empty box of tampons

I don't know why I can't get over Michelle Wolf's monologue at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, but I can't. It was so funny. And rad.

I particularly liked the jokes that felt like they had women as the target audience.

The "smoky eye" one. I wonder if there are a lot of men who didn't get the Maybelline reference. I mean, I've probably seen hundred of car commercials in my life, but I can't tell you the taglines of any of the major car companies. I haven't been socialized to give a shit. Most of those commercials are made for men, what with their need for speed. So I'm wondering how many men actually recognize the Maybelline tagline and how many of them don't because they tune out completely during makeup commercials.

I confess, I've bought eye shadow palettes that advertised themselves as smoky eye kits. To get the joke, you have to know (1) what the smoky eye is, and (2) you also kinda need to have some sense of how many smoky eye tutorials show up in women's magazines. Enough where it's possible to get the sense that we're all actually just on the quest for the perfect smoky eye.

The focus of the joke is Sanders' incessant lying in press briefings, not her eye shadow. But if you see how "burning facts and using the ashes as eye shadow" plays on the silly, upbeat tone of the smoky eye tutorial ("So resourceful!"), you get the added perk of a little satirical riff on women's socialization to be hyper-focused on our appearance.

A man couldn't make the eye shadow joke because they don't have to know about the work that goes into creating those sexy, smoky eyes of which they are the beneficiaries (if they are straight and buy into dominant beauty norms).

Also, the "Ivanka is as useful to women as an empty box of tampons" joke. We're the ones who know how annoying it is when you are sitting on the toilet, see that you got your period, reach into the cabinet under the sink for a tampon, and realize that the box is empty. It sucks so bad. Toilet paper wadded up to make do until you can get to CVS. That joke was for us.

All these men and anti-feminist women are crying about how she shouldn't make jokes about Sanders' and Ivanka's appearance (Oh, the diaper genie one!) as if they give a fuck about the ubiquitous reduction of women to their looks. She made no jokes about any woman's appearance. In fact, the kerfuffle over the jokes that aren't about women's appearance, but not about the ones that were actually making fun of individual men's looks, suggests that they really do equate women's value with their appearance. Make fun of Christie's and McConnell's nasty selves, and that's okay, because everyone knows that they're big, respectable men with big, respectable jobs. But if you go after a woman's appearance, you're leaving her with nothing! 

trying

Under Drumpf’s administration, I have forgotten what I have to say. It’s like, he makes it too easy:

“Dumb fuck.”

There. Now I feel like I’ve adequately critiqued his foul ass.

I’m also feeling writerly paralyzation because so many other folks are already writing fantastic pieces about what’s going on, and I’ve been feeling like, the best contribution I can make is just to Like and Share.

So I’m sitting down tonight to come up with something because I like how I feel about myself when I’m writing. I like the feeling of trying to wrangle the right words onto the page.

At least a dozen people have told me that I should be writing about the work we’re doing at SQ, but it’s hard for me to get outside of it and see the threads of narratives available for the telling.

In the last year, I’ve edited books for two different friends. They make it look so easy. Five- or six-page Word document? Chapter. Ten chapters in a book. They just do it.

And I’m sitting here feeling like I’ve got nothing to say when I’m pretty sure do.

I’d like to start publishing some stuff online maybe.

There have been several instances in the last few months where I think I’ve smelt a tiny whiff of what it’s like to have my depression lifted off of me. For a long time I’ve been fine, but not able to get excited about anything. The first moment came when I was seeing Hamilton with my Mom in March. As I watched, I kept thinking about a clip from a PBS special about the show where you see Lin-Manuel Miranda bringing his draft to a two other guys, and they’re going through it to edit and build. And I’d get so excited and want to do that.

In no particular order, I want to write about

: How white people need to find a way out of their blind rage at reverse racism without losing face. White people need to figure out ways that help white people better understand historical context and systemic oppression without emasculating them. If that makes sense. White people can get so defensive, and then the conversation feels hopeless because they’re not going to back down because white supremacy intersects powerfully with misogyny and hypermasculinity! We gotta do something about our people for real.

: The implicit pedagogy of Creativity Explored. Our former director called it “non-confrontational advocacy.” We do what we can to bring attention to work created by artists with developmental disabilities and know that when folks experience the beauty of the artwork, they a teensy-bit unlearn ableist and patronizing ideas about folks with developmental disabilities. Sentence too long.

But I think it’s much more interesting to think about the pedagogy of the studio, the teachers’ approach to the artists they work with. The lack of curriculum. The variance between giving artists direct guidance, images to draw or paint, and giving artists the paint they need to create basically the exact same piece that they’ve been making for thirty years. Artists are encouraged as they develop their practice, and artists are supported if they decide not to “get better.” Teachers do what they can to make sure that artists can make informed choices and then follow the artists’ lead.  

Makes me think about how my Mom would always say that they needed to stop plotting to make Conor smarter in his annual IEP meetings. Like, he’s fine the way he is. Let’s just make sure he’s experiencing pleasure – delicious food, sunny days, loud music.

: I’m teaching a class at Mills, Introduction to the Humanities, and we just read Whiteness as Property and the first chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. We’ve been talking about what it means to be human (and the students, graciously, are not rolling their eyes the way I kind of am at myself.) What struck me most this time around was the question of whether our humanity is innately individual or innately connected. I’m just now realizing that I think it’s the latter.

And for some silly reason, I’ve been thinking about how much I like the word “folks,” and how there’s not really such thing as a singular folk. Maybe there is, but it’s a horrible word.

Okay now, I’m going to go watch a few episodes of Insecure.

Navigating all that unpacking and complicating and problemetizing.

Walking down the hallway at Mills yesterday, I heard just these words from a conversation two women were having:

"...notion that how we position the concept..."

I immediately texted the words to myself so that I could remember them because I thought they were so funny.  I love graduate school jargon.

Just now though, it's making me think of the Bechdel test for movies, TV, etc.:

(1) Does it have two named female characters?
(2) Do they talk to each other?
(3) ...About anything other than a man?

Clicking the link above will take you to a sad long list of all the movies that fail the test.  More movies need to feature women talking about the notions of how we position concepts.  I'd go to those movies.

these obscene questions

Here's the thing.  Here's what it comes down to:

A White man does not get to call "obscene" an account, authored by a Black woman, of the emotional fallout of the ubiquity of sexual violence against girls and women.

A White man does not get to call a Black woman's hurt "obscene."

It's obscene for a man to censor women's unceasing trauma because that trauma is "obscene."  That trauma is perpetrated and perpetuated by men empowered by the very White supremacist patriarchy that also empowers this particular censoring White man.

did you hurt a woman today
i have to ask these obscene questions
the authorities require me to
establishimmediate cause
every three minutes
every five minute
severy ten minutes
every day.
-- Ntzoke Shange, from "with no immediate cause" 

Audre Lorde

"Caring for myself is not self-indulgence.  It is self-protection, and that is an act of political warfare."

filing

I came across Anita, a documentary about Anita Hill's 1991 testimony to Clarence Thomas' sexual harassment of her.  I was only five then, so I don't have any memory of it, but I'd heard it alluded to.  I'm glad I watched it.

There's such an air of, "Ohmygod why are you making a big deal of nothing," to the footage.  Actually, beyond that, it's like: "You are fucking up our shit by bringing this up! We are White men trying to do right by bringing in a Black guy! Why won't you shut up?!"  Putting her testimony on trial? What? 

(Although watching Senator Hatch come after her was not unlike watching White folks in the media and in local governments attack the characters of the Black men and boys that their police have murdered.  For example.)

There's a scene in the documentary where she shows all the file cabinets in her basement, filled with correspondence she has received over the years.  She randomly pulls one and reads it aloud, a letter of sincere support.  Earlier though, she shares that she has one file cabinet full of insults and threats she's received.

My former principal shared her file with me once.  I only read some of its contents; an anonymous letter shaming her for not shh-ing Black families cheering for their children at graduation stands out in my memory.

I have a digital folder full of screenshots from this whole incident.

---

There's something about filing.  About collecting.  Does cool-headedly putting mean messages aside help to restore a sense of dignity?  Like, in my case, I'm like, "...Hm... Alright, ya fucking asshole.  Noted.  I'll just keep that. shit. right. here."

---

My Facebook feed, perhaps coincidentally/perhaps because August is approaching, has had a lot of stuff about teachers and depression on it lately.  Once I noted the trend, I bookmarked this one and this one.  I take issue with several of the things these dudes have to say, but I'm feeling the need to start filing teacher depression stories somewhere.

"dominance, ego, and authority"

This piece is tripping me up this morning.  Particularly right here: 

Casebolt's behavior, as in all cases of police brutality, was not about protecting and serving. It was about dominance, ego, and authority, and when confronted with a young black girl it manifested itself through a sexual and physical aggression that was patently inappropriate -- but unsurprising. There are some who will say that it is a "reach" to accuse Casebolt of sexual assault. But in the case of a grown man physically dominating a 15-year-old girl, it's hard to see how else it can be described.

Yes.  As someone who has been an important teacher for me said on FB: "This. Is. Sexual. Assault." I don't really have a stomach for reading/watching stuff about child abuse and/or sexual assault, so the on-pointedness of what she's saying here is making me a little nauseous.

"@Xmukexziamx: RT #craigranch #RETWEET pic.twitter.com/kEXV5yCXKS" This is not okay. It's not fucking okay #McKinney

— girl . (@larryftniell) June 8, 2015

---

My White woman teacher-friend Mary and I were talking yesterday about being a young White woman authority figure (in the official world) in a classroom where Black and Brown masculinity holds power (in the unofficial world).  

Mary (who's for sure conventionally beautiful) and her (dude) partner are both teaching at the JDC here in the city, and she was explaining to me how interesting it is to get to see how the students there respond to him as a teacher versus her.  In the boys' classroom and in the girls'.  She said that her partner remarked that she seemed to have an easier time connecting to the boys.  She rolled her eyes and said that of course she knew that it had something to do with "being a woman."

And then we had this conversation where for the first time (for me anyway) we acknowledged that sex has a lot to do with teacher-student rapport.  Not actual sex, of course, but... you know, all the swirling stuff associated with sexual attraction.  We both admitted, real awkwardly, that we know that we've used how we look to get an initial in with a student, if that's what it takes to get to someplace where meaningful learning can happen.

I told her how two of my incarcerated colleagues explained to me how a major rapport challenge for them is student resistance to being dominated, and thus emasculated, when the teacher is another incarcerated man.

---

Last week, a really shitty experience I had a few months ago with misogyny got resurrected.  I hadn't thought about it for a while, but now it's back to being turned around and around in my head:

A man who was a classmate, and with whom I had a friendship that was rife with sexual attraction (and all the swirling stuff) attacked me in a group email in response to my request to be allowed to write with him and two other men about work that all of us in the group had done together last year.  A favorite excerpt: 

"Don't try and insert yourself now for your "intellectual" labor. You didn't do shit on the original proposal, it wasn't your idea to hold a roundtable, you might've contributed, perhaps, through casual conversation."

Intellectual in quotes.  That's the part that gets me.  The general idea of the whole email is that I didn't do any work because I'm not smart enough to have done so.

In reality, I did a shitload of the work -- both intellectual and logistical.  As well as a lot of straight up grunt work.  All of the other people included on the group email (bar one) reached out to me privately to incredulously affirm that.  

So to this asshole: my work was invisible, my intellect negligible, and my right to a voice in the description of what we did collectively was his to silence or allow.  "Dominance, ego, and authority" all underscored by our history of sort of dating for a little bit and having one drunk night a few months before this exchange, and therefore most definitely underpinned by my vulnerability from being a woman in a (hetero) sexualized context.

---

I'm still moshing this all about.  Certainly I don't mean to liken my experience with this fucker to the sexual assault of Dajerria Becton by that fucker.  Hell no.

I guess I'm just pinning them up side-by-side and stepping back to wonder.  Sex and violence.

staying single forever and ever and ever

Here’s something that’s true for me and will probably not be for others.  And it’s something steeped in my experiences of sexism as it intersects with hetero, White, and thin privilege:

When a straight woman and a straight man are coworkers (or even classmates, friends, whatever), it is sexist and horrible for the man to initiate anything romantic/sexual, but it is fine for the woman to do so.

I can think of five times in the last three years that this has happened to me, that a straight male co-worker/friend/whatever has tried to get fresh or something, and every time it’s been… ugh yuck.  Bad.  Awkward.  No.  Shit.  Ugh.  Needlessly anxiety- and guilt-producing for me.  

Most obviously, it’s sexist because it’s a reinforcement of the woman-as-sex-object thing that’s straight up old school sexism.  See any Gender Studies 101 class for more information about this.  Women are just ogled more than men are.  It’s more (potentially and/or actually) damaging for men to ogle women, too – especially when that ogling gets all up in there with the combination of masculinity as virile (powerful, in control, instinctually violent, etc.) and femininity as submissive.  When men ogling women becomes normalized.  It’s “natural” for men to be obsessed with sex.  Boys will be boys.  Blah blah blah barf. 

(And I don’t mean that men aren’t ogled often.  I ogle men all the time.  I once initiated a game of Hot or Not amongst my coworkers in our shared office space.  Pictured below.) 

What’s more insidious for me than this obvious my-face-is-up-here type enactment of sexism is the way that women and girls, myself included, are so often socialized to internalize male supremacy to the point that we, I, feel compelled to do what I can to avoid “emasculating” men I care about.  (Again, holy heteronormativity, I know.)  My friend Amy noticed this tendency in me years ago and used to try various ridiculous activities to condition me to be better at saying “no” to men who were creeping on me: She’d repeatedly put her hand on my lower back, for example, and try to get me to swat her away at faster and faster rates.  It’s embarrassing to admit it, but I have so many times let men who are friends do that – put their hand on my lower back, hug too close for too long, or put their arm around me – while I’ve cringed inwardly.  But I didn’t say anything because of the particular way that I guess I’ve internalized sexism.

Further, beyond allowing these micro-unwanted advances from male friends, I have felt tremendously responsible for smoothing out the social awkwardness they cause.  In one instance, the male friend in question and I were working together in a very tenuous context that he was officially charged with facilitating.  Later in the night after the meeting during which he slipped me an unwanted romantic note, I agonized about how I was going to let him down firmly without messing with his ego in ways that would slow or stop the progress of our committee’s work.  But I didn’t fucking do anything wrong, so why the hell did I feel so responsible?

And the thing is, it’s not like I have any male friends who are pronounced misogynists.  Actually, I would be surprised if very many of my male friends didn’t identify as feminists.  I’ve never been afraid that one of my male friends would assault me, sexually or otherwise.  But I don’t think that the kinds of fake male feminism I have encountered amongst some of my male friends is unrelated to our larger rape culture.  Um: 1 in 3 women experience physical or sexual violence.

And I don't think that any unwanted advances from female me toward a male friend exists on that same continuum of violence.  Again, it's sexist for them to do it, but not for me to do it.  No such thing as reverse sexism. 

I really like what this woman says here about fake male feminism.  She recounts,

I would meet a man who led a feminism reading group and become involved with the women, pissing them off to vision-blurring rage.  I would meet a man who writes his thesis on Audre Lorde’s idea of a lesbian consciousness but was always the last to leave a party, eyes darting around for inebriated women, prospective bedmates.  I would meet countless self-proclaimed feminists whose mouths would ask, “Have you read Gender Troubles?” while their body language asks, “Is that the passcode to your pants?”  And I would pardon these men over and over again, because they behaved, at least initially, like my male feminist role models.

And I’m like, yeeeah. But including and beyond dudes using their feminist credentials to get laid, I’m pissed about men who use their feminist credentials to get ahead professionally.  I’ve seen that shit several times in academe.  Male grad students publishing articles that lean heavily on feminist theories and blabbing to male classmates about sexual exploits with female classmates. All dudes involved in said blabbing sesh keeping it hush-hush because “guy code.”  

Feminism for Facebook likes but not within intimate relationships.  Fuh-hu-huuuuuuuuuuuck that.

Heck. We’re never going to elect Hillary.