Only One Manda

Enough is as Good as a Feast: Finding the Space Between Feast and Famine

2012-01-30T20:03:00.000-05:00

I was born in the early 80’s, so when I was little, VCR’s were just starting to become a household item. My parents tell me that they ran about $500.00 or so, so when we got one, it was a pretty big deal. One of the first tapes they got for me was Mary Poppins and I loved it. I watched it over and over, literally until the tape broke. And when the tape broke, I cried until we got a new one. And then I wore that tape almost all the way out. I still have that second Mary Poppins, actually. I watch it pretty sparingly now, so as not to break it again, and when I do watch it, it’s like I’m a 3-year-old again. I’m certainly not ashamed to say that I was watching it recently and something really stuck out to me this time.

There is a scene in which Mary Poppins, a magical nanny, has just gotten home from a day of fantastic adventure with her two charges, Jane and Michael Banks. The children are terribly excited and keep asking her for more. They’ve had a wonderful time and they don’t want it to end. Her reply to this? “Enough is as good as a feast.”

I’m sure my interpretation of this is colored not only by our present economic state, but also by my own stinginess. I am, by nature, a very frugal person. I find that at the grocery store, for instance, I don’t have a brand preference pretty much any of the time and I find also, that I don’t necessarily allow myself to have any preferences at all. I figure if I can get a pound of ground chuck for the same price or less as a few nice steaks, I’m going to go with the ground chuck. Not because I like it necessarily, but because I can have more for less. And doesn’t it make sense to spend as little as possible?

I’m like this with clothing, too. If I need a pair of shoes, for instance, I always look for the cheapest pair, telling myself that maybe I’ll buy a nice pair when I have enough money. The weird thing about this is that I’m not poor at all. Having just done my taxes, I am celebrating my second year as a single person in the work force living above the poverty line. You’d think that this would make me feel like splurging, but it doesn’t. It makes me feel frightened of losing what I have. And having admitted that in print, I have to acknowledge that this isn’t necessarily healthy (though I think I’ve known that all along).

Come to think of it, I’m like this with most things. As I was moving this last time, I found myself donating and throwing away everything that I didn’t need immediately and almost everything that wasn’t nailed down. My fiancé even tried to dissuade me when I was throwing away things like clothes I still wear and things we actually need. I had gone to one end of the spectrum and it took another person to make me step back and realize it.

On the other end of the spectrum I see things on TV like the show Hoarders, in which I see people who spend their lives accumulating so much stuff that they end up literally buried in it. People who believe that gobs of moldy food and piles of trash have value and should be kept in the house. This is certainly not healthy.

In my line of work, I come into contact with certain individuals who literally cannot stop spending money. Who always need one more thing or a better version of something. They feel entitled to whatever they want, in as large a quantity as they want, whenever they want. This isn’t healthy either.

So where, as a culture or as individuals, do we find a happy medium? Perhaps certain 29-year-olds find it in viewing Mary Poppins. Perhaps by indulging in moderation, I can prevent myself from feeling deprived without treading into the dangerous territory of being buried alive in mounds of stuff or overextending myself by always chasing the bigger, better thing. Perhaps as a culture, we can benefit from striving to live well, without living greedily. I think that’s what Mary Poppins meant when she was talking to Jane and Michael. That it is important to indulge – to have adventures, whatever that means to any one of us – and it is equally important to know when to stop. Enough is, indeed, as good as a feast.

Finding Hope: A Holiday Reminder

2011-11-15T22:52:00.000-05:00

Generally, I avoid the news. I know that’s not ever the politically correct thing for an intelligent woman to say, but it’s true. I hate watching the news. It’s always some sensationalized, pre-packaged nonsense story telling me that I need to be afraid of something. Reinforcing horrendous stereotypes. Amanda, you need to buy more hand sanitizer. Amanda, here’s the newest way to lose that pesky beer gut of yours. Amanda, they’ve recalled peanut butter. And so on and so forth until I’m either disgusted into a state of complacency or so aggravated that I have a hard time remaining compassionate towards other people. The news is bad for my health and, I might suggest, everyone else’s.

I live in the same world as everyone else does, though. In an apartment, even, rather than under a proverbial rock, and much to my dismay, some news items sneak through and make it under the layer of sand where I sometimes bury my head. Recently, two news items have struck me, not only because of their horrific nature, but also because of their undeniable interconnection.

First, there is the Penn State coach who is accused of sexually abusing children and those who sought to protect him from scrutiny. For days, I saw all over the internet how everyone felt so sorry for one coach when he lost his job for failing to report these instances of abuse. A good friend of mine who also happens to be a social worker brought up a good point regarding this story. She commented that she is tired of hearing how sorry everyone feels for the perpetrators of these grievous abuses and would like to hear someone speaking up for the children in the situation. I couldn’t have agreed more.

Second, there are the two (well, one current and one former) middle school special ed. teachers in Washington Court House, Ohio who were caught on tape both verbally and physically abusing a special needs teenager over a period of four days. According to various news stories, the parents of this fourteen year old had complained to the principal of the school, who barely seemed to do more than blatantly ignore them and then to the superintendent of the school system in question, who indicated that their accusations were bordering on harassment and suggested that their daughter was lying about these experiences. The girl’s parents had to hide a tape recorder in their daughter’s clothing and only when they caught the women in question on tape did the school system take any action. They terminated one of the teachers. The other, so far, has only been required to take a course on preventing bullying.

Anybody else feel sick yet? I sure do. I feel sick to know that even in a supposedly enlightened world, those with power are not only bullying, but also attempting to dismantle and destroy those without it. It’s happening with people. It’s happening with institutions (much as it always has). To make matters worse, it seems like more and more of us are trying to excuse some of it. In the case of the football coach, some people seemed to be more upset that the football team was losing its coach than they were that innocent children were being abused. In the case of the two abusive teachers, while the school system fired one of them, they thought that an eight hour long course on preventing bullying was adequate penance for having contributed to and having allowed the verbal and physical abuse of a child. These two instances are really discouraging. Are we really at a point as a human race that those who are charged with protecting end up being those against whom the powerless require protection? And what in the world are we supposed to do to try to heal?

I sat on my fiancé’s couch seething about this recently as he attempted to dismantle a desk and shelf that I think take up too much space in the room. He asked me to move in a few months ago, proposed about a month ago and we have recently begun the process of “merging our stuff.” The desk has been a point of contention between us. He picked out and bought it, along with a few other pieces and while I do find them attractive, I also find them bulky, so for several months, we have been discussing how to make “his space” into a livable “our space.” Part of this ended up meaning that the bulky furniture goes.

As he took apart furniture, I yelled in his direction about the news. “What is wrong with people?” I shrieked as he tried to find a suitable tool to remove stripped screws from metal fixtures.

“Seriously! How can we even call ourselves human beings when we are doing things like this to one another? I feel like there’s no hope for any of us!”

He sneezed at three years of dust under the desk as he started pulling it apart and it occurred to me that he wasn’t listening to me at all. I turned my fury on him and as he dumped a bag of screws and screw accouterments all over the living room floor and as the cat delighted in dancing around in the carnage, I realized something: this is how we should be treating one another. Suddenly, my anger dissolved into a bewildered love for my fellow humans.

Rather than using our power against each other so that we can feel less helpless in a chaotic world, we should all be doing what we can to make each other’s lives better. More comfortable. More compassion-based and less fear based. While I was lamenting the state of humankind and declaring us all one, giant lost cause, my partner in crime was unknowingly showing me hope in an act of kindness – in his willingness to inconvenience himself and dismantle his routine and his life so that I could be more comfortable. So that I could feel at home.

It is very easy, when confronted with the scope of our potential for evil, to give up on ourselves. To give up on the idea that we can be good to each other and for each other. There is no way to eradicate huge epidemic problems such as abuse or bullying. There is no sweeping statement or act that can prevent terrible things from happening in the world. All we have is control over our own actions. Mostly, what we have are small acts of kindness.

What we have is an immense power to do good, one small act at a time, every time we are able, as many times as we are able, as often, as much, etcetera. Sometimes it takes something as inane as the dismantling of a desk to remind me of the good in people. This holiday season, act in the interest of compassion, in the interest of kindness and in the interest of love, one act at a time.

“To Speak the Truth is Easy and Pleasant”: Russian Novels, Renewal and a Few Peeps from the Peanut Gallery

2011-09-27T21:16:00.000-04:00

I don’t know if anyone besides me does this, but I read particular books in particular seasons. For instance at the first break of Spring, I read Richard Brautigan’s In Watermelon Sugar. In the dead of Winter, I like All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque). In Summer, when I can’t sleep because it’s too hot, I read Altered States by Paddy Chayefsky.

Fall is very special to me, though. October is my birth month, I love crisp weather, I can’t get enough of the smell of leaves and Halloween is easily in the running for being my favorite holiday. Unlike many people I know, I find Fall (rather than Spring) to be a time of renewal in the sense that you know you’re going to be enjoying its beauty and that beauty will make you introspective enough to really examine your motives so that you can live with the isolation of your own company through the Winter months. Am I making sense? In case I’m not, I’ll get a little closer to the point.

At the end of September / beginning of October, I read my very favorite book by Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita. I came across this book accidentally in the fall of 2008. I had just moved to downtown Baltimore, I didn’t have any money and I had a lot of time on my hands. It was my roommate’s and it was lying around our apartment and I just happened to pick it up just as the weather started getting crisp. I don’t know if it was the weather or my situation at the time or the fact that I may or may not have been drinking a lot of vodka and chain-smoking a lot on the steps of my building, but that book was life altering for me and now I read it every fall. My favorite quote in it takes place when Jesus Christ is explaining to Pontius Pilate that, “to speak the truth is easy and pleasant.” Please take my advice and read the book and the quote will make more sense, but for now, that’s not necessarily the point either.

I just recently started my annual reading of The Master and Margarita and on a whim, I decided to read the translator’s introduction, in which she explains that Bulgakov was a gifted satirist writing satire in Russia in the 1920’s. Russia in the 1920’s was not a good place to be writing satire and needless to say, Bulgakov was slighted, stunted, hindered, discouraged and all but literally broken of his passion for the written word and observation of his world. He knew where his passion was, though, and in a very (almost stupidly) bold move, he wrote a letter to Stalin demanding to either be deported or assigned to a job in either literature or theater. As a result of this bold act, he spent the majority of his last decade alive in Theater. He didn’t get to see much of his writing published or enjoyed during his lifetime, but he never stopped writing and he insisted upon either remaining close to his passion or permitted to leave his home so that he could pursue that passion. Very Russian lit, I know, but stay with me.

All that being said, sometimes I’m not sure I’m that dedicated of a writer. For instance, I get two days before these deadlines and I have no idea what I’m going to say. So, inevitably and only half-jokingly, I make a post on facebook. Something to the effect of, “I need to write a column in the next two days. Throw me a bone, Muse.” The first answer came from my dear friend, Mike, who suggested the following topic: “Weighted nymphs seem like cheating to me. A good seven or eight weight shooting taper with a sink tip well presented upstream would keep the fly more natural in the proper hands and should elicit a strike from the most wary steelhead.” Of course, the only thing I understood about this was that Mike was talking about fishing and that Mike loves to fish. When Mike wakes up in the morning, he is a hunter and a fisherman. Possibly before he is, does or interacts with anything else, he is a hunter and a fisherman. He had to know I was probably not going to address whether weighted nymphs are a cheat move when going after trout, but he couldn’t help it. Mike wakes up Mike. A fisherman, hunter and smart ass.

The second answer I got came from my friend, Nate. He and I have been friends for years and years. We grew up together and we are usually those smug two in the corner making fun of everyone else. His answer was to write about, “Halloween as a moment of change and self-actualization.” He was a philosophy major and he is now in his first year of law school. When he wakes up in the morning, he thrives on understanding and mastering the art of human interaction. He can’t help it. Just as, I’m sure, he couldn’t help but state that I may, “submit his royalty check whenever I please.” Do you see where I’m going with this? No? Okay, one more example.

I got a third answer from my Aunt Traci who suggested that I write about the interaction between older and younger generations, their perceptions of one another and whether these perceptions are accurate. My Aunt Traci has many passions in life, but the most obvious of these to me is the passion that she has for raising and interacting with her children. She can’t help that. Her first reaction when I asked for a noteworthy topic was to suggest the interaction between generations and finding points of communication or even dissonance. This is who she is when she wakes up.

People always talk about a refusal to compromise as if it is a skill that is learned or a fashion that can be worn. I wonder if maybe a refusal to compromise regarding one’s passions in life isn’t simply an inability to compromise because it would contradict the essences of our respective selves. When you wake up in the morning, before you are anything else, what are you?

See what I mean about fall being a time of renewal? When I woke up this morning, I had no idea what to write about. So I acknowledged my passion without even thinking about it. I acknowledged and was able to then pay a little tribute to the interconnection between all of us. Mikhail was very right. To speak the truth, whether or not you know you’re doing it, really is easy and pleasant.

Carcinogens to Carrots - An Alliterative Allegory

2011-08-08T21:59:00.000-04:00

It's Monday night and Sam has already taken the Ohio Bar Exam. This means that after three years of living with a law student and three months of living with what basically amounted to a plucky, zombie with non-rotting skin and a blonde pixie cut, I have my sister back. And she's so relaxed. For example, a commercial just came on for Conan the Barbarian and the dialogue went like this:

Sam: OOH! Khal Drogo!
Me: What?
Sam: This really hot guy from... um...
Me: What are you talking about?
Sam: Conan the Barbarian!
Me: You're just saying nouns!
Sam: Sorry! Sorry. This is the movie, Conan the Barbarian. The guy playing Conan was
in the show, Game of Thrones. His character on the show was named Khal Drogo.
Me: Oh.

In her own words, "I'm excited to cook dinner, I don't get angry about unloading the dishwasher and I don't cry when people leave their pots and pans in the sink. I just feel, like, completely relaxed." Is it articulate enough a sentiment to hold up in a court of law? That's not really for me to decide, but it's really nice coming home from work and having a buddy to do stupid shit with.

After what I'll call a moment of clarity at the doctor's office recently, I've resolved to stop sneaking my favorite little cylindrical vices (among other things) and just to generally treat my body more like organic matter that requires a certain internal environment to function properly and less like the side of the couch on which I may or may not wipe boogers.

I think a lot of this attempt at a commitment to health has to do with the fact that I don't feel invincible anymore. When I was in my early twenties, I felt like I could drink a quart of well whiskey, puke it up, have some taco bell, drive myself home and still wake up the next morning and be able to function. Now, if I have a beer and go to bed without drinking a glass of water, I wake up feeling congested and headachy. I used to smoke a pack and a half of cigarettes a day. Now, if I smoke even one, I feel it all day. I used to be able to eat whatever I wanted and now if I don't eat enough fruits and veggies, I feel like I'm lumbering around like a bloated raccoon. I know the appropriate response to this is the time-marches-on resignation to "getting older," but for someone who relishes the ability to pleasure-seek without consequence, in other words this chick *points at self*, it sucks!

I get all temper-tantrum-feeling knowing that a diet of pulled pork, Marlboro reds and bourbon isn't going to work out for me on a permanent basis. Now I have to add it all to the list of things that I'll be able to do when I die and go to heaven, right along with "shred like Eddie Van Halen."

So meanwhile, never to be defeated by my own sabotage (or at least, not for long), I have needed to find better ways to blow off steam. Writing is obviously one of those things, so one of the things I've committed to do is write or edit at least one thing every day.

It's weird coming of age. I was watching Sam read a borrowed kindle, as content as a housecat, while I leaned against the kitchen counter, having my evening carrot and watching Hoarders. She gave me this weird look and I asked her what was up. She said she wanted to keep reading but she didn't want to stay on her ass anymore. I suggested that she come have an evening carrot-in-lieu-of-a-cigarette with me.

"We could pace," she said.

"I never really paced," I replied. "I leaned." I handed her a carrot and she crunched into it with the sort of dramatic flair only possessed by almost-lawyers.

"We could always stretch." And she showed me a stretch that involved your top half eventually going totally limp over your bottom half, thereby folding herself completely in half. The way you fold a baby only vertical and the other way around.

"Nah, I like tree pose," and I proceeded to chew my carrot like a Cuban cigar and pose like a statue of Shiva while Sam wobbled over with each attempt.

"You know, Amanda: Carrots. Cigarettes. They both start with C." She started trailing off. "Carcinogens versus Keratin...."

"Really?" I said.

"Cornucopias of cantankerous carrots to cancel carcinogenic cigarettes, perhaps?"

"Oh, jesus."

Then I told her about how I had writer's block and asked her to give me a theme.

"Why not write about your metamorphosis from a cigarette smoker to a carrot eater. It could be, like, a touching coming of age drama. Also, use some alliterations. Those are fun."

"Done."

The Failed Cookie Mission and How it Revealed Human Compassion as well as Stupidity

2011-07-11T14:39:00.005-04:00

Okay, so if anyone knows me at all, they know that I've basically been on a diet since I was five-years-old for the most part. It's how I grew up. It's what women did. Food is not fuel, but rather an elaborate system of rewards and punishments, bla, bla, bla. That's not really the point of this post. I'm giving you background to the failed cookie mission, here. Needless to say, I'm probably on a diet right now. Meaning that I'm pretty anal-retentive about the amount of calories I consume in an average day. Two factors combined to trigger something in my brain that made me eat a very delicious dinner of chicken marsala and mashed potatoes this weekend, though.

1. I've decided that way too many people still think it's funny to make fun of overweight people. I mean, for all you know, they've just committed to trying to change their lives and there you are, sitting in judgment of them. It's like this with anything for the most part, though. Don't judge a person until you know the situation and even then, just don't judge a person. It's gross and it's unnecessary. I decided that I was going to refuse to conform to society's various stigmas, throw caution to the wind and have a very enjoyable meal.

2. I met my weight loss goal for the week and my sister makes the greatest chicken marsala this side of the Mississippi.

So we ate the dinner and afterwards, the Vajskop sisters wanted something sweet to round it off. After a weird amount of sleepy, full-bellied negotiations about this, it was determined by the lot of us that I was to go to the store for cookies.

So I went out into the sweltering heat of Ohio summer, got in the car and started leaving the apartment complex, only to be temporarily held up by a young girl strutting around the entrance of the complex. She didn't seem to have any idea my car was there, so I just sat there, not wanting to hit her and thinking that she'd better be careful or she'd get hurt. I don't live on a very busy street, but it's still pretty important to look for traffic when you're on foot. I thought I'd wait to turn until she was totally finished crossing and then I'd go forth and complete the cookie mission, but she never made it across. She was hit by a motorcycle. No, I am not kidding.

For the first few seconds, I thought I had imagined it, but after looking at it for more than five seconds, I realized that it was very much a real thing which had just happened. I learned yesterday, that my go-to swear word is "shit."

I parked and called 911. I called my sisters and told them that I couldn't go to the store. They came down to wait with me. And I learned a few things about humans yesterday.

1. For the most part, people will try to do anything they can to avoid injuring each other. I watched the driver spill a very-expensive bike in an attempt to not hit this girl. I watched as several people stopped to see if the people were okay and to direct traffic until the police got there. I witnessed how quickly EMT's and police officers work to get to the scene of an accident and how efficiently they triaged everyone before loading them into ambulances.

2. Even though I'm not the hugest fan of the police in general, most police officers are nice people who want good things for the world and unfortunately, there are a few rhoided-out jerks who ruin the image of the police for everyone. When I approaced an officer to let him know that I had witnessed the accident, he was very kind, not at all condescending or suspicious of my efforts to be helpful.

3. People love to gossip, to a very sick degree. When I was filling out my statement, there was one particularly aggressive gentleman who kept pushing me to tell him what happened and became even more aggressive when I didn't want to discuss it with him. Also, what started out as four or five people at the scene when it actually happened turned into thirty or forty people who did not know these people at all, but had no problem lookey-looing, getting in the way and loudly speculating about who they believed to be at fault in the situation.

4. My sisters are two of the most fantastic people in the world. When I had explained what happened, they both came running down to meet me and to make sure that I was okay and not too shaken up, which I thought was hilarious since I was not the one who had just gotten creamed in the middle of the road.

From what I was able to glean by talking to the police, the only major injury belonged to the motorcycle itself. The people likely went home last night, and that gave me a huge sense of relief.

Needless to say, the cookie mission was a failure, but talk about being in a particular place at a particular time.

The universe is weird.

"I've come to keep you company my dear..."

2011-06-08T21:18:00.002-04:00

In the mornings before work, I’ve been re-reading Mary Daly’s work. I can’t decide if it makes me feel uplifted or guilty. Empowered or helpless. I wish she was still somewhere where she could write books and publish them and I could purchase them and read them. In some sense it was like she was saving me. Dragging me toward life on the margins. For now, I feel as though in a lot of ways, am part of the problem and I see no legitimate way out right now. This is because I have forgotten how to view the world. I’ve only ever known how in small bursts. I expected her to live for as long as I needed her to so that someone would be there to guide me.

I had a dream about her before she died. I was driving my car and something was wrong with the gas tank. No matter how much gas I put into the car, it would always be three gallons from empty. I was pulled over by the police and they asked me why I hadn’t fixed the car. I explained that I was a graduate student and I couldn’t afford a major car repair. I was arrested because in the dream, being poor was a federal crime. I was sentenced to what I will call “diet crucifixion.” I’m calling it that because it wasn’t brutal like the crucifixion of the Roman Empire. I wasn’t nailed to anything. Instead, a pink cross was made from PVC pipe and erected in the parking lot of a used car dealership. I was secured to it with ropes and left in the sun to die of dehydration. At first dawn on the second day, Mary cut me off the cross. I was so grateful that I tried to hug her. To make her hold me like a mother would. She became annoyed and pushed me away. I became stoic and seemingly in response to my stoicism, because she knew I felt alone and afraid, she smirked, tossed me a very crispy and cold red delicious apple and said as if to correct my need to be embraced, “I’ve come to keep you company, my dear.” And I understood. The point wasn’t to be cut off the cross to be embraced or loved or even comforted. The point was that I was down and I had nourishment and in that, I had the ability to walk away. Mary was gone, but I walked off the dealership lot.

I’m glad I typed that somewhere, so that I can reference it later. It is important for me to remember that dream as often as I can because it is the only way I have to remember her work in my core instead of just in my brain. She would refer to it as “lusty leaping,” which is something at which I am not yet particularly talented. The less I pity myself, I’ve noticed, the better at it I get.

And further, the more I realize that I need to write. Even if only a few people read it. Even if no one reads it. This is what I am able to do.

a normal column, this time

2011-03-13T21:35:00.001-04:00

Inspired by my recent move...

Three's a Charm: A Tribute

I spend a lot of my writing-life creating works of fiction. Probably eighty-five percent of what I produce is fiction and prose that never really goes anywhere but onto a computer. I’m okay with this because it’s a release for me. Because its purpose is for me to deal with my every day life. If you’ve ever met me, you’d know that I’m stubbornly unemotional. I have emotions. After all, I’m not made of wood. I simply choose not to let my demeanor reflect what they are most of the time. I digest my world by writing about it. As I’m sure you’re aware (since you’re reading this), I spend the other fifteen percent of my writing-life doing columns of one kind or another. Advice. Opinion. What have you. And again, in these situations, I use the medium to examine and call into question aspects of humanity that anger or amuse me. Or I use it to express amazement at every day life. At least, I hope this is what I’m doing.
I noticed something about myself as a writer that I don’t like very much. I just finished going through every column and nearly every work of fiction that I’ve produced in the past few years and it seems as though I do my best and most poignant work when I’m angry, afraid or sad. I thought about why that might be and the part of me that wants to justify things to myself did exactly that by thinking that when life is really, really great, it’s easier to digest. Then another part of my brain started to question my justification. Any artistic expression is in essence a tribute to something, isn’t it? A painter makes a painting and it is a visual tribute to the subject of the painting. Likewise, a writer writes and it is a written tribute to the subject of the writing, isn’t it? And along those lines of logic, I have to stop and ask myself why I so often pay tribute to my own anger and sadness and so infrequently to my happiness? Is that messed up or what? I’ve decided that in this column and in a rare-ish outpouring of emotion, I’m going to tell you my favorite story about my favorite moment so far.
I peaked as a four-year-old. This is something I tell people all the time and it makes me sound very self deprecating. Until, of course, I tell the story about why. Picture it. Strongsville, Ohio 1987. I’ve spent a four-year-old’s eternity begging for siblings and then finally, one day, my parents sit me down and tell me that I’m about to be somebody’s big sister. And then I spend what seems like another eternity watching my mother’s belly grow, talking to it, reading it Dr. Seuss books and telling it about my day. Imagine my unabashed toddler enthusiasm when I find out that she’s not just going to give me one sibling, but two!
After this, there is a lot more waiting. The babies are getting really big and my poor mom is barely able to move any more. The babies are using her ribcage as a jungle gym. They move around and her body moves with them. I tell them every day that I love them and I can’t wait for them to meet me. I tell them that I’m going to protect them and teach them everything I can and play with them. And then finally, the time comes.
I am at home with a house full of relatives, waiting for my parents to come home and waiting for the babies. I already know that she had them and they exist in the world and that she and they are okay. I’m told that I have two sisters and I’m in love before I even meet them.
So imagine my absolute horror when my mom and dad and brand new, tiny, perfect, beautiful sisters arrive and no one will let me near them! My mother sits in an arm chair with one baby in each arm and a roomful of aunts and a couple of grandmothers are oohing and ahhing over the new babies. I can barely see them and I start to cry. People assume that I’m jealous of all of the attention they are getting and they pat my head. They brush me aside and hand me toys to try to distract me but this only makes me furious. My mom sees me crying and she tells me to sit down on the love seat. She puts one pillow in each of my arms and says to one of my aunts, “Give her those babies, please.”
The room erupts into protest. “She’ll hurt them!” “What if she drops them!” “Are you insane??” My mom, without raising her voice a single decibel, but this time through slightly gritted teeth (she’s famous for making her point this way) says again, “I want you to give her those babies. Now, please.” If you’ve met my mother, you know it’s a dicey sort of game to argue with her. Especially if she’s asking you a second time to do something that she has already asked you to do, only this time through slightly gritted teeth. And especially when she has just had twins.
So my aunt did what my mother asked her to do. She put one baby in my right arm and one in my left and my four year old self, with legs dangling over the side of the loveseat, met her two best friends. “These are your sisters, Amanda,” my mom said to me. I looked at them, awestruck. Totally relieved and completely happy. One looked up at me like I was some strange bug and the other drooled profusely, eyes wide as little moons. And even at four-years-old I knew that not everyone had something like this. Not everyone gets to have even one best friend, let alone two. And certainly not everyone gets to have two, phenomenal sisters who love them and who they love.
We’re all in our twenties now. One is about to finish law school and baffles me with her ability to navigate the world with grace and ease. The other designs gorgeous flower arrangements, has a degree in biochemistry and is fantastic at taking even the worst situations and making them not only okay, but also hilarious and fun. A day does not go by in which we do not make each other laugh, or support each other’s endeavors or call each other out on our ridiculousness. And at twenty-eight, I know that not everyone gets to have this. I don’t just feel lucky because it goes beyond luck. I feel charmed. Like some magical force in the universe coordinated our being born into the same family. People laugh at me because they don’t get along with their siblings. They think I’m nuts. I say there are worse reasons to be called nuts.
So now you all know something that makes me happy. Not to mention, you’ve read a very unlike-me outpouring of emotion. Let it never be said, readers, that I forgot to pay tribute to my happiness.

Ask Manda Again

2011-01-10T22:52:00.002-05:00

The frienship issue? The relationship issue? I dunno, but here it is :)

Ask Manda: Confessional
Seriously, ask me anything. Just send questions to amanda.vajskop@gmail.com and put “ask manda” in the subject line.

Dear Manda: How do I cut ties with a high-maintenance friend? We’ve known each other for ten years, but I can’t help but feel that she’s not bringing anything good into my life anymore. She’s negative, self-centered and dramatic. In fact, I can’t think of the last time I heard her say anything positive about anything! Every time we talk, it’s only because she feels like she needs to talk at someone and she never seems to be interested in anything that isn’t about her or her life. I feel obligated to her out of loyalty, but I can’t handle this anymore. Thoughts? - Emotionally Exhausted Friend

EEF, I wonder a few things about this situation. First, why do you feel obligated to this person? She sounds like a total energy-sucker. I mean, did she offer you a vital organ at some point in the past? Did you meet her in prison and she saved you from becoming someone’s old lady? Ten years is a long time to feel obligated to anyone for anything. That being said, I know exactly how you feel. I’ve had friends like this in the past and what I’ve found is that I keep them around both out of some weird and unwarranted sense of obligation AND because I love to hate them. However resistant we all are to admitting this, we all keep people around who we love to hate. People who, by proxy, make us feel better about ourselves because we dislike them so much. THAT being said, how do you cut ties with her? Simple. Just cut them. You don’t have to make any kind of grand declaration about the state of your friendship because if this chick is as neurotic and self-centered as you say she is, she likely won’t even register that you’re pulling away. If you don’t want to be around her, just don’t be. Be civil to her, obviously, but most importantly, stop thinking that anything you do is going to change her personality. It hasn’t for the past however many years. Besides, EEF, the Universe usually upgrades us when we finally decide to let go of the things and people that aren’t working in our lives. Time to make some room for a better friend!

Dear Manda: I have this really codependent friend. We have a mutual friend who constantly complains about her and won’t hang out with me if the codependent friend is going to be there. I am getting tired of her being so meek and refusing to state preferences for anything, but on the other hand, she can also be sort of controlling and judgmental. Our mutual friend and another friend of ours think the codependent friend really needs therapy and we’re considering staging an intervention. What’s the best way to do that? -Intervention Ready

Um, time out, IR. I think the best thing to do is hit the brakes and look at what you’re saying here. You and your friends think another of your friends is codependent, so you want to stage an intervention because a mutual friend wants to control the kind of friends you keep (whew! I hope I got that all)? Let me ask you a question. What do YOU think about your friend (the one on whom you’re planning to stage an intervention)? Do you want to keep company with this person or don’t you. That’s pretty much the only question in this scenario that is worth your attention. As for staging an intervention, my advice on how to do it is not to do it at all. This woman isn’t endangering her life or the lives of others. At the absolute worst, she’s annoying you. If that’s the case, I’d just back off and hang out with her less. So much easier and less dramatic, right?

I really hate to exercise, but I need to stay active and I want to keep my weight down. Any suggestions? - Lazy But Hopeful

Oh, Jeez, Lazy. Have you seen me lately? I’m not exactly the pinnacle of physical fitness here. The best and only advice I can come up with is to move every time you have a chance. Take the steps. Park far away from where you’re going so that you have to walk a little further. I’m kind of lazy myself. And by “kind of” I mean “very.” But taking small steps like this will at least help ensure that you don’t end up so out of shape that you’re out of breath after the two steps from your car door to the front door of your house.

Dear Manda: Do you believe that social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. are really helping us connect with friends and family? Or are they really just distracting us from spending quality time with them in person? – Social Butterfly

I really like this question, SB. Mainly because I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. While all of these sites DO provide the opportunity to connect with people who would otherwise be hard to find, call, visit, etc., it does absolutely promote laziness and time-wasting. While you might be able to find your long-lost buddy from elementary school, your boss can probably find that picture of you bonging a beer and flipping off the camera. And God help you if you’re looking for a job. They have ways to find all that stuff, now. While I am able to keep in touch with dear friends who live on the other side of planet earth, I also find myself censoring my activity so that my livelihood isn’t threatened. And yes, I know I’ve just discussed facebook so far. This is because I don’t tweet. Mainly because I don’t get tweeting. Call me old-fashioned.

Dear Manda: I have a long track record of being single and basically lost hope of ever having a meaningful relationship until I met my current boyfriend. We've been together for a year and a half and get along very well. Haven't even had a fight yet. That in itself worries me a little. Our only issue really is that he is a devout Christian and I'm a non-believer. Right now we're in limbo because he wants someone to share that with and knowing this, I have stopped putting forth any effort in the relationship. I figure what's the point? We're just headed for a break up anyway. Do you have any advice on how we can connect in a different way? I'm terrified of losing him but we may have exhausted all our efforts. – Lost Soul

Lost Soul, you’re not as lost as you think you are. I think the best thing you can do in this situation is talk to him about it. Ask him if this is a deal breaker or if he thinks he can be okay with it. I don't think it's necessarily fair to give up on it so quickly. Whatever if you don't believe in God, but have some faith in your boyfriend and your relationship. I think what a lot of people like about religious structures / faith in something larger than themselves is that it provides a sense of well-being or wonder in the world. Maybe a sense of something miraculous rather than ordinary. Ultimate instead of penultimate, you know? Okay, maybe you're not a Christian, but ask yourself these two questions: 1. Are you a good human being who cares for others for the most part? 2. Do you take pleasure in the world in which you live? When you take the myth and symbolism out of it, your shared sense of humanity might be where you can connect best.

The genesis of Ask Manda - OR - How I abruptly changed the format of my WJ article

2010-12-15T20:49:00.004-05:00

So, you know how I've been doing that opinion column for the Summit County Women's Journal since, like, 2005? Well, now you're all caught up about it, okay? Anyways, I realized this past deadline that I have run out of things to say for the time being, so I decided I'd rather focus on what's going on in other people's lives. Telling, I know, but run with it. So there I am all making desperate pleas on facey-face for people to ask my advice. ANYONE. And no one did.

So I fumed about that for awhile, ruminating on the obviously incorrect notion that I had been abandoned by my friends and loved ones in my hour of need. Woe, you know? Then in a rare moment of reason, I decided to just ask again and blammo. A million ask Manda questions. Literally enough for several columns. I'm answering the questions in the order in which I got them and the WJ comes out every 2 months. So if you already sent a question, you saved my ass from having to come up with some nonsense opinion item and offered me the opportunity to rejuvenate my writing mojo.

So here's the very first Ask Manda. Enjoy!

Ask Manda: A sort-of confessional
Seriously, ask me anything. Just send questions to amanda.vajskop@gmail.com and put “ask manda” in the subject line.

Dear Manda: I started a women’s wine club six years ago. We’ve been lucky to partner with a fantastic wine shop and it’s been a great opportunity for women to bond and become friends. The bad thing is that some of these women have become cliquey and newer members have complained that they feel unwelcome. If they want to have a private party, they should have a private party rather than using this group for their own purposes. Should I approach them individually, or should I send a neutral, “gentle reminder” to the whole group about the need for courtesy? - Ticked Off Wine Czar
I feel your pain, TOWC. Cliquey people really aggravate me, especially in a setting in which the point is to learn something or create a sense of community for all members. It sounds like you’ve really put a lot of time, effort and thought into these events and I think it’s really important to remember that there are members of the group who still are benefiting from the experience. I also think that your statement says it all. If they want to have a private party, let them! What if instead of a confrontation either with these particular individuals or with the entire group, you let them have exactly what they want? Maybe you could suggest that they try to start their own satellite group of the wine club. Sure, it’s a blow to the effort you put into it … or is it? I mean, they’re willing to reap the benefits of the club, but are they willing to do all the legwork that you’ve done? Maybe this is a good opportunity to find out by simply giving them the responsibility for their own satellite group. I find that sometimes the best thing to do with an obnoxious situation is to find a way to wash your hands of it as best you can. Let me know how it goes and have some wine for me, TOWC!

Dear Manda: I am 29 years old and was perfectly healthy until about 2 years ago when I got diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease. This diagnosis has been life changing for me; people really have no clue. I do not look sick and I often pretend like I am not, but every aspect of my life has been truly been effected. All attempts at long term stabilization of my illness have thus far failed, but recently the word "chemotherapy" came up as a "last resort" treatment. Mind you, it is low dose chemo, but it is still chemo. I do not like being known as "sick", especially since I do not look sick. It is hard enough to cope with, without the looks of concern. I have a few close knit friends that know, however I am unsure how to tell people or if I even should about this part of my illness and its progression. – Sick and Tired
It sounds as though you’ve done a really good job of dealing with the situation as it stands and for that, I commend you. The issue of telling your friends is really tough. If it’s important to you to make this issue known at this point, I’d say the best way to do it is bluntly and without any fanfare. There is no point in softening difficult news and with friends, you shouldn’t have to. I think the best you can do is to sit down and have candid and pointed discussions about it with those people in your life with whom you want to share this information. And if it’s important to you not to receive too many “concerned looks,” I don’t think there’s anything in the world wrong with making that clear as well. You have the right to insist that you’re surrounded with helpful people and attitudes throughout this experience.

Dear Manda: I am torn between two places. I currently live in my hometown and I made the decision to do this for several reasons. I want to spend more time with my grandmother, whose health is failing, I like being around familiar places and people and I feel very safe here. However, I’m still young (only 29) and I also want to get out, meet new people and date. How do you choose where you should be? What advice do you have for someone whose heart is torn between spending time with family and branching out for new experiences? I recently had a job offer in a city about three hours away, but fear helped me in the decision to turn it down and wait for the next opportunity? – Geographically Polygamous
GP, you are a woman of my own geographic propensities. The thing that I always forget about these situations is that if a decision is made, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a forever kind of decision. There’s no reason in the world that you shouldn’t be able to get out and do new and different things. Furthermore, it sounds like you feel as though you’re still in your hometown because it feels secure to you. It also sounds as though you have very welcoming family and friends who would both understand if you decided to try something new and would welcome you back home with open arms if you decided that the new thing didn’t work out. You are still young, and if I were in your position (and I have been a couple of times), I’d probably just go for it and see how it turned out. At least you won’t have to wonder about it.

I'm a single twenty something who doesn't care for cooking despite the fact that I come from a long line of chefs. I'm almost embarrassed how much I dislike this domestic task. At my age the family expects me to show up with something other than my appetite. So here is where your help is needed. What do you suggest I bring as my signature dish this holiday season? Furthermore could you recommend simple but yummy dishes I can add to my cooking resume so that one day my splendid dish will lead me straight into a mans heart? Thank you in advance. – Microwave Ladi
ML, what I don’t know about a man’s heart could fill half a stadium, but you could fill the other half with what I know about seeming to be an excellent cook. My advice is this: When in doubt, bring pie. Everybody loves pie. Go to the store and buy a graham cracker crust, 14 ounces of sweetened-condensed milk, eggs, whipped cream and some key lime juice. Separate five eggs (you can google this) and beat the yolks (you can do whatever you want with the whites, but they don’t go in the pie). Add the sweetened condensed milk to the egg yolks. Add half a cup of key lime juice. Mix it, pour it into the graham cracker crust, bake it for fifteen minutes at 375. Put whipped cream on it. People will start calling this “Microwave Ladi’s famous pie.” Let me know how it works out for you!

Okay, so that was it. I'm always taking new questions, so feel free. I'll always either email or physically mail the article to you when one gets published with your question.

Livin' the Dream, Chief

2010-09-23T16:23:00.002-04:00

I’ve been noticing as I get older that more and more of my conversations include the phrase, “so what do you do?” This used to really get under my skin because what it really means is that a near-stranger is trying to categorize you by what you do to make money. I know I’ve talked about why I think this is wrong at least a few times before, so I’ll spare you the lengthy diatribe.

Suffice it to say, I’ve gotten a lot better at dealing with people asking me this question. Whereas before, I might have just walked away or abruptly and obviously changed the subject or, as I sometimes do, put up my rhetorical dukes, I’d like to think that I’ve gotten a little more graceful over the years. I usually give one of two answers. One: I will say that I’m a writer and then the person will usually ask what I write, to which I will reply, “words, mostly.” Then the conversation is over. Or two: I will answer completely honestly and say that I am a debt collector, an English tutor, an opinion columnist, a purveyor of occasional brunches and a sometimes cupcake-smith.

Now, sometimes this also ends the conversation but most of the time, it makes for some interesting ones. For the most part, people seem to think that this is a strange mix of things to be doing. If you break it down, it makes complete sense, doesn’t it? I collect debts as a primary source of income, because everyone needs a primary source of income. I tutor English for two reasons: As a secondary source of income (because almost everybody needs a secondary source of income) and to assuage my guilt about collecting debts. I write this column because I love to write, am mostly short on time and this forces me to write something coherent (I hope) at least as often as this paper comes out. I am a monthly purveyor of brunches because all of my friends are in the same boat I’m in. Too many jobs and not enough time. Brunches are a chance for us all to make time for one another. I am an occasional cupcake-smith because I secretly love to bake, because my cupcakes are awesome and because I think it’s really fun to hand someone something that they can immediately enjoy.

When broken down, my choices of occupation make complete logical sense. Okay, they make complete logical sense to me. But when taken as a whole, they look strange together, don’t they? Looking at them now, I realize that I’m very grateful for this hodge podge of things to be doing. One of the things I miss most about full-time studenthood is that every day was pretty well rounded. Whereas my days aren’t necessarily well rounded anymore, my months at least are. And I’ve learned a lot of things from all of these different trades. And a surprising amount of what I’ve learned can be attributed to every single one of these experiences. I’m about to share five of these things with you right now.

1.It’s never a bad idea to be polite. Man alive, it’s like being back in kindergarten, isn’t it? “Remember your pleases and thank yous. Say yes ma’am and no ma’am; yes sir and no sir.” I can hear my mom now. “Amanda, remember we’re using our inside voices right now.” Why is it so easy for us to forget these things? Why do we think that because our lives are stressful, that entitles us to stress out everyone around us? It doesn’t! I hear some collectors say things to debtors that literally turn my stomach. In turn, I’ve been on the phone with people who have actually made me cry (and even though I know every woman says this, I’m really not a crier). My students are often times more polite and respectful than some of the adults with whom I interact on a daily basis. That’s really really sad, isn’t it? If there is one thing that I believe to be infallibly true in this world and one thing alone that I could and would impose on people, it would be this – No matter what is going on in your life, no matter how angry you are, no matter how badly you want someone to feel as badly as you feel, there is absolutely no reason to be purposefully unpleasant. It just makes things worse both for you and for everyone who has to deal with you.

2.Do the research. This seems vague when you first look at it, but it could solve an amazing amount of problems if you really think about it. From not calling the wrong person when I’m calling folks to not serving a peanut butter cupcake to someone who I know has a nut allergy, remembering to look into a situation before jumping into it headlong is always a good thing. Think before you speak. Think before you act. Think before you decide. Simple, but it could save your ass a lot more often than you might think.

3.You’re never as stuck as you think you are. I wish I could have gotten this concept through my head a lot sooner than now. I know I’m still pretty young, but this would have been so helpful for me to know right out of college or even right out of graduate school. I tell my debtors this all of the time. There is always a payment plan that is possible. I tell my students this all of the time. There is always another way to look at a piece of information – to absorb it and internalize it so that next time, you’ll remember it. Even for me. I always make a serious effort to remember that no matter how entrenched I feel in what I’m doing or in what I think I know, there is always another way to look at every situation. You’re never too poor, too stupid or too scared to do anything you know you want to do. Even though it’s important to think before you act, it’s equally important not to overthink yourself into inaction.

4.You’re not as unique as you think you are. Ever notice how when you’re feeling angry or upset or conflicted or what have you, you feel like you’re the only person who has ever felt that way before? I’ve been under that impression myself occasionally. It’s really important to remember something, though. YOU’RE NOT! I have to say that even though I’m sometimes guilty of this, I absolutely cannot stand someone who is down in the dumps and would have you believe that a bad day is something which is unique to their experience. It isn’t. Everyone has bad days. Chances are if you are having an emotion, someone else has also had it. And along with this realization should come the realization that everyone else’s feelings and need are equally important as your own. We’re all human, you guys. Not just me. Not just you. All of us. Please behave accordingly.

5.The final word usually isn’t. Have you ever heard the phrase “God helps those who help themselves?” Well I’m not going to pretend to know what God is or is not planning to do, but I will speak to this. Nothing is ever going to happen to you. You have to take steps to make things happen in your life. Everyone in the world can tell you, “you can’t,” or “people just don’t,” or “that’s impossible.” People from all walks of life will make you try to think that they are the final authority on whatever it is you’re talking about. Chances are they aren’t at all. If you want a raise, ask for one. If you want a better job, apply to one. If you like making cupcakes, make them. If you want to be a writer, write.
I think the conclusion I’ve come to at this point in my life is this: You don’t need a career definition to define yourself. You just need to be you and do things. Sometimes they’ll be things that you want to do. Sometimes they’ll be things that you don’t want to do. Sometimes they’ll turn into amazing things and sometimes they won’t. The point is that while none of us may be “living the dream” right now, at least we can say we’re living!

Next Generation Baller: Reframing the Win

2010-07-28T18:17:00.004-04:00

Well, dudes. For the first time in 5 years, my article will not go to print in the August / September issue of the Summit County Women's Journal. But! No woman, no cry, right? I'm printing it here.

I know I’ve written about abusive relationships before, right? I mean. Really? Sometimes I feel as though that’s all we talk about with each other, readers. How to love ourselves first. How to identify abusive traits in a partner or friend. How to break free from the bonds of abuse. How to re-learn ourselves once we remove the crisis element from our respective lives. I’m pretty sure we’ve delved into these topics in very great depth and I, for one, am tired of hearing about them sometimes. At least in reference to human on human relationships.

This past summer, however, it has come to my attention that the entire sports-viewing Cleveland area (and I am including Akron in this statement for the purposes of sports-fan-demographics) and, in all fairness, the US of A, has been in an abusive relationship. So what happens when the abuser is a paradigm and the abused is a City?

I’ll bet you think I’m talking about LeBron James, don’t you. Well, I’m not. Good riddance to megalomaniacal rubbish, if you ask me.

What I’m talking about, of course, is Cleveland sports. Some refer to Cleveland as “the mistake on the lake,” while others often reference “the Cleveland curse” when discussing sports. Meaning, of course, that our sports teams either seldom ever win any games or that they win a long string of games only to blow it when our “glory moment” is about to take place. We all know the sob story by heart, don’t we? I’m not talking about this curse, though. The curse that I’m talking about is how the sports paradigm has taken all of us for a bit of a ride – and how we’ve allowed it to. Let me clarify a few things by outlining the facts of the matter at hand.

We condone, either by buying tickets to sporting events or by buying memorabilia or what have you, the outrageous multi-million dollar salaries of sports players – whether or not they do their jobs well. I know it’s been said before, but does this crap fly in ANY OTHER PROFESSION? I mean let’s say you’re a nurse and every patient with whom you come into contact just happens to die because you’re doing a negligent job. Do you suppose that your patients’ families are going to laugh it off and call it “the nurse curse?” Doubtful.

Now, have you noticed over the years that these multi-million dollar salaries seem to be able to buy these guys not only a heaping load of material goods but also things like money, time and freedom that would not be offered to the public? For instance, if a regular guy were to be accused of rape, chances are those around him and society at large would want to keep this guy off the streets in the time between his accusation and his trial, just in case he was a rapist. Not with a sports player. What do we say about a sports player accused of rape? We say that the accuser must be either crazy or greedy and then we start talking about how much we need that guy in order to win. Or let’s say, just as a hypothetical, that some dude is found riding around town a little bit disoriented and in possession of several loaded weapons. Do you think an average guy in this situation would be given extra consideration and understanding? Nope. He’d be pegged as nuts, sent to jail and never heard from again. Not a sports player, though. When it comes to a sports player, we start talking about how these behaviors are symptoms of a legitimate disease (something we should say any time ANYONE is suffering from a mental illness) and then we talk about how much we need that guy in order to win. Are you noticing a pattern here? Why is this winning so important? What does it mean?

Is it some kind of city-to-city peeing contest? Probably. But why, oh, why do we place our sense of worth as a city in the hands of a bunch of overgrown children* with egos the sizes of Texas who are basically paid to – dare I say it? – PLAY A GAME?? Put simply, that would be like giving me a 40 million dollar a year salary and a shoe contract (and little to no accountability for my actions) to play (and only MAYBE win) at, like, hopscotch or four-square.

I’m going to pose an alternate suggestion. Why not shift our focus onto things that are more important? Why not change our definition of winning to mean getting a higher graduation rate out of our schools? Why not change our definition of winning to mean how many hungry human beings we can get together and feed and how many homeless human beings to whom we can offer safe and warm shelter for the night. Every day on my way to work, I used to drive by that ridiculous ad on the side of the Sherwin Williams building and then two minutes later, I would drive past five or six people sleeping on the sidewalk outside of my parking garage. Does that image horrify anyone else? It certainly horrified me. The ad isn’t there anymore, but the people sleeping on the sidewalk still are. We’ve taken down the sign, but what are we doing to find other human beings a place to sleep?

And I know people love to see a struggle, a hunt, a victory. We love to see the polarity between that victory and a perceived defeat. We love the tension, the anticipation, the elation at the end of it. The thrill of being part of something. But why not just become part of each other? Why not make our cities’ reputations ride on the happiness and health of its inhabitants rather than on the outcome of a game played by a generally out-of-touch few? I’m not saying that sports aren’t to be enjoyed. Perish the thought! I AM saying that there is more – so much more – to life. And I see us missing it.

Why not change our definition of winning as a city to mean that we actually have the guts, the drive and the determination to look inward and the courage to actually see what we need to do to improve ourselves? And then just do it.

*I realize that not all professional athletes fall into the “egotistical child” category and that there are several individuals who play for the love of the game rather than for the status and who give back to their communities and behave like reasonable and caring human beings, despite their fame. Allow me to take this sidebar to openly commend them for that!

Intentionally Marginal or Thank You for Bein' a Friend: A Biographical Study of Mary Daly

2010-01-05T17:07:00.003-05:00

In her preface to a collection of feminist analyses of Mary Daly’s work, Nancy Tuana states:

Take into your hands any history-of-philosophy text. You will find compiled therein the “classics” of modern philosophy. Since these texts are often designed for use in undergraduate classes, the editor is likely to offer an introduction in which the reader is informed that these selections represent the perennial questions of philosophy. The student is to assume that she or he is about to explore the timeless wisdom of the greatest minds of Western philosophy. No one calls attention to the fact that the philosophers are all men.

Tuana goes on to remark that while women are omitted as thinkers in philosophical cannon, the texts and their authors dictate the supposed “nature of woman” (her proper place in society and the world, her abilities and inabilities, her desires and hints at her emotionality and irrationality). As such, one must take into account that the central concepts of philosophy (reason and justice), which are taken to mean human, are associated with male traits as they are conceived of by and for male thinkers. When Mary Daly burst onto the academic scene in the fields of both philosophy and theology in the late sixties and early seventies, she sought to bring this often overlooked phenomenon to light and in so doing, she has become one of the most influential feminist voices of our time.

Daly was born on October 16, 1928 in Schenectady, New York, educated in Catholic schools and earned her first PhD from St. Mary’s College / Notre Dame University in 1954. From 1959-1966, she taught the junior year abroad program in Fribourg, Switzerland at the University of Fribourg. There, she later earned doctorates in theology and philosophy in 1963 and 1965, respectively. In 1966, she became a member of the theology department at conservative, private and Catholic Boston College.

It was here that she wrote her first book in 1968, The Church and the Second Sex. Well-coordinated with the early wave of feminism in the United States, it highlighted Catholicism’s misogyny from the time of the early church fathers to the reign of Pope Pious XII. In The Church, she urges the Catholic church to end sex discrimination by allowing women to become active clergy members and encourages the breakdown of social / spiritual barriers between nuns and the rest of the world. Additionally, she calls for the church to refrain from applying the male gender to its images of God. As a result of this book, Daly almost lost her job at Boston College as, in that time, her publication flew in the face of dominant Catholic doctrine concerning women. Fortunately, after months of student protests and relatively widespread press coverage, Boston College granted her tenure.

In 1971, Daly was invited to give a sermon at Harvard University’s church. She would be the first woman in the school’s history to do so, however she found herself faced with an ethical dilemma. To accept the invitation outright would be, in her mind, to agree to being tokenized while to decline would seem like a refusal of an opportunity. Her creative solution was to accept the invitation, but to invite her listeners to leave the building and listen to her give her sermon outside, thereby still fulfilling her commitment while refusing to work from within a patriarchal structure.

From this point on, Daly no longer identified herself as Catholic or even Christian, preferring to refer to herself as post-Christian and in 1973, she published her second work, Beyond God the Father, a frontal attack on the entirety of our patriarchal culture. In it, she challenges every aspect of patriarchal religion, choosing to focus much of her attention on myths which legitimate male superiority and a way of thinking (that one must dominate other living beings) which will eventually, she asserts, contribute to the downfall of civilization as we know it. It is here that she points to an “ontological spiritual revolution” which only women, she argues, are capable of fulfilling. This tension between the religious faith in her earlier life as a Catholic and between her skeptical, post-Christian self after The Church and the Second Sex becomes a staple characteristic in all of her writing, expressing a certain level of annoyance at Christianity’s static symbolism and dogma. Marie Korte clarifies that “She alternated expressions of religious faith in an ‘Infinite Being’ with sekepticism toward the complacency of people who continued to speak in theological terms as though nothing had changed since the middle ages.”

Between Beyond God and her next work (Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, 1978), Daly abandons all Christian symbolism in her writing, choosing to focus only on the creation of a new and non-patriarchal social order. The symbolism and language she uses are completely rooted in women’s experience. Increasingly, she becomes interested in how language itself is a destructive force, contributing to the authoring of Pure Lust in 1984 and her Webster’s Wickedary in 1987. In both, she explores new possibilities for language as we know it, striving to recreate and redefine words that we currently use, in the interest of making language more empowering.

In the 1980’s and 1990’s, she continued to teach at Boston College and to lecture, becoming an outspoken critic of Christian men’s movements (such as Promise Keepers). Supposedly, at one of these lectures, when a reporter asked her, “Who has hurt women?”, she replied by stating, “These creeps, the Promise Keepers, rightwing Christians. It’s not just the ancient fathers of the church and it’s not just the church. It’s all major religions.”

In 1996, more of her feminist philosophy was published in The New Yorker and in 1999, she found her career taking a halfway-unexpected turn. Throughout her 25 years of teaching, Daly had always separated her male students from her female students, arguing that women would not open up about their own experiences when there were male students present and that many male students took women’s studies courses with the express purpose of disrupting them. This became a legal problem for Daly and for Boston College when one young man took legal action against both Daly and the school. This incident resulted in a forced leave of absence from Boston College. Daly’s most recent work, Amazon Grace, was published in 2005.

Taken as a whole, the goal of all of Daly’s work is a lofty one. She seeks to demystify our entire culture, confronting patriarchal thought patterns from a historical context and applying her discoveries to current damaging cultural trends. From there, she seeks transcendence, hoping that a radical change will ensue within human cultural context, leading to an equitable and mindful social order. In so doing, she urges women to leave the patriarchal structure of Christianity and to live an intentionally marginal life, in the hopes not only of realizing our personhood, but also of bringing about this new order. The topics addressed by Daly can be broken up into three loose categories: damaging myths and assumptions, the results of these myths and assumptions and how one might begin to transcend our current social order in the interest of pursuing better possibilities.

In Beyond God the Father, Daly makes an observation which might be considered obvious by modern feminist thinkers but which was, at the time she wrote it, radical. If we view God as being male and patriarchal then the male patriarch on earth is elevated to God status. In almost all prominent religious traditions on the planet, God has been (and still often is) portrayed as a patriarch ruling over “his” creation. Likewise, the male heads of households are represented in the same light, seen as ruling over that which is in their dominion (wives, children, etc.). This viewpoint, according to Daly, creates an artificial polarization of human qualities, which are categorized into traditional sexual stereotypes. As such, all good qualities are defined by and correlated to being male, whereas all undesirable qualities (as defined by patriarchs throughout time) are correlated to being female. With this polarization comes the myth of female evil and with this myth, women are put in an unfortunate position within society. While on the one hand, women are “pedestalized,” this elevation to icon status not only prevents us from realizing the multi-faceted nature of full personhood, but the image of what constitutes a “real” or “good” woman also excludes the majority of actually real women in the world.

Daly explains that the ambiguity and contradiction surrounding the church’s views on women produces a tension between the “pseudo-glorification of ‘woman’ and degrading teachings and practices concerning real women” through a historical analysis of the churches views on women from various standpoints including scriptural, patristic, the middle ages and the beginnings of the modern period. While ideas concerning women have changed slightly in their wording, the general tone remains the same.

For instance, woman emerges as subjugated and inferior in Old Testament teachings. This is illustrated nicely in the Genesis account most commonly used to justify women’s subjugation, in which woman is said to be created from the body of man and for his entertainment. Furthermore, the fall in Genesis 3 paints a picture of woman as a seductress who is chiefly responsible for the fall of humanity into original sin and for death itself. In an interesting contrast to Old Testament views on women, women in the New Testament emerge as actual human beings with which Jesus interacts in a way that defies the social norms conceived by those within his historical context. Unfortunately, this is not the mode of relation that is paid the heaviest attention when the church is attempting to justify female subordination. For this, one has only to turn to the Pauline texts that state that a woman should remain silent during meetings for worship and that wives ought to obey their husbands. While Paul’s actions and assertions concerning women should be read within their historical context, his statements are often taken by modern misogynists as normative.

For the church fathers, women pose an even greater problem. The dominant assumption during this period of time is that while women are human (which was actually up for debate during that period of time), they will never fully embody the image of God as they can never break free from their divinely sanctioned lot as servile bearers of children. Furthermore, all women are considered to actually be Eves, deserving of their subjugation because of the fall. The divinely sanctioned oppression of women is justified by the church fathers as first having to do with the “nature” of women (as carnal, dim and seductive) and then as having to do with the evil of Eve, the first woman (the human fall from grace / death). While Jesus functioned as the savior of the fallen Adam, female Eves had to turn to the Virgin Mary (a biological impossibility to which they could never realistically aspire) for their salvation. Thus, the redemption of women was made necessarily impossible by the rhetoric of the church fathers and female subjugation continued to be justified.

In the middle ages, women were seen as theoretically able to embody the image of God, but not practically able. Again, childbirth was the central focus of this assumption, as woman was seen to be the passive party in the creation of a child and man was seen to be the active party. We see again God likened to man and woman likened to creature in this assumption. Even in the beginnings of the modern period, the life of Teresa of Avila embodies how greatness in women is described in such a way as it dissociates her from her own sex. For instance, many of Teresa’s admirers described her by saying that she “is a man.” The underlying assumption is that a woman capable of greatness must actually be male, as no woman is actually capable of greatness.

According to Daly, the church and society in cahoots have contributed to the breakdown of full female personhood. She refers to this process as “pedestalism” and refers to the result of an attempt to “explain” female existence as the notion of the “eternal feminine.” Daly explains the “eternal feminine” as philosophical, theological and psychoanalytical arguments which seek out quick and dry assumptions that can be made about women’s supposed “nature” in an attempt to “explain” their existence. In short, women are put on pedestals and transformed from living people with moral agency to stagnant symbols. In collective consciousness and, unfortunately, in general female consciousness, these symbols do not allow women to evolve beyond them. Viewing women as symbols has allowed societies throughout history to commit various atrocities against them and, in its very nature, has hindered the evolution of men and of society.

This process seeks to uphold rigid gender norms in which male characteristics and female characteristics are strictly outlined. For instance, traditionally male roles are to be stoic, unemotional, violent, aggressive, levelheaded and competitive. It is interesting that these characteristics are not necessarily congruent in the sense that to be stoic and unemotional directly contrasts being aggressive and violent. Traditional female roles, on the other hand, are to be emotional, unintelligent, passive, docile and unable to think rationally. These characteristics are also contradictory. It makes little sense to describe someone both as docile and emotional. We must recognize that in their contradictions of themselves, these gender norms present themselves as arbitrary. As a result of our enculturation, society often finds itself obsessed with gender performances. Some of the more horrifying examples of these gender performances are described by Mary Daly as gynocidal rituals.

Daly argues that the patriarchs in a patriarchal society are able to penetrate the minds of their victims (subordinates) and keep them docile by seeing to it that the myth of domination/submission is acted out repeatedly in “performances that draw the participants into emotional complicity.” Daly give several examples of gynocidal ritual including Sati (widow-burning) in India, foot-binding in China, female genital mutilation in Africa, witch-burnings in Europe; before concluding with a comparison of American gynecology to medical experiments done on female prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. A common characteristic of all of these practices and of her later comparison is that in these “rituals,” women are not viewed as people. Instead, we are viewed as symbols. For instance, in the ritual of Chinese foot-binding, women’s feet are not viewed as part of a human being, but as potential “lotus hooks.” In this ritual, children’s toes and feet were broken and young girls were tortured in the interest of making them appear marriageable by turning their feet into objects of sexual enjoyment for potential husbands. While gynocidal ritual is on the extreme end of possible results of negative gender symbolism, it is nonetheless relevant as symptoms such as these are portrayed by Daly as those of a larger and very ill culture. One which we must strive to transcend.

While Daly stressed the necessity of a total transcendence of culture in all of her publications, in 2005, she posits a model for modern transcendence:

The new forms that will be assumed by re-emerging Radical Feminism must take into account both the extremity of the atrocious conditions under which many women now struggle to live and the global stealth campaign that often keeps the majority of women – even the majority of feminists – in a smog of unawareness and denial. This involves Daring to Know and Name the ways in which our victories are now being used against us. The hope that we can do anything about this state of betrayal and reversal requires faith in the “fabric of unseen connectedness”…Effecting changes in small places – seemingly small changes – is ineffably important, for this enables us to work with the flow within that small system and thus have impact elsewhere. Such changes create large systems change because they participate in an unbroken wholeness.

In order to transcend oppressive culture, we must simply cease to agree to function within its limits. To do so, we must be able to name atrocity as such and function, even in seemingly miniscule ways, as mindful human beings who recognize the interconnectedness and divine potential of all things as equal. Once we are able to make these small changes, larger systemic change will be allowed to take place and our culture will enter into what she refers to as “bio-philic” being. This refers, of course, to an obsession with life and construction rather than the death and destruction with which patriarchal structures and leaders have been and still are obsessed.

I must admit to the fact that I completely agree with almost everything Mary Daly says, thus I find it difficult to critique her assertions and methods. While I do think she is absolutely correct about our culture needing radical transformation in order for humans, other creatures and the planet itself to survive, I have a difficult time with how closely a lot of her philosophy borders on scapegoating. In Amazon Grace, one of the assertions that she makes is that in order for the human race to survive, there will have to be a drastic reduction in the amount of men populating the planet. While she states that this is something she believes will happen naturally, I fear that this vision could easily underscore a matriarchy (in the sense of a reversed patriarchy).

Another aspect of Daly’s work that I struggle with is the idea of intentional marginal living. For the most part, I agree that when one is marginalized within a society, especially one as far-fallen into patriarchy and exploitation as ours, it makes relative sense to strive to exist somewhat outside of it 1) in order to live the freest life possible and 2) to remove one’s self from a continual system of exploitation (of the self and of other beings). However, this is not always possible for everyone in the world. Using myself as an example, it is less plausible for me to live marginally than it would be for someone who has no student loans and knows a lucrative trade for example. Being in financial debt binds me to the economic system in which we exist and the obligations that are inherent in my situation prevent me from leaving it until I no longer have those obligations. In this way, her message is not as universal as I would like for it to be, as it applies mainly to white, American women who live above a certain economic earning level.

This brings me to a larger critique of her philosophy and theology: while her projections for peaceful co-existence are ones that I find ideal, they are goals which are impossible to meet without entirely decimating culture as we know it. Furthermore, even if this decimation were possible (that is to say, if society started from zero and had to rebuild itself in its entirety), those who were left to do the building would have recollection of a previous existence. Therefore, it is difficult for me to believe that patriarchal structures of domination would fail to arise once again.

That being said, I also must admit that Mary Daly’s work has been one of the most (if not the most) influential factors in my spiritual journey and how I view my personhood and my purpose on this earth. While I find her model of intentionally marginality not entirely possible most of the time, I do see it as something to which I will continue to strive. Having been raised in a Catholic household and indoctrinated with the churches derogatory teachings regarding women, I have been concerned with the feminist cause for as long as I can remember being cognizant. I fought my way through years of religious education as a child only to refuse confirmation into the Catholic church as a teenager. From there, I struggled with the tension that I felt between wanting to feel the welcoming comfort of belonging to a religious institution that I felt as a child and teenager and my longing to separate myself from a system which I knew would be damaging to my psyche and my sense of self. A long struggle with faith and God ensued for me until my freshman year in college when I was introduced to Beyond God the Father in an introduction to theology course. Daly’s assertions gave voice to things that I had felt deeply for my entire life and I was immeasurably relieved and empowered by reading them. After the semester in which I took that course, I changed my major from psychology to religion, in the hopes of further exploring feminist theology.

Interestingly enough, after six more years of studying feminism and feminist theology (four in college and two and a half in seminary), my spiritual journey has led me to a similar place as Daly found herself after having faced the backlash against the message in The Church and the Second Sex: post-Christianity. While there are some symbols and rituals that I still do find comforting and helpful within the Christian tradition and while I cannot separate myself from my upbringing and must continually acknowledge that I come from an American Christian context, I cannot, for the most part, identify myself with Christianity as a larger institution, as I believe it to be too damaging to salvage in its entirety without transforming it into something entirely different. Ironically, this discovery about myself points to what I believe Christians can take from the message of a post-Christian, radical lesbian feminist who is interested in the demolition of society and culture as we know it.

The only constant in existence is that we all exist together on this planet and through a careful and critical examination of our history as a human species of exploiting one another and our environment, it becomes clear that we have not found a way to peacefully coexist. While institutions such as the church have made recent efforts to be inclusive, these efforts have been on the surface rather than systemic and change has been painfully slow. That being said, I believe that the best piece of advice we can take from Daly is that sometimes an institution is not more important than life itself. It is often in one’s best interest to let go of the arbitrary structures into which we have been indoctrinated in the interest of living in right relation. For Daly, this not only meant leaving the institution of the Christian church, but it also meant inviting us to join her on the margins.

Mary Daly passed away on January 3, 2010, at the age of 81.

Dear Mary: I have more thank you than I have voice. I hope that wherever you are now, you know this.

**for a complete list of references, e mail me.

Give a Shit: Yea or Nay?

2009-12-03T11:33:00.002-05:00

Tiger Woods having an affair? Nay

The latest way to stay thin? Nay

Whether or not LeBron James is staying with the Cavs when he's a free agent? Half-hearted Nay.

Sales happening / money / winning shit for the holidays? Nay.

That chick who got into a whitehouse dinner, uninvited? Nay.

The fact that we're still at war? Yea.

The fact that I am still paid 70 cents on a man's dollar? Yea.

The fact that so many people still don't have access to adequate healthcare? Yea.

The fact that credit companies are doing everything they possibly can to prevent people from paying off their debts? Yea.

The fact that education is unmanageably expensive and yet, ironically, the only way to make it above the poverty level in the United States? Yea.

The fact that our isolationism is largely ignored, accepted, misnamed and causing many of our social problems? Yea.

The fact that young girls feel as though they owe their bodies to any young boy who shows them attention? Yea.

The fact that young boys are permitted to continue their bad behaviors because they "will be boys?" Yea.

Living in a society in which small scale news items are made out to be huge deals while the actual huge issues are glossed over entirely because we'd all rather think about something else since we've all been conditioned to view comfort and ignorance as being of the utmost importance? Priceless.

Shootin' Rockets to the Moon and Other Things I want to Sound Off About

2009-10-09T19:41:00.002-04:00

There are two things that I can’t shut up about today. I don’t have a whole heap of time right now, so I’m going to try to be as concise (and brutal) as possible. Ahem.

They shot a rocket INTO the moon today. Does this strike anyone else as a terrible idea? I know that they want to find out if the moon has water in / on it and whether or not it can harbor life (i.e. us), likely because those in the know happen to know that we’re a few minutes away from total decimation as far as Earth is concerned. HOWEVER… are these rocket shooters completely unaware that it is the moon that controls the water on THIS planet? Didn’t it occur to anyone that by changing the shape of our long-time orbiter, we might be drastically changing the face of the planet that all of humankind currently lives on? No? Morons.
I want to congratulate Barack Obama on his Nobel Peace Prize. Some say that it is coming too soon, as he is less than a year into his presidency. I guess that *might* be a *sort of* legitimate thing to bring up. What’s getting me is that there are people actually saying that this is “cheapening” the award. Again, think before you open your mouth, you guys. Do you know how this sounds?? Maybe you do and maybe you’re fine with that. Maybe these people are also fine with basically stating that they just don’t like this dude and can’t quite put their respective fingers on why… hm. I wonder what it could be… OH, WAIT! I KNOW! It’s because he’s black. Yep, the half-bred Lebanese girl just pet the elephant in the room on its bigoted little head. Way to go, America. I am indeed grimacing with a lowered head on behalf of all the white-ish people who are not acting like assholes about this administration.

Okay. That’s all for today. Ten four, readers.

Waking the Sleeping Elephant in the Room: One Woman as Microcosm of US Ignorance

2009-08-18T13:32:00.003-04:00

Let's talk about this shall, we?

First of all, let me say, I realize that seeing these clips on TV doesn't necessarily mean that I have the whole story, that I know this person's motives or background or anything like that. And don't think I haven't thought of the fact that during the Bush administration, the media made fun of smart people while during the Obama's administration, the media is making fun of dumb people - and since that's all subjective anyways, we should probably get into a "just the facts ma'am" mentality and quit squabbling like chickens.

I am using this instance to illustrate what I perceive to be widespread misinformation being shuffled around like it's fact. I am using it to illustrate how a country so used to doublespeak, ignorance and injustice perceives an attempt to heal as injustice or folly.

There ARE a few things that she says which I would personally like to address not really in terms of this one person saying them, but in terms of the fact that many many Americans seem to share these sentiments. File this under the category of "stuff that scares the shit out of Amanda."

1. I don't want this country to be like Russia. I don't want a socialist country.

I got news for everyone, as much as I would LOVE to see this country go socialist, it probably isn't ever going to. We are greedy sons of bitches through and through and if our own bloody, theft-filled history tells us anything it's that good ol' fashioned American greed is spelled C-A-P-I-T-A-L-I-S-M. The haves aren't going to let that go without a really brutal fight and, lucky for them, the have-not's don't seem to have a clue what's going on anyways. Yeah, it's a cynical, brief and not totally fleshed out assertion about our priorities and values as a country, but its pretty accurate.

2. It just seems like we're always at war with someone, so it doesn't really matter whether we're at war / I don't even pay attention to it.

Yeah. Shouldn't that raise a red flag for you? The fact that it "doesn't matter" anymore because it's so commonplace should matter to you a lot. Let me get this right. Providing necessary healthcare for all of our nation's citizens? Not into it. Warmongering all over the world under the guise of "bringing freedom" to nations who normally do not want our particular brand of it? Totally! Does this strike anyone else as being very fucked up?

3. Let's get this country back to the way the founding fathers meant for it to be.

Sure, let's just do that. We'll still have slaves, women won't be able to vote and we'll be involved in the systematic genocide of the rightful owners of the land we're sitting on. Brilliant idea.

4. Goddamnit, how am I gonna pay MORE taxes. They want to tax us MORE?

Hey, I have a good idea. Let's stop spending the ridiculous figure per day that we're spending on war in Iraq (yes, that IS still going on, in case anyone wondered). Then we'll have more than enough tax money for almost any hairbrained scheme to improve the USA that President Obama can concoct. Again. Health and wellbeing of each other and the planet? Bad. Killing? Awesome.

5. I'm normally not into politics, but...

STOP! Having an opinion does not make you an expert. And don't think it has escaped my attention that when you said that you began following the news during the Gulf War, you sort of just fizzled out because apparently, some of us cannot have babies and be abreast of current events at the same time.

Lord Jesus Christ almighty everybody, do we know how we sound when we open up our mouths to say something? Could we try to?

Please?

Promises Promises.

2009-08-18T09:28:00.001-04:00

I swear to god, I'm going to post here. Either tonight or tomorrow. Seriously.

What am I supposed to do?

2009-06-08T19:35:00.002-04:00

This is going to be a short post. A lot is going on in the world / my life that I want to address later on, but there is something that needs to be addressed immediately.

I was just reading on the back patio, when I heard a woman start viciously abusing her child. I say vicious because of the shrieks of pain, interspersed with a loud cracking noise.

It went on for fifteen minutes.

I cannot identify what apartment it is coming from, because it is echoing throughout the courtyard.

I have called the police, letting them know which building it is.

I don't know if this is a call to action or just a rant, but I'm so disturbed by this that I can't even think straight.

Note to the world: If you can't care for a child, don't have one. It's really very simple.

I Guess That's Why They Call it the Boob Tube: What Cable Makes Me Think About

2009-04-29T08:54:00.004-04:00

Hello, World! I'll bet you thought I'd make it all the way through April without making a single post. Well, you were wrong, weren't you?

Let's see here. I finally have a job (two actually) and I'm all the way back into the suburban lifestyle in which I grew up. Some things, such as cable television, I would have gladly done without, but I have this sister who has been supporting me since I moved back to Ohio and she really really wants cable. So we have it.

As a result of this, I find myself watching a lot of TV. Having your only job for two months be looking for jobs can do this to someone. Is anyone else noticing a serious feminist backlash in recent popular television media? I am.

I'd like to address just a few examples.

1. Tough Love - On this show, a bunch of ladies in the throes of "what am I doing wrong?" look to this guy to teach them how to act in a way that is more pleasing to men, so that they can "find love." Some of his advice to them is pretty standard. For instance, there was one woman who would decide whether or not she could date someone based on the shape and size of his feet only. I'll agree that's not really conducive to finding a partner. However, most of his advice is just a reinforcement of archaic gender roles and this reinforcement is being legitimized by the fact that some TV network is giving him credibility. To keep this short, the one piece of advice that stuck out to me was when he told all of the women that men need to feel needed and in order to give a man the idea that he is needed, it is necessary to not appear too self-sufficient. More on that after the rest of these.

2. Rock of Love - Now don't get me wrong, I'd much rather watch Bret Michaels try to get a date than watch Flavor Flav and the show was actually interesting at times because the verbal exchanges between the ladies was somewhat intelligent (I mean, of course, after the blond-tourage left), but there were a few things about this show (or, let's just say, this entire concept) that left me fuming. First of all, what is the deal with popular media perpetuating the myth that competing like dogs for a date with any man is acceptable or conducive at all to having any self respect. One of the first things my mother taught me about dating was that if it becomes a contest, it's not worth your time. Second, did anybody else notice the double standard? All of these competing women are expected to be totally physically and emotionally faithful to Bret. They even call in ex-boyfriends and interview them as a sort of background check of love. Yet, Bret has a harem of rock chicks on his hands and it's totally okay that he's switching between them all the time in order to make his decision. That kills me.

3. Millionaire Matchmaker - The premise is that women are matched up with millionaires. That's basically it. However, there are a few things here that I find laughable. First of all, the women are encouraged and taught how not to appear to be gold diggers, and yet, they all signed up for a dating service that is matching them up with millionaires. Hello. Second, while the service is run by a supposedly ball-busting strong female (supposedly), one of the main things she crams down everyone's throat is that men should act like men and women should act like women. What she means by this, of course, is that women should be passive, somewhat evasive and always irresistible, while men should be in charge and should enjoy the act of "hunting" for a girlfriend.

I don't know if this is a new thing or an ongoing thing, but is this making anyone else sick to their respective stomachs? I mean, are we in the year 2009 or what, because all this talk about hunting and passivity and living to please and veiling one's true intentions makes me feel like I should slap on an apron and get dinner on the table promptly by 6.

Don't we think it's time to just let the patriarchal paradigm go?

Ruby Slippers: Heel Clicking as a Plea for Universal Justice and Compassion

2009-03-12T10:22:00.002-04:00

I find myself, readers, back in my home town and without a job. Again. And yet, I'm more affluent now than I've been in years. I've been thinking a lot about my unearned privilege and wondering how it's possible for an out of work English teacher / writer / all-around badass can be doing a better job "making it" than she was when she had several jobs at once. I think I've figured it out, so this is going to be a relatively short post.

Things are easier for me in Ohio (specifically the Cleveland area) because I am lucky enough to have a network of family and friends who are not going to let me so much as leave the house with unkempt hair to go to a job interview, let alone let me go hungry. Yeah, the economy sucks. We know this. But why are some of us feeling it a lot harder than others?

In a matter of hours, I went from being in the former category of people to being in the latter category. That's insane. Because as a human collective, we should be doing everything we can think to do to prevent people from falling into the category of people who are hungry, tired, have nowhere to go and no one to whom they can turn.

My point is simple this time. And unabashedly biblical.

If you see a hungry person, feed her.
If you see a naked person, clothe him.
If you see someone in need of comfort, comfort her.
If you see someone who is thirsty, give him a drink of water.

It isn't a difficult concept to understand, but I'm seeing that it seems to be very difficult for people to implement.

We need to serve one another. Not because the economy is difficult right now, but because it is the right thing to do.

I'm guilty of lacking in this area. So are you. So is everyone who is not reading this post.

Let's change it.

The Best Things in Life Are Free

2009-02-10T13:55:00.002-05:00

If you read that title and immediately thought of the flying lizards, I commend you. Because that's what I was going for.

I want to talk about money. I want to talk about how I don't have any and how I want some and how I'm ashamed of myself to a certain extent for that and how I feel a little bit duped right now. I wanna talk about how I'm not the only one who feels this way.

For instance, the other night, a friend of mine from seminary and I were talking on the phone. In terms of money spent, our educational backgrounds are similar. We both attended private colleges and both went to seminary afterwards. And now we're reaping the benefits of that, right? Wrong-o! Now, loan companies are reaping the benefits of the fact that there is NO MARKET for post seminarians besides going onto a PhD or going into pastoral ministry or counseling. We're both gonna be paying these loans until we lie, stinking in the earth. That's fine with me, I guess. I figured I'd have debt for my entire life and that's something that I've slowly learned to accept. What I'm not fine with is that I didn't really know the financial facts going into all of this.

First of all, we're (and by "we," I mean middle class students in the United States) made to believe that having a degree is a good and useful thing. It is when the economy is good, but when the economy is looking like Germany right around the time when people were using deutschmarks as wallpaper, it's not quite so useful. Knowing a trade is useful. Because there's a market for it.

I'm pretty sure that there isn't a job market for 20 somethings with BA's in religion and MA's in Theological Studies and no experience doing anything. I'm not sure what I thought would happen, but I'm pretty sure I thought that any kind of a Master's Degree would at least ensure that I wasn't going to be living well UNDER the poverty level. That's weird, isn't it?

On the other hand, I've learned how much I don't need to survive and function, which has been a good thing. It'll allow me to be more frugal if ever I happen to have the opportunity to make enough money to actually decide what to do with the extra money I make.

I've been working my little ass off in Maryland, here. Two jobs. The usual. Then, poof, one of the jobs couldn't afford me anymore. They felt really bad about it, but I had to go. That's fine. It messes up my plans for the whole rest of the year, but only by pushing forward the inevitable move back to Cleveland. Probably a blessing in disguise, because I can be around my family and almost everyone else in the world who is important to me.

I'm so thankful that I have such a supportive social network somewhere in the world and I'm so thankful to be able to really know that I'm not going to end up on the streets because of this shitbag economy (thanks again, W), again because of that social network of people who care about me and who I care about.

Some people aren't as lucky as I am, though. I wonder what's going to happen to them as we lose more jobs. I wonder what's going to happen to us as more and more qualified and eager workers can't find work because there simply isn't any to be found? I wonder what's going to happen to families with children to feed. To people who don't have the familial resources needed in times like these.

I have to hope that we'll be able to pull ourselves out of this awfulness as a country. As a collective of human souls who have each other's best interests at heart.

I hope we're going to be willing to take a cut in hours or forego a raise so that we can ALL keep our jobs. Not just some of us. Not just the lucky ones. ALL of us. A-L-L.

Think about that in the upcoming years. What are you doing to take care of your fellow human beings? What are you doing to usher in a time of concern for each other. Of common human decency?

Even though it might seem like it, now is not the best time to have an "every-man-for-himself" mentality. That's the kind of thing that kills us.

The empowering potential of the human spirit, I might argue, is the very BEST thing in life.

And while they've already got us on water, air, food and sometimes even sunlight, I haven't seen anyone trying to charge for creative and empowering use of the human spirit.

The best things in life are still free.

Let's use them!

Please please please ... let me let me let me ... let me ... get what I want this time.

2009-01-15T16:28:00.003-05:00

Does anybody else think it's real wrong to be peddling chocolate Obamas? Is it just me? Anyways.

So, I guess the inauguration is coming up in a few days. I'm excited for the changes that are supposed to take place, but not too pumped to be living and having to drive to work in and through Baltimore while it's all going on. I live a few blocks from Penn Station and I hear it's gonna be insane. The insanity, if the US gets everything it's being promised, will be worth it, though.

I remember back in 2000 when the inaugural parade drove faster than the secret service guys could run because people were throwing eggs and Bush's limo. And then in 2004, when everybody was good and scared of terrorism and voted his sorry ass into office again, I remember walking around my college campus like a zombie wondering what awful things were going to happen in the four ensuing years.

Then there we all were in 2008. I was at Center Street Theater in Baltimore, drinking election-themed cocktails and chainsmoking dorals. They had these little computers that would let you click on a state or a county and see who the election was going to as it was happening. I was peeing when they called Ohio for Obama. I know this because my sister texted me. I squealed with delight in a women's public restroom. I don't regret it.

I find, though, that the closer we get to this inauguration, the more skeptical I'm feeling. Is that normal? Do all US citizens feel a little bit like even so much as avoiding a country-wide downfall the likes of which would trump Germany between the world wars is too much to ask for? Sometimes I do.

I think about things like when someone does finally declare war on US soil, I hope they take out all of the computers so that my student loan and credit card debts will be erased and I can at least live by my wits.

It's crappy to be envisioning a post-apocalyptic world on the eve of all of this change being promised. I have high hopes, but, let's say, I also have an IV drip of reality in my veins.

I say this stuff like I'm an old lady on my porch with a teacup full of bourbon and I've seen everything. Twice. Oh, I wish. That's not the case. I'm only 26, actually.

I want to believe that we'll be out of Iraq soon and focus our energy on the masses of starving people in this country.

I want to believe that having a Black president will help assuage some of the rampant and maybe even some of the more insidious racism in the country.

I want to believe that this dude's gonna focus, at lease a little bit, on women's rights and gender equality.

I want to believe that my gay and lesbian and transgender and bisexual fellow humans will be treated as more than a punchline.

I want to believe that the natural world we have come to depend on for our livelihood will suddenly become a mainstream concern.

I want to believe that healthcare will become available to everyone.

I want to believe that senior citizens won't have to choose between eating and taking their prescribed medication.

I want to believe a lot of things. I really really want to.

Oh, Obama. You've got a gigantic mess to start cleaning up. I want to believe that you want it bad enough to help empower this country so that we can all start taking care of each other and the world we're in.

That's me, though. Two parts naivete. One part reality. A dash of bitters and a twist of hope.

Lies lies lies: How a kimchi addiction led me to the worst advice ever.

2008-12-08T10:42:00.003-05:00

Have I ever mentioned that I am addicted to kimchi? It's true. Put it on the record right now that I came out as a kimchi addict on blogspot, okay?

Anyways, this addiction of mine warrants that I know where every Asian grocery store is within a 20 mile radius of where I am at any given moment. I don't know what to tell you. I'm a slave to the stuff.

The other day, I was supposed to meet a friend of mine for dinner, but I had to stop by the store on the way there to pick up some kimchi. Because why wouldn't I want to include it? Between shopping and having to be at my friend's house, I had half an hour to kill and I needed to buy some thank you notes. Because to speak cynically, I have recently become three things: 1) a non-smoker, 2) a motorist (again!) and 3) a world-class ass kisser.

Right next to the store I was at was a Christian bookstore. Immediately, I became suspicious because I really really hate those places. Mainly because of their surface Christianity, which I never appreciate. You know the kind. Full of ridiculous platitudes and bumper-sticker theology with no real consideration or thought given to how Jesus Christ lived his life as a revolutionary who fought hard against an oppressive status quo, bla bla bla. You've heard me rant about this before, ad nauseum, I'm sure.

The second thing I hated about this place was that it is called "His way." No shit. Not kidding. And for whatever reason (as well as to my dismay), Mary Daly was not outside in a construction hat blowing a whistle. Nonetheless, I thought they might have some schmoozy, full-of-feelin' thank you cards which would have served my purposes quite nicely. So I go in.

No thank you cards whatsoever and me with 30 minutes on my hands. I decided to look around for awhile and as I was walking down the main aisle of the store, here's what was happening in my head:

"No. No. Ew. Not interesting. Superficial. No. Ew. No." Then I saw the "Women's" section, which piqued my interest. That is until I saw the sort of drivel they were passing off as "good" for "women."

Let me tell you, the "Women's section" at "His way" should have been called the "Hey, if you're into BSDM as a sub in your private life, you might want to explore being a Christian woman during your public life" section. With titles like "How to Submit to God and Your Husband" (insert primal scream here) and "I am Eve" (do you hear me cocking a gun and pointing it at my own head?), it was hard not to laugh. I did laugh, actually.

If I had ever learned how to be successful at submitting, I would never have gotten a job in high school. If I had strove to find a husband to dominate me, I probably would not have worried about going to college. If I had ever mastered the art of keeping my mouth shut, I would not be an opinion columnist, a teacher, any kind of a good sister, friend or acquaintance or, for that matter, a blogger. I wouldn't have concerned myself with a fight for social justice and furthermore, I absolutely would not have thought it prudent to live my life the way I believe that Jesus Christ lived his: as a renegade force fighting daily for fairness, justice and compassion to our fellow earth-inhabitors. But what do I know, right? I'm just a beat away from being the evil temptress that caused the downfall of MANkind!

Can you imagine how many women there are in the world who are not actualizing their potential to do good in society because they truly believe that to take control of anything at all is contrary to God's will for women? I think about it and it makes me feel like screaming and shaking those women and saying, "You know what? If God didn't want you to change the world, s/he wouldn't have given you the impulse to do just that?"

Eventually, my laughter caught the attention of a sales associate and she edged towards me, asking if I needed help with anything.

"Yeah, I cackled. Do you have any Daly or Ruether or Trible?"
"Who," she asked.
"You know. Feminist theology. Do you have any of that?"
She looked at me like I had three heads and then, with too much incredulity and contempt for my liking, she put her hands on her hips and said, "Is that supposed to be funny?"
"No," I said, stifling more laughter, "but oddly enough it kind of is."

As I walked out of the store, there was a group of women marines jogging in tandem down the sidewalk.

And they say there aren't any signs from God anymore.

Kind of a dead beat blogger.

2008-11-25T09:25:00.001-05:00

I've been really negligent about this blog for the past few months, so to those of you who read it and look for updates, I sincerely apologize. Things have been a little bit nuts and I've been too survival driven to come up with coherent posts a lot of the time. And here we are in the holidays.

The good news is this: Now that I am relatively divorced from all the weird shit that's been going on in my life / the city / the country / the world, I can eventually look back and publicly discuss it. And by discuss it, I mean make fun of it.

I can promise you at least one of those sometime in the next month.

Yes!

2008-11-05T09:20:00.000-05:00

I watched Cuyahoga County go to Obama and I felt proud, because that is "my" county.

Then I watched him take Ohio and I shrieked like a little girl looking at a bicycle on Christmas morning.

I knew he'd take Maryland. I wasn't worried about that.

Then it was the entire United States. I don't have television, so I had to call someone and I just kept going, "Are you sure? Are you sure? They're not taking it back again?"

My friend kept saying, "No, dude. They're not taking this one back."

Oh, thank God!

Word Vomit: A Few Reasons why I Tune Out during Election Season

2008-10-19T13:57:00.003-04:00

This past Monday was my birthday. Among other things, I received a box in the mail from my mother. The box contained various nonperishable food items and the top fourth of the box was filled with tabloids.

These are a weakness of mine. I cannot get enough garbage news. Since all of it is presumably untrue gossip, it doesn't give me the same sense of total debilitating anxiety as do other "news" publications which claim to be full of "facts."

I tore through, like, five of these things in one day. The third one in the stack was "In Touch" magazine. And, believe it or not, there was one cover item on my garbage newspaper (which was supposed to be and usually is a riot for me) that got my blood boiling.

It was a feature called "Style Showdown: Who's Got the Winning Look." You might think that this is a totally normal thing to have in an "In Touch" magazine. Unless you consider the feature in light of the upcoming presidential election.

I'll clarify. The "showdown" is between Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama. This is wrong on a lot of levels.

I mean no disrespect to Michelle Obama when I say this next thing because if she ran later this year against her own husband, I would probably vote for her (and if you've spoken to me since they chose running mates, you know how I feel about Sarah Palin), but why aren't we having a showdown between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden?

Michelle Obama isn't a VP candidate, is she? I mean, I wish she was, but whatever. It's pretty standard to do the style showdown thing between the potential first ladies, so why isn't the style showdown between Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain? Why is the female VP candidate being so readily judged based on her style? This pisses me off for two reasons.

1. It is completely stupid to assume that a VP candidate or any human being should be judged based on "In Touch Weekly's" standards.

2. I'm horrified that people will vote for John McCain because Sarah Palin is pretty. Even having typed that out, I know it sounds atrocious, but it's a legitimate concern that I have.

I'm not going to go all the way into the feminist angle here because it would all be obvious and unoriginal. I am going to say that the feminist cause has come further than it would have had there been no feminist movement whatsoever. But if you ask me, it hasn't come far enough. 40 years later, we're still wrapped up in the same shit the minute we find out that someone with a vagina might assume a position of power.

Other things that concern me about this election are as follows: the republican VP candidate is developing a reputation for inciting race riots during conventions by "othering" Obama for being black, the possibility that our nation is still so archaic as to foster an environment in which people can't handle the idea of a Black president, the possibility that McCain could actually be the president of the US, the possiblity that when he keels over, Sarah Palin could actually be the president of the US. There are a million things that concern me about this election. And I don't think that "concern" is even the right word. These are things that actually keep me awake sometimes.

There is a reason that I totally avoid as much media as I can possibly avoid before an election. These are some of those reasons.

I don't normally pray very much, even though I did graduate from seminary. I always figure that God's got enough to deal with without me bugging her about my stupid shit. I'm praying for this country, though. And the world.

Choose? You can't make me.

2008-09-15T12:24:00.000-04:00

I am pro life. I believe in living and I believe in doing everything you can to help others to live. I do not believe in the death penalty or in war. I do not believe in murder or abuse of one’s power or in domination over others. Or in violence of any sort. I believe in mutual empowerment. I believe in choice.

So I am also pro choice. I believe in making good choices when you can and making the best choice when you are faced with two difficult options. I believe in helping others to choose wisely for themselves whenever you have the chance. Again, I believe in mutual empowerment.

Am I naïve to think that a radical feminist in the 21^st century, who has built the majority of her academic achievements on the biophilic teachings of Mary Daly, can be both pro choice and pro life? Maybe. Do I have what I believe to be some very well thought out reasons for holding both positions? Definitely!

Seeing what I am seeing in this presidential race, I am privy to one of the most poignant moments in United States history. Things are happening which many people said could not happen. I cannot tell you how many times I have cringed at hearing people say that our country “just isn’t ready” for a black president or a female president. And yet, the democratic party’s two main contenders in this year’s primaries were just that. And furthermore, in a move that almost surprised me, the republican candidate for the presidency just named a woman as his running mate. I am seeing things in my lifetime that people have always told me would never happen. And on those matters, at least for now, I am going to keep my opinion to myself.

What I am more interested in discussing are the two buzz words I mentioned earlier and their inherent baggage. Too often, women (and men) in this country swallow what the media machine spoon feeds us. We hear words like “terror” or “family values” or “freedom” and we don’t bother to define them for ourselves anymore. We simply take whatever image on the television or song on the radio or sound byte from whatever speech makes us feel the most righteous in the shortest amount of time and we run with it until our legs our tired.

What is life? When does it begin? Does it begin at the moment when a sperm meets an egg? Does it begin in the split second between that moment and an imperceptible splitting of cells? Does it begin in a particular trimester, or when a baby has perception? Or is it when humans become cognizant creatures? And what about after birth? How precious is life when governments cut funding to social programs to help poor families become economically stable? How precious is it when we are refusing to teach the nation’s children what they need to do to remain safe and healthy? How precious is it when we plunk these same children in front of MTV and then tell them in passing that they shouldn’t have sex before marriage?

Are we thinking about the sanctity of life when we are either directly or through deliberate inaction, removing more and more choices from our nation’s children as the years go on? When we push abstinence only sex education, are we equipping the daughters of the United States of America with the knowledge they will need to prevent their lives and development and education from being stunted by a preventable miscalculation?

When unwanted children are born to destitute families or to no families, who will be the brave citizens who cherish the sanctity of human life enough to step forward and nurture? Will it be you? And when the time comes to have embarrassing conversations with our children about the world and about life and about choice – about their choices concerning their own lives – who will have the strength of character to do that? Will you?

To me, it has seemed that life and choice are not two mutually exclusive truths, but rather, they exist in a dialectic, feeding one another and making one another stronger. One is inconsequential without the other. Do I pretend to know how to fix where I believe the country has gone wrong – has failed my generation? The one after me? The ones that came before me? No. All of our problems are systemic. You cannot just grab hold of a slogan, or even a handful of them, and expect those to be the basis for strong belief systems or even for informed decision making. We need to think, more than we need to do anything else. We need to carefully calculate our next move as a country. If popular media refuses to educate us, we need to educate ourselves. Language is powerful and as citizens of a powerful country, we need to take the initiative by creating our own definitions. By choosing the course of our own lives. I cannot pretend to come close to knowing how to solve many of the problems and concerns and hurts we all face. No amount of education can equip any one person to do that.

What I do know is this: Without life, there are no choices to be made. But without choice, there is no life.

I'm passing the buck today.

2008-09-04T09:48:00.001-04:00

I want you to go to the right hand side of this page and click on "Something Within" in my links list.

I could not have said this better myself.

Thanks, guys.

Balls to the Wall: When Abstinence Goes Horribly Awry

2008-08-12T12:39:00.004-04:00

I just moved from Columbus to Baltimore and, as such, have been generally out of touch with what is going on in the world for the past few weeks. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that I still don't have a job and I would do the bulk of my research / writing while at work (I know). That being said, there are always some precious gems in modern culture that make it from their origins to my ears, regardless of how out of touch I am. Usually, this happens via my mother.

We were on the phone the other day and somewhere between telling me that I should bake cookies to get over a nicotine fit and telling me not to talk to strangers, she started cracking up.

"What?" I asked.
"Oh, I'm reading this article and I could totally picture you losing your shit over this."
"What?" I asked.
"Purity balls. Do you know about them?"

For those of you who don't know about them, purity balls are a recent cultural phenomenon related to the broader abstinence movement in the United States. At these events (set up like real balls, like in Cinderella or something), fathers and their daughters (aged anywhere from 4 to 13) celebrate the daughters' "purity" (read, undamaged hymen, as if I have to say it). In addition to the fairy-tale-esqe themed evenings themselves, fathers present their daughters with a functioning padlock charm shaped like a heart. The father, of course, keeps the key.

Now, here's the part where I get pissed off and grossed out.

The idea is that when the daughter gets married, her father will present the key to her husband. In effect, the girl's father is giving tangible symbolic "permission" to have first dibbs at intercourse with his virginal daughter.

There is so much wrong with this "celebration," at least from this feminist's perspective that to try to tackle all of it would mean that I'd be here all day, every day, for weeks on end and not out looking for jobs. So in the interest of saving myself some time (presumably in which to bake cookies when not looking for jobs), I'll focus my righteous indignance into a few key points.

1. Abstinence itself is not entirely a bad thing, but the way it is being framed in these situations is horribly destructive to a young woman's sense of herself. Think about it. If you want to be abstinent, go for it! I'm sure not gonna try to stop you, but know why you're doing it. And know that it's your choice to make, not anyone else's. Don't be abstinent because you are being set up as the princess character in a fairy tale or because your father has purchased a piece of jewelry for you or even because you are being pressured into it. Deciding when and how to have one's first sexual experience is an intensely personal decision and is different for every woman who has to make it. It shouldn't be about anything but what a woman feels is in her own best interest and any social or cultural construct that seeks to muddy that decision with bribery or pressure (from either end of the spectrum) is not only clouding that decision but is also clouding the growing and maturing of the young woman's decision making skills and sense of self.

2. A daughter's hymen belongs to the daughter. Not to her father. Does anyone else think that the symbolic "passing on" of the daughter's virginity from father to husband smacks of incest, or is that just me? And furthermore, how can any parent expect their child to respect herself and her body when she is being told, either directly or indirectly, that it is not even hers to respect? If it belongs to someone else (fathers and husbands), then she takes no responsibility for it or what happens to it. This makes for some very passive women, which is perhaps what the purity ball phenomenon is actually seeking to create.

3. Again, we see women pedestalized as ultra-pure princesses. A prize to be won. And if, god forbid, any of these women should happen to have sex, common whores. There is no in between. You either fit into the construct of "purity" or you don't. Bad, bad, bad. I can't tell you how bad this is. Did you know that the Catholic Church actually held meetings in the middle ages over whether or not women were actually human? It pains me, literally, that in the year 2008, some facets of society would lead me to believe that our culture is still having that argument (only a lot more insidiously). Are we people or are we prizes? Or whores? Who's got the rulebook?

I'm all for abstinence. I'm also all for having a bunch of sex. It depends on absolutely nothing else besides the choice of the woman who it involves and any attempt to make that decision about anything but the woman's best interest (or who attempts to make the decision belong to anyone else besides the woman involved) is not only kidding him or herself and creating herds of passive princesses, but is also directly contributing to the objectification of women.

Purity? Sure. Purity balls? Hell no.

Talkin' 'Bout Everybody's Generation: The Booms of Past and Present

2008-07-11T08:23:00.004-04:00

It’s hard for me not to blame the baby boomers for the vast majority of America’s problems. In typing that out, I feel like sort of an asshole, but bare with me for a sec.

I’m a member of generation Y. Also sometimes called the i generation (I can only assume after our coming of age during the i everything phenomenon of the early otts), millenials and even echo-boomers, we’re made up of people who were born between 1980 and 1994 and are renowned (or infamed) by Americans of other generations for our penchant for instant gratification and our self-immersion in our own peer group. It is my generation who, supposedly as a collective, reaped the benefits of the internet and we are supposedly the most avid tamers of any technological advance this side of the gap between gen-y-ers and gen-z-ers (which sounds weird, even to me). The gen-z-ers are going to be better at it than we are. At least, that’s what I hear.

I barely missed being a part of generation x, that listless generation who produced grunge rock, supported Winona Ryder’s stardom, carried on the tradition of music festivals and became jaded with their parents’ generation’s materialism. Oh, to have been born two years earlier to have come of age in Seattle’s grunge rock scene! Interestingly enough, most gen-x-ers are children of, yep, baby boomers. But wait, you say. Aren't the baby boomers responsible for the personal freedom movements of the sixties and seventies (civil rights, women's lib, gay rights, etc?)? Why yes, they are. But they were also the first wave of yuppies when yuppies came into existence. That's whose materialism put off the gen-x-ers. But wait, you say. Weren't the baby boomers reacting to their parents' materialism during the Eisenhower years? Yes, but there is a small difference, which I will address in a minute, between the parents of the Eisenhower years and the baby boom generation. One was not raised with televisions in the home and one was. Chew on that while I make another point.

Because something that is of further interest to me, personally, is the fact that my generation, the gen-y-ers, are called echo boomers. We are supposedly the second baby boom: doomed to be a second wave of marauding, self-centered hypocrites. I can see it happening already, but let me explain why I feel this way about both the boom of yesteryear and my own, copycat boom.

Actual baby boomers were given birth to by both members of the “silent generation” and the so-called “greatest generation,” between 1946 and 1960. I suppose that even older members of the “beat generation” may have given birth to some boomers, though it would have likely created small-scale scandals among the sterile, anti-sex social constructs of the 40’s and 50’s. But I digress. It’s called a boom because it is exactly that. Between the years I mentioned, there were over 76 million Americans born. Incidentally, this is the first demographic of children who grew up with televisions in the home. Because of this fact, this generation of children was the first at whom advertising was so aggressively aimed.

And because of this, the baby boom generation ended up as the first generation comprised almost entirely of rampant consumers. I say almost, of course, because I am not seeking to describe the entirety of a particular generation. Merely a vast majority. As of right now, the baby boomers hold the highest median household incomes in the United states, have used up the largest amount of natural (renewable and non-renewable) resources in the country in the shortest amount of time, have been known to hoard these resources and wealth and, of course, have come up with countless ways to deny the fact that right now, they are aging (a topic I’m sure you’ve heard me discuss before). That being said, I see a lot of my generation in the boomer generation.

For instance, most of my peers are primarily interested in “getting ahead” in the world. I mean fiscally. Not emotionally, not in terms of personal evolution or revelation, but fiscally. We’re clamoring all over each other to make sure that we’re making more and more money as the years go by. We want rims on the tires, bling in the ears and on the fingers and around the neck. Some of us need to have the latest iThing. We need cars and women and oddly-concocted martinis in various hues. We wanna live in sparsely-decorated lofts and run the air conditioning all summer long. We want Prada and Marc Jacobs and we want it right now, goddamnit!

Knowing what my generation is supposed to know (that consumerism and materialism isn’t really doing anyone any actual good, not to mention that it’s destroying our natural environment at a terrifying rate), I’m not sure how we all ended up in a headspace where we can’t live without the internet, instant messaging, cellular phones, iPods, other iThings, DVDs, DVR, et cetera, ad nauseum.

To further my disgust with my own generation, it strikes me at my core that we didn’t even pick up on the good aspects of the baby boomer generation. What about the personal freedom movements? Civil rights, feminism, gay rights, environmental movements? What about the peace movement of the late 60’s? What about Woodstock, for God’s sake?! I fear that my generation sees these concepts as no more than a novelty or as nostalgia – something which can be further exploited for some monetary gain or, worse, for street cred! Oh, MTV, how I long for the days in which you actually played music!

And I think I’ve figured out why I’m angry at the baby boomers (the first ones). You were the generation who started off being dead set on changing the status quo. You revolutionized the way things were done in the United States. You should be thanked for that. But what is stopping you from continuing to live on the margins now? Why aren’t you teaching your children (cough US! cough) to live on the margins of society as well? To refuse to accept a mediocre and exploitative status quo based on capitalism and amassing wealth for no reason? What happened? After the personal freedom movements, you became yuppies and had a generation of children who started off disgusted with consumerism … and then became consumers. The next generation of children turned out like you, boomers, without very many of your good aspects. It would appear that in my disgust for the consumerism of my generation, a generation raised not only on television, but also on the internet, I am seeking a generational parent to blame.

Or perhaps my real problem is that everywhere in the United States, I seem to be seeing the same phenomenon: the most influential social groups are the most apathetic. And this is at a point in history when there is a lot about which to have an opinion! I mean, it's not like there isn't anything going on. Even in my anger, I realize that there are two sides to every coin. For instance, George W and Bill Clinton are both baby boomers (born within months of one another) and anyone with her senses intact can see that these two range in values and political agenda from one end of the spectrum to the other.

Now we, the echo-boomers or generation-y-ers, have the opportunity to take the country by the horns and really create some change. There are a lot of us. Imagine how many of us there would be if the boomers and the echo-boomers got together for change. For equality, sustainability and mindful living. And then what if the gen-x-ers joined, too? That would be incredible.

You would think that the generations who gave bloody, feedbackey birth to Woodstock, Lollapalooza and Ozzfest respectively would be able to come up with something, right? Right.

Guantanamo Bay: Torture Chamber turned Tourist Attraction and Why I'm Often Ashamed to be American

2008-06-25T08:52:00.004-04:00

Remember how last week I was talking about how the election-mania in the United States was making me and others not really want to bother voting sometimes because the media blitz regarding the candidates often has little to nothing to do with the actual candidates and what they stand for and furthermore, to find any facts on candidates one must be prepared to to actual research which is something that many voters are simply not willing to do? Well, believe it or not, I've found something new in the news this week that makes me feel even shittier about being an American.

Brace yourselves. I hope that you are sitting down because if this doesn't throw you into a blind rage or cause you to at least do a spit-take, then I don't think you're really human. Are you ready?

A few "entrepreneurs" have decided that it's a good idea to turn the portions of Guantanamo Bay which are not being used as holding cells, torture chambers and the scenes for indefinitely termed waking nightmares for unconvicted and untried human beings that the United States just sort of feels like detaining ... into a $42 per night tourist attraction. Do you know what they're calling this monstrosity of what I can only term the literal condensation of demonic potential in human beings? You're not going to believe this. They're calling it "The Taliban Towers."

I'll give you a minute to peel yourself off of either the floor or the ceiling, depending on how you react to bad news.

I want to pose a question to you readers: Would you be able to wind surf, fish, take a boat trip, lie on the beach, eat at a KFC or a McDonalds or shop at a Wal Mart (yes, they built a fucking Wal Mart superstore at Guantanamo Bay) knowing that mere yards away, prisoners who have been convicted of and tried for nothing in the past six years are being held in steel cells often no bigger than bathrooms? And I'm not talking about your suburban bathrooms with the jacuzzi tub and the fifteen steps from the toilet to the shower. I'm talking about that teensy one everyone has in his/her house where you have to try not to get a bloody nose on the sink when you sit down to take a shit. Would you be able to buy a t shirt for your little one that says, "Someone who loves me bought me this t shirt at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba" knowing that your fellow human beings are living in these teeny cells in isolation and that often times, as a form of torture, freezing cold blasts of air are shot into the cells which are normally at a tempurature of around 100 degrees Fahrenheit?

Would you be able to enjoy a nice fried chicken dinner knowing that on the other end of the spectrum, in a "deeper" area of the "resort," people on an extended "vacation" who have gone on hunger strike to protest these deplorable conditions are force-fed twice daily with an un-lubricated tube, through the nose and down into the stomach? What about if you knew that several detainees are fed with the same tube, without it being so much as rinsed off in between uses?

How do you think you might like a boat trip knowing that on the same island, prisoners were taken on "mock flights" to make them think that they were going to countries where torture is legal so that they could be treated brutally (I'm not even kidding. I wish I was)?

I think this'd pretty much slap the chiken-eating grin off anyone's face, don't you?

You know, this thing America has with taking beautiful landscapes and turning them into nightmarish atrocities is really working one of the last favorable nerves I have going on with this country. It's as though doublespeak (you've read 1984, right?) has manifested itself into the actions of America's leaders and thereby into the actions and psyches and belief structures of America's people. In essence, we're so far up shit creek that we actually have to use antonymous descriptions for things because they've gotten so bad. Turning Guantanamo Bay into a tourist stop is perhaps the most blatant manifestation of this phenomenon, but there certainly are others.

For instance, the US government measures nuclear waste in something called "sunshine units." Did you know this? Waterboarding, in recent political discourse, has been referred to by some not as torture, but as an "important tool in obtaining confessions."

I get to these points where I just wish someone would nuke us. Sick? Maybe. Do we deserve it, though? Probably.

As an ethicist, I swam around in a lot of scholarship regarding pattern maintenence. Basically the idea that in order to justify the (otherwise apalling) status quo, we come up with rituals, symbols, phrases, etc. which turn what would be offensive and unpalattable to any reasonable person viewing the situation from an objective standpoint, into something necessary and even honorable.

Example. Guantanamo Bay. This is an island, belonging to Cuba but rented by the United States government in which 280 people have been detained without being accused, tried or convicted of anything. They have been there for the past 6 years. These people are kept in deplorable living conditions and psychologically, emotionally, physically and sexually abused on a regular basis by United States soldiers. Take out the words "United" and "States" and what kind of a situation do you have?

One in which a group of people are being tortured by a group of people for no actual reason.

What are we calling this, though? Freedom. Take a look at the souveniers they're hawking at this shit show.

See what I mean? War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. And I think I'm gonna be sick.

Electile Dysfunction: Where's MY Viagara?

2008-06-16T08:27:00.006-04:00

I am so discouraged by the election system in the United States.

I've typed and retyped that sentence, like, five times before being able to decide whether to begin an entry that way or not. Leaving it out would mean no post. This is what's on my mind. Leaving it in as it stands is a double edged sword.

On the one hand, it seems as though I don't appreciate the fact that citizens of the US are supposed to be privileged with the most "democratic" (picture me doing finger quotes, because I don't even know what that is supposed to mean anymore) election system in the world. In a lot of ways, this is true. As far as I've ever been able to tell, there aren't marauding bands of government-hired assassination squads roaming the streets, pointing guns and people and telling them to vote a certain way. However, the vote is never left entirely up to the voter, which I'll discuss momentarily. For right now, let's get back to why I'm hesitant to state my discouragement so bluntly.

On the other hand, it might seem as though I'm stating the obvious. Of course I'm discouraged by it. So is everyone else! To give an example of just how discouraged some people are, let me discuss my father for a moment. Throughout the entire time I was growing up, he would always explain that it was not only a right and a privilege to vote, but also a duty of every American citizen. I can't say that I'm a very patriotic person because that would be a complete lie. What I can say is that this sense of duty has stuck with me. Lately, though, he's lost it. Last I heard, my father had no solid intentions of voting in the upcoming election. Why? "Because it doesn't matter." I wonder why he might think this?

Could it be because two elections ago, even though the popular vote went one way, the presidency went to the other candidate? I don't think that was it for him. My parents were staunch Republicans eight years ago.

Could it be that the last election was so socially devisive that my parents and I didn't speak to one another for months after it? I don't think that was it for him, either. My father and I rarely ever speak to each other as it is (and I don't mean that the way it seems, we're just like that) and four years ago, my parents were still staunch republicans.

Could it be that after about a month of Bush being in office for the SECOND TIME (sidebar: how this happened, I'll never know. Thinking about it keeps me awake at night sometimes), my parents decided to become democrats and were discouraged by a system which favors the upper 2% of our country's economic structure while paying little to no mind to the remaining 98%, causing the gap between rich and poor to be ever-widening, signalling a possible class war? All this while doing more damage to the environment in less than a decade than has been done in the previous century? And all this while initiating and maintaining a war with absolutely no cause in the pursuit of a non-renewable resource which serves only to contribute to the persistent destruction of our world as we know it? I doubt that any of these were his reasons either. While their split from the GOP turned my mom into somewhat of a 50-year-old riot grrl, it seemed only to turn my father more apolitical.

I know my father relatively well (despite the fact that our relationship is basically devoid of long, rambling conversations), mainly because I turned out a lot like him. And apart from all of the other reasons I've listed here that one might become apolitical in a time when the path voters choose for the US matters so crucially not only to our own well-being, but also to the well-being of the world, at least in some sense, I think I can come up with one more reason why someone might not want to even bother engaging in the process.

We've become petty.

My ennui regarding the election process became crystallized for me this morning as I waited in line at the grocery store armed with a banana and a Lean Cuisine (sidebar: I should post about the all around bland-ness not only of Lean Cuisines, but also of life based around working in an office. I think network television has beat me to it, though), it hit me in the form of headlines that read something like this:

"Bill's Secret Mistress: He was Cheating on Hillary WHILE SHE RAN!!!"

"Obama Abandoned by Mother: The Secret He's Been Keeping from America!"

"Bush on Cocaine: Why Laura Kicked Him Out of the White House!"

I could go on, but I'm not going to, mainly because (to my disgust, the more I think about it), I'm not surprised at all to see headlines like this. Furthermore, I expected them. It's like the bad news you know is coming or the phone call from someone you totally do not want to talk to. Sure, life might be temporarily nicer without these things, but you see them coming a mile away and then, whoomp, there they are. Staring you in the face at 8am on a Monday while Bob the checkout guy asks about your weekend and you tell him for the jillionth time that you do not need a bag. Standard.

On a side note, I can't help but notice that I haven't seen any headlines about McCain being involved in any scandals, though I'm sure they'll come out, probably reading something like a yo' mama joke ("McCain is so Old...").

Anyways, back to me being discouraged at the pettiness of the country as a whole. Why are these the things that we care about? Let me take an opportunity to criticize some of my female relatives* for a moment. At a gathering for the birthday of one of my oldest aunts (she's in her nineties, God bless her), my mother, grandmother, sisters, and a few aunts were discussing the primaries (this was a few months ago). In a Lebanese construct, it is difficult to be presented with the opportunity to discuss politics in an all-female space. Lebanese gatherings, while traditionally very gender-separate, more often than not involve women, well, waiting on men. This is a topic for another post, however. One would think (or at least I would think) that when presented with the opportunity to have a serious political discussion when that opportunity is not always there, you'd jump on it, right? Wrong. While I wasn't able to be at this particular gathering, I heard from my mother, who called me on her way home because she was so livid, that this is not how the conversation went at all. Three general things were discussed:

1. That Hillary Clinton should not be president because she could not "hold onto" her man and because her drive and ambition made her too much like a man. In essence, that if she were prettier and meeker, she would make a better candidate. There was great discussion about the merits versus the pitfalls of shorter hairstyles.

2. Barack Obama might be a good candidate because his wife calls to mind images of Jackie O and because while he is Black, he is not entirely Black (I am still trying to figure out how this computes into the actual world as opposed to the world at the table where this was being discussed).

3. John McCain is old and no longer verile. This is cancelled out by the fact that he is a white man and therefore trustworthy.

I could have screamed. On the phone, my mom was screaming. I had to ask her to calm down more than once and more than once, I became concerned that we were having this discussion while she was operating a vehicle. I was pretty sure that she was going to wreck it. Thank God she didn't. What I said in an attempt to console her was this: "It's okay, Mom. Most of the country is like that."

What the hell? Is this true? Yes! Should it be? No! Why are we like this? Because we are petty.

Because it's too much work to research a candidate and see what s/he stands for or intends to do for or with the United States. It takes too much effort to get involved in grass roots movements that could change things. It is a lot easier to sit around and listen to everything we are being told by the media. It is so much easier to have our opinions made for us by reading tabloids, listening to gossip and watching, oh, Fox news than it would be to take responsibility for our own decisions when deciding on which presidential candidate we prefer. It's so much easier to sit on the couch and complain about "how things are," throwing around phrases like "Bush's America" and "It's never gonna change." Not if we don't get off of our asses, it won't.

Not if we don't go out and work, actually work for change, it won't.

Not if we don't at least vote, it won't.

Now's not the time for discouragement or to lament the fact that we're all probably a little bit jaded. Now's not the time to bitch about our political boners becoming political softies. Now is the time to move past all of that and take a look at what is going on. Form our own opinions. Act on them.

It's time to stop being petty and start being mindful.

Otherwise, what's the point?

*When I discuss my female relatives, 9 times out of 10, I am discussing my mother's side of the family.

Carried Away: A Movie Review of Sorts

2008-06-02T08:42:00.007-04:00

First, allow me to apologize for not having blogged here for the entire month of May. That's kind of unacceptable for anyone trying to keep up a regular "column" (can I call this a column? You tell me). I did do a few worthwhile things, including but not limited to getting my master's degree in theology and driving all over the Eastern seaboard for a week. That being said, I want to talk about why I came home when I did. I made it a specific point to be sure that I was back in Columbus by Friday afternoon. Why, you ask? Because I had plans to see the Sex and the City movie.

Oh, I was geeked! I was so geeked that I started drinking cosmopolitans basically the minute I got out of the car. Which devolved into drinking water glasses full of pomegranete-flavored vodka and making facebook albums while I waited for us to leave, which eventually devolved into drinking wild turkey out of a flask at the movie theater. My rationalization for this was that I had to keep up with the girls if I was gonna have the total SATC experience. If you were to accuse me of being a wino that night, I might have slapped you, but I probably would not have argued.

That being said, let me explain that I was originally a SATC skeptic. When the show came out, I made a few haphazard attempts at watching it or "getting into it" as they say. It just didn't touch me. I couldn't identify with any of the characters. I am not from New York. I don't think I have a lot of sex. I don't own a single item of clothing that cost me more than $60 (handbags, for the sake of my argument being airtight, do not count). Most of all, I was not interested in the heteronormative world of SATC - a world in which women compete in droves for men who simply aren't that spectactular, in which gay men are the new fag hags and in which the only lesbian relationship happened within the characterization of the "oversexed" one and proved to be little more than a dramatic distraction. In short, the show's premise pissed me off.

Sometimes nothing can be as influential as boredom. You see, my roommate owns the entire series of SATC on DVD (it would be cool if I could have thought of a third acronym for that sentence, but I digress) and last year, I spent the first few months of summer on the verge of being laid off. At the time, I worked at a call center to whom the dot com company bluefly.com outsourced. Since bluefly was getting ready to outsource to a call center in Virginia and since they didn't mention it to anyone working at the Ohio call center, a lot of us were getting sent either a) on extended, unpaid breaks or b) home for the day, unpaid. It was a pretty shitty arrangement, but it presented me with a lot of time. I decided to use this time to give SATC a second chance. S0 one day, I picked up some shumai and some kung pao chicken, popped in the first disc and the rest was history.

I started to be able to identify a little bit better with certain aspects of each character. I recognized my own experiences in theirs. I even used Carrie's relationship with Big to justify getting back into a relationship that I had left a bunch of times before. Oh, it was insidious! The writers at HBO were inside my head and they knew just what I needed to hear and just what it would take to keep me coming back for more all summer long. By the middle of fall, I was watching the last few episodes and while I was completely emotionally ravaged by the last episode, there were a few things I just couldn't shake. For instance, what's with the whole everyone's getting married thing? And what's with the whole Big saving Carrie from the Russian on a white horse in Paris thing? It seemed a little bit too Cinderella for four capable city gals, didn't it? But whatever. At the time we were in a post 9/11 world of media-created archetypes and I could deal with what I was being fed. Mainly because I was entertained by it.

You'd figure that by 2008, the white horse story would be played out, right? I guess it was in a sense, but there were two things that made me incredibly angry about the movie (though I enjoyed it to a huge degree overall). 1) Carrie got screwed over by Big AGAIN and then got back together with him in the end. 2) Steve screwed around on Miranda and she got back together with him.

What exactly are we trying to say here? Are we so desperate to be paired off that getting together with whoever we have decided is THE guy should come at the expense of our own standards and basic sense of self worth and dignity? I mean, come on! If you were stood up at your own wedding by a guy who had strung you along for ten years, dumping you willy nilly throughout, do you think you'd give it any kind of shot after that? I really hope you said no. As for the cheating, that literally made me feel ill. And yes, I do know that it's just a movie. What I'm interested in exploring is what society views as realistic for women these days, a topic which I think is embodied relatively well in the SATC phenomenon.

The message is this: pair off or die alone. Period. It's that simple. It's that ridiculous. It's that prevalent in the minds of every woman watching the movie or the show that I can say, with a relative degree of certainty, that we all either watched lamenting that we didn't have earth-shattering relationships, feeling proud of ourselves for being in them or lamenting that we don't necessarily want them, thinking that this means that there is something wrong with us.

I've been feeling fantastic for weeks. Since right around the conferrence of my MA, I've felt care free and powerful and solitary. Oddly enough, the morning after SATC, I felt lonely. Don't get me wrong. I'm not blaming one movie for all of my feelings, but what I am saying is this: the media machine sends out some pretty insidious and dangerous messages to us ladies. And my point is this: It's important to recognize these things for what they are and stay one step ahead of the writers and advertisers who are trying to tell us what to think and how to feel. We need to think and feel for ourselves, you know?

My Beautiful Mommy (Botox, Baby, Girl pt. II)

2008-04-27T10:55:00.004-04:00

It's been a minute since I've been in here, blogsphere. Mostly because I've been using every avoidance technique in the book in the interest of finishing my finals for my last semester of graduate school. As I was furiously writing papers this past week, I checked my e mail pretty frequently and within two days of one another, both my boyfriend and a dear friend of mine from college sent me links to news items regarding a new children's book that is scheduled to come out this Mother's Day.

Written (and, noteworthily, self-published) by Dr. Michael Salzhauer, My Beautiful Mommy chronicles the technical process involved in various cosmetic procedures and the author attempts to present what he refers to as "mommy makeovers" in a non-threatening way to children whose mothers are undergoing them.

In a little snippet from newsweek.com: "'Parents generally tend to go into this denial thing'...But, he adds, children 'fill in the blanks in their imaginaion' and then feel worse when they see 'mommy with bandages.'" Um. Okay. As I'm writing this, I want you all to know that I've taken several deep breaths (some of them filled with Salem smoke) and I'm still livid. I don't just mean regular livid. I mean Cowboys from Hell, fucking hostile kind of livid (for those readers who are fans of Pantera).

I personally have come up with several questions based on this news snippet alone. 1) Can we please talk about the whole "mommy makeover" phenomenon? 2) Why, I wonder, might parents undergoing cosmetic procedures feel ashamed of themselves for doing so and want to hide it from their children? 3) In addition to filling in blanks about what happened to their mothers, what other "blanks" might children (particularly daughters) be filling in about the way society functions and what is acceptable or normative?

First of all, mommy makeovers. As I was researching the impending publication of this book, I noticed that this phrase came up a lot. I had an easier time searching the book by "mommy makeover" than I did by its actual title which clues me into something about which I was not aware until today. Mommy makeovers are a cultural phenomenon that happen to be on the upswing. Meaning that more and more mothers (of many ages) are looking at their bodies, realizing that they look different after having children and thinking that this is wrong enough to warrant invasive surgical procedures in which (in some cases) all of their sexual organs are reconstructed in an attempt to make them "like new" again. Large breasts are torn open and reconstructed into smaller, younger looking ones. Stomachs are torn apart and reconstructed into flatter, harder ones. Vaginas are sewn up from the inside, creating a tighter fit for husbands (a cultural phenomenon which also takes place in parts of Africa and the Middle East, though we call that by a very different name). It seems that this question leads me to another: have we all taken leave of our senses? It stands to reason that if your body is housing another human being for a long period of time (9 months, give or take, right?), it will be fundamentally different after this process than it was before this process. However, rather than identify these bodily processes as natural (because they are) and therefore normative, we as a culture and as a society identify the supposedly youthful, "pre-kid" body as the norm and we strive to mold our bodies (unnaturally, I might add) back into what they were before children. Maybe I'm being radical, but this strikes me as particular ludicrous. Which brings me to my next question.

Why do women who undergo these procedures (per the statements of Dr. Salzhauer) feel the need to "go into this denial thing" with their children? Are they ashamed of what their bodies have become after having their children? Are they ashamed that they are undergoing the procedures in the first place? I would like to say that it is the latter, but my own sagging gut (which I've become pretty fond of, actually) tells me that it is probably the former. And this makes me sick to my stomach because there is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. Okay, you had a kid and now your body is different. Wear it like a badge of honor! You supported a life IN YOUR OWN BODY for nine months and maybe after that you fed that body FROM YOUR OWN for a time after that. And it changed you. And, in my opinion, you are so incredibly gorgeous for that in such an amazing way that I, for one, cannot imagine associating shame with a post-child body. Like in many cases however, I realize that my opinion is not shared by our youth-obsessed culture. We've been indoctrinated into a belief system that tells us that there is only one acceptable way to be a beautiful woman and having children never helps a woman achieve that very particular and very warped end. Which brings me to my third question.

When the shit goes down, what other "blanks" are children (and particularly daughters) filling in for themselves. Once children know what their mothers are undergoing and why, what does this tell them about their own bodies and the bodies of others. My guess is that little boys are learning what "beauty" is and they are learning that it is thin, youthful, "un-touched" women who seem as though they have had no bodily experience before. Little girls, of course, are learning that in order to be desirable and accepted in society, they too need to fit and remain in this unreasonable mold. How terribly dangerous is this?? How detrimental to the young men and women we are raising? How awful for the self images of young girls and how psychologically warping for little boys?

I don't know whether or not Dr. Michael Salzhauer thinks he's doing a good thing by presenting plastic surgery in a non-threatening way, but I feel deeply that what needs changing is not how we explain cosmetic procedures to our children, but how we explain the functionings and idiosynchricies about the human body. Wouldn't it be a lot better to explain that these processes are natural, normal and nothing to be ashamed of? That confidence and self-esteem is less invasive than knives, lasers, scalpels and that tube that they use for liposuction? Self-esteem instead of self-mutilation, perhaps?

I know one thing for sure about this Mother's Day, and I hope I can speak for a lot of other women when I say this: You can take your mommy makeover and your attempt to explain it away and shove it right up your ass. Because I'm not buying it!

Letting Go of God: Simone Weil and Marginal Living

2008-04-15T08:15:00.005-04:00

Simone Weil, a French philosopher and marginal mystic, only lived to be 34 years old. In that span of time, she came to some pretty excellent conclusions about life and human relation. In the interest of space, I'm only going to share one of them with you.

While Weil felt very comfortable in a church setting, had mystical experiences that (for her) proved the existance of God and Christ and felt intensely moved by Catholic theology, she never did join the Church itself. In fact, she wasn't baptized until she was basically on her death bed. Yet, she was a part of the Church's community as a whole for the last few years of her life and I'm not talking occasionally. Essentially, she did everything but officially go on record as being Catholic. And if you were to ask me (which you have implicitly done by choosing to read this), she lived a more Christian life than most official Christians I've met.

I had to give a presentation on her life and her philoso-spirituality yesterday and one of the things I brought up for discussion was whether she was a better Christian for having intentionally remained on the margins for her entire "Christian life" or a worse one, for denying herself official participation in any type of covenant community. As planned, a few skirmishes broke out during the discussion (which I love) and it became clear that the concept of belonging to and within a structure is very important to many Christians.

Let me give you a premature debriefing of the analysis that is about to follow by telling you that, while I do try to live a Christlike life in many senses, I would under no circumstances label myself a Christian. My reasoning for this is that Christianity as an institution has moved so far away from the message of Jesus Christ as I (as a theologian) understand it, that for me it has become impossible to be Christ-like without being anti-Christian. Furthermore, I don't think that, as a woman, I can belong to an institution which strives to socialize me into non-being while at the same time convincing me that this non-being is part of a divine plan conceived by a supposedly loving father-god. That aside, my reasoning for purposeful marginal living and Simone's are different.

For her, the worst thing one could do would be knowingly engaging in a non-truth. That being said, she came to the conclusion that while many religious dogmas contain elements of a truth (partial), none of them contain the truth (entire). Therefore, to submit herself, mind and soul, to any one religious dogma would be hypocritical and dishonest. Interestingly enough, her life on the margins is what contributed to her stunning analyses of human nature and spirituality. Furthermore, she states in her spiritual autobiography that she never actively sought God, but that God found her. Interesting concept, considering that being a seminarian is a pretty much endlessly exhausting search for God and truth ... or at least that seems to be how most of my colleagues frame their experiences. It's like the old addage: If you love it, let it go.

If that's the case, God should come a'knockin on the door of my Columbus apartment any second now. Sadly, this is not always how it works, but for me that's just fine. The conclusion I've come to is that I don't think I actually believe in an absolute truth. Or at least one that any human being would be able to grasp given how limited our minds, socializations and physical environments are.

Which is why I belive that to live honestly, one must live on the margins to one extent or another. If you're in the middle of any institution that has become bigger than God herself (in your own mind), you'll never find her. It's that simple. You can't walk around thinking you have all the answers or that some other human does and think that this is going to be your quick fix to salvation. There is no such thing as salvation, at least the way we as human beings tend to frame it. We're waiting for a knight on a white horse that's never going to come.

The truth sucks, plain and simple. And for me, the truth is that anything that happens to me happens because of 1) accidents of fate 2) I or some other creature causes it to happen or 3) I live within a historical context. This isn't to say that religion itself is a bad thing (though, if I had my way, we'd all be out of the job). It's simply to say that our symbolism hasn't evolved with us. We've become idolatrous in our love of religious institutions.

I guess the conclusion that I came to as I explored Simone Weil over the past month or so is that if I love God, I gotta let her go sometimes.

Either that or I'm going to be hit with a bolt of lightning in the next couple a minutes.

Botox, Baby Girl.

2008-04-06T13:58:00.005-04:00

I was at brunch this Saturday with my roommate and his boyfriend when I witnessed something truly horrifying. A 40's ish mom, her ten year old daughter and her baby daughter were waiting for a table near us. This was not the horrifying part.

The mom was wearing a t-shirt on which was emblazoned in rhinestone letters, "BOTOX." This was not necessarily the horrifying part, either, though it would not have been a fashion choice that I would have personally made.

The horrifying part was this conversation:

Daughter: Mom, why does your shirt say "botox?"
Mom: Do you know what botox is? It's a shot that mommy gets to paralyze the muscles in her face so she doesn't get wrinkles.
Daughter: But why does your shirt say it?
Mom: Because some people think that it's supposed to be a big secret, but Daddy gives Mommy a shot to stay pretty.

I was fucking speechless. Wouldn't you be? Actually, I wasn't speechless at all. I had a few things that I really wanted to say to that woman, which I intend to say in a minute, but at the time, I felt that it would not be a good idea to create a giant scene in the middle of Rise 'n' Dine. In retrospect, that might have been the best idea after all, but I digress.

First of all, why the hell would you discuss this shit with a ten year old girl? She doesn't need to know about it. She doesn't need to be inundated by her own mother with the idea that getting older is a crime and that it is a woman's job to internalize society's poison messages by shooting actual poison INTO HER FACE! She's ten, for Christ's sake.

Second, what's with that shirt? Great idea, Mom, let's glamorize how warped society's view of female "beauty" was, is and will be if we keep this up. How 'bout a t-shirt that says something like, "slave" or "breeder" or "accessory." That might be a little bit more honest. Or maybe I should wear a shirt that says, "overweight" in big, rhinestone letters. If we're gonna glamorize the actually ugly characteristics of a misogynistic society, why don't we go full tilt boogy and start glamorizing the so-called "ugly" characteristics that we're all supposed to avoid, you know? Being old. Being fat. Being poor. You know. Those things.

In her explanation of gynocidal ritual, feminist theorist Mary Daly explains that in a patriarchal culture, society uses certain ritualistic behaviors (usually in the interest of enhancing female "beauty") to destroy female connections and to oppress women.* In these situations, women are often used as "token torturers." For instance, there was a saying during the days of Chinese footbinding: "If a mother loves her daughter, she will take no mercy on her feet." Nope, instead she will torture and cripple her to make her palatable to a society infected with brainwashed men who wouldn't know a natural woman if she bit him on the ass and then ran away on her big 'ol feet!

Perhaps we should add the persistent dieting, cosmetic surgeries and obsession with youth that the mothers of 2008 are exemplifying to their daughters to the list of other gynocidal rituals (female genital mutilation, witch burnings, footbindings, and what have you). Perhaps if women would get together and decide to live as we are - without injecting poison into our faces to satisfy a poisoned society - the men of the world would realize that real women don't look paralyzed. Real women aren't 24 hours of flat affect a day. Real women have scars and stretch marks and bellies and sagging breasts and cellulite and grey hairs and real women are beautiful! If you don't like women the way they are naturally, it has always been my suggestion, perhaps you do not like them at all. Perhaps you should experiment with dating men.

That might be a bit of a stretch, but come on! Glamorizing the injection of botulism into your body to stay pretty isn't the same as letting your daughter wear lipstick for the first time. It's downright scary.

And I can't help but wonder how many Rise 'n' Dine's or similar places have this same conversation going on in them all over the country, all the time. If you ask me, that's scarier than Linda Blair in the exorcist. That's scarier than night of the living dead. That's mothers turning their daughters into zombies.

And that's just not cool at all.

*Discussion of gynocidal ritual can be found in Mary Daly's book, "Gyn/Ecology: the Metaethics of Radical Feminism.

Literary Gentrification: A What the Fuck Moment

2008-03-26T10:33:00.000-04:00

I just got back from New York this past Sunday and while I was there, I decided to pursue a career as a writer. That's incidental to the rest of this post, though. As I was attempting to walk from Columbia to Soho (don't try this, by the way. It's FAR), I stopped in an Urban Outfitters to buy some books. I'll get to my love/hate thing with Urban O's in a minute, but the reason I decided to go there for books rather than, say, a Barnes and Noble is 1) I didn't want a lot of options, 2) It was convenient and 3) I was also halfway looking for earrings.

So Urban Outfitters. I love this store because everything in it is pretty much gorgeous. I love the "art," I love the furniture, I love the clothes and I love the jewelry. Totally accessible fake bohemian lifestyle packaged nicely for me to consume. This is also the same reason that I fucking hate Urban Outfitters. They are selling my culture back to me under the assumption that I don't know that it's what they're doing. Or worse, they think that I do know and I just don't care, which is actually true, but is still pretty fucked up if you ask me.

Anyways, I bought two books. The first was Chuck Klosterman's "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs." While this book is totally brilliant in my opinion and makes me wish that I was Chuck Klosterman, it is the sort of book that actually belongs in an Urban Outfitters. A book of critical analyses of pop culture is precisely what a store like that should be selling because should any shopper decide to pick it up and read it, it might provide a level of self-reflection one might not normally experience while purchasing or living la (packaged) vie boheme.

I was more troubled by the second book I bought. It's a collection of short stories called "The Lone Surfer of Montana Kansas." The author is Davy Rothbart, a documentary filmmaker, rapper and creator of "Found Magazine." The stories contained in "Lone Surfer" all smack of a cultural demographic who is so stuck in their own poverty and ignorance that they provide the stuff of hauntingly written and beautiful literature. Even as I read them, though, they posed ethical problems.

First of all, this dude reminds me a little bit of Eminem. In and of itself, there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not mad at him for being white, but I am forced to acknowledge the fact that this white-boy-thug-esque persona is socially devisive. Which I also don't mind, because I'm all about people examining themselves through deconstructing and being forced to reconstruct their cultural assumptions. That's beside the point, really.

The thing that fucked with me is that perhaps this author has been stuck at the very bottom rungs of blue collar life. The hopeless no collar life of the characters he portrays. And yet the marketing of the collection itself has somehow landed it in an Urban Outfitters - a store / cultural phenomenon which is arguably the antithesis to the cultural experience portrayed by the book.

I can't really decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing by itself. It's not that big a deal that they're selling the book and I can't, with any seriousness, suggest that the message of any body of work should be directly proportional to the cultural landscape in which it is sold. This is not what I'm saying at all.

What I'm saying is that hopeless poverty is not only being glamorized in a sense by the author, but it is also being glamorized through its marketing to suburban or upwardly mobile urban white kids. At the same time, I really liked the book. A lot.

This makes me question my own assumptions, the same way I question why I liked the serial killer cereal bowl set that Urban Outfitters was (maybe still is) selling. I am utterly convinced that un-glamorous things are glamorous and I have no excuse for this at all. As my culture is being packaged and resold to me, the manufacturers of my cultural experience have captured and shown me something that I don't really want to know about myself.

And to add salt to the wound, it looks sweet as hell.

Take a load off, Sally!

2008-03-17T11:26:00.004-04:00

I'm going to give you guys some information that may or may not be useful to you later in this post. Do with it what you will. I'm just the messenger.

Sally Kern operates out of 2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Oklahoma City, OK, 73105.

If you wanted to call her at work, her phone number is (405) 557-7348.

If you wanted to e mail her, you could do so at sallykern@okhouse.gov

So, I know I'm about a week behind on this fiasco. I've been busy brooding about it and I fear that I may have missed the boat, but for those of you out there who have a tendency to be absolute last minute activists, this post is for you. And, of course, for Sally Kern.

About a week ago, Oklahoma representative Sally Kern gathered a crowd of about 50 and, in an obvious Tourettes for bigots moment, proceeded to state, among other things, the following things about our nation's most excellent population of so called sexual deviants (LGBTQAI):

"I honestly think it's the biggest threat even that our nation has. Even more so than terrorists or Islam, which I think is a big threat."

"I'm not gay bashing, but according to God's word, that is not the right kind of lifestyle. It has deadly consequences."

I can see how, if one is this biblically (and apocalyptically) minded, one might momentarily forget that we are living in an age where pretty much nothing is private anymore. Unless she would have asked people to leave cameras and cellular phones at the door to her gathering of what I can only assume she hoped would be a nouveau KKK, everything she said could be sent all over the place in a matter of minutes. Blam, Sally! It ended up on youtube!

Like the asshole that I sometimes am, I got really excited at first. I love attempting to rebut this convenience style religion so popular in the midwest. Then, I got sad because after all, this is 2008. Then I remembered that I have thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of education in this very area and years under my belt having this exact argument! So, Sally Kern, we will go point by point in a public forum. And please expect to be contacted with more comprehensive information about why you are wrong as I compile it. For the purposes of this blog, let's go with two points made by Ms. Kern.

"To put this simply, as a Christian I believe homosexuality is not moral."

Okay, so. As a Christian, I'm sure you've done the extensive research necessary to make an informed decision on the texts that even specifically mention homosexuality (Leviticus, Romans and 1 Corinthians), right Sally? Let's begin with Leviticus. Even though this is technically a Hebraic document, it forms a lot of the basis on which some "Christians" build their homophobic rhetoric, as it does state that two men should not "lie together." It also states that abominations of equal intensity include but are not limited to touching the skin of a dead pig (football's out), wearing two kinds of fiber at the same time (from the looks of your picture, Sally, I would call that a cotton / poly blend) and planting two different types of crops in the same field (as a representative in a farming state, you should get on this). Furthermore, it also states that a child talking back to her or his parents is actually punishable by death. I understand you have a son, Sally (who is "artistic" to boot). Surely you haven't tried to kill him for insubordination. That would be ludicrous! But who's to say that one may pick and choose from these rules and decide which ones to follow, based on convenience. Operating under the assumption that biblical texts are the divine word of God, wouldn't you have to take all of it pretty seriously?

And, from a more Christian perspective, what about Paul's letters to the Romans and The Corinthians? He does state that homosexuality is a vice which he includes in vice lists that also contain adultery, gambling, getting drunk, etc. However none of these crimes are said to be any worse than any others. Do you go to AA meetings and spread your hate speech there? I didn't think so. Furthermore, from a cultural standpoint, homosexuality as a "lifestyle" didn't even come into play in modern rhetoric until the late 1800's in a Prussian legal code. In Paul's time, it meant something quite different. What we now translate as "homosexuality" in some translations of the bible could be boiled down to two Greek words: malakoi and arsenokoitai. The first refers to a temple prostitute, a character that those in Paul's community who wanted to establish their religious community as different from the surrounding Greek and Roman cultures would definitely seek to avoid for obvious reasons. The second refers to a slave owner who sexually exploits his / her slaves. Paul did not recognize any orientation when he discussed these two types of people and furthermore, what he was arguing against was the visitation of temple prostitutes and the exploitation of those with less power. Two excellent ideas that have been warped to suit the small-mindedness of interpreters throughout the centuries.

Continuing on, she defends herself in a later interview...

"In recent years homosexual activists have begun to aggressively promote their agenda through the political process, often providing substantial financing to candidates who agree with their views, including many running for state legislative races. National publications such as Time, The Atlantic and USA Today have noted that trend. That is their right, just as it is my right to voice opposition to their agenda, which I have been asked to do at several public forums in recent months. That's what democracy is all about. It appears some homosexual activists believe only one group is allowed a voice in this debate. I disagree."

What exactly is the homosexual agenda. I've never been able to figure that out and a lot of politicians talk about it. Last I checked, it wasn't world domination or the amassing of WMD's or even a plot as sinister as initiating a war for oil under the pretense of spreading democracy. Even if that's what the homosexual agenda was, it's obvious that the majority of the country would accept it without flinching. Seriously, though, is it the right to fall in love and marry and live a life in a committed relationship with a partner? Is sucking dick the problem? Eating pussy? What's the deal.

That aside, even if homosexuals somehow managed to take over all media avenues, Ms. McCarthy - Oops, I meant Kern, I think the worst that could happen would be that the layouts in newspapers would look a lot nicer, we'd have a lot more hard-hitting and honest journalism and there would be a new perspective participating in public discourse. It would hardly kill you or anyone else.

Finally, thanks to our wonderful country, Sally, you're right! You ARE allowed to say whatever you want. But don't for one second that people are going to sit idly by and not have anything to say back to you. You've dehumanized at least 10% of the United States population and those very articulate and wonderful human beings have quite a bit to say back to you, my dear. You are absolutely allowed to have your voice and believe me, all us gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender people, gender queers, allies, questioning people and intersexed people are more than willing to let you say your piece. Don't be surprised and act taken aback, though, when we have the opportunity to have ours.

Crushes, Rejection and Epiphany: Wake-up Call for a Stubborn Woman

2008-03-13T10:34:00.004-04:00

Crushes are really fickle things.

The thing with crushes is that when you have one, all it takes is one moment of rejection to cause you to go from "crushing" to "wanting to crush" what was the object of your affection.

This week, my honeymoon's over moment was not with a person, but with a school to which I applied. Now, I applied both to the MTS program and to the PhD program. This week, I heard back from the Masters program and they regretted to inform me that they won't be admitting me this coming fall. I suppose this is fine, since come May, I will already have a master's degree. My problem is that I hate being told no.

Oh, I hate it so much! Nothing can take me from zero to livid in a quicker amount of time than someone or some insitution telling me, "you can't," or "we don't think so." I have yet to have my interviews for the PhD program and I can't help but wonder why, if they said no to giving me a masters degree, would they ever say yes to giving me a PhD? On the other hand, a friend of mine put the situation aptly in the following dialogue:

"Do you even want another MA?"
"No."
"Well, what's the problem? Doesn't it make more sense to move forward instead of bilaterally?"

Why, yes. Yes it does. Incedentally, I can be calmed down relatively quickly by anyone holding up that metaphorical looney-tunes style sign that says, "Amanda, you're being stupid." And furthermore, what if what I think I want isn't really what I actually want? I mean, going all the way into academia is "admirable" enough, but what if it just isn't what lights me up anymore? Maybe it isn't. I can't help but notice that there are other things I might rather be doing. And what do I think I'm doing entering a field into which I'm not even sure if I'm called or not.

There's another one of my problems in life. I am perhaps the most stubborn person I know and when I get it into my mind that I want something, it's that thing or bust, regardless of whether I've thought things out thoroughly or not.

I was told this week, by someone who hasn't read anything I've written and for all intents and purposes doesn't even really know the extent to which I am a writer, that I dont' strike him as the professor type at all. That I should be a beat poet instead. I have to laugh at this because a beat poet I am certainly not. At the same time, though, I have to take his comment pretty seriously because I don't even strike me as a professor type. I need more freedom than that. A lot more freedom. I need total freedom with my words and I need more time to play with them than a career in academia could ever afford me...

...that is unless I become a little bit more openminded about what kind of field I want to enter. Sure, my Bachelor's is in Religion and my Master's will be in Theology and Church History. But all this time, I've been writing and writing and writing. I'm sitting on two and a half finished books that I've written as a form of escape or as recreation or simply because if I didn't write them, I'd just explode. I'm allowed to change my mind, right? Right.

It's interesting how just as quickly as a crush can turn bad, it can turn good again when you realize that the object of your affection isn't some otherworldly thing that is so much more amazing than it really is. When you take it off the pedestal you've had it on, you can engage in a healthier dialogue with it. You can expand your own options and remember that your identity doesn't ride on one thing alone. It rides on a lot of different things, simultaneously.

I guess that's not really crushing, though. It's just right relation to yourself.

Quitcher Bitchin'! Or, conversely: Unity, please.

2008-03-06T11:51:00.003-05:00

Is it just me, or is anyone else totally apalled at the Clinton / Obama public competition right now. I'm not talking about the candidates. I'm talking about the supporters. I've been reading and reading and reading all morning the blogs of Obama supporters who state that they will either vote independent or vote (gulp!) McCain if Hillary were to take the democratic nomination.

Let me explain something. If she does get it, an independent vote will be a vote for McCain. And a vote for McCain will be a vote for McCain. It stands to reason then that otherwise intelligent voters would actually rather see another white male republican in the white house than see any kind of diversity there at all. It's so childish. "I'm taking MY football and going back to MY yard."

I anticipate kicking and screaming. Temper tantrums at polling places. What the hell is the matter with everyone. I'm not saying that Hillary supporters are squeaky clean either. I'm sick of the whole Obama / terrorism / Kenya / Muslim bullshit rumor going around as much as I'm sick of Obama's supporters acting like crybabies.

Here's the thing: Under no circumstances whatsoever do I want to see another republican in office after this last debaucle. None. Whatsoever. If the devil herself were running against the republican candidate, I'd go out and buy one heavy-duty air conditioning unit and pray for the best because there is no way in hell (and I mean that quite literally) that I want to see any more of this awful, unintelligent, intolerant, back woods, good ol' boy politics barely managing to run our country any longer than I absolutely have to.

Democratic party, listen up! It doesn't matter who gets the nomination. I'm not going to whine and piss and moan if Hillary doesn't get the nomination. I'm still going to vote for Obama because I am tired of living in a right wing, conservative, soul crushing, republican country. And if Obama does not get the nomination, all these crazed Obama supporters need to get over it, dust off and make sure that you don't vote McCain into presidential office out of spite over your democratic candidate not getting the nomination.

And if, maybe, there seems to be a problem with what's in between Senator Clinton's legs (while no one with an ounce of intelligence is saying this explicitly, careful and suspicious consideration of recent political "discourse" causes me to call into question whether it is being said implicitly), then we're in more trouble than I thought. Brass ovaries are the same things as brass balls, folks and whatever the pair, either one would surely be a trade up from the sort of "leader" we have right now.

There's no reason to allow another shrivelled, old, conservative white guy into the oval office to continue removing the basic human rights of women, people of color, non-heterosexual people, non-cisgendered people, differently abled people, poor people, veterans, etc. As I reexamine that last sentence, it might have made more sense to say everyone but very rich, very white, very conservative biological males.

Isn't it interesting that the republicans happen to have chosen their candidate already? Isn't it interesting that the democrats are at each other's throats and can't seem to pull together to stop oil-tycoons, KKK members, war criminals, sinister capitalists, misogynists, homophobes, xenophobes and all around idiots from possibly goose-stepping all over our asses for maybe another eight years? Think about it. It's kind of genius in a Dr. Claw, evil genius sort of way, and if we don't all pull ourselves together (and I mean that quite literally as well), we're gonna lose bigger than we originally thought.

Quit bitching about the petty things. Unite!

"Our daughters' daughters will adore us ... and they'll sing in grateful chorus..."

2008-03-04T10:01:00.003-05:00

"Well done! Sister suffragettes!"

Remember that little number from Mary Poppins? I do. I watched that tape until it broke when I was little and I would stomp around the house, I'm told, demanding votes for women. At the age of 5, I'm not sure I actually understood the concept of women's suffrage. I'm not sure I fully understand it and all of its implications to their full extent at the age of 25 either.

What I do understand is that the Ohio primaries are today and that very early this morning, in the middle of a rainstorm, I got to do something in my lifetime that no one has been able to do since women got the vote some 90 or so years ago: I got to cast my vote for a female presidential candidate!

A few weeks ago, my friends and I were spending a Friday evening at our very favorite pub in Columbus, where we met a man named either Sheamus or Jim (he'd change his answer every time you asked the guy) who was trying to argue that he could never vote for a woman because he was a Catholic. All this week, cyberspace has been full of insulting images and ridiculous products, all touting the idea that regardless of her politics, her capabilities and her experience, Hillary is "just" a woman and should be silent. I've spoken to friends and relatives who have made excuses ranging from Hillary's supposed status as a "bleeding heart liberal" to critiques of her haircut to her age to her "inability" to hold together her "marriage." Whereas in any other situation, I might have immediately flown off the handle about any one of these things (I still might. You never do know), I've been feeling positive and calm, confident that it is possible for things to change even if it does seem as though it is happening at a snail's pace and even though I have no patience whatsoever.

I often find myself defending the position that radical change is possible in our culture. Most people, even those who I would consider to be the most "liberal" of the people that I know, have at some point or another told me that I should just "give up." That "the world is too messed up." That "things aren't gonna get any better with Bush in office, so I should just forget it." Well guess what, naysayers: He's gonna be out soon. And I am on cloud nine right now because in my lifetime, I just had the most amazing and empowering experience in recent memory. I got to cast my vote for a capable, compassionate, literate woman with a set of brass ovaries bigger than the state of Texas!

I know that who you vote for is supposed to be this big secret, but political correctness is not my forte and it never has been. So screw it. I voted for Hillary and I am so incredibly proud to be able to say that.

If you are in Ohio, I don't care what your politics are and who you support. VOTE! DO IT RIGHT NOW! You are part of a process that, while I believe it to be fundamentally flawed in many ways, can make or break history. Go forth into the world and have a voice, no matter what!

To my sisters of the US of A: This means you! In an era and under an administration which is seeking to systematically dismantle our rights and our autonomy, which seeks to gradually silence us and make us second class citizens again - to make us disappear - go be visible! Go find your voice! If you have it, go use it! Occupy space, get in your cars, on your bikes, set off on foot, go by rickshaw, run, crawl, do whatever you have to do to get your opinion - your voice - out into the public political lexicon.

And to my sisters of what seems like the distant past, who went to jail, were assaulted and raped, were injured, were silenced and who prevailed over the dominant cultural moore that women should be seen rather than heard: THANK YOU!!! Thank you for doing what it took to make it possible for me to do what I do every day: to exist in a slightly freer society in which I can keep pushing the limits of patriarchy - hopefully off the map someday!

This daughter's daughter's daughter adores you all!

"It's a long way to the top if you wanna rock 'n' roll..."

2008-02-28T08:57:00.000-05:00

I am so tired. I woke up this morning in that between awake and asleep space where the bed is really warm and the rest of the room is really cold and I couldn't think of one good reason to get up and get into the shower, but I did get up. And I did, for whatever reason, get into the shower. And I got dressed and drank some coffee and smoked a cigarette and went to work. I'm there right now. I have no idea why.

Is it just me or does anyone else feel like there's something larger at work in the "daily grind" mentality of the United States? Call me a conspiracy theorist, but this routine that's killing me, my friends, my family and pretty much everyone else in America; it seems kinda sinister, doesn't it? Like we're supposed to distract ourselves all day until we drop from exhaustion with no time to think in the interim.

No time to think about the fact that there are people in our country who throw up their food to stay thin, while people in other countries would kill one another for some food. No time to think about the fact that gas prices are getting so ridiculous that pretty soon, I won't be able to afford to drive. No time to think about the fact that while we were able to put a man on the moon, we still can't seem to come up with any form of birth control which is both effective and safe. No time to think about the fact that it's still not really safe for a woman to walk alone at night. No time to think about how truly racist our country still is. No time for anything except getting up, going to work, going to school, making money, getting degrees so we can make more money, etc.

I think that if I knew in high school what I know now, I might not have gone to college. I know that's very not "correct" to say, but if I knew that I would spend the rest of my life struggling to pay off something that didn't prepare me for any kind of a good job at all, I might have done things a little bit differently. Maybe I'm an idiot for feeling entitled to the pursuit of my own happiness and feeling a little bit indignant upon the realization that I might not ever get to pursue it to the full extent.

On a more optimistic note, I will be able to impart some of this knowledge (ha! I have a hard time typing that with a straight face) when I get to the point of being a professor for a living. It won't be a bad job at all and I'm sure, to some extent, I'll love it. I know, however, that I won't love it nearly as much as I would love driving around the country with no ties and writing books.

I think that's just a symptom of my generation, though. We've locked ourselves into this cycle of money making and in reaction to that drab and life-sucking cycle, we construct elaborate fantasies about what our lives should turn out like - in a perfect world or something like that. I don't fantasize about being able to purchase things. I fantasize about not needing anything. I fantasize about going completely off the grid. I fantasize about not having a legal name, a social security number, a drivers license, a car, a rent payment, an e mail address, or what have you. I fantasize about not being so crazy-connected and so available and so accountable all the time.

The thing that gets me is that in order to get to a place in my life where completely going off the map isn't going to adversely affect anyone I care about (co-signers on loans and other folks to whom I've made commitments), I have to keep getting up before dawn and getting home way after dark and running myself ragged doing things I don't really care about. In the words of AC/DC, "it's a long way to the top if [I] wanna rock 'n' roll." I suppose I'm a little miffed at myself - because even though there are reasons for getting up to do these things that seem so incredibly mundane and purposeless, none of them seem like good ones.

Wyoming is not a myth, damnit!

2008-02-21T13:09:00.000-05:00

I spent last week in Philadelphia and New York (both in the city itself and on Long Island). I always love taking these trips (which I do every few months or so) because not only does it give me a chance to escape the mundane nature of my everyday life, but it also allows me to stalk the people at my current seminary crush, Union Theological Seminary. Yes, it is possible to have a crush on a seminary. I have one, so I should know.

One of my favorite things about both New York City and Philadelphia is the public transportation, something which we in Ohio are sadly lacking. Don't get me wrong, I too have been on a subway car with that dude who thinks it's a good idea to relieve himself in public. Still, though. I can't help but love even the less dainty aspects of public transportation in a big city. Subways excite me. I couldn't tell you why.

After taking the Chinatown bus* from Philadelphia to New York, I ended up at a friend's apartment to see some classmates of ours who all happened to be in NYC on the same weekend. I was there pretty late and actually didn't end up getting back to Penn Station until about 1:30AM. Fine with me, I thought. Penn Station that late on a weekend is not really that scary. Everyone has the same idea, so there are a bunch of interesting folks to nonchalantly watch and make up stories about.

At that point in the evening, though, I was hungry and wanted a diet coke. Badly!

So my date took me to the Penn Station McDonalds (which, incidentally is my favorite McDonalds in the country. Don't ask me why. Couldn't tell you). As I sought out a table and waited for him to get some chicken nuggets and a diet coke, a man who I didn't know told me that he thought I was beautiful.

And then, he told me that I would be a lot more beautiful if I were just a little bit thinner.

I had a few things of my own to tell him, which I will not relate to you here. Suffice it to say, my date and I had the joint to ourselves after that. I ran that guy right out of the Penn Station McDonalds. What he said did bother me, though. Not necessarily because I took it to heart. I mean, I'm a big gal. Whatever. What bothered me so much was that a man who I had never met and who didn't know me at all thought it was okay to take it upon himself to make a judgment about me TO MY FACE! What the hell is that all about? Is it really still the case that men feel they can not only judge women based on ridiculous aesthetic criteria, but also make these judgments known to the woman in question and not expect to get reamed out for it (he was genuinely surprised that his comments made me angry)? Confrontation is not necessarily in my nature. It still makes me really uncomfortable, actually (I'm getting less uncomfortable as I get older), but this was just ridiculous!

That whole situation passed and we ate our nuggets and I drank my diet coke (to keep myself awake until the 3:19AM train to Port Washington boarded), still fuming about what had just happened but hiding it really well, partly because I nolonger wanted to discuss it and partly because I was very exhausted. When 3:19AM finally rolled around and we were on the Long Island Railroad, I felt an amazing sense of relief. That is, of course, until the characters on the train with us opened their mouths. There were two conversations going on around me, both of which pissed me off royally.

Conversation #1: A young girl complaining to her boyfriend (or her hookup for the evening) about how inconsiderate her friends had been. Their offense: not looking pretty enough to go out with her. My favorite ridiculous quote from this conversation is as follows and can be attributed to the girl in question. "They didn't even think about the fact that I had to be seen with them. I mean, they didn't even try to look good. What was I supposed to do when they weren't even wearing makeup?" I gleaned, from the rest of the conversation, that this girl had ditched her friends at a restaurant so that she could go to a club. She ditched them because she did not think that they were pretty enough to be seen with her.

I don't think I'm going to delve into too much commentary about this one because if you can both read and think, I won't need to. What I will say is that I am sick to death of woman on woman social crime. Ladies, we get enough judgment from men based only on our appearances and enough of the ridiculous criteria set up for us regarding how we should look comes from men. Can we please, please try a little bit harder to a)stop subscribing to it and b)stop holding each other to it? It's ridiculous.

The second conversation I overheard was just a gem. I'm not going to give you the gist of it because it's just too hilarious to paraphrase and still do it any justice at all, so I'm going to try to transcribe as much of it as I can from memory.

Guy #1: The clitoris is a myth, dude! It's just something that girls lie about. It's like the g-spot.
Guy #2: I don't know about the g-spot, but I think the clitoris is real, dude.
Guy #3: No. I think they're both pretty real. I've seen a clitoris. And the g-spot was named after that Dr. G, so it must be real.

(Sidebar: Isn't this logic so incredibly ridiculous? Wait, wait. It gets better. And by better, I mean worse!)

Guy #2: No way, dude, Dr. G was just a bitch, dude. I think she was some dyke or some feminist or something.

(Sidebar: Dr. G was a GUY, you moron!)

Random girl: The clitoris is not fake. I have one.
Guy #1: Well I haven't seen it! And I haven't seen a g-spot either, so it's a myth! Like, I think Wyoming is a myth, too!
Random girl: Wyoming is not a myth.
Guy #1: Have you ever been to Wyoming? Have you ever met anyone from Wyoming? See? You don't know if it really exists. It's a myth!

It was so ridiculous that it was almost awesome. It was almost to ridiculous to really be happening. Wyoming is a myth??? Admittedly, I have often wondered about the g-spot as it was a man who discovered it and its "existence" upholds the myth that the only "mature" orgasm a woman should have should be vaginal rather than clitoral. I have no questions about the clitoris, however. I am positive that it exists. So too have I been to Wyoming. And I can assure all of you that it also exists.

I was even more relieved to get off the train than I was to get on it. At about 4:15AM there was still the looming question of a taxi, though. The way the cabs work at the train station in Port Washington is that you have to amass a bunch of people going to the same place in order to get a taxi. I understand and appreciate that concept until I realized who we were riding with. There was one woman in the front seat with the cab driver and two very drunk, very loud and very stupid men in the backseat. The minute we approached the taxi, one of the men in the back seat gestured suggestively in my general direction and suggested that I cram myself back there with him and his friend. I un-politely declined his offer and got into the front seat with the woman.

The entire ride was spent by the two guys in the back asking about the sex lives of the two women in the cab. I gave as many one-word answers as I could stomach before pretending to fall asleep. The woman I sat with was a lot nicer, though she was visibly disgusted by the conversation. My poor date sat in the backseat with the other dudes, also disgusted.

I fell asleep at 5AM, wondering what the hell was wrong with gender relations in this country. I mean, what in the world makes it okay to assume you have any claim to the personal lives, choices, decisions, etc. of any other human being on the planet. And, I can't help but ask the men, what the hell makes you think that you have any claim to any aspect of anyone because you happen to be male and she happens to be female? What the hell is the matter with you guys?

I say this to the men of the world, in the spirit of love, understanding and humanity: Please pull your heads out of your asses. Seriously.

*The Chinatown Bus is a greyhound-like bus that travels from Chinatown in Philly to Chinatown in NY. While I was on it, I was: yelled at in Chinese, subjected to a strange lingering fish smell and almost in several accidents. The upside of the Chinatown Bus is that while its safer, greyhound counterpart costs $24, it only costs $12. Recommended for those with strong stomachs.

In a world...

2008-02-18T12:40:00.001-05:00

This has been a turbulent little landing into my first public blog. I had an incredibly clever and poignent first post all typed out and ready to go, but when I hit "publish," blogspot decided that I was a virus instead of a lady, so it wouldn't allow me to do anything. Apparently everything is fine now, so I'll give this another go.

I work for a Women's Journal as a columnist (as one of my jobs). My job, generally, is to write schmaltzy pieces in a publication that urges women to consume. This has included more pieces on "self-esteem," "loving yourself first" and "abusive relationships" than I'd care to admit. Naturally, in my dissatisfaction, I have started lashing out. Lately, I've been experimenting with my editor and the WJ construction writing pieces that are a little bit more radical each time. And I really do mean, like, just a little bit more radical. Since I basically have no patience at all, the gradual movement from total schmaltz to actual journalism is going to be a movement about as slow as closing the wage gap between men and women in this country. To give you some idea of how long something like that might take, it has been projected that, at the rate the US is going now, we won't close the wage gap until 2058. That would make me 76 years old. It would make my editor 113 years old. As you can see by my sophisticated calculations, there is no point in waiting. The time is now!

Furthermore, I have gotten jealous reading other people's blogs. I'm kind of a blog stalker and in recent weeks, I've become somewhat of a blog enthusiast. Here I am hanging out in a print-medium that doesn't allow me to do almost any of the things I want to do, nor does it allow me to address all of the topics I would like to address. I'm still there (I knew you'd ask) because of certain obligations. However, the overflow has to go somewhere. So I've decided it's going to go here. I'll start off with a little story about my personal life before I go getting all socio-political-anthropological on everyone's ass.

I'm a huge fan of spending really significant chunks of time fantisizing about things that will probably never happen. One of my favorite scenarios is that a movie is being made about my life or one will be made in which I am the star/heroine. Usually the former ends up being a touching, coming of age, ironic social commentary / comedy type thing and the latter ends up being an action flick. Over the holidays this past season, we came up with something really brilliant.

Christmas is under seige. And I am, singlehandedly (and maybe with some help from a few cameos), going to save it. It's stunningly like "Die Hard" and yet, totally different because it is me! As my friends and I were sitting around at a favorite bar of ours, we immediately began plotting out certain scenes and the soundtrack, but my absolute favorite part of our little rap session was when one friend did the preview voiceover in what we all affectionately refer to as "the man voice."*

Preview voiceover guy: In a world where Christmas is under seige, only one Manda can save us ... Manda Claus! This holiday season, hold onto your tinsel!" I, of course, would ascend from the floor, covered in a virtual artillery ... and holly. It's so awesome that you don't even need me to justify its awesomeness. Bruce Willis would definitely have to be in it. Probably making a cameo as my long lost vigilante father. I would be John McClane's secret daughter from a previous marriage. It would also be excellent if Reginald VelJohnson were in it.

Furthermore, I really like doing that with my name. Like, "Only one Manda" or "This is your foreManda speaking." It's my way of sticking it to gendered language.

"In a world where the blogsphere is under seige ... only one Manda can save us!"

*The "man voice" is the one appropriate for use when saying things like, "Don't move!" or "Stop right there" or "I'll save you!" Usually it includes some kind of really hyper-masculine hand flourish or standing very erect with one's chin at a jaunty angle and one's hands on one's hips.