I initially wrote this in response to a post at Pursuit of Harpyness. It's been lightly adjusted to support moving from that context to this one.

How are we supposed to “make peace” with our bodies when they’re a continual cultural battleground?

This is not hypocrisy. It’s not a flaw. It’s what happens when we set goals like “accept our bodies as they are” in the middle of a culture that will not accept them, and then expect it to work when we, the victims of this broken system, are the only ones actually working on it.

The best we can do is the best we can do. As one of those people who is sometimes Publicly Fat In A Bikini, I freely admit that oftentimes, I’m faking it. It gets easier with practice to stuff those insecurities in a dark hole and go out anyway — but the insecurities haven’t gone away. How could they? The pressures that created them are still happening!

When I’m out there with a size-8 friend who wouldn’t dream of wearing a bikini because she’s too ashamed of *her* body, it’s a little easier to remember that this shame has absolutely nothing to do with my (or anyone else’s) actual fat. And even then, even when I’m explicitly remembering that this twisted culture uses whatever tools it can find to make us all feel ashamed, I still cringe sometimes. We all do. AND IT’S NOT OUR FAULT.

It’s so important that we engage in body-acceptance activism -- because IT’S NOT ENOUGH for just us individuals to try to change the inside of our heads. It is also necessary for the culture to change. So, let's please please please do not beat ourselves up for this phenomenon. (see also: the personal is political, blaming the victim)

Well, I've been promising my "What about the Men?" series for awhile. I honestly still don't have time to give it the attention it needs, but at this instant, the baby is asleep and I'm happy to skip my shower and write instead, so at the very least, I can begin.

And where shall I begin? Oh, right here, with my imaginary friend "Dave McAlly."

If you see yourself in Dave, you might have contributed a bit to him -- or you might not have. I think that Dave has a lot of characteristics and experiences that are very common for liberal men. (Why "Dave"? because it was the fourth most popular name for boys the year I was born, and it seems like every third liberal guy I know is named "Dave.")

Like I said in my previous post on this topic, the process of coming to believe in social justice is one of personal consciousness-raising. Dave's a stand-in so I don't have to try to grab every man I know and have this conversation with him separately. It might seem a little impersonal. But the whole reason that Dave happened was I kept having these little conversations with you guys in my head, and those conversations were often just a little too personal for me to have with you in person. So, here's Dave to save us both.


sev: Hey, Dave? Welcome to my series. It's about you.

Dave: Huh? Where am I? Where did I come from?

sev: Well, you're a composite of many of the men I know. Most of them consider themselves feminist allies, fit my description of a feminist ally, or both.

Dave: So ... I'm your imaginary friend?

sev: Um, yeah, kinda. But you're a good guy! I like you a lot. Can you describe yourself?

Dave: Let's see ... I'm about thirty-something, or maybe twenty- or forty-something. I'm probably white, and definitely liberal. I can pass as able-bodied, straight, and middle-class, though I may or may not actually be any of those things.

sev: He's well intentioned, and even more importantly, he really does succeed at making the world a better place a lot of the time. Please be kind to him; I'm about to put him on the spot by publicly going through some painful, embarrassing, and sometimes enraging experiences he's had. And that's not easy on anyone, even an imaginary person.

(more soon, I hope.)

The "What About the Menz?" series:

• Introduction
  
• Part 1: The Theory. social justice and personal "click" moments
  

I've been musing about how wide a net is cast with "art" and what, under that net, is the meaning of "success". And else-web, I was prodded to think in a little more detail about that (by someone who will currently remain un-linked, because I can't remember if he connects his lj account with his other-online-selves.)

This was inspired by this book I'm reading about invented languages. From Klingon to Esperanto to Loglan, the author says they're all failures.

Some of the languages she describes sound just like art to me. ("Solresol," in particular, which is made up of exactly seven morphemes and can be sung or painted as well as spoken.) And as far as I can tell, the author hasn't really defined "failure" in terms of a language, other than to imply it means the language is no longer spoken. Which led me to think about defining goals for endeavors, which is a topic I find myself returning to regularly.

Is a webcomic a success only when it gets enough revenue to support the artist? Is my career a success only when I'm mentioned in the Wall Street Journal? Is my art successful only when I'm hung at a museum? (all real examples, either in my goals, my friends goals, or discussions in which something is labelled a success.)

And if the answer is, well, all those goals are over-reaching, and success can be something lesser-than-that, is goal-defining the only real meter?

I think I must answer, for that last question, no. For two reasons.

The first reason is personal. Meeting self-defined goals can't be the answer to success-in-general, at least not for me. Because I'm not the kind of person who sets goals that way. My goal is to better my current personal best. That's always my goal, and it is, by definition, unachievable. It has been noted that this means I can never do less than what I consider my personal best without falling into the "not successful at personal goal" category, and, well, can't argue that.

The second reason is all about what I consider to be the failure of art -- not failure in general, but the places where we fail spectacularly and try to pretend we don't. It's not enough for me as an artist to say "I make this art to shock" and then consider myself successful when people are shocked. That's not art; that's attention-seeking.

So, I've come around the long way (honest!) to the beginning of this post. If a language can be considered a successful work of art (even as it's considered a failure as a language), then what does that tell me about my definition of succesful art? Well, I haven't unpacked all the steps, but at the end of the path that question started, I came up with my answer:

Art communicates. It communicates with nuance, with power, and on multiple levels. Or else it fails.

Sometimes, color is just good for my soul. I can't knock the subtlety and power of a fine charcoal portrait -- not when I've been aspiring to that craft myself -- but sometimes there's a void that only color can fill.

Today I committed Low-Water Immersion Dyeing, ala Ann Johnston's Color By Accident. I didn't do much in the way of actually following her instructions, but I did burn through half the tie-dye cords I've had sitting around and used up all seven white t-shirts in the "do something with or get rid of these" pile. I know the color will dull once the fabric dries, but ... yum! So much color!

(photos pending, once they're washed and dried. They'll be less colorful, then, but it's better if no-one remembers how vivid they were when they first came out of the dyebath. Next time I'll be using higher-quality dyes, but this was good enough, for a project made up entirely of "stuff I happened to have on-hand.")

ETA: Posted photos

I should have realized this before: When people talk about "special rights", what they're saying is that they think *other* people should have no right to the privilege that *they* enjoy. It's the implication on the speaker's part that the privileged *earned* what they're being given. This, however, is generally false, because if they had actually earned it, they'd *say* that, instead of resorting to this kind of doublespeak.

Related to this, the next time says that it sounds like I think they should be ashamed for having privilege, the answer would be: No, you should be ashamed for acting like you somehow earned it.

"I've Got Mine": The inane philosophy that privilege is earned rather than bestowed.

Well, before I really got down to writing my "what about the men?" posts, Feministing started the conversation for me.

And, as usual, it's a theory-heavy discussion about "men" and "feminists", "allies" and "activism". It's absolutely a good read -- there's important stuff in there. But, I think, there's something missing for me in that discussion, as in most discussions about men & feminism (granted, I have not read all the comments to all those posts, so I may have missed where this gets discussed).

But anyway, I sat down to talk about why the theory isn't enough, and what I ended up with was ... pure theory. Oops. Well, I'm going to post it anyway. Right now, I'll talk some talk ... and next time, I hope to actually walk the walk, once this bit of theory is out of my system!

One of the side-effects of privilege is being used to being an individual, rather than a member of a class. That's often a sticking point, I find, in these conversations -- allies want to be treated like individuals, they want a chance to explain themselves, they want their personal snowflake-like eye-opening experience take the center of their conversations about social justice. And people who are in the thick of working for social justice know that if they spend all that time treating each privileged wanna-be ally like the individual they're used to being treated like, they'd never ever get anything else done.

But. For all that I'm impatient with the demands that male allies of the feminist movement get their recognitions as individuals, I can understand it, too. I treasure each and every one of my little "click" moments, where another bit of feminism slips into place for me based on my very own personal experience of the world. But those moments, rooted so deeply in my personal experience, are exactly how my feminism gets de-egoed. They're where my personal experience leads me to understanding the political reality of oppression. This is where the phrase "The personal is political" comes from.

Consciousness Raising groups aren't everybody's thing. But I do think that the process of coming to believe in social justice is one of personal consciousness-raising. Many women talk about coming to feminism via a personal "click" moment of realization. I think it's important to acknowledge that for many people, male and female, those moments can be traumatizing. And someone's personal trauma needs to be addressed, somehow, before that person can really work towards social justice.

Dreamwidth.org has a diversity statement. Right there alongside their ToS. Neat!

Anybody got an invite code they'd like to share with me? I realize they're opening to the public in less than two days. While I can wait, I was hoping to not.

(I have not yet gotten to the 'what about the menz' posts; this is something else entirely.)

Have you called your congresscritter about the Employee Free Choice Act or the Paycheck Fairness Act yet? Yesterday was Fair Pay Day; read about this stuff at a feminist blog near you. Today I read a Feministe repost of an earlier guest post by Sarah Jaffe as well as Sarah's Blog for Equal Pay Day post on her own blog.

And I want my goddamned twelve cents. (that's the conservative number, from the GAO. Yes, the one you get after you control for all the variables; the pervasive myth that controlling for occupation, industry, race, marital status and job tenure wipes out the wage gap is a horseshit excuse to try to avoid social justice, so cut it out.)

I've noticed that support for unions among mainstream liberals decreases as the percentage of women in unions rises. Don't just say "I've got mine! Don't need 'em anymore!" We are here -- with a reasonably-sized workweek, worker protections, maternity leave, minimum wage and on, and on, and on -- because of unions. They're not out-of-usefulness just because the average middle-class worker has most (but not all) of the benefits unions have fought for over the decades.

WE'RE NOT DONE. Corporations still exploit workers for the bottom line; now they just claim they have a right and responsibility "to shareholders" to address "labor costs." I call bullshit. Treating your workers as valuable human beings instead of resources to be exploited has been shown time and again to be *good* for the bottom line (q.v. Riane Eisler's Real Wealth of Nations to name an accessible-to-the-layman text that talks about this. Note that I Am Not An Economist, and I believe neither is she.)

To quote Sarah Jaffe in the Feministe post: "Unions ... do and have done more to improve the living standards of American workers than anything else."

Enough with getting wishy-washy about labor rights, people. We're not done.

"But what about the men!?" is shorthand for the kind of interjection that regularly derails attempts to talk about feminism (particularly on the internet, but really, in general). This phenomenon is discussed in great detail in a fine post at Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog, and if you're not familiar with the phenomenon or the blog, you should go read it.

That said, it's a question that's been itching at me lately. Maybe it's just because it keeps getting asked, and therefore feels important the way that lies, repeated over and over again, can start to feel true.

I've spent a lot of time and energy over the last decade trying to educate well-meaning men. It's a dangerous pastime, really. The danger, for me, is that I get sucked into stripping out anything that could possibly sound like an accusation, and thereby let everybody off the hook for examining their own privilege. The argument in the Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog post that these discussions should be led by allies, not by women, has a lot of sense to it.

But lately I've been feeling interested in how the patriarchy affects male allies. Not because I really care about men as a mass noun -- I figure there are plenty of other systems in place doing a fine job of that already -- but because I'm wondering what it can tell us about the patriarchy, and whether looking through that lens can help us -- feminists, women, allies, and so on -- dismantle that system.

so if the next handful of posts appear to be all about the boys, that's why.

....say that three times fast...

Tilings Encyclopedia: math is beautiful.

I've been having a data-visualization kind of week. First Flowing Data, and then janetmiles posted about A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods.

Fire up my rss reader. Read two sentences of a meaty feminist post.

Get interrupted by a two-year-old who wants something impossible. Redirect her to something within my capabilities.

Skim the two already-read sentences to regain my place. Read three more sentences.

Get interrupted by a two-year-old who desperately wants some oatmeal, of which she eats two bites before pushing it away.

Skim the already-read five sentences to remind myself of what I'd read. Read another paragraph, with my laptop at my left and a toddler's magazine on my right, alternating reading one sentence of the blog post to myself and one sentence of the magazine out loud to the toddler. Continue this until toddler pushes me away.

Finish the article.

Notice that the two-year-old has gotten into something she shouldn't. Extricate her and redirect her to blocks, which are safer.

Write six words of a comment on the post, which I started reading an hour and a half ago and finished reading fifteen minutes ago.

Get interrupted by the two-year-old, who wants "different blocks," and who is not dissuaded by the argument that she already has all the blocks we own. Agree that when daddy comes home she can "show daddy different blocks" and read her three books, twice each.

Write several more sentences of a comment on a post that it's now been over an hour since I finished (and over three hours since I started). Re-edit the first six words, because I've forgotten exactly where I was going with that.

Get interrupted by the two-year-old, who very sweetly asks mommy to read her another book.

Go back to the comment, remember that I had something very important to say, but I just can't remember what it was. Delete partial comment.

Start a thoughtful blog post. Alternate one or two sentences of blog post with five to fifteen minutes of toddler-wrangling.

Ask toddler, "did you know, your mommy used to be able to write long, cogent arguments about important things?" Listen to toddler's response, "knick knack paddywhack give a dog a bone." Figure there must be some meaning in there, somewhere.

Re-read what I wrote. Realize it's impossible to follow, and that while I know what I meant it would require significant editing to actually convey what I meant.

Delete incomplete post.

Make lunch for self and toddler.

Discover that while I was making lunch, toddler has gotten herself reading a catalog of kid's clothing-and-gear that very carefully follows the boys/doing/primary-colors vs. girls/being/pastel-colors. Spend large amounts of emotional capital not screaming. Recycle the catalog.

Interrupt the toddler, who is throwing a "I don't want a nap!" tantrum, by asking "Who do you blame?" Smile when she responds, "I blame the patriarchy." Unfortunately, she goes right back to the tantrum.

Post this instead.

Dedicate this post to Virginia Woolf and to this very relevant post at The Kitchen Table entitled "A Room of One's Own". Don't bother spellchecking or previewing, and figure this is the internet equivalent of appearing unkempt and frumpy in public, which I also do. Hit send.

When male protagonists of fantasy novels "get the girl," this does nothing to the genre of the book, but when female protagonists of fantasy novels have (consensual) sex, the book is suddenly relabled "romantic fantasy". This, I suppose, is because men are expected to engage in sexual conquest as a matter of being men, but romance is supposed to be all-consuming for women.

It does, however, make it harder for me to find stuff to read. I am capable of enjoying romantic fantasy but sometimes I want a little meat in my reading material, too. Not a lot, mind you -- I read for pleasure, and while I do chow down on an especially thinky novel now and then, the shape of my life doesn't support books where I have to really pay attention rather than just get swept away in story.

For awhile, I went to sci-fi for my intellectual stimulation and didn't worry about whether my fantasy was all that interesting. Every once in awhile a woman who's the focus of hard sci-fi gets laid, but it happens at the very end, like it's a reward for winning whatever conflict the book was about. (and then I wonder if the author purposely relocated any romantic consummation to the end to avoid being pigeonholed in the romance category.)

However, I periodically run into a fantasy novel with a female protagonist that gets me really engaged, at which point I want more (and am often disappointed).

Any recommendations?

What I've been reading that's getting me excited and interested:

Maria V. Snyder's novels about Yelena Zaltana, Poison Study & its two sequels. Like many trilogies, the first book's the best, but the other two aren't bad, either. I love fantasy politics, gutsy women, real stakes, and world-moving plot arcs.

Michelle Sagara's Chronicles of Elantra, starting with Cast in Shadow. I keep finding this categorized as "urban fantasy" because the city it takes place in is such an important player in the story, but it's not an "elves in LA" kind of urban fantasy. Like Poison Study, it takes place in a fully-realized urban environment in a completely fantastic world. As a reader, I'd like Kaylin to grow up faster; she's overly-belligerent and often self-destructive. But I keep coming back -- I've read the first three and the fourth is on hold at the library. I hadn't realized until just today that this is the same person as Michelle West who did the Sun Sword series (starting with The Broken Crown) which I also enjoyed.

Other things I've read that I enjoyed, but wasn't blown away by:

Patricia Brigg's Mercy Thompson books, starting with Moon Called. I read the first three; the protagonist has guts, but guts aren't quite enough for me. I only have a vague sense of the power relations between the vampires, werewolves, and fae, and that kind of bugs me. And the dominance hierarchy within each of the groups seems a little oversimplistic.

Kim Harrison's Hollows books, starting with Dead Witch Walking. They started to get repetitive, eventually. I can't remember how many I read, maybe 6? Rachel Morgan is another of those ass-kicking heroines with a bit of a self-destructive streak, and the latter trait continues to get on my nerves. And, um, too many people trying to get into her pants at once. I mean, really. But I was drawn in first by the interesting interplay between the different paranormal enforcement agencies (one of which Rachel quits at the beginning of the first book) and that kept me coming back for quite awhile.

C. E. Murphy's Negotiator trilogy, starting with Heart of Stone. I'll start by noting that the chick on the cover is awfully white, and it's relevant to both plot & theme that she's biracial, and the cover art therefore annoys the heck out of me. That said, it's a neat tale of the balance of power among multiple groups of paranormals as well as humans. That sort of thing is something I always find especially engaging when it's done well.

And I'm not likely to revisit:

S. L. Viehl's Stardoc series -- "Cherijo Grey Veil" is Anita Blake for the science fiction world. "I'm so hot, all the aliens want to have sex with me!" Like the Blake books, I actually enjoyed the first one. Then I staggered through several more of these books in somewhat horrified fascination because the premise seemed interesting. Done now.

...I launched my aggregator app at http://cheryl.trooskin-zoller.org ... but as I'm inside my firewall I can't really tell for sure if I did all the things I need to do to make it accessible from the rest of the world. but it's kind of exciting anyway. :)

This will mean litle unless you write software, but:

Time elapsed from initial ruby install to a fully-functional rss aggregator in rails: less than 2 days.  I'm impressed.

I'd show it to you, except I still need to upgrade my ancient apache install so I can turn on proxying so you can see it from outside my firewall.  If that turns out to take longer than the two days it took to install the framework & code the application in the first place, well, I'll just go ahead and punch a hole through the firewall.

and: now paying half the price for twice the bandwidth.  yay for upgrading my dsl.  Boo for overpaying for two years.

Snow on the ground *and* I still have to deal with hayfever? No fair! If I'm going to have to have a permanent case of the sniffles, I at least want to enjoy some sunshine and warmish weather.

On a completely different note: One thing I've noticed about regular doodles on big paper is that when I don't feel like starting something new, I can fiddle with something I started before. But I can still leave the doodle at the 20-minute stage and never touch it again, if I'd like.

(and aside from that? Playing Tiny D&D and Fish Wrangler and My City on Facebook. more fun than it sounds, and bite-sized games fit taking-care-of-a-2-year-old really nicely.)

I've been actually managing to read things. I've got a rss reader configured on my phone, and now I can read things and mark them for sharing. I think the non-mobile version would allow me to share with commentary; unfortunately, with the mobile version I can only share mutely. I'm really enjoying the opportunity to read smart feminist writing more often than once every few months!

If I'm smart, I'll be able to set something up so what I share shows up in the sidebar on this journal. Something like:





(if that space was blank, it means I haven't quite figured it out, just yet. Or javascript is turned off.) nvm. Not currently worth the effort, I think; if you really wanna know, you can follow the link.

Thank you, Michele Obama. Not only are you six kinds of awesome, your very existance encourages mainstream liberals to talk about sexism and feminists to talk about race. Maybe now we can have a useful discussion about how oppressions interlock and reinforce each other. (oh, wait, Patricia Hill Collins wrote _Black Feminist Thought_ 18 years ago. Well, at least now the rest of us can finally get with the program.)

edit: eighteen years. but still.

on the upside, I can now read lj on my phone, which means I can now find time to read it at all. on the downside, I get errors when I try to post lengthy comments, so being able to read but not reply in depth might drive me away. we'll see.

I'm proud to be a feminist.

(and posting from a new mobile device, so I'm breif.)