it's a link roundup
so grab your lasso, hoss. It's a dense one.
The 31st (!) Carnival of Feminists is up in two parts at petitpoussin's. Check it out. Thanks for the link, lady! For those of you coming here for the first time through the Carnival, happy reading. Hope you find something you like here. Drop a comment and say hi!
Second, speaking of blog carnivals, check out the budding Ourstory Carnival they're working on over at Taking Place. Hat tip to Kevin at Slant Truth, who also got me all choked up recently, and probably deserves more than a hat tip, honestly.
You need to read this post at Brownfemipower's. Trust me. Go do it and come back.
And now that we've got our minds on some things, I'm going to point you at this must-read post at Letters from Gehenna: The World on a Slant. Not enough people read what this woman writes. I feel that some remedy is in order.
And speaking of things we need to be reading: Kim writes. We read. I want to make it clear that my stake here isn't any kind of internecine fighting: it's that more people need to understand more about eating disorders, period. And more people damn well need to know that they aren't simple and they aren't about weakness, or lack of feminism, or trying to impress men; that they aren't just like a diet, but moreso; and that we need to stop stigmatizing the people who have them, and stop using them as ciphers and handy examples for our Big Theories, and actually listen and pay attention to the people living with these diseases and the doctors who actually work with them, first. In the past year, I've read every nonsensical theory you can imagine about what eating disorders are supposed to be, by people who want to make them fit neatly into a big statement about What Our Lives Really Mean. I think the people next to us--and make no mistake, there are such people next to you, if you're not one yourself--afflicted in this way deserve a lot more from all of us.
Okay. Deep breath.
The abstract matters, too. Lovelesscynic got me thinking, as per usual, with her "Equality in Atlantis" post--this has been a big component of a lot of our discussions lately, of course, this "Atlantis" we're all looking for, and the questions as to what matters, in quixotic quests for seemingly-impossible ideals, as feminism and antiracism and related fights against oppression often are. The discussion continues at Feline Formal Shorts, where Magniloquence came up with an analogy for debates about equality vs. sameness that utterly delighted me. (You'll note that I totally promised them I'd write something on the subject. This is sort of cheating. Sorry, compadres.)
A few other things I'd like to direct your attention towards: shiny new groupblog Dido Revisited, which has already cranked out some very interesting reading; a thought-provoking rabbithole trip courtesy The Unapologetic Mexican, love it or leave it; the Slacktivist hits it out of the park (again) looking at the disconnects between game theory and morality involving actual people; and--ah, hell, I'm just gonna leave you with a Moment of Zen, courtesy the always-worth-reading Making Light:
Nazi Raccoons on the March in Europe.
The 31st (!) Carnival of Feminists is up in two parts at petitpoussin's. Check it out. Thanks for the link, lady! For those of you coming here for the first time through the Carnival, happy reading. Hope you find something you like here. Drop a comment and say hi!
Second, speaking of blog carnivals, check out the budding Ourstory Carnival they're working on over at Taking Place. Hat tip to Kevin at Slant Truth, who also got me all choked up recently, and probably deserves more than a hat tip, honestly.
You need to read this post at Brownfemipower's. Trust me. Go do it and come back.
And now that we've got our minds on some things, I'm going to point you at this must-read post at Letters from Gehenna: The World on a Slant. Not enough people read what this woman writes. I feel that some remedy is in order.
And speaking of things we need to be reading: Kim writes. We read. I want to make it clear that my stake here isn't any kind of internecine fighting: it's that more people need to understand more about eating disorders, period. And more people damn well need to know that they aren't simple and they aren't about weakness, or lack of feminism, or trying to impress men; that they aren't just like a diet, but moreso; and that we need to stop stigmatizing the people who have them, and stop using them as ciphers and handy examples for our Big Theories, and actually listen and pay attention to the people living with these diseases and the doctors who actually work with them, first. In the past year, I've read every nonsensical theory you can imagine about what eating disorders are supposed to be, by people who want to make them fit neatly into a big statement about What Our Lives Really Mean. I think the people next to us--and make no mistake, there are such people next to you, if you're not one yourself--afflicted in this way deserve a lot more from all of us.
Okay. Deep breath.
The abstract matters, too. Lovelesscynic got me thinking, as per usual, with her "Equality in Atlantis" post--this has been a big component of a lot of our discussions lately, of course, this "Atlantis" we're all looking for, and the questions as to what matters, in quixotic quests for seemingly-impossible ideals, as feminism and antiracism and related fights against oppression often are. The discussion continues at Feline Formal Shorts, where Magniloquence came up with an analogy for debates about equality vs. sameness that utterly delighted me. (You'll note that I totally promised them I'd write something on the subject. This is sort of cheating. Sorry, compadres.)
A few other things I'd like to direct your attention towards: shiny new groupblog Dido Revisited, which has already cranked out some very interesting reading; a thought-provoking rabbithole trip courtesy The Unapologetic Mexican, love it or leave it; the Slacktivist hits it out of the park (again) looking at the disconnects between game theory and morality involving actual people; and--ah, hell, I'm just gonna leave you with a Moment of Zen, courtesy the always-worth-reading Making Light:
Nazi Raccoons on the March in Europe.
Labels: building blocks, feminism, metablogging
posted by little light | 11:53 PM
10 Comments:
You linked me! You really, really linked me!
I'm actually composing a followup to that post with more screaming and ranting in my head at the moment ...
That damned raccoon link cracked me up.
Some miscellaneous thoughts now that I've been through some of your links --
Scope issues: "I've struggled with eating problems" or "I've had times when I've been really down" or similar other stuff is really common for psychological disorders. I may go back and write about this at some point -- it's one of those things where people don't grasp that there's a qualitative difference between "a little bit fucked up now and then" and "realio trulio little pet dragon broken". Everyone goes through bits of a little fucked up now and then; not everyone hits the point where the whole thing just stops working right.
It makes it easy to ... understate? Blow it off? It's also really hard to evaluate whether or not one's own issues are real, I think -- I know I spend a lot of time worrying about, hey, do I know enough to speak about this subject, I don't know how my issues stack up against other people's. I've been struggling to gain weight for years. I've never been suicidally depressed; does my own struggle with my depression/anxiety complex 'count' compared to someone who is at needs-medication-for-this-or-at-serious-risk-of-dead levels? Most of the time, I don't need a cane to walk; how well-informed am I about access or mobility stuff? There's this whole "How do I know it's real?" for stuff that's so very subjective.
A friend of mine has written that the problem with equality is that the critical question is equality of access to choice. And this is where the systemic stuff comes in -- trying to correct at higher levels than that fundamental one doesn't actually fix the problem.
The word "privilege" as used in certain circles is often referring to less-fettered access to choice (and responses to it are often pointing out that "less-fettered" is not "unfettered"). And some political movements are discussing things in terms of improving access to choice, to options, so long as one doesn't choose something that falls within the realm one would have been limited to before.
And I think of my cousin, the musician -- I played you some of his stuff a while back, you may recall, LL -- who had a dream to set up a recording studio collective for other young black men in the inner city, because if they wanted to get out, one of the few choices they had was music. One of the few ways there was access to a productive, creative community, that might get them the resources to get to a place where they could choose something else.
And yeah, damn, setting up a recording studio that isn't Big Business and the crazed recording contracts stuff that's commonplace, an underground people's movement for good music that helps people, giving people something positive to work for, that's a good thing, but it doesn't go back far enough, to the question of "Why is music one of the few choices for people in this situation who want to get out of it?"
So yeah, I want my cousin to succeed, and I wish I knew where he was selling his CDs these days 'cause I can't find a damn link, and I want him to be able to help other musicians get their heads on straight and get their lives improving -- he told me this was a big pay-it-forward thing for him, that he owes it to the community of black inner-city musicians that got his head on straight to help others -- and I want more than that. I want to go beyond making the few choices easier and better to making more choices exist.
"Can we recruit more women into our hard sciences and engineering degree programs" is starting too late, it's a stopgap. Math is hard, let's go shopping: one has to go back to the question of what assumptions we have as a society about what people do and why, and figure out, systematically, where we're choking off possibilities. It's not just about The Pink Aisle in the toy store with all the goddamn dolls, and all the blocks and construction stuff and interesting things being filed under "boys", or about households with educated parents being more likely to produce kids who pursue higher education, or households with books producing kids who read, or any of these things ... it's about all of them, the whole complex, that cuts off people from choices or leaves them thinking that if they make those choices they'll be cut off.
I got filed as "Science Girl" in high school. I suspect a bunch of them'd be shocked by where I am, because I didn't make the choices that my social class, education, and nerdy reputation are presumed to lead to. Because of that social class, though, I can be "eccentric", rather than "reviled"; more access to choice that needs expanding.
I'm pontificating.
It's good pontificating. I didn't expect a discussion to blossom out of these, what with figuring everyone would run out and discuss at the other ends of the links; I like where you're going, though. Did you have more on those lines?
It might wind up turning into a post or two over in Gehenna someday -- that shot my wad for the moment.
*grins* Thanks for the link, LL!
And yeah, you're totally cheating, but you linked me, so it's good cheating. Or something like that, anyway.
de3t-hthr, wow. I love your miscellaneous thoughts. I especially love (and will probably steal) the line "realio trulio little pet dragon broken." The rest of it, about choices and expanding the scope.. that's exactly what I've been thinking for way too long. So many of our problems are systemic and structural... and we're not paying any attention to that at all.
My pet issue is education, but it goes in so many different ways. And it's not just Big Social Issues, it's.. everyday focus. We'd all work better if we thought more about the structure of what we're doing. I'm stuck in a shitty job that could be awesome, but isn't, because the structure of the place and the way we understand it is just fucked. I could be more efficient doing different things, and so could everyone else, if we'd just think.
Thank you for the link, LL!
<3
And I've got thoughts on most of the posts you linked -- but I think I'll leave comments in their blogs, not here -- suffice to say, thank you for the excellent linklist. :)
Education is a big thing, yeah.
And I look at me -- I had three choices for high schools to attend without considering going to a private school at all, three options for the public schools, because of where I lived and the resources I had as a kid -- and I look at my cousin the aforementioned musician, expelled from the public school system for being disruptive before they learned he was ADHD and dyslexic -- and what's that problem with scope of choice again?
Neither he nor I went through college. Our respective improverished-gentry intelligentsia parents both wish we would. Which sticks us both with less scope of choice than we'd have otherwise, too. The system failed him when he was a kid, and he never went back; the system failed me when I was a bit older and was told that people with my sort of mental problems just weren't fit to be educated here.
There's a whole lot of "You can choose anything" out there, so long as one's starting from a position of middle-class conformity. Start with the right values and attitudes and competencies and don't deviate too far from those norms -- and if you're black your span for deviation is narrower, remember that -- and don't go outside of normal range, have issues other than the normal ones ...
And into that rhetoric there are real people who aren't starting from there, or who, despite starting from there, have real issues that go outside the scope of what anyone's prepared to hear. And there's a lot of handwringing about how Those People don't choose certain paths, and why is that, anyway? Maybe Those People aren't starting out on the track that's assumed as the setup, or fell the fuck off it.
I don't have answers. Even if I did have answers, I don't have the edumacation and certification as someone with a fucking clue required to get J. Random Public Thinker to actually listen to my answers. So I jump up and down a lot, y'know?
Heh. Well, I've got that edumacation, and I'm willing to stand for you. For just about anybody who needs it.
Granted, I've got all sorts of other things restraining me (what's a queer mixed-race girl in a cross-racial relationship - who is otherwise exceedingly visibly traditional - got to do to get heard, mm?), but what I really need is a place to stand.
I did a little work with Teach For America, and they're great, but they didn't want me so I need somewhere else to shout from.
Even though I managed to get this far, I damn sure think the educational system failed me too. Not as badly as others (a school going down the tubes will let a 'gifted' kid get away with murder, if they bring back some awards.... never mind that they're not going to class, that they're not doing the work, that they're actively subverting the school structure and holding it up at the same time...), but failed nonetheless. Failed in my friends, who had potential that was never developed. For those that knew that they were never going to be anything, so why bother? Failed in my teachers, who tried and tried and tried to make a difference and got no support and little money and threats and massive classes and behavioral problems they weren't trained for. Failed in my parents, who had to fight just to know what was happening, who had to give and give at the last minute just to make sure the school kept going.
And we were one of the schools that was doing okay. At least nobody got killed, right? Well there was that one kid who got beaten into a coma for bumping someone in line, but that didn't happen on campus, so it's okay, right?
Yeah. Choices and access. Autonomy and opportunity. You find the language pervading every damn argument. People are beginning to dissect it in the "choice" discussions, which is great. But that extreme liberal individualism, the whole 'bootstraps' myth... that's keeping us from focusing on the source of the problems; the structures that doom us to the same mistakes year in and year out. The few that get through are extraordinary and should be praised, but shouldn't be the models.
Can we do that? Is there a mountain I can stand on? Where do I stand to move the world?
And then we get into the Catch-22. People who are seeing the problem are too undegreed or to queer or too brown or too [fill in your scope-reducing trait here] to be able to get heard with any consistency.
We can kick around the blogs and talk to each other, but that's, again, a stopgap and a sop: the blogs give us a way to pretend we're being heard by someone, take the edge off the pain a little, maybe.
And we're still stuck with, well, we should be able to do this ourselves, right? Too much Calvinism: our failures prove we are not among the Elect. We need to be able to see the problems and succeed no matter what the problems are to be heard.
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