100 out of 4800: what's that percentage?

Scholarship fund to help blacks go to UCLA - Los Angeles Times

african american students numbered only 100 out of last year's entering freshman class.

100 out of 4800.

Aged, Frail and Denied Care by Their Insurers - New York Times

so what's the point, you know?
if you spend all this time paying for something you'll never get, what's the frakking point?

lately, especially with news of insurance companies denying care to pregnant women because it's not profitable (which could probably expose them to accusations of gender bias, as well), stories like these have moved insurance companies (and the actuaries who create these frakked up equations) onto my list of industries that probably deserve a flaming meteorite to hit them.

last week, my Fancy Church threw a small fashion show to showcase our social service center and basically call for volunteers. it was sweet: a makeshift stage in the fellowship hall, our pastors and administrators wearing clothes that were donated to the center, thumping disco pouring from the speakers (modified slightly to reflect our churchy environs) and the smell of barbecued meatballs, cocktail wieners and banana pudding wafting from the back of the room. and half the audience smiling in their denturesand nodding underneath their gray wigs.

i leaned over to Roomie and whispered, 'this feels very british.'
she said, 'yeah. i'm having a Vicar of Dibley moment.'
...

some interesting things in the news lately.
so sad to hear about elizabeth edwards; i think it's rather brave of her to encourage her husband to keep on with his campaign. did anyone catch the katie couric interview? i heard it was a whopper; the reaction to it is rather interesting.

and then there's this article about the black church and gay people, which i thought was noteworthy. what stood out: attitudes toward homosexuality change once contact with gays becomes personal (through family or friends); and what one man interviewed said: 'God loves you but must correct you' or something like that.

(what does God's correction have to do with having gays in church? or preaching tolerance? seems to me that the whole 'gays must be corrected like everyone else' misses the fact that not 'everyone' gets 'corrected' the same way. so, until some straight person is told to get the hell out of dodge for being a lying philanderer, then folks should shut up about other folks needing 'correction.')

then there's this piece about the coast guard academy report whose findings showed that cadets would rather not report someone for sexual assault. considering how prevalent sexual assault is in our military academies, this should give us pause about how we're inculcating particular values in our armed forces. i wonder why we don't admit that our military academies are turning into breeding grounds for violent sociopaths. i mean, that seems to be the kind of soldier we want for our unending war against terror, isn't it? forget words like 'character' 'dignity' 'honor' or 'valor.'

but all is not lost. eric keroack, the anti-contraception 'doctor' who was appointed to oversee federal family planning programs resigned last night. yay!

women in the military: a double whammy

The Women's War - Sara Corbett - Iraq - Soldiers - Women - Abuse - New York Times

one of the goals of feminism, especially feminist historiography, is to shed light on women's untold stories and now that our country has embarked on a path of endless war, the stories of women in our military are slowly beginning to leak out. women, in some capacity, have always been part of our military machine - either as support staff, medical staff and now combat staff. but knowledge of their actual lives within the walls of the military is largely unknown - except for the stuff that's so bad it finally breaks the news.

this times magazine piece is fascinating: one, it becomes connected to the earlier article about boozed up men in the military and violence and, two, it prompts me to ask whether women belong in the military at all.

it's clear the military, despite some good lip service to the contrary after every sexual assault scandal in their training camps, academies and ranks, has no capacity to deal with the needs of military women who've been assaulted or harrassed within the military. their reporting structure is broken, their punishment structure is failed and their treatment/prevention capabilities seem to be non-existent. and all this failure and inaction, as well as the sexual assault itself, seems to be built into the very fabric of the military.

from the article:

''So you have young women joining the military who have the profile of being victimized, who don't have boundaries sometimes,'' [V.A. Palo Alto Health Care
System psychiatrist, Dr. Tina] Lee went on to say. ''And then you have a male
population that fits a perpetrator profile. They are mostly under 25, often
developmentally adolescent, and you put them together. What do you think will
happen? The men do the damage, and the women get damaged.''

i'm actually surprised to be asking myself this question of women in the military. i've always thought 'anything a man can do, a woman should be allowed to do' and service in the military certainly shouldn't be withheld from women because of cultural stereotypes of 'weakness' or 'girliness.' but what if the military is too unsafe for women? oh, not because of combat. they're trained to deal with combat situations, just like their male counterparts.

but what if it's too unsafe for women because of the danger posed by their male counterparts?
and if this is so, should women want to join the military?

(notice the particular frame for that question and the implied agency - it's not about 'belonging' in the military at all, but whether women should even choose it, given what that culture is actually like?)

in the stirrups

so a couple weeks ago i went to the doctor for my bi-annual pelvic. (although i know better, i don't go to the doctor unless something is hanging out of me, bleeding.)

anyway, there i am, in the stirrups, being palpated by my doctor and missing the old cloth robes we used to wear during these kind of examinations.

then she goes, 'Hm.'
i think, Hm is never good.
i say, 'what's wrong?'
she says, 'did you know you have fibroids?'
'uh, no.'
'well, you do. do you know what they are?' palpate. palpate.
i say, 'big tumor-y things?'
she laughs while continuing to palpate. 'yes, big tumor-y things.' she snaps off the gloves and gets ready to do the pap.
'you got 'em. i'm going to recommend you get an ultrasound just so we see how big they are.'

i just nod and i can't help but think, wow, i no longer have to justify being childless. i have fibroids! huzzah!*

god works in mysterious ways, doesn't He?

*for folks out there who may be befuddled at my logic re: infertility: fibroids keep growing back so i'd either have to get them lasered out all the time, take constant medication all the time, or get a hysterectomy. it's an inevitability. goodbye uterus.*

boozed up & defending freedom

For U.S. Troops at War, Liquor Is Spur to Crime - New York Times

this is really interesting. the article draws a straight line between alcohol use and the more egregious (or, in the case of the rape of the iraqi girl and the murder of her and her family, the downright criminal) acts our 'boys' get into while fighting this ridiculous war we can't extricate ourselves from. i draw attention to this line because it's one that's rarely made: heavy alcohol use by men leads to violence in general (and against women, in particular.)

but do we hear that narrative in our popular culture?

no. instead we get cautionary tales directed at women about our drinking. (remember the AMA's Spring Break warning to college girls? or the online chatter about the girl who was abducted on a school trip to mexico?) having been in the position once or twice to have made bad decisions while under the influence (hello, ex-whatever), i'm not saying that all decisions made while tanked are healthy but let's place agency where it really belongs, you know?

(and to make it a personal thing, which is my prerogative because it's my personal blog and which proves nothing, but only provides a context for my thinking:
a friend of mine, on new year's eve, was assaulted in her sleep by the person she let crash on her couch because it was too late for him to drive home. his bullshit excuse the next day, when she confronted him? 'I get horny when I'm drunk.' frakking asshole.)

anyway, it's an interesting article that should prompt more discussion about how we acculturate our MEN but it probably won't.

hey, pitches!

a pitch call from my fave mag waay up north. i'm not twinkly or sparkly enough for this one but if there are any budding poets, artists and/or faery folk who are interested please see below:

PITCHCALL GEEZ NO. 6

The re-enchantment of the world

We need personal, social and political liberation from malaise and mediocrity.

A new way of seeing can provide the seeds of change. An eye for the sacred in each moment, the animation in the trees, the spirit in the wind, the eternal reflected in ancient scriptures and back-lane scrawl.

We want to describe the world behind that twinkle or sparkle, that gleam or glow that emanates from some stalwarts of social change.

We see this revolutionary enchantment in Buddhist teachers like Joanna Macy, poets like Mary Oliver and authors like David C. Korten as he describes the transformation from Empire to Earth Community. It's also the vision that drives youth pastors to shun exotic overseas mission trips and make greater trips closer to home. To see the love and life in what they formerly called inner-city squalor.

This is a call for seers, poets and cultural healers to guide us along this Way.

We are looking for investigative reports, arguments, poems, art and reflections documenting how an enchanted world-view is the fuel for social change. Show us how an enchanted worldview undermines consumer culture and inspires social change.

(Or, if you think this is bogus hocus-pocus, show us the error of our ways.)

Tone and flavor
Think deeply, write lightly. Explore the deepest questions, but go easy on the earnesty. Geez does not assume a religious audience, so cut the religio-jargon, and only send a piece if your sharpest unchurched friend gives it the go-ahead.

Due date
Send pitches (your idea and how you will develop it) by March 21, 2007. If you already have a completed manuscript, poem, photo or design feel free to submit it as well. Unfortunately we are not able to respond to every pitch. If you do not hear back from us within 6 weeks, assume we were not able to use your idea or article.

Send to
editor@geezmagazine.org
or
Geez, Issue 6
264 Home St
Winnipeg MB, R3G 1X3
Canada

ok, i really like obama.

AlterNet: MediaCulture: Obama's Identity: Where Do We Start

a really great article from patricia williams about our public discourse on race in the figure of obama. (and check out the comment thread; it seems williams' piece was too beond most of everyone's ken. they talk about everything except what the article is about. and this is supposed to be a progressive thread!)

vomit vomit vomit: the pussycat dolls are feminist??

Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll - TV - New York Times

jeebus save me from totally ignorant hollywood folks who wouldn't know feminism if it bit them in the gonads:

When one reporter said his 17-year-old daughter looked at the group and their antics as a giant step backward for women, the Pussycat Dolls’ founder, Robin Antin, became defensive, invoking female role models who follow the Dolls.

“There’s a reason why people like Scarlett Johansson, Gwen Stefani, Cameron Diaz have all been so interested in what Pussycat Dolls is all about,” she said. “They feel that it is empowering to get up there and dress up like a Doll. It’s fun, and it’s something that every girl in the world — she may think one thing, but I think inside every girl in the world wants to do it.”

yeah, because scarlett, gwen and cameron are EXACTLY what feminism is about.

and in other news, how about a totally worthless discussion of 'hooking up' over at the today show? (incidentally, the women they showed for the story are all in their early 20s. so much for 'teenagers'.)

and why is the story worthless?
they don't talk about boys (what, these women are having sex by themselves??)
they don't talk about what this 'hooking up' is in reaction to
they treat an adolescent context the same as an adult context
and they link it to feminisam, which it's the farthest thing away from.

just my two cents.

they'll adjust. really.

so my sister told this story when she was visiting over the summer:

back in my undergrad days i relented, just a few times, to do some babysitting for a couple in dad's church. my sister and her boyfriend (now husband) were hanging out at our house watching movies while i 'babysat,' which entailed feeding them, then watching the clock assiduously and praying for bedtime to come. at last, bedtime. i tucked the little tykes in bed, clicked off the light and shut the door. i'd barely settled on the couch before faint wails wobbled from the bedroom down the hall.

i opened the door. 'yes?'
'it's dark!'
'it's bedtime.'
'it's dark!'
'it's bedtime.'
'leave the light on!
'your eyes will adjust!' click.

my sister and her husband laugh their asses off whenever they tell this story, always shouting the ending: 'your eyes will adjust!'

anyway. co-sleeping. excuse me while i roll my eyes.

Sleeping-Co-Sleeping-Children - New York Times

generation gap, pt 1

There really is a gulf separating those of us who live in my vague Generational X-ish sphere and Boomers like my dad, and the chasm between us seems virtually impassable. But I suspect this impassability has more to do with the comfort of familiar nostalgic narratives than anything real.

On the phone with my dad Sunday morning while he waited in Nebraska for a flight to get him back to California after a series of snow delays, our conversation turned to my sister and her husband calling my father for more babysitting duties.

Shorter Dad, the Boomer: Young folks today with families are shirking their responsibilities and have too much free time.

Shorter Ding, the Gen X-er: Young families/single people today have totally different (and in crucial ways, more demanding) responsibilities than the ones you guys had back in the 70s. Life is different now so don’t expect solutions to be the same as back in the day.

And this is where the dangerous power of nostalgia comes in. I love and esteem my dad in a huge way, but there are some crucial gaps in his memory. Gone is the fact that he and mom didn’t have an extended network of family around them – there were no cousins, aunts or uncles to take up any family slack (which isn’t usually the norm), so he and mom going it alone was a matter of necessity rather than choice; gone is the fact that mom was a secretary and he was a civil servant, so their professional obligations were very different than the ones my sister, brother in law and I have; gone is the fact that the cost of living/raising a family was considerably lower then than now; gone is the memory that my sister and I, through our elementary and junior high lives, had babysitters to watch us after school until our parents came home from work, though it’s somewhat comforting to think that mom and dad provided every moment of care themselves; also gone is the uncomfortable fact that, at the height of his pastorate, my father spent 90% of his time away from the home and family.

(Also forgotten: the bulk of their parenting advice came from our hardened, cranky, arid as Texas, Depression era Baptist pastor whose relationship with his own offspring was, shall we say, less than ideal.)

Nostalgia, however, paints a golden patina over all of these potholes of memory until the surface looks smooth and glossy. Instead of highlighting how he and mom operated in a parenting context that reflected their social and economic context, their childrearing is a simple story of two parents stalwartly facing the music and going it alone because, naturally, that’s what parents do.

But perhaps my sister and I are guilty of the same kind of nostalgia, too. Perhaps, in our mind's eye, we have a comfortable idea of what grandparents are: accessible, doting on the grandchildren, service-oriented. But that's not who my father is at all. Like others of his generation, he has a very fixed outside life from family. There's a strong feeling of "I put in my time and now it's Me time." Who can argue with that? What right do we have to impose on what little time he has left? (heh.) The grandparents now aren't the grandparents of whenever: they get depressed, restless, horny, impatient and, frankly, don't want to relive the years of raising kids.

My father teaches, goes on conferences, counsels, and preaches. (Sometimes he even goes out on a date.) And he deliberately bought a car that won't fit a child's car seat, let alone two. Deep down, the single childless woman in me respects his independence, applauding and encouraging it.

So if we are more similar than we think, why can't our generations keep nostalgia from clouding our perceptions of one another?

(next: take this job and shove it!)

back from springfield...other thoughts

i'm thinking about...

my old city. well, my old metropolitan area in southern california, anyway. it seems like some folks there don't like the way their neighborhood is changing: Some in Chino Hills nervous about ethnic shift exemplified by Asian supermarket [h/t from angry asian man]

i love how, if you study how (mostly white) communities deal with increasing numbers of non-white peoples, the discourse of protest hinges on 'community standards,' a handy code for racism and bigotry.

(it's basically the NIMBY argument: 'they can live like that around their own kind, but not in my back yard!')

it reminds me of a book i finished: There Goes the Neighborhood, a study of 4 chicago neighborhoods undergoing racial/ethnic demographic changes, how they either maintained their racial composition or changed and the strategies they used in 'fighting' the change. it's fascinating. in the study on the anonymous southside white neighborhood shows how inhabitants use the language of 'neighborhood standards' to justify keeping their community all white. it's a really interesting look at how ingrained, generational racism (not simply bigotry) affect quotidian details like, oh, where a person lives.

(it also explains why, 9 years ago, i probably stopped dating a guy who lived in one of those south side chicago ethnic neighborhoods. there were issues, the biggest being the fact i was the first brown girl to be introduced to his friends and family EVER.)
...
thoughts of the anti-asian sentiment in chino hills (no one finds it funny that 'chino' in spanish means 'chinese'?) also lead me to think of how we respond to racial or ethnic changes - but from the other direction.

for instance, when a brown neighborhood sees signs that it's getting less brown and more white it's funny that our discourse isn't about 'maintaining community standards' but a reverse narrative of imperialism. (for instance, imagine the story of 'settlement' told from the vantage point of native peoples.)

isn't that what gentrification really is - urban imperialism? a markedly capitalist, consumerist population running out of resources sees how other populations/geographies aren't exploiting capitalism as much as they can, so it moves to annex and control the population in order to benefit and spread itself.

i read the arguments in favor of manifest destiny and can't help but see similarities in chicago's language in favor of 'community renewal' on the southside and its heavy investment in development in places like hyde park, lawndale, pilsen.

of course this also puts me in a weird position since participating in this kind of urban imperialism is part of my job (but without displacing original populations, somehow.)

things i'm thinking about

i'm thinking about...

gay people...
this article in the sunday style section about gay PDA really brings home (to me, at least) how much still needs to be done on behalf of gay rights. yeah, it's easy for me, sitting on my hetero-normative ass, to be saying this, but really. there's something glaringly wrong when people are AFRAID to hold hands or kiss each other on the street because they're AFRAID of getting their asses kicked, or being told to leave a restaurant.

you think civil unions are 'going too far'? sweetie, they don't go far enough. see what laws are in play in your state here.

(just check out this professional athlete who says he 'hates' gay people and doesn't think it should exist. period. or even the outcry about the snickers campaign - which i thought was actually funny because it totally demonstrated how based in hysteria the notion, and image, of straight 'masculinity' really is.)

DOMA and domestic violence...
so you know about all the Defense of Marriage Acts being enacted in states across the country. on the surface it seems a silly, yet totally anti-gay issue. (meaning, you assume it's only really important to gay folks.) but now we see some unintended consequences of state legislated homophobia: it provides protection for domestic violence abusers. ohio's supreme courst has heard a case that argues domestic violence laws don't apply to the abuser because he and the women he 'allegedly' abused were unmarried and, under ohio's DOMA, their relationship has no legal standing.

and you know what happened? the ohio supreme court agreed with him. (and once i find the source for this, i'll post the link; it came up on a conference call i was on last week at work. and if i heard the update wrong, i'll post that, too. but the point remains the same: though there are those who support these 'defense of marriage' bills as protecting, the result of them is decidedly immoral.)

sometimes it seems like the interests of gay and straight people are far afield of one another but they're really not. like it or not, what affects one of us truly affects all of us.

valentine's day. is it over yet?

things have been sort of light here and that's because things have been so heavy at work; since i can't really write in detail about work without jeopardizing that work, then it means that i don't have a lot to write about.

but that doesn't mean that a lot isn't going on.

for instance, the very excellent people at Alas have been on a really great streak (must read them more regularly), writing about race, free speech, the kerfuffle involving the Catholic League and the blogger Amanda and there's one particular post i'd like to draw attention to: the one about rape and men 'getting it.' it links to an excerpt from tim beneke's book Men On Rape and it's so worthwhile reading i heartily encourage folks to go there.

(april is sexual assault awareness month, so be prepared. i'm gonna write about it.)

after reading the excerpt, i was struck by a disconnect beneke's subjects showed. there's an academic acknowledgment that rape is bad but there's also the very real emotional/psychological urge to act on that desire to rape, though they guys may not define what they want to do as rape.

it's interesting, this gap in logic. or, perhaps, this isn't a gap at all. to them, it makes complete sense.

which just reinforces a growing suspicion in my mind that straight men and women are utterly foreign to one another and perhaps men should live on an island somewhere to dress in skins and spear fish.

[jeebus. i just read about this asinine thing - Take Back the Date - over at feministing.

when are these people just going to face it? the 50's are dead. they're gone. done.
seriously, i can't wait until all these people who 'remember' what things were like back then and keep wanting things to 'return' to them to just shuffle off this mortal coil.]

approaching cliche

Bloog.

It's like I'm a manitee. I'm so incredibly bloated right now I actually look pregnant. (And the empire-waisted blouse I'm wearing ain't helping.)

It feels good, though, to let the belly out. Just stand there and let it all go. ahhh...
Who cares that Valentine's Day is tomorrow and I'm sitting here with my belly pooching out? Feels good. Watch the snow fall and let your belly hang out.

Hm.
I'm so signing up for Weight Watchers Online...

um, why can't i see my blog?

grr.
good thing i'm gonna be in springfield tomorrow or this'd upset me.

yuck.
Posing as a Family, Sex Offenders Stun a Town - New York Times

proving that more sexual assault education and training needs to happen in law enforcement, here's a stunner quote from an investigator:

“With boys it is a really tough deal,” said Lt. Van Gillock of the Police Department in El Reno, Okla., where Mr. Rodreick is believed to have posed as a 12-year-old to ingratiate himself with boys at church. “If they did it voluntarily, they have the stigma of homosexuality, and if it is forced, well, boys are supposed to be tough and the things the boys have on them gives them an embarrassment factor.”

riight. because getting raped is so much easier for girls.

a really good discussion: what are the risks of being anti-racist?

i really have to point out, again, the discussion over here, at Alas, a blog.

in the comment thread there is a fascinating sub-topic of what one risks when they decide to be anti-racist. i'd like to pose that here, in the face of the somewhat deafening silence from a larger white society when things like the Clemson ghetto party happens. (while also acknowledging the equally deafening silence from black folks when jesse jackson says totally problematic things like Hymietown.)

as a white person, what risk do you run when you decide to take an anti-racist stance - whether in the office when a coworker wants to know how many blacks it takes to screw in a lightbulb or in your family when someone complains about all the black people moving into the neighborhood?
as a person of color, what risk do you run when you decide to call someone out on their racism or bigotry? what risk do you run when it's another person of color you're calling out?

as nice progressives, what actual risks have we taken to be the nice progressives we think we are?

cuz if we aren't taking any risks, we aren't doing shit.

aw, damn: Molly Ivins, 1944-2007

Molly Ivins, 1944-2007

who cares if you're a racist? you're stupid.

here is a post from Alas, A Blog commenting about a really ill-thought racially themed party at Clemson on Martin Luther King Day.

not only does the general ignorance of college kids stun me, their whole misunderstanding of satire (which just re-emphasizes they weren't paying that much attention in their english classes in the first place) frustrates me.

we've seen this excuse before. michael richards had his defenders who said his n-word laden rant was perhaps a misfired attempt to satirize ... something (it's unclear what exactly he would be satirizing); chuck knipp's drag character, Shirly Q. Liquor, is supposed to be (in his words) a satirical look at racism; the hipsters in brooklyn with their Kill Whitey club nights think they're satirizing 'ghetto culture'; and now, every frat boy/sorority girl, college or law school student who wants to wear a sombrero, put on blackface, speak in ebonics or 'run for the border' thinks they're engaging in satire.

but what they forget, or perhaps never knew or understood, is that satire is a punch in the eye of Power. satire's anger, it's needle, is directed upward - never downward. if it does, then it ceases to be satire and it's just another way for those in power to bully the powerless or to scream to the public that you're just another tool of the status quo.

so, for all you dumbass college kids and misinformed adults out there, this is satire:

it is a precise literary term (which means you have to have some measure of intellectual weight to pull it off)
it has a very specific target (i.e., a person or group of people, an idea or attitude, an institution or a social practice)
in satire, your target is held up to merciless ridicule that is often very angry, ideally in the hope of shaming your target into reform (again, critical faculties are necessary as well as a recognition of power and how it operates in society)
it has a strong vein of irony or sarcasm (parody, burlesque, exaggeration and double entendre are all devices frequently used in satirical speech and writing - again, pointing to intellectual rigor in the person who calls herself a satirist)
finally, it is strictly a misuse of the word to describe as "satire" works without an ironic (or sarcastic) undercurrent of mock-approval, criticism and an element at least of anger.

how does a privileged white boy in blackface poke fun or criticize or throw into instability the codes of racism or our racist history? how does a white girl in a do' rag holding a forty problematize the ways that race, sexuality and racial images are reproduced and disseminted in this country?

it doesn't. because all you have is a white girl in a do' rag holding a forty.

here endeth the lesson.

[and photo credit goes to The Smoking Gun]