I’d be really interested to hear an art
historian with a deep understanding of pigment and process look at this oldest known artistic
depiction of the animal world and deconstruct why there are two slightly
different shades of red.
Most of the figure is done in a dark burgundy,
but then there is a warmer ochre tone which looks like it expanded on the
original image perhaps (*) – and one (left!) hand print in the darker color, then a
right hand print in the warmer color. And even the darker burgundy color –
there are many more “brush strokes” along the back of the animal in that color,
where the body is much less saturated. Was there more “coloring” as the artist
got the shape and size just the way they wanted it?
* Was this image complete, and the second “hand”
added to it, made the pig larger and more fearsome? Were two artists working
together, and the second color representing something – an aura of the spirit
of the animal, a ridge of hair raised as the pig encountered the other pigs (do
pigs “ridge back” as other animals do? They are mammals after all, and even
humans’ hair stands on end on our necks when we are on alert)? Is it possible one color was laid down, and long after, the second color was added by a prehistoric critic? Or are there two tones because one pot of mixed pigment simply ran out?
I am prompted to recall: many of these “hand print” paintings were
studied several years ago, and a new conclusion was reached that researchers
had never come to before: that they were women’s
hands.
This is an exhibit I might have to visit, Hopper and hotels. (Initially, I used the term "go see" in that first sentence, but changed it to "visit" ... both because my brain insists upon certain rhythms - but also because it seems, in the dingy gradation of color words have for me, a better choice for the picture.) What Sebastian Smee reviews as problems are part of what I see as the strengths in Hopper. The unfinished stories these pieces evoke. The "clunkiness" of his female figures strike me as, in fact, similarly honest to the rest of his images; celebrating bodies which are not artistically or aesthetically perfect. The strands of hair, the skin tones and shadow are impeccable. I can see muscles and bones where Smee apparently cannot.
You don't need to know what Tisah B'Av is, if you just know that America is suffering. Find an event this weekend; I have found mine. And I plan to wear mourning, go, be quiet ... and, most likely, weep. Where is your event - or would you like to plan one?
... and, should you need an antidote to American atrocity ...
High comedy? Or low - as in that personal space we so often call "down there"? Medieval satire, or: when a lady breaks up with her down-there amid arguments with her. Some satire is evergreen. Or ever-rosy! Never accuse The History Blog of being dry and boring ...
This week in Trek tech - that sun ship I first heard of on DS9, and found bewildering, turns out (like so much Trek tech!) to be a thing. Sailing on a sunbeam. COOL.
But, seriously. Recognize where we are. If that means joining communities of faith this weekend. If that means choosing to give to those who are suffering. If that means prayer, or just reflection. Understand the world, and that it is filled with humanity. And, if you can, if there is an event near you: go. And do.
I am a fifty-one year old woman, and this very blog reflects that experience. Take a look at the history of the vanity tag; it tells a story.
A reduced sense of visibility does not necessarily constrain experience. Associated with greater empathy and compassion, invisibility directs us toward a more humanitarian view of the larger world. This diminished status can, in fact, sustain and inform—rather than limit—our lives. Going unrecognized can, paradoxically, help us recognize our place in the larger scheme of things.
Yep. This is, more and more, informative of my spirituality.
My personal favorite Hawai'ian deity is Kamapua'a, but this guy actually does hang on one of my walls. (My print is definitely worth less than $5k.) Another interesting tale of repatriation and also a story about provenance.
In this moment of political division, Garry sees a spiritual test. The temptation to discard others has always been strong, and in some ways it is stronger than ever. But this is an old problem, maybe the oldest, he says. The Bible is all about overcoming the temptation to discard, to dismiss, to unfriend. If it were always easy to love your neighbor as you love yourself, it wouldn’t be a commandment. “We trust anger. We believe anger gets things done,”
The Lady of the Lake, in her own words. Yes, I have been slow to get to this story - but tell me this is not the best plot bunny ever - Nyneve becomes an actor in Paris ...
Ahh, the beautiful standards of art - where a woman's nudity is all but mandatory, but a man's is the time for censorship. Imagine actually thinking, "Okay, now I wish I'd seen naked Batman."
Because the assault was violent and harrowing, and because speaking about it led to death threats and her entire family being forced into hiding. She is being violently attacked (AGAIN) and having hands put over her mouth (AGAIN).
And she spoke not entirely voluntarily - her initial communication was anonymous, but she was outed, doxxed, and now harassed.
Attempts to assassinate her character, even before the character in question revealed her identity. Attempts to dismiss her, falsely, as “a major Democratic donor with a long history of left-wing activism.” To question her motivation under the (also entirely false) premise that Kavanaugh’s mother had once ruled against Ford’s parents in a home-foreclosure case. To brush aside the specific allegations she has made about what happened to her as a 15-year-old girl—being trapped in a room; being pinned down, her mouth covered so as to muffle her screams; being groped at so violently that she thought she might die—as the delusions of an unreliable narrator. It’s not her fault, Orrin Hatch, the Republican senator from Utah, concluded this week, magnanimously: The matter is simply that Christine Blasey Ford, in her recollections, must simply be “mixed up.”
During these hideous moments, during this crime that was perpetrated against her without any repercussions ever having come for Judge or Kavanaugh: she thought she might INADVERTENTLY DIE at these boys' hands. This is a fear an awful lot of women and girls have to live with. This fear is commonplace. It is all our lives, all of us "boys" and "men" prey upon constantly.
This fear has repercussions for us. If we "fail" to act, "why did she not say anything?" is the desserts for a girl, or the woman she becomes who gains courage to speak. If we act ... it can be worse. From the vulnerability that is routine, new risks arise. I've known of a young woman JUST THIS YEAR who did not prosecute a stalker. And I understand why she felt she could not.
Senator Hatch, I remember you from Anita Hill's testimony. I have never forgotten you, and never been able to so much as hear your name, in the GENERATION since then, without anger and horror.
Senator Hatch, you were loathsome then, and you are possibly even worse now.
Senator Hatch, you are a serial molester of women's agency and humanity.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
He held her down. He covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
And ALL that he stands to lose is a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States of America. That is the entire peril faced by Kavanaugh.
She is in hiding, and her entire family under threat of not at all inadvertent death.
My day is made, I have encountered the word excrementitious, which actually strikes me as one of those "probably a mellifluously beautiful word, if you don't know what it means" coinages ... Also: scatalogical archaeology! Always fun. Thanks, The History Blog.
Ahhh, the tedium of FASHION as opposed to style. We all know it's not just clothes, or at least in the form of textiles.
Remember when book covers were done by artists? Remember when all too many of them became photos of headless women? (Remember when we laughed at salads?) Apparently the current trend in cover design is flowers. This seems to surprise some people, but the development seems obvious to me, especially timed after November 2016, when stock photo libraries, advertising, entertainment, and so many visual aspects of the cultural landscape finally began to show women in active contexts, not strictly as pretty presentation objects. We were all sick of the ubiquity of book covers featuring decapitated women and sexualized women (the latter not being mutually exclusive of the former, which: ew). What's the next best sexual image? Flowers. Duh.
When an article features Terry Crews and mentions Rosey Grier, I'm going to be all the way in for clicking THAT. When that article fully displays the principle and ever-perfecting manhood, well pre-dating Crews' current testimony before the Senate, and how sumptuously he expresses not only his humanity but his convictions, I all but weep. He's proving what we know - and most need to know. Additionally, he's funny as hell.
A joke I heard on Twitter once: "White people upset about BET asking, 'Why don't we have White Entertainment Television?' ... We do, it's HGTV." Worth the click because sometimes online discourse is fertile.
In other TV musing, something struck me about Pose recently. Having watched other Ryan Murphy works, I knew early on that the discussion I'd seen regarding how unrealistic Pose is was almost funny: Murphy's not interested in realism, he presents setpieces, and he does that nicely if you choose to take it on his/those terms. (Feud felt intentionally setbound; even outdoors scenes are claustrophobic and closed-in. That plays to the emotional worlds of the Crawford and Davis characters in play.) For Pose, the archness is not as visually obvious, so I've seen complaints about, say, just how glamorous the scene is made to look, or the opening sequence for the series itself, where "real" historical costumes are stolen from a museum for a gay ball. Preposterous! And duh. Here is the thing: Pose is 80s TV. Figuratively (it's set in the late 80s) and literally (its emotional beats are ALL Very Special Episode-worthy). The depth of plotting is *veeeerryyy* much like 80s TV - sitcom or drama. The pacing is extremely 80s; when TV took time to lay things out. For many, this seems slow or dry or even insulting (making the implicit explicit). But this is so, so true to its time. It takes the 80s seriously, AND it tells stories no network (remember, we really had three back then) would have told in the time itself. I kind of think that's genius, and it's not Murphy's first time reining pace enough to slow things down like this. Given his current influence, you wonder how this might bear out in others' work. Imagine a vogue for *less* cinematic TV; imagine the VSE's regaining ascendance. I've seen surprising amounts of ink on VSEs over the past couple of years. My guess is nostalgia is bringing it back, in service of subjects even the original concept never served.
Leaping from television to literature, who has read Connie Willis's Doomsday Book? I actually re-read it a year or two ago, and - forget Jurassic Park - this book will scare the willies out of you, in both its plague-ridden timelines. So reading about the extraction of leprosy from centuries-old skeletal remains ISN'T HORRIFYING AT ALL. Just as long as you haven't read the wrong books. Yeep.
Finally ... hmm, and more hmm. Yes, fella babies, it's Adventures in Science Reporting again!
I have written in the past about Penelope'sancestry, and as little obsessed as I am with pedigree, it's not beyond me to admit fascinated with the idea my beloved Pariah descending from millennia of fascinating forerunners. Oddly enough, it seems like cancer is about all we really have left of pre-contact canine breeds. Still - being a critical thinker - it is hard not to wonder about previous DNA studies, pointing to modern Amercan dogs' long history here. Hmmmm. Keep us posted, Dr. Ostrander.
Through the past several months of #MeToo and all of the stories we allhaveendured, one of the less-spoken throughlines comes down to something like "how do we know not all men are like this?"
Granted, we certainly have the #NotAllMen hashtag to 'splain about these things. Ahem. And lots of us will note the guys in our lives we're sure are above it. Men themselves discuss how abhorrent certain behaviors are.
It is not a fact that the only good men are the men who live in the imaginations of others, idealized out of reality. I don't know there are Good Men just because I think my dad and my brother are good men. I know there are good men because there are men who have unequivocally demonstrated goodness in (cis and otherwise) manhood. And, yeah, it's not all binary either. But let's look at the binary that binds so many, ant look at it.
There are real STORIES, real moments in time, which prove the lie that All Men (whatever that can possibly be thought to mean) are creeps.
And, you know? I think these stories really need to be told. The unambiguously clear stories about non-predatory behavior.
***
Names, obviously, are altered to protect folks I have not seen in years, but let's start off with a couple Tales from College - and I went to a college where tales of the #MeToo sort abounded, to be certain. Hell, the earful my parents got the night before my graduation is enough to speak to the sexual entitlement of drunken frat boys.
But.
Then there was my "brother".
He and I became friends early out of the gate, freshman year (1986/87). It is not unlikely he had a bit of a crush on me, at least at some point, but he never acted upon it. Literally never - and we spent a lot of time together, at all hours and at that age when Not Acting On Things was more an anomaly than an expectation.
Then there was M.
I worked in the scene shop, and he was an associate in the drama department, I think 25 years old or so and himself scarcely past the college years (and so forth). He was wonderfully moody and intellectual, scathingly funny, and pretty well fixed up with all the things I still dig in a guy: dark, curly hair, sardonic wit, and a level of subcultural nerdliness/marginality.
I spent a lot of hours alone in the shop with M, and (as faulty memory implies) probably not without hopes that something drastically inappropriate might occur with him. Memory of any specific ideas I had about him are not clear, but I do have recollection of one particular day, when Beloved Ex and I were on the outs (I met BEx sophomore year, but worked in the scene shop for several; so by this point, I would have known M for a good year and a half - taking a class with him, working with him, making sure of course to display my intellectual cred at every opportunity). We talked a long time, and he let me go on a bit about whatever bothered me - maybe "boys" as a general caste, maybe just BEx specifically. I am fairly certain I made my vulnerability and availability for "reassurance" pretty plain.
And M didn't do a damn thing about it.
Now. Let it not be said I think I was some irresistible thing, so to resist me must be a feather in any man's cap. But I was fairly cute, making myself clear, and oh about twenty to, by then, his maybe 26 or 27. It wasn't exactly out of the question.
But M not only cared about the preservation of his job: essentially, he just was not that guy. He wasn't the guy who would mess with a student, even one he knew well, even one who wasn't "out of the question" - in circumstances other than the situation we actually did share.
Plus, I believe he had a girlfriend.
So, not only is it a dead-cert FACT that some men don't infringe upon women who might even be up for some level of infringement, but some men don't mess around on their girlfriends to do it. This is unquestionable.
There are men who do not use power - authoritarian, financial, or physical - to extort or demean a woman. There are men for whom that could never be sex (etc.) at all.
Okay, THIS THIS THIS THIS SO VERY THIS, when it comes to complaining that Al Franken is out but the GOP tolerates worse abusive and demeaning behavior than his. "There is a difference between the actions of Harvey Weinstein (accused of rape) and Franken (accused of forced kissing and groping women). But that doesn’t mean women should have to choose between the two. The ideal is none of the above." (Emphasis added.)
And here we are with one of those sites I always depend upon ("Too much?") for Collections posts, with a great pairing:
You may have heard of the partially mummified baby, but The History Blog, as they always do, has excellent background of its own along with their usual collection - ahem - of links. Make with the clicky for the clicks beyond on this story! Also: yay, science!
THB link #2 *may* not be for the squeamish - note, the words "gnaw" and "bones" occur togehter in an analysis of burial practices. But, for my gravedigging money (there's no research like grave goods!), funerary finds are the richest finds of all. So make with the clicky here, if you can stand the phrase "four pelvises on a stick" in service of a REALLY interesting look at Celtic warfare and military burial.
I have decided to leave this series of posts, intentionally, in a very draft form. This owes to the upheaval of the past month of my personal life, yes ... but it also feels fitting, as the entire point of this discussion of drag is about construction and challenging assumptions. To smooth it all into coherent, long prose might obscure the various parts, and thoughts, I have put into this, and they perhaps should stand out starkly. In honesty, much of what I say is just intros to the links embedded. And so, here is this series. Unfinished. Challenging - to me, in one sense, and to the audience in another. Seems right ...
Stories - both the wit onstage, and the realities of the performers: we all know these glorious manifestations were born of pain. Even the most loved and supported queens, who have enjoyed acceptance from their friends and/or families (genetic or adopted, by whatever means) performing right now are up against the WORLD of those who do not. And acceptance by those nearest and dearest is hardly guaranteed. Probably not a queen standing has not endured humiliation, doubts cast upon them, and discrimination - never even to mention the scrutiny of strangers who consider they have a right to particular knowledge of the most intimate aspects of their lives and even bodies. And yet, these people devote themselves to the art and entertainment they provide. This is not a minor risk ... even as many queens say their drag is their armor, the main reason it can be such is that they are forced to *need* armor at all ...
Drag Race capitalizes on turning self-expression into a competition - and then overturns all narratives about "winning" as Miss Congeniality and runners-up become superstars on tides of fan support ... or queens walk off voluntarily, messianic (no, seriously) figures simultaneously rejecting the crown and glorifying it, simultaneously gaming and messy, and - well - Miss Congeniality incarnate. The show has exemplified reality television's outcomes, where "winning" ends up meaningless - and might almost ruin the game, for some.
We all contain multitudes. Some of us may be less aware of that most of the time, and some may play it up more consciously, but few of us are glam queens 100% of the time any more than we're litter-cleaning schlubs 100% of the time.
One of the major focal points of drag is the synthetic ideals we've applied to the idea of "femininity" - and thereby, obliquely, pointing to the synthetic nature of the masculine, and of binary sexuality and humanity. Drag queens rarely dress like (everyday, cis) women. I am in lug-heeled boots, jeans, and a chunky sweater as I write this - and, on average, a drag queen is not to be caught dead in the attire that outfits most "women" throughout our lives. A queen is OTT, pointed (ahem), fabulous. If a drag queen is a showgirl, the point is the showing-girliness. If the spotlight is on, it's not going to shine without some glitter.
This series of posts has discussed the depths of social, cultural, *human* behavior in a lot of depth, and I've linked the dickens out of things which point to the fact that "human" does not strictly mean man-woman/nuclear family/hetero/binary/cis etc.
If "we" are hundreds of thousands of years old, and even before anatomically modern humanity we engaged in recognizeably human society and culture, how is it even possible to presume what any one of us thinks we know is any form of bedrock truth? If we were built to be, and survive only because we are, flexible and adaptable, why are there people who think their is safety lies in rigidity, in immutable definition and narrow parameters?
Why are people afraid of drag queens?
As natural as it is to be adaptable, it is also natural and human to harbor fear - and the original interpersonal fear, the greatest fear outside of fire and flood and hungry, toothy predators: is The Other. The person we do not know.
The person we do not understand.
As human as it is to self-decorate and put on uncomfortable shoes or shocking color: it is just as human to fear drawing attention, to fear those who brave it, and to fear behavior we cannot understand because we cannot bring ourselves to it at all.
Human innovation, our ingenuity itself, is born of fear and need. The need to eat and self-protect created community and the cultures we built to sustain the human herds within which we found it safest to function.
I have decided to leave this series of posts, intentionally, in a very draft form. This owes to the upheaval of the past month of my personal life, yes ... but it also feels fitting, as the entire point of this discussion of drag is about construction and challenging assumptions. To smooth it all into coherent, long prose might obscure the various parts, and thoughts, I have put into this, and they perhaps should stand out starkly. In honesty, much of what I say is just intros to the links embedded. And so, here is this series. Unfinished. Challenging - to me, in one sense, and to the audience in another. Seems right ...
We're all born naked, and the rest is drag.
--RuPaul Charles
CODED presentation and what that means: masculine marketing - cuck - shaming - feminized restriction
"Feminine" and "masculine" codes and symbology are taught and learned, not genetically determined.
HOW "natural" is binary sexuality ... thirdgender (only three?) ... why do we punish gender variance and respond to it so viscerally? Why do people care how someone else loves, or uses their body? Why are other bodies' behaviors important to our minds? Why do we refer to nonbinary pronouns, people, behavior as gender TRANSGRESSIVE?
Clearly, the underlying conceptualization of gender implied by these taxonomies is at variance with the idea that physical sex is fixed, marked by genitalia, and binary.
It's hard not to assume, growing up with a given set of assumptions, that these reflect the way the world "is" in some immutable way. But each of us, throughout the millennia of history and prehistory, grew up in a finite time and place - and the slightest observance of the world beyond our lives reveals that even in one given time there is a multiplicity of assumptions, even closer than we often like to imagine. Multiply this multiplicity across time and distance, and the variety of human culture is impossible not to acknowledge. Only the presumption of rock-solid correctness is bewildering, when you really look at humanity.
And so the challenge to heteronormative sexuality and gender should hardly be as surprising as it seems to be, for many people. But our emotional attachment to what we think we know means we cling to it with the strength of fear, or morality; all the things that reassure us deep inside.
My mom, who knows I love drag, and who even helped me to shop for the baby drag queen I used to sell to on eBay a few years back, still recoils at the whole thing. She's of a certain age and background, she's Southern Baptist, she's conservative. She never has had the vitriol for gay men so many like her harbor, but she does prefer not to think about it. Just recently, she was talking about watching Project Runway, and a man was in heels but his outfit was more athletic than stereotypically feminine. I told her, drag these days is less and less about synthesizing the "feminine" than it is about questioning what is stereotypically masculine. Heels aren't meant to evoke a paradigmatic "woman" - they are just to certain men's taste, or they are a question mark of a kind. Challenge.
Drag is no longer all about "female impersonation" if it ever was. Given the recency and locality of strictly heterosexual and binary sexuality and gender notions - given cultures who accept "third" genders and familial relations based on paradigms other than the modern Western nuclear family - heck, even given just the two-generation definition we've narrowed that down to, where even a household of three generations, or offspring living with parents past certain threshholds of adulthood, are looked askance, the het/cis/binary is a correspondingly narrowed view of roles. At a point where many are questioning the validity of 4-person nuclear households, questioning het/cis/binary roles is as natural as living outside them is.
Going along with all this fee-lossy-fizing is the point that "drag" as such is not even strictly a description of a specific form of entertainment. Not all drag is a staged performance. Like any persona in anyone's day-to-day life, drag is for many just their life - see the quote at the top of this post. Just as not all drag queens are cis or gay men, not all drag takes place on a stage, and not all drag is specifically a portrayal of women.
Fat, Femme, and Asian Feminizing and exoticizing race ... glorification and elevation of the marginalized - even within subcultural/marginalized terms.
History of female impersonation, passing,
We know that Joane of Arc didn't go in for dresses, but we also know that her practical, spiritual, individual mode of dress and behavior met not only her needs but answered to something much larger than one young woman. It still answers, for many, even centuries after the wars she fought have been, as far as this can be said, resolved. What she was and what she did continues to be meaningful even though she, her armies, and her Dauphin, are all dust. Her transgressions speak to us.
There have always been as many practical reasons to blur, to cross, or to sneak behind constructed boundaries as there are deep-seated objections to conformity.
Dunking doughnuts outside the 54th floor, Louis and Mrs. Armstrong at the Sphinx, a woman neck-deep in grapes, Malyshka the Russian Space Dog of Sputnik II ... oh and so indescribably MUCH more. Photos from The Atlantic's amazing archive.
In fuzzy-history-we-think-we-know: did you realize that the Equal Rights Amendment passed forty-six years ago, almost to the month? But it has never been ratified. Yes, ladies - and women too - there is still a deficit of two states' ayes to enforce what even CONGRESS was able to say yes to, way on back in 1972. More than a quarter of states in the theoretically United States still don't care to accept the amendment, two generations on. I am not proud to note my home state remains a holdout.
Tom Williams has a good post, reviewing New Grub Street by George Gissing. As interesting as the work looks, one of Tom's points is meta - that the work contains the flaws it rails against. He also points out that the complaints of the fictional author in New Grub Street are still with us today. To take this one more layer of meta, this morning before I saw his post, I happened to get up and turn on The Loves of Edgar Allen Poe as my background to waking up and getting ready. I was fascinated by its repeated commentary on a writer's raw deal in publishing, out of the Poe character's mouth, and got curious about the world of publishing circa, say 1941 or 1942 (the movie came out in 1942). Little is to be found about Brian Foy, who wrote the screenplay, in a cursory search, but he seems to have started life as a child entertainer before becoming a writer - easy to imagine he was exploited in more than one way in his given professions. I leave the link to Tom's post with only the observation that there is either hope or despair in knowing that it's never been easy in publishing.
Tom has another post of interest - short, beautiful, and poignant - about the Palace of Peace, the elite, and rumors of war. Sigh.
Just two links today, unless you count the recursive looks back upon my own musings.
For them/by them - a remarkable collection of perspectives not just on the period of sexual harassment history that began in Autumn of 2017 (and more), but on the dominant narratives and who is STILL left out of those narratives. The graphics are exceptional, and the writing ... well. Exemplary.
The very fact that such a model exists offers tacit permission for him to treat his wants as valid. ... I wish that he, as the adult in the room, had looked past his emotions to consider what would have been best for me ...
Also: "I’m disappointed that the story has remained focused so squarely on the villainous doings of the metropolitan elites." Yep. It's not just the "powerful" (rich) men, and it's not just white women in subjective but nonetheless injurious situations.
There is a constructive breadth, at that first link, of ages and understandings of (cis and binary) gender dynamics, and some of what is said I question. But it is best to understand than to refuse to know that others think things we do not.
“I remember when you told me I made this one girl feel uncomfortable because she had to say no twice, and I never forgot that.”
Some of what is said, in the last quarter or so of this anthology of perspectives - those things said by men, and about their looks - are ... well. Striking.
Where is the second link, you ask? Right here - and here is why:
While women aren’t confusing egregious incidents with less obviously offensive ones, the small ones matter, too. And not talking about them is the easiest way to ensure they go on and on, ad infinitum.
(T)heir guy isn’t well known enough, that the stories are now so plentiful that offenders must meet a certain bar of notoriety, or power, or villainy, before they’re considered newsworthy.
Here is the thing about this lengthy piece, about what we "all" have to reckon for: I've reckoned before. When I worked at The Federal Reserve, and a contractor who knew I worked till 5:30 p.m. himself stayed late one dark evening, and held out to me on a napkin a cherry stem, tied in a little knot, and said only "No hands" ... I was revolted. The next morning, first thing, I spoke with a manager - not mine, and a woman at that. And she essentially dismissed me as a hysteric. I chose to put the issue to bed, moving forward, concerning myself only with my future and my feelings.
Much later, when I saw from a strong physical reaction to him, by a woman with less power than I, it was clear to me that I was not the only person he had "made uncomfortable" (see also: repulsively harassed). I thought about the issue again, and discussed it with one or two trusted people.
Later still, when The Stem decided to apply for a permanent position, I instantly - I mean, within five minutes - went into my boss's office and phoned him while he was travelling. HE took me deadly seriously, and HR had an executive meeting with me almost immediately.
I thought about this guy's kid. Yep. But I also thought of that woman I had seen squirm. The Stem took his risks, knowing he had a kid. He behaved execrably, knowing he had a kid. Oblivious as he was socially (this is a man who discussed with me on scant acquaintance the extreme gruesomeness of his ex-wife's labor in bearing said son; he was ALL kinds of awkward, this guy). If, in his book, the "no hands" approach seemed even POSSIBLY valid - never mind potentially impressive - he needs a new book, and I'm not responsible for reading the text he was working from. Nor am I responsible for his son.
I was, in my knowledge, responsible for that woman I had done nothing to help. I was, too, responsible for the reputational risk to my own employer, who would have been exposed to legal risk by allowing a serial harasser on board. My employer: who kept me in mortgage payments, and that woman's family as well.
The woman manager, who dismissed my concerns? She didn't dismiss me because she was covering for a valued or powerful colleague, she shut me down for thinking what he'd done was an issue at all. His power, in the moment he flummoxed my pungent personality to the extent of an awkward joke and sheer befuddlement, was transient. And, in the end, mine was greater: my report had more power than his resume.
I have often thought about the background and experience that leads to attitudes like that manager's, though. These days, I imagine she's scoffing a great deal about all the precious little daisies enduring Weinstein's casting couch, so-called "consenting" to Louis C. K.'s displays, and on and on and on. Blaming them for being so sensitive. And maybe she has dismissed other women, too. Very possible.
I pity that woman more than myself. But, for her initial reaction to me and my opting for silence, I am GUILTY: about the other woman who worked there, who transferred away from our location I suspect to get away from The Stem. Whose price to pay I do not know, and is among the debts on my own soul. I pity the manager, whom I did not name but did talk about in that meeting with HR. But the other woman lives with me in a much more direct way.
I will leave this post with the following excerpt from the link ...
I struggled a lot internally about whether to name the Harasser at my former job. I decided not to, largely because I understand something about how things have turned out. In a rare outcome, I — along with some of the women he pestered — now have more power than he does. He is, as far as I know, short on work, not in charge of any young women. And so I decided, in consultation with former colleagues, not to identify him.
But here’s a crucial reason he behaved so brazenly and badly for so long: He did not consider that the women he was torturing, much less the young woman who was mutely and nervously watching his performance (that would be me), might one day have greater power than he did. He didn’t consider this because in a basic way, he did not think of us as his equals.
Many men will absorb the lessons of late 2017 to be not about the threat they’ve posed to women but about the threat that women pose to them.
This is a short, but achingly clear essay about the forced intimacy of disability (author's word choice). It's both obvious and something most of us probably never think about. And it's heartbreaking. Go read it - please.
Shrew are you? Super neato-spedito piece about the winter shrinkage of the shrew. Because shrews' heads were not NEARLY small enough. Amusingly written, and may provide some excuses for human seasonal lassitude as well.
Why do men who have never experienced this form of attack get to define what an attack is?
Like great writing? Funny, but honest - the humor that comes not merely from that certain kind of anger that engages us, but also reaches out to consider the anger together? Click here. Yes, it talks about sex. It also talks about things that definitely are not sex.
I have neglected this blog's penchant for fashion, style, costume, and beauty of late, so here is a curious look at (sniff of?) Commes des Garçons' strange brews. Personally, I love sandalwood. But did you know that concrete is absolutely devastating to the environment? Won't buy. Might sniff ... if I ever actually go to a department store.
Question for my writer pals, Reiders, readers, and anyone generally a nerd for a word: HOW COME NONE OF YOU EVER TOLD ME ABOUT THE OED BLOG??? Because I am mad at each and every one of you. Y'all going to make me caterwaul, I'm all tears and flapdoodle I never saw this site before. Another sample: litbait. Hee.
The (Not) Just No Stories ... Casey Karp tells us about yet more ways for The Internet of Things not just to run, but to ruin, our lives. Not scary at all!
Reider reading! I am shamefully late to getting to it, so probably anyone here who frequents the comments at Janet Reid's blog has read this already, but Jen Donohue was published recently, and her short story is very good. Hop on over to Syntax and Salt, sink into it slowly, and enjoy.
Can we please dispense with the precious little phrase "open secret" now? In the past three weeks alone, we've encountered an open secret in Hollywood - oh, and in politics - now it's academia - and media-curated regions of the world or remoter reaches of the United States - and it's been discussed about Silicon Valley for many years, at this point. "Casting couch" is a phrase probably nearly as old as the phenomenon is, which may be about a century at this point (if you only count *film*). THIS IS OUR CULTURE. Not some isolated little "secret" - open or otherwise - affecting isolated little islands of people other than ourselves. This is the world. Women have never not-known this. So who thinks this is any sort of a secret? Oh yeah. All those men who're so surprised that rape and sexual extortion/blackmail/revenge is a thing. And it's not a secret, even from them. They've just enjoyed the privilege of obliviousness.
The Weinstein (etc.etc.etc.) scandal in Hollywood might seem to beg comment from a blogger such as myself, but the simple fact is my main reaction to the whole thing was, for a good while, mere exhaustion. The fact that MEN are surprised and offended ... I don't know. Maybe it's nice. But there isn't a woman I know who's taken aback at the information unearthed so far. No, not even the scope.
Remember, kids: we just watched a proudly bragging sexual predator take the White House. Oh yeah, and the supposed fall of Bill Cosby, though that story seems to have been forgotten ("Thanks again, Trump's distracting Tweets!") You think we are shocked about a movie mogul?
Watching the astonishment of *men*, who rather loudly insist upon swearing they had NO IDEA about all this, might be almost be amusing for some, but - again - merely a bit tiring for me. Talk about bad acting: "gents", you are either criminally incompetent, intellectually compromised, or lying your asses off. (Same goes for women.)
So, why am I bringing it up at all?
The drumbeat right now is all about men in power taking advantage of women who cannot reasonably consent, given that consent requires autonomy, and so few have it in the situations encountered.
That is an important dynamic to consider, it's important to fight.
But I know this: SEXUAL HARASSMENT IS NOT METED OUT ONLY BY THE ECONOMICALLY POWERFUL.
For men power comes in other forms, and other magnitudes, than Trump or Weinstein or congressmen or kings.
Sexual harassment comes from the contractor at work, whose only power lies in the fact of his maleness and his speaking up after-hours in a deserted office. Sexual harassment comes from an awful lot of guys at work, in fact - just everyday guys in cube farms - the guy leaving anonymous notes which are TERRIFYING evidence of being covertly *watched* by unknown eyes, the guy cornering a woman in the break room. It comes on the street. It lives in every possible environment.
It could by ANY guy. That's what's got me mad: that in sanctioning this "Hollywood is the dangerous place" "Powerful men are the ones to watch out for" groundswell, we are safely defining boundaries around predators, pointing to the most unusual varieties as if they encompassed all the perniciousness women face every day. And thereby nullifying the fact that indeed it IS every day. Everywhere. Not just these rich monsters. NOT just desperate actresses.
It is pissing me off that the sudden vogue for pearl-clutching focuses so narrowly, so significantly, on plutocrats alone.
Not all power comes in the form of famous men using women who think they need these men in order to advance in an industry - or politics. These situations are not limited to the casting couch, or to some town or business the majority of people aren't in.
And not all blame belongs to these wealthy ... "exceptional" ... men.
#NotAllMen? Sure. Certainly not anyone I'd even call a "man".
But more than just a few, kids. And not just the one percent. Not by a long damned shot.
(W)ealthy people manage their discomfort with inequality, which in turn makes that inequality impossible to talk honestly about — or to change.
Ooohh, this is interesting. When wealth is treated like dirty laundry - the elite distancing themselves from being elite. I am reminded of the little old lady guest star on Taxi, who expressed that she was "filthy comfortable." A well-written and considered piece on making class divides invisible. (Interesting too is the point that the women interviewed for this piece appear almost afraid of husbands finding out what they disclosed, even anonymously. "He would kill me.")
(T)he wholesale adoption of garbage disposers in all five boroughs could, in theory, significantly reduce waste, cut costs, and offer the city a highly efficient, alternative renewable energy source.
... and they weren't even LEGAL there until the nineties!
Am I the only dork who finds the environmental science of garbage disposals genuinely interesting? Probably not, as this is an article about it. The sheer volume of waste we produce - NYC's stats are startling indeed, not least in the financials - is stunning, and yet we really do not think about it much. Even as a single-person household, I feel like my volume of refuse is small, even in the recycling bin - but the proportion of it that is food IS terribly high. This owes to the fact that when I need to stop eating something, I do better to dispose of it than to save it for later, because later is all too often sooner than it should be. Oh the twisted psychology of American weight and trash ...
Let's not even ask where the bubble in the wallpaper might be. (Not in China, though the water-weight research there might be instructive for us, even though the context was the filling of a dam and not a massive storm.)
What can we learn from a refrigerator light bulb thirteen billion miles from Earth? Find out now, Voyager.
Women clad mostly in soft towels, softly filtered. Women smiling at salads. Stock photography: you've come a long way, baby. NYT has an interesting, inspiringly hopeful, look at this year's trend. The bits about babies and how images are used/by whom are not exactly progressive, but at least it's not all pearly-lighted, calm, blank naked shots anymore.
