Archive for the 'Books' Category

Conferences and a call for support for South End Press

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 16, 2008
in Books
. 1 Comment

Things worth announcing:

The Radical Women Conference in San Francisco, October 3-6.

Animal Rights 2008 National Conference in Washington D.C., August 14-18, 2008.

Conference on Gender and Missions in Toronto, sponsored by Christians for Biblical Equality, this coming weekend.

National Conference on Men and Masculinity #33 in Salt Lake City, August 21-23, 2008.

I wish I could be at all four, frankly. I don’t know many folks who would feel comfortable at all four, mind you. But it would make me happy if I could mix and mingle with the good people at each of these important events. Alas, I have other commitments for each of these weekends. But if you can, go.

And please support South End Press. One of the great feminist publishing houses, South End (like Seal, another favorite) is an indispensable home for alternative voices. I’ll be using one book from South End in my women’s studies class this fall, but given the current publishing market, it’s not clear how long Southend can survive. (H/T: Miriam at Feministing.) Today, I joined the Community Supported Publishing Club at South End, and invite you to consider doing so as well. And you get books!

Loving the whole earth, loving the single place: a long response to Gregory Rodriguez, quoting Abbey and Hauerwas

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 27, 2008
in Books, Christianity, Environmentalism, Ethnicity, Globalism and Traveling
. 5 Comments

I normally like the perspective that L.A. Times’ columnist Gregory Rodriguez takes. But he wrote an op-ed eleven days ago that really irked me: Rootless to a Fault. Here’s a portion of it:

Here in the U.S., highly skilled workers and wealthy entrepreneurs from around the globe contribute mightily to this nation’s productivity and creativity. Their presence in our cities, and ours in theirs, has fostered a greater appreciation of global cultural diversity. It has spawned a vibrant cosmopolitanism that broadens our collective concern for people who live beyond our borders.

But this cosmopolitanism is not without its dark side. Increasingly, many of our big cities’ creative elites — both native and foreign-born — see themselves as citizens of the world. Our intellectuals are exploring the declining significance of place in the new globalized world order. And this brave new world cries out for an answer to the question: Does a person who swears loyalty to all cities and nations have any loyalties at all? I’ve always been struck by the fact that the same people who rightly criticize multinational corporations for having no sense of responsibility to place never seem to express the same concern about the equally “unplaced” creative elite.

A few years ago, I was at a fancy dinner party and found myself the only one at the table who held only one passport.

Rodriguez goes on to make a jarringly wrong premise: those who see themselves as “citizens of the world” are somehow dramatically less engaged in civic activity than those whose horizons are smaller and whose loyalties more narrowly defined. He opines:

Without denying the benefits of globalization, we should remember the beauty and strength of parochialism.

It’s all well and good to love the world, but real social solidarity is generally found on a smaller scale. And it’s not just the unskilled immigrants we should be concerned about. We need to find ways to encourage the highly skilled ones to form a sense of attachment and commitment to their new homes. On top of that, we natives must remember that there is no honor in escaping engagement by becoming a citizen of the world.

First off — and I could be wrong — I smell a tiny whiff in Rodriguez’s piece of an old anti-Semitic canard: the notion that the “wandering Jew”, cosmopolitan to a fault, undermines the stability of whatever society in which he finds himself, because his loyalties are eternally elsewhere. Though that is surely not Rodriguez’s intent, there’s no denying that jeremiads against “jet-setting elitists” who have no commitment to place are not new, and that in the past, many of those attacks have been aimed quite explicitly at Jews. Gregory ought to have known that.

But what I resent about the piece is the notion that loyalty to the world and all of its creatures is somehow incompatible with deep concern for the well-being of particular places. Rodriguez posits what is frankly a monstrously false dichotomy: parochial and engaged or cosmopolitan and unconcerned. Indeed, I assure Greg that there are those among his readers who are devoted to Los Angeles and its well-being without feeling any need to elevate the needs of L.A. above those of the entire planet!

I am a dual citizen, holding UK and US citizenship. My brother, his wife, and children hold a serious array of passports: Mexican, Austrian, British, and American. I have many friends who also have two nationalities, and I have a few acquaintances who have three. And no, we are not all part of some transnational global elite. I’ll be waiting a long time for my invite to rub elbows with the super-rich at the Davos Economic Forum. Of course, my dual citizenship is not without significance to me: it not only gives me and my family options about where to work and live, it reminds me that I do indeed have multiple loyalties and multiple commitments. But my devotion to any one place is not less because of a devotion to many. I have been fortunate to have been able to see much of the world, and am fortunate to have friends and family scattered across many continents. But that sense of belonging to the globe rather than to a country doesn’t mean I am any less passionately devoted to the well-being of Pasadena, or to my students, many of whom have never been on an airplane much less outside of the Western Hemisphere. Continue reading ‘Loving the whole earth, loving the single place: a long response to Gregory Rodriguez, quoting Abbey and Hauerwas’

Knees, feminism, and young warriors: the relief of Michael Sokolove’s new book

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 3, 2008
in Athletics and Fitness, Books, Sports and Youth
. 2 Comments

Back on May 8, I wrote about The Uneven Playing Field, a long article by Michael Sokolove that appeared in the New York Times magazine. The piece was excerpted from his then-forthcoming book, Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women’s Sports. The book has been published; my copy came last week and I finished it this morning, just moments ago.

I was anxious to read the book, particularly because I was more than a bit troubled by the title. Historically, when a man talks about the need to “protect our daughters”, you know trouble’s coming. “We’ve got to protect our daughters from the lesbian menace, boys!” “We’ve got to protect our daughters from abortion-promoting, Wicca practicing, bra-less, unshaven, radical feminists!” Though I know some paternalistic language creeps into my own writing, I do make a conscious effort to avoid obvious tropes like the need to “protect daughters”, recognizing that very phrase has been associated with everything from homophobia to the lynching of young black men. One wishes Sokolove had chosen a different subtitle for what ends up being a terrific, pro-feminist book. (I suspect, but have no evidence, that it was his publishing house who came up with the “protecting our daughters” line as a marketing ploy. Nothing sells like anxiety, after all.)

I love women’s sports. I’m married to a former high school soccer star who, like many of the women profiled in Sokolove’s book, suffered a career-ending knee injury. In my wife’s case, that knee injury cost her what had been the promise of a division-one scholarship. I’m particularly passionate about soccer — for its purity, its deceptive simplicity, its abhorrence of timeouts, and its endless capacity to surprise. Sokolove’s book is mainly about soccer, the sport that more American girls play than any other, and about the epidemic of knee injuries that has brought so much pain and devastation.

In my May 8 post and the Times excerpt, you can read about some of the research that explores both why young women suffer more frequent catastrophic knee injuries than men, as well as about the many proposed solutions to the problem. I’m happy to say, after reading the book cover-to-cover, that Sokolove repudiates the idea that girls are less interested in or less able to play sports than boys. The troglodytes seeking to repeal Title IX will find no comfort within the pages of “Warrior Girls.” Sokolove, whose previous books have all been about male athletes, including a much-admired sociological study of baseball and young black men, writes as someone passionately committed to athletic competition — but even more passionately committed to the well-being of the athletes themselves. Continue reading ‘Knees, feminism, and young warriors: the relief of Michael Sokolove’s new book’

Flying with Senator Scott, and a call for stories about the Pill

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 30, 2008
in Birth control and contraception, Books and Traveling
. 0 Comments

I’m home from a very quick trip up to Yuba City for our niece’s graduation last night. On the flight down from Sacramento to Burbank this morning, I got a chance to chat with the former Pasadena City College president, Jack Scott. Jack’s now a state senator and soon to be the chancellor of the California community college system; a fellow historian, he was very kind to me when I was first hired. I worked on his 1996 and 1998 assembly campaigns, and have always admired him for the decent, thoughtful way in which he blends his passionate faith (he’s an ordained Baptist minister) with strong progressive politics. When you fly on a Friday between Sacramento and Burbank, you’re guaranteed to have at least one state legislator on board; I’m glad that today it was my own state senator and former campus president.

But the point of this post is to pass along an announcement, sent to me by Courtney Martin.

Elaine May, who teaches history at Minnesota, is writing a book about the Pill. Here’s the announcement she sends out:

Dear Friends (and friends of friends…),

The Pill is often considered one of the most important innovations of the twentieth century. As I investigate this claim for a new book—set for release on the 50th anniversary of the Pill’s FDA approval (Basic Books, 2010)—I’m looking to include the voices and stories of real people. I hope yours will be one of them. I’m eager to hear from men as well as women, of all ages and backgrounds.

· Have you or any of your partners taken the Pill? Why or why not? How did it work for you—physically, emotionally, and ethically? How has it compared with other contraceptive methods you or your partners have used?

· What has been the impact of the Pill on your sex life, relationships, political or social attitudes, and beliefs about the medical or pharmaceutical establishments?

· Do you have opinions about public policies related to access, availability, approval or limitations on the development and distribution of the Pill and related contraceptive products (the patch, the “morning after pill,” long-term injections, etc.).

· Anything else you think I should know?

Send me your most richly detailed answers to any and all of these questions (and don’t forget to include your age, gender, where you live, occupation, ethnic/religious/racial background, sexual orientation, marital status, political party affiliation, or any other biographical info you think is important). If you would like to participate in my study but would prefer to respond to a questionnaire, please let me know and I will happily send you one.
I’m interested in hearing from men and women who have used the Pill and those who have not, those who used it briefly or a long time ago, or who use it now. I am also eager to hear from people who work in fields that relate to the use and availability of the Pill (such as medicine, public health, social work, education, etc.). You will remain anonymous. I will use your contact information only to respond to you directly and to let you know when the book will be available for purchase (at a discount to contributors!).

And just one more thing. I not only want to hear your voice, but the voices of those you love, teach, preach to, learn from, and work with. Please pass this request on! The more responses I receive, and the greater the diversity of respondents, the more the book will reflect the wide range of experiences and attitudes that have shaped the Pill’s history over the last half century.

I hope to hear from you. Please write to me at elainetylermay@gmail.com.

I’ll be blogging my own answers soon enough.

Five books meme

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 29, 2008
in Blogging and Books
. 8 Comments

I’ve got some serious posts in the mental hopper, but they will have to wait. I’ve got two lectures this morning, followed by a flight up to Northern California; my wife’s niece is graduating from high school up in Sutter County this afternoon, so we’re on the road yet again. (The current plan, however, is to spend every single night of the month of June in the same bed — something that by my calculation, I haven’t done since last October.)

So today’s post is a meme: name five works of fiction (no, Shakespeare doesn’t count, nor does the Bible for those of you who call it “fiction”) that have changed you and how you see the world. What five novels, plays, or short stories (no films, no poetry) have impacted your world view, perhaps altering how you live and how you think? Here are mine, in no particular order:

1. Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee. I read this novel in 2000, some two years after getting sober and forswearing, at last, my habit of seducing students. There are few characters in literature with whom I identified more than the narcissistic, self-destructive middle-aged protagonist of Coetzee’s Nobel prize-securing masterwork. And as a story about what I didn’t want to become, but might, and as a story about the necessity of humiliation before redemption, it was immensely impacting. I still re-read it every year. Continue reading ‘Five books meme’

GLBTQ fall syllabus reading list

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 21, 2008
in Books and GLBTQ
. 0 Comments

The books I’ll be using this fall in my Gay and Lesbian American History class:

Transgender History, Susan Stryker

Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement, Marcia Gallo

A Desired Past: A Short History of Same-Sex Love in America, Leila Rupp

The Invention of Heterosexuality, Jonathan Katz

And lots and lots of suggested, optional readings.

Girl-coddling feminists peeing in the pool of male privilege chased all the boys away: the nonsense of Kathleen Parker

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 21, 2008
in Books and Men and Masculinity
. 50 Comments

My former student Dolly sends me a link to this short Marie-Claire piece by Kathleen Parker, author of the forthcoming Save the Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care.

It’s hard to tell how Parker’s new book will differ from the standard anti-feminist bromides of everyone from Warren Farrell to Christina Hoff Sommers (two writers whose livelihood seems tied to propagating the notion that our country is somehow at war with men and boys). Then again, misogyny sells — especially, as Sommers and the likes of Ann Coulter have shown, it is being sold by a woman.

In the Marie-Claire piece, Parker writes:

“Boys hear how awful they are day in and day out,” she says. “We seem to understand that girls need high self-esteem to perform in school and society, but we pretend that boys don’t.” Teachers need to dial back their girl-coddling, she says, and society needs to better balance boys’ needs with girls’.

Say what? First off, the “boys are in trouble” industry is a decade old, Kathleen; you’re only the 435th person to get a book deal making the case that we’re overlooking our sons. More to the point, what evidence is there that we’re “coddling” girls? Jeepers, the right-wing can’t make up it’s mind! Half the time they’re whining that we are coddling girls, and the next minute they’re complaining that we push girls and women too hard to be “unnaturally” competitive (witness the recent hysteria about knee injuries for female athletes). In my experience as a youth leader and college professor, I see a lot of young women who are exhausted and anxious and stressed. They’re hardly being coddled; it’s their brothers, too often addicted to the unholy trifecta of pot, porn, and video games, who are being given a free pass by parents and teachers.

Parker continues:

IT’S RAINING ON MEN:

30 to 40% of all American children sleep in a home separate from their fathers.

60% of bachelor’s degrees awarded in this country in 2012 will go to women.

The fact that a great many American men have abandoned their children out of an unwillingness to be burdened with responsibility is, apparently, the fault of the women with whom they conceived the child. Or better yet, it’s the fault of feminism, for daring to suggest that real love between men and women required equality and inter-dependence rather than subjection and need.

As for the 60% of bachelor’s degrees going to women, that’s hardly feminism’s fault. Think about it: young men are much more likely to be locked up in prison or in the military than their sisters, thus reducing the number of males available for college. Blame the war or the prison-industrial complex; blame video games and pot and porn; blame an absence of strong male role models, but for the love of Pete, stop blaming girls and women for their brothers’ collective lack of success.

If there is a “boy crisis”, its roots lie in the decision of a generation of older men to walk away from their responsibility to care for, inspire, and mentor. These men were not pushed away by women, not forced away by the courts, they left of their own free will, abandoning their sons. We are reaping that consequence now. Parker misdiagnoses the cause of the male malaise, and her remedy is radically, disastrously wrong.

Of sluts and studs, passion and bitterness: a short review of Jessica Valenti’s new book

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 13, 2008
in Books and Feminism
. 59 Comments

Jessica Valenti’s second book is out: He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know. Much like her first book, the much-celebrated Full Frontal Feminism, He’s a Stud is deceptively light and quick reading. Jessica’s easy, colloqial style disguises some sharp and much-welcome social analysis of some 50 famously frustrating double standards.

Talk to any group of young women for a while, and you’ll hear laments about the various double standards that privilege men and punish women. Besides the obvious sexual double standard that gives Valenti’s book its title, separate and cruel paradigms about everything from body size to singleness abound, with one unifying characteristic: men, in virtually all respects, have it easier.

One of my least favorite double standards is one I’ve seen often in the vegan and animal rights world, what Valenti labels “He’s an Activist, She’s a Pain in the Ass”. She writes:

While men who work for change are revered and admired, women who do the same are often scoffed at, dismissed, or outright hated.

This is a theme that Jessica returns to several times; while men are allowed both a vibrant sexuality and the privilege of righteous anger, women are regularly excoriated both for their libidinousness and for “shrill”, “shrewish” activism. Heck, I run into this double standard all the time as a man teaching women’s studies. Time and again, I hear from my students that they appreciate both my passion and my “objectivity”. A typical evaluation I will receive: “I like taking women’s studies from a man because I think men are more fair than women.” Continue reading ‘Of sluts and studs, passion and bitterness: a short review of Jessica Valenti’s new book’

“Seal Press Saved My Life”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 30, 2008
in Books
. 1 Comment

Victoria Marinelli has a powerful post up this morning in defense of Seal Press. An excerpt:

Part of why I will always support Seal Press is because of a volume you published when, I am certain, no one else was brave enough to: Kerry Lobel and the NCADV’s “Naming the Violence: Speaking Out About Lesbian Battering.” (That book saved my life once.)

And now I see you have quite a range of new material, and that you are doing your damnedest to survive as a feminist publisher. I understand you’ve had some travails of late, and I hope they’ve been a learning and growing experience for you. I’ll be cheering you all the way.

Long live Seal Press.

Read the whole thing. I’m using two Seal Press books in my courses this fall.

On Lorna the Jungle Girl and the dark-skinned natives: a reluctant challenge to Amanda Marcotte: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 24, 2008
in Books and Race
. 84 Comments

UPDATED: Both Amanda and Seal Press have issued clear and heartfelt apologies for the images that appeared in It’s a Jungle Out There. The images will not appear in the second edition of the book. I honor the swift and unequivocal response from both Amanda and her publisher, and in light of this necessary and rapid apology, give the book my continued and wholehearted endorsement. I appreciate in particular that Amanda and Seal both take full responsibility for the very unfortunate decision to allow these images into the book, and am particularly heartened that the publishers acknowledge that Amanda herself was in no way involved in the editorial choice to place these comics in the text.

UPDATE TWO: I was wrong. Again. The endorsement of the text stands, but as long as the words on the page are presented next to racist images, I cannot recommend buying or using this book. I enthusiastically support a new edition of the book. Though the apology by Amanda was eloquent, concise, and sincere, it is only a first step to action. And the immediate action that must be taken, and is being taken, is the production of a new edition without these images. In whatever way my endorsement counts, please understand that it is only for that new edition. I do not suggest buying currently available copies from Amazon or another source until that second printing becomes available.

The original post remains:

I’ve got Lucy Kaplansky playing on my Itunes. She’s one of the artists I play when I need calming down.

This is a hard post to write. I’ve been in the forefront of those defending Amanda Marcotte against charges of appropriation and racial insensitivity. One month ago today, I wrote an enthusiastic review of her new book It’s a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments. I stand by the content of the review, which was based entirely on the words contained within the short, readable, accessible and often captivating text. But what I didn’t review, or even analyze in private, were the illustrations from the book.

It’s a Jungle Out There chooses, not surprisingly, a jungle theme for its imagery. Using pictures from the Marvel Comic series “Lorna the Jungle Girl”, the front cover is complemented by perhaps ten illustrations inside the book. Some of them are reproduced here. Marcotte’s theme is that feminists face a misogynist jungle; her blonde Lorna seems — and I say seems, because I don’t know what Amanda’s exact intent was — to be doing battle against those forces. On the cover, Lorna is about to spear a crocodile. But inside, Lorna does battle with dark-skinned natives. In the worst of these, Lorna delivers a mighty kick to a man with black skin and a traditional mask; she does so to rescue an apparently captive white man. Read Ilyka’s post for more.

When this discussion first came up yesterday at Feministe, my first response was to say that the images were surely intended ironically. But upon reflection, and after reading the many responses in that thread, I reconsidered. I don’t question Amanda’s intentions, or those of Seal Press. I don’t for one second believe that Amanda that anyone involved with producing the book made a consciously racist decision. But racism has damn all to do with intention, and a great deal more to do with perception. And it’s hard, very hard, to see these images as anything other than horribly racist. Given the desire to have this book appeal to the widest possible audience, I can’t for the life of me figure out how the potential interpretation of these comic drawings wasn’t taken into account. Continue reading ‘On Lorna the Jungle Girl and the dark-skinned natives: a reluctant challenge to Amanda Marcotte: UPDATED’

“Fun Dads”, “Strict Moms”, the myth of male weakness and female anorexia: some further thoughts on Courtney Martin’s book

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 23, 2008
in Books, Eating disorders, Father and Youth
. 11 Comments

When I was in grad school, I started doing quite a bit of reading about eating disorders. Some of that interest was personal, as I developed (relatively late) a rather serious obsession with food and exercise in college. Some of it was intellectual, as it intersected nicely with my interest in women’s studies. At one point, back in 1992-93, I got involved in an outpatient treatment program for folks with disordered eating at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. It was a mixed-sex group, and I was one of only two guys in a group of about fifteen students who met weekly with a clinician.

I remember that no topic came up as often as did parents. And the clinician, at least, generally asked questions about mothers. Indeed, I heard her once say something like “The first question I ask most women who have eating disorders is: ‘what is your relationship like with your mother’?” Most of the research done on anorexics and bulimics has been done on women; indeed, it’s only been relatively recently that we see a formal acknowledgement that eating disorders are becoming more prevalent among men. And for over a century, the assumption of therapists and doctors has been that a young woman’s disordered eating is almost always tied up in the invariably complex and entangled relationship she has with her mother. As Joan Brumberg illustrates in her essential monograph, Fasting Girls: A History of Anorexia Nervosa, as early as the 1870s doctors suggested that food refusal in middle-class girls was a form of quiet rebellion against the strictures and limitations for women modelled by their mothers.

There’s a lot to be said for that analysis, but it often has the unfortunate tendency to let dads off the hook. In her wonderful Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, Courtney Martin offers a chapter called “The Male Mirror: Her Father’s Eyes”. Some of what she says is new, some of it has been said before, but her analysis of the role of the father-daughter relationship and its role in the development of eating disorders is very good, and it offers a special challenge to those of us eager to help adult men transform the ways in which they relate to young people, particularly their own teenage children. Continue reading ‘“Fun Dads”, “Strict Moms”, the myth of male weakness and female anorexia: some further thoughts on Courtney Martin’s book’

Women’s history syllabus update

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 21, 2008
in Books and Feminist Pedagogy
. 12 Comments

I’ve made some changes to my Fall 2008 women’s history syllabus, dumping the textbook and going entirely with trade paperbacks. Six books total, but with a cost savings to my students of some $30 over this semester, and no increase in the overall number of pages assigned. I’ve taken seriously the charge to be more inclusive in the way in which I teach the intersectionality of race and class with gender history; it’s my hope that this reading list reflects the next step on that road. Implementing these books — particularly Andrea Smith’s Conquest — will be a considerable pedagogical challenge for me, but a necessary one.

First Generations: Women in Colonial America , Carol Berkin (1997)
The Body Project, Joan Brumberg (1997)
A History of U.S. Feminisms, Rory Dicker (2008)
Full Frontal Feminism, Jessica Valenti (2007)
Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide, Andrea Smith (2005)
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (1985)

Three of the six books come from small, independent presses like Southend and Seal. I’m delighted to direct my money — and that of my students — towards publishing houses run by and for feminists.

This updating of the syllabus has been overdue, and I’m excited to see what comes of it. I teach four sections of women’s history a year, with a total of over 200 students; I will share their feedback as it becomes available.

Avoiding the zero-sum game: on feminist publishing, citing, and using Jessica Valenti and Andrea Smith together

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 13, 2008
in Books, Feminist Pedagogy, Race, Teaching and WAM 2008
. 55 Comments

I’m taking a break from packing for our spring break trip to offer a Sunday afternoon post. We’re off tomorrow to the place where ‘Canes roam, where Democratic delegates wait in limbo this spring, and where dear old Gianni Versace breathed his last. It’s a region I love visiting every year, but gosh, I’m always as happy to leave as I am to arrive. It doesn’t help that I love the sun and the sun doesn’t love me. (My friend Joe and I used to run shirtless together; Joe, an ER physician, always called me a “melanoma farm.”) And I’m eager for the warm waters of the Atlantic.

Later today or tonight, I’m going to close comments I have closed comments on this post regarding the Amanda Marcotte, feminists-of-color, plagiarism/appropriation/attribution fight that happened across our corner of the blogosphere this week. I don’t regret having taken the tack I did in the original post, but I do appreciate the many and disparate voices that weighed in here. The general rule that threads rarely stay productive after the 200th comment may not have applied, but better not to push it. Two other threads with good discussions of this issue were at Feministe and Amptoons. I remain convinced of two things: first, that Amanda did nothing to deserve the opprobrium directed her way; two, that the mainstream, predominantly white feminist blogosphere (of which I am most decidedly a part) has more to do in terms of both listening and crediting what we hear.

When we were gathered in Cambridge two weeks ago for the Women, Action, and Media conference, I chose not to go to the panel on women–of-color bloggers. I missed out on the chance to meet the likes of Blackamazon, Brownfemipower, and Sudy. And I’ll be honest: I weighed whether to go up until the last minute. I talked to a few people at WAM whom I trust, and who were familiar with the often bitter and bewildering exchanges I had with many of those same bloggers in last year’s long and exhausting Full Frontal Feminism fiasco. (Do a search in my archives or in the archives of half the feminist blogosphere — first in May, and then around Thanksgiving, things got heated.) These friends told me that while there was some potential for good, it might be best if I didn’t go to the Women of Color panel. That was my gut intuition as well. Perhaps I flatter myself unduly, but I wondered if, in the aftermath of all that had happened, my presence would be a noticeable irritant. It would be hard — given that I was just about the only man over forty at the entire conference, and the only one in a bright pink shirt — for me to be unobtrusive. So I didn’t go. Continue reading ‘Avoiding the zero-sum game: on feminist publishing, citing, and using Jessica Valenti and Andrea Smith together’

Love trumps aesthetics: of books, music, desire, and deal-breakers

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 3, 2008
in Books, Music and Relationships
. 23 Comments

Jill and Amanda both had posts up on Monday about the “Pushkin Problem”: the issue of love, disparate literary taste, and “deal-breakers”. Their posts were inspired by this Sunday Times piece: It’s Not You, It’s Your Books. It begins:

Some years ago, I was awakened early one morning by a phone call from a friend. She had just broken up with a boyfriend she still loved and was desperate to justify her decision. “Can you believe it!” she shouted into the phone. “He hadn’t even heard of Pushkin!”

We’ve all been there. Or some of us have. Anyone who cares about books has at some point confronted the Pushkin problem: when a missed — or misguided — literary reference makes it chillingly clear that a romance is going nowhere fast.

As of this morning, there are 114 comments below Jill’s excellent reflection, and twice that many below Amanda’s. And all of this has me thinking about deal-breakers, both past and present, when it came to dating or marriage.

I didn’t have my first real girlfriend until I was 17 and a senior in high school. Before that, I spent a great deal of time talking with my friends — and fantasizing to myself — about what the “ideal girl” for me would be like. I’m not talking about physical attributes, though that sort of fantasizing was not absent from my reveries. I’m talking about taste. Like so many teenagers, I cared a great deal about books and music. It was the early-to-mid-1980s, after all, and I was in perhaps the only stage of my life where music (this meant records and tapes) was hugely important. I went back and forth between listening to Sixties folk-rock and early ’80s pop-punk; Joan Baez and The Clash were indispensable components of my adolescent soundtrack. And sometime in 1983, before I had even been properly kissed, I declared, with puerile self-righteousness, that “I would never date a girl who likes Duran Duran.” As best I can remember, this was the first of many “statements of exclusion.” Continue reading ‘Love trumps aesthetics: of books, music, desire, and deal-breakers’

Amanda Marcotte’s danceable revolution: on “It’s a Jungle Out There”: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 24, 2008
in Books and Feminism
. 12 Comments
UPDATE:

As of April 25, I am suspending my endorsement of this book until a new edition appears. I read this book without more than a cursory glance at the comic images used to illustrate it, images that were deeply offensive and unmistakably racist. Though Amanda Marcotte did not select these images herself, she and the publisher share responsibility for a very unfortunate lapse in judgment. As a result, I cannot in good conscience support the sale of the currently available edition. When a new edition appears — may it be soon — without these indefensible images within its pages, my endorsement will stand.

It took others to point out what I could not see. I am ashamed of that. This review stands in its entirety, with this disclaimer attached.

Last week, It’s a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments arrived on my desk. Amanda Marcotte’s new book from Seal Press is indeed available now, and over the course of the Easter weekend, I made my way through its brief and breezy 235 pages.

Amanda was a leading figure in the feminist blogosphere before she and Melissa McEwan were involved, over a year ago, in the now-infamous John Edwards blogging drama. (Details in this Salon article.) I’ve been reading Amanda since 2004, when she blogged at the now-defunct Mouse Words; since moving to the widely-read Pandagon, she’s become one of the most prolific and best-known of feminist bloggers. She’s also become one of the most controversial, not least for her fierce and occasionally profane perspectives. Despite her rising fame and her book deal(s), Amanda remains legendary for her willingness to comment frequently and thoughtfully on an extraordinary number of lesser-known blogs. I can’t think of many bloggers as well-known as she who do so much to nurture and encourage good feminist writing from all corners and all comers.

“Jungle” is listed (on the back jacket) as “Politics/Humor.” It goes without saying that writing and performing political humor is a tricky business; what one reader finds hilarious another will invariably find offensive or dull. I can’t imagine many people being bored by Amanda’s rapier wit, but I do know her capacity to alienate is formidable. Those already hostile to feminism, or those who are “on the fence” about women’s equality, are not the ideal audience for this rambunctious tour through the minefields that confront young American women today. In any movement, you need great satirists — and winsome apologists. Amanda Marcotte is definitely in the former category. She’s not winsome, she’s not irenic, and her writing isn’t going to make your misogynistic brother-in-law suddenly start donating to Planned Parenthood and start sharing the housework burden for the first time in his life. But for the right reader, “Jungle” will prove an inspiration and a delight. Continue reading ‘Amanda Marcotte’s danceable revolution: on “It’s a Jungle Out There”: UPDATED’