Shark Week

I don't care what copyranter says, I think this ad is awesome. This is EXACTLY what I think about when I go to the beach while menstruating. Who hasn't heard those factoids about sharks' amazing blood-detection abilities? Throw that beaker of blue fluid away: what better measure of blood-stoppage could there be?

I appreciate it when ads acknowledge the diversity of female experience. Our menstruation concerns do not all revolve around white clothing. They can also revolve around logistics (primitive camping on heavy flow days? No thanks.), fiction (again with the vampires), or health (still not pregnant WOOOOHOOOOO). So yeah, pretty awesome that this ad addresses the "can predators smell my period?" question.

Suggestion for the next such ad: Komodo dragons. Go.

Maybe We Can Live With Some Segregation

Faithful reader Boston Dreamer asks:

What are your thoughts on places like Harvey Milk High School in New York? Part of me sees the need for such an affirming institution, and the other side of me sees it as a cop out of sorts, allowing a school district to send 'those students' elsewhere rather than reforming the culture of the traditional school.

Just for some background, the Harvey Milk School is designed for, but not limited to, queer students. It is a fully accredited high school that is now run by the New York Department of Education. It has faced controversy since it opened in 1985, mostly from conservatives who want think that is an indoctrination process, or that it is somehow discriminatory. Some progressives have also criticized it, saying that it is a form of segregation to separate the queer kids from the straighties.

But here's the thing: Like it says on the front page of the school's website,

In an ideal world, all students who are considered at-risk would be safely integrated into all NYC public schools, but in the real world, at-risk students need a place like the Harvey Milk High School. HMHS is one of the many NYC small schools that provide safety, community, and high achievement for students not able to benefit from more traditional school environments.

That's... basically it, really. If the Harvey Milk School is helping kids get through high school and have a safer, healthier adolescence, I'm all for it. I think that sometimes we assume integration is always the best thing, but that's an oversimplification. Historians have long talked about the ways that integration was harmful to black communities, for instance: community schools closed, black teachers and administrators lost their jobs, black parents were made to feel unwelcome in their children's new schools, the kids were not necessarily better served, schools became internally segregated, etc. There is something to be said for having a school built by and serving your community. Not, of course, that segregation should ever be the law. It's just that it's not so simple as "integration is always a good thing for everyone forever." Some people benefit from these situations. And it's hard for me to see who loses in this particular case.

Queer communities have to form themselves, they aren't crowds we're born into. Consider that these kids might have parents, families, churches, and communities that think homosexuality is a sin or that gay people are fine as long as they stay in Chelsea or whatever. If they can go to a school that affirms their identity, they're going to be so much better off. I realize that they'd have to be out to their parents to go to the school, and that that could be a source of drama too. But I would rather this place exist than not exist.

Schools should be safe. They aren't always, and having zero-tolerance policies on queer bashing isn't always going to solve the problem. At Harvey Milk, kids are safer, more likely to graduate, and able to be open about who they are. I wouldn't throw that over for some "good liberal" hand-wringing about segregation, to be honest.

Feats of Strength

My parents used to buy 40 pound bags of salt pellets for the water softener. My dad could simply have carried these bags in himself, but he let us kids take a crack at them instead. Being the oldest by three years, I was also the biggest and the strongest and the most successful at lifting the bags. And it made me feel AWESOME.

Feats of strength: you do not have to be a hulking bodybuilder to enjoy performing them. You can be a scrawny 12-year-old girl. Or an adult woman of thoroughly average musculature. It doesn't matter. It's still fun to test your limits from time to time.

Not that anyone indulges me these days. If someone needs help moving, they usually put out a call for a bunch of guys to help. I'm no Chyna, granted, but heck, I can generally lift half a couch. So it's disappointing to be overlooked, and it can be kinda enraging when it happens at work. In grad school, my old Sun work computer was due to be replaced with a fancy Mac. I waited ... and waited. I finally went down to pester our Mac support person about it, and she told me that my shiny new computer had been sitting in the computer support office for a week but could not be delivered until she could get a couple of guys to move it. Yeah.

Of course, I had my old Sun computer dismantled and in her office in a hot second, much to her surprise, and whisked away the new computer my damn self. I'm still annoyed that she decided for me that I could not lift a computer monitor.

So, public service announcement. Women are not always incapable of and uninterested in lifting heavy things. So don't assume we are. You just might get twice as many people to help you move next time.

Your Partner(s)'s Health

I promised that argument I had on Facebook would prompt a series of posts, and here's the first of them! In this post, I'd like to discuss whether we have the responsibility to monitor and/or manage the health of our partners. (Note, I am specifically not talking about managing the health of, say, your kids. That is completely different.)

So. Many people enter into long-term romantic relationships with each other. Sometimes these relationships last whole lifetimes; more often, they last years or decades. However, our bodies can also change substantially over years or decades. So it is entirely possible for partner #1 to physically change in such a way that partner #2 now finds it difficult to eroticize them. Which poses a great challenge for the two if they wish to maintain a sexual component to their relationship. (This can apply to any two people within a poly relationship as well, of course.)

According to the internet, the most common way that this happens is when a partner gains weight. Not surprising, since the overall trend is to put on weight as you age, and since we have a cultural aversion to fat. I tend to agree with both Kate Harding and Dan Savage that, in this scenario, partner #2 has one of two options: [1.] learn to love partner #1's new, fatter body, or [2.] end the relationship.

This is by no means the majority opinion, though. Most people (and this includes friends of mine, friends of friends, advice columnists, bloggers, and TV personalities) are of the opinion that you are justified in encouraging/manipulating/coercing your partner into modifying their body back into a shape you find attractive. Did I say attractive? I meant to say "healthy." This is where the conversation veers off in a new direction, in which everybody claims responsibility for monitoring the health of their partners.

You guys, I object to this concept. I assert that I retain complete autonomy in my health care decisions regardless of my relationship status. Whether those decisions increase or decrease my health, they are mine alone to make.

Now, other relationships may function differently. Some couples prefer to completely share the responsibility for both partners' health. Here's the thing, though. Entering into such an arrangement is also a health care decision you make. And you have the right to rethink that decision any time you like. Furthermore, the fact that you have such an arrangement does not mean that any other two people on Earth are obligated to do things the same way. Furtherfurthermore, we shouldn't assume that other couples have the ability to make health decisions for each other.* If a man shows up in a doctor's office seeking a vasectomy, you don't get to quiz him about his wife's opinions. If a woman's lifestyle leads to her gaining weight, don't give her girlfriend tips on how to induce her to lose weight. That shit is problematic.

*I'm not talking about when one partner is incapacitated by illness. Obviously that's a different situation, in which you have to get someone else to make the decisions.

Queer on the Job

I've talked before about how I'm open with my students about my queer identity. I mentioned that this is a dangerous position to a certain extent, and that the idea of whether to be open on the job is contested amongst queer people. I think it is an entirely personal decision, and I would never, ever fault anyone for not being out at work or anywhere else. We all have to navigate our own lives the way we see fit. But the person I am is not someone who's good at hiding stuff, or playing the game, or pretending to mainstream-ness, or whatever. It's not about me hitting peoples' gaydar as much as it is just not being good at keeping my mouth closed or my identity secret. And there is certainly an element of choice, too. As I said in my previous post, it's about creating space for people to be comfortable in my classroom with being queer. And I teach in a college of education, so I feel these issues are especially pressing, considering how hard it is to be out in a K-12 setting.

A new report by the Williams Institute (that's a PDF) shows that 38% of lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults have experienced harassment at work because of their sexual orientation, and around 1/3 of LGB adults are not out at work. This number is surely significantly higher for trans people.

As Queerty points out, there are plenty (plentyyyyyyyy) of people out there who would say "Just tone it down and stop being so... you know, GAY in PUBLIC and then you won't have any moar problemz!" Well, that isn't going to work. Asking people to tone it down to fit in is asking for assimilation, and that's not cool. I mean, if you're a mainstream type of person or assimilation is fun for you, rock on with your bad self. But it isn't for me, and it isn't for most of my friends (next time we have coffee I'll tell you about my 4th of July fireworks adventure with the Gender Mafia and you'll laugh and laugh and be jealous of the delicious kettle corn and of my awesome queer family).

For me, trying to pretend that I'm part of the white middle class straight protestant mainstream capitalist America stuff is just not going to happen. My friend Dierdre said once that if she were going to just go along to get along, she'd have to take out part of her humanity and shoot it, which is exactly it (D: I apologize if I'm misquoting you, please correct me in the comments if I am). You don't have to like who I am and the way I express myself, that's cool. But we should, at a minimum, be able to avoid persecuting each other for things that don't affect anyone else, really, right? I mean, laydee-types who like b00bz are not ruining your family or your ability to do your job or anything like that. So I'm not going to tone it down for you, that deliciously flamboyant gay dude isn't going to tone it down for you, the hottie gender outlaw who you just can't figure out isn't going to pick a gender and stick with it to make you more comfortable. Learn to live with being uncomfy, you know?

I wish I could wave a magic wand and make everyone more accepting of - and excited by! - nontraditional gender expression or out-and-proud queers or whatever. I can't. In the meantime, though, for me, the answer is not to try to hide anything. This might mean no academic job for me, but I'd rather shred my PhD by hand than pretend to be someone I'm not to get a job at Straight Doodz U. I can figure something else out. That's a privileged position I'm in, and I get that not everyone is. So what are we going to do to make workplaces safer for those of us who don't fit in and who can't just go find a job working at a place where it's Okay To Be Takei?

Anatomy of a Garden-Variety Anti-Feminist Troll

Facebook, y'all. The best/worst shit happens there. Not so much on my profile, because I ban anyone even slightly sexist/racist/homophobic in order to maintain a happy fun place for myself. But oh, my friends' friends. Some of them are seriously fucked up.

Last week I teamed up with one of my friends to argue with a fat-phobic anti-feminist. In case you're curious about the context, she had posted a link to this piece o' crap from AskMen with a comment about how it obviously sucked, not expecting much disagreement. And then this guy, who will henceforth be referred to as Douche,* crawled out of the woodwork. To be honest, he has inspired a whole series of posts from me, which you have to look forward to, but first let us examine his troll-ness, because it is fun.

The thing about trolls is that they are all very similar and none of them realize it. Here's a bunch of stuff you will come across again and again in the comments sections of unmoderated feminist blogs, as expressed by Douche:

• "i didn't even bother to read ur comment at the top": What a good friend!
• "I think u might be being a bit over-sensitive." Oh hey! Are we playing antifeminist bingo?
• "Are u guys going to become those crazy feminists who give the rest of the rational group a bad rep??": We are playing anti-feminist bingo!
• "I'm actually a feminist lol." Lol indeed, dude.
• "Really you take everything here entirely too seriously." It's always charming when a guy (and a supposedly feminist guy, to boot) offers to dictate what women should get upset about or not.
• "the way women obsess over their bodies nowadays, and the terrilbe things that happen to men if they imply that their woman has gained weight": Er, what?
• "the article u posted is meant to be taken as a joke": Okay, I have that square already. I can't win this bingo game if you keep using the same approach.
• "It also doesn't mean you need to get bothered by every 'wife in the kitchen' joke."
• "I still think the article is worth a few giggles, not getting ur panties all bunched up lol"
• "I think both of you are so high up on your high horse that ur head has gotten lost in the clouds."
• "You're not seeing clearly anymore, ur just playing the victim." Finally, a new square. Unfortunately, I do not bingo. Sadface.

Perhaps you are wondering why on earth we would even bother arguing with this asshole. I shall tell you. First of all, this was not an anonymous commenter on a blog.** This was someone my friend knew personally. And now she and all their mutual friends now know exactly the kind of asshole he is. Which is valuable, if disappointing, information. Second, I think it's important to stand up to assholes, especially in one's personal life. And third, it's important to back up your friends when they're doing said standing up. Anyone who looks at her profile will see two coherent feminist viewpoints and one increasingly enraged and incoherent anti-feminist viewpoint. It sets an example.

Also, I like to post this stuff now and then because often one of my guy friends will respond with, "Wow, someone actually said that?" Yes, people "actually" say fucked-up, over-the-top sexist, racist, and homophobic stuff ALL THE TIME.*** Folk who are relatively privileged think they can just brush it off, but you actually can't just brush off a lifetime of this crap. And the bigots will likely assume your silence is tacit agreement. I don't think we changed Douche's mind about anything, but he has probably realized that this one tiny corner of the internet is, in fact, hostile to anti-feminism. If that happened more frequently, I do think we'd all have to hear less outrageous bigotry.

BONUS: More bingo.

* I specifically like to refer to anti-feminists as douches because it's so appropriate. Douches, after all, are terrible for women's health.

** I am generally in favor of banning trolls rather than feeding them. Which is what we do here.

*** And it's not "just trolling." Douche, after first denying it, then told us that he was trolling at first but really he's serious. And I bet that's the case for a lot of trolls.

Blogcation

Everyone needs a vacation! We're taking the first week of August off. See you next week, NWFers!

Hearts 'n unicorns,
Kyrie and Jess