Times They Are A Changin’

On the beach (Chatham, Mass.)

So it’s been a busy couple of months in the Clutterbuck-Cook household!

Hanna and I got married, all legal and everything, two weeks ago at one of our favorite neighborhood cafes. The morning ceremony was followed by a tasty breakfast of brioche and lattes which in turn was followed by the two brides going home and promptly falling into a deep, zombie-like trance for the rest of the day! Even low-key weddings take a surprising amount of energy to coordinate and execute.

In addition to getting married, I’ve also accepted an unexpected promotion from Assistant Reference Librarian to Reference Librarian — complete with minions! — at my place of work. Even though I’ve worked at the Massachusetts Historical Society for five years (as of October 12th, in fact!), this is a new position with new responsibilities that will keep me busy for the next six months to a year as I get my feet under me (thankfully I’ve got a crack team working with me, so I can’t complain!).

And I’ve decided to renew my dedication to being an historian and writer as well as a librarian, a decision that means making some difficult decisions about where to spend my non-work research and writing time. I want to keep reading and reviewing books, I have a couple of history projects underway, and along with a group of internet friends have organized a writing group to keep morale high.

All of these things mean less time for blogging, and as I’d already started to feel over-extended in terms of {blog posts I wanted to write x time it takes to actually write them \ available hours in which to focus on writing per week} it seems like a good time to rethink and consolidate my writing/blogging commitments.

Suffice to say, I’ve decided that as my two-year anniversary at Harpyness rolls around at the end of this year, I’ll be bowing out from this space. It’s been a great couple of years writing here, engaged in conversation with y’all, and I wish you well wherever you may go from here.

Booknotes: The End of Men

Back in July, I unexpectedly scored an advance review copy of Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men; and the Rise of Women (Riverhead Books, 2012) through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program. It arrived last week and I had every intention of saving it for vacation … but instead read it over the course of two afternoons. In part because it’s a pretty breezy read once you’ve got the gist — and mostly because I was so irritated by it, I found it hard to put down.*

In the event you’ve been in a media blackout since July 2010, Rosin originally wrote an article for The Atlantic under the same sensationalist title (a title which she apologizes for as the book dedication; perhaps that’s when you should rethink your marketing strategy?). Said article was one of a rash of journalism-lite pieces proclaiming the 2008 recession a “he-cession” and suggesting that as male unemployment rose it was women who stood to gain in both economic opportunity and political and social power. “The End of Men” painted a bleak picture of a future “matriarchy” in which high-powered, controlling women run the world while their college dropout loser husbands hang out with soiled toddlers ignoring the responsibilities of grown-up life. The End of Men is essentially a book-length elaboration on this apocalyptic vision of an upturned gender binary that — rather than creating space for more egalitarian, gender-independent relationships — merely reverses the stark hierarchy of the most aggressive patriarchal society.

More articulate and knowledgeable bloggers than I have refuted Rosin’s sketchy use of data and anecdote to paint this hysterical vision of what 21st-century hetero relationships may look like, and how the changing global economy might contribute to their reshaping. I’m not going to mimic more comprehensive efforts elsewhere. What I want to talk about instead is how crippling Rosin’s framework of oppositional, binary gender is to her observation and analysis, how profoundly it shapes her interpretation of what she sees in the world. Because this, more than anything, got under my skin and made me feel kinda sleazy for even paying The End of Men the time of day.

But I am giving it the time of day because — as Jill points out in her meditation on Naomi Wolf’s latest venture into the world of publishing — however frustrating and discrediting I find Rosin’s framework, it continues to be a compelling one for many people across the political spectrum. Rosin continues to be a respected left-of-center talking head on issues of children and education, on feminism, on parenting, on sexuality, on gender. And yet she is writing from a perspective drenched in the gender binary, seeing a world in which men stand in one corner, women in the other, locked in a zero-sum competition for power, prestige, and material resources.

And it’s important to ask how truthful this interpretation of the world is, how useful it might be in helping us move forward, and what Rosin’s framework causes her to overlook and leave out (in the event this post is tl;dr for some of you, my answers to these three questions are: not very, not hardly, and some pretty crucial things about humanity — for example, uh, that same-sex couples exist and don’t fit into her tidy framework of hetero couples in perpetual struggle for dominance).

Quick Hit: s.e. smith on the Dangers of Justifying Abortion

The incomparable s.e. smith @ Tiger Beatdown:

Every time a progressive justifies abortion, one of those horrid ‘lamenting the preborn killed by pinko commie scum’ websites gets another set of animated sparkling angel wings and a dreadful midi.

Private medical procedures do not require justification. As soon as you act like they do, you open up a line of conversation that is better left closed; you’re creating an opening where there wasn’t one before, and it’s one that directly harms the people who need access to abortion services. As soon as you start talking about why people have abortions, you set up a tiered world of ethically justified abortions versus others. You tell patients getting abortions after rapes, for example, that they will be supported and no one blames them for making a private medical decision, while leaving patients getting abortions for ‘bad’ or ‘selfish’ reasons with the impression that you are judging them.

Abortions don’t come in kinds or flavours, unless you want to talk about specific differences between individual procedures related to the stage of the pregnancy and the best procedure for the patient’s needs. There is no such thing as an ethically justified root canal versus an ethically ambiguous root canal. There’s just a procedure deemed medically neccessary after examination and discussion between doctor and patient, and a decision made on the basis of all available information.

You can talk openly about having a root canal. And you don’t need to justify it. ‘I just wasn’t ready to have a cavity.’ ‘It was causing an infection that could have killed me.’

Read the whole thing here.

Poetry Saturdays: Tina Chang

The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Tina Chang was born in Oklahoma in 1969 and raised in Queens, New York. She was elected the Poet Laureate of Brooklyn in 2010, and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

Duality

Perhaps I hold people to impossible ideals,
I tell them, something is wrong with your
personality, (you’re a drinker, you’re
too dependent, or I think you have
a mother/son fixation). This is usually
followed by passionate lovemaking,
one good long and very well meaning
embrace, and then I’m out the door.

In daylight, I’ll tip my sunglasses forward,
buy a cup of tea and think of the good
I’ve done for the world, how satisfying
it feels to give a man something to contemplate.
The heart is a whittled twig. No, that is not
the right image, so I drop the heart in a pile
of wood and light that massive text on fire.

I walk the streets of Brooklyn looking
at this storefront and that, buy a pair of shoes
I can’t afford, pumps from London, pointed
at the tip and heartbreakingly high, hear
my new heels clicking, crushing the legs
of my shadow. The woman who wears
these shoes will be a warrior, will not think
about how wrong she is, how her calculations
look like the face of a clock with hands
ticking with each terrorizing minute.

On Helen Gurley Brown, Traitor to Womanity

Helen Gurley Brown died today, at age 90, after a short illness. In Gurley Brown’s obituary in the New York Times, Margalit Fox wrote: 

Ms. Brown routinely described herself as a feminist, but whether her work helped or hindered the cause of women’s liberation has been publicly debated for decades. It will doubtless be debated long after her death. What is safe to say is that she was a Janus-headed figure in women’s history, simultaneously progressive and retrogressive in her approach to women’s social roles.

While I admire many things about Helen Gurley Brown’s publishing career and her seemingly boundless sociability and energy, there is no doubt in my mind whether she helped or hindered the cause of women’s liberation. Her message—and that of Cosmopolitan—has always been very clear.

I wrote this post on Helen Gurley Brown in 2009, not long after I founded the Pursuit of Harpyness with four other like-minded feminists. There are many, many, many glowingly positive tributes to Gurley Brown running all over the internet today. This isn’t one of them.

This weekend, sarah.of.a.lesser.god sent me a link to an article about the of the first biography of Helen Gurley Brown, founding editor of Cosmopolitan magazine. As you might know, Cosmo is a favorite anti-feminist punching bag of the Harpies; its writing is painfully stupid and it promotes all kinds of Bad Thinking about body image, sex, women’s roles and gender relations. The fact that Cosmo‘s readership skews very young –high school and college age women–makes their pandering of Bad Ideas that much more pernicious.

We have not yet weighed in, however, on Helen Gurley Brown herself, and Sarah was deliberately waving a red flag to the feminist bull with that link, as I absolutely despise HGB and she knows it (that is, sarah.of.a.lesser.god knows it. HGB is likely still unaware, but if y’all want to forward this post to her, feel free.)

The author of the biography, Jennifer Scanlon, is a professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at Bowdoin College and she thinks there’s a place in women’s history, and even feminism, for Helen Gurley Brown:

“Many second wave feminists wrote her off as no more than the female equivalent of Hugh Hefner,” notes Scanlon, who is an expert in consumer culture. “I’m arguing that she was an early practitioner of the second wave who also laid the groundwork for what people are considering feminism today—the so-called third wave, lipstick-friendly feminism you see typified in Sex and the City.

I’m not buying that HGB was part of the feminist movement at all. Not for a moment. And I don’t think  Professor Scanlon really is, either.  You’ll notice that she takes great pains to specify “what people are considering feminism today.” Not actual feminism, mind you, since that Sex and the City lipstick “feminism” has about as much in common with 1960s second-wave feminism as the “krab” in my California roll has in common with the real crustacean.  

Quick Hit: Junk Science Snark FTW

Hanna found this gem of a post by Sophie Collins at the Guardian on the recent pop psych “study” that is reported to have discovered that stressed-out men prefer heavier women.

Do you like beards? I like beards. But I know plenty of women who don’t. Most adult men I know don’t have beards. Which is weird, when you think about it. Because beards are a biological signal. A signal that says, “I am a sexually mature male, ready for mating. I have excellent genes and will impregnate you with fine children. Mate with me ladies.” They are the human equivalent of peacocks’ tails.

…

I know we shouldn’t get exercised about subheadings, which are generally not written by the author (and certainly not by the scientists). But, I give you: “Tightening one’s belt in a recession is usually considered prudent, but women may be advised to do the opposite after a study found that in tough times stressed men turn to larger ladies for comfort.” Oh no, we thought we were supposed to be thin, but now we might have made ourselves too thin for boys to like us! Let us cry hopelessly into our pillows ladies.

Seriously. Go enjoy the whole thing!

More Olympic Awesomeness from Women’s Boxing

Amazing performances for women in women’s boxing event, including this tremendous gold-medal performance by 17 year old middleweight Claressa Shields of Flint, Michigan. ESPN called it: “A performance worthy of Cassius Clay, Joe Frazier, Oscar De La Hoya and every American Olympic champion that came before Shields.” I can’t embed this video (you suck, NBC!) but the last two minutes are full of joy and pure Muhammad Ali-style heart, humor, and swagger.

In the lightweight round, Katie Taylor of Ireland won, bringing home Ireland’s first gold medal since 1996. Taylor is incredibly popular in her homeland and reaction in her hometown of Bray was explosive. The most exciting response—even if you don’t speak Irish— was the teary and breathless call by Raidio na Gaeltachta’s commentator Seán Bán Breathnach, who proudly sings praises comparing Taylor to historic and modern Irish heroines like Grace O’Malley, Máire Mhac an tSaoi, Maud Gonne, and Mary Robinson. (If any Harpies are Irish speakers, I’d love to know what else he was saying).

Poetry Saturdays: Beau Sia

Beau Sia is a Chinese-American performance poet. In her history of the New York poetry slam movement, author Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz wrote:

Beau Sia took Maggie Estep’s pop culture reference-heavy work to the next level, bouncing across the stage, frenzied and electrified. His work was confrontational, hilarious and unapologetic. Sia was a firebrand who seemed determined to smash the prevailing stereotypes of Asian-America, the ones that painted Asian-Americans as being meek, passive and voiceless.

Poetry Saturdays: Kwame Dawes on the Olympics

From the Wall Street Journal Speakeasy blog: Throughout the 2012 London Olympic Games, Guggenheim fellowship-winning poet Kwame Dawes will be writing verses that capture the spirit of the day’s action, with a particular focus on the Jamaican team.

WE ARE HERE

i

Ms. Gabriella finally speaks her mind
First I don’t like so much that “flying squirrel”
thing. They are rodents, you know, like rats;
they carry diseases and even though
I know y’all find them cute, me, I prefer
“queen”, “woman”, or just “amazing”.
And, second, all y’all well-thinking folks
who don’t like the way some of those
tv commentators been dogging me
or expressing their doubts,
talking about how I can fall apart
so easily and all of that;
or making it look like I done
stole something from somebody,
please don’t worry about me,
cause trust me, I can’t hear them
while I am doing my thing.

Women in the Olympics: Some Coverage I’m Reading

The Crunk Feminist Collective on gymnastics “smile politics” and the racist dismissal of Gabby Douglas. 

The New York Times on Wojdan Shaherkani, the first female Saudi Olympian.

The Washington Post on Kayla Harrison, who overcame years of sexual assault by her first coach to win gold in judo. 

The Guardian on women’s boxing, the first year this “bastion of masculinity” has been a medal sport at the Olympics (Did you know that until 1998, the British Boxing Board of Control denied women boxers licenses on the grounds that PMS makes us too unstable? Yeah, fuck those guys.)

And for a delightful interlude of hetero objectification, thanks to Jill at Feministe for linking to 33 Things To Love About Men’s Water Polo.

Dog Days of Summer [Urban Stay-cation]

It’s August 1st (can you believe it?) 

And I’ve decided it’s time to give myself a quasi-vacation from the ‘net.

Teazle napping with Hanna

Given that I’m online for eight hours daily at work, total blackout isn’t really a possibility — or something I feel is necessary. But I’ve been feeling pulled in a lot of different directions blogging lately, and I’d like to take some time to reflect on where I want to put my writing energy.

So this is all to say that — while I’m not going to quit blogging entirely — from now until after our honeymoon in mid-September I’ll be giving myself permission to post more sporadically than usual (when and how, exactly, did I get to the point of generating 5-10 posts per week, across half a dozen blogs?!).

I’m planning to use the offline time to read, write, nap, and enjoy non-work downtime with the future wife and kitten-kids.

Hope y’all are staying cool(ish) and we’ll see ya ’round these parts when time and inclination indicate this is where I want to put my energy.

“One Parent or Five?”: Rambling Thoughts on a Conservative Report

A few weeks ago, I read through the  2011 report One Parent or Five: A Global Look at Today’s New Intentional Families (Elizabeth Marquardt, Principal Investigator) published by the Institute for American Values’ Commission on Parenthood’s Future.

For those of you unfamiliar with the IAV, it is the thinktank founded and still presided over by David Blankenhorn, the prominent opponent of same-sex marriage who recently (kinda sorta) reversed his position. Marquardt is a staff member there and also blogs regularly at the Family Scholars Blog.

Why did I bother to read a 72-page report coming out of the IAV, you might ask? Well, sometimes I just can’t help myself. Too, I always think it’s worth trying to understand the worldview of people who are afraid of and/or opposed to the life choices and broader social changes which give me a deep sense of  inspiration and hope for the future of humanity.  In this case, intentionally non-normative family structures.

It’s tempting — but ultimately won’t be very helpful in effecting social change — to dismiss anti-gay-marriage sentiment as simply bigoted and wingnutty. It may well be these things, on some fundamental level, but that’s rather immaterial when it comes to trying to help people be less frightened of social change. Calling them homophobic bigots is about as helpful as calling someone who says something racist or sexist a racist or a sexist. While satisfying in the moment, it’s not the best way to get your opponents to listen to your point of view.

So. What’s the deal about my upcoming marriage? Why does it make certain people so uncomfortable? Inquiring minds want to know!

In One Parent or Five? Marquardt’s argument is clear. She (along with many of her colleagues at the IAV) believe that sociological evidence shows that stable two-parent households in which both parents are the child’s biological parent are the best type of environment in which to nurture children. Full stop. If you get nothing else from One Parent or Five? the takeaway would be that for Marquardt family structure is the factor to trump almost all other factors in terms of child well-being — and that the two-parent bio-family unit is the best of all possible family structures. The ideal to which we should all yearn toward or strive.

Why she believes this is never fully explained.  She begins the report with a romantic description of hetero couples who successfully conceive children within wedlock:

When at all possible, the married mother and father usually opt to conceive children the old-fashioned way, through sexual intercourse (or what our parents’ generation quaintly called ‘making love’). The married mother and father can be found pretty much everywhere, from the parks of San Francisco and Seattle to the streets of the edgiest neighborhoods of New York. Diverse and resilient, the married mother and father has for millennia put down roots everywhere in the world. Generally thriving wherever planted, the fruit this family produces — children– is among the hardiest and healthiest in the world (8).