Eat the Damn Cake

I just read this NYT headline four times. I read it out loud, to Bear. And then I started yelling. Which was bad, because my friend from Australia is staying here for a couple nights and she was trying to sleep.

“Health Experts Dismiss Assertions on Rape.”

Do you guys know about this? You probably do. Missouri Congressman Todd Akin, defending his stance on abortion (none at all, under any circumstances!) broke it down for us really simply: if a woman wants to get pregnant, she will. If she doesn’t want to, she won’t. So if she’s raped and she’s into it, she’ll let herself get pregnant. And if it’s a “legitimate” rape, and, you know, she doesn’t like it as much, she will just shut down her special woman hormones and her egg production and get all tight and unwelcoming in there. No sperm allowed! It’s basic biology.

I saw that. I read the quote. It made me die a little inside. Because that whole thing, where you blame women for everything, even their own rape pregnancy, it is so dangerous. It is terrifying. That whole set of logic that starts at “well, she was wearing those sexy tight jeans” and pauses briefly in the middle with “if she wanted to take care of her kids she would get another damn job and stop whining” before concluding with something about how she died of the cancer she got from the toxic fumes in her unregulated factory work and couldn’t afford to pay for any of her frantic, hopelessly expensive treatments– it’s bad.

(it looks so venerable. I want it to be. source)

But what made me yell was the New York Times‘ headline, and then the article. Patiently breaking it down for us. With the usual quotes from both sides. No, no, we’re pretty sure rape is bad. We’ve interviewed some experts. We’re pretty sure women can’t magically decide exactly when and when not to get pregnant.

It was suddenly easy to imagine other headlines and pieces, from other times. This expert says that black people are totally inferior to white people. And he has some good points! Let’s be fair! And then this other expert says, no, black people are not totally inferior to white people. They could be a little inferior, though, let’s not get carried away…

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For my whole life, I’ve been like, “Well, this sucks. I’ve pretty much amounted to nothing.” 

“Another year gone and I have accomplished nothing for the history books or even meritorious of a footnote.” (That’s me on my fifth birthday.)

Which is weird, because you can’t say that until you’re dying. And even then, you’re probably wrong.

I always feel like I’m too old. 

I think we live in a pushy world (and by we I mostly mean people with enough money to be in that demographic that is defined by its college attendance). I remember when kids were devastated because they didn’t get into an Ivy League college, back when we were 17. I remember when I was sixteen and this thirteen-year-old kid was flipping out at me, yelling, “I got a higher SAT score than you! I don’t even have to know your score to know mine was higher!” 

I don’t remember what I did to offend him. I hadn’t even taken the SAT yet.

And then you go to college and you graduate and you’re supposed to have this career. If you don’t then you’re lazy or a rebellious dreamer or being screwed by the economy and the New York Times will publish five thousand articles, one after the other, about your generation and how fascinatingly doomed and creative and spunky and immature you all are. And how you live in your childhood bedroom with pink bunny wallpaper on all four walls but you have this famous blog so it’s ok!

In the NYT, young people are often famous. This seems to make things better.

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I’m beginning to have no idea what “feminism” means.

Elizabeth Wurtzel wrote this predictably inflammatory essay in The Atlantic about why some fictional-sounding wealthy housewives are responsible for the “war on women.” In it she said, “Let’s please be serious grown-ups: real feminists don’t depend on men.”

In her supportive response, Jill, of Feministe, writes: “No. Feminism is not about choice”

Wait. Wait a second. But—I was pretty sure—But in my gender studies classes…But my mom…I thought?

OK, the full quote from Jill is:

In any comment section on the internet where feminism comes up, someone will pipe up and cry, “But feminism is about CHOICE!” No. Feminism is not about choice – at least not insofar as it’s about saying “Any choice women make is a feminist one and so we can’t criticize or judge it.” Feminism isn’t about creating non-judgmental happy-rainbow enclaves where women can do whatever they want without criticism. Feminism is about achieving social, economic and political equality for all people, regardless of gender. It’s not about making every woman feel good about whatever she does, or treating women like delicate hot-house flowers who can’t be criticized.

 So obviously there’s a little bit more to it.

(LAME!)

And since we’re criticizing women now, as feminists, let’s talk about how lame SAHMs are. Because that’s a new thought. Wurtzel is all over that. She’s disappointed in “full-time wives,” who are the same as SAHMs, but I think with more nannies and pedicures and possibly servants. She feels betrayed by them. She makes it clear that everything is about money. “… there really is only one kind of equality — it precedes all the emotional hullabaloo — and it’s economic. If you can’t pay your own rent, you are not an adult.” (thankfully, Jill contests this idea.)

Commenters add that being a SATM may make someone happy, but that’s a different thing entirely from being an adult.

OK, so being an adult= misery. 

So I definitely don’t want to be an adult.

Good to know.

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I used to get really offended, back in college. It was totally uncool. I know, because everyone told me how uncool it was. It was embarrassing. I couldn’t control it, and it made me feel weak.

There was this guy, let’s call him Tim, who used to tease me incessantly. Later, I slept with him, so I guess it paid off. Back then, freshman year, he used to tease me every day at lunch, in the dining hall. He’d say, “Bake me a pie, woman!” and grin at me. I had made the mistake of identifying myself immediately as a feminist, and he wouldn’t leave that alone. He had all these feminist jokes.

But most of all, he would bring this newspaper to lunch, and he’d read aloud from it sometimes. The newspaper was the creation of some guys on campus. I don’t know who. It was a publication by guys for guys, but it was everywhere on campus. In the student center in a stack, lying on the buses. I would look away when I saw it. I’d push it onto the next seat over, on the bus. Even the covers offended me. I couldn’t believe it had been published. I couldn’t believe it was allowed.

There were always pictures of naked girls. Drunk naked girls. Naked girls on the toilet. Once I saw a picture over the shoulder of a guy who was reading it. A little person– is that the term? A height-stunted woman, and a guy, with his pants down, at her face level. A triumphant headline. The right height for any girl. Something like that.

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There it is.

(source)

The latest in the “mommy wars.”

Because everything is a war these days, it seems. Yesterday, we were talking about the “war on obesity.” I even heard that Obama declared “war on marriage.” So “war” means “having a different opinion.” Or possibly “wanting equal rights.” In a moment, it might mean, “Hey, what you lookin’ at? You got a problem?”

But I want to talk about the so-called “mommy wars.” The cycle of articles and news reports and TV interviews and books that argue for the one good way to raise kids, and explain why every other idea is not only terrible, but it will definitely destroy your children’s future.

The mommy wars keep going, and going, and then they’re still going, because they are at their heart about two things that almost everyone cares about intensely: what it means to be a woman, and what is good for children.

So we go endless rounds. Breastfeeding vs. formula, weaning at six months vs. nursing for a year vs. nursing until the child feels done, SAHMs vs. moms who work outside the home vs. moms who draw an income from work they do while staying at home, attachment style parenting vs. hands off, supposed Tiger Mom parenting vs. supposed helicopter parenting. I think there are maybe dragon parents and dog parents too? Eventually we might get to iguanas and giraffes (parents who are always craning their necks to peer over their child’s shoulder?).

I am twenty-six. One day I would like to have a baby. At that point, I would like everyone to shut up. I would like everyone to stop marching around with weapons drawn and armor up, acting like there’s a war where there are only different sets of knowledge, different necessities, and different worldviews. In exactly the way that worldviews and knowledge and necessities are different surrounding other areas of life. Like what career you pursue, who you choose to date and/or marry, how you spend your free time, what motivates you, what makes you feel fulfilled, and, um, just about everything else.

My childhood was, in many ways, just about as alternative as it gets. At least, it was alternative according to mainstream media, which is fascinated by the things that it designates as alternative. My mom is a La Leche League Leader (a breastfeeding expert and mentor). She trained as a midwife for a while. She had home births, and I was there for my brothers’ births (it was loud). We had a family bed when I was little. My mom grew vegetables in her garden and we only ate organic, even before people were really into that. We didn’t watch TV. I didn’t go to school until college.

Wow. You might need to take a breath. That was a lot of alternative.

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I want to be a woman who doesn’t care. One of those women who doesn’t notice. A woman who doesn’t pay attention to girly stuff. To the stuff that women are supposed to care about.

I saw Marissa Mayer, one of the original Google employees (so now she’s insanely rich), talk about her life. She described herself as oblivious. As a girl, she wasn’t thinking about boys. She wasn’t thinking about clothes. She told a charming story about her time at Stanford, when she was the only girl in a sea of computer science guys. She loved computer science, and, by her own account, she barely noticed that she wasn’t one of the guys. Because, maybe, she thought she was. Someone made a comment about the “one blond girl in the computer science lectures,” and she thought, “Who is that?” and then, laughing, realized it was her.

Ha! Adorable! We all laughed along with her. She has that famous laugh.

(here’s Marissa Mayer, being…just one of the boys?)

A few nights ago, I saw Jill Abramson, the executive editor of the New York Times, interview her employee Jodi Kantor, author of the recent bestseller “The Obamas.” Abramson has this amazing voice. She sounds a little like a robot.

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Women everywhere are getting really excited about a very sexy book, and its two companions. So excited that they’ve made the trilogy runaway bestsellers, and driven the project into the arms of movie producers.

I read about it in the New York Times. And then somewhere else. And then somewhere else. “Mommy bloggers love it!” one of the articles proclaimed.

And then an argument was had over whether or not it was “good for women.” Whether or not it was “feminist.”

So I read the book, of course. It had originally been intended as Twilight fan fiction. Which I didn’t know at the time of my reading.

(source)

The book, Fifty Shades of Grey is told from the perspective of a (sort of, I guess) spunky twenty-one year old college student named Anastasia Steele who falls breathlessly in love with a gorgeous, wounded, enigmatic billionaire entrepreneur named Christian Grey. Christian Grey is twenty-seven, and he can do everything. He’s a brilliant pianist, flies his own helicopter, manages a business empire while having plenty of time for relationship drama, and can successfully identify down to the serial number any model of gleaming new Audi sports car he happens to own (and they appear to all be Audis, interestingly). But the most interesting thing about him is that he is a Dominant. And he wants a Submissive.

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