New York Times, teh stupid November 26, 2008

The New York Times is my (virtual) morning paper, usually reminding me of all things smart and carefully researched. When faced with certain student papers, that’s a good thing.

But when it comes to many things woman-centered, somehow the NYT manages to screw it up. Witness the recent article titled “To Buy Children’s Gifts, Mothers Do Without,” which details how “millions of mothers across the nation” are sacrificing their own desires (designer jeans, dontcha know) to be able to gift their children with the joy of the holiday season, i.e., lots of toys.

The data that is presented deals with the falling sales of women’s apparel (down 18.2 % in October vs. 8.3 % for men) and a “survey of shoppers’ intentions” by a consultant firm that suggests that 61% of mothers will shop less for themselves (as opposed to 56% of all women and 45% of men). This data is all that anchors a piece that brims with wiggly number words like “millions of mothers,” “nearly everyone,” “many fathers,” “typical woman,” “some are…others are…,” “that could translate into fewer presents…” etc. Until finally, we are left with the real take-home message: mothers are self-sacrificing.

And mothers are so self-sacrificing that

matriarchs of big families are bringing back the old practice of pulling names out of hats to decide who will buy a gift for whom. Some mothers have made pacts…not to buy gifts for anyone but the children.

Oh dear! Mothers are ruling the home in such a way that the retail industry might suffer! And heavens! Kids come first for many families! I’m sure no one else is making these kinds of choices, even if they don’t have kids. And certainly fathers have so little say in these matters…

Here’s what the story is really about: the retail industry is affected by the huge national/global economic downturn. And darn those mothers, they’re not helping because they’re too focused on their children.

As one commenter mentions, working-class women have always had to make choices that, yes, might privilege kids. Or they have even had to NOT buy gifts for their children. In other words, this is an article that laments the economic fall of the middle-class mother. It points to clothing and toy swaps and second-hand shopping as if they were strange activities from the planet Depression, rather than ongoing measures for anti-consumerism, frugality, and thrift that many folks practice. (Granted, this New York Times article appears to participate in a recent demonization of thrift/consumer choices. Look at the title of this recent article. Thriftiness is the new greed? What does that even mean?)

Once thriftiness of any sort is a problem, then clearly economizing mothers are the central economic problem. So. Let’s count on our fingers the problematic assumptions/assertions here:

1. fathers don’t count in family spending decisions
2. women’s purchases drive the economy
3. mothers always privilege children; they’re naturally self-sacrificing (Corollary: apparently not buying designer jeans is a sacrifice. Second corollary: single men’s and women’s sacrifices do not count.)
4. matriarchs determine gift-giving practices (and probably other things, those scary, scary dominant women!)
5. thrift is bad (See #2)

p.s. related to #5, a web ad that I’ve seen recently for the Discover card has this hilarious (when thinking about thrift and anti-consumerism) tagline: “We are a nation of consumers. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Appropriately election-y November 4, 2008

After a presidential election, there’s always a strange period of lame duckness (lame duckosity?) one one side and of presidential preparations on the other. To fit with the theme of the blog, I’m going to call this period a recurrent arid borderlands in our political landscape.

Of course, The Onion already captures the feeling perfectly:

“Can I Stop Being President Now?“

When informed by Washington Post reporter David Broder that his presidency would continue through early January, Bush stared at him quizzically, sighed, and shuffled silently back into the White House.

The bisexuality of Tila Tequila November 4, 2008

During our segment on bisexuality, a student presented on Tila Tequila and bisexuality in the mass media. She did a lovely job of talking about the Tequila’s show, A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila. She discussed the interestingly hybrid genre of the reality t.v. show in general, spontaneous but not unscripted. And within that frame, she presented a compelling argument for the way in which the show scripts the parameters of acceptable t.v. bisexuality.

First, it is important that the show centers on a woman’s bisexuality. Given the power of the male gaze, a guy choosing between queer guys and straight women would prove much more uncomfortable for a viewing audience than the spectacle of a hot, sexy woman choosing between other hot, queer women and hot, straight men.

Second, while the show does provide some unsettling of our assumptions around sexuality through Tila Tequila, overall the show reifies gender and sexuality. While Tila is allowed to be transgressive (kissing and having desire for both men and women, at the same time), nobody else is. The men are all focused on her and, in the second season, when two of the women kissed each other, they were kicked out. In addition, the show has the women and men segregated in a color-coded house that reminds me of the gendering that toy stores do– pink doors and blue doors lead into the different areas, and when the women and men arrive at Tequila’s house, they arrive in pink and blue limousines.

Finally, the show reifies sexuality in its very format as a dating show that leads, eventually, to Tequila’s choice. At the end of the first season she chose a man. At the end of the second season, a woman. In some ways, regardless of her biography or her own romantic story, two seasons were necessary narratively in order to avoid claims that Tequila was not really bisexual. (See my previous post.)

On a side note: I sent in a PSA for human rights in Burma (starring Tila Tequila) to Sociological Images, a blog whose insistent media watch I appreciate. I’m still not sure how to read this PSA… but it is disturbing in its use of Tequila’s bisexuality in the service of (?) promoting students’ knowledge of and activism about human rights violations in Burma.

Thinking about bisexuality November 4, 2008

My class was thinking through the borderland nature of bisexuality recently. We read a number of personal essays/poems from Robyn Ochs’s collection Getting Bi (a new edition of which will include even more global representation). We were lucky enough to have Robyn Ochs with us.

One thing that makes bisexuality comparable to mixed-race identity (which we explored through Nella Larsen’s fabulous novel Quicksand) is its relative invisibility.

Let me explain. In the U.S., the binary racial system has historically meant that you are either black or white. Larsen’s novel gives us a protagonist (Helga Crane) in the 1920s who struggles to find a place where she can acknowledge both her heritages: Danish on one side; African American on the other. Unfortunately, she finds no place like that. Whereever she moves, one aspect of her identity is made salient, is provoked, is seen. So the novel ends as she sinks into motherhood, more mired by the biological body and the meanings that dominant society gives it (colored bodies are only “black”; female bodies are only wives and mothers). As my students have noticed, much literature around borderlands literature ends badly, depressingly, wrenchingly, reinforcing the difficulty of remaining healthily in in-between spaces and identities.

Bisexuality is similarly invisible. Robyn Ochs emphasized this for the students, explaining how once she married her (female) partner, some of the reactions she got were on the lines of “oh, you finally came out all the way” or “you became lesbian!” Likewise, if she had fallen in love with a guy, then her straightness would have been “confirmed.” To complicate this a bit more, while there is a wide spectrum of sexualities, most of us define ourselves by the most visible of our choices. In other words, a woman who has had physical relationships with men and has had numerous fantasies about women is encouraged to privilege the physical in describing herself. Fantasies are not seen as constitutive of sexual identity.

My students, of a different generation than I, than Robyn Ochs, saw the term “queer” as one that–as the Wiki describes it–”simultaneously builds up and tears down boundaries of identity.” It is a term that parallels Anzaldúa’s borderlands in that it counters normative gender and sexual identities. Robyn Ochs countered that it might obscure more interstitial identities like bisexuality. I admit, I’m undecided. Queer seems like a pretty powerful term, but until sexual politics do not always already expect a teleological end to our sexualities (i.e., you are en route to your straightness, or en route to your queerness when you are bisexual) it seems premature.

Serious policing October 26, 2008

Also from this week’s PostSecret post:

Policing takes so many forms: humiliation, bullying, social ostracism, disrespect… and violence.

Policing October 26, 2008

subtitle: another Postsecret post. Yes, indeedy, I am fascinated by these cards.

In class the other day, we talked about those people who don’t feel they fit into the available social categories. What if, like Tiger Woods, you are both black and white, and choose not to choose one identity over the other? (In contrast, arguably Obama *has* made a choice to identify primarily as African American, even though he acknowledges his mixed identity too. Of course, given the power of phenotypical methods of identification used in the U.S., it is unsurprising to see Obama make that choice.)

When you choose not to choose, you are fighting against the social policing that asks you to choose. (I.e., questions of authenticity from the outside: are you black enough, white enough, feminine enough, etc.). Most of us on borders choose, then. We decide we’ll claim whiteness, or blackness, or straightness, etc. We choose in part because, as Foucault made clear in his work, outside forces of discipline naturally become inner forces of discipline and punishment. As individuals, we become determined to clarify which categories we fall into, because there are consequences when we are unplaced, unmoored from these dominant categories.

In my case, when I realized that I wasn’t being seen as Latina–and it was important to me that people saw me as such–I made sure to use the Spanish version of my name, and to practice my Spanish, and etc. etc. (As I’ve gotten older, I have to admit I have grown less worried and anxious about policing my identity. I feel more comfortable with it–and less frantic about how others see me.)

This postcard offers one of those moments where the author worries about not being seen as a woman, because she is so tall, which is not typically seen as a feminine attribute.

But what I find interesting about this postcard is that her worry is NOT that she’ll be seen as a masculine woman or, in that vein, a lesbian. She’s worried that people will think she’s a transvestite.

I’m not quite sure how to read this person’s anxiety–that she’ll be read as a man masquerading as a woman–except that clearly she is aware of a spectrum of gender… she’s not operating on the binary of male/female. However, she’s also –to me– invoking a set of fears about that spectrum of gender. It reminds me of a recent spate of blog posts I’ve seen recently about transgendered individuals in the media. It seems that transgender is the new frontier of “other” identities that make people question the stability of the social categories we use to organize our lives.

Election year latinidad October 15, 2008

Scholars struggle to understand why/how umbrella terms like Latino or Hispanic work or don’t work. Many have come to the conclusion that these global denominators do not speak to how most Latinos would self-identify. However, they have become useful tools, whether for political reasons (‘Hispanic’ was introduced for census purposes by the Nixon administration) or for economic reasons (‘Latino’ saw its rise in the mass media as a way to sell to our complex demography).

Yet here, in the election year, in bids for unity and political power, we see the use of the term Latino to invite different groups to join forces. See, for example, this screenshot from the end of the video:

obama video outtake

You can see here the Latino population of various states (which, let’s just admit it, have very DIFFERENT kinds of Latino populations, with very different histories). In addition, the chalking includes Nica(ragüenses), Venezolanos, Costarricense, PR (Puerto Rico), Cuba. All of these are both named and subsumed under the larger “Latinos somos.”

Only in an election year can you get these groups to the same table!

Postsecret-border secrets October 15, 2008

One of my not-so-secret addictions is the Postsecret site where you can see postcards that others have sent in about their secrets. Frank, the guy who started the whole phenomenon, has now published four books that collect all the secrets he receives.

I *love* these postcards. I am fascinated by their double-speak, the way they announce secrets at the same time that they preserve anonymity. Some secrets are funny, some are tender, and some are heartbreaking. Many, many, many deal with brown in that way that I talk about in my ‘about’ page: “a metaphor that starts in lo Latino–and in my particular mix of Mexican and American–but then also moves into considering and dismantling reified American identity politics.”

This week’s postcards were interesting, but this one stood out to me:

I can relate to this anxiety of reproduction–of wanting your children to feel more ‘at home’ than you did. I certainly had to defend my Latina identity during high school and college. I made sure I learned Spanish well in part as a defensive move. (“See! I AM Latina!”) Of course, this also has a lot to do with not feeling perfectly “white,” either (whatever whiteness means). So the postcard writer signals her own painful past, of not fitting in to her family/community the way she wanted to. And she passes that anxiety on to her imagined children. ‘Cause living in a borderlands feels hard enough without having your children go through the same identity confusion.

Interesting, too, that the picture the writer chooses is that of an apparently white baby. Of course, the baby might have Hispanic/Latino roots, but they are not visible/legible on his/her body. She/he is not phenotypically–stereotypically– Latino.

When I teach Latino Studies, I always try to help students get past the idea that Latinos all look a certain way. The expectation of the cloned body politic so easily bleeds into their expectations that all Latinos talk the same, think the same, feel the same.

So I want to tell that postcard writer that it’s ok. That Latinidad comes in a lot of different shapes and colors.

But I understand her. Because when you look like what your community expects, you belong more easily. When you don’t, you have to fight to belong.

As Gloria Anzaldúa says in her classic Borderlands/La Frontera:

Because I, a mestiza,
continually walk out of one culture
and into another.
because I am in all cultures at the same time,
alma entre dos mundos, tres, cuatro,
me zumba la cabeza con lo contradictorio.
Estoy norteada por todos las voces que me hablan
Simultáneamente.

The ambivalence from the clash of voices results in mental and emotional states of perplexity. Internal strife results in insecurity and indecisiveness. The mestiza’s dual or multiple personality is plagued by psychic restlessness.

What’s funny, when you think about it in historical terms, is that the postcard writer is striving towards brownness. Assimilation into whiteness is no longer desireable, as we might see in literature about passing of the early 20th century. Instead, the writer strives to assimilate, marry into brownness, into a cultural identity felt inside but invisible outside. The postcard suggests the dream of marrying a Latino man and having a Latino child; with that Latino family she will then feel less marginalized by her people.

potential poem titles October 9, 2008

Today I was at a talk given by someone much more integrated into technology than I am, and at one point he mentioned a “blob of data.”

My mind instantly took off, wondering what a poem would be like that had that title. Here’s one absolutely half-a**ed effort:

A Data Blob

In dribs and drabs come bytes

from apples unimagined in our youth.

Ones and zeros congregate to form

vast chains of information set

to tunes and tones and tens

of thousands organizing bits.

Together they will blob

and bob around in space

until some enterprising nob decides

to decode what could just remain

a brick.

See, a bunch of data forms a blob,

and since Yeaworth is not directing, it

will not grow nor eat nor roll.

It contains without shaping.

It holds all those digits, those crumbs, those nibbles,

those bytes

until we can digest it.

And someday we will.

Reassessing the blog–a brief excursion into the meta October 9, 2008

OK. Clearly my self-imposed mandate silenced me. Or I got busy. Somethin’. But now I have no, no, no, NO excuse for not picking up my keyboard and writing ’cause this term I’m teaching a class all about borders. Therefore, soon–tomorrow!–I promise some thinking about hybrid identities in literature.

But I’d also like to announce to the few of you out there that I will now be allowing myself to produce the absurd on this blog too. In a blog-that-was, I wrote about my son (but he’ll be mostly off-topic here), my running (I promise not to bore you), and random insights into the trivia of my life, sometimes in poem form. I feel strongly that my blog needs these oft-poetic random insights. It will keep me going when I don’t feel like being my scholar self.

Onwards.