Þingvellir National Park, Iceland

Þingvellir National Park, Iceland

After leaving Reykjavík, we were off to see the Golden Circle, which includes Þingvellir, Geysir, and Gullfoss. We started in Þingvellir National Park, which is located on the boundary between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates. In most places, these plates can just slide past each other, but here, they break apart, as much as 1mm to 18mm per year, resulting in dramatic fissures and earthquake activity. This photo is from the entrance to the park, just past the visitors center. It is actually a pretty small rock fissure, but somehow I can capture the feeling of the earth separating more on this small scale than in the larger rifts we walked through.

The Almannagjá fault in Þingvellir National Park, Iceland

The path from the visitors center takes us on the Almannagjá fault toward the Lögberg, the Law Rock. This gives you a better sense of how big the rifts can get along the tectonic plates in the Þingvellir plain. It also shows you how popular this site is -- look at all the visitors!

I love these textured rocks -- I don't know what process gives them these striations, though. Is this the result of the lava flows from volcanic activity or the stress of the tectonic plates? (Maybe, as Q said, these were giant fingerprints!)

Another cool textured rock. This trip made me wish I had taken a geology course in college. Or that I just had a geologist along to explain things to me.

We stopped to take a selfie as we walked through Þingvellir.

And there were mysterious paths into the rocks . . . but signs forbade us from straying off the main path, as it damages the fragile plants. (We saw other visitors doing so, though, much to our annoyance.)

Of course, Iceland is full of hidden treasures.  Did you know that in his book, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne placed the passage leading to the center of the earth at the mountain Snæfellsjökull in western Iceland?  

Þingvellir is also a key historic site.  Beginning in AD 930, the Icelandic national democratic assembly (Alþingi) was held yearly in Þingvellir. (This remained the national legislative assembly until 1271, at which time governance was surrendered to the Norwegian crown, though Þingvellir continued to be used as a courtroom until 1798.) People traveled from all over Iceland to attend -- here they would pass new laws, make criminal judgments, create marriage contracts, and enjoy the opportunities for trade and entertainment.

This is the view from the Lögberg (Law Rock). Here the Law Speaker would recite from memory the existing laws of Iceland (one third of the laws were recited each year, along with the rules of the parliament). The early Icelanders re-routed the river to provide water to the site of the Alþingi -- unfortunately, this caused problems later on with flooding and made the site almost impassible in some years.

The annual Alþingi acted as a national court, where criminal cases were heard and punishment enacted. Punishments might involve fines, outlawry, flogging, or execution. This is Drekkingarhylur ("the drowning pool"), where, up to the early 18th century, women who were convicted of adultery, incest, or infanticide were drowned. (Men convicted of capital crimes weren't drowned -- they were burned or hanged.)

Q got to clamber on the rocks near Öxarárfoss (a waterfalll flowing from the river Öxará over the Almannagjá rift). The story is that this is where the river was redirected by the Vikings for the Alþingi.

Q gets up close and personal with Öxarárfoss. 

Closeup of Öxarárfoss in Þingvellir National Park, Iceland

The water is flowing by, but I can capture just this one moment with my camera.

One of the reasons I enjoy posting photos and travelogue is to better remember our journey. Without a story, the memories tend to fade away. But when I capture a moment in time and place it into a narrative, I get to keep the memory. (Or, as cognitive science would argue, I construct the memory. Whatever. I still get a memory.)

Next up: Geysir

More to see in Reykjavik, Iceland

(Just as a heads-up -- this post includes a discussion of phalluses, as well as some pictures of preserved animal phalluses.  And ancient books.  And political art.  There is also mention of food and a spa.)

Aparth-eyed

My first year of college was hard for me. I felt socially isolated and disconnected from many of the students in my dorm, who spent their free time getting high or going to fraternity parties. I joined a couple of student groups to try to find a community, including the Anti-Apartheid Coalition. The Coalition was working to convince the college to divest itself of any holdings in companies that did business in South Africa, which at the time was still under apartheid, a system of racial segregation created and maintained by the state. The idea was, first, that it was immoral to reap profits from a violently repressive, racist state, and second, that divestment would create economic pressure for South Africa to change its oppressive policies. Those of us in the anti-apartheid group spent time educating ourselves about the history and politics of South Africa as well as putting together campus rallies and demonstrations to urge the college trustees to divest.

I grew up inspired by the activism of the 1960s. I often felt that I had been born in the wrong era, as I so passionately wanted to be part of a larger social change movement. Yet by the time I came of age in the 1980s there was little enthusiasm for social activism. While I proudly identified as a feminist, the popular culture offered up anti-feminist backlash; I wouldn't find a strong feminist community until the 1990s, when I was in graduate school. The political idealism of the anti-apartheid movement was deeply compelling to me. I wanted to be part of a movement that worked toward positive social change and I truly believed that dedicated activists could, in fact, make the world a better place.

Like most college students, I was juggling the academic work of writing papers and studying for exams, as well as a number of extracurricular activities. As the semester wore on, paper deadlines neared and we stepped up preparation for our big divestment rally, so I got even busier.

It was an unwelcome surprise, then, to wake up one day with my eyes glued shut.

Seriously, my eyes were completely glued shut, and I couldn't open them. I didn't even know that was possible! I panicked, and finally found my way to the sink in my dorm room. I washed out my eyes and was able to able to open them, which was a huge relief. My eyes were red and puffy, crusty with some stringy mucus secretion. Weird. It seems like a design flaw for a species that relies so much on sight that your own eye secretions can render you unable to see. I rinsed them out more fully and got ready to go to class.

I know -- you're thinking that I should go to the student health service and get this red-eye-gluey thing checked out. But you don't understand: I was busy. With important, life-changing, world-changing things. What did it matter if I had a little eye goop in the morning? We were going to end apartheid. Not only were my personal problems trivial, but ignoring my suffering revealed the depth of my selfless commitment to the cause. Real activists are willing to lay their bodies on the line, risking arrest and bodily harm on a regular basis. Of course, I wasn't in the least prepared to face arrest or expulsion, so my inflamed eyes would just have to do. And it never occurred to me that this even needed treatment. I didn't think of it as an infection that could be spread or that it could have long-term consequences if left untreated. The same boundless optimism that made me think I could change the world also told me that my body could take care of itself.

Another reason I didn't see this eye goop thing as a problem had to do with the pink eye scares of my childhood. When I was a child, my parents and the pediatrician periodically thought I had pink eye. I rubbed my eyes and they were red, so they couldn't tell if my eyes were red because I rubbed them or if I was rubbing them because they were red and infected. Just to be on the safe side, they would diagnose it as pink eye and prescribe daily eye drops as treatment. Couldn't be simpler, right? Except not for me. I have a very strong blink reflex -- when I see something coming at my eye (even if it is just a tiny drop of fluid), I blink. To me, that has always seemed reasonable. So to get the eye drops in my eye, my mother would hold my eye open and say, "Now, don't blink." And I would agree not to blink. But then as the eye drops were falling toward my eye, I would blink so forcefully that she couldn't keep my eye open, and the eye drops would fall on my closed eyelid. We'd do this a couple of times, and then my mother would just give up, hoping that some of the medication got into my eye through my closed lids.

As it turned out, it hardly mattered -- I never did have pink eye as a child. So I learned two things from this experience: One, that some things are out of my control, like blinking, and two, that I was invulnerable to pink eye.

But back in my college dorm room, I had to figure out some way to manage my goopy eyes. So I worked out a system. I'd keep a damp washcloth next to my bed so that I could clear out my morning eye-glue, at least enough to open my eyes, and then I could get on with my day. I worked my shift at the cafeteria, went to class (I never missed class), then handed out leaflets for our upcoming divestment rally. I'd stand in the path through the main campus green, wearing my denim jacket covered with political buttons, rub my red and gooey eyes, and offer leaflets to passing students.

"Don't forget about the rally on Wednesday!"

"Anti-apartheid rally, Wednesday afternoon!"

"Divest now!"

The passing students could not have been less interested. This was not Berkeley -- the majority of these students were not politically engaged. And South Africa was far away. What did this have to do with their lives? When the administration later attempted to ban keg parties, then the students found their political voice, to be sure. But the number of students interested in demonstrating to ostensibly help people in a distant country was a small minority, at best. And even if successful, our movement would only benefit those oppressed by apartheid indirectly through economic pressure -- it was not as though attending the rally would instantly free Nelson Mandela and others unjustly jailed. But I couldn't help being angry at the apathy I saw all around me. Why can't people see how important this is? So we persevered, handing out leaflets and getting the word out about our rally. I even wore a DIVEST NOW sandwich board to classes one day. I was the only one wearing a sign. I got quite a few stares that day.

The rally came off, though it wasn't as well-attended as I had hoped. We stood in front of the campus administration building, listened to the speakers, and chanted as loud as we could.

Hey hey!

Ho ho!

South African stocks have got to go!

Hey hey!

Ho ho!

South African stocks have got to go! . . .

We were a small group, to be sure. But student groups across the country made similar demands, and colleges started to feel the pressure to respond in some way. There was some divestment, though the process was sometimes slow and incomplete. And the international social and economic pressure did have a role in bringing down apartheid. I think we made a difference. 

Photo of the protest via  

I came through the experience with my optimism largely intact, both in terms of social change and in terms of my own body. Maybe I couldn't marshal thousands of students into the rally. Maybe the trustees delayed their decision on divestment. But in the end, the divestment movement had an effect. In the end, apartheid fell. And that goopy eye thing? After a week or two, it cleared up on its own; I never did go to the doctor about it. It wasn't until years later that it even occurred to me that I might have gotten pink eye that semester. No matter how often I got sick or hurt, I maintained a pretty robust belief in my body's resilience, assuming that any physical problems would resolve themselves without the need for medical intervention.

I have to admit, though, that my political optimism was a bit bruised by all those apathetic students. It can be difficult to sustain one's hope for social change in the face of such pervasive disinterest. My experience as an activist and as an educator has taught me that you aren't going to reach everyone, or even most people. You can leaflet and argue and talk yourself hoarse, but many people will not be persuaded. Like blinking, this is something I can't fully control.

However, as a teacher I've also learned that we can sometimes have an effect on someone that isn't immediately apparent. I don't know that I changed even one mind or inspired one student to attend the rally. But it could be that being exposed to the passionate political ideals we wore so proudly and shouted so enthusiastically created a sense of possibility for the power of a dedicated movement to enact social change. Those seemingly apathetic students may have gone on to become political activists for some other cause, or they may have formed community organizations or joined the Peace Corps. And certainly our public activism raised awareness about apartheid for students who might have otherwise not even known about it.

In the end, I'll never know whether or how they were influenced by our leaflets and chanting. I want to believe that I made a difference, even for those students who seemed utterly uncaring. It's important for me, even all these years later, with my idealism a bit tarnished, to have made an impact. I'd like to think I had at least some effect on them.

Well, if nothing else, I probably gave some of them pink eye.

***********************************************************************

NOTE:  I've come to enjoy storytelling podcasts like The Moth and The Story Collider, which feature live performances of people telling true stories from their lives.  It got me to thinking -- if I had to give a live storytelling performance, what stories could I tell?  I wrote this story with that in mind (it's not the same, of course, since I am writing it, not telling it live, but one does what one can).  Many thanks for helpful feedback from Clio, Ken, and, of course, Q.  The title was also Q's idea, so blame him for the pun.  (In case you were wondering, Divestment Bunny, pictured above, is a relic from my college days, when even my stuffed animals were politically active.)   

She *really* likes it: Eroticizing women's labor

I definitely do not look this happy when I am scrubbing the tub.
Image from Deviantly Domesticated (with funny commentary on lots of vintage ads)

Image from wonderfriend

Have you ever noticed how happy the women are in ads for cleaning products?  These advertisements  often glamorize domestic labor and imply that women are positively euphoric while cleaning (at least with the right product in hand).  You too can love cleaning and be floor-happy . . . with our product!  But some of the ads go further, implying that cleaning is an erotic experience for women.  In the Hoover ad below, for example, the woman is in a prone position, touching the vacuum lightly -- there is something intimate, almost romantic about the way they are situated (as well as putting her in a submissive position).   

I bet she'd be happier if
you promised to do the cleaning.
Image from SA_Steve on Flickr

This Pine-Sol ad, on the other hand, presents the woman in an orgiastic glow, presumably due to the stimulating qualities of the cleaning solution.  Who needs foreplay when you have Pine-Sol?

Pine-Sol -- with new aphrodisiac action!
Image from ThoughtCatalogue, who provides an
interesting retrospective of the Pine-Sol lady.

Janitors and Maids

Prompted by a Facebook discussion of my last post:

All this talk about professional cleaners got me to thinking about the distinction between janitors and maids.  Janitors tend to be men, while maids tend to be women.  According to the United States' Bureau of Labor Statistics, women make up 30.3% of janitors and building cleaners, while they make up 88.6% of maids and housekeeping cleaners.  Why? What is the key difference that makes one more male-dominated and one more female-dominated?

Let's start with the job descriptions.  The job description for janitors in the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that "[j]anitors and building cleaners keep many types of buildings clean, orderly, and in good condition," while the job description for maids indicates that "[m]aids and housekeeping cleaners do general cleaning tasks, including making beds and vacuuming halls, in private homes and commercial establishments."  These sound like very similar jobs to me.  Both involve cleaning buildings, although maids also work in private homes and janitors are involved in keeping buildings in good condition, as well as clean.  I'm still not quite getting the critical distinction that accounts for the gender disparity.  

Maid: Unpacking Ambivalence

Sometimes, while I am engaged in some unpleasant cleaning task, I think about how nice it would be to hire someone to do some of these cleaning jobs.  I'm not talking about a weekly whole-house cleaning (I can't envision that, somehow), just having someone in occasionally to clean the kitchen and bathrooms.  When I'm on my hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor, the vision of a professional service sweeping in and leaving behind clean, gleaming surfaces beckons to me.  And yet, apart from the time we hired a cleaning service when we moved out of our rental house (it seemed a good investment to make sure we got our deposit back), I haven't succumbed to the temptation of professional house cleaners.  In part, this is due to entropy (the irony of doing hours of scrubbing because I'm too lazy to call and arrange the service does not escape me) and being worried about the quality of their work (will things get broken or damaged?  I know I can do this safely and carefully -- will they?), but I also have a strong discomfort with the prospect of handing off my cleaning to professionals.  It seems the epitome of bourgeois privilege to not have to do one's own cleaning.  Let's face it, even with all my careful talk about cleaning professionals, the term that comes to mind is . . . maid.  And I'm not ready to have a maid.

What same-sex marriage represents

It's the end of June, and LGBTQ Pride Month is coming to a close.  Last week, I was pleased to attend the opening of the new exhibit at Montgomery College, Portraits of Life: LGBT Stories of Being as well as a day-long consortium organized by MC Pride and Allies entitled How Do You Do It?, bringing together students, faculty, staff, and administrators from a number of local colleges and universities to discuss best practices for creating a welcoming campus for LGBTQ students, faculty, and staff.  Both were wonderful events and I am proud that we are making a visible commitment to support the LGBTQ members of our community.  In doing so, we take a stand for a more equal society that does not discriminate based on sexuality or gender expression.


In many ways, we have made tremendous strides toward that equal society, but that progress is mixed with strong backlash, as well.  The recent Pride image of a rainbow Oreo posted by Kraft Foods on Facebook reveals the mainstream corporate support for the LGBTQ community, but it also elicited a stream of anti-gay commentary.  This year has seen similar conflict over same-sex marriage in the United States.  In a historic first, President Obama and Vice-President Biden both came out in support of legal recognition for same-sex marriage (the first sitting president of the U.S. to do so).  However, this endorsement followed the passage of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnerships in North Carolina, the 30th state in the U.S. to pass such an amendment. 

In his keynote speech at How Do You Do It?, Luke Jensen (University of Maryland) shared his lifetime of experiences in the trenches as an LGBTQ advocate.  As he marked various components of the struggle (HIV/AIDS, hate crimes, bullying, invisibility), I was struck by how far we have come over the years . . . and how far we still have to go.  For example, attitudes towards same-sex marriage have clearly changed in recent years.  While only 35% of Americans favored legalizing same-sex marriage in 2001, 47% indicated support in 2012, according to Pew research polls.  A recent ABC poll (April 2012) found that 53% of Americans favored legalizing same-sex marriage.  In short, polls indicate increasing support for legalizing same-sex marriage, but the country is still split on the issue, with strong feelings on both sides.   

Teaching toward a better world

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
          -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today we honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose tireless dedication to a world free of bigotry, poverty, and hatred helped bring us the civil rights movement.  I cannot do justice to the man or the movement, nor can I improve upon the many wise and profound words that have been said by and about him, so I will not try.  I want, instead, to take a moment to reflect on my own commitment to social change.

I sang for social change from 1989-1994.
(I'm in the middle in the back row.)

The torture debate

I've been following the discussion of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" in the last few weeks, in part because of the involvement of some psychologists in crafting these techniques for the Defense Department. In an interview on NPR, one of the military psychologists involved states that these interrogation techniques were fully justified in view of the need to protect America against future terrorist attacks -- in his view, psychologists are not constrained to "do no harm", but rather that they should do "the most good for the most people." The involvement of psychologists in these harsh interrogation practices has been the cause of a strong response within the American Psychological Association, including a restatement of their stance against torture, and a revision in the code of ethics for psychologists. Now there is a call for an investigation into the American Psychological Association's ethics task force, with the accusation that this task force was biased in favor of the Defense Department and that the ethics policy was crafted to conform to Pentagon guidelines. The debate over these harsh interrogation practices has generally focused on two questions: Are these practices morally and/or legally justifiable, and do they work? Let me leave the first question aside for the moment; important as it is, I want to unpack the second question. In general, the "do the techniques work" discussion has been narrowly focused on whether these techniques provide useful intelligence and whether they are necessary for getting such information. That is, do detainees spill the secrets (of other operatives and future attack plans) when they are waterboarded or held in stress positions, and would they have done so if they hadn't been waterboarded or held in stress positions? There has been a significant conflict between those like Cheney who argue that important intelligence was gathered through harsh interrogation techniques that saved thousands of American lives, and the recent testimony of an ex-FBI agent who said that these tactics were unreliable and ineffective. I would argue that torture does not reliably result in accurate or complete information, but rather, the person says whatever they think will make the pain stop. That *might* include useful information, but it might also be incomplete or even be false. President Obama (among others) has also questioned Cheney's reading of the relevant documents, challenging the notion that these techniques were necessary or effective in gathering information. But what seems to be missing in this discussion is what the effect is within the broader international context. If the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, there was a great deal of discussion about how these abuses would foster or enhance an anti-American sentiment and might inspire more to join terrorist groups. If our harsh treatment of detainees inspires more to join the ranks of terrorist organizations, then wouldn't it be possible that these interrogation tactics served not to save American lives, but to endanger them?

Pills, politics, and puzzlement

I'm listening to an NPR story on the controversy in Connecticut about a bill requiring hospitals to offer emergency contraception to rape victims. The debate centered, not surprisingly, on the four Catholic hospitals in the state, who did not want to be required to provide EC, as they are morally opposed to it. Their policy is to test female rape victims to see if they are near ovulation, and if they are, to tell them where they can obtain EC.

Wait a minute. If Catholics are morally opposed to the use of emergency contraception and they are trying to be consistent with this moral opposition, why would they tell the women where to go to get emergency contraception? If you're opposed to some action, you don't help people commit that action. It's like saying, "I think armed robbery is wrong, but the liquor store next door has a lot of cash, and here's where you can buy a gun." This is a cop-out. If you believe that EC is morally wrong for all women in all circumstances, then you wouldn't tell rape victims where to get it. If you believe it is an acceptable choice for some women in certain contexts (e.g., rape), then you offer it to women in your hospital and leave it up to their conscience to decide. The current policy is just moral hand-waving -- Oh, we didn't give them the EC, so our conscience is clean.

It reminds me of the inconsistencies in policies which ostensibly claim abortion is murder.

End of the story: The bill wasn't passed . . . lawmakers declined to vote on it.

Choices, choices

Check out the cartoon at Minimum Security : Second from the bottom, about salad dressing. Very on-target!

Flanagan and the motherhood mystique

After reading this post on Pandagon about Caitlin Flanagan's rhetoric regarding motherhood, I was intrigued enough to go read the article in Elle about Flanagan and some of Flanagan's articles. She talks about how mothers should stay home and care for their children full-time, that children are harmed by their mother's working outside of the home.

In other words, she's completely immersed in the motherhood mystique, which claims that:

• motherhood is a full-time (and more than full-time) job
  
• it is supremely fulfilling to women to be immersed in the task of mothering (indeed this is constructed as the ultimate fulfillment for all women -- a woman who does not want to mother or doesn't enjoy it is seen as psychologically disturbed)
  
• the best thing for children is the full-time, intense devotion of their mother (and only their mother)
  
• Women are naturally good at caregiving and should be responsible for all nurturance (husband, children, elders, etc.)
  
• Mothers have infinite patience and the willingness (nay, eagerness) to engage in self-sacrifice for her children (and other family members) -- she should put her own needs last. Flanagan mentions that when her children were young, "I was a mother virtuously willing to sacrifice her own happiness for the sake of her children," ("How Serfdom Saved the Women's Movement," Atlantic Monthly, p109).

Let's put this in context: This construction of motherhood is a modern, Western construction which emerged out of the industrial revolution, changing family and work patterns, gendered beliefs, and a healthy dose of patriarchy. Prior to the industrial revolution, most women and men were engaged in agricultural labor, and this involved productive labor for both men and women -- women made many of the items for home use (cloth, garments, candles), as well as participating in farming and animal husbandry, in addition to engaging in care of infants. Children were cared for by fathers, mothers, and older siblings (a pattern replicated around the world -- many cultures have an older sibling caring for the younger child). The Industrial Revolution hit, many men became wage slaves, and families became structured around one or more members of the family working for pay in an urban center. In poor families, men, women, and even children were wage laborers (until child labor laws went into effect); in middle-class families, men were wage laborers and women were in charge of domestic labor (housework and child care), for which they were not paid. But how to keep women busy with domestic labor, now that so many of their tasks had been relegated to mass-production in factories? I know! We'll tell them that raising children is a full-time job, which requires the skills of teacher, nurse, psychologist, and nutritionist, and that domestic labor is a labor of love for their families. Cook for your family and show them you love them! Decorate the home to be a haven of rest for your husband. So the domestic and child care tasks that remained were inflated in importance (the development of the cult of domesticity), and the belief that children needed full-time, devoted attention from their mothers was a device to keep women at home (instead of out agitating for the vote).

This construction emerged in the late 1800s and then again in force in the 1950s in the U.S., and Flanagan has got the rhetoric down pat. From her insistence that having a hot meal ready for her husband shows how much she loves him (and her critique of mothers who do not provide hot meals for the family) to her insistence that women are naturally skilled at, and are drawn to, domestic tasks, to her strongly-worded claims about the harms to children which stem from their mothers working outside of the home, she is the mouthpiece for the motherhood mystique and the cult of domesticity.

So why does her argument bother me? For many reasons:

• Natural and universal? Flanagan relies heavily on the notion that "woman in the home" is a natural and universal role: Women are naturally good a child rearing, naturally want to engage in domestic tasks, and that there is a natural "maternal bond" between mothers and their children. But it is clear that childrearing and domestic tasks are taken on by men and women, boys and girls, in many different arrangements in cultures around the world. Certainly, mothers are often involved in breastfeeding infants, but other types of care vary considerably. It is also clear that women and men vary in their enjoyment of, and desire for, childrearing and domestic labor. Flanagan herself seems to have little affinity for cleaning, cooking, or laundry, and she relates real ambivalence in her experiences of childrearing.
  
• Harm to children? The claim that children will be harmed by not receiving the full-time devotion of their mothers has been a cultural trope since the Victorian era, but there is little scientific support for this notion. Infants and children clearly need care, and it helps to have a consistent set of caregivers for infants so that they can develop secure attachment patterns. Beyond that, however, children do as well when they are in high-quality day care as when they are raised by full-time mothers or fathers or some combination of parent and paid caregiver. In fact, children generally do better when in high-quality child care if they come from a home environment which provides less cognitive and linguistic stimulation. Flanagan even admits that children who went to day care seemed to be "a little more on the ball" ("To Hell With All That", New Yorker, 80(18), 2004).
  
• What about fathers? It ticks me off to no end that women get castigated for combining paid work with child rearing, when fathers are almost never held to the same standards. Where is the concern for children of working fathers? Where is the criticism of inadequate fathering? It seems that the only thing a father can do to engage similar critique is to stop being the breadwinner and become a "deadbeat dad." We praise men for their contributions toward child rearing, but we rarely hold them accountable for their children's care to the same extent that we do women.
  
• She's a hypocrite She says women should be full-time mothers, but she has a writing career. She snubs women who take their children to day care, but she employed a nanny for many years. She exhorts women to cook, clean, and create lovely homes for their families, and she herself does little of this work (she employs cleaning services, etc.). Classic Flanagan from "To Hell With All That" (New Yorker, 80(18), 2004) -- she relates a story of being at a nursery school event:
  
  

  It was a dinner dance with an auction, and the signal items up for bid were chairs hand-painted by the members of each class, a project that had been laboriously created and supervised by an exceedingly earnest and energetic athome mother. . . Leaning against a far column watching her, with drinks in their hands and sardonic half-smiles on their faces, were two of my friends: a lawyer and a movie producer. . . We looked at the woman --- think of all she'd sacrificed to stay home with her children, think of the time she'd spent dipping our own children's hands in paint so that they could press their little prints on the miniature Adirondack chairs. "Get a life," one of us said, and we all laughed and drank some more. And then we turned our backs on the auction and talked about work. But I'm craven enough to change colors if the occasion calls for it. "Is that poor child's mother ever at school?" someone hissed when a (perfectly happy) little girl marched off with her nanny one recent afternoon. "I've never seen her," I clucked back, feeling guilty about knifing the absent mother and glad as hell that I hadn't sent my own nanny to pick up the boys that day."

  
  
  This is a woman who is opportunistic and hypocritical -- she will say whatever will sell best at the moment. And yet she has the hubris to criticize Laura Schlessinger for being a hypocrite for not living by the standards she advocates("Do As I Say", Atlantic, 293(1))!
  
  You know what? I've given this woman far too much of my time already. She needs to be ignored, because she has nothing important to say; she contributes nothing to our understanding of women's or men's lives or how to make them better. She needs to stop writing until she can figure out what she really wants to say, other than to claim a superior status to which she has no legitimate right and get paid for the privilege.

Dangerous VP on the loose

Vice-President Dick Cheney shot a 78-year-old lawyer on Feb. 11, claiming it to be a hunting accident. James Brady, who was shot during the assassination attempt on Pres. Reagan's life, and his wife, Sarah, responding to the news:

"Now I understand why Dick Cheney keeps asking me to go hunting with him," said Jim Brady. "I had a friend once who accidentally shot pellets into his dog - and I thought he was an idiot." "I've thought Cheney was scary for a long time," Sarah Brady said. "Now I know I was right to be nervous."

Marc Fisher, in his blog on the Washington Post, comments:

Why this story is being played as a brite--that's newspaper lingo for a cute little piece that offers the reader a chuckle--is beyond me. Here's the #2 guy in the nation firing a weapon and hitting a 78-year-old lawyer from Austin, sending him to intensive care. The vice president's office delayed releasing the news for a day (if a vice president shoots somebody deep in the heart of Texas and nobody hears, did it really happen?), the victim was flown to a trauma center and remains in the ICU, and Dick Cheney puts out a statement saying he's glad the guy is doing "fine?" I'm not a doctor, but I've been in enough ICUs to know this: If you're there, you're not "fine." Apparently, the victim will survive and that's good to hear. But isn't it a bit unseemly for the veep to have left town on the afternoon following the quail hunting expedition? If you shot somebody by accident, wouldn't you want to stick around for a couple of days to make certain he was "fine," to express your apology to the family, to offer to help in some way? Even if you are vice president and spend much of your time in secret locations, doesn't basic human decency call for you to cancel your plans and sit tight?

Makes you think...

Inclusion or exclusion in this holiday season

A number of Christians have been expressing offense (or even outrage) at the use of "Happy Holidays"; instead they want people to say "Merry Christmas." There was discontent at the First Couple's holiday card, which did not specifically mention Christmas. Some have stated that they will refuse to shop at any store that has no specific mention of Christmas.

For those who are used to being in the cultural mainstream and having most of the surrounding cultural discourse support their cultural practice, it can be disconcerting to become de-centered. To suddenly become merely one religious/cultural tradition among many, with no special status, seems to connote disrespect.

But only if you are used to being in the cultural mainstream. For those who are accustomed to lack of cultural recognition, the intensity of the outrage seems odd.


No one is claiming that there isn't a Christmas tradition for some people -- merely that it is part of a broader winter holiday season that includes New Year's, Hanukah, Kwanzaa, Solstice, Ramadan, etc... But that lack of privilege, the lack of exclusive recognition, the inability to ignore other traditions -- that is what is most likely the galling aspect.

It strikes at the heart of the key difference in viewpoints: Do we acknowledge and respect diverse practices and cultures, or do we ignore cultural diversity and recognize only the dominant majority?

For those in the dominant majority, there is always the option of ignoring the minority traditions. Those in the minority, however, have no choice but to confront the dominant traditions in everyday life (e.g., Christmas specials on TV, etc.) and to be reminded of their marginalized status. Those in the majority may not even notice these references to their cultural traditions -- they are just "normal" -- but they may become deeply upset at the hint of removing any of these references. We don't notice the culture when it coincides with our worldview, but we notice any perceived "loss" of these cultural supports.

I believe in acknowledging and supporting diversity. I believe it is worth sharing the stage, instead of hogging the spotlight. I recognize that people find meaning in a variety of cultural and religious practices, and I am willing to support their path as long as it doesn't harm others or exclude others' paths. I'm not offended when someone wishes me "Merry Christmas", or "Happy Kwanzaa", but I am sensitive to the experience of being unrecognized and marginalized. And so my reply will typically be "Happy Holidays," with that meaning that you should find joy in the holidays you celebrate. And if you take offense at that, I think you have missed the point.

Cancer prevents premarital sex?

Paraphrased from today's Washington Post:

A new vaccine will be available next year or soon thereafter which will provide virtually 100% protection against two of the strains of HPV (genital warts; human papilloma virus) that are linked to an increased risk of cervical cancer in women.

Health advocates say: Good news! We can protect women from a cancer which now takes the lives of 3,700 women each year in the US.

Social conservatives say: But wait...if girls and women are protected from the risks of cervical cancer associated with contracting HPV, then they will feel free to engage in risky sexual behaviors, like having more than one lifetime sexual partner. How will we motivate them to be abstinent until marriage, and faithful during marriage?

(I guess that the conservatives forgot about HIV/AIDS, herpes, and a host of other STDs/STIs...)

These two groups are debating whether to make the immunizations mandatory (health advocates) or optional (conservatives) for children/young adults.

Social conservatives are so committed to eradicating sex outside of marriage that they are willing to risk people's lives for their moral vision. It's almost as though they welcome the costs of sexual activity as an impetus for sexual morality. If we can just keep people terrified of the consequences of sex outside of marriage, then they will be abstinent. Maybe if we could convince them that sex without the wedding band causes you to die instantaneously -- you stick it in, and just explode (*boom*) -- then they'd be sure to be abstinent!

Except it doesn't work. Fear is a strong motivator, to be sure, but it is not the only relevant motivation -- pleasure and affection and desire for intimacy are strong motivators as well. And adolescents are often convinced that they will not be affected by risks (termed the personal fable) -- it's hard to get them to wear seat belts, and that isn't even much of an impediment to enjoyment! How many young women think to themselves...Hey, I'd like to have sex, but I might get cervical cancer as the result of an STD. Gosh, it's not worth it...I'll wait until marriage. Many people don't think that their partners could be infected with an STD/STI, and I suspect that a great many young people don't even know that HPV can increase a woman's chance of developing cervical cancer. (Particularly since many sex-ed programs have been eviscerated to a bare-bones "don't do it" message.)

Further, one cannot control whether one's partner is faithful or not -- the abstinent-until-marriage and faithful-during-marriage woman may still get infected with HPV from her husband...is she supposed to die as a penance for his lack of sexual fidelity? And this doesn't even consider issues of forced sex. In short, apart from the obvious question of whether having sex with more than one partner in one's entire life is, in fact, the correct moral stance, the fear-based approach is unlikely to succeed in enforcing this stance.

Let's hope that the health advocates win this one -- I'd hate to see more women die from a preventable disease just to assuage the fears of the conservatives that young people might have sex before marriage.

Racist, or just stupid?

The Washington Post today reports:
Democratic lawmakers and civil rights leaders denounced conservative commentator William J. Bennett yesterday for suggesting on his syndicated radio show that aborting black children would reduce the U.S. crime rate.

The former U.S. education secretary-turned-talk show host said Wednesday that "if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose -- you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." Bennett quickly added that such an idea would be "an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do." But, he said, "your crime rate would go down."

But wait, why stop there? Why not prevent *all* births -- if no one was ever born, surely that would eradicate *all* crime. Eradication of the human species as a crime-prevention program...

And this is from the author of a book on virtue.

*Sigh* Sometimes it seems that we haven't made any real progress.