Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

feminism

Crushing On: Smart Girls at the Party

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E and I joke that in our relationship she contributes most of the food discovery, while I chip in most of the media. She finds fresh foods, new snacks, and recipes, while I unearth new bands, programs, and news.

Lately we have slightly flipped the script, with me signing up for a CSA and E getting more connected with the women in tech movement. Which is how I walked downstairs the other day to find her watching this:


(If you can’t see the embed, you can watch the episode elsewhere.)

I sat down. I laughed and cried. I was delighted.

That’s an episode of Smart Girls at the Party, an unusual and awesome internet talk-show hosted by Amy Poehler of SNL and Parks and Rec. The show’s mission statement is “Extraordinary individuals changing the world by being themselves.”

What that boils down to is Amy Poehler interviewing young women who are trying and succeeding at anything and everything they want to do.

“We wanted to represent real female friends and celebrate that stage of life where you write down what you want to be when you get older, before too many people tell you no,” Poehler said. “And we poke fun at the talk-show format a little bit, taking very silly things very seriously. This is like ‘Charlie Rose’ for a younger audience.”

…”We wanted something to feel bite-sized and positive and I do think that there’s some lack of celebration of the unique, original girl,” Poehler told the Daily News. “So in some ways, it was a response to that. But, honestly, we really wanted to do a talk show that had a dance party at the end.”

I am not a fanatic about Poehler, but here her typical deadpan delivery makes for hilariously honest interactions with the wide age-group of her guests. She never condescends or jokes at their expense. Actually, she builds them up as characters and experts by interviewing them from a place of delighted naivete.

Despite being a major feminist, I’m always unsure when it comes to girl-centric programming – whether that’s curricular or in media. On one hand, I know girls need to get away from the shadow and influence of boys in educational and social settings so they can grow up with equal footing. On the other, girls-only can be a ghetto, and it can serve not only to over-shelter girls but also exclude the inquisitive, equality-minded boys that form the other half of a equal-opportunity world.

It’s a tough line to tread, and I feel like Smart Girls at the Party really gets it right. It’s a show I would share with girls or boys, and I’m sure they would both find it equally delightful – it just happens to feature the empowered young women who will change the world tomorrow by being themselves today.

Best of all, it’s a reminder that smart girls at the party are often the coolest ones in the room.

Is misogyny okay if it is tacit?

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I am angry about something. I ran the same situation by Elise, and she just found it amusing.

I’m interested to know what you think, posed in both hypothetical and actual flavors.

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Hypothetical:

You are attending a conference titled “Asian-Americans Emerging in Social Media.” Whether or not you are Asian is irrelevant; assume you’re interested in the content of the conference, and that 98% of attendees are at least partially of Asian descent.

While picking up your registration packet you recognize a non-Asian blogger, and he’s wearing a t-shirt that says, “I’ve got yellow fever!”

Later in the day, you run into a white female you don’t know wearing a tank top that says, “I’m turning Japanese.” Perhaps it’s just text, or perhaps it’s paired with a minimalist illustration of slanted eyes on an “O” face in a nod to the song’s subject. Later, at a party thrown by a Chinese culture website, her apparel bears something to the effect of, “Don’t worry boys: size doesn’t matter … to me”**

Note your initial reaction to the shirts, considering the context of the conference. Now, consider that both wearers blogged/twittered a promise to “pack their most inappropriate t-shirts” for the conference. Has your reaction changed?

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Actual:

This is a recount of something Grace of What If No One’s Watching witnessed at the recent BlogHer conference.

The attendance, while not 100% female, is very largely so. I haven’t seen more than 20 or 30 male attendees since I’ve been here.

The first one I saw just after arriving, at a restaurant in the hotel. I noticed him due to his shirt. It showed a graphic of a woman with her breasts exposed, her nipples replaced by @ signs. It read “show me your tweets.”

Then, not an hour later, I saw a man sporting a shirt saying something along the lines of “I love mommy bloggers–they put out.” The next day, the same man attended a party, hosted by an ostensibly feminist website, sporting a shirt reading “I am having very spiritual thoughts about your breasts” or some similar nonsense.

Did you have a similar reaction to those slogans? Note that they’re clearly aimed at women no matter the setting, while in my hypothetical two of the shirts wouldn’t have been as striking sans Asian context.

Again, does it change your opinion that that both bloggers blogged a promise that they had packed some offensive apparel?

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Both the hypothetical and the actual rubbed me the wrong way. Yes, they might be wryly humorous, but why bring that wry humor to a place celebrating a medium where a specific minority has escaped marginalization and become empowered?

Elise – an Asian woman – found them both amusing – especially “yellow fever” and “show me your tweets.”

Are Grace and I humorless feminazis for being offended?*** Or, is Elise is a self-hating Asian woman?**** Neither. Grace and I don’t appreciate tacit misogynism. Elise gives people the benefit of the doubt.

A final fact: both of the male bloggers commented on Grace’s post, claiming they wore the shirts to get noticed and start conversations (they apparently forgot that they’d be noticed simply by being a male). Those comments were followed by friends/readers who vouched that no offense was meant (they have “good hearts”), as well as a number who less-than-kindly called Grace overly-sensitive (a gem: “Is it possible it’s your own insecurities causing this? Seems to me that you feel like you’re less than a man.”).

Seriously?

Next year BlogHer is in New York City, and I’m contemplating attending. And you had better believe that if I do I am going to spend at least one day hanging out with Grace wearing the most hard-core grrl-power t-shirt I can find.

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* If you’ve never heard the phrase before, it is a particularly unclever way to note that you are a non-Asian who is primarily attracted to Asians.

** In the same way that people assume all black men are heavily hung, there’s also an assumption that Asian men are uniformly not. Neither assumption is statistically supportable.

*** I can’t speak for Grace, but I kinda am.

**** No.

President Obama

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When I was small I used to watch the news every night. At seven I was probably more educated about congress and presidential politics than I am now.

In the first election I was old enough to chat about – likely Bush Sr. in ’88 – I remember my mother telling me about Ferraro. “In 1984,” she said, “there was a woman on the ticket for the first time ever – Ferraro.” (My mother never uttered her first name that I can recall.) “She would have been Vice President for the Democrats, but they lost to Regan.”

I don’t remember her sounding too upset; I guess everyone liked Regan at least a little bit. But, I do remember the message that followed, whether it was said out loud, maybe in a voting booth, or just implied during our next re-watch of Free To Be You and Me.

It’s important that a woman can be considered for our second highest office. You’re going to grow up to be a white man, and in a way you’re lucky because you can aspire to do anything – even be president. At some point in your life you’re going to have the chance to vote for a woman, or for someone who is black or Asian, or for some other kind of person who usually isn’t given the same opportunities you might have. And, if you vote for them you might have to vote against someone who is more like you, but it’s important for you to support them. Not only because you agree with them, but because of what their election could mean for America.

In a way her message, however she actually conveyed it, changed my whole life. It was the birth of my feminism and the kernel that would become my fierce dedication to civil rights for everyone, no matter how different from me they are. And, it made me become aware that America means something very special and very specific – it means freedom to be and freedom to choose.

For that reason, even in the moments I have been the most critical of America, her message has always inspired me to fight for my country instead of against my country. That distinction has nothing to do with party lines and colored states on a map – it’s about freedom and choice. It’s about the quality of compassion.

Yesterday we elected the first black president of the United States of America. Not just black, but multi-racial. Just like America. Just like the family I have created for myself with Elise.

Tonight I’m already looking forward to America’s future elections. I’m looking forward to presidents who are female, Muslim, gay, Asian, or atheist.

Yesterday we could have elected the first woman vice president. And, though she lost, she may inspire stories told to another generation of little girls and boys who will grow up to love their country not for what it is, but for what it can be.

Tonight I spent some time with my two best friends – a woman who has made her way in a white man’s industry despite discrimination against her and everyone else, and another woman who saw four states tell her she doesn’t share the same rights as her peers because of who she is and who she has chosen to spend the rest of her life with.

Yesterday I cried from when I made that last post until about thirty minutes after the acceptance speech ended. I cried, and it felt good, because I was witnessing the birth of the America my mother promised me I would have a chance to live in. It has arrived blessedly early in my charmed existence.

Tonight I am weary and drained, but still ready to fight for my country, in my way. To fight to make people understand the rights we have and the process we are due. To fight for our freedom to be and to choose.

Today my mother sent me an email that shared its subject with this post’s title. It read:

Peter,

We just made history!!!!!!!

xo
mom

Alla This

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On Thursday morning I was very much in my head while sitting on the trolley, listening to Ani DiFranco’s madly terrific new song “Alla This.” The song is partially about the intersection of the personal and the political, with Ani at one point delivering the following:

i won’t rent you my time
i won’t sell you my brain
i won’t pray to a male god
cuz that would be insane
and i can’t support the troops,
cuz every last one of them’s being duped,
and i will not rest a wink
until the women have regrouped

I already love the song as much as anything she’s done this decade, but at her concert earlier this month that verse sent a thrill through my body – in eight lines it succinctly hits commercialism, religion, war, and feminism. Amazing.

The verse ended as I stepped off the trolley, and my mind began to wander. I thought about Ani’s constant challenging of the patriarchal status quo, and how any form of discrimination ultimately connects back to that hegemony.

In the distance between the trolley doors and the stairs to sunlight somehow that rolled into my wondering about the Iraqi citizens, and if life has actually improved for those that exist outside of the patriarchy both of that nation and of the force the world is imposing on it.

I wondered, what about the gays and lesbians in Iraq? I knew nothing about this group, though I was sure they existed. What was their life like before the invasion, and what was it like now? While I am advocating for the rights of my lesbian friends to marry are their Iraqi counterparts struggling for the simplest of rights – for the ability to exist as themselves without fear?

Sometimes my brain and the internet do a peculiar zeitgeist tango, where the same day I wonder about a topic it shows up in my daily reading, and sure enough when I got to my desk CNN was running a story entitled “Gays in Iraq terrorized by threats, rape, murder.”

As it turns out, as the Iraqi government came unmoored the situation of their GBLT citizens deteriorated. Any hint of their sexuality risks not only their own lives, but the lives of their entire families.

What a terrifying closet to be trapped within.

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Just a day later I was at the Philadelphia Theatre Company to see Elise’s brother in his weekly theatre lab.

One of his classmates – barely a teenager – wrote a brilliant play about how bullying can go too far, as the actions of a few are enabled by the inaction of their peers at large. Here the result was the death of a young girl at the hands of her tormentors – their faces unimportant, as all of her classmates were complicit in her fate.

In the play’s last scene Elise’s brother acted as a federal agent, gingerly interrogating one of the girl’s classmates, getting nowhere. Finally, grimly, he asks her:

“Is it true that the girl who was murdered had a crush on you?”

And then, brilliantly, sparking immediate tears in my eyes as much for his delivery as for the line itself:

“Have you ever heard of a boy named Matthew Shepard?”

So powerful, and from the pen of a girl half of my age. Vital proof that we still have some terrifying closets of our own, whether their doors are open or closed.

As the lights came up, Ani’s voice rung out again in my mind as the voice of murdered girl, of those Iraqi men, of Matthew, and of Larry.

i will not stand immersed,
in this ultra violent curse
i won’t let you make a tool of me
i will keep my mind and body free
bye bye minutiae
of the day to day drama,
i’m expanding exponentially,
i am consciousness without identity

Loving

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There were kittens in our yard, but now there are not.

You were going to get a whole post about the joys of kittens and the joys of pet fostering, with a smattering of Bob Barkerisms, but we returned from work to find said kittens and accompanying momma gone from the yard.

So, no wacky kitten pictures with captions in stilted lolzcatian English.

Honestly, I’m only mentioning it now so that in five years I can recall when it was we found the kittens in our yard.

So, for historical reference, the apparent close of the kitten incident happens to coincide with the first day of legal same-sex marriages in California.

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Just as I am a feminist, I am an advocate for civil rights for everyone, and that includes the GBLT community. I honestly don’t understand how anyone can not be an advocate and an activist for both, because each movement is rooted in a simple concept: equality for all.

As we celebrate the landmark California Supreme Court decision and the many beautiful unions that it will yield, I was also reminded today of another beautiful union – this one fifty years old.

The union in question was of Mildred and Richard Loving, two Virginia small-town sweethearts who in 1958 found themselves pregnant and decided to wed in neighboring Washington, D.C.

Back in Virginia, five weeks after their wedding the couple found themselves on the receiving end of an unfriendly visit from the local Sheriff’s department because they were in violation of the state’s Racial Integrity Act.

Richard Loving was white; his bride Mildred was black.

The Racial Integrity Act made their marriage – and, for that matter, any marriage between a white person and someone of another race – a felony.

This post isn’t meant to be a history lesson- you can read other sources detailing the Loving’s arrest, or their subsequent exodus from Virginia under threat of imprisonment, and how – nine years later on June 12, 1967 – the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the Racial Integrity Act in their landmark Loving v. Virginia decision.

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I know most people (maybe even you, reading now) see the Lovings’ story in black and white – literally and figuratively. However, laws like the Racial Integrity Act were leveraged against couples of any interracial combination across the country. If it weren’t for the Loving’s and the unanimous SCOTUS decision their case garnered, interracial marriages might never have become as visible and accepted in mainstream American society. (And, similar laws lingered on the books for decades until the last one was repealed in Alabama in 2000.)

If those same laws were prevalent today it might not be legal for me to marry Elise. And, it certainly would have been illegal for her parents – one white, the other Chinese – to marry and have children.

Consider that for a moment.

All of these years I’ve been one blessed white male in the multi-ethnic sea of America. I never experienced any personal discrimination to cause me to believe in feminism or civil rights, but I believe in them because equality should be for everyone, without strings attached.

Little did I know at age five, or age twelve, or age twenty-two that my blessed life would benefit from the battles waged before me in the most meaningful way possible – because they cleared the way for me to have and hold the love of my life.

Could you imagine denying us legal recognition of our happiness just for something as trivial as the colors of our skin?

Your answer, I suspect, is “no.”

Then, consider that as of today one of my co-best-ladies and one of my dearest friends can only legally marry each other in two states in the country, solely because they are both women.

Why is it that we can all imagine denying them legal recognition of their happiness just for something as trivial as their gender?

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In my mind, the two are the same – the two couples, the two imagined denials, and the two inevitable, ineffable sets of basic human rights.

Just as I advocated for those rights before I ever knew they would effect my life so directly, I will continue to advocate for them even after my marriage is legally recognized – because everyone should have the same rights as Elise and I, regardless of race or gender.

That’s feminism. That’s civil rights. That’s equality.

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As I write this post there is a tiny dent in the dish of cat food we put out in the yard, hoping to lure back momma and her four stray kittens.

And, at the same time thousands of Californians have had the imagined denials cleared from their path to a legally recognized life of loving.