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December 30, 2003

Allyson Shaw's Chap

(I haven't actually read it, but I'm sure it's excellent.)

Posted at 8:14 PM • Comments (1) • TrackBack

To Train Up a Child

December 29, 2003

See, here's the deal. I understand there are people out there who are awful to their kids. And I realize some of them homeschool. Proof of that came today when I got an e-mail from our state homeschool coalition (which I DON'T participate in, because they are way too religious/far right for me) that recommended this book. This book advocates NOT child "training" as the authors claim, but child ABUSE. Pulling an infant's hair when he or she bites mama's nipple is not "training" - it is abuse. "Rewarding" every transgression with "switching" is not "training" - it is abuse.

These people are not good parents, they are child abusers. However, I'm certain that if they homeschool, they are careful to dot all their "i"s and cross all their "t"s and live by the letter of the law, so they will not face any sort of punishment for "training up their children." However, if homeschooling regulation was enacted and enforced in Texas, I would probably be among the many who would be "closely watched" due to my beliefs and practices.

Go figure.

Posted at 11:17 AM • Comments (6) • TrackBack

Myth #14

December 11, 2003

There are just as many abusive women as abusive men. Abused men are invisible because they are ashamed to tell.

There certainly are some women who treat their male partners badly, berating them, calling them names, attempting to control them. The negative impact on these men's lives can be considerable. But do we see men whose self-esteem is gradually destroyed through this process? Do we see men whose progress in school or in their careers grinds to a halt because of the constant criticism and undermining? Where are the men whose partners are forcing them to have unwanted sex? Where are the men who are fleeing to shelters in fear for their lives? How about the ones who try to get to a phone to call for help, but the women blck their way or cut the line? The reason we don't generally see these men is simple: They're rare.

I don't question how embarrassing it would be for a man to come forward and admit that a woman is abusing him. But don't underestimate how humiliated a woman feels when she reveals abuse; women crave dignity just as much as men do. If shame stopped people from coming forward, no one would tell.

Even if abused men didn't want to come forward, they would have been discovered by now. Neighbors don't turn a deaf ear to abuse the way they might have ten or twenty years ago. Now, when people hear screaming, objects smashing against walls, loud slaps landing on skin, they call the police. Among my physically abusive clients, nearly one-third have been arrested as a result of a call to the police that came from someone other than the abused woman. If there were millions of cowed, trembling men out there, the police would be finding them. Abusive men commonly like to play the role of victime, and most men who claim to be "battered men" are actually the perpetrators of the violence, not the victims.

In their efforts to adopt victim status, my clients try to exaggerate their partners' verbal power "Sure, I can win a physical fight, but she is much better with her mouth than I am, so I'd say it balances out." (One very violent man said in his group session "She stabs me through the heart with her words." to justify the fact that he had stabbed his partner in the chest with a knife.) But abuse is not a battle you win by being better at expressing yourself. You win it by being better at sarcasm, put-downs, twisting everything around backward, and using other tactics of control - an arena in which my clients win hands down over their partners, just as they do in violent altercation. Who can beat an abuser at his own game?

Also of note - from Chapter 13 "The making of An Abusive Man:"

Abuse As a Form of Oppression A home where a woman is abused is a small-scale model of much larger oppressive systems that work in remarkably similar ways. Many of the excuses an abusive man uses for verbally tearing his partner to shreds are the same ones that a power-mad boss uses for humiliating his or her employees. The abusive man's ability to convince himself that his domination of you is for your own good is paralleled by the dictator who says, "People in this country are too primitive for democracy." The divide-and-conuer strategies used by abusers are reminiscent of a corporate head who tries to break the labor union by giving certain groups of workers favored treatment. The making of an abuser is thus not necessarily restricted to the specific values his society teaches him about men's relationships with women; without realizing it he may also apply attitudes and tactics from other forms of oppression that he has been exposed to as a boy or as a young adult and that he has learned to justify or even admire.
If you look at any oppressive organization or system, from a racist country club up to a military government, you will find most of the same behaviors and justifications by the powerful that I have described in this book. The tactics of control, the intimidation of victims who try to protest, the undermining of efforts at independence, the negative distortions about the victims in order to cast blame upon them, the careful cultivation of the public image of the oppressors - all are present, along with many other parallels. The people in power generally tell lies while simultaneously working hard to silence the voices of the people who are being dominated and to stop them from thinking, just as the abusive man strives to do. And the bottom line is the same: Oppressive systems stay in existence because the people in power enjoy the luxury of their position and become unwilling to give up the privileges they win through taking advantage of other people and keeping them down. In short, the abusive mentality is the mentality of oppression.

And let this be a warning to anyone else who wants to debate this shit. This is my space, and this topic is not up for debate at this time. In fact, I'm starting to see the need for certain male individuals I have known to push the envelope in debating the existence of the elusive abusive female partner as being a direct attempt to nurture and maintain male privilege, and I feel it's detrimental to women and men to continue to have that debate. As long as we live in a culture in which men (in general) have a privileged position over women (in general) abuse effects women more negatively. And it doesn't help anyone to attempt to gloss over that fact.

Don't even go there with me right now. You don't want to, and I don't want you to. This is my personal story (as told, at the current time, through selected quotations from a very good book) and I will not be silenced by bullshit equivocation.

Posted at 12:06 AM • Comments (8) • TrackBack

WTF?

September 22, 2003

Free love? As if love is anything but free. Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. - Emma Goldman "Marriage and Love."

Boy, I sure am glad that there are people out there who are still plugging away at the concept that women need to "position themselves" on the "dating market" - particularly after we reach that difficult, undatable age of 35, when certainly no man in his right mind would fall for an unpolished "product."

It's a good thing this woman found something to do with her degree from Harvard business school. After all, she found her man! Isn't that what pretending to be smart is all about? Goal accomplished, now she can inform the rest of us losers how to get our portfolios in shape.

I just don't know what I would have done with myself had I not seen this ~~book advertised~~ woman interviewed on The Today Show. But, I can't talk about it now. I need to find a sitter for the kids so I can read the paper at Starbucks in hopes of finding the perfect man. Wait, but first I have to do some market research, some "repackaging" of "my product"...and, oh yeah, I have to find someone who will do an exit interview with my husband to find out why our marriage didn't work out, so I can retool for my future long-term relationships, which will surely be based entirely on substance, rather than surface impressions.

Yr damn right I "bristle" when I hear the words product, strategic plans, and marketing applied to me and my "dating efforts." And it's not because I fear a "radical" new approach. It's because I'm a FUCKING HUMAN BEING. And there are enough fucking products and strategic plans out there without me turning my fucking life over to some idiot business expert who wants to commodify the experience of love and companionship. It's a sad, sad state of affairs when this kind of thing is taken seriously enough to warrant a 15-minute, earnest discussion on national television without someone even once perhaps suggesting that it's even the slightest bit CRASS.

(I REALLY should have put the TV up last night.)

Posted at 8:52 AM • Comments (6) • TrackBack

Come Back, Salmon

July 9, 2003

Another really excellent book I chose at random on my last trip to the library was Come Back, Salmon, which is a true story about how an elementary school in Everett, Washington brought a dead Creek back to life, stocked it with salmon, and through their diligence and vigilence got salmon to spawn there for the first time in over 20 years.

I thought it was an excellent story about how children have the power to make real change. The children at Jackson Elementary cleaned out an entire creek, raised salmon from eggs to set them free in the creek, and maintained the habitat so the fish would be able to come back and spawn. I thought it was especially interesting teaching this lesson in the context of salmon, which are really a concrete metaphor for going against the grain to accomplish what they need to in life.

More resources below:

Jonkonnu

July 8, 2003

When I go to the library to check out books, I employ a system of random selection that I fear most people would find extremely bizarre. But I'm totally thankful for it when, through it, I stumble upon books like this completely at random.

Jonkonnu is a children's picture book about Winslow Homer's visit to a southern town to paint pictures of freed slaves. The book describes the celebration of Independence day by white southerners, and the counter-celebration of Jonkonnu by the people who live "down the red clay road" who were not permitted to celebrate with the whites.

Winslow Homer, the yankee artist, comes to town and disturbs the townsfolk by painting pictures of black people in a manner that was normally reserved for paintings of whites. The book describes Homer as a man who is unconcerned with how others view him. A man who is intentionally humanitarian and is willing to risk his safety to portray the lives of freed slaves in a respectful way.

While I found this to be a wonderful story, and a great way to open up discussion with children about the scope of Independence day and our history as an exploitative nation, I was suspicious of this portrayal of Winslow Homer.

I did a little digging, and found that my skepticism was somewhat justified. Although Homer was certainly a man who was interested in a more honest depiction of African-American life, he was by no means a race revolutionary:

It is true that Homer went out of his way to paint African Americans with their families in the South, at work, serious, and with the kind of full facial characterizations that are not usually found within the radius of his psychological compass. It is evident in moving works such as Near Andersonville (1866), Sunday Morning in Virginia (1877), and Upland Cotton (1879-95). Even in The Gulf Stream, which grew out of his local knowledge of African-Caribbean culture, he emphasized the brooding face and passive strength of the black man, both signs of Homer's humanitarianism and his understanding of the long-suffering pathos of Africans in the New World. Yet, for all of his heartfelt sympathy, compassion, and moral engagement with African-American culture, Homer nonetheless believed in racial difference. In some early works, those he called his "darkey" pictures, such as Pay Day in the Army of the Potomac (1863), Our Jolly Cook (1863), Weaning the Calf (1875), and Hi! H-o-o-o! He Done Come. Jumboloro Tell You Fust, blacks perform and whites watch. In his late sea pictures of the 1880s and 1890s, Homer was not as overt, but nonetheless there are sharp differences between his conventions for black narratives and white narratives.

In spite of this fact, we really enjoyed this book. I couldn't have timed my discovery of it more perfectly. The illustrations are beautiful, and the premise is educational if not entirely accurate.

The author's note at the end does an excellent job of punctuating the story:

Homer, sensitive to the plight of htese freedmen and freedwomen, was moved to portray them in a manner equal to that used for any white subject of the time. Here at last was an artist who refused to depict the country's newest citizens as silly, demeaned caricatures.
In July 1976, as our nation prepared to celebrate its 100th Independence Day[...] Homer posed a young freedman and his family preparing to celebrate not the coming Fourth of July - which was for whites only - but Jonkonnu, a colorful old freedome holiday from slavery days. At Jonkonnu time, slaves could pretend they were free, singing and dancing on the plantation steps, shaking hands with the white master.

The young man stands thoughtful. The children clutching tiny American flags are solemn. Winslow Homer's message, masterly painted in Dressing for the Carnival is clear. It tells viewerswho care to look that freedom must never be a dream.

I found some more resources while doing a links search for this post:

Anti-Racism Books For Children - includes book lists and lesson plans on a variety of topics.

Jamaican Folklore - a brief summary of a variety of Jamaican folk tales and celebrations

In addition, as I was writing this post in my head, I happened to read what Jason and George had to say about Mr. Bush's recent foray into discussions of racial equality, and I wanted to find a clever way of tying that into this post somehow, but unfortunately, I cannot. So I'm just going to have to point you in their direction, and you can feel free to connect the dots.

Posted at 11:23 PM • Comments (2) • TrackBack

Of Wolves and Men AND...

May 21, 2003

Reading the chapter on man's cruelty to wolves throughout the ages, and the justifications surrounding this cruelty (in this excellent book), I'm struck by the similarities between these justifications and the "dominant culture's" current reasoning for committing acts of war and atrocities against people of other cultures:

This is not predator control, and it goes beyond the casual cruelty sociologists say manifests itself among people under stress, or where there is no perception of responsibility. It is the violent expression of a terrible assumption: that men have the right to kill other creatures not for what they do but for what we fear they may do. I almost wrote "or for no reason," but there are always reasons.

Lopez goes on to explain how man has historically expressed his frustration over being unable to control or predict wilderness by killing wolves and other creatures of the wilderness. The predation of wolves by men is an expression of not only a hatred for the wolf, but a hatred or ambivalence towards nature.

I wonder if perhaps Western cultures have an idea that they have already conquered nature and now they turn their frustrations on cultures that are not following the laws of civilization in the way the "dominant" culture has determined as the "right" way.

In America in the eighteenth century Cotton Mather and other Puritan ministers preached against wilderness as an insult to the LOrd, as a challenge to man to show the proof of his religious conviction by destroying it."

Given that most of us have grown up in a society in which people of color are viewed as inferior and even primitive, especially as pertains to people of color in developing nations or remote, unfamiliar locations (barren deserts, for one. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people talk of Iraq as though it's a backwards, uncivilized, undeveloped country.) Could we be replacing our hatred for the beast with a hatred for other people who we are convinced are somehow beastly? Is it that much of a stretch to believe this? Certainly we have treated other cultures this way throughout history, but with globalization swiftly bringing nations and cultures closer and closer together, is this way of thinking becoming more prominent, more urgent?

Man saw himself as God's agent correcting what was imperfect in nature; as he became more abstracted from his natural environment, he came to regard himself as the protector of the weak animals in nature against the designs of bullies like the wolf.

Of course, it's important to note that the above quote is intentionally one-dimensional, as the wolf is more than a bully and has a complex relationship with wilderness that overwhelmingly beneficial.

Lopez concludes this chapter by relating a story of a hideously cruel act perpetrated against a female red wolf by some men in Texas, and comments:

It is relatively easy to produce reasons why such depravity exists - because people are bored, because some men feel powerless in modern society. But this incident is, in fact, a staggering act of self-indulgence. That it is condoned by silence and goes unpunished reveals a terrible meanness in the human spirit.

So, it IS probably a stretch for me to extrapolate Lopez' research on man's adversarial relationship with wolves to US policy in the middle east, but it is interesting to think about. It has kept me busy for the last hour or so, anyway.

Posted at 11:33 AM • Comments (2) • TrackBack

Fuzzies

May 12, 2003

m's reading selection this evening was Fuzzies: A Folk Fable for All Ages by Richard Lessor....which was again an absolutely perfect fit for the past week's discussion about love and autonomy. And it actually left me wondering if this book was the initial spark to my ideas about the way love ought to be, as it is a book from my childhood. Published in 1971, with my name scrawled on the inside cover.

The book is about a small out of the way valley where the people are simple and happy. They don't need much, and they have these little creatures called fuzzies that they share freely with each other. Until one day a mean witch named Juanita comes to town and happens to mention to one of the townspeople that there's a shortage of fuzzies, and this leads to fuzzy restriction and, ultimately, the demise of all fuzzies.

People started crossing to the other side of the street so they wouldn't be expected to exchange Fuzzies. They stopped visiting each other.
When they did have to go to a wedding or a birthday part they gave money or gift certificates.

With nowhere much to go and not many people to talk to, people became restless and bored. Mostly they just sat around and worried that something might happen to their Fuzzies.

OK, it's a bit of a stretch to say it's a book about autonomous relationships, but it most certainly is about the scarcity myth, and therefore can be applied to my theories about love and how we close ourselves off from each other rather than having to worry about betraying our beloved.

I tried to get m to talk about what the book meant to him, but I think he really just thinks the fuzzies are cute.

Posted at 12:00 AM • Comments (0) • TrackBack