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Monday, September 29, 2003
NATURE IS A LANGUAGE, CAN'T ANYBODY READ? Second-to-last part of "What You Can Do for Your Country." Last part will be posted Wednesday-ish. You can read the whole thing in order here or just get the latest chapter here. As usual, I am really sorry about how awful that page looks. Try to go all ascetic and "the beauty of this world means nothing to me!"-ish. Well no, don't; but still, try to ignore my hideous fiction-blog template. I'll fix it someday (and its little dog, too). YOU WOULDN'T RECOGNIZE A CUNNING PLOT IF IT PAINTED ITSELF BLUE AND DANCED ON THE TABLE SINGING "CUNNING PLOTS ARE HERE AGAIN!" Hilarious what-not-to-do "Batman" takedown by Sean Collins. Plot-oriented writers should read this one. In other comicsy news, that Lying in the Gutters link below has "New X-Men" rumors that intrigue me. Scott Summers is by far my favorite X-character, and I got into NXM in large part because so far Grant Morrison has totally had Scott's number but good. (The first NXM issue I read was, I think, either "Brimstone and Whiskey" or one of the issues flanking it.) So the fact that Morrison is fighting to make permanent, non-refundable, non-retconnable (YAY!) changes in the character definitely catches my eye. Hmm hmm hmm! Have I mentioned that I know you care about this stuff? Anyway, the first link really is of interest to non-X-fans who want a good "Mark Twain on James Fenimore Cooper"-style beatdown. The other one not so much. DEATH AND THE EUCHARISTIC PRAYER. Characteristically powerful post from Dappled Things. This (death) will be the subject of the next short story I blog. I'm not sure which one it will be--there are two I'm choosing between--but both of them are about a) mortality and b) death. (Not quite the same things--a condition and an experience.) I would say I don't know why this subject came up twice in the stuff I've been working on lately, except that I kind of do. ARE YOU IN OR NEAR TAMPA, FLORIDA? Have you got bones? (Like, your own?) Via Lying in the Gutters, ultimately via Journalista!: "A young child needs bone marrow transplant urgently, and it's been very difficult to find a match. ... "Maybe you can help. The full press release is reprinted below. Find out more about the crisis at www.fbsblood.org. E-mail Tony at tonypanaccio@yahoo.com. And if you're in the area, there's a drive for marrow donors scheduled for Tuesday the 30th from 11am to 4pm at the The Phyllis Marshall University Center, University of South Florida, Tampa. "Tampa Bay Area Girl Needs Bone Marrow Transplant, But Cannot Find Donor Tampa, FL "September 26, 2003 -- A 3-year-old Tampa girl may be the latest victim of a bone marrow donor crisis that is affecting ethnic minorities around the country. "NBC News last night reported a national crisis for ethnic minorities waiting for bone marrow transplants. More than three-quarters of the existing 5 million existing bone marrow donors in the national registry are Caucasian. That means anyone who belongs to an ethnic minority will have an exponentially more difficult task finding a match. Experts estimate that more than 4,000 people a year, mostly minorities, die from leukemia alone because they can't find a matching donor. "Katia Solomon, the three-year-old daughter of Myron and Tracy Solomon of Carrollwood, falls into the ethnic minority category, and may soon die without a bone marrow transplant. She was diagnosed with Leukemia in April of 2002, has been through a battery of chemotherapy and complications, fought her way into remission, but as of last month, has relapsed and been readmitted to All Children's Hospital to prepare for a life-saving bone marrow transplant. The only problem is that the family, working with the Florida Blood Service, has not been able to find a donor. "While the Florida Blood Service has set up several open blood drives over the next few days in different parts of Tampa Bay, anyone around the country can help this weekend by going to ANY blood bank or bloodmobile donor drive and being tested to see if theya re a match for Katia's bone marrow. Being tested to be donor is easy and fast. Simply advise whichever blood bank you visit that you are testing for Katia A. Solomon, and they will take a small vial of blood from you, and that's it. You'll be notified in a week or two if you are a match, depending on how many tests are sent to the lab. "Direct contact for Myron Solomon: (813) 249-4279 "Media Contact for family: Tony Panaccio (813) 781-2446 tonypanaccio@yahoo.com" I SHOULD READ THE FREE COPIES OF THE WASHINGTON POST LYING AROUND IN THE COFFEESHOP MORE OFTEN. Those "Iraqis want to love us and hug us and squeeze us and name us George" polls aren't all they're cracked up to be. And North Carolina is paying reparations to the "unfit" people sterilized at the command of the state up through the 1970s. Blogwatch on the streets of London, Blogwatch on the streets of Humberside... Riverbend Blog: Anybody got more info on this?: "This media free-for-all [in Iraq] lasted for about two months. Then, some newspapers were ‘warned’ that some of their political content was unacceptable- especially when discussing occupation forces. One or two papers were actually shut down, while others were made to retract some of what they had written. The news channels followed suit. The CPA came out with a list of things that weren’t to be discussed- including the number of casualties, the number of attacks on the Coalition and other specifics. And we all began giving each other knowing looks- it’s only ‘freedom of the press’ when you have good things to say... Iraqis know all about *that*." Unqualified Offerings: Command-and-control in Iraq. Only it's not clear so much about the "control" part. Also, this is my promise and/or threat that I will in fact organize my previous posts on same-sex marriage and reply to UO's/other people's various posts on ditto, this week, but not until at least Thursday. You have been warned. The Volokh Conspiracy: "Doonesbury" and campaign finance reform. And the power of the press. A very good, basic post on one of the problems w/CFR. ...Burn down the blogwatch Hang the blessed DJ Because the music he constantly plays It says nothing to me about my life.... "WHAT IF THERE IS SOMETHING GOING ON IN THERE?": "Daniel Rios is 24 years old, with wavy black hair, a thick mustache and a glassy stare that seems to look both at you and through you. One day almost four years ago, while he was taking a shower, a blood vessel ruptured in his brain, and he collapsed on the bathroom floor. After emergency surgery, he lay in a coma for three weeks. When he finally opened his eyes, he could not speak or move his body; his head simply lolled. In the months that followed, the doctors monitoring him at the Center for Head Injuries at the J.F.K. Johnson Rehabilitation Institute in Edison, N.J., saw few signs that he had any meaningful mental life. Sometimes he looked as if he were crying. Other times his eyes would follow a mirror passed before his face. On his best days he was able to close his eyes on command. But those days were rare. For the most part he lay unresponsive, adrift in a neurological twilight. "One morning just over a year after his accident, Rios was taken to the Sloan Kettering Institute on Manhattan's East Side. There, in a dim room, a group of researchers placed a mask over his eyes, fixed headphones over his ears and guided his head into the bore of an M.R.I. machine. A 40-second loop of a recording made by Rios's sister Maria played through the headphones: she told him that she was there with him, that she loved him. As the sound entered his ears, the M.R.I. machine scanned his brain, mapping changes in activity. Several hours afterward, two researchers, Nicholas D. Schiff and Joy Hirsch, took a look at the images from the scan. They hadn't been sure what to expect -- Rios was among the first people in his condition to have his brain activity measured in this way -- but they certainly weren't expecting what they saw. 'We just stared at these images,' recalls Schiff, an expert in consciousness disorders at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. 'There didn't seem to be anything missing.' "As the tape of his sister's voice played, several distinct clusters of neurons in Rios's brain had fired in a manner virtually identical to that of a healthy subject. Some clusters that became active were those known to help process spoken language, others to recall memories. Was Rios recognizing his sister's voice, remembering her? 'You couldn't tell the difference between these parts of his brain and the brain of one of my graduate students,' says Hirsch, an expert in brain imaging at Columbia University. Even the visual centers of Rios's brain had come alive, despite the fact that his eyes were covered. It was as if his sister's words awakened his mind's eye. "To the medical world, Rios and the hundreds of thousands of other Americans who suffer from impaired consciousness present a mystery. Traditionally, there have essentially been only two ways to classify them: as comatose (eyes closed and responses limited to basic reflexes) or vegetative (eyes opening and closing in a cycle of sleeping and waking but without any sign of awareness). In either case, it has been assumed that they have no high-level thought. But Schiff, Hirsch and a small group of like-minded researchers are studying people like Rios and finding that the truth is far more complicated. Their evidence suggests that even after an injury that leaves a brain badly damaged, even after months or years with little sign of consciousness, people may still be capable of complex mental activity. 'If I say, ''Touch your nose,'' and you touch your nose, and then I say ''Touch your nose'' six more times, and you don't do it, how do we account for the one time you did?' asks Joseph T. Giacino, a neuropsychologist who collaborates with Schiff and Hirsch." more This stuff is important not only to doctors and to the families of people with profound brain injuries. It affects all of us, because there are people right now who may be denied food, water, and the kinds of treatment that in some cases have helped them recover, because somebody deemed them insufficiently conscious with no hope of recovery. Very important link via Amy Welborn. "In the [John] Adams formulation, aristocracies were to society as the passions were to the individual personality, permanent fixtures susceptible to disciplined containment and artful channeling, but never altogether removable." --Founding Brothers Friday, September 26, 2003
Are you not loyal to your pride? Are you not on the blogwatch side? The Center for the Future of Russia has a blog tracking anti-liberal developments in that beleaguered country. Via Cacciaguida. Forager23: If I ran film grad school... "The movies shown will include canonical classics, pure period pieces, forgotten gems, as well as the occasional piece of utter crap, just to keep our students guessing." Inappropriate Response: On same-sex marriage. Over the weekend, assuming my archives return, I'm going to organize my previous posts on this subject so that you all can at least have a fighting chance of making sense of my tangled comments. Polytropos: Football. I empathize. I don't get it, personally. "All that aside, I still enjoyed myself, though I have grown envious of foote-ball fans. Clearly they possess a special, extra compartment in their brain devoted to storing foote-ball trivia and statistics. I assume this must be the case because if I had to retain the amount of lore they are able to draw upon at a moment’s notice, it would quickly edge out other important data such as the complete lyrics to 'It’s the End of the World As We Know It,' the fact that Thundarr the Barbarian’s sidekicks are named Ariel and Ookla, and how to brush my teeth." The Chaldean Bishop of Baghdad thinks things are going as well as could be expected, says media is distorting the picture. Via Hit & Run. Which superhero are you? I'm either Nightcrawler, which is pretty darn cool, or the Hulk, which is less so. Ah well, you won't like me when I blogwatch.... Via Neilalien. An interview with Grant Morrison in which he says several things about the X-Men that strike me as accurate. Also, pretty pictures. Via Big Sunny D. "Anyone ever tell you that you have a dormant, deep-rooted hostility complex?" --Henry McCoy, to a prehistoric guy riding a giant carnivorous bird, Essential Uncanny X-Men vol. 1 a.k.a. a big book made out of ice cream Thursday, September 25, 2003
BROKEN RECORD (ME, NOT HIM): Unqualified Offerings on me on same-sex marriage. I guess I just find it odd that a hardcore libertarian like UO (that's not an insult! seriously!) is defending SSM rather than simply saying marriage should be just another contract. I mean, unless we are starring in "Willard," we all have intense personal relationships. Why do these relationships suddenly become the state's business when we start sleeping together? Why do we need/seek/prefer state sanction and status for sexual relationships when we wouldn't need/seek/prefer it for other intense personal relationships? EDITED TO ADD: Maybe another way to put this is, Before you figure out "why same-sex marriage?" you need to figure out, "why marriage?" I think it is much easier to answer that question for male-female sexual relationships than for any other kind. Others may differ; but I do think that's the essential question for those who start from a libertarian perspective. And I think I answered the "persistence of gender roles" thing here. Yeah, UO is absolutely right, you gotta get up real early to thwart children's desire for gender. The only question is, Who will give them the models of gendered action--you, or MTV? EDITED: I do realize I didn't address most of Jim's specific points. I'll probably do that sometime this weekend. But I kind of wanted to swoop back for a moment and get the wide-lens view. U.S. OUT OF SAUDI ARABIA: Whoa. Wow. This is really important. Also, perhaps relatedly, an article on Saddam/Osama ties. I seem to recall some of these being significantly shaky. And if they weren't shaky... I mean, everyone has to assume the Bush administration is wildly incompetent at something, right? People who oppose war in Iraq have to assume he's screwing that up majorly, and people who support it have to assume he's doing OK in the actual war but totally stupid when it comes to presenting said war in the press. So, still skeptical, but the link above should at least give you a decent starting point for (I hope) dismantling my skepticism. Via InstaPundit, predictably. TOP TEN SONGS BY FUGEES: CD player: still broken. Old cassette collection: still getting a workout. Thus, I'm thinking about which songs by Fugees members are the best. My votes: 10) (tie) "To Zion," from "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill." Sweetest childbirth song ever. And "Gunpowder," from "Carnival." Cliched but still really affecting. I hate myself for getting all worked up by this song. "The preacher man told me, 'Good things come to those who wait.'/Do good things come to those who wait?" 9) "Jaspora," from "Carnival." Apparently some Democratic presidential candidate (Dean?) named this as his favorite song. So they're not wrong about everything. 8) "Ready or Not," from "The Score." Best work Enya ever did. 7) "Guantanamera," from "Carnival." "Soy Celia Cruz! Azucar!" The Fugees made their name on covers ("No Woman No Cry," "Killing Me Softly with His Song") but they did much better with songs that jumped off from, without replicating, previous hits. This is one. 6) "Lost Ones," from "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill." The abstinence radio hit, for a reason. The vocals twine around your heart. EDITED: Oops! Apparently my memory deceived me--I kind of melded together two songs, "Lost Ones" and "Doo-Wop (That Thing)". Sadly, the made-up song in my head was a lot better than the two actual songs on the album. Oh well. 5) "Year of the Dragon," from "Carnival." I fully admit that this choice may be influenced by the fact that the Fugees' childhood is kind of sort of close to mine, so we recall the same cultural icons. Whatever. I still love this song. "Paranoid cause this boy around my neighborhood got shot/Name plate hair straight metal braces on my teeth/Fat laces on my feet the year crack first hits the streets./In the year of the dragon, lots of men disappeared/Quiet as it's kept, they won't be back next year." 4) (tie) "The Mask" and "Cowboys," both from "The Score." Best storytelling, decent sound. Memorable lyrics. Paranoia. Good stuff. 3) "Fu-Gee-La," from "The Score." One of the perfect summer songs. 2) "Sang Fezi," from "Carnival." I don't know what they're saying but I know I like it. 1) "Manifest," from "The Score." It's got the Jesus. It's got the ferocity in Lauryn Hill's voice. It's got the resigned beat and the powerful lyrics. It kicks. I REALLY COULDN'T MAKE MYSELF ENJOY GULLIVER'S TRAVELS, but this is cool nonetheless. Via the Shrubbloggers. "WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR COUNTRY": My short story. You can read the story so far starting here; or just read today's installment here. (Actually, I recommend reading from the beginning, because I made a fairly significant change in order to shorten the story.) I think there are about three episodes left. Next one should be posted Monday. DREAM SEQUENCES: COMICS REVIEWS. Raise your hand when you spot the growing obsession! Finder: Dream Sequence: A big and creepy story about the perils of being the audience or the artist--living in someone else's dream, and being the one whose dreamworld attracts so many tourists. Magri is the creator of Elsewhere, a virtual reality filled with landscapes and lightning storms that he has never seen, but has imagined so vividly that everyone else wants a piece of the dream. Ayo works standing up with a box around his head, crammed in among other office drones like a Dilbert sardine, and spends all his free time plugged in to Elsewhere. (There's a logic hole here, I think--why don't people just work from home, rather than dealing with these insanely crowded head-cubicles?) When a ferocious wolfman-like beastie starts rampaging through Elsewhere, Ayo is left with a messed-up head, Magri is confused, and the corporate masters who profit from Elsewhere face a potential PR nightmare. "Dream Sequence" is probably the most physically brutal of the Finder books I've read. Hoo boy, does bad stuff happen in Elsewhere! And in Magri's memories, too. Talk about "a world of hurt"... ...which is part of my problem with the book. Magri, as a character, does not work, I think. He's too dissociated, wounded, and vague. (I should note that I ran into the same problem with the narrator of "Judica me Deus"--it's really hard to write intentionally unformed, blank characters without frustrating the reader or copping out on crucial character-formation tasks. So I sympathize with the problem here. But still, Magri doesn't work.) He wanders through the book fulfilling various cliches of martyred artistry, rejected child, and repressed anger. Ayo comes across much more powerfully, in part because his voice is more distinctive, less gray and static-y, even though he gets much less screen time. So: There are several great sequences and moving images, but ultimately, no. Finder: King of the Cats: I was going to review this. But then Unqualified Offerings got there first, and said maybe not exactly what I would have said, but definitely what I should have said. I'll just sign on to his review. (Plus you get a bonus review of "Eightball #22," free inside each specially-marked package!) Finder: Talisman: At the Small Press Expo, Carla Speed McNeil said that this book garnered bushels of letters from librarians, telling her that her book had made them weep. It's easy to see why: "Talisman" is an ode to bibliomania. (Interesting to contrast with the far more jaundiced view of living-through-others'-dreams presented in "Dream Sequence.") Because this is McNeil, you can expect clean, evocative art. And I think I could read about the Grosvenor family, who starred in the "Sin-Eater" books, more or less endlessly. They're terrific characters, and several scenes in "Talisman" gain new potency when you realize how they fit into the "Sin-Eater" sequence. ("Can you kill my husband for me?") We get to see a family drama first through the adults' eyes, and then through the eyes of a child living out her own adventure often disconnected from the family's rhythms. But my general conclusion, after reading all these Finder books--all of which are very good, I should note--is that McNeil is at her best writing plot-driven stories rather than idea-driven stories. In "Sin-Eater," which I can't recommend highly enough (really, you owe it to yourself to check this out), the themes emerge gradually from the surf of plot and character. The other three volumes all seem more like the idea came first, and plot accrued around it and was ultimately dominated by it. Many writers work well that way. McNeil, with her hawk eye for character, ambivalence, and conflicting impulses, does not. Jinx: A big hulking noir romance from Brian Bendis. The good stuff: compelling characters, lovely art, very effective use of noir visual effects--the book really does translate noir directly into comics. I loved that, since I'm a) hooked on the noir style (except for its overly slick, all-surface manifestations), and b) fascinated by "crossover" possibilities in different art forms--whether and how comics can do what we normally expect from music, or movies/prose, etc. Anyway, the book looks great, and the visual effects underscore the story and characterization nigh-on perfectly. The bad stuff: pacing. Jinx starts fast and propulsive, but somewhere in the middle the pace flags and never quite recovers. The too-short chapters add to this problem. The middle feels saggy, overstuffed. Overall: I am fascinated by noir and a fan of Bendis generally. So I definitely wrung my money's worth out of this fat book. But if neither of those descriptors fits you, you should look elsewhere for your fun. Like a River: Story of a near-despairing Russian widower whose estranged son returns to try to put their relationship, and his father's life, back together. Harsh, ramshackle drawing; taciturn, equally-matched characters (nice to see that the narrative doesn't overbalance to favor either son or father); poignant story. This was really good. It probably won't change your world, but it is well worth your time. Breakdowns thought that the "fixing a roof = fixing their relationship" and "life = river" metaphors were a bit tired. I agree w/r/t the river, but actually, I thought the book did a good job of presenting several different task-metaphors (not just the roof) and treating each one only glancingly as a metaphor. So you get a more realistic sense of how a family is patched back together, one small task at a time, each task a battle of wills but no one task assuming especially heavy metaphorical baggage. Recommended. MARK SHEA WANTS YOUR MONEY. This guy provides a host of links, fulmination, theological sanity, and attitudinal wit, every single day. Why not kick in a few kopecks? GROWL. Apparently my apartment building is conducting an all-day fire alarm test, with very. loud. alarms. at random intervals throughout the day. So I'm going to the library. More later. In the meantime, Camassia has a good post up on gender and bullying, and there's a lot of debate about fidelity and relationship models at MarriageDebate.com (with one long post from me). I'll pitch in more there later, either today or tomorrow. Off to escape the klaxon of doom. Tuesday, September 23, 2003
EASILY AMUSED. Funniest complaint about comments-box fluctuations I've seen. Shea also asks about favorite books (not "best," but favorite). Here are mine. You will notice a distinct skew away from "best," but not, I think, entirely leaving that high ground. In order of how fast I call them to mind. Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Henry IV 1 & 2, and, like, pretty much everything else. Someday I'll get it together to post my paper on Shakespeare's "tragic sidekicks." If I had to name five, and only five, other Shax. plays, I think I'd go with Lear, Richard II, Love's Labour's Lost, Macbeth, and Midsummer Night's Dream. Maybe. Argh, maybe later this week I'll try to post on why these plays in particular. Diana Wynne Jones, Dogsbody Michael de Larrabeiti, The Borribles and The Borribles Go for Broke GK Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi and The Dumb Ox: St. Thomas Aquinas, in that order (remind me to tell you about the Hamlet/Francis parallel) Ottfried Preussler, The Satanic Mill John Milton, Paradise Lost Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals (esp. in Francis Golffing's translation) and maybe Beyond Good and Evil Oh! and how could I forget Stephen Fry, The Liar? Or Donna Tartt, The Secret History? Honorable mentions (books that strongly influenced me but that aren't really "favorites"): Caryl Churchill, The Skriker Edward Hale, The Man Without a Country Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (bet you weren't expecting that one!) Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book That's not counting all the supposedly non-literary influences like Alfred Hitchcock, though.... TOMORROW, when I can think again (I hope), I'll post: comics reviews; final reply re same-sex marriage (I promise it will be short!); Poetry Wednesday; finally, the next episode of "What You Can Do for Your Country" (it's already written but I'm too tired to type it in--yes, I am lazier than roadkill); and whatever else crosses my palm with silver and asks me to tell its fortune. ARGH! Want to do one more Amp/SSM-related post, on equality & the purposes of marriage, but can't think of best way to do it now. Stay tuned. MY RELIGION AND OTHER THINGS YOU DON'T NEED TO SHARE TO AGREE WITH ME ABOUT MARRIAGE: Look, I'm Catholic. My religion says guys shouldn't boff guys and girls shouldn't boff girls. Obviously, that affects my view of same-sex marriage. But I do not think you need to share my faith or my moral assessment of homosexual acts in order to agree with me about SSM. If I thought that, I wouldn't bother making secular arguments on this blog! I don't make arguments I don't agree with. So if I'm not talkin' God in a moral/ethical/political argument, you can take it that I don't think I need to. So first of all, I think the non-Catechism-related arguments I make here (specifically here, here, here, here*) are valid. But also, I know or have read the work of several people (like Professor Paul Nathanson) who do not believe that homosexual acts are immoral, but oppose same-sex marriage. Several of my (atheist, agnostic, Deist, but definitely not Christian) close friends fall into this category. If they did it, you can too! *LINKS COMING AS SOON AS MY ARCHIVES ARE FIXED... SORRY. RECONCILING THE SEEMINGLY DISPARATE: More Ampersand and gender. He misconstrues my somewhat ironic suggestion that "marriage is how we reconcile the opposite sexes." Amp writes, "I'm very sorry to hear that Eve, who is (I think) unmarried, has no close male friends nor any good relationships with any male relatives, and exists in a state of permanent war with all men. ... "The point is, if I search for friends based on my interior life -- my enjoyment of science fiction, or my commitment to feminism -- I'm far more likely to find people I share things in common with. According to the rabbi, I should just look for an all-male group and I'll automatically be among my peers -- but in reality, men aren't all the same, and we don't all have the same interests. "...The basic point is, do you think that men and women are individuals, with individual traits (some of which are gender-typed, some of which are not), or robots whose every trait and interest are determined by their genitals?" See now, unsurprisingly, I don't think this rather strenuous over-reading and over-dichotomizing is "the basic point" at all. There are two huge problems here (yes, I know, this is another numbered list--when I'm sleep-deprived I fall back on these annoying blog tricks): 1) Wild dichotomizing! It's runnin' rampant! Head for the hills! I mean, surely we can all imagine something that is neither, "Men and women have exactly the same interests, pressures, and needs, because We Are All Individuals--there are no men and no women, only People," nor, "I-am-robot-female-take-me-to-your-kitchen." In fact, Amp concedes as much in his reference to "gender-typed" traits. Why can't he accept that these are precisely the kind of traits that people who talk about "reconciling" the sexes are addressing? (And yes, "opposite sexes" is itself a fairly obvious bit of overstatement. I was trying to signal my dislike of the true-but-bland term "gender complementarity," but in case anyone is wondering, I do not think men are from Mars and women are from Venus or whatever. Hence the title for this post, from Helen Cresswell's hilarious kids' book Absolute Zero--"reconciling the seemingly disparate.") Oh! Actually I think I may see the problem: Possibly Amp was focusing on "opposite" (the part of that phrase that is least accurate!) and I was focusing on "reconciling"? 2) So what are those gender-typed traits? What are those differing interests, needs, pressures, etc.? I think it's telling that Amp talked about how he would find friends, since friendship is precisely not what I'm discussing here. (Well, OK, I don't know what the rabbi he cites is talking about, but I do know what I was talking about.) We're talking about marriage, and therefore we're talking about sex. And in heterosexual relationships, yes, the sexes do need to be reconciled. The risks they take are very different. The possibility of pregnancy (including the fact that women have a shorter reproductive life than men) is only one reason for these sharply differing risks. One of the reasons I didn't write this post yesterday--besides the inzombia thing--was that I didn't think I could be non-bitchy about it after a much longer than usual session of follow-up calls for the pregnancy center. Do my calls for me, then we'll talk about how men and women in sexual relationships don't need any structures to reconcile their differing risks, needs, desires, and interests. (Was that non-bitchy? Maybe a little bitchy?) I hope that clarifies my stance. Now, back to my permanent war with all men. Be afraid... be very afraid. GENDER: Ampersand posts a fierce and heartfelt rebuttal of my blog comments (and possibly my JWR column?) on gender roles. He argues that supporting gender roles at all means fostering the kind of brutal enforcement of rigid gender roles that made his youth awful: "The belief that there is a correct 'gender role' which must be taught inevitably leads to child abuse, in my opinion." I can definitely sympathize; it should be obvious that I think what happened to him was evil. In fact, I think in a lot of ways we're trying to address some of the same problems, including/especially male bullying and violence. So let me make my position a little clearer: 1) I'm not advocating for rigid gender roles. Tried to make this point in my JWR piece: "Rosalind, Antony, Lear, Beatrice, Iago, Emilia, Leontes--could any of them exist in a genderless world? I think not; and I think even the apostles of gender neutrality would miss that menagerie when they were gone. "And also: Could any of them exist in a world where women were 'angels in the house' and men were Strong Silent Types? Again, no; I can only hope that the apostles of gender rigidity would miss them." Don't know if I succeeded. But anyway, this is not about whether you like sports or shopping. (I hate both.) I think there's a very wide array of possible gendered roles--in some ways analogous to the wildly varied lives of the saints. 2) I doubt that rigid gender roles (boys are good at sports, girls think math is hard) can be promoted without harm to children's well-being and self-image. However, I'm pretty well convinced that flexible gender roles can be promoted in ways that respect kids; I've seen it. It happens. A lot. 3) If you take away the gendered incentives to act rightly--gendered roles, gendered heroisms--you don't get a genderless world. You get bad gender roles. If a man can't be a masculine hero, he is a lot more likely to choose to be a masculine bully or a masculine womanizer rather than a gender-neutral feminist. In the JWR piece (sorry for linking this so insistently but I do think it addresses a lot of Amp's concerns) I suggest some reasons this happens. These reasons are deep-rooted enough in the human heart that I don't think there is really any chance of just saying, "Well, but we shouldn't want gender. Let's make it so people don't want gender anymore." Here, I'll quote the piece: "Children want gender because they want a role in the world, a place in the story unfolding around them, a role to live up to and by which they can judge their actions. Gender fits us into the cycle of family and fruitfulness; it connects us to our parents, who have taken on the most obviously gendered roles of all when they became mother and father; and it provides children with a connection to their future maturity, and thus to sex. Children want a sexual identity even when they do not plan on kids or a spouse, because they want an adult identity." OK. Will post on some of Amp's other points in a bit. SAME-SEX MARRIAGE RESPONSES PART ONE: Jonathan Rauch responds; then Maggie Gallagher. Dave Tepper responds but misses what I meant w/r/t why it's important to talk about sex, not just committed loving relationships, when we talk about marriage.... I genuinely do not think the SSM debate reduces to, or even needs to address, "Is sodomy A-OK?" But I can see that I was unclear about that. Hope to make my point clearer a little later today, when I respond to Ampersand's lengthy post. Blogwatch sat bathing by a stream where fairest shades did hide her.... Body and Soul: Mentally ill man dies naked and alone in jail after being arrested for panhandling. What more to say. Unqualified Offerings: Property rights in Iraq. Edward Gorey at Yale. GodSpy--new Catholic online mag. Sleek, has an article by Fr. (Msgr?) Lorenzo Albacete, looks intriguing though I haven't had time to check it out. In insomnia-related news, I made the top picture on this page my desktop background. IRAQNESS: Unqualified Offerings links to this really interesting discussion of the proposed Polish role in the rebuilding of Iraq, and how it fell apart. As he notes, there's some discussion of the main post's veracity (in comments here and here). The author of the initial piece comes out strongly in support of the war, and it's being published on an Objectivist site, so there's some potentially relevant background info. More on the rebuilding and information sources here (via Body and Soul). I certainly have zero firsthand knowledge, and can't really vouch for this stuff, but I thought you all would want to see these posts--they're worth the time it takes to read and form your own judgment. Feel free to bring the same skepticism you'd apply to any other enormous government program.... Also, send toys to Iraqi kids. DOING ZOMBIE RHUMBA: I've had extremely bad insomnia for almost a week now. Am operating on approx. three hours of sleep. Apologies if I get punchy or discombobulated. Anyway, on with the show.... "The trademark [John] Adams style might be described as 'enlightened perversity,' which actually sought out occasions to display, often in conspicuous fashion, his capacity for self-sacrifice. He had defended the British troops accused of the Boston Massacre, insisted upon American independence in the Continental Congress a full year before it was fashionable, argued for a more exalted conception of the presidency despite charges of monarchical tendencies. It was all part of the Adams pattern, an iconoclastic and contrarian temperament that relished alienation." --Joseph Ellis, Founding Brothers Friday, September 19, 2003
HERE IN DC, it was just your basic fierce summer storm. The sky turned light purple with rain for a while. Wind whipped the lampposts around. The streets went white with rain, then dark and wet. Then it stopped. Now everything is gray and the Metro is open again. So much for Isabel. UPDATE: Well, apparently Iz did some serious huffin' and puffin' here after all--I saw a big uprooted tree on Capitol Hill, and Russo reported seeing a tree blocking off 18th Street and a lamppost bent in half. Wild. It really didn't look that crazy when we were watching the storm last night; but then again, we were inside.... Thursday, September 18, 2003
THOUGHTS ON THE A.F.F. SAME-SEX MARRIAGE DEBATE: Scattered impressions, of course--what, you expected concise paragraphs in military formation? The panelists were Pia de Solenni, Robert Knight, Patrick Guerrerro, and Jonathan Rauch. Rauch was by far the best speaker, as I'd expected. He kicked off the panel with a strong defense of two things that may or may not be the same thing: marriage, and "long-term caring relationships," "someone to come home to," someone to provide stability in one's life. He also argued that if same-sex marriage doesn't pass soon, a Chinese menu of alternatives to marriage will arise (or rather, will gain in popularity--all of these already exist): domestic partnerships, civil unions, committed relationships without marriage, etc. etc. Basically, the idea is that heterosexual couples will see these other relationship models being practiced by homosexual couples, and will pick these looser-but-stabler unions over the demands of marriage. (Interestingly, this claim rests on the premise that hetero couples will take advantage of problematic relationship models offered by homosexual couples. That's a premise that advocates of SSM generally deny when the question is whether hetero couples will imitate male-male couples' often laxer standards of infidelity.) I think this is Rauch's strongest claim, and will perhaps write more about it later. De Solenni made one really good point, which is that advocates of SSM rarely cash out what makes marriage different from best-friendship. I think it's fairly important to ask why nobody thinks the state should sanction or affirm my closest chosen relationship unless I start sleepin' with her. More on this soon. Unfortunately, this interesting point was sort of lost amid vague, un-cashed-out talk of "complementarity" and children. Guerrerro is a politician--he's a big wheel in the Log Cabin Republicans--and talked like one, for good and for ill. He spoke movingly about 50-year-long loving homosexual relationships that have lasted through thick and thin. I found myself wondering whether Guerrerro really thinks that nobody is ever really in love with his mistress. IOW "but they love each other" is not really the end of the argument, you know? For oh so much more on that tip, check out Denis de Rougemont's incisive and potentially life-changing literary study, Love in the Western World. He also offered a very attenuated understanding of friendship (can you tell I've been thinking about this a lot?), as if a friend is just a casual acquaintance, rather than, so often, a well-loved shelter from the storms of life. Knight... well, eh. I've seen him speak more persuasively than this on topics relating to homosexuality. Basically, he said that butt sex is bad, and we should be encouraging people to become "ex-gays" (not a notion I'm super fond of). Then the moderator asked everyone to define marriage. You can probably do Knight's and De Solenni's yourself, but Guerrerro's and Rauch's definitions were interesting: G. said that marriage is when "two loving people choose to have the state recognize their lifelong committed relationship, with all the legal rights and responsibilities offered to heterosexuals." Rauch, in a clipped and passionate tone, simply said, "To have and to hold, to love and to cherish, for richer and for poorer, for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, 'til death do you part." Overall take-home thoughts from the debate: Like most of these discussions, it was framed in terms of heteros vs. homos. I think that's unnecessary and misleading; I've said before that I think this is an issue about men and women, not gays 'n' straights. Similarly, both Knight and the pro-SSM speakers seemed to think it was very important to figure out whether or not people could change from a homosexual to a heterosexual orientation. I don't think that's an especially important question (to the extent that it's important to one's personal life, you can find my answer in the "ex-gay" article linked above), and I think it reflects an unwarranted American pursuit of "the authentic self"--what I am rather than what I should do. Include me out. Opponents of SSM need to work much harder on explaining what "the children!" are doing in our argument. There needs to be much more careful attention to the role of ideals and models in people's lives. Instead, we're getting bogged down in questions about infertile couples, etc., which I think are just plain irrelevant. We need to talk about the effects of changing the ideal marriage to a unisex, not necessarily physically constant model, where children only enter the picture when you specifically go out and plan and get 'em. We need to talk about the expectations that new model raises, and the desires it does and doesn't cater to. (Does = the desire to have control over our bodies, a control that is, frankly, illusory, especially for those whose sexual relations can and often do lead to pregnancy. Doesn't = the desire for gender. For example.) None of that stuff got brought up last night. Advocates of SSM really need to stop talking about me and my best friend when they think they're talking about marriage. I mean, I don't think Knight's approach was super helpful either, but at least he did in fact talk about sex. Let's have a less abstracted and more visceral, embodied understanding of what makes marriage unlike other socially-beneficial relationships. Advocates and opponents of SSM might usefully discuss what they think about children and gender. Should children learn gender roles? Is that harder with a same-sex couple? Is it harder in a society with same-sex marriage? Do those questions matter, and if so, how much? The language of "gender complementarity" is kind of bloodless. I more like a formulation, which I think Maggie Gallagher may have come up with?, that marriage is how we reconcile the opposite sexes. CONFESSIONS OF A FAILED SOUTHERN LADY: Recently finished Florence King's autobiography. I'd told myself that I would be good, and stick to my reading list, but King was just too tempting! This is definitely the kind of book you devour--engrossing and a fast read. It takes you through King's childhood (caught between Granny's fevered discourse on "woman troubles" and Mama's fierce tomboyisms), college, brief stint as a lady Marine, grad school at Ole Miss (easily the best part of the book), and budding career as a true-confessions writer and virago. King is a passionate writer (especially about books and sex) and a wry one. COAFSL was immensely fun and often moving. (Although there were several blushworthy moments when I somewhat regretted reading it on the Metro, where people could glance over my shoulder!) King is also, as The Rat (who gave me the book as a birthday present) pointed out, pretty blatant in her egoism and amorality. But that too is very Southern. There's a long Southern tradition of elevating personal ties, loyalties, wants, and attempts to establish oneself as a "character" over moral laws. In that respect, King, like the polite bohemians at Ole Miss with their embroidery hoops, didn't quite achieve escape velocity; but then, I don't get the impression that she wanted to. "Southern bohemians never quite make it. An embroidery hoop containing a half-finished sampler fell out of the Army B-4 that Sorella used as a book bag. Augustus carried in his chinos an heirloom pocketwatch with an inscribed lid. Lucius kept his place in Tropic of Capricorn with a strip of leather containing the tenet, 'I Know That My Redeemer Liveth.'" --Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady Wednesday, September 17, 2003
TOMORROW: Florence King, marriage-debate report, fun with hurricanes, finally-updated fiction, and more. Unlike the federal government, this blog will be open for business. Uh, unless we lose power. TO THE PERSON WHO DID A GOOGLE SEARCH FOR "MAKE EVE TUSHNET LAUGH": You are a big dork. A big, successful dork. SAME-SEX MARRIAGE DEBATE HERE IN D.C. TONIGHT: I will be there. 7 PM. Free food, beer, wine. Interesting speakers. AFF is fun. You should come. I will report back when it's over. I will use longer sentences then. Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Her name is Noelle I have a dream about her She rings my bell. I got gym class in half an hour and oh how she rocks in her Keds and tube socks. But she doesn't know who I am. And she doesn't give a damn about me Cuz I'm just a teenage blogwatch, baby Yeah I'm just a teenage blogwatch, baby.... After Abortion points us to this affecting story of a woman's tattoo, and this post on pro-life hiphop. (I guess Common says he's "pro-choice," but Lauryn Hill is a member of Feminists for Life, representin' for Maplewood, New Jersey.) The Agitator: The permanent emergency. Hey, here's my JWR column on the very same topic. (Speaking of, have you given them money? They can't live on their Trilateral Commission salaries forever, you know....) The Volokh Conspiracy: A headline (not esp. interested in the post's content) that manages to combine my loathing of both ag subsidies and birth control! As you might imagine, this doesn't happen every day.... More than you ever wanted to know about the California recall insanity. Let 'em fall into the daggone sea already. And I realized, when I noticed how happy I was that there's a new Comics 101 up, that I should plug that site. It's an intro thing for people wondering what the heck the X-Men, or Pogo, or... um... I guess... Ant-Man (just teasin'!) are all about. Much fun to be found in the archives here. Thanks, Scott. "Mama hated to be alone; Herb had so many inner resources he could have committed folie a deux all by himself." --Florence King, Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady Monday, September 15, 2003
LIGHT BROODING AND HEAVY INSOMNIA last night, plus jury duty today, equals head full of white noise. I'm not really capable of thinking anything beyond, "Og want food. Og want bath. Og want sleep." (Am only awake now b/c I don't want to mess up my sleep schedule even more.) Tomorrow I will be fun, come here tomorrow. In the meantime, why don't you check out this stuff? Big Sunny D (more of him at the end): Odd hair on the rise in East Kilbride. I'm pretty much pro- anything that falls "somewhere between 80's pop star and evil sci-fi villainess." In fact, I think that is my new career choice. ("Um...'new'?") The Old Oligarch: Great post on being a Catholic theologian moving through a world where everybody has a question. Unqualified Offerings: More on decoupling health insurance and employment. As a lowly ant in the vast wasp's nest of the self-employed, I am on his side. More here. A hilarious Style Invitational this week: Washington, DC-themed pickup lines. Samples: "Excuse me, ma'am, but the gentleman at that table has sent you a FYH 2005 energy and water appropriations bill rider for a $52.3 million solid-waste treatment plant upgrade in your home congressional district, with his compliments." "I'm guessing you work for Fannie Mae, because your fanny may be the best I've ever seen." "How about if we get away somewhere and completely deregulate ourselves?" "Boy, that dress you are wearing is the most effective Request for Proposals I have ever reviewed." And, for once, the Invitational winner is actually the funniest entry: "Your beauty renders me as powerless as Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton." read the rest And now is the time on "Sprockets" when I indulge my X-obsession. Both Big Sunny D and Paul "How--And Why?--Does He Read All Those X-Books?" O'Brien heap praises on the Big Twist issue of "New X-Men." (The spoilers! They taste... pointy!) D and O'B have much, much more faith than I did that this will turn into something interesting rather than collapsing under pressure to return the franchise to status quo ante. So I will elaborate very briefly: NXM #146 is a beautiful example of what somebody or other called, in praise of Agatha Christie, "animated algebra." Yeah, I totally went back and looked through all those old episodes, reading them with new eyes, seeing all the clues. That was a fun puzzle. Click-click-click-click all the frames of the Identikit fall into place. (With a few mysteries left hanging for the next issues!) But. All kinds of nifty moments and ideas and themes have been woven in along the sides of Morrison's X-Men issues, never getting nearly enough time, and I am really hoping that they will not simply be abandoned in favor of making this storyline all about... how to say without spoiling... well, status quo ante seems adequate. I'm worrying that this is all we're gonna get--animated algebra, attention to the clockwork of the plot and the expectations built up by 40 years of X-stuff, but that's about it. I of course hope to be proven utterly wrong. The more I thought about the Twist, the more highly interesting repercussions I saw it could have on the characters, and if Morrison takes us there I will happily eat my hat with ice cream. Also, you can buy a "Magneto Was Right" t-shirt. It was only a matter of time. Too bad my birthday just passed! Friday, September 12, 2003
VOLUNTEER AT A PRO-LIFE PREGNANY CENTER! Capitol Hill Pregnancy Center, the place where I volunteer, will be holding its next volunteer training sessions in October. EDITED TO ADD: There will be three evening sessions (which I think are two hours each), on October 7, 9, and 16, and one all-day session on Saturday, October 11. This is a great place--you work with amazing, inspiring women (both volunteers and clients--many of our clients are incredible people), and offer counseling and material aid to women and children in need. I love this place. It is a Christian ministry, and all the counselors are expected to sign a statement of faith. If you're thinking about whether you want to do Christian crisis pregnancy counseling, or if you know someone else who might be interested, please consider CHPC. You can call Tara Woods at (202) 546-0117 for more info. Guys too--we've had a male mentoring program in the past and I think they'd like to start it up again. WHAT YOU CAN DO: My short story. You can read the story so far starting here, or just catch the latest installment here. Next installment on Monday. |