Happy Halloween

A little lovesong for the most ghoulish holiday of all, here’s Dead Man’s Bones‘ “My Body’s a Zombie for You.” There is handclapping, there are children howling,  there is a teacher leading everybody in song in what sounds like a classic cafetorium (and I bet that teacher is really nice and gives everybody candy during rehearsals), there are zombies, and there is Ryan Gosling.

Stay golden,

CF

Friday Free for All

• I love this soon-to-be poster from I Heart Guts so much.  I know Always’s current motto is “Have a Happy Period,” but I Heart Guts has won the crown here.  Other contenders for world’s happiest period: Fussybutt fussystuff, Monthlyinfo.com email reminders, and the best titled T-shirt I’ve seen in awhile “A Womb of One’s Own” (again, the guts have it).
• Why am I so happy that Tracy Anderson, Madonna and Gwyneth’s personal trainer, is turning out to be a con artist?
• I owe $20.00 to the public library, which is keeping me from returning four books, which means I am increasing my debt every day.  And I have books on hold that I need to pick up, or more fees! Vicious cycle.  The librarians are real sons of guns.
• My fourth anniversary is next week.  I have no gift yet. But am looking for ideas involving linen, fruit, flowers, or appliances (according to the vast anniversary encyclopedia of the internet).  Happy applianceversary! I got you an icecrusher!  There are some real doozy gift ideas over at Regretsy, including: masturbating dinosaurs, poetic jeans, and a cocked up pumpkin necklace. Oof.

The Personal and the Political

Dear Millicent,

In regards to our ongoing conversation about the place of personal narrative in abstract ethical argument, as well as our consensus on the trials of weddings, I thought Jessica Valenti’s post today about her recent wedding might be of interest.  In her post “Well, I’m damn sure I’m never getting married again,” she writes about the high profile of her wedding (it was featured in the NYT), and how her public feminism brought a great deal of criticism.  Through various media, people commented on her “self-promotion,” her choice to get married at all, her dress, her caterer. She asserts that she is not a symbol of feminism, speaking for all feminists, and that instead she is an individual deciding to share her own navigations through a tricky wicket.

I think lots of couples, brides especially, deal with this same kind of stress, though on a less grand scale.  While most of us aren’t public figures, couples face a rough road in announcing the choices of their wedding. One of the reasons playing “wedding” as a kid is so fun is because it seems like an adult moment where you have all your glories gathered: this is my dress, my flowers, my bridesmaids, my groom: I am an adult, look at the finished me!  It is a game of the luxury of self, especially attractive in childhood because there we rarely get to control our world.  And then, the cruel joke of a real wedding—-you are supposed to have some adult self to concretely present: an aesthetic, a found beauty, inner grace, humility, and it is supposed to fit everybody else’s wishes and expectations for you.  If you proclaim your self too loudly, you are a bridezilla, lost to the wedding gods.  If you go by the book, you are not authentic enough.  If you ditch it all and go to city hall, there’s a modest twinge of what could have been (“it’s such an important moment, you want it all over in 20 minutes?” and “what kind of pictures will your kids have to look at?” were both questions I heard).  And so, post wedding, the criticisms roll in.  I have never met a bride who didn’t feel a little beat up at the end of it all, and most of the battering came from assuming a defensive gesture.  Defending their dress, their friends, the food, the band, the cost, the wedding date, the travel, and all the other stuff.  We think a wedding is going to be a kind of cotillion, where instead of announcing ourselves as polite “finished” debs, we arrive as welcomed smart adults into the community.  But, debs have strict rules and follow a rigid ideal of ladyhood to be accepted without qualms into the dating pool of cotillionland.  Most of us at our weddings, with our eclectic and fierce assertions of authenticity, announce “hey, this is me!” and then have a lot of explaining to do.

In short, I think it’s damn hard to get married these days, even if your peeps are the best of the best.

But Valenti’s essay brings up more than the post-wedding hindsight of “jeeesh!”  She says:

I’ve always felt that putting yourself out there – even if it means being more vulnerable – was a terrific way to show the nuance and complexity of feminism. And that making yourself more accessible was a way to make the sometimes-dense ideas of feminism more relatable. I knew this would make for a dangerous line to walk – that opening yourself up also means opening yourself up to hatefulness. And over the last five years that I’ve been blogging, that hatefulness has come through. But wonderful, amazing, supportive people have always counteracted it – and that made it worthwhile. But looking back, when I realize that some of the most important and joyful moments in my life have been poisoned by the cruelness of people I don’t even know…well, it just gives me pause.

A wedding is so inherently personal and public, in general, but to have that public critique to continue to other experiences…it sounds brutal.  It’s different here than a case of celebrity, or even of our prevalent public/private twitterblogfaceland, and I admire her perseverance. My question is, is relatability worth the sacrifice? Is relatability the key?

We’ve talked before about how the introduction of the personal often changes the conversation when it comes to broad argument.   This happens a lot, for example, in the comments section of Jezebel, where a post will advocate or critique a particular cause.  The comments section will then fill with people relating stories of people they know, one time events, or personal narratives. On Jezebel, I find it annoying because the larger conversation is lost to single voices proclaiming their own experience, looking backwards and then leaving the conversation. However, I think Valenti presents here the power of these kind of conversations: they can demonstrate and highlight the complexities.  For me, the best use of personal narrative is not when it fragments into every single person’s “I can relate” pitch,  but when the voices together illustrate the importance and power of the issue at hand.

I recently went to a conference on women and power where practically every speaker started their speech with a short anecdote or comment about the difficulties of having a job and a family.  By the end of the conference, about 18 speeches later, the gesture felt hackneyed and a bit predatory: a request for empathy on demand.  Yet, in a keynote speech, Gloria Steinem said that personal narrative was the key to social justice, and that “empathy is the most revolutionary emotion.”

Years ago, I went to another conference where before each speaker spoke, they presented their reproductive history.  The summit’s focus was to bring together pro-choice, reproductive justice, and birthing rights advocates to look beyond the abortion debate and work together. As every person spoke over the three days, the immensity of how deeply reproductive and sexual health policies affect everybody, regardless of race, class, gender or sexuality was strikingly clear. Assumptions were dismantled, and empathy ruled the day (impressive around the abortion debate, no?).  It was one of the best ideas I have ever seen at a conference.

Closing thoughts:

• Can empathy limit progress?
• Is it empathy that occurs when people take the mic and  tell their own story? Or is it contingent on the fact that they keep speaking after their story is done?
• Would modern weddings be better if the conversation didn’t focus on dream dresses, bridezillas, and proclamations of originality (I find these bridal narratives as irritating as the princess wedding version) and more on familial stresses, navigating adulthood, and the other strange beasts that lurk?
• Did the Houston bride who had her own cakeself worry about any of this, or is she the rare creature—-the satisfied bride? She did get exactly what she wanted, and I’m sure there was somebody trying to talk her out of that cake.

Yours,

CF

Letter From a Sterling Institute Ex-Friend

Thanks to Hank for writing in about how his friendship with a longtime family friend changed as a result of the Sterling Men’s Institute (Hank’s comment originally appeared here):

I’m a veteran of men’s gatherings ala Robert Bly’s “Ironman” and was invited by a longtime family friend to participate in The Sterling Men’s Weekend (for $900.00). My friend cautioned me NOT to look at anything on the web about Sterling…which only lead me to do just that: research the “Weekend”. Frankly, I was totally turned off that Arnie Rabinowitz (or whatever) changed his name to “Justin Sterling” and that he got plastic surgery to improve his appearance. LOL! Arnie has been through one or two nasty divorces, too, and relies heavily on volunteers to do the Institute work while he takes in the dough and reportedly lives a million-dollar lifestyle. Yeah. This is just the kind of group I want to get involved with…NOT!

So I told my friend what I’d found out about Sterling and he quickly ceased to encourage me to do the Weekend. In fact, he doesn’t say much of anything about it to me anymore although he’s been involved with Sterling and subsequent Sterling-esque splinter groups for several years now. I’ve met a few of his Sterling buddies (or as HE refers to them: “his men”) at bonfires he has in his backyard and I can’t seem to shake the impression they give off as being “losers” of a sort. My friend’s marriage has been shaky for many years (he’s a gay man in a heterosexual marriage but his wife knew that when she wed him…) and the Sterling men I’ve met at his bonfires seem to either be divorced or on the verge of it.

Another particularly annoying characteristic that my friend has taken on since getting involved with Sterling is answering his cellphone IMMEDIATELY at all times. This means during dinners (where he and Mrs. are our guests), in the middle of concerts (and talking loudly to the dismay of those around him) and while supposedly spending time with me/us. His cell phone trumps everything else. It’s weird.

Last summer he had planned to go camping/hiking with “his men” to a large mountain in the northeast. It just so happened that a once-in-thirty-years reunion with his old friends (me included) was also happening that same weekend. When the forecast predicted high winds and driving rain on the mountain, he opted to change his plans and attend the reunion. From what he told me “his men” berated him repeatedly for failing to live up to his commitment even though extremely poor weather was forecast and actually happened. I’m sure they had a lousy time up on that mountain and they managed to prove the old adage “Misery loves company.” LOL!

Lemme see, what else. I know he has a 5AM conference call with his men every Sunday. Five-friggin-A-M on a Sunday. I’ve certainly noticed that he helps out with domestic house chores WAY more than he ever did and, I get the feeling, that he’s learned to do that so that he can go away on his Sterling jaunts and not have to answer to his wife. He’s been unemployed for quite some time and there doesn’t seem to be any job on the horizon YET he seems to invest plenty of time in Sterling stuff. Yep! He’s always there for His Men!

He’s invited and cajoled a number of other men in our circle of friends to do the Weekend. Most have declined but one did take the bait and I’ve noticed that he’s not around much either because HE now has commitments doing things with HIS men.

Whatever!!!! Whatever floats your boat, I guess. IMO, steer clear of scam artists like “Justin Sterling”. Unless, of course, you want to help ol’ Arnie Rabinowitz keep up the masquerade AND support his comfortable lifestyle.

The Eyes Have It

Millicent,

I would like to say this is some kind of metaphor for marriage,  or an easy slight on bridezilla culture, but it’s too grand for analysis.  I cannot stop thinking about this picture:

I have tried to write about other things, but I am defeated.

Yours,

CF

Letter from a Sterling Institute Ex-wife

Thanks to Karen who wrote this lengthy account in response to this post on the Sterling Institute. Readers: if you’ve had any experience (direct or indirect) with the Sterling Institute, feel free to comment below.

Karen, over to you:

My ex husband attended a weekend. Supposed to improve his relationships with all people, including work/management relationships which is why supposedly his employer was paying for it (no way they’d pick up a $600 tab on the little and convoluted info provided). Of course at the time I was as yet unaware of how compulsively his lying issue was.

It was supposed to make him a better man, better at relationships. After the weekend they broke off into “teams” which met once a week (and they had to call each other once a week – but no one wanted to leave a name or any info…. an elusive, secret group). They had meetings that started at 9 p.m. at the beach on a rainy night. Or 11 p.m. – 1 a.m. on a Sunday. Not allowed to reveal where they were or have cell phones. Found the sword/dagger hidden under coat in trunk of car. You better your relationships through all this SECRECY? That was part of the beginning of the end.

Oh, and then there was the day that he left the papers with their team “rules” and ordinances on the counter which I quickly copied. hmm. His group named themselves
The Gay Poodles. Gay poodles, fighting to be seadogs….
Now if that wasn’t telling I don’t know what is. Oh yeah, the book he’d allegedly found from college and was getting rid of a few years before but somehow found its way to be hidden deep in his nightstand drawer, by a famous gay author, on a gay teenage boy finding his sexual self with salcious passages about he and his partners.

Yeah, Sterling really helped my ex become a man. He’d been cheating for years before (with who/what gender) and never stopped (with who/what gender?) Of course it was MY fault the marriage ended when, disgusted with it all and his recommendations to the kid that they throw mom out I finally crossed the line (well tried to) and metup with the (straight) man I was SUPPOSED to have married. Reread your Gay Poodles/Sterling rules dear, when your wife stops respecting you, she’ll find someone else.

Sterling did NOTHING to help this “man” (male person in adult size body) earn/keep respect. Or get the guts to come out of the closet he was stuck halfway in.

And I am quite sure I’m half the $600 plus half the six figure equity line he ran up secretly the poorer because of this gutless loser…….. Sterling can’t fix everyone.

Yep. Follow us on Twitter.

Drilling Down

Dear Millicent,

The fall, with it’s famous bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils, must sound the alarms of kick-in-the-pants nationwide. As you suggest National Novel Writing Month (I get head-achey at the acronym), I am also considering another internet regimen: Apartment Therapy’s Fall Cure.  The two are connected, and I’m very much considering joining you in the great novelwrite, and wonder if maybe we can create an overwhelming hybrid of sorts?

In your last post on Whip It, you asked about the ideal writing environment.  My honest answer is my sophmore dorm room, which was  the size of a cubby hole, and when I tipped my chair back, my head could rest on the opposite wall.  As I hopefully won’t be moving back into a u shaped space that held a twin bed, mini fridge and desk, I should probably re-adapt and get another program going.  As a mutual professor of ours recently mentioned, “space matters.”  I believe this to be true in the same way that teacups and good pens are pleasing; they can bring delight into the undercurrent, thus happily infecting everything.

Right now my desk and home resemble a comforting racoon’s den–comforting if you are that racoon (luckily, I am).  With a bit of distance, it looks piled and sticky. Functional, yes! Delight inducing, no. Apartment Therapy offers an 8 week focus to make things better.  The site insists it isn’t about style or spending as much as it is making sure one feels very good in their living space.  This week’s assignment is to get some sense of vision together.  They suggest pulling from environments you have admired (friends’ and neighbors’ houses, rooms you felt extremely good in), and to resist making a scrapbook from magazines and catalogues.  They want you to work for a feeling more than rigid ideal that might not fit.  I like this because money is not involved off the bat. Also, it doesn’t want you to be a style robot, as much as, dare I say it, your best self. Tim Gunn would approve.

I was talking to Mr. Carla Fran about these regimens, and my attraction to them.  He has very little interest, and I think might view all of this as another system of procrastination or exuberant timefill.  And it might be.  I do have about seven writing projects that need attention and wrangling. But, they are like the apartment: comfortable and piled.  I need some homework to get me through to the other side.  National Novel Writing Month and the Fall Cure seem like a good sidefocus to dig up all the scattered energy, and start the approach.

My one hesitation about Novel Month is admittedly weak.  I look at the site, and think that a real writer wouldn’t dare post their words there.  I hem and haw about pseudonyms, and then realize I am my own worst wallflower/firecracker: resistant because it seems earnest and uncool.  My punishment should be to include my middle name, and send my parents links to read every update.

What’s the great attraction to these regimens? Is it being told what to do? Is it that it gives a finite start, and a sense of community that promise there is an end and it all will be ok?  Is it a matter of focus and a steady hand?

I think I like it.  Of course, starting is always the easy part.

Back to the den,

CF

ShudWeNaNoWriMo?

Dear CF and beloved commenters and lurkers,

National Novel-Writing Month. I’m gonna do it, or a variant of it that might start a little earlier. Wanna join me?

Below are the official rules, which we could tweak. For example, I like the starting from scratch idea that doesn’t let me use any previous drafts or notes. I don’t know that I feel compelled to upload the final product to verify the word count, but that may be an irrational reluctance to commit anything with my name attached to it to the internet (I know, I know).

On the other hand, while I resent the cheerleading angle, I could put up with it and sort of like the institutional flavor of the thing that permits crapola to exist. I’m interested in the NaNoWriMo gatherings in different cities where strangers gather to write.

We could post nonthreatening updates, like statistical analyses of our most frequently used words, here.

The Rules as articulated on the site:

• Write a 50,000-word (or longer!) novel, between November 1 and November 30.
• Start from scratch. None of your own previously written prose can be included in your NaNoWriMo draft (though outlines, character sketches, and research are all fine, as are citations from other people’s works).
• Write a novel. We define a novel as a lengthy work of fiction. If you consider the book you’re writing a novel, we consider it a novel too!
• Be the sole author of your novel. Apart from those citations mentioned two bullet-points up.
• Write more than one word repeated 50,000 times.
• Upload your novel for word-count validation to our site between November 25 and November 30.

What say you, CF? Louise? Mrs. B. U-S? RachelB? Zunguzungu? Others?

Whip It: Girls Need to See This Movie

Someone once said they would go out tonight but they haven’t got a stitch to wear, and I’m feeling that way after watching Whip It: in need of clothes and a destination.

Having seen it, I’m predictably fascinated by roller derby, awed by Juliette Lewis, and delighted with Drew Barrymore and Kristin Wiig. I’m all-around pretty darn happy with this uncloying and montage-free female comedy. At last: a movie that isn’t ironic cheesecake, Bratz, Rival Brides or a warmed-over version of Clueless.

The main character, Bliss, really wants something seriously scary that demands a toughness not usually demanded of someone of Ellen Page’s build. It isn’t sensible and isn’t sex. God, that’s a relief. Girlish wildness so rarely gets channeled anywhere else.  (Incidentally I’m tired of sensibleness tonight. It’s boring, and my protests against my sensible self are even more boring. Wouldn’t it be great to take an actual risk? I ask myself and answer sensibly, yes. Yes it would.)

I want to say this: It has flaws, but it fired me up.

A tangent (if disinclined, skip to here*): If on a winter’s night a traveler is a “novel” whose plot is that you, the Reader, are trying to track down the rest of a novel you’ve started and instead you keep starting different novels that have the same title, or purport to be the one you want in translation, but aren’t what you started reading at all. They trail off in turn just when you start to get interested and you, the reader, end up frustrated—both in real life and in the novel. Instead of investing in the stories themselves, you start caring about the frame narrative: the story of the reader (you, male) tracking down the stories with the Other Reader, a woman.

When they started the book my students cared a lot about the novels-within-the-novel: they really wanted to know what happened in the first novel to the man waiting to hand off a suitcase to a fellow undercover agent at the train station. Or to the woman who ran the leather goods store. They were a little upset by the interruption. Now, midway through the book, I asked them where their investments lie. They say they don’t care about the interrupted stories at all. They express surprise at the very suggestion.

When I remind them of how interested they’d been in the man at the train station their faces change into that frown-twist of recognition that strikes when you remember a childhood feeling. It’s a look that dredges impressions from very long ago. They explain, then, that they didn’t know yet. But now they’ve learned not to invest in the beginnings because it’s clear, at this point in the novel, that they’re never going to get a full story.

Not surprising; we’re creatures of habit and we’re easily trained. What is kind of surprising is that they don’t remember the initial interest they felt until they’re reminded of it. Even their memories of the experience have been trained out of them. They forget that once it was otherwise—once upon a time they were more interested in the story than the frame.

(Exeunt Tangent, chased by a bear.)*

I feel that way tonight—startled that I can experience something as silly as a roller derby movie directly without having to transpose it into a different key, without experiencing it at one remove. I can’t remember the last time I felt anything but mildly depressed by a sports movie—elated in translation, maybe, in my imaginary incarnation as the boy the movie was meant for, but pretty convinced that those bodies and those possibilities aren’t mine.

These aren’t either, but they’re much, much closer, and that matters more than I thought it did. Not all movies are meant for identification, but this one is. Girls need to see this movie.

In addition: I feel like driving. And I miss L.A. And part of me wants nothing more than to work in a really plasticky commercial mall, the kind with Christmas ornaments the size of beach balls already hanging from an enormous tinsel tree. Another part wants to spray-paint a bicycle and start a zine. A third part wants to fight. A fourth wants a haircut and contemplates doing it herself. And the last part, the part that lets me sleep or not, wants me to finally get to the work that matters.

Four years ago someone wrote me asking me to fill out a survey about writing. It was the kind of thing I scoffed at—the hokey sort of “what is your ideal writing space?” quiz that forces you to come up with positive terms on which you will actually work instead of complaints or excuses. Hokey or not, I’m taking it seriously.

How would you whip it? Where would you go to write?
M