Adventures in Women's Studies: Purity-Mongers Strike Again

Earlier this week, I guest lectured in a Gender and Pop Culture class using the research I did for my honors thesis--the Duggars, Quiverfull, purity movements, and the like. It went quite well as usual, and we ended the class by watching the new 45 minute documentary of Jessica Valenti's The Purity Myth. She analyzes the obsession with a woman's purity and how this in fact sexualizes women and girls even more by placing their entire worth between their legs. Excellent watching. Find a way to view it.

In any case, it just so happens that Valenti was also just on Anderson Cooper debating with Randy Wilson, who is the male half of the couple that created the infamous Purity Balls, ample footage of which can be found on you tube. The usual arguments were made (brilliantly on Valenti's part, weak and insane on Wilson's in my humble opinion), and much merriment was had by all the feminists. Then they discussed a you tube vlog that went viral at the end of last year, posted by a 13-year-old Canadian girl about slut shaming.

Slut Shaming: the act of shaming a woman as a slut for her actual or perceived sexual activity based on rumor, attire, or knowledge of her personal life; most important to note is that it is solely aimed at women

She should be explaining this to a majority of the grown women I know. She breaks down how it contributes to sexism and rape culture and basically does the universe a service by putting this out there for her audience. The after-show "continued discussion" featured several audience members quietly losing their shit over how this 13-year-old was discussing sex and sluts. "She's so young." "She's advocating sex at 13." "She's too young to know anything about this." Okay, I usually have some issues with the current youth movement's insistence on supporting youth rights as extensively as they do. Don't get me wrong. I do think that young adults should be taken seriously, but they are still young adults, which means they do still need guidance and not all of them are as capable and mature as the movement would have you think. However, this girl is obviously quite knowledgeable, and the fact of the matter is that she never advocated sex for 13-year-olds. Not once. She never said she was having sex. Not once. She never even said that all her friends were having sex. Again, not once. What she advocated was well-informed, consensual, safe sex for those who are mentally and physically prepared to deal with the act and its possible consequences--an excellent thing to stump for as far as I can see. These women (and notice that it was only women) who basically attacked her mentally blocked everything she said except "have sex," instantaneously morphing a mature, well-thought-out, brilliant message that should be standard fare in any household into a blanket endorsement of child sex. In the process, they absolutely lost the message, one that they would have done well to absorb. There are kids having sex at 13 (and younger in some cases), and they have internalized the larger culture's ideals that a woman having sex at any age is a slut but a man is a stud. This is not new, but it is still a problem and needs to be addressed as such by women of all ages.

Valenti's main argument is that by focusing our attention completely on whether or not a girl or woman has had sex or not is painting her as nothing more than a sexual creature, which is exactly what the purity movements claim that larger society does and what they claim to be fighting by shoving the purity ideal down the throats of people at every turn. What they need to understand is that no one is attacking the idea of not having sex. That's fine. But they also need to understand that they need to stop attacking the idea of having it, which is also fine. A woman is not only the area between her legs, not just the number of times she's been intimate, and not solely the length of time she remains celibate; she is a complex creature with wants and needs every bit as important as her sexual activity or lack thereof. In short, can we please start telling our daughters and sons that the body is an amazing thing that houses the wonders of the mind and soul, which are truly the markers of a person's worth, and that there are better things to worry about than how many times the kid in the next row has or has not done the deed.

It's a Small, Disordered World

My entire life I have fought to conceal my OCD and its weirdness, the oddball compulsions, and general insanity accompanying it. I never wanted people to notice me checking the door locks over and over, the way I have to walk on sidewalks with cracks, and the way I can't function properly on brick or cobblestone walkways. Now I find myself expounding and expatiating on every bit of minutiae associated with it--in blogs, essays, and (at least attempting) poetry. On the one hand, this makes me vulnerable to comments I would otherwise be able to avoid, and on the other I'm making myself part of a community. So, what's the point? Earlier this evening, I read some comments on another OCD blog asking for help. The person was dealing with a particular type of obsessive thought and was trying to find out whether he was alone. While it is true that every person experiences their disorder in different ways, obsessions and compulsions repeat themselves over and over. I used to have the very kind of intrusive thought the commenter was worried about, and I was able to reassure him he is not alone.

Honestly, I have no other real point here...just that I am constantly amazed at how freakin' small the world gets everyday.

Scary Numbers, or What is Wrong with These People: A Brief Discussion of Rape Stats

While driving home today, I saw a billboard posted by a group called FSU Measure Up. In short, it's a "social norms initiative" which aims to "correct misconceptions about male students in regards to promiscuity and sexual violence" (from their "About" page). Anyway, the text read something like "FSU Men understand the importance of getting consent before sexual intimacy." First of all, let me say that I certainly support the idea that the men at FSU have figured out this apparently esoteric piece of knowledge, but...so I went and poked around the Measure Up website and found the following bits of info:

"88% of FSU men have gotten consent before sexual intimacy."

"97% of FSU men would do something to help a woman if they Saw her being mistreated."

"93% of FSU men would respect someone who intervened to prevent abuse or sexual assault."

Again, good, but...Since when did the notion that one needs consent before sex become such a revolutionary idea? And who are these 12% that did not get consent? Because, hello, that's rape and a crime, and my first inclination is expulsion. Except of course, these were, I assume, anonymous surveys, and so the people conducting them don't know which ones were the miscreants. Who are these 3% who would ignore the mistreatment, and why did so many of the 97% lie on this question? I'm sorry, but it's a valid question here. And the 7% who would not respect someone who intervened need their asses beaten. Here's one more thing to ponder: Why don't these numbers add up? These appear to be all from the same survey, so in theory, the men who got consent would have answered positively on other questions.

I'm just absolutely floored by the need for this campaign. As my friend Eric said, "What ought to be basic human decency is now award-winning behavior: 'Don't I get pie for not raping you?'"

On Gaps in Posting

So, I've been away. For a while. Work has exhausted me to the point of not being able to think clearly, and the blog has suffered unfortunately. Let me catch you up:

1. The biggest news is that I have had an essay accepted for publication in an anthology! It's basically my final project from Nonfiction last spring about OCD, and the anthology, It's All in Her Head, will be out in Spring 2013 from Seal Press. More news as I receive it.

2. I've been working my ass off at Scholastic book fairs packing the fairs for schools. If your kids go to a school in north Florida or extreme south Georgia, I've probably packed the fair that landed in their school library. Excellent company to work for, though I am wiped out at the end of the day. Many interesting thoughts about books and reading due to being there, which will come later as I try to get this poor neglected blog back on the rails.

3. I've been sporadically guest blogging at Queer Mental Health, and just this evening, I also guest blogged at Vocal Youth, which is run by my amazing friend A'ishah.

4. Lastly, for now, I have submitted my application for grad school--this time to the MFA program at FSU. Failing that (after I have my mental break and attempt hari kari), I'll put in for the library science program. More news on that as I receive it as well.

Other than that, I've been reading like a mad bastard. My profile at GoodReads will attest to that, and hopefully I will be blogging reviews again soon. For all those two or three of you that read this, sorry for the neglect, and I hope to have this thing going again soon. Peace!

Book Life 22: Never Drink Your Rich Roommate's Champagne, or Rural Boy Goes Ivy League, A Semi-Tragedy (Plus One Awesome Chunk of News)

As a book geek of massive proportions, I have been suffering a deep blue funk over the closing of Borders. While I try to shop my local used bookstores for the most part, sometimes you gotta hit up the big shiny bookstore, you know? And Borders was the best of the ones I'm familiar with. I found the book I'm blogging on there in the bargain section slashed another 50% because my beloved Borders is going under. I'm glad to be able to afford a few books I've been wanting because they are so cheap, but I hate the reasons for it. But I digress...

Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overacheiver by Walter Kirn

If you are at all familiar with this blog, you know that I am from a low SES rural background (and continue to be) and have had some difficulties adjusting to life in a town seemingly stuffed with entitled, pretentious people. (My previous rantings on the subject can be found listed under the "poverty" tag in the cloud to your right.) So when I saw this book, I snatched it up immediately, thinking I'd found some wonderful if distant authorial soul mate. Eh, not really.

Though I enjoyed the read, I found myself constantly searching for the thing the title and blurb promised. I understand why he included early memories, because after all, it is a memoir. However, most of it didn't seem to click with the expectations an initial glance gives you. Once he arrived at Princeton, it appears with his first roommates, a snobby group of over-privileged people I wanted to smack and other classmates wandering about in the background of the narrative. It falls away again shortly thereafter only to resurface here and there in the second half of the book, in between drug addled hazes and what looks to be an exhaustion-based disconnection with reality. As I've said about many a memoir I have read, I was not there and can make no claims about what did and did not happen and how it affected the author. But in many places, it seemed less to be the overwhelming nature of being thrown into the company of a class he was unfamiliar with than his own preexisting issues.

Knowledge is a reckoning...a way to assess your location, your true position, not a strategy for improving your position. (p.23)

Having said that, I did find a few places in which I was nodding in agreement. It isn't that it was a bad or poorly conceived book. (I think more people from rural, low income areas/backgrounds need to express these things, hence the reason I am always ranting on about them and reading this book.) I simply think that if he wanted to write a memoir about his discombobulation and how he dealt with the upper class twilight zone he ended up in, he could have done a much better job. I wanted more of the actual conflict and how he proposed to combat it. I don't mean to give anything away, but at the end when he finds himself deeper in an upper class arena than before, he makes no mention of it. It's presented as a moment of "whoo hoo! I got this!" rather than what could prove to be a shove into an even more pretentious pit of vipers. I know he couldn't conceivably go on forever; a book must end somewhere, after all. I just wish he could have acknowledged the depth of the issue and the effects it would have on him in the future or even how it has affected him now that he's all grown up and distanced from the actual events.

In the end, if you're looking for a more eloquent and extensive discussion of the problems I ramble on about on occasion, this isn't exactly it, but read it anyway. It does have its moments.

And now for something you'll really like...

In other book related news, it pays to follow authors you like on Facebook. Why is that, you ask? Because sometimes they post interesting and awesome things. Take yesterday for example. Chuck Palahniuk posted an opportunity for bloggers: all you had to do was email Double Day with your blog and physical address for a chance to read and review his new book Damned before it hits shelves in October. As you may have surmised, I will be one of the lucky ones. It isn't as if I've become entitled to an exclusive audience with the book, but it is pretty darn cool nonetheless. I have no idea when it may arrive, but rest assured you will know when it does. Stay tuned.

Book Life 21: In Which I Ramble About the Abortive Ending of the Vampire Chronicles

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you have not read the last two Chronicles books, and do not want anything at all spoiled, do not read this. I despise spoilers, and would not want to ruin the experience for you.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been rereading the Vampire Chronicles in their entirety which I don't think I've done since the last one was published. Oh, I pick up Body Thief or Memnoch occasionally, but this time I started at Interview and just finished the last page of Blood Canticle. Up through Blood and Gold, which is (finally) the full tale of the life of Marius, I remembered how much I loved the Chronicles. I am a self-avowed fan of Lestat and most of the books Anne Rice has written. I've read all of them, Mayfair series, Violin, Servant of the Bones, the erotica, etc. Anyway, I've been pondering what went wrong with Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle, because most assuredly, something did go wrong.

It isn't that the final two books aren't well written. I'm pretty sure it is impossible for Anne to write badly (although I haven't read and don't plan to read her newest ones so they could be terrible for all I know). However, something changed with Memnoch, and the series slowly drifted apart from there. If you haven't read it, Memnoch tells the tale of Lestat being courted by the Devil himself and taken through the "true" history of creation, God, etc. Being the religion geek that I am, I liked this book a great deal. I took issue with some of the plot twists at the end, but all in all, I enjoyed it. After this you have The Vampire Armand, Pandora, Vittorio, Merrick, and Blood and Gold. Armand is a whiner, but it was a good read. Pandora and Vittorio are largely outside the realm of the Chronicles (with the exception of Pandora's involvement with Marius), but excellent books. Vittorio is beautiful and strange enough that I forgive its digression. Merrick is the first book in which Anne tried to meld the Vampires and the Mayfairs, but it works in this one. Merrick is distant enough from the Mayfair series that you don't get bogged down, and frankly I just loved the Voodoo in the story. Blood and Gold is oddly framed, but being that it is Marius, it's fine. Then the train wreck happens. The thread of the main Chronicles story gets lost somewhere in Armand, and since the next few books are digressions, it just drifts away entirely until she attempts to find it again in Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle.

*Sigh* The problem with the last two books is that they really don't want to be part of the Chronicles. Were it not for the fact that Lestat frames the first and narrates the second, they would have no ties whatsoever and could be continuations of the Mayfair Witches (especially Canticle). Here's the issue: Anne broke with the Catholic Church years and years ago, and sometime just before Memnoch she began to reconcile with them, which intensely colored her writing. She began to to think of the Chronicles as "darkness" and even titled her fairly recent memoir Called Out of Darkness. She started the fictional accounts of Jesus' life (which on the whole are not terrible--again, religion geek) at this point, and even appeared on that horrific show The 700 Club (see my response to that HERE). Even more recently she has broken with the Church again, but kept her Christianity. But now I'm digressing a bit. The point is that this all affected her books immensely. If Memnoch wasn't enough to prove it to you, Lestat's philosophizing throughout Canticle should do it.

I think Anne felt some modicum of responsibility to her long time loyal fans to finish the series rather than drop it at Marius' tale, but rather than take the time to properly end it as it warranted, she decided to rush the job. Blackwood Farm seems to travel on an odd and twisty path that makes little sense at times, though it is, of course, beautifully written as always. Toward the end, we get another main character shoehorned into our little universe, and at first, she seems okay--one of those characters you can stomach but don't really grow to love. The first time I read this (and this time, because I didn't remember what happened) all I could hope was that Mona would fade out of the picture early into Canticle, though I knew she'd appear because of the way Anne structured the end of Blackwood Farm, ending it in the middle of Lestat making her a fledgling. How sadly wrong I was. In all the Anne Rice novels EVER, there has never been a major character that I didn't grow to love in some way--until Mona Mayfair. She is the most horrendous little monster, and it gets to the point that every time she opens her mouth you think you can't dislike her more. Then she proves you wrong. She effectively ruins most of Canticle for me.

Now, I have heard (a few) dissenting opinions. There are those that actually like Mona, though how I will never know, and I'm sure those people think Anne did a wonderful job closing out the Chronicles. I am not among them. She dispatches Merrick Mayfair into the great beyond with so little fanfare that it's insulting (both to the character and her readers) in order to tie up a major plot line in Farm. I mean, really, how in the hell did she justify that mess to herself? Merrick was a powerful enough witch and Voodoo priestess that she could have sent Goblin's soul into the light without flinging herself into the flames as well. Hell, she was aiming to do just that in Merrick with the ghost of Claudia. Just ridiculous. Then Canticle, instead of truly focusing on Lestat, as the last of the series should have done in my opinion, she centers it on Mona's involvement with the Taltos (from the Mayfair Witches trilogy) and her unending ability to be one of the biggest bitches in christendom (oh, and Lestat's inexplicable obsession with Rowan Mayfair). Most of a few chapters in the middle are her being bitchy, Lestat getting angry at her, and Quinn being the go between. It was unbearably tedious. Frankly, he should have let her die on her bower of flowers in Quinn's bed at the end of Farm and saved us all the trouble.

In the final analysis, what I think happened is that Anne felt she needed to give her fans an ending to the Chronicles and (for some unknown reason) one to the Witches as well, so she threw them in her mental blender and voila! She used Farm to shove Mona into the picture, giving the Mayfairs a reasonable claim on story space, and then she used Canticle to play out the end of the Taltos saga. I might not be so aggravated by all this if she didn't attempt to call them both Chronicle books. Had she simply been honest and presented them as a bizarre (and wholly unnecessary) extension of the Mayfairs, I would at least have known what I was walking into: A hot mess, but at least a properly categorized one.

Waxing Poetic, the Second: I Could Totally Be His Groupie, or In Love with People I've Never Met

I stumbled across this poem while searching something else this morning, and of course, I fell in love with it as I do all of Alexie's work. Right now I'm in the middle of rereading the Vampire Chronicles again, but I think I may be working my way through all of Alexie's books again after this. I swear I could just fall into his books and poetry and live there under his ash-blasted skies and strange sun. I've told Anna before that if he ever showed up at our front door, I would not be held responsible for my actions. Of course, all he would have to do is read me his poetry all night...

Go, Ghost, Go by Sherman Alexie

At this university upon a hill,

I meet a tenured professor

Who's strangely thrilled

To list all of the oppressors --

Past, present, and future -- who have killed.

Are killing, and will kill the indigenous.

O, he names the standard suspects --

Rich, white, and unjust --

And I, a red man, think he's correct,

But why does he have to be so humorless?

And how can he, a white man, fondly speak

Of the Ghost Dance, the strange and cruel

Ceremony

That, if performed well, would have doomed

All white men to hell, destroyed their colonies,

And brought back every dead Indian to life?

The professor says, "Brown people

From all brown tribes

Will burn skyscrapers and steeples.

They'll speak Spanish and carry guns and knives.

Sherman, can't you see that immigration

Is the new and improved Ghost Dance?"

All I can do is laugh and laugh

And say, "Damn, you've got some imagination.

You should write a screenplay about this shit --

About some fictional city,

Grown fat and pale and pretty,

That's destroyed by a Chicano apocalypse."

The professor doesn't speak. He shakes his head

And assaults me with his pity.

I wonder how he can believe

In a ceremony that requires his death.

I think that he thinks he's the new Jesus.

He's eager to get on that cross

And pay the ultimate cost

Because he's addicted to the indigenous.