2009-10-01 10:22 | Your links for the hour.

I have a backlog.

*) Alternet: 40 Books About Sexuality That You Have to Read

Some are articles, instead of books, but hey.  Nice to print out and save somewhere.

*) Rebel Raising: Is that child crazy?

If you lived in a world where you were constantly confronted by new things, which you were expected to assimilate and understand quickly and without showing concern? If you pretty much never got to choose your own activities? If you were regularly touched, lifted and restrained without your permission? If you lived at the mercy of, however loving, people who were in total charge of your comings and goings, your access to food and drink, your access to activities you enjoy?

I'm not trying to say that we all traumatise our children horribly for no reason. This is not mother-blaming central. But too often we don't see children as people; we don't think, hey, if I were taken from something I was absorbed in, strapped into a pushchair and hurried down the road without anyone checking I understood what was going on, would I scream and struggle? Probably.

*) Raising My Boychick: What is appropriate parenting advice?

I don't think there is no place for parenting advice; that is, to unwind that double negative, I do think parenting advice has its place. The point of the previous post was that while it's sometimes tempting to dismiss parenting advice from someone solely because of their child-less/free status, that's not actually a good enough (or good at all) reason.

So what is appropriate parenting advice? It certainly is not "unsolicited… not-so-masked criticism of [one's] parenting." That's inappropriate at any time, from any source, yet is one of the most common — and most infuriating — types of "advice" parents get, and why we get so defensive on the topic in general.

Advice on parenting is least likely to be received as an attack — or to phrase positively, is most likely to be listened to and reflected on, whether adopted or not — when it is: solicited; humble; experiential; and in line with the receiver's own basic parenting philosophy.

*) Fugitivus: Not a real post

I'm a pretty big believer that wherever you are, that's where you need to be. I don't want to say that's where you "deserve" to be, because that drags in ideas of entitlement and punishment that are really arrogant and cruel. But I do believe that individuals only stay in a place as long as that place is meeting their needs. Not all their needs, and maybe not always the good ones, but people don't stick around for free; there's got to be some return investment, even if that return investment is only "staying here helps me avoid something I perceive to be worse."

*) Fugitivus: Stuff What Boys Can Do

[...] asking men to be allies isn't really a cut and dry case. Privilege is its own kind of oppression; to maintain privilege, one must maintain a very specific and strict mode of behavior. Stepping out of that behavior strips you of your privilege, and leaves you vulnerable for a pretty significant degree of attack. There are times when an ally can pull an Afterschool Special, and there are times where even deigning to disagree could get a guy beat to within an inch of his life. I'd like to see, and hear, more ways that men can be allies in all the different contexts they find themselves in.

2009-09-11 20:24 | …

I've never quite sussed out the etiquette of having a "blog crush", but if it is meet to have one in this sort of situation, I would totally have one on Fugitivus.

(Wait, would I have one on the blog, or on the author?)

Anyways, the post: Personal Life Update

I can't even quote it, because it is all "aiee, yes, this!".  With the main exception of I'm not where she is yet.  I'm still a hermit.  But this gives me… not hope.  It gives me paths for how to get from where I am to where I could be, I suppose is the phrasing.

2009-09-08 16:04 | Your posts for the day.

* On parenting advice and the idiocy thereof, at Raising My Boychick:

But then I spent years in a parenting and natural living community before getting pregnant (before even deciding to try), so I also know the sting of being dismissed simply for not having had kids yet. I know how much it hurts — and how wrong it is — to tell someone they can't possibly know anything about children just for not having their own yet. And after I spent a couple years spending much of my time around other parents, reading parenting books, studying midwifery and everything baby-related (you should see my book collection!), and my parenting ideas gelled? They didn't change when I had the Boychick. People told me "you'll get a stroller, you'll learn to love disposable diapers, you'll let him cry — just wait, and you'll sing a different tune." And they were, simply, wrong.

And more on the topic of "You don't have kids, so your input is invalid".

* Dream, at Fugitivus, wherein she writes about this dream she had, and how it represents her leaving her abusive relationship… and leaving a friend in one.  Trigger warning for abusive-relationship content in full effect.

Two awesome posts.

2009-08-15 13:50 | Onwards to the feminist stuff.

Two posts have been stuck in my tabs for the past week or so.

1) The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck, at Shakesville, by Melissa McEwan.  It's hard to find one good quote out of that essay, as I would end up quoting the entire thing.  I suppose one that would kind of summarise the post:

These things, they are not the habits of deliberately, connivingly cruel men. They are, in fact, the habits of the men in this world I love quite a lot.

All of whom have given me reason to mistrust them, to use my distrust as a self-protection mechanism, as an essential tool to get through every day, because I never know when I might next get knocked off-kilter with something that puts me in the position, once again, of choosing between my dignity and the serenity of our relationship.

Swallow shit, or ruin the entire afternoon?

This is entirely exactly it.

2a) Harriet Jacobs wrote at Fugitivus about making rape jokes, and it is a good post, but one thing stuck out as something that hadn't occurred to me:

Whenever you hear about the epidemic number of women who are raped, bear in mind that there is an equally epidemic number of rapists.

So telling rape jokes isn't just bad because statistically speaking you might be telling this around a rape victim.  It's bad because statistically speaking, you might also be telling this around a rapist, or potential rapist.  And so you're contributing to the notion that rape jokes are just fine.

I have already nattered about how one can contribute to such things simply by being quiet.  I already know that rape jokes are perfectly awful for a myriad of reasons.  Just for some reason, that phrasing brought home to me, again, that the only reason why rape happens is that rapists exist, and also that I can't, just by looking, tell who they are.

Right, back under the covers for me.

2b) In that same post, she also wrote about jokes being a way to relieve tension.  Quote:

Jewelbeard is extremely liberal. He wants to help people regain their civil rights. He is pro-choice, he is pro-gay, he professes a unremarkable and unverified affinity to anti-racism. But he cannot stop calling his cats filthy sluts, or acting like a fucking asshole in D&D.

[...]

The bear confronted Jewelbeard with his zany douchebag antics, and Jewelbeard offered the excuse he always does: “It’s to relieve tension.” He went on to explain that he totally isn’t sexist — I mean, he’s pro-choice and everything! — and he completely respects women and sexism is wrong like definitely totally, but gaming is his place to cut loose and so that’s why he acts that way when he games.

There is nothing wrong with having a place and a time to relieve built-up tension. But by shifting the argument thataways, Jewelbeard neatly sidestepped the question of why there is a tension build-up in the first place. He is basically admitting that not getting to call women bitches and whores and treat them like he hates them on a daily basis creates an intolerable tension within him, and it must be let out somehow.

More for my "Gah, yes, this!" file. Absolutely.