Can't Protest Weather, Can Protest Porn

I don't know how to publicly empathize with victims of natural disasters. I think that's because there is nothing I can suggest or support to change the situation. I can't join a stand-in against the ferocity of Hurricanes Harvey or Iris. I can't call a slew of Congresspeople and demand they deal with fault lines in California. I can't carry a poster to Union Square to protest natural devastation. 

What is possible is pushing legislators to finally rebuild infrastructure; insurance companies not to enable building in areas likely to get swept up (i.e. much of Florida); Congress to wake up. Science is a real live thing and they know it. They just like the feel of sand in their ears. This may or may not connect with what follows.

I was moved to post today after reading an article about porn. David Simon and George Pelecanos have created a new t.v. series on the porn industry that sprang from Times Square when the center of Manhattan was skeevy. I neither love nor hate Simon and have mixed feelings about The Wire. I have no mixed feelings about porn and Simon has illuminated aspects which have had a deadly and long-lasting effect on women.

The article is: "If you're not consuming porn, you're still consuming its logic." Some of Simon's and Pelecano's thoughts, as quoted in this article.

He admits: “I don’t have any real way to prove that, but certainly the anonymity of social media and the internet has allowed for a belligerence and a misogyny that maybe had no other outlet. It’s astonishing how universal it is whether you’re 14 or 70, if you’re a woman and you have an opinion, what is directed at you right now. I can’t help but think that a half century of legalised objectification hasn’t had an effect.”

On women and the latest election: "The code words that were used against not just her but female journalists and everybody that was involved peripherally in the campaign was awful. Never seen anything like it.”

George Pelecanos, 60, thinks about the two sons he raised and the conversations he overheard when their friends came to the family home. “The way they talk about girls and women is a little horrifying. It’s different from when I was coming up. It’s one thing what was described as locker-room talk, like, ‘Man, look at her legs. I’d love to…’ – that kind of thing. But when you get into this other thing, calling girls tricks and talking about doing violence to them and all that stuff, I’d never heard that growing up, man. I just didn’t.

No Harem Pants for Me! Unmarriage Defended.

In truth, I would do pretty much anything
for this outfit. Really. It's beautiful.

Talk about the Lonely Crowd of lonely Americans. Apparently it's now a crowd of golden and single women, golden and single and, according to Kate Bolick's too easily named, “All the Single Ladies,” really very lonely in lonely rooms in lonely beds in which self-actualization has its many meanings. (Thanks to poet Elisa Gabbert and her blog to alerting me to this Atlantic article, link below.)

Because no matter how Bolick phrased the lament, no matter how many sociologists and culture analysts she visited (note the consistent style of the article—short bio of the sociologist type, then Kate's visit), the choice to be alone, or the circumstances of aloneness—for a woman—suck, according to her. Only women are unhappy, I gather. All men are trippin' with their, er, female friends.

It is Bolick's mother's fault. You know the saying, If it's not one thing it's your mother. Mom was feminist. Influenced daughter. That arc is one I've read over and over though I never knew of a writer so influenced by the slogan, “A Woman Without a Man Is Like a Fish Without a Bicycle.” I don't mean to go ninja intellectual on Bollick, but I was more influenced by Ai. Or George Eliot. Or Audre Lourde. Or the Brontes. Or Rita Dove. Or Virginia Woolf. Or Mary Shelley (or her mom). Or Loorie Moore. Or Elizabeth Bishop. Or Zora Neale Hurston. Or Adrienne Rich.

Women have been struggling with being women forever. And men have had their correlative struggles. As with perfectly straight, long blonde hair, marriage (hetero or homosexual) does not have to be top of the social chain. It is because we agree it is ("we" being loosely and inexactly defined). But no one should second guess their choices, as Bolick does her choice to go solo. What's that Zen koan, maybe in an Alan Watts' book, where the farmer says his son broke his leg, which is bad, but then he doesn't have to join the army, so that's good, but then the crows ate the corn, which is bad, but then they don't have the bother of harvesting, which is good (huge paraphrase).

Who the heck knows what the right choice is or should have been. We are defined more by our reactions and reshapings of events than the initial impulse. I have a friend who was caught passing a joint in a high school classroom and from that one stupid incident, which spiraled, was no longer invited to attend Julliard. Pretty awful. But she is such an amazing person and used her talents and energies to help many (I can't get too specific). Maybe at Julliard she would have been run over by a bus her first time off campus. You just don't know.

If Bolick's mom could have given her a Stand by Your Man t-shirt, Bolic might have heeded the sage advice and ended in a shelter with her kids hiding from a brutal, incesting husband. I've seen that one happen, too. I've seen more happen than I lived, and that's fine with me. There is something perversely conservative about the article, subtly reactionary, as if someone from the old moral majority wrote it and gave it to Bolick, as if the Koch Brothers arranged for it to be published. Satisfaction generates from how we navigate circumstances. Not the circumstances. And marriage is neither bad nor good, though I am not neutral on community, which is good, warm, complicated, how we get through. The Atlantic article.

"...for sheer brute strength, it's incest all the way" Marathon Man. No, it's still not safe.

"I tell you, the poets are always declaiming on the power of love, but for sheer brute strength, it's incest all the way." Biesenthal, a (fictional) superstar historian in Marathon Man (book and screenplay by William Goldman).

I recently read Marathon Man for a quick escape. (Saw the movie in 1976.) I was startled, blown away, in fact, by the above horrifying yet freaking intelligent insight into Biesenthal--a secondary character, I'd thought, who lords over doctoral students, his peers and the American public (as one of those talking head historians). It's not in the movie.

Bisenthal is not what Marathon Man is about. Nazi dentistry, the shadow of the McCarthy era—those are the two main characters. And then there's Levy, the Dustin Hoffman character, fresh from his Rhodes scholarship at Oxford, who is going to write his dissertation under the great Bisenthal's tutelage (Biesenthal is played by Fritz Weaver in the film).

It's a page-turner, but the above quote, on page 223, almost a throwaway line, stopped me cold. Was Goldman aware of what he'd written? I suspect so and admire him for putting these words on the lips of someone who but for geography ("Biesenthal" is German) would have suffered under Hitler. Similarly I wondered if Goldman approved of Levy's shallow perception of women—he would prefer a pretty waitress to a scholar.

Levy's not a character I like or understand, except for the fact that he has spent his young life reacting—to his father's scholarship, to Senator Eugene McCarthy's denunciation of his father, his father's suicide, to his idolized older brother, to Biesenthal, to a imperious male-centered, 24-hour animus, no anima, culture which is arrogant, hierarchical and mean-spirited to its core.

A male-centered world is not the only world available but it's the only one he's known. Significantly his mother died when he was six.

Whatever Goldman's intentions, he deftly presents a culture where men use women. Here's the full quote from Biesenthal. His daughter just brought him his wallet so he could help the already dentally enhanced Levy. And note, Goldman both describes her as a "Jewish princess." Spooky, eerie, given the number of "Jewish princess[es]" killed in the camps.

"Bright child, senior at Barnard, she'll be Phi Beta barring a complete collapse. She wants to be an archaeologist but then she wanted to go to Bryn Mawr. I stopped that, I'll stop this – she should be more than contented looking after my bones in my dotage, don't you think that's fair? I tell you, the poets are always declaiming on the power of love, but for sheer brute strength, it's incest all the way."

Is Biesenthal a better man than the Mengele-like (Szell) character played by Sir Lawrence Olivier in the movie?

You can attempt to destroy a culture, ethnic group, race, gender en mass as did Hitler, "Szell" and those lunatics, or simply woman-by-woman, princess-by-princess, like Biesenthal. How interesting William Goldman is. More to learn.

...
See also my blog on The Omen, in which major decision making is in the hands of men. Things don't turn out so well, unless you're rooting for the Antichrist. ["The antifeminist fathers the Antichrist" http://my3000lovingarms.blogspot.com/2010/06/omen-antifeminist-fathers-antichrist.html]

[And for a photo of Olivier in the role, see my blog--"The Craft of the Gum" about my dentist: http://my3000lovingarms.blogspot.com/2009/08/gummy-bared.html]

Delirious Feminism: question #1 of 3

The blog Delirious Hem is pushing for a Feminist poetics by posting essays by poets, followed by questions. The latest is from Jennifer Bartlett. Scroll down for the link.

I'm responding to her three questions in three blog postings. My response may not be as direct as she would want, but I'm musing. I'm a muser. (Always a muser, never a muse?)

1. Where have you seen mainstream Feminism and disability intersect in positive ways?

Okay, First the definition: I see mainstream Feminism is an impulse similar to that impulse which voted in our first black president, a desire to make amends and a hope the amends (such as Obama) is intelligent and capable. (He is.) In other words, men and women sense equality of male/female capability, each according to their light, which can cause confusion, hurt or ridicule: We are all well armed with expectations and mindsets.

Disability? Since women have been objects of a "gaze" for several millennia, our level of self-consciousness about our appearance is near electric and at odds with disability's perceived threat to our poise and ability to navigate male (and female) expectations. As more women are more conventionally successful, the culture has expanded its zone of the amount of "differentness" it will tolerate. This extends to disability, but only some. Only if it's not threatening. People are really easily threatened and difference is scary, I guess.

I have to laugh at the word "differentness" and the underlying presumption that there's a fine woman who is slim and straight-haired, fair, and is what the Creator intended. That the rest of us are "different." What a crock, but how we all buy into it.

I hope that women become more willing to be at least a bit different, to access our inner-Annie Oakley. Alas I see evidence to the contrary. I'm old school, 70s Feminist and also pulled between urges to be femme and urges to be tough. I'm all over the spectrum of sexuality, and was was astounded when I reached that certain age and began to realize the new breed of young women poets always wear skirts and make-up and are a bit restrained. They're smart and talented, but, as I see them, many aren't women to object too loudly. I could simply be describing the shock between the culture of 70s Feminism and contemporary Feminism.

Old-style Feminism was not all about being feminine. Not at all.

I present differently, at times, than what these new Feminists are comfortable with. One young woman who has a good teaching job, and more opportunities offered to her than I'll ever have, made a snarky remark to be about how angry old time Feminists were. I replied that it did seem to parallel the anger of African Americans of a certain age who, like the Feminists, were subjected to old school prejudice. She is black and didn't respond. I found her comment, the one mentioned and others, hurtful. Her only experience of me at that point was of my poetry and humor, and I didn't take it personally, but hey, I'm a Feminist and I'm angry. Sorry, honey.

We love Nature's diversity. Wow, man, there's eels and tulips and lichen. But when it comes to people, women being people and people being people, we have a long way to go.

Finally, I wrote several poems about my mother's painful (for the daughers and for her) self-inflicted twenty-year bout with cancer and the ravage on her face. This is not a disability. My mom's true disability was a slight limp ("First Appearance of the Angel Evelyn") from the polio epidemic of 1919. But her disfiguration is really hard for people to handle. Just throwing that in.

Jennifer Bartlett's essay at:

http://delirioushem.blogspot.com/%20(January 16, 2010)

Old Wounds Tell Some of the Truth and Tell It Slant

A few years ago a friend generously paid for me to go to an “Earth and Religion” conference at Bard. As soon as I arrived I looked for an opportunity to volunteer, as volunteering is a great way to feel part of something and make friends. I was set to collating and stapling handouts at a table with a few other people, all like minded, and we eased into a conversation.

We were jolly, I was myself, funny, quick witted, verbal, and when someone brought up the topic of crossword puzzles, a man my age, wearing an old beret, looked at me with hatred and sneered, “I’ll bet you’re great at those.”

This may not seem like much, but I was cut. I was bleeding. Here I was at a save-the-earth-through-love event and right off I was hit with a sort of male malevolence I’ve encountered over and over. (The joke here, I’m rotten with crosswords and Scrabble.)

A few days later this same man came up to me with guilt-at least he knew what he’d done. So that’s that.

Recently I was invited to a James Joyce/Ulysses reading and discussion group. There were two other members. One a scholar and poet who once studied with James Wright. The other a new poet sidetracked by marriages and kids. I enjoyed reading Joyce outloud-that’s a pleasure and I think strength of mine-hearing and speaking rhythms.

The scholar was cool and knowledgeable; the nonscholar was sincere and a good soul, but had a concordance which “explained” Ulysses. He was intent on explaining Joyce to me, and not for the first time. I’m not going into the details, but I looked into my heart and realized I had been through similar so many times with with men and just better not show up for this one.

I now swerve to the famous Emily Dickinson quotation, "Tell all the truth, but tell it slant." My swerve is a little suspect, logically. A parabola of jello in the sun. But I was recently reminded of the quote and shortly after, thought of the above two incidents. I flashed on Emily in her well-kept home in Amherst, brilliant Emily, who may have found solitude the only way to keep sane. Maybe she wrote "Tell all the truth, but tell it slant” because, being so innately clever (and, please, I understand that Sarah Sarai : Emily Dickinson :: one daisy : all the flowers of Paradise) because she was fed up with the witless and weary of speaking carefully.

Could be she'd first thought it, in a context other than the poem. Maybe this is Emily being snide or exasperated. For chrissakes, dude, tell, but be hip. You know the old joke. Do Quakers swear? Sure. Fuck thee.

Thanks to Alfred Corn, a very warm soul and extraordinary poet, who reminded me of the Dickinson quote and did so in a far more interesting manner than the above.

Apologies to all good souls mentioned. We all say and do stupid things, have old and new wounds. Ain’t that so.

Image from: http://quakeragitator.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/quakers_prison_ministry.jpg

(I once was a Member of the Religious Society of Friends.)