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Cahiers Parisiens: les Autres, les Etrangres, le Moi

Categories: all about me, kyriarchy, paris notebook, travels with CL

Last night I was having a somewhat dismal (in Paris, that means it was actually decent) meal over on République when I think I saw the mostly iconic image of 21st century Paris I’ve ever seen: a guy on a rented bicycle, smoking a cigarette as he rode down the boulevards.

Paris, of course, has an uncomfortable relationship with the modern world. It retains it’s preeminent place in the world of fashion, is a major political and business center for Europe, and remains the center of gravity of the francophone world. And, of course, it is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe.

But so much of that comes from its curious sense of being frozen in time: the perfection of the nineteenth-century vision of Good City Life, the architecture frozen in place, the parks looking almost identitical to the images on the canvases of the Musée d’Orsay. It’s static the way New York, my other favorite city in the world, never is: New York reinvents itself every day, in a furious pace of rebuilding, modifying, reconsidering, reconfiguring. Paris sedately glides by, asleep in the long belle rêve of Haussman.

Sometimes I think only Paris’ status as the capital of a major country in Europe keeps it a living city. That, and the changing face of the French world.

I am staying in the Oberkampf district, on the northeastern edge of the city. I’m guessing it’s going through a gentrification cycle; it’s close to the Marais, the former Jewish ghetto that has become not only the heart of gay and lesbian Paris, but the home of most forward-looking fashion designers. It’s an area of former factories being transformed into a residential district.

Out here, not quite in the periphery (let alone the banlieues, the suburbs that ring Paris), I still see more people of color than you do in central Paris, tourist Paris: Africans and Berbers from the old colonies, Indians, Vietnamese, Chinese, Arabs. It makes me homesick and feel at home at the same time, resembling my ethnically mixed neighborhood in the Great American Metropolis. (Also a rapidly gentrifying area with great restaurants.)

I won’t rehearse for you the litany of troubles the changing population of France has brought on: the difficulties in assimilating different ethnicities into the French self-conception, the poverty and racism and rioting in the banlieues, the fact that the President of France once threatened retributary violence on those same rioters, before he was elected. France bans the veil at school, championing the cause of secularism and human rights, and we are left with profoundly mixed feelings about exactly what liberties are being abridged, and who has the right to do that. Etre Muslulman en France, screams the headline of one magazine I see advertised: being Muslim in France. What is it like, I, they, wonder, to be marooned in a culture that regards you cautiously, obliged to help you because of the mythic ideals of its own past, but not sure how to come to terms with being more than it was in the past: plural, multiple, different. How it is to be Other until that happens, if it ever does.

I could claim some parcel of this terrain, as both a woman and trans, but I really doubt it’s the same: here, as in America, the swath my privilege as a white, able-bodied, educated person cuts through most hindrances.

Still: Tuesday night I went to an aikido class. The dojo has a very different style compared to my dojo back home: much harder, more concerned with proper form than movement. A good experience, but too much like my original aikido dojo for my taste.

I’ve talked about my French being better on this trip, but the truth is, it’s still very weak, comparatively. I can read it passably well (today I was reading the “Declaration of the Rights of Man” in French and getting most of it), but anyone who speaks even moderately fast will have me in the dust. So, when the teacher would explain the technique, I would be…lost. I have almost no vocabulary for body parts: no word for wrist, barely able to recognize “leg” or “knee.” I would get a word in every so often, and occasionally a general sense, but for the most part I’d be lost, and have to rely only on what I could see.

Which is the best way to learn, actually. But in those moments…I was the other. I was the one lost in a sea of incomprehension, struggling to use all my wits to figure things out, almost mute, ignorent. (There are times I grow so frustrated with how I speak, because my mind leaps so far out in front of what I actually know how to say: and I know I must sound stupid, with my mangled syntax and wonky accent.) And this is a valuable lesson to learn, to hold to myself the next time I get frustrated with someone else.

We never learn more about our privilege than when we are called on it. Or made to see the other side of it.

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Cahiers Parisiens: À faire vôtre conaissance, je suis ravie

Categories: beauty mythology, o mores, o rapites, paris notebook, the male ogle, travels with CL

Désolée, mes canards! Sorry, Ducks! Been an odd few days–an exhausting theory fight on a board I belong to, and general exhaustion! You see, it would seem that I did an apartment exchange with a French person who only drinks tea. That’s right! No means of creating coffee in the apartment except a jar of instant coffee. Which I was actually desperate enough to use.

So I’ve been drinking tea. Now, I know that the UKians in my audience will think this odd, but tea doesn’t wake me up, or at least not enough, not like coffee. And I think I’ve been going into serious caffeine withdrawal, which has completely messed up my sleep cycle. So today’s big accomplishments–on the day I needed to do a solid day’s work to get back on track–was walking down the Boulevard Voltaire to a kitchen appliances store where I got a tiny french press to make coffee with. And after I’d had a pot, and took a long nap, I finally am feeling human again.

So anyway. Do you like puns? do you like obscure French puns that only make sense in English! I do! I’ve named two blogs after that way, and the title of this post! Which I will explain below.

On Monday I went to the opening of Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Venetian Rivalries at the Louvre, thanks to a ticket my exchange mate scored for me. I’m not a huge fan of the Cinquecento, but there’s obviously some insanely good stuff done by these painters, so I was happy to go–plus sailing into the special exhibition hall in the Louvre was pretty posh.

The show has some really good paintings, and they are really beautiful–though I agree a bit with Michelangelo’s critique that the Venetian painters placed color over drawing skill. (It’s okay; you can make the same criticism of my favorite painting in the world, which has some awkward bits–look at the way the arm kind of hangs out there in the foreground.) And as I walked through the exhibit, two thoughts came immediately to mind:

A) These guys painted real women! Take a look at the centerpiece of the exhibit, one of Titian’s most famous paintings, Danaë:

It’s astonishing to contrast Danaë with media images today–her breasts, hips, thighs, arms–and look, she even has a bit of stomach. And she’s a gorgeous, idealized image of femininity; this is what women were supposed to look like.

In fact, she looks a lot like Lizzi Miller…the plus-size (size 14) model:

Although she’s hardly idealized, at least by some people:

So what do you think? Does Lizzi Miller look fantastic or is this lowering standards for stick thinness industrywide?

(For a little more intelligent discussion, see this Below the Belt post.)

However, my appreciation for this fact was kinda mitigate by my next observation…

B) This exhibit is a little…rapey

OK, a lot rapey.

I mean, the signature painting of the exhibit–the afore-referenced Danaë–depicts, well, the rape of a woman by Zeus. Oh, and did I mention that she had been kidnapped by her father and locked up to prevent her from having a kid? I know the Greeks weren’t really big on happy stories, but still.

In fact, and I guess sort of to it’s credit, the exhibit has a whole couple of rooms about the ways nudes are depicted in the arts of these masters. But even that was a bit problematic: wall to wall naked women, offering themselves up to men, or the male gaze, or alone by themselves (letting you gaze voyeuristically at them.) And in one room, there were five separate treatments of the Rape of Lucretia. Which is a lot of rape to have in one room, even if the paintings themselves are exquisitely decorated.

So that takes me back to French puns.

One of the things you say in French when you are introduced to someone is Ravissante à faire vôtre conaissance. Now, ravissante means ravished; and in French, this is basically only used in the way we use the English word ravishing, that is, beautiful.

But it comes from the same roots and same sense as ravished in English: to take, to carry off…to rape.

So that’s why I flipped it around in my post title, one translation of which might be: “to meet you, I am ravished.”

I don’t mean to say that in French you say that you’re raped when you meet people. That’s not what it means anymore. But it is an artifact of how rape, how the principles of rape–that a woman’s body belongs not to her, but the men who look at her, who can take her–pervades every corner of our culture. You can see it art; you can hear it in language; you can feel it in the way men look at you, or in the long lists that people send you telling you how you can avoid being assaulted–because assault is an implacable force of nature, not the acts of people with the moral capacity to make decisions.

But hey, don’t believe me. Just ask Tucker Max!

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Les Cahiers Parisiens de C.L. Minou: un dimanche de feminisme

Categories: all about me, paris notebook

So yesterday I managed to do a few feminist things while here in Paris–both homages, of a sort.

First, I visited Père-Lachaise, the largest cemetery in Paris and a convenient ten-minute walk from the apartment. I didn’t stay long, just long enough to visit the tomb of Heloise and Abelard, the great medieval lovers and philosophers.

After that (and after a quick café au lait–my exchange mate doesn’t drink coffee, it seems, and I’m in a caffeine deficiency from trying to make do with tea), I dropped by Violette and Co., a feminist/LGBT bookstore in the arrondissement. I picked up a new copy of Le Deuxième Sexe, volume I–I somehow managed to lose the copy I bought last year–and a book called Je suis pas feministe, mais… (“I’m not a feminist, but…”), mostly because I have a book in English with the same title. They’re very different books–the French one is a collection of pointed cartoons, the English one a collection of feminist facts aimed at consciousness raising (i.e., if you believe/know all these things, you really are a feminist.) The cartoons are interesting to me beyond their humor (which I mostly get) because they reproduce spoken French, a very different thing from written French or even the French they teach you at school.

On that note (and of interest to nobody besides myself), I’m doing better with my French than ever–I even attempted to use the subjunctive while talking to the clerk at Violette’s. (We also discussed, unbelievably enough, the fact that a) the only translation of The Second Sex into English was, as I said, absolument merde, and b) there’s a new one coming, thank goodness.) In any case, it’s a relief to me, as one of my quirks is that I actually like to speak French, even if I’m not very good at it.

Today, I’m off to the Louvre–my exchange mate got me a ticket to the premiere of a Titian/Tintoretto show. Tomorrow, I’m going to try aikido Paris-style.

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Monday Media Watch: Oh NYT, You’ve Done It Again

Categories: media tool kit, monday media watch, privilege stories

Oh, New York Times! You mixed-up kid! When you’re not panting all over the latest Dan Brown novel (for shame, Janet Maslin, for shame) you’re punting muddle-headed essays on gender on us.

Let’s take a look-see…hm, they talk about Caster Semenya–hey, join the club! I used the controversy to talk about gender issues too, seeing as gender and appearances were a major part of my life. What’s Peggy Orenstein got to say?

I had my own reasons to be fascinated by Semenya’s story: I related to it. Not directly — I mean, no one has ever called my biological sex into question. No one, that is, except for me. After my breast-cancer diagnosis at age 35, I was told I almost certainly had a genetic mutation that predisposed me to reproductive cancers. The way I could best reduce my risk would be to surgically remove both of my breasts and my ovaries. In other words, to amputate healthy body parts. But not just any parts: the ones associated in the most primal way with reproduction, sexuality, with my sense of myself as female.

I…see.

No, wait, I don’t.

I mean the whole point of the Caster Semenya story is how people question your gender, right? Now, not to diminish Ms. Orenstein’s pain here. I am well aware of how terrible cancer, breast cancer, and the surgeries proposed are, and how not having breasts or a womb or ovaries can make you question your femininity and your sense of yourself as female, as a woman. (I’m rather intimately acquainted with that, actually.)

But like they say over here, quoi?

So I began to fret: without breasts or hormone-producing ovaries, what would the difference be, say, between myself and a pre-op female-to-male transsexual? Other than that my situation was involuntary? That seemed an awfully thin straw on which to base my entire sense of womanhood. What, precisely, made me a girl anyway? Who got to decide? How much did it matter?

Um…the difference would be that you thought of yourself as a woman? Ya think? And waitaminute–involuntary? Are you kidding me?

I guess you can say that starting treatment to transition is voluntary–I mean, you have to decide to do it; nobody makes you. But the being trans part isn’t.

Oh, goodness, ducks, there’s a lot to pick apart in the essay–like when she says biology is destiny! Sorta! But it totes shouldn’t mean anything to women’s rights or stuff (which seems pretty baffling.) She does inch close to something important though:

According to Sheri Berenbaum, a professor of psychology and pediatrics at Penn State who studies children with disorders of sex development, even people with ambiguous biology tend to identify as male or female, though what motivates that decision remains unclear. “People’s hormones matter,” she said, “but something about their rearing matters too. What about it, though, no one really knows.”

There is something mysterious at work, then, that makes us who we are, something internally driven. Maybe it’s about our innate need to categorize the world around us. Maybe it arises from — or gives rise to — languages that don’t allow for neutrality. My guess, however, is that it’s deeper than that, something that transcends objectivity, defies explanation.

Now, that I can agree with. I mean, that’s the story of my life, right? Except that in my case, my sense of gender was at odds with my body. I didn’t choose a middle way or androgyny or something like that (though people do and that’s just as valid as my own gender), but instead was impelled to think of myself as female. Why? And why is it so hard for some people to accept that about me–why do people cling to narrowly construed models of gender? What is it in human culture or the human brain that does that? These are good questions! Ms. Orenstein, maybe you’ll leave me on a good note!

I know that my sex could never really be changed by any surgeon’s scalpel.

Thunk. Boy it’s a good thing my desk is 5,000 miles away.

I mean, I know what she means, and it actually follows the same course as my own thinking: my gender was female before, during, and after my surgery. But sheesh, lady, for TS and intersex people, surgery can be Kind. Of. Important.

And that’s just it. She wants to talk about gender, she even brings in the example of a famous person who is intersex (or presumed to be, thanks to the leaks of evil, evil people), but does she engage with any intersex or transsexual people, who sure as hell know a lot about intrinsic gender identity?

Fuck no.

People get all in an uproar, it seems lately, about the word cis as opposed to trans. (Right now on a message board I still read we’re having our latest battle about it, a three-way fight between cis folks who don’t want the word applied to them, trans folks who want it applied in the neutral and descriptive way, and other trans folks who oppose its use and want to be nice in hope of getting a cookie from the cis folks.) But an article like this shows exactly why we need to have a word like this: because the privilege of not only never wondering about your gender identity, but never needing to know anything about people who have, is astonishing and smothering. So many of the questions Ms. Orenstein ponders have been batted around for years. There’s research, books, testimonials, diatribes, and even blogs.

There were answers. But privilege deafened her to them.

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Adventures in Transition: Édition française

Categories: adventures in transition, travels with CL

Bon jour, mes canards! I’m spending the next two weeks here in Paris, doing the apartment exchange thing (there’s some value to living in the Great American Metropolis–people want your place!) I hope to report on le feminisme and transness here in France, and also make some of you green with envy.

More later–I splurged on a traditional dinner (vegetable soup, confit de canard, crème caramel and 50 bloody cl of wine) and need to sleep it off.

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If it’s Wednesday, it must be Below The Belt

Categories: below the belt, i get around

My bimonthly post for Below The Belt is up!

One of the things about being part of a maginalized population that is the most fun–if for fun, you read “uncomfortable, occasionally stomach-churningly so”–is that many pleasures cannot simply remain unmixed: messages, tropes, and cultural references that can be overlooked, disregarded or just plain unseen by the dominant group hit home with you in unmistakable and unignorable ways.

Even worse is when you make the, ahem, transition from dominant to marginalized groups. Things that once gave you easy enjoyment now leave a bad taste in your mouth, and when you complain, people tell you you’ve become humorless or a radical.

And that’s just when you talk about popular entertainment.

Which leads me to Adult Swim…

You can read the rest here.

Edit: Links Now Work–Sorry!

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How to Tell You’ve Transitioned, Part I

Categories: adventures in transition, all about me, how to tell if you've transitioned, privilege stories

How can you tell you’ve transitioned?

…because shopping for clothes becomes a tedious chore rather than a fun excursion.

OK. Not fair, I get that–I know plenty of women of all stripes and origins who enjoy clothes shopping, including me, on occasion. But still…as compared to the times when I constructed myself as a crossdresser, shopping for clothes doesn’t have the same kick.

On the face of it, this seems strange. I mean, I no longer have to use the exasperating and even sometime ridiculous accoutrements to round out my figure, give me the appearance of having breasts, add to my hips so that my skirts wouldn’t fall down. I’ve got a body that actually fits the mold women’s clothing is intended for…and that is a relief and a pleasure, often.

On the other hand, maybe my body’s part of the issue–I’ve gained about 25 pounds in the last six months, and while that’s not an earth-shattering, cry myself to sleep issue, I am a little unhappy about how I look in my clothes lately.

Which got hammered home yesterday when I went out to buy some clothes for the first time in months (business has been slow and I haven’t had the cash to spend on clothes–though maybe I’d kill both my issues there if I stopped ordering out all the time.) But I’m travelling tomorrow and wanted to have some new clothes for the trip, especially some casual dresses, which would be light to pack. I didn’t find any that I liked, although I did get some new jeans that will actually fit.

I hate shopping for jeans. There are times I just can’t even work up the energy to go try them on, even though I think I look good in a lot of different styles of jeans. But I just hate doing it.

Maybe that’s another sign I’ve transitioned.

My relationship with my clothing has always been…interesting. I’m not like a lot of trans women–I don’t deny having had a long period of time identifying as a crossdresser; I think I was a crossdresser, albeit one with a greater interest in transitioning than I let on, even to myself. Back in those days, clothes held an allure, a mystique, an air of the forbidden about them. To crossdress was to engage all my hidden desires and frailities at once; the feeling of being at home while crossdressed was exhilerating and terrifying, and my clothes were fraught with a lot of meaning.

Which isn’t to say that clothes aren’t fraught with meaning for anyone–compare the different uniforms we wear every day, from bike messenger with one pants leg rolled to corporate honcho in a bespoke suit. Clothes are shorthand for our identities, they send out messages about us–sometimes ones that we don’t want to send.

For example, when I was in India, I bought two saris. I bought them because I loved India and the culture and the people, because I wanted to bring home a souvenir, because I think saris are beautiful dresses. I even asked a friend of mine (not Indian) if I could wear one of them to her wedding, and she enthusiastically agreed.

All this was before my “second awakening,” though. After I began to engage identity politics further, I saw that my wearing a sari just couldn’t be an isolated action–that I couldn’t avoid all the centuries of past interactions between Western and Indian people, and that ultimately I wouldn’t be able to get past the fact that if I wore a sari, I’d be a cool multiculti chick–whereas an Indian woman who wore a sari in America would seem to be “fresh off the boat,” unassimilated, perhaps ingnorant of American culture or even English. And that while some Indian people wouldn’t have a problem with me wearing a sari, others would, and it wouldn’t be easy to just discount their opinion simply because it was a beautiful dress and I liked it a lot.

I did end up wearing the sari, because my friend insisted, and she was the bride. I was fortunate; the only couple I met at the wedding who were from the region didn’t mind at all. Still I changed out of the sari and into a dress after the ceremony. And I’m not upset that I felt I had to do it, and certainly not upset at any Indian people who might take offense at me wearing a sari. I’m upset at the four centuries of Westerners who plundered India, who exoticized it, who used and abused the people there. They’re the ones who’ve “ruined” it for me–not their victims.

So yeah, clothes mean a lot more than just something to keep the wind out.

But you knew that already, didn’t you? Any woman who has been verbally (or all too often, physically) assaulted because her neckline or hemline had crossed the invisible threshold between “prude” and “slut,” who’s been told she’s “asking for it” because of what she’s wearing, who’s been told that her outfit was part of the reason she was attacked (as if women in pants and long sleeves are never raped) knows this. Hell, even I knew that back when I was a crossdresser, although sadly like many of the CDs I knew, I don’t think I really fully engaged with all the implications of what that meant. (There are things that being full-time does to you.)

Wearing clothes has a context for me now that it didn’t have back when I kept mostly to safe spaces–it has the context any woman has to deal with, from issues of personal safety to the whole construct of female beauty and its impossible-to-attain ideals. So yeah, some of the fun has leached out of it. And that’s how I can tell I’ve transitioned.

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Mailbag

Categories: mailbag

Sorry ducks–it’s the doldrums here, where I try to not flip on the a/c even as it gets warm again, my PHP website continues to progress PHPfully–that is, in fits, starts, and inexplicable error messages–and the rest of my hilariously-titled “free time” is eaten by aikido.

So that’s for me, why I’ve not been writing more (I do have something I want to get down about “Johnny Guitar”, which I watched last weekend and was tickled rainbow about, but that will have to wait.) Fortunately, you have been writing here, so…to the mailbag!

First, about the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival: Sal writes

Whilst a trans woman, and feminist, I’m not that bothered over the whole Mich controversy. It’s just one festival in the world which has a slightly strict (and from what I can gather, over the years difficult to even enforce) policy. If they want to try and define that someone like myself can’t be female by their definitions despite that I’ve been post-op since 18, well, meh. I say just let them get on with it and I’ll happily be at Glastonbury instead!

Well, said! However, I do still think it is important to continue to raise consciousness about MWMF, because it is a very influential event for many in both lesbian and feminist circles. So, I’ll keep talking about it, even though you’ll likely never see me at one–because three days in the mud only sounds good to me if it’s the hot mud treatment at a spa, decadent capitalist that I am!

There were a lot of good responses to my “How to be alone” post (and one slightly clueless–you know who I’m talking about.) Friend of the blog Spatula
 had some very interesting things to say about the dimensions of the problem:

You know, maybe setting up the whole thing as “enlightened me vs. barbarous them” is not the only way… I’m starting to see the whole calling-out-and-being-called out as a collaborative figuring-life-out-together thing. I’m muddling through my own thinking and perceptions and how to deal with situations, and so is everyone else.

And while I agree with that wholeheartedly, the thing is–some of these issues have taken on a moral dimension to me, and that makes it hard to not respond forcefully, albeit there need to be ways to temper the insta-crush reaction that you develop online. I think, ultimately, the way forward will be to continue to try and live up to my own ideals: to listen more and talk less, to teach and educate…but also to be willing to take a stand, even when it’s not popular.

Also, aikido. Lots of aikido. At the very least I’ll be too tired to argue.

Finally, as I expected, my post on video gaming got a bunch of comments. Thank you all, especially VM & feministswithfsd, a blog I really oughta take a look at since there are certain issues we may have in common. I guess I’ll update you: I blew up Kilrah, finally, and with fewer qualms than I thought I’d have–I got frustrated at having to fly the mission over and over again until I finally figured out that the Big Bomb would indeed lock on even while I was cloaked. I still have the WC games kicking around on my PC (WCIV plays beautifully and still looks good–twas ahead of its time) but I haven’t done much, maybe because I’ve actually finished those games in the past. And have I mentioned I’m busy?

Speaking of which, I’m late to get picked up and thrown around. Also, I have to go to aikido! More new stuff soon, I promise.

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Now Let Us Abhor Wicked Men

Categories: the patriarchy: you can't live with it....that is all, your rda of misogyny, Your RDA of Outrage

I haven’t had much to say about the Rihanna incident–where for “incident”, I invite and encourage you to read “vicious beating inflicted upon her by an depraved, jealous boyfriend.” Like a lot of folks I was appalled at the light sentence he received, incensed that once again money and fame insulate men from the consequences of their actions (but said money and fame didn’t do squat for Rihanna) and moved on to the latest outrage.

Turns out, today everything old is new again! Because Chris Brown has kicked off his rehabilitation tour! (You know, the one where a douchebag guy goes on the talk shows, displays a vetted-level of contrition, promises to never do that again, mentions Jesus somewhere, and is immediately rehabilitated in public opinion so you never have to feel guilty about listening to/voting for/paying $12 bucks* to watch him again.)

Chris has hit upon an interesting rehab tactic, however: he claims he doesn’t remember assaulting Rihanna:

King, whose interview airs on Wednesday night on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” asked Brown if he could remember the event, and the singer told him “no.”

“I just look at it like, wow, I’m in shock, because, first of all, that’s not who I am as a person, and that’s not who I promise I want to be,” Brown said in a video posted on CNN’s website. “So when I look at the police reports or hear about the police reports, I just don’t know what to think.”

Hey, dude, guess what: that fucking is who you are as a person. A person who beats his girlfriend viciously and repeatedly. Even if you “can’t remember” doing it.

Separately, Brown told People in a story for the issue on newsstands Friday that he still loves Rihanna. “I never fell out of love with her. That just wouldn’t go away,” Brown said.

Well, that seems to be the problem, since the assault started

…when Rihanna found a text message on Brown’s phone from “a woman who Brown had a previous sexual relationship with,” according to CNN’s story.

Yeah, he never fell out of love with her, provided he could get some on the side. And when the woman he “loved” argued with him about that, he attacked her. He assaulted her. He choked her. He bit her.

Brown, 20, said he was distraught the night of the event and “broke down” after he told his mother, who herself was a victim of an abusive relationship.

His mom, Joyce Hawkins, told People that Brown’s confession was “the most painful moment of my life,” and sitting with her son on Larry King’s program, she said she was “totally shocked.”

“I know that Chris has never, ever been a violent person. Never,” Hawkins said.

I’m supposed to say something sympathetic here about the cycle of abuse. And honestly, I am sympathetic–there’s no question that children who are abused, or whose parents have an abusive relationship, are more likely to abuse other people. But that sympathy kind of sputters to an abrupt halt when it includes putting a horrific beatdown on a woman. One that you claim you love.

I mean, it’s not like Chris Brown was without resources to help him get over the abuse he’d suffered.

As for Ms. Hawkins…well, see above. And below:

But a story accompanying CNN’s video cites a probation report for Brown stating he and Rihanna had two other abusive incidents: one a verbal argument in which Rihanna slapped him and he shoved her, and a second in which he broke the windshields of a rented car while she was with him.

Yeah. Never violent at all.

Of course, the thing is…the thing is. Bloggers like me will write about this. Lots of women and well-thinking men will get outraged. People will be upset. Hell, Rihanna will even do a revenge song about Chris Brown.

And he’ll probably go on ultimately like it never happened. And the next time some rich and powerful douchebag beats his girlfriend, he’ll go on TV and do his contrition waltz and the rich and powerful douchebag interviewers will pronounce their absolution and it will all go on and on and on again.

Because they know they can wear us down with all the other outrages they throw at us every day, while their patience seems unlimited.

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Now Let Us Praise Wicked Men

Categories: privilege stories, the patriarchy: you can't live with it....that is all

So dear friend of the blog Sady has a post up at Salon’s Broadsheet about Sophie Tucker, whose career as a female singer who pushed gender boundaries in the early 20th century would normally make her a feminist icon–except that she also did blackface for a long time. And that, as well as the funeral of Senator Kennedy, has me thinking about bad people who did good things, or vice versa.

Of course, Teddy looms large in this calculus.

Liss at Shakesville has the most nuanced discussion of the senior senator from Massachusetts’ career, I think:

Teddy, as he was known, was privileged, in every sense of the word. And he made liberal use of his privilege, in ways I admired and ways I did not. The terrible bargain we all seem to have made with Teddy is that we overlooked the occasions when he invoked his privilege as a powerful and well-connected man from a prominent family, because of the career he made using that same privilege to try to make the world a better place for the people dealt a different lot.

Twice, Teddy did despicable things with his privilege, very publicly.

…the two things being the horrific Chappaquiddick affair, and whatever role he helped play in getting his nephew, William Kennedy Smith off the hook for his (alleged, I have to say alleged) rape of a young woman.

Those are two pretty terrible things, by the way.

Daisy over at Daisy’s Dead Air does her best to speak for the dead:

I will mourn the working woman who was forgotten, as the actual circumstances of her death were covered up by a powerful family, who then arbitrarily assigned her slut status.

Imagine slowly, slowly drowning, water enveloping you inch by inch as you drown, waiting for the person to rescue you that never arrives.

Sorry, folks. Some things, I do not excuse.

Mary Jo represents all the nobody-women killed (or allowed to die, if you want to quibble over my terms) by all the powerful, rich men, because they were “evidence”–because they got in the way.

And yet, and yet–he fought hard for people who weren’t able to fight as hard for themselves–the Americans With Disabilities Act, fighting apartheid, even helping Jews escape the Soviet Union. He never let up on the universal healthcare fight. He blocked Robert Bork from the Supreme Court. And he did all those things largely in part by using his name, his wealth, and his reputation to accomplish things other people might not have.

And he let a woman slowly drown. And he helped an (alleged, ok? alleged.) rapist avoid punishment.

Lots of–let’s not say heroes–icons have feet of clay. Martin Luther King had affairs. Thomas Jefferson raped his slaves. And lots of wicked people do great things: Napoleon spread the rule of law, the ideals of the French Revolution, and death, death, death throughout Europe; Wagner wrote some of the most complex (and occasionally even beautiful) music in history and was a dead-beat, adulterer, and depraved anti-Semite. Julia Child was frequently homophobic. And so it goes.

How do we judge? Is it only time that allows us to be dispassionate? What are the morals of admiring the Declaration of Independence or the ADA when you know that they are the results of men who did despicable deeds?

I’m not sure I know. I mean, I’m glad for the Declaration and (well, sometimes) Tristan und Isolde and the millions of people that Senator Kennedy helped. I am aware of the enormous good that has been wrought by flawed men and women.

But I still can’t shake the thought of that woman drowning, or that woman screaming on the beach where nobody could hear her.

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