When you enter the Blogosphere, you start reading other people's blogs. Because I've been referencing this blog when I meet new people, I go and read their blogs, too. By virtue of chance, many of the women I've met recently read blogs like Feministe and Feministing. I've been enjoying them--I forgot how much fun it is to discuss feminism with people not my friends. (The arguments get familiar and dull, sadly. No offense to my friends, it's just boring to have a discussion with someone when you know which direction it will go...)
Because I've had my Feminist Hat on a lot more lately, I've been seeing the world with that viewpoint again in a way I haven't in a while. Maybe it's cos it's an election year? Maybe it's cos I've been hanging out with a lot of right-wingers and Libertarians? Eh, who knows?
To side track for a second...
Yes, I actually did just say I've been hanging out with right-wingers and Libertarians. I am a Libertarian.
Ooh, it's liberating say that! (hee.)
My boyfriend and I have a running joke, in which we hop up and down shaking our hands like Homer Simpson, and act terrified about "The patriarchy! Oooh! The patriarchy!!!"
I firmly believe it is possible to be a feminist and be able to mock "womyn."
Maybe I'm not so much a feminist as an egalitarian, but then, I never said I was normal.
Ever since I expressed an interest in joining the marketing/publishing/entertainment industry, my father has very kindly set aside the issue of AdWeek he gets through his office and passes it along to me. In a recent issue, there was an ad for Jane Magazine that surprised me. I will try and scan it to share with the class. For now, a description will have to suffice.
It is a two-page spread. Three-quarters of the spread is a closeup of a woman's face, so close, in fact, you can't see her hair. She is looking squarely at the camera.
The other quarter of the page, the quarter on the left, is a bright green field, with text half in the green field, and half on the woman's right cheek. The text on the green field says "She's marched for women's rights." The text on the woman's face says, "She's cried her way out of a speeding ticket."
I couldn't quite name the emotion this ad evoked in me. The closest I can come up with is "Impressed Revulsion."
I am impressed because that ad eloquently describes many women, especially Jane readers. I am revolted because as convenient as it may be to cry one's way out of a speeding ticket, that's a flavor of gender-preferential treatment I can't really cotton to.
Let's face it: I'm a petite, slim, attractive woman. I like makeup and skirts, and all the sorts of "patriarchal" trappings that have caused kilobytes of wank all over the internet recently. (Not to ignore that it's an old argument-it's just cropped up again recently. Repeatedly.) If I wanted to cry my way out of a ticket, I could probably do it easily--I cry easily when I get an adrenaline overload, which I'm sure a speeding ticket would do to me.
But would I do it? Would I? Hell no.
I'd curse and cry and scream after the cop went back to the car and drove away. I'd be really annoyed at the amount of money I'd have to throw into that municipality's local government. But I certainly wouldn't use my gender to dodge a ticket. That's pretty repugnant.
I guess what it comes down to is the following sentence:
How can we claim we want equal treatment if we're still willing to use our gender to play on a man's sympathies?
Somewhere between being an actual, literal, "tool of the patriarchy" (I acknowledge they exist, even if I don't have an active fear of them), and being a radical womynist, there has to be a nice middle ground.
While I know that was what the designers of that Jane ad were going for, I don't think they quite hit the mark. Instead, they showed us how "so close" can still be "too far."
Monday, October 30, 2006
Monday, October 09, 2006
Chronic(le) Voyeurism
This is a relatively new blog. I started it in July, unsure of what I wanted it to be. I told no one of its existence, and merely used it to write the second post, which I feared too inflammatory for my usual space. I didn't want it to be completely anonymous, but I didn't want it to be as personal as my usual blog, either. In short: I was all blogged up with nowhere to go. Having finally made the decision to focus on writing, my path was clear, and I announced the existence of Red Stapler on my personal blog. The purpose of Red Stapler, I said, was to have a public writing space that I could use to professionally promote both myself, and my writing.
"I've had this [blog] since Sophomore year of college," I said, in reference to my personal blog. "The editor of a publication doesn't need to see that shit."
A discussion ensued, the winning points being that a blog site like Livejournal fosters a sense of community, but also cliqueishness. With a Livejournal, you’re writing to a specific audience. Namely, you write for your friends, and everyone can see who your friends are. With a "public" blog on a person's own site, or on Blogspot, barring any blogs one might link, the audience is anonymous.
An important question, though, is why do we blog? Were we all such unrepentant Doogie Howser fans? Were we just waiting for our chance to end our days in front of a screen, summing up our adventures with a witty platitude? Interestingly, Doogie never published the things he wrote. (Although what a pop culture cash-cow THAT collection would be!) He was writing for himself. Further interestingly, Steven Bochco, the show’s creator, has been quoted as saying his long-term vision for the Young Doc, was for him to abandon medicine and become a writer. Surely, had the series survived to the late-90s, such a disillusioned Doogie would have blogged before writing professionally! The show was cancelled before Bochco could produce that outcome, so we are left with our memories of Doogie and his verbally-efficient text files. But as to the way he wrote, we didn’t exist to him—in that through-the-looking-glass way that he doesn’t really exist either. In that vein, what of the strangers’ blogs we read, and the strangers who read ours? Not only are we driven to blog, but we are driven to read the blogs of others.
The very first blog I read was written by a friend of mine. The thing I loved most about it was that I knew he would never tell me the stories in the same way as he wrote them. When a story is told verbally, or a situation described, objectivity goes out the window. One element of a story that might be glossed over to you may be highlighted in a less specific or more public retelling.
When I write in my personal blog, I have a fairly good idea of who my readers are, and I write my posts accordingly. When I ask questions of my audience, I have a good idea who will answer, but occasionally I get surprised. Sometimes pleasantly, sometimes not.
I started blogging when I was sixteen. It was hosted on my AOL space, hand-coded in a Notepad file, and listed under another screen name. This was so that my classmates couldn’t find it. I kept it up for a year and a half, at which point I moved to Diaryland, a blogging site many of my friends used. That lasted about two years, at which point, I moved over to Livejournal. This was immediately following a breakup, so I decided it was time for things like locked posts and filters. I also quickly fell in love with the "friends list" feature. On that blog, one can bear witness to two and a half years of college, the rise and fall of several relationships and dalliances, and the ebb and flow of my friendships of the last five years. That's a lot of data.
Which brings us back to writing for an audience.
Even in my high school blogging days, I noticed a difference in my writing. I was writing to an audience, however small it was at the time, rather than simply setting down my thoughts and feelings. These days, I have almost two hundred people listed on my friends list. Twenty-six people whose journals I don't read have me friended. How many more read without my knowing?
This all came to an enlightening intersection recently, while out with a friend I hadn't seen in about two years. He informed me that my ex's wife not only reads my blog, but had or has an unhealthy obsession with it. He showed me her blog, and it was terrifying.
I felt exposed and vulnerable.
My discomfort wasn't with the fact a stranger was reading my words. Actually, I look forward to that possibility. My discomfort was with the fact a woman was torturing herself with my existence and my words. Unwittingly, and to be honest, unwillingly, I remained an elephant in the room to a couple who live hundreds of miles away.
Just as she read my blog, I rushed to read hers. Like Hilary climbing Everest, I read it because it was there. We, as a generation, have become stalkers. We know, without a doubt, that data on anyone we encounter will be there for the finding. Meet some new? Google them when you get home. Discover the blog of a high school acquaintance? Read every entry and know what they ate for breakfast every day for the last year. We have become total informational masochists, while at the same time, offering up the same overload of information. Worse, to this day, I love reading the blogs of "adversaries" so I can get a sense of their end of things. We are disappointed and frustrated if we actually can’t find anything about someone.
This, ultimately, is probably what my ex's wife was trying to do—get a sense of The Ex of Her Husband. I, being completely oblivious to this, wrote on. I never slandered my ex. I never spoke ill of him, and only wished him well, even, and especially upon hearing of his wife and their since-born child. She even remarked, disparagingly, "I thought to myself as I…scoured her website for references to my soon-to-be husband how little she refered[sic] to him when they were together." I have a sneaking suspicion the sort of information she sought was behind filters—and therefore invisible to her. (That, and despite living together, we were rarely available at the same times. It’s difficult to blog about dates that never happened!)
I understand the impulse for information, even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. As I said: We are a generation of informational masochists. If there is something to read, the more it fuels our paranoia and fear, the more likely we are to read it. Several years ago, a friend of mine dated—and blogged about—a coworker of my boyfriend. When my boyfriend and I first got together, I found myself addicted to my friend’s long-ago posts. In her words, I found the same questions I was asking about age differences, the nature of the company they work for, etc. Her gnawing insecurities were the same as my gnawing insecurities, and suddenly, mine got louder and louder. I eventually tore myself away from said posts, but its effects were shocking.
As a society, we are completely inundated, and saturated with information. No longer is it just the news and the weather, but the intimate details of someone’s date the night before can be found, just a few clicks away. As of this writing, 11,261,500 journals exist on Livejournal alone. I’m sure the statistics of sites like Blogger, GreatestJournal, and Xanga are similarly staggering. We are a world completely consumed with our own chronicle voyeurism.
"I've had this [blog] since Sophomore year of college," I said, in reference to my personal blog. "The editor of a publication doesn't need to see that shit."
A discussion ensued, the winning points being that a blog site like Livejournal fosters a sense of community, but also cliqueishness. With a Livejournal, you’re writing to a specific audience. Namely, you write for your friends, and everyone can see who your friends are. With a "public" blog on a person's own site, or on Blogspot, barring any blogs one might link, the audience is anonymous.
An important question, though, is why do we blog? Were we all such unrepentant Doogie Howser fans? Were we just waiting for our chance to end our days in front of a screen, summing up our adventures with a witty platitude? Interestingly, Doogie never published the things he wrote. (Although what a pop culture cash-cow THAT collection would be!) He was writing for himself. Further interestingly, Steven Bochco, the show’s creator, has been quoted as saying his long-term vision for the Young Doc, was for him to abandon medicine and become a writer. Surely, had the series survived to the late-90s, such a disillusioned Doogie would have blogged before writing professionally! The show was cancelled before Bochco could produce that outcome, so we are left with our memories of Doogie and his verbally-efficient text files. But as to the way he wrote, we didn’t exist to him—in that through-the-looking-glass way that he doesn’t really exist either. In that vein, what of the strangers’ blogs we read, and the strangers who read ours? Not only are we driven to blog, but we are driven to read the blogs of others.
The very first blog I read was written by a friend of mine. The thing I loved most about it was that I knew he would never tell me the stories in the same way as he wrote them. When a story is told verbally, or a situation described, objectivity goes out the window. One element of a story that might be glossed over to you may be highlighted in a less specific or more public retelling.
When I write in my personal blog, I have a fairly good idea of who my readers are, and I write my posts accordingly. When I ask questions of my audience, I have a good idea who will answer, but occasionally I get surprised. Sometimes pleasantly, sometimes not.
I started blogging when I was sixteen. It was hosted on my AOL space, hand-coded in a Notepad file, and listed under another screen name. This was so that my classmates couldn’t find it. I kept it up for a year and a half, at which point I moved to Diaryland, a blogging site many of my friends used. That lasted about two years, at which point, I moved over to Livejournal. This was immediately following a breakup, so I decided it was time for things like locked posts and filters. I also quickly fell in love with the "friends list" feature. On that blog, one can bear witness to two and a half years of college, the rise and fall of several relationships and dalliances, and the ebb and flow of my friendships of the last five years. That's a lot of data.
Which brings us back to writing for an audience.
Even in my high school blogging days, I noticed a difference in my writing. I was writing to an audience, however small it was at the time, rather than simply setting down my thoughts and feelings. These days, I have almost two hundred people listed on my friends list. Twenty-six people whose journals I don't read have me friended. How many more read without my knowing?
This all came to an enlightening intersection recently, while out with a friend I hadn't seen in about two years. He informed me that my ex's wife not only reads my blog, but had or has an unhealthy obsession with it. He showed me her blog, and it was terrifying.
I felt exposed and vulnerable.
My discomfort wasn't with the fact a stranger was reading my words. Actually, I look forward to that possibility. My discomfort was with the fact a woman was torturing herself with my existence and my words. Unwittingly, and to be honest, unwillingly, I remained an elephant in the room to a couple who live hundreds of miles away.
Just as she read my blog, I rushed to read hers. Like Hilary climbing Everest, I read it because it was there. We, as a generation, have become stalkers. We know, without a doubt, that data on anyone we encounter will be there for the finding. Meet some new? Google them when you get home. Discover the blog of a high school acquaintance? Read every entry and know what they ate for breakfast every day for the last year. We have become total informational masochists, while at the same time, offering up the same overload of information. Worse, to this day, I love reading the blogs of "adversaries" so I can get a sense of their end of things. We are disappointed and frustrated if we actually can’t find anything about someone.
This, ultimately, is probably what my ex's wife was trying to do—get a sense of The Ex of Her Husband. I, being completely oblivious to this, wrote on. I never slandered my ex. I never spoke ill of him, and only wished him well, even, and especially upon hearing of his wife and their since-born child. She even remarked, disparagingly, "I thought to myself as I…scoured her website for references to my soon-to-be husband how little she refered[sic] to him when they were together." I have a sneaking suspicion the sort of information she sought was behind filters—and therefore invisible to her. (That, and despite living together, we were rarely available at the same times. It’s difficult to blog about dates that never happened!)
I understand the impulse for information, even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. As I said: We are a generation of informational masochists. If there is something to read, the more it fuels our paranoia and fear, the more likely we are to read it. Several years ago, a friend of mine dated—and blogged about—a coworker of my boyfriend. When my boyfriend and I first got together, I found myself addicted to my friend’s long-ago posts. In her words, I found the same questions I was asking about age differences, the nature of the company they work for, etc. Her gnawing insecurities were the same as my gnawing insecurities, and suddenly, mine got louder and louder. I eventually tore myself away from said posts, but its effects were shocking.
As a society, we are completely inundated, and saturated with information. No longer is it just the news and the weather, but the intimate details of someone’s date the night before can be found, just a few clicks away. As of this writing, 11,261,500 journals exist on Livejournal alone. I’m sure the statistics of sites like Blogger, GreatestJournal, and Xanga are similarly staggering. We are a world completely consumed with our own chronicle voyeurism.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Pink is the new Red!
Hello, dear readers!
I have changed the layout for the month of October, as it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month!
Six years ago, my mother had, and beat breast cancer. As such, it's become a cause dear, if you'll pardon the pun, to my heart.
My favorite supporter of the cause is a friend of mine, Lisa Spodak. Lisa runs Lisawalks.com, where she chronicles her fundraising efforts.
I am also taking part in Pink for October.
Support women all over the world, and from all walks of life, as they fight breast cancer.
And remember, as Lisa says on one of her shirts up for sale at her CafePress store:
I have changed the layout for the month of October, as it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month!
Six years ago, my mother had, and beat breast cancer. As such, it's become a cause dear, if you'll pardon the pun, to my heart.
My favorite supporter of the cause is a friend of mine, Lisa Spodak. Lisa runs Lisawalks.com, where she chronicles her fundraising efforts.
I am also taking part in Pink for October.
Support women all over the world, and from all walks of life, as they fight breast cancer.
And remember, as Lisa says on one of her shirts up for sale at her CafePress store:
Fuck C*ncer!
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