Friday, November 17, 2017

Simplicity Focus: Matches and Kerosene

Reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' book We Were Eight Years in Power reminded me of how you can't really move into a healthy place working through a broken system.  Until we admit that racism caused the Civil War and that the fallout even after the north won led to more racism, we aren't being fair to blacks.  We can't be surprised when Colin Kaepernick or anyone else kneels for the anthem. That flag has never meant freedom for blacks in the same way it has for whites.  Let's acknowledge that and dismantle the system.

I feel the same way about the patriarchy that leaves in its wake wounded women who are then blamed for their own rapes and assaults.  Coates' book reminded me that broken systems need to be destroyed and built again based on truth.  What I have seen in the wake of all the sexual assault allegations coming to the surface is people telling women to fix the crimes they didn't commit.

Dress modestly.

Have less women in the workplace.

Never be alone with a man.

Here's a thought: men, stop hurting women.  Take responsibility for this being your problem and don't lay it on women.  So simple.

The issue is that treating women badly and getting away with it is so prevalent in our society that no one even sees it anymore. Making women responsible for other people's actions is habit.

I discussed with a friend that my oldest is getting to the point where we have to start talking about the older kid things, like wearing bras. I told her I was hesitating even bringing it up because I don't want any of my daughters to assume they have to follow a societal norm if it doesn't work for them, whether it's shaving their legs or wearing bras.

My friend agreed, but she said we wear the bras and watch the wardrobe closely in order to keep ourselves safe.  She meant well with this statement, but I was way past that way of thinking.

Me:  I can't say I think it's doing a lot of good.  I would rather send my braless daughters into the world with pepper spray and brass knuckles with a come-at-me-mother*cker attitude than to let them run around thinking that if they had just dressed differently they would have been okay.

She wholeheartedly agreed that my approach could also work.

That's when I realized I wanted to set the patriarchy on fire, not try to put Band-Aids over a broken leg.

How can we make people understand that women aren't possessions? How we can we make women understand that no one has the right to do something to them if they don't consent, and that they don't have to say I'm sorry or feel ashamed when they are hurt?  How can people in the church get on the right side of this issue since many of them are busy defending a pedophile after electing a president accused of sexual assault?  I mean,  Jesus didn't tell women to dress modestly.  He warned men that if they lusted when looking at women, they might want to go pluck their own eyes out.  It's a pretty clear message.

Burning the patriarchy down is not an anti-man message.  Good men, like my husband, aren't scared of this idea at all.  They welcome it with open arms.  If those who believe they have rights to women's bodies that they don't are shaking in their boots at this idea, well, good.  That's the point.

We need to make it unacceptable to hurt women and then blame women for it.  We need to stop excusing sexism and misogyny in its many forms.  The term locker room talk needs to die.

Here's another thing:  just because women don't come forward immediately doesn't mean they weren't assaulted or raped.  Women who are sexually assaulted often don't report it for years, if ever, for a variety of reasons.  It's not because it didn't happen.  Also, with the hell they take when they come forward and the backed up rape kits that are never even tested, they don't feel a big incentive to come forward.

Of the women I know and count as friends, I would say at least half of us have been assaulted or raped.  None of us reported it.

Asking why a woman didn't report a crime against her body implies there was no crime or she would have said something sooner.  Forget the evidence that shows these men have harmed multitudes of women and none of them felt they could say anything.

After a stressful month where I felt helpless a good portion of the time, my simple goal came into focus: stop accepting this society, the one that devalues women.  Stop trying to fix small parts of it.  Take it apart every day and put something better in its place.

I would like to say that this is starting to happen with all the women coming forward, but I'm not optimistic.  These men will not lose anything near what these women have.  They won't suffer criminal prosecutions, though they would if they had stolen someone's car.  Most of them won't lose their jobs even if they attempted to rape teenagers.  As Sady Dole wrote in her amazing book, Trainwreck, men can get away with a hell of a lot more than women.

This will be a long fight, but it's worth it.  I want to push against what we've been taught and what we've seen when it comes to how women should be treated.  I want to make sure my life reflects love and care for the women I know and those that I don't.  I want all of us to banish the belief that women can't support each other and that women are hyperemotional messes.  Where I see sexism in my own life or in anyone else's, I want to draw attention to it and make a change.

What this will look like throughout my life I don't know, but I know this will be a forever mission, a calling if you will.  If you want to join, bring some matches.  Some things need to burn.

Just getting started on your burn-down-the-patriarchy journey?  Grab these books:

Trainwreck by Sady Doyle
Dietland by Sarai Walker
Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin
Jesus Feminist by Sarah Bessey












Tuesday, November 7, 2017

The October Book List

October's books did not disappoint.  Non-fiction was dominant this month, but all were great reads.


Non-fiction

Hygge:  The Danish Art of Happiness by Marie Tourell Soderberg
I've read a ton of books on hygge, and I feel like I need to read them forever because of the good, basic reminders for how to live well.  This book was good, but it wasn't the best I've read this year.  The author had interviews, recipes, and general information, but it wasn't as informative or as entertaining as the other books I've picked up on the topic.

Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York by Roz Chast
Roz Chast won me over with her graphic novel, Can We Talk About Something More PleasantGoing Into Town was great.  When I get back to New York, I will likely take this as a guidebook.  Chast wrote it for her daughter when she moved to Manhattan, but she turned it into an entire graphic novel, and it is as informative as it is funny.

Warehouse Home by Sophie Bush
I scanned this book, and it was beautifully designed.  Alas, I do not live in a warehouse home.  I'm in the suburbs and don't have the architectural specifications that would make this book useful for me.  I did like checking out the designs within, though.

 We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Coates is one of the strongest writers and smartest thinkers in the world today, and I never walk away from  his writing unchanged.  Between the World and Me is an epic accomplishment that D and I read together so we could discuss it.  We did the same with this book.  Coates speaks of race with honesty, making no excuses for our country's decision to base it's so-called liberty on enslaving African Americans.

If you read Coates writing in the The Atlantic, then you will likely recognize some of these essays.  There are eight that he wrote starting with Obama's campaign through his years in the White House.  He also starts each essay explaining what was going on in his life and the life of the country at the time he was writing.

Coates' work is well-researched (that's an understatement.  I don't have a word for the kind of work he puts into his essays.)  He also weaves in his personal story seamlessly with the bigger story at hand, that of the enslavement and oppression of blacks for generations.  If I had my way, this book would be required reading for the masses.

Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear...and Why by Sady Doyle
Coming off of the heavy content of Coates' work, I dove right into Doyle's book about how women are often viewed as trainwrecks due to behavior that men are never labeled for.  This book is a great introduction to feminism and is also perfect for a seasoned feminist who wants to make sure he/she isn't sliding into bad habits when judging women.

Doyle looks at figures such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Bronte, and Sylvia Plath, as well as Britney Spears, Hillary Clinton, and Miley Cyrus to dissect how we treat women who don't follow the rules.  She also holds up examples of men who get away with quite a bit more in our society.

In the world of Harvey Weinstein and other predators, many who still go unpunished because their accusers are women, Doyle's book is much needed.

Dear Fahrenheit 451: Love and Heartbreak in the Stacks by Annie Spence
READ THIS BOOK!  If you can make it through the chapter about Spence having to weed out The One Hour Orgasm book without laughing so hard you snort, I will give you five dollars!

Spence is a librarian, and having worked in a library and being only 15 hours short of my MLS degree, I have a huge appreciation for this book.  Spence writes letters to books in her life, and she also makes some stellar recommendations for readers at the end of the book.  It's a quick read that is hilarious, touching, and perfect for anyone who loves to read.


At Home in the World: Reflections on Belonging While Wandering the Globe  by Tsh Oxenreider
I have heard Oxenreider speak on podcasts and really enjoy her insight.  This book about the nine months she spent with her family traveling the globe pushes against the idea that we can't travel with kids.  Her children were all under the age of ten when the trip started.  She and her husband were already experienced travelers, so she had an advantage there, but she makes world schooling with young kids seem possible.

Oddly, this book wasn't what I expected.  I didn't feel near as connected to Oxenreider as I expected considering the fact that this was a memoir-style story.  I still enjoyed it, and her writing is strong, but it just didn't have as profound of an effect on me as I thought it would.  D and I have been struggling with wanderlust for a while now, but this book didn't make me want to grab the kids and hit the road. Oxenreider's honesty about the challenges of travel reminded me that we would be seeking gluten-free food in countries where we didn't speak the language, and Meniere's disease would likely keep me puking or dealing with vertigo on every plane, train, or car ride.  I still want to travel, but I appreciate this book for reminding me that it's more than glamour and new places, even if I would have liked more depth in the narrative in certain areas.

Fiction

Forest Dark by Nicole Krauss
I read this one very early in the month, so I have a general impression of it more than a detailed account.  My overall feeling was that though I enjoyed it and the author had some profound thoughts, I wasn't 100 percent sure what I had read when it was over.

Krauss plays with the idea of divided selves, the idea that we can be in one place and feel in another, sort of.  Even the book is told in a divided way, with the two protagonists receiving alternating chapters and never connecting in the story.  Nicole and Jules are both from New York and both end up in Israel for what could be considered existential crisis-like reasons.  They both chase unlikely tales despite their doubts.  They are both questioning their previous lives at home.

I am glad I read this, but I didn't take away anything concrete.  It was beautifully written, but I usually like to know at the end of stories if what I think happened really did happen, or if what occurred was a metaphor for an idea that was over my head.  This one may have just been a little too smart for me, and that's okay.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
I don't know how many times I've read The Bell Jar in my life.  A lot is my best estimate.  I ran across Plath's name online and was overcome with an insane desire to read this again.  I actually own this one (I don't buy many books despite how much I read.  I am a big lover of the public library.) so I grabbed it off the shelves and dived in.

I haven't read this one in years, and I am a different person than I was when I last read it.  Plath appeared to me in ways that were so different and yet the same.  Yes, the story is fiction, but most say it's so closely based on her life that the novel ruined real life marriages, and it wasn't supposed to be released until her mother died.  (It was anyway.)

The story tells of Esther Greenwood and her summer in New York as she starts suffering from a mental breakdown.  It's honest and raw.  It led me down a rabbit hole as I researched again Plath's suicide that left her two young children behind, her son's suicide a few years ago, and the suicide of Ted Hughes' mistress, who also killed their child. (Hughes was Plath's husband at the time of her death.)  I am going to dive into Plath's poetry again next, but this excursion gave me a lot to think about for awhile.

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Author Annie Spence is so convincing that I ran out and picked up The Virgin Suicides from the library because it's her favorite book. I was not disappointed.  This beautiful story was my introduction to Eugenides, and his writing is flawless. 

He tells a story about the Lisbon sisters and the boys who watch and love them, mainly from a distance.  We know that they will all commit suicide by the end of the story, but that doesn't take away from the beauty of this book at all.   Eugenides captures lust, obsession, and adolescence perfectly, and I was  sad when this one ended.