lifecourse transition and everyone is pregnant, no one is pregnant

Sunday morning at 7AM and I'm reading about how severe will be the rupture in my human capital if I get pregnant in Canada. To make up for it, I don't even have time to be writing this blogpost.


I'm familiar with lifecourse transition literature on this socioeconomic loss for women. It was the focus of the later years of my undergraduate degree. What distinguished my reading then from my reading now is how much more the themes are reflected in my daily life. Three close women in my family are pregnant, as are three of my closest friends in Ottawa. The key transition for these pregnant bodies is at the nexus of individual biology and social structure, and it is beginning to hit closer to home.


The impact of this morning reading comes after a long week of bumping against my own lifecourse "choices". On Wednesday, I met with a colleague to develop my Vitae. That's right, vitae. Life.


Hers is 37 pages long. Pages 15 to 35 are publications. I left her office feeling like a Kindergartner. Nothing like comparing your novice CV to that of a senior academic to unleash a pang of insecurity into your throat worse than acid reflux. I should never have looked at the page numbers of that CV! I think it caused permanent cardia malfunction. **clearing throat*


The deeper I get into my comprehensive exam reading on life/work conflict for academic women, the more I accept that staying optimistic about competitiveness in academia should be laughable for us. Biking home from my CV meeting along the canal to Foster the People [better run, better run, faster than my bullet??], I felt the onset of waterworks. I pulled over in a Glebe park, sprawled out starfish and let the analytical thoughts spill into the front of my head. Sadly, a sense of doom that I work desperately to keep under wraps for purposes of daily functioning leaked forward.


None of my top five non-parental role model figures have children. Only one of them is married. The married couple is gender queer. What does this mean for the way I am fashioning my life? The feminist idiom (I'm paraphrasing), "if you aim to break the glass ceiling, raise dogs," is getting louder in my brain. No wonder I feel conflicted. To cope, I'm going to try to drown myself in the bliss of apple picking on this fall day. Then maybe I'll practice resenting my performance of normative femininity by baking a crisp.

“we found the world in our cervixes” and “never trust anyone over 30”

It has been tough to follow national politics since May 2^nd. I’m in a state of denial about the upcoming provincial election in Ontario. I’m also in denial about the sexist nature of some of my friendships. And denial works… until it doesn’t. Frack. Just when I thought I was being a little hard on myself and maybe I should show myself some compassion about living in political apathy, I flipped my laptop open to see the Google word of the day is “disassociate.” Thanks a lot, Google. Blog time.

Both quotes in the title of this post were slogans of the women’s movement in the 1960s. They’re kinda edgy. Usually I like fuzzy quotes. Edgy femme stuff is on the brain, though, as I prepare to stomp around (peacefully) at the Take Back the Night march this Thursday night at Minto Park. It’s the kind of demonstration that is triggering by nature as we are forced to consider the way walking in fear is commonplace for women. The potential to be raped is so deeply ingrained that we accept it in order to get on with our days. This generally comes off as sounding a little extreme to some of my man friends, but it’s true. And they simply can't relate. It's the main factor that distances me from men. It's difficult to make fuzzy quotes out of this concept.

A few weeks ago, I was tossing around slogans and lifestyle quotes when my new friend Simon told me about his mandate (and plan for his first tattoo): ‘when walking, just walk’ (which I mentioned a few weeks ago in the context of my idyllic trip to Brighton). The 'walk' metaphor is particularly timely for Take Back the Night. Of course I fancy Simon's romantic decree to just be with oneself and others on this journey called life (perhaps with a cup of tea and a stuffed animal! fuzz!), and it parallels various turns of phrase that I resort to in times of motivational drought for personal/political realignment: live every day, love thy neighbour, a loving heart is the truest wisdom, etc. Obviously I'm inclined toward the mysteries of love, even in my political positions. I must have been rolled in honey, rose petals and sonnets as a baby.

But today as I weigh my sense of apathy against an acute sense of anger, these outlooks don't seem to pack enough punch. I need my cri de coeur to be peaceful in it’s aim, but kick more ass ‘cause there’s unjust stuff going on. Maybe: 'when walking, walk with your fucking chin up.' Going to read the whole local newspaper today... and get my mind a little dirty again.

london calling... me to move to the UK

Post-dated Sept 5.


Just when I was starting to feel the kind of burn-out that only comes from lugging a large suitcase through the turnstiles of public transit stations, I spent the most melancholically wonderful rainy Sunday morning at a patisserie on Clapham Common. There is no happier time for me - rainfall, coffee, notebook, great pen, soft fatigue. ABBA's Winner Takes it All came on when I was writing a letter to my parents. Brilliant. I hope to die in a politically motivated drive-by cafe shooting on one such day.


Playing the poet for the morning hours, I returned home and collected the energy to run through the Common and reflect on my position in the global. Things were going bittersweetly (perfectly!) in the misty afternoon until I got a cramp under my right rib, which subsequently produced thoughts of "my life sucks" and "people suck" and "running is for suckers." So I'm fickle.


But I got happy again. It is my absolute delight to be staying with two of the hippest guys I’ve ever met. Their flat looks like one of those chic retail stores that have only a few items of tattered black clothing hanging between stacks of glistening coffee table books and neon plastic busts of old presidents. Couldn’t throw the look together if I dedicated my life to it. Retro/mod/awesome. They are both so kind and generous and have made me feel right at home. Last night we wandered through East London on a bit of a hipster watch, stopped for a bottle of wine on a patio picnic table, hit Islington for yummy Thai food and attended a party of Paul Smith folks (I felt tres cool). Tonight we are drinking tea, reading books and listening to the BBC. Amanda heaven. I might secretly move in and see if they notice.

tearing/tearing [te(ə)rɪŋ/ti(ə)rɪŋ]: reunion and a heart explosion

Last night I reunited with a high school friend in Central London. We decided it had been at least 5 years. On my way home, when I popped up from the tube into the English dampness, the arpeggiated piano accompaniment for Someone Like You by Adele started on my iPod. I’ve been (grotesquely) indulging to the song on repeat for the last two weeks, so when it played by natural virtue of its cue in a playlist, it felt serendipitous and fateful. I was instantly moved.

‘Sometimes it lasts in love and sometimes it hurts instead.’ That fact froze me on the corner of my friends’ flat, my face tilted up to the rain, mouth broke into a toothy grin and tears streamed down my face. Pure madness to the onlooker. I stood there crying – for the beginning, the end and therefore the middle of personal transition, for my cousins’ joy at their new puppy, for kids who cry when they see other kids cry, for Amy Winehouse’s mom, for profound loneliness and subsequent connection, for going the journey alone for awhile. My heart burst toward pavement and sky. I felt held by the night air.

I slept hard last night. I woke to an unsettling dream about wooden dolls, but when I came to, I felt safe: like I had admitted vulnerability to the earth at long last and it would therefore take care of me in the face of uncertainty. Now off on a day of further movement, this time by the people moving machines of international airports. Wishing everyone a heart bursting second.

fearing (the myth of?) the maternal – scary to have, scary to lack

Yesterday over lunch, I was going on with some new UK friends/colleagues about the idea of maternal instinct. The concept disturbs me, both because I loathe the idea of being trapped by hormones in my body and because I guess I want to be “maternal” on some level and I fear and already grieve the potential of disconnection from my offspring. Do we have these instinct things? Are they parental? Or uniquely maternal? Age-old feminist question. Most of us post-structuralists in the conversation were simply preoccupied with the very word maternal. Gender Trouble (Butler), false binary, tie of gender to sex, slippage of femininity into motherhood, etc. Maternal - we hate the word. Instinct was a whole other issue. One of our colleagues (NOT a post-structuralist), a humanities prof in the US, insists there is a maternal instinct, one that she found when she had her first child. For her, the bond to her child was so severe that she felt fear for the first time in her life – fear of that child in a dark world without her care. This did not allay either component of my own fear. What will it mean for my life that one day I might be overcome with fear for my child’s safety? What if I’m not? WHAT’S WORSE?

The aforementioned maternal colleague gave a paper on representations of femininity and motherhood in Ian McEwan’s critically acclaimed, “The Road.” She slammed McEwan’s mother-blaming techniques for the creation of his post-apocalyptic world (there is so much unchecked mother-blaming in fiction, I like when people point it out). I actually think his notion of the absence of the feminine symbolic under capitalism as apocalyptic worked well for the novel, but that's beside her point I guess. I don’t think her argument held together well (and I told her that), but I at least liked the confidence and certainty with which she spoke of the pain of an absent mother. This theme doesn’t get a lot of play in academia anymore. Rightfully so, I’d say (let’s open queer kinship), but still, good for her for revealing her deepest convictions, if they are essentialist to me.

Small tangential aside: in The Road, the dad pours cold water on the boy’s head, demonstrating his lack of maternal instinct. What kind of human being doesn’t assume their son isn’t going to like having freezing cold water dumped on his head? Weak representation, Ian. If the dad couldn’t find his breast to breast feed, well alright then. I can get on board with that.

my dissertation, my life

When I first arrived in Brighton, I snuggled into a tiny independent café called Taylor Street Barista. The walls were painted taupe and periwinkle, decorated with photos of “specialbike,” hung by clips and strings. Cozy. I daydreamed I owned the café.

The guy next to me, whose accent I recognized as Ontarian (the first person I sit next to in the UK is Torontonian!) was joined by a young woman student. He was doing a Ph.D. and she was chatting with him for advice about graduate school. The two of them proceeded to illustrate my dissertation topic, at which point I interrupted and admitted/asked to eavesdrop.

The girl quickly launched into the dilemma of whether or not to start grad school based on wanting to start a family with her male partner in the next few years or so. She’s my age. What struck me immediately is that she was incredibly frank about the tension. She wasn’t ashamed of desiring either role – she didn’t express guilt about wanting a career and she didn’t seem embarrassed about wanting to be a young mother. This sounded slightly different from my Canadian colleagues. Typically I’m exposed to women who use a million caveats (“I know I’m young, so it’s silly to be thinking about family… [even though they totally are thinking about family and I’m sure they secretly don’t feel that young]” or “but I don’t want to be one of those crazy career people… I just love what I do… so… [even though they joyfully work harder than most people I know]”) as they describe their strategizing. The girl in the café also didn’t frame the tension as something frustrating or structural – this is also a unique message. Many women I chat to comment on inadequate maternity leave or barriers to getting funding after taking time out for kids, etc. My café friend was matter-of-fact about what she perceives to be choices.

But the frustration leaked out of her. She was saying stuff like, “if I do it, I want to do it the best” and “I’m a perfectionist” and “it’s an investment: kids or career.” THEN, she hit it home by admitting that in the end, work is very competitive and there is so much uncertainty (you could go to grad school for 5 years and not get a job in the end!), whereas being a mother would be a guaranteed role. And her partner is supportive of that. She said her main aim is financial stability and her main question is timing – her desire for both motherhood and career success is not in question at all – but she feels the need to pick a path. Also, she’s 25, so she’d better make the decision within the next 5 years. I didn't even prompt her to say that!

HOLY CRAP. Rushing to the interview guide drawing board.

The Academy and Love in Brighton and Hove

Greetings from East Sussex! Brighton is my new favourite place. It's like a mini San Fran (complete with tourists in windbreakers cluttering the promenade) but the seagulls have accents and the pastries are fluffier. Bike paths, seawall for running, organic co-op markets, the celebration of vegetarian food and the "when walking, just walk" ethos of my new friend Simon - these have seduced me. I had such a pleasant time sharing meals and teatimes with my generous hosts, and the CAPPE conference at the university was more professionally rewarding than I could've anticipated. I want to stay!

The academic culture over here fantastically contrasts that to which I've been exposed in Canada. Granted, I was at the University of Brighton's Centre for Applied Political Philosophy and Ethics -- the crowd seemed to reject academic elitism as a matter of politics. This made for a hugely enriched atmosphere and authentic knowledge exchange. Only after the conference closed did I consider that we, most of us strangers from over a dozen countries, achieved kind and respectful debate that I've only ever dreamed of. Also, the attendees were just genuinely cool. We drank beer (they drank a lot of beer), told crass jokes (they told really crass jokes) and acknowledged things about our mortality that I think academic "minds" often forget, or at least pretend to - we're all just bags of bones in a slow rot toward death. So let's make the most of it. Have another pint. Laugh about sex. Eat chocolate. Etc.

My talk was the first on Friday morning, the third and final day of the conference. When skimming over my notes the night before, I noticed that many of the words I had so carefully chosen had been nuanced and complicated, heralded and rejected, by other speakers over the course of the previous days. Panic and exhilaration consumed me as I scribbled in the margins reminding myself to allude to what others had already said. 

I shared a panel with an admired Dutch philosopher named Evert. He's an established scholar in Europe so I was incredibly appreciative that he took the time to reassure me of how excited he was to be speaking alongside each other. His kindness helped allay my anxiety immensely. Nice guy.

A bit on his talk to preface reflection on my own, Evert argued for the taking up of certain political virtues in international relations. To develop his argument, he insisted upon suspending moral judgment when both politicizing acts in the pubic sphere and rethinking democratic values in general. Referring to the riots in London, several historical acts of murder or kidnapping that have been individualized and/or criminalized as acts of "madness," and the September 11, 2011 attacks on the WTC and Pentagon, he claimed that each act is political, regardless of the conscious motives of the perpetrator, and needs to be viewed as such. Acknowledging this allows us to truly reflect on the cultural state(s) of things. His examples bled splendidly into my talk, as he slammed our pathologizing of the suicide bombers at 9/11 as "irrational" or "fundamentalist" or even simply guided by religious doctrine. I hung on his every word. In the dialogue that followed his talk, philosophers (constructively) condemned his use of masculinist language/aims (particularly his use of the word virtue) and his slightly ideological leanings. I soaked that part in like a sponge too.

When I began speaking, my jitters subsided. I even got the guts to take up a dare from a (scary) British(Marxist) professor (who looked like a member of the Hell's Angels) to somehow insert the phrase "wanking and weight-lifting" into my introductory comments. "After some wanking and weight-lifting alone in our rooms," (people were very shocked at the deadpan delivery of this phrase by the tiny Canadian) ... I announced my thesis and set off like a racehorse to defend myself (read: I spoke too quickly). For some reason, there was a lot of laughter during my talk, which I choose to interpret as the natural reaction to my satirical commentary on US pop culture... and not to my crude references to and frequent dismissal of the entire European philosophical canon post-enlightenment. Haaa.

I think it went over okay on the whole, though I'm sure my lack of philosophical depth on the notion of time was fairly obvious to the experts in the room. They were kind to me, though, and even though the first inquiry tossed my way asked me to explain how my argument complemented or rejected that of Immanuel Kant's in Pure Reason (fuck) (!!!!), I'd say I still offered something from Indigenous and feminist thought that contributed some speckle to the week's handling of 9/11 discourses. I'd even say I bullshitted my way through Kant with relative eloquence by quoting him and then referring to theorists of supernaturalism who approach the same language from entirely different subject positions. This seemed to puzzle the crowd, which I think may have also impressed them. Nobody hugged me after or gave me any presents (academia sucks!), but I felt relatively heard, and I guess that is what to hope for.

If I could, I'd make my life a conference. I had so many meaningful encounters this week that clarified my personal/professional values and aims. The group plenary alone served to remind me that there are a pile of lefty academics who dedicate their lives to understanding the state of democracy in this world. At a time of neocon backlash in global politics and a time in my studies when I was lacking motivation, I've been refreshed! Now off to London to spread optimism and luv.