thanks(?)giving

Thanksgiving stumps me every year. First I think about the history of the holiday and what and how we are currently celebrating. Then I drown in bliss as I consider how to pen the many things that bring me love and gratitude.


Then I blog about hypocrisy.


I have never seriously resisted the celebration of Thanksgiving. I have never expressed my conflictual feelings about Thanksgiving, not even to my family. I have never responded to a well-wisher with, "Do you know the origin of this holiday?" As such, I have remained far from one of my main political aims: to question and resist colonial practices in everyday life.


In a recent Ms. Magazine post, Natalie Wilson, an avid feminist blogger with a Ph.D. in women's studies, writes "No Thanks to Thanksgiving - Part 2," following up on Robert Jensen's original 2005 post. In the "Part 1" version, Jensen opens boldy: "One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective collective fasting." 


Zing. That ought to get the grannies with turkeys up in arms.


"Moral progress" aside, I think Jensen and Wilson are totally on. They both point out the hugely problematic myths of benevolent empire that circulate through this weekend. My internal contradictions are highlighted, however, by my pang of defensiveness while reading their enlightening posts, even though I agreed with and felt refreshed by the joint argument entirely.


Truthfully, I love Thanksgiving. It's my favourite holiday. You don't give gifts, Jesus isn't risen or born, an angel didn't not kill us, and it's not the birthday of a dead monarch. Unfortunately (note sarcastic triteness), it is the anniversary of the start of the genocide of indigenous people and the celebration of an ever-destructive empire... via gluttony. Somehow we are okay with this?


Beyond the moralizing ideologies about the family and state that so proliferate this feast day, Thanksgiving is a veritable host of ethical frack-ups, not the least of which is our slaughtering of turkeys by the million (for not-so-fun [but not too viscerally jarring] turkey facts, check the Society for the Advancement of Animal Wellbeing). A severe injustice, as discussed in Wilsons' post, is the Thanksgiving LIE presented to children in school curriculum. I remember gleefully tracing my hands onto orange and brown paper, cutting the drawings out and gluing them as "feathers" onto a turkey-coloured paper plate thinking "Oh, the savages in the forest got to eat the well-cooked turkey with the boatmen and priests and everyone was so happy."


...


This Thanksgiving, I spent a truly rewarding evening with an Indian-Canadian family in Montreal. Over turkey and wine, we thought on gratitude. Tears came to my eyes on several occasions. I thought - if only there were more focused dinner gatherings like this, the world would be a better place. It didn't need to be meat and alcohol, and we didn't need to overeat, but we needed to be sitting around a table in a warm home with the sole purpose of celebrating food and gratitude, for it and our company. It can't be about colonialism, but we need spaces like this.


Today I am thankful for the kindness in my life. My parents, cousins, landlord, grocery bagger, bank teller, stranger on craigslist, you name it. Kind to me. I'm privileged. I'm thankful. When I paused to think about it last night, I literally felt my life slow down to a healthier pace.


I look forward to next year when I may move with more confidence toward Jensen's socially just Thanksgiving - helping tell the truth (even when I don't want it to be true as I risk losing the pleasures of this weekend) - "even when it is not welcome." I also hope to take more time for daily reflection on gratitude.

i'd like to be a supermom, please.

While reading an old Tom Brokaw transcript for my comprehensive exam research, the following commonplace utterance jumped off the page.

“My children are young, they’ll never be this age again, and I really don’t want to miss out on that.”

The children will never be any age again. That’s the thing about time.

Yes, it’s cynical and presumptuous of me to assume that watching babies grow is not all that fascinating. Here I stand admitting that my ambivalence may reverse entirely if I pop one out and look into its pudgy little face. At that time, I will likely be arguing for childcare, parental leave, reintegration-to-workforce programs and fully funded transitional post-docs, extension of the tenure clock, and forgiveness of parental gaps from governmental funding bodies like SSHRC.

But what especially bothers me is the context in which this phrase, “I don’t want to miss out,” always floats to the surface. It’s the cited justification when a mother decides to leave the labour force or cut down to part time paid employment. While it may be true for some, how much of this unwillingness on the part of mothers to sacrifice motherhood for the “fast track” (or any track at all) stems from a true longing to be at home with babies, and what part, if any, can be attributed to various social pressures? Further, which moms get to make this choice anyway? Could a black mother on welfare utter this pleasantry and be legitimated? Or would she be seen as craving afternoons of painting her nails in front of soap operas? And does this mother “decide,” or does she default to letting the fast track alone while making peace with herself and others through reliance upon this phrase?

In the Brokaw segment, “Mom at Work,” Tom interviewed a lawyer at Goldman Sachs. She “does not feel the pull” between work and family because she is now working three days a week – a “new version of having it all.” Indeed, she states, “The beauty of my way is that I have everything.” How nice for you, rich white lady. As if “superwoman” were a drive-thru menu item (I will take one of those, supersize it please). Oh right, you’ve never been to a fast-food restaurant because you have a nanny who cooks your meals.

My point is not to gang up on this, or any mother, though. I do not want to be mistaken for attributing blame. What I mean to say is that this heralding of supermom is intensely problematic as it pits welfare mother and supermom against each other, instilling the fear of apocalypse in all of us lest we get out of sync with neoliberal expectations of woman-citizen.

So I’ll put down the sarcasm. As Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels detail in “The Mommy Myth,” the 90s marked an intensified “mommy track” discourse: working outside the home is not all its cracked up to be, feminists, so you’d best retreat to the domestic bliss of home before it’s too late. A brand of so-called postfeminism or difference feminism manufactured the more nurturing, more sensitive, less competitive, natural mother woman, and shoved it onto magazine covers for purchase. It turns out we're not "equal" so let us women do what we do best - nurture (read: clean and feed).

It seems to me that even when the supermom syndrome is criticized in mainstream media (and it’s only criticized in the context of hetero-nuclear family, of course) and we get a glimpse at nearly progressive feminist discourse, moms are guided back to the home. Because guess what? He’ll leave you. Would you rather have a stable nuclear family or a gritty 9-5 and a life of loneliness, financial stress and social apology? In Canada and the US, the idea of an overhaul of family policy is still met with heavy skepticism and resistance. This inevitability-of-business model, and even the praise of efficient business practices for the vitality of a competitive GDP, occurs even among my close male friends who seem like otherwise reasonable humans. I’m not sure what it will take for this historical problem to be seen for the gross injustice that it is.

pontification, democracy and the masculinized space of formal politics

As we enter the final days before the Ontario election, the gendered nature of formal representation explodes my frontal lobe, and not in the good new Feist album(!) way. It feels like a tired complaint at this point, but one I cannot ignore.

Last week I attended the final Ottawa Centre leaders debate at St. Paul's University. Ottawa Centre is the dense middle neighbourhood of downtown, loosely hugged by the Ottawa River and Rideau canal. It's reasonably diverse for Ottawa (though very white and Catholic/Protestant) with a mix of students, professors, artists, professionals, singles, families and a thriving queer community. It's a tight district this year. Typically NDP, but historically Liberal, the two front runners will be hoping their door knocking translates to turnout on October 6th.

10 humans sat on the debate panel, one of whom was a woman. She was running as an independent and was not able to comment on many of the issues raised in questions by the public. Sadly, I'm sure she was read as an ignorant and even apolitical woman. I think she deserves to be praised for running and advancing her platform (linking undergraduate students [in arts] to careers that reflect their skills and interests), but I wish she had bothered to familiarize herself with broader issues so people could not simply write her off.

The leaders debate was one of the most excellent I've seen. It was truly all-candidates and everyone showed up. The four front-runners knew the issues well and avoided cheap shots (for the most part). Not everyone was equally skilled, but that is the exciting and aggravating nature of debate. Questions from the audience and twitter were relevant and challenging, ending with, "When push comes to shove, do you align yourself more with the values of your party or your constituents?" BAM. Elicited decent responses too.

As expected, there were the usual pontificating peripheral candidates. This makes me cringe as I simultaneously value the all-candidates space and desire detailed responses from front-runners. This issue collides with the issue of recruitment for formal politics in general - the people who know the issues intimately are not running (they're busy learning and writing about the issues intimately) and the people who are running should be commended for their bravery and willingness. Remembering this, it's still frustrating to hear a speaker relish in talk time when their comments are unfounded.

Of course this argument would apply to anyone monopolizing time in the public sphere, but it is particularly enraging to me that the sphere is dominated by men. 

Last week, I attended a lecture by a well-known US media theorist from Urbana-Champaign. She analyzed the discourse of historical Trojan condoms advertising, particularly pointing to the marketers' use of pirate imagery in the interwar period to defend the brand's legitimacy in pharmacies when no-name condom brands were selling for lower costs underground.

There were two men in the room and about 20 women. Both men were the only ones to interrupt during her talk, and they were two of four humans to ask questions at the end. One simply launched into questions (that were mostly comments) as soon as the floor was opened. This will not come as a surprise to anyone, and I can already predict a myriad of justifications for both the men's and women's behaviours in these and other settings. Regardless, the dynamic is unacceptable. I had things to say, but lost motivation in the corrupted space. I darted glares at one of the men. Sure it was immature, but I've run out of patience for finding ways to be productive in such settings. Next time, I may scream, "BE MORE SELF-AWARE."

One of my major frustrations in life is the masculine nature of formal Canadian politics. I've resorted to finding hope in voting on Thursday for Kevin O'Donnell, a geeky white man who likes public transit. Hopefully with more Kevin O'Donnell's in the house, there will arrive more women.

the night(?) and danger(?)

Freelancer updates on Palestine, Occupy Wall Street and the Ontario Election have distracted me from putting typeface to screen lately. There’s a united voice out there that seems to be getting louder. Feeling the pulse and getting excited for the first time since May 2 and Jack Layton’s passing.

Last week, I attended Ottawa's Take Back The Night (La rue, la nuit, les femmes sans peur) with some of my feminist posse. For those unfamiliar, TBTN is a march for safe streets that (allegedly, but not according to wikipedia) began in Philadelphia in 1975 after a young woman microbiologist was murdered on her walk home. In 1976, an International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women culminated in a march in Brussels.

The event has carried the typical “women’s only(?)” controversy over the years, and each year, organizers field dialogue on whether or not to welcome men. Traditionally, the marches are women-only, but the discussion varies on how to include men. The purpose of the walk varies contextually as well, as some marches include domestic violence under the broad VAW umbrella, while others are more directly tackling rape and safe streets, and even the right for women to walk alone in public.

Admittedly, I find the collision of slogans in Canadian walks a little emotionally confusing. “Hey, hey mister, get your hands off of my sister,” is absolutely ridiculous to me (no wonder men are scared of us), as is the tried and true, “However we dress, wherever we go, yes means yes and no means no,” and even the more-to-the-point, “2-4-6-8, no more date rape.” We are not cheerleaders. And it's not like we can easily shout, "Hey, hey mister, you may touch me where and when I say, and not feel at liberty to access my body as though it were an object. But mix it up a bit: sometimes just catch me off guard and kiss me, and sometimes ask politely if you may kiss me, and sometimes take control when I falsely protest as I am socialized to be gatekeeper and I really don't want to be, and other times when I protest, it is certainly not false, and you'd better listen, and you'd better not get me to that point of anger in the first place..."

Why not march in silence with candles as and for the women who are sexually assaulted and murdered daily in our streets and around the world?

I marched in relative silence with my friends, reflected on what we were doing as women and feminists, and soaked in the stares and honks of onlookers. Activists against segregation in the march are met with considerable backlash on this night. I usually favour inclusivity, but I do appreciate how at the Ottawa event, men are asked to walk behind women or line the streets in solidarity and are not generally seen among the ranks of marching women. This of course brings up the intensely problematic reification of gender binaries, which I generally resist. But for such an event as Take Back The Night, where the purpose is to highlight the particularly gendered nature of volatile bodies and street (sexual) violence, I think the symbolism is important. I think those who identify as men should be involved. At the back.

At one point in the march, there was a throng of young boys walking behind me, screaming (shrieking!) at the top of their lungs. Would it not have been so painfully ironic given our cries for non-violence, I would have stiff-armed them. They really did pollute the space.

As I conclude, I realize I set out to critique how the event was organized (who gave speeches, what did they say, etc.). Maybe it’s not the organization I have a problem with, but the way we conceptualize “safe” streets and “rape” and “power” that distances us from what I believe would be meaningful and provocative forms of protest. Paralysis by sloganitus at its finest.

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.