Reading List

So, I'm reading this bizarre pop-philosophy spin on X-Men.

Hopefully, it'll be good fodder for blogging. Now if only the migraines would stop...

Dear Christ.

Sure, I'll laugh out loud.

You'll laugh out loud when you watch this trailer for the new series Only in a Woman's World.

Hm!

I'm reading transcripts from the DOMA debates, and, of course, I can't help seeing the parallels between Marvel's various registration acts and the DOMA debates.

I copy from the Senate Debates (09/10/1996, 104th Congress-2nd Session, Sen. Trent Lott R-MS speaking):

This is not prejudiced legislation. It is not mean-spirited or exclusionary. It is a preemptive measure to make sure that a handful of judges, in a single State, cannot impose an agenda upon the entire Nation.
The Defense of Marriage Act is not an attack upon anyone. It is, rather, a response to an attack upon the institution of marriage itself.
This matter has received so much attention in the national press, that everyone should know by now what the problem is and why we need to pass DOMA, as it is usually referred to.
The problem is the serious possibility--some say even the strong likelihood--that the State court system of Hawaii would recognize as a legal union, equivalent or identical to marriage, a living arrangement of two persons of the same sex.
If such a decision affected only Hawaii, we could leave it to the residents of Hawaii to either live with the consequences or exercise their political rights to change things. But a court decision would not be limited to just one State. It would raise threatening possibilities in other States because of article IV, section 1 of the Constitution.

Hm, sound familiar? I copy from X-Men (2000):

Senator Kelly: You're evading the real question. Three words: Are mutants dangerous?
Doctor Jean Grey: That's an unfair question, Senator Kelly. After all, the wrong person behind the wheel of a car can be dangerous.
Senator Kelly: Well, we do license people to drive.
Doctor Jean Grey: But not to live.

Maybe the parallel's a stretch, but, for me, it's there, as clear as a bullet. And I think Mr. Lott and Mr. Kelly would have similar kinds of difficulty specifically answering why they felt uniquely positioned to be legislating for the safety of all Americans.

The registration acts, unlike DOMA, stirred up some complications. According to proponents, it was to promote the "safety" of all those innocents. Yes, true. Provide the government with a list of potentially dangerous people and you just may be able to prevent the deaths of "innocents" across the country. But it's those words: "potentially" and "may." How many of those with superpowers turned out to be dangerous? In the comic books? I would imagine only those necessary to provide interesting stories.

I'm more interested in the thought of extrapolating out to consider a realistic world where people actually had special abilities: who would turn out to be dangerous? How could we prevent it? Would demanding that superpowered people stand guard over the innocents be a fair demand? Do these people function outside of the law-or should they conform to some sort of vigilante code (e.g., no killing)? How would these people be funded? How would these people be evaluated?

Various authors have weighed in, ranging from cock-eyed altruism to sinister mistrust. Funding: private fortunes, the government, or theft. Evaluation: volunteerism, recruitment via appealing to a universal notion of "humanity" (or..."mutantity"), brain washing, or kidnapping. Who's to say that any of these is more heroic or more villainous? For example, government funded brain washing of superpowered children to produce an army (ahem, ahem, Weapon X anyone?) that protected us against a new 9/11 would certainly gain a lot of support from those invested in national security (which, I imagine, isn't limited to right wing, neocon crazies). After all, The Watchmen's Dr. Manhattan (the only one with actual superpowers) was the US's shield against possible Soviet nuclear attack, and no one argued with that despite the fact that he and Silk Spectre were all but kept prisoner in a government facility.

A lot to consider.

The first step

So, I'm reading The Autobiography of Malcom X, and hope to post something intelligible on it soon. Who knows when...

Until then, I figured I would start with the most basic thing surrounding heroes/villains: superpowers. Seems simple enough, right? Let's hope that lays the groundwork for a better discussion.

Heroes

Heroes and Villains. I can't get my mind off of them lately. It probably has something to do with seeing Watchmen (good, but not for the faint of heart) and the first X-Men (lighter, but no less heavy if probed deeply) film back-to-back. Curiously, my thoughts, re: activisms, are also fairly relevant.

All my thoughts boil down to one thing: if you had extraordinary abilities (and, yes, even "abilities" that aren't really abilities, a la Batman), what would you do with them?

The sheer range of answers, I think, aborts a simple "hero" or "villain" dichotomy. Would all those invested in personal gain be necessarily interested in creating collateral damage? And what about those who would fight (so-called) criminals--what about the property destruction inevitably accumulated at the hands of "doin' good"?

Yet, inevitably, we construct a sharp division between "hero" and "villain," right? Perhaps because (as my undergraduate "upbringing" would have me believe) we need one to define the other? Certainly that must be true, 'cause heroes need somebody to fight as much as the villains do too.

I think I'm going to dedicate the next few posts to this topic. It's a lot to sort out, and I, of course, want it as linear as possible.

PS: Search "hero" on Google's image search. And then "villain." Notice anything?

Papers? Who wants those?

I enjoy social work school. I do! Rarely for the readings, but mostly for the thought candy distributed in class discussion. I credit others for challenging me and thereby expanding my awareness of other viewpoints, but, occasionally, the other students (and even professors) just piss me off. Again, still good, but...more emotional? But is anyone really surprised that I'm emotional?

Both my classes today did a great job outlining what constitutes effective activism. Joy, joy, joy! I'm always so freaking glad when someone else deigns to inform me what's the "effective" way to do anything. Of course, being the very liberal people that we social workers are, we believe that the most effective way to achieve change was to (A) achieve "buy-in" from a wide range of community members, workers, and even those opposed to an initiative and (B) legislate and enforce the change.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Maybe something's tickling your brain about either (A) who the heck outlined that this was the most effective avenue for change? or, perhaps, (B) what about all those protests I went to in college? Tried as I might (and, believe me, I am probably the worst person at holding back my opinions), I just couldn't let it go. Just couldn't. In Class 1, I raised my hand when asked to describe "other" forms of activism (great, Madame Professor, let's other these forms straight out the gate!) and I offered that radical, more "in-your-face" activism was effective.

But, wait! Apparently, that's just not effective. You close people off. Opponents and potential supports are just alienated. No will talk about anything and we'll all just run around smashing windows and throwing things at cops! OH NOES! THE AGONY! What shall I do with my well-laid out legislative agenda? Wipe my pretty bottom with it?

I hope I gave a valiant effort to expand our definition of activism by asking questions about how we measure "effectiveness" (according to whom?) and sharing personal experiences, but I doubt it. Mostly 'cause I was just mad--and when I get mad, I tend to just get sassy. The "it" of it, though (at least in my mind): radical activism (OK, let's pretend that's even close to an acceptable categorization) has a very needed place in the change continuum. Even if we just take them at face value: the grab people's attention. Sit-ins, rioting, speak outs, vandalism, standing in front of tanks, and even whipping out snarky comments to people who disagree with you in a confrontational way all GET SOMEONE STARTLED. Let's go from there, huh?

Activisms aren't required to make sense (hey, guys and gals, I'd bet some person, somewhere would look at a "progressive" policy agenda and say, "That doesn't make sense. Ho. Ho. Ho."). They're required (at least, I think) to get an issue public and, hopefully, make change the issue. Why, then, is there only one "effective" method of activism?

In Class 2, the professor was a little bolder. She directly asked: does anything think that there would be an issue for which you would engage in radical action? I was the only person who raised my hand. I hope (really, truly) that I'm not the only one who thinks that. I hope (perhaps in a fit of naivete) that, in fact, my fellow social workers would radically act in some situation. They just don't know it yet? Maybe?

Now: a paper to write and it's 8:34. Awesome.

Disclaimer's abound!: I always hesitate to write about things said in class (am I breaking some sort of confidentiality?), though I hope any one of my classmates would be able to stand up and be counted for her opinion. Also, keep in mind that while I advocate radical activism, I was the person who tried to keep Lambda's funding away from the Sex Worker's Art Show because I was afraid of the threat's made by WM's administration. I was overruled, called a "backstabber" and "betrayer to my community," and resigned my position as treasurer a week later.

I got nothin'

Oh my dear, sweet, holy baby JesusBuddhaAllah:

http://www.concealedcampus.org/

No words. None! Zip!

Wait, what?

I said I'd update, re: complicating Jindal. I don't think I will. Needless to say: My criticisms of Jindal are (and can be) countered by similar (and equally valid and comprehensible) critiques of Obama. I pose the question: what, then, makes it OK to hold up one and not the other?

Party faith? (I was never a Democrat)

Blind faith? (Hm, possibly)

Society faith? (Hm, doubtful)

I dunno. You?

Ah-ha!

After watching Bobby Jindal (a.k.a. the Oust spray after a dirty fart) respond to Prez Obama's congressional address, I seethe. I rage. I sass. I hate it. I hate him. I hate all those who fight hard, complicated plans with sunshine up my fanny--on either side of the divide.

Yes, Bobby, please tell me how I can do anything because some magical America fairy waved her wand at me and said, "Go. Be Awesome." Please tell me more about your fetus-life as your mother's "preexisting" condition and how your blind faith supports your forcing your God down the throats of children. Please tell me how my American spirit helps me look out for other people, like those poor boatmen in the face of that nasty beaurocrat.

Go. Fuck. Yourself. You masturbatory rag.

Most of all, though. I fear him. I fear him because his message is so seductive. It's easy to believe a good-looking governor tell me what's really the problem (it's those beaurocrats again!) and that my gentle American spirt (which, after all, saw the end of the Soviet menace) will overcome.

I fear that people don't pay attention to the fact that he, and others like him, say nothing. Zip. Zilcho. Yes, OK, there were pretty words about my American spirit and some cute stories about Katrina and how Louisiana continues to triumph over Katrina (PS: Hey, Bobby, what ever happened to Mississippi? Or Alabama? Man, I guess it sure is easy to forget all those houses because they never had a Bourbon street, huh?). And those pretty words will make them ignore the fact that after you turn off your TV and reenter the world of reality, that our world is full of shit, evil, and people who will just as soon run your fat ass over with their boat as soon as help you in it.

I want to drag him out of his comfortable governor's mansion and through the hospital. Here, Mr. Jindal and various other ninny-heads, look at this woman. She has three easily managed conditions that, combined, make it impossible for her to work. Her husband makes 22500 MAX a year. She has a child who is gifted and may not be able to stay in school because she can't afford transportation costs. She's applied for SSI, SSD, Medical Assistance, Food Stamps, and TANF. And been denied. She's been on the waiting list for AdultBasic for three years and won't hear back because there are 180000 people in front of her. She must run to Canada to get her preventative medications. She cannot have a regular doctor. And she can't join her husband's insurance plan because they will take too much of his pay, and she won't be able to afford food for her daughter. She doesn't want to be on welfare, but she's been on it before. And she cried so much, she threw up.

Look at her. Now. Where is her American spirit? In her puke?

Every time I hear a speech like that, I fear. I fear that he will drown out stories I see every day because it's easier to believe that we're all really good people crawling into our Sertas at night and all those people on welfare roles are there because they want to steal someone else's hard-earned money. I fear that when Nixon's silent majority wakes up, they will find that they've created a world where I can't exist because I want welfare bigger, badder, and meaner than it's ever been before. Will they miss me (of course, I mean the metaphorical "me." They'd miss the real me-after all, who's going to provide all that clever word play?)? Or will they ignore the fact that I'm rotting somewhere because they don't have to sift through puke to find one of "those" people's American spirit?

I hope Obama triumphs, and I hope Louisiana has the good sense to swallow Mr. Jindal in a bog.

Must...

I really want to write something. Can't. Why?

Dunno.

So, I said I was gonna do it...

And now I'm gonna.

I begin with an excerpt (as we all know, none of my ideas originate internally): I felt little when my hair was gone down there and I couldn’t help talking in a baby voice and the skin got irritated and even calamine lotion wouldn’t help it. (Vagina Monologues, "Hair")

Just why have I co-opted Eve Ensler's work? We all know that I don't have a vagina (no, seriously), but I find interesting parallels with my recent shaving experiences. Last...Saturday (?) I engaged in the HOUR AND A HALF LONG shaving process at the possibility of having a threesome with a good-lookin' dude from Austin. The threesome never happened (much to several people's disappointment), yet I was left with the look of prepubescent boy.

Why, on God's green earth, did I do this?

Admittedly, I like the look. I like how it feels--in fact, shaving almost always make me more aware of my sexuality than when I harvest a vertible jungle between my thighs. But I hate the act of shaving. It's incredibly disempowering. All that hair, all that part of my (my "leaf around the flower") flushed down the drain while I'm sweating and bent in awkward positions. It. Effing. Sucks.

For a while, I promised myself I would never do it. "Anybody would just have to get used to it," I told myself. Yet the more and more gay men friends I acquired, the more I felt the pressure to shave. And I caved. The first time I did it, it took nearly two hours. Honestly, I thought it would never end. Plus, it was in the middle of summer. I would sweat, which would sting and burn--essentially urging me to take my everything off and sit in a tub of cold water until my dick fell off. I fantasized about that while I hobbled bow-legged down long DC blocks. Ugh.

Why do I still do this? Surely, I'm strong enough to resist some silly social pressure, right? Right?! Or is it even that simple? I've admitted to enjoying the end-result, but the actual process is what bites. Maybe if I just get it all lasered off...

Hair...Down There...

I'm going to write about shaving my pubes. You just wait-I know you're on the edge of your seat.

I was going to rant...

Instead I just had sex.

More later?

To the big city

I'm often asked "How do you like Philly?"

I always say (somewhat snarkily, somewhat faux-mysteriously), "I have a complicated relationship with this city." And it's true. I don't really like Philadelphia, yet something about it jives. This is an odd town, and rarely do I think of it as a "city" despite all evidence to the contrary. Most of the time, it seems like a lotta rowhomes, too many cars, and a high mortality rate. I often think that Philadelphia is New York's redheaded step-sibling who everyone thinks has some sort of cognitive impairment, but we're all just too polite to come right out and say it.

I hate where I live (kiddies: never sign a lease without having a savvy city-native to help you), but it's cheap, I've only been chased once, and I'm moving at the beginning of the summer. I'm actually looking forward to living above an Indian restaurant (after all, who doesn't like the smell of curry in the morning?) and I want all the chaos that makes a city a living thing.

This post brought to you by: my impending visit to New York for the afternoon. And the letter "P."

Killin' time, not trees

So, I often have these thought experiments. Oh my, yes, they are terribly geeky, but they're there. And seeing as how I've spent the last two and a half hours fretting about what I'm going to do in New York tomorrow, I figure I'll play one of them out here.

This is about superheroes. In a recent Facebook Note of mine, I wrote, "I love super heroes, and secretly wish that I had super powers only so I can finally find out what being a hero is really like. I imagine that there's a lot more pain and I wonder who actually pays to repair all that senseless property damage." I meant it. My super powers of choice? Empathy and emotion control.

OK, sounds wimpy, right? True, but think about it. Think about the Hulk on a rampage: he's crunching cars, smashing buildings, and walking so hard he might as well be Galactus coming to devour the Earth. He's terrifying-all testosterone and pulsating muscles. Who do you send in? Do you send in the guy with super strength, invulnerability, and really tight clothes? No, silly. Because, though it'd be a helluva battle, you'd want to neutralize him as soon as possible. You send in your psychic. You send in me-a skinny white kid who knows the Hulk's Achilles heel: make him unangry. Suddenly, the Hulk ain't nothing but a box of fluffy kitties.

Kick. Ass.

I'm fascinated with super heroes. What makes someone a hero? Is it willing to die for an idea? Is it the preservation of life over its destruction? What about property damage--if I'm taking out a bad guy and destroy a few buildings in the process, am I still a hero? I'm constantly amazed by the sheer flexibility of the term, especially with the modern introduction of the anti-hero who, although he does good, could potentially destroy and much as he saved. It's also really neat (for me) to place characters like Prof. X and Magneto on the same coin. Yes, they're tactics and end-goals are different, but they're both fighting for their people right? I go back and forth about who I'd join. Magneto, if he didn't insist on losing so much, tends to be the more attractive choice. Freaky, huh?

That's the other thing! What if villains actually won? After all, Doctor Doom has Latveria. Lex Luther was a US President. It. Just. Never. Lasts. But what if it did? What if they actually conquered the world? I always turn to the haunting ending of Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (OK, so not exactly a comic book, but bear with me in this similarly geeky vein). The emperor says that once the Sith triumph, the galaxy "will have peace." Peace! Of all things! Not endless wealth, unlimited poon, or all the bad ass starships you would ever want (though no one said they never got all that)--he wanted peace. That stuck with me. We all advocate for peace, but what if the "good guys" were really fighting for continuous flux, which essentially meant continuous danger for all those innocents who just wanted to pop out a couple of kids and die on some moisture farm? Could heroes survive in a world that didn't need them? Or, would they slowly start dying out, like the Aes Sedai in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series?

More on this later. I have to teach a Pilates class now.

Because all the cancer patients don't want to talk to me...

I'm filling my time posting here because (A) I'm waiting for return phone calls (don't they know that I'm important?) and (B) once those calls get back to me, I have hours of SITTING ON MY ASS to do today.

Anyhoo...

Periodically, the INANE student meetings that we have at the hospital bear thoughtful fruit. I should've bought a lottery card yesterday, 'cause it seemed to be one of those good days.

One of my fellow students is following a case that I saw months ago in the Ethics Committee. Without violating HIPPA regs, I'll sketch just the barest bones: a young woman (19) is pregnant with her second child. In early November, she began having some sort of bizarre brain issues and is now in a persistent vegetative state with slim recovery chances. At the time of the Ethics Committee meeting (mid-November), she was 15 weeks along (well within the state guidelines to perform an abortion) and her mother and sister came forward saying that she did not want to have the child and asked to have the fetus aborted. The patient is not married and the father is currently in jail serving an indeterminate amount of time for...something. The docs refused to abort the fetus, pointing to some mysterious (and unsubstantiated) rumor that there was some documentation from her prior hospitalization (at a small, Catholic hospital in Trenton) that said she wanted to keep the child. As it turns out, there is no such documentation (it was actually just a misread nursing note that soapboxed about the evils of abortion). So, the Ethics Committee advised that the docs perform the abortion and move on.

They still didn't. In fact, they asked legal to investigate the situation further. And they did. Slowly. Here's the legal situation: the docs need the mother's consent to perform the abortion, which they can't obtain because she's unresponsive. Typically, they would turn to the next of kin who, according to PA law, is the mother, but the docs insist on ignoring her because she "can't be trusted" and has a "history of noncompliance and difficulty." In order, therefore, for the mother to legally make decisions regarding medical care, she would have to file for guardianship, which takes about 4-6 weeks to even file, let alone arrange a court date. This was in January. Currently, the mother is 24 weeks along, just a week over the legal limit to perform an abortion. Now, the fetus is viable, no abortion will take place, and the mother has to make decisions regarding the quality of care that the docs must provide (i.e., will there be an emergency Cesarean if the mother codes?).

I. Flipped. My. Shit.

First: So, now the mother is capable of making medical decisions whereas previously she wasn't? Second: According to the docs, the fetus has been exposed to possibly terratogenic medications that were sustaining the mother's life. There's little hope for the mother's recovery and, if the fetus is carried to term and makes a successful entry into the world, its grandmother may be asked to take care of a potentially cognitively and/or physically impaired infant for which she may be grossly unprepared to do. What systems are in place to educate the grandmother on how to care for this infant? Is she financially capable of doing so? ALSO, she has to care for the 2-year old whose mother is in a coma and has to explain complicated life/death/coma issues. Who's helping her with that? Third: Maybe the mother has a "history of noncompliance and difficulty" because she's been dragged through the institutional hellhole that is a hospital. Why would she trust and/or follow up with people who haven't listened to her throughout this ENTIRE ordeal? Has anyone attempted to reach out to her and build trust/a positive relationship? It sure don't sound like it 'cause we're just a willing to write her off as an (another) poor, ignorant black woman. Fourth: THERE WASN'T A LEGAL ISSUE BEFORE. WHY WAS THERE SUDDENLY ONE? What checked the "OK" box that justified this sequence of unnecessary action? The mother, by law, was the next logical health care representative. Why couldn't we just trust that she knew what her daughter wanted? Couldn't that have avoided all this nonsense?

I was told to get off my soapbox. Clearly, I'm still on it. I leave those questions to you all.

To begin again.

I just wanted to be cool like you. So, there. We'll see how long this lasts. I'm hoping to side-step embarassing long waxings about my feelings. I do that enough in practice class.

Let's start with this:

I first read David Brooks in the NYTimes about a week ago where he praised the sanctity of institutions. And, why yes, I had to resist barfing all over the computer (after all, who really wants to clean up puke anyway-didn't we do that enough in undergrad?), but, somehow, he hooked me. I looked him up on Wikipedia and read him named a "third wave feminist." Now, normally, I trust the good scholars at Wikipedia, but this time, I just had a big ol' case of WTF. Somehow, a man advocating (poorly) for women's rights earned him the title "third waver." Seriously, Wikipedia? Seriously?

Then, perhaps to make matters worse, I saw that he supported gay marriage. I know, I know. WHAT? Not only that, BUT WHAT? So, of course, I had to read this column of his, scouring through years of neocon (yet third wave?) hogwash and found this gem.

An excerpt for those who appreciate excerpts:

The conservative course is not to banish gay people from making such commitments. It is to expect that they make such commitments. We shouldn't just allow gay marriage. We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity.

First of all, Mr. Brooks seems to have the power to determine the course of all conservative thinking (gee, what a gift!). Second of all...uh...I really don't know where to go from there. I spend a lot (perhaps too much?) time thinking about marriage and what that means for me. It's complicated and muddy. I turn to you, my readers for help.