Linking Time! Also: I Will Bring Shame Upon My Family

This morning, I woke up full of dread and shame. Bleary and haggard, I stumbled toward my computer screen.

"No," I muttered. "I didn't do that. I would never do that. I must have dreamed it."

But I was wrong. There, before my eyes, was a pale-blue Safari window, glowing with menace.

"Holy fuck," I said. "I just wrote 3,000 words about Valley of the Dolls."

On that note: it's Linking Time! My most favorite time of all! (Note: this is a lie. My most favorite time is actually Smoking Time, but I am going to give that up - again - in approximately 48 hours. I will be in Ohio, so you won't have to witness my Neely O'Hara-like withdrawal unless you are a member of my immediate family. If you are, well, sucks to be you, I guess!) Here are some people who are much better at blogging than I am:

Man Madness is the single greatest use of the Internet, whether or not you live in DC. Which is manlier - the FBI or the CIA? Place your bets now!

Mainstreaming feminism: it turns out that's a problem! This is because it allows Sarah Palin to cuddle and/or cash in on the movement like it's an adorable Downsy baby. Also, things only get absorbed into the mainstream if they're not that threatening in the first place, so feminism is selectively mainstreamed? And the good stuff about the movement then becomes invisible? See also: sex-positive movement, relationship of Sex & the City to.

You guys, the military is sad and scary. (Have you read Our Guys yet? If not, do it. Warning: it is the only book that ever made me vomit. Aside from Atlas Shrugged, I mean.)

Other things that are sad and scary include: violence against sex workers. The Good Guys trial reports are fascinating. It's like watching a really good procedural, except that Amanda Hess actually writes about strip club workers like they're people, instead of Symbols of Decadence and/or body-count increasing devices. Revolutionary!

Oh, hey, sheep people!

I read Emily Gould's blog. This rambling, ambivalent, occasionally mean, often sad piece - which touches on Emma Goldman,* "Song for Sharon," Prop 8, love, solitude, and that damn Beyonce song - is a good example of why I do that.

Some other people, who are funny and smart, are complaining about the Beyonce song, because they think it's kind of regressive, what with the forcing men to marry you and give you presents for sex and whatnot. Personally, I feel that the song's main theme ("don't be mad when you see that he want it / if you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it") is simply another way of saying, "if you were really that invested in our relationship, perhaps you could have made that clear BEFORE WE BROKE UP AND I STARTED MAKING OUT WITH OTHER PEOPLE," which is a sentiment for the ages.

Now that I'm defending Beyonce, I must also tell you that I read a Bukowski poem that I liked! What has become of my standards, I ask you?

* However, I must respectfully point out that quoting the Goldman piece without qualifying it is objectively kind of bonkers. People do this a lot! Often in Women's Studies classes! Goldman made quite a few points in that piece, many of which were specific to her day and age. For example, she writes that marriage may come about because of love, whereas love does not come about because of marriage, a point which is no longer even vaguely controversial, and which is the precise reason that people tend to live together before getting hitched. She also argues against compulsory marriage, marriage as the goal of a woman's life, and prohibitions against sex outside of marriage - and all of these pressures still exist, but are considerably less powerful now, given the fact that all but the most conservative people resist or ignore them. Goldman also speaks out against marriage as an economic arrangement while completely undervaluing the presence of women in the workplace. If you have no income of your own, you might have to stay with someone who treats you badly out of sheer financial necessity; if you have a job, an income, and savings, however, then you get to stay for precisely as long as the marriage meets your needs. (Hopefully it lasts forever, but, you know, things happen.) At the time Goldman wrote this piece - when you were expected to marry someone without sleeping with him, living with him, or even knowing him very well, and were also encouraged to give up your entire career once the wedding had taken place - some of what she had to say was smart and relevant, if overblown; now, however, people tend to quote the piece as a support for their vague "marriage-is-bad" arguments, which rest mostly on the fact that their parents were fucked up or their exes were mean and they're consequently scared of commitment. This is quite another thing. Anyway, end of post derailment.

Little Women: There Will Be Germans. Oh, and Pap.

Let me preface this with a warning: there will be numerous spoilers for the plot to Little Women.

SPOILER: there is no plot to Little Women.

Not a plot in sight! The girls grow up, get married, have babies, and sometimes die. (SPOILER!) Then again, if you are a girl, you know this already.

For those who were spared: Little Women is about four sisters, the Marches, who live in Civil War-era... oh, let's say New England. You would think it would be impossible to tell a story about Civil War-era American life without really mentioning slavery, or the Civil War! You would be wrong. This probably says something about the domestic sphere vs. the public sphere, or the female experience of war, or about trying to create a sense of common national identity in 1868 (they do hate on the British a bit), but it also says something else: B-O-R-I-N-G.

The March sisters are poor, although it's a Jane Austen kind of poverty, consisting as it does of having only one servant (horrors!) and having to take up genteel professions. They spend a lot of time telling anecdotes, having adventures (like that one time Jo goes over to the neighbor's house, or that other time Jo goes over to the neighbor's house, or that time when, you won't believe it, Jo actually goes over to the neighbor's house - man, these girls are crazy!) about which they tell anecdotes, and, of course, extracting a moral out of every single anecdote that they tell. In the absence of any discernible conflict, Alcott relies on the time-honored practice of separating her female cast into opposed yet complimentary Personalities (TM).

Let's see, you've got the sheltered one:

The boyish one:


The annoying, self-centered, if-she-mentions-clothing-one-more-time-I'll-smack-her one:

And the old one:

The book is basically devoted to explorations of how these Personalities(TM) develop, make choices, get married (or die, SPOILER), and learn life lessons. If you do not shudder at the phrase "life lessons," as I do, it has evidently been a while since you read Little Women.

I am being negative. That is not nice. So, let me throw in something positive right up front: I think it is very impressive that Louisa May Alcott managed to write an enduringly popular novel, since she apparently never spoke to another human being in her life. In every scene in which the girls are gathered, the dialogue follows a distinctly unnerving pattern, which goes like this:

Meg says something,
then Jo says something,
then Beth says something,
then Amy says something else.

The order sometimes varies, but the weird spelling-bee effect of the whole arrangement never dies. Let's not even touch on the things that they actually say. ("All the married people take hands and dance around the husband and wife, as the Germans do, while we bachelors and spinsters prance in couples outside!" I've never had a wedding, but if I had, and the guests had suggested "prancing" or doing anything "as the Germans do," I would have closed the reception hall down and sent their gifts back unopened. Not the March sisters. They love German prancing. They prance the shit out of that German business. They are prancing balls over at the March place. )

So: let's rattle off the list, shall we?

Meg March, the oldest, is boring. She wants to get married and have babies, and then she does. The dude - a German tutor - is poor, which is kind of a problem, except that it isn't. So, um, check!

Beth March is the simple child that they keep locked in the basement. She's so shy that she can't talk to anyone outside of her immediate family, she rarely leaves the house, and her only interests in life are her piano, her many cats, and her collection of creepy, disfigured dolls.

"There were six dolls to be taken up and dressed every morning, for Beth was a child still, and loved her pets as well as ever; not one whole or handsome one among them... [as one had] no top to its head, she tied on a neat little cap, and, as both arms and legs were gone, she hid these deficiencies by folding it in a blanket, and devoting her best bed to this chronic invalid. If anyone had known the care lavished on that dolly, I think it would have touched their hearts... She brought it bits of bouquets; she read to it, took it out to breathe the air, hidden under her coat; she sung it lullabys, and never went to bed without kissing its dirty face."

Boy, that sure touched my heart... WITH EVIL! SHE'S EVIL! Anyway, Beth dies. There is some business involving tending to the poor and a lingering case of scarlet fever. After wasting away for approximately seventy-five percent of the book (and taking lots of belladonna for her health) she finally kicks off.

This leaves us with two well-drawn characters in the book, Jo and Amy. Before we get into that, however, let us pause to consider the dark, throbbing heart of Little Women: Marmee.

Marmee is the girls' mother. She is terrifying. When you live at Marmee's house, you don't get presents for Christmas: you get inspirational Christian tracts. Actually, you get the same tract, purchased four times. Marmee could have gotten you other presents, but preferred to give you the same incredibly disappointing item over and over, just to rub it in your face. You don't get breakfast; you give your breakfast away to the German family down the block. (Again with the Germans!) Do you miss your dad, who is away in the war? Well, Marmee has a story for you. It's about the time she met a guy whose four sons were killed in that very war, and how you are all selfish shits because your father isn't dead. One of the most heartwarming/creepy scenes in literature comes when Marmee advises Jo on how to deal with emotions:

"I am angry nearly every day of my life, Jo; but I have learned not to show it; and I still hope to learn not to feel it... I've learned to check the nasty words that rise to my lips; and when I feel that they mean to break out against my will, I just go away a minute, and give myself a shake, for being so weak and so wicked."

That's right, Jo - just swallow it, SWALLOW IT, push it all down into your gut until it becomes a black cyst of rage threatening to burst at any moment, pulsating with hatred for yourself, your husband, your disgusting spawn, and god WHO KNOWS WHAT you could do when it's finally unleashed, WHO KNOWS, you could just TAKE THE BELLADONNA and DROP IT INTO THEIR SOUP, they'd never suspect you, no-one would suspect you, who would suspect DEAR OLD MARMEE, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA.

Back to Jo and Amy. They are the two most disappointing daughters, and therefore the most interesting. Amy is every girl you've ever hated. Her priorities include (1) her hair, (2) her clothes, and (3) being popular, which has a lot to do with hair and clothes, she would like you to know. She's spiteful, manipulative, shallow, none too bright, and overwhelmingly fond of herself. This isn't a hard character to draw, but it is surprising how well the portrayal holds up, with certain little details (after the girls get the books, Amy's only reaction is "I'm glad mine is blue," as if she can't find anything worth remarking on other than the color of the binding, because, you know, it's a book) seeming true even when very little else does. It is easy, even enjoyable, to dislike Amy as her creator intended - not least because she is mean to Jo.

About Jo: oh! My God! There is so much going on there! Endless papers have been written about Jo - as feminist, as queer, as portrait of the artist, as tragic figure - and, to be frank, you need a lot of papers to sort Jo out, for Jo is complex. Here are a few things you need to know: (a) Jo refers to herself as "the man of the house," and responds to someone saying "he's a stubborn fellow" with "so am I," (b) Jo says she will never get over being born a girl and not a boy, (c) Jo's "gentlemanly" or "boyish" demeanor is referred to throughout the book, (d) Jo uses slang and other forms of language ("can't do that" instead of "I can't do that," for example) that are gendered male, (e) Jo is disgusted by the prospect of marriage, and when a boy kisses her, she backs away in a manner that is not at all flirtatious, but actually freaked out, (f) Jo insists that the boy address her as "my dear fellow," (g) Jo insists that her income will be earned rather than married into, and that her happiness will depend on her professional success, and (h) Jo gives up all of this by the end of the book, and it is crushingly sad.

The one thing that everyone remembers about the second half of Little Women, aside from Beth finally dying, is that Jo turns down her friend Laurie's proposal of marriage and ends up with some ancient German (!!!!!) who convinces her that she is a shitty writer and should give it up, even though she is well-published by that point. Laurie ends up married to Amy. This pisses people off to no end. What no-one remembers is that Jo never had any romantic interest in Theodore "The Fellows Called Me Dora" Laurence. She wanted him to marry Meg. When he kissed her, she apologized and said they shouldn't drink together any more. The Laurie and Amy thing came about because Louisa May Alcott wanted to annoy people; she was incensed that, after Jo had explicitly stated her distaste for marriage (and possibly dudes?) 5,000 times, her readers kept writing her letters that went like "OMG can Jo & Laurie get married they r meant 4 each other!!!!" Laurie marries the most insufferable March sister for the same reason that Jo gives up her career to get with the AntiSexy: Louisa May Alcott was fucking with you. You wanted Jo and Laurie to get married? Fine! They do! To the worst imaginable partners! Suck on that.

What stands out about this story is that, unlike any of the jokes in Little Women, it is actually kind of funny. In fact, it raises the question of how a woman willing to pull this sort of stunt could tolerate the pious, mealy-mouthed, intolerable dreck shoveled out by noted author Louisa May Alcott. Here is a pretty interesting piece about Jo March and young women's literature in the 19th century. It includes this little gem:

Alcott herself saw the book as a biographical and moral story about female coming-of-age, and feared its didactic, moral overtones rendered it boring (295). In response to one of the energetic young admirers who wrote to her praising the novel, Alcott replied, "Though I do not enjoy writing 'moral tales' for the young, I do it because it pays well" (Showalter 56-7). While she enjoyed the financial power (and to some degree the public recognition) that Little Women brought, the biographical evidence extant suggests that Alcott found little pleasure in the actual writing of the novel and tended to dismiss it, as well as the similarly-configured stories she produced after it for the same audience, as "moral pap" (Saxton 16).

Okay. You know what? I like this woman.

Demographics, WOO

I know! I am crazy with the numbers lately! This is because I have no idea how statistics are compiled, and therefore see in numbers a certain reassuring purity that rhetoric cannot provide. I mean, I'm sure they are just as skewed as everything else, but I would prefer it if you did not tell me about that. (Also, given the fact that I mistook Indiana for Illinois at one point on election night - I know, and I really do know where they are, I just saw a longish pointy contextless state from afar and I went for it - I am kind of thinking that "shapes" might not be my thing.) So, anyway, this article is very useful when you are thinking about the intersectionality of oppressions, and ladies in general, and the power of your vote.

Because it turns out that women's votes are totally important in choosing who the president will be! This is true all the time, but this year everybody seems to be like "wow, women, I guess they vote - maybe we should actively strive to represent their interests?" Speaking as someone who actually wrote a letter to Obama's campaign - yeah, I know, I'm so sure he read it - telling him that the Democratic party was historically the party which most honored the values of feminism, and that I felt more open and earnest statements about his commitment to women's issues could only help him to win, let me just say this: great, thanks for showing up, dudes. You're late.

So, men were split 49 to 49 percent between Obama and McCain, whereas women favored Obama over McCain by 53 to 47 percent, meaning that we were crucial to establishing his lead and facilitating his victory. (To the one or two of my lady friends who did not vote: I have another number for you. EIGHTY-EIGHT. It is the number of years that women have had a constitutional right to vote in this country. Also, SEVENTY. That is the number of years that women organized and protested - and were arrested, beaten, tortured and jailed - in order to secure that right. We've been full citizens of this country for less than a century. You cannot tell me you are tired of it already.) In a spectacularly duh-making statement, MSNBC points out that "women make up not only more of the general population, but also more of adult voters."

Here's the bummer: only forty-six percent of white women voted for Obama. My fellow white ladies, that is gross. What was it that did the rest of you in? Was it the fact that you might get to pay for your own rape kits? The promise that, if your pregnancy threatened your life, you would get to die rather than be forced to have a safe and legal abortion? Was it the thrilling prospect of having a misogynist wife-abuser - who does not think you deserve equal pay or insurance coverage for birth control - as your President? Or was it, you know, THE RACISM? Anyway, various reports seem to show that in communities of color, Obama was the leading candidate, and that women of color voted for Obama in even higher percentages than men of color did. So, thanks; the rest of us apparently need to get our shit together for 2012.

All of this is merely prologue, though, for now I must introduce to you the single most annoying voter demographic of all time: the Unmarried Woman.

Analysts expected Tuesday’s crowds to include record numbers of single women voters, who could help fuel a “marriage gap” that could be more significant than a gender gap, or the difference between how men and women support the same candidate. The Women’s Voices. Women Vote Action Fund registered 900,000 new unmarried female voters, according to Page Gardner, the advocacy agency’s president.

“There’s something about being on your own as a woman in this country that is politically significant,” Gardner said. "Unmarried women are at the razor's edge of the economic crisis."

Can we please, for the love of God, stop defining women as either "married" or "single"? I'm not single right now, nor am I married. "Single" and "married" are two ends of a spectrum, and there are about nine million kinds of relationships in between those two points, none of which is any more or less legitimate than any other. This concept works to make lesbian voters invisible, and it also delegitimizes domestic partnerships between men and women - not to mention the fact that I have never in my life heard people talk about the political differences between married and unmarried men. I think marriage is sweet and lovely and nice, and I think everybody should be able to have one, if that's what they want. However, I also think that we give unwarranted legitimacy to marriages as opposed to other partnerships, and that according women different values depending on whether or not they are married is heterosexist, sexist, and just plain obnoxious.

--- AMAZING TRUE STORY TIME ---

I once worked at a very small tea shop with two other waitresses. We worked our shifts alone. At that time, I had been living with a partner for about four years. On Mother's Day, the woman who was supposed to to work the five-hour morning shift called in "sick." She was married, with kids. I volunteered to cover her shift, even though it was my day off. An hour before that shift ended, I received a call from the tea shop's owner. The woman who was supposed to work the five-hour evening shift could not come in; her husband, whom she had known for a grand total of two years, had purchased theater tickets. I would need to work the evening shift, too.

"Is there any way you can require her to come in?" I asked. "I don't mind covering for [Married Lady #1] if she's sick, but this was my day off, and [my partner] and I had plans. I don't see why [Married Lady #2's] plans should be more important than mine, especially if she's announcing them at the last minute."

"You don't understand," my boss said. "They have to spend time with their husbands."

And that is the story of how I ended up working a ten-hour shift on my day off because I was not married.

--- THE END ---

So, yes: I think the "married/alone, SO ALONE" distinction, and the baggage that comes with it, has got to go away. However, I would also like to point something out:

At least 70 percent of unmarried women with and without children supported Obama, a margin of more than 2-to-1.

That's right, all you Democratic married ladies and men whose marital status is apparently irrelevant to your politics. PRAISE ME. For my people have brought you victory!