A Review in Journal Excerpts

9/15/08
I think we have a very narrow view of feminism in this day and age. you cannot be a feminist and also be:
pro-life, Christian, married, Muslim, Republican, a mother, uneducated, a model, attractive in a “mainstream” way

I think we feminists limit ourselves more than anyone else does with all our rules about who is and who is not one of us. (Cue chanting: One of us! One of us!) And yet, very early on — before I knew what pro-life and pro-choice meant or could have understood that the two concepts were supposed to be opposites — I called myself a feminist. There was a group of boys in my elementary school who liked to tease the girls . They’d pull our hair, and the teachers would say, “He just likes you,” which is a shitty excuse if you ask me. My girlfriends and I formed a little club that was half cheer leading squad and half NOW, a renegade dance group whose signature attack was the High Kick. I never got punished despite all the times I kicked my classmates in the balls in the first grade, so on a personal level at least, I’m pretty sure we were even. (And I wondered why I never had boyfriends…)

… But these women, they can be feminists, too. But they have to do it in their own culture, in their own context. They carve out their own rights in their own society. They can do it with our support or without it. But our support must not come in the form of new oppression. Forcing our religion of relativism on them can only contribute to existing tensions. Ours is not to judge their culture as in need of an overhaul but to love and love and love them.

… To be honest, I feel like a stupid outsider sometimes when I read these books — gringo, whitey, cracker, whatever else you call white people who have been numbed by a life of ease. Is it wrong of me to even try? Is it insulting to even pretend I might understand it?

9/16/08
P. 59 — A reminder that this is not about us. That is, this is not about the U.S. These women and their stories are not here to be defined against us. We are not the sky, and they are not the blackened profiles of tress populating our landscape at dusk. That, I think, is the whole point of the book (so far). In their classes, and in their discussions, they imagined themselves, not as the necessary other of some sexist regime or as the unfortunate little sisters of progressive Western women but as people in their own right. The little girl complains that she is made to trample the U.S. flag and chant “death to America,” but this is not about America. This is about a little girl who has been made a pawn in an insane culture war.

A complicating factor of relationships between the West and Islamic societies like Iran is that these theocracies are so absurd. When a Westerner, raised on the idea that government is a basically logical institution, is confronted with the infinite contradictions of a theocracy, we are confounded. We cannot accept it. We think someone has got to be lying, and since we already have a president we don’t trust, we figure it’s him. We have no way of really knowing.

What they ask — these despots and all dogmatists — is impossible. They demand, like children, for the world to bend to their will. And they don’t care that they are asking human nature to cease being itself. In a way, this is comforting because since their true goal can never be achieved, since they can never really win, they must one day be defeated. But when?

Am I saying the Human Spirit will triumph? Maybe. And so what if I am? It’s not a triumph of our powerful will our our inherent goodness. It’s the nature of things. It’s physics.

Part 1: Lolita
Theme: Being defined by others — colonialism

9/18/08
In this book, all the villains are idiots, promoting what they call morality, which is really simplicity, absolutism and idiocy. We consider it a sign of intelligence when a child can comprehend abstract subjects/concepts. In fact, the inability to grasp certain abstractions, like empathy, is considered a disorder. Too powerful an attachment to order, exactness and absolutes can be totally debilitating. And yet, when it comes to morals, we still act as though living in strict accordance with these absolutes is admirable and honorable. We act as though being inflexible is a sign of integrity. We accuse politicians of “flip flopping” when they show any susceptibility to reasoning.

Notice: The students’ reaction to Gatsby is disturbingly similar to some people’s feelings about video games.
Also: I think there’s much to be said for choosing which media items you consume. I don’t play GTA because I don’t enjoy it, but not because it’s dangerous (at least not in the hands of someone mature enough to filter its content intelligently).

9/22/08
Part 2: Gatsby
Theme: Blame Games, literalism, and understanding versus condemning
The arrogance of ignorance.

9/23/08
Things

1. The U.S. economy. The great bail out. The stock market. Ben Bernanke and the other guy.
2. Buying a house. Mortgage payments. Income. Freelance work.
3. Waking up screaming. Scaring the poor cat. Nimby holding me. A cold glass of water.
4. War. Iraq. Iran. Afghanistan. Russia fits in there somehow.
5. Islam. Extremism Absolutism. Solipsism.
6. Christianity. Ditto.
7. IRC. Self-absorption. Trivial arguments. Misdirected anger. A world in text.
8. My husband. My protector. My lover. A mystery.
9. Yoga. Detachment. Impermanence. Hard work. Is the only comfort through physical exhaustion? It felt so good when we worked outside all day.
10. The hairdresser believes I have a blond streak, but that’s a gray hair. I want someone to tell me the world is OK and to believe it.
11. Global warming.
12. Gas prices.

Rightly or not, I feel an urgent need to save the world and an oppressive disappointment at my inability to do so.

Henry James, during WWI, felt that words themselves had been devalued in the wake of the war’s horrors. This is devastation– when the words you relied on now are empty and fall flat.

9/26/08
Section 4: Austen
Theme: The dance. Cooperation. Partnership. (requires compromise and self reflection)
p. 268 “In Austen’s novels, there are spaces for oppositions that do not need to eliminate each other in order to exist.”