I'm doing better! and feminism.

[gement]

It's come to my attention that I often write to wail and then fail to follow up. Look, I'm following up!

I'm feeling pretty well now. I got to see my mom on her way out to her next paid working vacation in the Carribean. (This is me shaking my fist. I am not in the Carribean.) L and I took her out on the town and went to Babeland.

This prompted me to buy a copy of Cunt, which I first saw on xiadyn's bookshelf yeeeaarrs ago. It's an interesting read; I've never read any of what I've heard called "hot feminism" before. Y'know, the stuff that talks about the patriarchy, how we were once revered as sex goddesses, and how if women ruled the world there would be no war... It was neat actually reading a full book, because it let me see the nuances behind the oversimplifications I just wrote.

My version, in case you've ever been rubbed the wrong way by those generalizations, is this: "Our culture's self-perpetuating abusive power system is currently slanted firmly toward men keeping power. This has less to do with men than it has to do with the structure, but the practical fact is that 95% of the assholes in charge are men, and the other 5% are trying very very hard to act like they are so they'll fit in. This is not about all men; most men aren't in much power either, though there's still often a slant.

"The power structure abuses people and creates sick sick sick cultural effects. These are very easily diagnosed by looking at the symptoms apparent in the ways women are treated. What we're trying to cure here is the cultural mindset that supports the structure. This will benefit men, women, everybody. It's an abuse intervention for our culture. Starting with redressing how women are treated is an easy and obvious way to do it. If we cure enough of the craziness that women are treated well, another effect will probably be fewer international abuses.

"The word 'cunt' has nowhere to go but up. All the wedges that the power structure uses against women revolve around our cunts, and the first step in taking our power back is loving our bodies and reclaiming this word."

I'm glad I read the second edition, which has the hundred-page afterword covering things like trans issues and sexual assault of men. The exclusion of those things in the main book had bothered me, because I didn't know if she consciously thought they weren't important. Turns out she'd just been reading the sorts of feminist literature that leaves it out. She was emphatically grateful for having been corrected and informed.

The strongest thing I took away from this book was realizing how strong a tribal affiliation gender is for some people. I've always identified more strongly with "geek" than "woman," long before trans issues even crossed my radar. Reading the perspective of someone who feels more comfortable in the company of women because they're women was really news to me; I had an intellectual awareness that people felt that way but I couldn't grok it before. For other women who feel that way, this must be a really powerful rallying cry.

I'll stick with rallying for the underlying social change, but it was really interesting.

---

In other news, I led a class discussion on book banning. It was so much fun! Wow it was fun. We worked quite hard at bringing in a selection of books that might bother liberal librarian types:

• Racist tracts (The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades, which has a TERRORIST on the cover was my favorite, but we also had Tim McVeigh's bedside reading and the Protocols of Zion.)


• Creationist textbooks


• Sex books (The Ethical Slut is about polyamoury and Lost Girls is intensely pornographic; we also brought in some of the classic kid sex manuals.)


• Vapidism! Someone found a teen novel about being popular and shunning losers; it was really appalling.


• Dangerous instructions... we failed to bring in real copies! I ended up finding citations online for "Killer Commando Techniques," "We Can Make You Talk," and books on manufacturing meth, but they were not to be found in library collections locally. I asked in the UW Chemistry Library for books on making bombs and drugs. It turns out they were constantly stolen, so she put them in a side room, but then no one was ever using them, so she put them in off-site storage. So they are, for effective purposes, gone unless you want to make a special request and wait several days.

We also brought in some classic challenged kids' books, like My Two Dads' Marriage (whee!), And Tango Makes Three (gay penguins!), Captain Underpants (very unpleasant portrayals of authority figures), and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (we're still trying to figure out, but it was one of the top ten challenged books of the 1990s).

It was fun. A lot of fun. I've been accomplishing more things since I wailed, and I was very thoughtfully kidnapped to the zoo on Sunday. I'm getting through it.

Comments

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

Aren't librarians usually among the hardest core advocates of free speech? I sure hope there aren't many "liberal" librarians who object to the stuff you listed. The only way to defeat bad ideas is by spreading good ideas.

[gement.livejournal.com]

You would be amazed. The first day of class discussion, the group (even me after they'd been talking it long enough) was talking warning labels on information they thought was unfactual, guiding patrons who ask for creationism toward evolution books, and trying to "intervene" if someone asked for books on suicide.

I was deeply uncomfortable, particularly in retrospect, that the teacher didn't offer the very clear arguments for neutrality. Over the course of class I've developed them myself and explained them to some other people, but I think the teacher was irresponsible. Actually I think she agrees with a certain amount of censorship, which is a different problem. (She apparently broke someone's confidence who was feeling suicidal, which I find appalling.)

[grum]

"(She apparently broke someone's confidence who was feeling suicidal, which I find appalling.)"

Do librarians fall into the category of mandatory reporters? (or is there any precedent saying that they may?)
That said, I know nothing about the actual situation.

[grum]

Yes, it is. I have very mixed feelings about it.

[gement.livejournal.com]

It was in her personal life, so that wouldn't apply. Also, we are not mandatory reporters, for exactly this reason.

[gement.livejournal.com]

So, in summary, yes, they are and they are supposed to be, but no one thinks of themselves as a censor. Even the parents asking to remove Huck Finn from a school library do not think of themselves as censors. They would say that the information is available elsewhere, but is this really the right context? They're just trying to protect vulnerable people (people not as enlightened as the censors) from bad information/opinions that they wouldn't be equipped to handle appropriately.

Librarians are not immune from this feeling. If you do it right, they're aware of the pitfalls before they leave school. However, Lost Girls is a high quality art book by a star-spangled author and got a big splash in Publisher's Weekly; it's still only in 60 Worldcat libraries. (Most U.S. public and academic libraries are in the Worldcat system, as well as some international libraries.) There are sensible reasons, involving theft, for a public library to hesitate to own it. No excuse for academic art/literature libraries. Just unconscious censorship, because it's "porn."

[morinon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, one of the biggest problems with a number of public bureaucracies, is that nobody ever thinks of themselves as being prejudiced. They think of themselves as acting for the common good, never realizing that they're really acting out their own personal issues.