You know, I’ve been writing a lot about feminism and relationships on here lately.  Maybe because I’m getting married in less than 3 months?  I don’t know, just a guess… But whatever the reason, I think it’s a really important topic to cover.  There are lots of us out there who identify as feminist or who advocate feminism and who are also either facing a change in their relationships (moving in together, getting married, etc.) or are well within a relationship or family setting and work to advocate feminism within those relationships every day.  I also find that many of us in this community are frequently combating the often negative, patriarchal connotations that come with marriage and family life and the various titles associated with that life.  I’ve seen so much of this in the comments of this blog or in e-mails sent to me or in twitter responses to things I’ve written that I believe the topic of feminism and relationships cannot be ignored.

So, I want to hear from you.  I’m announcing an open-ended call for guest posts on feminism and relationships.  You can interpret the term “relationships” as loosely as you want, but some ideas for posts might include topics on “Feminism and…”:

• Marriage (a broad topic here; could include name changes, household chores, the patriarchal connotations behind marriage… anything!)
• Family (your mothers and fathers, your children, your siblings, etc.)
• In-laws
• Same sex partnerships
• Interracial relationships
• Long-distance relationships
• Moving in together
• Moving somewhere new together
• Boyfriend/Girlfriend relationships
• Weddings
• Friendships
• Body image and relationships
• And the list goes on and on – anything you come up with, I’d love to hear it!

What are my guidelines?  As you may know from previous calls for guest posts, my guidelines, like all good things in life, are flexible and open to interpretation.  But in general, I’d say posts should be about 400-800 words in length and spell-checked/grammar-checked to the best of your ability.  Hyperlinks are OK in bios and in posts.  Just make sure I have a list of all URLs in case something is lost in translation, so to speak.  Also, please keep in mind that I am a high school teacher, so I cannot publish curse words, sexually explicit language, or anything overtly political.  If you think you have a topic that might fall into one of these categories, go ahead and e-mail me a pitch and we can totally figure something out.

Of course you can cross-post something to your blog, as well, or submit something you’ve already written on the topic, but I’d appreciate a link back here from your blog.  Also, you don’t have to be a blogger to submit a post!  If you just want to write something for me but don’t necessarily write on your own, that’s swell, too!

All posts or pitches can be submitted to samsanator (at) gmail (dot) com along with a brief bio and a link to your blog if you’ve got one.

I look forward to hearing from you, and hopefully you all will find this new series interesting and helpful!

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This past week, I had the good fortune of being able to not only attend, but present my paper on Literacy in the Feminist Blogging Community at my first-ever international conference.  The Contemporary Women’s Writing Network conference in San Diego was a great place to connect with fantastic women and those who write about women.  It was great fun to present, as well, with a woman from York who is writing about feminist bloggers for her PhD dissertation!  As you can imagine, we had much to talk about.

Although I attended many other panels and learned much about Margaret Atwood, women and adolescence, and other interesting female bloggers, I feel I learned more about the academic community than anything.  Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly), this is still a community for which gender binaries still exist in full force.  Every panel I attended discussed the differences between men and women, or how men appear in books versus how women appear in books, or how men write differently than women do.  There didn’t seem to be much of a discussion about, say, how feminism or feminist ideas can help men better function in society, or what benefit men might get from reading women writers.  There was also not much discussion about the trans community or anyone that may exist between the gender binary.  Granted, I did not attend all of the panels, but from what I saw from the titles of the presentations, this conference was very much fitting of the title: Contemporary Women’s Writing Network.

This is also a community for which feminism does not seem as problematic as it does in the internet community.  In fact, it is a way of being for many of these women and men, almost comically and overtly stereotypical.  For example, Tim was there with me because we turned this trip into a little vacation.  He, naturally, came to see me present since, you know, he was already there.  Another man who was attending the conference asked him what he was presenting, and Tim informed him that he was my fiance and there to see me.  The man proceeded to poke fun at us a bit, saying I wasn’t much of a feminist if I couldn’t even present a paper by myself.  I wasn’t actually a part of this conversation, or I would have given him a piece of my mind, but this is just an example of the sorts of things I overheard throughout the conference.

Not only was much of the focus on women and only women, but privilege at this conference was obvious.  Not so much white privilege or heterosexual privilege so much, but definitely economic privilege.  This may seem obvious considering that this conference was academic in nature and, therefore, mostly professors and students from esteemed universities were in attendance, but this was so much so that I felt a bit out of place.  This is not to say that I am not economically privileged; I am.  I attended a small, private, expensive school for my undergraduate education and I also attended a small, private, expensive school for my graduate education.  However, I felt as if I was the only person presenting at this conference who was not teaching in a university in some capacity – even as a TA – or working on her PhD.  When asked what university I was affiliated with (as I was asked on more occasions than I can count), I said I had just graduated with my MA from [insert grad school here].  When asked where I was teaching, I responded [insert high school here].  I then received the typical shocked response from almost every participant: “You teach high school?  And you’re here?“  Why yes, why shouldn’t I be here?, I wondered.  Why shouldn’t high school teachers work on other pursuits besides high school education and take pride enough in them to visit conferences and present papers?

I think there might also have been a bit of surprise that I was attending this conference without any affiliations, that is to say, without any university to support me or reimburse some of my expenses.  Then it occurred to me: Do people do independent research?  If I wanted to further my work about feminist blogging, would I have to re-affiliate myself with my university?  Or would I need to continue on to a PhD?  Would it be possible to continue the research and write papers and attend conferences on my own?  It saddens me to think that I may not be able to fly solo and continue doing the sort of work I want.  And it saddens me even more to think that there are many people out there who could be writing excellent papers and attending conferences and really changing the face of academia but who don’t necessarily have the means to attend colleges and work towards advanced degrees and fly cross-country to academic conferences.

But, all-in-all, it was a spectacular experience to be a part of this conference and to interact with so many wonderful writers and thinkers.  Although I found it quite problematic on many levels, and felt the need to write about the problematic nature of it all here, it was more rejuvenating than anything.  I found myself wanting to blog and tweet so much of what I learned while I was there (but made myself not do it so as not to waste valuable time in San Diego!), so you can look forward to some more blog posts about many of the interesting sessions in the very near future!

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It came to my attention during my blogging break, courtesy of Emily Heroy – Founder of  the Gender Across Borders blog and fellow Equality 101 writer – and Liza Donnelly – Cartoonist Extraordinaire – (If you’re not at least following these ladies on Twitter or reading their work, you should be.  Now!) that maybe saying “I am a feminist” is maybe not the exact correct thing to be saying.  It’s no secret that feminists throughout history have worked extremely hard towards equal rights for women.  But it’s also no secret that they haven’t historically worked very hard towards equal rights for all women.  bell hooks noted this (I can’t remember the exact essay in which she noted this, so forgive my lack of citation.  If anyone knows, feel free to drop a comment.), especially in the way feminism tended to be for the white, upper-middle class women, not for poor women or women of color.

Today, we see people claiming to be feminists and actively working against women – see anything written about Sarah Palin in the past month.  We see women actively excluding other human beings from the fight for equal rights (Emily didn’t exclude other people in this post, but I refuse to link to the post that did).  We see women telling other women how to be feminists.  Apparently, my feminist card was taken away from me when I chose to get married and have a big wedding.  It’s going to be torn up into little pieces when I write later about the crisis we’re seeing with boys and education and how we need to work to catch them up.  Or when I blog about how my future husband and I are going to share money.

I can’t remember the last time I was so disillusioned with a community of people.  If you read through some of my earlier archives, you’ll see how enchanted I was with this blogging community; I even chose to write my Master’s thesis about it!  It was so wonderful to finally be surrounded by women who supported one another.  And now it seems like these women supporting one another are just doing it in the same way as they did in high school – they’ve formed little Twitter-cliques and feminist groups, only worried about who is tweeting whose links or who is saying things that can be attacked or disagreed with or about who to criticize next for voicing opinions.  This isn’t activism.  This is cattiness masquerading as activism, which, in my opinion, makes it even worse than just plain old nastiness.

It’s no secret that I’ve been pretty disappointed with this community for a while.  But I don’t think I’m disappointed with feminism in general.  In fact, there are some really great women out there writing some really great things, and over the next few weeks, I’m going to try to highlight some of those posts (let’s start with Sophia’s blatant sarcasm regarding the Rules of Feminism).  I’m honored that these people even give this blog the time of day, but I’m not so much honored to call myself a feminist anymore.  Saying “I am a feminist” makes being a feminist all that I am, and makes it tough to do anything that anyone might consider “not feminist.”  So, like bell hooks, I’m no longer going to say I am a feminist, but more simply that I advocate feminism.  I advocate lots of things: human rights in general, better treatment of teachers, equity in education…. and the list goes on.  These things aren’t wholly what I am – although they can be all-consuming.  They are simply things I stand for.  I’ll stand for feminism, or for a feminism that is inclusive and intersectional.  But I won’t let it become all of me.

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s.e. smith over at this ain’t livin’ posted an awesome post the other day about the difference between critiquing institutions and critiquing the individuals that are a part of those institutions.  Here’s a brief part from the post:

Yet, somehow, we need to figure out a way to do that. We need to be able to have structural discussions about our society which do not devolve into people complaining about personal attacks and lashing out, or people attacking people simply for being who they are. And a big part of that, quite honestly, is for everyone to get a little bit less self centred in these discussions, to recognise that, well, not everything is about them. Even if it seems like it is. Even if it feels like a personal attack to hear that you have privilege. (Read the full post here.)

This post was great, and said it much better than I could have.  I read this post just after I posted my thoughts on bride-bashing, and I think s.e. smith touches on some of the same issues here.  Attacking an institution should be different than attacking the individuals in that institution, except when those individuals are actively working to uphold said institution.  I’ll stop here because smith’s post says it better than I ever could.  So go read it!

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Or: “Why I am Taking a Break.”

Dear Feminist Bloggers ¹,

I think it’s time I take a break.  I don’t know if this will end in a complete “break up,” if you will, but it will be a definite break.  I am not going to blog or post on Tumblr for 30 days, starting right after I post this, I am not going to be reading any blogs,  (In fact, I am going to seriously clean up my feeds) and I am not going to post or read anything on Twitter or Facebook for at least 10 days.   I’ve really enjoyed our time together, and you all have been invaluable to me as I’ve stumbled through a thesis using your brilliant ideas and writings, and as I’ve grown into my own definition of feminism.

But, that’s just it.  My definition of feminism seems to be growing away a bit from the community’s as a whole, or maybe it just was never the same.  I think there is a disconnect between me and my beliefs and many of yours, and I think that disconnect lies in the fact that I am a high school teacher, and I am not steeped in academia or living in the middle of a liberal city.  I think it’s easy to have lots of highbrow discussions back and forth when you’re in the midst of many other people who have read the same articles as you or who have been to the same lectures as you (say, on a university campus, for example.  Or in the middle of a big city.),  or, perhaps, when you’re the one giving the lectures.  But, sometimes, it’s very difficult to reconcile these academic ideas with the world in which I live and work.  And I think me being out of grad school for a while has only helped to deepen this divide.

Don’t get me wrong; the work of the academics and lecturers is vital to the feminist movement.  However, for every academic discussion about feminism (or any -ism, really), there isn’t necessarily a clear, practical application for those of us who are not on a university campus or in a big city, and who aren’t constantly surrounded with people who share our beliefs and opinions.  And it is this disconnect that, in turn, causes a disconnect between belief sets.

Let me give you a concrete example of what I’m talking about.  Anyone who’s spent any time in undergrad or graduate level classes knows the frustration (or perhaps this does not frustrate you) of reading scholarly articles after scholarly articles that do nothing but talk in circles around each other and add nothing to “real life” but more theory.  This theory is vitally important, and change could not be made without it.  But it is sometimes difficult – maybe impossible – to practice what is preached, so to speak.

Theory is often a one size fits all type of thing.  You’re either going to buy it or you’re not.  But there is very rarely any in-between.  Take, for example, the idea floating around out there that feminists should not get married.  Or that, if they do get married, it should be a simple affair because importance should be placed on the marriage, not the wedding, and “these bridezillas who care about nothing but their white dresses and perfect, expensive receptions, never stop to think about their marriages, and shouldn’t that be the important part?”  (Yes.  I saw that sentiment on a feminist blog a little while ago.)  In my opinion, this just isn’t practical, nor is it correct.  It seems based on various bridal shows one might see on TLC, but not based so much on real life. (And this surprises me a bit coming from a group of people who continually critique pop culture; why would such a group willingly buy into the idea that most brides are actually anything like what we see on reality TV and romantic comedies without critique or second thought?)  OK, I’ll be the first to admit it: I may be hyper sensitive because I am having a rather large wedding, and we decided to do that because this is the biggest decision we’ve made in our lives so far, and it is the happiest we have ever been, and we wanted to share it with as many friends and family as possible.  But we are also very focused on our marriage and getting our lives together right.  We have conversations almost daily about our future.  The wedding is a day.  The marriage is a lifetime.  And I think most brides really do know that.

But this is just one example.  I have had feminist bloggers who don’t know the first thing about teaching try to tell me how to implement feminism in my own classroom, or tell me that I’m “doing it wrong” when it comes to teaching and feminism.  I’m not trying to be elitist here, but I am saying that I do know my craft.  And maybe feminist blogging isn’t my craft, but teaching most certainly is.  And, as a teacher, I know that I cannot make radical changes or radical theoretical statements in my classroom.  They just won’t go over well, and might even get me fired.  Theory must be radical, but teaching cannot practically be so.  Perhaps that’s where my philosophy of Small Strokes comes in: I am not trying to be radical in any way, but just trying to make small differences.  Maybe one student this year might remember the discussions we had about feminism who wouldn’t have otherwise known about feminism at all.  Maybe two students might see a boy treating his girlfriend badly and say something about it because of my influence.  These things might seem small to you, but they are my ultimate success stories.

I think it is this that makes people look down on teachers quite a bit.  (Do you know how many times I’ve been told I could do better than teaching?  Or how many surprised and disdained looks I got when I told people in undergrad that, no, I wasn’t going on to grad school right away and, yes, I always wanted to teach?)  We’re in a different sphere, making different changes in different ways than, say, the feminist blogosphere.  But when I’m teaching, I feel I’m doing the most important thing I can do with my life.  Sure, other people might be traveling the world, giving lectures or volunteering or studying (all extremely important activities), but I’m in the trenches.  And I’m not leaving.  And I won’t ever stop being an activist in my classroom.  There has been a lot of talk circulating about the privilege embedded in blogging-as-activism, and that bloggers can just walk away from their writing and their activism – put it on hold for a bit while they take care of other things.  I’m telling you right now, I cannot walk away from my activism, for, as soon as I do, I cease to be helpful to my students or to myself. I live and breathe activism in my classroom, and I see things that many feminist theorists may not.  But when I blog from my perspective, often, I’m told that I’m wrong or didn’t say it right.  (I didn’t know thoughtful opinions steeped in research or personal experience could be wrong.)  Frankly, I just can’t handle it right now.  Not to get too personal, but I’ve lost a lot of the confidence I felt I had previously, and the incessant criticism that is coming at me because of this blog is too much.  And it’s hard not to see blog posts that probably have nothing to do with you, but indict something that you’re currently immersed in and not take it personally.

So, I’m going to take a break.  I’ve seen how valuable this can be with Equality 101, and I now want to do it for myself.  I want to relax a bit, let this all sink in, focus on the end of school and grad school, and – hopefully – refocus on this blog and Equality 101. I don’t know what this blog will look like afterwards, or what time commitment I will be promising to it, but I know that this is best for me.

So.  Hopefully I’ll see you all on the flipside.

Sincerely,

Ashley Lauren

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Color-blind racial ideology linked to racism, both online and offline by Phil Ciciora

Images from racial theme parties that are posted on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace not only elicit different reactions from different people based on their race and their attitudes toward diversity, they also represent an indirect way to express racist views about minorities, according to published research by a University of Illinois professor who studies the convergence of race and the Internet.

Wal-Mart Faces Largest Gender Bias Lawsuit in U.S. History

Yesterday, the happy news came that the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that Wal-Mart must face a gender-bias lawsuit filed by six of its female employees. The women claim that Wal-Mart, the world’s largest private employer, pays its female employees less than their male counterparts for doing the same jobs and that promotions are few and far between for the women of the Wal-Mart workforce.

Two Ways About It by Becky

Abby and Carolyn give conflicting advice about what to do with unmarked wedding gifts.

Dear Abby 4/17/2010

DEAR ABBY: My daughter was married last weekend and received several unmarked gifts. When sending out thank-you notes, how do you know what to say and to whom? There were several guests that would never have come empty-handed, yet there is no way to match the mystery gifts to the right guests. Not sending a thank-you note to someone I’m sure brought a gift seems awkward and embarrassing. — AT A LOSS IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

I’m getting married very soon, and I absolutely did not think of this at all.  Thanks for more anxiety, Becky. I kid.  This was good advice, and I def never would have thought of it!

The Blind Assassin discussion is going on at Radical Readers and Feminisms for Dummies!  Check out this early post by Amanda

I got a little ahead of myself and finished this selection early (love, love, LOVE Margaret Atwood – we could do an entire book club just around her!). Here are some things I think are worth keeping in mind as you read…

How is education (in both the most literal and broadest senses) passed on between characters? Who is teaching, and what is being learned?

What is the relationship between violence and silence? How do each manifest throughout the novel?

My post is coming soon!

What Does Feminism Mean For You? and A Reader’s Response to FAB Blog Debacle from Emily at Gender Across Borders

So I’ve been called a “troll” on one blog–named called “fabulous fab stuff” where the author Miska declares that feminism is only for women, not for “gay men, or black men, poor men, or disabled men.”

I disagree. I made a comment stating that:

I am totally for feminism having different definitions for each person, so I will disagree with you because our definitions are very different. I believe that feminism is not just about women, but equal rights for all. By excluding men and the like, you are making feminism exclusionary. Just my two cents.

I thought sharing opinions was part of the Feminist community online, and I also believe Emily was unduly attacked.

“My Deaf Family” (And My Hearing Life) from Danine Spencer

I’m hearing impaired. I was born with a 60% hearing loss in my left ear and an 80% loss in my right ear. I have worn a hearing aid in my left ear since I was three years old and in my right ear sporadically. It’s hard to explain but wearing a hearing aid in the right ear doesn’t really help all that much. It sort of provides a surround-sound effect that is distracting, like background noise that doesn’t really add anything to my listening experience. For instance, when you’re talking with a friend in a café, do you want the radio turned up or down? It’s easier to hear your pal when the radio is turned down, right? Well, it is for me, anyways. Wearing the right hearing aid is a lot like that.

Thanks for sharing this, Danine!

Wage Disparity Not Just Between Men And Women, New Study Says Blonde Women Make 7% More Than Non-Blonde from Sophia

From the Telegraph, a new study out of the University of Queensland states that a survey of over 13000 women revealed those with blonde hair make on average 7% more than women with other hair colors. The study also revealed that women with blonde hair (in the UK) are more often married to wealthier men.

Whaaaaat?!

What Does Blogging Mean To You? by Colleen at Gender Across Borders

I was moved by this post at The Pursuit of Harpyness and wanted to share it. The author shares honestly, allowing the reader to accompany her/him while s/he struggles through some convoluted, but important, thoughts. S/he struggles with the idea of blogging as activism, and wonders, as we all have, what role it takes in our work for equality. Later the same day I read this post by Amy at Science & Sensibility also exploring her thoughts about blogging but with a decidedly more positive tone. Her post also resonated with me because I, like her, have turned from a non-believer to a preacher of the power of social media to inspire social change.

Blogging is as draining as it is important, but never doubt that it is important!

And…. RMJ at Deeply Problematic is back!  Yay!

What have you been reading and writing this week?  Post some comments!

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Cover of The Blind Assassin

I loved The Blind Assassin.  I saw that Radical Readers and Feminisms For Dummies was reading it this month, and I thought to myself: That title sounds really familiar… I went to look at the bookshelves in my closet and, lo and behold, there it was among my mom’s books!  Just waiting to be read!  So I grabbed it and started immediately, and I couldn’t put it down.  This book is truly epic, and the way Margaret Atwood weaves multiple stories together, revealing just enough information at a time to keep the pages turning, is absolutely masterful.

I could gush about the book for hours, and probably not even make a dent in the brilliance of this novel, I’ve decided to add to the discussion of the book by doing a Pentadic analysis of the marriage and subsequent love and sexual violence which ensued between the main characters.

(WARNING! There are spoilers in this post, so don’t read it if you haven’t finished!  I’ve put the rest of this post after the jump to avoid angry readers!)

A Pentadic analysis is actually a form of rhetorical analysis with its roots in the theory of Kenneth Burke.  As such, it is usually reserved for a rhetorical situation, not a fictional one, but I want to try it out here to hopefully reveal the importance some of the major elements in this book.  Basically, in a Pentadic analysis, one looks at an act (what is done), agent (who is doing it), agency (what means the agent used), scene (the background or situation in which the act occurred), and the purpose (the reason why this happened).  Once these terms are defined, one puts the terms into ratios and decides which term is more important in that ratio.  These ratios are then used to define the motivation behind the act.  So, let’s give it a try, shall we?

Definition of Terms: (For the purposes of this analysis, I’m going to define these terms very broadly, as this is meant to be an analysis of the entire book.  However, this could just as easily have been done with one very specific situation in the novel, or a specific relationship¹ in the novel.)

Act: Relationships in every sense of the word – Richard and Iris’s marriage, Richard and Winifred’s sibling relationship, Iris and Laura’s sisterhood, Richard’s violence towards Laura, Laura’s love for Alex, Iris’s affair with Alex

Agent: Iris, Laura, Richard, Alex, Winifred

Agency: Laura’s silence toward Richard, Iris’s writing of The Blind Assassin, Richard’s manipulation of Iris and Laura, Winifred’s manipulation of Iris and Richard, Alex’s stories

Scene: Canada, 1930’s-present (However, I’d argue that, in the sense of these relationships, the time period between 1930-1940 was probably the most important.)

Purpose: Iris married Richard to please her father; Richard abused Iris and Laura as a power play, or maybe just because he could; Winifred manipulated Richard and Iris to maintain her wealth and power; Iris fell in love with Alex that day in the attic and later had an affair with him because of that love, and because Richard treated her so poorly; Laura fell in love (or did she?) with Alex well before that, seemingly because she was so young and naive and he was so infatuating.

That was a super cursory analysis, but I’m trying to define terms in 600 pages of novel!  Ah!

OK, so next comes the ratios of the terms.  They’re set up like this: “Scene:Act” and the question being asked here is “Is the term on the left more important than the term on the right?”  Then, a “Yes” or “No” will follow each ration, answering that question.  Here we go!

Scene:Act Yes
Scene:Agent Yes – I’m arguing here that no matter who these people were, in this time and situation, this could have happened (You could argue differently; that’s where this type of analysis becomes incredibly subjective.)
Scene: Agency No
Scene: Purpose No

Act:Agent Yes
Act:Scene No
Act:Purpose No
Act:Agency No

Agent:Act No
Agent:Scene No
Agent:Purpose No
Agent:Agency No

Agency:Act Yes
Agency:Agent Yes
Agency:Scene Yes
Agency:Purpose No

Purpose:Act Yes
Purpose:Agent Yes
Purpose:Agency Yes
Purpose:Scene Yes

From this ratio analysis, you can see that I thought the purpose behind the actions was the most important part of this novel (it had the highest number of “Yes” answers), followed by the agency, and then the scene.

Based on this analysis, then, I argue that the scene, specifically the time period, coupled with the purposes and means behind the characters’ actions show that no matter who these characters were and what their personalities were like, in this time period and the culture created by a severe class divide in the middle of a severe economic depression, tensions run high, especially when the rich are trying to stay rich.  This extreme class divide seems to breed a culture of hatred between the upper class and the lower class, and opens up possibilities for violence and manipulation of all kinds.  I think that says a lot about world history and the treatment of women, doesn’t it?

Of course, as I said before, this is totally subjective, so feel free to argue with me!  I’d love to hear your thoughts on this book, and this analysis!

This post is cross-posted at Radical Readers & Feminisms For Dummies.

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Don’t forget!  There’s still time to donate to my Avon Walk for Breast Cancer AND to RSVP for the #chifems April Tweetup!

The Impact of Twitter on Feminism: Its Facilitations & Limitations by Emily Heroy

Feminism makes it way all across the internet–in universities all over the world, news articles posted online, in forums, on Facebook, and (as the title suggests), Twitter. I’ve talked about the impact of social media and feminism in a video interview I did awhile back. But for this post, I want to stress the impact of Twitter on feminism.

Teenagers and Reading by Justine Larbalestier

1. There seems to be an implicit assumption that all teenagers are the same.

2. There’s also an assumption in all these discussions about YA that it is primarily read by teenagers.

3. Another assumption is that a) only reading fiction counts and b) reading is better for you than any other pastime.

4. Then there’s the assumption that there is such a thing as good writing and bad writing and we all agree on what those are.

Smarts, books, teens and fairy dust by Chally

There’s a particular trend in the challenging of teenagers’ reading choices. Everything teenagers read – or everything teenagers are supposedly reading – is baaaaad. It’s immoral! Or it’s sapping their minds! Or they could be reading something better! say the older folk. We must question where such valuation of these books comes from. Is there something particularly wrong with Harry Potter or Twilight?

Beyond the Pale: Is white the new black? by Kelefa Sanneh via The New Yorker

In a marvellously splenetic essay, “On Being White . . . And Other Lies,” James Baldwin argued that America had, really, “no white community”—only a motley alliance of European immigrants and their descendants, who made a “moral choice” (even if they didn’t realize it) to join a synthetic racial élite. And, in the nineteen-nineties, a cohort of scholars took up Baldwin’s charge, popularizing a field of research that came to be known as whiteness studies. In 1994, the white labor historian David R. Roediger published an incendiary volume, “Towards the Abolition of Whiteness.” Paying special attention to unions and strikes, he traced the unsteady growth of American whiteness, a category that eventually included many previous identities that had once been considered marginal: Irish, Italian, Polish, Jewish. “It is not merely that whiteness is oppressive and false; it is that whiteness is nothing but oppressive and false,” he wrote. “Whiteness describes, from Little Big Horn to Simi Valley, not a culture but precisely the absence of culture. It is the empty and therefore terrifying attempt to build an identity based on what one isn’t and on whom one can hold back.”

What Makes a Great Teacher? by Amanda Ripley via The Atlantic

For years, the secrets to great teaching have seemed more like alchemy than science, a mix of motivational mumbo jumbo and misty-eyed tales of inspiration and dedication. But for more than a decade, one organization has been tracking hundreds of thousands of kids, and looking at why some teachers can move them three grade levels ahead in a year and others can’t. Now, as the Obama administration offers states more than $4 billion to identify and cultivate effective teachers, Teach for America is ready to release its data.

Five Years by Danine Spencer

Sunday was the anniversary of a really good day. A great day, in fact. It was the fifth anniversary of the day I was admitted to Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee, Wis., where I where I stayed for the next two months. I’m sure most people wouldn’t commemorate the anniversary of the day they entered a hospital for two months, but April 11, 2005, was a day that changed my life.

Guest Post: Interview with Julie Zilinger, teenage editor of top feminist blog, the Fbomb from Veronica Arreola

We had the opportunity to talk to one of the busiest (and youngest) bloggers on the web, Julie Zeilinger, sole founder of the Fbomb, a feminist blog for teenagers. Let us rephrase: while the blog may be run by a teenager and posted from a teenage perspective, the content is relevant for any feminist young and old.  Zeilinger attracts an international array of young feminists while posting from Pepper Pike, Ohio. In this interview, she tells us how her feminist outlook was shaped,  juggling school, the blog and the way her peers and parents view her.

SAFER: Beyond the Campus by Amanda ReCupido

I recently volunteered with SAFER (Students Active for Ending Rape), where I’ll be writing a weekly blog post that collects news of sexual assault from “beyond the campus” (their mission is to improve college sexual assault policies). Below is my first post, cross-posted here.

Food and Moral Weight by s.e. smith

But the thing I really like about Michelle is that she talks about the structural systems behind the food we eat, and she specifically addresses and refutes the commonly held idea that individual eaters should be held morally culpable for the system they are trapped in. She does not, in other words, think it’s very productive to judge people who don’t have a lot of choice when it comes to what they get their stomachs around. In fact, she thinks, as I do, that it’s actually pretty counterproductive to be berating people for not eating “right” when “right” may not be an option for them.

Take Care of Your Eyes! by Danine Spencer

More women than men are diagnosed with eye diseases such as glaucoma, cataracts, macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy

Women may experience changes in vision in various stages of their lives including pregnancy and post-menopause.

More than 2.3 million women (out of 3.6 million people total) live with visual impairment, including blindness

6 million women (vs 3 million men) have dry eye syndrome, a condition where not enough natural tears are produced.

Day of Silence by s.e. smith

Bullying kills. This is not just about kids being kids. It is about unparalleled viciousness and horrific behaviour. It is about violence and rape and hatred. It is about school districts which stand by and do nothing while their students are literally bullied to death and people are begging for help; the ‘not my business’ attitude harms youths who are being bullied in particular because they are counting on the adults around them to do the right thing and when they don’t it is an act of betrayal. An act which can’t be made up later, when the victim is dead, I would like to point out.

Following up on the F Conference by Chally

But a problem with feminism is that those “other” issues get treated as pet issues that mainstream feminism can pick up once in a while for minority points and drop again. And the sad thing is, intersectionality isn’t that hard a tool to employ. There are so many conventional sites of feminist activism that could centre, for instance, disability along with gender, but just don’t.

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This is a cross post from Equality 101.

I wrote a post the other day about Standard English Privilege that has garnered quite a bit of attention.  The main argument of the post (I won’t bore you all with the details again) goes a little something like this:

Why is it that so often on the internet I see people revert to the argument that so-and-so writer or commenter can’t spell or construct a grammatically correct argument and therefore the entire argument has no validity in this sphere?

Is literacy so important to credibility here? (One could argue that being literate in this way is vital to the credibility of the author of the post, but is it for commenters?) Or, let me rephrase: Is Standard English literacy so important to credibility here?  Or, let me rephrase again: Is white, upper-or-middle class English literacy so important to credibility here? (I am not saying here that you have to be white or upper-or-middle class to have a command of Standard English.  Just that it is no secret that Standard English is the language of white, educated people.  For more on this, see this article.)

When we discount people and their arguments because of their command (or lack thereof) of grammar, what we are really saying is: Your thoughts are useless because you don’t use the kind of grammar I’ve come to expect from literate people on the internet.  What we are also saying is far worse: You don’t have the privilege to have learned the “correct” way of writing or speaking, and, therefore, your ideas are worthless.

In this previous post, I was referring specifically to blog authors and the surprisingly widespread tendency I’ve seen to discount arguments because the commenter “can’t even write a grammatically correct sentence! So they must not be very smart!  [giggle]” However, I think this has some interesting implications for teaching, as well.

As teachers, we are taking into account our privilege all the time.  Some of us have white privilege or male privilege or class privilege or any number of other privileges, and those of us who fall into those categories must realize that we have these privileges and be constantly aware of them as we teach our students who may or may not have those privileges, as well.  But there is another privilege that isn’t very often discussed that is almost a non-negotiable privilege for teachers that we don’t usually talk about: Standard English privilege.

Standard English (SE) privilege means that you, one way or another, have a good command of SE grammar.  As stated above, this usually means a few things: 1) You grew up speaking SE at home; 2) you have had access to enough books, articles, and other written works to teach you what SE is supposed to look and sound like; or 3) you have had access to enough education to teach you what SE is supposed to look and sound like.

We know that 1) SE has been dubbed White English Vernacular (WEV); 2) books and articles cost money and parents have to have a lot of time to read them to their children; and 3) education is often expensive.  We blog and talk about these sorts of things all the time in our education communities, and yet there are still teachers out there who see three grammar mistakes and hand the paper back for the student to correct it before he/she will read any further.  This type of behavior – the type that makes grammar mistakes more important than the ideas in the paper – reeks of white privilege and class privilege.  I think my favorite literary character said it best when he said: “That’s something else that gives me a royal pain.  I mean if you’re good at writing compositions and somebody starts talking about commas.” ¹ When we mark up a paper with our red pens – circling every spelling error, crossing out every extra word, pointing out every missed comma – and hand it back to the student and ask him or her to revise, it’s no wonder all we get back are corrections of grammatical errors and no real revisions of ideas.  When students think all we care about is grammar, all they’ll edit is grammar.  Far worse than that, when all we care about is SE grammar, we call their entire literate identity into question, and when we tell them their grammar is “wrong” – if that’s all we tell them – what we are really saying is that their argument is worthless because their command of SE grammar isn’t good enough.

I know there are still a few grammar sticklers out there, clutching to their red pens for dear life.  (“But it’s on the ACT!!!” you scream.  “We MUST teach grammar!!!”)  I’m not saying we should stop correcting grammar all together (although maybe we should stop calling it “correcting”).  I’m just saying that with practice and the nurturing of a student’s ideas in a paper, the grammar will come.  And, really, aren’t the ideas more important, anyway?  What, really, is “good grammar” without interesting thoughts?

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Why is it that so often on the internet I see people revert to the argument that so-and-so writer or commenter can’t spell or construct a grammatically correct argument and therefore the entire argument has no validity in this sphere?

Is literacy so important to credibility here?¹  Or, let me rephrase: Is Standard English literacy so important to credibility here?  Or, let me rephrase again: Is white, upper-or-middle class English ² literacy so important to credibility here?

When we discount people and their arguments because of their command (or lack thereof) of grammar, what we are really saying is: Your thoughts are useless because you don’t use the kind of grammar I’ve come to expect from literate people on the internet.  What we are also saying is far worse: You don’t have the privilege to have learned the “correct” way of writing or speaking, and, therefore, your ideas are worthless.

We’re all very aware of the fact that we have privilege; it is the topic of many blog posts in the feminist blogosphere.  Criss says this well here; we are bloggers and, therefore, we have privilege that many others don’t have because, in order to blog, we need a computer with internet access, free time in which to blog, and we need to be literate.  This must mean that we have at least enough education to understand a command of the – in this case – English language, and we must feel comfortable enough with our command of the language to write articles and put them out there for everyone to see (and comment on, and criticize).  Not everyone has this privilege.  For one reason or another, not everyone possesses the same level of comfort with Standard English as we bloggers do.  These reasons are very often related to race and class; it has been my experience that students of a different race than me and students from a lower socioeconomic background than me posses (often exquisite) command over a different English grammatical structure than me.  But does this make their arguments and ideas less valid?  No. And to argue such reeks of race and class privilege – just the things we work so hard against.  Which is why it is appalling to me how many times I see people say: “This person can’t even write a coherent sentence, so they must have no idea what they’re talking about.”

I would urge you, bloggers, from now on to look at your practices in a new light.  Sure, all we’ve got on the internet is literacy – all of our communication more or less takes place using reading and writing practices – but be careful when discounting or making fun of arguments because they are not written using Standard English.  Not everyone has the privilege of understanding its use.

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