Posts by Ashley:
- Sometimes you just have to go to bed angry. And to work. And to your in-laws’. And to the mall. Everyone at your wedding spouts out these platitudes about the “not going to bed angry” bit being the best advice they’ve ever gotten. But some problems just can’t be solved in a day or an hour or whatever time you have left before someone has to go somewhere. And staying up until 3:00 AM trying to figure out a solution to a problem or trying to get to a place where you’re not angry anymore never helped anyone. Often, it just clouds the situation with exhaustion and makes you even angrier the next day because you didn’t get any sleep. So go ahead and go to bed angry. Chances are you’ll both wake up in the morning better equipped to deal with the situation at hand.
- Dance classes are a lot like couple’s therapy. Really, this applies to anything fun you do as a couple. You go there, hash out your issues, laugh a bit, forget what the problems were in the first place (if there were any at the time), and go home happier and closer.
- Eating together is a must. Every day. At least once. Seriously. Eat breakfast together if you can and your day will start out better. Eat dinner together if you can and you’re crappy day will feel a lot better. Family dinners are important for conversation, and conversation is important to any partnership. Just make sure you both share the responsibilities of cooking and cleaning up afterwards.
- Don’t let anyone tell you that just because you don’t have children or aren’t married that you aren’t a family. You are a family, and you are each other’s family. And that is just as important as any children or wedding or whatever. It’s about love, not numbers of people present or ceremonies.
- Go on dates. It doesn’t matter what kind of dates or what you wear or how much it costs, but no matter how much time you spend together at home, you need to spend time together outside of your home, too. Just grabbing a sandwich at Panera without bringing it back home to eat it is a good thing. You have different conversations with people in different settings, and you can focus on other things besides your house when you’re not sitting there staring at it.
- Talk. I always knew this one was important, but I didn’t know just how important. If you have an issue, just say something. Don’t hold it in. Your partner can help, and probably wants to, but he or she can’t help if you don’t talk about it in the first place.
- Write a book
- Visit San Fransisco
- Buy a house
- Learn to scrapbook
- Host a holiday meal
- Listen to all of albums on my iPod
- Visit Ireland
- (Maybe a sub-goal of #7) Visit Dublin on Bloomsday
- Visit France… again
- Visit Barcelona, Spain
- Publish a book (or at least give it a good try)
- Get a dog
- Teach a course at a university or community college
- Attend another English conference
- Read 50 books (for pleasure)*
- Make it to State for Contest Play
- Watch 20 films I’ve never seen before*
- See 5 plays or musicals*
- Take a creative writing class
- Re-learn French. Or learn Spanish.
- Learn more about wine and wine and food pairings
- Attend a multi-course wine dinner
- Host a multi-course wine dinner
- Clean out the guest room closet/boxes of files
- Actually walk ALL 39.3 miles in the Avon Walk (and train for it!)
- Get some artwork for the walls of our home
- Buy a real couch
- Get Tim to try Indian food (yummy!!!)
- Begin to collect and edit personal essays for my second book
- Organize my jewelry
- Image by GoodNCrazy via Flickr
- I loved middle school, but no matter how much anyone loves middle school, I believe we all look back on it as a lonely, angsty, teenage nightmare. ↩
- Prelude/Processional
- Opening Remarks from Officiant (who was also my uncle)
- Reading 1 from “The Prophet” by Khalil Gabran
- Interlude played by my brother (one of the coolest moments of my life) “They Bring Me To You” by Joshua Radin (If you haven’t ever heard this song, go listen now. It is beautiful.)
- Reading 2 “How Marriage is Like Baking Bread” by Matthew Nienow (from a book of poetry sent to me by one of my former students as an engagement present. Inside was a note from her that read: “To a feminist for whom marriage is not an institution which holds a woman down, but rather, the coming together of two disconnected souls which recognize their own purpose and raise each other up.” Did I mention I have had the best students ever??)
- Reflections from the Officiant
- Vows
- Ring exchange
- Pronouncement of marriage
Honeymoon!
December 18th, 2010For those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you may not know that Tim and I leave for our honeymoon tomorrow. (Who says a honeymoon needs to be right after the wedding??) We’re going to Napa Valley for two nights and San Francisco for two nights (checking something off my 30 Before 30 list!)
I’m leaving my computer at home and taking a little break from the internets for that time, so I won’t be blogging again until after Christmas. But then, you can expect more Feminist Wife posts and (finally!) a full recap of the wedding with pictures! I know you’re excited.
So enjoy your holidays, everyone, and I’ll “see” you all again very soon!
The Feminist Lens: Unwind by Neal Shusterman
December 17th, 2010
In the future of America, after the Heartland War, abortion is made illegal. The Heartland War, after all, was not a war involving any military, but was a war between the pro-choice and pro-life forces in America. The war got so bad that the American military had to be asked to come in as a mediating force to stop the fighting. It was suggested, as a compromise, and also as a bit of sarcasm, that abortion could be made illegal, but once a child turns thirteen, and no later than the child is eighteen, the parents can decide to unwind their children. This means that their children are sent to “harvest camps” and their organs are harvested and given to others. The law states that 100% of the body (actually 99.4%, which accounts for unnecessary organs like the appendix) needs to be used, so people started to buy things like new teeth or hair. The organs that don’t function properly – like one boy’s asthmatic lungs – are sold cheaper than those which function extremely well. This compromise was accepted because everyone was just so sick of fighting.
Unwind sets us up in this dystopia following the Heartland War and follows three Unwinds, as the children who are going to be unwound are called, who run away and fight for survival. I won’t give away much of the plot in this one, because I think that it is secondary to the political and religious agendas raised in the book. I was first introduced to this book by one of my students who read it in his literacy support class last year and loved it. When he described it, I was intrigued, thinking it would be all about how pro-choice people have the right idea because “unwinding” a teenager – essentially killing him or her – is sort of ridiculous. But that really wasn’t the political agenda in the book. Yes, the idea of unwinding a teenager is presented as awful, and the parents who choose it are also presented as sufficiently awful to be able to do this to their teenage child. However, there are debates back and forth between the runaway Unwinds and within their inner thoughts about which is better – unwinding or abortion – and we are really left to believe at the end of the book that there is no good option, even though it is set up as understandable that raising a baby can be difficult or even impossible, and raising a troubled teenager can, at times, be the same.
The religious debate, however, was more clear-cut. One of the runaway Unwinds the story follows was a tithe, or a child that was given up to unwinding because religion calls for a donation of 10% of all the family has – money, possessions, and – yes – children. It doesn’t seem that there is a single religion that doesn’t call for this, actually, and the almost over-dramatic, sensational ending (that I won’t give away because as over-dramatic and sensational as it was, you’ll still want to be surprised) leaves us with a foul taste in our mouths about religion in general and what kind of person it can create if taken too far.
Shusterman does a fantastic job of developing this dystopian society and setting up rules that answered pretty much all of the questions I could think of about the laws that had come into place. For example, women who had babies but couldn’t take care of them still had an option called “storking.” They could “stork” a baby, which meant they could leave the baby on the doorstep of a home. If the mother got away undetected, the baby was the legal responsibility of that family. If the mother got caught, she was officially legally responsible for the baby herself. After that, the option would be a state home, where children could live until thirteen and then be unwound most likely. Shusterman obviously spent a lot of time thinking through his society and the rules, which I think is an absolute must for a successful dystopian society (*ahem* The Hunger Games, anyone?). However, I was less than enamored with the format of the book. Each chapter jumped to the perspective of a different character, although the entire book was written in the third person. So, as readers, we were shuffled between one third person limited point of view to another, and because of this, I felt as if I couldn’t build up an attachment to any of the characters because, as soon as I did, I was ripped away to yet another character. If it was limited to just the three characters, I think I would have been less disappointed with the format of the book, but toward the end, there were all sorts of characters – even some that would be considered flat characters, and I think that did little to push the story forward or add to the suspense of the novel.
Although I was left wishing I knew what the “agenda” of the book really was as far as abortion, I was pleased by the fact that, as a YA novel, the point of this book was to stimulate discussion, not to preach. As much as I may have my own agenda about certain issues, I’d much rather have my students come up with their own, informed opinions rather than push my agenda on them – which is perhaps what Shusterman was trying to tell us regarding the religion part of the book. The more agendas – both political and religious – are pushed on children and teenagers, the more teenagers are apt to rebel against those agendas. In that way, then, I’m glad Shusterman didn’t push an agenda about abortion, and I think it’s pretty clear at the end that, at least, the idea of unwinding a teenager is completely unfair and that a different alternative needed to be presented. It is also empowering for teenagers because they are shown that, with protests and petitions, they can make a very real change in society. And, although the ending is a bit over the top, that point still does ring very true.
This is book 1 of 50 in my 30 Before 30 goal #15.
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Want to be a Feminist? Act More Like A Man.
December 16th, 2010Maybe it’s having a wedding or being married and entering into a realm typically deemed for women, but I’m noticing a disturbing trend in feminists lately, especially those who are so outspoken against weddings, name changes, being a stay-at-home mom, being a housewife, etc. They say feminist women should not have weddings, should not change their names, should not stay at home to support a family.
Their message, in essence, is that if you want to be a feminist, you need to act more like a man.
Men don’t care about weddings, right? And they don’t change their names or give birth or stay home to support a family. (I’m bleeding sarcasm here to make a point.)
I see two problems with this mentality. First, there are a lot of misconceptions about feminism out there. I know, for example, The Undomestic Goddess (among many, many others) and I spent a lot of time at the beginning of our feminist blogging careers debunking the notion that all feminists are man-hating lesbians who don’t wear bras or shave. That view of feminism is problematic for a number of reasons, not least of which because it chases people away from feminism. Many young women today don’t want anything to do with feminism (“I’m not a feminist but…” anyone?) because they don’t want to declare they are a feminist and be seen this way. Now, I’m not out to convert people to feminism by any means, but I think the sooner people open their eyes to the idea that feminism isn’t going to hurt you, the closer we will be to equality because more people will actively be fighting for it.
Similarly, the sooner people realize that feminism is (or should be, in my humble opinion) about women having the ability to make the same choices as men – a very subtle difference than women actually beingmore like men, but a difference nonetheless – the sooner the negative stigma about feminism will be dropped and the sooner people of all genders will jump on the feminist bandwagon.
But even more problematic to this thinking is the idea that a specific binary between men and women exists. The idea that anything “girly” is bad – as voiced by people telling boys they ‘throw like a girl” or are a “wuss” or “pansy” (among other, more colorful terms) as insults and reinforced by various feminists who believe that women falling into a sphere that was historically for women is a move against equal rights – is only hurting feminist efforts. We all need to realize – and reinforce in our daily lives – that just because women like it or do it doesn’t make something inherently bad or stupid or wimpy. This should go for if boys andgirls take interest. The more feminists tell other feminists they need to act more like men by not changing their names or becoming housewives or what have you, the more the idea that anything girly is bad is reinforced. It is the same thing as telling boys “they throw like a girl” as an insult. The exact same thing.
Which is why I am such a huge proponent of choice. Which is why I’ve spoken out so often about choices and how we really need to respect them, even if they’re not the choices we may make ourselves.
So, I say: If you want to be a feminist, act more like a person. And not just any person. Act more like the person you want to be. Others will see that in you and be inspired to follow suit.
A Feminist Wife: Things I’ve Learned from Marriage So Far
December 15th, 2010This could just as easily have been titled “Things I’ve learned From the First Five Months of Cohabitation”. The marriage and the cohabitation really do blend together. I know it’s only 2 months into my wedded bliss, but it’s a steep learning curve. So, since I know some of you are right there with me, here’s a smattering of things I’ve learned so far.
This list is a work in progress, but it’s what I’ve got so far. What about you, readers? Any nuggets of wisdom I should have included here?
30 Before 30
December 12th, 2010A little while ago, I began reading some of the blogs of the bloggers who had participated in the Mighty Summit retreat. If you haven’t seen this page, check it out; it’s pretty cool. These women make life lists of things they’d like to accomplish in their lifetimes, and then go on a retreat and talk and write and help each other accomplish things on their lists. Then, they sometimes blog about things they do on their lists and receive feedback and encouragement. No task is too big or too small, and their goals are sometimes lofty, sometimes concrete. Heck, sometimes they’re just things that have been nagging them for such a long time and they just want to get them done, gosh darnit!
I’ve always seen the value in having concrete, written goals. I love to-do lists because they keep my life organized and keep me on track. However, I have never written down my life goals before, just my day-to-day ones. So I’ve been thinking about this list for quite some time, and I thought it would be good to start with a 30 Before 30 list – 30 things I’d like to accomplish before I’m 30 years old. Being 26.5, now’s the time to start checking some of these things off! Maybe I’ll even write about a few of them as I go. So, below you’ll find my list. Do you have anything I should add? Do you have a life list? If so, post a link in the comments! That way, we can all keep ourselves and each other accountable for achieving these goals. And who knows, we may even be able to help each other out!
*These may seem like small numbers to accomplish in 3.5 years to those of you reading 52 books a year or watching movies daily or seeing plays every month, but I have a lot of trouble reading for pleasure and watching full movies because my life is so busy. So I set achievable goals. Maybe I’ll even exceed them!
Fighting Homophobia and Fighting Homophobic Language
December 11th, 2010Fighting homophobia and fighting homophobic language are two different things. Often overlapping, yes, but different.
When one fights homophobia and homophobic language, one is fighting power structures that are in place. Let’s use the word “gay” as a running example, since it is the example of this type of misuse of language that I encounter most frequently in my life and my work. When someone sees an assignment they don’t like in my classroom, they most often say: “Miss, this is so gay.”
If I were going to just fight the misuse of language in that sentence, I would say: “Don’t say that. Here are some other options!” just like the poster I have hanging in my classroom:
Poster in my classroom which reads: I think I just heard you say… “That’s so gay!” Here are some other things you could say: ludicrous. naive. frivolous. irrational. interesting. curious. eccentric. bogus. weak. foolish. goofy. insipid. absurd. ridiculous. annoying. asinine. pathetic. yesterday. surreal. wack(y). Read the rest of this entry “
A Feminist Wife: Is Marriage Obsolete?
December 7th, 2010A recent survey showed that 4 in 10 Americans now believe that marriage is obsolete.
I saw this on the news a few weeks ago, but I was too busy reading The Hunger Games to comment. It’s too bad, too, because this study is right up my alley.
The article linked above explains that people believe that marriage is no longer necessary to have a family because so many people are growing up outside of the traditional family. Many more parents are divorced, never married and single, or never married and cohabiting than ever before. And this changes the face of the American family: when people grow up in households that are not the mom-dad-three kids-golden retriever-white picket fence “norm,” they are more likely to think of family in a different way. I see this as a major difference between my students, for example, and the kids I grew up with. I grew up in white picket fence suburbia, and it was very rare to see different types of families. It is these people that have the most difficult time accepting my decision to keep my name, for example. Their view of family is so narrow that even me keeping my name is outside of the family box. My students, however, are a completely different demographic. While still suburbia, my students come from all different types of families. Divorce, single parenthood, remarriages, cohabitation, you name it. It is increasingly rare, then, for my students to have the same last name as their parents, or the parent they are currently living with. While my white-picket-fence peers wonder: “How is that going to look when you send your kids to school and you don’t have the same last name as them?” my students are much more likely to say: “Well, I don’t have the same name as my mom and step-dad and I turned out OK.”
Needless to say, I think this shift in the way people view families is an important one, and makes us a much more tolerant and accepting society. Or, at least, it’s a step in the right direction.
However, if I really thought marriage was obsolete, I wouldn’t have gotten married in the first place. I do not think that getting married is necessary to be a family – just like I don’t think having kids is necessary to be a family – but I do think that there is something extremely powerful about marriage. People joke with me all the time that married life must not be very different than it was before – and people really do believe that nothing changed between me and Tim after the wedding. But things really did change. We used to fight constantly and worry about breaking up and worry about what we’d do if such-and-such a thing happened. Now we don’t do any of that much anymore. We still fight, but a breakup isn’t in the cards, so the fights are just different. And if such-and-such a thing happens, we will deal with it together, because that’s what marriage is all about. All-in-all, I find myself much more relaxed and free to do other things like write and participate in activist events than I was before. There’s just something incredibly empowering about knowing that your husband has your back no matter what. And that, I think, is what marriage is all about. Can you have that relationship with your partner without being married? Sure you can! I just personally find it much easier to do pretty much everything now that I’m married.
So, I guess I see both sides of the issue here. But I don’t think marriage is really becoming obsolete. I just think we’re looking at family differently. Because, really, if marriage is actually becoming obsolete, then why can’t everyone have equal access to it? I’m just sayin’.
A Feminist Wife: Being in an Equitable Partnership
December 5th, 2010People are often flabbergasted when they realize I am a feminist and I am married. Of course that doesn’t apply to any of you; if you were flabbergasted then you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog. Somehow, though, they don’t understand how a feminist marriage would work. Do I work and he stays home? Does he do all of the chores and the cooking and cleaning? Do I “bring home the bread” and “wear the pants in the relationship” so to speak?
I simply respond that a feminist marriage functions just like any other marriage. We’re married. We love each other. We handle household chores, finances, and decisions equally. That’s about it.
It’s always funny (in a sad sort of way) when I hear these people giving advice like “Oh, start sharing those chores early or you’ll end up doing it all for the rest of your life” or “Don’t let him control your money. Always have a little money for yourself” and then countering with cautionary “Oh if you think your future husband is going to let you _______ (fill in the blank), you’ve got another thing coming!” That’s what I usually use to explain a feminist marriage: It’s all the sharing and none of the “letting.” We don’t ever “let” each other do anything. We talk about decisions and if one person feels strongly enough about it, we’ll figure out a way to make it happen. It’s not always equal, but it is always equitable.
I spend more money on myself than he does, for example. While his money is free to be put away for a house or vacation, mine is often spent on things like glasses, contacts, monthly prescriptions, eyebrow waxing, hair cuts, etc. He’s never needed glasses or contacts in his life, has no monthly prescriptions, and does not spend more than $5 on a haircut ever. I, on the other hand, require these things. (Well, maybe I don’t require a more expensive haircut, but it is one of the few things I allow myself that’s more of a frivolity than a necessity.) I also had to get a new car because mine was totally unsafe while he’s driving the Ford he bought in 2005 pretty much into the ground. However, if Tim comes to me and says he wants a shiny new computer or whenever he decides he needs a new car because his has broken down on the side of the road, I will not question that. See? Equitable.
This is the same for how we approach our life goals and dreams. That’s the beautiful thing about our partnership: We have very different life goals, but they all sort of seem to fit within one another and that will allow for us to have a much fuller life than we would have had alone or with a partner much more like either one of us. We both want to travel, and even though money is a bit tight, we’ve been able to save enough to take our honeymoon in Napa Valley a few days before Christmas, and we’re planning on road tripping to Denver soon. Yes, they’re small trips, but they’re trips nonetheless, and we’re able to do this because we want to and work together for it. That’s about where our similar life goals end, however. Tim’s major life goal right now is to buy a house. I, on the other hand, have never seen myself buying a house, never even thought about buying a house, never idly looked at houses, nothing. Tim spends hours idly perusing real estate sites on the internet, asking me if I like this house or that house or what I think about this bathroom or that kitchen. Do I need a house right now? No. But Tim does, and because it is so important to him, I will buy into his goal and make it mine.
While Tim has his house dream, I have my book dream. I want to write a book. This might seem like any other blogger’s dream, too, but it’s true. I want to write a book. I’ve always wanted to write a book. Since I was a kid, I used to go through the Fiction & Literature sections of Barnes & Noble and stop at the S-authors, thinking I’d someday see my name there. (I still do this on occasion. I know, I’m a nerd.) I could write a book or not write a book; it really makes no difference to Tim, but he knows how much it means to me and has spent numerous hours reading this page or that section – and reading this blog – and encouraging me to do what I need to do. He’s offered to work this summer so I don’t have to and I can concentrate on writing. He does a nice job of leaving me alone so I can do my work. Above all, he is just supportive.
See? Equitable.
The number one thing I see in problematic marriages is one partner doing whatever he or she wants either at the expense of the other partner or with complete disregard to the fact that he or she is unhappy with the choice. It seems to me that an equitable marriage is a happy marriage, and an equitable marriage is a feminist marriage. Therefore, a feminist marriage is a happy marriage. Makes sense, right? 🙂
When Teachers Cross A Line
December 1st, 2010I knew I wanted to be a teacher ever since my senior year in high school. I was fortunate to have many amazing teachers throughout my high school experience, but there was one teacher whose passion for his students inspired me to go that extra step and officially apply to colleges with the intent of joining a teacher education program.
Of course, we all probably have a teacher like this in our lives – otherwise we probably wouldn’t have ever decided to be teachers. My story is different, though, because this teacher not only inspired me, but showed me what can happen when you take your role as teacher too far into a student’s personal life.
We all called him Doc, one of the two Anatomy and Physiology teachers at our high school. Even students like me, sure we were going to major in the humanities in college, took A & P as our third science, and not just because of the weighted grade. We wanted a chance to be in Doc’s class. He was almost legendary. We all had heard stories about his compassion and willingness to help his students, even outside of the classroom. We had also heard about how he made even memorizing the bones in the human body fun – no small feat, let me tell you. So my junior year, I signed up for his class and was not disappointed.
Doc taught us all about the human body in ways I’d never imagined. He taught us how to kill people in various ways, for example, because he thought that if we learned how to make the body stop working, we would understand how it did work. He rarely used the textbook – something my other science teachers never quite figured out how to do. And he made it a point to talk to each one of us almost every day – asking us about our lives, our goals and dreams, and encouraging us or answering questions or giving advice as needed.
One time, late in the year, we found out that Doc was going to be suspended because of accusations of theft of something or other that was in a dumpster ready to be thrown away. At least, that’s what he said. I suppose we all should have been a little more suspicious, but we trusted him implicitly.
He was back my senior year, though, and I signed up to be his lab aid – someone who ran errands or graded papers for him while he was teaching a class. I had the hour free, and volunteering to help a teacher always looks good on college applications. As his lab aid, for some reason, he felt it appropriate to tell me things that he may not have told his other students. He told me about how upset he was that the administration was targeting him – yet again, my senior year – because they wanted to fire him. He was very expensive for the district, after all. He thought that the claims the administration was making against him were completely unfounded. They said he was getting too personal with his students, but how could this be, he wondered aloud to me, when he so obviously loved his students so much and wanted to be a guiding force in their lives?
In February of my senior year, he was suspended again and told me that he thought about killing himself because he was so upset. He wouldn’t do it, he said, but he had thought about it. He told me I was an adult and could therefore handle this information. I missed school for three days following that because I was so upset. I wanted to say something to someone because that’s what you’re supposed to do when someone expresses suicidal thoughts, but I was so worried I’d get him in more trouble by telling that I made myself sick. Finally, I told my mom who contacted the school. Eventually (and not because of my confession to my mom) he was suspended again indefinitely and eventually fired, and the last months of school were filled with visits to my dean and with school lawyers and counselors. They were trying to build a case against him because he was suing the school to get his job back.
It came out in these meetings that he was suspended and fired because he had a habit of prying into the personal lives of some of the girls in his classes. He would ask them about their boyfriends and other topics that are not a far stretch from that. He would massage their shoulders at random times – as he did with me often, which always made me uncomfortable. In short, he crossed all sorts of lines, and it was very difficult for the administration to do anything about it because of his tenured status. When it became apparent that he was suing the district, I was asked to testify against him because it was so clear to everyone else that his confession of his suicidal thoughts to me was completely inappropriate. It wasn’t so clear to me. I still thought very highly of him as a teacher and wanted to testify for him, but his lawyers never contacted me. The school lawyers promised me that I’d be able to share my side of the issue when his lawyers asked me questions at the hearing. They couldn’t have been more wrong.
Instead of asking me to praise Doc as a teacher, his lawyer brought out a card I had written to him thanking him for being such a good teacher. I had signed that card “<3 Ashley.” He asked me to read the card aloud and I read it as saying “Love Ashley,” which he twisted to imply that I was, in fact, coming on to him which meant, obviously, that anything he may have said to me that might be seen as inappropriate was invited by me. They also brought up the fact that I had a few boyfriends in high school, making it seem as if I were the sort of person who may invite these sorts of innuendos all the time. It was more or less awful, and when I looked at Doc in front of me that day and he motioned for me to cheer up, I hated him. And I never forgave him.
The feminist in me is still unsure about the whole situation. I replay the events of those years over in my head, trying to find answers. Why did this particular group of girls feel the need to come forward when so many of us were grateful for his advice? Why was I so torn about it when I know that what he did was wrong – even if he didn’t cross physical lines, he did cross emotional ones and, as an adult and a teacher, should have known better. Why did his lawyer feel the need to blame me when he could have so easily asked for praise for Doc and I would have readily given it?
The educator in me is also still unsure about the whole situation, although less so. As a teacher, I appreciate tenure and strive for it, even though I understand that sometimes teachers like Doc get tenured and it costs a lot of money and time to terminate their contracts, and all the while they are really doing more damage. I also want to be the type of teacher that students feel comfortable talking to, but I always fall WAY on the side of impersonal and always back out of or cut off conversations that seem to be too personal. In this way, I am a conservative teacher when I know I have much to offer in discussions about feminism or LGBTQ issues or sexuality or anything like that. I am also extremely conscious of things like if a student is in my room for an individual conference during a prep hour or outside of school hours, I always prop the door open and sit near it so there’s no questions ever.
I admire his passion for teaching and for helping young people realize their dreams, and I try to emulate this passion in my own teaching. But when I look at these issues as a feminist, I am appalled that we live in a culture where these sorts of events are often overlooked or dealt with in a manner such as what I described.
Like so many events in life, I doubt I will ever fully understand what happened those last two years of high school, and I don’t think I want to. But every so often, I think about Doc and his awesome class and his terrible situation and it reminds me why I care so much about education and feminism. A formative event, indeed.
This article is cross-posted at Equality 101.
When Teachers Cross A Line
December 1st, 2010I knew I wanted to be a teacher ever since my senior year in high school. I was fortunate to have many amazing teachers throughout my high school experience, but there was one teacher whose passion for his students inspired me to go that extra step and officially apply to colleges with the intent of joining a teacher education program.
Of course, we all probably have a teacher like this in our lives – otherwise we probably wouldn’t have ever decided to be teachers. My story is different, though, because this teacher not only inspired me, but showed me what can happen when you take your role as teacher too far into a student’s personal life.
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The Feminist Lens: The Hunger Games Trilogy
November 28th, 2010I’m sure by now you’ve all noticed I’ve been conspicuously absent these past few days (or maybe you’ve been busy enough with families and turkeys that my absence hasn’t really been noted). I honestly haven’t even turned my computer on or so much as checked my Twitter or Facebook pages in four days. All because of the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. Well, ok. Because of tofurkey and family fun, too. But it’s been a long time since a book or series of books has made me completely useless and dead to the world like the Hunger Games trilogy. In fact, I think the last time this truly happened, I was deep in my fantasy book phase, devouring every single Anne McCaffrey and Dragonlance series book I could get my grubby little sixth-grade hands on. And playing Magic: The Gathering. Yes, you read that correctly. Magic: The Gathering. I bet you can’t picture that, can you?
And, honestly, maybe that’s part of the reason I avoided the Hunger Games trilogy for so long. People kept describing them as sci-fi young adult novels, and, as such, I avoided them like the plague. First of all, I left my sci-fi/fantasy books behind me long ago and, as much as I loved them, I was sure that delving into the pages of a new one would leave me right in the middle of that lonely, angsty, teenage nightmare that was middle school. 1 I also have been wary of other teen series-novels that have gained popularity like wildfire. Harry Potter, for example, or even worse, Twilight. I’m simply not interested in reading about teenage fantasy worlds where angst and drama prevail. I lived through that once, and now I teach in the midst of it; I certainly don’t need to be reading about it in my precious time off. Which is probably why I also tend to avoid young adult novels in general; the drama and drivel seem to be things that we’re trying to teach our students to avoid, not relish in. However, after reading this trilogy, I would not classify it as young adult, sci-fi, or fantasy – although the voice of Katniss is decidedly seventeen and the arc of the trilogy does definitely follow that of a typical sci-fi or fantasy narrative with two battles followed by a third battle that decides the fate of the war and a little love story mixed in. Which is probably why I loved it so much – it had all of the things I have always loved in books wrapped into one easy-to-read trilogy.
Do not read any further if you plan on reading these books but haven’t yet. For real. If you spoil the ending, you’ll be disappointed. So stop now. Read the books. Come back later. I’ll wait, I promise. Also, I don’t really do plot summary, so if you do continue reading, it may not make a whole lot of sense if you haven’t already read the books. The full review, spoilers and all, is after the break. (You will also not be disappointed to know that I actually had a sign that looked like this hanging in my room when I was younger. Except, of course, instead of spoilers, it said dragons. I never cease to amaze you all, I know.) Read the rest of this entry “
I am bad at grading.
November 21st, 2010Well, I am. I’ve never been very good at it, actually. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I don’t necessarily “believe” in grades. I believe in them enough that I really wanted to get A’s in high school and college, but I also always recognized the fact that they really are arbitrary measures of success, and the students that got the best grades were often the students who learned what the teacher wanted and produced it. In short, the students with the highest GPAs either learned how to “play the game” or cheated. Maybe it’s also because, since I started teaching, I’ve taught classes in which I need to grade mostly on whether or not the student completed the assignment and followed the directions. If the student was able to do this, I usually gave that student at least a B, because there were so many students who didn’t read the directions or didn’t listen in class and therefore produced an assignment that wasn’t actually the assignment. I did, however, reserve the A for those students who not only followed directions but went above and beyond. Maybe it’s because I know that my students don’t usually read my extensive comments on their assignments, and therefore I find it tedious to even write them. I much prefer to give the students a grade and then hold a one-on-one conference with them afterward to discuss why they received the grade.
Regardless of the reason (and I’m sure it’s all of the above), I’ve never been very good at grading. There was one time I felt I had some success with grading essays: Last year, my students wrote their major research papers, and I graded them with a rubric, along with writing them a letter about what they did well and what they could improve for next time. That, I felt was successful, because the students actually read the letters and seemed to genuinely appreciate them. However, it took so much time to write the letters, and there isn’t another research paper in the curriculum that year, so I wonder if it really was worth it.
Up in Flames
November 18th, 2010
I had every intention of blogging yesterday. And then I got a message from my best friend’s mom that the store where she bought her wedding dress and where we bought our bridesmaid dresses burnt down. Take a look at those pictures. It’s really scary.
Her wedding? It’s in 3 weeks.
Her dress? She had a fitting at 12:30 yesterday. The fire started at 3:00. It’s gone. Our dresses, too. But our dresses aren’t nearly as important as hers. Hers was a designer gown – the stuff of Say Yes to the Dress, complete with a tearful moment of happiness when she decided that one was The One.
Did I mention her wedding is in 3 weeks?
Thank goodness no one was hurt. Thank goodness her wedding isn’t tomorrow or Saturday like some of the other brides interviewed in the news articles. But 3 weeks? I mean, I remember myself 3 weeks before my wedding and there’s a good possibility that if this were me, I’d be inconsolable.
Not to mention that this could be the most important dress she ever wears in her life. Wedding dresses are strange things, especially when you pick them out over a year before you get married. They sort of take on personalities and become a fixture of your life for that time, like a friend you haven’t seen in a year and can’t wait to visit.
So, even though her maid of honor was on the phone with the designer and other stores in the area trying to find another dress and I (the matron of honor) was scouring the Internet for the bridesmaid dresses, there was a good possibility that, even if we found everything exactly the same, it wouldn’t be exactly the same. And Christina, my friend, had every right to a total emotional breakdown last night.
But when I talked to her on the phone, she was laughing. She was joking about the whole situation, and thanking her lucky stars that she had enough time to figure this out. She was saying how lucky she really was that she might get to go wedding dress shopping twice in her life, and then joking about how she planned on drinking at least two glasses of wine because she deserved it.
Christina, needless to say, is amazing. She somehow always finds the positive in every situation. She has been this way our whole lives, so I’m not surprised at all at last night’s phone call, but I still find her high spirits and perseverance amazing and something to emulate. She just knows that it will all work out; maybe she doesn’t know how, but she knows it will. And it will – we will all make sure of it.
It’s important to keep things in perspective when things like this happen, and Christina does this beautifully with grace and a smile. She truly is an amazing woman, my best friend.
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A Feminist Wife: Sunday Breakfast
November 14th, 2010Sunday breakfasts are maybe my favorite part of married life. No matter what has been going on, no matter what we have to do before work starts on Monday, we sit down to a huge breakfast on Sunday mornings and talk.
This wasn’t a “tradition” we ever talked about starting or continuing on a regular basis, although I do think it sort of naturally continued from when before we were living together and I used to spend the night at his place on Saturdays and we’d wake up and have breakfast on Sunday morning.
But even though we’ve never really talked about doing it, we still awake every Sunday, and one of us overtakes the kitchen to make a usually-stunning bed & breakfast-style meal. (We do share this responsibility in true, feminist-couple fashion.) Sometimes Tim makes French toast, sometimes I make eggs and English muffins and soy bacon. I almost always make some sort of bread. On nice days, we serve the breakfast on the balcony and on chillier days we eat at the kitchen table from my childhood, passed on to me from my mom. We serve the breakfast with coffee and cranberry juice. And we talk. We talk until the coffee gets cold and then some. We talk about our weeks past and upcoming. We talk about the bills we need to pay. We talk about family. We talk about happiness. We talk about frustrations.
We just talk.
Just having food and a table in front of you is conducive to talking. I’m not sure what it is about these huge meals that opens us up, but there’s something there. And I’m not interested in explaining the magic away; I’m just interested in creating these meals and feeling satisfied both physically and emotionally. Filling ourselves up with food and conversation.
They say communication is the basis of a healthy relationship. If that’s true, we have that going for us. We’re not always experts at sharing everything all the time, but sharing a hearty meal and a good talk once a week is something we’ll continue to work on and build on for the rest of our lives.
What are your traditions in your relationship? How did they start?
Feminism and Choices: Should We Always Choose the “Feminist” Choice?
November 12th, 2010I’ve been thinking quite a bit about Cat Rocketship’s post about Feminism and Being a Housewife and about the venomous response she received when the post was linked elsewhere. I’m particularly talking about the comments on this article. It seems that women having choices is something we all agree is an important goal of feminism. However, it also seems that when one makes a choice that isn’t necessarily the “feminist thing to do,” we’re told we’re privileged and exercising that privilege is not feminist, and not what a feminist should be doing. (I’m reminded here about the reactions Emily received when she told us she is changing her name when she marries her fiancé, and the reactions I received when I commented over at Choices Campus Blog on their bride bashing piece a few months ago.) It seems like there is a lot of “Women should be able to make the same choices men can make!” followed by “And here is the right choice to make if you really are a feminist!”
Is being able to work from home or completely devote yourself to housewifery a privilege? Absolutely. Is being able to keep your surname a privilege? Totally. Is having a big, white wedding a privilege? You betcha. But if someone has the privilege to have the choice between housewife and job, keeping a name or changing it, or having a wedding or not having a wedding, does that mean she should choose the option that exerts less privilege just because some people may not be privileged enough to have the option? I’d argue no, and I’d also argue that making that particular choice within your privilege does not make you less of a feminist.
Sure, maybe being a housewife or changing your name or having that big wedding aren’t necessarily “the feminist things to do”, but I don’t think they are the anti-feminist things to do, either. Especially when the choice has been considered and weighed and it has been decided that this particular choice is best for this particular person. Likewise, I don’t believe anyone should make a choice for the sole reason that their “feminist card” might be taken away if they made the other choice.
We must, absolutely, critique the society and the narratives that dictate that women should stay at home or change their names or become the blushing bride. We should also absolutely critique a society that says “If you do this, you’re not really a feminist.” But to critique individual choices when they were actually choices that were actively made, not just someone blindly following the patriarchy, seems counter-productive. And it seems like a huge source of women bashing other women.
From my understanding of feminism, feminists didn’t fight for women to work outside of the home; they fought for women to choose what profession they wanted, just like any man could choose. When women choose typically women’s jobs, however, we’re sometimes looked at as not fulfilling our feminist duties. Being a housewife is typically a woman’s job, and that’s why Cat caught such a backlash when she proudly stated she is a housewife and a feminist. I’m an English teacher, which is historically a woman’s job, and people have often told me I should be doing something better with my time. However, if a man makes the decision to stay home to support his working wife, we think and say “Wow, what a stand-up-guy! How wonderful of him to support his wife!” Similarly, if a woman takes a job historically reserved for men – like an engineer or CEO – we applaud her. If she takes a job typically reserved for a woman, we cut her down.
I’m not saying all choices are feminist choices, so please don’t start quoting Sarah Palin criticisms at me (although, as I think is pretty clear here, I don’t think these choices we’re talking about are necessarily un-feminist, either). I’m just saying that, if someone chooses to do something feminists fought against women being more or less forced to do, that doesn’t make her not a feminist.
Submit your posts to the Feminism and _______ series today!
The Observation Deck: Ask A Question (Open Thread)
November 12th, 2010
Ask a Question
Ask a question? OK! Open thread time!
I’ve been having a pretty rough week as weeks go. So I really could use some happiness! So, what makes you happy? Post your answers in the comments!
Literacy and Blogging in the Classroom
November 11th, 2010Today’s post is a video tutorial that I created to show you, in 5 minutes, the benefits of including blogging in your classroom. Personally, I have been unable to include blogging in my classroom this year because of many reasons, not least of which being because my students’ comfort level with technology is extremely (and surprisingly) low this year, but I have done it in the past, and I know many teachers who incorporate blogging with great success. Do you incorporate blogging in your classroom? If so, how? I’d love to hear some ideas!
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The Observation Deck: Become the Other
November 11th, 2010
Become
Interestingly enough, the first card I pulled from The Observation Deck was “Become the Other.” For creative writers, this card is all about becoming your characters. Talk like them, walk like them, dress like them, eat like them. See how people react to you and write from there. I think that’s why most people tend to write semi-autobiographically, or at least tend to base fictional characters on people they know – it’s easy to write their dialogue and actions because you’re familiar with them, and easy to write other characters’ reactions because you’ve seen them or they are your own reactions to that person.
From a feminist perspective, however, becoming the other is something we do almost every day, or at least I do. Feminism, for me, is about questioning and fighting against the patriarchy or, more specifically, the kyriarchy, in whatever form that may take – from standing up for my LGBTQ students when they are bullied to educating my students about ableist language, from fighting for marriage equality to upholding the right to choose, from discussing racial injustices to defending feminist housewives.
I, however, am privileged. I am a white, cis, thin, heterosexual, upper-middle class female. To fight against the kyriarchy as a privileged person can, at times, require putting yourself into someone else’s shoes to understand their arguments, feelings, concerns. As a teacher, I am constantly asking my students to do this – to feel what the other person feels in order to curb bullying and harassment I may encounter in my classroom and in the hallways.
Recently, my focus on the marginalization of women has taken a more personal turn. Instead of commenting on stories that involve women more globally, I’ve been focusing quite a bit on myself and my personal struggle to find my feminism within my new marriage and family. I hope to continue to focus on other issues in the future, but for now, “the other” is, in fact, me. I feel at times like I’m a totally different person than I was just a few short months ago, and exploring that while keeping a hold on my feminist ideals is a major focus in my life at the moment. So, instead of trying on my characters’ clothes, I’ll be trying out new hats for myself and studying my reactions and those of others, trying to see what fits and what doesn’t.
Tradition is in the Eye of the Beholder
November 10th, 2010Since I began the wedding planning, I thought our ceremony was going to be largely traditional. The white dress, the readings, the music (I guess The Beatles are sort of traditional for weddings…), the rings, the vows. I really believed that with all of these things, our ceremony would be very traditional. We booked a golf club, hired their caterers, had a pretty typical reception. However once I read this post from A Practical Wedding about writing a non-traditional ceremony, I thought, Wow, if that ceremony is non-traditional, ours was really non-traditional! The ceremony timeline they lay out there is almost exactly like ours. If you’re curious, we did this:
I mean, this is really the skeleton of a religious ceremony, right? But I guess a wedding ceremony is a wedding ceremony is a wedding ceremony, huh?
Our vows seemed very traditional, as well, but having my uncle as our officiant really helped them not feel cookie-cutter. He gave us a bunch of different options for vows and things to say when we exchanged rings, and anything we didn’t like, he changed with no problem.
As an aside, here (and not just because he occasionally reads this blog 🙂 ), my uncle Jeff – the officiant – is definitely one of the coolest guys I know. When he and his wife married in the early 80’s, she didn’t change her name, and he was all about me keeping mine. He was also all about subverting the norms and personalizing the ceremony. If you’re thinking about writing a non-traditional ceremony yourself, first check out this post, then make the first thing you do be putting some time into choosing an officiant you really like and who will give you ideas, but also work with you. Having my uncle officiate our wedding was one of the best decisions we made, because he was so cool with whatever we wanted to do.
I think his awesomeness and his commitment to doing our ceremony the right way are evidenced best in the reflections he offered before our vows, which I will never forget. And, never fear, I will share a piece of them with you here, now. (Not all of them; sorry. It’s still a little bit too personal. 🙂 )
You see, when we look at marriage, we are looking at creation itself.
“I am the sky,” says the bridegroom to the bride. “You are the earth. We are the sky and earth united.”
“You are my husband.”
“You are my wife.”
“My feet shall run because of you.”
“My feet shall dance because of you.”
“My heart shall beat because of you.”
“My eyes see because of you.”
“My mind shall think because of you.”“And I shall love because of you.”
Now – are you guys cool with that?
And then the vows we created:
[Insert name here] do you take [name] to be your wife/husband? Do you commit yourself to her/his happiness and self-fulfillment as a person? Do you promise to love, honor, and trust her/him in sickness and in health, in adversity and prosperity, and to be true and loyal to her/him so long as you both shall live?
I may be biased, but I think that, even with all of the nods to the traditional, Christian ceremony and to the patriarchy, we were really able to make our ceremony very non-traditional. At the very least, it was intensely personal, but also had a wonderful communal feel, which is really all we could ever ask for.
Yea, I’m Going to Write About Name Changes Again.
November 9th, 2010Stephanie (one of my favorite bloggers/tweeters – you should check her out) pointed me to this Shakesville article yesterday that deals with the [radical] idea that, as feminists, we shouldn’t judge women who decide to take their husband’s name upon marriage.
Melissa outlines some great reasons here why we should not judge heterosexual, feminist women for changing their names, and I’ve been a huge advocate of the whole not judging people thing for some time. People often don’t believe that because I didn’t change my name and am not planning on doing so, but it’s true. I am pro-choice in every sense of the word – I will fight every day for women to have the right to choose whatever it is they want. Maybe the choices they make will not always be inherently “feminist,” but I’m not going to say that women should have the right to choose and then say “but this is really the only ‘choice’ you have.” That just seems counter-intuitive.
Interestingly, however, the article never explicitly says that we should respect women’s choices because we’ve fought so hard for the right to choose. Melissa hints toward this at the end of the article, but “Because she has the right to choose what’s best for her and her family” is not on her list of reasons why we shouldn’t judge women who change their names, and I think it definitely should be.
Obviously, I believe it is important for women to consider keeping their names upon marriage, or I wouldn’t have considered it myself. However, my reach stops there. If a woman decides to change her name, far be it from me to tell her she should do differently.
I would urge that the problem lies not in the women who make a conscious change, but in both the women who make the unconscious change and the men who put up such a fit about their future wives keeping their names that the women are left with the choice to change it or lose their partner. As a young woman who didn’t change her name, the two comments I’ve heard most often about the choice I made are either along the lines of “Well, why would you do that? Don’t you want to be a family?” or “Wow, that’s so cool. I wish I could do that, but my boyfriend said no.” Only amongst my feminist circle of friends have I heard “Cool” or “Good to know.” And only amongst my feminist friends have I been asked if I’m changing my name before I could even tell them I wasn’t.
Melissa writes:
But it’s eminently possible to critique the culture in which individual choices are made, and the cultural narratives that may affect our decision-making processes, without condemning those individual choices. Or the womanists/feminists making them.
I would argue that it’s not only possible to critique the culture and cultural narratives, but necessary. Many of my more progressive friends don’t believe me when I tell them some of the comments I’ve received, and I think lowering our guard on this one and thinking that this fight is over is one of the more dangerous things we could do.