Giving Thanks: 2009

Forgive my predictability here, but these are a few of the things for which I am grateful:

* for being old enough to be irreverent and young enough to wear cowboy boots, and get away with both.

* for my old Passat that keeps hangin’ in there.

* for kids I would be honored to know even if I wasn’t their mother.

* for friends who make me laugh until I cry.

* for big brothers who call me “Kid,” and “Sweethaht.”

* for classroom moments that take my breath away.

* for little boxes of paint that wait patiently in the closet.

* for my mom who teaches me how to grow old gracefully.

* for Sadie who tugs at my heart from 900 miles away.

* for coffee and chocolate.

* for my Bose Wave Radio/CD Player that I turn on even before I set down my keys.

* for books and exquisite sentences that must be read over and over again.

* for the Atlantic Ocean, four minutes away.

* for every day that brings one damn gift after another.

Fractured Fairy Tales

Inspired by a feminist coloring book we saw online, a friend and I were playing with captions we'd like to see ourselves. So, as you read these, imagine black and white outlines (of the appropriate character), just waiting for that little girl to color (hopefully OUTSIDE the lines).

And for those of you who would point your finger and accuse me of "male-bashing," I must object. For in reality, what this is, is "Prince-MYTH bashing." It's a feminist deconstruction thing...

"Snow White left 7 little men who catered to her every whim, for a man who expected her to do the same for him. It didn't take her long to realize just how Dopey she had been."

"When Rapunzel first met the Prince, he pulled on her hair. After she married him, she pulled out her own."

"Sleeping Beauty didn't realize just how precious a nap was, until she married the Prince and had his kids."

"The Little Mermaid traded eternal life for a man. After she married him, she realized what eternity really felt like."

"Cinderella didn't know that she simply traded one dirty chimney for another."

"The Wicked Witch wasn't really wicked. She was just trying to keep Sleeping Beauty from making the same mistakes she had."

"Beauty was told that if she loved the Beast enough he would change. No one told her that what he would change into was a MAN."

"If your father introduces you to someone named 'The Beast,' run Sweetheart. Run like the freaking wind."

Feel free to offer your OWN 'Fractured Fairy Tales...'

Home is Where They Have to Take You In

Rhode Island. They have to take me in there. These are the people who have known me all my life; my mother and brothers. This trip, my first best friend ever will also be there. Her mother still lives across the street from my dad's bar. I've agreed to meet them there, for a drink. I haven't walked through the doors of the Arena Cafe since my father died 22 years ago. I grew up there. I know the smells, the light as it comes in through the transept windows; how the wood of the bar glows. It will be a tender re-entrance into a world in which I am forever six years old. My friend told me that if they are already inside when I get to the street, I should call her and she'll come outside and walk me through it.

Call It By Its True Name

On Thursday, the New Haven Police Chief classified the murder of Yale graduate student Annie Le as ‘workplace violence.’ Several (feminist) voices have been raised in protest of such a classification, but not nearly enough. I now raise mine.

Annie Le was a victim of a hate crime and it has a name. Its name is gender-violence. Its name is misogyny. Annie Le was murdered because she was a woman.
She was murdered by a bully with a history of violence against women; a brute who cleaned mice cages for a living and who became enraged when a petite, brilliant young woman with a promising career did not heed his commands, was not intimidated by his text messages, did not submit to his male entitlement to authority.

The leadership and citizens of this country point their fingers at violence against women in other parts of the world. We denounce female infanticide in China, bride burnings in India, honor killings in Pakistan and Syria, sex/slave trafficking in women’s and children’s bodies in Thailand and Cambodia, female genital mutilation in Africa, but when the cultural evidence is laid at our door and within our own borders we deny, refute, contest, defend and mask its true nature under euphemisms. Or we appeal to pathologies and psychoses that are unique to the individual alone so that once again we can hide behind the veil of denial. We say, “What a sick man HE is,” rather than diagnosing the disease that is pandemic in our culture.

According to the United States Department of Justice:

Women are more likely to be victims of sexual violence than men: 78% of the victims of rape and sexual assault are women and 22% are men.

Most perpetrators of sexual violence are men. Among acts of sexual violence committed against women since the age of 18, 100% of rapes, 92% of physical assaults, and 97% of stalking acts were perpetrated by men. Sexual violence against men is also mainly male violence: 70% of rapes, 86% of physical assaults, and 65% of stalking acts were perpetrated by men.

In 8 out of 10 rape cases, the victim knows the perpetrator. Of people who report sexual violence, 64% of women and 16% of men were raped, physically assaulted, or stalked by an intimate partner. This includes a current or former spouse, cohabitating partner, boyfriend/girlfriend, or date.

In 2000, 1,247 women and 440 men were killed by an intimate partner. In recent years, an intimate partner killed approximately 33% of female murder victims and 4% of male murder victims.

Of the almost 3.5 million violent crimes committed against family members, 49% of these were crimes against spouses. 84% of spouse abuse victims were females, and 86% of victims of dating partner abuse were female.

Males were 83% of spouse murderers and 75% of dating partner murderers.

The number one killer of African-American women ages 15 to 34 is homicide at the hands of a current or former intimate partner.

50% of offenders in state prison for spousal abuse had killed their victims. Wives were more likely than husbands to be killed by their spouses: wives were about half of all spouses in the population in 2002, but 81% of all persons killed by their spouse.

The Violence Policy Center reports that of females killed with a firearm, almost two-thirds were killed by their intimate partners. The number of females shot and killed by their husband or intimate partner was more than three times higher than the total number murdered by male strangers using all weapons combined in single victim/single offender incidents in 2002.

You want euphemisms? I can come up with plenty; workplace violence, bedroom violence, barroom violence, back alley violence, living room violence, hotel violence, street violence, inside-the-car violence, in-the-shed violence, in-the-schoolhouse violence. But PLACES don’t commit violence. HANDS commit violence. And overwhelmingly those hands are raised against women.
Call it by its true name. Its name is misogyny.

For more information visit the American Bar Association’s web site: http://www.abanet.org/domviol/statistics.html#prevalence

The Things I Carry With Me

The 2009 CofC Convocation Committee put out a 'call for essays' from faculty that would reflect the theme of this year's convocation, based on the book The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. This was mine:


THINGS I CARRY WITH ME

I Carry with me Generations of French, French-Canadian and Canadian Indian ancestors,
Who taught my grandfather his sacrilegious profanities,
Who taught my grandmother and mother to make tortieres
(French-Canadian Meat Pies).
Who taught The Lord’s Prayer and Hail Mary in Canuck French.
Who taught my father to sing ‘O! Canada!’ before he could speak.
And in so doing, taught me as well.

I Carry with me a Century of Stories told in French and spoken over tables that held,

Pinochle Cards and Cribbage Boards,
Bread and Beer,
Oatmeal and Crepes for breakfast.

I Carry with me a Remembrance of Catholicism; No more than a childhood memory now.

Of incense and swirling Vestments,
Of impossible Ave Marias wafting down from choir lofts as from Heaven.
Of simple faith like my grandmother’s who, if disappointed in a saint’s
response to her prayer, would turn their plastered, painted faces to
the Wall.

I Carry with me dozens of teachers whose classroom magic rivaled Houdini’s;

Miss Dalton who played Dylan for me,
Dr. Mellor who made a 16 year-old love Moby Dick (impossible),
Mr. Healey who made me write a story about a head of cabbage,
Richard Niebuhr who bared his great soul in every class,
Ralph Potter who placed Aristotle before me,
And Elisabeth who placed courage before me.

I Carry with me a thousands angers, betrayals and broken promises,

That came to me much too late, or at just the right time,
That became creative and enticing Questions.
OR, did the Questions come first and then the anger?

I Carry with me those Questions that never end,

Why does it rain equally upon the Just and the Unjust?
What Tenet, Law, Doctrine, Practice, Ritual?
And Whom do they Serve?
From what place and time and context?
From whose world view and what assumption?
On what turtle does that turtle rest?

But I Carry FROM this place also.

I Carry From this place, Gratitude,

Of which I cannot speak; of the sheer Luck or Gift to do in this place what
I love like no other thing.
Of the classroom, laboratory of experiment, of Ideas,
Of my best self, There.
Of those Questions that haunt my Dreams and Wakings,

I Carry From this place the many gifts my students present to me Every day,

Humor that stops me in mid-lecture and sets me laughing Out Loud.
Daring that poses the Questions too; more courageous than the bravest
of warriors.
Shared Learning that happens in stunning, crystallized moments of
sudden Knowing

I Carry From this place the Hope that they are, sitting there at their desks, Thinking.

~~ Louise M. Doire
July, 2009

Kitchen Bulletin Board

these are a few of my favorite things...

the 'cabana' in Maine--euphemism for 'outhouse' and 'spider's den.'

I'm Always Talkin,' Chicken Squawkin' (Joni)

This week I participated in a public panel discussion on ‘women and religion.’ And in the course of an hour and a half, I pretty much said that I have absolutely no interest in ‘redeeming’ the Bible or Christianity, that I have become uninterested in religious questions of ‘truth’ and that Christianity, through its sacraments and priests has co-opted women’s biological functions and further, that priests ‘even wear dresses.’ I am sure that I scandalized some members of the audience.

This is what happens when one has been studying and reflecting upon such issues for years and years. In the course of five minute responses, what are expressed are the personal conclusions drawn from those years. Without introduction or foundational explanations, these conclusions come out of one’s mouth like perfunctory sound bites. And mine ‘have teeth.’

The issue of ‘truth’ came about when in response to a question about what I think is the greatest obstacle to women’s equality, I said fundamentalism and gave an explanation of why I thought so. I said that it begins with claims to sole possession of truth. When those claims are made the tendency is to view all those who think ‘like me’ as GOOD and all those who don’t as EVIL. This dualistic perspective radicalizes difference in such a way that commonalities get lost and traditional (read also: patriarchal) values become more entrenched. These become dearer and are embraced more fiercely. And if, in that schema, one finds oneself on the bottom of the totem pole of social status, THAT difference too becomes exacerbated. (Admittedly, this is a very brief summary of a very complex dynamic—another ‘sound bite’ in written form?).

A question came from the audience, “How then do we examine, determine, and make judgments about truth?” I responded that personally, I have become uninterested in questions of ‘truth.’ Is this true? Is the Bible true? Is that truth truer than this truth? I have abandoned the question, ‘What is true?’ (A question which frankly, will drive you a little nuts anyway) in deference to the question, ‘What is just?’

Another panelist responded, “Well, you know…truth and justice are both ‘fictive’ terms.” Fictive? That’s right. He meant ‘subjective, relative, fictional.’ I have to admit that when it comes to faith claims, I would not venture to advance any definitive ‘truths.’ But if claims to justice are also all relative and fictional, then the result is ethical paralysis. I would have said this, if the panel had not moved along so quickly that I didn’t have a chance. I would have said that there is a difference between cultural morality and ethical rationality. I would have said that when it comes to justice, I think we can make some claims. I think we can say that slavery is unjust. I think we can say that trafficking in women’s bodies is unjust. I think we can say that locking a new bride inside her house and then setting that house on fire is unjust. Are these mere fictives? Are there no ethical certainties or claims that we can make definitively? If not, then I quit. I quit teaching. I quit writing. I quit speaking. I quit getting out of bed in the morning.

I assured the audience that I have no interest in salvaging ‘the Tradition” in response to another member of the panel who said (something like), ‘the problem is that nobody wants to leave.” At which point I wanted to shout, “I did! I did!” He continued to say (something like), that no one wants to abandon the Bible, the ritual, the Tradition and so they scurry around trying to change the language, create a more friendly interpretation, etc., and all they end up doing is running around in circles. They are circular attempts and never end up any other place than where they started. This is when I said, “I assure you all that I have absolutely NO interest in redeeming the Text, the ritual, the Church or the Tradition. I engage in these dialogues (and in my teaching) with cultural and political concerns, in the interest of liberation. And when a student comes to my office and says to me, ‘I just want you to know that I broke up with my boyfriend last night. Because of your course I realized that he abuses me.’ THAT is not circular. THAT does not leave us in the same place. THAT is moving forward.’

It was the first and only time of the night that the audience erupted with a spattering of spontaneous applause.

I was not about to let someone tell me that the last 20 years of my life have been spent chasing my own tail. If what I do makes NO difference then, I quit. I quit teaching. I quit writing. I quit speaking. I quit getting out of bed in the morning.