Behind the Scenes
But What About the Nipples? A Nice Conversation (Pt. 2)
Blake Butler, Kate Zambreno, Amy King and I recently had a nice, interesting, and lengthy conversation about gender, publishing and so much more, prompted by lots of things including the recent, and largely excellent discussion in Blake’s “Language Over Body” post about the second issue of We Are Champion. Over the next three days, I’m going to post that conversation and we all hope you guys join in on our conversation and share your thoughts. You can find Part 1 here.
Amy: We’ve got our rooms and we’re writing – we are no longer invisible, unless editors and prize committees try to render us so. My response was an attempt to point out the other option, which is to be inclusive (which means showcasing possibly disparate work that could be in dialogue), via a new mag, PARROT, that includes work fitting the aforementioned bill:
“PARROT will print the work of Stephanie Rioux’s My Beautiful Beds, Harold Abramowitz’s A House on a Hill (House on a Hill Part 1), Amanda Ackerman’s I Fell in Love with a Monster Truck, Will Alexander’s On the Substance of Disorder, Amina Cain’s Tramps Everywhere, Allison Carter’s All Bodies Are The Same and They Have The Same Reactions, Kate Durbin’s Kept Women, Joseph Mosconi’s But On Geometric, Amaranth Ravva’s Airline Music, Mathew Timmons’ Complex Textual Legitimacy Proclamation, Allyssa Wolf’s Loquela as well as the work of Michelle Detorie, Vanessa Place, Brian Kim Stefans and others…”
I realize this number counting feels isolated and is usually defended as ‘accidental’. Just see PW’s note on their all male “Top Ten” list for 2009. But what gets lost when we don’t query such disproportionate representation is that the interests and views and styles that men write in are what we all: male, female, and every other gender get conditioned to, starting with child lit on up to college “classics.” Such lack parallels why the Wall Street fuck up might have been prevented, or at least lessened. If variety is the spice of life, shouldn’t that hold true for the literary landscape as well? There should be a symphonic cacophony, no?
Roxane: You’re absolutely right that this sort of gender imbalance is often explained away and that dismissal is hugely troubling because it frames the people who voice their concerns about these issues as shrill and hysterical. We are not shrill and hysterical. We have our eyes wide open and we see some really fucked up things going on. I do not think the issue of We Are Champion is as commensurate a fuck up as the disgrace that was the Publisher’s Weekly Top Ten of 2009 list. They are not even in the same universe of things that are fucked up. I think a bit of perspective of scale is really important here. The two cannot be compared. A magazine cannot be judged on a single issue. If the next four or five issues of We Are Champion excluded women, then I would say we should riot because that would be a real problem.
Kate: I don’t know if we can compare this to the PW Top Ten list. And this is not a journal that’s very powerful like a Poetry or a Granta, shouldn’t this editor be allowed to curate his own selection? I don’t think the answer is to count, I think the answer is to come up with and celebrate a counterculture of presses and journals and anthologies run by men and women that dig writing that’s working aggressively against the dominant culture, by publishing queer writers, experimental women writers, innovative writers of color, writing that explores identity, etc. And maybe encouraging those who are starting small presses and journals to consider certain writers, maybe in a positive, constructive way.
Amy: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with noting that yet another journal, big or small, is once again perpetuating the old traditions, especially in an open forum where the editor can respond. Out of 18 or so writers in two issues, he included three women. Pointing out that disparity signals a query, to me, that can be responded to and accounted for, or at least remedied in the future by the editor, if he finally agrees that he wants to publish the work of female poets. It is not some sort of ironclad indictment that means everyone in the world is going to suddenly boycott WAC. If anything, WAC has likely gotten much more attention than it would have if we’d never said a word. Also if the editor, Gene Kwak, said that he simply prefers a male-aesthetic, then that’d be fine too as it’s his baby; I’d likely ask that he note such parameters in his announcements of the mag or at the very least in the submission guidelines. I think what got a few of us riled was because Elisa Gabbert originally noted the issue on her blog. Kwak responded to her by mocking Gabbert’s face and telling her he didn’t give a fuck instead of simply responding to the point as he has recently done. If everyone just sits complacently by without ever asking how this came to be or what were your criteria, as we have for so long done, why do we think we’ll get to query places like PW?
I offered to start this discussion because you, Kate, endured an ad hominem attack in the comments field of a post on HTML that dismissed Zelda Fitzgerald in the typically gynophobic way. You rightfully queried that characterization, and then the tide turned to attacking you.
Kate: I love what Roxane writes here. “We are not shrill and hysterical. We have our eyes wide open and we see some really fucked up things going on.” I think what bothers me about the direction the commentstream on HTML Giant has yes (occasionally?) gone whenever gender specifically comes into the question (and yes, as thus goes the nation, I think HTML Giant is reflective of the culture not necessarily making it, although shouldn’t it be distinct from mainstream media sources?) is the stereotyping of women if they pose valid concerns about how women writers are represented within the site as shrill frigid humorless feminists who need to get hatefucked (and there’s so much homophobia in that as well, that obviously the feminist is a lesbian, which obviously means she hates men, or that she’s empty without the magical medicinal cock within her, even if she likes the cock, which is another way to say, shut your mouth, woman). It’s just the direction the stream has occasionally gone in the short time I’ve observed if it’s allowed to go on for a while. This is completely a way to shut down any valid concerns, and a way to invalidate and humiliate the person posing the concerns. It’s a Keep Out Icky Girls sign. It’s not original. It’s not funny. It’s playground politics. It’s bullying. Although I will note that when I first saw the Zelda post I was not very aware of HTML Giant, how it is often a sort of Vice magazine dealing with writers, the locker room atmosphere, I had only heard of Blake, and then I knew Lily was starting to blog there, and if I was more familiar I probably would have framed my reply in a less stringent way. The post was ill-read about Zelda or even Scott Fitzgerald, both writers that are very important to me, and personally I felt the joke was never made, a joke that seemed to pivot around the folds of flesh around cute Zelda’s midsection and wishing her sheets were soft enough at the asylum. Rhetorically where it went from there was really interesting. It’s now been deleted from the site. But the writer of the post, Jimmy, apologized, but kind of in a way that said, yeah I didn’t know what I was talking about, but it was a joke, get a sense of humor. I pounced on him again (again, maybe I should have in a different tone, with less severity, buttons were definitely pushed), another commenter came in and critiqued the post, a woman writer, and then the writer of the post basically needled her, saying how could you attack me for objectifying this woman writer when your blogger pic is comely. It was really so stupid, again, playground politics. (I too have engaged in these playground politics with HTML Giant, that’s how it becomes playground, everything devolves.) Then it became this sort of terribly stupid Mars/Venus war, which I hate, I hate when women have been occasionally typecast as the hardline stringent feminists on this site if they have concerns dealing with how gender is represented on the site, how women writers are represented on the site. I don’t like to play the stringent feminist, to be stereotyped and almost forced to be humorless. But then you feel you’re in this fight, where you’re being attacked, or women writers you admire are being attacked in such an ugly way, and you have to jab back or passively disappear. The comment stream is often very masculine in this way (and I’ve noticed this on other literary blogs as well). You’re not allowed to argue emotionally, you must be hard, cold, rational, or you’re decimated. And every weakness in your argument exploited, anything to win the argument, even it if turns personal. On the Zelda comment stream the women writer and I were being accused of being racist, that we wouldn’t be worried about the plight of a Mexican woman who works at a Wendy’s, I think that was the approximate language. Which is so ignorant and ridiculous. For of course a modern feminist position is about the oppression of all social hierarchies- it’s really quite desperate, trying any tactic to shut down a conversation, the easiest one being to accuse the accuser of being humorless, so you don’t have to actually consider the situation. Then this one person, came in and wrote a pretty ugly screed that was quite sexual and dismissive. And I actually think I understand where this person is coming from, I think he thinks he’s defending HTML Giant as being this Vice magazine, defending its tradition of the irreverent and unrepressed, lamenting the old liberatory aspects, but I think unfortunately he’s not terribly self-aware. For women too can write the irreverent and unrepressed but that is really fucking hard when you’re being attacked or women are being attacked, or you’re simply reduced to being a gendered body (so why wasn’t this commenter told that it’s just about bodies? why aren’t those who peddle in stereotypes of women on HTML Giant reminded this?) That kind of rhetoric basically kicks women out entirely, or asks them to stay, if they’re silent, if they behave, or agree with you, if they don’t go against any of the clubhouse rules. And then what happened then is interesting. Then the only commenters felt comfortable to intervene and comment were male, and they defended us, the women, who had now been effectively shamed/silenced. Which to me is the most insidious aspect. The silencing. Of course it’s not specific to HTML Giant!
Blake: But do you only have to jab back or disappear? I think it’s a mistake to imagine that gender roles are the only thing that gets attacked at HTMLGIANT, or any other venue where a bulk of speaking comes not from the helm but from the field. And yes, totally I am embarrassed sometimes at the kind of thinking that comes out of the rough. I’ve been personally attacked for all kinds of things, specifically verbally assaulted for my own writing, and in the world of the internet, I’ve come to find that the only way I can stay positive about it is to take the good and go. It’s easy to get caught up in the bullshit flying, and that’s what boils the blood, but that’s also part of the entity of it for me: to make a mess and watch it fly. There are plenty of institutions designed to talk about literature without the forum, or specifically without such a raucous forum as ours, but one of the major reasons Gene and I started this site was to have a place to talk about anything, no matter how off the cuff or bizarre. I’ve been told I need to get fucked, too. I’ve been lambasted in all the way you are naming as aimed at women, and then from the other side, am called a frat boy, a dick monger. Anyone who has met me in life knows I am not this person. I want creation.
All that said, I don’t think the nature of the beast should be assigned to who comes to troll in the field. HTMLGIANT is made up of more than 20 people, of different origins and backgrounds and genders, and the ways they talk about what they love gives me light and hope, regardless of how it comes off in the comments, or even when that satirical or messy nature gets into the meat of the post and pisses people off. To focus only on the negative camps, the political, and the offensive seems intentionally revisionist to me. I feel like we do a lot of good. We help get word out about books we love, and some pretty amazing discussions happen in the meantime, even when they turn to blood on the web browser. I always find it just as disheartening when people only want to focus on the “male dominated” aspects of the site, which to me are a small fraction of the identity, and yet one that seems the most poked at. It is much more about passion than it is dimunition or labeling or what have you. If there’s anything “literature” needs it is to relax, expand, absorb.
Kate: I don’t think the political or bringing in political is necessarily negative, and I think stating that can be seen as a way shutting off the conversation. And why does literature need to relax? Is Bernhard relaxed? Is Artaud relaxed? Is Cixous relaxed? No. And in just my short period of observing HTML Giant, I think the comments can be most vitriolic, most hateful, when dealing with gender (I am thinking of only three or four incidents). Although I think charged language can be used all around when a shitstorm happens. And revisionist? I don’t get that. I think it’s revisionist to brush what happened under the rug. Wouldn’t it be characterized as more revisionist to actually take down posts, which is what happened with Zelda?
Blake: I certainly wouldn’t have removed the post myself: that was Jimmy’s doing. I didn’t realize he had actually, until much later, and wish he hadn’t. But that’s his call. I think he takes to heart a lot of the over-serious analysis of what he means in fun, even if it might seem damaging to some: as I said either above this or below this (honestly, I’m spun by the circling of this discussion, it’s very nature: it’s not in me), I believe that in the truest equal state nothing is sacred, and nothing can be toppled unto itself, everything is open to fangling, nothing is true, everything is permitted. And sure, this is a privileged view, as is so often made accused when someone like myself hopes to just avoid the political in favor of aesthetic, or even fun: but jesus christ, we’re having an online discussion about gender for a website about books, we’re all privileged, we all have burden and bodies, we all have shit that fucks us up, and in the end, we’re all pretty well off compartively. At the end of the day, the language and the creation is the important thing, the what happens in the room where you make what you make, and all this socializing and collision of bodies is something entirely else. A conversation beside a meditation. True revolution occurs within the self.
Amy: I don’t think anyone’s under the delusion that ‘gender roles are the only thing that gets attacked at HTMLGIANT’ – if anything, the gender discussion should be a beginning to understanding how such attack-debate functions and to what end. What are we achieving here? Are we making people conscious of issues and biases? Or all we all just arguing our positions so that we’re heard? Roxane’s most recent post on the lack of not-white people at AWP is something a lot more white people who attend AWP should be aware of because perhaps that will enter their thinking as they plan and invite for the next year. She’s not just noting this disparity to alleviate her discomfort; there’s a point to such address, and while the answer isn’t clear, identifying and naming a problem is a first step to understanding that it’s there, needs to be interrogated, and steps should be taken to change it. And this certainly affects writing because the venue is about promoting writers and their work: who gets included, promoted and heard is absolutely connected to issues of ‘how many black people attended AWP.’ The remedy isn’t obvious but it needs to be thought about.
Kate, I think this situation originally became a serious consideration ultimately because you explore issues of anger and hate in your writing, even as your work is motivated by those emotions. What got muddled, from what I can tell, is that once you experienced the effects of a misogynistic silencing, you wondered about your own use of hate speech in your writing versus direct speech; do all such uses incite to violence? What’s the difference between reinscribing, say, some misogynist notion in your work versus someone slandering you with a sexist characterization (i.e. you just need to get fucked)? Also, what writers, cinematographers, and artists have shaped your thinking about anger?
I admire James Baldwin immensely. Baldwin was angry and spoke with vitriol at times. He was no apologist for his anger; he was certain in his reasons for being angry and tirelessly pointed them out, often at risk to himself.
The tenets of the Civil Rights movement aren’t the same as what I’m pointing out here by any means, but they resound for me when I see what feels like blatant sexism couched in rhetoric and defended by ignorance and constant denial. Sexism is systemic and the resistors deny that, don’t even want to broach it (which is complicated and what’s necessary to begin figuring out how to address it), most especially through ad hominem attacks. We keep getting shot down to ground level: we have to offer caveats that we prove we like men, don’t want to kill them, aren’t unfashionable lesbian feminists (or am I?), etc. And I get tired of being angry, but I can’t shut up either.
Kate: I wouldn’t characterize my writing as using hate speech. Although the two novels I have written have featured cruel narrators. I have often, yes, in my writing been harsh on women who act out stereotypes, the novel that’s out features a hysterical Mrs. Dalloway-type character named Mommy who I kind of decimate, as well as a daughter Dora-character who I’m quite ambivalent about, and sometimes the work is about that ambivalence. But I do think there’s a difference between writing the unrepressed or taboo in your own personal work, writing that stems from hate or anger or violence, that is about working out these things, as opposed to just being an asshole and instigating ad hominem attacks in a forum as and not engaging in dialog. I have noticed on HTML Giant these personal attacks happen when gender comes in (or for other insular reasons I’m less interested in or aware of). What that guy who told me I needed to be fucked (and an element of his bile was also racist, I won’t even repeat it) didn’t realize is that I often write about sex and violence in my writing, and not necessarily while toeing the feminist line, because I find that boring. And I do tend to gravitate towards radical writing rooted in anger, in rallying against society, my favorites are probably the Vienna Group, Thomas Bernhard and Elfriede Jelinek. I disagree with Woolf that great writing cannot be done in the red light of anger. But I think women are still criminalized for their righteous anger. As Jelinek has said “A woman is permitted to chat or babble, but to stand in the square and speak with authority is still the greatest transgression.” Think of the hysteria that was ignited when Jelinek won the Nobel Prize.
Roxane: You bring up something very interesting. We do always have to offer up our caveats to prove that we’re not man-hating while the misogynists never ever say, “Go get fucked and shut up, but I love my wife and my mom.” I’m currently working on a post about the dearth of people of color at the AWP conference and the very first thought in my head was, “I should probably say something like ‘I have a white boyfriend and he’s great,’ so readers know I don’t hate white people.” I don’t know why we feel compelled to prove that we’re not the very things we’re often accused of being but it’s hard to feel anything but defensive when you want to discuss issues like misogyny, racism, homophobia and other forms of hate with audiences who feel threatened by such discussions. And they (we?) are threatened because often times, they (we?) see such discussions as attacks and take them personally.
Blake: I feel the same way as you do: that I am constantly being asked to prove I am not a racist, sexist fuck. If I try to move beyond it without acknowledging by saying I am really more interested in the art than in the politic, then I am told my bias is unconscious, that I can never beat it. There is too much focus here on things that are not the act of creation. I only have so much blood. At the end of the day I am going to put that into my passion, not into self defense. I like Kate’s bringing in Bernhard here, how he often seemed to be speaking into a box that became a book, in a realm far from anyone else, and yet so full of that kind of light that can’t be pinched. The more I move in these public ways the more I want to go live in that cone he showed in Correction, to stay there, and talk into nothing. I don’t know what else to do but do what I do and be where I am.
Amy: Blake, I haven’t seen anyone call you out as a “racist, sexist fuck” on HTMLG or anywhere, but then I haven’t read the vast numbers of your posts or comments. I have not thought as much; as you yourself note, the contributors to HTMLG range greatly via their backgrounds, which speaks to what I think should exist on the literary landscape as a whole and as noted earlier: a symphonic cacophony. Because this life is made up of so many instruments and sounds (to use a shoddy metaphor) that it would only be fitting to enter a bookstore or an online journal and find authors of very disparate backgrounds side-by-side, almost in dialogue regarding their assorted views and takes and foci. I get pissed when I think of my own education and, though it may be cliché to note, how many dead white male writers I read and was expected to get excited about in discussions. Only by taking Women’s Studies classes, which sometimes overlapped with Native and African American lit classes (which also illustrates the connected nature of various oppressions), did I read “marginalized literature” that surpassed the thrill factor of many of those Robert Frosts and Ernest Hemingways. Where was Gertrude Stein? Paula Gunn Allen and Audre Lorde? They were in “those classes.” & How many young people aren’t offered such ‘marginalized’ class opportunities?
I wanted to say something also about the “correctives” of simply adding in women writers or Asian American writers to meet a quota. I’m not advocating for such a bald and base ‘remedy’, which is obviously no remedy at all. I think that reduction does a disservice to the complexity of the issues here and to our conversation. I’ll repeat: asking a question doesn’t mean the answer is directly on the other side, wearing a nametag and knocking at our door. Clearly, we can’t just create a list of identities to tally and check off once our issue has been edited; that’s a total throwback and watering down of identity politics of the 80’s ad 90’s. Most oppressions are integrally tied together, so asking about one is a way into analyzing an intricate historical system.
What we can begin interrogating is how to change up the system that has, for so long, relied on binaries that prioritize white male voices and styles, and figure out how to break it. I suspect a way in is just to change the publishing landscape in general, as Roxane or Kate also noted, by filling it with ever more styles and voices. That’s one way in. Another may be to encourage writers of one gender to write as other genders. I know this sounds simplistic, but I don’t believe we can all write in an androgynous way, as Kate earlier touches on, though getting rid of gender may be an ultimate goal. We’re so attuned to the mostly gendered way things are viewed that I think we need to begin by conflating and confounding what it means to write in ‘drag,’ so to speak. Again, that’s just one more tiny way of dismantling the mostly-undetectable machinery already in place.
On another note, Roxane, it seems you have to contend with a lot of the same as an editor who likely moderates the minefield, I mean the comments’ field at HTML now and then. I just saw your interview there today with Mather Schneider, the only person to be banned from HTML. How much time do you spend policing, if any? Does any of the derision and distraction get to you? Do get angry? Why do you keep at it?
Roxane: I don’t moderate or police the comment sections at HTMLGIANT. It is not possible and I have no interest in it. Furthermore, one of the things that makes HTMLGIANT such an interesting place is that the open exchange of ideas is encouraged and anytime there’s going to be an open exchange of ideas you’re going to encounter both intelligence and ignorance. The comment sections at HTMLGIANT have often been framed as a terrible, misogynistic place but compared to the comment sections at other sites, like Yahoo.com or CNN.com, the comment sections at HTMLGIANT are quite tame.
As for really engaging with commenters, I’ve been accused by commenters, more than once, of throwing my thoughts out there, and then not defending them but a. I’m pretty busy so I don’t have time to keep up with the comments in a really substantive manner; b. I find that at a certain point the comments become anarchic and when the comments reach that point, there’s no discussing things with people who are trying to show off and/or preen and/or be purposelessly mean and aren’t really there to engage in the matter at hand; and c. most of the time I have said all I have to say on a given subject in the post, like I’ve totally blown my wad and am simply eager to read what others have to say in the comments.
The derision and distraction do get to me and there are times when I get angry or frustrated but I try to keep it in perspective. HTMLGIANT is just a website and when I find that it starts affecting my life, I just step away from the computer.
I keep at it because I really enjoy participating in the HTMLGIANT community. I’ve met some fascinating people who challenge me and interest me and I love being “bossy and opinionated” so to have that kind of platform is excellent. You also have to understand that for every person who comments there are hundreds if not thousands of people who are reading posts. I get great e-mails all the time from people who have interesting things to say but just don’t want to comment.
Amy: Do you think your efforts are ultimately constructive? Do you think Schneider’s referencing of “jokester” commenting is a male mode of discussion? Is such a label used sometimes to blur ad hominem hate speech? Are the comments threads comprised of mostly young and male writers?
Roxane: I do think my efforts are constructive. I absolutely know my contributions are respected and appreciated by most of the community.
Schneider’s reference to “jokester” commenting is useful and I think it describes the online mode of discussion more than the male mode of discussion. There is something about the relative anonymity of the Internet that often compels people to lose their inhibitions (and their minds). Assholery is not gender specific though there is an aggression I see in male commenters that I rarely see in female commenters. That is not a scientific observation.
The “jokester” commenting should not be confused with ad hominem hate speech. There is a segment of commenters who think they are “edgy” for saying what they wrongly think “everyone else is thinking” or who think that all a woman with an opinion needs is a good dick to shut her up. They cannot be rationalized with. Frankly, their comments reflect poorly on them. I try to console myself with that but it is truly disheartening, in this day and age, to see some of the things I’ve seen in comment threads. I actually missed the Zelda Fitzgerald post and it was taken down before I could follow the comment threads but I am sick about what I’ve heard about what went down. It makes no sense that human beings would treat other human beings with such disregard. Whether those sexist, and hate-filled attitudes come from laziness and complacency (I’m comfortable in my white male-ness and don’t want that to be questioned) or defensiveness (I feel like the world hates me because I’m a white man but I’m not the real problem) or ignorance (I don’t know how to engage with you productively so I will say something crass and stupid), I’m not sure but it’s shitty.
The comment threads are primarily comprised of young men. I’m sad to say that many women simply don’t want to subject themselves to the open hate, misogyny and weird, creepy aggression that sometimes encroaches on HTMLGIANT comment threads. It really bothers me that people feel uncomfortable participating in conversations at HTMLGIANT but I also remember when I was nervous about participating when I first discovered the site so I kind of understand it. The comment threads can be scary. But again, I don’t think this is HTMLGIANT specific. I think it is an Internet phenomenon.
Amy: Do you think our discussion will be treated with any seriousness or even read with any interest? Is it worth it?
Roxane: Absolutely. The majority of the members of the HTMLGIANT community are intelligent and open-minded. They might disagree but they will do so without resorting to puerile personal attacks.
Kate: I don’t know. I do agree that the majority of HTML Giant writers are intelligent and open-minded – I do however think there’s a sort of masculine rhetoric apparent in other literary blogs and their comment streams, and hell, in academia, that is very one-sided and becomes about decimating your opponent, at any cost, in a way that can cancel out dialogue. The dialogue about the fistfucking poem wasn’t like that, and I enjoyed that. But I think HTML Giant is what it is – often humorous or witty, one-liners, sometimes pointing out great things to read under the radar small presses or highlighting interesting books or authors, occasionally a great place for discussions about literature, but not a feminist forum or a forum terribly political or sympathetic with feminism. (I think sometimes saying one chooses not to be political is to choose to be apathetic). I think the real solution is not to try to change HTML Giant but to form one’s own counterculture.
Amy: Roxane, you say that we need to “not only women writers but also look at the entire range of diverse writing and create a publishing culture that embraces difference without exploiting it.” Can you talk a little more about how you attempt to reach those diverse writing communities for PANK? Because it does feel like a pitfall to think, “Oh no, I have no black writers and then go seeking someone to send work along.” At the same time, it’s very easy to claim that no black writers submitted to your mag, so it’s their fault you didn’t publish their words. Blake, do you consciously address these issues at HTMLG in terms of who gets to contribute or what writers are being discussed?
Also, I want to mention the numbers again, not because I think WAC is necessarily heading the way of replicating a tradition (the editor also contacted me and explained how he ended up with an all-male issue), but because there is so much resistance to the notion that the historical numbers are biased in favor of men. The resistance seems to be borne mostly out of the notion that no one consciously intends to publish and reward (via prizes, best of lists, etc) more male than female authors, and yet the facts are tangible, countable: men are grossly published in higher numbers (see 2009 if you imagine all is equal. Pointing this evidence out, in my opinion, is a beginning, an interrogation—not an answer. I want to A) put an end to it and read more voices, views, styles from a variety of writers and B) figure out why this publishing bias keeps happening so that we can move beyond A. I’m certainly not winning any popularity contests saying such disparities take place, but I can’t, and won’t, shut up. If that means I get the WAC editor and HTMLGIANT readers to think about their publishing and reading practices, then I’m happy to point out the obvious, however much we want to ignore it, for the public record. Seems obvious that such practices shouldn’t “unintentionally” carry on without an examination, so why would anyone resist talking about it, if only for a minute? I do think that the aggression and nay-saying that often dominates these conversations though means that women bow out because, as you note Roxane, women don’t seem so willing to participate in that mode of discussion.
Roxane: I try to post Calls for Submissions on listservs and online forums for diverse groups and I spread the word that we would love to see work from all kinds of writers through people I know but we do not solicit writers of any ilk and we certainly don’t go Negro Hunting or Queer Hunting or whatever. That’s not publishing diversely, that’s just tokenism and it’s a bandaid solution. It is, as you note, a real pitfall to think you can cherry pick diverse people to include in a publication. That said, it has never crossed my mind to blame black writers or any other kind of writers for not being published in our magazine. The issue of encouraging diversity in publishing is just not that simple, and it’s not easily fixed. We try to include a nice mix of diversities (spanning all kinds of things including and beyond gender, sexuality and race) based on what we have. We should probably be more proactive but this is not a full time job for either my co-editor or myself and it is just the two of us, in the middle of nowhere. I say that by way of explanation more than excuse. We do the best we can with what we have and we try, in small ways, to make a magazine where all kinds of writers feel comfortable sending and publishing their work. We also never forget that we can and we will do better every day.
As for numbers, you’re absolutely right. They do matter to an extent. I look far beyond WAC though. For me the real things we should be worrying about are the annual prizes, the editors and final selections for the Best of anthologies, etc. I don’t know why there’s so much resistance to accepting that men get published more and they also get published in higher profile ways but my first guess is that it makes people feel uncomfortable to acknowledge that even in 2010, the world is not a happy, equal place. I always love that when the gender imbalance in mainstream publishing is raised people will throw out the year when one of the major awards had all women nominees. Yes, you can point to examples A, B, and C of successful women writers but so long as you can still name names, we’re in a situation where we are dealing with exceptions rather than rules. I totally understand that conditions have improved vastly over the past 50 years or so but the notion that things are good enough indeed frustrates me. It’s easy to get complacent.
The naysayers do seem to be more aggressive and more vocal on these issues and women do seem to bow out of these conversations. I have to believe it is because it is futile to engage with people who will not change their minds. And I must admit that I myself, am fairly weary of this conversation (broadly speaking, not this one here and now.) I don’t think we can convince the naysayers of our arguments and vice versa. I also often feel that, as Blake has said before, let’s just write. The best thing I can do, other than to beat my drum at HTMLGIANT, is to write the best stuff I can write, and bust my ass to put that work out into the world. If I spent all my time and energy worrying about all the things working against me, I wouldn’t get anything done.
Blake: Our contributor list at this point is basically half men and half women, a fact which always seems to surprise me when people say we are a boy’s club. How does that make the efforts of those female contributor’s feel. Are they men now? Trannies? Are people who call us a boy’s club ignoring their efforts? I’ve never really understood it, except in the way that I know our comments fields are often overshadowing to the posts themselves, at least in the really feisty ones, and the installed presences there are so often loudest as male. But again, I don’t see us defined as what comes out of that. It’s only an offshoot, and an interesting one, probably the thing that drives our traffic more than anything. It seems like the more heat that we take, the bigger the stats come. I don’t know what this says about things. I do know that as a result I’ve become more sensitive to taking care to know what to expect, and to give the air its own rolling, as no matter what one does it’s going to sad someone up.
As for my “policing,” I don’t do it. Each contributor develops his or her own content, and were asked to contribute because I admire their mind, their interests, and want them to talk about what they want to talk about. The one banned commenter was a man who began commenting on every post saying not even inflammatory things but essentially trying to hijack the discussion in to shit, i.e. someone would write a post about an event coming up and he would immediately comment saying, “This looks like a pile of shit.” Or something as such. No real commentary, just shitting like a loose anused bird with no actual want for discussion, even in a vile way, but to reroute every thread into blabber. I asked him to stop doing that, and he didn’t, and so I banned his IP. I would do it again, the same way I would ban a spam bot trying to post ads for dick pills. As much as I like the mess and the loud to come through, I’m not interested in turning every single issue into a butt spreading contest. Everything gets old.
Kate: Perhaps this still goes back to what Virginia Woolf is writing about in A Room of One’s Own – that masculine values are still privileged in literature above the feminine. To me this explains the top ten PW list. We still have those values for literature (large masculine system novels seen as the “genius” works), certain subject matters are seen as more worthwhile and literary, I mean even in film a woman finally won for best director, but it was basically a hypermasculine film about war (right? I didn’t see it. Did it deal with female soldiers as well? I don’t know.) And male writers are I think more often lauded, well-published, seen as “genius,” etc, so are more likely to have high visiblity land on that top ten list (but I don’t think that’s necessarily a symptom of the WAC journal or HTML Giant). These ideas still exist in our mainstream concept of literature. There’s a fantastic essay by Christine Brooke-Rose called “Mistresspiece” that focuses on women and the history of the avant-garde. And Brooke-Rose writes (I’m rewording) that the only experimental writers who are allowed in the mainstream, are published by the big guns, who transition to being popular writers, are men. I think this is still mostly true. Pynchon, Delillo, and there are more contemporary younger examples. While women writers, if they’re innovative or experimental writers, are almost never given that level of cultural recognition/big publications/agents, etc. at least in the States (exceptions include Christine Schutt’s Florida winning the National Book Award, and remember the shitstorm that generated? but there have been activist judges, etc.) But I speak of prose not poetry as that is what I know better! And this is not an issue I specifically have with HTML Giant.
Tags: gender, thomas bernhard, wall street
Why can one issue of a top 10 list be judged but one issue of a magazine can’t be? PW puts out that list every year.
Why can one issue of a top 10 list be judged but one issue of a magazine can’t be? PW puts out that list every year.
Because the breadth covered by the top 10 list of the best writing published in a given year is far wider than that of a small, and new online magazine. I cannot think of a year when there hasn’t been as many great books written by women as men. The exclusion within that context has far more of an impact on me. But you do raise an interesting point.
Because the breadth covered by the top 10 list of the best writing published in a given year is far wider than that of a small, and new online magazine. I cannot think of a year when there hasn’t been as many great books written by women as men. The exclusion within that context has far more of an impact on me. But you do raise an interesting point.
why are they burning bras while WEARING bras?
why are they burning bras while WEARING bras?
Hello Amy, Blake, Kate, & Roxane,
Thank you for pursuing this beast.
Comments streams do define the blogs to which they’re hinged; they house the audience that a reader elects to join (or bows out of). If you’re getting more traffic on posts like “Language Over Body,” won’t that necessarily overinform the blog’s reception? It’d be a bummer for me, but I don’t think politics and art are separable.
To say that theorizing/critiquing these things opposes (or apposes?) creation of art strikes me at least an overstatement, maybe fallacy. Of course, right now, I’m also breastfeeding, and playing blocks, so I wouldn’t be making art on this setting anyhow. (And per Amy, now the biologically male know that they too can breastfeed and blog at the same time! Try it out, yo!)
I appreciate the discussion here, but on the whole, where feminist ‘splaining is considered, I’m feeling very http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/patriarchy-blaming-the-twisty-way/guidelines-for-commenters/
Hello Amy, Blake, Kate, & Roxane,
Thank you for pursuing this beast.
Comments streams do define the blogs to which they’re hinged; they house the audience that a reader elects to join (or bows out of). If you’re getting more traffic on posts like “Language Over Body,” won’t that necessarily overinform the blog’s reception? It’d be a bummer for me, but I don’t think politics and art are separable.
To say that theorizing/critiquing these things opposes (or apposes?) creation of art strikes me at least an overstatement, maybe fallacy. Of course, right now, I’m also breastfeeding, and playing blocks, so I wouldn’t be making art on this setting anyhow. (And per Amy, now the biologically male know that they too can breastfeed and blog at the same time! Try it out, yo!)
I appreciate the discussion here, but on the whole, where feminist ‘splaining is considered, I’m feeling very http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/patriarchy-blaming-the-twisty-way/guidelines-for-commenters/
Roxane, did you post the special issue to all those message boards and listservs?
Roxane, did you post the special issue to all those message boards and listservs?
Not yet.
Not yet.
[…] For better or worse, Part Deux has gone up – click here! […]
I am grateful that you have discussed this so seriously and calmly, and I look forward to the next installment. It is awkward to be a male and make comments on the subject; I can’t imagine what the female experience is like. What am I responding to? Also, whenever I feel like saying anything, I feel convicted by the language I am given (by men) to use.
Since it’s unlikely that humans will re-establish a more equitable language, it becomes overarchingly important to share our stories. And the way to do that is by talking to each other. And the way to do that, aside from talking to each other, is to create. And from that comes the pre-eminence of a non-hegemonic aesthetic. Therefore I hold to the notion that it’s the work that matters, and anyone whose work doesn’t embody a feminist ethos is not participating in the discussion, and should be ignored like a pesky child. When they want to come to the table, they will be welcomed.
Of course, ignoring criminals isn’t enough. But our work should be (and is) our action. This is a good discussion, but it’s supplemental material. We are right now acting in accordance with the system, but our poetry is our transgression.
That guy who put the flower in the rifle wasn’t saying “don’t shoot people” he was saying, “This would make a nice vase.” http://midwestpoet.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/flower-in-rifle.jpg
I am grateful that you have discussed this so seriously and calmly, and I look forward to the next installment. It is awkward to be a male and make comments on the subject; I can’t imagine what the female experience is like. What am I responding to? Also, whenever I feel like saying anything, I feel convicted by the language I am given (by men) to use.
Since it’s unlikely that humans will re-establish a more equitable language, it becomes overarchingly important to share our stories. And the way to do that is by talking to each other. And the way to do that, aside from talking to each other, is to create. And from that comes the pre-eminence of a non-hegemonic aesthetic. Therefore I hold to the notion that it’s the work that matters, and anyone whose work doesn’t embody a feminist ethos is not participating in the discussion, and should be ignored like a pesky child. When they want to come to the table, they will be welcomed.
Of course, ignoring criminals isn’t enough. But our work should be (and is) our action. This is a good discussion, but it’s supplemental material. We are right now acting in accordance with the system, but our poetry is our transgression.
That guy who put the flower in the rifle wasn’t saying “don’t shoot people” he was saying, “This would make a nice vase.” http://midwestpoet.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/flower-in-rifle.jpg
YES! And, shit. I just took a couple hours saying inelegantly in a post what you’ve just said so directly, Adam.
YES! And, shit. I just took a couple hours saying inelegantly in a post what you’ve just said so directly, Adam.
Thank you so much for your comment Adam. I find it awkward to make comments on many subjects subject too (really) because the “insert whatever” experience is such a broad thing that I rarely feel qualified to speak on as just me.
I like what you say about how ultimately it is the work that matters. I come at it from a slightly different place but still, I just appreciate all you’ve said. And yes, this conversation, as all such conversations, are supplementary but at times, I do think they can influence in really interesting ways the work itself, the poetry, the transgression.
Thank you so much for your comment Adam. I find it awkward to make comments on many subjects subject too (really) because the “insert whatever” experience is such a broad thing that I rarely feel qualified to speak on as just me.
I like what you say about how ultimately it is the work that matters. I come at it from a slightly different place but still, I just appreciate all you’ve said. And yes, this conversation, as all such conversations, are supplementary but at times, I do think they can influence in really interesting ways the work itself, the poetry, the transgression.
” I get pissed when I think of my own education and, though it may be cliché to note, how many dead white male writers I read and was expected to get excited about in discussions.”
How seriously are we expected to take this? You couldn’t get excited about Robert Frost because he was male?
” I get pissed when I think of my own education and, though it may be cliché to note, how many dead white male writers I read and was expected to get excited about in discussions.”
How seriously are we expected to take this? You couldn’t get excited about Robert Frost because he was male?
Why can one issue of a top 10 list be judged but one issue of a magazine can’t be? PW puts out that list every year.
Because the breadth covered by the top 10 list of the best writing published in a given year is far wider than that of a small, and new online magazine. I cannot think of a year when there hasn’t been as many great books written by women as men. The exclusion within that context has far more of an impact on me. But you do raise an interesting point.
demi,
Aren’t you taking her comment out of context? It’s pretty much an historical fact that dead white males have dominated literature syllabi.
The issue isn’t, “I can’t read him because he’s a dead white male.”
It’s, “why do I mostly read books by dead white males”?
I don’t see how you interpreted her comment as a dig at Frost.
There’s really no excuse to have a syllabus that lacks diversity in any American Lit course that covers the 20th or 19th C.
demi,
Aren’t you taking her comment out of context? It’s pretty much an historical fact that dead white males have dominated literature syllabi.
The issue isn’t, “I can’t read him because he’s a dead white male.”
It’s, “why do I mostly read books by dead white males”?
I don’t see how you interpreted her comment as a dig at Frost.
There’s really no excuse to have a syllabus that lacks diversity in any American Lit course that covers the 20th or 19th C.
You don’t have to take anything seriously. But no, I did not get excited about good fences making good neighbors. Prufrock gave me a rise, and oh yes, Blake for sure, but mostly no. I felt annoyed because I saw mostly men getting hotly excited in these classes debating Pound’s work, but no similar rise regarding any female poets, except maybe, maybe, maybe when discussing her work in relation to the biographical Plath and then that segued into discussing Ted. Of course, there were exceptions (rare & therefore lost in the ether now), but hot debates primarily took place over the oeuvres of such men.
You don’t have to take anything seriously. But no, I did not get excited about good fences making good neighbors. Prufrock gave me a rise, and oh yes, Blake for sure, but mostly no. I felt annoyed because I saw mostly men getting hotly excited in these classes debating Pound’s work, but no similar rise regarding any female poets, except maybe, maybe, maybe when discussing her work in relation to the biographical Plath and then that segued into discussing Ted. Of course, there were exceptions (rare & therefore lost in the ether now), but hot debates primarily took place over the oeuvres of such men.
I’m going to be horribly impolitic here, but I wonder why if readers and editors are subject to the workings of vast mechanism that effect their ability to recognize and support poetry by women– if, essentially, the argument isn’t that many of those readers and editors are sexist, but have really been warped by a large machine that they’ve been inattentive to… why isn’t it the same for writers? Why is there an assumption that there must be an equal number of great female and male authors– isn’t the creative process to some degree subject to the same forces? It seems like there’s only one acceptable, pre-determined outcome of we male readers and editors paying more attention to this issue: equality/ But isn’t it possible that the amount of good work ISN’T equal, for some of the same and many similar reasons that our aesthetics as readers reflects an imbalance? I’m not saying it’s 100-0, men ft. But what if it really is 80-20 or so, which is how it seems to be when I look around? Isn’t that at least as important of a problem?
I’m going to be horribly impolitic here, but I wonder why if readers and editors are subject to the workings of vast mechanism that effect their ability to recognize and support poetry by women– if, essentially, the argument isn’t that many of those readers and editors are sexist, but have really been warped by a large machine that they’ve been inattentive to… why isn’t it the same for writers? Why is there an assumption that there must be an equal number of great female and male authors– isn’t the creative process to some degree subject to the same forces? It seems like there’s only one acceptable, pre-determined outcome of we male readers and editors paying more attention to this issue: equality/ But isn’t it possible that the amount of good work ISN’T equal, for some of the same and many similar reasons that our aesthetics as readers reflects an imbalance? I’m not saying it’s 100-0, men ft. But what if it really is 80-20 or so, which is how it seems to be when I look around? Isn’t that at least as important of a problem?
Pound, Plath? That class sounds like ass.
I just think it’s not that hard to “get excited about” Frost, and dismissing him as “another dead white male” seems gross to me, and IMO implies a very superficial kind of reading.
Pound, Plath? That class sounds like ass.
I just think it’s not that hard to “get excited about” Frost, and dismissing him as “another dead white male” seems gross to me, and IMO implies a very superficial kind of reading.
Demi-puppet, I think you should note the phrase “how many” in the passage you quote. There’s your answer. And yes, you should take it seriously.
Demi-puppet, I think you should note the phrase “how many” in the passage you quote. There’s your answer. And yes, you should take it seriously.
why are they burning bras while WEARING bras?
I get that, and I have no argument with it. The fact remains that excusing yourself of a deep reading of frost because he is dead and white and male is a highly anti-intellectual move.
I get that, and I have no argument with it. The fact remains that excusing yourself of a deep reading of frost because he is dead and white and male is a highly anti-intellectual move.
I mean it’s basically the same thing as one of my buddies who dismisses himself of appreciating Dickinson because “he just doesn’t get all those capital letters.”
I mean it’s basically the same thing as one of my buddies who dismisses himself of appreciating Dickinson because “he just doesn’t get all those capital letters.”
how come white males are always dead white males in discussions about what gets taught? if we’re really trying to be representative, we’d study almost zero living writers, for there are many many more dead people than alive people.
how come white males are always dead white males in discussions about what gets taught? if we’re really trying to be representative, we’d study almost zero living writers, for there are many many more dead people than alive people.
I think it’s pretty obvious we’re speaking here in ‘gross’ generalities, which are by default superficial, but the point is to get at why these generalizations bear up under scrutiny/survey. For instance, why is it that those undergrad class syllabi remain populated by mostly ‘dead white male’ writers? Why are “tokens” sometimes included? I read the occasional Brooks and Plath and Sexton and even Clifton (this was in Baltimore) but syllabi didn’t veer from the usual traditional prescriptions still being taught today until I took those “alternative” or “marginal” classes. Do undergrad syllabi offer a wider array of poets? Why not? Haven’t many more writers been published since those dead dudes published? Who is teaching those classes and why do they feel compelled to include only the canonical writers they read in school? Do they have a Tao Lin and Ariana Reines on there? (I do) Who else? Or are there very few changing this ‘syllabized’ landscape in schools? What’s really changing via one of the biggest industries in the U.S.: education? A quick google search for “modern american poetry syllabus” reveals who? Pound, Williams, oh there’s a Loy! Eliot, Crane, Whitman, Stevens, oh! a Hacker, Yeats, Stein!, Sandburg, cummings, A Lowell!, Ginsberg, Snyder, Emerson, Poe, Dickinson, M Moore, etc. Um, shouldn’t this landscape be changing a bit by now? Why isn’t it? Or is it slowly and I can’t tell because I’m simply dipping in and scanning quickly? Aren’t there more Modern American Poets apart from those listed? Why aren’t they appearing on these syllabi?
I think it’s pretty obvious we’re speaking here in ‘gross’ generalities, which are by default superficial, but the point is to get at why these generalizations bear up under scrutiny/survey. For instance, why is it that those undergrad class syllabi remain populated by mostly ‘dead white male’ writers? Why are “tokens” sometimes included? I read the occasional Brooks and Plath and Sexton and even Clifton (this was in Baltimore) but syllabi didn’t veer from the usual traditional prescriptions still being taught today until I took those “alternative” or “marginal” classes. Do undergrad syllabi offer a wider array of poets? Why not? Haven’t many more writers been published since those dead dudes published? Who is teaching those classes and why do they feel compelled to include only the canonical writers they read in school? Do they have a Tao Lin and Ariana Reines on there? (I do) Who else? Or are there very few changing this ‘syllabized’ landscape in schools? What’s really changing via one of the biggest industries in the U.S.: education? A quick google search for “modern american poetry syllabus” reveals who? Pound, Williams, oh there’s a Loy! Eliot, Crane, Whitman, Stevens, oh! a Hacker, Yeats, Stein!, Sandburg, cummings, A Lowell!, Ginsberg, Snyder, Emerson, Poe, Dickinson, M Moore, etc. Um, shouldn’t this landscape be changing a bit by now? Why isn’t it? Or is it slowly and I can’t tell because I’m simply dipping in and scanning quickly? Aren’t there more Modern American Poets apart from those listed? Why aren’t they appearing on these syllabi?
Hello Amy, Blake, Kate, & Roxane,
Thank you for pursuing this beast.
Comments streams do define the blogs to which they’re hinged; they house the audience that a reader elects to join (or bows out of). If you’re getting more traffic on posts like “Language Over Body,” won’t that necessarily overinform the blog’s reception? It’d be a bummer for me, but I don’t think politics and art are separable.
To say that theorizing/critiquing these things opposes (or apposes?) creation of art strikes me at least an overstatement, maybe fallacy. Of course, right now, I’m also breastfeeding, and playing blocks, so I wouldn’t be making art on this setting anyhow. (And per Amy, now the biologically male know that they too can breastfeed and blog at the same time! Try it out, yo!)
I appreciate the discussion here, but on the whole, where feminist ‘splaining is considered, I’m feeling very http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/patriarchy-blaming-the-twisty-way/guidelines-for-commenters/
I ‘dismissed’ (i.e. admitted to disinterest, gasp!) Frost because his fences and his roads less taken and his poetics never thrilled me. They never ‘took the top of my head off.’ How are his poetics related to gender expectations? Class expectations? And the touting of his poetry? That’s more to the point. Haven’t you ever heard of generalizations? Or are you just insisting on this point to avoid discussion?
I ‘dismissed’ (i.e. admitted to disinterest, gasp!) Frost because his fences and his roads less taken and his poetics never thrilled me. They never ‘took the top of my head off.’ How are his poetics related to gender expectations? Class expectations? And the touting of his poetry? That’s more to the point. Haven’t you ever heard of generalizations? Or are you just insisting on this point to avoid discussion?
Are you really suggesting that we teach Tao Lin?
Well because we certainly have a bevy of living writers that speak much more to my students than just the dead white males. But as I’ve noted, to beat a dead horse now, the phrase is a generalization. We can stop and stare at the thing, protest that it ‘just ain’t right’ on repeat, or be productive and examine it’s innards, query how it got here, ask who reinscribes that body (of work) ad nauseum and where (as I did in response to “demi puppet” above), wonder aloud what it means to not veer from the traditional/canonical, etc.
Are you really suggesting that we teach Tao Lin?
Well because we certainly have a bevy of living writers that speak much more to my students than just the dead white males. But as I’ve noted, to beat a dead horse now, the phrase is a generalization. We can stop and stare at the thing, protest that it ‘just ain’t right’ on repeat, or be productive and examine it’s innards, query how it got here, ask who reinscribes that body (of work) ad nauseum and where (as I did in response to “demi puppet” above), wonder aloud what it means to not veer from the traditional/canonical, etc.
depends on the class, but i would think generally that a syllabi might want to represent all of literature historically, which is male dominated, because that’s history. more modern classes would include more of an array of modern writers including more women. is that not the case?
depends on the class, but i would think generally that a syllabi might want to represent all of literature historically, which is male dominated, because that’s history. more modern classes would include more of an array of modern writers including more women. is that not the case?
but isnt there value in that traditional/canonical, at least from an historical perspective?
but isnt there value in that traditional/canonical, at least from an historical perspective?
Roxane, did you post the special issue to all those message boards and listservs?
I’m insisting on this point because I think it’s indicative of a crass anti-intellectualism. Frost never “thrilled you.” Gee, I wasn’t aware that that was his responsibility. The way you talk about poetry reeks of the consumer’s mentality. “What has Frost done for me?”
I’m insisting on this point because I think it’s indicative of a crass anti-intellectualism. Frost never “thrilled you.” Gee, I wasn’t aware that that was his responsibility. The way you talk about poetry reeks of the consumer’s mentality. “What has Frost done for me?”
I published these two poems of his: http://www.mipoesias.com/Poetry/lin_tao.html and still like them very much. Many of my students who have mostly been exposed to the ‘dead white males’ in high school have been turned off to poetry. I share these, among a wide variety of others, and they are like, What the hell? Poetry can be like that?? And they open a little. And then I can go backwards later and dip into the ‘canon’, which they are now more receptive to. So yes, Lin or some other younger zany poet, a number of them actually, can open a door that was closed. You don’t have to think it’s ‘canon-worthy’, nor do I suggest you teach work you don’t like (and thus set an example of an unhappy reader) but yes: teach the unusual, that which has not been prescribed or even authenticated as ‘true literature’ via some anthology.
I published these two poems of his: http://www.mipoesias.com/Poetry/lin_tao.html and still like them very much. Many of my students who have mostly been exposed to the ‘dead white males’ in high school have been turned off to poetry. I share these, among a wide variety of others, and they are like, What the hell? Poetry can be like that?? And they open a little. And then I can go backwards later and dip into the ‘canon’, which they are now more receptive to. So yes, Lin or some other younger zany poet, a number of them actually, can open a door that was closed. You don’t have to think it’s ‘canon-worthy’, nor do I suggest you teach work you don’t like (and thus set an example of an unhappy reader) but yes: teach the unusual, that which has not been prescribed or even authenticated as ‘true literature’ via some anthology.
Yes, of course, but must it dominate? I also kind of answered this question in my reply to you above just now about opening students and then going backwards to dip into the canon.
Yes, of course, but must it dominate? I also kind of answered this question in my reply to you above just now about opening students and then going backwards to dip into the canon.
Not yet.
That isn’t a list of poets for a class on contemporary or current poetry, but it looks like a list of poets for a class on modernist poets. That landscape doesn’t change that much (except maybe through instances of “discovering” work from that time period). It sucks that there aren’t more academic classes on contemporary poetry, sure. Most of my reading in that has come from workshops, where I’ve read Zachary Schomburg, Tony Tost, Carolyn Guinzio, Brian Henry, Brenda Hillman, etc. (there are lots more, the list might be male-dominated, I’m not sure. I’d have to go dig up most of those books to make a comprehensive list).
That isn’t a list of poets for a class on contemporary or current poetry, but it looks like a list of poets for a class on modernist poets. That landscape doesn’t change that much (except maybe through instances of “discovering” work from that time period). It sucks that there aren’t more academic classes on contemporary poetry, sure. Most of my reading in that has come from workshops, where I’ve read Zachary Schomburg, Tony Tost, Carolyn Guinzio, Brian Henry, Brenda Hillman, etc. (there are lots more, the list might be male-dominated, I’m not sure. I’d have to go dig up most of those books to make a comprehensive list).
i dont know. for high school maybe its a different mindset, i’m not thinking about it from that point of view, if you are just trying to stimulate interest. at the college level, i would expect the historical canon to dominate though.
i dont know. for high school maybe its a different mindset, i’m not thinking about it from that point of view, if you are just trying to stimulate interest. at the college level, i would expect the historical canon to dominate though.
Um, this is totally bogus. So you read poetry that bores you? Or act like it should be revered? I’m not going to fake any excitement over Frost, who you cherry-picked as the representative ‘dead white male’ that I somehow magically dismissed (from what, pray tell? my bedside reading? Oh no! Horrors!), and pretend that I want to include him in my daily reading or even yearly reading. Why should I? Who said it was his “responsibility”? I think my own work rocks but I surely have no expectation that everyone else will and that everyone else should read it, even if it makes it into a hundred anthologies. I didn’t ask Frost to do anything for me anymore than I “must” read his poetry. Neither of us has an obligation to each other. What are you really getting at here? Or do you just love Frost as the dead horse to beat?
Um, this is totally bogus. So you read poetry that bores you? Or act like it should be revered? I’m not going to fake any excitement over Frost, who you cherry-picked as the representative ‘dead white male’ that I somehow magically dismissed (from what, pray tell? my bedside reading? Oh no! Horrors!), and pretend that I want to include him in my daily reading or even yearly reading. Why should I? Who said it was his “responsibility”? I think my own work rocks but I surely have no expectation that everyone else will and that everyone else should read it, even if it makes it into a hundred anthologies. I didn’t ask Frost to do anything for me anymore than I “must” read his poetry. Neither of us has an obligation to each other. What are you really getting at here? Or do you just love Frost as the dead horse to beat?
I haven’t cherry picked anything. I’m talking about ways of reading, and you seem violently content with the most superficial of ways.
There are plenty of seminal women writers who can be taught from the 19th and 20th C when examining the historical cannon.
For fiction: Stowe, Alcott, Gilman, Jewett, Cather, Wharton, Barnes, Stein, Woolf, Hurston…tenoff the top off my head from late the 19th, early 20th C, and just Americans.
A semester usually runs a few months.
Again, no excuses.
I haven’t cherry picked anything. I’m talking about ways of reading, and you seem violently content with the most superficial of ways.
There are plenty of seminal women writers who can be taught from the 19th and 20th C when examining the historical cannon.
For fiction: Stowe, Alcott, Gilman, Jewett, Cather, Wharton, Barnes, Stein, Woolf, Hurston…tenoff the top off my head from late the 19th, early 20th C, and just Americans.
A semester usually runs a few months.
Again, no excuses.
“ceci n’est pas un fusil”
“ceci n’est pas un fusil”
Exactly, Michael. Again, I’m not arguing against a diverse syllabi. There’s more than enough tremendous women authors to study—you could spend an entire lifetime on it. What I’m more concerned about is the attitude behind the construction of these syllabi, the way we talk about the value of literature, etc. —But apparently this makes me a troll?
Exactly, Michael. Again, I’m not arguing against a diverse syllabi. There’s more than enough tremendous women authors to study—you could spend an entire lifetime on it. What I’m more concerned about is the attitude behind the construction of these syllabi, the way we talk about the value of literature, etc. —But apparently this makes me a troll?
@michael. thats not historically representative though, is it? maybe it is, ive never been a lit major so i dont know why im even having a discussion. I mean im not saying there is a lack of women writers from history to teach, only that what ought to be taught be representative of major works, for the sake of having a broad knowledge of the major works.
@michael. thats not historically representative though, is it? maybe it is, ive never been a lit major so i dont know why im even having a discussion. I mean im not saying there is a lack of women writers from history to teach, only that what ought to be taught be representative of major works, for the sake of having a broad knowledge of the major works.
demi,
I haven’t called you a troll.
Why can’t we talk about literature’s “value” while working hard to develop diverse syllabi? We can’t do both at the same time?
i guess more what i am saying is that what ought to be taught ought not to have anything to do with gender and more to do with its historical importance. thats all.
demi,
I haven’t called you a troll.
Why can’t we talk about literature’s “value” while working hard to develop diverse syllabi? We can’t do both at the same time?
i guess more what i am saying is that what ought to be taught ought not to have anything to do with gender and more to do with its historical importance. thats all.
Yes, it’s definitely historically representative.
Stowe–“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (addressed race, slavery)
Alcott–ahead of her time in the way she addressed women’s issues in fiction.
Gilman–“Yellow Wallpaper,” one of the most influential feminist thinkers ever (used a unique gothic style to address serious social issues).
Jewett–helped make “local color” writing important in American letters.
Cather, Wharton, Stein, Woolf, Hurston–should be obvious.
Barnes–noted experimental writer of the modernist era.
I should also add Harding-Davis, whose story, “Life in The Iron Mills,” is a hallmark of American realism.
Seems like a good historical range.
Yes, it’s definitely historically representative.
Stowe–“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (addressed race, slavery)
Alcott–ahead of her time in the way she addressed women’s issues in fiction.
Gilman–“Yellow Wallpaper,” one of the most influential feminist thinkers ever (used a unique gothic style to address serious social issues).
Jewett–helped make “local color” writing important in American letters.
Cather, Wharton, Stein, Woolf, Hurston–should be obvious.
Barnes–noted experimental writer of the modernist era.
I should also add Harding-Davis, whose story, “Life in The Iron Mills,” is a hallmark of American realism.
Seems like a good historical range.
its a range but i dont know that that range is representative of the entire range of all literature ever written. are you goin to disclude shakespeare to make room for these?
its a range but i dont know that that range is representative of the entire range of all literature ever written. are you goin to disclude shakespeare to make room for these?
That’s a bit of a strawman, as most courses aren’t designed to cover the entire history of English and American literature in one semester.
That’s a bit of a strawman, as most courses aren’t designed to cover the entire history of English and American literature in one semester.
darby,
I see what you’re saying–how, for instance, could we avoid teaching mostly dead white males in a medieval or renaissance course. I understand this point, but I don’t think it matters since these courses represent a fraction of the courses offered by a department, and when there is a history of courses that cover later periods–periods when women were writing and publishing–that still exclude those women.
darby,
I see what you’re saying–how, for instance, could we avoid teaching mostly dead white males in a medieval or renaissance course. I understand this point, but I don’t think it matters since these courses represent a fraction of the courses offered by a department, and when there is a history of courses that cover later periods–periods when women were writing and publishing–that still exclude those women.
that’s a strawman, sure, to make a point. and i’m not even talking about any particular course, but the sum of all courses that make up a comprehensive lit degree. sum of all syllabi should be representative of works that were culturally relevant through history, and that doesn’t even mean works that merely address culturally relevant issues, but works that were influential beyond themselves. works by men simply were more influential, and as unfortunate as that is, you cant change that because its history. altering a syllabi to be more politically correct alters our perception of history. its not a realm where social change should take place, its a realm where factual history should be reflected.
that’s a strawman, sure, to make a point. and i’m not even talking about any particular course, but the sum of all courses that make up a comprehensive lit degree. sum of all syllabi should be representative of works that were culturally relevant through history, and that doesn’t even mean works that merely address culturally relevant issues, but works that were influential beyond themselves. works by men simply were more influential, and as unfortunate as that is, you cant change that because its history. altering a syllabi to be more politically correct alters our perception of history. its not a realm where social change should take place, its a realm where factual history should be reflected.
i may be getting the purpose of a literature degree mixed up with a history degree though. im not an academic, so i dont know.
i may be getting the purpose of a literature degree mixed up with a history degree though. im not an academic, so i dont know.
I don’t understand how you can argue that my list isn’t “historically representative” when you yourself admit that you don’t know much about literary history. All of the writers I listed are clearly influential. I mean, for Pete’s sake, Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped start the Civil War.
I don’t understand how you can argue that my list isn’t “historically representative” when you yourself admit that you don’t know much about literary history. All of the writers I listed are clearly influential. I mean, for Pete’s sake, Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped start the Civil War.
I am grateful that you have discussed this so seriously and calmly, and I look forward to the next installment. It is awkward to be a male and make comments on the subject; I can’t imagine what the female experience is like. What am I responding to? Also, whenever I feel like saying anything, I feel convicted by the language I am given (by men) to use.
Since it’s unlikely that humans will re-establish a more equitable language, it becomes overarchingly important to share our stories. And the way to do that is by talking to each other. And the way to do that, aside from talking to each other, is to create. And from that comes the pre-eminence of a non-hegemonic aesthetic. Therefore I hold to the notion that it’s the work that matters, and anyone whose work doesn’t embody a feminist ethos is not participating in the discussion, and should be ignored like a pesky child. When they want to come to the table, they will be welcomed.
Of course, ignoring criminals isn’t enough. But our work should be (and is) our action. This is a good discussion, but it’s supplemental material. We are right now acting in accordance with the system, but our poetry is our transgression.
That guy who put the flower in the rifle wasn’t saying “don’t shoot people” he was saying, “This would make a nice vase.” http://midwestpoet.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/flower-in-rifle.jpg
The Yellow Wallpaper was one of the first “serious” texts I read when I was in high school. I loved it so so much.
The Yellow Wallpaper was one of the first “serious” texts I read when I was in high school. I loved it so so much.
Michael Fischer I like how u do. I agree/disagree with many points u make. I think you are a good thing
BUT
Can I get you to get off the Michael Fischer thing?
I mean get a handle or maybe just Mike F or F Mike or MF9 (that’s like enigmatic and British and kinda cool) or something.
The two name thing every time is worrying me, from a rhetorical aspect and also just a drunkenness (all mine) thing and also it’s a bit 19 century and makes me think of trains.
Soon as I think of trains I get lost.
please?
Michael Fischer I like how u do. I agree/disagree with many points u make. I think you are a good thing
BUT
Can I get you to get off the Michael Fischer thing?
I mean get a handle or maybe just Mike F or F Mike or MF9 (that’s like enigmatic and British and kinda cool) or something.
The two name thing every time is worrying me, from a rhetorical aspect and also just a drunkenness (all mine) thing and also it’s a bit 19 century and makes me think of trains.
Soon as I think of trains I get lost.
please?
Then again the whole whole whole name thing IS your handle, right?
Ok, never mind.
Then again the whole whole whole name thing IS your handle, right?
Ok, never mind.
hmmm, well, I actually love trains and have an obsession with all things railroad.
I didn’t realize that I was the only one here to use his full name. I figured, “if I’m going to come on here and argue my opinions, I should have the courage to use my full name, instead of hiding behind some handle.”
I don’t have a blog to link to like you do…
And your blog includes your full name, eh?
hmmm, well, I actually love trains and have an obsession with all things railroad.
I didn’t realize that I was the only one here to use his full name. I figured, “if I’m going to come on here and argue my opinions, I should have the courage to use my full name, instead of hiding behind some handle.”
I don’t have a blog to link to like you do…
And your blog includes your full name, eh?
I’m confused.
i wasnt arguing that your list wasnt. i said i didnt know that it was, which also admits to not knowing enough to have the argument. but your list feels narrow. im just thinking of so much that is excluded from it.
I’m confused.
i wasnt arguing that your list wasnt. i said i didnt know that it was, which also admits to not knowing enough to have the argument. but your list feels narrow. im just thinking of so much that is excluded from it.
YES! And, shit. I just took a couple hours saying inelegantly in a post what you’ve just said so directly, Adam.
a gender equality discussion with a panel of 3 women and 1 male.
let equality ring!
a gender equality discussion with a panel of 3 women and 1 male.
let equality ring!
Thank you so much for your comment Adam. I find it awkward to make comments on many subjects subject too (really) because the “insert whatever” experience is such a broad thing that I rarely feel qualified to speak on as just me.
I like what you say about how ultimately it is the work that matters. I come at it from a slightly different place but still, I just appreciate all you’ve said. And yes, this conversation, as all such conversations, are supplementary but at times, I do think they can influence in really interesting ways the work itself, the poetry, the transgression.
Haven’t had time to read everything in the thread, but one quick note: I really don’t appreciate masculinity being equated repeatedly with destructiveness, “masculine” used as a slur. Destructive, asshole behavior is destructive, asshole behavior. It may be culturally attached to my penis, but it isn’t actually about my penis, and though implying otherwise is a common tendency among well-meaning feminists, it’s actually deeply antifeminist. Didn’t like seeing it happen here.
Haven’t had time to read everything in the thread, but one quick note: I really don’t appreciate masculinity being equated repeatedly with destructiveness, “masculine” used as a slur. Destructive, asshole behavior is destructive, asshole behavior. It may be culturally attached to my penis, but it isn’t actually about my penis, and though implying otherwise is a common tendency among well-meaning feminists, it’s actually deeply antifeminist. Didn’t like seeing it happen here.
is equality always everything split evenly down the middle? although i would have liked more male writers involved in the discussion.
is equality always everything split evenly down the middle? although i would have liked more male writers involved in the discussion.
The discussion is about discrimination against women in literary publishing. Published writers who are women have more authority to speak about this issue than published writers who are men.
The discussion is about discrimination against women in literary publishing. Published writers who are women have more authority to speak about this issue than published writers who are men.
Entry Word: equality
Function: noun
Meaning: the state or fact of being exactly the same in number, amount, status, or quality
what other male writers did you ask to be involved?
I think that’s a bit of a narrow reading of the discussion. I can’t speak for my co-conversationalists but the masculine as destruction was used in the very specific context of negative online discussions where women are attacked. And this comment really speaks to some of what all four of us specifically bring up here, which is the demand to clarify and qualify.
” I get pissed when I think of my own education and, though it may be cliché to note, how many dead white male writers I read and was expected to get excited about in discussions.”
How seriously are we expected to take this? You couldn’t get excited about Robert Frost because he was male?
The idea for this conversation began before AWP between Amy and Kate and myself and then we all met at AWP and discussed it a little more and then we started and thought let’s bring a guy into the mix to add some different perspectives and Blake was down and had amazing things to say. The “balance” is off by 1 but the world continues to spin on its axis. Posting the conversation here was the opportunity for men, women and people between those two spectrums to join in.
sounds like unpublished women would have been best
How does this definition prove your point?
“Status” is used in addition to “number” and “amount.”
you can qualify the hypocrisy any way you prefer.
it is still hypocrisy.
I’m not qualifying anything. I don’t think a discussion on equality on publishing demands both men and women. I think the discussion is enriched by both perspectives but it isn’t mandated. I’ll just beg to differ.
your math is wrong also.
3/0
+1
3/1
1 + 1 = 2
3/2
it is okay, blake speaks for all penis.
thank you, sir.
i dont think its even a matter of 1 vs. 3. thats focusing on the numbers again, as if there is a singular male opinion and a singular female opinion. the problem in this discussion is that it actually comes off that way, the 3 seem polarized together already and blake is on the defensive the whole time.
Thank you for the math lesson. And if you really care, join in the conversation instead of… doing whatever it is you’re doing.
careful with your math, anon. She said the balance was off by one. to be balanced, it would be 2/2. it is 3/1. the balance is shifted by one.
Yeah.
I feel like me and the other anon are “at cross purposes.”
demi,
Aren’t you taking her comment out of context? It’s pretty much an historical fact that dead white males have dominated literature syllabi.
The issue isn’t, “I can’t read him because he’s a dead white male.”
It’s, “why do I mostly read books by dead white males”?
I don’t see how you interpreted her comment as a dig at Frost.
There’s really no excuse to have a syllabus that lacks diversity in any American Lit course that covers the 20th or 19th C.
You don’t have to take anything seriously. But no, I did not get excited about good fences making good neighbors. Prufrock gave me a rise, and oh yes, Blake for sure, but mostly no. I felt annoyed because I saw mostly men getting hotly excited in these classes debating Pound’s work, but no similar rise regarding any female poets, except maybe, maybe, maybe when discussing her work in relation to the biographical Plath and then that segued into discussing Ted. Of course, there were exceptions (rare & therefore lost in the ether now), but hot debates primarily took place over the oeuvres of such men.
Dude, Frost sucks.
I’m going to be horribly impolitic here, but I wonder why if readers and editors are subject to the workings of vast mechanism that effect their ability to recognize and support poetry by women– if, essentially, the argument isn’t that many of those readers and editors are sexist, but have really been warped by a large machine that they’ve been inattentive to… why isn’t it the same for writers? Why is there an assumption that there must be an equal number of great female and male authors– isn’t the creative process to some degree subject to the same forces? It seems like there’s only one acceptable, pre-determined outcome of we male readers and editors paying more attention to this issue: equality/ But isn’t it possible that the amount of good work ISN’T equal, for some of the same and many similar reasons that our aesthetics as readers reflects an imbalance? I’m not saying it’s 100-0, men ft. But what if it really is 80-20 or so, which is how it seems to be when I look around? Isn’t that at least as important of a problem?
Pound, Plath? That class sounds like ass.
I just think it’s not that hard to “get excited about” Frost, and dismissing him as “another dead white male” seems gross to me, and IMO implies a very superficial kind of reading.
I was just giving a sampling of significant women fiction writers from the 19th and early 20th C, knowing that most courses last a few months and that it wouldn’t be difficult at all to have a syllabus of half women and half men that’s “historically representative.” I chose this period because it tends to be the most taught period in Am. literature (mid 1800’s to early 20th C).
The list isn’t narrow in terms of the themes and movements covered in Am. lit of that time frame.
Roxane,
Have you read “Herland”?
Demi-puppet, I think you should note the phrase “how many” in the passage you quote. There’s your answer. And yes, you should take it seriously.
Herland is awful.
I get that, and I have no argument with it. The fact remains that excusing yourself of a deep reading of frost because he is dead and white and male is a highly anti-intellectual move.
I mean it’s basically the same thing as one of my buddies who dismisses himself of appreciating Dickinson because “he just doesn’t get all those capital letters.”
Michael, no I haven’t. Should I?
how come white males are always dead white males in discussions about what gets taught? if we’re really trying to be representative, we’d study almost zero living writers, for there are many many more dead people than alive people.
To be clear, by and large I’ve enjoyed the discussion — particularly your own contribution, which seems eminently reasonable and practical. (I think there’s a need to be acknowledged as completely right in some of Amy’s and Kate’s comments that got a little tiring — smacks of the old liberal purity contest.) But I was actually referring to precisely the use of masculine you’re describing — using the word “masculine” to mean “destructive to women” in any way is only perpetuating the problem. Not a huge deal, and not a major problem in the discussion as a whole, but we’ve seen repeatedly in this conversation how counterproductive “icky boys” stuff can be.
‘The list isn’t narrow in terms of the themes and movements covered in Am. lit of that time frame.’
haha. something is narrow, either the list or the category. cuz i keep thinking across the entire spectrum like homer and shakespear and milton shaw kafka joyce lawrence eliot o’niell proust etc. i concede to your point though, you’re more in a position to evaluate it.
I think it’s pretty obvious we’re speaking here in ‘gross’ generalities, which are by default superficial, but the point is to get at why these generalizations bear up under scrutiny/survey. For instance, why is it that those undergrad class syllabi remain populated by mostly ‘dead white male’ writers? Why are “tokens” sometimes included? I read the occasional Brooks and Plath and Sexton and even Clifton (this was in Baltimore) but syllabi didn’t veer from the usual traditional prescriptions still being taught today until I took those “alternative” or “marginal” classes. Do undergrad syllabi offer a wider array of poets? Why not? Haven’t many more writers been published since those dead dudes published? Who is teaching those classes and why do they feel compelled to include only the canonical writers they read in school? Do they have a Tao Lin and Ariana Reines on there? (I do) Who else? Or are there very few changing this ‘syllabized’ landscape in schools? What’s really changing via one of the biggest industries in the U.S.: education? A quick google search for “modern american poetry syllabus” reveals who? Pound, Williams, oh there’s a Loy! Eliot, Crane, Whitman, Stevens, oh! a Hacker, Yeats, Stein!, Sandburg, cummings, A Lowell!, Ginsberg, Snyder, Emerson, Poe, Dickinson, M Moore, etc. Um, shouldn’t this landscape be changing a bit by now? Why isn’t it? Or is it slowly and I can’t tell because I’m simply dipping in and scanning quickly? Aren’t there more Modern American Poets apart from those listed? Why aren’t they appearing on these syllabi?
darby,
I probably should’ve been clearer that I was talking about a specific time period; it’s difficult to have this discussion if you don’t put a hypothetical course on the table. My bad.
btw, I liked your story in the Collagist.
Roxane,
Yes, esp. in light of this topic, haha.
http://www.amazon.com/Herland-Charlotte-Perkins-Gilman/dp/0394736656
I ‘dismissed’ (i.e. admitted to disinterest, gasp!) Frost because his fences and his roads less taken and his poetics never thrilled me. They never ‘took the top of my head off.’ How are his poetics related to gender expectations? Class expectations? And the touting of his poetry? That’s more to the point. Haven’t you ever heard of generalizations? Or are you just insisting on this point to avoid discussion?
It’s a pretty good list, although if it’s supposed to be representative of American Lit I can’t figure out why Woolf (I thought she was English??) is on there, and why Dickinson isn’t. But regardless Woolf is great enough to teach just for whatever reason. I would axe Stowe and Gilman and get Dickinson in there. You can’t teach the whole of literature in one class, and that would be a pretty nice list to run with.
michael, re the collagist, thank you!
True true. It is counterproductive. And it is important to be just as sensitive to the masculine as a slur as much as we are sensitive to attacks on the feminine. To be honest, it is not something I have given a great deal of thought to but now I will.
Are you really suggesting that we teach Tao Lin?
Well because we certainly have a bevy of living writers that speak much more to my students than just the dead white males. But as I’ve noted, to beat a dead horse now, the phrase is a generalization. We can stop and stare at the thing, protest that it ‘just ain’t right’ on repeat, or be productive and examine it’s innards, query how it got here, ask who reinscribes that body (of work) ad nauseum and where (as I did in response to “demi puppet” above), wonder aloud what it means to not veer from the traditional/canonical, etc.
depends on the class, but i would think generally that a syllabi might want to represent all of literature historically, which is male dominated, because that’s history. more modern classes would include more of an array of modern writers including more women. is that not the case?
but isnt there value in that traditional/canonical, at least from an historical perspective?
Roxane,
I was thinking the same.
Trey,
did roxane not state this “discussion” originated from the initial conversation between the 3 women?
Yep, she did.
Thanks! Like I said, not a huge problem, just a thing I am kind of sensitive about. I spent a fair amount of my life being kind of an asshole because I thought that was what guys did. Wasted a little bit of life that way.
I’m insisting on this point because I think it’s indicative of a crass anti-intellectualism. Frost never “thrilled you.” Gee, I wasn’t aware that that was his responsibility. The way you talk about poetry reeks of the consumer’s mentality. “What has Frost done for me?”
I just downloaded Herland for the Kindle. For free. The future! So amazing. I will read it eventually. The list of things to read is long.
I published these two poems of his: http://www.mipoesias.com/Poetry/lin_tao.html and still like them very much. Many of my students who have mostly been exposed to the ‘dead white males’ in high school have been turned off to poetry. I share these, among a wide variety of others, and they are like, What the hell? Poetry can be like that?? And they open a little. And then I can go backwards later and dip into the ‘canon’, which they are now more receptive to. So yes, Lin or some other younger zany poet, a number of them actually, can open a door that was closed. You don’t have to think it’s ‘canon-worthy’, nor do I suggest you teach work you don’t like (and thus set an example of an unhappy reader) but yes: teach the unusual, that which has not been prescribed or even authenticated as ‘true literature’ via some anthology.
Yes, of course, but must it dominate? I also kind of answered this question in my reply to you above just now about opening students and then going backwards to dip into the canon.
Leave it to darby to “get” the allision.
That isn’t a list of poets for a class on contemporary or current poetry, but it looks like a list of poets for a class on modernist poets. That landscape doesn’t change that much (except maybe through instances of “discovering” work from that time period). It sucks that there aren’t more academic classes on contemporary poetry, sure. Most of my reading in that has come from workshops, where I’ve read Zachary Schomburg, Tony Tost, Carolyn Guinzio, Brian Henry, Brenda Hillman, etc. (there are lots more, the list might be male-dominated, I’m not sure. I’d have to go dig up most of those books to make a comprehensive list).
i dont know. for high school maybe its a different mindset, i’m not thinking about it from that point of view, if you are just trying to stimulate interest. at the college level, i would expect the historical canon to dominate though.
Um, this is totally bogus. So you read poetry that bores you? Or act like it should be revered? I’m not going to fake any excitement over Frost, who you cherry-picked as the representative ‘dead white male’ that I somehow magically dismissed (from what, pray tell? my bedside reading? Oh no! Horrors!), and pretend that I want to include him in my daily reading or even yearly reading. Why should I? Who said it was his “responsibility”? I think my own work rocks but I surely have no expectation that everyone else will and that everyone else should read it, even if it makes it into a hundred anthologies. I didn’t ask Frost to do anything for me anymore than I “must” read his poetry. Neither of us has an obligation to each other. What are you really getting at here? Or do you just love Frost as the dead horse to beat?
I haven’t cherry picked anything. I’m talking about ways of reading, and you seem violently content with the most superficial of ways.
There are plenty of seminal women writers who can be taught from the 19th and 20th C when examining the historical cannon.
For fiction: Stowe, Alcott, Gilman, Jewett, Cather, Wharton, Barnes, Stein, Woolf, Hurston…tenoff the top off my head from late the 19th, early 20th C, and just Americans.
A semester usually runs a few months.
Again, no excuses.
?
“ceci n’est pas un fusil”
Exactly, Michael. Again, I’m not arguing against a diverse syllabi. There’s more than enough tremendous women authors to study—you could spend an entire lifetime on it. What I’m more concerned about is the attitude behind the construction of these syllabi, the way we talk about the value of literature, etc. —But apparently this makes me a troll?
@michael. thats not historically representative though, is it? maybe it is, ive never been a lit major so i dont know why im even having a discussion. I mean im not saying there is a lack of women writers from history to teach, only that what ought to be taught be representative of major works, for the sake of having a broad knowledge of the major works.
demi,
I haven’t called you a troll.
Why can’t we talk about literature’s “value” while working hard to develop diverse syllabi? We can’t do both at the same time?
i guess more what i am saying is that what ought to be taught ought not to have anything to do with gender and more to do with its historical importance. thats all.
Yes, it’s definitely historically representative.
Stowe–“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (addressed race, slavery)
Alcott–ahead of her time in the way she addressed women’s issues in fiction.
Gilman–“Yellow Wallpaper,” one of the most influential feminist thinkers ever (used a unique gothic style to address serious social issues).
Jewett–helped make “local color” writing important in American letters.
Cather, Wharton, Stein, Woolf, Hurston–should be obvious.
Barnes–noted experimental writer of the modernist era.
I should also add Harding-Davis, whose story, “Life in The Iron Mills,” is a hallmark of American realism.
Seems like a good historical range.
its a range but i dont know that that range is representative of the entire range of all literature ever written. are you goin to disclude shakespeare to make room for these?
That’s a bit of a strawman, as most courses aren’t designed to cover the entire history of English and American literature in one semester.
darby,
I see what you’re saying–how, for instance, could we avoid teaching mostly dead white males in a medieval or renaissance course. I understand this point, but I don’t think it matters since these courses represent a fraction of the courses offered by a department, and when there is a history of courses that cover later periods–periods when women were writing and publishing–that still exclude those women.
that’s a strawman, sure, to make a point. and i’m not even talking about any particular course, but the sum of all courses that make up a comprehensive lit degree. sum of all syllabi should be representative of works that were culturally relevant through history, and that doesn’t even mean works that merely address culturally relevant issues, but works that were influential beyond themselves. works by men simply were more influential, and as unfortunate as that is, you cant change that because its history. altering a syllabi to be more politically correct alters our perception of history. its not a realm where social change should take place, its a realm where factual history should be reflected.
i may be getting the purpose of a literature degree mixed up with a history degree though. im not an academic, so i dont know.
I don’t understand how you can argue that my list isn’t “historically representative” when you yourself admit that you don’t know much about literary history. All of the writers I listed are clearly influential. I mean, for Pete’s sake, Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped start the Civil War.
The Yellow Wallpaper was one of the first “serious” texts I read when I was in high school. I loved it so so much.
You’re right. Don’t know what I was thinking re: Woolf (sometimes it’s easy to confuse the nationalities of some of the modernist writers).
I would certainly include Dickinson if the course were multi-genre (I just focused on fiction since it’s the genre I know best and the point was to show that there are plenty of women writers to choose from).
Michael Fischer I like how u do. I agree/disagree with many points u make. I think you are a good thing
BUT
Can I get you to get off the Michael Fischer thing?
I mean get a handle or maybe just Mike F or F Mike or MF9 (that’s like enigmatic and British and kinda cool) or something.
The two name thing every time is worrying me, from a rhetorical aspect and also just a drunkenness (all mine) thing and also it’s a bit 19 century and makes me think of trains.
Soon as I think of trains I get lost.
please?
Then again the whole whole whole name thing IS your handle, right?
Ok, never mind.
hmmm, well, I actually love trains and have an obsession with all things railroad.
I didn’t realize that I was the only one here to use his full name. I figured, “if I’m going to come on here and argue my opinions, I should have the courage to use my full name, instead of hiding behind some handle.”
I don’t have a blog to link to like you do…
And your blog includes your full name, eh?
I’m confused.
i wasnt arguing that your list wasnt. i said i didnt know that it was, which also admits to not knowing enough to have the argument. but your list feels narrow. im just thinking of so much that is excluded from it.
a gender equality discussion with a panel of 3 women and 1 male.
let equality ring!
Haven’t had time to read everything in the thread, but one quick note: I really don’t appreciate masculinity being equated repeatedly with destructiveness, “masculine” used as a slur. Destructive, asshole behavior is destructive, asshole behavior. It may be culturally attached to my penis, but it isn’t actually about my penis, and though implying otherwise is a common tendency among well-meaning feminists, it’s actually deeply antifeminist. Didn’t like seeing it happen here.
is equality always everything split evenly down the middle? although i would have liked more male writers involved in the discussion.
The discussion is about discrimination against women in literary publishing. Published writers who are women have more authority to speak about this issue than published writers who are men.
Entry Word: equality
Function: noun
Meaning: the state or fact of being exactly the same in number, amount, status, or quality
what other male writers did you ask to be involved?
I think that’s a bit of a narrow reading of the discussion. I can’t speak for my co-conversationalists but the masculine as destruction was used in the very specific context of negative online discussions where women are attacked. And this comment really speaks to some of what all four of us specifically bring up here, which is the demand to clarify and qualify.
The idea for this conversation began before AWP between Amy and Kate and myself and then we all met at AWP and discussed it a little more and then we started and thought let’s bring a guy into the mix to add some different perspectives and Blake was down and had amazing things to say. The “balance” is off by 1 but the world continues to spin on its axis. Posting the conversation here was the opportunity for men, women and people between those two spectrums to join in.
sounds like unpublished women would have been best
How does this definition prove your point?
“Status” is used in addition to “number” and “amount.”
you can qualify the hypocrisy any way you prefer.
it is still hypocrisy.
I’m not qualifying anything. I don’t think a discussion on equality on publishing demands both men and women. I think the discussion is enriched by both perspectives but it isn’t mandated. I’ll just beg to differ.
your math is wrong also.
3/0
+1
3/1
1 + 1 = 2
3/2
it is okay, blake speaks for all penis.
thank you, sir.
i dont think its even a matter of 1 vs. 3. thats focusing on the numbers again, as if there is a singular male opinion and a singular female opinion. the problem in this discussion is that it actually comes off that way, the 3 seem polarized together already and blake is on the defensive the whole time.
Thank you for the math lesson. And if you really care, join in the conversation instead of… doing whatever it is you’re doing.
careful with your math, anon. She said the balance was off by one. to be balanced, it would be 2/2. it is 3/1. the balance is shifted by one.
Yeah.
I feel like me and the other anon are “at cross purposes.”
Dude, Frost sucks.
I was just giving a sampling of significant women fiction writers from the 19th and early 20th C, knowing that most courses last a few months and that it wouldn’t be difficult at all to have a syllabus of half women and half men that’s “historically representative.” I chose this period because it tends to be the most taught period in Am. literature (mid 1800’s to early 20th C).
The list isn’t narrow in terms of the themes and movements covered in Am. lit of that time frame.
Roxane,
Have you read “Herland”?
Herland is awful.
Michael, no I haven’t. Should I?
To be clear, by and large I’ve enjoyed the discussion — particularly your own contribution, which seems eminently reasonable and practical. (I think there’s a need to be acknowledged as completely right in some of Amy’s and Kate’s comments that got a little tiring — smacks of the old liberal purity contest.) But I was actually referring to precisely the use of masculine you’re describing — using the word “masculine” to mean “destructive to women” in any way is only perpetuating the problem. Not a huge deal, and not a major problem in the discussion as a whole, but we’ve seen repeatedly in this conversation how counterproductive “icky boys” stuff can be.
‘The list isn’t narrow in terms of the themes and movements covered in Am. lit of that time frame.’
haha. something is narrow, either the list or the category. cuz i keep thinking across the entire spectrum like homer and shakespear and milton shaw kafka joyce lawrence eliot o’niell proust etc. i concede to your point though, you’re more in a position to evaluate it.
darby,
I probably should’ve been clearer that I was talking about a specific time period; it’s difficult to have this discussion if you don’t put a hypothetical course on the table. My bad.
btw, I liked your story in the Collagist.
Roxane,
Yes, esp. in light of this topic, haha.
http://www.amazon.com/Herland-Charlotte-Perkins-Gilman/dp/0394736656
It’s a pretty good list, although if it’s supposed to be representative of American Lit I can’t figure out why Woolf (I thought she was English??) is on there, and why Dickinson isn’t. But regardless Woolf is great enough to teach just for whatever reason. I would axe Stowe and Gilman and get Dickinson in there. You can’t teach the whole of literature in one class, and that would be a pretty nice list to run with.
michael, re the collagist, thank you!
True true. It is counterproductive. And it is important to be just as sensitive to the masculine as a slur as much as we are sensitive to attacks on the feminine. To be honest, it is not something I have given a great deal of thought to but now I will.
Roxane,
I was thinking the same.
Trey,
did roxane not state this “discussion” originated from the initial conversation between the 3 women?
Yep, she did.
Thanks! Like I said, not a huge problem, just a thing I am kind of sensitive about. I spent a fair amount of my life being kind of an asshole because I thought that was what guys did. Wasted a little bit of life that way.
I just downloaded Herland for the Kindle. For free. The future! So amazing. I will read it eventually. The list of things to read is long.
Leave it to darby to “get” the allision.
You’re right. Don’t know what I was thinking re: Woolf (sometimes it’s easy to confuse the nationalities of some of the modernist writers).
I would certainly include Dickinson if the course were multi-genre (I just focused on fiction since it’s the genre I know best and the point was to show that there are plenty of women writers to choose from).
amy- anyone who’s read this blog knows I am ardent partisans for both Tao Lin and Ariana Reines, but your question about why they aren’t taught more is deeply troubling to me. The reason we read old books is *because* they are old. They have withstood the strong testing of cultural shift and time itself. Eliot, Emerson, Austen, Shakespeare—these people did not write with the assurance of canonicity; they earned it. Their work accreted value and age, it continued to matter to people across cultures and times and eras and everything else. And that’s the value in reading it–because it has lasted, and because it is strong enough to last. You simply can’t know whether new work is capable of such a feat. Neither A.R. nor T.L. has even ten years as a publishing writer under their belt. I’m pulling for those guys, and I’ve taught them before in creative writing classes, and would teach them gladly in other types of classes where it made sense to include their work, but this idea that “old things are boring because they are old” really disgusts me. A definition and practice of “the new” that essentially reduces itself to “burn everything before 2005” is as naive and destructive as anything from the conservative-reactionary camp, maybe moreso. Not for nothing did Ariana bother herself to put out an original translation of Baudelaire.
I actually agreed with a lot of what Blake was saying, in the context of the entire discussion.
I’m relatively new to HTMLGIANT, and really the online literary world in general, and I just wanted to acknowledge how important this conversation has been to me as a writer. At first I viewed it more or less as an interesting topic to mull over intellectually and then move on about my day. But then one of you (i don’t really feel like going through the post to see which one) mentioned that more writers should try to “write in drag”. I started thinking about it and going through my work i realize just how one sided and narrow my writing really is. I’m always looking for my own weaknesses so i can tackle them and see what happens on the other side. Keep asking those questions.
“Eliot, Emerson, Austen, Shakespeare—these people did not write with the assurance of canonicity; they earned it. Their work accreted value and age, it continued to matter to people across cultures and times and eras and everything else.”
Thank you, Justin. I wouldn’t be here and i suspect many others wouldn’t be here without Shakespeare and Eliot and Yeats and many other “canon” writers. My brain was opened up and turned inside out by the beauty of what they wrote. And I remember many of my classmates feeling the same way (including many non-white, and non-male classmates.). They led me to writing and to this community, eventually, where I’ve now discovered all these fabulous newer writers. I think it’s great to teach the new, too…but not without the historical and linguistic grounding and context of their own influencers, the “dead white men.”
We can add new names to the syllabi, but why would the new names replace the old? They should supplement it but never replace it. That’s like teaching painting starting with Rothko. You’d not only miss the Masters, but you’d never get what Rothko was all about or why he was revolutionary in the first place.
It’s important to distinguish between “dominant” or “hegemonic” masculinity and a multiplicity of masculinities more generally.
what tim said. i think i was most often referring to masculine rhetoric, a sort of dominance in rhetoric or posturing.
not only men use masculine rhetoric. women of course can use it as well.
i think many traits of masculinity are quite positive and many traits of femininity are quite positive. i think i have at times many masculine traits, some positive, some negative.
i’m sorry you think i came off as so ideologically pure or us versus thems or essentializing in my politics. i’m not. the discussion and the questions i was asked were focused on my take on specific incidents or phenomenons through the lens of gender, specifically.
i was also speaking of masculine versus feminine values in literature, cultural ideas, but that’s just straight-up quoting v.dubs in a room of one’s own.
and i did write masculine too many times. agreed.
Right, I get what you’re saying about your use of masculinity, but again, why does that have to be masculine? You would find it insulting if I said doilies and knitting were feminine, yes?
Of course there’s a sense in which child-rearing, collaboration and gentle kisses are “feminine,” and it’s the same sense in which domineering behavior is “masculine,” but we’re engaged precisely in the project of sundering those regressive associations. Or, to look at it another way, as long as domineering behavior is gendered masculine, it would be unreasonable to expect anything else of men, who are raised to want desperately to be masculine, perhaps more than anything else.
Not trying to “call you out,” but clinging to the term would signal an investment in resentment and personal grievance that sometimes dominated the conversation (continuing to go after Jimmy for what was, at absolute worst, a joke in poor taste). Probably best to drop it.
Same here. The three of us have different opinions that are not always diametrically opposed to those of Blake’s. It is shocking.
amy- anyone who’s read this blog knows I am ardent partisans for both Tao Lin and Ariana Reines, but your question about why they aren’t taught more is deeply troubling to me. The reason we read old books is *because* they are old. They have withstood the strong testing of cultural shift and time itself. Eliot, Emerson, Austen, Shakespeare—these people did not write with the assurance of canonicity; they earned it. Their work accreted value and age, it continued to matter to people across cultures and times and eras and everything else. And that’s the value in reading it–because it has lasted, and because it is strong enough to last. You simply can’t know whether new work is capable of such a feat. Neither A.R. nor T.L. has even ten years as a publishing writer under their belt. I’m pulling for those guys, and I’ve taught them before in creative writing classes, and would teach them gladly in other types of classes where it made sense to include their work, but this idea that “old things are boring because they are old” really disgusts me. A definition and practice of “the new” that essentially reduces itself to “burn everything before 2005” is as naive and destructive as anything from the conservative-reactionary camp, maybe moreso. Not for nothing did Ariana bother herself to put out an original translation of Baudelaire.
Mike – I was asked to participate in this forum. Amy King found out about the Zelda incident (which happened I think three months ago) and then another conversation that occurred here dealing with gender that I was involved in and asked whether I wanted to do a conversation about this sometime, about rhetoric, etc. I agreed. I was asked specifically about the commentstream after the Zelda post. I was asked to contribute to this discussion not because I am the best writer to contribute to a conversation about gender, or that I’m a spokesperson for feminism, or even always a good postergirl for feminism, but because I involved myself in a couple of debates about gender on the commentstreams here that turned quite personal. I do think this issue has been discussed a lot on HTML Giant. I don’t think I’m clinging to anything. Then following the debate/discussion regarding the WAC issue, Roxanne and Amy wanted to do the discussion and I said I’d participate.
And I think I said that Jimmy’s joke was in poor taste, that it wasn’t malicious, but it was reflective of a sort of stereotyping I have observed happening occasionally on this site with regards to gender. I was responding mainly to what happened afterwards, the direction of the commenstream.
The rest of what you write, I’m sorry, I really want to follow you, but I can’t. I think doilies and knitting are very feminine – why wouldn’t that be feminine? Why would that be offensive? Who would say doilies are butch? You have a problem with me using the word masculine. But then you state that boys are socialized to be domineering (or punished if they’re seen as weak, etc.), so isn’t this a cultural fact we’re dealing with, these cultural ideas of masculinity and femininity?
“we’re engaging precisely in the project of sundering those regressive associations.”
I really don’t know what you mean. Who’s engaged in this project? Should we be engaged in this project? Who’s “we”? What are we sundering?
But I really don’t want to get into it with you. It does seem like you are calling me out, and maybe being more than a tad condescending (“Probably best to drop it”) which is fine, you have every right to, it’s not like I’ve never called anyone out, you can say that’s what I was doing that got me into trouble here to begin with. I don’t have an investment in resentment and personal grievance. I have no investments. My bank account is really quite empty.
I’m imagining you will want to get the last word, which is fine. But I feel I’ve already blabbed enough on this topic here, am tired of it, myself, this issue, and so don’t plan on checking the comments any longer.
Posers.
could be. i didnt read the whole discussion admittedly. its just the general sense i was getting.
I actually agreed with a lot of what Blake was saying, in the context of the entire discussion.
Demi,
I’m the one who brought up troll – and I didn’t call you one – but sean and alan who evidently has a small dick. I should be used to it. It’s the typical able-ist bullshit that typically everyone ignored. Pretty ironic for a conversation about equality.
(Apologies if my previous attempt to comment appears here as well — it doesn’t seem to have posted, so I will try again.)
Kate, this is exactly what I’m talking about. You say you want dialog, you want to challenge people, but when someone actually engages you in dialog and offers some criticism along with what is essentially qualified agreement, you respond defensively, and out of proportion to the critique. I never questioned the legitimacy of your comments or your presence in the conversation, I just dissented from some of the particulars of what you said. Confusing the two is something you’ve done in this conversation previously. I think it’s a mistake.
I don’t want the last word, and accusing me of wanting it is a way of victimizing yourself before I get the chance to do it for you. Please have the last word. Go for it.
To explain what I meant a little more clearly, I think that you’re right that men’s writing has been and is privileged. If this is so, it’s probably not so much (anymore) a result of out and out misogyny, but a result of the preference among many editors and teachers for “masculine” or “muscular” prose, as Roxane alludes to above. The only solution I can see to this problem is to remove all meaning from words like “masculine.” As Mike Young wrote, it’s time we recognize how weird it is to play with trains. We can’t do that if in the midst of this conversation we’re defining masculine and feminine in certain ways. In other words, I am trying to help you here.
I apologize if I seem condescending in the process, but I’ve felt the same thing in your tone. Which probably suggests less about your tone, or mine, and more about the difficulties of the conversation.
tldr: If you want dialog, this is dialog. But there will be criticism flowing in both directions, and sometimes it will hurt. But no one is trying to silence you here, this time.
PS; Alan could you post your last name…I want to use your comment in my new manuscript.
Chris, You don’t own the meaning of “good work,” nor does anyone. I think your thinking is working in the wrong direction here. You are applying a sort of false rationalism. It is logical, but your premise is bunk. I’m not sure about your description of a “vast mechanism that effect their ability to recognize and support poetry by women.” I don’t think this caricature is helpful (nor do I think it accurately reflects the more substantive discussion going on here).
The whole idea of “equality” of course–as has already been pointed out–isn’t simply about ratios, though numbers are important as they point to underlying factors. It is more a question of awareness and the need for self-awareness for editors and those in positions of power. If you habitually only publish men or mostly men there is likely to be some sort of problem at work. (You don’t escape your boys club you might not get submissions from women, if your ideas of “good work” only map onto a literature that reflects your own experiences as a man, of a certain sexual orientation, of a certain class, etc. than you might not take work from writers with different experiences, etc.)
You do have a point buried in this mess of false premises. The work, indeed, may not be equal. There are reasons for this. Women may write the body in very different ways because their bodies are treated as objects in our culture. (Do you disagree with this premise?) It is a part of the very culture so a writer self-aware or not, is likely to write the body and their experience in a different manner whether or not they are writing within or against the culture.
Of course a writer can do this well or miserably. And the community and its various institutions (blogs, lit mags, etc.), in part, offers some sort of criteria for judging what fails and what succeeds. This conversation is worthwhile because it points to the rich social context within which this all occurs. We are not post-race, we are not beyond gender discrimination and bias. The realm of art is influenced by this, as it is a product of culture. We should be aware of this and not ignore it. We should address the problems bound up in this. Saying “just pick what is good” dodges the larger conversation. It is a cop out. Let’s talk about “good” and who owns and determines it and upon what grounds.
What the hell, JB. I don’t get your post.
What would it mean to own the meaning of good work?
Ok, the fact that you wrote the thing about ‘fat poets’ entirely makes fun of what I am talking about with inclusion of people with disabilities. I don’t know if you were serious, but it didn’t sound like it. If you were serious, it’s the typical argument of ‘O my God how many minorities have a voice?” Ironically, gay people have a huge representation while 10% of Americans are gay – 17% or more have a disability. Now, transgender people even take presidence over disability. How many tran people are there – less than 1%. This does not mean I’m anti-gay or anti-trans. All of my friends, in fact are gay and I’m somewhat of an activist. My point is, people with disabilities would like to be taken a little more fucking seriously.
PS: I’m currently writing my poetic autobiography about having cerebral palsy. It will be my third book. I’m writing a number of poems that mocks able-bodied people so if Alan will write his last name, I’d love to use it as a quote for my book.
But isn’t your example “doilies and knitting” just proving Kate’s point that the culture attributes acts or things as masculine or feminine? These things ARE feminine. This is coherent in our current discourse and cultural context. It may not be just. It may not be ideal. But our culture constantly is dictating what is masculine and what is feminine.
Aggressiveness e.g. your own “masculine rhetoric” here your kicking of the dead horse and “lay off Jimmy” or get out of the treehouse, well, it just proves the point and exemplifies masculine rhetoric. Does it not? The Jimmy/Zelda example is a worthy discussion to have. It is an example of reducing a woman to an object. This is an okay conversation to have. This doesn’t mean that Jimmy is an asshole. It just means that when one writes in a public forum one should not be afraid of a public discussion.
“Probably best to drop it.” really seals the deal. Is this followed by an implied (or else). Perhaps this is too far, but it does say I will have the last word. I will define this space.
Or are you really just attempting to ironically perfectly exemplify the very concept of “masculine rhetoric” to show what a deep sensitive reader you are?
Women are constantly reminded of their status as women. (Open a magazine, turn on the television, watch a Hollywood film, walk the aisles of supermarket.) But when a man is coded not as man=human but man=male/masculine, one feels so reduced, one protests, ah the discomfort of being reduced to a gender category. How does it feel?
This doesn’t perpetuate the problem it illustrates it. Conversation and dialog addresses it. Bullying does not. I don’t think this is “clinging to the term” I think this is acknowledging the reality so as to transform it.
That sounds really cool, Jennifer. I love big ambitious poetic projects (partly because my poems are such teenie weenies).
that was a response to Mike M. below…
Ok, now I see. But I think you’re really out of bounds to read one comment–especially an internet comment when, a milieu in which, as you said, you have no idea my seriousness or now–and the start throwing “dick” and “fucking seriously” around. It’s like your shouting at me and I don’t think that helps you rhetorically anyway.
And I wasn’t serious. One of my best friends at work is a Fat Studies scholar and Fat Studies is a growing part of BSU. We are proud of that.
If I want to criticize Fat Studies seriously, I would actually criticize, with an argument and reinforcing evidence.
It was an offhand comment. If you’re offended, sorry. Let me rephrase that, because I hate non-apology apologies.
if you are offended, I am sorry I made the comment.
S
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaLfDnShEn0&feature=related
Are you saying that fat is a disability?
So we have to accept the culturally conditioned definitions of masculinity, or femininity? That seems kinda goofy.
It certainly can be. There are instances where people are obese enough that they cannot properly reach behind themselves to clean up after a poo, and they must shower off in order to get clean. Morbid obesity is certainly disabling, and many people get there because of oddities in their gastronomical system, or because of refractory (medicine resistant) atypical depression.
I’m relatively new to HTMLGIANT, and really the online literary world in general, and I just wanted to acknowledge how important this conversation has been to me as a writer. At first I viewed it more or less as an interesting topic to mull over intellectually and then move on about my day. But then one of you (i don’t really feel like going through the post to see which one) mentioned that more writers should try to “write in drag”. I started thinking about it and going through my work i realize just how one sided and narrow my writing really is. I’m always looking for my own weaknesses so i can tackle them and see what happens on the other side. Keep asking those questions.
I don’t understand what happened?
“Eliot, Emerson, Austen, Shakespeare—these people did not write with the assurance of canonicity; they earned it. Their work accreted value and age, it continued to matter to people across cultures and times and eras and everything else.”
Thank you, Justin. I wouldn’t be here and i suspect many others wouldn’t be here without Shakespeare and Eliot and Yeats and many other “canon” writers. My brain was opened up and turned inside out by the beauty of what they wrote. And I remember many of my classmates feeling the same way (including many non-white, and non-male classmates.). They led me to writing and to this community, eventually, where I’ve now discovered all these fabulous newer writers. I think it’s great to teach the new, too…but not without the historical and linguistic grounding and context of their own influencers, the “dead white men.”
We can add new names to the syllabi, but why would the new names replace the old? They should supplement it but never replace it. That’s like teaching painting starting with Rothko. You’d not only miss the Masters, but you’d never get what Rothko was all about or why he was revolutionary in the first place.
demi-puppet- No. We should address them. Undermine them. Subvert them. Destroy them. But we should not say: No, let’s pretend we are post-gender meaning anything. Let’s pretend that these terms are not written in everywhere in our culture (and this extends beyond language). Thus the last paragraph above (anticipating your response).
Dialog helps take us there. As does literature. There was a time (if only perhaps a mythic time) when literature and poetry were viewed as having the power to transform a language. Perhaps this is the vain hope that has brought this conversation here by some? To recognize the reality is NOT to accept the culturally conditioned definitions. It is to recognize and acknowledge that cultural conditioning takes place at all.
I mean: (pretending) we are past the point when gender matters (wrote: “post-gender meaning anything”)
Sean,
I’m sorry I took it the wrong way. It the context, it did really seem as if you were mocking me. I used the word dick because Alan said ‘is having a small dick a disability?’ Didn’t you see that comment? Don’t you think that was out of bounds?
Yes, being overweight is a disability. People who are overweight are very often judged and isolated in the way that people with disabilities are. I said ‘fucking seriously’ because if you read dialogs like this one, time and time again disability is NEVER mentioned. It is simply not taken seriously.
I get testy with dialogs about marginalization when 75% of people with disabilities are unemplyed and there is no affirmative action. 85% of babies with down syndrome are aborted. In my own experience, I’ve been turned down for 100s of jobs (despite having two masters degrees and thousands of pages of publications) simply because I ‘talk’ or ‘wALK’ differently. If I used a wheelchair, I could get into virtually none of the stores or restuarants in my neighborhood. Have you head of Willowbrook? Further, I taught at United Cerebral Palsy where my students have 1 computer for 35 people. In a ghetto school (where I also taught) these things never happened.
I’m sorry if I sound a little nuts – perhaps I AM! That’s what being called a retard while you’re reading James Joyce on the subway will do to you.
Absolutely, it is disabling. I was just curious as to what Jennifer was getting at with the comment of Sean’s she’s addressing.
Roxann,
Below are the two comments which I’m referring to which were posted in response to my questions about the exclusion of disability. Am I too sensitive?
alan—
would having a small dick count as a disability?
Sean—
Anyone want to weigh in on fat studies?
http://www.nyupress.org/books/The_Fat_Studies_Reader-products_id-11104.html
How are we to determine the weight of submitters to magazines?
Sean—
Anyone want to weigh in on fat studies?
http://www.nyupress.org/books/The_Fat_Studies_Reader-products_id-11104.html
How are we to determine the weight of submitters to magazines?
Jennifer, thanks for clarifying. I don’t think you are too sensitive, I was just curious as to where your original query came from.
For the love of all that is holy, though, my name is spelled Roxane.
I’m sorry!!! My mother is Roxanne sans e!
It’s important to distinguish between “dominant” or “hegemonic” masculinity and a multiplicity of masculinities more generally.
May 4th, 2010 / 11:34 pmdemi-puppet—
Herland is awful.
_______________
Thanks for this sterling contribution. Have you read the book, or did you just read the comments on Amazon from people who misread it?
You have the passive-aggressive Internet commenter thing down pat. One minute you seem to have good intentions, then you post stuff like this.
i would just add, somewhat @darby, that no professor should “have” to teach anything because of any reason other than their own reasons, in my opinion.
what tim said. i think i was most often referring to masculine rhetoric, a sort of dominance in rhetoric or posturing.
not only men use masculine rhetoric. women of course can use it as well.
i think many traits of masculinity are quite positive and many traits of femininity are quite positive. i think i have at times many masculine traits, some positive, some negative.
i’m sorry you think i came off as so ideologically pure or us versus thems or essentializing in my politics. i’m not. the discussion and the questions i was asked were focused on my take on specific incidents or phenomenons through the lens of gender, specifically.
i was also speaking of masculine versus feminine values in literature, cultural ideas, but that’s just straight-up quoting v.dubs in a room of one’s own.
and i did write masculine too many times. agreed.
I’ve read it twice. How am I being passive-aggressive? I participate in blogs as if they were conversation. Not every thought can be a dissertation.
Right, I get what you’re saying about your use of masculinity, but again, why does that have to be masculine? You would find it insulting if I said doilies and knitting were feminine, yes?
Of course there’s a sense in which child-rearing, collaboration and gentle kisses are “feminine,” and it’s the same sense in which domineering behavior is “masculine,” but we’re engaged precisely in the project of sundering those regressive associations. Or, to look at it another way, as long as domineering behavior is gendered masculine, it would be unreasonable to expect anything else of men, who are raised to want desperately to be masculine, perhaps more than anything else.
Not trying to “call you out,” but clinging to the term would signal an investment in resentment and personal grievance that sometimes dominated the conversation (continuing to go after Jimmy for what was, at absolute worst, a joke in poor taste). Probably best to drop it.
Ok, Jennifer, thanks for posting my comments twice and it must be wild having “all” of your friends gay. That’s pretty unusual. Congrats on that one.
I did not see Alan’s comment. It is ridiculous.
Since this original post–I think–was about publishing and gender, let’s stick to publishing, mags or presses or whatever with your issue.
You’re not saying lit mags and presses should have more disabled authors, right? I’m assuming here. Because how would they know if a submission is from someone disabled, unless he/she told them.
So I assume you are addressing the content? You want more representation in stories, poems, CNF about these issues?
I’m wondering the solution there. I just head edited a magazine and we received maybe 300-400 submissions (we had a very short window). Very few (if any) addressed any disability issues, and we didn’t know the author identities at all.
So I’m opening the discussion here, which I’m sure you will answer.
What exactly do you want lit mags and presses to do?
And do you read one of my fav poets, Paul Guest?
http://paulguest.blogspot.com/
How does he enter the conversation, if at all?
BTW, stealing threads is allowed at HTML. If someone says I (or you?) stole the thread, tell them to eat 42 ounce grandmothers.
Same here. The three of us have different opinions that are not always diametrically opposed to those of Blake’s. It is shocking.
Ahh I see, I am Roxane, one “n”, one “e”.
Sean,
It is comments like this Ok, Jennifer, thanks for posting my comments twice and it must be wild having “all” of your friends gay. That’s pretty unusual. Congrats on that one.
That I find ‘out of bounds’ and not necessary. I posted you quote twice by accident. I have cerebral palsy and it is hard for me not to hit keys accidently – also the cause of my spelling errors. It is interesting that you want to have a serious conversation, but feel the need to stick it to me first.
My answer is simply this – if an editor – and only if – wants to form a magazine of inclusion, they should also consider people with disabilities. As an editor, and I was one for 7 years, I feel it is our job to know poetry and to know who the poets are. now, this of course, is a non-point if one doesn’t care about inclusion. However, if one does, how would one know who is black or who is gay? I am not talking about content necessarily. Eigner rarely, if ever, wrote ‘about’ disability. I am talking about people who have a unique view of the body and the world. For better or worse, I have a ton of experiences that the so-called able bodied have no idea of. These experiences are both valid and interesting.
I don’t trust you b/c of your snippiness. If Paul Guest is one of your favorite poets than you must know about our argument and I feel like you are trying to trick me into getting attacked again, I respect Paul, but his work isn’t for me and we seemingly differ on how we view disability. If you want to talk about a poet with a disability I love Eigner and Vassar Miller. I also like Sheila Black’s work and I am very intregued by what Julian Weise (whose name I might have wrong) is doing. I am also very interested in Norma Coles’ ‘language poems’ about words she cannot say after her stroke.
Do you know any of these guys?
jen
To put it more in context, these two poems are how I view ‘disability’ and what I mean by rare experience.
4.
to be crippled means to have a window
into the insanity of the able-bodied
to be crippled means to
see the world slowly and manically
to translate
to record
to adapt
to be crippled means to have
access to people’s fear
of their own eroding
5.
so that, the mother might
say your child must be angry
because you are disabled
so I told her, your child
must be angry
because you are a bitch
and the children ask
why do you talk like that?
and i ask them
why do you talk like that?
and children grow up
thinking this body is ordinary
Jennifer,
I think bringing your disability into it counteracts your very argument. Why do you lead with that?
And I didn’t say a thing about any spelling errors, so take that them elsewhere.
I offered you a sincere apology. A draw-down. Post that comment.
All you had to do is take it. As far as I’m concerned, game on. You want to antagonize, let’s go.
You don’t trust me? OK. Whatever. Let’s leave that one out of the conversation. I don’t trust you either. I don’t know you. Who cares? i think we can still have an internet forum conversation. No?
http://www.guernicamag.com/features/1723/guest5_1_2010/
The above is honestly not your type of thing, OK? It is mine. I read a lot of memoirs. This opening is one of the best, IMO.
I know neither name you mention. I’ll read them if you quit telling me to go to hell (not directly, with tone) and quit re-posting my comments. Re-posting comments is lame rhetorically. First, people can just read my comments on this very thread, IN CONTEXT. Not cut and pasted where you want to make a point.
The poem excerpts are OK. But not affecting. We need a bit more image, no? Or maybe that’s my idea of poetry.
So let’s go back to my original question. Your answer is to have all literary editors have you tell them if you are disabled in the cover letter?
Other questions:
What is someone not disabled wrote about disability issues?
What is someone disabled wrote about a life not disabled?
What is someone disabled simply wrote about rivers?
I don’t have the answers. Just wondering your opinion.
Publishing disabled writers and publishing writing about disability are two different things, and speaking for the magazine where I edit, the latter would only be appropriate if the writing fit our aesthetic. Given that, it is, as has been discussed throughout this conversation, really hard to identify a diverse range of writers (race, class, gender, disability, etc etc etc) unless writers explicitly make that known in their cover letter. Is the answer to lead with “I’m a disabled writer” or are you a writer, who is also disabled?
What if “is” were “if”
Mike – I was asked to participate in this forum. Amy King found out about the Zelda incident (which happened I think three months ago) and then another conversation that occurred here dealing with gender that I was involved in and asked whether I wanted to do a conversation about this sometime, about rhetoric, etc. I agreed. I was asked specifically about the commentstream after the Zelda post. I was asked to contribute to this discussion not because I am the best writer to contribute to a conversation about gender, or that I’m a spokesperson for feminism, or even always a good postergirl for feminism, but because I involved myself in a couple of debates about gender on the commentstreams here that turned quite personal. I do think this issue has been discussed a lot on HTML Giant. I don’t think I’m clinging to anything. Then following the debate/discussion regarding the WAC issue, Roxanne and Amy wanted to do the discussion and I said I’d participate.
And I think I said that Jimmy’s joke was in poor taste, that it wasn’t malicious, but it was reflective of a sort of stereotyping I have observed happening occasionally on this site with regards to gender. I was responding mainly to what happened afterwards, the direction of the commenstream.
The rest of what you write, I’m sorry, I really want to follow you, but I can’t. I think doilies and knitting are very feminine – why wouldn’t that be feminine? Why would that be offensive? Who would say doilies are butch? You have a problem with me using the word masculine. But then you state that boys are socialized to be domineering (or punished if they’re seen as weak, etc.), so isn’t this a cultural fact we’re dealing with, these cultural ideas of masculinity and femininity?
“we’re engaging precisely in the project of sundering those regressive associations.”
I really don’t know what you mean. Who’s engaged in this project? Should we be engaged in this project? Who’s “we”? What are we sundering?
But I really don’t want to get into it with you. It does seem like you are calling me out, and maybe being more than a tad condescending (“Probably best to drop it”) which is fine, you have every right to, it’s not like I’ve never called anyone out, you can say that’s what I was doing that got me into trouble here to begin with. I don’t have an investment in resentment and personal grievance. I have no investments. My bank account is really quite empty.
I’m imagining you will want to get the last word, which is fine. But I feel I’ve already blabbed enough on this topic here, am tired of it, myself, this issue, and so don’t plan on checking the comments any longer.
Posers.
OK, thanks Roxane. So that leads me to question # 14. Or whatever.
What if you put your disabled in your cover letter?
Should I read the word somehow differently?
Lit mags have takes. This is what separates them from one another.
If a lit mag asks me to send something to them, I have to go “know” their mag, read closely, before I would send anything. Diagram is not Glimmer Train, etc.
Just another question, J
could be. i didnt read the whole discussion admittedly. its just the general sense i was getting.
Ok: I apologize too. Gloves off. Let’s discuss stuff.
Do you agree that editors need to know poets of all aestetics and differences?
I do not know if any abled-bodied people have written poems about disability. However, plenty of abled people are involved with disability studies.
I don’t know about rivers, but Larry Eigner wrote hundreds, if not thousands of poems that did not touch on disability. Neither of Shelia Black’s recent books are about disability. Illy Kaminisky, to me knowledge, does not write about being deatj. I don’t think Josephine Miles wrote about disability either, nor were all Vassar Miller’s poems. My first book only mentions disability once or twice. Even all Guest’s books are not about disability. Eigner’s work is primarily about sound and language -although he includes some rivers too. I guess this answers questions one and two!
People don’t write about a life disabled necessarily because being disabled isn’t a qualifier for a life. Ok, this might seem contradory! But, what I’m saying is the so-called abled bodied only see people with disabilities as that – not full people. That is why people use the term wheelchairbound which doesn’t make any sense. Folks aren’t bound to wheelchairs. Wheelchairs are a tool to get around.
Back to poetry. I am anxious to read the Guest post. However, my opinions differ from his work. I see it different from ost folks, but I wouldn’t want my situation thought of as heartbreaking. Many people love Guest poems. That is great! For me they are too narrative and too constructed. I have a different sensibilty – I am very into language poetry and other people like Berndette Mayer and Lisa Jarnot. But, that’s just my taste.
Can you tell me your last name?
Does anyone else want to chime in?
I meant deaf!
PS: I don’t think by mentioning my disability I’m contradicting myself. Can you explain why you think that? I was just showing a practicality!
J: (I’m going to call u J now. We fight enough to be intimate.)
1. Do poets of all aesthetics and differences want to be known by that label? Are do they want to be known by their work? Can’t all differences and aesthetics be addressed by their literature? isn’t that the point of literature? If I feel alone and alienated, didn’t Kafka’s cockroach speak for me?
2. To your point about Larry Eigner, Shelia Black, Illy Kaminisky, Josephine Miles, Vassar Miller. So they aren’t addressing disability issues. Isn’t this an argument for editors looking at the best work, disabled writer or not? How would any editor know–from their content?
A lot of African American artists get fatigued with the burden of all art having to represent their political position. See Halle Berry as extreme example. She would just like to accept her Oscar, for ACTING, thank you…
Possibly disabled writers are the same?
3. I disagree “abled” (this is a word–yes?) people see disabled people as not full. ANY person with a disabled friend knows they are perfectly “full.”
I have a severely disabled friend, BTW. I have been so drunk with her that I tackled her wheelchair. Seems “wrong” I guess but I would have tackled my “able” friend the same. We were DRUNK. I’m kinda against the “bring personal stories” rhetoric, but I’m just saying.
My friend, L, is not a half person.
What is your obsession with last names?
My name is Sean Lovelace.
I have a blog called seanlovelace.com (what an ass? who names a blog after themselves?)
I’d love to debate you more.
Maybe even meet you (MAYBE)
But I might tackle your chair (if you have a chair)
Demi,
I’m the one who brought up troll – and I didn’t call you one – but sean and alan who evidently has a small dick. I should be used to it. It’s the typical able-ist bullshit that typically everyone ignored. Pretty ironic for a conversation about equality.
(Apologies if my previous attempt to comment appears here as well — it doesn’t seem to have posted, so I will try again.)
Kate, this is exactly what I’m talking about. You say you want dialog, you want to challenge people, but when someone actually engages you in dialog and offers some criticism along with what is essentially qualified agreement, you respond defensively, and out of proportion to the critique. I never questioned the legitimacy of your comments or your presence in the conversation, I just dissented from some of the particulars of what you said. Confusing the two is something you’ve done in this conversation previously. I think it’s a mistake.
I don’t want the last word, and accusing me of wanting it is a way of victimizing yourself before I get the chance to do it for you. Please have the last word. Go for it.
To explain what I meant a little more clearly, I think that you’re right that men’s writing has been and is privileged. If this is so, it’s probably not so much (anymore) a result of out and out misogyny, but a result of the preference among many editors and teachers for “masculine” or “muscular” prose, as Roxane alludes to above. The only solution I can see to this problem is to remove all meaning from words like “masculine.” As Mike Young wrote, it’s time we recognize how weird it is to play with trains. We can’t do that if in the midst of this conversation we’re defining masculine and feminine in certain ways. In other words, I am trying to help you here.
I apologize if I seem condescending in the process, but I’ve felt the same thing in your tone. Which probably suggests less about your tone, or mine, and more about the difficulties of the conversation.
tldr: If you want dialog, this is dialog. But there will be criticism flowing in both directions, and sometimes it will hurt. But no one is trying to silence you here, this time.
PS; Alan could you post your last name…I want to use your comment in my new manuscript.
Chris, You don’t own the meaning of “good work,” nor does anyone. I think your thinking is working in the wrong direction here. You are applying a sort of false rationalism. It is logical, but your premise is bunk. I’m not sure about your description of a “vast mechanism that effect their ability to recognize and support poetry by women.” I don’t think this caricature is helpful (nor do I think it accurately reflects the more substantive discussion going on here).
The whole idea of “equality” of course–as has already been pointed out–isn’t simply about ratios, though numbers are important as they point to underlying factors. It is more a question of awareness and the need for self-awareness for editors and those in positions of power. If you habitually only publish men or mostly men there is likely to be some sort of problem at work. (You don’t escape your boys club you might not get submissions from women, if your ideas of “good work” only map onto a literature that reflects your own experiences as a man, of a certain sexual orientation, of a certain class, etc. than you might not take work from writers with different experiences, etc.)
You do have a point buried in this mess of false premises. The work, indeed, may not be equal. There are reasons for this. Women may write the body in very different ways because their bodies are treated as objects in our culture. (Do you disagree with this premise?) It is a part of the very culture so a writer self-aware or not, is likely to write the body and their experience in a different manner whether or not they are writing within or against the culture.
Of course a writer can do this well or miserably. And the community and its various institutions (blogs, lit mags, etc.), in part, offers some sort of criteria for judging what fails and what succeeds. This conversation is worthwhile because it points to the rich social context within which this all occurs. We are not post-race, we are not beyond gender discrimination and bias. The realm of art is influenced by this, as it is a product of culture. We should be aware of this and not ignore it. We should address the problems bound up in this. Saying “just pick what is good” dodges the larger conversation. It is a cop out. Let’s talk about “good” and who owns and determines it and upon what grounds.
What the hell, JB. I don’t get your post.
What would it mean to own the meaning of good work?
1. What do you mean by label? Disability?
2. Editors should always look at best work – no matter what. Again, all I’m saying is that if an editor chooses to follow the inclusion model, they need to include poets with disabilities. I don’t know how to do that – other than from what I have suggested. Yes, it is the same problem with race and gay poets – again, all I can say is know your poets!
3. I heartily disagree with your third statement. If this is true, why have I and my friends experienced profound prejudice? You say anyone with a disabled friend, but most people don’t have a disabled friend! From elementary school the children with disabilities are segregated. Unlike civil rights, until my son’s generation (he is 7) nothing about disabilty was taught in schools. People with disabilities are rarely in the media, and if they are, they are people with spinal injuries who look ‘normal.’ Yes, able-bodied and ableism are words. I wonder how you can despute my own personal experience; the daily stares and jobs I’ve been passed over for and the times waitresses refuse to address in me restuarants -asking my husband what I want for dinner. Mary Karr calling Guest an invalid. How does this add up people acting like we’re ‘full’ people?
4. Roxanne, we are poets who happen to be disabled, not the converse. All this is important and different from race and gender because no matter what I say – ‘disability’ is still a negative thing. Not everyone regards race and gay (ness?_) as ‘bad.’ Most people don’t! But even enlightened people have a hard time seeing anyhting positive about disability.
Ok, the fact that you wrote the thing about ‘fat poets’ entirely makes fun of what I am talking about with inclusion of people with disabilities. I don’t know if you were serious, but it didn’t sound like it. If you were serious, it’s the typical argument of ‘O my God how many minorities have a voice?” Ironically, gay people have a huge representation while 10% of Americans are gay – 17% or more have a disability. Now, transgender people even take presidence over disability. How many tran people are there – less than 1%. This does not mean I’m anti-gay or anti-trans. All of my friends, in fact are gay and I’m somewhat of an activist. My point is, people with disabilities would like to be taken a little more fucking seriously.
PS: I’m currently writing my poetic autobiography about having cerebral palsy. It will be my third book. I’m writing a number of poems that mocks able-bodied people so if Alan will write his last name, I’d love to use it as a quote for my book.
But isn’t your example “doilies and knitting” just proving Kate’s point that the culture attributes acts or things as masculine or feminine? These things ARE feminine. This is coherent in our current discourse and cultural context. It may not be just. It may not be ideal. But our culture constantly is dictating what is masculine and what is feminine.
Aggressiveness e.g. your own “masculine rhetoric” here your kicking of the dead horse and “lay off Jimmy” or get out of the treehouse, well, it just proves the point and exemplifies masculine rhetoric. Does it not? The Jimmy/Zelda example is a worthy discussion to have. It is an example of reducing a woman to an object. This is an okay conversation to have. This doesn’t mean that Jimmy is an asshole. It just means that when one writes in a public forum one should not be afraid of a public discussion.
“Probably best to drop it.” really seals the deal. Is this followed by an implied (or else). Perhaps this is too far, but it does say I will have the last word. I will define this space.
Or are you really just attempting to ironically perfectly exemplify the very concept of “masculine rhetoric” to show what a deep sensitive reader you are?
Women are constantly reminded of their status as women. (Open a magazine, turn on the television, watch a Hollywood film, walk the aisles of supermarket.) But when a man is coded not as man=human but man=male/masculine, one feels so reduced, one protests, ah the discomfort of being reduced to a gender category. How does it feel?
This doesn’t perpetuate the problem it illustrates it. Conversation and dialog addresses it. Bullying does not. I don’t think this is “clinging to the term” I think this is acknowledging the reality so as to transform it.
That sounds really cool, Jennifer. I love big ambitious poetic projects (partly because my poems are such teenie weenies).
that was a response to Mike M. below…
I like the numbering system.
1. Label. As in what you are going to identify yourself AS when you send this cover letter to this lit mag editor. You are going to include your identity, right? This is a solution you posited. To identify yourself in the letter. That is a label.
If I meet you at a party and say, “Hi. I’m Sean Lovelace. I hunt deer!” I am at that time a deer-hunter. You will have opinions on that label. It is a label.
2. The way to include disabled artists is for disabled artists to research the magazine’s sensibilities, write their ass off for years, then submit to said magazine. Guess what? Poem, story, essay published. That’s my answer.
“Know your poet!” is a slogan. Historically, slogans scare me. What does that even mean? I am going to forgive the exclamation mark.
3. OK, this is way off topic of this post, and way larger, and since no one has responded between our sparring on an active site between our posts, let’s just go email if you wanna debate. I have no interest in clogging HTML with a back-n-forth.
My email is leapsloth14@hotmail.com
4. You are naive about people’s views on race and homosexuality.
One of my best friends had his skull crushed in a hospital parking lot for being gay.
And can’t wait to meet these enlightened people you speak of…
S
Ok, now I see. But I think you’re really out of bounds to read one comment–especially an internet comment when, a milieu in which, as you said, you have no idea my seriousness or now–and the start throwing “dick” and “fucking seriously” around. It’s like your shouting at me and I don’t think that helps you rhetorically anyway.
And I wasn’t serious. One of my best friends at work is a Fat Studies scholar and Fat Studies is a growing part of BSU. We are proud of that.
If I want to criticize Fat Studies seriously, I would actually criticize, with an argument and reinforcing evidence.
It was an offhand comment. If you’re offended, sorry. Let me rephrase that, because I hate non-apology apologies.
if you are offended, I am sorry I made the comment.
S
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaLfDnShEn0&feature=related
Are you saying that fat is a disability?
So we have to accept the culturally conditioned definitions of masculinity, or femininity? That seems kinda goofy.
It certainly can be. There are instances where people are obese enough that they cannot properly reach behind themselves to clean up after a poo, and they must shower off in order to get clean. Morbid obesity is certainly disabling, and many people get there because of oddities in their gastronomical system, or because of refractory (medicine resistant) atypical depression.
I don’t understand what happened?
demi-puppet- No. We should address them. Undermine them. Subvert them. Destroy them. But we should not say: No, let’s pretend we are post-gender meaning anything. Let’s pretend that these terms are not written in everywhere in our culture (and this extends beyond language). Thus the last paragraph above (anticipating your response).
Dialog helps take us there. As does literature. There was a time (if only perhaps a mythic time) when literature and poetry were viewed as having the power to transform a language. Perhaps this is the vain hope that has brought this conversation here by some? To recognize the reality is NOT to accept the culturally conditioned definitions. It is to recognize and acknowledge that cultural conditioning takes place at all.
I mean: (pretending) we are past the point when gender matters (wrote: “post-gender meaning anything”)
Jennifer, I don’t think anyone is disputing the importance of disability as a consideration. I only think we have to acknowledge that it’s hard to know if a writer is disabled and therefore it is hard to be knowingly inclusive of disabled writers. Also, I must say that you’re a bit off base with regard to race and homosexuality and cultural attitudes and you really wander into very dangerous territory with the sentence immediately following about enlightenment, positivity, and disability, don’t you think? Difference cannot and should not be ranked. We should be able to talk about all of these concerns without the defensiveness that whether intentional or not, you express when you try to equate civil rights with disability studies. These are two very different things. Finally, my name. Is. Spelled. R O X A N E. I am coming off like a psychotic bitch about this but I’ve told you, directly, TWICE how my name is spelled and it is correctly spelled every time I comment and you still spell it wrong so that makes it hard for me to engage with you without being frustrated.
Sean,
I’m sorry I took it the wrong way. It the context, it did really seem as if you were mocking me. I used the word dick because Alan said ‘is having a small dick a disability?’ Didn’t you see that comment? Don’t you think that was out of bounds?
Yes, being overweight is a disability. People who are overweight are very often judged and isolated in the way that people with disabilities are. I said ‘fucking seriously’ because if you read dialogs like this one, time and time again disability is NEVER mentioned. It is simply not taken seriously.
I get testy with dialogs about marginalization when 75% of people with disabilities are unemplyed and there is no affirmative action. 85% of babies with down syndrome are aborted. In my own experience, I’ve been turned down for 100s of jobs (despite having two masters degrees and thousands of pages of publications) simply because I ‘talk’ or ‘wALK’ differently. If I used a wheelchair, I could get into virtually none of the stores or restuarants in my neighborhood. Have you head of Willowbrook? Further, I taught at United Cerebral Palsy where my students have 1 computer for 35 people. In a ghetto school (where I also taught) these things never happened.
I’m sorry if I sound a little nuts – perhaps I AM! That’s what being called a retard while you’re reading James Joyce on the subway will do to you.
Absolutely, it is disabling. I was just curious as to what Jennifer was getting at with the comment of Sean’s she’s addressing.
Sean,
Yeah, you’re right…we should stop. Before you go, I would just ask if you have any ideas to address the 4th thing I said – as you make the proclaimation about people with disabilities being full people.
Your comment here totally avoided what I said…
J
Roxann,
Below are the two comments which I’m referring to which were posted in response to my questions about the exclusion of disability. Am I too sensitive?
alan—
would having a small dick count as a disability?
Sean—
Anyone want to weigh in on fat studies?
http://www.nyupress.org/books/The_Fat_Studies_Reader-products_id-11104.html
How are we to determine the weight of submitters to magazines?
Sean—
Anyone want to weigh in on fat studies?
http://www.nyupress.org/books/The_Fat_Studies_Reader-products_id-11104.html
How are we to determine the weight of submitters to magazines?
Jennifer, thanks for clarifying. I don’t think you are too sensitive, I was just curious as to where your original query came from.
For the love of all that is holy, though, my name is spelled Roxane.
I’m sorry!!! My mother is Roxanne sans e!
Roxane
First, please, please, please forgive me for misspelling your name. That is totally my fault. I was an ass.
I think you are misunderstanding me. I never meant to say and do not think that neither sexism, homophobia, and racism do not exist. Please do not think I mean this. What I mean is that these minorities have come much further than people with disabilities in terms of publishing, the job market and everything. Do you agree?
I think we may be speaking in different ways. I am not equating disability studies with civil rights. I am saying that disability IS a civil rights movement. Can you see it this way?
Finally, as far as enlightened people, all I meant was that most people do not see anything positive about disability – even disabled people. Do you think I’m wrong? Do you, yourself, see disability as ‘just is’ not negative. Maybe I’m off base? But, whenever I’ve told people that I don’t mind having cerebral palsy or that I wouldn’t want to be ‘cured’ or abled – people think I’m nuts.
Does this clarify? Tell me if you think I’m still out on a limb.
May 4th, 2010 / 11:34 pmdemi-puppet—
Herland is awful.
_______________
Thanks for this sterling contribution. Have you read the book, or did you just read the comments on Amazon from people who misread it?
You have the passive-aggressive Internet commenter thing down pat. One minute you seem to have good intentions, then you post stuff like this.
i would just add, somewhat @darby, that no professor should “have” to teach anything because of any reason other than their own reasons, in my opinion.
I merely get the sense that you think that we’ve knocked out homophobia, racism and sexism for the most part. I’m sure people from those groups have come further in terms of visibility. I just don’t know enough to be able to quantify that nor do I think anyone does.
I do see disability as a civil rights issue but the reality is that disability has only come into the public consciousness in the past thirty years and that’s still not an issue most people give any thought to. Civil rights, as we generally understand them, have been contested since the 19th century if not earlier. This is not to say that disabled people didn’t exist prior to the 1970s but rather that it takes a while for textbooks to catch up so to say that it’s only with your son’s generation have textbooks begun to incorporate disability studies is troubling Im sure, but within the context of the history, it sort of makes sense. Please note, again, I’m not saying it’s okay but I do think there’s a perspective here that has to be considered.
With regard to your last point, I think most people would have a very hard time seeing disability as anything but a negative. That is a human response. I cannot ever imagine being blind, for example, and not wanting to see but that’s because I don’t know any different. You make a valuable point that disability is not a negative but I think even you have to acknowledge that there are many disabled people themselves who would prefer to be “abled.” I understand your outlook but I do think you need to demonstrate a little patience with people who can’t adopt your mindset so easily. Is it fair that you’re the one who has to be patient? No, of course not but few things are ever fair.
I’ve read it twice. How am I being passive-aggressive? I participate in blogs as if they were conversation. Not every thought can be a dissertation.
Roxane,
You are totally right. At no point did I say or think that racism is cured. I am just saying that disabled people are still very far behind. And you are right as far as how long people have been fighting for civil rights. As you, yourself, say that disability is still not in the conciousness enough, I think it is crucial to put it in the conciousness.
Finally, yes. Disability can be hard and tragic. I know, not personally, but have heard people say they would rather be abled. I should be more patient, yes. The reason though is that my opinion is less common and I think it needs to be heard too. Most people know that some disabled people want to be abled. Hardly anyone knows that some people DON”T want to be “cured.” As you probably know, this is a big movement in the deaf community. The deaf people regard themselves as a culture and largely do not want to be ‘hearing’ and welcome having deaf children.
My main point is that if able-bodied people continue to look at disability as something that people want to cure, it continues to put the responsibility on the disabled. Meaning ‘we’ don’t have to change society to be accessible and accomadating – you (the disabled) have to ‘fix’ your body to fit into the abled-system. My attitude is, better or worse, people with disabilities can not be cured, so it would be better to focus on changing society to accept us. That’s all I mean. Do you agree?
I was also a bit taken aback that you didn’t chide Alan for his dick comment. I think you may have not seen how horrible that is.
Thanks for listening. Sorry this went on.
Good points. You don’t have to apologize. This is the point of the discussion. If you’d like to write some kind of guest post on disability and publishing, feel free to email me and we can talk about it. My email is roxane at roxanegay dot com. As for Alan, I’m not a hall monitor. People can say anything they want. I saw Alan’s dick comment but what am I supposed to do? Slap him on the wrist? That’s not how this place works.
Ok, Jennifer, thanks for posting my comments twice and it must be wild having “all” of your friends gay. That’s pretty unusual. Congrats on that one.
I did not see Alan’s comment. It is ridiculous.
Since this original post–I think–was about publishing and gender, let’s stick to publishing, mags or presses or whatever with your issue.
You’re not saying lit mags and presses should have more disabled authors, right? I’m assuming here. Because how would they know if a submission is from someone disabled, unless he/she told them.
So I assume you are addressing the content? You want more representation in stories, poems, CNF about these issues?
I’m wondering the solution there. I just head edited a magazine and we received maybe 300-400 submissions (we had a very short window). Very few (if any) addressed any disability issues, and we didn’t know the author identities at all.
So I’m opening the discussion here, which I’m sure you will answer.
What exactly do you want lit mags and presses to do?
And do you read one of my fav poets, Paul Guest?
http://paulguest.blogspot.com/
How does he enter the conversation, if at all?
BTW, stealing threads is allowed at HTML. If someone says I (or you?) stole the thread, tell them to eat 42 ounce grandmothers.
Ahh I see, I am Roxane, one “n”, one “e”.
Sean,
It is comments like this Ok, Jennifer, thanks for posting my comments twice and it must be wild having “all” of your friends gay. That’s pretty unusual. Congrats on that one.
That I find ‘out of bounds’ and not necessary. I posted you quote twice by accident. I have cerebral palsy and it is hard for me not to hit keys accidently – also the cause of my spelling errors. It is interesting that you want to have a serious conversation, but feel the need to stick it to me first.
My answer is simply this – if an editor – and only if – wants to form a magazine of inclusion, they should also consider people with disabilities. As an editor, and I was one for 7 years, I feel it is our job to know poetry and to know who the poets are. now, this of course, is a non-point if one doesn’t care about inclusion. However, if one does, how would one know who is black or who is gay? I am not talking about content necessarily. Eigner rarely, if ever, wrote ‘about’ disability. I am talking about people who have a unique view of the body and the world. For better or worse, I have a ton of experiences that the so-called able bodied have no idea of. These experiences are both valid and interesting.
I don’t trust you b/c of your snippiness. If Paul Guest is one of your favorite poets than you must know about our argument and I feel like you are trying to trick me into getting attacked again, I respect Paul, but his work isn’t for me and we seemingly differ on how we view disability. If you want to talk about a poet with a disability I love Eigner and Vassar Miller. I also like Sheila Black’s work and I am very intregued by what Julian Weise (whose name I might have wrong) is doing. I am also very interested in Norma Coles’ ‘language poems’ about words she cannot say after her stroke.
Do you know any of these guys?
jen
To put it more in context, these two poems are how I view ‘disability’ and what I mean by rare experience.
4.
to be crippled means to have a window
into the insanity of the able-bodied
to be crippled means to
see the world slowly and manically
to translate
to record
to adapt
to be crippled means to have
access to people’s fear
of their own eroding
5.
so that, the mother might
say your child must be angry
because you are disabled
so I told her, your child
must be angry
because you are a bitch
and the children ask
why do you talk like that?
and i ask them
why do you talk like that?
and children grow up
thinking this body is ordinary
Jennifer,
I think bringing your disability into it counteracts your very argument. Why do you lead with that?
And I didn’t say a thing about any spelling errors, so take that them elsewhere.
I offered you a sincere apology. A draw-down. Post that comment.
All you had to do is take it. As far as I’m concerned, game on. You want to antagonize, let’s go.
You don’t trust me? OK. Whatever. Let’s leave that one out of the conversation. I don’t trust you either. I don’t know you. Who cares? i think we can still have an internet forum conversation. No?
http://www.guernicamag.com/features/1723/guest5_1_2010/
The above is honestly not your type of thing, OK? It is mine. I read a lot of memoirs. This opening is one of the best, IMO.
I know neither name you mention. I’ll read them if you quit telling me to go to hell (not directly, with tone) and quit re-posting my comments. Re-posting comments is lame rhetorically. First, people can just read my comments on this very thread, IN CONTEXT. Not cut and pasted where you want to make a point.
The poem excerpts are OK. But not affecting. We need a bit more image, no? Or maybe that’s my idea of poetry.
So let’s go back to my original question. Your answer is to have all literary editors have you tell them if you are disabled in the cover letter?
Other questions:
What is someone not disabled wrote about disability issues?
What is someone disabled wrote about a life not disabled?
What is someone disabled simply wrote about rivers?
I don’t have the answers. Just wondering your opinion.
Publishing disabled writers and publishing writing about disability are two different things, and speaking for the magazine where I edit, the latter would only be appropriate if the writing fit our aesthetic. Given that, it is, as has been discussed throughout this conversation, really hard to identify a diverse range of writers (race, class, gender, disability, etc etc etc) unless writers explicitly make that known in their cover letter. Is the answer to lead with “I’m a disabled writer” or are you a writer, who is also disabled?
What if “is” were “if”
OK, thanks Roxane. So that leads me to question # 14. Or whatever.
What if you put your disabled in your cover letter?
Should I read the word somehow differently?
Lit mags have takes. This is what separates them from one another.
If a lit mag asks me to send something to them, I have to go “know” their mag, read closely, before I would send anything. Diagram is not Glimmer Train, etc.
Just another question, J
Ok: I apologize too. Gloves off. Let’s discuss stuff.
Do you agree that editors need to know poets of all aestetics and differences?
I do not know if any abled-bodied people have written poems about disability. However, plenty of abled people are involved with disability studies.
I don’t know about rivers, but Larry Eigner wrote hundreds, if not thousands of poems that did not touch on disability. Neither of Shelia Black’s recent books are about disability. Illy Kaminisky, to me knowledge, does not write about being deatj. I don’t think Josephine Miles wrote about disability either, nor were all Vassar Miller’s poems. My first book only mentions disability once or twice. Even all Guest’s books are not about disability. Eigner’s work is primarily about sound and language -although he includes some rivers too. I guess this answers questions one and two!
People don’t write about a life disabled necessarily because being disabled isn’t a qualifier for a life. Ok, this might seem contradory! But, what I’m saying is the so-called abled bodied only see people with disabilities as that – not full people. That is why people use the term wheelchairbound which doesn’t make any sense. Folks aren’t bound to wheelchairs. Wheelchairs are a tool to get around.
Back to poetry. I am anxious to read the Guest post. However, my opinions differ from his work. I see it different from ost folks, but I wouldn’t want my situation thought of as heartbreaking. Many people love Guest poems. That is great! For me they are too narrative and too constructed. I have a different sensibilty – I am very into language poetry and other people like Berndette Mayer and Lisa Jarnot. But, that’s just my taste.
Can you tell me your last name?
Does anyone else want to chime in?
I meant deaf!
PS: I don’t think by mentioning my disability I’m contradicting myself. Can you explain why you think that? I was just showing a practicality!
J: (I’m going to call u J now. We fight enough to be intimate.)
1. Do poets of all aesthetics and differences want to be known by that label? Are do they want to be known by their work? Can’t all differences and aesthetics be addressed by their literature? isn’t that the point of literature? If I feel alone and alienated, didn’t Kafka’s cockroach speak for me?
2. To your point about Larry Eigner, Shelia Black, Illy Kaminisky, Josephine Miles, Vassar Miller. So they aren’t addressing disability issues. Isn’t this an argument for editors looking at the best work, disabled writer or not? How would any editor know–from their content?
A lot of African American artists get fatigued with the burden of all art having to represent their political position. See Halle Berry as extreme example. She would just like to accept her Oscar, for ACTING, thank you…
Possibly disabled writers are the same?
3. I disagree “abled” (this is a word–yes?) people see disabled people as not full. ANY person with a disabled friend knows they are perfectly “full.”
I have a severely disabled friend, BTW. I have been so drunk with her that I tackled her wheelchair. Seems “wrong” I guess but I would have tackled my “able” friend the same. We were DRUNK. I’m kinda against the “bring personal stories” rhetoric, but I’m just saying.
My friend, L, is not a half person.
What is your obsession with last names?
My name is Sean Lovelace.
I have a blog called seanlovelace.com (what an ass? who names a blog after themselves?)
I’d love to debate you more.
Maybe even meet you (MAYBE)
But I might tackle your chair (if you have a chair)
1. What do you mean by label? Disability?
2. Editors should always look at best work – no matter what. Again, all I’m saying is that if an editor chooses to follow the inclusion model, they need to include poets with disabilities. I don’t know how to do that – other than from what I have suggested. Yes, it is the same problem with race and gay poets – again, all I can say is know your poets!
3. I heartily disagree with your third statement. If this is true, why have I and my friends experienced profound prejudice? You say anyone with a disabled friend, but most people don’t have a disabled friend! From elementary school the children with disabilities are segregated. Unlike civil rights, until my son’s generation (he is 7) nothing about disabilty was taught in schools. People with disabilities are rarely in the media, and if they are, they are people with spinal injuries who look ‘normal.’ Yes, able-bodied and ableism are words. I wonder how you can despute my own personal experience; the daily stares and jobs I’ve been passed over for and the times waitresses refuse to address in me restuarants -asking my husband what I want for dinner. Mary Karr calling Guest an invalid. How does this add up people acting like we’re ‘full’ people?
4. Roxanne, we are poets who happen to be disabled, not the converse. All this is important and different from race and gender because no matter what I say – ‘disability’ is still a negative thing. Not everyone regards race and gay (ness?_) as ‘bad.’ Most people don’t! But even enlightened people have a hard time seeing anyhting positive about disability.
I like the numbering system.
1. Label. As in what you are going to identify yourself AS when you send this cover letter to this lit mag editor. You are going to include your identity, right? This is a solution you posited. To identify yourself in the letter. That is a label.
If I meet you at a party and say, “Hi. I’m Sean Lovelace. I hunt deer!” I am at that time a deer-hunter. You will have opinions on that label. It is a label.
2. The way to include disabled artists is for disabled artists to research the magazine’s sensibilities, write their ass off for years, then submit to said magazine. Guess what? Poem, story, essay published. That’s my answer.
“Know your poet!” is a slogan. Historically, slogans scare me. What does that even mean? I am going to forgive the exclamation mark.
3. OK, this is way off topic of this post, and way larger, and since no one has responded between our sparring on an active site between our posts, let’s just go email if you wanna debate. I have no interest in clogging HTML with a back-n-forth.
My email is leapsloth14@hotmail.com
4. You are naive about people’s views on race and homosexuality.
One of my best friends had his skull crushed in a hospital parking lot for being gay.
And can’t wait to meet these enlightened people you speak of…
S
Jennifer, I don’t think anyone is disputing the importance of disability as a consideration. I only think we have to acknowledge that it’s hard to know if a writer is disabled and therefore it is hard to be knowingly inclusive of disabled writers. Also, I must say that you’re a bit off base with regard to race and homosexuality and cultural attitudes and you really wander into very dangerous territory with the sentence immediately following about enlightenment, positivity, and disability, don’t you think? Difference cannot and should not be ranked. We should be able to talk about all of these concerns without the defensiveness that whether intentional or not, you express when you try to equate civil rights with disability studies. These are two very different things. Finally, my name. Is. Spelled. R O X A N E. I am coming off like a psychotic bitch about this but I’ve told you, directly, TWICE how my name is spelled and it is correctly spelled every time I comment and you still spell it wrong so that makes it hard for me to engage with you without being frustrated.
Sean,
Yeah, you’re right…we should stop. Before you go, I would just ask if you have any ideas to address the 4th thing I said – as you make the proclaimation about people with disabilities being full people.
Your comment here totally avoided what I said…
J
Roxane
First, please, please, please forgive me for misspelling your name. That is totally my fault. I was an ass.
I think you are misunderstanding me. I never meant to say and do not think that neither sexism, homophobia, and racism do not exist. Please do not think I mean this. What I mean is that these minorities have come much further than people with disabilities in terms of publishing, the job market and everything. Do you agree?
I think we may be speaking in different ways. I am not equating disability studies with civil rights. I am saying that disability IS a civil rights movement. Can you see it this way?
Finally, as far as enlightened people, all I meant was that most people do not see anything positive about disability – even disabled people. Do you think I’m wrong? Do you, yourself, see disability as ‘just is’ not negative. Maybe I’m off base? But, whenever I’ve told people that I don’t mind having cerebral palsy or that I wouldn’t want to be ‘cured’ or abled – people think I’m nuts.
Does this clarify? Tell me if you think I’m still out on a limb.
I merely get the sense that you think that we’ve knocked out homophobia, racism and sexism for the most part. I’m sure people from those groups have come further in terms of visibility. I just don’t know enough to be able to quantify that nor do I think anyone does.
I do see disability as a civil rights issue but the reality is that disability has only come into the public consciousness in the past thirty years and that’s still not an issue most people give any thought to. Civil rights, as we generally understand them, have been contested since the 19th century if not earlier. This is not to say that disabled people didn’t exist prior to the 1970s but rather that it takes a while for textbooks to catch up so to say that it’s only with your son’s generation have textbooks begun to incorporate disability studies is troubling Im sure, but within the context of the history, it sort of makes sense. Please note, again, I’m not saying it’s okay but I do think there’s a perspective here that has to be considered.
With regard to your last point, I think most people would have a very hard time seeing disability as anything but a negative. That is a human response. I cannot ever imagine being blind, for example, and not wanting to see but that’s because I don’t know any different. You make a valuable point that disability is not a negative but I think even you have to acknowledge that there are many disabled people themselves who would prefer to be “abled.” I understand your outlook but I do think you need to demonstrate a little patience with people who can’t adopt your mindset so easily. Is it fair that you’re the one who has to be patient? No, of course not but few things are ever fair.
Roxane,
You are totally right. At no point did I say or think that racism is cured. I am just saying that disabled people are still very far behind. And you are right as far as how long people have been fighting for civil rights. As you, yourself, say that disability is still not in the conciousness enough, I think it is crucial to put it in the conciousness.
Finally, yes. Disability can be hard and tragic. I know, not personally, but have heard people say they would rather be abled. I should be more patient, yes. The reason though is that my opinion is less common and I think it needs to be heard too. Most people know that some disabled people want to be abled. Hardly anyone knows that some people DON”T want to be “cured.” As you probably know, this is a big movement in the deaf community. The deaf people regard themselves as a culture and largely do not want to be ‘hearing’ and welcome having deaf children.
My main point is that if able-bodied people continue to look at disability as something that people want to cure, it continues to put the responsibility on the disabled. Meaning ‘we’ don’t have to change society to be accessible and accomadating – you (the disabled) have to ‘fix’ your body to fit into the abled-system. My attitude is, better or worse, people with disabilities can not be cured, so it would be better to focus on changing society to accept us. That’s all I mean. Do you agree?
I was also a bit taken aback that you didn’t chide Alan for his dick comment. I think you may have not seen how horrible that is.
Thanks for listening. Sorry this went on.
Good points. You don’t have to apologize. This is the point of the discussion. If you’d like to write some kind of guest post on disability and publishing, feel free to email me and we can talk about it. My email is roxane at roxanegay dot com. As for Alan, I’m not a hall monitor. People can say anything they want. I saw Alan’s dick comment but what am I supposed to do? Slap him on the wrist? That’s not how this place works.
It’s only over the last few years that I have come to understand (as best I can) what gender is and why it is sometimes a slippery thing to identify. I am working on a theater piece now that was created by gay and transgender artists. I came on to the project having no idea that this was a specific focus, and while that would never have kept me away, now that I have been working closely on this piece with them, I am grateful that Chance brought us together as my heart has opened even more to people who struggle every day with their gender identities or with the prejudices of others.
This has never been an issue for me. I am a vanilla white straight male. I understand that I am privileged because of this, and while I have never knowingly used my whitemaleness as a lever, I know it has given me access and opportunities I might not have had otherwise. I don’t feel guilt, just disappointment. I believe in justice.
I’m grateful for this discussion between the four writers as it offers me a reminder to remain open-minded and adventurous when I go looking for new things to read. They have also reminded me to do something I love yet I neglect; they reminded me to write.
Having lived most of my life in the Bay Area, it seems a given to me that gender lines are blurred. It’s just the way, and the milieu in which I was brought up. One friend of mine espouses her theory that gender is a spectrum. (Just like that circle of color in Word that you can use to pick a font color). Another calls himself “pan-sexual”, whatever that means (and not sure I need to know!) He has an infamous hot tub in the Berkeley hills. He’s one of the smartest and sweetest people I know.
When I got married a few years back, one of my friends said to me “It’s like you married one of your girlfriends, but she has a real dick.” and I thought to myself “She’s right.”
It’s only over the last few years that I have come to understand (as best I can) what gender is and why it is sometimes a slippery thing to identify. I am working on a theater piece now that was created by gay and transgender artists. I came on to the project having no idea that this was a specific focus, and while that would never have kept me away, now that I have been working closely on this piece with them, I am grateful that Chance brought us together as my heart has opened even more to people who struggle every day with their gender identities or with the prejudices of others.
This has never been an issue for me. I am a vanilla white straight male. I understand that I am privileged because of this, and while I have never knowingly used my whitemaleness as a lever, I know it has given me access and opportunities I might not have had otherwise. I don’t feel guilt, just disappointment. I believe in justice.
I’m grateful for this discussion between the four writers as it offers me a reminder to remain open-minded and adventurous when I go looking for new things to read. They have also reminded me to do something I love yet I neglect; they reminded me to write.
Having lived most of my life in the Bay Area, it seems a given to me that gender lines are blurred. It’s just the way, and the milieu in which I was brought up. One friend of mine espouses her theory that gender is a spectrum. (Just like that circle of color in Word that you can use to pick a font color). Another calls himself “pan-sexual”, whatever that means (and not sure I need to know!) He has an infamous hot tub in the Berkeley hills. He’s one of the smartest and sweetest people I know.
When I got married a few years back, one of my friends said to me “It’s like you married one of your girlfriends, but she has a real dick.” and I thought to myself “She’s right.”
I should add:
*pan-sexual = consentual, adult only, and safe
That’s important.
Be safe, people.
I should add:
*pan-sexual = consentual, adult only, and safe
That’s important.
Be safe, people.
As the coordinator for a series on race, class, gender, and sexuality at Luna Park, a series inspired by Roxane Gay’s post on Race at PANK, Cate Marvin’s Women in Letters and Literary Arts (WILLA) which began as a response to PW’s Top 10 list, I would like to thank Roxane, Amy, Kate, and Blake. This is a great, much needed discussion. I also would like to briefly respond to some of the commentators who argue for the sanctity of the canon. Terry Eagleton’s Intro to Literature is instructive here – all art is produced, sanctioned, censored, vilified, recognized by those in power.
And while the picture that accompanies these posts Tyra and her bra-burning friends can be read as mildly funny- I think in this context it actually undermines the women contributors who are interrogating gender inequity.
Thanks for your comment, Marcelle. I picked the picture. I was looking for bra burning and the Tyra part made me laugh but I can see how it can be viewed as undermining, which is not my intention.
lol
Thanks Roxane :) Reminds me of the old joke about feminism – Q: How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb? A: That’s not funny.
As the coordinator for a series on race, class, gender, and sexuality at Luna Park, a series inspired by Roxane Gay’s post on Race at PANK, Cate Marvin’s Women in Letters and Literary Arts (WILLA) which began as a response to PW’s Top 10 list, I would like to thank Roxane, Amy, Kate, and Blake. This is a great, much needed discussion. I also would like to briefly respond to some of the commentators who argue for the sanctity of the canon. Terry Eagleton’s Intro to Literature is instructive here – all art is produced, sanctioned, censored, vilified, recognized by those in power.
And while the picture that accompanies these posts Tyra and her bra-burning friends can be read as mildly funny- I think in this context it actually undermines the women contributors who are interrogating gender inequity.
Thanks for your comment, Marcelle. I picked the picture. I was looking for bra burning and the Tyra part made me laugh but I can see how it can be viewed as undermining, which is not my intention.
lol
Thanks Roxane :) Reminds me of the old joke about feminism – Q: How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb? A: That’s not funny.
What do you think of the photo I chose, Marcelle? And all that I linked to, inspired by Blake’s reference to nipples: http://amyking.wordpress.com/2010/05/04/more-brouhaha-part-1/
What do you think of the photo I chose, Marcelle? And all that I linked to, inspired by Blake’s reference to nipples: http://amyking.wordpress.com/2010/05/04/more-brouhaha-part-1/