feminist blogs

Pretty, huh?

(This review and the one I’m linking to contain some spoilers–the plot isn’t exactly full of twists and turns, but just in case.)

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There was a comment on the Barnes and Noble thread about where one would go to find new books:

Where do you folks find out what is new in lit? I’m really curious as I don’t hang with literary types, so my reading is a lonely enterprise.

Also, I agree with Angi, my curiosity about the real world keeps me engrossed in non-fiction so much that my good intentions to dive into the world of lit, new or old is nothing but that; good intentions.

I tend to have too many recommendations on my plate rather than too few. When I need something new, I usually just check out the new acquisitions shelf at the library. I also check out Bookslut occasionally.

Where do you get your suggestions? Friends, family, the paper?

…Or, the Jonathan Safran Foer open thread that ended up containing a review of the book we weren’t talking about. (This post contains Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close spoilers.)

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Speaking of Chris, he also has a post up–off of a post by Michael Berube in Crooked Timber–in response to some people who need literature to keep score:

And plus, every time a person reads it, a nut gets its wings. After finishing the novel, I recalled an entertaining post Michael Bérubé wrote at Crooked Timber, with one of his trademark post titles dropping coy references to hip and current musical groups so that the young people will find it relevant. The post discussed the usual bleatings by Conservative Academics that the Literary Canon is being eroded by the relentless inclusion of writers who have the temerity to be not-white, or not-male, or not-dead-since-before-the-bleaters-were-born, or some combination of the three. It’s an old argument, an evergreen, and yet no matter how many times the argument is made it never gets any more justifiable. Or for that matter more interesting.

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Like Chris says, many bloggers are using this time to reflect on 2007 before it disappears forever. I’m sure there’s some selection bias at work, but I see a lot of entries about aftermath: a radical change in expectation and its effects. I’m coming back to blogging after more than a year of absence punctuated by the occasional post–even less consistent than I thought.

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Brownfemipower has posted about her own personal relationship with Santa:

I just want the permission to sit and swear and throw chewed gum at all the happy people wearing bells and green and red sweaters. I want to laugh when my angel gets drunk and farts a wet drunk fart at all the shiny happy people when he bends over to pick up the chips I keep dropping on the floor. I want to flash my five foot long stretch mark infested pancake wanna be breasts at all the cute 20 year olds and scream at them THIS IS YOU IN FIVE YEARS BABY!!!!!!!! I want to sit in the dark corner with other outcasts and rejects and plot the overthrow of Christmas together. I want to be the obnoxiously loud group that everybody rolls their eyes at and wishes wasn’t there–because I’m in just that sort of mood.

Anytime, BFP. It’d be a lot more entertaining than, well, any version of A Christmas Carol that doesn’t star Patrick Stewart (why was he the only cast member with good teeth?).

It’s funny. I’ve never hated Christmas and I enjoyed this Christmas–which is why I decided to post over here instead–but I do usually feel like spending this time of year in bed. It’s not a dislike specific to Christmas so much as a sense that Christmas comes at an inconvenient time. My family seems to feel the same way: tired, chilly, overworked, often sick. So our Christmas tradition is to hole up at home for three or four days, eat a ton of sugar and milk fat, drink a lot of heavily spiked egg nog, and watch stupid–chiefly nondenominational–television until our brains leak out our ears. If we feel up to it, we go and see something awful at the multiplex.

Then, we’re ready to start again.

So say you’ve been passing as female for several months. Perhaps passing isn’t the right word anymore, since you’re at the point where you simply assume that people will see you as female, and since no one has given you any reason to doubt that for a good while now. Everyone you had to come out to, mostly people who saw you coming and going, have long since taken you aside to make sure that you’re not still wanting people to use male pronouns. You did notice them using your ambiguous name with weird emphasis. You felt some guilt because of that. You are pretty relieved that they took it upon themselves to ask.

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Little Light wrote a post recently about taking that one step:

See, there I was, incapacitated, unable to sit up or wash myself or feed myself, body weakened by four days of 103-degree fevers and convulsive chills and dehydration, in so much pain that I couldn’t drink clear water. Everything hurt–joints, tongue, you name it–even down to my eyeballs, which were in so much pain I had to blindfold myself. I had to be taken care of. At the doctor’s, I needed a wheelchair, and nobody talked to me like a person.
And I was angry.
I was hurting, I was feeling sorry for myself, I was miserable with the ravages of whatever illness this was, but you know what? I was angry.

Isn’t that interesting? Angry. I felt a sense of profoundly wounded pride, I was upset at the total stripping-away of my dignity, I didn’t feel like a person. I was sitting there naked and reeking and unable to drink water by myself, and it made me mad.

…And I suppose I just wanted to draw attention to it. I don’t have much to add to everything she’s said, other than, “Go read the whole thing.”

Amanda wrote a post about this article in Details magazine. I wanted to respond to both.

I was supposed to have this up days and days and days ago, but I’ve been busy. And lazy. It’s difficult to know what to write when you’e so late to the party, but I’ve been thinking a lot about bodies and the double bind and the way that implants are coded.

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(Edit for clarity: I don´t mean to compare the Trail of Tears to this situation in any respect but this: the conflict of interest that should have been undeniable to any but the most callous, transparently hateful lawmakers. Evans’ description of the consequences of shopping out to a company with no goal but the contract, and with a clear understanding of the inhumane priorities of its employer, is as eloquent as “nasty, brutish, and short.”)

“What, are sixty thousand human beings, the sick, the aged, the infirm, children, and infants, to be transported hundreds of miles, over mountains and rivers and forests, by contract! By those who will engage to perform the service for the smallest sum! Are you to hold out such inducements to long and fatiguing marches, to scanty and cheap provisions? Will you place these hapless, deceived, and abused people at the mercy of contractors, whose only object is gain?”

–Representative George Evans on the Indian Removal Act of 1830

Apparently, if you place the welfare of an extremely vulnerable population in the hands of a corporation whose only concern is profit, misery is pretty much inevitable. This is especially true if said corporation has oodles of practical experience with lawsuits. And it´s even more likely when legislative authorities look the other way! Who knew? I mean, it isn´t as though there´s any sort of history of privatization leading to horrendous abuse, or as though there´s any disparity between providing responsible care and wringing every cent out of your enterprise. Hey, does anyone know if this privatization scheme has caught on in other public institutions?