feminist blogs

In the event this was you earlier tonight:

Accessing, specifically, 12 pages primarily in the Matriarchs and The Family Cactus categories, before I took my blog offline for awhile, please, for both our sakes, go away*. If I wanted to be in communication with you, I would be in communication with you. I’ve worked hard to make sure you can stay in touch with your granddaughters (and thankfully my husband is willing to serve as proxy in this matter), and I’m happy to send gifts at all the right holiday occasions (have you noticed I’m much better about that since we stopped speaking?), but there is a reason I haven’t been in touch since early in 2006 - it’s because I don’t want to talk to you.

I feel much better about, and emotionally generous toward our involuntarily shared history, when we’re not in touch. I like that. It helps me to remember the good stories. It helps me remember that I love you.

If you have some instinct to re-state, icily and indignantly, that you just don’t get it - what happened? why? - I’ve been explaining the what and the why for decades, and only clued into the fact that you would never hear me, much less change, a relatively short time ago.

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly yet expecting different results, then consider this my declaration of significantly improved mental health.

Now it’s possible that wasn’t actually you tonight (in which case, apologies for the mysterious and now obstreperous behavior, everyone else), just as it’s possible it wasn’t my ex the other day, accessing 22 pages mostly in the Exes category from the ISP of the specific place I know she frequents (which may explain the other recent outage to others of you out there).

I know this is the internet, and I’m the one who put all of this out there. I get that.

But if you want to show me that you care about me at all (I am not, of course, counting on this), please respect my privacy anyway. Do me that favor, if you do nothing else for me.

You have two granddaughters, and yes, you usually only get to see them once a year or whenever a conference takes you to the mainland, but there were plenty of years of my childhood when I only saw you once a year, because that was how you wanted it.

You didn’t want me; you made that incredibly clear. I was the inconvenience standing between you and any number of adventures that were more exciting than childrearing. And yeah, there were fringe benefits for me (like riding out Hurricane David with you in a St. Thomas warehouse, what a vacation visit with my mother that was!).

But I don’t want anything like that kind of life for my daughters. Relative to my having attended in the range of eight schools between kindergarten and the second grade alone, my eight year old daughter still lives in the house where she was conceived. Ours is a run-down house, and a rental to boot, but I’m damned proud of the fact that I have now lived in one place for ten years - four years having been my previous record. (One reason why, though I only lived there from 1984-1988, after my dad and stepmom kicked me out and you had to take me back - I do, in my heart, regard Hawaiʻi as one of the places I can somewhat authentically think of as “home,” despite the acute postcolonial guilt I felt, even at thirteen, though you, of course, never did).

And really, it’s okay. Hell, I’m the one who gave you this book, a sympathetic memoir about a woman who’d left her children. Maybe in your perusals of this blog, before I turned the lights out earlier tonight, you got to this part:

A normal person would be able to move (construct a new bridge, repair the old one, navigate some other path across), but I have never been like that, nor has my mother been, or she would not have surrendered her custody of me, with no observed reluctance, on so many occasions when I was young - seeking new locales, lovers, and “lifestyles” as she saw fit.

I don’t begrudge her that, any more than I begrudge Maria Housden, author of Unraveled, who, after the death of one of her four children, stunned everyone she knew by seeking a divorce, granting full custody of her surviving kids to her ex-husband. She then struck out on her own, initially, for an artist’s colony, of all apparently self-indulgent sites. Her story placed in sharp relief the double-standards by which women are viewed as parents, relative to how fathers are judged. No one questions that men need identities beyond marriage and parenting. Housden got hers; so, too, did my mother.

My God, do you see how far I bend over backwards to find honorable, even feminist analogies via which to generously reconstruct my own childhood experience? Did Maria Housden share with her kids the joys of fishbowling when they were quite young? And then tell, at each Thanksgiving, the hilarious story about her young daughter being so stoned that she turned to the hippie next to her in the cramped car, and, after saying “I’m going to eat you up,” bit into the guy’s kneecap? I’m guessing not.

What’s even more curious? How you’d give up custody of me, more often than not, while simultaneously pursuing an option that would have given you custody of Lori Jo, your brother Billie’s daughter. Because he and his wife were alcoholics, and you were so much better than that. During one of my visits, you even showed me a draft of a children’s book, Evra, which in some fashion concerned Lori Jo. (Interesting how you always had a searingly sharp sense of irony, except when it was your behavior that was ironic; then you were just being rational and benevolent!)

You had a special kind of devotion to children’s issues, it’s true. But I was peculiarly excluded from this category, “children.” You made this even more clear when you took a nude picture of me (seated in the lap of one of your lovers from the period immediately following your leaving my father), and an artist’s reproduction made from that, and hung it from every one of the countless houses you lived in, while also sending copies to everyone we knew, and frequently discussing how, in the picture, I looked so sultry, beyond my years, etc. (Incidentally? Before his death, Billie told me about how he always thought that was inappropriate).

I’m not trying to get my childhood back. It’s gone, and that’s fine. But I’m not going to deprive my daughters of the intrinsic value of this time in their lives. Which is what would happen, to some degree, if you and I were in touch, because the effort is always uniquely draining.

Listen, I do care about you. And I’m really not obsessing on all of this stuff constantly. But you have no clue! And I doubt you can help it. You are, after all, your mother’s daughter (though God knows, you improved on that template).

And yes, I am yours. But I’m the one who did break the pattern of us. I’m the one who did not abandon her children at any number of points on the map whenever whimsy (in your case) or drunkenness (in your mothers) happened to strike.

The bottom line - that it’s my daughters who deserve and require my attention, not you - hasn’t changed from when (this most recent round in) our estrangement began. (And if they decide to become mothers, I hope they’ll do their part to improve on the generational template. No doubt, by the time they are grown, I will have given them plenty of things to legitimately complain about.)

You always joked how it was no accident, your moving all the way to Hawaiʻi, while your mother remained in Virginia. You don’t suppose it’s merely because airfare is expensive (although of course, there’s that too) that I haven’t been back to Hawaiʻi since 1993, and that I ultimately came back to Virginia, do you?

There may be a time when I’m ready to talk to you again. If you push it, it may never happen. And there is nothing I want less than I want that. (Re-read last sentence as needed. Now do you get it?)

I love you. Now please leave me alone.

__

* Or if you must read here, for the love of God, have the decency to use a feed reader.

[See note re: problem w/ text size*.]

In lieu of the still-unfinished essay referenced yesterday, I give you this**.

My mother with Barack Obama, December 16, 2004, Honolulu, HI.

Someday I’ll find, and post, the one with my maternal grandmother and her hero, Oliver North. (Because I’m nothing if not fair and balanced.)

Plus the ones of my paternal grandpa (who raised me on C-SPAN, God bless him) with Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Ford.

For more goofiness, see this old post with pics of the late, great Senator Paul Wellstone, who went to high school with my dad; Wellstone’s mom and my grandmother also worked together in the cafeteria; the families also got together, on occasion, outside of school functions. (Did I mention the young Mr. Wellstone - for whom, years later - I did in fact vote, when I lived in Minnesota - looks quite fetching in a skirt?)

For better and for worse, the political thing has always been in the blood.

Not to worry though, the chances of my running for office are pretty much nil. Not only did I experiment with some blow while I was a teenager in Hawaiʻi, I also have an arrest record.

Ironically, the Olympia, Washington cop thought I had cocaine on me at the time; I didn’t. Rather, I had unlabeled capsules of another white powder in an unlabeled plastic baggie. Somehow he didn’t believe that the capsules contained boric acid: a homeopathic remedy for yeast infections. So they kept me locked up until they’d tested every last one of them. Following which he sheepishly emerged from the lab, asking whether I had any more capsules back at my dorm, so I could take care of my, ahem, “little problem.”

Needless to say, I was itching to get out of there.

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* Tech note: WordPress is doing something weird with text size, which renders the individual post with too large text, and the post as it appears on main page of blog with size of title’s text too small. No idea why, trying to figure that out now. Will delete this note after troubleshooting.

** Intended also as a follow-up to a conversation that started here. Because this is the fun response, and I’ve given plenty of energy in recent times to political discourse that is, necessarily, painfully serious.

When I was fifteen, I had a gig babysitting for a prominent pot growing family on the North Shore of Kauai. I loved those kids and we had a lot of fun - even if we had to take our recreation elsewhere during the plant-drying process, when the house was filled with part-time help and overflowing bags of pakalolo.

Anyway, this one time they came home from a late night out, and tried to pay me $15.00 for my time - at my fee of $3.00/hr. And for some reason, I just couldn’t take it. It’s not that I had a problem with where the money was coming from (having lived in several hippie houses over my young life, I was pretty unfazed), rather, I just didn’t think I deserved that much money. I mean, not only did I enjoy the work, but I ate meals there myself and, what was more, got to play awesome records from their vast collection after the kids were tucked in. (This was how I got hooked on George Benson.) And it’s also not that I didn’t need the money. We were on welfare, and things were precarious. Hell, when my mother had first gotten me registered for high school, we’d had to list my address as “Anini Beach.” But for whatever reason, I insisted they take back a third of the money. They were confused, but I was adamant that $15.00 was really too much. They were loaded, of course - richer than anyone I knew - but at the time that seemed irrelevant.

I laugh about this now, because in the twenty-two years since then, I haven’t gotten any better at accepting, much less asking for, financial support when I need it.

But the truth is, I do need help.

Recently, blogger Elaine Vigneault raised objections to the choice of Feministing’s Editor-in-Chief, Jessica Valenti, to purchase a purebred dog from out of state (rather than adopt from animal rescue organizations), and then to post pictures and video of her dog on the website. This has created quite a kerfuffle. (The post that started it all is here; some of Elaine’s responses are here, here, and here.)

Fast-forward, then, a few days, to Feministing’s post explaining the appearance of new advertisements on their site, and also soliciting donations. Elaine commented:

I still won’t be donating to feministing.

However, those of you with small time blogs who do serious feminist activism, please leave a comment on my blog and I’ll consider donating to you.

Impulsively (and also because I could really use the money), I responded.

Now, Elaine may well reject this blog as a site she’d want to support, as is her right. After all, I’ve given full disclosure that, for instance, I am not a vegetarian, and also that I have no beef (no pun intended!) with Feministing’s solicitation*. But I thought it would be interesting to take this woman, who’s been pretty vilified of late, at her word. I disagree with her on a variety of issues, but it’s clear she is sincere in her convictions, and I respect that.

So, I described to her, in detail, the nature of my request, which I’ll excerpt here:

I write about a variety of feminist issues (plus plenty of apolitical stuff), frequently about issues impacting women in the sex trade. (If you want to read only my posts in the “Feminism” category, you can click here, or for the tag archive for posts addressing the sex trade specifically, you can click here, though be aware I’m nowhere near done with tagging old posts, so it’s not a complete archive.)

If you are interested in offering some support for my blog, I could sincerely use it. I paid for my initial website with proceeds from my last regular job, which ended two years ago next month, and my account will soon be up for renewal. Also, I have new (as in, charged on my credit card yesterday) expenses to attend the upcoming Prostitution, Sex Work, and the Commercial Sex Industry conference in Toledo, which I’m doing not only to further develop my activist connections with women working on this issue (women on various ideological “sides” of the matter), but as part of launching an action- (rather than blogging-) oriented project, socialchange.org. (Please excuse the terrible, outdated state of the draft site… I no longer have access to the software with which I wrote the first version last year, and I’ll probably be redoing the whole thing within the next two months.)

My pre-tax combined family income, supporting two adults, two children, two cats and one dog is below $50,000 annually (includes my disability check), if demonstrated need is a factor. I receive no income from advertising or other sources (though, really, perhaps I should be)**.

Needless to say, even if Elaine chooses to donate $50.00 (or some portion thereof, if the gift is divided between multiple sites) to my blog, I’m still going to be struggling like all-get-out.

Which is why I am (finally) posting this here.

So… if you read me, if you like me, if you think I have valuable contributions to make on feminist issues, if I amuse you, if I freak you out, if you think my discursive commentaries on everything from hardcore metal to radical feminism are oddly stimulating, and/or if you’re just feeling like being a nice person right now, I’m (gulp) willing to accept any contributions you may be willing to offer. (I’ll even resist any perverse urges to return 1/3 of any such donations!)

If you do choose to donate, drop me an email and let me know if you would prefer to be thanked on this blog by your real name, pseudonymously, or not at all.

If you want to help, see the new “donate” button at the top of this page. (You don’t need to have a PayPal account.)

Other ways you can help:

• Checks by snail mail to Victoria Marinelli, PO Box 2508, Richmond, VA, 23218.
• Include a link to this post on your blog, if you want to encourage your own readers to donate.
• Add me to your blogroll. (Note that my own blogroll is down for editing right now, and should be up again within the week. Sorry about that.)
• Comment from time to time, so I can keep sight of the fact that what I’m doing has merit. That way, if I still can’t afford to buy shoes on account of my blogging and activist expenses (that conference is going to eat half of my next disability check), I can tell myself (and my husband, whose paycheck keeps a roof over our heads) that it’s been worth it.

Thank you.

___

*See yesterday’s This blog will now feature porn for a more mischievous take.

**This post at Bitch, Ph.D. (and the astonishing comment thread that followed) gave me a walloping dose of perspective on how different my concept of financial need is from many other women’s. I have no doubt that many other feminist bloggers have more demonstrated need than I do (indeed, as a former welfare mom who has also been, on several occasions, homeless, I’ve been a hell of a lot worse off than I am right now), but damn, some of us also have craploads of class privilege, the likes of which I can’t begin to wrap my head around.

Of dogs, death, uncles, dear friends, Southern rock anthems, and the variously constituted forces of Grace.

Many years ago, back in one of the hippie houses I lived in with my mother in Williamsburg (the one featured in this story at Eclectica), two of my roommates had a dog named Serendipity.

They called him Seren for short. (Later, I would muse on the oddity that this was a homophone for Sarin, the toxic nerve gas - but of course, I didn’t know that then; most likely, the dog’s owners didn’t, either.)

I don’t remember much about either the roommates or their dog (even at the ripe age of ten or eleven, I’d lived with too many companions, human and otherwise, to count), beyond that: A) the dog was very sweet, and B) the roommates were recent survivors of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state. (Following which they’d moved all the way to Virginia.)

I don’t know if it happened this way or not, but I always assumed that Seren had been rescued from the volcanic ash. Or he’d been their dog already, and had made it out with them.

Either way, that dog was my introduction to the very concept of Serendipity (per the Wikipedia entry: “the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely”), which would carry me through a lot in the years following. (As alluded to in yesterday’s post.)

Which brings me to the story of another fortunate dog, discovered quite by accident, which has been unfolding all this week.

The other night I saw that our friend Karrie had a new blog post on her myspace page, and I went to check it out.

Only to have my heart broken:

We found this cutie pie on the side of the road, he was laying next to his buddy that had been killed by a car. He’s a little beat up, but we took him to the Vet & got him up to date on all of his shots. This lil dude is super sweet & has a great temperament. He’s about 35lbs, but should probably weigh around 40lbs. He’s roughly about 2 yrs old & is not neutered. He looks to be a foxhound/beagle mix. If anyone knows of anyone that could take him & give him lots of love, please message me. Thanks!

I should specify here that, when I went to Karrie’s page, the last thing in the world that I was thinking about was acquiring a dog. (What’s more: I have absolutely never been known as a “dog person.”)

But this one, through those pictures, just called out to me, so last night Jeff and I packed up the girls and went over to Mark and Karrie’s. (Not telling them anything - just that we were going to hang out - in case the internet puppy love I experienced at first sight didn’t match the reality on the ground… or whatever.)

So there we were visiting with Mark and Karrie, their dog (whom the girls hadn’t seen since he was more of a pup) Curtis Lowe (yes, as in The Ballad of… by Lynyrd Skynyrd), and this little survivor dog, who immediately bonded with Jeff and the girls and me. He was amazingly gentle and calm (particularly relative to dear Curtis, who is a wild thing!). While we were there, the as-yet-unnamed-one (referred to in general terms as Lil’ Dude!) hopped up on the couch next to Karrie, which she said he hadn’t done before, and she took it as a sign that he felt safe and welcome and loved, after his long and difficult journey.

Karrie and Mark had, of course, been taking excellent care of the boy, but with Curtis being quite attached to his Sole Dog of the House status, and other logistical considerations (not least of which is Mark’s touring schedule), they needed to find a good home for Lil’ Dude. Mark knows how good Jeff is with dogs, since they grew up practically across the street from each other back in Williamsburg, and Jeff almost always had a dog.

And so, with all the evidence in abundance that this was going to be a good match, we announced it to the girls: “So, how would you like to have this dog?” And their eyes lit up in surprised glee: Really? Can we?

And we worked out the details as best we could on the spot. Karrie brought out his medicine, and Jeff went and got the leash he’d bought after work (along with dog biscuits, food, bowl, chewy bones, etc.). Another friend had already taken on the job of setting up Lil’ Dude with an appointment to become a Lil’ Eunuch, so that piece was taken care of.

We discussed various names, and by the time we were ready to leave, had pretty much settled on Lynyrd. The provenance of the name being only partly in the fact that he was rescued by a bona fide Southern rock star (Mark’s the second guy from the right on the current cover of Guitar World, which he’s been featured in now more times than I can count), and in the fact that Curtis Lowe was his first doggie companion in Lil’ Dude’s first place of safety, after being rescued. It also has to do with my uncle Timmy.

See, in Timmy’s funeral that I keep writing circles around, there was the inescapable sadness about Timmy’s brother Billie who had preceded him in death two years earlier. Both my uncles were hard-living hellraisers, but Billie was the one who finally got sober, kicked all his drug habits, etc. - only to die at the age of 45, of cancer. It broke Timmy’s heart, and what strength he otherwise might have (eventually) been able to muster in order to stop drinking was leached away by that sadness. He died, then, on the eve of what would have been his forty-fifth birthday, of cirrhosis and hepatitis.

When Billie died, there was nothing any of us could have done to blunt the force of that event on Timmy. There would be no bringing him back.

Then this little dog lost his companion on the road, but by Grace, in the actions of some very fine people, he was saved, brought back from the sadness. (Not to mention:taken to the Vet!)

But I digress.

At Timmy’s funeral, to which various of his drinking buddies had been invited, there was a time during which mourners were invited to play a track of music that evoked the departed in some way. Naturally, there was one dude who wanted to play the Lynyrd Skynrd song, Freebird.

Thing is, he brought the wrong tape. And yes, it was a tape, and not a CD, so there was a long awkward silence while the hapless funeral director was rewinding and fast-forwarding, trying to find the requested track. So when no Freebird track could be located, he went with what was apparently considered the next most thematically appropriate Skynrd tune: That Smell.

(Yeah I know: only in the South.)

So there I was, taking in the surreal experience of my uncle’s open casket funeral while listening to these words:

Whiskey bottles and brand new cars
Oak tree you’re in my way
There’s too much coke and too much smoke
Look what’s going on inside you

Ooh, ooh that smell
Can’t you smell that smell?
Ooh, ooh that smell
The smell of death surrounds you…

And while the whole thing was undeniably fucked up, it was also hilarious, as I knew Timmy would have appreciated.

So, as a result of these multiple connections, Lil’ Dude is now answering to Lynyrd.

Here he is at home, feeling quite safe indeed, if his lack of hesitation about curling up on the couch is any measure (click on any image for a larger version).

And now, as I finish this, it’s just about time for Lynyrd and me to head for the bus stop to get the youngest daughter. He was quite enamored with the walk to the bus stop this morning, the introduction to his new neighborhood.

Welcome home, boy.