Tag Archives: language

The false dichotomy of “body” and “mind”

We speak of the body and mind as though they are separate, when they are anything but, when one rises from and is rooted in the other, the mind not a distinct form but an integral function of the flesh. To speak of I is not to give voice to an inner humunculus, but to express the tip of my nose, the jiggle of my thighs, the oft-ignored deep fascia of my pelvis. Not objects, these, but subject; not multiple, but me.

When anxiety spikes, it is my heart that pounds, my muscles that tense and yearn to strike.

When I feel the deep rise of my abdomen as air fills my lungs, it is my mind that temporarily stills.

When my muscles ache and spasm, it is my mood that turns sour, my temper that quickens.

When my thoughts race, it is my limbs that cannot remain still, my heart and breath that race to keep up.

When I give massage, it is my thoughts and my attention as well as my hands that focus on the receiver, that determine whether that person feels touched.

When I finally, finally sleep it is my muscles that ache less, my thoughts that grow sharper.

To talk of the mind and body as though they are two, separable, is a sometimes-useful fiction, yet this distinction nevertheless is a lie that leads to a life disjointed, the seamless whole sundered into incomplete components; alone each proves inadequate to explain our experience.

This lie is responsible for the dehumanization of hospitals, the depersonalizing of psychiatry, the disembodiment of blogging. We can pretend that persons don’t matter when we’re treating bodies: kick partners and doulas out of birth rooms; offer weight-gain-countering drugs that deny us the ability to speak; deride women for breastfeeding in public when “pumped breastmilk is just as good.” It’s a false duality at least as old as Descartes, but pervades nearly every aspect of our modern life.

What would it mean to reject this notion, to embrace the person-as-whole?

Can we even begin to imagine an answer, given the limitations of our language? “My” nose, “my” pelvis, “my” moods — these imply a belonging-to other than each other, other than the sum-of-all that creates — that is — the me.

Perhaps start with imagining: what would it feel like to recognize ourselves as whole? To be known as whole? To inhabit our entire body? Investigate the lusts of your left pinky toe, let your right shoulder lead, become aware of the impact of anger and joy and boredom on your elbows, your ass, your eyebrows. Imagine a world where such was commonplace, where the self was seen as complete, inseparable from its component molecules, whatever their configuration.

Imagine — and remember it is your left pinky toe, your right shoulder, your fascia and face and elbows and eyebrows and lympocytes and synapses and hormones and neurons that do so.

7 Comments | Posted on 23 August 2011 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Kyriarchy | Tags: beautiful words, disability, language, Mental Health

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I’m alive! To prove it, have some links!

So I’m sort of, y’know, done? With this whole parenting-pregnancy-housebuying-blogging-daily-living thing? And my need for, and frequent inability to achieve, sleep has pretty much taken over my life? And yet, annoyingly, the world continues.

Fortunately, other writers have continued to, unlike me, write:

Both Salon and bluemilk have tackled the bruhaha around Madison Young (activist, artist, sex worker) and her Becoming MILF exhibit.

Salon:

The emotional response to her public breast-feeding conveys the Madonna/whore dichotomy better than Young could ever hope to do with her kitschy quilt and breast milkshakes. The idea that there is something inherently prurient about a porn star breast-feeding plays right into that classic either-or thinking: Her breasts are erotic in one venue, so they can’t be wholesome in another.

bluemilk (if you only read one of these articles, make it this one):

There is something else worth considering about Furry Girl’s criticisms of Young, and that is the way in which she can’t distinguish between mothers and mothering. Yes, Young’s daughter can’t give permission for being included in her mother’s artwork, neither can mine give permission for my writing. But who owns Young’s experience of motherhood? Who owns mine? Where do Young’s and my experiences of early motherhood and our desire to explore these all-consuming aspects of our lives end, and our children’s ownership of them begin? Can Young, who describes her devotion to her baby daughter so lovingly, not be trusted to know? Does being sexual as women (or even sexually objectified unintentionally) spill dangerously over into our responsibilities as mothers? Does it prevent us from good mothering?

These are particularly poignant questions for me, given the reactions to my recent public discussion of sex.

Also on the topic of breastfeeding, Scientific American reports that Breastfeeding Reduces Risk of Hard-to-Treat Breast Cancer among African-American Women:

The researchers analyzed data from the Black Women’s Health Study, which has collected health information from some 59,000 women for the past 16 years, focusing on 318 cases of ER-/PR- breast cancer and 457 cases of estrogen receptor- and progesterone receptor-positive (ER+/PR+) cancer. Palmer and her team found that black women with breast cancer who had two or more children and didn’t breastfeed them were 50 percent more likely to have the ER-/PR- form of breast cancer than those who had two children and breastfed them.

And a note on language: in hypothesizing some other potential explanations for the difference, the post declares African-descended women have “tougher immune systems to cope with endemic diseases of sub-Saharan Africa” (emphasis added). While at first glance, this might appear a benign phrasing, it seems to me another instance of the animalization of Black peoples; other, just-as-accurate ways of phrasing the same concept might include “more advanced”, “highly evolved”¹, “smarter”, etc. But these would require different cultural conceptualizations of race.²

And I feel like I owe you so much more in the way of linkage (and to be sure, there have been some amazing posts I’ve encountered in the blogosphere recently, and please feel free to leave more, your own or others, in the comments), but, well, see aforementioned done-ness.

PS No one say this doneness is a sign of immanent birth. It’s not allowed to be. We’re still weeks away from closing on the house, so if you’re going to send vibes, send stay-in-and-healthy vibes, please. One of the few things worse than dealing with another few weeks of this would be The Man using up all his vacation time babymooning — and then still have to move. With a newborn. So, just, no.³

ETA OMG PONY DOCTOR WHO!

This is only quite possibly the best thing in the history of everything. Because pony Doctor. And bad French. You’re welcome.

OK, technically we’re all equally evolved, because we’ve all been on the planet equally long, and therefore have evolved the same amount, if in very, very subtly different ways. ↩
I also have questions about the accuracy of generalizations that characterize sub-Saharan Africa as more disease-ridden, and inherently and long-term so, than other places, but am not knowledgeable enough about evolutionary epidemiology to make any challenges to this assertion. ↩
We’d survive, obviously; I’d manage somehow. I just don’t want to, ta. ↩

9 Comments | Posted on 17 August 2011 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Kyriarchy, Parenting | Tags: breastfeeding, Doctor Who, language, Links, Race, racism, sex

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On mothers’ groups and men-bashing

“Yeah, my husband will change diapers when I ask him to, but only if we have the man-friendly/easy-to-use ones clean.”

“Sure he says he’ll clean the bathroom, but he’s a man, it’s like he doesn’t see the dirt.”

“My spouse is such a GUY — fifty things to do before my family comes over, and he spends an hour on one that’s not even on the list.”

“Bloody men!”

I hate hearing phrases like these. Hate. (Loathe might be a more accurate word.) They drive me absolutely up the wall, and occasionally send me to a safe space (or Twitter) to rant about how much I cringe upon hearing them — and I do, seemingly inevitably though to greater or lesser extents, any time a group of women (especially mothers) gather together.

A short list of the problems with these and similar phrases:

They extrapolate from one man to all men as though men are a monolith, each identical to the other. (Sometimes this is “reduced” to “only” straight men — because “gay” and “straight” are two discrete categories, and within each all individuals are the same.)
Related, they extrapolate from “once” (or, granted, a historical pattern) to “always”, thus encouraging (which is not to say entirely creating) a self-fulfilling prophesy.
They assume inadequate performance is due to inherent incompetence rather than cultural learning (or lack thereof).
They assign said incompetence to gender — or sometimes, explicitly to (inevitably cissexist) symbols of gender, such as cocks or Y-chromosomes.
They excuse, and thus encourage, said incompetence — after all, he can’t change that he’s a man/guy/has a penis; plus, who wants to do more of anything that gets them berated?
They exclude men from the domestic sphere, leaving women as the ones who must be competent at home, thus denying them the freedom to move into the public sphere.
They’re wrong, both factually an morally, for all the above reasons.

Yet — I almost never say anything when they’re said. What could I say? I’m one of the “lucky” ones¹, so any protests would read as either bragging, preaching, or rubbing their noses in what many others don’t have and I do. Yet murmur vague concurring noises, and I’m agreeing to sexism — not “reverse sexism”, but the logical sequela of women-need-to-stay-at-home misogyny. Go off on a rant about society and the damage of kyriarchy, and I’ve both lost my audience (a minor issue) and completely ignored the emotional content of my friends’ complaints (a rather more major one).

For there are reasons women complain about the incompetence of the men in their lives, not least because it’s true — if not as a generalization, then for them, in their lives. And it’s crappy, and of course they want to complain and vent to a supportive audience of their peers, many of whom experience similar personal aggravations and injustices. These phrases do reinforce misogyny and sexism, both personally and culturally, but ultimately it’s not women’s job to make sure men do theirs, not our job (alone) to eliminate sexism, and in many relationships it’s just not as simple as stepping back and changing our words and trusting that suddenly, magically, the men will step up and do their share.

I wish that were always the case — and it sometimes is, and I invite you to decide to what extent that’s true in your relationship, because I surely am not going to attempt to — but sometimes leaving things up to a woman’s partner puts her children at risk; sometimes ceasing to excuse him increases the antagonism at home; sometimes it increases verbal/emotional abuse, or risks turning it into physical abuse. Complaining, though often counterproductive, is sometimes a woman’s only coping mechanism in a situation where she has little power and a very small set of crappy options. Furthermore, generalizing those complaints to “men” instead of her man places her in solidarity with other (male-partnered) women rather than (falsely!) placing the blame on her and her “bad choice” of a partner. I can’t — won’t — deprive someone of their coping mechanism, won’t condescend to presume even that such is true for every woman I’m listening to, won’t offend by assuming ill-intent or laziness.

And so I cringe, say nothing, and think of my child — self-declared boy, statistically likely to be straight and one day woman-partnered — and I hope that he never gives his lover cause to evoke these phrases, never is hobbled in his parenting or partnership by these all too pervasive cultural ideas.

ETA: And just in case we needed evidence this is hardly a mothers-started idea, making it even more pointless to blame individual women, here’s evidence of just how pervasive the-incompetent-dad idea is.

A phrase which itself silences the few complaints with my partner I may have, because then not only would I be placing myself as “perfect” — hah! — to his “imperfect”, I’m also not “appreciating” my “luck”. ↩

34 Comments | Posted on 27 April 2011 by Arwyn | Category: Kyriarchy, Parenting | Tags: domesticity, language, men, misogyny, sexism

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Quick hit on nuance

Pregnant + school + sick = series of short posts. Drop me a line if there’s a topic you want covered.

People sometimes act as though nuance is a precious mineral, one we have to dole out sparingly, or store away in a warehouse the size of Fort Knox, protecting it from all attackers with the weapons of black-and-white thinking. We think it takes so much time and energy and space that it won’t fit in any but the largest tomes (or tombs), that it’s too hard for the average person to understand — or possibly it’s a toxic substance, and the public can’t be allowed to handle it for fear of damaging themselves or others with it.

I disagree.

Nuance, rather than a dead, discrete mineral, is a living thing, capable of growing — and dying — capable of being planted and nurtured and increased. The more nuance there is, the more nuance there can be. The more we use it, the more it spreads. The more we are surrounded by it, the more we are able to understand it, use it, welcome it, share it.

The problem is so many of us refuse to do the work of gardening nuance, and instead we plow down its forests — while lamenting its scarcity.

Kyriarchy thrives on — or perhaps more accurately is the process-and-product of engaging in — all-or-nothing, black-and-white, us-versus-them thinking. It is the antithesis of nuance, a toxic, genetically targeted herbicide. Kyriarchy is perpetuated every time we decline to acknowledge transgender issues in a post about women, every time we decline to acknowledge disability in a post about “healthy people”, every time we respond to a caricature of our opponents instead of the persons they are, every time we deliberately misrepresent an argument we disagree with, every time we act as though there are only-and-exactly “two sides” to an issue, every time we deny that someone might have sincere and thoughtful reasons for the opinions they hold, every time we go for the quick and clever retort instead of the thoughtful and respectful reply, every time we nuke someone as “entirely worthless” for a mistake or misguided choice and every time we defend someone as “entirely blameless” when we deem them friend or ally.

Kyriarchy is the antithesis of nuance, but nuance can be the undoing of kyriarchy. Cultivate nuance. Look for another angle. Take a moment — sometimes one paragraph or one footnote or ten words or even just one word is all you need — to acknowledge that there is beautiful, breathtaking, valuable complexity in this world of ours. Your argument will be all the stronger and — even better — kyriarchy weaker for it.

7 Comments | Posted on 12 February 2011 by Arwyn | Category: Kyriarchy | Tags: language, nuance

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Arwyn’s Rules for Blogging

Every couple weeks or so I run across another list of 5 or 10 or 40 Rules of Blogging. Sometimes they’re called Blogging Tips, sometimes Tricks to Make You a Better Blogger, or, my favorite, Laws of Not Sucking at Blogging. But they’re always numbered, bulleted lists, and I always break at least half of the rules, and go away grumpy and more cynical than ever. The obvious solution? Make my own!

Write long, intricate posts. Never write less than 500 words; see if you can go for 1000, even 1500 or 2000 or more. Make as many points as you want to; don’t split a tangent off into another post if you can possibly make it fit into this one.
Make your sentences as long as possible; learn to love the semicolon. Let at least one paragraph per post start with the most round-about intro sentence you can think of: let this sentence be at least thirty words long. Fifty is better.
Avoid numbered lists and bullet points like last year’s turkey leftovers. Better yet, like they’re medium-rare day-old buffet burgers — and you’re a raw-foods vegan.
Unless you’re being paid to sell something, pretend the letters SEO stand for Search Every Orifice, and immediately click away from any blog or post with that in its title.
Demand more from your readers. Expect them to click and read the links you leave explaining complex concepts. Require them to use their minds to engage with your topic; if you must set analytics goals, make it be that they spend a minimum of four minutes per post, and that they then immediately click away to learn more.
If you haven’t bothered to learn its versus it’s, your versus you’re, or exactly what to do with that semicolon I just cajoled you to use, by all means, spend half an hour reading about grammar and do better. But if the word “grammar” strikes fear in your heart, if you’ve read the rules a hundred times and still don’t get it, if your brain doesn’t work in a way that accords with highfalutin’ rules of grammar, if it’s hard enough to sit up and type at all when your head’s in a daze from the pain: fuck ‘em. Write anyway. The world needs your words, and it doesn’t need you to be stopped by rigid allegiance to arbitrary agreements of where the apostrophe goes in “mamas’ night out”.
The title is your place to get creative, eloquent, lyrical, dorky, or quote obscure pop culture. Or not — make it boring as hell if it’s 3am and you just want to publish the damn post already. Pretend search engines don’t exist when titling your work, unless you’re writing a review of the latest Canon PowerShot SD4000 IS IXUS 300 HS/ IXY 30S, or the chromatic aberration and barrel distortion of the Sigma 70-200 F2.8 EX DG OS HSM lens used in conjunction with the Nikon D3s, in which case you are probably not reading my blog (unless you are Lisa: hi Lisa! Thanks for the part numbers!).
Bold is for emphasis only. If you wouldn’t speak those words louder or with more gravitas, if you don’t want your reader’s eye to linger there, if you don’t want them to feel you are shouting that sentence, for the love of Calliope, don’t bold it. Definitely don’t bold short thesis statements; your readers are smarter than that. And if they’re not, you don’t need ‘em.
Pictures are a requirement — if yours is a photography blog. Otherwise, pick pics only if it pleases you or is absolutely necessary for the post.
Do not ever, ever change your writing because of numbered lists of blogging tips.

…so perhaps this list won’t get your post to come back as the first entry for “cosleeping safety” in a Google search, and if that’s your goal, go forth, and read many more lists that are rather more serious than this one. Study SEO (the search engine optimization one, not the sexual assault one). There are good, valid reasons for some of the traditional recommendations, and if that’s your thing, may it bring you many Google hits and spread your gospel. I have friends who will pinch me viciously if I imply that the choice is between paying attention to The Blogging Rules and having meaningful content; that’s not my point. (Not quite, anyway.)

Rather, I hate these lists because they assume a monolithic blog reader, and for that matter a monolithic blog writer. I would be undone if I tried to write under 500 words a post, as is traditionally recommended. I write 500 word intros. And yet, you people read them, and read to the end, and respond to the ideas. 500 words isn’t enough for nuance, for introspection, for really examining a topic from as many angles as possible; it’s barely enough for an abrupt intro to most of the topics I write about. And yes, I use extraneous words, I use excessive rhetorical devices that lengthen my posts, I have an addiction to mostly unnecessary footnotes that calls for the help of a twelve-step program, but still, I cannot imagine that most of my work “should” be cut in half, or less.

I also refuse to believe that no one online is looking for posts of more depth, that “no one” will read a post with longer paragraphs, with fewer bolded thesis statements, with rambling introductions and run-on sentences. That some, highly studied (highly privileged?), goal-oriented groups of readers will not stick around for longer posts doesn’t mean the desire isn’t there; perhaps us long-winded bloggers serve niche readerships, but why should we abandon those who are seeking just what we offer to cater to an audience that reads-and-leaves anyway?

I’ve tried, for some of my posts, to implement aspects of SEO. Sometimes it’s because I really would like to get to a wider audience, people who might like my style but haven’t found me yet. But usually it’s because I think I “should”, that I’m somehow a “bad blogger” if I don’t. Usually it’s because I’ve read a how-to-blog list recently. And I wish I could figure out how to, as some promise is possible, keep my voice and keep my morals and increase searchability, if only because having more tools, more skills, is good. But I’m bad at it. And I have no desire to do the things that might make me better, and what’s more, trying to do so creates even more anxiety when already it takes me two hours to write a post and three, at least, to tweak it and edit it and convince myself to just hit publish already. Telling me I “should” do SEO is intended to get my voice heard farther afield, but it ends up silencing me.

So here are my real rules for blogging. I’ll even put them in a numbered list, as is traditional:

Write.
Publish.
Figure out what you want out of blogging, then figure out how much time and energy to devote to achieving those goals, and then do it — or not. This step is optional.
Repeat steps 1 and 2 indefinitely.

Congratulations, you’re a blogger.