Gender Across Borders

Cross-posted at Small Strokes Fell Big Oaks blog for the series on feminism and relationships.

photo by surrealize

Long-distance relationship.

In the five-plus years that I’ve been in my relationship, my partner and I have spent a total of 27 months apart – in Kenya, in India, in NY and Boston – and are on the precipice of another year on top of that.

I would say it’s part personality, part feminist persuasion that drives me to endure distance in the pursuit of personal/professional gratification.  And I am deeply appreciative of a partner who feels the same way.

In contrast to the age-old character of long-distance relationships, in which the woman is often left behind, pining, while the man goes off to work or war or otherwise, ours is mutual and often driven by myself.

My partner and I are both very driven people, deeply committed to our careers and prescribing to the notion that if we individually are not pursuing our dreams, then we cannot pursue our collective one.  And if that takes us apart from each other now and then, well that’s a price we are willing to pay.

The feminist in me reviles against the notion of sacrificing for another until I am good and ready to, and it’s my choice to do so.  While I hate that constant missing, I sort of revel in the independence that it gives me and deeply appreciate the elasticism of my relationship.

Despite growing up in a more progressive environment than women before me, the specter has still hung over my head all these years that a “good” wife/partner/woman sticks by her significant other for support and because she can’t bear to be apart from him.  She doesn’t go off to live in a rural village in Mali to bolster her career; heck, she doesn’t even put her career ahead of his.

It is this archaic model that I am resisting against, silly as it may be.  And though I was raised in a very different time from my feminist ancestors, who were denied the right to vote or attend university, I am still conscious of the relative rarity of these privileges…no rights…for women worldwide.  Therefore I feel a feminist duty to take advantage of the opportunities afforded to me, in honor of all the women who cannot or will not. Read the rest of this entry →

This post is by Ashley Lauren. Ashley, 26, is many things, including a high school English teacher, a feminist blogger at Small Strokes, founder and executive editor of the education blog Equality 101, and a fiancée planning a big white wedding in October 2010.  She received her bachelor’s in English Literature and Creative Writing in 2006 and her master’s in English Studies in May of 2010 after writing her thesis about literacy in the feminist blogging community.  Now that she’s done with her master’s, she has all this free time to read, write, and finish up her wedding plans – all while beating her fiancé at Mario Kart Wii.  You can follow her on Twitter @samsanator or e-mail her at samsanator(at)gmail(dot)com.

The other day, Emily from Gender Across Borders graciously allowed me to cross post her article about changing her name for my series about feminism and relationships to my blog, Small Strokes.  My readers were very nice in the comments over there.  Emily wasn’t so lucky with her commenters here at GAB.  (Check out the comments here.)  And, while I normally would not take the time to write a full-out post inspired by commenters, I do feel that this issue needs a little more attention.

Let’s be clear before we go any further: I have written before about how I’ve decided not to change my name when I get married.  But I’m not one of those feminists who think that any woman who does change her name is reversing decades of feminist activism.

There are people out there, though, who do believe that women should absolutely never ever change their names – apparently for any reason whatsoever.  And some of those views were reflected in the comments on Emily’s GAB post on Friday. Read the rest of this entry →

Cross-posted at Small Strokes Fell Big Oaks blog for the series on feminism and relationships.  If you’d like to submit a guest post for this series at Small Strokes, see the guidelines here and submit your post to samsanator(at)gmail(dot)com.

I have issues with feminism. Wait, let me re-phrase that: I have issues with feminists telling me what feminism is or isn’t. What feminism should or shouldn’t be. Telling me that I’m not a feminist or I am in fact a feminist because of certain actions and life choices that I make. Thankfully it was bell hooks who proclaimed “I advocate feminism” so that I don’t need to prescribe to feminist rules.

Sometimes my personal life does not run parallel to feminism. Not against it; it’s just a different entity. The relationship with my significant other is one of them, for many reasons.

First off: we have a very equal relationship which would be so-called “feminist.” In the past, I have been in relationships where one person is needier than the other (by means of more attention). I have been in relationships where I have been put on the pedestal and almost fawned over. But no, my significant other and I are different. We both respect each other deeply. We are considerate of each others’ feelings. We adore each other equally. We listen and communicate well. Read the rest of this entry →

Image courtesy of eurout.org

On Sunday, I saw The Kids Are All Right, a new film directed by Lisa Cholodenko. I enjoyed the film for many reasons, but perhaps the most significant one is that I loved watching a mainstream movie depicting lesbian parenting as completely normal. The family is never overtly politicized, and none of the characters question the validity of same-sex parents. It was refreshing to see a lesbian couple experiencing the same joys and struggles as any other couple raising two teenage children, without their identity as lesbians being the story’s focus. It gave me hope that the United States is progressing to a point where the idea of gay parents isn’t just accepted by the mainstream but also viewed as downright mundane.

Coincidentally, the film opened just after two studies on the successes of gay parenting were released. AlterNet reports that both “Gay Men Who Become Fathers via Surrogacy: The Transition to Parenthood” and “US National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study: Psychological Adjustment of 17-Year-Old Adolescents” conclude that gay and lesbian couples are just as adept at parenting as straight couples — perhaps even more so. Read the rest of this entry →

Photo from wikipedia

In many countries around the world, this Sunday is Father’s Day. In his book, The Daddy Shift, Jeremy Adam Smith looks at how our perceptions of fatherhood are changing and shares the stories of fathers who have cut back on paid work to spend more time with their children. A growing number of studies have documented the importance of a father’s early involvement in his children’s lives:  better cognitive development in infants, higher educational attainment, fewer behavioral problems in teen years, lower rates of criminal behavior and better social functioning. But making the “daddy shift” is easier in some countries than in others. In Sweden, for example, where at least two months of parental leave are reserved exclusively for dads, 85 per cent of fathers take parental leave.

As deputy prime minister, Bengt Westerberg introduced Sweden’s first month of “daddy leave” in 1995 (the policy didn’t force fathers to stay home, but if they didn’t, their families would lose one month of subsidies). The share of fathers on leave increased dramatically and in 2002 the government added a second non-transferable month. According to Westerberg and others, this shift in father’s roles is changing the definition of masculinity:

Many men no longer want to be identified just by their jobs. Many women now expect their husbands to take at least some time off with the children.

Read the rest of this entry →

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE9rUHDXRFI&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]

“Born Free” was released on April 23^rd to promote M.I.A.’s latest album, which will be released on June 29, 2010.  Recently, the L.A. Times reported that the video had been banned by YouTube.  Although this was untrue, the production did incite strong reactions-so strong, that YouTube ultimately obscured the video in order to appease angry YouTubers and the general public.  In response to the potential censorship, M.I.A. tweeted about it and added a direct link to the video on her official website.

The video begins with military sounds and imagery-sirens lazily blare as the sleepy-eyed Los Angeles S.W.A.A.T. team sits in anticipation of their next mission.  Bursting out of the van, they proceed to terrorize the unsuspecting tenants. Using their batons and pointing guns at bewildered tenants, they search rooms until they find their intended target-a young man wearing a tracksuit.

What follows is the disturbing part.  A bus full of redheaded young males are taken to a deserted area and ordered to run.  Upon refusing, a young boy is shot to instill fear, and they take off into the desert.  It doesn’t look good for them-there are landmines surrounding them and the S.W.A.A.T. team follows them in a black van.  With the music reaching a crescendo, a young man is blown apart as he inadvertently runs onto a landmine.  The rest of the redheads are beaten, and these are the images that the video ends with.  For most of us that have viewed the video by Romain Gavras, the violence is not anything new.  The most striking aspect of this is a genetically-determined feature-red hair. The mystifying cast of detainees has sparked the most reactions from viewers who just want to know, “Why?” “Born Free” is offensive and hard to watch. Fine. It’s meant to stir up feelings.

The discomfort can be understood as a culture shock of sorts, culled from the “antiracist and antisexist cultural tactics in ’70s activist art,” which A.S. Van Dorsten described as a “decentering.”  Atlantic writer Aylin Safar referred to it as “flipping the subject.” This is ultimately the success of M.I.A.’s video.

Read the rest of this entry →

Photo/ boston.com

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke once described their song “Fitter, Happier” as a checklist of slogans for the ’90s. If it was re-written for the modern mom, the checklist might look something like this (you’ll have to imagine the computerized voice on your own): Read the rest of this entry →

From left: Roxanne Samer and Becky Bivens

Artist Amy Jenkins’ one-woman exhibition, Nurture, was up at the Athens Institute for Contemporary Art from January 9th through February 28th, 2010.  I asked Roxanne Samer, Gender Across Borders’ Visual Arts Editor, to discuss Jenkins’ work with me.  What follows is a minimally edited transcript of our conversation, in which we talk about two of the videos in the exhibition, The Audrey Samsara (2004) and Audrey Superhero (2010). 

The Audrey Samsara, which captures the artist’s eighteen-month-old daughter breast-feeding, became the center of a controversy in 2005.  Jenkins was invited to show the work at the 5^th Avenue store of Italian fashion designer Salvatore Ferragamo, but the work was removed just before the exhibition opening because a Ferragamo executive took offense. As Jenkins explains in the Nurture exhibition catalog, “It was most definitely censorship.”  Audrey Superhero also focuses on Jenkins’ daughter, now six-years-old and exploring gender and sexual identity through role-playing. Read the rest of this entry →

Image courtesy of www.dwtickets.com

It’s no secret that Florida is an unfriendly environment for its LGBT residents. So it should not come as a surprise that the state is now attempting to censor the portrayal of LGBT people — and other images of “nontraditional family values” — in the media.

From The Palm Beach Post:

Movies and TV shows with gay characters could be ineligible for a “family-friendly” tax credit in Florida under a little-noticed provision tucked into a $75 million incentive package that Republican House leaders hope will attract film and entertainment jobs to the state.

The bill would prohibit productions with “nontraditional family values” from receiving a so-called family-friendly tax credit. But it doesn’t define what “nontraditional family values” are, something the bill’s sponsor had a hard time doing, too.

Read the rest of this entry →

Children of Laos by Taylor Miles

I can take no credit for asking this question or raising this issue. Many people I respect have written about this subject before. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find most of these posts through Google, though I remember that one appeared here. You see, when I first started seeing these posts, my response was anger. Haven’t women, and disabled women in particular, been fighting not to be treated like children? Doesn’t saying that children are oppressed undo all of that?

But enough people I respect had commented on the subject that I sat on my rage and thought about it for a while. Eventually I came to see was that my reaction to the idea of children as an oppressed class resembled the way some temporarily able-bodied feminists respond to discussions of ableism. Able-bodied women don’t want to be treated like “cripples”, after all. Then I had to admit that of course children are oppressed as a class. Because they are smaller and weaker than most adults, and at very young ages unable to provide for their needs independently at all, they are deeply vulnerable to oppression. Read the rest of this entry →