Susan Klebold has written an essay for O Magazine and for the first time we can hear the voice of one of the Columbine Shooters’ mothers. It is I very painful voice to hear and I was shocked how quickly it brought me back to my early adolescents and that April day when I was attending my final months of middle school only twenty miles away from the carnage. That day is impressed upon my mind in a way that is unrivalled by any other public event in my life, including the 11th of September Attacks. For me, as for many of my peers I believe, Columbine was the day everything changed.
Suddenly I was part of a wounded community which, instead of acting with grace and love, acted like a wounded animal desperate to strike out and place blame. The shooters, who were just other children in that high school, were painted as monsters and their parents as inept at best and criminally negligent at worst. The mega-church pastors who quickly took to leading the public mourning assured their flocks that the killers where in Hell (along strangely with many of their victims) and that those who had accepted “Jesus as their Saviour” were the only among the dead now in the arms of their Creator. Good and evil, Heaven and Hell, these became the dichotomies that defined the aftermath of the shooting and no one seemed willing or able move beyond them. Unlike the Amish community at the West Nickel Mines who would reach out in forgiveness to the family of the grown man who slaughtered their daughters, my natal community shunned and vilified the parents of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Later it would rally against Marilyn Manson and trench coats, seeking to blame everything and everyone accept us. It was watching the reaction to the Columbine Shooting that prepared me for the reaction of my nation after the 11th of September; I already knew the drill: Retaliation with no room for self-reflection.
I though cannot move past thinking about Dylan and Eric and the ways that they were failed and reading the words of a mother who is clearly still grieving brings me even closer to those thoughts. I was four years younger than Eric and Dylan on the day of the shooting. Today I am six years older than they were then. In a few months I will be a decade older than their youngest victims. They all were my peers then but the passage of time allows me now to see them as the children they and I truly were. In the ten years that has passed, I have done so many things that none of the children who died a Columbine will ever get to do. I have graduated from high school and then university. I have fallen in love and had my heart broken. I have danced until dawn on four continents. I have seen the world beyond the Denver suburbs. I have seen that the high school cheerleaders and mega-church pastors are not the only people in the world. I wonder if Dylan and Eric would have felt differently if they had known this too, if they had only know how changeable their situation was. Even then, they were failed. And we, as a community, were the ones who failed them. They were our children too which is why I am glad that Dylan’s mother has finally spoken.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Columbine High School, Denver, grace, Harris, Klebold, Littleton, shooting
October 14, 2009 · 1 Comment
Below is a list of 10 things I once believed that I simply do not believe anymore. I do believe that this list shows how life has moved me away from youthful absolutism toward a greater understanding of a world that rather than being black and white or even various shades of grey exists in vivid colour.
1) Violence never solved anything.
2) “Love means never having to say you are sorry.”
3) All opinions are equally valid.
4) Morality is relative.
5) Self-reliance is always a good thing.
6) All traditions, by virtue of being traditions, have some inherent value.
7) All people can be persuaded by reason.
8 ) I look good in stripes.
9) All conformity is bad.
10) It matters if people like you.
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Like every other person on Facebook I have a lot of Facebook friends whom I haven’t spoken to since the Clinton Administration. This means that inevitably I see the “Status Updates” of people about whom I don’t actually know anything about really, except maybe to which primary school they went. Most of the time, these little updates are brief windows into lives out of which I have long drifted. They mean little or nothing to me. Sometimes, however, they feel like windows into parts of society of which I will never be part. And to be honest, sometimes what I see is really scary.
For example, this morning I awoke to a particular status update that commented
“geez, no wonder most men think women are cheating whores..there is a lady in here with a man that is NOT her husband, and they definitely aren’t siblings..tramp”
As a feminist, no wait check that, actually as a human being this sort of remark worries me. I wanted to leave a “Comment” under the status but then I realized that it would probably be to no avail. The Updater, a woman no less, was committed to stigmatizing the open display of women’s sexuality. She was acting as an accomplice to the patriarchy and she most likely didn’t know it. It made me sick and sad and angry all at the same time; and not just angry at her, but angry at my own self-righteousness. Who am I to tell anyone that you aren’t supposed to use words like “whore” and “tramp” unless you are reclaiming them. The snobbery of Liberal Academics strikes again!
The fact is that my Facebook “friend” probably thinks more like the rest of the world than I do. At the same time I do not think that I and my cohorts (Hello there cohorts, or dare I say, Comrades! How are you guys?) think the way we do because we are sequestered in “The Ivory Tower” peacefully completing our apprenticeships before we slap a “Dr.” in front of our names and head off to lives full of Summer Vacations. We lead real lives full of office politics (probably more of that than most), drunken nights, crummy boyfriends, and dirty jokes. We know that no matter how much noise we make about the construction of race and gender that those things are real enough in the day to day living of individual lives. And yet I still know that the above status update was personally cruel and politically irresponsible. If that makes me an arrogant, liberal academic then so be it. I will wear that label with pride…or will I?
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: academia, feminism, me, navel gazing
Here is a little piece I wrote about my Mama that is over on offbeatmama.com. Check it out. You know, since Mama features so heavily around here.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Mama, me
September 26, 2009 · 3 Comments
I was very struck by this story at Salon.com. I am so struck, in fact, that I am going to abandon my much needing to be done work in order to blog about it. Now, as is probably very apparent, I am not a big fan of the gender binary. When I mention this to my non-academic, non-hippy-dippy friends, the response I almost universally receive has something to do with the fact that little kids are REALLY into gender norms therefore gender norms must be natural, necessary, etc. Yet Lise Elliot seems to suggest in the aforementioned article that kids aren’t really into gender normative behaviour, kids are really into pleasing their parents and other caregivers. And even a three year old can figure out that in our culture, everyone seems very pleased by gender appropriate behaviour and very displeased with the converse.
I think that Elliot also made a very interesting point about the current predicament of boys. While lots of anti-feminist fear-mongers like to suggest that there is a “War on Boys” that is the result of an effeminized culture, I think that the real gap is still founded in misogyny and a nearly pathological fear of all things feminine. Girls increasingly receive the message that they can “do anything”. Boys receive the message that they can do anything that is not perceived as feminine. This is because that while we might recognize and even encourages girls to aspire to traditionally masculine roles; we are still dumbstruck as to why a “privileged” male would surrender his masculine privilege and risk being seen as feminine. Dressing up old prejudice in new guises is not real progress.
So where does that leave all us in terms of childrearing in this post-Post-modern age? Well, I don’t have any little feet running around my flat at the moment and I don’t imagine they will be appearing soon (I am currently expecting a doctoral thesis). But if and when I become a parent, the role of gender will be at the front of my little pea brain. What I want for my hypothetical children is what I want for all people: the knowledge that the dignity of the human person has nothing to do with gender (or sexuality or race or creed or any of the other silly things that we use to divide ourselves). I want them to love themselves and others as completely and utterly unique individuals joined mysteriously in diversity.
These are principles deeply rooted in my faith, a faith that knows God as Trinity-One and yet Three. It is a faith that calls me to remember that the eradication of divisions amongst people is the most immediate result of the Incarnation for there is no longer “male nor female, Greek nor Jew, Free nor Slave”. Hence for me, the challenge to gender is a necessary one because it is an act of devotion, an act of faith. What would please me are not little children obsessed with pink and blue, boy toys and girl toys. What would please me are children who live as fully and authentically as possible who tell the truth about themselves and in telling that truth share with the world a small part of the truth about God. It is those kernels of truth that we are all sent here to share which we lose when we insist that everyone must be the same. Of course, with regards to gender hasn’t truth always been the first victim?
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: children, feminism, gender
Mama had lots of crazy rules. I think she probably still does; I just get to ignore more of them by virtue of being on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. At any rate, one rule she did not have was an insistence that my sister and I form some sort of crazy playground alliance. Wait, hear me out. Lots of the kids in the neighbourhood had parents who had such expectations. Their children were to act as some sort of cohesive unit which would always follow the same party line throughout the ups and downs of childhood diplomacy and warfare. But Mama never said that we had to agree with each other, that we had to be on the same side. She insisted that choose the right side, regardless of our biological affinity to our comrades. Certainly, she would have been thrilled if we fought less with each other (and as a side note I would argue that today as adults Jackie and I are much closer than most siblings); but she never forced us to arbitrarily side with one another.
I never thought much about it at the time. I knew my family was “different” as a result of my parents’ unrestrained eccentricities. But difference was not the product of eccentricity; it highlighted an enormous ideological gap between my mother and all the others in our corner of the world: a definition of family that was radically different. While the soccer moms in their mini-vans taught their children that family was small, static, and tribal, my mother taught me a definition of family that was vast, dynamic, and universal. Two anthropology classes, one my senior year of high school and another my freshman year of college, repeated my mother’s lesson in a very scholastic way: There is not just one way to organize kinship. Each culture’s definition of family is largely a product of history, environment, and chance.
And so with Mama and Margaret Mead telling me the same thing, I have come to reject the vision of family presented to me by the American Family Association, television, and my primary school playmates. Mama was right all along. The bonds of genes and marriage licenses are nice enough, but there are other ties that bind that our just as powerful. The re-imagining of the family as something wider than its mid-20th century poster image is an action that is simultaneously traditional in the extreme (why does no one seem to remember that the “nuclear” in “nuclear family” refers to the “Nuclear Age”?) and revolutionary. When we come to redefine the family, we can begin the project of reorganizing human relationships in ways that are more egalitarian. We can strike a crippling blow to tribalism and expectionalism. We claim the idea and practice of community.
Jackie (the aforementioned sister) is the most likely kidney donor I have in the world. She is also my best friend, if the truth is told. But Mama never forced us to be arbitrary allies, because family is not a weapon to yield against the imagined “Other”. It is the institution by which we can ever widen the circle of Us until there is no Them. This though can only happen when the notion of family is freed from the Us on the playground and beyond.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Crazy ideas, family, feminism, Mama, naval gazing
September 16, 2009 · 1 Comment
Now, as Mama will tell you, I don’t like birds with broken wings; I like birds that have been run over by semi-trucks, multiple times. So here it goes: I think that everyone from Pink to the President to the media is being way too hard on Kanye West. (A) It’s the MTV Video Music Awards people. They are supposed to be crazy and in your face. They are not supposed to be nice or classy or anything else like that. It’s not the freakin’ Oscars or the ceremonies for the Nobel Laureates (pinkie swear I did not see a single member of the Swedish royal family at the VMAs). (B) Beyoncé did have the better video, even if I have my oh-so-P.C. doubts about the song. From a purely aesthetic perspective Kanye was right.
But I think reason “C” is by far the most important. As I have watched Kanye doing his mea culpa dance and listened to the commentary from all around, I have begun to wonder if there is not something more sinister lurking beneath this bubbly pop not-quite-a-firestorm. Maybe this is just another piece of evidence that post-racial America is still not here. I mean let’s put on our race-goggles here for a second and look at the incident: An African-American man in the hip hop industry publically told a very young, white female country western singer that her video was inferior to the video of an African-American woman. Now, Kanye West, said black guy, is the most evil, awful person on the planet and must carry out a protracted public apology. I don’t think so. I think he was Kanye West acting the way Kanye West acts in a questionably appropriate venue for doing so. I think he is being unfairly demonised. And I think it is because that the narrative of the black man as aggressor and white woman as victim continues to be a powerful story in our culture. This incident fits the model of that story and so we fell we know who each of the characters are.
For the record, it was jerky of him to do. Clearly Taylor Swift is not tough enough to tell him to get the hell off the stage (like I imagine many others would have done). It’s not right to pick on people who are not going to fight back. That being said, Kanye West is not evil or anything of the sort. He just said what everyone was thinking out loud at a rather jerk-y time to say it. That’s the actually story, but I am afraid we are listening to the old narrative instead.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: crazy people, Kanye West, racism, Taylor Swift
September 14, 2009 · 1 Comment
Okay, I might write more about this later or I mightcompletely forget about it. I am listening to Beyoncé’s Single Ladies. I really like the song but I am not sure if I SHOULD like the message or not. On one hand, it is seemingly very empowering: She will not continue to be part of a relationship where her need for commitment et cetra is not met. And yet at the same time, when she is talking about “putting a ring on it” she is talking about herself. Can we say objectification, people? And what is up with our collective obession with “The Ring”? I just don’t get it.
I actually would like to know what you all think. If I actually get comments (hint, hint), I’ll write another post on the subject. If not, I will move on and try to stop over-thinking a freakin’ song. And now back to Oedipus to the tunes of hiphop.
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When I tell anyone that there is a pro-patriarchy movement, they are shocked. I think this is in no small part due to the fact that the people I tell are good post-modern academics who know their gender theory and aren’t afraid to use it. So I would imagine that most everyone I know personally would be shocked to learn that there exists a book entitled Passionate Housewives, Desperate for God. The book is a passionate and surprisingly well-written full frontal attack on feminism and the “evils” it has wrought and was actually sent to me by one of its co-authors Stacy McDonald.
Stacy (who by the way is a very nice lady despite every preconceived notion I had about her) along with Jennie Chancey are actually good writers. I don’t like or agree with the vast majority of their ideas but they are good writers. I read Passionate Housewives in a single day. And what’s strange is that I think they and I see many of the same cultural phenomena as negative. Where we differ is on the cause and the solution. For example, I too am deeply troubled by the incredibly narcissistic nature of our culture. McDonald and Chancey call “me-ology”. I just don’t think feminism, humanism, or liberalism is the cause of this. In fact, I would argue it probably has a lot to do with the demands of the consumer culture which needs us, all of us, to be terribly wrapped up in ourselves in order to keep spending money on ourselves.
The absolutely weirdest part of reading this book for me was that I have so firmly come to believe that the cultural divide in America, in the world is such that the two sides cannot even agree with each other on what reality is.
This book flew in the face of that assumption. We are all seeing the same play here, people; we are just interpreting it differently. That does not mean that the divide is any more surmountable, but it does make me feel strangely comforted. It means that we are all human; doing our best to make sense of what is often a nonsensical world. I know all too well that I for one would be a more compassionate person if I remembered this more often. The world would probably be a better place if we stopped calling each other baby killers and sinners, bigots and wingnuts.
I think when she sent me the book Stacy was expecting me to think and write more about its actual arguments. I have not done that here and I probably won’t to be honest. Clearly, the arguments are ones with which I disagree. That we disagree is obvious. The hard part is salvaging some understanding from those disagreements. I believe that at the heart of the faith that Stacy McDonald, Jennie Chancey, and I share is the call to relationship: relationship with each other; and through that relationship with each other, union with the Creator. If we are all truly desperate for God, we shall find him most quickly in one another; whether or not we are housewives or students, community organizers or governors. Reading their beautifully written odes to family and community that make up much of the book, I am lead to believe that Stacy and Jennie believe that as well. Perhaps, for a moment, that is enough.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: crazy people, feminism, God, me, naval gazing
Back home in the good ol’ U.S of A, it is Labour (or more accurately Labor) Day Weekend, the traditional end of summer. In honour of turning point, I give you your Sunday poetry:
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
—–Mary Oliver
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