On the Mommy and Daddy Binary

[this post was originally posted on Shakesville with the title Mommy v. Daddy ]

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Via Media Matters, I find this gendered analysis of Tuesday’s debate in the LA Times:

The late conservative economist Jude Wanniski once dubbed Republicans the “Daddy Party” and Democrats the “Mommy Party.” On Tuesday, Obama seemed to prove his point by laying out the more expansive government role in caring for middle-class Americans. And he mentioned not only his mother, but his wife and grandmother too.

First, let’s talk about how this is insulting to men, via its implicit contention that men don’t care for other people, and, quite specifically, if one takes this tired metaphor to its logical conclusion, that fathers don’t care for their children. Men are there to provide and discipline; women are there to care. This lie is the foundation for every damnable binary about sex and emotion in our culture—men are rational; woman are emotional—and it is on what we’ve based our pernicious refusal to regard the most destructive versions of emotions like anger, jealousy, possessiveness, vengeance, apathy, and selfishness as not emotions at all, but merely biological evidence of strength, as long as they emanate from men.

Friday Feminism: Fierce

[This is a crosspost from Shakesville where it was originally posted in October of 2007.]

I was standing in front of a full-length mirror with my leg stretched out, modeling at its end for my own consumption the left half of a pair of kelly green steel-toed Doc Martens knee-highs I had just bought, in spite of their outrageous price tag. "Girl, those boots are hot!" came the voice from beside me. This was St. Nate of the Perfectly Shaped Eyebrows, my coworker and friend, who would, one day, find himself at my parents’ house in the suburbs racing through their kitchen as I screeched, "Get the baking soda!" to help put out a fire I’d started on their deck with the grill. But today he was admiring my boots. And admiring me.

"God damn, look at you!" He pulled my shirt from the back so it clung to my form. This was not a look I felt was particularly good for me, even in those thinner days, and I pushed his hands away, squirming and frowning at myself in the mirror. He raised an eyebrow and frowned back, then turned me around by the shoulders, away from the mirror.

"Bitch, be fierce…"
 

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Nate was one of many people who fall under the "T" in LGBT who have been important to me in one way or another, many of whom have played vital roles in helping me understand and appreciate my queer-brained self, and sort out what it means for me to be a woman. This is, quite obviously, no coincidence. Being myself a person who is, like many non-trans feminists and queers, uncomfortable with, and thusly constantly challenging, the expectations imposed on my sex and gender, I have found it valuable (and, in my personal experience, inevitable) to engage with Ts as part of divining my own self-definition. Which is to say nothing of simple and precious friendships.

Event: Digital Photography Contest themed on gender roles

This was just sent to me from Spain. Looks interesting (website uses Flash and some images are Not Safe For viewing at Work), although the shots currently in their gallery seem to focus perhaps overly much on the sex aspect of our gender roles, and it would be good to see some works looking at a broader view.

ROLLING ROLAK

Rolling Rolak, set up by Pripublikarrak feminism group and Nontzeberri cultural web site wishes to think about the roles we have, which we invent, or which have been enforced on us, and to think beyond the masculine/feminine, male/female, traditional man/woman binary. .

As a result, Rolling Rolak embraces three events involving various degrees of participation: Argazklik which is an on-line photo competition open to whoever may wish to participate; Camara Crossing which is a series of photographs taken one after the other involving social and cultural agents working fields linked to feminism; and lastly, Production of gender and bodies a theoretical seminar which looks at the possibilities of thinking about gender through various areas of contemporary art.