An Honest Day's Work

The federal government redefined work yesterday, or, rather it redefined it for the 53 million families who received TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families) in 2005 (calendar year). There is, naturally, at least one snarky comment to be made about whether a body that does so little work, and work of such poor quality has the right to define what is work for 53 million families that are struggling to make ends meet? That is an important question, but there are other axes I want to grind with their decisions.

Work and Values
The ideology that underpins this provision of welfare reform from 1996 to the present is that work is valuable for work's sake. The idea is that children learn important lessons from having their parents be part of the workforce, they learn about the value of money, the self-esteem and feelings of self worth that can come from work. Maybe, maybe, but I don't know how much you learn about those things if you never see your parent because ze is working ten hour days and multiple jobs. I also don't know how many low-wage workers would say that they got their self-esteem and self-worth from their jobs. I don't want to deny that possibility though, since I've had minimum wage jobs that I've loved and living wage jobs that killed my soul.

There are problems with this ideology, it privileges wage labor over home production and education. This came out strongly in the regulations put out by the Feds yesterday. It is no longer considered work to care for a disabled relative. What values does that teach our children? Do you think these people have the resources to ensure that their relatives are cared for properly by someone else? But apparently caregiving is lazy. If the federal government said that about middle and upper class stay-at-home parents there would be a media war (oh wait, that's already happened).

Another highlight of the new regulations is that homework time for job training programs only counts if it's in a supervised study hall. What? These are people with kids, do you think that they can pay for another hour of childcare so that they can go to bloody study-hall? Do they need bathroom passes?

Doing More Work?
All of the statistics point to the fact that TANF caseloads have decreased over the last ten years, and that more people are in wage earning jobs. However this might also mean that there are many families who don't bother to apply for welfare because they know that they will be shut out or who are "saving" their TANF months for a time when things are even worse. Also it's not entirely clear that they are better off when they are working than when they were collecting welfare. These rules also don't ensure that more work will happen, even if we agree with them that that is a goal which makes sense. If anything I think it makes it likely that people will leave the programs because they can't make those studyhalls or just have to take care of that sick family member. Which means that the caseloads will continue to go down and things will continue to look good, while the fruit rots under the skin.

The people who it will mean more work for is the people working in welfare offices across the nation, because they Feds also issued new guidelines for tracking the work activities. This tracking will be a near impossible task, taking up resources that could be devoted elsewhere... if we actually wanted things to change.

I know a lot of people who did an honest day's work yesterday -- but they sure weren't the people writing these rules.

(Full Disclosure -- I haven't read the new rules yet, just the NPR story and the I can't find them right now, but I will read them soon and get back to y'all if they have any redeeming value)

Ten (Tipsy) Confessions

1. I'm starting to think that living as a couple might be something I could do after all, after years of saying that community living was all I would ever want.
2. Oral sex, as a blogging topic, bores me - I haven't read the posts, I haven't read the posts in response to posts or the comments. (Sorry y'all).
   
3. I've found the *actual* oral sex in my life delicious, boring, hot, gross, and confusing in turns... fortunately, now we are on an upswing.
4. I hate it when TP talks on hir cellphone for long periods of time.
5. Who am I? I got tipsy after one beer (granted I hadn't had dinner yet).
   
6. I'm really looking forward to starting NewJob next week, I love vacation, but I get fiesty and stircrazy.
7. I drank a beer today while my two roommates went for a run -- this will catch up with me eventually.
8. I've been wearing shorts that are shorter than any I've worn since childhood, but it's fecking hot up here. In my defense, I think they are average femme-woman length, but they aren't my norm.
   
9. I'm painting new roommate's room and walked all over town covered in paint today, in the short-shorts; no one seemed to mind.
10. I'm so pathetic at thinking of interesting confessions that I've asked TP for help, ze is feeling equally unoriginal.
    

Mix(ed) Tapes and Marriage

So, the car that L and I just bought dates from the mid-nineties, which is fine. It's a Toyota and so I have perfect faith that it will continue to drive along in its understated loveliness for some time. On the music front, it's a little sad. I think that I need to find some way to adapt my iPod to the tapedeck, for now, I and anyone who rides in my car is stuck in my seventh grade life.

Now, there are some great mixed tapes (Is there a standard here, mix or mixed? What should that modifier be?) from that era, it was the period of my first eposure to the Indigo Girls and Ani DiFranco, but they remind me of being desperate, bitter, angsty and in the closet. Not a scene I wish to revisit. I think that the music you listen to makes a difference. As the main character in one of my favorite movies says:

"People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?" (Rob, High Fidelity)

So, driving back from Idyllic Ancestral Home, I listened to one of the mixed tapes that my sisters made for me that winter of 7th grade. Who were they at this moment in time? Sister, Esq. had just finished her first semester at Women's College and was coming out as a lesbian, Sister, MD was a sophmore in high school and struggling with her body, her brain, and her peer group. On it there are a surprising number of song that sort of mock marriage -- Liz Phair's "Divorce Song", Mary Chapin-Carpenter "He Thinks He'll Keep Her", the song about a "matchmaker" from some musical I've never seen -- those were the songs both about straight people, and about long term pair bonding. Sure the songs on that mix about queer relationships depicted plenty of torture and anguish, but then I was 12 I wanted anguish, I wanted to experience everything. This mix was very much my older sisters teaching me, picking out these very specific cultural productions and showing me what was "cool". Marriage wasn't cool, at best it was empty and conformist, at worst it was a painful trap. At the same time I was listening to these bitter songs, I was also watching about three romantic comedies a week, the really fluffy kind. "Pretty Woman" was my favorite movie for a very long time. I have no idea how I incorporated these saccharine fairy tales with the bitterness of Ani DiFranco and Liz Phair, but I did. I wanted to fall in love just like that.

I'm not saying that I think that listening to this music turned me into the radical queer anti-ish marriage person that I am, or that the romantic comedies provided me with faith in humankind, but I did learn from them. The things I learned were not always true -- queer relationships can be abusive and stifling (I've been in them), and straight ones can be amazing, and either way, regardless of the sex of the individuals involved marriage is a mixed bag on a personal level. Politically, well, I promise to write about that this week. Maybe this is all about role models. I didn't have very many role models for stable long term happy pair bonding. My parents were divorced, and most of my mother's friends were either lesbians, with quasi-rotating lovers, or not also divorced. My father sort of remarried, but I didn't know enough about their relationship to feel like it was something I would want mine to mimic. So, it was up to pop culture. And really, bottom line is that you should never let pop culture teach your children about something -- not race or gender, not sex, and apparently, not marriage either.

We'll leave it there for now, theory will come soon, promise. Right now, I'm feeling very in love, and listening to the Brokeback Mountain soundtrack... not that that really gives me faith or anything.

The Good Life

(I've been on the computer for about half an hour, putzing about, and go and sit by TP and put my head in hir lap)
Me: Are you waiting for the computer?
TP: I sort of was, but now I'm reading "Pedagogy of the Oppressed", and hoping you will come cuddle.
Me: I thought I was cuddling.
TP: You are, but I was hoping to sustain it.
Me: Oh, okay. (I go and find a more comfortable way to curl up on the couch with TP)
TP: Where is your book?
Me: (Closing eyes, sipping coffee) You're reading, I'm doing the cuddling part.

When did life get so good?

Yeah, I'll get back to something real maybe Saturday.

June In Idyllic Ancestral Home

TP and I are at my mother's house in New England State, also known as Idyllic Ancestral Home. This means that we are eating fabulous fresh produce and drinking red wine. Tomorrow I'm going to visit my ancient Latin teacher (he's ancient, so is the language). Tonight we had dinner with friends L. and M. L was my creative writing teacher in high school and is a lovely woman who reminds me vaguely of Anne of Green Gables, M is her British husband who makes me smile and is tall and lanky and an incredible dork. She is still my most faithful of critics, and I love handing her over my rare little poems to read over and comment on. Someday I'll write some more fiction as she always encourages me to, but it's so time consuming.

This evening the menu was:
-mango salsa and chips
-red wine or rhubarb juice with seltzer
-broiled wild salmon
-broiled asparagus (the fattest I've ever seen in my whole life)
-salad with four kinds of lettuce (L brought it over in an industrial size trash bag) and arugula and beet greens
-creamy basil pesto pasta
-vanilla ice cream and fudge sauce

YUMMY.

I love being home this time of year, everything is so green and eager about life. Makes me feel the same way, and having TP here is special because everything looks new again as I look at it through hir eyes.

I'll get back to the serious stuff in a while. I'm too busy basking right now.

Marriage and Fear

So I've been watching a lot of this recently. Don't ask, just blame TP. But hey, at least there is a queer subplot that is just that -- a subplot and the queer characters have all the normal problems as everyone else (if magic addiction is normal). Anyway, in the sixth season there is an episode where Xander is going to marry Anja (former vengeance demon) except a demon comes back to stop the marriage and poses as Xander as an old man and shows him images of himself and Anja sixty years down the line and how miserable they will have made each other. It freaked me out a little bit and not the least because while I was watching it today I was also working on my wedding present for Sister, Esq. and her partner, and thinking about Sister, MD and her new love, and thinking about TP and me. (Have I mentioned that maybe I should just think a little less?)

I have a lot to say about the politics of marriage and long term monogamous pairbonding. I've been meaning to respond to Mamita's post for almost three weeks at the point, and not being able to find a way to crystallize everything I have to say about marriage into one piece.

A lot of what I have to say is about an idyllic vision of queer politics and poverty reduction, and really hard core theory that I love and can totallly have a dork-fest about. But there is also a scared little girl who really wants to believe that two people can know that they love eachother and decide to make that work, and lively mostly happily for a very long time. This is the same little girl who grew up knowing that that wasn't really a possibility and needing to choose between deciding that people who love eachother can make each other unhappy and believing that her parents had never loved each other, or that one or both of them is inherently unloveable. Of course, really I'm scared that all of these things are true and true about me, and I'm scared that I won't be able to figure it out, and that not figuring it out will be the big way I fail at my life.

I've been avoiding really thinking about marriage for a long time. I just theorize about it, but this fall, when Sister, Esq. and her partner tie the knot I'll have to actually deal with the viscera of it -- this is not a task that I'm looking forward to particularly. I'll write more about this soon, I really do want to lay out some of the theory stuff sometime soon. Hold me to account on this, while this space is totally bizarre in my life, part of the reason that's the case is because it's so very separate and that's a good thing.

Enough babbling for now.

Feminine-Minded -- Indigenous Feminisms

I'm reading a truly excellent novel right now, called The Polished Hoe, written by Austin Clarke (see link in sidebar). It is about postcolonialism, race, and sexual exploitation, some of my favorite themes, right? In it, the main narrator is talkign about her history with her sexual exploiter, Mr. Bellfeels, and touches on feminism, and its applicability to women of color, and women in the postcolonial world. I've heard this sentiment expressed in theory and personal statement before, but never this explicitly or elegantly.

" "That was done in times when a woman, with no education to speak of, didn't know the term 'feminine-suffrages'. We knew we were feminine-minded-women, though. That was driven into us, by instinct...

"There was no feminine-suffrages in my time, Constable. But we still knew what was happening to us, in this Island. As women, we didn't comport ourselves with the talk of English suffrages-women. But that voice was buried inside our hearts. And although we could not, dare not, shout-out a dirty word in Mr. Bellfeels face, or pick up a rock-stone and pelt it at Mr. Bellfeels, and break his arse... Pardon my French!...and watch his head burst-open like a watermelon, and that the blood spurt-out like the water from a water-coconut, all those thoughts and buried acts, and stifled wishes concealed in our craw, were always near the top, near to erupting. We couldn't act like this modern generation of dark-skin women I see walking-'bout this Village, in dresses of African print; and wearing their hair natural; uncomb. But the plot of defiant words and Africa was already hatching inside our heads. Yes. "-Austin Clarke, pg. 59-60, The Polished Hoe

There are very few things that I would say are truly indigenous to the human spirit. Heck, some of the time I don't think I believe in 'the human spirit'. I do think that a desire for liberation is indigenous to the human spirit, I think that the ways that people go after that goal vary drastically over time and space. But it's always there, bubbling up under and against oppression, pushing for resistance anywhere that hegemony gives it a space. I think one think that I like so much about this passage is that it conveys that bubbling, and the very visceral ways in which that manifests itself. I also really appreciate the fact that she identifies this "feminine-mindedness" with exploring and expressing their African heritage. This is not something that white-liberal-middle-class-feminism would take for granted.

The fact that this particular expression of resistance would not be takend for granted brings up another issue with truly believing in indigenous feminisms. It is total hogwash to say that everyone has an indigenous desire to have the right to vote, or access to birth control and higher education, or any of the other gains of the feminist movement in the First World. They might, or they might not. Really believing in indigenous feminsim and having faith in it means taking it on its own terms, and in its own manifestations every time.

Adventures of a Pretentious Tote Bag

1. This is the news and notes post, I seem to tend to write more than one post at a time, one more issues based, the other more newsy. I write and post the newsier one first, so it is further down on the page, I do this to clear my brain of some of the detritus and because I figure that people who just show up here, should read about what I'm actually thinking about and not my mental detritus.

2. My left hand has been cramping really badly over the past couple of days. I can't make a fist and several of the my fingers are in constant tingle mode. I helped Sister, M.D. paint her apartment this morning, and she diagnosed it as a simple strained muscle, but man, does it hurt.

3. I went out to the Human Resources Office at NewJob and they gave me many brochures and pamphlets that I may or may not read, and they gave me a v. pretentious tote bag in university colors with their logo on it, and I mean, really? Could we be more dorky? On the other hand, on the train ride home I realized how useful it was, despite it's dorkage. I'm lost.

4. Sister, Esq. and her partner are going to be in town tomorrow and are staying with me. I feel a little angsty about this because, well, my house is nuts over the next couple months, by July 20th the people who actually will be living here for the next twelve months will be the only people here, but until then it's a little revolving door. This would be fine, except most of it is imposed by my people. On the other hand, I get so little time with Sister, Esq. and her partner and adore them both so much, that I don't really want to sacrifice any of that.

Steady On

When you live in a town that doesn't have a grocery store, an orthodontist, a dentist, a middle school, or... ok, well, anything except a high cow to person ratio, you end up spending a lot of time in the car, add on to that that you are a **Child of Divorce** and you are basically glued to your bucket seat. This means two major addictions are likely to be inflicted upon you -- NPR and particular music selections. One of the lesser known properties of family cars is that they are vectors of inertia*. This means that once a tape is in the car the likelihood that it leaves the car within a decade is close to zero. Heck, sometimes it doesn't even come out of the tape-deck for a good six months.

The other thing about that music that gets left in the car is that it becomes integral to your emotional life. I have a lot of songs that I can attach to a particular moment or person or place, but because these songs never left the playlist they are touchstones to go back to, they are the able to untangle any emotional knot. I was a fairly introspective kid, and at the point where you're spending that much time just sitting and listening to music and thinking... it's inevitable that these songs become so important.

In my family, that music which never managed to escape the vortex was Paul Simon's "Graceland" and Shawn Colvin's "Steady On". They are both really good albums, though clearly you can't really compete with Graceland. Until I was about 12 I thought that Graceland was one piece of music, like a symphony -- then we got it on CD and inadvertently put it on shuffle. It scarred me for life. But I got the CD anyway so that it would make it past the technology change and be safely burned onto computer and loaded onto my ipod. "Steady On" fell by the wayside -- until today. As I was cleaning up TP's room in my attempt to pack after being there for two full weeks, I found a CD copy of "Steady On" and borrowed it, and I'm listening to it right now. Sure, I'm sitting in an airport terminal and typing on a laptop, but I could be driving through rural New England, watching the raindrops on the windows and unravelling the current knot in my heart.

* Yes, vectors of inertia is a technical term. No, I just made it up.

ESPN2

Ok, I know I don't strike you as a sports-watching cable type, and I'm not. But I am right now, because I'm in an airport and have no control over what I watch, and because the Mundial/World Cup is on and I like me some futbol.

But back to ESPN -- there is something very strange about our culture when we relegate both world class soccer and the **national domino championships** to the same backwater channel. Really, is there anyone out there who springs for the extra 50 million channels of cable so that they don't miss that Dominoes final?

Another Post on Pronouns (Plots, and Theory)

Today, I totally can't focus, this is the third post I've started, but I just have too much to say. I need to compartmentalize better, but it all blends together into a post that looks like this oldfriendshoutoutgendermarriagesexqueercommunity.... yeah, I can't make head nor tail of it either.

Anyway. I remember when TP first changed hir name, I put up on my dorm room door (yes, I am that young) that femalename=masculinename to remind myself that this person whose name I was just integrating into my dreams was changing names. In general, the switch wasn't hard, we'd only been dating for about two months, but it took a while to stick, and the time that it finally did was when I went to visit for a weekend and there were others using the new name and finally it felt right and natural to use the newname.

Being down here these two weeks has been similar. In HarborCity, most of the people know me as a queer woman who dates women. This preconceived notion they have of me often means that the feminine aspects of TP are privileged in our discussions, like deep down ze is really a woman. I, too, am guilty of this tipping of the scales for the sake of simplicity. Here, people just know TP and so there are many people who use male pronouns and refer to hir as a "very busy boi" and so on, and so the masculine side of the scales has been getting some more weight. Of course, there are also spaces down here, particularly feminist places on campus that use the "one drop" rule to make TP a woman, because only women are feminists, right? I don't know if TP thinks of these masculine markers as just as wrong as the feminine ones, but for me they are helpful.

It's not just about pronouns.

Let's think of the definition of pronoun for a minute:

1. (grammar) A word that takes the place of a noun or noun phrase in a sentence, but which cannot ordinarily be preceded by an article and rarely takes a qualifying adjective. English examples include I, you, he, she, it, we, they.

(from wiktionary.com)

Something that takes the place of a noun or noun phrase in a sentence. TP is illegible, there is not language that adequately takes the place of the TP noun phrase in any sentence or situation, this is probably true for most people. However, we need to use these markers as place holders for a much more complex reality. In some ways, once we think of it this way, all language functions like a pronoun, a mere marker for the noun phrase that is our world.

Let's think about a scatter plot for a minute, nothing more than a map of markers. Imagine all the markers that are used for TP, drawn onto a scatterplot. In trying to understand, love, and support the noun phrase that is TP, I've been trying to find a line of best fit. Until I came down here I only had one set of markers, I didn't have the set provided by grad school friends, some of whom are (gasp!) bio-men, or the set provided by the queer community friends. This is what we call a data selection problem.

The line of best fit is shifting, and it all feels very natural.

East Nowhere, RS

TP and I temporarily surrendered our sanity when we decided to drive all the way to HomeTown, DRS on Friday and then all the way back on Saturday. This amounted to about 24 hours of driving in 40 hours. See what I mean?

On the way back at about hour 20 of driving I got pulled over and got my first speeding ticket ever. It is expensive, it is money that I don't really have, but it was also legit. I was driving through a residential area too fast. It was one of those roads where the speed limit is 65 between towns and 30 in the towns, and the towns are the size of the head of a pin. Since my mother lives on one of those roads I can sympathize with the residents and their desire to have a quiet street. So sure, RS can have my precious dollars to pave their roads or build washed out bridges between East Nowhere and Central Nowhere. Fine.

But why, oh, why do cops have to be jerks? Are they trained especially in some kind of special asshole tactics? Of course they are, they are trained to have no respect for the people they are "protecting" to ensure "public safety". At the end of the whole experience, I was glad that all he could find to rag me on was my intelligence and powers of observation. But it seems to me that I should be able to be pulled over for a traffic infraction without driving away thanking the stars that the person that guy pulled over wasn't trans or of color. Because then, I think that all hell could have broken loose, or, rather, I have no reason to think it wouldn't. I hate that the thing that made it ok, was that I played into his idea of who the public was, of who he was out there to protect instead of criminalize. I was the nice, blonde, straight woman, who was "Real sorry, sir". I hate that he thanked me for my courtesy. Like I had options.

Is all of that really in the best interest of Public Safety? Not when my communities are part of the public.

Rural Arkansas

TP and I drove through rural Arkansas on the way from RedState to DarkRedState and back. Here's the thing about places you drive through. You know nothing about them. I can read their culture off of the billboards, but if all cultures were judged by their advertising we would all be in trouble. That said, it's all very telling.

Huge porn stores, coupled with huge churches and the occasional fireworks warehouse. What is that about? Is it the theory that every force must have an equal and opposing force? My favorite billboard was one with TONS of hearts on it that said "Love Video: All Ratings". Naw-uh, that is not about love.

The actual land that we covered in our drive was beautiful. Arkansas is the southern terminus of the mountains that are mine, up in NewEnglandState where I grew up. (Kudos to my father for pointing that out). So maybe the affinity that I felt for the rolling green hills, herds of cows. Mainly it was all just brighter and a little bit bigger. I'm still put off my guard by how huge the sky can be here. It makes me feel exposed like something could swoop out of the sky and get me. On the other hand, driving through East Nowhere, RedState I encountered a rural landscape that was very foreign, and I still found it deeply beautiful. This made me think that maybe, despite my cosmopolitan leanings, I really am a country girl. My basic affinities are to places where there is a lot of space, and small clusters of houses that cling to each other against some harsh environment, and of course, where the sunsets are stunning and the cows are plentiful.

Therapy, of a Kind

It was my first full day here in LiberalCity and TP and I were jumpy, on edge, not quite used to each other and jumping at each other constantly. We get like this after not having seen each other for a while... it takes us a while to get back into our rhythms.

TP had therapy in the afternoon, and after that we went to a bar with a couple friends and commenced the boozing process. Which is to say we ordered margaritas. After those were had, I was debating whether to have another drink -- but not just any other drink a "Mexican Martini", which is like a martini, but with tequila (yes, there is a God).

Me: Should I get another drink?
TP: Do you want one?
Me: Well, as much as this makes me sound like a budding alcoholic, I think it would take the edge off and calm me down a bit.
TP: Well, it's only fair you didn't have therapy

We kiss. I buy a martini.

The Paradox

The paradox is that when life is full enough to have stuff to say on one's blog one doesn't have the bloody time to do so, or is away from high-speed internet having adventures. It's nearly one in the morning, less than forty-eight hours since TP and I left LiberalBlueCity in RedState to go to DarkRedState to meet hir father.

There are stories, and musings.

But first a shower and one more thorough tic check and then lots of sleep.