I know it didn’t sound like it the other day. That day I could barely be civil. I talked in grunts. Details squeezed out like tough little tantrum-y tears, in between growls and barks.
Perhaps the bad mood is related to the following:
I’ve been tweeting the stuffing out of the #Iranelection story. Just a little over two weeks ago, I happened to be hanging out on a Friday night at the local watering-hole-for-dull-married-with-kids people called Twitter. Vote counts from Iran’s greatly anticipated elections were coming in, and Mousavi supporters were hopeful even as strange results made them puzzled and then upset. Tweets started flying back and forth (pdf), like “Ten million votes counted only two hours after the close of polls? WTF [or its equivalent, in Farsi]??? IT CAN’T BE AHMADINEJAD!!!”
I quickly found a group of Iranians who were tweeting in Farsi and English, and followed. In Iran, the discontent hardened into firm conviction among many that the election was rigged. Events began to gather speed even at Twitter’s already hummingbird-fast metabolism. I went to bed as something unknowable was forming, the angry mutters and background-wallah (noise cooked especially for the ambient sound particular to a location in a film) growing in volume.
The next morning I woke up and it was well into the evening of the next day in Iran. Crowds were gathering in the street. They got bigger. Louder. More insistent.
I tweeted like a crazy woman. I retweeted all the Persians I’d followed and then some. I did the equivalent (on Twitter) of grabbing people by the collar and demanding that they follow and retweet the people I was following and retweeting. The most astonishing reports were flying through the air: protesters were now yelling, hurling rocks at the government henchmen sent to shut them down.
Taking over streets with marches 5 miles long and 500,000 people strong. I tried to tweet as much as I could and still be a decent human being and parent to my child. Weirdly, I felt responsible to these people who I’d casually began following expecting a much less bloody and distressing response to their election results.
People yelling turned to people being hit, cut, beaten with clubs, hauled away, or their computers or other equipment trashed into disuse. Bloody, then outright gruesome still photos and videos began leaking out of Iran. I retweeted it as fast as I could. Often I’d pass on Farsi tweets, hoping that it wasn’t a grocery list being urgently circulated. Trusting that the urgency of the moment meant that it wasn’t.
Here’s one mournful video I’ll always remember:
Both protests and Twitter, the means of “publishing” that dissent, became big stories.
Soon the paranoia and government disinformation campaigns set in. Non-Iranians trying to help get out word of how basijis (paramilitary thugs) were shooting, beating, “disappearing,” and otherwise terrorizing civilians suddenly realized that the porosity of Twitter was precisely what allowed the Iranian government to use its sophisticated monitoring technology to track ISP sources of uploads of provocative pictures and videos documenting the violence. Persian usernames became scarce and ubiquitous; scarce because now we were retweeting them blind, ubiquitous because what’s ever really hidden on the web? Ubiquitous because someone decided that we’d ALL adopt Tehran as our cities of origin and local time as our own.
Also almost immediately, of course, an important mullah made a speech promising a partial recount and otherwise chastising the protesters the government cracked down upon, saying that they’d brought violence upon themselves.
For people who hadn’t been paying attention prior to that first key weekend, the paranoia was greater. I still remembered who was really from Tehran, who was a diasporic Iranian, who was a non-Iranian helpfully masquerading as an Iranian but really from the west. Rumors flew that such-an-such username was really an alias used by the Iranian government as part of a counter-intelligence spying/disinformation campaign.
My memory of who was who was all I had to offer by way of credibility as someone who passed along nearly everything I could get my hands on that originated from my Iranian twitterers. Was that information reliable? Well, given that the Iranian government cut SMS, phone, and satellite service, the opportunities for bloggers & twitterers to get their testimony out were scarce. The Iranian government was said to have used social media to track down users who seemed like “ringleaders” (or perhaps people the Ahmadinejad government had always wanted to silence) to throw them in prison. People were risking arrest, beatings, and being “disappeared” to upload videos and pictures and accounts of what happened. Erring on the side of too much rather than too little seemed to balance the need for any information to make it out of Iran, given the total lack of coverage in the early days of protest, otherwise known as #CNNFAIL.
I’m sure I passed along my fair share of rumors, rumors that originated on the ground in Iran from peoples’ families and friends reaching out to the Persian diaspora. I think some of that confusion is inevitable in a chaotic, fear-filled, fast-changing environment like Iran’s “Green Revolution.” I hope no one was harmed by anything I disseminated; at the same time, I think those in Iran were well aware of the major players in their government and could far more ably sift fact from fiction than I could.
Appallingly, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayotollah Khamanei, came out with a speech affirming the results of the election and certifying Ahmadinejad as the “rightfully” elected president of Iran. Was there ever really another possible outcome to the “recount”? Worse yet, he blamed Mousavi for the protests, and said any violence or deaths that occurred from Basijis (paramilitary forces) keeping the peace were the fault of Mousavi.
It’s all too depresingly familiar for those more accustomed to watching the hopeful uprising of a galvanized people demanding basic human rights, only to be brutally smacked down. I hadn’t ever felt so directly and immediately invested in such an uprising before. (One of the Iranian students I follow has braces, for chrissake.)
It’s hard to bear the truth that torture, endless imprisonment, or outright executions may be happening to dissenters now under cover of a government-authorized news blackout. Some accounts continue to trickle out from Iran, but it’s hard to know where Mousavi and his supporters will steer the reform movement next. Mousavi is perennially rumored to be in prison already or at the very least, threatened by house arrest. His main deputies have no doubt been intimidated into silence or jailed. While there’s much disagreement among Islamic clerics in Iran, many feel the largest and most obvious cracks in the legitimacy of the theocracy are already glaringly apparent to many.
I and many others watch with concern where this fledgling movement will go next. We hoped for Prague, but perhaps got Tiananmen. We can’t be sure yet. Looking at the situation in America, we had Gore v. Bush in ‘00, more election mishegoss in ‘04, and only in ‘08 with Obama’s election did we approach a free and fair election. Until recently, certification of Senator Al Franken as rightfully elected official from Minnesota was still under challenge by that nuisance sore-loser Norm Coleman.
People outside Iran helped as best as they could. Those efforts are still continuing, although my impression is that much has gone deep underground and gotten extremely technical (the cyberwarfare aspect of anonymous posting, DDOS strikes and defenses against governmental attacks of same). I hope, along with many others, that the broad-based protests originating in Iran among many strata of society have permanently undermined the theocratic authority of the current Supreme Leader Khamanei and Ahmadinejad, his secular proxy.
I’ve been away. Apologies, few-and-far-between blog readers.
Hiro Protagonist “graduated” from preschool, will officially be a kindergartner in the fall.
I’ve been writing elsewhere.
I’ve been tweeting elsewhere. (For real, my soul feels worn thin as a shard of bone–for two weeks straight I’ve tried to get word out about reformers’ protests in Iran over their strong feeling that their latest election was a sham. I’m not sure where this movement is going, or how much more I can contribute to it.)
I dislike much “women’s trade fiction.” Mary Higgins Clark? Why??
I’m thirsty for good news. I hope to have some soon.
I’d most like to curl up into a ball and hibernate from this non-stop feeling of exhaustion all the time. And yet I can’t. I need to throw myself out into the world over and over again.
So here I am. Discombobulated and scattered and dispirited. Nerve endings frayed. Restless and wretched.
I wish it were different.
I wish my son would like watching movies in the theatre. He says they’re too loud and overwhelming. He has a point. The other day I saw DRAG ME TO HELL (it wasn’t half as bad as I was tempted to crack that title equals the experience of going). I was tempted to half-plug my ears the whole time.
I’ve killed one strawberry and one tomato plant and many sugar snap pea seedings establishing my garden.
But we have 5 tomatoes on the vine, and many more passing from flower to fruit.
I’m tired. Tomorrow will be another day.
There’s been a bit of an uproar lately about “mommyblogging” as a business. Some women who’ve been at this longer than me, and have a perspective on women blogging that I trust have said the following:
Queen of Spain asked: what about community? A bright line between editorial versus advertising?
CityMama talks about the FTC’s push to regulate “mommyblogging” as commercial speech.
Kim Moldofsky looked at marketing to women through the lens of the recently released “Nielsen Power Mom Top 50″ list.
At Authenticities, Blagica Bottigliero noted that the term “mommyblogger” seems to be used so much by marketers, it’s suffering from meaning fatigue. (And from that I take it to mean that there’s a lot of variety in the PR/marketing people who are out there as well–many who are interested in promoting socially redeeming products and services and doing their part to help create crucial demand for them.)
UPDATED 5/19/09 TO ADD: BusinessWeek reported on the FTC’s closer scrutiny of review bloggers who are either paid or allowed to keep the product itself. It looks as if there’ll be changes in tax rules governing freebies as well. (h/t QueenofSpain)
NO ONE IS SAYING IT’S WRONG to accept, talk about, be paid for, or blog about things received for review purposes. Least of all me. But what everyone is urging is transparency, and maybe mindfulness, about what it is you’re doing.
So with that in mind, I thought I’d navel-gaze about my own situation. I’ll try to be matter-of-fact and descriptive, in an effort to keep the self-righteousness to a minimum.
I’ve been ad-free ever since starting this blog in February, 2003. That’s partly because I had no thought of starting this blog to make it profitable, not to mention making it public. Who wants to read a zillion and one rantings about how much I hate George W. Bush, with a few cat and baby stories thrown in? (The laugh’s on me, because that site is called DailyKos and it’s both a netroots heavyweight and quite prosperous. Of course they do more than just rant, they’re quite effective in liberal-progressive politics at all levels.)
I unlocked my blog in 2007, and as I mentioned in the comments to Queen of Spain, I mostly regret not going public sooner because then I could’ve tapped into the progressive political/feminist blogosphere sooner.
I briefly dallied with making the blog over and adding an affiliate program since I often review books and movies that I like (or sometimes dislike). But I dropped that idea in favor of more remunerative freelance work. I may yet revive the idea.
After mulling just WHO marketers target when they try to woo “mommybloggers,” I’ve finally decided I must belong to a finicky subset called “Free Range Mamas.” Rather than worry about why WalMart isn’t courting *me*, I think ultimately the bigger issue is this: I don’t live in a way that consumes a lot of the things mainstream moms are supposed to need or buy. And this is on purpose.
- Huggies or Pampers would never sponsor my blog, because I practiced “[disposable] diaper-free” Elimination Communication with my baby. What diapers I did use were cloth from our local service.
- About 75% of the time, I made and froze my own baby food when my son was young. So no Earth’s Best sponsorship, even though I liked their products.
- For the first 20 months of my son’s life, he wore probably 80% hand-me-downs which I was lucky enough to get passed to me in the big karmic circle of used baby clothes. (I was thrilled and considered myself lucky to have them.) Therefore, no Gymboree sponsorship, even though I like their kids’ clothes and have purchased many outfits from them since for my son (though I did make fun of their mama and baby programs because they seemed weirdly chipper and cult-like to me, plus I can’t sing worth a damn).
- Furniture-wise, I bought a crib and a rocking chair for my infant to sleep in and be rocked to sleep in, and instead used the bassinet to help in co-sleeping and the birthing ball in place of rocking. The crib sat empty and the chair was a place to pile clean laundry. (It turned out my son was most lulled to sleep by vertical bouncy motion as opposed to lateral rocking motion–go figure.) So much for the big baby mega-stores like Babies R Us, Pottery Barn Kids, or Buy Buy Baby sponsoring me.
- I did splurge on all sorts of noisy and silly toys. And I did scour books and recommendations on toys pretty carefully. But even then I bought lots of wooden toys and specialty education toys from obscure mom and pop websites. (I wish I’d bought more hand-made Etsy toys, but oh, well.)
When I think about what mommybloggers I read as an inexperienced mother to a newborn, what mommyblog websites I visited, I’d have to say Dooce, Mothering.com, Dr. Greene, and the odd BabyCenter or other “mainstream” parenting website with handy developmental charts.
I enjoyed reading Dooce–this was after her post-partum depression breakdown, when she wrote lengthy thousands-of-word-long stories, but before she really blew up big and put ads up on her site. But as read, I also realized that I disagreed with a lot of her attitudes and decisions about parenting. I realized reading her site was like training wheels for my own mothering. Once I didn’t need that reassurance any more, I got less and less pleasure from visiting. Women in my mom’s group and other concerns filled the gap. I’m not saying this is the case for everyone, just describing who, as a mom, has had influence on me as a brand new parent. I’m glad for the much-needed laughs and irreverence I did get from reading Dooce and other, A-list bloggers, but for whatever reason, I don’t seem to read them as much any more.
So, who do I turn to when I want to buy something for my kid? Google, and Consumer Reports. A few trusted moms who were friends first before I ever read their blogs with any frequency. And my own judgment.
Who doesn’t influence me now: Dooce, the 11 Moms of WalMart (I’ve been in a WalMart *once* in my life, and I think all I bought was bananas), and any number of popular, funny, delightful, talented “mommybloggers” who write about products they’ve been given. I enjoy their writing and what they have to say, but many times I lack the inclination to buy what they’re describing.
See, thing is, my theory is that as you get more comfortable in your skin as a mom, and as your kid becomes more idiosyncratically themselves as they get older, the less likely there’ll be a one-size fits all solution. Giving a frozen washcloth to a teething baby to suck on will work on 95% of teething babies out there, barring any unusual circumstances. But finding toys for a kid who likes to take apart your old broken vcr and then make a model car out of it (for example), requires creativity and resourcefulness. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure the easiest way to find such a toy is to send out a big holla to the interwebz and dozens of good ideas will come at you from people who have idiosyncratic children in just the ways yours are. But it probably won’t be from Kits R Us.
So is the upshot that I’m so special and I like the sound of my voice? (No, yes–this IS a personal blog…kidding, and overall, no.) It’s hard to keep from sounding self-righteous any time you explain what you do and why. But bear with me: if there are 26 million women blogging about their lives and families, not all of them think the same.
Knowing the way the world is, I know there are other Free Range Mamas like me. But do we constitute a profitable market, we “live-lightly-on-the-earth-be-peaceful” people? We big city and suburban greenies tentatively dipping our toes into our vegetable gardens, and wondering if it’s against city ordinances to have a goat keep your grass trimmed?
What if living in environmentally sustainable ways is completely counter to capitalism? What supply chain am I keeping afloat if I grow my own vegetables? What hardware store is selling one less lawn mower if a goat cuts my grass instead of a mower? (On the other hand, my need for a veterinarian rises in proportion to owning a goat.)
Point is, my needs are much more modest if I forego the convenience and expense of fast-food, mega-chain stores and their products. At this point, I pretty much have it down to Lowe’s, Vons, Whole Foods, JC Penney, and Target. And even then that seems like a lot.
I don’t even watch tv, or subscribe to cable. (I know, how Amish of me!)
If there’s something on tv I want to see, I usually wait for the clip to show up on YouTube. If there’s a movie my kid wants to see, we buy the dvd or borrow it from the library. (Yes, I’m purposely teaching him that commercials are an annoyance. Because even Gen Xers whose heads are filled with old tv commercials and jingles–like myself–skip through them when they TiVo the programs they want to watch.)
Well, what the hell DO I buy? Books, music, movies, food, clothes, and things that make my house more comfortable and green. Fun experiences and things to do them with, like bikes, scooters, skis.
Still, those aren’t the big ticket items with built-in planned obsolescence (like cars or new appliances or the street-grade crack that’s the near endless need for disposable diapers) that would make a company go out of its way to court me.
Take away the corporations that do all the ad-buying, and who’s left?
Much of the above has led me to conclude that the part of “mommyblogging” that’s cheek by jowl with giant-ultra-mega-hyper corporations works best when that persona is politically center-right. (Did I say person? No, I said persona. Blogging persona.)
And those of us who are center-left, who’d really rather not blog with any connection to WalMart, for example, won’t be finding any corporate sponsors soon. (That’s why you won’t see me crying that I don’t get free trips to Disney World–I wrote a whole as-yet-to-be-published novel making fun of Disney World, for pete’s sake. My spouse worked at Disney and had SILVER PASSES and I still made fun of Disney. I think it’s both a delightful and ridiculous place.)
Because there’s something about us Free Range Mamas that’s like herding cats. Cats with long tails.
Theoretically the long tail was going to set us creative types free and create the next worker’s paradise. So far? It hasn’t. But the interwebz that are guided by the ethos “information wants to be free” have also been darn busy corroding existing corporate business models. (I’m waiting for Hulu to explode free tv as we know it into smithereens.)
What’s ironic is that the anarchic potential of the web–to flatten hierarchy, make instantly accessible new groups of people who you’d otherwise never bump up against IRL–is really shaping up to be an arena that reproduces the same power relations that are at play offline. Who are self-anointed social media gurus at big tech conferences? Mostly white men. Who are mostly corporate-anointed “mommyblogging” social media mavens, with very few exceptions? Mostly white women.
Do I influence these people? I doubt it. Am I upset that I don’t influence them? No, why would I be?
But by the same token, why would it be assumed that a “mommyblogger” talking about a product or service would automatically influence me just because I too have blogged about my family life?
I’m just as likely to buy something a friend has told me about, as I am to hear about it discussed by real people (not sock pupperts) in a forum, as I am to have googled around to see what I can glean about it myself. So maybe that’s something for PR/marketing people to think about: is “mommyblogger” too big an umbrella term? Are there niches within that?
Because I’m much more a Free Range Mama Lifeblogger/Political Blogger than a “mommyblogger” as WalMart or even Nickelodeon would understand it. I’m fickle. Picky about who I listen to. And not automatically inclined to believe “bigger=better.” If I ever was to be sponsored by a big corporation like Clorox, for example, I’d want to know when they plan to stop offering their bleach cleaners altogether. I’d be more than happy to praise their ecological spray cleaners to the skies, but I wouldn’t consider the fact that they sponsor me or give me free products a down payment on my critical silence. (They give me nothing and have never heard of me aside from me pestering them lightly for bee’s waxed non-bleached wax paper, I assure you. This is purely an example.) See what I mean about Free Range Mamas being a more prickly, difficult bunch? That center-left orientation is probably too pesky for a corporation to want to tangle with. What corporation wants a spokesperson all up in their grill when they can find someone who’ll be much more aligned with them to begin with?
And yet. Most moms I know aren’t Stepford Women. They’re a snarky, lively, irreverent bunch. They can smell fakery and corporate shill from a mile away. Many of them, like me, who dearly want a greener world for the next generation, wouldn’t hesitate to ask WHY? HOW? WHY NOT? Why isn’t this made in a way that lessens its carbon footprint? How did this get here, from an unregulated factory in China or the Marianas Islands, or is it at least made in the U.S. where product safety standards are supposed to matter and be enforceable?
Understand this: you mess with a woman’s kids by misrepresenting your product’s safety, and you can expect hell to rain down on your head.
And I think we’ll start seeing more of this scenario: blogging mom X connected to company Y is happy to continue the relationship until a random horrible scandal befalls company Y. Then, instead of enjoying the perks, blogging mom X will be tarred with the same negative publicity as company Y.
Because when a person becomes associated with a company, the company enjoys the “just folks” authenticity and reputation of the blogger, but the blogger also gets tied to the brand of the company for better or worse.
Though I tend to veer away from corporations and have relatively modest consumption habits, we’re aren’t this way, as some might believe, because we lack money or solely because of the bad economy. We’re upwardly-striving, aspiring upper-middle class people like many others of our education and generation. I like pretty shoes, fancy dinners, and nice vacations. Occasionally I enjoy those things. But I can’t say I organize my life around their acquisition.
We’re this way–I am this kind of Free Range Mama–because I’m a citizen first, consumer second; because I was raised by frugal immigrant parents and I can’t (nor do I want to) shake that; because I’m trying to live in truly more sustainable ways so my kid and other kids inherit a habitable world; because the primeval quality of child-rearing keeps us honest in a time-shifted, value-shifted world; because I had a good education and trust my ability to filter the world; because I believe that authority comes from integrity and authenticity, and that people around me can have as much authority as messages that come from “on high.”
Thing is, I’ve never viewed the women’s blogosphere as uniform. And among we blogging women who are mothers, there’s a million and one ways to do it. What I find sad is the possibility that the differences among us stem not from the divinity of our own real experiences, grounded in the truly unique tragedies and moving triumphs of our lives, but variations in quirk and vocal tics while we all tell the same “Weird Places I Have [Huggies logo TM] Diapered My Baby” stories. Is that comforting, or stultifying? I’m not sure, and the balance changes from moment to moment.
I think about being a Free Range Mama at a moment when sustainability is on everyone’s lips. Sure, for a brief moment in the late ’90s Safeway offered canvas bags at the grocery store. Then, a bunch of things happened and we all had national amnesia and forgot, until 2006 or so and Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth woke people up again. And now we’re trying to remember to bring our cloth or mesh shopping bags again, because even little things matter and we’re doing what we can.
Will I forget about our compost heap in the back yard? Life gets busy, people change, get sloppy, busy, or forgetful. Our attention spans are short. We’re human and only do things when we feel urgently pressed to. But, right now our son thinks it’s natural that fruit and vegetable scraps get dumped out there. He automatically asks if there’s recycling. He sees us debating whether, when, and how to get solar panels to reduce the cost of our electricity bill. He sees solar panels powering parts of the Mars Rover. I want him growing up to believe a different and better world is not only possible, but a completely mundane expectation. It’s effortful for us, his parents, to learn new habits and do things differently after decades of living unsustainably. But one of the most powerful motivators is love; if we raise him to expect that doing things the green way is how it’s supposed to be, won’t he go on to fulfill that expectation? The endpoint of our evolution should be his starting point for growth. That’s how progress happens. And maybe this time that’s why we’ll keep composting and trying to figure out how to localize our produce and doing what we can to make change a permanent part of our lives. Maybe this time the cloth bags will stick.
Let me know if you’re a Free Range Mama (or guy) too. If not, no harm, no foul. Ten years ago, I never thought I’d have a compost pile either, or grow my own sugar snap peas. Ten years ago, I didn’t have a son and I didn’t blog either.
[Okay, I'm taking cover because this being the Interwebz, someone will inevitably take umbrage with what I've written and assume that the way I live my life is how I think you should be living yours. Um, actually, no...I'm too busy doing things the long, hard way (made my child homemade baby food! 
who does that? crazy!) to want to manage someone else's life too. I think I've simply arrived at some sort of peace about why I don't have zillions of corporate sponsors. I'm the wrong match for most of them.]
Popular and funny MetroDad, a blogger whose work I usually enjoy, wrote a post some time ago called “Use Your Words: How We’re Raising a Nation of Pussies!”–and I respectfully disagree. After reading his post, I thought, hmm, definitely a big city dad’s point of view on what’s best for his DAUGHTER. But I’m here to give a feminist woman’s response to what’s best for my SON. And I don’t think you can use the same guidelines for boys and girls. Most girls need to be encouraged to be more physical in asserting themselves, as their socialization tends to inhibit them; most boys could probably use some curbing of their socialization to use physical means to solve their problems, and more encouragement of verbal and connected ways of resolving conflict.
Here’s a post I wrote on LA Moms Blog that answers MetroDad in part. (The rest I’ll say later on in this post.) In it I talk about my love for gory kung fu movies in which women as well as men kick ass, and how I struggle with this apparent contradiction as a peace-loving feminist raising her Asian American son. To excerpt myself:
[My parents] shrugged at murder mystery books…and made exceptions for a certain kind of violence onscreen, and you know why? Because they thought it was more important that I retain my Chinese language ability, and the way we did that was to go to subtitled kung fu movies. I listened in Mandarin Chinese and followed the hilariously misspelled English subtitles. The year my dad was on sabbatical at a university on Long Island, we drove in every weekend to the theatre in New York’s Chinatown right next to an elevated portion of train track. We’d bring takeout, and eat it during a double feature. Kids would be running around, grandmas getting up at the most inconvenient times in the middle of a plot point to visit the ladies room, people would talk occasionally, and every ten minutes a train would rattle the whole theatre. The theatre owners turned up the volume, all the better so we could appreciate the grunts, screams, and groans as evil Tang dynasty villains who were inevitably the minions of the emperor fought in exhausting combat with the humble villagers who were avenging the wrongs committed against their peasant families. This wasn’t the arty, prettified Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon version of kung fu movies Ang Lee made. These were down and dirty Run Run Shaw old school epics. Grindhouse flicks fanboy Quentin Tarantino would approve of. (He WISHES he lived my childhood.)
I still recall how, at ten years old, I’d watch the cartoonishly graphic eye-gougings, impalings, garroting, limb-chopping (complete with giant shooting geyser of red blood!), blood-vomiting from kidney-punching, and brutally long kung fu action set pieces that went on for ten minutes at a time. Anything could become a weapon: a braid of a woman’s hair, a pitchfork, a walking stick, a flute that shoots deadly hairpins/blowdarts. It wasn’t only men who fought, it was women so fierce they beat up, and were beaten by, men. The point of all this violence, I guess, was to show how important it was to fight unto death 1) people who would oppress you, 2) people who messed with your family. And women were equally expected to fight in the resistance against the corrupt emperor and avenge their families.
My favorites were the Shaolin monks who were supposed to be Buddhist vegetarians but snuck meat, were supposed to be teetotalers but got drunk when the head monk wasn’t looking, and “only” fought when attacked (but that seemed to be quite often). Those ripped (and “celibate”) Shaolin monks…one of whom broke out of kung fu movies and became known as Jet Li. But I digress.
The point is that the lofty kung fu ethos–fight only in defense, the smartest one is the one who anticipates the fight and deflects it, that brawling is for losers and losers need to be thumped–clashes hard against the need to tell a great visual story. One where the dazzling mastery of martial artists, truly an amazing sight, can be shown off. And also that the last word is for movies: peaceful monks are also the ones who can get most medieval on your ass; yet, even so, they have to keep proving the point to the next wave of bad guys who come over the hill. Contradictions abound: for all their warring, the Chinese haven’t really ever colonized anybody. (Recently. Um.)
Now, given that this is part of my heritage, I would like to pass on my appreciation of Bruce Lee, and kung fu movies in all their athletic vigor, to my son. But maybe when he’s older. When he can tell the difference between fantasy and reality. When he won’t try to “fly” with his kung fu powers from the ground to the tiled roof of a house, like the actors do with the aid of wire work. When he understands that “use your words” aren’t the last resort of a wuss, but the first defense of a Chris Rock (who seems to be doing all right with a tongue like a stiletto), or a Jon Stewart (who also seems to be doing all right with a brain that works and a sense of humor), or even the shrewd, silver-tongued Barack Obama (who you could say is a righteous dude and no pushover as well). Obama, who, for his own reasons, won’t be baited into losing his dignity and will still prevail.
Because believe it or not, after all that amped-up, violent, sometimes gruesome, way-of-the-fist moviewatching, I turned out a pacifist. I wouldn’t want my son or anyone else’s child to go to a real war, and be cannon fodder. I just don’t trust any politician that much. And the last thing I’d want my son to believe is that fighting is how you solve problems. The way of the fist gets trumped by the way of the gun; but the way of the tongue trumps them all, from what I can see.
I’m hoping there are new models of masculinity, and strength. I look around at the battles being fought everywhere, over things I can hardly keep track of any more, and I think, it doesn’t seem to be working very well. There’s got to be a better way than an eye for an eye. That way lies ethnic infighting, the Hatfields and the McCoys, and vendettas so ancient their origins are lost in the mists of time.
So it looks like my son will be demonstrating crane, viper, mantis, tiger, dragon, and monkey for his class [to introduce something he knows and appreciates about being Asian American]. And talking about pandas. Cuddly pandas that can kick butt, when they need to. But only if all other ways of being a peaceful person have failed.
So, what’s my problem with MetroDad’s views in what I call the School of Ultimate Whupass philosophy? I don’t, for the record, have a problem with raising resilient, tough, self-contained, emotionally self-sufficient kids. It’s what I hope I’m doing, even as I encourage my son to feel his feelings (and not stuff them–here’s what can happen when Asian men stuff their feelings).
But here are my misgivings about the School of Ultimate Whupass:
- what kind of masculinity are you teaching your son if you say that fighting is a reasonable way to solve problems? Shoving back at the sandbox is one thing. Getting into fights as an adult is another.
- if you don’t allow siblings to fight each other ’til one emerges the victor to solve problems, why is it okay to hit other people you’re not related to?
- can you really make your kid responsible for fighting back when most schools have a zero-tolerance policy for fighting in school, with both kids usually being given suspension? The problem gets thrown back to you whether you planned to deal with it or not. It’s not so easy to say, “Kid, you have to deal with the consequences life just dealt you.” It’s your problem too as a parent. The principal will make it your problem. And expect YOU to come up with a solution.
- can you really assume your kid didn’t start it first?
- even if your kid didn’t start it first, do you really get the last word by throwing the last punch in a world that’s so fucked up, it doesn’t even see the legitimacy in why you fought back?
Take this example of the last point, some of which is redeeming (the actions of the kid’s anti-racist friends), and some of which is really appalling (the comments to the article, saying, “where’s the racism?”): when a racist schoolmate use racial epithets to taunt, then hit an Asian kid, the Asian kid, a black belt in martial arts, defended himself and broke the racist kid’s nose. The Asian kid was suspended. He may face expulsion and has criminal charges filed against him, but the kid who made racial taunts was only suspended.
HB was so disturbed, he emailed the newspaper article to me. We’ve been talking about it a lot, and I’m sure as HiroP gets older, it’ll be something always lurking in the back of our minds.
There’s a lot going in the article. First of all, the racist kid hit first and drew blood. But when the Asian kid defended himself (part of me says approvingly, You broke his nose, goooooooood), he got the book thrown at him. He might face expulsion, and was charged with assault. The racist kid? He was suspended for starting the fight in front of lots of other kids who were witnesses, but aside from that–nothing.
Now we all know there’s prejudice. I’m female and yet I’ve heard my share of “chink” and what-have-you over time. But there’s one-on-one racism and then there’s the racism institutionalized throughout a community.
Having grown up in a tiny northern town similar to Keswick, ONT (in fact, just across Lake Ontario in upstate New York), I know all about small town racism. First of all, everyone’s related to everyone else. The principal is probably the racist kid’s second cousin’s aunt by marriage. If not the principal, then a police officer on the scene is the nephew of the racist kid’s mother’s grandmother. Or something like that. Small towns don’t absorb outsiders easily. They’re often insular and cliquish. An incident like this will cause everyone to circle the wagons and make bullshit excuses, “The racist kid’s not a bad kid, boys will be boys…” And the Asian kid and his family have only been living in Keswick since 2004.
So here we have an example of a kid who was provoked into fighting, threw the last punch, and now is having the brunt of legal and administrative punishment bear down on him instead of the boy who shit-started.
Everyone wants to believe the movie myth that you can crush your attacker with one definitive fight. It’s seductive fantasy. For boys, “you crush that bully for once and for all, and are crowned new king of the playground” is the equivalent of girls’ “you win the prince’s affections and live happily ever after.” I think the incident described above proves that myth is more KARATE KID than truth. Real life is seldom so neat. In fact, real life continues on in messy, unresolved, sometimes unsatisfactory ways past a clean narrative conclusion. There aren’t convenient endings to life where the credits scroll up and we leave that episode tied up in a boy scout knot.
What happened in this instance is that the community closed ranks against the outsider: the Asian kid and his family.
From the May 2, 2009 Toronto Globe and Mail, which was c&p here:
For the moment, both students are suspended from Keswick High School, but the Asian student’s parents have been told he could be expelled and forced to find a new school.
They are shocked and saddened by the ordeal.
The day after the fight, an older cousin of their son’s antagonist approached him in the school cafeteria and uttered a similar slur, compounding their sense of despair.
“He said, ‘You punched my cousin you Chinese ****,’ ” the 15-year-old said. That student was overheard by a teacher and suspended.
His father explains that the easiest course would be to move somewhere else and get a fresh start for his son. But he can’t do it.
“I don’t want to run away. If another Asian kid comes to this school, what happens to him? Will he run into problems? Will they think they can just kick him out? I don’t want to set that example,” he said.
“Personally, for my kid, I should move. But as a Canadian I cannot move.”
Some might say, that’s a small podunk town in rural Canada. No one would do that in big cities in New York or California, where people are more cosmopolitan. I say maybe, maybe not. What California has going for it is real and sizeable Asian Pacific American communities. But to imagine that racists who pick fights with Asians have disappeared is naive and unrealistic. And to believe that every single principal in every school is enlightened and a passionate advocate for anti-racism is also unrealistic.
Now what doesn’t help the Asian kid, and is different from how HB and I would handle things, is the immigrant parents’ approach to things. Sweeping generalization: immigrants tend to accept the authority of principals, the police, the school board, and other authority figures. (I think of my parents. They had unhelpful advice for me such as, “Ignore them,” or even less helpful, “You come from a culture that’s 5,000 years old and America is barely 300 years old…”)
To give these particular immigrant parents credit, the mom pushed for more anti-racist curriculum at the school. She was rebuffed. In small, otherwise homogeneous towns, immigrant Asians may be isolated from other Asians, and have no community other than whites sympathetic to their plight. Perhaps that’s also why my parents took the “cultural superiority” approach that they did–they didn’t have many other cards to play and certainly no community to speak of to turn to. And maybe that explains the predicament these Asian Canadian parents find themselves in.
Clearly the 400 kids at the school stood up for their friend the Asian kid. But apparently, none of the adults who matter in that town have stood up for what’s right/the Asian kid.
If what happened to this kid happened to HiroP, HB and I would scream bloody murder. We would be on the phone SO FAST to the school board, the superintendent, the local media, the other kids’ parents, our mayor, congressman, the police chief, the city attorney, a damn good lawyer–whoever it took for our kid to get a fair shake. (I doubt it would happen for a number of reasons, mostly because we chose our community very carefully for its reputation for diversity, progressivism, and tolerance, etc.) As American Born Chinese (ABCs) we know how to work the system. We know that volunteering at the school in ways big and small is a way to make sure our kid’s learning what he needs to and not being hassled. We’d feel obliged to take a high profile stand and fight on behalf of our son, instead of turning inward. We’d find allies. We’d call the racist kid’s parents and say, “What the fuck?” We’d raise holy hell. Because we understand how the system works. We understand what the levers of power are and will use them. Most importantly, we improved the chances that nothing like that would ever happen to our son by living in a metropolitan area with a large Asian American community.
Most importantly, we’re trying to raise a son who’s deft at navigating all these minefields involving masculinity. We want him to develop a strong core sense of confidence in himself, the self-knowledge to know what he’s capable of, the ability to make allies, and the perspective to understand that the actions of a racist person trying to victimize him do not define him.
But we DON’T want him to overcompensate for some perceived lack of “masculinity” by growing a huge chip on his shoulder that can only be addressed by proving himself again and again, sadly, ON OTHER PEOPLE’S TERMS.
And we’re fully cognizant that you can be the strongest, most resilient person in the world, and someone can come along and use racism to shit all over you. That’s the point–racism is a blunt force tactic to take away your humanity and dignity regardless of what you did, said, or how you live.
The family of the Asian boy in Canada has chosen to be quietly defiant. From my view, the lack of support from adults in that community has caused them to internalize the insult that was added to the original injury. And I’m not sure that’s helping the boy overturn the assault charges or see that the racist kid gets his due.
Here’s what I take away from all of this:
- sometimes fighting back physically/in an uncontrolled way is a sucker’s game. (Again, I cite Obama. Weren’t Republicans hoping to tease and provoke Mr. Cool into blowing his top and being “the crazy/scary black man run amok” that they wish he was? Luckily, Obama was too smart for that.)
- use your judgment. Get a little Sun Tzu on your adversary’s ass. In the case of the Asian Canadian boy, I think he was right to hit back and good for him that he was a black belt. But individual retribution falls apart when there’s a disconnect between the parent’s actions on behalf of their son, and the community’s actions.
- I disagree with mainstream parenting that posits “reality” and “practicality” as center-right constructs and Darwinism as a given. Might makes right is the ethos of a culture IF YOU LET IT BE the ethos of a culture. The racist kid’s parents need to seriously check what they’re teaching their kid about people, and get with the anti-racist program. They need to be compelled to do it. The school needs to be compelled to do it.
- words are powerful. Use them.
- humor is powerful. Use it.
So MetroDad, wondering if you’re altering your position a little? I think your post was entertaining and fun, but maybe not so suited to the details of actually raising peace-loving sons in a culture that pushes for boys to front a machismo that does them, and others, little to no good. This Asian Canadian kid lived by his martial arts-dad’s teachings to use force only in self-defense, because he’s a peaceful person. His punch was effective in the short run, but now he needs some help “using his words.”
I know you’re a smart, funny Asian American man who’s made a good living by working harder and smarter. Deep in your childhood, you may have some stories about growing up an Asian American boy in a time and a part of the country that may not have had a place for that. (HB, who’s also Asian American, certainly has his battle scars from growing up in the midwest.) I’m guessing you use your words to get ahead.
That’s why it was so counter-intuitive to hear you dismiss teaching kids to “use your words.” See, sometimes when we teach our kids, we reinforce the lesson for ourselves as well. That young man needs to find his tongue; helping his parents find theirs could help him too.
In the end I’m guessing we both want the same thing: to grow the next generation of wonderful Asian American boys into successful, confident, feminist men. Tossing aside strong ways of asserting yourself, like “using your words,” doesn’t help.
With that, I’d like to reach out and propose a blog action in support of that poor Asian kid in Keswick, ONT. Why isn’t there anti-racism training added to the curriculm? Will he have to face a judge and have an undeserved criminal blot on his record? Let’s be that kid’s missing Asian North American community. Let’s shine a spotlight on the people in that town, and force them to confront the unfairness of their approach. Let’s blog, call it out, whatever makes the most sense.
York School District Race Relations Advisory Meeting, May 14, 2009
York Region District School Board
The Education Centre – Aurora
60 Wellington Street West, Box 40
Aurora, ON
L4G 3H2
feedback@yrdsb.edu.on.ca
| Tel: | (905)727-3141 | (Aurora/King) |
| (905)895-7216 | (Newmarket/East Gwillimbury) | |
| (905)722-3201 | (Georgina) | |
| (416)969-8131 | (Toronto/Markham/Richmond Hill/Vaughan/Whitchurch-Stouffville) | |
| Fax: | (905)727-1931 |
Let’s use our words–to make sure there’s sunlight on this case, and to make sure justice is done.
In which all the narrative memes of my life converge in one conversation, and I’m told by my huz that I’m exactly like BSG President Laura Roslin. Was I just insulted?
Hiro Protagonist goes to school with a little girl who started out, charmingly, as strong-willed, bossy, and sweetly impertinent. Over the course of three years, she’s become something of a Mean Girl. A little girl who makes other little girls miserable and screams at them and holds them hostage by threatening to withhold her friendship. You’d think she’d be happy in her Alpha Girlhood, but as so often true to ABC After School Special form, I think she’s deeply unhappy. HB picked up HiroP from spring camp one day and reported that Mean Girl was lying face down on the playground surface, not looking up, not playing, not smiling, not inviting any other children to play, not seeming as if she wanted to get up any time soon. It seemed she’d been that way for quite a while. No one approached her or spoke to her, not even the kids who are usually in the same class as her during regular school days, not to mention spring “camp.”
Recently, her anti-social acts have included twisting/breaking the WALL*E gibbet off HiroP’s croc. And: possibly laughing and running away. HiroP used his words to tell her to stop, but she didn’t. I was annoyed. If I see her, I may say something to her. (What, I’m not sure.)
I reassured HiroP that he’d done the right thing. I also told him that had the regular staff been on duty for spring camp, he could count on them to enforce a little justice. But they weren’t, so not to blame himself for Mean Girl’s mean behavior.
* * * *
Earlier today, HiroP conducted a lengthy interrogation with me as to the nuances of the various Furious Five. In case your child is too young/old for Kung Fu Panda, the Furious Five would be: Crane, Monkey, Mantis, Tigress, and Viper, plus the titular hero of KFP, and Dragon Warrior himself, Po the Panda.
HiroP: What do you like best about Crane?
Me: Crane makes it look easy–he makes fighting look like dancing. He’s powerful AND graceful. That’s harder than it looks.
HiroP: What about Mantis?
Me: Mantis is fast. Sometimes, speed is the most important. It’s possible to win by being the fastest. Not the best or biggest, but the fastest or first.
HiroP: Monkey?
Me: Ahhh, Monkey. Monkey is very interesting because with him, it’s a mind game.
HiroP: Huh?
Me: You remember when we got Monkey’s backstory? [This is Los Angeles, parents use terms like 'backstory,' and 'throughline' when talking to our children.] How did he make trouble and fight with the villagers?
HiroP: He pulled their pants down!
Me: That’s right. He didn’t beat up his opponents, he embarrassed them. He humiliated them! [Explanation of 'humiliation.'] So you see, he overcame them not by force, but by knowing something about his opponent.
HiroP: Monkey was treated the same way. When he was a little monkey.
Me: Yes, that’s right. But as he grew up, he realized that everyone has vulnerabilities. Not only physical ones, but in your personality, the way you think.
A long silence as HiroP took this in.
Me: Like, if Mean Girl comes at you again and tries to mess with you, you can say, “[Name], stop!” And if she keeps doing it and laughs, you can say, “[Name], if you keep doing that YOU WON’T HAVE ANY FRIENDS. So stop!”
…This is where, when I related the story to HB just now (HiroP at his grandparents’)–
HB: Ahh, the old Psy Ops maneuver…
Me: “And that might bring her up short, because it’s true that she doesn’t have any friends. And she knows it.” I think he took it in.
HB: Oh, and so that’s where she hauls off and knocks him one.
Me: No, I don’t think that’ll happen. Besides, if she does, HiroP has the moral authority to defend himself. It’s okay for him to open up a can of Tigress (whupass).
HB (laughing): Shock and awe?
Me: Hey, not at all–if you don’t even TRY to establish diplomacy or brinksmanship, then you have no moral authority whatsoever–no legitimacy–to use force yourself. None at all. In this case, I advised HiroP to use his words–strategically. Go all Monkey on her. She’s the aggressor!
HB (laughing more): Unbelievable! You…in Battlestar Galactica, you’re President Roslin.
Me (one of the last people on the planet who doesn’t watch BSG at all): WHAT?? What’s that supposed to mean? I really want to watch now.
HB: Um? Maybe not.
Me: Tease. You know I’ll just google it.
Tomorrow I get up early and my son and HB drop me off at the airport. I spend all day flying to the east coast for a conference that was planned months ago.
Isn’t it always the way where nothing happens for weekends at a stretch, and suddenly one weekend everything happens?
While in transit, I’ll miss the press conference of this baby I’ve worked on for weeks now. (The two men I’ve worked with are saints who have totally been behind this project 5000%.) See, post-Prop 8, I was really unhappy that we actually had a state constitution that went out of its way to discriminate against gays and lesbians. And what was really troubling was how my new community seemed to have too many people who thought this was perfectly okay.
So I pitched some API PFLAG folks an idea about holding an essay contest awarding college scholarships to young people entering or continuing in college. Whoever could write a well-argued, beautifully written essay on why marriage equality should be a fundamental civil right would win up to $5,000 to spend on their educations.
The idea caught fire, and before I knew it, people were pitching in to help. The community embraced the idea, and I embraced the community.
So now the press conference is tomorrow, we have political luminaries like vice-chair of the State Board of Equalization Judy Chu and State Assembly member Mike Eng lined up as judges. Ministers Jonipher Kwong, Rev Dae Jung, and professor of religion Dr. Julius Nam will speak in support of the project, and school board members Jay Chen (Hacienda Heights-La Puente) and Henry Lo (Garvey) will also speak publicly to urge students in their district enter the contest.
Here’s Rev Dae Jung with a short, simple statement about marriage equality:
I really, really, really wish I could be there.
The other event I’m missing is a retreat of the Board of Directors of a non-profit I’ve given time to for over six years. It’s the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment. I’ll miss the opportunity to get meta about the organization and its goals. And, of course, the informal time together, which we seldom get to spend as such.
I’ll br participating in the Women, Action, Media! conference in Boston. Looking forward to it, and at the same time already missing my family.
Recently a lot’s been swirling around in my brain about the economy.
Crisis in the banking system has led me to the conclusion: you know what? I don’t need or use complex derivatives and if there were a way to decouple my simple nest egg from the rest of the high-stakes casino that’s Wall Street (oh wait, I think that’s already happened. It’s called Massive Loss in 401k Value), then I’d be more than happy to have Wall Street go away and fuck itself gently with a chainsaw.
See, I agree with this person, who says he needs a few very basic banking services and beyond that, if he wants to gamble, he goes to Las Vegas/buys stock. So we need a wall again, like Glass-Steagall used to do before that jerk Phil Gramm masterminded “financial services theft” and did much to bring about the subprime lending fiasco and permit “fake” insurance to cover bad bets, also known as “credit default swaps.”
All I ask of my nest egg is that it NOT dwindle. If it could keep pace with inflation or maybe just stay ahead a bit, I’d be happy.
And I’ve accepted that I’ll never be a millionaire through my lavish 401k savings (or at all, actually).
CAPITAL PRESERVATION, IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK?
Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about wealth, growth, and social/political/economic sustainability. It was sparked by reading this thought-provoking post, “Beyond Scarcity: Reinventing Wealth in a Progressive World.”
Some highlights:
The scarcity mindset
The belief that a person has to compromise his or her values to make money. Harboring an impoverished view of wealth as merely money or accumulation of material stuff – and seeking to avoid being identified with this activity. A recurring feeling that there just aren’t opportunities to do something meaningful and satisfying. A cynical view of collaboration. The belief that people who seek wealth are selfish or greedy.
Um, a very Chinese view of the world much? (This is the valorization of the classical Chinese scholar, too pure to dirty his hands with commerce.) Also muchly Chinese: the scarcity mindset co-existing with its contradictory opposite, which has but one view: greed is good. (Our long and varied history as a mercantile people.)
Those observations aside, I think Joe Brewer accurately diagnoses a wealth-phobia common to many left-liberals. (It’s like how we fear power and don’t seem to know how to use it.)
The answer is not a “reactive trap” (staying within the parameters of the argument by going to its seeming counter)–it’s not for progressives to suddenly embrace wealth. What we need to do, argues Brewer, is re-define wealth as “well-being.”
I love this simple, yet deft move. Wealth has limits and seems to be a zero-sum game. Well-being is a personal resource that an individual caretakes, as well as a larger measure of the world around us that can be collective or shared, properly taken care of or diminished through abuse and neglect.
Social well-being cannot exist if planetary well-being is jeopardized. There’s just no way around this.
Which is why I’ve been thinking about size: dinosaurs and banks Too Big To Fail.
[To Be Continued]
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