Sexy geek. Sexy nerd. Tina Fey.

Lately it’s been just fine that women are smart…as long as we’re also smoking hot.

In a recent article at WomeneNews, Danica McKeller revealed the name of her upcoming and third in a series of math books for girls – “Hot X: Algebra Exposed.” Oh my.

At the 2010 Chicago Women in Science symposium a speaker’s talk was about how women can use our womanly skills to get ahead in science. It wasn’t a talk about wearing short skirts, but rather embracing ones femininity and the apparent skills that go along with that like multi-tasking. One of my former students told me she was offended by part of that presentation. Another student told me she felt that if she emphasized her girlishness, she would be kicked out of her lab for not being serious or at least not taken seriously. Both agreed that there were some excellent points in the presentation as well.

On one hand, there is still a strong stereotype of who does science and math: a nerd. There are some people who believe that this stereotype is one reason why we don’t have more women in science, technology, engineering and math. Even if this is 10% of the reason, is the answer calendars of nude students? What about model engineers?

Back to McKeller’s book title. She’s making a career out of pinkifying math and making, like, math all girly with questions about text messages and shopping. So what does it mean that she’s making a sexual innuendo in the title of a book aimed at the algebra set? Nowadays, high schools expect kids to be taking algebra freshmen year, if not sooner. So that’s what, 14-15 years in age? Grown women with PhDs modeling is one thing, hell even college students stripping down for a calendar (which will haunt their Senate campaign one day) is a different discussion. They are adults. But should a math book for teens be sexualized? Aren’t their lives sexualized enough?

We have a lot of issues to tackle on this road to fairness and equity. Do we really need to add sex into the mix?

The Intersectional Feminist proudly presents June’s guest writer, Jillian Schweitzer. Jillian is a writer and photographer, currently pursuing graduate work. She is working on a book of poetry and lives in Maryland.

Everyone has seen the media reports alerting us to the fact that feminists and the feminist movement is out to destroy families, cast children out in the street and encourage government handouts.

Safe to say that I was worried.
Then I picked up the latest from Seal Press Studies, Motherhood and Feminism by Amber E. Kinser. Kinser, a mother herself, sets out to debunk myths about feminism and motherhood and get the conversation started about mothers today. The book starts with the Industrial Revolution and continues up to present day, all the while describing how feminists have a long history of fighting for mothers and mothers’ rights, as well also helping mothers fight for themselves. Of course, feminism hasn’t always been accommodating to every mother, which is why Kinser also highlights many groups or individuals that sought to help everyone regardless of race, class, ability or sexual preference.

Motherhood changed dramatically with the start of the Industrial Revolution, with the “shift…from an agrarian and domestic economy to an industry based one.” Men went to work and women were at home; dualism between private and public spheres had begun. Kinser neatly divvies up the next two hundred years into easy-to-digest chapters, which includes Seneca Falls, Black Women clubs, both world wars, the oft nostalgic 1950’s (which, interestingly enough, was the decade with the highest rate of teen pregnancy to date), the Civil Rights movements, the bloated and consumer driven 1980’s with Reagan at the forefront, then moving into the late 20th century and finally, the blogging world. Her research is extensive, including many areas of intersectionality, such as race, class, ability, gender and sexual orientation. Admittedly, able-bodied privilege and LGBT issues are not mentioned as much as I would have preferred, but she does touch on them periodically throughout the book. While the book does mention activists and movements that range internationally, the book does have a Western slant to it, although admittedly it would be difficult to do a starter book globally about motherhood and its history.
The reader does get a good grasp on both motherhood’s recent history and how feminism has helped with the progression of the movement. One of the big themes in the book is how motherhood and the mothers involved challenged the aforementioned dualism between the public and private sphere to push for social and economic justice. In the later chapters, several organizations are mentioned, including United Mothers Opposing Violence Everywhere (UMOVE), The Motherhood Project, Mothers on the Move or Madres en Movimiento (MOM), INCITE! Women of Colors Against Violence, Ariel Gore’s Hip Mama community, Family Equality Council, and Mothers Ought to Have Equal Rights (MOTHERS). These are just some of the many groups advocating and providing resources for mothers and children.  

The book wraps up with a long quote from theorist and feminist writer Patricia DiQuinzio, stating six concerns that the motherhood movement must contend with — readers will note that her critique, in a more broad sense, applies to contemporary feminist movements:

“Resisting the mass media’s tendency to use stereotypes of mothers that divide and pit them against each other… stretch the movement so that every kind of mother can fit comfortably… the movement must refuse to adopt a good mother/bad mother dualism… movement activists must work to bring young women into the movement… to be vibrant and promising movement, a mothers’ movement must forge alliances with mothers and others who do different kinds of caregiving work… finally, the mothers’ movement must support reproductive and abortion rights as part of the movement agenda.”

Kinser has delivered another great addition to the Seal Studies library, examining a history which many of us do not stop to consider as being important.  While feminist movements have certainly not been perfect or completely inclusionary, many activists throughout history have continued to make great strides for mothers.  Perhaps more importantly, these movements have helped mothers to make their own strides.  Motherhood and Feminism is an enjoyable and informative read and one that I would recommend.

Health posts are my thing, and today I cannot stop thinking about the health of the Gulf Coast…which clearly impacts the health of more living creatures than we can fathom.  News coverage may talk about bodies of water like they are distinct things, but ‘the Gulf’ is merely a cartographer’s distinction.  It’s hard to watch the live feed of the endless spray of oil shooting into the ocean.  It feels like watching a massacre, like a spray of machine-gun bullets ending life after life.  Calling this catastrophe a “spill” is like calling an amputation a “boo-boo.”    And, frankly, I can think of nothing more important to write about for this month’s column. 

So, allow me to compare our planet to a patient, a very ill patient who has suffered a severe injury and is receiving really crappy medical care.  Or, let’s take it to a more intimate-level: we can anthropomorphize one affected area, the Mississippi Spillway, as the vulva of the U.S.  One of my favorite sociologist bloggers, Mimi Schippers, Ph.D. (a.k.a. Marx in Drag), did just that in a post where she calls British Petroleum (BP) a pimp — and not the MTV/”pimp my ride”/bling-bling/Snoop Dogg kind of pimp.  No, we’re talking a stone cold, cruel, exploitative, abusive, criminal.  In the words of Dr. Schippers:

 BP and the rest of the oil industry are the johns and the federal government is the pimp.  Federal, state, and local politicians pimp us out to put money and power in their own pockets while, by paying the right price, Big Oil gets to take what it wants and needs.  And they-the pimp and the johns, do so with absolutely no regard for the needs or well-being of the body they use.  The body—the living environment, including the people—is, however, a breathing entity.  And though it appears as if it is just an object to be used, the people know what they are doing.  They strike a bargain that, for the moment, benefits themselves but sacrifices the rest.  You give me jobs, and I’ll give you whatever you want.  Invoking the vulva as metaphor suggests there is something feminine or female about this place and that masculine or male power is the problem.  But don’t let that confuse the issue.  This is about class and economics. 

Whether you prefer to see the U.S. government as an incompetent physician (allowing a patient to inch towards death) or as a corrupt police officer (being too kind to a felon), we have got to ramp up our demands for swift, safe, effective action.  And, perhaps, we need to think seriously about how to safely shut-down all of the deep-water drilling before the next tragedy.  All the money in the world cannot buy a healthy ocean.  Even if this torrent of BP oil is the last one we ever have to deal with, don’t think that we’re close to knowing how bad things really are..in the words of that 70’s BTO classic:

Here’s somethin’ that you’re never gonna forget. B-, b-, b-, baby, you just ain’t seen na, na, nothin’ yet!

Recently, the Barbie.com website became a polling place where participants could vote on what the legendary doll’s next career move should be. Toymakers at Mattel offered five choices for its new “I Can Be” Barbie: architect, anchorwoman, computer engineer, environmentalist, and surgeon. Girls overwhelmingly favored the “News Anchor Barbie”—whose glamorous get-up (tulip skirt, pink velvet jacket, black camisole, high heels, and cordless microphone) draws more inspiration from American Idol than it does from Katie Couric’s nightly wardrobe. I didn’t see Surgeon Barbie’s proposed garb, but I’d bet that her lab coat lacked a certain glitz factor. Of the five career options, anchorwoman fits most snugly within the media-and-entertainment realm that saturates kids’ fantasy lives. Newscaster Barbie’s popularity among girls is hardly a shocker.

In a surprising twist, however, the computer engineer beat the anchorwoman in the popular vote. But it wasn’t because girls vouched for her. Rather, a vocal group of adult female computer engineers launched an online campaign to lure voters—parents included—to elect the leggy lady with the pink laptop. “Please help us in getting Barbie to get her Geek on!” they appealed. Their campaign worked.

Mattel did its best to glam-up Engineer Barbie’s attire, which includes “geek-chic glasses,” black leggings, a Bluetooth headset, and sporty yet sensible pink shoes. But while real-life girls love electronic gadgets, most don’t seem to aspire to high-tech careers themselves. Or, at least, they don’t take a shine to a doll that does.

In the end, Mattel decided to play to both constituencies, and announced plans to manufacture the top two winners in the coming months. But let’s take a step back for a minute. Does it really matter what career path Barbie takes? Do toys really influence girls’ future aspirations? Clearly, women engineering professionals think they can.  According to Ann Zimmerman of the Wall Street Journal (who reported in the April 9, 2010 issue): “Why grown women felt so strongly about having themselves represented by a doll—especially onethat feminists have always loathed—speaks volumes both about the power of the iconic Barbie doll and the current state of women who work in computer and information sciences. Their ranks have declined in the past two decades. In 2008, women received only 18% of computer science degrees, down from 37% in 1985, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology.”

In the early 1970s, when role models for girls in male-dominated professions were sorely lacking, proponents of gender equality successfully lobbied toy makers and educational publishers to design products depicting diverse career options for girls. They strongly believed that early play experiences would make a difference in kids’ future aspirations.  So they worked actively to shape the material culture of childhood.

Back then, Barbie was so anathema to feminists that it would never have occurred to them to collaborate with Mattel. But times have changed. Over the past three decades, commercial toymakers have perfected their absorption and co-optation of liberal feminist ideals; Barbie’s latest career makeover is just one recent example. So today, many women’s groups are apt to adopt the strategy: “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” We can interpret these Barbie dolls as “compromise formations” (to use an old grad-school phrase) because they represent an uneasy combination of traditionally feminine beauty standards with forward-thinking advocacy to enhance women’s economic and professional status.

With these Barbie dolls in our daughters’ playrooms, are we on solid footing, or shaky ground? Will the new Computer Engineer Barbie help reverse the decline of women in high-tech careers? We don’t know. But real surgeons—and I’d bet most computer programmers—don’t wear stilettos to the workplace. It’s too bad that Barbie dolls still have to.

I’m always highly attuned to language—its nuances, implications, and effects—so much so that my partner is ready (if not always eager) on at least a weekly basis to hear the latest term or phrase that I find problematic.  So here’s the latest:  I’m troubled by the metaphors of battles, wars, fighting that often get linked to people with diseases or disabilities.

Two nights ago I was watching Extreme Home Makeover.  As a side note, let me warn you never to watch this show unless you just want to sit in front of your tv weeping while simultaneously being vaguely embarrassed at yourself for doing exactly what the show’s makers want you to do.  That pretty much describes my evening.

There are many, many problems with this show that other bloggers should feel free to launch into, but one of the things that struck me was the battle metaphors.  The father of the family whose home was being remodeled has ALS, a progressive neurodegenrative disease.  He seems like a genuinely wonderful person, with a great attitude and a passion for his family and his career.  Everyone who helped with the project of rebuilding this family’s house seemed moved by this guy, and repeatedly throughout the episode folks recognized him and honored him for, among other things, his “battle against ALS.”

This is, of course, a pervasive way of framing people with diseases of all kinds.  The ALS Association’s big statement at the top of every page on their website is “Fighting on Every Front to Improve Living with ALS.”   There are a number of websites devoted to fighting cancer, fighting HIV, cystic fibrosis, multiple sclerosis, etc.  The fight metaphor is often how individuals with these diseases discuss their own lives and priorities.  And yet, it gives me a small, uncomfortable twinge.

I’d be politically troubled or offended if someone had referred to the little boy in the Extreme Home Makeover family as “battling” his life in a wheelchair, or if people suggested that my daughter was “struggling against” Down syndrome.  Down syndrome and paralysis aren’t war zones, they’re simply parts of the lives of some people.  And yet diseases seem to be different, certainly to many who are living with them.  While Down syndrome has been part of Maybelle’s life since the instant she was conceived, ALS comes along later in life, and the fighting metaphor seems empowering and functional for many people.

But I’m not one of those people.  I think that much of why this bothers me is personal.  It’s not that I’m opposed to fighting.  I’m an activist:  I welcome a fight.  I’m happy to aggressively challenge many things in this world that need to be shaken up.  And yet, as a person with a brain tumor, I don’t want my health condition framed in terms of a battle.  I am not someone who’s “battling” a brain tumor.  Some scholars have examined this concept and have identified several ways that the metaphor is problematic—not only because it’s “inherently masculine, power-based, paternalistic, and violent” but because it frames the patient as the one who has to fight fight fight in order to win the war, and if they don’t win, then they didn’t fight hard enough.

I have a brain tumor, and there are things I need to do to take care of myself, but no level of armored-up embattlement is going to make it go away.  I don’t love it, but it’s part of my body.  As the scholars note, “There are conceptual weaknesses in the metaphor. There are no actual enemy invaders; the enemy is self…and the battlefield is the patient’s very body.”  I feel that I’d like a rhetorical framing of my condition that allows me a little more coherence and peace.

Fortunately, I’m very happy with my house, so there will be no need for the Extreme Home Makeover folks to come over here and cheer for my fighting spirit in order to make themselves feel better.

Editor’s note:  I promise that my next Girl w/Pen post will be about something other than my brain tumor!  You all have been very supportive, but I think it’s time for some variety.

We are investigating why the funny characters are appearing here and there.  Apologies in the meantime for a bumpy reading experience.  And if anyone with far more tech savvy than I have knows what is going on and how we can fix it, I’d so value your expertise in comments! Heeellllpppp?!

We will get to the bottom of this soon.

Most readers know Eve Ensler best as the anti-violence activist and star of the feminist world-traveling production, The Vagina Monologues. She has followed this seminal play with other popular works, highlighting the difficulties of women surviving war (Necessary Targets), women’s endless scrutiny of physical imperfections (The Good Body), and even her own experiences of finding self-protection as a survivor of abuse (Insecure at Last: Losing It in Our Security Obsessed World).  In her latest book I Am An Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World, Ensler sets out to portray the thoughts, issues, and desires of adolescent girls today. 

With varying degrees of success, Ensler offers a broad spectrum of experiences that keep the reader engaged with the work, even as much of the language suggests an adult perspective of a teenager’s world.  This is not to say that Ensler portrays her subjects with insensitivity or condescension; as a reader, I believed in Ensler’s earnest hopes that the book is “a call to listen to the voice inside you that might want something different, that hears, that knows, the way only you can hear and know.  It’s a call to your original girl self, to your emotional creature self, to move at your speed, to walk with your step, to wear your color.”  But there’s something very trivializing about the voice of certain girls within the book, particularly Ensler’s uninspired perspective on the American suburban teen.  In “Let Me In,” the speaker obsesses over purple UGGs and whether there’s room for her at the popular kid’s table in the cafeteria.  The speaker comes off false, shrill, self-absorbed and petty.  Contrast that monologue with the girls of Bulgaria (“I Have 35 Minutes Before He Comes Looking for Me”) or Palestine (“Sky Sky Sky”), young women who engage with their environment, politics, families, and communities.  They are also poor, suffering, in desperate need of aid. This dichotomy establishes the class and race privilege of the white Western girl, sure, but it’s hardly empowering for the girl of color whose only shown in a victimized, one-dimensional point of view.

This is really the heart of my issue with Ensler.  As a famous, successful and established playwright, Ensler was in the perfect position to work with young women in writing and publishing THEIR monologues.  Yet Ensler only credits a V-Girls Advisory Circle.  Wouldn’t it have been better to let these young women from Palestine, China, Israel, Iran, France, and the U.S. write their own stories in their own authentic voices?  Much of this work feels like a co-optation of experience, a wasted opportunity to give voice to young women’s lives, despite the protestations of the author.

If readers are hoping to expand their ideas of what it means to be a teen girl in different parts of the world, this book won’t do much to expand the story.  Ensler’s intentions are noble, but like the voices of the young women portrayed in I Am An Emotional Creature, they are slightly off-the-mark.

Imagine

1. A morning spent reading the newspaper and drinking coffee without constant interruption from the kids.

2. A newspaper filled with stories about the new global peace: no environmental disasters, no bombs exploding, no torture, no hate crimes, no war.

3. A house overflowing with peace (no screaming fights over Lego pieces, etc.).

4. Clean dishes. Even after pancakes.

5. Phone call from father-in-law acknowledging that nearly 20 years of political conversations have resulted in his conversion on certain points, such as the need for nationwide family-friendly policies (affordable childcare, paid parental leave, flexible work/life policies, universal healthcare, etc.).

6. A country with the political will to pass policies such as the ones listed above.

7. A world in which being born a girl is not a risk factor for malnourishment, hunger, neglect, discrimination, poverty, abuse, sexual violence, forced labor, trafficking, or death.

8. A world in which social inequalities are shrinking, and progress is being made toward the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.

9. Sufficient time to play with kids, talk with husband and friends, and care for self (read, exercise, shower, write in journal, and meditate).

10. Ability to do the above with a sense of abundance instead of stress.

And, last but not least:

11. No BlackBerry or iPhone. All day.

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It would seem our much ballyhooed entrance into a “post-feminist” reality would translate into more positive and widespread depictions of females in popular culture. Though mainstream representations of women have improved quite a bit, one type of character is still disproportionately evil, missing, and/or killed off – the mother. The mother has been particularly ill-treated and under-represented in animated films, especially in those of the Disney variety.

The mother’s absence or death is often attributed to the fact many animated films are adaptations of fairy tales. Various studies of such tales argue that the lack of mother figures is based in historical reality, as childbirth was a major cause of death before the nineteenth century (see, for example, Sheldon Casdan’s The Witch Must Die or Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment). However, even contemporary films with little to no basis in older tales are still inordinately fond of leaving (or forcing) the mother out of the picture.

With the rate of release of children’s and family movies, one would assume that mom characters might finally be able to get a fair shake. Alas, as in the bad ‘ole Disney days, most moms are either silent, dead, or wicked. Most don’t even have names (as with Andy’s mom in Toy Story – maybe in film three she will finally get a moniker…). A few mothers get to hover in the background, occasionally saying something useful, as in Diary of a Wimpy Kid. But, for the most part, modern kids’ movies, the fairy tales of today, still present us with usually absent mothers and all-too-present fathers. While mom is gone, dad is here to stay – doling out advice, jokes, aid, and adventure.

In the recent How to Train Your Dragon, mom is dead, but she kindly left behind one of her breast plates to serve as helmet for the (male!) protagonist, Hiccup. Yup, mom might be under the ground, but at least we can still joke about the size of her mammary glands. How sweet. In a comment thread about this film at Two Peas in a Bucket, someone queried “I really wonder what the makers of kid movies have against moms.” Yeah, me too.

The post entitled, “Mommy, why is the mommy dead?” offers a long list of dead mothers. Similarly, the post Motherhood in Disney Films argues that animation is a patricentric world noting that “Since The Little Mermaid, single fatherhood has risen dramatically in Disney films, as has the death of mothers. More mothers have died in the fourteen years since The Little Mermaid than in the fifty-one years before.” Well, there goes the historical reality theory – at a time when we have far more single mothers and far fewer deaths from childbirth, we have more single dads and dead moms in animated films. Go figure.

When mothers are present, they are treated far differently than fathers. Fathers are the center of a child’s life – not only way back when in Lion King days, but also in recent films such as Nim’s Island, Kicking and Screaming, Elf, even Twilight. Meanwhile, dead or bad moms abound –  Finding Nemo, Nanny McPhee, Coraline, Ice Age, Over the Hedge. Even when the mom is part of the storyline, as in The Princess and the Frog, she rarely remains front and center.
Danae Cassandra, author of Brilliance, a blog dedicated to analyzing gender in animation, offers the following rational:

“The only conjecture I can offer to this depiction of motherhood in American animation is backlash. With the decline of two-parent families and the rise of single motherhood, perhaps Disney and other studios are feeding a conservative, patriarchal reaction to the decline of the role of fathers in the lives of their children. …With the exodus of women from the home, perhaps the backlash in popular entertainment is to exalt the status of a single father, eliminating the mother from the picture as someone who would normally have the custodial rights by killing her off. There is no messy divorce, no custodial battles, and the father comes out as the good guy.”

Sounds plausible to me. Though I don’t feel there is necessarily a “decline in the role of fathers” nor a new mass “exodus of women from the home” – rather, there continues to be a decidedly unequal approach to parenting specifically and gender more generally. Or, in other words, we are nowhere near the neighborhood of “post-feminism.” However, our steps towards gender equality do seem to be engendering a conservative backlash (one recently and brilliantly explored in Susan Douglas’ new book, Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism’s Work is Done).

Whatever rational one uses, the father certainly continues to be the good guy in most children’s films, especially in those stories with a girl child at the helm. These narratives always seem to involve kindly males ushering girls through a strange and dangerous world filled with monstrous females. Think Wizard of Oz. Coraline. Alice in Wonderland. The Golden Compass.

One of my mom’s favorite quotes is “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.” Ah, would this were true. Seems more like the hand that pens, produces, and animates the films rules children’s imaginations – teaching them that mothers disappoint but dads deliver.

This mother’s day, why not rock your child’s world – find a film to watch together that portrays a strong, intelligent, wise, funny, courageous, and ALIVE mother. Good luck.

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For those who care about the po’ biz, as the “business” side of the poetry world is sometimes called, the details of who gets published, how, when, and why, often seem to be of utmost significance. Although this might be a small subset, it’s heartening to see how many others are tracking and fighting for better gender parity within publishing now. And for those who like to dig into gender theory, especially the exploration of what Helene Cixous coined “l’ecriture feminine,” it’s gratifying to know these debates are still active. Finding a book that addresses all of these issues serves not only as an exemplar of hybridity but also as a daring act of new publishing practice.

Feminaissance: A Book of Tiny Revolts, edited by Christine Wertheim, just out from Les Figues Press, serves all these purposes. For one, it acts as a journal from the conference of similar name (Feminaissance: A Colloquium on Women, Writing, Experiments, and Feminism) held in 2007 at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles. For another, it offers not only innovative writing from intriguing poets, but each offers commentary about what it means to be a woman writing now. Some essays grapple with Cixous’s idea of l’ecriture feminine and what it means to “write as a woman”; some offer a meta-level response through the work itself.

“Another anthology of women’s writing!” is how Wertheim wryly starts out her dedication, followed by the inevitable rhetorical question, “Don’t we live in a post-gendered, post-subjective age where isolating the work of specifically defined groups is outmoded?” Her answer comes in the book’s subtitle, taken from contributor Dodie Bellamy’s piece that “grand revolutions are passé” but, as Bellamy writes, “tiny revolts” are still necessary. Wertheim offers that this book is meant to serve as a “display of the many different avant-garde experimental, innovative and conceptual modes that women themselves conceive.” Issues explored include “whether there can be specifically ‘feminine’ forms of text; the economic position of women as writers in the academy and marketplace; mothers, real, symbolic, and imaginary; questions of aesthetics and representation in relation to women’s work” and more.

While all of these questions are vital, and the work of Les Figues is both exciting and crucial, the volume itself requires either a natural ADD-like ability to accrete meaning from scattered forms, or earnest retraining in how to read a text, an admirable challenge, but one that most readers are not likely to bother with. I applaud the subjects addressed in this volume, and the quality of deep thought that most (but not all) offer in their responses, but the material book’s construction, an act of innovative publishing, made it difficult to absorb the texts.

Each page in Feminaissance is divided into three sections, with the author identified in a tiny vertical byline in the page’s margins. Until I caught on to this, I kept trying to read down the page, puzzled by the glitches in sequence.  As the publishers and editor write in the forward this allows for “multiple reading strands on each page” and “uses the space of the page as a visual arena for a public conversation.” By allowing, as they write, for “multi-vocality” they enable different styles of reading, both discursive and narrative as well as, they write, and “a more poetic meditation.” I admire this, but also found it detracted from the power of the authors.

The contribution most compelling to me is one that rippled before the book came out, stirring new controversy into a sadly evergreen debate. The essay “Numbers Trouble” co-written by Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young was published, post-conference, in the Chicago Review. Their essay was a response to a previous article (Jennifer Ashton’s “Our Bodies, Our Poems” published in American Literary History) which contended, (in brief summary), that gender parity is no longer an issue within publishing, writing programs, etc., and that commitment to a “notion of difference” is essentializing and regressive. Spahr and Young confront Ashton’s notions of parity by literally counting pages and the result is dismaying. Things are, in fact, worse than they thought in terms of female representation in literary journals. (Much of this debate, including Ashton’s rebuttal, is collected at this site by scrolling down to “Gender.”)

When they published their essay the poetry world bristled at claims of sexism. I find their research admirable and their outrage constrained, given their findings. The essay authored just by Spahr (“Gender Trouble” a nod to Judith Butler’s book) is also a lucidly sobering recounting of gender performance and politics inside the creative writing program Spahr attended from 1989-1995, with its concomitant issues of power around gender representation within academe, (“the heroic male literary tradition”) mentorship and publishing, and then, full circle, who gets hired to start the cycle over again. Spahr and Young’s essay canvasses the whole of the book, in a two-line couplet-like form that looks like a running headline. Intrigued, I paged onward almost as if gleaning a story from a flip book, but couldn’t take in their whole meaning until I printed the essay whole.

The mix of poems included is admirable, although some are less successful than others. I found Wanda Coleman’s poem “Rape” (which I heard her read at the LACE book party) to be baffling to comprehend in tone. The essay by poet Tracie Morris (“Embracing Form: Pedagogical Sketches of Black Women Students Influenced by Hip Hop”) was especially interesting for its intersectional address of race and gender, as well as interplay of music and poem, with reference to contemporary performing artists and her breakdown into “craft specifics.”  Some of the more innovative styles, such as work by publisher Vanessa Place, and certainly, editor Christine Wertheim’s visual poems, are an acquired taste, undoubtedly most appreciated by those fully engaged in avant-garde aesthetics. I had the pleasure of hearing Wertheim “read” one of her poems at the book’s debut and her vocalizations were astounding, but without this rendering, the poem’s dimensionality on the page loses a reverberation of meaning.

“Where are the Whitmans? The Steins?” asks Lidia Yuknavitch in an epigraph. This is a book ripe for a graduate school classroom and I wished I had a cohort of poets and academics to hash through it with, particularly to discuss the issues raised around gender identity, essentialism, and how l’ecriture feminine can be understood currently, nevermind is bounded by race, class, and other markers. It is successful in drawing attention to critical issues, both theoretical, aesthetic, and practical, about women’s writing. What it is not is easy to absorb, something I don’t think its editor or contributors will mind in the least.