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I am pleased to introduce Susan David Bernstein, “Beyond Pink & Blue’s” first guest columnist! Susan teaches literature and gender studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has published widely on contemporary feminist theory and the Victorian novel. She is currently working on a study of women writers and activists in the Reading Room of the British Museum, as well as a memoir titled Unlikely Loves.

Here’s Susan:

I discovered new realms of gender profiling before my child was born in August of 1992. Although the sex chromosomes of this eventual baby were recorded in my OB/GYN file, I was adamant that I did not want to know. “Don’t tell me!” I’d shield my eyes, when a nurse or doctor opened my file at an appointment. At that time, it was increasingly common for people to have this knowledge, and from what I witnessed, prenatal gendering took off with a vengeance. I’d hear comments like, “I know this little guy is going to be a quarterback! What a kicker already!” Baby showers became gendered affairs, and the first outfits for the ride home from the hospital were tooled to match that chromosomal information. I was happy instead to receive an array of baby clothes, some blue, some fuschia, one with a rodeo pattern, another with vegetables in reds, greens, and oranges.

So even back then, it was unusual to answer the “what kind of baby are you having?” question with, “I don’t know.” I had an elaborate birth plan which even included a provision about birthing room announcements: I asked my doctor not to say, “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” but simply, as he did, “Congratulations, you have a healthy baby!” My partner and I even joked about how we’d try not to know those gender-defining genital features of our baby (we’d have someone else do the diapering and bathing for the first month), so that our ingrained notions about gender would be kept at bay. And, we thought, so would those of the world we lived in. Not possible, I discovered, from day one.

I did of course learn I had a daughter within in minutes of her birth, and she was quickly swaddled in a pink blanket. A nurse held out a basket of caps for newborns, all knitted by a women’s league, and I chose a white one with lavender and blue stripes. But later that day my partner and I requested a different blanket, yellow perhaps, or green or white. We learned that the maternity unit only had blue and pink blankets.

This was Madison, Wisconsin, a university town with a history of progressive values; Tammy Baldwin is our congressional representative—the first open lesbian to be elected to the House. Today, in 2009, my daughter is taking a terrific women’s studies class in her high school (the same one Baldwin graduated from); all four public high schools in Madison offer such courses. But in 1992, there were only pink and blue blankets at the hospital. So I asked for a blue one. A nurse entered my room the next morning, glanced at the bassinet, and then asked me cheerily, “And how is your little boy today?” I responded, “I do not have a boy.” The woman peered in the basket, looked a bit alarmed, and hurried out of the room.

Within a few years, the hospital expanded its newborn wardrobe to include prints and other colors. Still, there remain many ways in which the straitjackets of gender identity flourish from before birth through high school. My daughter spent all four years of high school competing on the cross country team where the girls run 4K meets to the boys’ 5K races. And now she’s one of two girls on her high school team of forty wrestlers. She’s also in the gender minority in her advanced chemistry and physics classes. As a family, we’re still learning to navigate the updated variations of pink and blue that we first encountered in 1992.

As I slowly reenter the world–Anya and Teo are 6 weeks old!–I can’t think of a better place to start than She Writes’ webinar tomorrow, “Time Management for Mother Writers” with Change Agent extraordinaire (and mother of two) Rebecca Rodskog. It’s not too late to register.  It’s at 1-2 pm Eastern Standard Time, via conference call and web.  Join us! And if you can’t, you can always order the download after the event. And also do check out the Mother Writers group at She Writes too–for “moms who write with spunk and sass.”

Not sure I’ve got spunk/sass yet since I’m a little, how do you say, sleep deprived, but I do have a post up over at the She Writes blog called : “Finding Mother Writer” which excerpts a GWP post of course.

Here’s to all you mother writers out there who have been doing it for some time.  You inspire the heck out of me over here!

My book, Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism, has just been released. More about that later, but for now I wanted to let those of you in the NYC area know about an upcoming book event:

Girl Zines at Bluestockings

Saturday, Dec. 5, at 7 p.m.

Free!

I’ll do a brief reading from the book, and then fabulous zine creators Ayun Halliday, Victoria Law, Jenna Freedman, and Lauren Jade Martin will read from some of their zines.  Someone from BUST will also be there.

Here’s how Bluestockings is advertising the event:  The East Village Inky… Mend My Dress… Dear Stepdad… I’m So Fucking Beautiful… In the past two decades, women have produced 1000’s of unique zines which serve as engaged and tangible evidence of the third wave feminism. Join Alison Piepmeier for a reading and discussion of her book “Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism,” which explores these quirky, personalized booklets and the meaning of being a revolutionary girl.

I would love to see Girl with Pen readers there!

Before I moved to Los Angeles a little over a year ago, I had never heard people speak with complete lack of irony about their television-watching habits, certainly never academics.  Among the revelations I’ve experienced since moving one of the biggest has been realizing how serious so many people are about what’s on the tube. In La-La Land, of course, because so many work within this industry.

What a pleasure to then discover Merri Lisa Johnson’s book Third Wave Feminism and Television: Jane Puts It in A Box with its feminist counter to what’s seen on the screen (see below).  The subtitle riffs off of one of Johnson’s previous books Jane Sexes It Up. This anthology covers many of the cable favorites from the past decade: The Sopranos, The L Word, Six Feet Under, and Queer as Folk, among others, and a show that has spawned its own subgenre of academic inquiry: Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

In her intro “Ladies Love Your Box: The Rhetoric of Pleasure and Danger in Feminist Television Studies,” Johnson harkens back to the now classic essay “Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema” by Laura Mulvey and the complicated, gendered relationships long explored between pleasure and spectatorship.  Johnson compellingly outlines her own position in both settling on the couch for a night of cable and wrestling with the theoretical assumptions this act also contains, particularly as a third-wave feminist.  She considers how television is now embracing characters who can be identified along a range of sexual positions and feminist roles and the complicated relationship the viewer enters into by watching.  The book’s contributors explore how plotlines, characters, and thematic twists can be considered progressive as they look through the lens of feminist and queer theory and the scope of cultural studies.

In “Primetime Harem Fantasites: Marriage, Monogamy, and A Bit of Feminist Fanfiction on ABC’s The Bachelor” Katherine Frank offers analysis of the show and its popularity with the imagined alternative ending of a non-monogamous choice or critique of the strictures of heterosexual monogamy that celebrates the finding of “the One.”  Laura Stemple’s essay on “HBO’s OZ and the Fight Against Prisoner Rape: Chronicles from the Front Line” opens with a narrative about her work as former executive director of Stop Prisoner Rape, “a national human rights organization working to end the sexual abuse of men, women, and youth behind bars.”  As the show OZ aired, Stemple finds herself stunned by the “gloves-off nature of OZ” with realistic depictions of the effects of prisoner rape, and the psychological dimension of abuse prisoners experience and how this brought victims forward to her center.  She notes that OZ‘s sixth and final season “ran in 2003, the same year in which the first federal legislation to address prisoner rape, The Prison Rape Elimination Act” was signed into law.

On a different note, in Candace Moore’s “Getting Wet: The Heteroflexibility of Showtime’s The L Word” she writes how the show accesses a range of methods to make “straight tourists into queer-friendly travelers” incorporating what she calls “the tourist gaze” sometimes by craftily using “immersion and distance” through camera work and the show’s visual rhetoric.   Cultivating “the tourist gaze,” Moore says, “in politically positive ways” the show moves along an axis between queer and straight viewers allowing for access of “multiple desires and sensibilities.”

On the cusp of big-movie release season, nevermind the plethora of holiday “specials,” Johnson’s book offers welcome relief as its astute critics offer analysis and provocative perspectives on television’s influences. On this holiday weekend, good feminist, media watching to all.

On this national day of gratitude, I find myself giving thanks for many things — including my family, my friends, and my health. I owe my sexual health to the now outdated norm of getting annual gynecological exams, with Pap smears, from the time I became sexually active. As a 20-year-old, in the mid-1990’s, I benefited from U.S. medical guidelines that supported my gynecologist in recommending cryosurgery (application of liquid nitrogen) to kill/remove the HPV-infected cells on my cervix. Early detection and early treatment afforded me a quick recovery from a potentially cancer-causing and highly contagious sexually transmitted infection. Following that treatment, I never had another abnormal Pap test result, got pregnant the first time I tried, and gave birth to a healthy baby. For all of those outcomes, I give thanks.

Today, many teen girls and women may not benefit from the level of medical care that I received. Last week, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) issued new guidelines for pap smear and cervical cancer screening, and this may prove to have unintended, negative consequences for sexually-active Americans.

Until 2008, ACOG had recommended annual screening for women under 30. This month, ACOG summed up their revised recommendations:

…women should have their first cancer screening at age 21 and can be rescreened less frequently than previously recommended. 

Media coverage of this latest revision has not done as good a job distinguishing that a Pap test is just one aspect of a pelvic/sexual health exam. How many girls and women will interpret the new guideline of “No need for an annual pap tes,” as, “No need to get an annual pelvic exam”?

ACOG admits that the Pap test has been the reason for falling rates of cervical cancer in the U.S.

Cervical cancer rates have fallen more than 50% in the past 30 years in the US due to the widespread use of the Pap test. The incidence of cervical cancer fell from 14.8 per 100,000 women in 1975 to 6.5 per 100,000 women in 2006. The American Cancer Society estimates that there will be 11,270 new cases of cervical cancer and 4,070 deaths from it in the US in 2009. The majority of deaths from cervical cancer in the US are among women who are screened infrequently or not at all.

So, why revise the guidelines such that we are likely to see an increase in the number of U.S. women “who are screened infrequently or not at all”?

And, it’s not just teen girls and young women that are the focus of these revisions. ACOG also recommends that older women stop being screened for cervical cancer:

It is reasonable to stop cervical cancer screening at age 65 or 70 among women who have three or more negative cytology results in a row and no abnormal test results in the past 10 years.

How much of this rationale depends upon women over 65 years old being sexually inactive or monogamous? This argument seems predicated upon ageist assumptions about older women’s sex drives and sexual behaviors (or lack thereof).

As the tryptophan from my Thanksgiving feast begins to dampen my ire, I’ll bring this post to a close. These are just a few of the problematic aspects of this new policy recommendation — stay tuned for “Part II” of this post in the near future.

It feels rare these days that I see anything on TV that makes me laugh, but I found myself struck by both the hilarity of this SNL segment as well as by the unexpected parable of thwarted, gendered communication it offers. Catapulting me back to the linguistics class I once audited in college, the skit relies on what seem like arch-stereotypes of male and female behavior: the boorish male producer who literally runs the show (filling in for the sensitive female talk show host) but who also literally can’t hear the words of the nervous, self-effacing audience members’ questions. Then, when the effeminate pony-tailed male production assistant, (encouraging the women with an understanding look and supportive pat on the back), “translates” man-to-man for the producer he can comprehend their words – only to offer a one-note prescriptive answer that serves his perspective (to flatly apologize with no notion why he offends), revealing that he lacks any ability to truly listen. When the women express puzzlement or refuse his inappropriate advice, he immediately resorts to defensiveness. He exhorts the women to speak up only to completely miss (and dismiss) their intent and then blame them for not taking his advice. He’s “tried” to help and it’s their fault if they don’t agree with him.

Interestingly, when the assistant steps in to channel the voice of the sensitive host, Dr. Danilla, spouting her affirmations about empowering women, it’s as if he “gender-passes” into a female role and then suddenly can’t be heard by the producer either, who returns to his state of selective deafness. As her proxy, his impassioned plea for women’s empowerment results in the same editing out that the producer gives the female audience members.

This skit had me laughing and cringing at the same time. The blustery, self-important producer who both realistically and metaphorically just can’t hear women’s voices seems an all-too-familiar stereotype, alongside the hand-wringing and apologetic linguistic patterns of the women who are trying, bravely, to improve their lives. When faced with the brick wall of the producer’s dismissal, the second woman’s impulse is to retract her question, retreat, and say she’ll deal with the issue herself, and the third, realizing what a fight is ahead, decides it’s not worth it. Somehow, this struck me as both a hilarious and a sobering parable of entrenched patriarchal patterns embedded within styles of communication. I’m curious what others think – is this over-reading a simple skit? Is this the product of an astute SNL writer jabbing at a producer’s power to silence? Where, exactly, does the joke lie?

There’s lots of cross-dressing buzz in the mainstream media and in the blogosphere.  Here’s a semi-biased sample for your consideration:

Oct. 17: CNN covers Morehouse College’s dress code which “cracks down on cross-dressing.”

Nov. 6: NYT article asks “Can a Boy Wear a Skirt to School?” and describes U.S. high schools whose dress codes range from enforcing ‘traditional’ norms to allowing for students to more freely express their sex, gender and sexuality through their appearance. Is this a case of those with social/political power being ‘out of touch’ with changing times?

Dress code conflicts often reflect a generational divide, with students coming of age in a culture that is more accepting of ambiguity and difference than that of the adults who make the rules.

Nov. 7: Sociologist Shari Dworkin’s post on the Sexuality & Society blog adds a more nuanced analysis of Morehouse’s policy and encourages a complex approach to understanding gender-based dress codes.

Nov. 18: My guest-post on the Sexuality & Society blog takes on some of the questions left unasked and unanswered in that Nov. 6 NYT article about high school dress codes and considers Dworkin’s arguments.

What are the overt and covert goals of school dress codes? Are these dress codes developed to ensure that students meet norms of professionalism, or do these serve as tools for schools to enforce heteronormativity and stigmatize transgenderism? Are schools citing safety concerns, warning parents about how to protect youth from harm, or do these intend to distract us from the ways in which dress codes serve to reinforce heterosexist norms? How well can we predict the unintended consequences of dress codes – both the more ‘traditional’ and more ‘progressive’ policies?

Today: I read a new NYT article online — in the Fashion & Style section — that asserts, “It’s All a Blur to Them” and goes on to describe today’s “urban” 20-somethings who,

are revising standard notions of gender-appropriate dressing, tweaking codes, upending conventions and making hash of ancient norms.

So, what are we to think? In early November, we read about a female high-school senior who was forbidden to wear a tux in her yearbook photo. A couple of weeks later, we read about the growing trend of unisex lines in the fashion world. Does this mix of media coverage reflect that the U.S. remains an ideologically conflicted patchwork of ‘blue’ and ‘red’ Americans? Or, if the generational-change argument holds true, then are we on our way to becoming a society that truly embraces ‘gender fluidity’?

For a great mix of stories, personal essays, and conversations on topics related to women and alcohol, be sure to check out the blog www.drinkingdiaries.com.  Today’s column features an interview I recently completed with the blog’s editors.  Other recent posts include an excerpt from Mary Karr’s acclaimed new memoir;  a heartwrenching piece by Deirdre Sinnott about her past drinking exploits;  and many other revelations on the multiple meanings of drinking and alcohol in women’s lives.

By now you might have heard that the popular TV series Glee recently aired an episode entitled “Wheels,” which was all about disability. It was a mixed bag. For the most part it was better than the sorts of cloying, sentimentalized depictions of disability on television–shows often advertised as “a very special Punky Brewster” (or whatever).

The main premise is that one of the regular characters, Artie (played by Kevin McHale), uses a wheelchair, and is going to have to find his own way to a glee club competition because the school district doesn’t have any accessible buses. The episode starts with Artie being framed by an individualized rhetoric of triumph over adversity–Artie is used to overcoming obstacles, Artie doesn’t mind–but it quickly undermines these messages. Artie does mind, and for most of the show the nondisabled glee club members are required to get around in wheelchairs. This of course is a learning experience for them, and it has the effect of visually challenging the normality of bodies not in wheelchairs for the show’s viewers. The show ends with a wheelchair dance number that’s nicely done, and is a lot of fun.

So there are good things about this show. But I had a number of problems with it, too. The most obvious problem is that it became the disability episode. Not only do we have Artie and his wheelchair, but we have two characters with Down syndrome. And while I am delighted to see actors with Down syndrome on any mainstream TV show, these two characters were used in problematic ways. The first, Becky Johnson, played by Lauren Potter, tries out for the cheerleading squad and is accepted. The good aspect of this is that she’s pushed really hard by the coach, who says that Becky wants to be treated like the other cheerleaders: she refuses to coddle her because of her diagnosis. The bad aspect is that she’s terrible, just terrible. She can’t do even the most basic things that the rest of the squad does.

And the worst aspect of the inclusion of the characters with Down syndrome is that they’re ultimately used, as the New York Times Arts Beat blog argues, “as a prop in the continuing humanization of [cheerleading coach] Sue Sylvester.” We find out that the coach let Becky onto the squad because her older sister (played by Robin Trocki) has Down syndrome, and we find this out when Sue visits her sister and reads her Little Red Riding Hood. Again, a mixed bag: many folks in the world have people we love with disabilities, and it’s nice to put that message out there. The scene with Sue and her sister was trying to be very loving and affectionate, and it sort of worked, but sort of verged into that cloying, a very special Glee kind of place. Is it sweet that Sue was reading her sister–her older, very clearly adult, sister–Little Red Riding Hood, or was it infantilizing of the sister for the sake of making Sue seem sweeter?

Ultimately the show can’t fully escape from the individualized triumph over adversity rhetoric that permeates a lot of mainstream treatment of disability. Near the end of the show, the character Kurt, as part of another plot line, tells his dad, “Being different made me stronger.” In some ways this is the message that the show leaves with its viewers, and it’s a message I have strongly mixed feelings about.

Below is a message from She Writes founder Kamy Wicoff.  Please pass it on!

Dear friends and colleagues,

Last week, Publisher’s Weekly came out with its first-ever Best Books of 2009 list, and its Top Ten Books of the year included zero books written by women. Yes, ZERO. PW‘s explanation for the omission was outrageous, insulting, and smug: “We ignored gender and genre and who had the buzz. We gave fair chance to the ‘big’ books of the year, but made them stand on their own two feet. It disturbed us when we were done that our list was all male.”  As if PW‘s Top Ten Books List were an immutable truth handed down by God. (Sorry, girls!) As if women writers and writers of color, who, with one exception, also failed to make the cut, can’t “stand on their own two feet.”

Some of you have already heard from me on this subject. If you are a member of the network I recently founded, shewrites.com–an online community of 5,000+ women writers, established and aspiring alike, from all fifty states and more than thirty countries–you have received an email describing the She Writes Day of Action planned in response to PW‘s list. And if you are receiving this email, you are part of my personal network, and I am writing to ask that you take part in Friday’s action.

The PW list, while just plain silly, is also indicative of a larger, more insidious attitude toward women who write and the stories they tell (“small,” “unambitious,” “personal”). And to my mind, the extreme stupidity of this list presents an excellent opportunity to question the assumption that men’s work is important, and women’s work is, well, women’s work.

I thought of creating an alternative She Writes Top Ten Books of 2009 List, but decided I‘d rather honor the efforts of our community than create another inevitably flawed list. So I am asking all of our members to do three things on She Writes by Friday, November 13th:

1) Buy a book published by a woman in 2009, and tell She Writes about it.  If you published a book in 2009, send me a line and we will highlight it on She Writes’ book cover banner.  (Please join the network first.)

2) Post a blog on She Writes in response to PW‘s article–share your favorite books of 2009, or use this opportunity to sound off more generally.

3) Invite five fellow women writers to add to our numbers, and our power, at She Writes.

Many of you have the stature, the eloquence, and the platforms to call attention to this action in a way that will make all the difference to its success. A post on She Writes can be as short as a shout-out for a favorite book of 2009, or as simple as reposting something you have already written on this subject (Katha Pollitt, Elaine Showalter, Francine Prose, and Laura Miller all come immediately to mind). My hope is to spur book sales and lively discussion. If you have any questions or want any assistance in joining the site or posting a blog, please don’t hesitate to write to me at kamy@shewrites.com.

Kamy