For those of you in NYC, there’s a great film in town, playing tomorrow night. Join the Girls Education and Mentoring Services (GEMS) for a screening! Writes the NYTimes’ critic:

Notwithstanding the coyly suggestive title, “Very Young Girls” is very far from exploitative. Adopting a confessional, direct-to-camera interview style for most of its running time, this unvarnished vérité documentary about teenage prostitutes in New York City resolutely resists the urge to dramatize. The heartbreaking stories are drama enough.

Ignoring underlying issues of upbringing, class or race (only one of the film’s victims is white), “Very Young Girls” is still an effective scratch on the surface of a serious social problem. However hard it is out there for a pimp, it’s not nearly hard enough.

For more info, click here!

(And thanks to GWP friend Patti Binder for the heads up.)

The other week I had the great fortune of meeting a fellow traveler, Gretchen Rubin, creator of The Happiness Project — my current favorite model for a blog that’s tied to the creation of a book. She interviewed me for her “True Rules” series, and here (dorky though I look) is what I said:

This week marks the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And it’d be far happier, of course, if so many human rights weren’t being violated around the world–including, ahem, by us. Condi’s speech on it, here.

This morning I heard the most inspiring talk from one of the most inspiring women I know, Miss Jacki Zehner. The talk was sponsored by 85 Broads, an organization of power women set up to educate, empower and connect talented women across industries, generations, and geographies, and the room was filled with said women — including author Leslie Bennetts, SheSpot guru Lisa Witter, and NCRW leader Linda Basch. When I got up to circulate, I heard three women say, “I wish I had given that speech.” It was just that kind of speech. The title? “Are YOU Ready for a Revolution?”

This here’s a pic of Jacki climbing a chair as she takes off her power jacket to unveil the Wonder Woman girl power t-shirt she’s wearing underneath. And that was only the start. I mean, that was the end of the striptease, but the beginning of a speech on making the personal political–a favorite theme of mine–in which she urged us all to push past our comfort zones. Jacki did, when she took on Goldman Sachs, where she was formerly a partner, in her ballsy (female anatomy equivalent here) post at HuffPo last month, called “Why Are Goldman’s Women Invisible?”.

Jacki blogs at 85 Broads, and at her own blog PursePundit, at HuffPo, and is soon to be a media star, I just know it. Look out world, cause Purse Pundit is on the LOOSE. The woman walks her talk, bringing the message to a sector where revolution is not exactly water cooler conversation: the corporate sphere.

So she got me thinking, where are the edges of my comfort zone? Where are yours?

Linda Hirshman’s excellent oped in today’s NYTimes, “Where Are the New Jobs for Women?”, brings light to a conversation I’ve been lurking on among feminist historians and economists, and I’m so glad to see that argument reaching the light of day. (There was a Boston Globe piece on it earlier, too, titled “Macho Stimulus Plan,” which we reported on here at GWP.)  The call is basically this: Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the New Deal, which failed to apply a gender lens.

As Hirshman notes,

[W]omen constitute about 46 percent of the labor force. And as the current downturn has worsened, their traditionally lower unemployment rate has actually risen just as fast as men’s. A just economic stimulus plan must include jobs in fields like social work and teaching, where large numbers of women work.

The bulk of the stimulus program will provide jobs for men, because building projects generate jobs in construction, where women make up only 9 percent of the work force.

…A public works program can provide needed economic stimulus and revive America’s concern for public property. The current proposal is simply too narrow. Women represent almost half the work force — not exactly a marginal special interest group. By adding a program for jobs in libraries, schools and children’s programs, the new administration can create jobs for them, too.

Amen to that.  And speaking of F.D.R., which makes me think of Eleanor, which makes me think in general of powerful Presidents’ wives, may the Obama team take up Abigail Adams’ cry to “remember the ladies”. For reals.

(And thanks to Elizabeth Curtis for the, er, correction that it was Abigail and not Eleanor who said that!)

The feminist blogosphere has been chewing over Gropegate these past few days (see the post with 364 comments over at Shakesville) and I just watched James Carville and some Republican strategist “analyze” the incident and the brouhaha on The Situation Room.  Carville, who I generally really like, acted like a total pig.  While the speechwriter apologized and Hillary accepted, Carville thought he had nothin to apologize for, he was just a 27-year old havin some fun, whohoo ye haw!  Amy Siskind, cofounder of The New Agenda, has a piece up today at The Daily Beast on it too.

I’m with Shakesville on this one, who asks “ why, pray tell, do so many people seem so compelled to make excuses for what is, at best, such puerile, obnoxious, and just plain disrespectful behavior?”

I mean, seriously?  Really boys?  Sigh.

I’m back from my talks in Iowa (thank you Astrid Henry! thank you Renee Kramer!), back in action, and wanted to follow Shira’s awesome inaugural post (welcome, Miss Shira!) with an updated plug for The Masculinity Project. This amazing project sponsored by Black Public Media “uses media to create a virtual community record of the true issues affecting black men and black community in America” and includes a blog, BLACKstream, film shorts, forums, and more.  The hope, according to the press release, is that it become a repository of work by the next generation of storytellers and filmmakers, fostering cross-cultural dialogue that “reaches our neighborhoods as well as our policymakers.”

Why now?  Because:

This year Barack Obama made history when he was elected as president of the United States on November 4, 2008. His candidacy has trained significant public and media attention to issues of race and the challenges facing black men in this country. While President Elect Obama ran for the highest office in the land, he also hails from Illinois, a state where the prison population is 63 percent African American—an incarceration rate nine times that of whites. But what does it all mean?

Check it out! www.masculinityproject.org

I’m thrilled to join Girl With Pen with this inaugural entry of The Man Files. Deborah Siegel and I have big plans for this column. Watch us grow! In the meantime, join our monthly discussions about masculinity, sex, culture, work, parenting, and progressive change. Our goal is to engage scholars, bloggers, and readers in a popular online forum about what it means these days to “be a man.”

Why The Man Files? Because gender isn’t just about women. And because it’s time that the amazing female feminists and the awesome feminist guys get out of our (virtual blog) boxes and start talking with each other. There are so many people doing so much hard work to end sexism, racism, and other forms of hate. Yet so often we stay oddly isolated.

Personally, I’m not one to shy away from difficult, challenging, or even unlikely convos across communities. The Man Files provides a forum for these conversations. The more we talk, the closer we come to preventing male violence against women, improving pay inequity, building strategic feminist alliances, and generally expanding our everyday choices in selecting where we work, who we love, how we act, and why we do — the sorts of choices that are so often constrained by rigid gender expectations.

To start out The Man Files I want to introduce a couple recent works about men and masculinity. A few of my favorite things, if you will, that include hot new projects hitting the scene.

Monthly Round-Up
Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men by Michael Kimmel (HarperCollins 2008). Kimmel cuts new ground again with his most recent book, Guyland. Going beyond pop-psych pablum or narrow-minded moralizing, Guyland takes us inside the world of young men between 16 and 26 so that readers can understand how these critical years contribute to the formation of masculinity. Think boys and their toys, beer, babes, and (foot)ball.

The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life edited by Kevin Powell (Atria Books 2008). Kevin Powell makes a strong case in The Black Male Handbook for supporting men in the black community. This collection of highly personal essays offers “fresh solutions for old problems.” Authors like Hill Harper, Byron Hurt, Jeff Johnson, and Ryan Mack provide concrete plans for improving economic empowerment, creating physical health, and developing spiritual and political awareness. These issues have political roots and such personal consequences. Written primarily for black men, we can all benefit from reading this book. Check out the suggestions for new music, books, and other sources of entertainment.

Barack & Curtis: Manhood, Power & Respect directed by Byron Hurt. As part of the recently launched Black Masculinity Project, Byron Hurt does it again with his recent short about Barack Obama and rapper 50 Cent. (See Hurt’s acclaimed film Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes.) Why these two guys? As Hurt explains, Barack Obama is shattering so many myths about black masculinity and 50 Cent (named Forbes Magazine‘s top-earning rapper), epitomizes gangsta hip-hop masculinity. “Both are successful Black men,” Hurt says. “Both are rock stars. Both are admired and feared.” Juxtaposing the two men in a short documentary film promotes — in Hurt’s words — historic level conversations. See it on YouTube.

So that’s it for this time. Humor and (respectful) controversy are always welcome at The Man Files. Send your ideas to Shira_Tarrant at yahoo dot com and tell me what you’d like to see. The lines are open, we’re taking requests, and I’ll see you here next month.

—Shira Tarrant

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been a bit MIA lately from the site (and profuse apologies — I feel completely out of the loop because of it all), but I have a bunch PhD apps due and a conference that I’m running coming up in the next couple of weeks.

What I am about to post requires much more thought and consideration than I can muster up right now, but everyone should go and check out the recent article in The Atlantic about transgender children, the question of the parents’ role, various theories by doctors, and of course the age old question of nurture vs. nature (response: a little bit of both, perhaps, but each appearing in different formations in different people so that it’s possible to predicate any assumptions/prejudices/stereotypes on this).

Go look at the article here. It’s worth a read.

Jill at Feministe has some excellent analysis on the matter, especially one doctor’s particular take on the role of the mother in “gender-identity disorders” as he so terms it.

Writes the Atlantic reporter of a family who took this doctor’s advice and theory:

When they reversed course, they dedicated themselves to the project with a thoroughness most parents would find exhausting and off-putting. They boxed up all of John’s girl-toys and videos and replaced them with neutral ones. Whenever John cried for his girl-toys, they would ask him, “Do you think playing with those would make you feel better about being a boy?” and then would distract him with an offer to ride bikes or take a walk. They turned their house into a 1950s kitchen-sink drama, intended to inculcate respect for patriarchy, in the crudest and simplest terms: “Boys don’t wear pink, they wear blue,” they would tell him, or “Daddy is smarter than Mommy—ask him.” If John called for Mommy in the middle of the night, Daddy went, every time.

Writes Jill:

Well that sounds helpful — just teach him that girls are stupid and weak and then he won’t want to be one.

Exactly, let’s just initiate a whole different kind of “disorder” as a result. The focus on the mother as the source of the “problem” is of course an old trope– in the Fifties, for example, it was though that Autism was caused by frigid mothers. I had hoped we had gotten beyond that.

Ok, that’s it for tonight. I’ve missed writing more frequently on this site and will be back soon!

–Kristen

Image Credit.

Sad times over here in the publishing world. The news reports come one after another: layoffs at Simon & Schuster, jobs cut at Random House, a freeze on acquisitions at Houghton Mifflin and layoffs as well, and plenty more to come, I’m sure, as the fiscal year comes to an end.

With the economy flailing, it’s no surprise that readers aren’t buying as many books. But is that really what’s causing all this distress?

Depression or no, it seems to me that publishing has been going in this direction for a long time. With the money that the big publishers have been spending on books in the post-Internet Age, in which content is otherwise cheap and plentiful, it seemed that it was just a matter of time before the old budgets couldn’t sustain themselves.

To make my point, here’s a generic case study from pre-economy-crash days: Let’s say Big House Publisher A offers a book deal to Author B for six-some-odd-figures. And then, to show its support for the book, Publisher A spends another 20,000 on publicity, marketing, and the like, making the overall expense on Author B’s book somewhere in the range of, let’s just say, $150,000. Throw in plant costs and overhead and manufacturing and shipping and that number gets even higher.

Now, Author B’s book is pretty commercial—not celebrity commercial, but an interesting topic that’s relevant to a good-size audience—and it gets some terrific reviews, and winds up selling, let’s say, 25,000 copies. Terrific! Well, come to think of it, the book is actually a little more nuanced and sophisticated and attracts a slightly more targeted niche audience and sells more like, say, 15,000 copies, but that’s 15,000 people who just read this book, and that’s fantastic too. An accomplishment any author can be proud of, no question.

Except. If you’re like me, this is where you stop and check your mental back-of-the-envelope P&L. Where, exactly, is the sustainable profit after spending six figures on a book that, like many wonderful books in your local bookstore, sells 15,000 copies? Or less? A scenario like the one above, for a book that costs $20, would mean losses for the publisher that would easily exceed $100,000.

The publishing industry, and the big houses in particular, have been headed for a housing-bubble-like crash for some time now, and we’re only starting to think about what a new mortgage might look like. A peek at a new writer-publisher model could be found, I’m betting, by looking at the independent presses, which tend toward savvier spending and more realistic expectations of what a book can do in the marketplace. The economy isn’t doing these indies any favors these days, either, but I’m betting these tight-and-lean operations are taking the hits with a little more stability.

If you’re a writer with publishing aspirations, I hope you don’t think I’m being a Cassandra. In fact, I’d say this isn’t necessarily bad news. I have to confess that I’m a little bit excited to see what’s next for literary America. If the rubric of yesterday was Big House = Big Advance = At the Mercy of the Big Three (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders) Only to Almost Earn Out Your Advance but Not Quite, then maybe the new rubric will allow for More Houses offering More Realistic Advances which could lead to More Generous Profits which will create a More Open Marketplace that advances A Wider Range of Authors and Ideas.

A girl can hope.

It’s a long way from here to there. But sometimes we need to take something apart in order to put it back together again in a better and smarter way, and if you’re an aspiring author, I’m rooting you on to take advantage of the time we’re living in by pitching your book to editors and publishers who understand the new economy and the value of your intellectual offering: indie houses, small and medium publishers, and boutique agents who are committed to your message and mission, not (only) to your bottom line.

More on the bottom line — and what this means for YOUR bottom line — next month.

Meanwhile, a few nights ago I got a chance to hear literary great Gary Snyder read letters Allen Ginsberg wrote to him about getting high and getting naked and sitting zazen and circumambulating mountains, and it reminded me why I’m in this book publishing business: I’m in it to be in it, to be a part of the public exchange of ideas and the intellectual development of our era.

What about you?

—Laura Mazer