I started writing this over a month ago and never finished. Story of way too much of my life right now. But the thoughts seem coherent enough as started. So you get that.

Twisty at I blame the patriarchy has been critiquing the patriarchal nature of fashion this week. There’s a whole series of posts, but this one takes on fashion head on in a way I find interesting. Essentially the argument is that all fashion serves to sort people into categories and that all fashion is informed and shaped by our patriarchal system. Fair enough. I’ll buy that. She also argues that within our partriarchal system women’s agency is limitted and that women make up a subordinated sex class. The argument that women’s agency is hindered by patriarchy is one that I’m willing to accept.

Twisty concludes:

A few of you have wondered what I suggest in terms of the patriarchy-blamer’s value-neutral wardrobe. Sadly, if my hypothesis is correct, such duds do not exist. Feminism cannot seem to counteract the intoxicating effects of male domination. In our culture it is the moral duty of every woman to be “sexy”, and her value remains tied to her success in this painful endeavor. You’re either “sexy” or you’re a schlub. Fucking patriarchy. I blame it, I do.

I’m tempted to conclude that she’s right. On the surface, the argument holds pretty well. But in the end it feels defeatist to me. In the end I think arguments of this sort give too little credit to what agency oppressed people do have within systems of oppression. To say that one has less agency in one social position than one would if one were in another, is not the same as saying that one has no agency. It is not the same as saying “resistance is futile.” So the question then becomes, is resistance futile? How much agency do I have? Is that agency enough to actually effect anything, or should I use what agency I have to choose the path of least resistance?

What does my body mean? What is it worth? Who does it benefit? How much are you willing to pay for it? Despite four years in women’s studies classrooms and half a lifetime of personal feminism, the questions still sound a little strange to me even as I ask them. But in the past few days I’ve come to the conclusion that these are precisely the questions I need to be asking. What do bodies mean in our consumer culture? What do female bodies mean? And if my body can be bought and sold, even if I am the one selling mine, what does that imply about freedom?

Let me start with a couple of caveats. I consider myself a pro-sex feminist. Moreover, I’ve never believed that pornography is the root of all evil and oppression. I tend to part ways philosophically from the likes of Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin pretty fast. As a primarily hetorsexual woman with some notable bisexual leanings, I actually benefit somewhat from the sexualization of women. And I’ve always been mildly uncomfortable with my own ability to objectify women, but reasoned that the objectification itself (at the mental level) is not entirely unnatural. The problem with objectification is how it’s performed in the world. At a certain level if you look at a stranger and appreciate their physical form you’re objectifying them. And frankly, I don’t think I’m ever going to get to a point where I don’t find myself appreciating the physical forms of those around me. Still, I find objectification as it tends to be practiced in our society sad and scary.

Last weekend I went to Vegas for the first time. We stayed in a hotel off the strip. As it happened, said hotel was right next to Club Paradise, a strip club. As it turns out, I’d never been to a strip club either. Not out of lack of interest particularly. It just was never high enough one my “things I want to do” list to make putting the effort into doing so. So when the friend of the friend I was brought up the idea of going to Club Paradise, I was enthusiastic. Indeed it’s probably my enthusiasm that resulted in us actually ending up at Club Paradise.

I was fully expecting to enjoy the experience. Lots of my female friends like strip clubs. I have great appreciation for the naked female form (though even going in I knew that I have an appreciation for a larger range of female forms than I was going to find there). So where’s the problem?

I’m still not sure I can explain my emotional response in a way that makes sense but I did not enjoy the experience. In fact it made me queasy, depressed, and a little angry. Something about actual women, removing actual clothes, and gyrate around their actual bodies, in an actual club was disturbing to me in the way that the theoreticals never were. B. pointed out to me that this particular club was creepier than others he’s been to on account of the particularly aggressive money extraction (i.e. cover charge to get in, minimum bar tabs for tables, etc.). But I’m unconvinced that I could have stomached any other club any better.

The first problem was two of the men I was with trying to talk me into a lapdance. I was unethusiastic and actually balked at the idea. It took me a minute of standing watching the stage to figure out why. As a woman getting a lapdance I would be playing into the lesbian fantasy that so many men seem to have. A woman getting a lapdance stops being a consumer of semi-naked women and becomes an object herself. So I rejected the lapdance, intending to just enjoy the women from a distance. Except I couldn’t.

Somehow I couldn’t get past the knowledge that they were there because they were being paid. I couldn’t get past the knowledge that these were real live women in the flesh, and they were for sale. The more the women gyrated, the sadder I got. I just couldn’t shake the realization that I was in a huge club packed with people (more men than women, but women too) who had come to consume female flesh.

I don’t hold anything against the women at the club for selling access (if fleeting) to their bodies. I don’t even necessarily hold anything in particular against the men buying it (though I find it a touch disconcerting). But the social structure that all of this takes place in makes me want to scream and cry. It seems to me to be a simple step between “their bodies are for sale” and “my body is for sale.” Actually, that’s not really the problem. They make a choice to sell their bodies and I make a choice not to sell mine. And as long as I continue to think of it in those terms I have no problem. The problem is not with the selling, but the consuming. While I choose whether to sell my body, what I realized at Club Paradise is that I don’t necessarily choose whether or not my body is consumed. It’s not as if I didn’t at some level already know this to be true. But the club just made the point too clearly. The entire place screamed out “the female form is for the pleasure of men (and the occasional woman)” It screamed “the things beneath this flesh, hopes, dreams, personalities are irrelevant.”

I’d like to believe that this isn’t pervasive, that once I walk outside the confines of a given club that I am not for sale, that my body is no longer open to be consumed. But the realities of my experiences suggest otherwise. How many times have men with whom I share no intimate involvement made comments about my body? How often have I caught eyes tracking me as I move? Or tracking other women, whose bodies conform more strictly to our society’s oppressive standards of beauty?

We are a consumer society. We recieve constant messages to consume, consume, consume. So we consume things. And we consume people. And it isn’t just within so-called sex-work. We sell products using people as objects. Movies are all to often about the consumption of the image of people on the screen more than consumption of the story. Sex sells. Everywhere.

And some people even feel entitled to that. In a discussion about the Dove Real Woman ads, Jill of Feministe links to this article, which discusses men complaining about the ad campaign because the women in the ads designed to sell products to women are not attractive enough. The men complaining are implicitly asserting their right to not just consume images of women, but to consume images of beautiful women.

I want to run around screaming “I am not for sale.” I want to wear a huge paper bag over my head (and the rest of me) so that my body does not become object as I walk down the street.

All that said, at least in a strip club there’s a certain honesty. At least in that setting women are compensated for others’ consumption of them. Nonetheless, I don’t think I’ll go back to one anytime soon. I don’t really like the feeling when the realities of my society are presented to me so clearly in black in and white.

I have great respect for people who are willing to call a spade a spade, particularly when they are willing to do so in situations where the status quo rules supreme. But I’ve become frustrated with what seems to me a tendency among some to call anything that even vaguely resembles a spade a spade (”it has a handle and you can dig with it, therefore it is a spade; the fact that you insist that it is in fact a hoe is a sign that you are not really with us.”) My main complaint with this lately has been in the area of racism, but it’s a danger in all anti-oppression work. Yes, I said a danger. I think that calling things that are not clearly instances of the racism (or other ism) racism (or other ism) weakens an anti-racist (or anti- other ist) movement. Why? Because it reduces your credibility, and because it makes you appear angry, reactionary, and fundamentally impossible to work with. At it’s worse I think it is equivalent to crying wolf.

Let’s step away from racism for a moment and talk about sexism, since that’s something that I’ve thought deeply about for a longer time (and an area where I’m less likely to be hit with “well it’s your privilege causing you to make that argument; if you were of the oppressed group you wouldn’t feel that way”). I once read (or perhaps it was a conversation) a sort of parody of feminist analysis that argued that ketchup is an element of the patriarchy? Why? Start with round tomatoes, clearly symbol of that which is feminine. Boil these tomatoes down and force them into a bottle. Not just any bottle but a bottle that is higher than it is wide (well, I guess that’s the definition of bottle, otherwise it would be a jar). Don’t you see, you’re taking the feminine round essence of the tomato and forcing it into the phallic masculine mold?! We must protest the patriarchal ketchup. Clearly this is satirical right? And you’d probably find yourself taken aback by anyone who seriously argued that ketchup is a tool of the patriarchy used to keep women down right? Indeed, you might even find yourself questioning whether this person could be trusted to ever cogently analyze what is and is not patriarchal, right?

In most cases the sorts of things that annoy me are not as full blown ridiculous as claiming that ketchup bottles reinforce patriarchy. (I’m sorry, I realize ridiculous is a judgmental term, but since I came up with the original argument in the first place I think I am justified in labeling it as patently ridiculous.) And as a result these things aren’t as damaging to the credibility of the analyses they are associated with, but still I find myself looking at a lot of things that seem very dangerous to credibility.

I’m going to cite an example that is contentious among the Unitarian Universalist community (or at least the online community, for various reasons I haven’t talked to anyone in my immediate UU community about the issue), but I think gets right to the core of my frustration. At the end of June there is an annual assembly of UUs called General Assembly or GA (UUs like acronyms). GA this year was in Fort Worth, Texas. Unsurprisingly there were some incidents of racism at GA. I say unsurprisingly not because I think racism is ok, but because as long as we live in a racist society some incidents of racism are inevitable, even among progressive religious people (who, incidentally, I often feel are much better at denying their racism than actually avoiding racist behavior). There was apparently a great deal of hurt surrounding some of these incidents, and a lot of processing went on around them as well, causing the cancellation of one of the social events in favor of time to process.

In the aftermath the board of trustees of the Unitarian Universalist Association issued an open letter of apology. The letter doesn’t give much clue about what really happened or what the nature of any of the incidents really was. The discussions I have seen online about the issue have focused almost entirely on an incident that took place during the closing ceremonies. This incident involved some young people outside the hall. Apparently the young people in question did not have their badges that let the ushers know that they were in fact registered for GA. Thus the young people were not admitted to the closing ceremonies. This made them angry and there were unpleasant words exchanged between the youth and the minister who spoke up in the ushers’ defense.

As you can guess the young people in question were not white. And the incident was labeled racist. In the absence of other information that seemed like a potentially accurate analysis. ChaliceChick brought up another perfectly reasonable analysis, suggesting that the youth might have been asked for their badges not because they were black, but because they were youth. Indeed, she suggests that all the ensuing chaos might have had more to do with their age than their color. If you happen to be a UU you probably won’t be horribly surprised to find out that she was quite quickly attacked in a number of places for suggesting that just because an incident involved people of color does not automatically mean the incident was racist. Yes, for a faith that claims to be non-dogmatic, we are awfully vicious in enforcing the accepted group-think when it comes to racism.

And then, the first actual eye-witness account of what occurred appeared (it appeared first on the anti-racist white allies email list, but I’m linking the article on fuuse). According to the usher (who herself happens to not be white) who was present, the kids were not escorted out because they were black. Indeed they were not even escorted out because they didn’t have their badges. They were escorted out because they were rude and disruptive.

At this point, some people began to acknowledge that while racism is a problem within the UU community, this particular incident might not actually have been primarily about race. Many others, though, dug their heels in and continued to insist that this was racist. And maybe it was. We don’t all the details. But given the details that we do have, I have a really hard time with people saying unequivocably that this was racism. To me it’s like standing in a garden looking at a bit of handle poking out of the ground with the rest of the instrument hidden in the dirt and yelling “look, look, it’s a spade.” Much worse than the continued insistence that this is a spade is the names and insults being leveled at the people who reply “well, I suppose it could be a spade, but we can’t really tell so maybe it’s something else entirely.” This accomplishes nothing. It alienates those who are calling into question whether the implement is in fact a spade. And it may make them much less likely to believe someone when they say “I saw a spade lying out by the garden.” I know for me if you tell me that a little bit of handle poking out of the ground is definitely a spade and ridicule me when I say “it actually kind of looks like the handle to the garden weasel I left out here last fall” I’m going to be very hesitant to ever believe you when you tell me you’ve seen a spade.

I believe language is important. And I believe misusing it is detrimental. When you call everything used to dig a spade it lessens the precision of your analysis. When you call every negative incident that involves people of color racist you are undermining the term racism. You are weakening your position opposing racism. And potentially you are putting yourself in a position when people won’t hear you when you do see something that is racist.

I know that a lot of times it feels like incidents are because of the categories we live in. And often they are. But sometimes a jerk is just a jerk. And I think moving forward in our analyses and our actions requires that we be able to not only call a spade a spade but also stop and ask ourselves and others whether it really is a spade at all.

I’ve spent the past two years of my congregational life calling attention to structures and incidents that I feel are racist. And that’s important work and we should all do it. But for one thing it needs to be done in ways that aren’t confrontational or people’s feelings get hurt and they stop listening (and even if you don’t give a flying f*** if people’s feelings are hurt, if you want to get anything done you better care whether they keep listening). And it also needs to be done in a spirit that recognizes that if we think the people around us are wrong, they also might think we are. The minute we stop being able to question and analyze our own perceptions of things we are lost. If we cannot question everything including ourselves we run the very real risk of becoming a source of the very types of oppression we seek to root out.

How do we negotiate anger in an ethical way? I ask this question because it is rooted very deeply in a personal situation right now. But I think it is important, too, to think about in situations that are less immediately personal and more about community, about institutions and the people within them. The problem is not simply the negotiation of anger, though arguably that along is problem enough to deal with. The problem is negotiating anger within relationships that involve things other than just anger, relationships that cannot simply be severed either for pragmatic reasons or reasons nestled in the heart.

What I’m getting at is the question of how do you deal with anger while at the same time maintaining other emotions. Of course we deal with this frequently in small ways. A friend, for instance, may do something that angers us. But for the purposes of this reflection I’d like to draw a distinction between very temporary anger and more ongoing forms. What is bothering me is anger about situations that are not likely to change (or are only likely to change with great effort) and situations that cannot easily be smoothed over with apologies, heartfelt conversations, or other strategies of reconciliation. I am talking here, about deep and very painful anger.

I suppose I should start by confessing that I am bad at anger to begin with. It’s an emotion that I’m never sure how to shape into constructive form. But at a certain level there are people that I can at least feel angry at without making myself too uncomfortable. I am angry at the current U.S. president and this administration. I find this easy. I am angry at the history teacher who sexually harassed me throughout high school. Again, I experience this anger with very little internal conflict. I do sometimes feel twinges of guilt for the kind of anger that starts bleeding over into hatred because it does not seem to mesh with the UU principle of “the inherent worth and dignity of every person” but there are ways to mentally overcome that hurdle. Eventually, after much thought, I have come to the conclusion that it is possible for people to tarnish themselves through their actions to the point where their inherent worth and dignity is no longer visible to the naked eye.

Lately I have been thinking about a much more interally conflicted sort of anger. Perhaps it is easiest to start with the very personal example and move from there to the more generic question of pragmatic alliances forged despite anger. The short version of the story is that I am currently very angry at a friend with whom I have had a very tumultous friendship over the past three years. He is someone I care very deeply about and who has been very valuable to me. He is also someone who has treated me in ways that hurt a great deal during that time. And while we did discuss these behaviors and the way they made me feel, they nonetheless continued. And ultimately I find myself standing at what feels like a brick wall. On the one hand my heart is expansive and full of good will, happy memories, and recognition of the powerful influence this man has had on my life and my identity. On the other hand I am suffering from a long accumulation of hurt. And I am angry that my hurt has been left largely unaddressed and indeed sometimes even unacknowledged. I have expressed both my hurt and my anger. Ultimately the expression changed very little in terms of how I felt about it. I was still hurt. I was still angry.

And this raises the question for me, what is one supposed to do with one’s anger? I feel like a hysterical child caught in a temper tantrum, stomping my feet and yelling and screaming. I am angry. I am hurt. And I’m rather exhausted from all this screaming and stamping my feet. I feel like this hysterical child because I don’t know what to do next besides yell and scream. And the yelling and screaming itself seems both pointless and manipulative. I have expressed my anger. I know nothing is going to change, really. Little things might, but the larger issues almost certainly won’t. I can continue to express my anger, but that feels as if it demands some response. And what response is there really? Apologies are frail substitutes for actual efforts to remedy a situation. And, in this case, I am not really looking for a remedy. And this leaves me feeling that I cannot continue to relate to this person because there seems to be no solution to my feelings besides continuing a relationship that leaves me prone to histrionics and tantrums. Continuing the friendship on those terms seems damaging to both of us. The effort of the tantrums is exhausting for me, and unfair to him. And so I am left balancing this feeling of deep, probably unreconcilable, anger with an equally deep and unshakable feeling of care and regard.

This is uncomfortable and hard to deal with in my personal life, and a lot of my current emotional energy is spent on trying to ease that discomfort. At the same time, though, I have been thinking about how these dynamics play out in other situations. In my life as a Unitarian Universalist I spend a lot of time looking at dynamics of oppression. My home congregation is one in which issues of racism (and language-based oppression) are very salient and must be dealt with at an institutional level constantly. Sometimes things can be very contentious. And I’ve both witnessed and experienced a great deal of anger in that setting. Nonetheless is a community in which we, by the choice to form a faith community, remain in relationship with one another. And I have to wonder what the effect of this is. I have seen hurt heaped high. And I have seen people continue on and work in alliance with each other later, despite having expressed deep hurt at past points. I don’t percieve that hurt being worked through. Much like with my friendship that now hangs in tatters, that hurt just seems to be pushed aside indefinitely. And I wonder what damage that does to our ability to really be in relationship with one another.

How do we form alliances through anger? Most social movements involve some aspect of this. Those fighting to right their own institutional disenfranchisement often find themselves having to form connections with those who possess institutional power. And underneath that there is anger. If nothing else there is an overwhelming anger at the system. In many cases there is a passionate anger at all members of a group in power. But yet relationships are formed. And often they are not merely pragmatic. Often they involve real regard and trust (even if it is tinged with a patina of non-trust).

More importantly, what do we do with our anger? How do we express it? How do we use it. As a woman I am deeply angry at the systems of sexism that constrain my behavior and my perception in the world. I try not to let that anger become an anger at all men. But how do I express and anger at sexism without lobbing bullets at those who I love, who happen to be empowered by the system that I hate? How do I harness that anger for something constructive, rather than just letting it eat away at me and tarnish my relationships? How do I separate individuals I care for from the system of oppression that we all exist in?

From the other side, how do I deal with other people’s anger? How do I, as a white woman, process the anger of my non-white friends. How do I separate their, and my, hatred of a system of racism, from a hatred of white people, from a hatred of me personally?

How do we love despite hurt? How do we balance anger with that love? How do we move forward with the anger that we do have in ways that don’t hurt the innocent? How do we move forward with the anger that we do have in ways that don’t hurt us? I think these are questions I am going to be left working on for a long time.

Ok. I think last night I fixed the formatting problem. Indeed I think I fixed it in both firefox and I.E. (different renderings of CSS in different browsers are the bane of my webdesigning). I haven’t tested it on any of the Mac browsers so if anything looks rabidly amiss let me know.

And in other news, for anyone reading this via RSS feed, I need to change it. Previously I was using the blogger default, which is all fine and good except I have multiple blogs writing into a single directory and so I keep doing stupid things like overwriting the RSS feed with output from the wrong place.

So the new feed will be http://www.sliz.net/sliz.xml For the time being the old feed will also be active, but since blogger doesn’t allow you to set up two feeds at once, keeping the default feed going requires a manual copy on my part. So you shouldn’t assume I’ll keep both indefinitely.

You know, I didn’t used to be this lazy. Once upon a time, before what I was doing was called a blog, I used to write on my webpage by logging into the server and typing my entry in pico. I also manually copied old entries into an archive folder. In theory technology makes things “easier.” In reality I think it just raises the standards of what you should do, sometimes actually requiring more work. (Here I’m thinking not just of computers but also of the innovations in housework like vacuum cleaners and dishwashers since the evidence suggests that at least initially these innovations did not lead women to do less housework).

A woman on a livejournal community this morning posted that she’s stressed out because her husband wants a baby and she wants a baby too, BUT she also wants to finish her PhD, to teach, to write, to publish (presumably to get tenure). I responded that it’s not an impossible situation if her husband is willing to be at least a 50-50 caregiver if not a primary caregiver. I firmly believe that academic women should be able to have families. I also recognize reality and realize that if you want to get tenure at a top tier school babies are a risky business. This is a very personal issue for me. And while right now I don’t particularly want children, I still find the bind that academic women (and high achieving women in general) find themselves in very stressful and depressing.

One woman (I’m guessing from the username that she’s a woman, but hard to say for sure) responded to my comment noting that it’s very hard for a father to be a primary caregiver in the first year if you’re breastfeeding and “If you medically can breastfeed and don’t intend to do it, then you should assess whether you really want to have a child at all.” Urgh. Excuse me for a moment while I gurgle in frustration.

Basically what it comes down to is that professional women are essentially damned if we do and damned if we don’t, no matter where we turn. Lots of people seem to share this notion that if you can’t be the perfect mother you shouldn’t be a mother at all. And somehow perfect motherhood seems to involve letting motherhood subsume all other identities. Don’t get me wrong. I am pro-breastfeeding. In fact I’m very pro-breastfeeding. But I’m also pro women having lives that are not entirely determined by motherhood. And somehow that aspect seems to get lost in a lot of the dialog. It becomes this situation where anything that does not put the immediate well-being of your child front and center is “selfish” no matter what it does to your own well-being immediate or long-term.

Forgive me if I think happy mothers are better mothers. And to me being a happy mother means making your own choices and not being thrown piles of guilt and shame. Do you want to take three months leave and breastfeed and be there every time your new baby gurgles. Fine. Oh wait. How many women actually have the privilege of doing that? Not that many. And even those who do face the very real possibility of negative consequences for their career. Does wanting motherhood to have as small an impact on your career as possible make you selfish? Well, you know it might. However, I’m a big proponent of being selfish once in awhile and watching out for your own well-being.

I’m just frustrated because women find themselves in this situation where they are made to feel guilty no matter what they do. No matter how good a mother you are, you’re never good enough. Someone will always have some reason you should have done things differently. And ultimately what it comes down to is choosing between motherhood and career. And yes men have to make this choice as well, but they aren’t punished for it the way women are. Men are allowed to say “yes I want children, but it’s not practical for me to be the primary caregiver because it will hurt my career.” And yes the situation hurts men. Yes, the situation is unfair for men. Yes, men who choose fatherhood are punished in their careers. But it’s not quite the same catch 22, and there isn’t the same cult of perfect fatherhood. A father who chooses to put his career at the forefront might get a snort of disgust for his 1950s behavior, but I’ve not seen fathers choices attacked in quite the same ways I’ve seen mothers choices attacked.

So I’ll tell you what. I’m not going to tell you how to raise your kids (short of the obvious things like make sure they’re fed and clothed and don’t beat them) and I’ll trust that when the time comes you won’t tell me how to raise mine. AND you won’t treat me like I’m a selfish bitch who can only think about herself if I decide that maybe I don’t want any kids at all.

I live near downtown L.A. in a beautiful reasonably well-maintained Victorian house (see photo). It really is lovely, and it makes me very happy to live here. Our lovely, well-maintained house, however, is flanked by two horrendously dilapidated houses. Since I don’t actually own property, the state of the neighboring houses is only a concern in the sense that for my own comfort I’d rather they not become home to squatters, etc. Actually one of the properties came preloaded with a squatter, a tenant who stuck around after the former owner was indicted for being a slum lord. He lives in an RV in the abandoned lot that adjoins the property and is a bit eccentric, but seemingly harmless.

Until recently the condition of the neighboring properties was not much of a concern. In the past few weeks, however, the new owner of the next door has started remodeling, or should we say gutting, the house. This is annoying due to the noise, but overall an acceptable thing to do with a dilapidated house that one owns. Except two weeks ago he began redoing the roof, at 7 a.m. on a Sunday. I wasn’t actually present for this event but apparently it was loud. Also, apparently illegal. I guess doing this sort of work on a Sunday is illegal (but yet Christians claim their beliefs are persecuted, no comment). The neighbor across the street called the police. Turns out the reroofing of the house hasn’t been approved. At this point the neighbor who called the police tells my roommates that we should show up at the planning meeting where the roof will be discussed.

And thus I found myself Tuesday night in the office space of one of the neighborhood realtors sitting on an uncomfortable bench with one of my roommates. Our house is in a Historical Preservation Overlay Zone, which I would have thought a priori would be something I would approve of. But I left the meeting rather troubled. Being in an HPOZ means that anything that’s done to the outside of one of these old houses has to be approved by the board (I don’t know what the date cut off is, but their authority extends at least to building built into the 1920s or 30s). It’s not like the system elsewhere where you only have to worry if your property is on the historic registry (which generally means its in reasonably good condition anyway, and someone in its ownership trajectory had a personal commitment to its historical value). No, the zones were established by the city. As near as I can tell there’s no way to opt out (short of selling off your property and leaving the zone). And while existing non-historically accurate features are grandfathered in, once you start doing any work on the exterior you’re stuck doing it in a historically accurate way.

The board is made up of architects and planning folks. Some of whom live in the neighborhood. The chair person described the whole process of board selection, but I don’t remember the details. Suffice to say, people with an interest in preservation, at least some of whom also have personal interest in the neighborhood itself. As she was pointing out the residency requirement she noted “so it has a very community feel.” Funny. The people sitting around that table didn’t look anything at all like how I think of this community. First, this community is not a majority white community. And it isn’t composed solely of monolingual English speakers (ok, to be fair some of the board might speak a second language, but I’m willing to bet that English is a first and dominate language for all except possibly the one of them with the Spanish-origin surname). Second, this community is not predominately middle-class, though the proximity to a University means there are incursions. So yeah, forgive me if I felt the only contribution of a “community feel” came from the non-board community members present.

First up on the agenda was the owner of the house next door. My first thought when he started talking was to wonder if translation is available for those homeowners in the area who are not capable of communicating with the board in English. Of course, economic realities being what they are, most of the actual property owners probably are at least fluent enough in English to get by. But one does wonder about provisions for those who are not (and while we’re talking about access, let’s note that the meeting was held in a second floor room accessible only by a set of stairs with an extremely flimsy handrailing that could not actually be used by anyone needing something they could put weight on). Now I’m not going to throw too much support in the direction of this man since it does strike me that he pulled down the roof without permit in a blatant move to guarantee that the board would let him reroof. And there’s something about the man that suggests to me that he might not be a significantly better landlord than the notorious slumlord before him. Still, I have to wonder about a process wherein you need to get permission for your choice of color and material for shingles.

I’m torn. I love these old buildings. I love our porch (which would have been replaced with something much less historically appropriate were it not for the intervention of the HPOZ board) but I have a bit of a problem with the level of control over private property. Usually I’m not of a rabidly individualistic bent. I have libertarian sympathies sometimes, but fundamentally I think for society to function as society there needs to be some attention paid to the good of the collective. But the problem here is that good that is in question is property values. And as much as I’m in favor of thinking about the well-being of the collective, and even the economic well-being of the collective, I have deep problems with the notion that I am obligated to follow certain aesthetic patterns on my property in order to increase the value of yours. I understand that this is, in part, about historical preservation, a love for the past. But the “quality” of a block was invoked at one point during the meeting. And it sent my hackles up.

The couple after our deroofing neighbor claims to have been unaware of the rules of the HPOZ. So they tore down their old porch and started building a new one, without a permit. Granted, had they pulled a permit the way they were supposed to they would have discovered the need to approach the board before doing anything. But right now they’re in the position of having to tear down the new porch they started and start over, in a more historically accurate (and much more expensive) way. It’s just a guess, but I’m betting their budget doesn’t have much room to allow that.

Throughout the whole thing I was a bit uncomfortable but it wasn’t until the third person on the agenda that I realized what it felt like. They were telling him that he had to get paint colors approved, was required to use three colors, etc. And suddenly I felt like I was in the sprawling subdivisions of suburbia, where the board determines that your ranch house (one of four possible designs) must be painted in one of the six community approved colors. And again, I have to admit that a priori I would think that I would be in favor of historical preservation. But there is something about a table of middle-class white people telling a room half full of non-middle class, non-white people what to do with their property that just doesn’t sit well. I can forgive the draconian subdivisions. At least there the boards choosing the range of allowable colors really are representative of the community as a whole. At least there you choose to buy that property with the knowledge of the rules. But here the board is not really OF the community even if some of them live IN the community. What’s more, at least some of these property owners didn’t opt in. And that strikes me as problematic.

I also wonder if the end goal is well-served by this strategy. It strikes me that the incentives get a little weird in this situation. If you don’t do anything to your property you’re not subject to the jurisdiction of the HPOZ board. But as soon as you start doing any changes, you have to face the board (which means all projects become dramatically more expensive). So basically what we have is an incentive to let your old Victorian house descend into disrepair. Now granted, it’s not that simple since there’s a built in incentive (in the form of your own property value) to make improvements in the ways that the board leads you. But ultimately there’s a payoff question, and particularly for the absentee landlord types (the vast majority of these houses are subdivided) the incentive not to improve is likely higher than the incentive to improve. And hence, the neighborhood retains its gritty slum character despite the gentrifying force of the HPOZ.

I know a middle-class white academic who owns property in the neighborhood. One thing she noted in a discussion about this is that her neighbors who are not middle-class whites don’t seem to have the same aesthetic appreciation for the old houses. And I think it’s worth pointing out that these are Victorian houses, hence by default this is a white upper class aesthetic we are attempting to protect. I’m just saying….

It’s not that I’m against preservation of history (though I’m not sure I believe there’s any inherent need to do so on a grand scale for reasons other than aesthetic ones). I just am suspicious of placing the cost for that preservation on individuals who don’t necessarily benefit from it. If we agree that this is a public good, the cost should be distributed. If we don’t agree that preservation is a public good, then it shouldn’t be legally required. Mostly, my issue is that this seems to be something imposed upon the neighborhood from the outside and the people enforcing the rules are not the ones subject to the cost. And I can’t shake the feeling that this whole thing was probably put together by politicians who wouldn’t be caught dead here.

The title of this is taken from an Alice Walker poem that always makes me think of changing the world by changing the landscape, revolution with a spade and garden gloves instead of rifles (ignoring for a moment the fact that the content of the poem itself is rather violent).

My brain these days is circling around the word revolution, around phrases like social justice. I wonder what others mean by these words. I wonder what I mean. A fellow Unitarian Universalist asks of the support of white allies in anti-racist movements: “I wonder if that support is premised on our space in the sun not creating a shadow for them…” I have spent a lot of time pondering this question and pondering whether my answer is consistent with my faith/philosophy or whether it is a hypocritical mark of racist self-interest. Because ultimately my answer is “yes.” Yes, my support for anti-racist movements is contingent upon those movements not merely shifting upon whom the shadows fall. But I would expand my answer beyond that. It is not just along the lines of color where I think my discomfort with this formulation lies. Fundamentally I am not interested in reinforcing hierarchies. I am not in favor of replacing old hierarchies with new hierarchies that simply favor the formerly disempowered. I do not seek to replace white supremacy with non-white supremacy, patriarchy with matriarchy, or rule by the rich with rule by the workers. I haven’t read Rawles in any detail, but I understand him to basically argue that justice requires the feeling that a system is just even if you don’t know where you’re going to end up in it. The way I think of this is that I should be imagining a utopia where I am not penalized for characteristics of my birth. The assumptions of those fighting for their own empowerment, however, often seem to rest on the notion of a zero-sum game, the idea that one cannot come into power without wresting power from another. And that’s a reasonable assumption, certainly. It’s the next step in the logic that puzzles me. Why does a redistribution of power necessitate recreation of hierarchy? Revenge? Where’s the logic there? Why is it any more fair that I should pay the price for my position in a system created by my ancestors than it is that you should pay a price for your position in a system created by my ancestors?

Truly I’m not much of a revolutionary, the way revolution seems to be typically defined. My disdain for violence seems to get in the way. I understand that to say that I am a pacifist is a reflection of my privilege. I understand that when the war lands on your doorstep the words “but I’m a pacifist” will not stop the bullets. On the other hand, I have seen no convincing evidence to suggest that any problem has ever been solved through violent action. I am convinced, having seen it historically and in the personal lives of people surrounding me, that violence begets violence. Of course violent revolution can be successful, but it requires an astounding amount of blood. It requires not merely overthrowing those in power and putting yourself in their place, but killing every last one of those in power or those related to those in power, or those sympathetic to those in power. Essentially it involves killing anyone and everyone who might eventually want revenge. I have to admit that I am at a loss to think of any cause I support strongly enough to endure that kind of bloodshed.

But I realized last night that I have other problems with leftists and revolutionaries, and radicals in general. Tunnel vision, a devotion to one’s own cause that leaves even well-meaning fighters of oppression perpetuating oppressions of their own even as they pat themselves on the back for their progressiveness. I realized in the midst of another conversation that part of my retreat from economic radicalism has nothing to do with my pacifism and everything to do with my feminism. I offer here two historical examples. The first is the United States in the 1960s. Sara Evans offers a nice narrative of the relationship between civil rights activism and the formation of the women’s movement (second wave feminism). Of course, if you want to look back further, you could also make similar arguments about abolitionism and the suffrage movement (first wave feminism). But flash forward a couple of decades and shift your focus a few thousand miles south of the civil rights work done in Alabama and Mississippi. Anna Fernandez Poncela and Jennifer Bickham Mendez both offer descriptions of women’s organizing in Nicaragua during the Sandinista Revolution that is depressingly familiar. Maxine Molyneux describes the history of women’s organizing in Cuba in ways that again sound all too familiar. And yes, my skepticism is driven largely by self-interest but I have a hard time getting behind the word revolution when it seems clear to me that I risk being put against the wall for the color of my skin (or the privilege of having pursued intellectual pursuits, never mind the ill-logic of punishing people for where they ended up rather than where they started) without even having any hope of overthrowing the particular hierarchal structure that holds me down. And as a feminist I can’t much fantasize about violent revolution if I want humankind to survive. And even if it weren’t for the issue of reproduction, nothing changes the fact that some of the people I love most are people empowered by patriarchy, men.

There is more I could say of course. But really what it comes down to is a conviction that no one should be living in shadows. And a deep underlying suspicion of anyone who would ask me to fight for their right to stand in the sun but be unwilling to fight for my right to the same.

I’ve been thinking a lot about community. Last week I voted in the L.A. mayorial election. I didn’t really have a deep attachment to either candidate, but I couldn’t help but think that I should at least pretend to walk my talk and focus on local issues rather than letting national ones eclipse everything else.

I walked to my polling place. I have a friend who insists that voting in person is more civic and community minded than voting absentee. I decided to take his argument one step further. It’s not just about seeing the people in your polling place at the time you vote. It’s about seeing the people in your community. Who is out on the street. What do the blocks between here and there look like.

I don’t walk much in L.A. (Don’t even start with the song lyrics. “Nobody walks in LA” is utter bullshit; in poor neighborhoods lots and lots of people walk). I used to walk more in my old neighborhood since there was a drug store within a few blocks. But even there once I got my car, I stopped being locally self-locomoting.

I’d forgotten how different neighborhoods feel on the ground. I know the blocks around my house well enough. I’ve explored a little there. I walk to the 7-11 on occasion (too often, though, I drive… to buy ice cream… how sad). But I almost never cross Hoover. The neighborhood West of Hoover is ever so slightly sketchier than the blocks around our place. I can’t point to anything solid that makes me less comfortable in that segment of the neighborhood than my own, but even were it closer I wouldn’t walk to La Barca (our favorite neighborhood Mexican restaurant) at night, whereas I have walked over to 7-11 after dark with only a minor fluttering of nerves (and anger at a world that makes walking at night such an issue for me). But, at 5 in the evening with bright LA sunshine beating down, there was no reason to think that I’d have any problems going to vote.

So I headed out. And it was an interesting adventure. Just after I crossed Hoover a car drove past and honked. I looked up and the (male) driver waved. I was mildly put out about this. I hate being forced into street interactions with men I don’t know. I hate the presumption that somehow my mere existence in the world should somehow satisfy their sexual needs, if only verbally. I hate being drug into interaction. So I was a bit annoyed at Mr. Honk&Wave. Of course I was grateful it had just been a way and not a “hey baby” yelled out the window. As far as creepiness goes it was largely innocous.

And so I kept walking. It’s important, perhaps, to note that I am not the majority demographic in my neighborhood. I am white, appear vaguely middle-class, and speak English as my first language. The neighborhood is predominantly immigrant Latinos. The houses are run down and it isn’t uncommon to see men in front yards working on cars. It’s a very comfortable neighborhood to me because I grew up in a rural working class environment and somehow, despite the radical differences between there and here, this neighborhood feels like home.

After voting I came back up a different street. I was quite content and relaxed, enjoying the sunshine and the breeze. I passed a man hauling a refrigerator. He paused and moved slightly to the side so I could pass. Without thinking about it I murmured “gracias” as I slid past. (He had spoken in Spanish to two women blocking the sidewalk). I rounded the corner and my breath was taken away by murals that I had never really registered on the side of the corner building. How many times have I driven past those paintings without a second glance? I am obsessed with mural art, and so I paused to take in the colors (and wished I had my camera in hand).

Walking up the street I was surprised by the number of dogs. Lots of barking as I passed. “Beware of Dog” signs. In some sense I could understand why people would be nervous on these streets. Decaying houses, barking dogs, working class men out on the street (who regardless of ethnicity do tend to come off as more threatening than middle class men). But I felt entirely content and comfortable.

As I came up toward a driveway a man crossed in front of me, heading up the driveway. He looked my way and said hello. It was something that would normally annoy me, make me feel put upon with its presumptiousness. I think he said “how’s it going.” Before I could even open my mouth to answer he had turned his head back to his own path and was going about his business. Not an insistence upon interaction, merely an acknowledgement of my presence. I was oddly comforted.

I came to the corner. A car was waiting at the stop sign to turn left. I paused to let him pass, but he waved me across. As he turned he smiled and said something out his open window. I couldn’t hear him well enough to understand what he said. But oddly I didn’t care. I just smiled in response and turned away.

It struck me suddenly that what felt right about all these interactions was that they were simply friendly. Growing up I was used to waving at people as they passed. If you drive past a neighbor’s house and they are outside you wave, whether you know them well or not. This felt like that. Somehow even Mr. Honk&Wave felt almost like that. And I felt utterly unthreatened.

Saturday I walked to the corner store to buy some orange juice. The cashier asked me “do you need a bag sweetheart” when I paid for the juice. I smile and told her no. On my walk back I passed a group of three women in conversation who said hello to me.

It is an odd feeling. But somehow it is like this little section of LA is it’s own small town. Except less restrictive because none of these people actually know me.

For the time being I don’t have a lot to say. The new design is finished (of course most of you won’t have seen my old page or my old design). There’s still some things that need to be updated and dealt with, but for the time being this page is mostly functional.

Soon it will even say interesting things. Really. I promise it will.