Threat Level: Tiger Orange

I'm back in Ohio after an almost uneventful trip. Almost, because we had a minor adventure in Tegel Airport, before we ever left Berlin.

Tegel is set up as a 12-sided shape,(a dodecagon, my mathematician friend tells me). Each gate has its own waiting area. This is only feasible because Tegel is a quaint little airport with just over 20 gates in total. (Berlin has two other airports.)

Each gate has its own security checkpoint because that's what the geometry dictates. Centralization is a national pastime in Germany. Tegel is decentralized only because everything else is a mathematical impossibility.

So we're unloading all of our carry-ons onto the belt, and noticing that the security crew seems half-trained and uncertain, and trying to keep an eye out so neither kids nor laptops disappear - when suddenly the belt stops, and stays stopped, with our last two bags trapped inside the x-ray machine.

At first we assume the computer system has frozen up. I figure someone would try rebooting it, but no, the guards have called for outside help. And so we wait.

After maybe ten minutes, there's no sign of any tech geek. Instead, three burly, uniformed police officers appear. This is the first sign that maybe it's not a technical glitch after all.

On the x-ray equipment's screen, it's evident that the offending baggage is the Tiger's Bob the Builder carry-on. Inside it, you can clearly see the outline of the his LeapPad: a couple of batteries, some circuitry, and an irregular loop that connects the stylus to the rest of the toy. Here's how it looks in action, with the stylus cord clearly visible:


Unfortunately, I can't replicate the x-ray view. Just imagine it looks sort of like this, only way more threatening with its innards exposed:


And so we ask: What's the holdup?

"Wir warten auf den Hund." We're waiting for the dog.

Oh dear. They've called in the bomb squad - on account of my son, the Tiger.

As my sister later commented: "We know he can be a terror. But a terrorist?"

The dog eventually appears, frolicking around the equipment with his tongue lolling about. He seems completely unimpressed with the Tiger's foray into international terror. Then again, as any parent knows who's spent hours with a noise-making toy, maybe the LeapPad is the most dangerous item on board. So we unpack it, make it go doodle-doodle-doot, and repack Bob the Builder just as boarding begins.

It's not all that surprising that German airport security is just as paranoid as the American version. They've had over thirty years practice, ever since the Red Army Faction provoked panic in the late 1970s.

The rest of the trip was easy, including re-entry into the U.S., which always makes me nervous. No one confiscated our laptops at the U.S. border; we didn't end up stranded in O'Hare even though oodles of connecting flights were delayed. In Columbus, we managed to fit all ten of our bags into our old Saturn sedan without even having to strap one of the kids to the top. (I did have one carry-on under my feet, though.) To stay awake on the drive home, I ate not one but two Krispy Kreme donuts on the way home - one glazed, one maple frosted. They were divine.

It's great to be back.

In Transition, Again

I probably won't get a chance to post anything substantive for the next couple of days; I'm flying back to Ohio, leaving Berlin behind.

Here's what I'll see when the plane takes off, assuming the fine weather holds. This is the view from the Siegessäule (the reward for climbing up those 285 steps, and then - painfully - back down them). It's also more or less the vista that Barack Obama saw from the ground when he spoke here; he stood at the base of the Siegessäule. The spire is the TV tower that the East German government built to show how high-tech they were. At the end of the street, you can see the Brandenburg Gate.

Binging on Prohibition

Photo by Flickr user kspoddar, used under a Creative Commons license.

A legal drinking age of 21 prevents high-risk drinking among college students, right?

Umm ... not so fast. Over 100 college presidents have signed onto the Amethyst Initiative, a petition calling for a national conversation on rethinking the drinking age.

Already there's a predictable counterreaction, as the Columbus Dispatch reports:

... Mothers Against Drunk Driving says that lowering the drinking age would lead to more fatal car crashes and urges parents to think carefully about the safety of colleges whose presidents have signed on.

"It's very clear the 21-year-old drinking age will not be enforced at those campuses," said Laura Dean-Mooney, MADD's national president.

Joining with MADD is Nationwide, which released a survey last week indicating 72 percent of adults think lowering the drinking age would make alcohol more accessible to minors, and nearly half think it would increase binge drinking among teens.

But here's the thing: Unlike the general public, college presidents have a close-up view of underage drinking. A lot of them apparently realize that neo-prohibition has failed miserably on their campuses. Students engage in binge drinking partly because they have to do it on the sly. So they front-load their evenings, drinking heavily behind closed doors, before they mosey out to the bars or parties where they might not be served.

I have an even closer view of the issue because my students have talked to me frankly about it. A year ago, I took an informal in-class poll of who had gotten in trouble for alcohol violations. At least a third of my students in two different sections of 40 raised their hands. That makes roughly 25 students, mostly freshmen and sophomores, whose college careers were threatened with derailment. Those who raised their hands are only the ones who got caught and were willing to admit to it in public; the true number is probably somewhat higher. Even those who'd never been caught - including most of the teetotalers - saw the system as capricious and unfair.

The result? Diligent, responsible students are threatened with suspension if they get caught twice with alcohol in their dorm rooms. They don't need to be drinking themselves, they merely need to be in the same room as friends who are imbibing. I've written letters imploring student judiciaries to go easy on students who've been swept up in this trap. Alcohol infractions clog the judiciary system, crowding out plagiarism cases and diverting attention from much more serious violations of policy.

Not least, as long as drinking is criminalized, students are much less likely to report sexual assault. Alcohol is almost always in the mix when college students experience unwanted sexual contact. The Kyle Payne case is only an especially infamous and egregious instance of this. Every sexual assault case that I know about first-hand involved alcohol. But the current approach - "just don't drink and you'll be safe" - is a failure.

I'm not naive enough to think that irresponsible drinking will disappear if alcohol becomes legal on campus. I was an RA for two years in college. I was also a student, fer goodness sake. I did enough stupid things to have a permanent aversion to tequila.

But because I was an RA in the dark ages (1984-86), I also know that things can be different. We RAs bought the alcohol for dorm parties. (Okay, I know that won't fly anymore! You'd get your butt sued.) With social life centered in the residences, we could easily keep tabs on our charges. Sure, people still regularly overindulged. But we knew who was overdoing it, and we made sure they were cared for.

As far as I know, no one was ever sexually assaulted on my watch. It might have happened without my knowing; that's in the nature of acquaintance rape. Certainly in the mid-1980s, "date rape" - as it was then called - was such a new concept, few women would have applied it to nonconsensual sex.

Still, we had a safety net, composed not just of RAs but of friends and dorm-mates and resident faculty. I'm positive that this averted lots of potentially ugly situations. Often, I was part of that net. On more than one occasion, I was the person it protected.

I'd love to bring back that net. Although Gordon Gee of Ohio State has signed the Amethyst petition, the president of my university has not, and I'm sure he won't. My university has a reputation as a party school. Signing the petition could create a short-term PR problem. But in the long run, bringing alcohol use out of the shadows is the first step toward fostering a more responsible drinking culture.

The Chinese Century

I know that other feminist bloggers are bemoaning the sexism of Olympic uniforms or the sexist neurosis of gymnastics. And I agree with them pretty well across the board - even though I still adore watching the gymnasts.

It's just that I think there's an even bigger issue encapsulated in these Olympics, and it too has feminist ramifications:

Future historians are likely to look back and see the 2008 Beijing Olympics as the start of the Chinese century.

That conclusion comes not from the careful historian in me who included thousands of footnotes in her dissertation, but the ready-for-prime-time bloviator who pronounced the American century dead a few months ago. Okay, I can't see the future any more than you can, dear reader, but my goodness, the future is here.

Demographically, China is the world's largest nation.

Economically, China is arguably the world's most dynamic nation. Oh, and it owns so much of America's debt, it could squish us like an insect any time it chose. It won't choose to do that just yet, because if it were to destroy the dollar and our economy, China would be left holding lots of worthless debt.

Politically, China is about as authoritarian as it's ever been.

Athletically, it's kicking the rest of the world's ass. Now, I don't get passionate about the Olympics, and I haven't even seen much of the gymnastics (I've been buried in work), but even I know that China's haul of gold medals is making history. When I checked just now, China had 39 gold medals to the United States' 22. If you click that link, their total will no doubt have edged higher.

Why should this matter even to those of us who are tuned out to the Olympics?

Well, the ability to mount a first-class team of Olympic athletes isn't magical. It's not genetic. It's not even a matter of national character or optimism. Apart from those sports (like running) where little equipment is required, Olympic success depends crucially on a country's wealth and - failing that - its ability to marshal resources.

China's gold medals show just how well it's able to extract and mobilize resources, even under conditions of fairly modest wealth. This is why future historians are likely to look back and say: The 2008 Olympics proved that China had arrived - that this century, the twenty-first, would belong to China.

Why is this a feminist issue? Well, as China becomes the dominant world power, other nations will come under tremendous pressure to play the game on its terms. Much as American military and economic prowess pushed other countries to adopt democracy in the twentieth century, China's growing might will create similar pressures to pursue its model of authoritarian capitalism in the twenty-first.

And if I'm right about this, we'll not just be importing Chinese surveillance technologies, as Naomi Klein argues in Alternet this week. We'll be flirting with a more authoritarian form of government that will be far more comprehensive than the cameras and biometric ID cards Klein describes. The mounting energy and environmental crises are going to severely test the American capitalist model, as well as our commitment to democracy and human rights, flawed as they've been. China's ascent will make its model look increasingly attractive if the American economy collapses and the rule of law begins to break down.

But feminism, and indeed all movements to increase equality and freedom, depend on democracy. Feminism can't thrive under an authoritarian regime.

And this is why the Chinese century - like peak oil, like global warming - needs to be viewed as a feminist issue. All of these things are already upon us. All of them threaten American freedoms far more than al-Qaeda will ever do.

The question is merely, how will we respond?

Lion King

The Tiger got a new stuffed animal this weekend. He's called Harry, in honor of his mane:


Obviously I'm still damaged from the 1980s, but I had to wonder:

Separated at birth?

Photo of Don King from Wikimedia Commons. Photo of Harry Lion by me, Sungold.

Cautionary Tales from My Medicine Cabinet

"Pill Jar," photo by Flickr user deepwarren, used under a Creative Commons license.

I mentioned that I've had a miserable week with back pain. It's much improved since I posted on Tuesday, which was the last day I knowingly took half of a Vicodin. After that, I was getting by on ibuprofen (aka Advil or Motrin) but was bemused at how dizzy I still felt.

So I finally took a closer look at the little bottle that my pills were in - which I'd clumsily labeled "ibu" with a ballpoint pen - and scrutinized the pills themselves. They had a string of letters imprinted on each one that I didn't remember seeing on ibuprofen in the past. I googled the letters together with "pill."

And guess what? I'd been popping a Darvocet every six hours. No wonder I thought my back was getting better. No wonder I felt wobbly.

Lessons learned:

1. If you repackage pills for traveling (the original container for the Darvocet was ginormous), at least label them!
2. If you don't know what you're taking, google it! The intertubes will know.
3. If your back is acting wonky, don't climb 285 steps up and 285 steps down (as I did Monday at the Siegessäule, aka the site of Obama's Berlin speech) just because your kids want to do it. I was proud not to be huffing and puffing like a lot of the other climbers - I guess my heart and lungs are in better shape than I thought - but I don't think it improved my back.

I really am feeling much better - just very sheepish at my own dipshittery. I've been repotting my pills for years (I think it must be a congenital trait, my brother does it too) but I've never mixed them up. Until now.

Usually I reserve the label "stupidity" for posts about other people's foolishness, but I think I earned it this week.

An Electoral Snow Job

Abominable snow kitten from I Can Has Cheezburger?

Regular readers of Kittywampus know that I spend a disproportionate amount of time ranting about my school district's silly approach to snow days. (One of its great features is that no snow is required, just weather too cold for flip-flops.) If you thought you were safe from this for a few more months, brace yourself for an unseasonable snow day rant ...

... because the a number of central Ohio schools have already declared November 4, Election Day, a fucking snow day! As the Columbus Dispatch reports:

At least six central Ohio suburban districts -- Bexley, Dublin, Groveport, Reynoldsburg, Westerville and Worthington -- have called off school on Election Day.

Today, says the Dispatch, the Franklin County Board of Elections was scheduled to consider asking Columbus city schools to do the same. The problem, apparently, is that the schools become overcrowded and voters have trouble finding a parking spot. Security issues also apparently play a role, although I'm not sure who's endangering whom. My district isn't on the list ... yet.

I'm not willing to say this is just Ohio's problem. Ohio seems to be a bellwether for electoral snafus as well as for who will win the presidency. We are the canary in America's pseudo-democratic coal mine.

Hey folks, I know it's too late for this election cycle, but if we've reached the point where Ohio's electoral woes are forcing us to cancel school - thus depriving children of crucial educational experiences, or at least creating massive childcare problems for their parents - then isn't it time to start thinking outside the box?

What about if we followed the example of most European countries? My German friends are bewildered at our "first Tuesday after the first Monday in November" scheduling. Not because that's such a mouthful, but because it strikes them as utterly stoopid not to hold elections on Sundays, when fewer people have work conflicts. I realize Congress would have to pass a law, but if it has time to pass resolutions against MoveOn's Petraeus/Betray Us ad, seems like it could squeeze Sunday elections onto the agenda.

The only downside I see to this is that the nice older ladies (my mom and her friends) who volunteer at the polls would have to play hooky from church. Call me a heathen, but I think that's a lesser evil than calling off school. And wouldn't it be lovely if our paragon of democracy didn't have one of the world's worst voter-turnout records?

More Musings on the Edwards Affair

The night before last, in a fit of curiosity, I cross-posted my essay Surviving Cancer, Surviving Affairs on Salon's new blogging/social-networking platform, Open Salon. I've been a long-time Salon reader, so I was curious to test-drive this new feature. My post somehow caught the eye of Salon's editor-in-chief, Joan Walsh, who quoted a lengthy excerpt in her column.

All of which was kind of cool, but since the excerpt didn't include the part where I said "that doesn't mean it was right" for John Edwards to cheat on his wife, a lot of letter-writers who responded to Joan Walsh's column felt that she and I were making excuses for him.

So I'll just say it one more time, with feeling: He done her wrong. John did not have Elizabeth's blessing to go outside the marriage. Her statements make clear that she was deeply, deeply hurt.

At the same time, I'm still frustrated by the dominant but simplistic trope of "what kind of a monster cheats on a sick spouse?" For those who've never experienced cancer or other serious illness, it may be hard to imagine how illness and its aftermath can mess with people's heads and hearts. Otherwise decent people can make hurtful decisions when they're not thinking or feeling straight. This goes for patients and caretakers alike.

Moreover, sexual infidelity is only one possible form that failure and betrayal can take. I have not slept with anyone other than my husband since I married him, 14 years ago to this day. I believe he can truthfully say the same. And yet, we've both failed each other in a variety of ways, as long-term partners inevitably will. Most of these failures occurred in the aftermath of illness. By now, we're back in a pretty good place, but it took work. It took us recommitting to each other again and again.

In that light, John Edwards' behavior looks wrong but not incomprehensible. It's harder to see him as Evil, though we may still see him as weak. He's not inhuman. He's just human.

And if we acknowledge that, then we have to inject a little humility into the three-ring-circus of judgmentalism. We have to let his family and his higher power judge his private misdeeds.

As for his public misdeeds, I purposely didn't address them in my original post. I chose to "write what I know" because I thought I could shed a different light than most of the commentary I'd read, and because I wanted to engage a conversation on relationships and serious illness. That doesn't mean I believe the political questions are trivial. On the contrary! I just thought others were covering the political side much more thoroughly.

As more facts and questions have come to light, though, I'm becoming increasingly concerned that l'affair Edwards might dog the Democratic Party through the rest of this election cycle. So, for the record, here is how I think it genuinely affects the public interest.

First, there's the question of whether the affair began before Rielle Hunter was hired. Some sources suggest this was the case. If so, then Edwards can fairly be accused of misappropriating campaign funds in hiring her.

Second, we know that Hunter has received millions of dollars, ostensibly to help rebuild her life after harassment by the tabloids. To me, this goes a tad beyond the call of kindness. (We should all have such generous friends in our lives!) Again, if any of this money came from political contributions, whoever is responsible needs to be held accountable.

Third, it was unquestionably reckless for Edwards to run for president with a major skeleton in his closet. In an ideal world, voters could distinguish between private behavior and public competence. But in America, they don't. And so the philandering politician lies. And then he gets caught. And then half of America is shocked at his sexual activities, while the other, purportedly more liberal half, cries: "It's not the sex! It's the lying!" - never mind that the lies were about entirely private (albeit foolish) behavior. Yeah, it's politically immature of us. But that's how things work in America, and Edwards knows this; he's too savvy a politician to claim naivete. He knew full well that if his affair became public, his chances at the presidency would be toast. And so he not only wronged Elizabeth, he also deceived his supporters and put the future of his party at risk. Imagine if he were the presumptive candidate right now!

Fourth, I'm suspicious about why Rielle Hunter is refusing to allow a paternity test to be conducted. Could it be that she's being paid off on the condition that she continues to refuse testing? This would allow John Edwards to act innocent - he's agreed to be tested - without putting him at any risk.

All of these unanswered questions are at least a distraction from Obama's campaign efforts. At worst, they may become a drag on the Democratic party, including the down-ticket races. I assume Edwards went public now in hopes of averting a big blow-up closer to November 4, but if he has failed to come clean - or worse, appears to be harboring more secrets - his grand confession will have been for naught.

And then there's one other thing that's bugging me, which is in a totally different register. Why does so much of the commentary revolve around the question of "why men cheat"? Sure, very, very few female politicians have been caught out in sex scandals. But garden variety affairs normally require two partners, and very often both are married. The statistics on infidelity are not terribly reliable, but on average they seem to show about a ten percentage-point gap between married men and married women. So why do we cling to this narrative of faithless men getting it on with desperate/victimized/conniving single gals?

I guess that loops back to my original frustration with the simplistic stories we Americans want to tell ourselves about that complex and mysterious thing, marriage.

Uncomfortably Numb

From I Can Has Cheezburger?

My back has gone, well, kittywampus on me. I've got an old lower-back injury that dates back nearly twenty years, to the time I got stuck in O'Hare Airport overnight with Grey Kitty and no money for a hotel room.

Technically, the pain in my back is actually located in my backside, which means, as the Bear pointed out, I actually have a pain in the butt. I said that's better than being a pain in the butt. He wisely refrained from further comment.

So I'm stewing in muscle relaxants and opioids, all legally obtained. (Yes, I'm talking to you, DEA, if you're listening in.) The furniture is still in one place, maybe because some of it is bolted to the walls. But I'm not really capable of stringing together a coherent thought.

I'd make a terrible junkie; the buzz is fun for a few hours, but then I want my brain back. More substantive posting will resume once the drugs have worn off.

The Visible and the Invisible

From I Can Has Cheezburger?

No, this isn't a post about the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, though I ripped off his title. It's about some really cool science news: Researchers now have the tools to make you invisible. Not just hide you from radar (in case you were worrying about that; I know I was) but really, truly, sci-fi-fantastically invisible.

The AP reports (via the Columbus Dispatch):

Researchers have demonstrated for the first time they were able to cloak three-dimensional objects using artificially engineered materials that redirect light around the objects. Previously, they only have been able to cloak very thin two-dimensional objects.

The findings, by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Xiang Zhang, are to be released later this week in the journals Nature and Science.

The new work moves scientists a step closer to hiding people and objects from visible light, which could have broad applications, including military ones.

People can see objects because they scatter the light that strikes them, reflecting some of it back to the eye. Cloaking uses materials, known as metamaterials, to deflect radar, light or other waves around an object, like water flowing around a smooth rock in a stream.

Metamaterials are mixtures of metal and circuit board materials such as ceramic, Teflon or fiber composite. They are designed to bend visible light in a way that ordinary materials don't. Scientists are trying to use them to bend light around objects so they don't create reflections or shadows.

(Source: Associated Press)

If these cloaks actually became widespread beyond the military sphere, they would radically change our perception of space and embodiment. If you saw someone before you, you could be pretty sure they were for real. But empty space might be empty ... or might conceal another person. Our ideas of privacy would be radically transformed. So would the opportunities for outdoor sex.

So here's my question. If you had an invisibility cloak, what would you do with it?

I made the mistake of telling my kids about this story, in a vain effort to stave off pre-bedtime meltdowns, and now they naturally want an invisibility cloak for Christmas. The Bear says he'd use it to play hide and seek. The Tiger said, "If you was a little kid, you could walk around alone." I asked him if he really meant that - I still have waking nightmares of him running away in crowds, which really only ended this summer - and he said yep, he would like to get around without having to hold onto any grow-mutt (aka grown-up).

I'd like to have an invisibility cloak so I could listen in on the goofy things the kids say and believe when they don't think the grow-mutts can hear. Like the time the Bear and a couple of his friends were talking about what would happen if your brain was too big and your head exploded.

If you had an invisibility cloak, what would you choose to do with it?

In Praise of Political Correctness

"Agonised Clowns" - photo by Flickr user tallkev, used under a Creative Commons license.

I don't usually have much use for political correctness. I'd much rather have a free-wheeling discussion. When I teach women's studies, I make that clear on day one, though it usually takes a couple of weeks until the great majority of my new students trust that I mean it. The result is that even Republican supporters of pregnancy crisis centers feel free to speak their minds - and I've developed nice relationships with people whose views are the polar opposite of my own.

But darn it, I hit my limit last night.

I was out at a beer garden with my family, having dinner before my mother-in-law took the night train home. This is something I love about Germany. A beer garden can be a perfectly nice environment for kids. This one, the Johannesgarten, has a slightly ramshackle, dusty playground.

I'm equally delighted by the fact that the Johannesgarten is run by the Johanniskirche - St. John's (Lutheran) Church - in the verdant space next to its sanctuary. Imagine even the United Church of Christ or the Unitarians doing something like this in the U.S.! The idea is to reach people where they live, and so this congregation also hosts puppet shows for kids and other neighborhood activities.

Last night, the Johannesgarten hosted a free variety show, and as always the intent was good. Right away it was clear that the emcee wasn't very funny. That alone would've been fine. I know lots of funny Germans - I don't last long with humorless people - and there's also a growing number of hilarious, talented people in the German comedy scene. Even so, lots of the mainstream, mass-media humor tends to be pretty hokey.

The show took an ugly turn, though, when his sidekick appeared onstage. The emcee introduced him as Blondie. The sidekick was a black man. And his schtick was the most unreconstructed Steppin Fetchit act I'd ever seen.

I don't know what I found more disturbing: That the show's sponsors at the church thought this was okay. Or that at least half of the audience convulsed in giggles at the name Blondie. Or that some unemployed black actor felt compelled to take on this humiliating role.

I wouldn't argue that German society is more racist than American. It's certainly more overtly racist, simply because "political correctness" hasn't pressured people to examine their stereotypes about race (apart from anti-Semitism, which is discussed at length in the schools). People of my mother-in-law's generation (over 70) have loads of unreconstructed racist notions. But then again, a lot of stand-up comedy in the U.S. plays with stereotypes - including racial ones. It's virtually never funny in the U.S. either. A lot of the laughter stems from embarrassment. I'd like to think that was true for part of the Johannisgarten audience as well.

At any rate, for a few moments I found myself yearning for a bracing dose of political correctness. Not just because I was offended and embarrassed - though that was my main beef - but also because there's just no way to be entertained after you've seen the Jim Crow era come alive onstage. Even the quite good Parisian juggler couldn't tickle me. I was just deeply relieved when it was time to get my mother-in-law to her train.

It turns out that it's not so-called political correctness but racism that's the mortal enemy of humor.

Surviving Cancer, Surviving Affairs

So I wasn't entirely shocked at John Edwards' admission that he'd had an affair in 2006. Mostly, I was relieved that Elizabeth Edwards wasn't standing by his side. Maybe everyone learned from the sad spectacle of Silda Spitzer that the straying mate only looks worse when the spouse appears beside him while he makes his confession.

While most of the non-tabloid media attention has focused on how Edwards' disclosure might affect the presidential race, I've been obsessing instead on the connections between cancer, survivorship, sexuality, and relationships.

Now, I don't know anything about the Edwards' marriage. I believe that all marriages are deep mysteries - often enough to the partners themselves, and certainly to the outside world. I do know something about surviving cancer, however, and the still-taboo topic of how it can affect a marriage or other committed relationship.

The facts, as we know them, are that John Edwards had an affair in 2006 with a video producer for his campaign, Rielle Hunter. He has specifically said it occurred at a time when Elizabeth's cancer was in remission. It ended well before she was diagnosed with a recurrence in March of 2007. Indeed, he confessed to her back in 2006 and asked her for her forgiveness. She decided to stay in the marriage.

What follows is informed speculation. It's based on a mixture of my own experiences as a spouse of a two-time cancer survivor (a term my husband and I both dislike, because it falsely implies the experience is finite) and those of other couples who've dealt with cancer. In the interest of everyone's privacy, I've blurred some of my experiences with those of others.

For most couples going through cancer, the diagnosis and immediate treatment are a time of solidarity. The healthy partner supports and cares for his or her partner during chemo or radiation or recovery from surgery - or some combination of the above. The sick partner rallies to the extent physically possible and is grateful for support from every quarter, but especially from the caretaking spouse. You each marvel at the others' strength, and you're grateful that you have each other. (I realize a few spouses totally freak out, but I'm pretty confident that most react by drawing on their better angels.)

Then, abruptly, treatment ends. And you have to figure out how to rebuild your lives, and how to be a "normal" couple again. Nobody warns you about this. There's no roadmap. You might not even realize you're still on a major journey until you're already lost deep in the woods. No wonder lots of people's relationships founder.

Here are some of the ways the survivor can react. He or she can pretend everything is okay, which is right in line with the cultural script, but is bound to fail. He or she might fall into deep depression. Or act positively manic. Or be paralyzed with anxiety. Or try to make up for lost time by acting like a teenager. Or dwell obsessively on every bodily twinge. Or go on a fitness kick. Or any combination of the above, plus a whole kaleidescope of other possible reactions.

Through all of this, the overwhelming cultural message is very simple: You should be deeply grateful to be alive.

The post-treatment process of coping and rebuilding and grieving is more complicated, of course, if treatment has affected the person's sexuality. That's perhaps obvious for breast or uterine or prostate cancers. But chemotherapy often has medium-to-long-term effects on hormone levels and libido. Surgery and scars can lead to feelings of unattractiveness. I've heard anecdotally of prostate cancer survivors who became so depressed about their sexual losses that they took their own lives. So much for survivorship.

What's more, any form of cancer can result in profound alienation from one's own body. If your cells have risen up against you, how can you trust your own flesh? How can you revel in it again? And if you do find a way back to pleasure, will you still include your partner in it?

(That last question goes back to a woman I knew who'd had surgery for breast cancer, then got reconstructive surgery several years later. She was thrilled with her new shape. Soon thereafter she divorced her husband of 20 years. I don't know exactly what happened between them - they'd also spent years living in a trailer while building a house with their own hands - but clearly her "new" body played some role as a catalyst.)

The "healthy" partner, too, has to readjust, though he or she may not even realize this. Speaking for myself, I was so invested in the idea that I couldn't burden my husband with mundane frustrations that I bottled up a lot of resentments, and I had to learn again that he was strong enough to be an equal partner - that I didn't have to "protect" him constantly. I'm pretty sure there are lots of variations on these themes, too.

Both partners may be just sick to death of sickness. And that's the first thing my husband said when I mentioned John Edwards' confession. He said, maybe Edwards had an affair because he just wanted things to be normal again. Maybe he was tired of cancer and treatment.

My first thought was that maybe one or both of them just couldn't see a way to reconnect erotically after breast cancer. Speaking only for myself again, when I had a scare with an unclear mammogram - one that took months to clear up - I felt profoundly alienated from my body as a source of pleasure. And I didn't even have cancer, just a bad case of paranoia!

Maybe having an affair when your spouse has just faced down mortality is a way of affirming your own survival. Maybe it's a form of denial about your partner's mortality, and your own. This might be just an extension of the stereotypical mid-life crisis - but cranked up to eleven.

And maybe, with the pressures of raising two young kids and running for president (which I'd bet are only one notch tougher than raising two young kids and teaching at a university!) the Edwards just hadn't yet figured out how to be a couple together again.

In the end, why John Edwards strayed will remain a mystery to everyone outside his family, and that's only right. They deserve their privacy. A marriage should remain a mystery to everyone outside it.

And yet, while he publicly said he had an affair because he'd grown selfish while campaigning, I think his motivations must be more complex. No one comes through cancer treatment unscathed. Not the patient, and not his or her partner.

With this in mind, I don't think you have to approve of his actions to acknowledge that both he and Elizabeth were under tremendous pressure, and that his affair might be at least partly a reaction to their cancer crisis. That doesn't mean it was right. It's even possible he's just a horndog on the Bill Clinton model - though my gut feeling is that he's not.

I just think there's way more room here for compassion than for judgment.

Finally, I think this news may illuminate why Elizabeth Edwards decided to stay on the campaign trail after her recurrence was diagnosed, and why she seemed to arrive at her decision so quickly. As the AP reports:

In a statement last night, Elizabeth Edwards said that after a "long and painful process" she decided to stand by her husband. Mrs. Edwards called the affair a "terrible mistake" but said the healing process was "oddly made somewhat easier" after her diagnosis of a reoccurrence of breast cancer in March 2007.

First, it sounds to me very much as though the new diagnosis put the Edwards back into the "let's fight this beast together" mode. And secondly, Elizabeth had already decided to stick with John after he'd disappointed her. Cancer, at least, is impersonal in its cruelty. Having forgiven her husband for his deliberate actions, Elizabeth had already cast her lot with him. I can totally understand why she wouldn't let cruel but impersonal fate affect her loyalty.

Inlaw Visitation

In-law kitteh from I Can Has Cheezburger?

No, my mother-in-law isn't a meddler. But she's here for a visit, and so posting may be thin for the next day or two.

Babies, Biology, and Ideology

Photo by Flickr user JeremyHall, used under a Creative Commons license.

For feminists and women's health advocates, it's not exactly news that the life sciences aren't quite the beacons of objectivity that they purport to be. Even so, a study released today on the risks of pregnancy over age 40 is startling in how its conclusions are totally warped by ideology.

Published in the Journal of Women's Health, the study - "Pregnancy Late in Life - A Hospital-Based Study of Birth Outcomes," by Ali Delpisheh et al. - concludes that fetal risks rise sharply after about age 40.

Background: Pregnancy in older women is of great relevance, particularly in developed countries where many women experience pregnancy late in the childbearing age.

Methods: A hospital-based data analysis of 9506 delivery records from 1998 to 2003 at the Liverpool Women's Hospital was undertaken to assess pregnancy outcomes in older women of reproductive age.

Results: Overall, 2.4 % of mothers were >40 years of age (advanced), 5.6% were <20 style="font-style: italic;">followed a U-shaped curve with nadirs in the middle age classes. ... [my emphasis]

Conclusions: Pregnancy in older women is associated with adverse birth outcomes, particularly in primigravidas. Increased health promotion is required to highlight the risk of adverse birth outcomes in women who become pregnant for the first time in the late childbearing years.

So, okay. We already knew that pregnancy becomes riskier for both mother and child as the mother grows older. But first, note that the data follow a curve. Women don't suddenly drop off a cliff after age 40. If you go to the full-length study (available for free in .pdf format) you'll see that it really is a U-shaped curve.

Second, and more importantly: The data in the full text of the study clearly show that by all three measures (low birthweight, preterm birth, and small for gestational age), the babies of young mothers - defined here as less than 20 years old - fare just as poorly.

Yet the intro and conclusion of this abstract fail to even hint that extreme youth could be just as problematic as advancing age. Indeed, given that adolescents outnumbered the older gals by a ratio of 5 to 2 in this study, their babies' health problems represent a greater public health problem and an even larger contribution to human suffering.

Moreover, this study was conducted in Great Britain, a nation with universal health insurance. In the United States, the rate of complications among very young mothers is likely to be higher yet because they are less likely to be insured than the older crowd. In the United States, furthermore, complications of prematurity among uninsured adolescent mothers mean that 1) taxpayers will foot much of the bill for the NICU, and 2) those adolescent mothers will suffer financial worries along with the emotional rollercoaster of caring for a baby born too soon. Having watched friends deal with significant prematurity, I know I'd struggle even at my "advanced age." How much harder would that be if you, the mother, were only 16 or 18!

Now why would careful scientists fail to highlight the second half of their findings? Could it be that the cultural anxieties about women deferring marriage and childbearing have spilled into the hospital and lab, too? Because I honestly see no other reason why the abstract (which is all many doctors and journalists will read) should omit the sufferings of adolescents. The way the problem is currently framed, it plugs right into a discourse of blaming women for first establishing a career before starting a family, while ignoring the real physical risks of very early motherhood.

Parenting between the Cliffs of Risk and the Rocks of Pragmatism

Cliffs and rocks at Big Sur, California, photo by Flickr user Ed Yourdon, used under a Creative Commons license.

Yesterday in comments on my feminist homeschooling post and at her own blog, Marcy of Marcy's Musings suggested that my arguments against long-term withdrawal from the paid labor market were driven by a politics of fear. She pushed me to keep thinking about this, since they way I mix my feminism with my parenting is definitely not driven by fear. It’s a balance between risk-taking and pragmatism, which recognizes that "choice" is illusory unless you've got a clear picture of the trade-offs.

Honestly, a lot of people (feminists or not) might say I take a few too many risks. Too many years in grad school? Check. In an "impractical" field? Check. Married a foreigner whose training is in philosophy? Check. Rode home the other night on my bike after midnight - alone - through the big city of Berlin? Check. In other areas, though, I'm boringly risk-averse: I won't talk on a cell phone while driving, and I'm very careful with my kids' safety.

We all take risks - some smart, some stupid - and the trick is to figure out which risks are worthwhile. Marcy recognizes, for instance, that her decision to stay home with her kids through their school years entails a financial risk. She doesn't deny it, though she reduces it mostly to the risk of divorce, while I see the issue as broader: a spouse can also die or become disabled while kids are still young. My husband narrowly escaped death twice, and he went through a prolonged period of disability.

My story is far from unique. The Sungold family tree indicates why it's important for women not to become too dependent financially over the long term. One grandma was divorced from an alcoholic husband in her early twenties. (Circa 1912! Imagine the scandal!) She raised her two daughters alone until she met my grandpa nearly two decades later and then gave birth to my dad. One of my dad's half-sisters was divorced while her daughter was still tiny. His other half-sister was widowed in her early fifties. My maternal grandma was widowed while still in her early forties, with four children to support, the youngest (my mom) only six years old. Both my mom and her sister were divorced while they still had young children at home. Their two brothers remained married to the same women into old age.

So, in those two generations, only two of eight women enjoyed a husband's support throughout their childrearing years. (And those two were farm wives who worked from dawn to dusk and beyond.) It's not that the women in my family are unusually flaky, either; those who divorced did so only under considerable duress. While none of the women in my family chose single motherhood, they still had to find ways to cope, financially and emotionally. For instance, both my grandmas were teachers, and that's how they held their families together.

My family tree suggests why it's neither pro- nor anti-feminist to say that women run greater risks the longer they're completely financially dependent on a mate. The risks are simply a pragmatic reality.

Now, Marcy interprets my argument as saying

women shouldn't have the freedom to do what we find fulfillment in, if it means we might be dependent on the men in our lives, because if those men should fail, we will be in serious trouble. We should follow the current cultural pattern and go to work so we will have a "safety net" in case our husbands should walk out on us.
(Read the rest here.)

No, what I'm saying is something different. I'm suggesting that we need to balance a quest for fulfillment with awareness of the risks of long-term dependence, which grow over time. Only if we're realistically aware of the risks can we make informed and conscious choices.

I'm not at all arguing that mothers should take six weeks' maternity leave and then plunge back into work full-time. I'm not inveighing against stay-at-home parenting. My own choices have tilted in that direction since my first baby was born. I chose to take the financial risk of parenting first - and working for pay only secondarily - during my kids' preschool years. I believe kids need intense attention while they're very young. As infants, my boys got that almost entirely from their dad and me. Starting from around their second birthday, they went to daycare half-days with six other kids and a wonderful caretaker; they loved it, and I could work part time. Only now, with both kids in school, am I returning to work full time. I'm lucky I'll still be able to pick up the kids after school, since I can grade and prep classes at home. My work responsibilities have allowed me to spend lots of time with my kids, and to enjoy the sort of self-fulfillment that Marcy describes. I was lucky that my husband supported (and quite literally subsidized) this arrangement. Other people make other choices, and that's okay too, as long as their choices are conscious and well informed.

Indeed, failure to recognize the importance of active, involved parenting - and its rewards for children, mothers, and fathers - poses very significant risks of its own. The truth is, most jobs are a hell of a lot less interesting than mine, and it's very common for parenting to be far more fulfilling than paid work. That goes for most of men's jobs, too, although lots of fathers still find their fulfillment through the breadwinner role - sometimes too narrowly, at the expense of closer relationships with their children.

Where I differ from Marcy is mainly in the length of time we're spending outside of the paid labor force. The risk here is that re-entry into the labor force becomes increasingly difficult, the longer you've been out. For women, this has historically translated into a substantial risk of poverty in old age or upon their marriage ending. (One of my aunts is in precisely this position now, at age 76.) If the kids are still at home, they're hurt by poverty, too.

In other words, I'm arguing that we need to consider the long-term perspective in our decisions. For me, it made sense to roll back my career to spend lots of time with my little ones. That was a risk and a trade-off. It struck me as worthwhile - and it was. But I see how its costs continue to rise over time. The choice to homeschool, if it means two decades or more outside of the labor force, carries risks and sacrifices that would be too costly in my life. Above all, my children would depend on me completely if my mate's health failed again.

Other folks are free to take that risk, and for some parents whose circumstances are different than mine, it may make sense. However, it would be misleading to portray these significant risks as minimal or to argue that homeschooling may be a more feminist choice than relying on the public schools. The only feminist choice, I'd say, is one that's thoroughly informed.

Finally, I really haven't addressed the elephant in the room: socioeconomic class. It should be clear, though, that the capacity for real choice depends on a certain level of prosperity. In many families, both parents must work in order to avoid eviction and keep the utilities on. That's when choice - even to take a brief maternity leave - can become an unattainable luxury. And that's why poverty has to be a central issue for feminists. That would be a whole 'nother post.

A Pain in the Pelvis

Here at Kittywampus we aim to deliver an unpleasant medical fact every few weeks. And no, I'm not trying to gross out my most tender readers. I've got this ongoing obsession - I mean, research interest - in gender and health. You, dear reader, just happen to be on the receiving end of it.

So, now that you've been warned: I read a rather alarming statistic today on the incidence of vulvodynia. That's a fancy Latinate way of saying pain in the pussy. It's sort of a garbage-can diagnosis, in that pain can have disparate causes. It only names the symptoms, not the etiology.

Even the symptoms can vary. In some women, vulvodynia resolves within a matter of weeks. Many live with it for years. Some suffer worse with intercourse, while for others, pain may be independent of sexual activity. Other activities may exacerbate it - or not. Sometimes the pain is more internal, sometimes more external. In most cases, the pain very significantly affects the woman's quality of life.

I've personally had some intermittent experience along these lines. I don't want to go too deep into TMI, and frankly I debated with myself about whether I should even mention this, but if I don't, I'm playing into the same shame that keeps the problem closeted in the first place.

I've never been diagnosed with vulvodynia, but I do know severe pelvic pain. So I'll just say for the record that severe pelvic pain doesn't really respond to painkillers. It laughs at Tylenol or Motrin. You can bring out the big guns, but Vicodin or Percocet doesn't erase it; you just gain some detachment so you can pretend it's not really your own body that's so miserable. Really, this isn't surprising when you consider how sensitive those nerves are. They're wired for pleasure. That same wiring can cause debilitating pain.

And it turns out that this sort of experience is shockingly common. According to the latest issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology (free abstract here), over the course of a year, 1 in 50 women will develop vulvodynia. That's not a lifetime risk. That's the number who report new symptoms of it over a single year.

The study spanned two years and included 744 women who completed the follow-up, though the pool of women who had no symptoms at the outset was smaller, just 372. The study's statistical power is a bit weak, as the abstract reveals:

Of the 372 asymptomatic women controls at initial enrollment, 13 (3.5%, 95% confidence interval 1.6–5.4%) had developed vulvodynia during the 2-year follow-up period; nine (2.2%) of these had ongoing symptoms.

So let's say the low end of the estimate is correct, and fudge it even lower to correct for the fact that the 2.2% figure doesn't supply the range for a 95% confidence interval. We're still looking at more than 1 woman in a hundred.

But remember, this figure only covers a single year. What happens if we make a few reasonable assumptions and estimate a woman's lifetime risk of suffering from vulvodynia? Some of the "new" cases in this study may well be repeat customers, so to speak - women who've experienced these symptoms in the past and are suffering a recurrence. Let's say this accounts for half of all cases. That leaves us with an annual incidence of one woman in 200, or 0.5 per 100.

Even so, 0.5 women per 100 multiplied by, say, 50 years (to account for the age span between 20 and 70) still yields an estimate that's shockingly high: 25% of women, by this reckoning, will suffer from vulvodynia at some time during their adult lifespan.

I don't have any way to test how reasonable my assumptions might be. I tried to skew them in a conservative direction. But even if the number of discrete recurrences is much, much higher and the true lifetime risk is, say, only one in ten instead of one in four, that's still a mighty high number.

This study had the advantage of being prospective - that is, following a group of women over time. A previous, retrospective study (which used a questionnaire that asked women to recall their histories) put the lifetime risk at about 16%.

So how come we so rarely hear about vulvodynia? I'm disinclined to blame simple sexism. I know that men also suffer from unexplained pelvic pain, but there's less consensus on a catch-all name for the male equivalent. Googling "testodynia" gave me all if 18 hits; "penodynia" yielded 11 and led me to a veritable jackpot: "scrotodynia" with 138 hits. Then there's "prostatodynia" with 16,600 occurrences, which is sometimes used as a synonym for chronic prostatitis, which in turn is also called "chronic pelvic pain syndrome" with some 59,400 hits. (I wasn't aware of this last term until figleaf mentioned it a few weeks ago.)

Vulvodynia, by contrast, comes up 168,000 times. I realize Google isn't the measure of all importance, but still! Women have become much less shy than men in advocating for their sex-specific health needs, and the greater visibility of vulvodynia on the Web reflects this young tradition of advocacy.

On the whole, then, women's needs aren't being neglected any more than men's. But when it comes to unexplained pelvic pain, both men and women are being neglected quite sorely. These aren't conditions that kill, and so there's not a lot of glory for researchers in understanding them. Severe pain can rob people of their lives, however, and that alone should concern researchers as well as us ordinary, vulnerable human beings.

I think the problem is that vulvodynia and similar conditions are both too sexy and terribly unsexy. Too sexy, because they draw attention to those body parts that our culture still so often denies. And unsexy, because there's nothing sexy at all about pain in your pussy. Until we as a society get over our confused feelings about sex, we're doomed to be in a state of denial about the real medical needs of our sexual anatomy.

And now, let's get back to our more usual O'Keeffe-ian perspective.

But first an update from 8/9/08: In comments, Alexandra pointed us to this additional resource for vulvodynia, Cure Together. If you're suffering from unexplained vulvar pain and stumbled upon my blog, you might want to check it out, along with the National Vulvodynia Association.

Daylily from my garden three weeks ago, guaranteed to be suffering no pain. Then again, it only lasted a day.

Feminist Homeschooling: Why I Don't

Student kitteh from I Can Has Cheezburger?

As I mentioned yesterday, the Feminist Underground is running a cool series on feminist parenting. The latest post is a spirited argument by Rachel Allen in favor of feminist homeschooling, which was originally published in its entirety by California NOW. The core of her argument is that schools are basically racist, sexist, homophobic engines of conformity that magnify the most pernicious aspects of the mass media. Homeschooling offers her a way to counteract those forces while maintaining a work-at-home career as a feminist activist.

In principle, I think homeschooling can be made compatible with any worldview. In my little town, as in most of America by now, the homeschool community is composed partly of fundamentalist or conservative Christians, partly of lefty/alternative/neo-hippie families. I also know people with non-ideological reasons for homeschooling: they have gifted or speech-delayed kids who are served poorly with by their local school, or they faced a bullying problem that couldn't be resolved.

In practice, however, I think feminist homeschooling is a thorny issue, if only because it requires one parent to be mostly at home. Rachel Allen is lucky in that she works from home. I know another political activist in my neighborhood who strikes a similar balance. Most of us don't have that much flexibility.

As a university professor I have more flexibility than most workers, but I couldn't homeschool unless I had a nanny to carry much of the burden. I still have to show up for my classes and meetings. This year, I've got a rising third grader and kindergartner. With both kids in public school, I'm looking forward to going full time (and having my own health insurance!) after nearly a decade of part-time work.

For work reasons alone, then, I wouldn't homeschool unless I felt there was no other tenable solution. Of course, I realize that I'm lucky to have work that's personally rewarding and reasonably remunerative.

And this points to the crux of the problem of reconciling feminism with homeschooling: While the kids may be getting an anti-sexist, anti-racist, anti-homophobic education, the stay-at-home parent is still usually a mother. If she works from home for pay, she rarely earns enough to survive financially if her marriage or partnership were to end. So homeschooling as a solution that's feminist for the children is much harder to defend on feminist terms for the parent.

I don't think that staying home to parent is inherently anti-feminist. I did it myself when my kids were little, and it's important, honorable work. It's just that the longer you stay out of the labor market, the more precarious your financial position will be - and if that situation persists for a couple of decades, the stay-at-home parent is likely to be very vulnerable, financially. Sure, there are ways to mitigate this by working part-time or from home, or by taking turns being the at-home parent. But the fact remains that as Ann Crittenden has shown so persuasively, staying at home has very steep, long-term costs.

I'm the last person to measure worth and happiness solely in financial terms (otherwise I wouldn't have spent all that time in grad school). However, I see lots of female students hoping to be stay-at-home parents without much awareness of the attendant risk of poverty, and I suspect many mothers decide to stay home with the assumption that divorce or widowhood won't strike them personally.

The calculation changes, of course, if you live somewhere with poor schools. We're lucky in that our local elementary school is quite good. The teachers are smart, dedicated, and fairly progressive. Though I live in predominantly white Appalachia, the student body is multiethnic and multinational, partly because the school serves the university's graduate student population, partly because binational families like mine gravitate toward its diversity.

Diversity is of course no safeguard against racism, sexism, or homophobia. I know of at least one incident where a racist joke was told at recess. Lunchtime conversation too often revolves around gender stereotypes. The teachers can't police all of this, and so it's up to us parents to talk to our kids after school and discuss why those things aren't okay.

Homeschooling would shield my kids from hateful and stereotypical comments. On the flip side, though, they wouldn't learn how to respond to racism and sexism, which my rising third grader already does pretty effectively. The school environment is also much more diverse than our local homeschooling community in terms of race, nationality, social class, and parents' educational level.

I fully agree with Rachel Allen that there's pressure to conform even in most progressive schools. One of our jobs as parents, I think, is to help kids learn to distinguish between mindless conformity and the necessity to get along and work well with others. So far, we're all doing okay, but I'm well aware that striking this balance won't get easier over time.

Temperamentally, homeschooling would be a tough fit for my kids. My older son, the Bear, wouldn't want homeschooling; we've talked about it, and we both know it would turn into a contest of wills, me nagging, him resisting. He also needs more stimulation than any one parent could provide, and he gets that primarily from the other kids at school, plus frequent playdates and oodles of informal teaching after school. The Bear's curiosity never sleeps. (For that matter, the Bear would literally prefer never to sleep, and he's been that way since the day he was born.) Even with all the activities that homeschooling families pursue together, we'd still come up short.

I can imagine certain circumstances where homeschooling might be the least-bad choice for us: if one of my boys was getting severely bullied and was unable to learn; if he was so terminally bored that his grades were suffering (their dad dropped out of school, actually, for that reason); or if we moved somewhere that had lousy schools. But for now, I'm grateful that my kids are in good hands at their school. We've been lucky to have good, close relationships with their teachers. I'm eager to finally put more energy into my own work (feminist and otherwise) after nearly a decade of dialing back those commitments.

Not least, the kids get along better when they're not together 24/7, and for that reason alone, we're counting down to August 26. (I am that LOLcat!)

I'd love to hear what others think about feminism and homeschooling. I'd bet there are as many perspectives on this as there are parents.

Kyle Payne Redux, and More Fun with Blogrolling

Remember the case of Kyle Payne, the self-appointed advocate for survivors of sexual violence who exposed and photographed the breasts of a passed-out woman whom he was supposed to be helping? Well, he's written a long and kiss-assy letter on his blog, which I won't link to directly, but you can find the link at The Curvature, where Cara dissects Payne's letter beautifully. Jeff at Bookworm (jfpbookworm) dismantles his non-apology apology almost line by line, and does it so well I have nothing to add. So go read their posts already.

Well, I guess I have just one question - not really a thought - and that is, can someone ever regain trust after violating it so flagrantly? I don't think Mr. Payne ever can. Even in his long letter - which I honestly think is aimed more at the judge than at feminists or his victim - he acts as though events simply happened to him. Clearly, aliens swooped down and inhabited his body for a few minutes.

But the question is still one I wonder about, partly as a student of history where it's not just individual but collective guilt, responsibility, and accountability at stake. What crimes - and what circumstances - render someone irredeemable? I'm not sure this can be answered in the abstract, since circumstances do matter. And yet we make such judgments regularly, whether in our personal relationships or through the criminal justice system or even on the level of international sanctions.

Anyway, inspired by Cara and Jeff's excellent take-downs , I decided it was time to update my blogroll:

• Cara's The Curvature
• Jeff's Bookworm
• Lindabeth's Don't Ya Wish Your Girlfriend Was Smart Like Me
• The Feminist Underground (Habladora and more - okay, I actually added them a few days ago - but let me toot the horn for their newly launched series on feminist parenting)

Happy reading!

Song of the Earth

I don't have much to say for myself tonight because I spent the day trying to finish a translating job and then went on an actual date.

We heard Mahler's Lied von der Erde - Song of the Earth - played by the German Youth Orchestra at the Konzerthaus (which I will always call by its old name, the Schauspielhaus) in the former East Berlin. The orchestra was just a bunch of kids, really, aged 14 to 19. They blew away lots of older, more professional musicians.

Interestingly, in light of how long Germany's top orchestras were male dominated (the Berlin Philharmonic still had only a handful of women 20 years ago), the youth orchestra was predominantly female. I'm curious to see how they'll transform the music landscape over the next 20 years.

I know Mahler isn't everyone's thing. People fall into two categories, I guess: those who adore Mahler and think he expresses the whole range of human experience, and those who think he's just noisy, overblown, and in bad taste. (Well, I guess there's a massive third category, those who don't give a shit about classical music, but they've stopped reading by now.)

I love him partly because music can be heard as pieces for French horns (sometimes small armies of them) accompanied by orchestra, which - as an old horn player - is how I listen to them. I think Mahler manages to capture joyful angst and angst-ful joy. He merges beauty and despair. I didn't just get tears in my eyes; my nose turned a charming shade of blubbery red. Luckily my date knew that about me before he married me.

One of my daylilies from mid-July - it doesn't quite capture the spirit of the Lied von der Erde, but it'll have to do.

Cross a Border, Squander Your Privacy Rights

Are you traveling across any international borders this summer? Is your laptop along for the ride? Does it contain any sensitive information: banking or other personal financial data, medical records, left-of-center political screeds? Or might your browser history reveal that you've been reading NC-17 rated blogs?

If you answered yes and yes - or if you give a crap about the dismantling of rights and liberties in the Land of Freedom - you might want to know what the WaPo is reporting:

Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ...

Civil liberties and business travel groups have pressed the government to disclose its procedures as an increasing number of international travelers have reported that their laptops, cellphones and other digital devices had been taken -- for months, in at least one case -- and their contents examined.

The policies state that officers may "detain" laptops "for a reasonable period of time" to "review and analyze information." This may take place "absent individualized suspicion."

The policies cover "any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form," including hard drives, flash drives, cellphones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover "all papers and other written documentation," including books, pamphlets and "written materials commonly referred to as 'pocket trash' or 'pocket litter.'"

(Read the rest at the Washington Post.)

So, you basically forfeit your entire right to be free of unreasonable search and seizure as soon as you commit the un-American act of visiting another country.

The WaPo also reports that one of my personal heroes, Russ Feingold, is working on legislation that would circumscribe the Department of Homeland Insecurity's power to rifle through your books, laptop, and chewing gum wrappers. However, the current guidelines have been upheld by one of the nation's most liberal courts of appeal, the 9th Circuit. This makes me wonder how you could craft a law that would withstand the inevitable DHS legal challenges.

Realistically, you, my dear readers, are not likely to get caught in this net. Nor am I. But in my experience, border guards have unlimited power, and a few seem to get drunk on it. About a decade ago, well before 9/11, an INS guard at JFK questioned my husband's green card with no cause whatsoever. He took sadistic pleasure in growling, "I could send you over to investigations!" (He didn't do it, probably because my husband refused to show that he was annoyed or flustered.)

Another time, my little family of four all had to go through the "suspicious people" line upon re-entry because the airline had omitted us from the computerized flight manifest. No, we didn't get searched, but I was grilled by the customs officer.

Him (frowning): So you're married.
Me: Yes.
Him (not ironically): So why do you have a different name than your husband?
Me (smiling too politely): I kept my name for professional reasons.
Him (with mounting hostility): What do you do, professionally?
Me (quaking by now): I teach at a university. I'm a historian.

Lucky for me, he stopped his interrogation before I was forced to cough up my women's studies credentials. I had the feeling that would've triggered a serious luggage search. I was so not going to explain that the real reason I kept my name was to rebel against the patriarchal history of marriage.

Maybe this guy was just a jerk who thinks it's great sport to make the "feminazis" sweat. Maybe he got his rocks off even more when he realized I was an egghead, thus an obvious member of the academic Fifth Column. More charitably, he might have been making sure that our marriage was legit - never mind that our sons resemble their dad as closely as if he'd spawned them through parthenogenesis. But let's be real. For a customs official, sniffing out sham marriages isn't part of his ambit.

And these are the people we're supposed to trust not to abuse their ever-widening authority?

If visible feminist sympathies make me suspicious, maybe even a potential gender jihadist (!), Homeland Insecurity would have a field day with the contents of my computer. Besides my tax returns, extensive medical information, and personal emails, my laptop also holds hundreds of articles on feminist topics. And then there are the books I've packed for this trip:

• Martha McCaughey's The Caveman Mystique (a feminist critique of ev psych, thus all about sex and violence)
• Elaine Pagels' Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (heretical as well as feminist)
• Evelyn Fox Keller's Reflections on Gender and Science (ditto!)
• Rachel Maines' The Technology of Orgasm (potentially obscene?)
• Kathleen Bogles' Hooking Up (ditto again)

Geez. I guess I'm more seditious than I thought.

Ballsy Denglish Speakers

From I Can Has Cheezburger? (department of desserts).

One source of amusement when you're living in a foreign-to-you language is the endless mistakes you make. I'm sure my husband could regale you with some of my linguistic bloopers, but the humor would probably get lost in translation.

If you speak the globally dominant language, though, you're treated to the natives' adventures with English - here in Berlin, it's Denglish, an alarming blend of Deutsch and English. I had one of those precious moments today.

We were at a memorial for the Berlin Wall that has sort of preserved a small stretch of it, soberly trying to explain to the kids why this broken-down chunk of reinforced concrete mattered so much. In the midst of all this earnestness, the kids spotted an ice cream truck. And so I said sure, why not have a scoop?

Well, it turns out that "a scoop" was nowhere on the menu. You could order chocolate or lemon or Fanta or dino-cola (which made me go WTF? but not enough to try it). Regardless, it came in the form of either a Kugel or a Ball. Or so the sign said. My darling smart-ass husband asked the proprietor, an apparent Berlin native on the far side of sixty, what the difference was, since Kugel and Ball mean pretty much the same thing. They both refer to things spherical.

Just as sober as we'd been with the kids, the ice cream man informed us that a Kugel was, well, a Kugel - the usual German word for a scoop.

And Ball was English - no, American English! - for the same thing.

I was so tickled, it really didn't matter that the ice cream was mediocre or that we were slurping it next to the old death strip.

Obama's Thesis and He-Said, She-Said "Journalism"

Last week when I was nosing around for reaction's to Obama's Berlin speech, I came across this gem at MSNBC:

Conservative provocateurs have been hunting for it. Investigative journalists have been on the prowl, too. Even a former professor has been searching through old boxes for his copy of it. But today Barack Obama made it official: He doesn’t have and can’t release any copies of the thesis-length paper he wrote 25 years ago while a senior at Columbia University. “We do not have a copy of the course paper you requested and neither does Columbia University,” Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt told NBC News.

Oh dear. I have copies of student final exams going back a few years. The reason for this is not that I'm obliged to keep them; they can be thrown out after a year. No, it's that my students are generally unmotivated to pick them up once the new term starts, and I'm lazy about cleaning my office. I suppose I'll toss them when I move in my new office at the end of August.

As for actual papers? They go back to my students, with copious but often illegible comments. I make a copy if I suspect plagiarism. Otherwise, I don't keep them on file.

Any professor who'd keep a paper - and that's what this is, a lengthy paper, not a master's or doctoral thesis - for 25 years would need a much bigger office than mine.

But here's how MSNBC reports it. The story begins reasonably enough, telling of a "right-wing hit-man," David Bossie, who's been trying to dig up the thesis. Here's the ad he's been running in newspapers:

Image via MSNBC, reproduced here under fair use provisions of U.S. copyright law.

MSNBC then quotes Obama's former professor from the honors seminar he took on U.S. foreign policy, Michael Baron, who remembers Obama as a stellar student. Remarkably, Baron thinks he actually kept a copy of the thesis paper until eight years ago - but he then trashed it while moving house.

So on one level, the MSNBC report appears to be debunking wingnut rumors. But it's playing an ugly double game. Consider this header:

The dog ate my homework?

And then there's the article's ending, which gives Bossie the final word:

Case closed?

So is that it? Is the Case of the Missing “Thesis” over?

Not so fast, Sherlock.

“If Obama says he doesn't have a copy, I would have to call him a liar,” declared David Bossie, the conservative activist. “Obama has it or knows where it is but no one has pressed him seriously for it,” Bossie said.

In other words, for some, the search continues.

There's a convention in American journalism which requires only that "both sides" of a story be told. This passes as objectivity, no matter how bat-shit loony one side may be. At best, MSNBC is engaging in this he-said, she-said type of journalistic "ethics." (Jon Swift took the piss out of this better than anyone else so far.)

At worst, MSNBC is throwing its weight behind Bossie, becoming complicit with the right-wing hit-men. The fact that the article ends with his words gives some credence to this intepretation.

Either way, this is horseshit, not real journalism. What I learned from this article can be easily summed up:

1. Obama was a more diligent college student than I (who refused to write an honors thesis because it would have required sustained effort).
2. Obama nurtured an interest in the Soviet Union and arms control (not a bad thing in a future president).
3. Obama's former prof sounds like a super-nice guy.
4. Bossie sounds like a world-class Arschloch. (Some of the translations behind the link are rather loose, but all of them apply.)
   
5. MSNBC is no better than Faux News.