Hello Friends,
Life is becoming something, isn’t it? I know we aren’t supposed to allow others to live rent-free in our heads, but the Trump administrators are certainly in mine. I have been having weird dreams about them because I can’t stop seeing what they are doing in the world and the racist, hate-filled posts they are throwing up endlessly. This was just so weird (and racist and hateful):
Trump, 79, Posts Bizarre Grim Reaper-Themed AI Music Video
As was all of it. I guess we’ve forgotten what the office of the presidency once meant.
Three bizarre dreams of mine, related to it all:
* Trump walking through a public square with cracker-filled plastic bags hanging out his ass, held by their ends in his anal sphincter. When he came across anyone, he would pull one bag out of his ass and hand it to them. The openings of the bags had a sort of gelatinous poo-goo on them. People were saying, “Should I open it? Is it worth it to get what’s inside?” And I was yelling, “Don’t touch that! You’re going to get sick! And that’s just crackers—it’s not worth anything!”
* JD Vance walking down the street as a giant animatronic dildo (with eyeliner), trying to prove his manhood. I think I dreamed this because of the meme of Vance with a bloated, bald head.
* Kristi Noem’s octopus tentacle hair reaching out through her mouth as she becomes the monster Cthulhu from H. P. Lovecraft’s horror stories.
The question is, Can I endure the apprenticeship of failure long enough to witness whatever comes next? From Jeannine Ouellette, Writing in the Dark
I try to get away from these thoughts by always checking in with positive things. Here’s one I think you will love:
We’re Living in a Mushroom Kingdom from Reasons to be Cheerful
From Hermès to Cadillac, manufacturers are replacing plastics and leathers with mycelium, a material so sustainable it can actually make the environment healthier.
I also spent four days actually relaxing in Catalina. It was great—chaparral wilderness against a perfect cerulean ocean. Much needed.
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Sexism & Sensibility
Back when I was working to find a community on Instagram, I had the opportunity to find out about a lot of books that other authors were about to have published. When Jo-Ann Finkelstein published Sexism & Sensibility, I was very curious because of my career as a high school librarian. Could this be a book for the library? Since I’m perpetually behind on my TBR list, I bought the audiobook and listened. Both the book and the narration were great. I felt that it could serve in the high school library as a companion book to Girls and Sex, published a decade earlier and which I reviewed here.
After listening, I thought I’d check out a copy from my local library. But the library didn’t have a copy. So—I requested that they buy it. A few weeks ago, I got to wondering if they had. Although some libraries notify the requester, this one doesn’t. They bought it! So I checked it out.
[Digression: even if you have absolutely no money for buying books, if you want to support an author, a great way to do so is to request that your library buy their titles! That’s a copy purchased and the possibility that it will bring the author several readers! Do this consistently! It’s one of the easiest forms of literary citizenship.]
Sexism and Sensibility: Raising Empowered, Resilient Girls in the Modern World
“In a paper for my developmental psychology class, I mentioned how I was often accused in my family of being too sensitive and dramatic, rather than being acknowledged, as I see it now, as highly attuned to my environment. The professor scribbled in the margin, ‘That’s what people say to talk girls out of their feelings!’” (x-xi)
There’s so much of value in Sexism and Sensibility that I want to bring it to your attention. As Finkelstein says, we are in a period when equal pay protections are being hollowed out; legislatures in many states working to outlaw contraception; states are proposing ‘don’t say gay’ bills that ban teachers and administrators from supporting those students’ needs in the schools, and so more more.
We want to raise boys who treat girls with dignity and are intolerant of sexism, so helpful ideas about raising boys are included.
“This book isn’t about casting girls and women as victims or boys and men as villains. It’s about preventing girls from internalizing the limiting and distorting messages of our culture, and from privileging others’ feelings, perceptions, and comfort over their own. My aim is also to help us figure out what part we play as adults in both clarifying and muddying the waters for our daughters as to what’s fair and how they should expect to be treated.” (xv)
Part One: Adults Colluding with the Larger Culture
The book is broken into four parts. Part One shows how adults set the stage for gender bias, and sexism to flourish in girls’ lives by colluding with the larger culture. We have implicit biases. We learned a narrow script when we were young and we’re still on it.
For as long as I can remember, I was told girls can be anything boys can be. I’ve never heard, however, the phrase ‘boys can be anything girls can be.’ Entire books aren’t devoted to fostering positive female qualities in boys. We must help boys see that sexism imposes limits on how they think and feel and on what they can be when they grow up. For these things to register as loss, however, we have to actually believe relational qualities like caring, connection, and cooperation are worth having, that they’re aspirational for boys, not emasculating. But that requires doing something we don’t as a culture do: value the behaviors and norms of girls and women. We can help by reading books to boys that feature girls or emotionally complex boys and be careful to avoid attaching gender to interest and abilities when we speak.” (24-25)
Even for couples who largely divide along traditional gender lines, if you’re modeling genuine respect for each other’s contributions, you can model equality. It’s essential to value each parent’s work, regardless of what that work is and what it pays (or doesn’t pay).” (17)
Part Two: Cultural Forces and the Beauty Culture
Part Two looks at major cultural forces that create and intensify sexism, and those include the beauty culture in the media.
“Perhaps the greatest resource exploited by a beauty obsessed culture is our mind. Girls who self-objectify have more difficulty with cognitive tasks. Research shows self-objectification usurps our cognitive resources, making it difficult to get into the flow states necessary for performance and achievement.” (87)
Part Three: Potential
Part Three examines common experiences in girls’ lives that teach them that they’re less deserving, that they’re less intelligent, and they’re less powerful than boys, and this, of course, keeps them from fulfilling their potential.
“Virtually every girl and woman I see in therapy feels as if they got away with something when they experience success. They bring up the term ‘imposter syndrome’ and say, ‘that’s me exactly.’” (100)
Part Four: Body Autonomy and Sexual Agency
Part Four focuses on sex and sexuality and discusses how to set girls up for body autonomy and sexual agency. I think this is the part that might disturb the censors who don’t like high school students to talk about adult topics. Please remember: teens this age—14 to 18 years old—are thinking exactly of this sort of thing and entering this sphere in their life. Forewarned is forearmed. It’s good to have an idea of how to conduct that next phase.
“We tread a difficult line between preparing our daughters for the world and instilling fear. We don’t want to unfairly color the way they see the world, but not knowing what to expect could be worse. It’s vital they trust their instincts, whether that curdled feeling in their stomach comes from a teacher‘s snide comment in class or from being approached by a carful of teenage boys. They need to know what to do when they feel their heart racing, but their feet are glued to the pavement. It’s our job to teach them to navigate bodily autonomy in a world where their bodies often don’t feel like their own and aren’t safe, to stand their ground when they need to, and to move on with grace and without guilt when they can’t.” (xi-xii)
Sexism and Sensibility has personal elements: both stories from the author‘s early life and stories as she navigates raising both a girl and a boy, trying to make sure that they have a healthy attitude towards sexuality. The book shows how difficult this is because sometimes we don’t know what to do when we know what’s healthiest for our kids, but we also know that they might be slammed in the outside culture at school and work if they don’t meet a certain cultural stereotype. Should your 10-year-old be shaving her legs? No? What if the kids at school are calling her “gorilla” because she has lots of black hair on her legs and she is being ostracized? Should your 12-year-old be wearing make up? In the dating app age, should older teens be allowed to post ‘bombshell’ photos of themselves—skinny, long hair, false eyelashes, revealing clothing? How much more are girls today pressured to look homogenous? How much of their self-esteem relies on ‘likes’? Tweens and teens who are still trying to form their identities are being scooped up by the beauty industry, which advertises to them at a younger and younger age, to see themselves as consumers and sex objects. The industry may no longer directly say that girls are flawed. However, when it uses a language of wellness and self empowerment, that’s actually what it’s doing.
A patriarchal system doesn’t have girls’ and women’s best interest in mind. Navigating such a system has always been hard. In an online world, it’s even harder. Finkelstein gives lots of good examples for action. And that’s what I love about this book. Actionable items are what we all need right now.
As usual, another thing I love about a good non-fiction book is a solid index. Here I was able to look back at things I was interested in like “agency,” “consent,” and “media” to remind me of what most affects girls’ images of themselves. There’s also a solid notes section with links to many studies.
Recommended for all parents and for teachers and high school libraries.
Banned Books Week is Here!
As I think about the moment we are in, an old YA book—Burning Up (1999) by Caroline B. Cooney—comes to mind because of its theme on a town’s prejudice and the ineffectiveness of covering up the past. (Banning books about the less than stellar moments in our history places us in the same sort of moment.) If the author’s name rings a bell, you might have read The Face on the Milk Carton books when you were a kid.
Burning Up is old enough not to be widely available although the audio version is on HOOPLA and can be checked out at the library. I need to see if there is a newer book where a teen learns about her grandparents’ and parents’ prejudice through researching her town’s past. Here’s what Publishers Weekly said about Burning Up 26 years ago:
What does a 1959 barn fire in Macey’s affluent Connecticut town have to do with an arsonist’s attack on an inner-city church where she and classmates volunteer one day? Nothing, as far as the 15-year-old’s friends and family are concerned. But Macey, who narrowly escaped the church fire, senses that there is a connection between the two when she researches local history for a school project. Cooney (The Face on the Milk Carton) has produced another tantalizingly dark secret for her protagonist and readers to unravel together. Macey’s rising awareness of hate crimes sharply escalates after Venita, whom Macey met at the church, is murdered when she tries to interrupt a gang fight. Macey is appalled by her parents’ and grandparents’ apparent callousness and their refusal to let her attend the girl’s funeral (”“Try not to think about Venita,”“ her mother says. “”It’s so sad, darling, but there is nothing you can do”“). Were her grandparents’ hearts as cold 40 years ago when the barn apartment of the town’s only black resident went up in smoke? Were they responsible for his near death? By interviewing community members and tracking down Mr. Sibley, the tenant of the barn apartment, Macey finds the ugly answers to her questions. Even though Macey’s introduction to prejudice and her unshakable nobility are slightly overdrawn, she remains a sympathetic figure, just stubborn and vulnerable enough to be real. Ages 12-up.
Here’s a list of 43 Banned Books That Are Still Powerful Todayif you’d like to look at the last 50 or so years.Most of these are adult books, and you’ve probably read some of them (The Color Purple, Of Mice and Men, Huck Finn, Maus, Fahrenheit 451, etc.) However, some are children’s and YA books. A few on the list that I used to booktalk: The Giver (My son’s favorite book when he was a child). M.E. Kerr’s Night Kites and Deliver Us from Evie.
M.E. Kerr was challenged and removed a lot because she dealt with real teen issues. In fact, her novel Gentlehands has something of the same idea that Burning Up has. Here the protagonist Buddy Boyle learns that his grandfather may be a notorious Nazi war criminal. Censors said they wanted it removed for antisemitism, which is a ploy—the protagonist is learning about antisemitism in people whom he loves and rejects it.
I have posted discussions of many banned books on Be a Cactus. Here are some:
And in light of the fact that, according to PEN, Stephen King is now the most banned author in schools (this happens because other authors were banned in the previous few years, so they are no longer in the censors’ libraries to ban again).
Thanks for reading! See you next week.
