At, when his rant seemed to be focused on airing general grievances about the use of language, they found it vaguely amusing; then he started insulting their intelligence. This group of four girls has at least ten degrees between them, half of them in English or Literature, and did not take too kindly to the lecture on their intoxicated vocabulary choices further expanding to include calling them all idiots. For the sake of not provoking the obvious cauldron of crazy, none of them said anything.

The onslaught continued throughout the ten minute train ride, completely spoiling their vibe.  My friend spent the entire trip mentally constructing a barrage of arguments about the evolution of language and the value of “like” as a modifier, but stopped just short of engaging the ranting man every time she thought she might yell at him. Her preservation instinct overrode her anger.

The group was relived to get off the train, and ran to hail a cab quickly while the man followed them out of the train station, still shouting. As my friend closed the cab door, the man screamed at them to “Go listen to your Britney Spears, you bitches!” All of her coherent, well-formed arguments about language and dialog about language dissipated as she shrieked “Go fuck yourself, asshole!” out the car window at the man until he was out of sight.

There you have it, folks. It seems that the downfall of the English language has less to do with the words we use than the manner in which we conduct ourselves.The breakdown of communication will inevitably be caused by people who think that the entire world should be addressed as if they were on the internet: insulting, nonsensical, ignorant, and in caps lock.

Phew. That was a lot of linking.

Anyway, you get the point that things have been pretty said and done on this particular matter, so I won’t mention it specifically again.

What I do want to talk about are the implications of telling people to shut up–of women telling women to shut up. I like telling people to shut up, I  like telling them to shut the fuck up (Hi, Grandma!) if they are being especially stupid. I am not remotely opposed to the idea that some people should just shut their mouths and listen to what other people are saying once in a while. However, there are appropriate times and places for saying shut up,  and appropriate reasons for saying it. “You’re a bad feminist” is not an appropriate reason.

The truth is that I am not of the belief that “choosing your choice”, (to borrow a phrase that should probably go the way of “Girl Power!” and the like) necessarily makes a woman a full-blooded feminist. If you choose to be a stay-at-home mom, but you aren’t teaching feminism to your kids, then no, you’re not a feminist. If you choose to be a Fortune 500 CEO, but you don’t make any effort to promote, educate, and protect the women in your company, then no, you’re not a feminist. But do I think that women who do these things have the right to speak about feminism? Yes, of course they do. Feminism is part of every American woman’s history, even those that don’t choose to embrace it. Feminists built the foundation for other women to make the choices that they do; these feminists are in our cultural blood and there’s no changing that. This is also true of girls who don’t yet know that they have choices to make, and that is essential to remember when we’re throwing stones at young women for “killing feminism” with their drinking, whoring, being raped, teen pregnancy having, abstinence promoting ways.

I’m sure you’re wondering why I included the last two things on that list. This is why. Not the article, which is fairly diplomatic, but the comments, which, at passing glance contain at least five pleas for Bristol Palin to “STFU”, and a gem (that won Worst Comment of the Day, thankfully) declaring that everyone under the age of 21, maybe 30, should stop speaking.

…Uh huh.

Of course, I don’t agree with anything that Palin is saying. Regardless, there is a HUGE difference between saying, “Maybe you don’t know this because you are young and don’t have a lot of perspective beyond the one in which you were raised, but everything you are proselytizing about is wrongwrongWRONG!” and saying “Everyone under the age of 30 should shut up.” Sure, I wish Palin were saying different things, I wish many young women my age were acting differently, I wish someone would bring me a pizza right now. I wish a lot of things. Mostly I wish that women would stop telling other women to shut up. Just like the feminists of times past are the foremothers of many women who do not subscribe to original feminist ideal, so are we the foremothers of women who do not call themselves feminists, and many women who do not subscribe to our particular brand of feminism. However, we have a responsibility to speak to them, not silence them.

Today, C. L. “Cat” Minou (Thanks, Tiger Beatdown, for the link!) has a post that I’d like to exerpt here:

“…everywhere I looked among the various underprivileged communities I encountered–female, feminist, people of color–I saw the same pattern of holding other members of your group up to your own personal ideal, and then calling them out on how far they fell short of it. People complained about it; long and bitter struggles took place with each faction trying to prove their authenticity to each other. And yet the patterns persisted, over and over and over again.”

..Sound familiar? 

It rarely does a woman any good to tell another woman to shut up. It especially doesn’t do any good to tell another woman to shut up and leave it at that. (Not that I haven’t done it, ahem, especially to certain people who share the last name of another certain person whom I mention several times in this post. The only time it does do any good is when it’s said to a woman who is actively working to silence other women. I think we all know a few of those.) I believe that the more women who speak, whatever it is they are speaking of and whatever it is they are saying, the better. Silencing the voices of young people and refusing to let them participate in the feminist conversation amounts to nothing more than petty societal hazing; it’s infantilizing and patronizing, and I can think of  another “p” word that shares that root… that’s right, you know the one.

If we never let young women speak their minds and never engage them in dialog that may change their minds, then what kind of choice are we giving them, and what kind of equality are we teaching? 

(Side note: this is probably the linkiest post I’ve ever done. I know it’s a pain, but I hope you check them out!)

The genus narcissus is more commonly known in the United States as “daffodil”. Every type of narcissus has a central trumpet shaped blossom, but contrary to the origin of their moniker most of the daffodils you see bordering people’s front walks have upward facing flowers. This is because horticulturalists have been selectively breeding them for decades to better display the popular yellow and white spring blooms. 

I learned this interesting bit of trivia at dinner tonight when I told my dad, a horticulturalist, that I had a Twitter account.

“Isn’t that a little narcissistic?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s SO narcissistic,” I admitted, “I’m completely aware of how ridiculous it is.”

Then he proceeded to tell me about the evolution of the flower that bears the name.

I think it’s interesting that oversharing the minute details of our lives is just par for the course now. Our lives are so much more public than they used to be. I have a Facebook account, two public blogs, one more private one, a Twitter account, and I comment on several web forums. One person with access to all of these facets of my online persona would soon probably know more about me than I know about myself, but all things considered I still think of myself as a very private person.

Everyone draws the line in a different place. I would never blog about my sex life, but I have no problems blogging about my political views. I’m sure there are people who feel the exact opposite. Regardless, I’m sure if you had asked my parents when they were my age if they thought it was a good idea to share their thoughts and feelings with hundreds of strangers scattered around the planet I don’t think they would have been so keen it. Even now, most people I know, even those that use this technology, feel a little uncomfortable with Facebook updates and Twitters. While we recognize that it’s a weird thing to do, we do it anyway. It’s just seems like a given to adapt to social networking technologies because our desire to communicate and reach out to others continually overrides or stretches our desire to create boundaries.

It makes me wonder what things will be like in another ten years. Will we all wear monitors that share our heart-rate and automatically record our every waking thought? That’s probably hyperbole, but if someone told you about Twitter even five years ago wouldn’t you have considered it satirical? Celebrities challenging each other to see who can collect more followers, 140 character posts from your friend on what they ate today? I would have.

Narcissism has not only become more tolerable, it’s become an accepted part of our lives. Freud believe that a little narcissism was healthy and essential to a person’s mental stability. Maybe he was right. Maybe a society obsessed with outward appearances and self-esteem has bred us, like the daffodils, to keep our heads up no matter what.

First of all, SMMOA, you decided not to just use “Men” and “Women” and those are the best you could come up with? Secondly, good to know that men can exist as both children and adults, but those who have a vagina never go through puberty. You learn something new every day!

After the initial anger and confusion at this discovery washed over me I said to myself, “Let’s take a step back, the titles are stupid, but maybe they sell clothing of some kind that requires this distinction.” Nope, certainly not enough to warrant entirely segregated sections of the site. 

You want to know what the SMMOA is selling those “Boys to Men”? Pens. Cool pens: crossword pens, and ruler pens. Oh, and shot glasses. There’s something else I didn’t know! Only boys and men use manly tools like pens and shot glasses.

You want to know what the SMMOA is selling “The Girls”? (Of course you do.) Soap. And this monstrosity, and a “crying towel for those blue, blue days.”

Lest you should be offended, dear readers, they also have a recommended gift “perfect for a staunch feminist.”

Hey, Santa Monica Museum of Art? Get a clue and a new retail buyer.

…Really? Are you threatening me with your Christianity right now?

Now, I’m not religious, but I did go to Sunday school. I don’t seem to recall Jesus being too big on bearing weapons. In fact, I’m pretty sure he was the “turn the other cheek” guy, yes? “Love thy neighbor as thyself”…any of that ringing a bell?

As much as it pains me to cite a Mandy Moore movie, there’s a scene in Saved! that I believe to be one of the best illustrations of this failure to understand the basic tenents of Christianity: Mandy Moore’s character, Hilary Faye, attempts to stage a “Christian” intervention on behalf of Mary, played by Jena Malone. When it doesn’t go as planned, Hilary Faye chucks her bible at the back of a retreating Mary’s head. Mary picks it up and chastises her sadly, saying, “This is not a weapon.”

It is fools like this who start wars over things that they don’t understand.

A Book from the Sky was exhibited for the first time in 1988 at the Beijing China Art Gallery. The work itself is bound in four-hundred small books printed, bound, and strung with traditional Chinese techniques; they are displayed open on the floor, framed by fifty-foot printed scrolls hanging from the ceiling and wall panels printed to look like Chinese newspapers.

Each character is unique, printed using hand-carved pear wood blocks. All look like traditional Chinese characters; none of them mean anything.

At first, even official government critics lauded Xu Bing’s work as an important development in Chinese art. It was even featured in a government exhibition entitled China/Avante-Garde. Four months after that, in June of 1989 the anti-government protests and subsequent massacre of thousands of pro-democracy advocates at Tiananmen Square started an authoritarian suppression of the press, artists, intellectuals and anyone suspected of subversive action against the communist government. 

Officials suddenly had something to fear from Xu Bing’s nonsense characters. The entire avante-garde movement was condemned by the Ministry of Culture for “bourgeois liberalism”.  Xu Bing was placed under police surveillance, and eventually fled to the United States in 1990.

They say the pen, or wood block in this case, is mightier than the sword; they also say that a picture is worth a thousand words. So how many words are four-hundred books of nonsense-word pictures worth? Apparently enough to panic a government, warrant censure, and drive a previously touted Chinese artist into exile.

Ambiguity is frightening. Ambiguity has shaken the foundations of authority since there were foundations to shake. Officials from governments and other institutions of power have gone to great lengths to persecute, silence and kill artists and intellectuals who have dared to suggest that things are not black and white, that life is not based on certainties and that every person is entitled to interpret the things we see and the things we “know” on their own merit. All the more reason to pay attention to the ambiguous nonsense we’re told to ignore.

So, I have added another blog to my empire (mwhahahaha!) that will serve as a deposit for my more loosely aligned, and more personal, stories and rants.

It is here, if you wish to view it! I will also add it to the Blogroll at the side bar.

I’d like to keep this one marginally cleaner and more presentable, and keep the posts under the subjects of words, language, art, feminism, writing, and combinations thereof here.

Thanks for reading!

The first post can be found here at Pursuit of Harpyness, one of my new favorite internet hangouts. It is authored by the witty and astute Pilgrim Soul, who is always worth a read. 

The second is an older post from one of my new favorite blogs (as of today in my internet odyssey of sickness and boredom), Tiger Beatdown, and can be found here.

Both posts tackle issues of the language of misogyny as employed by male novelists– Russel Smith and John Updike, respectively.

For another look at sexism in John Updike’s work, definitely check out Lizzie Skurnick’s take on The Witches of Eastwick found here via Jezebel.

I have a lot of trouble finding a solid ground for my values on this topic (though, notably, not with either of the authors mentioned in these pieces). The first book that I remember really turning me on to the study of literature and language was Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, which is likely one of the finer examples of misogyny and the objectification of women in American literature. Catherine Barkley is certainly one of the progenitors of, if not the “manic pixie dream girl”, the “maternal stoicist dream girl”. I confess to a literary adolescence spent in fascination/admiration of Ernest Hemingway and his world of man’s men, man’s women, disillusionment, and disconnection. I do not, however, concede that this is entirely my fault. I find that there is a startling lack of cynical disengagement in novels by women. My favorite books by female authors at the same time were Little Women and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, both of which deal with many of the same themes as A Farewell to Arms, but in a different context and from a woman’s perspective.

War is an omnipresent truth in Little Women, but instead of succumbing to self-pity and despair about the crushing lack of agency that war brings the March girls cheerfully soldier what responsibilities they can and optimistically pray for the safe return of their father from the battlefield. Only Jo occasionally shows moments of anger and lashes out at the unfairness of circumstance, but this is regarded as her biggest flaw, something she must overcome. Similarly, Francie of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn struggles with the bitterness of a failed dreamer that plagues her alcoholic father, and strives to emulate her ever stoic, ever care-taking mother. Yes, the female characters in these books are immensely better written and more realistic, but there is something so enticing, especially as an embittered teenager hell bent on disconnecting from the insurmountable chaos that surrounds you, about reading Hemingway. The bitterness and the disillusionment aren’t something to be discussed or overcome, they aren’t flaws of character, they are just there. Yes, this is a problem of sexism and entitlement that we are continually railing against: the right to be angry, to be discontent. But, sometimes there is an escapist element to reading about a man’s man and his man’s entitlement to be disconnected from the world.

This sometimes makes me feel like a very bad feminist indeed, but I think that  Sady from Tiger Beatdown addresses this very eloquently in the final paragraph of the post I mentioned.

All of this being said, I welcome any suggestions of angry, disconnected female protagonists. My lovely, incredibly intelligent, female (isn’t that a combination sure to cause some emotional strife in her life?) cousin, a voracious reader will be entering middle school in another year. I just mailed her copies of The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler and Harriet the Spy, but I fear I will be ill-prepared to handle her literary well-being four years from now when she is angry and confused and has no refuge in books.

On to the content!

I work for a company that sells art books; part of my job is to do page and illustration counts on all the new titles that we receive from our trade and university press distributors. In the last few months I’ve looked at countless books on graffiti: the origins of graffiti, New York graffiti, L.A. graffiti, Miami graffiti, freight train graffiti, and so on. Consequently, I’ve been thinking about it a lot.

Graffiti fascinates me on a number of fronts. First, anything with an element of civil disobedience to it charms me for fairly obvious reasons. In a book I was reading entitled Miami Graffiti, photographed by James and Karla Murray, one of the featured artists was saying that he and his crew, or team of taggers, all have a tattoo of the number “28″ somewhere on their bodies. My immediate thought was that it was interesting/weird that a graffiti artist, a person whose art revolves heavily around words and images, would choose a number to unite his team and be a singular expression of his life’s work. Then he explained that “28″ is the Miami Police Department code for “vandalism”. That, I understand. 

Graffiti, from the plural of the Italian word “graffito”, or the diminutive of “a scribble”, has existed for nearly as long as humans have felt the impulse to draw on things. Anyone who has been or spent any time with a toddler, some crayons, and a white wall (or even an adult who thinks no one is watching) knows that this impulse is universal and unquellable. Who’s to say that the first cave painters were painting on their own caves? Interestingly, one of the first women to gain notoriety for graffiti tagging in New York went by “Eva”.

The origins of modern graffiti are somewhat convoluted, but tagging as we know it is thought to have started in Philadelphia in the late sixties and moved to New York City by the early seventies. For a more complete account with more information on specific artists I recommend this site, or this book. Regardless of who started it, the graffiti movement here and abroad gave the disenfranchised a public voice. Common themes from the seventies until now include anti-war, anti-poverty, anti-authoritarian and feminist messages.

Otpor, the Serbian youth movement partially credited with the eventual removal of Slobodan Milošević from office, used stencilled graffiti of its famous black fist symbol to intimidate the police and create public awareness of their existence. Graffiti is intimidating to authority figures in that it indicates that even in the absence of violence there is a noticeable mark of frustration boiling up from the underpinnings of society. Graffiti artists target infrastructure: subways, freight trains, buses– all are highly visible symbols of the pieces that enable the organization and control of the social order.

Today, graffiti seems to be gaining acceptance as an art form, but even as exhibitions are held and books get published graffiti artists are certainly still considered outsiders in the art world. Websites like Graffiti Hurts, and Zero Graffiti San Francisco make it clear how they feel about graffiti: that it is gang-related, destructive, and that “Where Art Lives” (the title of the anti-graffiti program that older elementary school children in San Francisco must complete) is not on the street.

Actually, for the most part, the art depicted in Miami Graffiti is on the inside of abandoned buildings populated by the homeless. Crews create spontaneous galleries wherever there is space available. Looking at the pictures of these walls covered in pieces of what, arguably, will soon be valuable pieces of art juxtaposed with shopping-cart castles where the ignored and forgotten exist once they have fallen through the cracks is, to say the least, disconcerting. Sure, you can take graffiti off the street, you can encourage students to put their artwork on paper “where it belongs”. Inevitably, that lessens the impact. When protest goes mainstream and loses the force of intimidation it hasn’t necessarily infiltrated the system; the system has infiltrated the protest.

This is not to say that all graffiti is political, or that it is not worthy of veneration from a purely aesthetic point of view–truly it is worthy of review from an artistic standpoint, and it would be condescending not to consider each piece on its own merit. However, to remove the political elements from our analysis of the entire art form is disingenuous. To ignore history is to refuse to learn from it. We can elevate art that has grown out of poverty and frustration, but if we insist on walking past the social ills that bred it on our way to congratulate the talented few whom art society has deemed laudable the congratulations are empty. The message has been lost.

As you can imagine, this has been a rather serious point of contention between my teachers and me over the years. In seventh grade, Mrs. Leffler (Mrs. Leffler, if you are reading this I wish a million paper cuts on you and your progeny) threatened to fail me if I did not start doing the journaling assignments. Like any mature and rational middle school girl with a giant chip on her shoulder and a blatant problem with authority would, I filled the rest of my journal with essays on how condescending her assignments were, exactly how strongly I was going to stand against her onslaught of “One page on your favorite animal,” and “One page describing your house,” and how I could not possibly care less what she thought of my writing. Needless to say, Parent-Teacher Conference Days were particularly enjoyable for my parents that year.

Writing, like any skill, is in a constant state of improvement. It is not that I am so arrogant as to be incapable of understanding the value in practicing a skill. But, in my opinion, writing is a skill of communication. Why bother expending the energy to write pages of prose to a teacher who, by her attitude, has made it clear that she has no regard for your thoughts and opinions regardless of what they contain? That is not communicating, it is jumping through hoops. Students are not circus dogs. (Now isn’t that a blog for another day!) 

Wouldn’t moderated class discussion, or peer-edited essays be better teaching tools than graded journal entries? I suppose it seems rather silly for a blogger to be debating the validity of a “journal” post as a valid means of communication, but my earlier point that communication requires both a communicator and a communicatee still stands. At least the Internet is a better reader than my seventh grade English teacher.

All of these memories of the drudgery of childhood are surfacing at this late hour on a Monday evening because I have just spent the last hour writing six 250-word journal entries for my Macroeconomics class. I was supposed to do ten over the course of the semester, but like any mature and rational young woman with a giant chip on her shoulder and a blatant problem with authority would… I put them off.

I have fifteen minutes left before the deadline to turn them in, and I could probably knock off at least one more, but I don’t think my skin can take it.