You can see the inside of the rest of the book here, and order it here for only $15! Sold!

• “The New Evangelicals and the Inevitability of Homosexual Accommodation” by Jeremy N. Thomas
• “‘Westernizing’ the Galaxy: Klingon ‘Otherness’ as Affirming Human Superiority in Star Trek: The Next Generation” by Melissa J. Stacer

Thomas’ article because woah, “the inevitability of homosexual accommodation” just invites a reading.

Stacer’s paper because holy shit! Trekkies in academia! How awesome would it be to be able to spend research time on analyzing the world of Star Trek: TNG?!

Abstract of Stacer’s paper:

This project contends that the idea of “Westernizing” is implicated in the science fiction universe of Star Trek. Europeans once explored the earth and attempted to civilize the barbaric peoples they encountered, and I contend that the Star Trek universe portrays humans exploring space and attempting to accomplish this same task with alien species. This project explores how the human species as portrayed in Star Trek represents the hegemonic voice of White America, a representation of the natural and normal to which other species, specifically the aggressive Klingons, are contrasted and viewed as inferior. Klingons represent the human revulsion against the barbaric “Other,” typified by characteristics that humans have already overcome. I utilize Hall’s (1997) theoretical frameworks and themes around which representations of racial differences cluster to examine how Klingons and humans are portrayed in this supposed future utopia. I also employ work by Dyer, whose wrote [sic] that the inclusion of minority groups in media is essential because their inclusion is necessary in order to define and clarify characteristics of whites. These frameworks allow a critical examination of Star Trek’s portrayal of humans and Klingons as well as helping to illustrate what this present day cultural phenomenon may be indicating about current societal relations. [Source: allacademic.com]

Relatedly: “Should Feminists Be Cyborgs?” by Blauwkamp and Krassas

Abstract: Building on Donna Haraway’s cyborg manifesto, we analyze cyborg exemplars from science fiction to assess the potential of cyborgs to challenge sexist dualisms along with the logics and practices of domination that spring from them. [Source: allacademic.com]

Way back when, almost ten years ago, I found Bitch Magazine sitting tucked behind women’s glossies on the top-most shelf of the bigbox bookstore. It was love at first page flip, finding a magazine that addressed real concerns (e.g., the challenges of working mothers vs the latest celeb diet) and whose politics where right there in their tagline: Feminist Response to Pop Culture. By this time my feminist consciousness had been raised and I was deep into theory. I’m not sure how it went for other feminists, but I found myself unable to even flip through traditional women’s magazines. To me they became icons of women’s present day oppression: how-to manuals on subordinating oneself. All I could take away from them was that women don’t need others to oppress them, they’ll do it fine themselves as long as they can try to look hot while doing it.

‘Cosmopolitan’ Institute Completes Decades-Long Study On How To Please Your Man

Artist Robert Shetterly has painted portraits of over 100 individuals who have impacted the US political scene throughout history up to the present day. The website features an image of each portrait along with a short biographical sketch of the person. The portraits and biographies have been made into a book while the portraits themselves remain as a group in a traveling exhibit.

Individuals represented include Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King, Jr., Amy Goodman, Shirley Chisholm, and Dennis Kucinich, among many others.

AmericansWhoTellTheTruth.org

• Revolt of the Second Sex by Julie Ellis (1970)

You can find this book in some libraries and for sale online, but descriptions and summaries are hard to find. The first page copy reads:

THE NEO-FEMINISTS—
SEVENTIES STYLE
They come in all sizes and shapes. From micro-skirted teeny-boppers to successful lady lawyers to matronly grandmothers bored with the garden club. Freedom, equality, acceptance—they all want the same things. The ways they plan to get them are different—they run the gamut from ladylike persuasion to riotous overthrow. This book describes the ladies, how they feel and what they’re planning to do—today and tomorrow!
REVOLT OF THE SECOND SEX
THE FIRST AND ONLY FULL-
LENGTH REPORT ON TODAY’S WOMEN
AND THEIR FREE-SWINGING LIFE STYLES.

Chapters range from “Female Liberation Movement”, detailing women’s liberation groups, to “Our Archaic Abortion Laws” which discusses the then-current status of abortion law and practice.

• Teaching As a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner (1972 Penguin edition)

I have the Delta edition, which was probably printed in the 1990s. I like having early editions, and multiple editions, of books. I’m weird that way.

• On Becoming a Person by Carl R. Rogers (1961 Sentry edition)

I’m not sure if I heard about this book through Jensen, but I’ve heard of it somewhere and thought I’d pick it up. Pay no attention to the pre-existent pile of books in front of the full bookcases.

• Unlearning the Lie: Sexism in School by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1973)

Another book with little online information. From what I read on the book cover: The author got together with other parents to form a “Sex-roles Committee” at “Woodward School, a private, interracial, nonsectarian, parent-teacher cooperative in Brooklyn” “to explore the ways in which Woodward might be perpetuating ‘mind- and spirit-debilitating stereotypical sex roles’.”

• Feminist Criticism and Social Change: Sex, Class and Race in Literature and Culture edited by Judith Newton and Deborah Rosenfelt (1985)

This is an anthology of 12 scholarly essays. Back cover reads:

This lively and controversial collection of essays sets out to theorize and to practice a ‘materialist-feminist’ criticism of literature and culture. [...]

The essays in the first part of the book examine race, ideology and the literary canon and explore the ways in which other current critical discourses, such as those of deconstruction and French feminism, might be useful to a feminist and materialist criticism. The second part of the book contains examples of such criticism in practice, with studies of individual works, writers and ideas.

• Horace’s Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School by Theodore R. Sizer (1985)

I also have the 2004 edition of this book. And, I still have yet to read it.

• The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner (1986)

This find made my day. This is volume one of Lerner’s Women and History series. I’m still on the look-out for volume two, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-seventy.

• Ourselves, Growing Older: Women Aging with Knowledge and Power (1987) by Paula Brown Doress and Diana Laskin Siegal and The Midlife and Older Women Book Project in cooperation with the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective

There is a “newer” (1994) edition currently available, but I figured I would check this out. Not that I’m their target audience as far as age goes—but I enjoy their Our Bodies, Ourselves and this text should be just as informative.

I love book sales.

Banned Books Week is September 29 through October 6. You can find an online catalogue of banned and challenged books at The Forbidden Library, either arranged by title or by author.

Or you can head over to your own public library. My city library has a display devoting several shelves to banned and challenged books. The Partner and I stopped in on Saturday, not knowing it was Banned Book Week at all, and I came across the display on our way to the counter.

I picked up Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden (1982). According to Wikipedia, in 1993 this book was banned by the Kansas City school system and was burned in protests. Students filed a First Amendment lawsuit, and the book was returned to the shelves in 1995.

I started the book that Saturday, only reading about 20 pages. I picked it up again this afternoon and have just finished it. It is the story of Liza and Annie, two 17-year-old gals who fall in love, told through the point-of-view of Liza.

Chad kept kidding me that I was in love, and asking with whom, and then Sally and Walt did, too, and after a while I didn’t even mind, because even if they had the wrong idea about it, they were right. Soon it wasn’t hard any more to say it—to myself, I mean, as well as over and over again to Annie—and to accept her saying it to me. We touched each other more easily—just kissed or held hands or hugged each other, though—nothing more than that. We didn’t really talk much about being gay; most of the time we just talked about ourselves. We were what seemed important then, not some label. (p. 118-9; emphasis in original).

It is an extremely moving story which brought me to tears many times.

I went downstairs to Dad’s encyclopedia and looked up HOMOSEXUALITY, but that didn’t tell me much about any of the things I felt. What struck me most, though, was that, in that whole long article, the word “love” wasn’t used even once. That made me mad; it was as if whoever wrote the article didn’t know that gay people actually love each other. The encyclopedia writers ought to talk to me, I thought as I went back to bed; I could tell them something about love. (p. 143).

Although listed in Young Adult, this book should be read by everybody, and I am extremely disappointed I didn’t learn of it years ago.

And in case you’re like me and usually out of the loop, on September 19th San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, a Republican, held a press conference in which he stood in solidarity and spoke out in support for gay marriage, a complete turn-around for him.

Through the exacting and normalizing disciplines of diet, make-up, and dress–central organizing principles of time and space in the days of many women–we are rendered less socially oriented and more centripetally focused on self-modification. Through these disciplines, we continue to memorize on our bodies the feel and conviction of lack, insufficiency, of never being good enough. At the farthest extremes, the practices of femininity may lead us to utter demoralization, debilitation, and death. (p. 14)

I am looking forward to the rest of the text.

Here’s what I was listening to:

1. The Moldy Peaches — Nothing Came Out
2. Devendra Banhart — At The Hop
3. Journey — When The Lights Go Down In The City (ugh)
4. Peaces — Operate
5. Devo — Head Like A Hole
6. DJ Paul V — Yo Majesty vs Depeche Mode — Just Can’t Get Club Action [mashup]
7. Bratmobile — Polaroid Boy
8. Eric Bachmann — Lonesome Warrior
9. Cola Wars — V As In Victory
10. Princeton — Tokyo, Japan

Blast from the Past Bonus: It was 1993 and I was totally listening to these guys while painting my nails black and dying my hair pink:

PG was founded in 1971 by Michael Hart with the mission of “encouraging the creation and distribution of ebooks”. The goals are to create a digital library of electronic texts that are (relatively [there are operating costs]) free, easily accessible via various formats, and are readable, searchable, and quotable. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization that operates on a reasonable budget–the bulk of funds going to servers and other tech fees.

There are lots of ways to volunteer, but I chose to be a proofreader (and sometimes monetary donator) because that’s where I’m able to make the most impact. I found Plucker, a program which enables offline viewing of HTML documents and ebooks on my PDA, and have been using PG more. Plus, I’m one of those anal folks who will read a book and find an error and it will drive me crazy that the editor didn’t catch it.

Proofreading for PG is done through Distributed Proofreaders, which breaks up the process of turning a paper book into an ebook into various stages. I’m a newbie, so I’m a level-1 proofreader. If I decide to continue with the project, I’ll move into level-2 proofreading and from there can move into the formatting levels. For the geek in me, it’s fun work.

If you find yourself with free time and you have a love for books, you might give proofreading for PG a try.

When I read that Kay was a poet it didn’t surprise me. The story is beautifully written from inside the heads and hearts of numerous characters seeking a reconciliation that already exists, if only they could get to it. The book reminded me a lot of Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson. Trumpet begins in the present and takes you to the past, and you travel like this for most of the book. I couldn’t help but get wrapped up in the lives and memories Kay created. The ending made me cry, not out of sadness but harmony.

When I go into our bedroom, the bed is just lying there. As if to say, it’s only me again. I keep expecting that some miracle could happen, that I could just come up the stairs and find Joss in bed waiting for me. Each time I come into this room the emptiness of it punches me in the stomach. There is something so repetitive about grief. First the stupid hope, then the violence of remembering. The hope, then the carpet from under your feet. If Joss had lived and I had died. If Joss had seen a doctor. If I had made Joss see a doctor. The same things spinning every day and night. Each night I’m afraid to sleep. I know Joss will find me. I know I will wake up and forget and then remember. (p. 95-6)

Pick it up when you get the chance.

I had heard about The Stepford Wives — had heard enough to at least get the cultural references whenever someone called Laura Bush a Stepford wife, but I never bothered with reading the book. I did see the 2004 movie version, which had an ending of the exact fucking opposite of the book.

The back of my copy reads

At once a masterpiece of psychological suspense and a savage commentary on a media-driven society that values the pursuit of youth and beauty at all costs, The Stepford Wives is a novel so frightening in its final implications that the title itself has earned a place in the American lexicon.

“Savage commentary on a media-driven society”, to me, speaks to a critical analysis of media culture, consumption, production, and marketing. While the book brand-name dropped a couple times, the only piece that I can loosely construe as being anywhere near ‘commentary’ on media is found on pages 42-3:

That’s what she was, Joanna felt suddenly. That’s what they all were, all the Stepford wives: actresses in commercials, pleased with detergents and floor wax, with cleansers, shampoos, and deodorants. Pretty actresses, big in the bosom but small in the talent, playing suburban housewives unconvincingly, too nicey-nice to be real. [emphasis in original]

What am I supposed to take away from this book? To never get married, and secondly, to never let a male partner join a “men’s association”, let alone watch commercials? Writing in 1972, perhaps I’m immune from whatever Levin was trying to get across to a woman audience at that time.

For all the cultural hype, I think it lacks full engagement.

Have you read it? What are your thoughts? Am I right to hate it as much as I did the movie?