Handouts

I feel like I won the sweepstakes.  But really I just signed on and waited.  Tomorrow, I go in for my appointment with HUD to do paperwork that should lead to my being issued a voucher to help me pay for rent.  Section 8, now called the Housing Choice Voucher Program.  I spent over three and a half years on the list.  I actually applied over 4 years ago, but didn’t get my update form in on time (5 minutes late) so was bumped of the list and had to reapply.  Don’t most of our tax dollars going to terrorizing and bullying the world anyway?

I got the letter weeks ago, but my intake appointment was of course weeks later.  That way us “clients” can collect all our paperwork (and there is a lot of documentation to collect). I am surprised at the feelings I have gone through over the weeks about this.  I was surprised at how I felt like I should keep it a secret, like it was something to be ashamed of…you know with all this anger about fair shares of taxes.  Am I paying my fair share?  Is there such thing as a fair share?  And if so, who decides?  And why should taxes be fair when everything else isn’t?  Aren’t taxes our remedy for our unjust system anyway?

What is fair?  Does fair even exist? Is being born into poverty fair?  I mean, I like who I am, and what would I be like were I not born poor?  Would I like myself then? More or less?   Poverty isn’t the thing I would change, would I?  The unfairness in my childhood is mostly fine with me now, though it wasn’t then.  What I did learn is that it was the interactions with people that affected me, that’s what I would have changed.  I would have chosen a different dad, probably. I would have wanted my mother to spend more time with me.  But if she had spent more time with me, would my relationship with my daughter as an adult have changed? Would I be so determined to give my daughter the love, compassion, consideration that I desperately wanted as a child?  Or was it actually the poverty that robbed me of the love, compassion and consideration?  Isn’t it poverty that forced my mother to destroy her body through hard work as a low-wage slave? Isn’t it poverty that forced her to choose between giving her children enough time, or giving up her passion (Art). Isn’t it poverty that drove her to the brink of insanity over and over again? So was it fair we were impoverished? Or was it just punishment for having a mother with the audacity to raise children absent of a breadwinning male head-of-household?  And should I be punished as well?  Hmmm, Some would say, “YES, I should be punished” but they’re generally the same people who would tell me I couldn’t have had an abortion if I wanted one.

Okay, stop thinking about those crazies.  I am ecstatic…just when I thought single-motherhood in America was about the gut me.  I will be able to rent a two-bedroom place for 1/3 of my income…in northern California none-the-less.  The idea of not having that huge bill to contend with has opened up so many possibilities to me.  One is entrepreneurship.  I won’t work for the stockholders and the upper crust.  So I have non-profits and myself left to work for. Having a small job that I do from home has taught me that this is what I want. I want to work from home.  I don’t want to dress up to impress others.  I need to be me.  I want to throw out my work clothes.  Since my teaching job is out for the summer in 4 weeks, and I should be moving around then…I have all summer to recreate myself.  I get to take risks because I won’t be paralyzed by the fear of not being able to pay rent. Untrapped. I get to be an asset to society again.

I still wonder if it is fair that I get to pay 1/3 my income for rent while others pay more.  Well, the program is out there…anyone can sign up.  And you know, I work all the time, I work in my community, I work with my daughter and she is a beautiful, positive, intelligent addition to society. The work I do is far more beneficial to my community and society that anything the average money mongering CEO does.  I have been doing volunteer work since I was 12…wayyyyyy before career experts and George W Bush told everyone to volunteer because it is good for our resumes.  I am so excited to have a chance to recreate and organize again.  Move back into the realm I am comfortable with and direct my energy into the systems that make sense to me.  The natural movement of my life, comfort.  I am so excited!

Interruptions

I have noticed this strange phenomenon lately. It is children who interrupt conversations, resulting in their parents giving them all their attention. It strikes me as rather odd. Or is it wrong to expect a child to say excuse me or wait until an adult is finished speaking. When I need someones attention, I say their name or excuse me and wait until they can give me their attention. To me it is upsetting when someone walks up while I am in mid sentence, or listening to ones story and just starts talking, adult or child. I wonder then thinking behind this.

So I ask you...Are parents afraid that their child won't feel important if they don't respond to them instantly? Is it perfectly acceptable to interrupt?

Or am I just so boring that any interruption is a breath of fresh air?

Gender Part 1

I named this Part 1, just because this story has so much to it to fit into one blog post...

My job as a parent is to support my child’s self-realization, to nurture her character and facilitate the flourishing of the soul. I decided from the get go to avoid, as much as possible, genderizing my daughter. Genderizing is my term for the act of socializing a child to gender norms. I will admit that, though I often dressed her in gender neutral clothing, I also often dressed her in girl clothes, while skipping the boy clothes. It never bothered me when people mistook her for a boy, as it does some people, who like to neurotically dress their babies in super pink ruffles and lace and strap bows to the head, since there isn’t actually any hair tie up with a bow. Well perhaps some babies like that stuff, but mine liked to play and crawl and climb, not be dressed like a little doll. I often received compliments on how present and alert Ramona was, sometimes the admirer would use the word “he.” I always found it curious that if I corrected the admirer (which I only did a few times then though “what for?”) rampant apologies would ensue. I found it troubling that people care so much. After complimenting my child for her presence of mind and spirit, they find it necessary to apologize for calling her a he, when there are little or no gender clues to pick up on? “It’s a baby,” I would say, “Yes, she is very present.” Babies have no use for gender.

All through the baby and toddler years, Ramona could put the majority of boys to shame when it came to being rambunctious, often covered in dirt and scabs, hanging from any object that jutted out from anywhere. But from the very beginning, in the playground, I would hear parents of boys telling their sons “Be careful of the little girl,” and then they would turn toward me and say something like, “Boys can get kind of rough.” Okay, so there they are telling me in front of our children that girls are fragile and boys are rough. These are the comments of everyday life! You can only shelter your child from genderization for so long…well not long at all. I mean…you can’t. It happens the instant you go out in public. People want to know if it is a boy or girl. Gender is so important in our society. The comments are relentless, and people just spout them out, oblivious to the fact that children take their cues from adults as to what is the proper way to function in society. I can not tell you how many times people have told me in front of Ramona that boys are just “like that,” that boys are uncontrollable or that girls are so nice.

What makes it worse, is that having a rambunctious toddler (remember more rambunctious than the average toddler) that is a girl, you get no sympathy. People just assume it is easy to raise girls. My parenting skills mean NOTHING! I have brought Ramona almost everywhere with me besides work (and she has even gone to work with me at times), even to graduate school. It is this experience of living and growing in public spaces that has taught my daughter to function in public spaces. We are mother and daughter and also good friends and she wants to go to the places that I go to and knows what is expected of her. At one volunteer meeting I took Ramona to, she was sitting on the couch doing coloring and art (because we had an agreement that that is what she would do while we talked) while a couple brought their son, who was sitting in a chair playing a video game. The mother turned to me and said, “Wow, your daughter is so good. You’re lucky, girls are so easy. I wish our boy would be happy just sitting on the couch with some crayons.” I couldn’t believe my ears! People say the darndest things! I am not going to go into every bit of my parenting philosophy, but I will say that children learn to be in society by being part of society, not being ushered off to children’s spaces most of the time. Children also learn about what is expected of them [about gender] by observing what we do and say. I have made plenty of sacrifices to parent the way that I think is right in my soul. To just have my child’s ability to be quiet and work on her art be degraded down to the fact that she is a girl (biologically) is offensive to me, especially since she is probably be more spirited than the kid sucked into the video game.

When I have spent time in indigenous areas in Mexico and a bit in parts of Central America (i.e. where western culture is not prevalent) both boys and girls know how to be in public spaces without running rampant and throwing tantrums. That isn’t to say those things never happen, but it is very obvious that 1) children exist in public and 2) they know how to behave and 3) boys and girls both do it. I am comfortable to say that our rambunctious rowdy misbehaving boys are a construct of our American style Western society and culture. I mean we start buying boys things and girls things from the moment they are born. Why!?! Is there no other reason than our societies preoccupation with gender and making sure babies with penises act like boys and babies with vaginas act like girls? I can’t think of one. Most babies I know like cars better than dolls. So why do little girls always get dolls?

I have expressed my frustrations to friends about peoples assumptions about how boys and girls behave, and usually, if they have boys, they will tell me that there really is a difference, and then give me some example of some boyish thing their boy does. Only once has it been something that doesn’t describe Ramona…in this instance I was told of boy’s natural desire to know the scores of football and baseball games. The other day as I was waiting with some other mother’s to pick up Ramona from preschool, two mothers were talking about how dirty their kids were. One mother caught my eye and said, “Don’t mind us, we have boys.” She turned to the other mother, “Boys are always dirty,” and laughed. The other mother shuddered, “Ahhh, boys,” she said uncomfortably (yay, I’m not the only one who thinks these gender comments are crazy), “yeah boys…their clothes...are expensive…at least the ones I like.” We changed the subject.

I acknowledge that male and female children do have tendencies, but also there is a great range within those tendencies. A girl can be more physical than a boy. And a boy can be more nurturing than a girl. And both can be both rambunctious and nurturing. Children can be both physical and intellectual (which is a false fragmenting binary that has also always annoyed me). The truth is that the majority of gender is a social construct. Those who aren’t properly molded to societies gender constructs are pegged as abnormal. Yes, they are abnormal…but let’s not confuse normal with natural, abnormal with unnatural.

Any thoughts?

To be continued…

Women's equality means working fo The Man

...the man...you know...the guys who somehow squeeze more and more wealth from the poor and resources from the earth every year.

I have become appalled at the level of devaluation of mothering in this country, especially as I am a feminist, and I have seen how the types of feminism that have become mainstream have worked to exasperate this devaluation.  Women’s equality has been linked to women's ability to sidestep responsibilities of care of family and home.  Unfortunately men have not stepped in enough and home and family have suffered.   Our children have been institutionalized more and more.  Schools have stepped in to provide more after school care and activities (which is great considering the alternatives we have, i.e. nothing), and many “liberated” mothers have hired other mothers (cheap labor) to leave their own children behind to care for thier's in one of the lowest paying industries in our country (an eye opener as to our American Values).   Somehow, in our value system it is better to leave your children and care for another’s children, because you are making money, stimulating the economy and money is the signpost of success and equality not the sarcasm).  The dominant feminist mantra presents the solution always being “more childcare.”   Success is measured by how well women are able to fill the positions that men dominate, while what once was women’s work (now the “care industry”) have remained degraded, a place for the poor and the immigrants to work or the site of a woman’s “second shift.”  Not working and “just” staying home to care for your children is so un-feminist these days, you can never be successful or equal doing that!

You could be the best preschool teacher in the world, but the Wall Street tycoon will be the one considered successful.  He will be the one with his name in the papers.  I suppose it is easier to get women into “men’s jobs” than it is to try to make a society value “care” while the media screams at us that the only way we can survive is to make more profits for the rich capitalists. When future historians look back into our time, they will note that we value people for their ability to wield power, use scientific logic and their ability to make money (power).

During a recent debate with a friend about culture and whether other cultures do fine without us (of course my take was that they would do much better without the Western Ideology and economic systems imposed upon them) my friend made a comment about ancient cultures only valuing women for their ability to reproduce.   I did think that this was a bit erroneous, as women’s work in agriculture has been so indispensable to so many cultures and civilizations for the majority of human existence. Throughout history and prehistory, women have often been the primary agricultural workers.  Also, men have often been valued and respected in their strength, or in their material wealth.  People tend to need to be respected for something. 

The truth is that our own, western culture has been one of the most brutal to women.  Our culture has stripped women of their power and worth over the last 1000 years or so (I guess it depends where you come from), through things such as witch hunts, legalization of rape, propaganda, violence and outlawing natural medicine, midwifery, birth control, etc.  When it was decided that child birth and childrearing was just a natural function and that nature was vulgar and something to be feared and exploited for our benefit, woman, as the child rearing gender, had her fall from grace. She has only recently, over the last hundred or two years been climbing her way back.

Women bear children and their bodies supply nourishment, which lead to women being the ones with the children at their feet.  This created a sort of division of labor but NOT the devaluation of reproductive labor.  That is a contemporary idea that we often project into the past.  In fact, women were once actually worshipped for their child bearing and rearing abilities.

Once upon a time, God was a woman, she worked outside the home as her children played and worked all around her.

When we refer to other cultures or ancient cultures valuing women for their ability to bear children, we have to realize that we are looking through a decidedly Western lens that does not value reproductive work.  In the hierarchy of power and the discourse of equality, reproductive work and care (of elders or children) are squarely at the bottom.   I have done a lot of learning in Chiapas, Mexico and reading about the cultures from the area.  In Mayan culture, equality is (or was, this part of Mayan culture has been highly eroded) about respecting difference.  There is (or again, "was") a tradition of Complimentaridad; male and female work are different and complimentary.  One is not valued over the other.   The western hierarchy of values places money at the top, so one who is not making money is not considered as successful as one who does.   When the Americas were colonized, western culture began to seep in as the West destroyed and exploited indigenous peoples and became the dominant culture.  Even after independence, the Americas are controlled by the Globalized Western Capitalist Economy.   This has forced indigenous Maya out of the villages and into the money economy.  This lead to western ideas about gender and public and private spaces to be transported back into the villages.  "Women’s work" became, as it is here, considered inferior and less valuable.  This is one instance.  It has been well documented that the introduction of our culture into others, even if they did have some inequality to begin with, has changed women’s positions for the worse in almost every instance.  As equality in our culture improves, we point at other cultures and say, “Look at the guys, they are so far behind the times with women’s rights…oh the hypocrisy! 

And in the end, we still like to blame our mother's for all our problems.

I wonder, in what kind of world should be want to be equal in?

To be continued…

to read the paper I wrote on Indigenous Feminism in Chiapas, check out this link: http://www.mujereslibres.org/Articles/indigenousfeminism.htm