A bit of everything.
May. 11th, 2010 12:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinI got everything on my list yesterday done except for Tribe, because I saved that for last and underestimated how much relaxation and enjoyment I'd get in a single day. So it became my first priority this morning, and will be so again tomorrow. Most of Tribe to date was written as the last thing I did before going to bed at night, but that only works when I'm leading a very boring life.
Something to file in the overstuffed drawer labeled "lessons I keep learning and forgetting": blogging/journaling helps me write. Any time I'm bottling up feelings and biting back words, writing becomes orders of magnitude harder. Having a blog post in me and not letting it out because I feel guilty for doing one kind of writing before I've done the other sort just leads to less writing, period.
Anyway, as I've mentioned a few times, I'm in Florida with my parents. Unlike most of my trips that are kind of busy-busy-busy (including my last trip to Florida with them), this one is very relaxing and low-key. I think my folks felt I needed a bit of a getaway. So while I had originally planned on doing at least a meet-and-greet while I'm here, I think I'm going to make this trip into "me time" and catch up on the 2.5 Rs: Reading, wRiting (that's the .5) and Relaxing. My trips never end up being very relaxing or very productive, and among the reasons for that are the fact that I've always got a lot of things planned and that I never have very much alone time during them. So the next few weeks are going to be a "recharge" period, where I just do what I love in a beautiful place and don't stress out over things.
Florida folks, don't despair... I will be back here, and the next time I am I'll get something lined up for you all before I arrive.
I said in a blog post that Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court would prompt some people to talk about how many women have been nominated in recent times (that is, contend that too many women are being nominated)... but of course, the Institutional Isms don't need to be quite so bald-faced as that to get their work done. There is at least one blog post out there talking about the impact of a "motherless" Supreme Court. The blogger is quick to point out that he doesn't think Kagan should be disqualified for not having children, he just wants us to think about what it means when none of the women on the court are mothers.
Now, again, there are two women on the court now. One of them, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, does have children, but his scenario is that Kagan is confirmed and Ginsberg retires in the next couple of years (not unlikely), leaving us again with only two women on the court again. With two women sitting on a nine-member body, he wants us to consider their parental status. Is that honestly meaningful? It's not as though there is a huge trend of women who aren't mothers being appointed. Two out of four. Given the stigma against women who choose not to have children, I doubt there's going to be such a trend. Couple that stigma with the stigma against women with children who choose to have a demanding, high-powered career and we begin to see why only two of the ten justices who have been seated behind the bench since Sandra Day O'Connor supposedly shattered the glass ceiling have been women.
This issue of how many of two (out of nine, again) woman justices are mothers is a smokescreen. Even if the person raising it is sincerely and passionately interested in it, all he's doing is raising a big noxious cloud that will impede women like Elena Kagan and give cover to the people who would rather not see a woman seated at all.
This is the evil twin of the "eveyrthing women choose to do is empowering" meme... anything a woman does can and will be used against her in the court of life. Everything is fodder for public discussion and dissection. The "double standard" that afflicts women isn't one standard for men and another for women, it's two standards for women, so no matter which measurement one strives to live up to, one still gets hammered for failing the other.
(See: stay-at-home versus get-a-job, loose-slut-who-sleeps-around versus frigid-bitch-who-won't-sleep-with-me, and any other reductive dichotomy to which women are subjected.)
Something to file in the overstuffed drawer labeled "lessons I keep learning and forgetting": blogging/journaling helps me write. Any time I'm bottling up feelings and biting back words, writing becomes orders of magnitude harder. Having a blog post in me and not letting it out because I feel guilty for doing one kind of writing before I've done the other sort just leads to less writing, period.
Anyway, as I've mentioned a few times, I'm in Florida with my parents. Unlike most of my trips that are kind of busy-busy-busy (including my last trip to Florida with them), this one is very relaxing and low-key. I think my folks felt I needed a bit of a getaway. So while I had originally planned on doing at least a meet-and-greet while I'm here, I think I'm going to make this trip into "me time" and catch up on the 2.5 Rs: Reading, wRiting (that's the .5) and Relaxing. My trips never end up being very relaxing or very productive, and among the reasons for that are the fact that I've always got a lot of things planned and that I never have very much alone time during them. So the next few weeks are going to be a "recharge" period, where I just do what I love in a beautiful place and don't stress out over things.
Florida folks, don't despair... I will be back here, and the next time I am I'll get something lined up for you all before I arrive.
I said in a blog post that Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court would prompt some people to talk about how many women have been nominated in recent times (that is, contend that too many women are being nominated)... but of course, the Institutional Isms don't need to be quite so bald-faced as that to get their work done. There is at least one blog post out there talking about the impact of a "motherless" Supreme Court. The blogger is quick to point out that he doesn't think Kagan should be disqualified for not having children, he just wants us to think about what it means when none of the women on the court are mothers.
Now, again, there are two women on the court now. One of them, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, does have children, but his scenario is that Kagan is confirmed and Ginsberg retires in the next couple of years (not unlikely), leaving us again with only two women on the court again. With two women sitting on a nine-member body, he wants us to consider their parental status. Is that honestly meaningful? It's not as though there is a huge trend of women who aren't mothers being appointed. Two out of four. Given the stigma against women who choose not to have children, I doubt there's going to be such a trend. Couple that stigma with the stigma against women with children who choose to have a demanding, high-powered career and we begin to see why only two of the ten justices who have been seated behind the bench since Sandra Day O'Connor supposedly shattered the glass ceiling have been women.
This issue of how many of two (out of nine, again) woman justices are mothers is a smokescreen. Even if the person raising it is sincerely and passionately interested in it, all he's doing is raising a big noxious cloud that will impede women like Elena Kagan and give cover to the people who would rather not see a woman seated at all.
This is the evil twin of the "eveyrthing women choose to do is empowering" meme... anything a woman does can and will be used against her in the court of life. Everything is fodder for public discussion and dissection. The "double standard" that afflicts women isn't one standard for men and another for women, it's two standards for women, so no matter which measurement one strives to live up to, one still gets hammered for failing the other.
(See: stay-at-home versus get-a-job, loose-slut-who-sleeps-around versus frigid-bitch-who-won't-sleep-with-me, and any other reductive dichotomy to which women are subjected.)
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no subject
on 2010-05-12 07:22 am (UTC)