Secondhand Sun

When I was in high school, I had an argument with a classmate and friend of mine named Nicole about the literal truth of the Bible. "So you're saying," I said incredulously, on realizing she was absolutely serious about the position she'd staked out, "that God actually bent over, picked up some dirt from the ground," I scooped up a handful of the dry, fine dirt we were standing on, "and made a man out of it?" She rolled her eyes at me. "Well, obviously he had to spit on it first. DUH. You can't make anything out of just dirt unless you get it wet."

For a number of years afterward I told that story for laughs, or to bring home a point about the goofiness and weirdness of fundamentalist Christianity. But what I failed to notice or appreciate was that believing in the literal truth of a creation myth is only one way to have a relationship with the story - and it's only one way that the myth can have a profound effect on your life. There are many other ways that can happen.

Continue reading "Adam and Eve, not Eve and Adam" »

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I've been visiting family; it's good. But this morning, when I was sitting on the couch bouncing with excitement over the news of John Edwards' announcement of his presidential candidacy, my brother and my cousins started discussing Hillary Clinton. "Is Hillary running?" A. (female) asked. "She hasn't officially announced yet, but she's raised a ton of money," I answered. "She's running, all right," one of the guys said, making it sound almost as ominous as, "It looks like cancer."

"Good," said A., causing general surprise - she's not a Democrat, at least not publicly.

"Why do you want her to run?" asked C., her sister's boyfriend.

"Because!" A. answered. "We need a woman in charge of things."

"Not /that/ woman," came the immediate response from another of the guys, but C. was eyeing A. with a poisonous look. "Are you a lesbian or something?" he demanded.

A. was offended. "No. Why?" she shot back.

C. shrugged. "I'm just wondering what your big attraction is to women."

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This is the problem I have, and probably will continue to have, with this upcoming presidential primary season. So much of the opposition to Hillary Clinton is rooted in outright hatred of women that I feel dirty just thinking about supporting someone else. (And I think about it a lot. I like John Edwards.) A lot of feminist bloggers oppose Hillary Clinton, but that doesn't help me out, because when their commenters agree, it's always with the same misogynist undertones.

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Brilliant.

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World Cup 1990 fuelled my growing fascination with soccer and over the course of that summer, it became an obsession. I watched as many games as I could, and taped more, because some were on at odd hours, or when we were out of the house. They were shown on the Turner Broadcast Network, and those little advertising graphics in the corner of the screen hadn't yet been invented - we had to endure actual commercial breaks in the middle of play, during at least one of which the beleaguered US viewing audience actually missed a goal. And the commentary was horrible! "A penalty kick is sort of like a free throw in basketball..."

The 1990 World Cup was supposed to have been the most boring yet, with the lowest ever number of goals scored, but I never noticed. I devoured each game I could get hold of, and ignored my father's growing irritation with the number of blank VHS tapes I was using up - I couldn't bear to erase any of the games even after watching them. "Are you really going to watch these again?" he'd grouse; "Yes," I'd snap back, and the argument would be suspended til the next day when I discovered he'd taped over Ireland-Romania or something.

I remember Tony Meola and his ponytail - he was my favorite player for the US team, and ever since I've always had a thing for goalkeepers. I remember Cameroon and all the talk about how they were controversial and played so much more brutally than the European and South American teams (like animals, you might say?) and how surprising it was when they did well because African teams never do well in the World Cup; the racism of all this escaped me utterly, because I was twelve years old and white and sheltered and I knew nothing of such things. I remember learning about offsides traps and running into space and, well, much more strategy than I'd ever been exposed to in my youth league (none). I remember Diego Maradona, and the "Keys to the Game" that were flashed up on the screen before the final in which Argentina played West Germany: for Argentina, the "Keys" were "Back" "Knee" and "Foot" - the places where Maradona was having steroid injections, already battling against his body's betrayal. I felt sick inside when Argentina lost 0-1 on a penalty kick by Brehme in the last minutes. I felt empty when the World Cup went away and there were no more games with which to fill my hours. I consoled myself by using heat transfer paper and special markers to make myself a Maradona t-shirt with a number 10 on the back.

And I made a decision. I wanted to be a soccer player when I grew up, and play in the World Cup.

Continue reading "Soccer and Me, Part II: What She Wanted To Be When She Grew Up" »

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When I was in elementary school I wanted to play in Little League. Other children in my class played. My best friend played. I played baseball, too, but only in my backyard, when we could get three or four or more kids together; the batting team supplemented their ranks with "ghost runners" who could never be thrown or tagged out due to their lack of corporeal existence. But I wanted to play for real, with uniforms and full teams, so I went to my dad and expressed to him my longing to participate fully in the great American pastime of baseball.

He said no.

He had his reasons, good ones - the local baseball league was populated with those Horrible Sports Parents that you read about in magazines. Coaches screamed at the kids, parents cursed at the umpires, and kids who weren't particularly skilled or athletically talented were benchwarmers, nothing more. My dad wanted something better for me, and so he told me that if I really wanted to play a sport, he'd sign me up for the fledgling local soccer league. Sulkily, I agreed, and so that fall, my brother and I played soccer.

Continue reading "Soccer and Me, Part I: Girl vs. Boys" »

Posted by Joanna at 8:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (1)

The idea for this blog (if there could be said to be any central idea behind it, which is arguable) was conceived months and more before its beginning, and from that time until this past June, Secondhand Sun was intended to be discussion of politics and current events from a feminist perspective, with the occasional personal-life flavor thrown in. Then in June and July came the World Cup, and soccer invaded my life and my blog. The story of how this happened goes all the way back to my experience as a girl growing into a young woman and playing youth soccer, and so, dear readers, with your indulgence, I'm going to go all personal-is-political on you and tell you about soccer and me.

Part 1 - Girl vs. Boys
Part 2 - What She Wanted To Be When She Grew Up
Part 3 - We Didn't Notice You Were Open Because You Weren't Waving Your Penis
Part 4 - Brandi Takes-Her-Shirt-Off
Part 5 - Necesita Una Mas?

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Here is a must-read from Echidne at Echidne of the Snakes, who kept a notebook to track how women and girls were covered in the news.

When I leafed through the diary a year later I was shocked by what I found, and especially shocked because I only really followed the fairly liberal or neutral sources of news. I expected the news coverage to be neutral, on average. Instead, everything, every single thing about women was negative. Women or working women or mothers or girls had problems, were a problem, and even good news were presented as "good news but..."

Read the whole thing here.

Sad, but not surprising - it's always us women who are The Problem. Always.

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From advice columnist Carolyn Hax's online chat at washingtonpost.com:

Re: Arlington, Va.: Whoa, you make it sound like an abuser is making a conscious decision to mislead with flowers, etc. Couldn't it just be that they didn't have good role models, are dealing with internal issues that creep to the surface, are tired of the way they are treated, etc,etc?

Carolyn Hax: Could be. But if the answer when called on it is some version of, "I'm not the problem, you are," then conscious or un-, this is a "pattern" that isn't healthy and isn't changing and its origin is beside the point.

Because abusers don't beat women up on purpose! They just had lousy childhoods! And they have anger management issues! And she drove them to it, anyway!

Ginmar has a much more thorough and bitingly clever debunking of this same bullshit. The money quote is here:

The abusive man will show you the face of the section of his character that he needs you to see. He assesses people, especially women, according to what he needs from them, and so there are always women he treats very well. He does not abuse his boss, his friends, or his coworkers. He is very skilled. His wife is the only one who sees his fist, and because people see the pleasant face he shows the outside world, they find it impossible to believe such a change can occur.

Ginmar, and her commenters who reiterate this point, are absolutely correct. Men who beat up women somehow manage to keep their tempers in check when they're dealing with a boss, a neighbor, a friend. It's not "anger management" issues and it's not an accident that these men choose the person in their world who is most vulnerable and least likely to be able to fight back against him, and beat her up with impunity.

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Remember Casey Casem and the Top Forty? Remember that horrible Bette Midler song, "Wind Beneath My Wings," that was used for the Request and Dedication at least once a month from the time it was released until... well, until I was too old to be interested in the Top Forty?

It must have been cold there in my shadow
To never have sunlight on your face.
You were content to let me shine, that's your way.
You always walked a step behind.

So I was the one with all the glory,
while you were the one with all the strength.
A beautiful face without a name for so long.
A beautiful smile to hide the pain.

I hate that song. Hate hate hate.

Could it start off any more condescending, for one? Notice that this supposed tribute to the "hero" who's suffered so long in silence never once shifts from the reference point of the speaker. It must have been cold! That must have hurt! You might have thought I didn't notice, but I did!

Continue reading "Privilege" »

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