On Prefixes, Priorites, and Breast Milk

I am an affiliate of the Women's Studies program here. There is no actual major in Women's Studies, just a program, and I am grateful that we have that. 

Apparently the state's higher board of education want our university and the other university to have the same prefix for their programs to make it easier to transfer credits. I get it. This is one of those little annoying things that isn't a big deal until you find yourself dealing with people's mistakes too much of the time. Go ahead--change the program name and/or the prefix. Let's move on.

Move on? But no. No, no, no, no, no. We can't just get it done and move on, because academics are a bunch of narcissistic crybabies. Not all of them, but too many of them.

Narcissistic crybabies. There, I said it.

I don't go to the Women's Studies meetings because it seems like a lot of drama. I feel bad about not attending, but there are a handful of people that really get under my skin who faithfully attend and I only have so much patience. I try to save it for my child :)

There is an awful lot of mental masturbation (i.e. big words that serve no more function than smaller words, theorizing for the sake of theorizing, using hard-to-understand, insider terminology) going on in this department. My friend C calls it academic masturbation. I think academic masturbators are just subsets of mental masturbators. My ex-husband was an MM, but not in the academic category. He was a music snob MM. Like High Fidelity, but way more "underground."


My friend, K, is a member of the Women's studies curriculum committee. Regarding the meetings about name changes: Oh my god. There was pointing and yelling and crying and all sorts of drama.

Narcissistic crybabies. I told you.

K then went on to say that she must be a bad feminist, because she just didn't care that much about the prefix--she wanted to get on with other challenges and problems in the curriculum.

The thing is, I totally understand why this kind of thing matters. They are currently debating two options to rename the program: Women and Gender Studies vs. Gender and Women's Studies. I find the second-wave feminists favor the first option and third-wave/queer theorists want the second. So while the some of them are duking it out, there are others (4th wave pragmatists?) who are like, um, hey, uh, we just need to get this done so we can move on to important shit.


Personally, I prefer the first option: Women and Gender Studies. I think it's important to include both Women and Gender in the title, but I think Women should come first, if for no reason other than to pay homage to those early programs that were hard to start and controversial. In this regard, I agree with the 2nd-wavers. If women will be subsumed under "Gender," then you might was well just take "Women" out of the name.

Yes, I have an opinion. But at the end of the day, I'll go with any of the options as long as we still have a program and funds to expand. I'm nauseated that this kind of thing is taking up so much time. Let's celebrate that we have a program that needs a name and that we have freedom to bicker about this bullshit. And then move on.

Because seriously, stuff like this is happening, and once again, women are being chastised for daring to assert that they know what is best for their children, even though they are in agreement with the recommendations from the World Health Organization. The overarching message is that women are too irresponsible to be able to care for their children appropriately. The overarching message is that women are really just children, after all. They can create life, but are obviously too feeble-minded to figure out how to boil milk. Obviously, we shouldn't trust them to cook meat to a proper temperature either. Those dirty, weak, imbeciles can't be trusted.

I'd rather put my time and effort into political action like this. This is where academic feminists should be putting their time and energy. The Eats on Feets "movement" didn't initially set out to be political; it has, of course, become political. Anytime women assert control over their bodies, it becomes political. There is always backlash. The medical-pharmaceutical-agricultural-industrial complex always knows best.

This woman started the first Facebook page. She is simply amazing, and I feel honored to know her:

"I'm not saying we need to discount possible concerns because they are real and legitimate," said Walker. "But women are smart enough to figure these things out."

Amen to that.

Santa

The boy visited Santa today. When we got there, there was no line (SERIOUSLY, NO LINE! I wasn't sure how to react), and I asked him what he was going to ask Santa for. He said he couldn't remember (even though he's been reciting the same two things for several weeks), so I reminded him of the first thing--an R2D2 robot. Once I reminded him of that item, he generated the following list:

1. R2D2 robot (already purchased on Ebay)--He saw a remote control R2D2 robot in the store last May, and has been mentioning it ever since. Please don't ask how my almost 4-year-old knows who R2D2 is. I still can't decide if that's parenting win or parenting fail. Instead, I refer you to this video:



3. Journal from mama**--A few weeks ago I asked what he would like from me for Christmas, and he said he would like a journal like the one he has at school, which is basically a tri-prong folder with blank pages.

4. Water bottle from daddy--When I asked what he would like form daddy, he said another water bottle. He already has a couple of stainless steel water bottles, and he keeps one next to the bed, takes one to school, etc. Since he hasn't used a sippy cup in several months (after I decided that I really wanted to minimize the degree to which our food touches plastic***), I think this is a prudent and endearing request.

Then, he turned to me and said, what else?

I suggested play-doh, because he is out of it and I already bought more.
 
5. Play-doh

When he got up to Santa, there was no way he was sitting on his lap, but he did bend in and whisper his list, in that exact order.

I try to not go overboard on material things for holidays and birthdays, but it's hard because I LOVE TOYS and holidays in my house growing up were riddled with tension and strife. I know that you can't buy your way to happiness, and have tried to stick to a fairly rigid list this year. The last few years I bought more than expected, and ended up doling things out for subsequent holidays or other random days of the year. Case in point--we just opened the majority of the play-doh that I bought last December. He created an army of creatures with it and refused to put them away so they dried up. He continued to play with them until I'd had enough of finding crumbs everywhere, so I slowly threw them away one at a time so he didn't notice. Hence the need for more play-doh.

---

*I don't mind giving a shout-out to Ebay because a few months ago, I ordered a Wall-E costume from a seller on Ebay (because boy was very definite about what he wanted to be for Halloween and I couldn't find the costume here). The costume that arrived was not the one in the picture, and I had taken a lot of time to find that specific costume. Had I wanted the costume they sent to me, I could have found it far cheaper and with less hassle on several other sites. When I tried to contact the seller, they had disappeared. I couldn't email them. I couldn't go to the seller's store. I contacted Ebay. After a week passed and I was still unable to contact the seller, Ebay refunded my money. All of it. In the past I have been hesitant to order anything online, but this earned my confidence. I like that I can order used things, and even though many items are not local, I feel like that reduces my carbon footprint. If I were to buy something new locally, my options are limited, so I'd end up giving my money to a chain store that shipped the stuff here anyway and sends the profits back to a corporate office.

**I could have explained that he didn't need to tell Santa what he wanted mommy and daddy to get him, but that would have been confusing.

***I know that the plastic stuff is BPA free now, but I still don't trust the plastics industry and feel it is only a matter of time until we learn that some other chemical in plastic is making us sick. I try to store everything in glass. Especially if it will be reheated in a microwave (we don't own a microwave, but I take leftovers to work).

Core

Air cutting through me,
blades of spectral ice
slice my soul to bone.

Winter

Dressed in their space suits,
toddlers in the snow.

Stumbling, falling, laughing, crying--
Winter has arrived.

Food on Your Face

When winter started sneaking up on us this year, my hands suffered badly. No matter how many times I put on lotion, they still end up red and speckled and cracked. I mentioned this to my Introduction to Psychology course, with a request for suggestions on how to win the battle between my hands and the cruel winter air (and I know, it would help if I actually wore my gloves all the time, but the Vitamin D has to leak in SOMEWHERE).

A student emailed me today with a few questions about our most recent study guide, and she also sent me a link to Crunchy Betty. I think I am in love. Here is a post about dry hands, and by golly, it gives me hope! She's got skin care suggestions, household cleaning suggestions, etc. I especially love the subtitle of the site: You've Got Food on Your Face.

This recent post made me laugh, in addition to providing some general advice to live your life by:

Sometimes You Have to Pee In the Snow, Just to See What Happens.

Indeed.

I want to meet Betty some day.