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Warning: Contains adult language, heavy irony, and scathing sarcasm!
Deconstructionists need not apply
Sweeping generalizations are sweepingly general for dramatic purposes only and should not be taken as serious statements of my beliefs about men, kitsch, or shit.
January 9, 1997
My little movie star ate the ribbon off Mark's birthday present and threw up. Better that than the other possibility too gruesome to mention. Or should I write "the ribbon was thrown up by the cat"? Or simply the ribbon was thrown up? Does it matter who Mark is? Should I have said "from" instead of "off"? Can the reader grasp that "little movie star" refers ironically to my cat Wilbur whose scene in The Crucible apparently made it as far as the cutting room floor?
Jaguar has reached new heights of ecstasy at the cat shelter. Yesterday while we were busy scrubbing cages he plunked himself down on a pile of clean laundry that Roberta had left on top of the dryer. He sprayed. The clean laundry. Roberta groaned. The rest of us laughed. What else to do? Roberta sniffed the laundry and identified the one towel that was actually soaked and stinky. In a moment of inspiration we all decided at once to give it back to Jaguar. So there he was on top of the dryer with the stinking towel. He purred. He kneaded the towel. He rolled over and exposed his belly - a vulnerability hitherto impossible for Jaguar to allow himself. I stroked his head. He purred. He lifted his head for me to stroke his chin. I ran my fingers along his fluffy white throat and he closed his eyes in rapture. After a long time he started rubbing his jaw against me scent-marking me. Still kneading the stinking towel. I have never seen this beast so contented.
Harvey got adopted. A beautiful orange tabby with a sweet disposition toward people and a cantankerous disposition toward other felines. His fur felt like silk. I was happy to see him placed finally.
So that's it for yesterday. Back to today.
I looked up feminism in the dictionary. Feminism, noun, 1. a) the theory that women should have political, economic, and social rights equal to those of men. b) the movement to win such rights for women. 2. [Rare] feminine qualities. - Webster's New World Dictionary, College Edition, 1957. Interestingly this is not the definition the postfeminists either at pfplayground or at ebr are using.
My favorite tag line on postfeminist writing: "Postfeminist fiction. It isn't about your vagina." Like hunh? Is it about my ovaries? Tits? Hair? Teeth? Fingernails? Left armpit? Bunion? Big toe? Liver? Gallbladder? Or do women in the postfeminist country have gasp shudder .... a penis?????
I also looked up writer. I found a zillion slightly different definitions but basically a writer is someone who writes. Only one referred to a writer as someone who writes as an occupation - and that includes scribes, scriveners, and amanuensis [sorry I don't know how to form the plural of amanuensis], as well as authors. And the next time somebody asks what's wrong with my hand I'm gonna tell 'em "scrivener's palsy" instead of RSI. Sounds so much more retro don't you think? Anyway, since one of the definitions specifically lists "one who keeps a diary" as "writer", I think we can safely call ourselves writers.
whether we are postfeminist writers or not is a whole 'nother story
And interpellative. I particularly like interpellate "to ask [a person] formally for an explanation of his actions or policy: a form of political challenge to governmental officials, etc. in legislative bodies of certain countries". An interpellation is a formal calling to account of a minister,etc. by a legislative body. An interpellant is a person who interpellates. So, like wow man is like postfeminism a separate country? Who is the minister of on-line journals? Can we interpellate him? It is a him, isn't it?
So one day a few weeks ago, Roberta asks how come we have so few male volunteers at the cat shelter and the ones we do have either feed the ferals or do carpentry and appliance repair - not cleaning. Elementary my dear Roberta "Men are afraid of poop!" She thought on that a moment or two and agreed I had a point. Same reason men don't like to change their babies' diapers. Poop-o-phobia. Gee, even this fits in with the whole Todd Napolitano/Milan Kundera thing: if kitsch is the denial of shit then kitsch is the state to which men aspire. It's the denial of diaper changing, cat box scooping, elder bathing... That's what Todd/Milan is talking about!!!!!!!!!
Has it occurred to anyone that Todd Napolitano is Milan Kundera?
I knew I shouldn't've gotten started on this. Just press that darn "women's writing" postfeminist button on my console and I explode into shards of gd only knows what. I may remain in this fragmented state for days, weeks, months... Once upon a time somebody told me "We live in a sexist society, janet, get used to it." in a situation where if you substituted racist for sexist the courts would've had a field day. It took years to calm down.
So will somebody please tell me what "women's writing" is? Is it one of those phrases like "family values" that means something totally different depending on your political affiliation? I mean c'mon! Is anything written by a woman "women's writing"? OK, so like how about Writing a UNIX Device Driver? Is that women's writing? I wrote it. I'm a woman. It sure as hell isn't about feeding the cat or confessing my transgressions or connecting to other humans (no UNIX does not have a kernel interface for that kind of I/O yet!).
Oh lord, there I go relying on the one decent accomplishment of my entire career. And it isn't even the best thing I ever wrote. That would be the boot sequence description for the PDP-11/74 Inter processor Interrupt Sanity Timer. That was a masterpiece. The product never shipped. It was canceled out of beta just 'cause it overlapped another product line. Well, if my best "writing" wasn't the IIST thing, it was the record I/O code for the BASIC_PLUS_2/20 compiler.
Does code count as writing? How come we don't hear about "women's coding"? Now there's a thesis topic: men's coding vs women's coding in the post-assembly-language era. Are there university departments devoted to women's coding? Women's math? women's philosophy? women's electrical engineering? women's biology? women's chemistry? women's stock options? reductio ad absurdem....
What percentage of the code underlying the net was written by women? What percentage of men's salaries were they paid to write it? Would it have been cheaper if all the software was written by women? Another thesis topic?
If I write about cats, shopping, friends, or feelings it's women's writing. If I write about operating systems, disk drives, communism, politics, or tools it's men's writing. Ooops. Do I change gender in between projects? What if I mention a cat and a stepladder in the same sentence? Do I switch gender between the cat and the stepladder? What if there is a saw or a hammer or a screwdriver in the same paragraph as shopping? What if I have feelings about communism? This would be much easier in a language where the nouns have gender. English isn't really geared for this sort of exercise.
Mr. Napolitano's essay expresses a fear of feelings (feelings -> values -> frightening) (which he attributes to Kundera) and Kundera's essay on kitsch expresses a fear of shit. A night in the woods drumming with Robert Bly would do them both some good. But they better camp someplace with indoor plumbing...