The Mongoose Lives - Blog Note

So I've noticed that you people have completely given up on even acting interested in my whereabouts and wheretofores. At first there were several questions about when I might start posting again, then general dribbles of "Hey wassup. Just checking" messages. And now, not so much as a glance. How fickle, the six of you.

Notwithstanding the neglect, I am passing through to confirm to no one in particular that posting officially resumes on the blog on November 1st, although I may try to add some content before then. The reason for my absence - a new job that has been consuming all my waking hours and most of what should be sleeping ones - will also restrict the range of topics I can cover as well as the range of people I can piss off. Not even sure I can say "piss off", but there I go, living on the edge.

Still, let's see how far we get with these new parameters. See you in November.

Another shoe etiquette standoff. This time with fancy font

So this post at Gawker almost inspired me to email Brian Moylan to inform him that I wrote pretty much this exact post a year ago. "Ha! We have the same brain! You should hire me at Gawker and pay me lots of money!" But I did not.

I was, however, extremely tickled to read in a subsequent post that the offender he references (on second thought, I could never work at Gawker if I had to cover the comings and goings of this creature called the socialite, or worse, random successful-but-not-famous people whom I know because they are successful but who do not know me because I, presumably, am not. I do not understand it as an occupation. Why do the Brian Moylans of this world care if rich strangers make their guests remove their shoes? Keep it general, Brian. Or at least anonymous. It makes for funnier, far less creepy reading) is protesting his criticism on the grounds that she had put NO SHOES PLEASE on the invitations. And this is her defense! "I am not to blame, because, you see, I included a tacky little note advising guests that their shoes would not be welcome. And I also reminded them after they RSVP'd. So I am clearly beyond reproach."

I have to say that had I received an invitation that said "NO SHOES PLEASE", I would have wondered for a full 40 seconds whether I was meant to show up barefoot to the event (Is it a theme? How do I travel on the streets shoeless? Do I leave them in the car? Is this a hoax? ) before I threw the thing on the pile of papers I use to flick bugs outside.

That's all I have on that. As you were.

Happy Errol Barrow Day

Today, January 21st, is Errol Barrow Day in Barbados, and a national holiday. With our independence in 1966, Errol Barrow became the country's first Prime Minister, and was in fact one of the greatest champions of the independence process and of the integration of the Caribbean region.

I remember that immediately after his death in 1987, our primary school school class was asked to write an essay about him, and our teacher then asked if I'd like mine to be submitted to the newspaper. Of course I said yes, and it was published. My mother cut the article out and took me into town with her to the framing place so I could decide how I wanted it framed. I chose an off-white frame with gold detail, and a week later, it was ready to be hung in the dining room. The text was on the left, Errol Barrow's picture on the right, and the article stayed in that place for years and years, only taken down when friends came to the house and my mother forced them to witness the proof that her daughter had been 'published'.

I tell that story because through that experience, Errol Barrow became probably the only national hero with whom I felt I had a relationship, even though I had never met him. I looked at his yellowed picture in that article for years, and saw him as a kind of uncle/grandfather who had done some pretty awesome things. I think that kind of intimacy with the Errol Barrows of our region should be encouraged in the way we teach young people about their lives and work, so that they're not just some woman or man in a textbook (come to think of it, Barrow wasn't in any of mine. We learnt about him in primary school from newspapers and our teachers' stories. And in secondary school, forget about it. The Renaissance was apparently more important); they're people who had thoughts and visions like the rest of us, and made them happen.

A year before Barrow's death, calypsonian Johnny Ma Boy (John King) became the 1986 Pic-O-De-Crop calypso monarch with the song Tribute to de Skipper, in honour of Errol Barrow. It is one of my favourite songs of all time. I was hoping to find a video online, but couldn't, and I would post the lyrics in my head, but I don't want to risk getting any of them wrong. (If anyone has either, please post in comments.) So instead, here's another song honouring Bajan culture: Gabby singing "Bajan Fishermen". It has nothing to do with Errol Barrow, but I like it.

Myriam Merlet

We received news yesterday of the passing of Myriam Merlet in Tuesday's disaster in Haiti. Merlet, a women's rights activist and Head of the Ministry of Women in Haiti, helped to call international attention to the widespread rape of girls and women as a political weapon in the country, where rape was only made a criminal offence in 2005. Merlet's essay The More People Dream appeared in the popular 2001 publication Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance.

We are saddened by the passing of one of our colleagues and friends. I imagine that in the coming weeks, there will be many tributes to those we've lost, and I look forward to contributing to those, to remembering the Myriam I knew, and her work. I want to reaffirm our solidarity in assisting Haiti, and in working towards the peace and security of all its citizens as they work to recover and rebuild not only now, but for years to come. I believe we appreciate that the support needed goes way beyond 'fixing' the fallout from Tuesday's disaster, and I'm hopeful that as a region, we will listen to the needs of the Haitian people, and stay committed .

Durned bloggin' 'n' such

I've just returned from a panel discussion on The Role and Responsibility of the Writer in Shaping the Identity of a Developing Society. And it was hilarious for a lot of reasons, not least among which was the refusal of one of the panellists to engage blogging as a legitimate medium of writing. He was outraged - or rather feigning outrage because one senses that he often uses the theatrical to make his point - that here we were meant to be discussing writers, the greats of literature, and we were wasting our time mentioning blogging and other such new-fangled nonsense. He kept saying 'blogging' with much disdain, like one might say 'phlegm', and I started to wonder if he even knew that blogging was actually writing, or if he thought it was some completely unrelated and tiresome young people's pastime - like skateboarding. I began to invent all kinds of things that blogging might actually refer to in his mind. Maybe he thought it was derived from "breadfruit logging"? The wanton cutting down of breadfruit trees? Or "blue fogging": driving around vehicles that send huge puffs of blue smoke into homes and communities, which sounds ridiculous but would surely be at least as effective as regular fogging in killing mosquitoes (i.e., not at all), and would be much prettier and hilariously random.

But assuming he does realize that blogging is writing, then I have to wonder what he's so upset about. Could it be that we're so used to the elitism of traditional literary/news/opinion media that it sticks in our craws that we have no control over who gets a voice these days? That we aren't ready to release the privilege traditionally required to publish and achieve literary greatness (or at least some kind of audience) and its associated power? That we want it to be hard, goddammit, because then anyone would have access and then what would be the point of our privilege and overpriced, overinflated educations and egos? No. That probably wasn't it.

We talked too about the importance of fair, unbiased reporting, which we seemed to be saying was the current standard of print journalism. We neatly separated this accounting of fact from 'creative writing', as if some of the writing we see in our newspapers isn't the most intentionally scandalous, subjective, created (as apart from creative) thing you've ever seen. The entire discourse reminded me of fourth form English class, where we were taught the definitions of fact and opinion, and then took sentences and assessed them for their content of each. It was disingenuous in its kind of Journalism 101 vibe, and when it came time for audience questions, I wanted to take the mic and say "I'm sorry. Are you people at all serious?" Are we really saying that a newspaper that often runs quotes like "A HOMOSEXUAL TRYST that turned into robbery and ended in death went before the No. 2 Supreme Court yesterday", describes the fact that a man didn't kill his cheating wife sooner as "restraint in the face of adversity" and spends entire paragraphs on stories covering wrongful death/police misconduct cases on whether the alleged victim was gay and promiscuous is committed to some apparently invisible ideal of non-sensationalism and impartiality? No, we can't have been saying that.

In the end, I didn't say anything at all. I've not really outed myself as a writer in this community, at least not in that way where people gather around cheap wine and bemoan the fact that we haven't produced another George Lamming. (As if anyone wants another George Lamming in 2009, or ever. Or another Derek Walcott or Austin Clarke. I don't want another of any of those. We already have them.) And I don't know that I will, because all that bellowing messes with my process and keeps me in my own head, which can't be good for writing. But also because writers talking about writing is potentially some of the most tiresome navel-gazing you could imagine. The people behind the event seem to have great intentions, and I'd like to see them keep going, with perhaps a little more focus next time. But I'm not driven to charge to the fore of this particular movement. I'm not sure I get where it's moving.

Have you missed the mongoose?

There's a lot happening in the world, and unfortunately, I've had neither the time nor internet connection to comment on it all, since my move. We're not fancy enough around here to have a whole coordinated guest blogger system, so you'll just have to miss me terribly. But at least I'm all moved in now! So things are looking up.

Thanks for the comments, questions and "what the hell is going on?!"s. Be assured that as soon as someone hits me with some wireless (although at this point I'd settle for dial-up. [No I wouldn't.]), a mongoose will be up and running again. Let's hope it's soon.

In the meantime, keep the messages, newstips and general indignation coming. You all know I love me some indignation.

Carol Thatcher disgusts me

In February of this year, Carol Thatcher, daughter of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was dropped as a roving reporter on BBC1's The One Show after calling a black tennis player a golliwog in the show's backstage green room, and then refusing to make a full public apology over the remark. In the aftermath of her sacking, the BBC received over 3 000 complaints against their decision to fire her, and the mayor of London Boris Johnson publicly declared that he thought it was the wrong decision.

Thatcher was back on the air last week on BBC One's Andrew Marr Show, and not only defended her use of the word - which is not surprising given that she refused to apologize in the first place - but also made two statements which I found indefensible. She first informed us of the many letters of support she received and of the fact that her golliwog collection had now greatly increased since like-minded people had included the keepsakes in their fan mail; and she suggested that the whole brouhaha was a result of people being overly sensitive and politically correct.



Now, I'm going to try and keep this short because we've had an extended conversation about this before, and because this kind of wilful racism does not stand up to argument. But the fact is, just because you grew up seeing golliwogs on the side of your jam jar as you sat at your breakfast table with your white, wealthy family and friends, does not entitle you to decide for another group of people what they are and are not allowed to be offended by. Carol Thatcher is a white woman, who was never the subject of the racist taunts of which the word 'golliwog' was a part, and who clearly does not understand that even the origin of the figure as a blackface minstrel is in itself far from flattering and arguably racist. As Labour's Jennette Arnold pointed out in response to Boris Johnson's defense of Thatcher's position:

"The symbolism of the golliwog is colonialist, racist, and harks back to time when black people were dismissed as slave, servant, and figures of fun.

"It is an image associated with the demeaning of black people. There are no second chances when anyone in public life uses such offensive language.

Boris Johnson seemed to think that Thatcher should have been disciplined internally with a small slap on the wrist, arguing that [emphasis mine]:

"The way to deal with it is if someone says something a bit offensive in a green room and you're the producer of the show and everybody else has taken umbrage and feels uncomfortable ... you take that person on one side and say: 'Listen, you've got to understand we've got to work together and you've got watch what you say and you've got to be sensitive,' but I don't think you fire someone. I really don't."

I often wonder how it is that people's self-censorship mechanism fails to engage in these situations; how it is that they do not realize that as people outside of the group whom this directly affects - and worse, part of the group that has perpetrated the racism in question - they don't get a vote. Now Boris Johnson's comments are less to do with whether the word itself is offensive and more to do with corporate equality policy, which is an important debate for everyone to have, but the fact that he calls the expression 'something a bit offensive' gives us a clue about how damaging he thinks this language really is (not very), and in fact, he should just have shut up.

I was disgusted by Thatcher in this Andrew Marr interview, because alarmingly, she seems to be part of this club of golliwog collectors who think their quaint little hobby is more valuable than the historical and current subjugation of an entire group of people; and worse, she is also one of those who has assumed the role of victim because The Man wants to take away her right to hurl racial slurs at people. And the rest of us should just get over it so she can have her golliwog fridge magnets and make fun of black people.

The issue of whether the term 'golliwog' and its image are offensive seems to be a recurring one. And for me, it is simple. As a small child, one of my favourite Enid Blyton series was The Three Golliwogs. I adored the characters, Wiggie, Waggie and Wollie, and saw them as just three toys come alive who got up to mischief. Of course, I grew up in Barbados. By that time, no one had ever called me a golliwog, and I hadn't yet learnt about the practice of blackface or really any of the history of slavery. As I got older and learnt more, no one needed to point out to me that these characters were a product of a racist time and tradition. It naturally became apparent - even before I learnt that one of the original names of the golliwogs was 'Nigger'. So just because you found a name or image harmless in childhood, either because you were part of a privileged group towards whom it was never directed, or because, like me, you were black but lived in a society where that kind of nomenclature was not a common form of attack against your group, that does not mean that the word or image was not harmful or racist. Both sets of circumstances can obtain, and in this case, they do. And here's what I also find problematic: it is not alright to say "well, people at the time were racist. So what can you do? I'm going to continue to read this book to my children because people nowadays are way too sensitive." You can do that, but if you do, be aware that you are in fact perpetuating racist stereotypes, and be prepared to be called a racist when someone comes to your house and sees your little golliwog fridge magnets. Because the fact that you know better and still refuse to adjust your behaviour means that that's exactly what you are.

A few months ago, I went exploring a closeby neighbourhood in search of cheap hangers on which to store my ridiculous amounts of clothes. (I'm always buying hangers, because apparently we have a hanger ghost who cannot cross over until she has hidden all of mine under bushes and brambles far and wide. Either that or I should stop shopping. My money's on the ghost.) I came upon this home supply store with cheap hangers of all materials and colours and as far as the eye could see! It was some kind of hanger paradise! So as I was scooping madly, my eyes happened upon the back of the store, which seemed to be where they stored the toys, and against the entire back wall, from floor to ceiling, were all kinds of toy golliwogs, their hundreds of black faces, white eyes and red lips grinning back at me. I have to say that I was horrified. I immediately felt vulnerable, because if these were the kinds of people who would so unashamedly offer these items for purchase, what, I thought, would they do with a real, live black person (I was the only one) in their store? Because clearly, they weren't worried about seeming racist.

It must have been people such as this who sent Carol Thatcher their letters of support, people who are banding together to protect their right to display icons of the racism they practice when they think no one's listening. Well, carry on with your crusade. But don't be surprised if you lose your job over it.

More victim-blaming and patent idiocy over at The Root

Rihanna reportedly took a peek at Chris Brown’s PDA and set off the course of events we’ve been reading about for the last few weeks. With all the different reports, I’m all kinds of conflicted and disgusted overall by the Chrianna incident, but one thing I’m sure of: if you love someone, you don’t read their text messages.

This gem came from Jimi Izrael over at The Root.

I'm still trying to figure out whether this is some kind of Onion-style joke. Because the man can't really be this clueless. This has to be the most flippant, overt case of victim-blaming I've seen since this thing began. If you want to write some pseudo-analytical little blurb about why you don't want women reading the messages on your phone, I suppose you can go ahead and do that. But don't use a horrifying attack perpetrated by a man against a woman to preface your stupidity, managing to blame her for said attack in the process.

I can't even spend any more time on this mess. Go on over and read it yourselves, and come back and let me know if it really was meant as a joke. Because I can't imagine that grown men who call themselves progressive don't know better by now.

Snyder's Watchmen almost redeems him for 300. Almost.

One of my neighbours and friends from primary school was that child your mother made you hang out with because she was friends with his mother, who was worried that he didn't have any friends. I wanted to tell my mum that the boy seemed perfectly happy squirreled away in his room inventing secret languages and building radios from paper clips and bits of gauze. But that was one of those pick your battle things. Besides, he turned out to be alright: he introduced me to chess and to Watchmen comics. Chess never really was my bag, but Watchmen was comic book genius: the perfect deconstruction of your average, pretty-boy superhero and the good/bad dichotomy in which he operated. And Zack Snyder's 2009 film adaptation does a decent, albeit flawed job of replicating that idea.

If I were to write a real review, it would end up being an analysis of all the things the Watchmen novel got right, and how they are or are not mirrored in the screen adaptation. I would still be here typing tomorrow, and you would all wonder if I've gone completely off my gourd thinking that anyone wants to read such a giant pile of blah. Instead, I'm going to talk about the things that struck me about the film, so they'll probably seem like random thoughts, but that's what you people get for not wanting to indulge in the true range of my brilliance.

All the elements that make the Watchmen comics/graphic novel the best of the genre - the disturbed superheroes with no obvious super powers (except Dr. Manhattan); the alternate historical reality; the politically astute and satirical narrative - are more or less present on the screen. But there can be no doubt that they are infinitely better represented in the novel. I am a firm believer that the comic form, particularly one as pioneering as Watchmen, is not meant for film adaptation, especially without careful attention to the nuances of the structure, art and composition of the source. This is why Sin City was, in my mind, such a colossal failure. So taking for granted that there are certain given limitations, there were some things that the film did not do well, but there were also a few elements that I quite admired.

The role of the soundtrack in this film is crucial: each track is not only well-chosen to portend the scene that is to come, but it acts as a bit of a stamp to signal a new "frame" or "page". I'm pretty sure I wasn't imagining that, and it worked brilliantly. The music was used to help replicate the kind of pacing of the drama that the nine-panel grid would have achieved on the page, and was also a satire in itself, like the ridiculous, hippie Sounds of Silence at the hippie-shooting Comedian's funeral. The slow-motion opening sequences that served to establish the background for the original characters were also well executed. The limited screen time devoted to them mirrored the lack of public attention and outrage for the ways in which the characters were disposed of, especially striking in the case of the hate-crime murder of Silhouette.

I quite enjoyed too the use of light and angles, casting and costuming to try and replicate those heavy pencil strokes that we would have seen in the novel. I don't know that it worked, but the effort was noted. I always thought (not as a child, but later) that the hard lines were meant to lend to the hard edge of the characters as compared with other superheroes. The characters have considerably less edge on screen, except perhaps for Jeffrey Dean Morgan's The Comedian and Carla Gugino's Silk Spectre, which - along with Patrick Wilson as the second Nite Owl and Jackie Earle Haley as Rorshach- were my favourite performances.

I wasn't that crazy, however, about Malin Akerman as Silk Spectre II. Aesthetically, I suppose I see why they cast her, although she wasn't who I imagined. Akerman's body has some interesting, strong lines that help convey the sexy but not outrageously voluptuous Silk Spectre form to the screen. But as such an important character to the on-screen story, Akerman's acting should have been at a higher level. On the page, the story itself is less important than the links among its different parts, but on screen, it's a whole different ball game. And we need the characters' performances to help us enjoy and make sense of the plot. We can't go back a page or read it again: they only have one shot to bring it home, and bring 'it' home Akerman did not. Between the awkward sex scenes and the vapid stare, 'it' is still out there somewhere, lost and gathering change for a taxi.

I also really did not care for the prison riot scene, which I didn't recognize as fitting in anywhere with the original Watchmen. In the original, the prisoners are not your one-dimensional bad guys: they are also victims of a degenerative society, borne out by the fact that they are the innocents wiped out in Ozymandias's last stand. In the film, however, what with all the sawing off of arms and silly blockbuster mayhem, that subtlety is lost. The point at which Silk Spectre and Nite Owl join Rorshach's dark side is painted as simply a rescue mission of one of the Superfriends, when it is really meant to be the point at which the two characters come face-to-face with the type of violence begotten by their own violence. And from here, well, it all comes undone, and the film starts to feel exceptionally long and improperly edited because they start to tell the story in a different way. The Comedian's awful confession to his nemesis - which is meant to represent a convergence of the methods of 'good' and 'evil' to prove that the two do not that simply exist, and is meant to anchor his own shooting of demonstrators with his violence against the two women, the killing of prisoners in the riot and the final annihilation in New York into a common thread - instead seems weird and out of character, and all the potential irony is lost. By the end, all of the tragic, moral agonizing has been stuffed into Ozymandias's final blaze of glory, so that you're not so much steadily fed the ironic message as you are whacked over the head with it and kicked out of the theater. Of course, by this time, you're glad to leave because you're sure the sun has started to rise and it's time for breakfast.

There's a lot more that can be said about this film, but overall, after the drawn-out, sensationalized gigantic bore that was 300, Zack Snyder did a whole lot better with Watchmen. Sure it wasn't meant for the screen, and all its political and philosophical anarchy are difficult to 'get' off the page, but Snyder did justice to most of the film. And if he had only stayed the course, instead of being just a good film, it could have been brilliant.

Across Africa

I'm passing through in a flurry of colons and stage directions (writing a theater performance piece that is at the moment dangerously close to being pure suckage, so am performing last-minute CPR) to highlight Chioma and Oluchi Ogwuegbu, two Nigerian sisters who "are hoping to reverse the trend of bad news out of Africa by touring the continent documenting its good news stories."

Their journey so far has seen them visit Ghana, Burkina Faso, Gambia, Mali, Senegal, Guinea Bissau, Cameroun, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, and Sierra Leone.

And what they have discovered is a land of friendly people, beautiful landscapes, unusual dishes, and unexpected hospitality and kindness.

Their website features photos, information about their route and my favourite part - a blog (not recently updated but still interesting) with little stories from their travel. Give it a gander.


The photo at right, of a carved tree in Senegal, is taken from the sisters' website.

Mongoose genitalia!

Ok, not exactly. But I've just made my first guest post over at BelowTheBelt, so you see what I was trying to do in the title there.

BELOW THE BELT is a multi-faceted genderblog designed to provide a space for informed, critical commentary about gender, sex, sexuality, and the many other aspects of gender facing people around the world.

So follow the mongoose on over there, and while you're at it, stay and check out the other posts. It's a cool bunch of people saying probing things in clever ways. And we always like that.

Johnathan Pearce almost gets it right, then gets it very wrong

Oh Johnathan, I want to like you, I almost succeed, and then you go and undo all of my progress. I was with you through most of this analysis of the varying reactions to the ridiculously smart Gail Trimble.

But then you had to go and say this as your closing assessment:

And then again, I will openly confess to having a weakness for brunettes with brains and a cultivated voice. I see the young lady has a few male admirers on the web. Good for her.

Good for her not that she is trouncing all challengers, not that she does not feel obligated to hide her pride at achievement as so many would want we uppity women to do (you mentioned this earlier but where was your follow-through?), but that a few men online - you included - find her hot. Because at the end of all the bothersome question-answering, is that not the ultimate success?

Feminism: you're doing it wrong!

I'm pretty new to the blogging thing, though not new to the being a feminist thing. I've worked for years as an economist trying to convince governments that while economic policy is for all, as they so indignantly point out, economic behaviour and access are realized differently depending on gender, race, class and other factors; and that these differences have to be accounted for. It's an uphill climb in the Caribbean, where the first response is to roll out old statistics of university matriculation and how many women are heads of this and chief of the other. There is very little dialogue around issues that affect women like the increasing incidence of violence against women and the feminization of HIV/AIDS; and further, there is an enormous backlash against all things seen as remotely feminist. To put it simply, people just don't get it, and they don't want to.

After years trying to straddle policy development, academia and people's real world experiences, to draw from all three and make them accessible in order to just make life better for women in lasting and sustainable ways, it felt like a breath of fresh air to happen upon a blogosphere where the feminist dialogue had a space. I expected that it would be dominated by white, middle-class, North American theorists, or at least they would be most visible. But even if that were the case, I thought, the nature of feminist analysis and inquiry is to help uncover other voices, and to consider gender together with other markers of identity. So it would be alright. And largely this has been true. But there are also gender activists of all types bouncing around the interwebs saying very smart things: fat ones, black ones, white ones, brown ones, lesbian, gay, bi, transgendered ones, poem-writing, 'fuck'-saying ones; obviously some of those are probably disproportionately represented - I haven't done any studies - and there is almost always room for further diversification, but there are certainly enough perspectives to keep grassroots-worker, paper-writer, previously-non-blogging feminists like me busy catching up for a few days.

And there is a lot of mutual support for the work of other women writers online. There is guest-blogging and cross-posting and hyperlinking and all kinds of ways to agree with what you already believe or have recently learnt, and to diversify your voice. And this is all very good. Some writers have their issues with it, and may have some valid points even if they express them in a way that is in places disgruntled and somewhat passive-aggressive. But so far, I in my little corner haven't been completely turned off or shut out by the feminist blogger glad-handing machine. I may feel less warm and fuzzy later, so check back.

However, what I am starting to notice is this kind of 'you're doing it wrong' approach to discourse. As is the way in the blogging community, everyone is writing on what someone wrote on what someone said on television about what someone sang or said or photographed. That's fine. That's what we do: we take the mainstream party line and pick it apart, saying what's wrong with it and how it is potentially or actually damaging to certain groups of people. But in this maelstrom, other feminists end up on the chopping block being attacked rather than engaged. I'm probably guilty of attack myself, as you might be able to point out by clicking on this blog's archive. Attacking is fun when the argument is so ridiculous and smacks so much of intolerance and supremacism that you feel no obligation to spare the feelings of the fool in question. I don't massage people, and I get a kick out of reading those who take a similar approach while advancing worthwhile arguments. But ultimately, it seems to me that the point is to tease out the issues while finding common ground, and while simultaneously sharing how my experience of a particular issue is different from yours, and what that means for how a solution is found. Sometimes as theorists, we get caught up in finding holes and proving people to be other than whatever label they have given themselves, and trying to find new ways to argue the same thing. We get tired of feeling like we have to teach people who should know better. But sometimes we do, we have to teach them. And sometimes, we just have to shut up and listen, because we think we know, but we don't.

As a Black, non-American, non-British woman engaging with US- and Europe-dominated media, I am aware of American and British ideas of what a feminist should look like, and moreover what a Black feminist should look like. It is determined by the women's rights histories of those nations, and I am to an extent part of that. But I have a different voice as well. I feel pretty at home commenting on American politics and culture as a black woman, but I'm not a black American woman, so I have to account for that. I also feel certain kinship with women of other ethnicities and religions around the world, but I am not they. So while I can advance ideas on their experiences from a perceived shared reality, I have to, at the same time, respect at least their authority as being of that community, even though I may instinctively disagree with their arguments.

I understand the need to protect what we feel we have fought so hard for, and yes, sometimes we can clearly state that something is anti-feminist or not a feminist ideal. But with the more nuanced discussions, it seems to me we can sometimes quit the yelling at people who often are on journeys just like we are, and just resolve to keep talking about it.

Get a real story, or at least wait for one

Holy Moses on a bicycle.

Is the Nation Newspaper now sourcing the kings of trash, stalkerazzi online tabloid TMZ.com for news about our beautiful, little sister superstar Rihanna? The thing doesn't even read like a real news story. TMZ is hardly the AP or Reuters. Pick up a telephone, find a source, and while you're at it, find a clue. I weep for journalism in Barbados. Weep, I tell you.

I don't believe you've met my vagina

I’m loving this Salon article about how women writers are leading women towards greater openness about what happens to our bodies during less than delicate processes. It mentions Moe Tkacik’s famous account of when she left a tampon in for 10 days, along with this experience about which Miranda Purves wrote in Elle magazine:

Upon reading in "What to Expect When You're Expecting" (the ultimate compendium of maternal paranoia) that women who had given birth vaginally might find that sex will change thanks to the stretching (and tearing) of their vaginas, Purves realized that "No one, not a single one of my friends who had already given birth, not my mother, not a doctor, not another book, no one had told me that there would be a permanent 'slight increase in roominess.'" And so, perhaps as a public service, or perhaps just to get it off her chest, Purves described in Elle how she made the final push through the so-called ring of fire. "I ripped like old sheets, and the (my) baby's head burst free," she wrote, going on to describe the unsatisfactory healing of her granulated vaginal skin, her lack of sensation when her husband attempted to stick a finger inside as foreplay, and how, when she finally braved a look at herself in the shower, "what had once been smooth and pale pink was a weird tortured purple. It conjured jellyfish, dead and torn."

I don’t yet sense this newfound openness among Caribbean women. The lengths to which we’re taught to go to avoid discovery of the feminine products in our purses rival the training of the cyanide-carrying spies in films and novels. And perhaps it’s part of our martyr status, but it seems real women don’t complain about childbirth. A woman once boasted to me that when she had had her son, “the doctor didn’t have to cut [me] or anything.” Congratulations? I’m thrilled you didn’t have to deal with the discomfort of an episiotomy, but I wouldn’t categorize it as an achievement. Still, this kind of dynamic encourages shame and silence among women who don’t simply bounce back from childbirth, or who deal with the everyday nasties of being a woman.

I have friends who will screw their noses up and squeal “Ewwww! TMI!” if you mention the word ‘clot’. You can relax, lady. I just said the word, I didn’t gift wrap one and leave it under your Christmas tree. If women can’t talk amongst ourselves about the things that happen with our bodies, how can we expect our partners to understand and support us when said things take painful and uncomfortable turns?

I’m not advocating going number two with the door open while we give the household ball-by-ball coverage. And I for one don’t have warm, fuzzy memories – or any memories at all – of my first period. But being a woman isn’t always all lavender and manicured labia. Sometimes gross stuff happens. And being able to talk about it keeps us healthy and sane.

Some mongoosekeeping

Thousands and meeellions of people have been asking for a simpler way to subscribe than via the newsreader option. So there's now an option on the right-side panel to subscribe via email. So now you can:

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Image by bluebison. Some cool stuff there.

Mar is a B, and she stinging everybody

I’m not quite sure of the blog-starting etiquette. In January 2009, I’m so late in joining the hordes of bloggers worldwide that I imagine there should be some fanfare now that I’ve crossed over. I am now a Blogger. [CYMBALS] At least I imagine that would be the stage direction. I realize that this conversion is not at all interesting, especially given the lateness of my arrival – at a time long after people have written articles and directed documentaries about the advent of blogging.

But for me, this is an occasion. I’ve long held out against blogging, thinking that humankind has really reached fresh and ridiculous levels of narcissism to fancy that anyone cares where we buy our glue, or that a man at the supermarket was oh em gee standing SO CLOSE to us in line that we could totally hear him whistle through the gap in his teeth as he breathed and could feel his hot, grody breath ew ew ew OMGWTFBBQ!!!

But apparently, we do care.

And why should we not? Conceivably, we all desire the perfect glue. Nay, deserve it. And I, for one, am always willing to commiserate with those who suffer at the hands of people who haven’t the slightest clue about the all-encompassing significance of Personal Space. You will likely be hearing more about this.

Besides, these days, I call myself a writer. And I suppose one who calls herself a writer should write things. A blog therefore seems convenient. (I used to – with much coercion – call myself an economist. But I’ve stopped all that silliness, having witnessed firsthand the perils of such nomenclature. My withdrawal hasn’t yet stopped others from continuing to call me an economist, and asking my economisty advice. But hopefully soon they shall learn.)

However, I must warn you of a few things before we proceed. First, I sometimes write complex, run-on sentences. This - I have heard - is frowned upon. But I have more faith in the attention spans of my fellow readers than the writing intelligentsia seemingly do. Some of the smartest and most interesting people I’ve encountered are fans of complex sentences, and manage them quite effortlessly. (They worked splendidly for Obama; not as well for John Kerry.) I don’t endorse them when they’re used just to appear bright, but thoughts are complex. At least some of the best ones are. Sometimes they require more than a subject and verb. And if properly executed, long sentences can be fun. Come. Let’s explore them together.

Second, I love asides. I have a random, meandering brain that thinks in asides, which I must, regrettably, share with all of you. For my asides, I often make use of all kinds of colourful punctuation: dashes; parentheses; semi-colons; and my dear, dear friend, the comma. They’re perfectly friendly creatures. I promise.

I also have what you may by now consider the annoying habit of saying first and second rather than firstly and secondly. This is simply because the former are perfectly good adverbs and for the life of me I cannot fathom why we keep replacing perfectly useful parts of speech with weaker, stupider substitutes. You people who say ‘addicting’, I’m looking at you.

I haven’t even a clue about how these blog things work, since clearly I’m making multiple entries on the same day. And based on limited research it would seem as if one is expected to only have one thing to say per day, and neatly archive these things accordingly. But I am a maverick! (Oh the fear that word now strikes in my heart.) And so we press on, stinging all those for miles around with our newfound B(logger) status.

Don’t worry about the title reference. Unless you’re Bajan, or not Bajan but (curiously) a fan of The Mighty Grynner anyway, you’re allowed to just let it go.