Cyborg Feminist

Donna Haraway

“By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs. Ths cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centres structuring any possibility of historical transformation. In the traditions of ‘Western’ science and politics — the tradition of racist, male-dominant capitalism; the tradition of progress; the tradition of the appropriation of nature as resource for the productions of culture; the tradition of reproduction of the self from the reflections of the other — the relation between organism and machine has been a border war. The stakes in the border war have been the territories of production, reproduction, and imagination. This chapter is an argument for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction. It is also an effort to contribute to socialist-feminist culture and theory in a postmodernist, non-naturalist mode and in the utopian tradition of imagining a world without gender, which is perhaps a world without genesis, but maybe also a world without end.”

Battle Cry

http://madehereproject.org/gender/women-in-the-arts/

We Have No Past

I moved to New York City in June of 2002, less than a year after 9/11. The city was suspended in sadness underneath two invisible shadows. A resilient, loud, dirty and beautiful urban recovery zone. When I would ride the local N/R train from Brooklyn to Manhattan, the train would fall silent as the conductor slowed down to pass the closed Cortland Street stop. I thought about my childhood friend from Wisconsin who was headed uptown at the Wall Street stop in the moments right after the first plane hit. He explained how confused he was about the huge group of people who rushed onto the train, fleeing downtown onto what must have been the last train to make that stop.

Fall makes me miss New York. And the season always starts in such a reflective time as the names of the victims of that tragic day are read aloud during the televised memorial. New York is such a goliath. A place that can not be conquered. Can not be overcome by the extraordinary or by familiarity — it is always changing and there is always a new corner, a new store, a new exhibit you have not seen no matter how long you have lived there, it seems. I always felt simultaneously swept up within the flow of pedestrians while strangely an outsider to the city’s inner-workings. People would often ask me if I loved living in New York. I could never answer the question, I couldn’t look objectively at myself in relationship to the behemoth that was that city. It was work. I was learning. I often wondered what would have happened had I moved to New York in June of 2001.

Becoming a young artist there at the time always felt like I was chasing something that no longer existed or that was way beyond my reach. Generations older than I talked about walking out of their apartments in one of the villages to see their friends show. We were on the subway for an hour to see our each other’s performances. But we did. And we were caught without knowing it.

Caught between eras. Well after the Judsons, the NEA wars, and just before youtube. In a city many of the elders called homogenized but before the Nets stadium went up on Flatbush. Perhaps it was just that, after the fall but before the next. I still had a landline.

I babysat for an incredible family during that time. She was a heartbreakingly talented painter and her husband was an uber eccentric film maker. Their child was a wondrous little kid, a total genius and is now, so I’ve seen online, a voice of the young generation of LGBT as a transgender male. They were so kind to me. They taught me so much about art and New York, she told me to be an actress instead of a dancer. I took a class. I had no idea at the time what a bad ass apartment they had. I loved that family.

Despite their  creative cores their kid wanted to take Hockey lessons (and, I should add,  watch Some Like It Hot and Annie Get Your Gun every afternoon). So we would gear up and head to Chelsea Piers. Often times I was with the whole family for the Hockey outings. I was not the only babysitter to be tagging along with both parents.

One of the other babysitter + parent teams was Cyndi Lauper and Co. My midwesternly earnest self of course did not even notice it was her until it was pointed out to me. Every Tuesday afternoon I sat on the bleachers with Cyndi, her babysitter, and my employers watching our two charges in the crew of 7 year olds on ice.

To me, no one is more New York than Cyndi Lauper. When I hear her music or her Queens accent I think of those afternoons in that cold indoor rink as I babysat — wondering if I was  going to survive let alone actually make anything as an artist. Waiting for an opportunity; the afternoons between taking a dance class, an acting class, not taking class because I was hungover, going to a rehearsal and not getting paid, going to the audition, blowing off the audition. The months and years as I struggled to know who I was as an artist in the in-between time, in an in-between era where we didn’t belong to the past but the future was just on the precipice of the new.  She is the *old* New York of Studio 54 and seedy letter Avenues, and the *new* mega Broadway productions and Williamsburg Condos. She is timeless. The real deal. The artist who remakes herself and responds to the world around her. She is not overcome by the goliath in its rise or fall. She is simply alongside, within and becoming.  

I’m a Patriarchal Asshole, Too

Ventures into feminist motherhood

Kate Chopin with her children, 1877

“IF YOU AREN’T WORKING, SHOULDN’T YOU BE THE ONE TAKING CARE OF THE BABY?”

This is a question I have even asked of myself as I prepare to become a first time mom. And below are the reasons why it is the most sexist, patriarchal viewpoint ever. I will attempt to write this entry with the least amount of sarcasm, snark, and rage so as to avoid discrediting my female self as “overly-emotional.”

REASON #I. I can’t go back to work right away if I am breast feeding.

This is but one of the many reasons why maternity leave exists — despite the fact that the US is one of the few countries without mandatory paid maternity leave — read this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/15/united-states-only-first-_n_1968193.html.

And as much as I am certain I am going to love being with my new baby in ways I can not even begin to imagine yet, I also love my job. I love my career. I feel satisfied, challenged, engaged, and purposeful in my work.  When the partners of breast feeding mothers become parents, they are not the ones who might compromise the health and feeding habits of their child if they go to work for eight hours or go on a business trip. They inherently maintain some sense of independence. Historically, this role has been fulfilled by men who never had to greatly consider or fear that this pregnancy/baby/new role of parenthood would completely compromise their careers/get them fired/force them to choose between their professional pursuits and their children. In 2013 I still, STILL worry about my job security and professional reputation in my choice to have children.

So while you may ask the above question from a place of honest curiosity and innocent logistical planning — the question itself ignores the deep sensitivity to the fact that having children  requires a very specific set of sacrifices for all parents but especially for women. It is vital that this sacrifice is honored by constant childcare support and a great deal of gratitude if your career is not the one being put on hold, and if you are able to continue about your professional pursuits as normal — albeit more tired than usual because you got up once or twice in the middle of the night to bring your child to his or her mother while she stayed up to feed and you went back to sleep.

REASON #2. My vagina has been ripped in half and has stitches in it, so maybe you could just shut up and lend a hand?

(Failure at omission of snark, but I’m pretty sure this is enough said).

REASON #3. Postpartum depression is real, Tom Cruise you bat-shit-crazy mother fucker (oops, slipped again).

The expectation that a woman who is a) going through major hormonal changes and b) incredibly sleep deprived should be solely responsible for the well-being of an infant is not only repressive to the mother but dangerous to the child. This is why women have to depend so fully on their own mothers. Other women empathize and understand that things can and do go wrong with young mothers in postpartum depressed states. They are there to not only prevent bad things from happening, but to strengthen the new mother — give her confidence, boost her self esteem, and make her know that she is capable of handling the challenges of motherhood.

And while this maternal lineage of support is nothing short of a godsend, the patriarchal systems that necessitate this tradition serve male dominance and power in the workforce. This grandmother might still be working as well. Or perhaps she chose to retire a little early so that she could offer her daughter more support. This continues to allow men of all ages to climb ladders, make deals, produce ideas, and create projects that further their professional esteem. So again, when you ask the above question from this vantage point, you ignore a historic system of oppression that has assumed this role for women, and disregards the idea that she might also want to pursue her professional goals competitively and uninterrupted.

The overdepedence on other mothers also perpetuates the falsehood that when women offer each other the emotional support that they need, men do not need to do the same. Patriarchal systems of oppression often burden men with the struggle to express themselves emotionally — unless it is done through the masculine-approved display of anger. I call this the anger funnel in which all emotions are filtered through and result in expressions of anger rather than unauthorized feelings of sadness, insecurity, etc. The lack of emotional communication isolates new parents from each other, especially for the pre-supposed woman at home who may not have had much recent interaction with adults or even other speaking humans. So rather than turn to her husband or partner for affection, empathy, or attention — she picks up the phone to call her mother, sister, or friend.

REASON#4. Women historically were not allowed to have careers in the first place, and in many countries that is still the case so  . . . .please see #2 again.

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The thing that frightens me the most about the silent absorption of female oppression is the way I too accept it in my day to day. Sometimes it seems obvious and I recognize it right away  — a family seats the father and eldest son, rather than the mother, at the heads of the dinner table. The female boss that accuses a younger woman of being responsible for a male coworker’s inappropriate behavior.The woman who is silenced in a conversation with two men as they never even look at her during a discussion “between the three of them.”

 But other times it is in the way that I make assumptions of myself that I learn the most about my own fear. I make excuses and tell myself it’s just easier if I do it all myself. Or when I become self critical for not doing it all myself. Or silently judge a friend because she asks too much of her *bread-winning* husband. Or stick up for a male friend or family member for making an offensive sexist remark by telling another feminist to lighten up.

These are the moments that haunt me and make me wish I had more courage.

When I got married the only vow I remember saying is ” I promise to encourage you.” This is something that gets built over time, I am sure, but one that I constantly feel is at odds with the social expectations of marriage, womanhood, and child rearing. Like the dull presence of carbon monoxide in a house, these oppressive tropes that we have grown up in continue to plague us. And so often the total discrediting or disbelief that they still exist is the most oppressive response of all.  I just want to exorcise those demons.