$12.95 get's you salvation and free admission to the song and dance theater

LIVE! RUDE! GIRL!
Welcome to Florida's biblical theme park
by Neva Chonin
San Fransisco Chronicle
Sunday, January 15, 2006
(Note: This column was published on SFGate on Feb. 9, 2001.)

Heaven on Earth
News: When theme parks get religion
Mother Jones
December/January 2006

City of Revelation Theme Park
According to the Mother Jones Article, this theme park is up and running and features an "authentic Jewish Wedding." If so, the website is horribly out of date.

The Holy Land Experience
According to Chonin's article, this theme park was master minded and created by park founder Marvin Rosenthal.

Chonin says:
"A few fortunate visitors might experience the added attraction of seeing authentic members of the...Jewish Defense League protesting outside the gates, sans robes and special effects. It seems the JDL suspects Rosenthal, a Baptist minister who was born Jewish and now heads the Orlando ministry Zion's Hope, hatched Holy Land as a nefarious scheme to convert Jews to evangelical Christianity."

Why do people think that taking their philosophy and religion and turning it into plastic keychains and life-sized cosumed characters is a method of 'teaching' and 'immersing people in the experience' and 'spreading the word? wht part of rollar coaster rides and cotton candy brings a person closer to god or nirvana or enlightenment or simple trust in a higher power that might lead to a kind of relaxed happiness?

I guess the jokes about the Mouse God that is workshid in Florida must be true, because the Christians are awfully determined to imitate his method reaching out and making converts (not to mention a little cash) from all over the country.

Better a nursing home than babysitting

Born to Serve: The State of Old Women and Widows in India
By Priya Verma
Off Our Backs
Vol. 35, no 9/10
Sept-Oct 2005

Articles like this one always set my instincts on point. Off Our Backs can be an angry and in your face magazine. There are good articles, and some effective coverage of conferences and news, but this is interspersed with articles and essays whose overall tone is one of women’s anger and proof that women should be angry.

While there is plenty for women to be angry about, I ran across several articles that seemed more like propaganda then analysis or well thought out opinion. This article did not strike me as propagandistic, but it is a harsh criticism of traditional Indian culture.

I have never lived in India and I have never known anyone from India outside of academic and professional circles. Therefore, I have no real experience or knowledge to determine whether this article is on target or not.

Having said that, the reasons for my concern are the women-in-India-have-the-worst-possible-lives tone of the piece. While Widow houses sound decidedly horrible, and the tradition of burning a living woman on the same funeral pyre as her deceased husband is something I simply cannot understand (having no knowledge of or contact with the culture), the analysis of the lives of old women leaves me with the desire to ask an old woman from (or in) India.

The integration of old women into the family is described as ‘exploitive’ because they provide childcare and physical labor for their children and grandchildren. Verma insists that women are unwilling to leave Widow Houses (where they are required to beg and prostitute themselves in order to survive) because each of them is “free to live her own life,” while living with her family “obliterates her identity and ordains for her a kind of social death.” Verma then ends by stating that all of this must be fixed through government welfare programs.

Plenty of people in this country (and others) rely upon grandparents to help out with the childrearing. Many do it because the parents are unable to handle it themselves (due to time constraints and other commitments), can’t afford to pay for childcare, or prefer to trust the care of their children to family members. More than one grandparent that I have known has not only done this willingly, they have offered to do it more often because they want to see their grandchildren. To suggest that a woman is forced to care for her grandchildren, and that the act is a form of drudgery and enslavement, is both extreme and offensive.

There is a difference between being a part of the family, helping out with the day-to-day workings of that family, having your needs met through your family, and being forced into an abusive slave-like existence. Is Verma so offended by the idea of childcare and housework that she is appalled that women past childbearing age would be forced to endure involvement in such activities?

While I admit that her point about women not being given any kind of choice within these situations is difficult to hear and difficult to live with, but the reality of life is that all people (male and female) live in the exact same situation. It’s neither realistic nor admirable to suggest that a person has a right to being catered to and served and given the means to do anything they please. We all have our struggles and caring for a family is one of the most difficult, complicated, economically challenging, and rewarding experiences of any person’s life. Why is the incorporation of the grandparents into this life supposed to be so offensive while shuttling them off to nursing homes and providing them welfare checks is such an improvement?

Personally, I am very much of the opinion that Western culture needs to learn from Indian culture, not the other way around. Nursing homes and day care centers are income generating businesses that have become the standard when, ideally, they should be the last resort or the occasional fill-in when other options simply aren’t available.

Granted there are, and always will be, people who abuse a tradition or a system, but the possibility of abuse does not, necessarily, prove that a tradition is without value or need.

I’m already wearing purple…

Practicing for Age: Embracing the Old Woman Within
By Roxanne Friedenfels
Off Our Backs
Vol. 35, no 9/10
Sept-Oct 2005

Over the Hill and Out of Sight
By Janice Keaffaber
Off Our Backs
Vol. 35, no 9/10
Sept-Oct 2005

Thoughts of a Fifty-Nine Year Old Feminist
By Carol Anne Douglas
Off Our Backs
Vol. 35, no 9/10
Sept-Oct 2005


Recently I decided to make a very large decision – I’m going to cut my hair. This isn’t about style or letting go of what has grown to be reasonably long, it’s about age. I started going gray, I have been steadily getting more and more gray over time, I have been overly focused on (and convinced of) getting old, and it’s time to just get over it. So, in about 2 months I’m going to have all of the dyed hair cut off of my head, leaving nothing but what is growing there naturally, and I’m going to leave it that way for a minimum of one year. This means that I will be cutting my hair shorter than it has ever been at any time in my life (the reason why I’m waiting a few months – going bald is a little more than I can handle at this point), and I will be looking at myself with no-longer-nearly-black hair.

It’s going to take some getting used to, but it’s something I have recently realized I need to do.

Friedenfels mentions the same thing occurring in her life – but made the decision to refrain from dying it or doing anything to change the fact that her hair is also thinning out. She’s focused on embracing the process of growing old. Truthfully, this is a process and an honor that is dangerously distant from the society I live in. I am told that we should be grateful for every day we are given. There is no guarantee that you will live through the next moment, much less then next decade, so thank whatever powers you believe in and be grateful for what you’ve been given. If someone reaches a point where they’ve put together many decades worth of days, then they’ve been given something exceptional. They’ve survived something that will, eventually, kill us all: time.

So, why are we so obsessed with youth? Why are we so angry with age and/or the old? Why is there this reaction of failure to someone who has done something that you may not even come close to accomplishing?

Keaffaber describes reactions people have to her because of her age – refusing to acknowledge her existence in a clothing store, pretending she’s not there at a checkout counter, finding herself to old for protests and trainings because they were for ‘youth,’ and newspapers taking photographs that clearly displayed herself and other women over 50 in a crowd of other protesters while providing a caption stating that “young activists protest…”

It’s like we become more and more invisible the older we get.

It’s also strangely important that things like activism be constantly focused on ‘youth.’ Sometimes I notice a trend (even among activists themselves) to present everything as though it were a special event catered to the young and spirited. As though activism and concern about issues in this country and abroad were something that people grow out of – a phase that young adults go through while they’re still learning about how the ‘real world’ works:
They’re to young to really understand, but with time they’ll come around. Humor them; it’s a good learning experience. They can build leadership skills and then apply them to life when they’re done playing around. The reason there are no middle aged or old or retired people profiled is because everyone knows that the people who actually grew up and matured are no longer doing those things. If someone is still involved, they clearly have not let go of their younger days and taken on real responsibilities…Rather interesting twist of perspective, isn’t it? After all, if the entire age span of a community were to be involved, then the issue at hand might have more validity and importance then the powers-that-be would like it to have. If it’s just the kids and their chaperones (read: the invisible non-youths in the center of the picture) then it’s really nothing more than an elaborate field trip, is it?

Keaffaber states that she doesn’t want to be a mentor or a font of wisdom or a woman working for the future generations or even wear purple all of the time. She just wants to be herself. Personally, one of the things I simply love about people decades older than me is their ability to cease to care about the opinions of other people – they are what they are and you’re just going to have to deal with it, damn it. Granted, this isn’t every person in a given age range, but it’s something I’m drawn to and one single powerful reason I have for actually looking forward to growing old. The ability to say “At my age, you just don’t worry about it anymore” must be wonderfully freeing.

And, quite frankly, I wear purple right now. I wear a lot of purple. More than I probably should. My room is filled with it and it’s been ‘my color’ for as long as I can remember. Does this now mean something about me and my age and my attitudes about age? Is it akin to men who wear pink (the recent trend of pink-everything notwithstanding)? The trappings that become stereotypically associated with a person, place, position, culture, race, gender, identity, or thing have a cascading affect on the rest of us. Yes, there was a poem stating that part of the glory of growing old is the ability to wear any color, or combination of colors, you very damn well chose. The author chose purple clothes and a red hat, so now the red hat society revels in the spirit of the thing by wearing exactly those things. It’s fun and it’s empowering and there’s nothing wrong with it.

It also has nothing to do with me, or my many years of choices in color coordination, any more than it has to do with Keaffaber’s sense of self or desire to be respected for who she is and not her age.

All of which sounds very feminist and decidedly current: women are invisible, women are judged by what they wear, women are expected to wear certain things, women have no voice in matters of importance, women are expected to fulfill a certain role at certain times and even the press pretends they do not exist because of it, women must fulfill the duties expected of them and all women like them (read: of the same age)…

Yet, all of it gets passed over because the young are the constant center of attention and are often made the center of attention by the very people who need to be heard themselves. How many times have a group of people chosen to take on the role of ‘chaperone’ while attending an activist event/action because letting the young have their chance seemed to much more important?

If you want to be heard, you have to open your mouth.

Also, never forget the fact that people come and people go. Some chose to stay with a cause and others chose to buy into the idea that it was just a phase in their wild and untamed youth. People live long lives and people die young.

Douglas does an excellent job of expressing her concerns about growing older, but really emphasizes her fear of being the last radical feminist of her generation. She doesn’t want to watch all of her friends die and find herself left without people who “understand what I’m thinking.”

Seems like a bit of wallowing self-pitying arrogance to suggest that no one alive could possibly understand you now that all of your friends are gone. Of course, Douglas is talking about fears, not reality, and it’s both valid and important to talk about fears for the very fact that other people feel exactly the same way that you do – including the thought that no one can possibly understand what you are thinking. Strangely enough, that connection based on the conviction that no one understands proves to both persons involved that someone else understands.

It’s one of those mysteries of life.

Ultimately, what I understand Douglas to be saying is that she’s afraid of being alone and helpless. The nursing homes, the slow-killing disease that takes your mind before your body (e.g.: Alzheimer’s), the passing of one close friend and family member after another, and the ever shrinking circle of people who have known you for longer than a few months, or years, or decades. Change is scary, but inescapable solitude is terrifying.

If we are constantly working for future generations, then shouldn’t those generations be growing up around us, and with us, and in our homes and communities and lives? Wouldn’t it seem logical to expect a large network of human beings filling the life of people who have been consistently involved over the years, like a gardener surrounded by flowers? Why does the work result in a barren and empty garden? Why do the efforts to create solidarity and community ultimately result in a collection of cliques that rely solely on themselves while other cliques form around them?

Why does our human connection end with the friends from our youth and in our circle of similarity instead of branching out, both up and down the age range, through the simple act of collaborative action? If we are working together, if we have the same objectives and goals, if we are part of the same community, then why are we so divided?

Ultimately, I have more questions than answers, and I’m simply hoping that cutting my hair and spending a year facing myself, and my age, in the mirror, every day, will help me to understand, if not fully answer, at least some of them.

The Problem with MS

MS Magazine
The year 2005

If you look through this blog, you’ll notice that there are no articles from MS magazine listed or discussed. The reason for this is because I did not get my last copies of the magazine and, therefore, could not read them. (This blog was started after the first few had been read and passed along to other women.)

MS comes out 4 times a year (and costs far more than it should). However, if you move at anytime during your subscription and fill out the change-of-address from on their website, you will get an interesting email informing you that it takes at least one issue to complete an address change – regardless of when that address is changed in the course of year.

The Nation, Technology Review, and WIRED had no problem changing my address immediately, but MS magazine seems to be unable, or unwilling, to do the same.

I did a little digging on their website and looked over my emails from them again, and realized that MS does not consider itself to be a publication – it’s an association. It’s something that women join so that they can say they are card carrying feminist and have access to all of the inside things that associations provide. Honestly, I can’t tell you if MS provides much in this respect because I never used my membership for anything more than the magazine.

Quite frankly, I am disappointed in MS and the association connected to it. The whole thing is very elitist – never mind the fact that I hate using that word and get my dander up every time I hear someone else use it. At this point there’s a lot of prestige tied up in being published in MS, being interviewed in MS, being mentioned in MS, having your organization or work covered in MS, and otherwise being recognized by the flagship of feminist involvement. Whatever it may have been in the past, it is now a ruler by which women can judge (or value) their involvement in the feminist movement. It is proof that someone else is doing something worth supporting. It is the source of all things feminist and, therefore, read with unquestioning awe of the un-challenged expert.

So, I guess they feel perfectly justified in telling a nobody like me that I will simply have to let go of at least one forth of my annual subscription because I moved. Maybe mail forwarding is something they offer to people who purchase the more expensive membership.

The other half

Rabbis’ Wives: Then and Now
By Shuly Rubin Schwartz
Lilith
Winter 2005

I have no idea what Rabbi’s wives do (or do not) do. I have no experience with them. However, I do have experience with the wives of various Christian leaders and the secretaries of Catholic Priests (many of whom follow their employer from one congregation to the next).

I’ve heard people talk about the roles women play in many scenarios where the husband is in power, or the leader, or the holder of religious/spiritual…whatever…and she’s brought along for the ride.

I’ve wondered about such things as I’ve watched women present themselves as the wife of the Boss, the Owner, the CEO, the Sergeant, the Politician, the Professor, and the Athlete. And, I myself have been the wife of a man with a high profile job who went to a good number of events she had no interest in because he needed ‘the wife’ (a title we occasionally, jokingly, tossed around) to be there.

It’s a role, just like any other role, and it has its duties and it’s expectations because history and society and the necessities of the particular relationship in question have placed them there. Call me complacent, but I have no strong feelings about the nature of any of these roles, one way or another.

At least, not when the roles are chosen. Actions between consenting adults are their business, not mine. What they choose is what they choose and bless them on their road ahead.

What annoys me is when there are no other options and creating them requires a massive amount of effort, energy, time, and negotiating. But, things that have been created over time are not going to be changed over night, and roles caste in the expectations of society (like ‘the wife’) are not a recent fad-like development in this country or the world.

While I find no reason to be offended by it, also find no reason to accept it as inevitable or the only option. However, I am no longer married (and he is no longer in a high profile job), and my time as ‘the wife’ was spent resenting the role instead of using it or changing it. Granted, I was young and idealistic and less than happy about living where I was living, but I occasionally look back and regret not having the wherewithal to recognize the position I was in and what that really meant (or could mean).

By the same token, I learned from the experience that I am not suited the role of ‘the wife’ at all. It’s not something my personality is going to settle into without loud and angry complaint, so it’s something I will not do again. I’m not unique in this – most people don’t realize how ill suited they are to something until they try it.

Which is what brings me to the one thing that I have always felt-thought about the role of ‘the wife’ – it’s a job. There are things that need to be done, details that need to be handled, people who need to be appeased, situations that need to be organized, and things that have to be addressed by more than one person whenever a position of leadership or power or prestige is being filled. Traditionally this role has been filled by ‘the wife’ because it made the most sense – she’s there, she’s going to be involved in some way (regardless), she already focuses on the things all women/wives focus on in the society in which she lives…it’s something that is/was simply practical when you stop to think about it.

But, that does not mean it’s the only logical possibility. It also does not mean that it’s suited to our current society. If a person is in a position that requires (for whatever reason) showing up to various events with a person on his/her arm (or as a companion of any sort) who will effectively navigate the crowd and the culture and the conversation and the event for whatever reason, then why not hire the position out? People talk disparagingly of escorts because of their association with prostitution, but what about the reality of finding a personality who handles a social situation in a manner that is needed? The person could be male, female, bilingual, smooth, cool, bubbly, sweet, intelligent, streetwise, blunt, argumentative – it could be anything that the event needs and the needs could change from one event to the next, which means the person hired could (logically) change from one event to the next.

Organizing, entertaining, and managing a crowd are talents and skills, and they do not (necessarily) have to be handled by the same person at every event.

Cooking, cleaning, and organizing the physical details of an event or a home are also talents and skills that do not have to be handled by one person, or the same person, at any given time.

Caring for children – same thing.

There’s a lot of talk out there about people taking on the roles most suited to them, instead of assigning roles based on gender, marital status, race, class, and whatever else people might be in the habit of using. What this article got me to thinking about was the reality involved in taking that concept and transforming it from talk into action.

It’s more logical, realistic, and possible than we might think – and the change will occur when we stop theorizing about the possibility and start passing the work around.

Tell me about the women with guns

Through a Different Lens
Women Bring the News from Israel
By Helen Schary Motro
Lilith
Winter 2005

Women journalists, soldiers, mothers, and residents of Israel and Palestine do their jobs despite patriarchal oppression – that’s one point.

Women journalists are both competent and more inclined to focus on the human aspect’ of the story – that’s another point.

Women journalists are able to interview women, and connect with people, in this region because they are female (women are not allowed to speak to men outside of their immediate family in this region) and they have stories about children and family that they can use to connect with the people they are interviewing – that’s yet another point.

On the one hand I found the discourse on what women journalists tend to cover (as opposed to men) interesting. Why is it that covering the ‘human’ aspect of a story is considered so much ‘less’ an avenue of reporting than counting the number of bombs, or trucks, or soldier, or dead? Isn’t the affect on human lives, due the large and weeping events occurring around them, the whole point?

But, that said, I also found myself wishing the journalists would spend less time talking about being journalists and more time talking about the women they mention in passing. The photograph of the three soldiers watching from the women’s section of the Netzarim synagogue as Torah scrolls are removed from the ark keeps drawing me back to it. Three women, each with an enormous gun slung over her back, a pointy tail down her neck, and matching green military uniforms, are standing close and intently watching something the camera does not show. On the one hand, they aren’t allowed into the main part of the synagogue because they are female. On the other, they are allowed into combat military while women in the US have to protest and fight for the same…privilege?…opportunity?…right?…(I’m really not sure how to describe being allowed to go to the front lines of a war – even if you want to be there).

I want to know more about the women in the uniforms. I want to know more about the settler with the baby in a sling around her neck. The Gaza Strip really isn’t a place I’ve ever wanted to go. Neither is Israel, but that’s more because I’ve never really thought about (and because I’ve always known that it’s one of those exceptionally dangerous places to travel). These photographs make me want to go there and meet those four women.

The article itself was interesting, but not so near as interesting as the photographs. Is it because the photographs don’t have a story connected to them? Would I be as interested if the article detailed their story and their lives? I think I would, but I might be more interested if they followed this story up with that one. Photographic teaser from one article to the next, I guess.

Regardless, I keep looking at those three women, in front of the white wall with the white curtains, standing close, arms around each other’s waists, as though the guns over their shoulders weren’t even there.

Words like swords

Words Can Hurt
By Karen Propp
Lilith
Winter 2005

This article is about verbal abuse and it's frequency in the jewish community. Until I moved to Philly, I had never lived in (or, to the best of my knowledge, near) a Jewish community, so i really can't comment on what is frequent and what is not. However, it makes some interesting points about abuse.

Verbal abuse is something everyone experiences - particularly if you're female. It seems to be the way girls fight. quite frankly, I've often wished more women would learn how to use their fists on occasion...but that's another topic for another day.

The hard thing about verbal abuse is identifying it. When has someone gone to far? Just like physical abuse, there are times when it's obvious, but there are times when it's not.

Recently I was told by a person I know who is a Psychologist that verbal abuse can 9and will) have the same afect on the human psyche (and the body) as physical abuse. It's a form of trauma that can/will cripple a person just as effectively as a brutal attack or regular beatings.

There's a disconnection and a pointed insult of human worth when verbal assaults are thrown, but there is that difficult to identify aspect of personality. some people will be bruised and broken by the very same interaction that will not bother another person at all.

Identifying the abuse between a couple has to occur between that couple, as the affects are indicated by their relationship and moods and psychological health. between people who are not in an intimate (or familial or work) relationship, there's (usually) the possibility of removing oneself from the interaction altogether (in a work based relationship there are usually options for this that don't occur elsewhere) and it may be a matter of the person recieveing the assault recognizing the effects on themselves and taking the action necessary.

If someone you can walk away from and avoid contact with is brutalizing you physically, would you go back? Why should verbal abuse be any different?

I guess it comes down to society and personal struggles and people learning to see the affects of their own actions - even when those actions are both accepted and expected among their own family.

It's a complicated problem.