Violence is the answer: I’m over football.

February 2, 2016February 3, 2016 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 11 Comments

February 2, 2016

I give up. I was ready to give up on American football before Concussion, the recent Will Smith movie that focuses on the NFL hiding the issue of the staggering number of serious head injuries among players. I was ready to give up before the endless stories of boys in high school who have died while playing football. I was ready to give up before the continuous stream of stories about college and professional football players beating the women in their lives. I was even ready to give up before Justin Timberlake ripped Janet Jackson’s bra off at Superbowl 38 and the controversy was more about almost seeing her nipple than it was about the implied sexual aggression against women. You can have it, but I’m giving up.

I was ready in 1978, the day I sat on the bus after a B-team football game with the rest of the members of my team at Redan High School. We had lost the game and I took it in stride. But I questioned another player who was in tears. He said, “If you don’t care about this team to cry when we lose then you don’t belong on the team.” And then he beat me up. I quit the next day and joined the punk rocker team.

It might surprise some folks that I was a huge football fan as a kid. I was obsessed with the Miami Dolphins in the early 1970’s and can still name the starting offensive team (including kicker Garo Yepremiam). In 4th grade I wrote a letter to coach Don Shula asking him why the Dolphins never played my hometown Atlanta Falcons. After that the O.J. Simpson poster was on the wall right next to Farrah. There was nothing more blissful than a Sunday watching the NFL highlight reel and all the great tackles shown in slow motion.

In my podunk Georgia county (Dekalb in the 1970s), there were no middle schools. So 8th grade was the first year of high school. You want to feel small? And I skipped 5th grade so I was essentially a 7th grade kid in high school. The only way for a 12-year-old boy (or any boy) to stake his claim for Southern masculinity was to join the football team. No cuts. You show up to practice in the sweltering Georgia sun and you are on the team. You might be tenth string but you get to wear the jacket and be in the team picture and sit in the front at pep rallies. Oh, and you get cheerleaders cheering for you. And the only people that get to beat you up are your teammates.

So I rode the bench as an outside linebacker (#53) for three years. I was skinny but fast so when I did get to play I channeled those NFL films and did recover a fumble in one big game against Cross Keys High School. At most of the games me and the other sideline jockeys would smack our helmets against the bleachers to make it look like we got in some good hits. When I left in 10th grade I was happy to let the jocks have their game and get out without a serious injury. (The first year I broke my tailbone. The second year I broke my thumb. The third year I ripped a muscle in my back and got to sit in the hottub during afternoon practices.)

But it’s hard not to be a casual football fan with all the billions spent on hyping college and pro football. Even last year I wondered if feminism and Super Bowls could exist side-by-side. Football is the only major sport where there is not some reasonable equivalent for females. (And don’t you dare say, “Lingerie Bowl.”) At least Major League Baseball has women’s softball to narrow the gap. If my daughter wants to become a part of the NFL, her best option is to become the wife of a player and risk abuse that comes from a guy who is being exploited and has been hit in the head too many times. Or she can be a cheerleader, cheering on the guys and getting paid minimum wage. But who cheers for the cheerleader? Even management in the NFL is an old boys club. What’s a female football lover to do?

The abuse of women by players (and fans) is an old sad story. The new wrinkle to that story is the growing understanding of the cumulative effect of countless head blows that players get as part of their job description. And this starts when they are unpaid players in school. Yet people are still making millions off these young men killing themselves for our entertainment. A few will make it to retirement with a nest egg but more are just chewed up by the machine. There is even a Wikipedia page for NFL players who died while still playing and you have to stop wondering when you see all the suicides. But go team!

There is, of course, a racial and class element to this as poor boys from inner cities and rural communities are told their one way to the American Dream is through professional sports, especially the hyper-masculine world of football. They can have everything they see dangled in front of them on ESPN, including super-model wives. All they have to do is sell their soul (or brains, ACLs, and spines) to the game and hope they are one of the few that has a post-career life worth living.

This issue is finally getting some attention. The NFL reports that this season there were 317 reported concussions of NFL players. (Who knows how many are unreported?) And that number may be down because of better helmets for teams that can afford the latest, most expensive protective gear. I doubt the inner city high school team is in line for the new top-of-the-line Xenith helmets any time soon. And there is a new effort to decouple the violence on the grid iron from the violence in the home front that is encouraging. You just wonder if the neurology of football can counter a few well-meaning PSAs. But I have to say I have a big ol’ man-crush on former LA Ram Terry Crews and his efforts to bring these issues to the audience that needs to hear it the most. There are feminist football players, y’all.

In a society that claims to preach, “Violence is not the answer,” why do we still obsess over the macho violence of football? In football, violence IS the answer, and the harder the better. I’m not immune to this. As a kid in Georgia I would go to stock car races and PRAY to see a big crash. The game itself can be fascinating and artful and (in those slow-motion NFL films) can look more like ballet, than war. But there is a growing body count that is part of the cost. And that includes battered women who are beaten by brain-damaged players and former players.

I’m just not sure it’s worth all the hype. Sure it’s fun to meet friends to watch a big college bowl together. Maybe you even went to that school 100 years ago. And I know some people want to watch the Super Bowl “for the commercials,” but your are going to see every single one of those commercials a thousand times over the next three months (including whatever sexist crap GoDaddy and Carl’s Jr will throw at us). There certainly is a thrill to watching a live sporting event as it happens, and not TIVO’d (or like with the last Olympics, on a 3-day tape delay). To share in a global experience can be unifying and exhilarating. (Just witness my freak out for the World Cup every four years.) It crosses political, racial, class and even gender lines. I bet even Bernie Sanders has a pick for the big game. (I can hear him say, “I’m quite impressed the the Carolina Panthers ability to reduce the inequity between the salaries for its support staff and its management.”)

I won’t hold it against you if you are all in for the sport and Sunday’s Super Bowl. I’m out. I’ve devoted enough time watching reruns of players getting folded, spindled and mutilated and just thinking, “That’s awesome!” This year, out of respect for the dozen boys who died playing high school football in 2015, like 17-year-olds Luke Schemm and Andre Smith, I’m going to spend Sunday hanging out with my daughter. Maybe we’ll go to the duckpond or go shopping. And I’m trying to teach her to play catch so she can play softball someday.

Edit: I’m supposed to watch this Frontline story: League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis.

I’m in charge of your butthole: The intimate world of parenting

January 20, 2016January 20, 2016 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 4 Comments

January 20, 2016

This is a piece I’ve tried to figure out how to write for a while. It could simply be a meditation on something that every parent has thought about. Or it could be just plain icky. This could go either way. Here is something that every parent of a young child can relate to or here is something that screams for state intervention. Okay, here goes. There is a sensual element to parenting a child.

Before you get on the horn to DHSS, there is a difference between sensual and sexual. If fact, as I’ve written about before, being a parent can really interrupt the sexual. We’ve come to refer to our wonderful daughter as the “great cock blocker,” as we reminisce about the good old days when we were crazed weasels who, well, you can guess. All the time.

There’s still weasel action but there is also this other thing. Someday I will write about the increase in connection with a person you’ve had a child with, but this is the trickier area of the relationship between father and child. I was thinking about what to write about today when Cozy, now 17 months, started stroking my hair. I don’t know if she was doing it to be nice to her stressed-out dad or she was assessing how much conditioner I needed, but it felt nice. And I realized how many moments we have like that. Moments where we just snuggle or give kisses or just look into each other’s eyes and I wonder how bizarre it is that I’ve played a role in the existence of this beautiful creature.

It shouldn’t be creepy to be routinely humbled by how soft baby skin is. It’s like as if there was a freaking baby panda that was actually a cloud. I feel like like a chewed up piece of 80 grit sandpaper compared to even the bottom of her feet. There’s a whole industrial machine that sells “baby soft” products, but they can’t even approach my baby’s bottom. Since much of the time is spent holding or changing my daughter there’s a lot of skin to skin contact. Sometimes that’s depressing (“Honey, your father is not the Crypt Keeper, he just grew up in Georgia.”) but often it’s awe inspiring. Did we all start off so perfect and unblemished?

My ethnic heritage on my father’s side is Czech. Czechs tend to be moley people. Cozy was born this wonderful Czech-Mex mix. Her blue eyes turned brown after about a week. And a week after that she got a little mole on her butt. It just appeared like a message from my ancestors. Every time I change her, I’m reminded of that genetic line. Also when she runs around the house bottomless. Hey, sometimes you’ve gotta air your business out.

I grew up in a weird time and space, the South in the 1970s. On one hand it was the Bible Belt so there were plenty of people who thought bodies were dirty things to be covered (because of that bitch, Eve). On the other hand, it was the height of sexual liberation and people were walking around their homes naked with copies of Playboy and Our Bodies, Our Selves on the coffee table. (My parents were from Ohio and midwesterners just ignore anything sexual.) I have to think those mixed messages didn’t do the psyche of my generation any good.

Cozy bathes with her parents fairly regularly. She and I had a shower together this morning. It’s really just a way to be efficient. I can watch her if she’s in the tub with me and we can save water on the probably much-needed booty hose down. It is perfectly innocent but I am aware there are some very uptight people who would see it as inappropriate. I know at some point one of us will grow out it, but it’s a nice thing we share. I’ve got friends that showered with their kids into the double digits (in Georgia!), so maybe I’m too worried about the Bible thumpers and their cousins in ISIS.

It is funny when she waddles into the bathroom when I’m standing there peeing. She has this confused look on her face as she tries to figure out what my penis is. I always feel uncomfortable and sing this little song I made up.

What are you looking at Baby B?

What are you looking at, what do you see?

What are you looking at, you’re looking at me.

You better not be looking at my pee pee.

You can’t not have an intimate relationship with a child after you’ve changed thousands of diapers. I know her vagina better than I know most of my family members. And that thing is as clean as a field hockey coach’s whistle. (Wait, that sounds rather dirty.) As a stay-at-home dad, I am the primary agent of her undercarriage management. I often joke that I am on “Butthole Patrol,” because you don’t want to let a kid sit in a dirty diaper too long or you’re gonna need a power sprayer to do the job. (How I envy the French and their clever bidets.) As much as I want the kiddie potty to take over my job, their is something bonding about the diaper change ritual. Eye contact and mutual trust, and a song from dad. (This week it’s been David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes.”)

Freud, Foucault and Judith Butler all have written about the psychic damage done to boys who have to be weened from their mothers and switch their identification to their fathers. In this new age of stay-at-home dads there is the interesting question about daughters who have similar intimate connection to their fathers. How will Cozy’s psycho-sexual identity be affected by all this time we spend together, including the showers and diaper changes? Perhaps not at all, or perhaps she’ll have a solid sense of self that is not defined by one idea of gender or genders.

I do know it has affected me. Besides the protective “papa bear” mandate it fuels, I also feel more like an actual human being. This is a true connection between two people. She might not remember any of it, but I’ll never forget any of it. Before I put her to bed, we have a little dance to some soft music and she puts her head on my shoulder and I make a wish that this dance never ends.

How David Bowie Bent My Gender

January 12, 2016January 24, 2016 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 8 Comments

January 11, 2016

This is a strange bifurcation point on our blue planet. From this point on there is no David Bowie to share the world with. Like people born after 1980 who claim John Lennon, or those born after 1959 who claim Billie Holiday (as they have a right to), every child born after today will never anticipate hearing David Bowie’s new song on the radio or changing their fashion to fit Bowie’s new style. It’s all just back catalog now. He can’t be truly their peer. Fortunately there’s enough there for future generations to mine for inspiration.

I awoke this morning to a message from my friend Roy in England that just said, “Sad day for music.” A sense of dread swelled up. I know that I am likely to witness the passing of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Patti Smith. What will the world be like without them? For the moment we share the same sunlight and oxygen supply. When there is a lunar eclipse, I know that Paul McCartney and Toni Morrison are looking at it, too. I know there is a chance that I could bump into Smokey Robinson or Elton John getting coffee in an airport somewhere in the world. We share this tiny globe together.

But not with Bowie. He is gone so unexpectedly. I was in New York City all weekend and was waiting for today to get Blackstar, his heralded new album. The beginning of the next phase of Bowie in our lives. Would there be a tour? Would I get a new haircut to look like him? Again? I should have found him on his deathbed there in Manhattan to thank him. A kiss on his alien eyelids.

For those of us that came of age in the 1970s, David Bowie was more than a “rockstar.” He was an avatar of our awkward young selves as gangly beings who had just fallen to earth, genderless and omni-sexual. I was an Apollo kid so it started with “Space Oddity,” and imagining the astronauts circling our troubled planet. But when Ziggy Stardust arrived, I could see clues to a third path, somewhere between male and female that was beautiful and personal. Glam rock was liberation, even if was just the thought of it. “Rebel, rebel. You’ve got your mother in a whirl ’cause she’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl.”

That was the beginning of me wanting to grow my hair long. Endless battles with my mother (“Boys with long hair are all on drugs!”) and my father (“Why would you want to look like a girl?”). Each half inch it grew, you’d get called “fag,” and “queer,” in rural Georgia. (Of course, once Willie and Waylon grew their hair out all that ended.) If word got around you were a Bowie fan, that was like declaring your homosexuality. “You must be AC-DC like him!” I didn’t really care. The music came from some place magical. His self-declared bisexuality created a safe zone for us as we engaged in our own space exploration. My sexuality was never an issue. The sanity of the world I expressed it in was.

All us misfit kids had Bowie. Before punk roared in, we had Bowie to speak for us and to tell us we were wonderful. “Rock and Roll Suicide,” must be an anthem for so many young people, both then and now, who feel zero validation from the straight world. It’s a reason to reject suicide as an option.

You’re watching yourself but you’re too unfair

You got your head all tangled up but if I could only make you care

Oh no love! you’re not alone

No matter what or who you’ve been

No matter when or where you’ve seen

All the knives seem to lacerate your brain

I’ve had my share, I’ll help you with the pain

You’re not alone

In fourth grade, when the other kids were obsessed with the Captain and Tennille, me and my little goon squad were memorizing “Young Americans,” and “Fame,” (listening for John Lennon’s voice). It was like a secret society. You had to say, “Oh yeah, Deep Purple rocks!” and then find out what kid in the neighborhood had a copy of Diamond Dogs you could borrow, being sure to hide it from your parents’ gaydar.

Bowie always defined gender non-conformity. Wearing make-up, dying his hair, wearing a skirt on Saturday Night Live. In a culture obsessed with a simple gender binary, what could be more rebellious than that? Boys keep swinging! For all us kids that didn’t quite fit in the butch boy/femme girl box, we had permission to mix and match and create something completely new.

My first sociology professor at Oxford College who radicalized me in so many ways had a bit of blind spot around queer issues. I remember him trying to make the case that we are all sexual but socialized to be heterosexual and if that process gets messed up we end up confused, “like David Bowie.” I remember thinking, Wait, that’s not right. Bowie’s not “broken,” he is just free and rebelling against social constructions of gender. He knows exactly what he’s doing.

So, yeah, I have every piece of music that Bowie has released (except Blackstar, which is sold out all over the city). I have b-sides and oddities. Have you heard the soundtrack to The Buddha of Suburbia (1993)? You should. I’ve seen him in concert several times. My favorite moment was at Live Aid in London in 1985. I was right front for the global event. All my favorite stars were there. I should mention that I really hated Bowie’s Let’s Dance album when it came out in 1983. It was such a commercial piece of fluff compared to 1980’s Scary Monsters (although it has aged better than I have). So I was supremely bummed when he opened with “Modern Love,” my least favorite Bowie song. But then he played “Heroes,” and it could not have been more perfect. We were there trying to feed the world, just for one day. There were tears everywhere. Bowie transformed us.

He transformed us many times. He loosened us from our moorings. He made being smart and aging into your 60s look really, really cool and never stopped playing with our weird obsession with gender roles. All the kids that got beat up for being “Bowie fags” can have the last laugh (the ones that weren’t murdered, at least). Now that he’s dead, everybody will claim him as their own.

He’s never not been with me. His ex-wife, Angie Bowie, was my first guest speaker at Emory, delighting my students with tales of Ziggy and Iggy and the glam explosion. I courted my wife, Andrea, with mix CDs that linked Bowie songs to Nina Simone songs. When Cozy was born, I sang “Little Wonder” to her repeatedly (and “Space Oddity” when I strapped her in her car seat). And she’s napping to Station To Station as I write this. I want her to have the sexual and gender freedom that was so hard for us over forty years ago. But for all the goon squads out there, Bowie made it a lot easier and cooler.

A lot will be written this week about the Thin White Duke as a “chameleon” and all the ch-ch-changes he went through, the movies he made and the fashions he inspired. I just think about us kids who didn’t fit in who got to feel that we had a very special space boy on our side.

Gender: Nature vs. Nurture 5: Elmo is queer

December 15, 2015February 25, 2017 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 6 Comments

December 15, 2015

It’s funny how we look for gender clues in toddlers. When Cozy wears my old baby clothes or the Atlanta Falcons gear my dad bought her, people don’t hesitate to make her male (although he did also buy a Falcons cheerleader outfit for her). When she’s pretty in pink, it’s all good in the Ladyland hood. As a sociologist of gender, I keep looking for it and wonder what, if anything, is innate about gender. She watches her dad cook and clean house. Will she see those as male activities? I’m the nurturer, wiping her butt and a face every five minutes. Her Mexican mom is much sterner so there’s the authority in the house.

Cozy turns 16-months-old in a few days and she’s fully into imitating behavior now (which means I need to watch my fucking mouth). The three-year-old girl on a flight to Atlanta taught her Peek-a-boo and that’s her jam now. She imitates me washing dishes (that’s a good hobby), but she really loves to imitate her mother. Especially when it comes to make-up. Maybe it’s the just the feel of the brushes on her face, but when mom is at her make-up table, Cozy is wrapped up in a lesson from the master.

The other night Andrea was at an art gallery, hanging out with some beatniks and Cozy and I were home. Cozy climbed up on to mom’s vanity and looked at herself in the mirrors. She picked up different lipsticks and brushes and I could see it starting. “This what I do to be like mom.” Now, first of all Andrea doesn’t have to do any of that but she’s an artist and has really created an amazing look for herself. And secondly, a little boy of the same age could also find his way to mom’s make-up table and be as fascinated by all the candy-colored treats.

I found myself wanting to pull her down and shove her beloved Elmo doll under her arm. Say what you will about Sesame Street going to HBO and PBS running only the too-short 30 minute versions of the show (Abby’s Flying Fairy School just got gentrified the fuck out of this neighborhood), there is salvation in Elmo. Elmo is my daughter’s security blanket and a link to something close to baby bliss.

Elmo first stumbled on to Sesame Street in the early 1970s as “baby monster,” so the little red thing should be firmly in its 40s by now, instead of perpetually 3-and-a-half. But the one thing that’s consistent about Elmo is Elmo’s non-gender (and maybe the fact that Elmo bizarrely is unable to refer to himself or herself in the first person). Most see Elmo as a boy monster but there are plenty of little girls who see Elmo as a girl monster. Elmo is gender-queer. I was just in New York City and saw four Elmos in Times Square. Were there males or females in those costumes? It really doesn’t matter as long as they were fairly sober.

Elmo is a blank slate that we write gender scripts on to. In a patriarchy, the fallback assumption is male and Sesame Street exists in patriarchy so there are some who refer to Elmo as “he,” but are you really sure about Elmo? He/She doesn’t wear pants so there should be some extra red fur down there. Yeah, you might see Elmo dressed like Indiana Jones but also wearing a tutu. Singing hard with Elvis Costello and later singing softly with Norah Jones. Elmo doesn’t expect Elmo to be masculine or feminine. Elmo is just Elmo, free of gendered norms.

So, even though her Elmo doll is probably made in a Chinese sweatshop, I’m happy Cozy feels a connection to the little red monster. Her Elmo is not a baby doll with lessons about mothering or a Barbie Doll with a dozen problematic messages about body image and heteronormativity. Elmo comes with one message, Elmo loves you. Elmo’s like Jesus but a lot cuter. Maybe if Jesus was a genderless furry monster baby, some of his followers would stop shooting up women’s health clinics and closing doors on refugee families and just being, in general, dicks. Elmo would never do that shit.

Cozy imitates her mother in many wonderful ways. She likes to draw and cuddle and she’ll take off my mopey music and put something Latin on so she can dance. And she knows when I’m trying to BS her. Her hat obsession comes from me, but her love of boots comes from mom. And someday Cozy and Andrea will have long discussions about how to do your eye liner like Amy Winehouse.

For now I’m just gonna try to keep her in the Elmo zone for a little bit longer, though, if that’s okay.

Gender: Nature vs. Nurture, Round 1

Gender: Nature vs. Nurture 2: Ain’t I a Black Girl?

Gender: Nature vs. Nurture 3: How babies queer gender

Gender: Nature vs. Nurture 4: She’s gotta be free!

Dial your douchebag down: How to.

July 8, 2015July 9, 2015 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

July 8, 2015

Ah, summertime when a boy’s mind turns to, well these days, probably endless video games. I was a bit girl crazy as a boy (not that I ever did anything about it) and it was the “crazy” part that got me into trouble later. You see (feminist blogger confession coming), I was trained to be a girl watcher. As a 70’s kid, I came of age in the era of “jiggle TV” (Google it). I had a poster of Charlie’s Angels on my wall with Jacyln Smith’s cleavage stationed right at eye level.

The message was clear. Men are to look and women are to be looked at. There was no concept that they might not want to be looked at that way or that men should be equally objectified. Females were just eye candy.

This was reinforced all around me. Men’s magazine’s had pictures of women to look at, but so did women’s magazines. My mom’s Glamour magazine provided more fantasy material than Playboy ever could. And my father was not shy about craning his neck to see a pretty girl, once almost driving the car off the road. There was no counter message about the real impact of all this girl watching.

I’m going to save, for another day, the discussion of beauty myth and what the toll is of the atmosphere of non-stop (mostly airbrushed) images of “beautiful” women. And there is even another discussion about the social construction of beauty itself. Today, from my little cafe on Isla Mujeres, I want to write about the cost of looking.

So, as you may know, I’m currently living on an island in the Caribbean called Isla Mujeres, writing and helping teach a course on research methods. Isla Mujeres – Island of Women. While there are Mayan goddess roots to that name, the marketing of the island alludes to the fact that beautiful women from around the world come here for sun and fun, so boys head over with your pesos. I would be an idiot not to notice the contrast between the locals and the large numbers of young people (including female people) wandering around in their bathing suits. So does this give me permission to girl-watch? I mean, my wife and child won’t join me here for over two weeks. What could be the harm?

This has long been an issue for me that I think I finally have a handle on. They say old habits are hard to break and you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but psychologists will tell you that even longstanding synaptic pathways can be re-wired. Those deep ruts, worn in from bad cognitive patterns can be rebuilt.

I’ll start with a little story that gives me a starting point. In 1994, I was nearing the end of my doctoral dissertation at Emory but also doing a lot of spoken word performances. I was to asked to organize the poetry events for part of the Lollapalooza tour that year (the one with the Beastie Boys). That year the big fad was for young women to just wear bras, with no shirt. I imagine that that was quite liberating in sweaty but conservative Georgia. My girlfriend at the time, Christina D., caught me looking and asked, “What are you thinking about?” Now this was at a time when I was fully embracing feminism and assigning Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth to my students at Emory. My answer to her was, “I was just thinking about how I want to fuck every single one of these girls.”

Such a dochebag moment. There was no thought of how that statement would hurt her let alone the impact of the activity itself. And she’d called me on it before. In fact, often after margaritas, this 5 foot 1 “girl” would kick my ass down the street for ogling women. (Those of you that knew Christina D. can surely see this happening.) My defense? A. Men are just more visually stimulated than women. And B. I’m just looking.

This issue had been a long-running problem in my relationships. One minute I was lecturing about the male gaze in patriarchal mainstream media, and the next I was checking out a coed walking across campus. I’d write it off as no big deal. I don’t care about those women on a personal level and will probably forget I ever saw them. But each one probably was a little stab for the woman I was with. “He says he loves me but why does he do this to me?”

I’m not sure how this plays in same sex relationships, but in male-female relationships there are two elements of gender socialization that factor into it. The first is that men learn male bonding at a very early age. We may compete on the basketball court, but, at the end of the day, we’re headed to the same treehouse. (“Bros before hos, bro! Jaeger shots!) Girls are trained to compete with each other for the same scarce resource, the Bachelor. (“Don’t you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?”) So while dudes are calling each other “bro,” girls and grown women are calling each other “skank.” Divide and conquer the ladies.

The second part is that once bro and skank are in a relationship, not only does he not want to talk about the relationship, he doesn’t want to even hear about it. It’s her job to maintain the whole thing (I have an earlier blogpost about this), so when there is a problem (and there always is) she’s expected to suffer in silence. Until it all blows up and bro asks, “What the fuck?” Then some other bro will just say, “What do expect from a ho? They’re all crazy.”

This where I can help both parties. Learn from my mistakes. Bro, you are a human, not a bro. And she is also a human, not a ho, skank, or hooch. She might be a “swamp donkey,” but I don’t know what that means. It does not sound good. So Step One is stop dehumanizing the other. There is no other. There is only us. Us together. Step Two is don’t just listen but hear. Hear the hurt you do. You love and respect this person, hear the hurt you cause. It may mean nothing to you (“I’m just looking!”), but if hurts her and you blow it off, that’s on you. She needs to be stronger because she’s with you. Not weaker. There is an old R&B song that says, “When something is wrong with my baby, something is wrong with me.” Listen to it often.

Now if bro is not in a relationship, he may fell free and clear to stare at women. But here’s two things to chew on. 1) There is also a real impact of your male gaze on the women and (often under-aged) girls you creep on, and 2) why build a habit that you are just going to have to break later? Like, when you grow the fuck up.

There’s this video circulating this summer called “The Scientific Reason Why Guys Stare At Girls Will Surprise You.” First of all there is no actual science presented in the video. Secondly, it’s done by right-wing radio personality Dennis Prager. He’s an active anti-feminist. Just check out the other videos on his Prager “University” channel. It’s the shit that masquerades as legitimate academic thinking on the internet. The guy rivals Trump in the 2015 Douchebag footrace.

Having said that, some of his points are rooted in general sociological thinking. Women are trained to constantly compare themselves against each other and evaluate the threat. I mean, Halle Berry’s husband, Eric Benet, cheated on Halle Berry. I mean, seriously. So I get why women might have some anxiety. And yeah, guys might just be getting a taste of eye candy, but Prager seems to be saying, “So just shut the fuck, you crazy bitches.” And bro, go right ahead and look because “Professor” Prager says, “Science!” Most importantly it serves to invalidate the very real feelings of the female in the relationship.

So much of the world under our noses seems invisible. This includes the emotional world of women – Who have been trying to tell us about it for ages. Virginia Woolf, where are you? Oh, in the bookstore? OK. But there is a paperback version of Jurassic World! But that big picture may be hard for some guys to swallow, so try this. If it’s important to your partner, it should be important to you. If turning down the Girl Watcher Eye will make her feel better about you, I promise it will make you feel better about you.

This is a really long post to say old habits can be broken. It’s not a sad thing. I’m happy to be in place so physically different from Portland and so emotionally different from 1994. And I’m almost as naked as everybody else, so… When I finally heard my wife, I started rewiring my brain and it feels nice. So besides the goddess Ixchel (above), there’s only one girl I want to watch. OK, two. Which means get ready for devastatingly cute pictures of Cozy at the beach.

Toys in the Attic

November 29, 2014October 23, 2015 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 3 Comments

November 29, 2014

I hope everyone had a nice Black Friday. We spent the day in bed watching movies: Hannah and Her Sisters and Blue Velvet (I wanted my wife to see where Lana Del Rey gets all her video ideas from) and spent absolutely zero dollars. But now it’s officially the Christmas season (for those who celebrate it. Also, for everybody else.) and a parent’s thoughts turn to toys.

I went absolutely ape-shit over Xmas as a kid. By mid-November I had 90% of the toys in in the JC Penny catalog circled (the remaining 10% were girl toys) and ended up with most of them under the tree. I would be tired of the majority of those toys in a day (they always seemed cooler on the Saturday morning commercials) but my parents would be stuck with the credit card bill for months. I did love those Hot Wheels well into the summer, though.

Now as a socially conscious feminist, the whole issue of toys brings me great anxiety. First is the fact that most toys for kids today (and all the toys at Wal-Mart) are made under questionable labor practices. The thought of giving a child a toy made by child labor in China is just a deal with the devil. How many of those Black Friday parents are clobbering each other for a Barbie doll that was made by kids who are essentially slaves? Would they buy that doll if they knew? (Probably, they were only $5 at one Wal-Mart.)

Black Friday 2014: Fight breaks out at Walmart over Barbie doll, more incidents

But most of what we consume this season has some bad mojo behind it, from the chocolate we shove down kids’ throats to the coffee we drink while we do it. So the first goal this season is to pay attention to where this stuff comes from and who makes it. Portland is a great city to buy local from. It’s not always the cheapest option, but it’s good for the soul and that’s what the Baby Jesus would want.

13 Products Most Likely To Made By Child Or Forced Labor

The other issue is the relationship between toys and gender socialization. I’ve lectured on this topic for 25 years. I’ve always found it interesting that as soon as little girls can sit up we give them baby dolls and start training them for motherhood. Why don’t we similarly train boys for fatherhood? Boys DO play with dolls. They are called “action heroes” and come with guns and “Kung Fu Grip.” I was obsessed with GI Joe as a kid but knew which girls got the Easy Bake Oven for Christmas because they had the cookies (along with their domestic apprenticeship).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6IPmmODlDI

The new adds for the Easy Bake Oven are just as sexist as they were in 1972, but the tide has turned. Mattel recently reported its profits were down as Barbie dolls had fallen out of favor. Good. This house will be a Barbie-Free Zone.

I remember the talking Barbies of the 1990s that said things like “Math is hard” and “Let’s go shopping.” That’s not the message I want for my daughter. If she wants dolls, they can have realistic figures and non-gendered aspirations. I want a doll that says, “I’m applying to MIT” and “I’m not a SkyCap. Give your baggage to somebody else.” If she wants to bake things, I’ll get her a chef’s hat and a Gordon Ramsey DVD. Gone are the days of Mystery Date and princess parties.

They gave each kid a Barbie and a doll with real proportions. What they say next really says it all.

Of course my fear is that she’ll want a Little Mermaid costume made in some sweatshop by Vietnamese orphans and know how to sing “Someday My Prince Will Come” instead of Sleater-Kinney’s “I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone.” Do I honor her choice? Or do I take her to a basketball game instead (explaining that some of the players are wife-beaters)? I really have no idea in a consumerist society like ours how to avoid these moral landmines that are set in front of our children, especially our girls. No answers yet. Stay tuned.

EDIT: Thanks to my cousin Jennifer for turning me on to Amightygirl.com. Take a look at this link below!

http://www.amightygirl.com/holiday-guide

Image source: http://feministing.com/2014/11/25/photo-of-the-day-7-year-old-girl-unimpressed-by-sexist-advertising/

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