December 3, 2014

Being a new parent brings on a lot of strange emotions. I’ve already mentioned the love, love, love, crazy love. Then there’s the guilt. Neurotic guilt. My new daughter has turned me into Woody Allen’s character in Hannah and Her Sisters (which I’m sure is just Woody Allen). Managing the guilt is something I’m not sure how to manage.

It starts before the baby is even born. I worried I wasn’t offering enough nutritional or emotional prenatal support. Why, oh, why did I let Andrea have that sip of beer? That probably knocked three points off our kid’s IQ score. Should I have played more classical music while she was in utero? I played Nirvana’s In Utero album, but what if that loud music messed her up?

I read a lot of books during that period, including Prenatal Parenting: The Complete Psychological and Spiritual Guide to Loving Your Unborn Child by Dr. Wirth Frederick. It details how to create a healthy environment for your baby’s brain to develop in. But I sort of skipped over the sections about “God.” Was that bad?

Then the guilt ramps up once the baby arrives. I feel guilty about my constant fear that I might drop her or accidentally dislocate her arm putting on her Yoko Ono onsie. I worry that I’m not doing enough for her intellectual or emotional development. She seems to like TV. That’s not good, right?

Yesterday I went into a shame spiral because I let her cry for 20 minutes, not realizing she had a soaking wet diaper. I just kept shoving the binky in her mouth, saying “Baby, please stop crying. Daddy needs to blog.” Then I felt guilty for sticking my finger into her diaper, worrying it will be logged in her subconscious for some later neurosis of her own. “I have a vague memory of my father’s finger in my diaper.” Lord.

If fact she’s crying now, with a dry (finger tested) diaper. So we are going to take a few minutes to dance in the living room to the Flaming Lips.

The gender guilt is another killer. I thought I could interrupt the wave of pink everything, but it would have been like a elderly toad stopping a convey of Wal-Mart long-haul trucks. And a gift is a gift, so, thanks for whatever you gave us, pink or otherwise. But I will draw the line at toys! I promise! But it’s a daily thing. I accidentally called her  “my little princess” one day and thought, “Well, that’s it. I’ll try harder with the next daughter. Might as well go buy Barbie’s Dream House for this one.”

It’s still early. She’s only three and a half months old. When I tell her, mid-squall,  “There’s no crying in baseball,” I don’t have to share my inner monologue that says, “Why not? Baseball is good and so is crying? Why can’t there be crying in baseball?” Thanks, Tom Hanks.

My goal is to raise a human that is free of gender, that isn’t stuck in what Judith Butler called “gender trouble.” But, in this culture, it’s one step forward, two steps back. I want her to be surrounded by the strong feminine characters in her life (especially her Latina family members), but am I poisoning the well early by being a stay-at-home dad? I feel guilty about having this intense bonding time with her that my wife is missing.

And of course, added to this, is the guilt I feel toward my wife. The baby takes emotional attention that I used to lavish on her. I know she’s wondering what happened to the guy who dragged her into a bar restroom to make out. And I worry her career as an artist has been derailed to be a working mom. She is such a talented artist, I feel really guilty about this one. My mom dropped out of college to have me in the 1960s. Am I just reproducing the Mad Man patriarchy of the home? Crap.

So, yeah, lots of guilt betweens moments of extreme bliss. I imagine that this is “normal” but I think feminist parents get an extra layer of it. I’d like to think that I’m getting more things right than I’m getting wrong. Time will tell. As long as I don’t drop her too many times. OK, she’s crying again. It’s a cold day and she only has one sock on. I suck. Gotta go.

These books are available at Powell’s by clicking the covers below.

December 2, 2014

I will write plenty about music in this blog (It’s how I started out as a writer, after all), but this is about another sound: the ultrasound. When we found out we were going to have a baby, we both hoped for a girl. My main motivation, to be honest, was to avoid the whole  “to circumcise or not” decision. I love the idea of raising a feminist son, but I remember what a warlord I was as a boy and a girl just seemed to resolve a lot of parenting issues.

I really didn’t want to know the sex of the baby before it was born but Andrea did. She promised that she wouldn’t tell me. (I think she didn’t want to refer to the kid as “it” for 9 months.) I wanted to avoid the tidal wave of pink or blue that would start the gender socialization even before the kid hatched. But I gave in knowing there was no way she could keep such a secret and we headed off to the ultrasound appointment to find out which lane of the gender binary we would be dropped in to.

The woman at the medical office slathered the goo on Andrea’s belly and we anxiously watched the TV monitor, like we were looking for life on another planet. And there the baby was, quite alien looking. We were having an alien! Then, the clarification was made. “You are not having an alien baby. You are having a little girl.”

We were really excited to find out we had a girl bun in the oven. Our reaction caught the medical technician off guard. “I’m glad you are happy. Most people are upset when they find out they are having a girl.”

What?

“Yeah, I’ve even had dads say to the moms ‘You should have gotten an abortion. You know I wanted a son.’ Like it was the mom’s fault.”

Now this is in “liberal” Portland, Oregon, home of riot grrrls, where “all the hot girls wear glasses” (according to Portlandia). So I asked, “Are you talking about a particular ethnic group?” I was thinking maybe Indian immigrants, or Somalis.

“Nope,” she said. “It’s pretty much across the board. A lot of white guys only want sons.”

This is what patriarchy sounds like around the world. Sons are are valued over daughters. Countries like India and China are suffering from a lack of women because so many female fetuses are aborted, which, ironically, reinforces male power in sheer number alone. Patriarchy is NOT a cultural universal, but where it exists, it reaches right into women’s wombs.

The War on Baby Girls: Gendercide http://www.economist.com/node/15606229

Whether it’s the denial of education of girls in Afghanistan by the Taliban or American Southern Baptists demanding the wives submit to their husbands, the devaluing of girls and women has a corrosive effect around the world. Even in liberal Portland. And you can hear it in the ultrasound clinics of the city every day.

When I heard that reminder from the technician, I was really glad I was having a daughter.

December 1, 2014

As a man, I’ve had a varied relationship with the vagina. The first decade after I emerged out of one, I really didn’t think about them much. (I was under the impression that babies came out of ladies’ butts.) Then I did start to think about them, a lot, like disembodied creatures from another dimension. Then I thought I had them all figured out. And then I realized I didn’t know as much as I should.

Naomi Wolf’s most recent book, Vagina: A New Biography was an eye opening read. It outlines how the source of human life became a devalued slur. How the “flowering lotus” became the “cunt.” And how that devaluation undoes the goddess power in women. How did “pussy” become the ultimate putdown?

In high school, there was a guy named Ted who used to bully me. One day I was walking past his house and he said, “Blazak, you’re a pussy.” My reply was, “Well, I guess you are what you eat, dick.” He didn’t punch me in the face because I was a being homophobic (A sincere apology to all dick-eaters everywhere). He punched me in the face because I refused to let “pussy” be used as a pejorative. Whenever I see someone use that term as a negative (which happens constantly on internet postings), I always respond, “As a heterosexual male, I really like pussy so I assume you mean something positive.” It might not be very PC but I like to think of it as Douchebag Ju-Jitsu.

The other thing about Wolf’s book is its explanation of the complex neurological wiring of the vagina, compared to the rather simple penis. This alone should make this text required reading for any guy that has figured out his sexual happiness depends on his woman’s sexual happiness. (And Wolf herself has discussed the heternormativity implied in that idea.) I’ve assigned this book several times in my Contemporary Theory class and quite enjoy seeing young men walk across campus with a big white book with “Vagina” in bold red letters on the cover. I know their lives will be better for reading it.

So what? Well, now I am charged with the care of my daughter and her own vagina, including how she will think about it. There was a certain amount of awkwardness at that first diaper change, confronting the very close-up intimacy involved. But vagina care is essential from Day 1, so I will spread her labia to clean the poop out like a champ. Hopefully, for her sake, this won’t come back to haunt her in her teen years. “Don’t you backtalk me, Cozy. I used the clean the shit out your vajayjay!”

But in a strange, non-creeper sort of way, the intimacy of the diaper change ritual has both further removed the fear/stigma/ignorance/whatever of the vagina and reinforced the idea that my daughter will find this part of her body as a source of power, not a source of put-downs. Wolf writes about how the vagina (and sexual happiness) is a gateway to female creativity and strength. The research on how rape victims can lose both of these stands as evidence. This means there are messages that I need to be consistent on as a father.

The first is that her vagina belongs to her and she is the only one who should decide what happens to it. I can best achieve that by working for a world where girls like her are not routinely sexually victimized. Second is the complete rejection of all things feminine being used as negatives. This includes, “bitch,” “slut,” and “pussy.” The vagina was once known as the “goddess pool.” I’ve got a lot of years before anybody goes swimming in her pool, but Cozy will never be shamed for the sins of the past. You’re not going to blame Eve for this one. Pussy power!

OK, time to change a diaper. My little goddess just ripped of fart that was solid, liquid, and gas. Wish me luck.

Oh, and that’s a picture of Naomi Wolf and I at Powell’s Books on 12/05/12. Her name will appear often in this blog.

This book is available at Powell’s by clicking the cover below.

November 26, 2014

Let’s post some love after the riots and before Thanksgiving. I’m sure this blog will feature a few rants, including the exasperation that parents apparently experience (Can parents really disown their kids? My mom told me that quite often) and me wondering why I didn’t do this when I was 20. But today I’d like to share the love.

I’ve loved people, moments, bands and stuff. I love my record collection. I’ve always thought if my house caught fire the first order of business would be to save my autographed Ramones albums. But there really is no comparison to the love a parent feels for a child. It’s like some drug-like state of euphoria and anxiety. Like what you thought love was supposed to be like when you were 13.

I was one of those people who made fun of “breeders” with their mini-vans and screaming brats on cross-country flights. As a childless dude, I had ultimate autonomy. If I wanted to go see a band on a Wednesday night, I would just go. If I wanted to spend my money a blue leather jacket because it looked like something Axl Rose might wear, I could do it. (It was on Kings Road, London in 1991 and I would give anything to trade that ugly thing in on a baby bike trailer.) People who had babies were just adding to the population bomb and the rising idiocracy. Look at that mom, smoking in her kid’s face. Forced sterilization!

Of course, I had to reconcile my hostility with my feminist values. Pro-choice means you can also choose to produce mini-yous if you want to and maybe this generation of rug rats will be the one to finally smash patriarchy. Each wave of youth gets a little less douchebaggy, right?

But then we got pregnant. It was planned. We said, “Let’s get pregnant!” and a month later we were. In fact on our second date, sitting at the bar in Binks on Alberta, I looked at Andrea and said, “We’re going have kids, aren’t we?” And the dread started to fade. That autonomy that had defined my masculinity for decades seemed like something I was ready to let go of, for something much better.

I’ve a lot of amazing moments in my life. April 29, 1985. I played guitar onstage with U2 in my hometown of Atlanta. Pretty awesome, right? It does not even compare to the first time we heard our baby’s heartbeat. The world changed in that instant. I heard a giant whooshing sound, like a massive black hole being shrunk down to a tiny singularity. My life was no longer about me and all the things and experiences I could collect. It was now about that heartbeat and protecting it with all my might. For the rest of my life.

That moment changed me. It destroyed my ego and opened up a part of my heart that I never even knew was there. In that moment, my life as a human finally started. And now that she’s here, I just have to look at her and the dopamine starts flowing in my brain. So I look at her a lot. I can’t believe that she’s here and that I had anything to do with her creation. Babies are the best drug ever.

So I get it, parents. I’ve got the secret now. I apologize for fantasizing about keying Volvos and bringing back “Adults Only” apartment complexes. When your kid is screaming next to me on the flight, I’m just going to look at you and say, “Isn’t this awesome?”

Day 1 – Nov. 24, 2014 C.E. I just dropped my wife off at her new job at Planned Parenthood. I know it was hard for her to just get out to the car. Not because it was her first day at work but because it meant being away from our 3-month old daughter, Cozette. We’ve been pretty much addicted to Cozy since the get go and now she’s doing the 9 to 5 while I’m playing stay-at-home dad. She made me promise to send lots of Snapchats and I promised her lots of wonderful reunions when she got home each night and dad went on a run. To the bar.

[I can already tell that the challenge of this blog is writing and trying to calm a crying baby. Baby comes first!—— Dear lord, the only thing that stopped the wailing was Kathy Lee and Hoda.]

So today I start my job as a stay at home dad. As a sociology professor, for the last 20 years I’ve been telling people how to raise their kids. Now it’s time for me to take my own advice. As a feminist I’ve lectured about how to undo gender socialization and challenge patriarchy on the home front. Now my ideological rubber has to hit the road. Fortunately, I have a combined sabbatical/parental leave that will keep me home until March. After that I’ve shifted my work schedule so I can be home most of the week. I know my wife, Andrea, is jealous that Cozy and I will have so much time together, but I’ll probably be jealous that she has a work life while I’m at home sterilizing nipples.

So I’m channeling John Lennon for help. When his son with Yoko, Sean, was born in 1975, he quit the music business to become a stay-at-home dad. While Yoko went off to the office, John stayed home, playing with the baby and baking bread. As a 70s feminist, he redefined the role of fatherhood. The Father Knows Best days when dad came home from work to dinner on the table and solo time in the den were finally changing. John gave us permission to be hands on fathers who changed diapers and actually raised children.

The goal of this blog is to share the challenges of balancing fatherhood and feminism. In my academic work I’ve explored the connection between masculinity and crime (including hate crime). Now I have a chance to explore my own masculinity as I try to raise my daughter, with my wife, to become a strong young woman in a world that still rewards Miss America with more scholarship money than a girl who works helping house homeless mothers. I hope people will come along on my journey. I’ll share stories, thoughts and pictures. I probably won’t share all the Snapchats that I’m going to be sending Andrea. I think most of them are going to be of poopy diapers.