Musings, Pt. 1

When I wrote my play, I totally had Plimco in mind for the lead.  I don’t think that makes her my muse, though.

Do women have muses?

According to Wikipedia, Robert Graves says:

No Muse-poet grows conscious of the Muse except by experience of a woman in whom the Goddess is to some degree resident; just as no Apollonian poet can perform his proper function unless he lives under a monarchy or a quasi-monarchy. A Muse-poet falls in love, absolutely, and his true love is for him the embodiment of the Muse…

But the real, perpetually obsessed Muse-poet distinguishes between the Goddess as manifest in the supreme power, glory, wisdom and love of woman, and the individual woman whom the Goddess may make her instrument…

The Goddess abides; and perhaps he will again have knowledge of her through his experience of another woman…

How is there room for a woman writer in that definition?  Do I fall in love with a woman who is the instrument of the Goddess?  Do I look for a man who manifests a God?  And what if someone volunteers for it?

Then what?

Hee, I am a Dork

My parents arrive tomorrow and I cannot wait to take them for a tiny jaunt in my car.  Every time I’ve gotten in my car today, I’ve thought, “tomorrow, I will show this to my mom and dad.  I bet my dad makes my mom sit in the back.  I bet my mom asks me to drive her to the store so that she gets a chance to sit in the front seat, too.”

And then I think that I cannot wait to drive my car to Michigan, except that I am still not sure what we’re going to do with Mrs. W. and I want desperately to bring her with us.

It’s Weird, but It Makes Me Think

I’ll admit, I’ve been reading over at Sadly, No!the enormously long thread that was supposed to be about Chris Clarke, but then devolved into how much Amanda Marcotte sucks, by way of her evil influence on me, until it then re-evolved into a somewhat interesting discussion about how much feminists suck and how divisive identity politics are.

I just want to talk about this a little bit because this is really the first time this has happened to me–that I’ve been lumped into a group with people I admire and talked about as if we all have the same agenda (as dictated to us by Marcotte).

I’m kind of a terrible blog commenter.  If there’s one thing I’ve realized having a blog, it’s that this part–which I think I do well–and the commenting part (especially not on one’s own blog) are two different skills entirely.

Some people do both well, post and comment.  Most of the rest of us, though, have a talent for one or the other, I think, and I know where my talents lie.  Every time I comment on someone else’s blog, I feel like a complete idiot.  So, I rarely do it.

Which means, frankly, that, though I read Pandagon and other blogs, I don’t feel like a part of their community.  I don’t feel like I have anything really invested in them and I don’t feel like they have anything invested in me.

So, it’s weird for me to see myself talked about as if we are some kind of monolithic feminist blogosphere.

I do admire the work of the folks I’ve been lumped in with and I read them and feel like they give me a lot to think about and mull over, but it’s weird to be lumped in with them, as if we are all on a team and making team-like decisions.

And it’s weird for me to watch people making assumptions about me and my politics and what kind of person I am based on their reading of one post I wrote.

Anyway, so I have been reading this whole thread over at Sadly, No!, about identity politics, with the tangent about how much I suck, and then back on track to the problems with identity politics.

I want to think about this some more, but I remain convinced that both sides are right and that both sides are wrong.

I think it’s true that it’s often a bullshit move when someone says, “hey, the way you’re acting right there is racist, sexist, whatever” and the person accused is all like “Hey, not me.  I didn’t intent to be racist, sexist, whatever, therefore it is impossible for me to have acted in such a way.  If you perceive that I have acted in such a way, you must be wrong.”

But, as I’ve said before, and as we’ve talked about in many iterations here–feminism isn’t a moral position and people who are feminists (just as people who do race or whatever) aren’t more moral than people who aren’t (at least, not by virtue of them being feminist) and we definitely aren’t more knowledgeable (by virtue of our feminism) than others.

So, it’s entirely possible that someone could say “What you’re doing is sexist” and the person doing it could say, “No it’s not,” and the first person could say “Yes, it is” and be wrong.

In my perfect world, we would take all claims of bias seriously, but there would also be room for someone to say, “Hey, I’m sorry.  I’m just not doing what you think I’m doing for the reasons you think I’m doing it.  And, I’m doing the best I can here and, if it’s not good enough for you, again, sorry, but that’s all you’re going to get from me.”

Oh, fuck, I am late.

But I do want to think some more about this.

And whether it can be brought back around to pleasure that doesn’t hurt myself or others (can we call that ethical pleasure?).

Okay, more later.