Archive for April, 2007
women & sexuality
Apr 20th
I was recently listening to a Scientific American podcast (you did realize I’m totally geeky, right???) and they mentioned a blog post of theirs that refers to a NYTimes article about men and women’s sexual orientation.
While I couldn’t read the NYTimes article (because I don’t have an account and I refuse to get one more account to a place that I may only visit from time to time), I did read the excerpts on SciAm’s page and on The Stranger’s slog. What I come away from these articles thinking about is that they aren’t realizing how much play pop culture would have on this supposed sexual orientation. For instance, SciAm quotes:
Presumably the masculinization of the brain shapes some neural circuit that makes women desirable. If so, this circuitry is wired differently in gay men. In experiments in which subjects are shown photographs of desirable men or women, straight men are aroused by women, gay men by men.
Such experiments do not show the same clear divide with women. Whether women describe themselves as straight or lesbian, “Their sexual arousal seems to be relatively indiscriminate – they get aroused by both male and female images,” Dr. Bailey said. “I’m not even sure females have a sexual orientation. But they have sexual preferences. Women are very picky, and most choose to have sex with men.”
This is my theory: We are bombarded with images of women and sexuality each and every day of our lives, from the moment we are born until the day we die. We see women in all modes of dress in ad compaigns, television shows, movies, and in life. We do not see men in the same way.
I think that it is also the norm for “red-blooded” American men to say that they don’t find other men attractive.
It’s not the same with women. We have been shown women all of our lives. “Isn’t she lovely? Isn’t she sexy? Isn’t she stunning?” We have had women’s bodies literally shoved down our throats until we naturally agree that women are sexy and beautiful.
Would that not then translate into what we find sexually appealing? When we are told that a certain shape and form is sexy and desirable all of our lives, I can imagine that we’d begin to find them thus even if that wasn’t our “bent.”
I hear men saying that all women are bisexual. I disagree. I just think that we are able to say that we find women desirable because we are open to finding them desirable — even if we would never want to have sex with them.
how are you doing?
Apr 18th
americanlife in poetry: column 103
by ted kooser, u.s. poet laureate, 2004-2006
One of the ways a poet makes art from his or her experience is through the use of unique, specific and particular detail. This poem by Rick Snyder thrives on such details. It’s not just baseball caps, it’s Tasmanian Devil caps; it’s not just music on the intercom, it’s James Taylor. And Snyder’s poem also caught my interest with the humor of its flat, sardonic tone.
How Are You Doing?
As much as you deserve it,
I wouldn’t wish this
Sunday night on you–
not the Osco at closing,
not its two tired women
and shaky security guard,
not its bin of flip-flops
and Tasmanian Devil
baseball caps,
not its freshly mopped floors
and fluorescent lights,
not its endless James Taylor
song on the intercom,
and not its last pint of
chocolate mint ice cream,
which I carried
down Milwaukee Ave.
past a man in an unbuttoned
baseball shirt, who stepped
out of a shadow to whisper,
How are you doing?
Reprinted from “Barrow Street,” Winter, 2005, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2005 by Rick Snyder. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
in memoriam
Apr 17th
I didn’t know about the shootings until quite late yesterday. I get to work at 6:30 in the morning and from that time on, I’m listening to podcasts, downloaded audiobooks, or music. I don’t get radio reception in my office and I rarely listened to streamed radio reports — typically they are about the war and that has worn me out.
I was in a meeting and one of my colleagues was showing how to use a tool on our tablet pc’s (we were doing a training with a faculty member). He pulled up CNN and cut the photo out of the page and pasted it on a document (it’s a cool little tool). I watched him do it, not paying attention to the photo he cut out. Heck, the faculty member had brought in her 5-month old baby and I was too busy loving on him.
As we sat there, I looked at the photo. It didn’t dawn on me until thirty minutes later that this was something real. “Did this happen today?” I asked. “This morning,” was the reply.
Oh.
I just stared at the numbers. Thirty-three dead in a university shooting.
I was sitting in a university office. I’m a university student and employee. My first choice for my doctoral program is a university in North Carolina. It was all getting too close to home.
It’s easy to distance these things when they don’t have any affiliation to us. High school shootings are tragic but I don’t have a connection to them. I’m not a high school student nor am I a parent of one. I didn’t know anyone who worked in the World Trade Center. I don’t even know many people in NYC. I didn’t know anyone in the airline flights, either, and they weren’t originating or flying to cities where I knew many people. I have two cousins in the armed services but they aren’t near Iraq.
So I distance myself. I do it because if I didn’t, my heart would hurt constantly and I would be overwhelmed by the tragedies that surround us each and every day.
The Virginia Tech shootings were closer to home though. The shooter was an English student. I am often that student in a classroom. Some of my favorite people are professors who have been mentors and friends. Some of my best friends are colleagues who are all over campus as well. This one was close to home even though it was across the country.
It’s so close to the end of the semester and I started wondering if there are people bordering on the edge right now. I know I feel that way at times. It’s overwhelming. Multiple papers that are the culmination of my graduate career and the balance of things hanging on those papers drives me forward to complete everything. But it is so much. It would be easy to be distraught over all of this (and, as one colleague said, post-modernism can certainly push you over the edge). We pour our lives into it. My schooling is one of the most important parts of my life — the only thing more important to me is my family and Dakota (who is family). That’s it.
My heart goes out to those who were touched intimately by this tragedy. I hope, for their sakes, they can make some sense out of it and be able to survive the after effects.
morel mushrooms
Apr 9th
american life in poetry: column 102
by ted kooser, u.s. poet laureate, 2004-2006
Those of us who have hunted morel mushrooms in the early spring have hunted indeed! The morel is among nature’s most elusive species. Here Jane Whitledge of Minnesota captures the morel’s mysterious ways.
Morel Mushrooms
Softly they come
thumbing up from
firm groundprotruding unharmed.
Easily crumbled
and yethow they shouldered
the leaf and mold
aside, risingunperturbed,
breathing obscurely,
still as stone.By the slumping log,
by the dappled aspen,
they grow alone.A dumb eloquence
seems their trade.
Like hooded monksin a sacred wood
they say:
Tomorrow we are gone.
Reprinted from “Wilderness Magazine,” Spring, 1993, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 1993 by Jane Whitledge. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
wax lips
Apr 8th
american life in poetry: column 101
by ted kooser, u.s. poet laureate, 2004-2006
Those big cherry flavored wax lips that my friends and I used to buy when I was a boy, well, how could I resist this poem by Cynthia Rylant of Oregon?
Wax Lips
Todd’s Hardware was dust and a monkey–
a real one, on the second floor–
and Mrs. Todd there behind the glass cases.
We stepped over buckets of nails and lawnmowers
to get to the candy counter in the back,
and pointed at the red wax lips,
and Mary Janes,
and straws full of purple sugar.
Said goodbye to Mrs. Todd, she white-faced and silent,
and walked the streets of Beaver,
our teeth sunk hard in the wax,
and big red lips worth kissing.
“Wax Lips” by Cynthia Rylant from WAITING TO WALTZ. Copyright (c) 2001 by Cynthia Rylant. Reprinted with permission of the author, whose most recent book of poetry is “Ludie’s Life,” Harcourt, 2006. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
