Thursday, with bonus Madeline Kahn

1. I have resorted to collegiate habits. I wrote out on a piece of paper a three-week calendar, from now until Wiscon, and filled in all the things I need to do between now and then. This always helps me, because I can see that the tasks are accomplishable — as long as I stay on-task.

2. I finished reading (or, re-reading,) Joanna Russ’s How to Suppress Women’s Writing. I haven’t read this since, oh, I don’t know, 1996? I internalized it at the time, incorporating it into my worldview. But re-reading it still hits me hard. I get such intense rage reading the techniques by which the cultural contributions of the half the planet — more, really, because these techniques apply to racial and ethnic minorities as well — are marginalized.

Yes. Rage like that.

3. I am reading Robert McKee’s STORY, a book on screenwriting. And it is causing me to admire the t.v. show Hellcats even more. My goodness, this show is tightly written. Every scene does at least two things. Even the pauses for 1) musical numbers or 2) cheerleading routines either advance the plot or reveal characters changes, in addition to being show numbers. Highly economical writing.

4. Today, in addition to school and housework, I must go make flyers for the Whedonistas party at Wiscon. Also go to the bank, pick my dog up from the vet, and take M to get a haircut. This is all doable, yes.

Thursday’s post needs a title

1. I finished Irrepressible yesterday. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s the biography of Jessica Mitford. Let me just say, it is decidedly odd to be reading a biography of a person who lived in history — you know, all those years before I was born — and then their bio starts talking about events I remember! Can’t they have the decency to die before 1980? (I kid, I kid!) This is a thing I’ve noticed with teaching my kids — the Regan era is history. So is the first Gulf war. So is 9/11. Idek, y’all.

But, in Mitford news, while in her 70′s, Decca Mitford became lead singer in a band that cut a few tracks professionally. Despite being no longer able to sing on pitch or carry a tune. Her friends were often embarrassed on her behalf, but her family supported her. And Decca herself? Completely irrepressible.

2. N brought back a CASE of Bundaberg Ginger Beer for me from a vendor in Madison. This is awesome. Bundaberg Australian Ginger Beer is the best ginger beer I know of, and there are no vendors of it in Minnesota.

3. J and I got an estimate for steaming the roof. It’s fairly expensive. We’re waffling now, trying to decide if we need to get it done or if we can just fight the ice dams ourselves for the next eight weeks. Home ownership kinda sucks sometimes.

4. I watched a BBC movie last night, Dr. Bell and Mr. Doyle, about Arthur Conan Doyle and his medical school mentor, Dr. Bell. Bell was an acknowledged inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. The plot was interesting — the story is set at a moment of profound misogyny, as women have been accepted into the medical school for the first time. The film wasn’t bad, with solid acting and a good script. If this is the sort of topic that interests you, I recommend it.

5. I also finished the audiobook The Rise and Fall of Alexandria, Birthplace of the Modern Mind. I did, in fact, cry in my car while driving at all the points where the library and museum were burned or sacked, or the points where incredible scholars were killed. The death of Hypatia essentially marked the end of Western, Christian scholarship for 600 freaking years. (The Muslim world continued on thinking and exploring and learning just fine, thank you very much. As did Europe’s Jews. But both peoples were frequently executed by Western Christians if they displayed any of their fine erudition in Europe. Christianity, you have a LOT to answer for. (Yet, it was the monks who saved what they could, through the Dark Ages, the bishops who tried to educate the gentry, the monks who tried, against all odds, to preserve what little knowledge they had. Every monastery sacked was tantamount to another fall of Alexandria. I find this fundamental internal conflict in the early medieval Christian church to be as frustrating as anything.))

When Hypatia was murdered — the first prominent female scholar, scientist, and philosopher in the Western world — it was not because she was a woman, but because she was not a Christian. And, moreover, because she taught the Alexandrian elite that they should examine Christian doctrine as critically as they would examine anything else. But Christianity was not a movement based on reason, it was a movement based on faith. Any reason that contradicted faith was not merely wrong, but evil. And treasonous.

I don’t say it often, but I think that faith-based cultural movements are some of the most damaging things humans have ever created. I’m not sure their contributions to progress — see the aforementioned monks-saving-books — outweigh the harm.

Women agency playlist

I could, I suppose, cut this playlist down further. But I didn’t see a reason to do so. I mean, I started with over one hundred and fifty songs in contention.

The playlist has some obvious lacks and faults. Not enough women of color. Not enough songs by women who are not from the U.S. I’m missing some major, important, icons and songs — there’s no Madonna, for instance, no Lauper, and not enough country music. Country music is awash in amazing songs about female agency, I just don’t happen to know enough about the music to pick some out.

I loosely grouped the songs into sections, sort of kind of thematically. In my head, the whole playlist is not about a specific single female character. But it is, sort of, about the nature of being one kind of woman. The sections are titled in that character’s voice. (Songs are listed in the format “song title — band name”.)

1. I’m tough, amazing, and possibly dangerous. You certainly don’t want to mess with me.

TKO — Le Tigre
Heads Will Roll — Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Consider This — Anna Nalick
I Like Playing With Fire — The Runaways
Rockstar 101 — Rihanna
One Beat — Sleater- Kinney
Paper Planes — M.I.A.
People Got a Lot of Nerve — Neko Case
UNITE! — Hamasaki Ayumi

2. And these other women, that I’m singing about here? They are also amazing, and fascinating, and I can’t stop thinking about them.

Karen By Night — Jill Sobule
Gloria — Patti Smith
Rebel Girl — Bikini Kill
Once And Never Again — The Long Blondes
Caroline — Concrete Blondes
Gloria — Laura Branigan
Maria — Blondie
Crimson and Clover — Joan Jett & the Blackhearts
All The Things She Said — t.A.T.u.

3. When I set my eye on who I want, I don’t stay quiet about it. If I want you, I tell you.

Call Me — Blondie
Connection — Elastica
See You Again — Miley Cyrus
Heard It Through the Grapevine — The Slits
Long Shot — Kelly Clarkson
Piece of My Heart — Janis Joplin
Take it Off — The Donnas
When You’re Good to Mama — Queen Latifah
I Touch Myself — The DiVinyls
Because the Night — Patti Smith

4. Sometimes, though, you don’t want me back. Or it’s more complicated than that. And that hurts. Sometimes it’s you that’s hurt me, and I can’t feel anything but anger.

Insomniatic — Aly & A.J.
Girlfriend — Avril Lavigne
Love is a Battlefield — Pat Benetar
Why Can’t I? — Liz Phair
Telephone — Lady Gaga w/ Beyonce
Criminal — Fiona Apple
Like the Way I Do — Melissa Etheridge
You Oughta Know — Alanis Morrisette

5. It’s the world, sometimes, that just sucks. That hurts. And the choices I make to get through that sucky world may be bad choices, but they are still mine.

Celebrity Skin — Hole
Just a Girl — No Doubt
Queen of Apology — The Sounds
Like O, Like H — Tegan and Sara
Pretend We’re Dead — L7
The Moneymaker — Rilo Kiley
Down by the Water — PJ Harvey

6. They are still my choices, it is still my life.

When I Grow Up — Garbage
Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) — Florence and the Machine
Control — Poe
Fighter — Christina Aguilera

7. And I am and I do what I please.

Sweet About Me — Gabriella Cilmi
Gimme Sympathy — Metric
People We Want — Kenickie
L.E.S. Artistes — Santigold
So What — Pink
Goodbye to You — The Veronicas
Barracuda — Heart
Xxxo — M.I.A.

8. Don’t make the mistake of underestimating me.

I Live for the Day — Lindsey Lohan
Piece of Me — Britney Spears
Tougher Than the Rest — Emmylou Harris
Bad Reputation — Joan Jett & the Blackhearts
Fingerprints — Katy Perry
Respect — Aretha Franklin
I’m Ready — DJ Rap
Invincible — Pat Benetar
Let the Flames Begin — Paramore
Wild — Poe
Because I’m Awesome — The Dollyrots

9. Because when all of this is said and done, I am still tough, amazing, and possibly dangerous. if that’s what you’re up for, come along.

I Walk the Earth — Voice of the Beehive
Evolution — Hamasaki Ayumi
Dance This Mess Around — The B-52’s
I Will Survive — Gloria Gaynor
Pull Shapes — The Pipettes
We Got the Beat — The Go-Go’s

Playlist of agency

So I was talking on Twitter yesterday about making a playlist of music featuring or about kick-ass women. I’ve figured out what I meant, more or less, and am working on refining the list even as I type this. Here, then, are my thoughts so far.

What the heck do I mean by kick-ass women music playlist? It’s a good question. First of all, do I mean the female artists or the narrative characters in the song? Does the music have to be performed by women? Written by women? Can male artists be involved? These basic questions led me to figure out that I wanted music about the female narrative character in the songs. This meant I needed a female vocalist — that’s how I hear the narrator, in the singer’s voice.

Caroline pointed out that “kick-ass” could mean angry. That wasn’t exactly what I meant, though anger was certainly welcome. I wanted, I realized, songs about female agency. Songs in which, regardless of what the MacGuffin of the song was, women sang about their lives and their selfhood. Songs that featured “I” in the lyrics.

This leads to further questions, though, and those are the questions I am currently pondering. For instance, are songs about addiction songs about female agency? The Sounds’ “Queen of Apology” is one of my favorite songs ever, yet it is a laud to the narrator’s helplessness. Caroline again pointed out that there is a long tradition in blues of reasserting one’s power over negative circumstances through the vehicle of singing about said circumstances. That the standing on stage or in a recording booth and singing “now you’ve got me on my knees / this will be the death of me” is an act of agency. I think I agree.

What about, then, songs treating relationships as addictions? “#1 Crush” by Garbage is a good example of this.

I would die for you
I would kill for you
I will steal for you
I’d do time for you
I would wait for you
I’d make room for you
I’d sail ships for you
To be close to you
To be a part of you
‘Cause I believe in you
I believe in you
I would die for you.

Where’s the agency in that? Well, I rather think it’s there. The freedom to control one’s self and life includes the freedom to make poor choices, to hold to damaging beliefs. If the narrator of that song wants to devote her life and breath to the object of the song, that’s her call. (And that’s leaving aside what part of all of Garbage’s ouvre is ironic or sarcastic. I wouldn’t swear to the sincerity of any of Shirley Manson’s songs, except “The trick is to keep breathing.”) Besides — whoever this narrator is, I expect that the crush will fade as all crushes do, and she’ll move on in time.

Which leads to breakup songs. These are in the list, I think. But I am making a personal aesthetic choice against songs that express sadness and grief in, well, sad terms. I favor songs that express those emotions through anger, sarcasm, and humor.

I’m trying to include songs that have women thinking about or singing about other women. So I’ve got Blondie’s “Maria,” (which I will always assert is West Side Story fanfic,) Jill Sobule’s “Karen by Night,” Laura Branigan’s “Gloria,” and Patti Smith’s “Gloria.” (And if anyone can tell me what the Branigan song is about, please do. Explanations via fanfic are always welcome.) I sort of think of these as songs that pass the Bechdel test, songs that treat all the women as actors in their own right.

And then there are all the other songs, including the vast number whose meaning I can’t fathom — mostly because I don’t understand the lyrics and haven’t looked them up. But they are united by a tempo, a speed of the beat. They are united by the women’s voices singing them. And they are united by their expression of the lives of women. “Gigantic” by The Pixies. “Glass Ceiling” by Metric. “Respect” by Aretha Franklin. “Paper Planes” by M.I.A.. “Punka” by Kenickie. It goes on. At this moment the list has 133 songs in it. When I get this down to a manageable number, I’ll post the final result.

Girls to the Front

I got, started, and finished Sara Marcus’s Girls to the Front yesterday. Stayed up too late to do it. But … but I’ve never been standing that close to the history I read, before. Unless-and-until someone writes the history of my high school. Which is going to happen one of these days.

I mean, I remember sharing pizza with one of the women in this book. I went to GLBT parties which she also attended. I knew, though was not exactly friends with, some of the Black-and-Greens that hung out at the Emma Center, I picked up Minneapolis-St. Paul Riot Grrrl zines and flyers in the student union at Macalester. It is a decidedly odd feeling to think that the normal background of my life was art of someone else’s cultural movement. Part of a revolution.

I’ll simply quote the About the Book from the website, here:

Riot Grrrl roared into the spotlight in 1991: an uncompromising movement of pissed-off girls with no patience for sexism and no intention of keeping quiet. Young women everywhere were realizing that the equality they’d been promised was still elusive, and a newly resurgent right wing was turning feminism into the ultimate dirty word. In response, thousands of riot grrrls published zines, founded local groups, and organized national conventions, while fiercely prophetic punk bands such as Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, Huggy Bear, and Bikini Kill helped spread the word across the US and to Canada, Europe, and beyond.

Girls to the Front, the first-ever history of Riot Grrrl, is a lyrical, punk-infused narrative about a group of extraordinary young women coming of age angrily, collectively, and publicly. A dynamic chronicle not just of a movement but of an era, this is the story of a time when America thought young people were apathetic and feminism was dead, but a generation of noisy girls rose up to prove everybody wrong.

Yeah. That.

I remember sitting in the baseball field at Macalester on a beautiful spring day, watching Babes in Toyland play in front of the science building. It was just normal, you know? Not a part of anyone’s political agenda. This would have had to be in May of 1992, the year before Babes played Lollapalooza. I remember all the women, including some of the extremely attractive members of the women’s rugby team, getting up and pushing to the front near the stage and dancing their asses off to “He’s My Thing.” I sat with my friends on the hillside, contemplating our inside jokes, discussing the prospect of getting more beer from the truck even though we were underage (and was that guy over there really holding), and wondering to myself why that one really cute rugby player was dancing to this song even though Everyone Knew she was a lesbian.

Was I thinking about Riot Grrrls? Was I thinking about changing the world? Was I thinking about politics, or women’s rights, or feminism, or the upcoming elections? Nope. Not really.

Except, in another sense, I thought about those things all the time. Operation Rescue was going to come to Saint Paul that summer. I still own the poster I found inside one of the city’s free weekly newspapers. It had a photo of a hand holding a Molitov cocktail, in front of the spire of a church. The text read, “Operation Rescue come to our town We’ll lock you in a church and burn the fucker down”. There was a sense of low-grade warfare everywhere I spent my time that year. War of women against the bastards who would rather see us dead than give us power over our own bodies. War of queers against the fuckers who would rather see us dead than — than, well, any other option. Everyone knew someone who knew someone who had AIDS. Everyone knew someone who had had an abortion or been raped. The sense of a tangible, physical, constant threat was in everything.

I knew, in the way one knows things that may or may not be true, that this election would determine the fate of my physical safety in the world. That the elections this coming fall would decide whether I was going to be even less safe walking down the street. Whether I would be safe talking to my doctor. Whether I would take my life in my hands going to the gay bars I was then too young to go to but knew I needed to see.

Fear turns to rage, you know. Not every time, but a lot of the time.

I remember low-grade anger being … normal. Just a constant, seething, angry awareness that the world was essentially hostile. Feminist rage was not only normal, it was sane. It was the best response to a completely fucked-up situation. Yet I also remember being convinced that change was possible. That the world could be remade if one fought hard enough. I still believe that, more or less. That change is possible. That taking action is useful. That community brings strength.

The thing is, I was never a Riot Grrrl. I was never even particularly punk, or particularly grunge, or particularly anything. (Except geek. I have always been geek.) I never had either the strength of conviction or the insecure need to belong that drove some people into full membership in the big movements of the time. But reading Girls to the Front makes me realize how much I was affected by those things. Riot Grrrls were just an everyday part of my college experience. I saw their posters and flyers in the student union, saw them dancing at shows at First Ave, shared a pizza with one of them while discussing Jodi Foster with a big group of friends. I was never in Queer Nation, either, or ACT-UP. But these groups, collectively, formed a great deal of my political thinking at the time. That’s what feminism was, that’s what queer was — a refusal to be grateful to a hostile majority for every time they did not choose to harm me. An insistence on speaking up, living openly, and standing under the banner of the people who would take me in.

It’s twenty years later, now. And … And the more things change, the more they stay the same. I don’t have the current rates of domestic abuse, rape, child molestation by family members, or deaths from botched self-inflicted abortions sitting in front of me. And, coward that I am, I’m not going to go look them up. All those things still exist. Yet …. Yet things do change. In the industry I love, with all my heart, in spite of all its flaws — the comics industry — there are more women working on prominent titles, in bigger and better-paying positions, than there were in 1990. There are about four times as many women working in my building as there were ten years ago. Women find themselves more able to gain access to traditionally male things, and they find that sometimes they can speak up about the bullshit they find there — and then make change occur.

So, thank you, Sara Marcus. Thank you, Kathleen Hanna. Thank you, Susan Davies. Thank you, Kat Bjelland. Thank you to the Riot Grrrls of East Coast and West, the Riot Grrrls of Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

Girls to the fucking front, indeed.