A Day of Thanksgiving: Challenging Colonialist Myth

Thanksgiving in the United States is wrapped in colonialist/nationalist myth that most of us learn from pre-school/day care and on.  I don't think most of us are ever taught the realities of "Thanksgiving;" why the holiday exists, what cultural narratives it perpetuates, what present realities it obscures.  In an annual effort to challenge the fucked up colonial underpinnings of this holiday, I give you the debunking of myths most of us probably learned growing up.


Myth #1: “The First Thanksgiving” occurred in 1621.

Fact: No one knows when the “first” thanksgiving occurred. People have been giving thanks for as long as people have existed. Indigenous nations all over the world have celebrations of the harvest that come from very old traditions; for Native peoples, thanksgiving comes not once a year, but every day, for all the gifts of life. To refer to the harvest feast of 1621 as “The First Thanksgiving” disappears Indian peoples in the eyes of non-Native children.

Myth #2: The people who came across the ocean on the Mayflower were called Pilgrims.

Fact: The Plimoth settlers did not refer to themselves as “Pilgrims.” Pilgrims are people who travel for religious reasons, such as Muslims who make a pilgrimage to Mecca. Most of those who arrived here from England were religious dissidents who had broken away from the Church of England. They called themselves “Saints”; others called them “Separatists.” Some of the settlers were “Puritans,” dissidents but not separatists who wanted to “purify” the Church. It wasn’t until around the time of the American Revolution that the name “Pilgrims” came to be associated with the Plimoth settlers, and the “Pilgrims” became the symbol of American morality and Christian faith, fortitude, and family.

Myth #3: The colonists came seeking freedom of religion in a new land.

Fact: The colonists were not just innocent refugees from religious persecution. By 1620, hundreds of Native people had already been to England and back, most as captives; so the Plimoth colonists knew full well that the land they were settling on was inhabited. Nevertheless, their belief system taught them that any land that was “unimproved” was “wild” and theirs for the taking; that the people who lived there were roving heathens with no right to the land. Both the Separatists and Puritans were rigid fundamentalists who came here fully intending to take the land away from its Native inhabitants and establish a new nation, their “Holy Kingdom.” The Plimoth colonists were never concerned with “freedom of religion” for anyone but themselves.

Myth #4: When the “Pilgrims” landed, they first stepped foot on “Plymouth Rock.”

Fact: When the colonists landed, they sought out a sandy inlet in which to beach the little shallop that carried them from the Mayflower to the mainland. This shallop would have been smashed to smithereens had they docked at a rock, especially a Rock. Although the Plimoth settlers built their homes just up the hill from the Rock, William Bradford in Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, does not even mention the Rock; writing only that they “unshipped our shallop and drew her on land.” The actual “rock” is a slab of Dedham granodiorite placed there by a receding glacier some 20,000 years ago. It was first referred to in a town surveying record in 1715, almost 100 years after the landing. Since then, the Rock has been moved, cracked in two, pasted together, carved up, chipped apart by tourists, cracked again, and now rests as a memorial to something that never happened.

It’s quite possible that the myth about the “Pilgrims” landing on a “Rock” originated as a reference to the New Testament of the Christian bible, in which Jesus says to Peter, “And I say also unto thee, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church and the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18) The appeal to these scriptures gives credence to the sanctity of colonization and the divine destiny of the dominant culture. Although the colonists were not dominant then, they behaved as though they were.

Myth #5: The Pilgrims found corn.

Fact: Just a few days after landing, a party of about 16 settlers led by Captain Myles Standish followed a Nauset trail and came upon an iron kettle and a cache of Indian corn buried in the sand. They made off with the corn and returned a few days later with reinforcements. This larger group “found” a larger store of corn, about ten bushels, and took it. They also “found” several graves, and, according to Mourt’s Relation, “brought sundry of the prettiest things away” from a child’s grave and then covered up the corpse. They also “found” two Indian dwellings and “some of the best things we took away with us.”  There is no record that restitution was ever made for the stolen corn, and the Wampanoag did not soon forget the colonists’ ransacking of Indian graves.

Myth #6: Samoset appeared out of nowhere, and along with Squanto became friends with the Pilgrims. Squanto helped the Pilgrims survive and joined them at “The First Thanksgiving.”

Fact: Samoset, an eastern Abenaki chief, was the first to contact the Plimoth colonists. He was investigating the settlement to gather information and report to Massasoit, the head sachem in the Wampanoag territory. In his hand, Samoset carried two arrows: one blunt and one pointed. The question to the settlers was: are you friend or foe? Samoset brought Tisquantum (Squanto), one of the few survivors of the original Wampanoag village of Pawtuxet, to meet the English and keep an eye on them. Tisquantum had been taken captive by English captains several years earlier, and both he and Samoset spoke English. Tisquantum agreed to live among the colonists and serve as a translator. Massasoit also sent Hobbamock and his family to live near the colony to keep an eye on the settlement and also to watch Tisquantum, whom Massasoit did not trust. The Wampanoag oral tradition says that Massasoit ordered Tisquantum killed after he tried to stir up the English against the Wampanoag. Massasoit himself lost face after his years of dealing with the English only led to warfare and land grabs. Tisquantum is viewed by Wampanoag people as a traitor, for his scheming against other Native people for his own gain. Massasoit is viewed as a wise and generous leader whose affection for the English may have led him to be too tolerant of their ways.

Myth #7: The Pilgrims invited the Indians to celebrate the First Thanksgiving.

Fact: According to oral accounts from the Wampanoag people, when the Native people nearby first heard the gunshots of the hunting colonists, they thought that the colonists were preparing for war and that Massasoit needed to be informed. When Massasoit showed up with 90 men and no women or children, it can be assumed that he was being cautious. When he saw there was a party going on, his men then went out and brought back five deer and lots of turkeys.

In addition, both the Wampanoag and the English settlers were long familiar with harvest celebrations. Long before the Europeans set foot on these shores, Native peoples gave thanks every day for all the gifts of life, and held thanksgiving celebrations and giveaways at certain times of the year. The Europeans also had days of thanksgiving, marked by religious services. So the coming together of two peoples to share food and company was not entirely a foreign thing for either. But the visit that by all accounts lasted three days was most likely one of a series of political meetings to discuss and secure a military alliance. Neither side totally trusted the other: The Europeans considered the Wampanoag soulless heathens and instruments of the devil, and the Wampanoag had seen the Europeans steal their seed corn and rob their graves. In any event, neither the Wampanoag nor the Europeans referred to this feast/meeting as “Thanksgiving.” 

Myth #8: The Pilgrims provided the food for their Indian friends.

Fact: It is known that when Massasoit showed up with 90 men and saw there was a party going on, they then went out and brought back five deer and lots of turkeys. Though the details of this event have become clouded in secular mythology, judging by the inability of the settlers to provide for themselves at this time and Edward Winslow’s letter of 1622, it is most likely that Massasoit and his people provided most of the food for this “historic” meal.

Myth #9: The Pilgrims and Indians feasted on turkey, potatoes, berries, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and popcorn.

Fact: Both written and oral evidence show that what was actually consumed at the harvest festival in 1621 included venison (since Massasoit and his people brought five deer), wild fowl, and quite possibly nasaump—dried corn pounded and boiled into a thick porridge, and pompion—cooked, mashed pumpkin. Among the other food that would have been available, fresh fruits such as plums, grapes, berries and melons would have been out of season. It would have been too cold to dig for clams or fish for eels or small fish. There were no boats to fish for lobsters in rough water that was about 60 fathoms deep. There was not enough of the barley crop to make a batch of beer, nor was there a wheat crop. Potatoes and sweet potatoes didn’t get from the south up to New England until the 18th century, nor did sweet corn. Cranberries would have been too tart to eat without sugar to sweeten them, and that’s probably why they wouldn’t have had pumpkin pie, either. Since the corn of the time could not be successfully popped, there was no popcorn.

Myth #10: The Pilgrims and Indians became great friends.

Fact: A mere generation later, the balance of power had shifted so enormously and the theft of land by the European settlers had become so egregious that the Wampanoag were forced into battle. In 1637, English soldiers massacred some 700 Pequot men, women and children at Mystic Fort, burning many of them alive in their homes and shooting those who fled. The colony of Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay Colony observed a day of thanksgiving commemorating the massacre. By 1675, there were some 50,000 colonists in the place they had named “New England.” That year, Metacom, a son of Massasoit, one of the first whose generosity had saved the lives of the starving settlers, led a rebellion against them. By the end of the conflict known as “King Philip’s War,” most of the Indian peoples of the Northeast region had been either completely wiped out, sold into slavery, or had fled for safety into Canada. Shortly after Metacom’s death, Plimoth Colony declared a day of thanksgiving for the English victory over the Indians.

Myth #11: Thanksgiving is a happy time.

Fact: For many Indian people, “Thanksgiving” is a time of mourning, of remembering how a gift of generosity was rewarded by theft of land and seed corn, extermination of many from disease and gun, and near total destruction of many more from forced assimilation. As currently celebrated in this country, “Thanksgiving” is a bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for friendship.

Source

On Columbus Day, Indigenous Activists Urge Celebration of Native Culture & Teaching of the Americas’ Genocide

From Democracy Now:



Let's celebrate a history worth celebrating: resistance.

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day!

"Developed" land is not better land

Indians: Vallejo's plans for park desecration

"Plans by [the city of] Vallejo to turn a scraggly stretch of waterfront on the Carquinez Strait into a park with paved parking, trails and restrooms are infuriating local Ohlone Indians who say the 15-acre site is sacred and should be left alone.

The property is Glen Cove Park, a spot that was the site of a 3,500-year-old Ohlone village and shell mound where thousands of people were buried.

The settlement is one of the oldest Ohlone sites in the Bay Area and among the few that has eluded development. But for decades, Vallejo has wanted to convert the wildland to a park with a portion of the Bay Trail, picnic tables and a pastoral array of native plants.

'What we want to do is return it to what it was 100 years ago,' said Steve Pressley, maintenance and development manager for the Greater Vallejo Recreation District. 'As an agency, we have a responsibility to the public as a whole, and we need to consider all the components, not just the needs of Native Americans.'"

Of course, as it noted further along in the article, people already use this site as a park and are quite happy with it. So "responsibility to the public as a whole" is a shallow defense at best. Although, I plan to quote that bit in my letter to them as a reason why they should care what I think of their plans.

I'm not even going to get started on how the way the article is written is clearly meant to create sympathy for the city.

In addition, another story will probably be popping up soon putting Vallejo on the radar of bloggers/social justice minded news readers like you and me (hopefully more on that soon), so I want to make sure to spread the word on this. I can just see them using the noise on the other story to do some shady shit like this while we're distracted.

Please feel free to tell the Greater Vallejo Recreation District and tell them just what you think about paving over sacred Indian locations:

Shane McAffee, General Manager
smcaffee@gvrd.org
Telephone: 707-648-4603

Steve Pressley, Maintenance & Development Manager
spressley@gvrd.org
Telephone: 707-648-4602

Board of Directors
BoardofDirectors@gvrd.org

In their local community workshops [pdf] the GVRD asked participants to rank a selection of priorities, one being "Protect Native American sacred land." I think that should be number one. How about you?

Helping is a natural behavior

Likewise, the proponents of today’s digital libertarianism exploit any evidence they can find of evolutionary principles that reflect the fundamental competitiveness of human beings and other life forms, while ignoring the much more rigorously gathered evidence of cooperation as a primary human social skill. The late archeologist Glynn Isaac, for one, demonstrated how food sharing, labor distribution, social networking and other collaborative activities are what gave our evolutionary forefathers the ability to survive. Harvard biologist Ian Gilby’s research on hunting among bats and chimps demonstrates advanced forms of cooperation, collective action, and sharing of meat disproportional to the risks taken to kill it.

Edge: ECONOMICS IS NOT NATURAL SCIENCE By Douglas Rushkoff (via champagnecandy)

Does one person make a difference?

So I recently read about the newest Miss England at Bitch Blogs and the writer, Mandy Van Deven, asked if the inclusion of a black woman who is openly athletic and ambitious as the number one beauty queen in her country could be seen as feminism at work. My first reaction was a very tentative, "maybe?"

The problem is, women can be included in something without that something (whether it be politics or community leadership or motherhood or beauty pageants) necessarily taking on anything (values, practices, etc.) remotely feminist (much less womanist). We see this all the time, don't we? Women's options for participation in life have been expanded, but only if we play by the rules.

Looking at Rachel Christie's pictures and reading about her, it reminded me of a case I had heard of before: Vanessa Williams.

And the question that came to my mind was: does the inclusion of these Black women really challenge whiteness? Or is it simply more of the aforementioned "play by the rules and we'll let you have this" mentality?

Lo and behold, a mere week later I was assigned a reading for this women's political history class precisely about the Vanessa Williams case. Reading through Sarah Banet-Weiser's essay, I got my answer: a resounding "No".

Pageants have a set of rules they play by, it's called "idealized white womanhood" and while women of color can be included now, it's only by showing white America that "we're just like you".

Banet-Weiser talked about the way specifically Black women (though I would argue this applies to all women of color because they are so severely underrepresented in pageant winners or even contestants) must "pass" while also "eroticizing their difference". In other words, they have to make us (the audience, the, white, audience) want them, while also feeling they could be one of "us". They have to fit a mold and prove to us that they can represent the same "values" as their white pageant sisters.

This played out in a huge way with Vanessa Williams' fall from grace because she broke the rules of proper "American" (read: white) womanhood. She was, in her Penthouse pictures, too sexual and sexually deviant across boundaries of both "appropriate" race and sexuality.

Most importantly, there have been no institutional changes to the pageant since Vanessa Williams became the first Black woman to win the Miss America title. More Black women (and one Asian American woman) have followed in those footsteps, but there is still a very strict formula one must follow to be a beauty queen. Look at the winners before and since, there is definitely a "look" that is deemed "correct". And the behavioral components Banet-Weiser discusses certainly seem to still be strongly in place.

So to me, is Rachel Christie's victory "feminism at work"?

No. Because I have no reason to believe her win will challenge the rules of the pageant, and those rules are markedly anti-womanist/feminist.

Certainly her win is an achievement for a talented and ambitious young Black woman in the UK, and perhaps that's a good thing in of itself (though I had to put that "perhaps" in because I'm unsure if indoctrinating women of color into the cult of white womanhood is really a good thing for anyone). But that doesn't make it feminist.

Happy 4th!

@thedrun: Happy 4th! Let's all remember that this country was founded by secular leftist radicals who wanted to be free from oppression!

@bintalshamsa: The founders of our country were actually vicious colonizers who simply wanted to be on top.

-Twitter

We were founded on a very basic double standard. This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free. Am I right? A group of slave owners who wanted to be free. So they killed a lot of white English people in order to continue owning their black African people, so they could wipe out the rest of the red Indian people and move west and steal the rest of the land from the brown Mexican people, giving them a place to take off and drop their nuclear weapons on the yellow Japanese people.

- George Carlin
via stuff white people do

Is it weird that I hold these perspectives in my head as all pieces of truth at the same time?

Milk

You know I haven't even seen the damn movie yet, but it's getting talked about a lot on campus and in the blogosphere, and after writing a rather large comment at Renee's place, I knew I should post here as well.

So Sean Penn won for Milk and I'm sure he was very good. (I was happier to hear of Heath Ledger's win, to be honest) And the acceptance speeches of him and writer Dustin Black are getting circulated.

Well, we talked about this in my Variations in Human Sexuality class today. My professor is a gay man who was active in the community in those days and introduced himself to us as "sex radical" on the first day of class. He gave us a quote from Harvey Milk and talked about how he didn't understand how either of these guys could tie Milk to the efforts of Prop 8.

He also told us about a rally he went to, in November, remembering 25 years since Harvey had been shot, and the first woman Supervisor spoke at it. Carol Ruth Silver got elected in the same elections as Milk and worked with him. She was also on Dan White's kill list, but was out at a meeting when he came to the offices. That day at the rally she spoke about Harvey and asked the crowd what they thought he would be working on now.

"Prop 8!!!!" many people yelled out.

No, she said, he'd be working to end the drug war. The LGBT people caught up in that horrendous national policy would be what concerned him now. Prop 8, he probably wouldn't have cared about much, and the reason why is in the quote my teacher gave us:

"As homosexuals, we can't depend on the heterosexual model. We grow up with the heterosexual model, but we don't have to and we should not follow it. We should be developing our own lifestyle. We must take the rights associated with marriage and give them to everyone. There's no reason you can't love more than one person at a time."
(1978) The Weekly Standard

My teacher went on to talk about, can you imagine if the benefits you get from marriage, you could give them to whoever you wanted? What if your sister is really the one who needs medical insurance? What if grandparents could have rights to their grandchildren to provide this stuff for them? What if everyone got these tax breaks? What if we weren't so bound by this strict nuclear heterosexual family model? He said that was the sort of change that Harvey Milk was interested in, not in replicating dominant culture norms, but figuring out better ways.

There are also some problems I have with what they chose to do with Milk, itself. Harvey was not THE leader against the Briggs Initiative. He was one of many, but the people he got to run that campaign were Bill Krause and Gwen Craig (a black lesbian). Somehow, they didn't make it in the movie (or onto Wikipedia, I had to put them in), though I hear there is a shot where a black woman who is supposed to be Craig is literally in the background of a crowd. The only reason I even know this is because I happen to go to an awesome university where another teacher of mine was one of the organizers behind a panel in San Francisco on the concerns about Milk called "Skim Milk".

I hate the way gay history gets white washed, in more ways than one. Symbols are made of people, and they are reinterpreted through our own cultural lens (hello media) and then given whatever meaning we want them to have. It makes it difficult to love these things (movies especially) as much as I want to.

Thanksgiving and the National Day of Mourning

Thanksgiving is a complicated holiday for me. When my parents got divorce we split up the holidays. Dad got Thanksgiving because we'd usually celebrated it with his family, Mom got Christmas so we could keep waking up on xmas morning in our beds and going out to find our stockings, etc. Keep the routine as normal as possible. Plus dad's side of the family went a little more nuts for food. We had this in common. A holiday celebrating food and being thankful for the ability to do so was always a big thing for me.

The national mythology never really resonated with me. We all knew the pilgrim line was mostly bullshit, so my family appropriated the holiday and made it our own. But as my political consciousness raises, as I learn more about this history of this country, I feel the need to bring into the forefront of my mind the stuff we knew was bullshit and to be conscious of the truth behind it. When the prayer goes around the table this year I will be thinking about those mourning at Plymouth Rock, and if I can find the words to express what I am feeling, I will voice them.

Below is a statement I found especially moving.

C/O Renee

Every year since 1970, United American Indians of New England have organized the National Day of Mourning observance in Plymouth at noon on Thanksgiving Day. Every year, hundreds of Native people and our supporters from all four directions join us. Every year, including this year, Native people from throughout the Americas will speak the truth about our history and about current issues and struggles we are involved in.

Why do hundreds of people stand out in the cold rather than sit home eating turkey and watching football? Do we have something against a harvest festival?

Of course not. But Thanksgiving in this country—and in particular in Plymouth—is much more than a harvest home festival. It is a celebration of pilgrim mythology.

According to this mythology, the pilgrims arrived, the Native people fed them and welcomed them, the Indians promptly faded into the background, and everyone lived happily ever after.

The pilgrims are glorified and mythologized because the circumstances of the first English-speaking colony in Jamestown were frankly too ugly (for example, they turned to cannibalism to survive) to hold up as an effective national myth.

The pilgrims did not find an empty land any more than Columbus “discovered” anything. Every inch of this land is Indian land. The pilgrims (who did not even call themselves pilgrims) did not come here seeking religious freedom; they already had that in Holland.

They came here as part of a commercial venture. They introduced sexism, racism, anti-lesbian and -gay bigotry, jails and the class system to these shores. One of the very first things they did when they arrived on Cape Cod—before they even made it to Plymouth—was to rob Wampanoag graves at Corn Hill and steal as much of the Indians’ winter provisions of corn and beans as they were able to carry.

They were no better than any other group of Europeans when it came to their treatment of the Indigenous peoples here. And, no, they did not even land at that sacred shrine called Plymouth Rock, a monument to racism and oppression which we are proud to say we buried in 1995.

The first official “Day of Thanksgiving” was proclaimed in 1637 by Governor Winthrop. He did so to celebrate the safe return of men from the Massachusetts Bay Colony who had gone to Mystic, Conn., to participate in the massacre of over 700 Pequot women, children and men.

About the only true thing in the whole mythology is that these pitiful European strangers would not have survived their first several years in “New England” were it not for the aid of Wampanoag people. What Native people got in return for this help was genocide, theft of our lands and never-ending repression. We are either treated as quaint relics from the past or are, to most people, virtually invisible.

When we dare to stand up for our rights, we are considered unreasonable. When we speak the truth about the history of the European invasion, we are often told to “go back where we came from.” Our roots are right here. They do not extend across any ocean.

National Day of Mourning began in 1970 when a Wampanoag man, Wamsutta Frank James, was asked to speak at a state dinner celebrating the 350th anniversary of the pilgrim landing. He refused to speak false words in praise of the white man for bringing civilization to us poor heathens. Native people from throughout the Americas came to Plymouth where they mourned their forebears who had been sold into slavery, burned alive, massacred, cheated and mistreated since the arrival of the Pilgrims in 1620.

But the commemoration of National Day of Mourning goes far beyond the circumstances of 1970.

Can we give thanks as we remember Native political prisoner Leonard Peltier, who was framed up by the FBI and has been falsely imprisoned since 1976? Despite mountains of evidence exonerating Peltier and the proven misconduct of federal prosecutors and the FBI, Peltier has been denied a new trial.

To Native people, the case of Peltier is one more ordeal in a litany of wrongdoings committed by the U.S. government against us. While the media in New England present images of the “Pequot miracle” in Connecticut, the vast majority of Native people continue to live in the most abysmal poverty.

Can we give thanks for the fact that, on many reservations, unemployment rates surpass 50 percent? Our life expectancies are much lower, our infant mortality and teen suicide rates much higher than those of white Americans. Racist stereotypes of Native people, such as those perpetuated by the Cleveland Indians, the Atlanta Braves and countless local and national sports teams, persist. Every single one of the more than 350 treaties that Native nations signed has been broken by the U.S. government. The bipartisan budget cuts have severely reduced educational opportunities for Native youth and the development of new housing on reservations, and have caused cause deadly cutbacks in healthcare and other necessary services.

Are we to give thanks for being treated as unwelcome in our own country?

When the descendants of the Aztec, Maya and Inca flee to the U.S., the descendants of the wash-ashore pilgrims term them “illegal aliens” and hunt them down.

We object to the “Pilgrim Progress” parade and to what goes on in Plymouth because they are making millions of tourist dollars every year from the false pilgrim mythology. That money is being made off the backs of our slaughtered Indigenous ancestors.

Increasing numbers of people are seeking alternatives to such holidays as Columbus Day and Thanksgiving. They are coming to the conclusion that if we are ever to achieve some sense of community, we must first face the truth about the history of this country and the toll that history has taken on the lives of millions of Indigenous, Black, Latin@, Asian, and poor and working-class white people.

The myth of Thanksgiving, served up with dollops of European superiority and manifest destiny, just does not work for many people in this country. As Malcolm X once said about the African-American experience in America, “We did not land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on us.” Exactly.

Articles copyright 1995-2008 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Muxes

I read this story late last night and didn't post so Nezua beats me to it, but that's ok, we still like him. ;) With the sorrow of TDoR I found the Muxes celebration a refreshing sigh of relief.

THERE ARE FEW THINGS as refreshing as the sensation of a stereotype being exploded before your very eyes. Here today to apply a brilliant shade of eyeshadow to the often-referenced machismo of The Latino and Mexicano Male iconry are l@s muxes straight from Juchitan:

JUCHITAN, Mexico (Reuters) - Attaching flowers to a ribbon headdress, pulling a lace slip under an embroidered skirt and draping a necklace of gold coins over his head, Pedro Martinez puts the finishing touches on the traditional costume of Zapotec women in southern Mexico.

“When I get all dressed up like this my father always says, ‘Oh Pedro! You look just like your mother when she was young,” beams Martinez, 28, gluing on fake eyelashes in front of a mirror.

Martinez spent two hours in the hair salon he owns getting ready for this weekend’s festival of the “muxes,” indigenous gays and transvestites in the town of Juchitan who have found a haven of acceptance in Mexico’s macho society.

The muxes (pronounced moo-shes), mostly of ethnic Zapotec descent, are widely respected in the southern town where a dance and parade that crowns a transvestite queen and celebrates the harvest has been held annually for the last 33 years.

Marriage

Ashley Ann got me thinking about marriage again. For some reason the threads that pop up on Feministing always seem to come up with the most diverse set of opinions. And that always gets me thinking.

It's especially interesting for me to see how other people conceptualize marriage. See, I definitely noticed the incredibly sexist conditions under which the institution of marriage has and continues to thrive. The thing of it is though, it seems like a lot of people thus feel that the institution of marriage is consequently fucked. That their options are to have THAT kind of marriage and wedding, or none at all.

That's not my conclusion.

My basic premise: marriage is beholden to the people undertaking it. Therefore it is as malleable as the people who are getting married. The traditions surrounding it are symbols. And symbols require people to give them meaning. Therefore the symbols are just as malleable as the people invoking them.

My husband and I, our marriage is exactly what we want it to be, and designing the wedding ceremony to reflect that was incredibly important to us. And design we did, from start to finish, including the vows. The fact is it never even occurred to me not to do so. A wedding ceremony is far too important to ever attempt a "cookie cutter" version.

Traditional elements that were included:

Engagement ring. I got a wedding set from an estate case (woot recycling!). My husband paid for it, I felt that was important because it was for me a sign of commitment. I also got him a ring sometime earlier which he felt served the same purpose.

Asking dad. We did not do this. I thought it would be "cute" in a very ironic sort of way given how untraditional both my relationship and my family was. But it didn't happen. What I suppose I was more looking for was the two men I cared most about to sit down and have a heart to heart, for my dad to be able to trust my husband and for them to be on the same page. I am a Daddy's girl, and I wanted them to get along. Turns out they ended up having that without the "asking for" thing included. That's even better.

Walking down the aisle. We did not do this either. And I told my Dad right from the beginning we wouldn't be. I am not a fucking parcel to be given away, no thank you. I understand why the engagment ring is looked at as a dowry or down payment or something and why some people are against that, but this giving away shit was just too much for me. Husband and I walked down the aisle together. We both felt that was far more appropriate, I mean we're undertaking this life together, right?

Name change. Didn't do this. We talked a lot about it. He'd prefer to take my name as he has no attachments to the family his last name comes from. We also discussed both changing our names to his mother's maiden name, as that is the family he is connected to. Honestly, I doubt either of us will actually change our names unless we have kids, I dislike the way our names would look hyphenated.

"Mrs". Yes, I use this. I like it. I've seen arguments against it, and I understand them. But I still like it. It's a spiffy new title. Honestly I think it's stupid that guys don't get their own new title! In the name of equality I think we should come up with one!

I guess my point is, you can take one symbol and it can mean something to you and something to other people. I think what disturbs me about marriage and weddings as general concepts is that people take what is one of the most important commitments of their life and simply use the symbols laid out for them. They don't talk about their wants and needs, what traditions are meaningful to them, what exactly they're vowing to... Without that people are adopting essentially meaningless symbols, or worse, symbols with deeply ingrained meanings for those around them, which they have no real interest in, never understanding that they're missing the entire point. Ending up unhappy in that situation seems a no-brainer to me.

But I'm different now!

Hat tip to Hugo Schwyzer today, who made me chuckle and silently cheer with this one;

White people who are tired of talking about race often behave like newly sober alcoholics, eager to “focus on the future” and “forget about the past.” Because they aren’t drinking anymore (or lynching anyone this particular afternoon), they are annoyed when those who have been victimized by their recklessness or their privilege insist on “having a conversation” about what’s happened — and what may still be happening. “But I’m different today”, says the former drunk who’s just taken his 30-day chip at an AA meeting to his wife; “you should trust me now.”

And nod along enthusiastically with this one;

All gender roles are, of course, performances. Whether we’re straight or gay or queer, most of us “play act”. For many of us, that playing has become so deeply ingrained that we are unaware of a distinction between our “true” and our “performing” selves. But even someone who has never taken a gender studies course can figure out that certain ways of “performing” enhance and affirm our sense of ourselves as distinctly feminine and masculine. The woman who says “Wearing lipstick and heels makes me feel more feminine” is acknowledging that her sense of herself as a woman is connected to public performance, just as the guy who says, “I like it when a woman waits for me to hold the door open for her; it makes me feel like a gentleman” is admitting that his sense of gender identity is closely connected to what he does rather than to his biology.
[...]
Sugarbutch’s claim that chivalry is “deeply feminist” is a provocative one, but the more I think about it, the more it seems to make good sense. Sugarbutch makes the case that this deliberate performing of chivalry on her part is rooted in a recognition of just how burdensome the performing of femininity (or femme-ness) is. Doing chivalry is, it seems, rooted in a recognition not of feminine weakness but of the colossal effort of performing as a feminine woman (regardless of the sexual identity of whoever is performing femme.) To not be chivalrous is to claim that the burden of performing gender falls equally on both men and women, on both butch and femme. And that’s preposterous: think of the amount of time anyone performing “butch” has to spend getting ready compared to the amount of time that someone performing “femme” does.

Yes, yes, yes

Mind the Gap has a great post up about femininity and courtly love. And there are a couple things I especially loved.

“The household tyrant has his wife help him into his coat. She eagerly does the service of love and accompanies him with a glance, which says: what am I supposed to do, let him have his little joys, that’s the way he is, only a man. Patriarchal marriage revenges itself on the man through the indulgence, which the woman practices and which has turned into a formula in the ironic lament of male vulnerability and dependence. Inside of the lying ideology, which posits the man as superior, lies a secret, not less untrue one, which reduces him to something inferior, to the victim of manipulation, maneuvers, deception.”

I have a big problem with the idea of the ‘deviant’, mainly because it’s usually meant as a challenge to heteronormative attitudes to relationships, but in actual fact it reinforces them. If you define yourself as a deviant, your identity relies on the existence of a norm. You’ve said ‘fuck you!’ to this norm, but at the same time, if it went away, well, oops, there goes your identity as a deviant.

I think if we’re to have a sexual revolution, if we’re to completely destroy patriarchal ideas of gender and sexuality, we need to get rid of the idea of ‘deviant’ versus ‘normal’, if nothing else because it assumes that everyone belongs to a huge mass of undefined ‘normals’ off somewhere pleasuring the Patriarchy, whereas we hallowed beings who are gathered in this room are all clearly defined individuals, which is of course a bit of an illusion to say the least. On a more basic level, we need to defeat our deeply patriarchal urge to define everything, and particularly as women, to pin and mount ourselves like butterflies.

I couldn't agree more, and that's as someone who has and does certainly define herself equally as much by what I am NOT as by what I am. But the labeling and titles and definitions, they have really started to wear on me and seem increasingly worthless.

Women Sentenced to Death by Stoning

Iranian 1 Million Signatures Campaign
Zohreh Kabiri-niat and her sister Azar, are facing execution by stoning, for “adultery”, a charge which they deny. They were arrested on 4 February 2007 after claims that they had had “illicit relations”. They were initially sentenced, along with a third sister, to flogging, with this sentence reportedly being carried out.

However, a fresh charge of “committing adultery while being married” was then brought against Zohreh and Azar, where they were both found guilty and their sentence of death by stoning was then approved by the Supreme Court.

A moratorium on execution by stoning was ordered by the Head of the Judiciary, Ayatollah Shahroudi, in December 2002. Despite this, sentences of death by stoning in Iran are still being passed and, on occasion, carried out.

Iran’s Penal Code prescribes execution by stoning. It even dictates that the stones are large enough to cause pain, but not so large as to kill the victim immediately. Article 102 of the Penal Code states that men should be buried up to their waists and women up to their breasts for the purpose of execution by stoning. Article 104 states, with reference to the penalty for adultery, that the stones used should “not be large enough to kill the person by one or two strikes; nor should they be so small that they could not be defined as stones”.

Please take steps to help stop this execution and to call on the country’s authorities to immediately abolish this grotesque punishment, which is specifically designed to increase the suffering of its victims.

Please click on this link and take action.

Regards,

Kim Manning-Cooper
Amnesty International UK
Campaign Manager - Death Penalty

Female Genital Mutilation

When I read this story last week, I felt absolutely chilled to the bone.

When a girl is taken — usually by her mother — to a free circumcision event held each spring in Bandung, Indonesia, she is handed over to a small group of women who, swiftly and yet with apparent affection, cut off a small piece of her genitals. Sponsored by the Assalaam Foundation, an Islamic educational and social-services organization, circumcisions take place in a prayer center or an emptied-out elementary-school classroom where desks are pushed together and covered with sheets and a pillow to serve as makeshift beds. The procedure takes several minutes. There is little blood involved. Afterward, the girl’s genital area is swabbed with the antiseptic Betadine. She is then helped back into her underwear and returned to a waiting area, where she’s given a small, celebratory gift — some fruit or a donated piece of clothing — and offered a cup of milk for refreshment. She has now joined a quiet majority in Indonesia, where, according to a 2003 study by the Population Council, an international research group, 96 percent of families surveyed reported that their daughters had undergone some form of circumcision by the time they reached 14.
[...]
According to Lukman Hakim, the foundation’s chairman of social services, there are three “benefits” to circumcising girls.

“One, it will stabilize her libido,” he said through an interpreter. “Two, it will make a woman look more beautiful in the eyes of her husband. And three, it will balance her psychology.”

It just makes me want to cry. It's not like the head scarf or something. Not like male circumcision where there has been evidence of health benefits (though arguable). I truly, truly do not want to cast judgment from afar on an entire culture. But... I mean gah, just read that! "It will stabilize her libido"? STABILIZE? Given how many women require a clitoris to have an orgasm ever in their life... STABILIZE? It will KILL their libido. It will make it so the only orgasmic pleasure (most likely) is that of her husband. Thus binding her sexuality to that of her husbands (oh and apparently "make her beautiful" in his eyes thusly). Given my feelings on the fundamentalness of sexuality, I can only hope you can understand how agonizing such a prospect is to me.

What I'd really like to see them justify is how it's possible for this procedure to "balance her psychology." I can't even begin to attempt to analyze that, except to assume that it is a classic fear of female sexuality, fear of females as sexual beings, and that robbing them of that capability happily eliminates their "unnatural" needs. Or something. What makes this topic all the harder is that reading the article it's clear this is important right of passage for many young women. That it is meaningful to them. Can we retain a meaningful right of passage while getting rid of this abhorrent practice?

Another Dose of Anarchy

Original story

By IAN URBINA
Published: December 24, 2007
Shopdropping is the practice by anti-consumerist artists of leaving fake products with political messages on shelves.
[...]
At BookPeople in Austin, Tex., local authors have been putting bookmarks advertising their own works in books on similar topics. At Mac’s Backs Paperbacks, a used bookstore in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, employees are dealing with the influx of shopdropped works by local poets and playwrights by putting a price tag on them and leaving them on the shelves.

At Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore., religious groups have been hitting the magazines in the science section with fliers featuring Christian cartoons, while their adversaries have been moving Bibles from the religion section to the fantasy/science-fiction section.
[...]
Ryan Watkins-Hughes, 28, a photographer from Brooklyn, teamed up with four other artists to shopdrop canned goods with altered labels at Whole Foods stores in New York City this week. “In the holidays, people get into this head-down, plow-through-the-shopping autopilot mode,” Mr. Watkins-Hughes said “‘I got to get a dress for Cindy, get a stereo for Uncle John, go buy canned goods for the charity drive and get back home.’”

“Warhol took the can into the gallery. We bring the art to the can,” he said, adding that the labels consisted of photographs of places he had traveled combined with the can’s original bar code so that people could still buy them.

“What we do is try to inject a brief moment of wonder that helps wake them up from that rushed stupor,” he said, pausing to add, “That’s the true holiday spirit, isn’t it?”

Personally, I find this highly amusing. Right up there with the art restoring anarchists. I almost wish I shopped more so that I had come across one of these.

Happy Yule!

The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper

So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!!

V

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent
To blow up King and Parli'ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

A Return to Traditional Values!

...But probably not the ones some Christians so actively call for...

So shortly after my own post on religious diversity I have come across this LA Times article by Mary Lefkowitz talking about the same thing. Her solution is a return to the Greek way of looking at religion. While that is not exactly my thought, I can certainly support the notion.

Prominent secular and atheist commentators have argued lately that religion "poisons" human life and causes endless violence and suffering. But the poison isn't religion; it's monotheism. The polytheistic Greeks didn't advocate killing those who worshiped different gods, and they did not pretend that their religion provided the right answers. Their religion made the ancient Greeks aware of their ignorance and weakness, letting them recognize multiple points of view.
...
Zeus, the ruler of the gods, retained his power by using his intelligence along with superior force. Unlike his father (whom he deposed), he did not keep all the power for himself but granted rights and privileges to other gods. He was not an autocratic ruler but listened to, and was often persuaded by, the other gods.

Openness to discussion and inquiry is a distinguishing feature of Greek theology. It suggests that collective decisions often lead to a better outcome. Respect for a diversity of viewpoints informs the cooperative system of government the Athenians called democracy.
...
The world, as the Greek philosopher Thales wrote, is full of gods, and all deserve respect and honor. Such a generous understanding of the nature of divinity allowed the ancient Greeks and Romans to accept and respect other people's gods and to admire (rather than despise) other nations for their own notions of piety.
...
Paradoxically, the main advantage of ancient Greek religion lies in this ability to recognize and accept human fallibility. Mortals cannot suppose that they have all the answers. The people most likely to know what to do are prophets directly inspired by a god. Yet prophets inevitably meet resistance, because people hear only what they wish to hear, whether or not it is true.
...
Greek theology openly discourages blind confidence based on unrealistic hopes that everything will work out in the end. Such healthy skepticism about human intelligence and achievements has never been needed more than it is today.

Extremists and Polarity

Extremists. Radicals.

They exist in every medium as we all know. And they are generally looked down upon, even reviled (and sometimes for good reason).

But, extremists are my favorites to read. They show you with absolute clarity the outcome of whatever area, whatever concept, they represent taken as far as it can go. They are the ones who are constantly pushing the boundaries.

Thought isn't stimulated by moderates. What's truly thought provoking about a moderates opinion? They are the ones who look at the extremists and then integrate it back in with the conventional we're all familiar with. They tone the ideas down to something that can be consumed. And oppression can hide so easily behind a "moderate" viewpoint. But how quickly do we grow complacent with nothing but moderates about?

The worth in an extremists opinion is letting yourself see something in a new way, letting yourself think about something differently than before. It's not to necessarily come around to their ideas, or rather, their interpretation of their ideas. Not at all even. But to expand your mind, and not reach your own opinions and conclusions solely from a stagnant pond of convention and tradition.

They are the shit disturbers, who stir things up in those stagnant ponds.



In a complementary vein is the idea of polarity. Inspiration arises through polarity.... Polarity is a concept I've been reading about in "A Witches Bible" recently... It's a concept I'm really going to have to expand on at a later date because I haven't fully assimilated the various implications of it.

But it is something I think I'm familiar with... I firmly believe the only reason the Suffragist movement was successful when it was, was because of the polarity between Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul. Without these two going about the same task in utterly different ways, I don't think it would have worked.



We see these extremists and their polarities... And we bemoan the strife, the challenges that arise in trying to reconcile to a usable middle. But perhaps it's through the strife and the challenges that a worthwhile, lasting, middle is reached.



Read more on the importance of polarity, strength through diversity.

On "asking permission" for marriage

Posted by Ann today at Feministing:

I am so sick of reading newspaper style section "trend" articles about how the gender and social norms of the 1950s are "making a comeback." So I hereby inaugurate Retro Trend Watch. In today's installment... Asking Permission. (And sadly, I'm talking about for marriage, not sex . In the bedroom, I'm all about asking permission.)

Supposedly more men are asking daddy if it's ok to marry his daughter.

The kick-ass historian Beth Bailey puts this in some context:

‘‘It was a fairly common practice based on the notion of making alliances between families and passing the daughter who was legally the property of the father onto the husband,’’ says Temple University historian Beth Bailey. ‘‘What we’re seeing right now is an odd combination of young people with progressive sentiments and a real desire for conventional gender roles and arrangements’’

At a wedding this summer, I had to stop myself from making retching noises when the bride's father devoted a significant portion of his reception speech to how he knew his son-in-law was "worthy" of his daughter because he asked for permission before proposing. And this was a couple who lived together before getting married -- not exactly a picture of conservatism.

I know I don't need to explain to you, dear Feministing readers, why asking dad for permission to assume ownership of his property marry his daughter is a pretty f'ed up practice. But if you feel like being extra grossed-out, check out this step-by-step "How to Ask Your Girlfriend's Father for Her Hand in Marriage." Yiiikes.

So, usually, I'm with Feministing opinions on things, but there are moments where we differ. This is one of those moments. In the comments I quoted an earlier respondent and then went on to comment:

"This happened recently with a very progressive couple I know - they had a hippy wedding in the woods and really aren't conformist, yet everyone involved seemed to think it was so charming that he'd asked her dad for permission."

That's so funny, because that could be me and my family. I've been married for one whole month, and I originally wanted my now husband to "ask my dad for permission" to marry me. I think it's cute.

Cute because it's so totally unnecessary, especially in our area of the country, and ESPECIALLY in MY family.

So for me, for us, it would have simply been him going an extra mile to have a "man to man" discussion with my dad about why he wanted to marry me. Being a daddy's girl, I appreciated that sentiment.

My dad was actually the one taken aback, and when I told him eventually Travis might "ask him" his response of "O.O WHY?!" put me off of the whole thing, and so it didn't happen.

This from the same girl though, who didn't have her father walk her down the aisle, because fuck that if he was going to give me away.

My point is that it all depends on context. There can be totally sexist reasons for traditions, but if you grow up in an environment where those ARE NOT the prevailing notions, sometimes you find other (and non sexist) reasons to like those old traditions.

I really can't stress how important I think that is. Growing up in an empowering environment can cause you to totally re-frame things that in another time, or another place, could be totally sexist or harmful. I'm with women who don't like the tradition, for many women other than myself, it still is indicative of their "place" in their family and in marriage, and that's not a good thing. But it's not like that for all of us.

I think also that Americans have a real need for tradition sometimes. We don't have quite the solidified culture some, hell most, other countries do, and so I think we can cling to what we have sometimes. Which might explain why other Progressives like me, who might very well be throwing most of the traditional conventions of marriage out the window, might be re-framing some of those traditions in an effort to keep them.