Aaaaarrrrggggghhhhhh!

That is all.

Teaching

I'm teaching my first class on the MA Interdisciplinary Methods module today and am feeling increasingly nervous about it. However, the class that we have designed should be really interesting. We are asking the class to think about the different ways that one might investigate a phenomenon such as blogs, whether one's focus is on blogs as culture or as cultural artefact. Fingers crossed we have a good session.

I'll let you know how it went - if I survive!

A little ray of gay sunshine

I realise this alternative video for Lily Allen's 'Fuck You Very Much' might have been around for a while, but I just stumbled over it and think it really needs to be shared. Much, much better than the official video. Kudos to Lily for the track, though.

Right, now I'm off to jump gleefully round my lounge to it for the 10th time today.

From the heart of an eloquent butch

Following on from my previous post, I wanted to share the following link with you about femmes, from Ivan Coyote at xtra.ca.

Now that is what the love of a good butch feels like.

Btw, Ivan ranks number 6 in the 2009 Top Hot Butches list.

Not so damn extinct, huh?

In honour of the butch

Ever read something so smack-you-between-the-eyes stupid that you wonder how the hell you and the writer exist in the same world? Especially when you both allegedly live in the same small niche that the rest of the world ignores, denigrates or uses for titillation? There’s supposed to be some solidarity in those circumstances, right?

Yesterday I was chatting with my beloved and she clued me into an article printed in g3, a free monthly lesbian magazine. Now, I have read this magazine over the years, and can appreciate that, with an estimated readership of approximately 140,000, such a magazine cannot be expected to truly represent every single queer woman out there. But from a quick scan of their data about their average reader, I was the walking embodiment of that average reader.

Until I became a poor student again, of course.

My beloved is still smack dab in the middle of the average reader category. But according to the offending article, she does not even exist.

You see, my beloved is a butch. A short-back-’n’-sides, big-boot-wearin’, checked-shirted butch. She has more pairs of jeans than a Levi’s museum and channels a glorious Jimmy Dean-esque charm and quiet charisma. And the leather jacket is somewhere between her uniform and her armour.

According to the g3 article, butches under 40 do not exist, so sorry, darling, you’re an impossibility. Not only is this article just plain wrong, it was so poorly argued with no internal logic that the writer and the editor should be ashamed to have published this shit. The writer manages to both note that butch represents gender fluidity that increasingly no longer exists and to argue that butch is no longer necessary because we have enough gender fluidity. Yup, I can’t get my head around that one either.

Another beautiful piece of circular logic suggests that we don’t need to dress butch any more because you can just go to a gay club or check out a profile to find another queer woman. But at the same time, straight women are increasingly dressing like queer women, who are increasingly dressing like straights, so it can be hard to figure out who might be up for a Sapphic encounter or two. Damn it, why can’t you just tell by the way that women dress? It’s all too confusing!! Oh.

Of course, butch might just be about being in yer face political, opines the writer. Because walking down the street every day taking the random abuse and rudeness that people hand out to butches is absolutely about being political. These dang women are just being difficult and you know there’s just no need for a nice lesbian to do that any more!

I hope you note the liberal dose of sarcasm laced through the preceding chapters. Please don’t miss it.

I am a butch-loving femme. A smile from a butch makes me go weak at the knees in all sorts of good ways. So I am absolutely biased. I am also apparently invisible as well. Those gay clubs that are allegedly the obvious places to go to find a fellow queer woman are not particularly helpful places for me. I get read as a fag hag and dismissed by most queer women. In clubs for gay women, I get treated like I do not belong, unless I have a woman with me to validate my credentials. I walk down Old Compton Street with my beloved and she gets cruised whilst I am blatantly ignored as irrelevant by most queer women. Butches, on the other hand, always recognise me for who and what I am. It’s like we speak a language other queer women cannot or do not want to understand. And I can tell you that there are butch women out there, including butches under 40.

It takes a lot of courage to be a butch, because it means being yourself. It means knowing who you are and refusing to hide or pretend, just to make other people feel less challenged. It means holding your head high every single day and rejecting all the judgement and insults that the rest of the world might throw at you today. It means being prepared to fight to be treated like a human being just because the cut of your hair, the clothes you wear and the way you move are not the way that you have been told to behave. Being butch means being brave.

So when a community magazine declares butches extinct, whether due to gender fluidity or rigidity, lack of political need or just plain fear, my heart bleeds for the butches that I know and my own beloved butch. To me, this article smacks of an internalised misogyny and homophobia . And I know that there are butches out there who feel now even more isolated, since even their own community does not recognise that they exist.

Believe me, butches, there are women out there who love you just as you are and would be devastated if you disappeared.

...

Spoke too soon.

More posts to follow later.

Ahhh!

7 hours of near continuous, dream-filled sleep.

At last!

Advert rage

Ever deconstructed the messages and language within adverts?

Sometimes there's fun to be had (see the weekly column at the beginning of the Saturday Guardian's Guide section). Sometimes there are pure head-desk moments. And sometimes the red mist of rage descends.

At the moment, amongst others, I am feeling pretty pissed at the relatively recent appearance of adverts which assume that plastic surgery will be an eventual and necessary choice for every woman.

Firstly, Juviderm, a feather will never convince me that the needle you are hiding behind it will not hurt. Of course it frickin' will. And no, I do not have an aesthetic practitioner. And hiding the word surgery does not change the realities or the risks of undertaking even so-called simple procedures.

But putting all that to one side, the other thing that chaps my hide about all of this is the limited and restrictive idea of 'perfect woman' that these kinds of adverts promote at an apparently increasingly urgent fashion. These women are almost universally white, definitely middle-class (both by accent and by resource measures for these things to be matter of course), absolutely not queer, not differently abled, without doubt cisgendered, etc. This woman that we are all supposed to be and to spend money on being as 'naturally' as possible ignores the realities of the vast majority of women in this country. I realise that advertisers target the market that will buy their product, but when all the adverts make the same assumptions, I have to come to the conclusion that to a capitalist system, I am invisible and therefore irrelevant.

On the other hand, when I think about who I am invisible to, maybe I am better off existing in their blindspots.

The need for sleep

3 hours of sleep a night, in two 1 and a half hour batches, is simply not enough.

I can only hope that tonight is at least a smidge better. Fingers crossed

Lovely afternoon

I just had the loveliest afternoon with my Roller Derby girls.

A bit of yoga, homemade pizza, strawberries, good music and good conversation.

Bruis'em and Toxic rock. Love you, ladies

Presenting my nerves

So two days ago, I gave my first academic presentation of this PhD and I think it was safe to say that I was pretty terrified. I am a very confident public speaker and performer and knew that I had that bit covered just fine. The truly frightening element was presenting in front of other PhD and MA students from my home institution and a similar department from a nearby university, and more to the point the academic members of staff from both institutions. I struggle with anxiety about my work not being good enough to give to my supervisor, so putting it out on display for all these people I respect was almost too much.

Don't tell anyone, but there were points in the day that I seriously thought about feigning illness and wussing out. It really did not help that I was the only first year PhD student presenting - all the others were second or third years with experience to reflect on. The brief for the day was methodology - in the main the other presenters focussed on method and the challenges of those methods. Because I am taking a slightly different approach, my paper was written from a more meta-methodological angle, and so as the day went on I became more and more anxious that my paper was pitched all wrong and that as well as being inadequate in itself, I was also going to be talking to them about completely the wrong thing.

The four coffees probably did not help with keeping perspective.

But now I am on the other side of the whole process. And from here it looks very different indeed. I can honestly say that I presented well. As a performance of 'presenting a paper', I carried it off. The content of the paper, I am still not sure about and in reading it I realised that it sounded more contentious than I really intended. But I think the structure held together and I presented a coherent argument. Since I am so ealy in the process of developing my ideas, I think this is ok.

But the real learning point for me has been about the process, eespecially the emotional element of the whole thing. I have always struggled with needing people's approval (I don't think that is particularly unusual). I could feel the audience getting away from me at points as they disagreed with what I was saying and had a strong conflict between running out of the room or stopping to appease them. But I didn't. I kept on with my presentation and maintained my authority as presenter. I accepted the questions put to me at the end calmly and was able to respond without becoming defensive. Now my commenter was very generous and gentle and in no way attacking, but I know that previously when I have been that anxious it has been hard to hear such generosity and not simply be automatically defensive.

So on reflection, the day feels like a triumph. Not for the quality of the paper, but for the learning about giving a paper at a conference. I learned that I can say things that others might find contentious and I can stand by them. I also learned that I can be much braver than I thought. And I learned a bit more about the practicalities of paper giving. None of which are ground breaking revelations in the grand scheme of things, but they feel pretty important for me and right now I feel really good about them. And I think that is more than enough to get from the day.

On a related note, I really must give huge thanks to my good friend AB. Her honest constructive feedback after the session was very much appreciated. I think all nervous newbie paper-givers could do with a feedback goddess such as her!

The passing of a gentleman

Yesterday was the funeral of my partner's grandfather. I can't claim to have known him that well - he and I never quite figured out how to talk to each other and only really related through our love of a good game of scrabble. But his presence suffused the whole family. He was an almost constant presence at the family Saturday afternoon tea and whilst he was not always able to join in the conversation (or more likely often chose not to hear!), his very presence was the anchor of the whole family. He was a generous, thoughtful, caring man, who brought compassion, humour, a staunch heart and a seriously strong work ethic to everything he did. You can see his influence rippling through his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Their lovely natures are a direct tribute to him and his beloved wife.

So now I am sitting in a bar, waiting for my partner to return from delivering a training session today, and raising a glass in his honour. I won't claim that his passing marks the last of the true gentlemen - that would be both cliched and less than he deserved. But he is so very missed, even by those of us who only had the privilege of knowing him for a very short time. He was such a very special person.

One of the reasons psychology and I don't get on

Since I am feeling blogularly challenged today, I point you to this story:

Therapists offer gay 'treatment'

and this fantastically Twisty response:

UK shrinks suffer case of double barbaria

And thus my obstreperal lobe is somewhat soothed.

Btw the ONLY reason I ever need therapy now is because there are people out there who think shit like this is anything other than hideous. When I was in straight relationships, I needed permanent therapy but allegedly was deluded about that need. Go figure.

IBTP

Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day here in the UK. So today is a pretty crappy day for me and for anyone else whose Mum has died. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for everyone celebrating their Mum and I am absolutely of the opinion that you should make the most of every moment you have with her. But for me, Mother's Day just feels like an extended period of emphasising that my Mum is no longer alive. And it hurts.

So should anyone real this post, this is a big hug for anyone else who's in a similar position and is feeling hurt and lost today. This hug is especially for Jade Goody's two boys. My heart breaks for them.

Butt ache

Having not blogged since the original two whole months ago, I thought I would share a new obsession and possibly tmi. So in my department, I have two friends who are dedicated Roller Derbyers, who should always be referred to by their RD names: Toxic Pink Stuff and Bruisin' Banshee. TPS is so obsessed with RD that she is also basing her PhD on the phenomenon (sport seems such a limited word for the amazingness of RD).

Now obviously for obsessed peeps, they were keen to share the joy and preached, cajoled and bullied their way into promises to join from a number of the women in the department. This Sunday, I succumbed and ventured out to training. I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. Bear in mind that I have not been on roller skates for at least 24 years (which TPS helpfully reminded me is her age - grrr!) and you will have some idea of how daunting a prospect it is to walk into a large hall with about 20 women hurtling round at speed. They were all very friendly, although their gum-shield smiles were perhaps not quite as reassuring as on might have hoped.

So I strapped myself in to the helmet, wrist pads, elbow pads, knee pads and rented skates and gingerly rolled out onto the floor. and you know what? I wasn't that bad. I couldn't keep up with everyone else, of course, but I was skating fairly passably. Nuclear Miss-ile was assigned to teach me how to skate safely and more importantly, how to fall safely, whilst everyone else practised their blocking. I learned a one knee fall, sucked at the two knee fall, rocked the baseball slide, and gradually got the hang of a decent plough.

My confidence was growing, my speed was picking up and I think it's fair to say I was starting to feel a little cocky. Which of course was the point at which I misjudge my balance, my feet flew up in front of me and I landed unceremoniously on my coccyx. now I thought I had more than enough padding on my butt to take care of such a fall, but oh my sweet ***********, I could never have enough padding to deal with that fall. You know how when you injure yourself and the world swims away, you feel sick, want to cry, and snap at anyone who talks to you? Just that deep shock and adrenalie dump before the pain finally sets in. So sorry to NM and Rosewhip if I was in the least bit rude, but oi! the shock and pain.

Luckily BB was driving us home and I was able to lean gingerly across the backseat of the car with my poor bruised tush carefully protected. I woke up the next morning with the tenderest b-hind, whiplash and incredibly sore thighs. And you know what? I can't wait to go back. I don't care that I am still incredibly bruised. I want to be as confident and competent as the women on this Roller Derby team. I want to lose some of that fear of falling. I want to be fearsome and fearless. I want the adrenaline and the knowledge that the bruises I have have been well earned.

Roll on Sunday.... :)

Why Am I Doing This?

This was written for a presentation as part of a panel, but I think it stands as a starting post. It was only supposed to be a ten minute presentation, so is not as detailed, accurate or well argued as it might be. But it's my current thoughts and a start.

When I began thinking about what I wanted to focus on for my PhD, the Internet was an obvious place to start. I had fallen headlong in love with all things online during my MA studies and had had chance to think about the Web in more depth during the Feminist Perspectives on Web Fiction module, but realistically I wanted more. The chance to spend at least three years thinking about, exploring, reading about and investigating the Web and the Internet was just too exciting to resist.

I knew I wanted to think about the relationship between feminism and the Internet. After all, feminism was really what led me to the ‘Net and what keeps me there. But the Internet is a both a cultural artefact and a cultural phenomenon. Depending on whether you want to be technologically or socially determinist about it, you can see it as either changing the way we live our lives or being changed by the way we use it, or a combination of the two, which is where I tend to see myself. So I knew I wanted to look at the way in which feminist culture utilises and is possibly shaped by the ‘Net.

Finally, I have a longstanding complicated relationship to the way in which Feminism both describes itself and is described, particularly terms such as ‘Third Wave’ and ‘postfeminist’ and with what seems to me to be the misappropriation and redefinition of the word ‘feminist’ itself. I wanted to have the chance to explore how and why women deploy these terms, who uses them, and what are the issues that of concern to women who use these terms as self-definition. Third Wave Feminism is said to be a product of its sociocultural, temporal location and a key part of this is the centrality of technoculture and the Internet (Heywood and Drake, 2007)

So you can see how all of these elements came together. The final choice was what aspect of the Internet I wanted to focus on to keep the scope of my research realistic. For me, this was a very simple choice. Blogs have been an important part of my online life since I finished my MA, mostly thanks to Andrea, a fellow MA student from California, and they have been an important source of feminist information, inspiration and intellectual respite over the last 5 years. Going from blogroll to blogroll, I eventually stumbled upon the carnival of feminists, and thus found the perfect organising element for my research.

The Carnival of Feminists is a fortnightly digest of posts from blogs across the blogosphere. One blog is nominated to host the next Carnival and asks for submissions. People then either submit one of their own posts or nominate a post by someone else that they really liked. The host blogger then selects from these and presents them in a narrative outlining common themes and debates, with hyperlinks within the text leading to each blog post. At the time of writing this we are currently waiting for the 70^th Carnival of Feminists to be posted on 14^th January.

One of the major challenges for online research is knowing where to start and where to stop. The Carnival provides a coherent structure for me to explore the debates and events that concern and inspire feminist bloggers with a definitive starting point (19^th October 2005).Of course, the question of when to stop will be driven by time and funding.

However, some of the key features of web texts are both what makes them really interesting and what makes them potentially complex to work with. Mitra and Cohen (1999)outline 6 key features for web texts which are intertextuality, nonlinearity, a blurring of the reader/writer distinction, ‘multimedianess’, ‘globalness’, and ephemerality, all of which are true for blogs and the Carnival to varying degrees. Ephemerality poses the most significant headache for a researcher, especially with a long term project. While cataloguing the past Carnivals, I have found that a number of blogs have been deleted, moved or made private. Sometimes a small amount of detective work relocates them; sometimes the original posts are lost forever, although their impact remains within the Carnival. The only way around this issue is to catalogue all carnivals, saving a copy of each and every post currently available onto a hard drive as a more permanent record.

However, this poses other questions. Although it will always be possible for me to cite where the location and date of publication for any blog post accessed, following good referencing practice, keeping a copy and referring to it despite the fact that the blogger has since taken it down does not feel ethical. And do bloggers consider their posts to be public or private? The fact that some bloggers subsequently make their blogs private suggests that open access blogs may be considered public material, but this can never be taken for granted.

A further ethical consideration is exactly how to be a researcher within this particular section of cyberspace or rather how not to be. Unlike some areas of cyberspace, for example Second Life or discussion boards which are based around interpersonal interactions within which one chooses ones level of involvement, blogs are intended to be authored by one person or collective only. Interaction is possible but only in the comments section. This section can often take on a life of its own, but is normally time limited before readers move on to comment on more recent posts on the blog. This leaves the researcher in the awkward position of delayed lurking by default. Providing communication links with the blogger are still functional, it is possible to declare interest and seek permission from the blogger to use the post as source material after the fact, but seeking permission from commenters will be near impossible.

A final consideration that has to be made when conducting online research is whether one treats the online world as a discrete entity, independent of the offline world, or considers them to be inextricably interlinked. Arguments have been made to support both positions. However, because I explicitly want to consider the relationship between blogging and Third Wave theory and activism, I would argue that the online and the offline worlds are fundamentally interrelated in the cultural expressions that I am researching. The question of how closely the ‘reality’ of one might map onto the ‘reality’ of the other may be considered much later in my research.

Because of these challenges and my suggestion that online and offline are interlinked, there are layers of culture to be explored for which only mixed methods would be suitable. Following Bell (2001), I argue that there are three different types of ‘stories’ to be told about feminist blogging and third wave theory and activism, these being the material, the symbolic and the experiential. I propose using three different methods for my research to allow me to explore these stories adequately.

Firstly, the material ‘story’. This refers to what it is and in the case of blogs includes the text, the layout, any images, sound or video, the links on the page, and the presented persona of the blogger. I will explore the ‘stories’ that these elements tell, through the use of textual and visual analysis.

The symbolic ‘story’ refers to what the blogs mean and I intend to explore this through online interviews with a select number of bloggers, focusing on the meaning of the blog for them; their definitions and understandings of feminism and third wave theory and activism; and their experience of blogging, among other things.

Finally, the experiential ‘story’, in this case, is about experiencing blogging myself, particularly in the context of the Carnival of Feminists and as such represents a move towards an ethnographic approach. I’m cautious about claiming that I will be engaging in ethnography since there are some challenges to carrying out pure ethnography online, such as the problem of intermittent immersion, but I will try work within the spirit of ethnography. This will at least go some way towards mitigating the problems of the lurking researcher as well as being true to the ethos of feminist research methods.

In conclusion, I chose to research blogging as a means of exploring a site of feminist cultural representation, cultural production and cultural artefacts. This research is specifically located within one of the Third Wave’s key media because all three types of ‘story’ about feminist culture can be located here and because of the unique opportunities created by the key features of web texts to allow for non-traditional voices to emerge. Whilst there are numerous challenges to be negotiated, adoption of a mixed methods approach can mitigate against many of them. Hopefully, in the case of my research, this will allow me to develop a nuanced understanding of the relationship between feminist blogging and Third Wave theory and activism.