this woman’s work

When I was a teenager and first getting my feminism on, I used to have a test for movies and books. Where am I? Where am I in this story? Who could I get to be? Asking myself this helped me identify why reading some books (Philip Roth, Jerzy Kosinski) left me feeling so … empty/scared/lonely/depressed/angry. Because very often the who I could be (the woman or women in the book) were empty stereotypes. Those stereotypes left me feeling worse than if I hadn’t been there at all. In other words, having women’s roles limited by sexist stereotyping felt worse to me than reading a book where women didn’t even appear. Because I could read a book, say, The Chocolate War and know that the lack of women was about the focus of the book and not about the unimportance of me and women like me in all of our technicolor detail.

It’s not that I’m arguing for a complete lack of representation but I am saying that token representation can feel just as bad if not worse. Because I would read those books and think, “Is this all I am to men? Is this all they see of me? Is all the scope I’m allowed to be?”

I sometimes still use this tool to point sexism out to, say, Brett who doesn’t have a lifetime of evaluating media under his belt. For me, understanding the limited range of my imaginary role-models helped me not to take that subtext on as my own. Seeing that my empty feelings after one of those books or movies had to do with the limited imagination of the artist let me reject it.

Let me say right off that as a writer, I didn’t like The Time Traveler’s Wife. I thought it was a lumpy story full of unnecessary detail that detracted from the narrative. I felt that the complex structure of the plot didn’t make up for the unfinished main characters, stilted dialogue or self-indulgent trivialities. I wanted to like it but I didn’t. I felt about it the same way I felt about Mr. Holland’s Opus; I cried at the sad parts even while cursing the master manipulation at work. I knew I was being strung along but gave into my base emotions anyway.

Still, you can’t argue with numbers and the sales attest to the skill of the author. People loved this book. Writers whose opinions I admire loved this book. Readers who read with a discerning eye loved this book. Besides which, Becca has done a good job in reminding me always that to sit down and write a book is an endeavor worthy of admiration in and of itself. So there’s that.

Thing is, The Time Traveler’s Wife is also really racist and that I can’t forgive.

Let’s dip in, shall we? (after the cut)

(more…)

Regarding the post below. Like I said, I’ve been thinking about writing this for AntiRacist Parent.

I think he’s a bully and I think he goes for what he perceives as weak points. I think he confuses sarcasm with being clever or witty.

Now I love me some sarcasm, don’t get me wrong, but in this case he’s using sarcasm as a weapon. He’s using “but it was a joke” as a cover for being hateful. Does he really hate black children? Well, as far as I can tell, only as much as he seems to hate everyone. But to tell a black 3-year old that he doesn’t like black children — he’s a white man. There’s no way to take that out of the context of his race.

The example I used in the comments to my entry was this:

If my husband — who is not Jewish but is married to a Jew — said snidely to a Jewish child, “We don’t like Jews in this house” I would think he had some serious antisemitism going on and I doubt people would argue with me. But I think white people like me are so nervous about the R word (racism) that we try to make excuses to avoid it.

The fact that this guy has immediate family members who are black is another reason some people said, “But he couldn’t have meant it that way!” You know, that racist way. But I see racism in some of his behavior (statements) to his black family members as well.

There’s a power differential in what he said to Madison that cements this for me. He is a white adult. She is a black child. “In this house, we don’t like brown skinned babies.” From an adult to a brown skinned child.

Is he just ignorant? Unable to understand that a preschooler isn’t the same as an adult? It’s an argument I’ve heard from people who care about him and I used to believe it but his actions seem deliberate to me. When he’s insulted me in the past, his actions seem deliberate. I’ve seen him chuckle over how funny it is to say things that make people angry or hurt their feelings. He takes pride in speaking outside of norms and in upsetting people. He uses cruelty to boost his self-esteem and he does it without considering the consequences to his victims.

(I’ve since talked to people who have confronted him and they say he rolls right over when someone calls him on his shit, which I think is another sign that he’s a bully — hitting people who can’t hit back.)

So yes, I think he’s racist. And sexist. And all sorts of other -ists because I think he’s a bully and he uses those -isms to assert his power over other people. In other words, an equal opportunity abuser and in this case, racism was his means to lash out at a preschooler.

Madison has none of this context; she just has a memory of someone who basically said he didn’t like her because she was black. And Madison was shaken, too, because she knows his black family members and she sees them as vulnerable, (which they are). (Ok, damn — he’s got black kids, ok? More identifying info than I meant to give but it’s important to the discussion.) That scares her — that he said that to her and he has his own brown-skinned children. So the adults (some of them) said, “But he couldn’t mean it because he has black kids” and Madison more clearly sees that the fact that he has black kids makes it that much more hurtful and wrong that he said it to her.

I really do feel better since writing this — my mood is much lighter than it was before I wrote it — but writing about it makes me cry.