in which she ponders writing and literary theory and feminism and doesn't come to any conclusions

i can tell you that when every experience is fodder for your character sketches, it makes meetings ever so much more amusing. even better when you can actually sit with your laptop and type the scenes in directly, a sort of simultaneous transcription. i'm gleeful. and leaning increasingly towards fiction rather than anthropology. but it's a fiction that will contain an awful lot of truth. i'm hoping a plot will develop out of the character sketches, as i've got no idea of one at this moment. i'm just riding the waves of inspiration. and figuring that writing it is the best way to make sense of it all.

* * *

i fear i may be a member of the theory generation.

we thought we were so smart.

and we still are.

but at what price?

* * *

one of my facebook friends shared a link to this blog, which suggests that there is a new era coming - one in which women will take the lead and heal the earth. while i think this is a wonderful (if fanciful and slightly new agey) notion, i wonder if this person has spent any time at all with groups of women. because there's no one more hard on one another than women. we do more to keep one another down than any man ever even thought of doing to us. there is more manipulative game-playing among groups of women than anywhere else. if we're not sneering at one another, sniping, talking behind one another's backs or outright treating one another as invisible when we feel threatened by another woman's intellect or viewpoint or very presence, then we're scheming and jockeying for position. it would take a miracle for women to truly embrace the role of healer and begin to heal through peace and love. there might be less bombs, but i am absolutely certain the number of poisonings would rise.

i should note that i am by no means anti-feminist and i most fervently wish that women would start working together and stop dragging one another down. it's just that when i look around me, right here in my own community, i don't see it happening anytime soon.

i think i like the brand of feminism and femininity presented here (and embodied in lady gaga) much better. as halberstam says: "Gaga Feminism as embodied in certain eclectic performers does not promote a new liberal version of femininity, rather it inhabits wild terrains of sonic and political chaos in order to bring new forms of politics, culture, and gender to life." that sounds much more interesting than the earth mother, sit in a circle and gaze at our vaginas kind.

* * *

sabin and i are madly in love with the mean kitty.

* * *

the k boards (sorry, there are no j boards) on pinterest: kitchen goodness (this is one of the early boards), kulturhus inspiration related to my involvement in my local community).

what is an ideal family anyway?

this was the front page of our newspaper on friday. the headline says "career society's new ideal family" - and i "read" the photo as one of a filipino nanny seeing to the children and family dog, with absent parents.  but the article itself turned out to be far more cynical than that.

it seems that of the 5,149 fertility treatments in denmark in 2010, 3,249 were women who were not in a relationship with a man. that means 2/3 of the fertility treatments in this country are performed on single or lesbian women. 13% of these treatments result in a child, so some 400 children were born to single or lesbian mothers. the article didn't dig down into how many of these were in a lesbian relationship and how many were just women whose biological clock was ticking with no partner in sight. it also didn't include those who might have been inseminated abroad or without the help of a clinic. but the numbers are interesting.

leaving aside the question of lesbian couples who are having children (which i am totally cool with and which wasn't the focus of the article), it seems that there are increasing numbers of women in denmark who are choosing to have a child on their own. the article indicated that they are often well-established career women who simply feel they don't have time for career, relationship and children, so they are choosing children and career and making a conscious decision to forego a relationship with the child's father, or to even bother to find a father for their child other than in a test tube.

in fact, there are actually people selling coaching services and so-called decision workshops and donor sperm workshops and networking groups for this type of woman. it seems that for many of these women, their biggest worry isn't that the child will grow up without two parents, but that having a child will devalue them in the workplace. really? this is seriously the most cynical view on the world i've read in a long time. it frightens me to think of what the individualistic, me-me-me, egotistical way of living today is doing to our world. i realize this sounds rather anti-feminist of me, but i cannot believe that not a word of an article that stretched over two full pages of my newspaper, questioned whether or not it's the best thing for the child to grow up with a single parent? especially one that the article cites as particularly career-minded.

the good news is that today's workplace and way of working allows for a single parent model - no one in denmark (except foreigners) will look askance at you for leaving at 3 to pick up your child. it's assumed that you'll get back online in the evening and tend your mails after you've put the child to bed, so single mothers can make it work to have both career and child. both the technology and the view on work support this model.  and that undoubtedly helps two-parent families just as much, so i'm good with that.

however, the article actually says outright that many women are choosing to divorce because they feel they only have time for their child and their job, but not the husband. that way, they also can work very hard every other week, when the partner has the kids. according to one mercuri urval recruitment consultant interviewed for the article, employers look upon this type of dedicated-every-other-week employee very favorably.

i'm not sure whether the article was meant as a provocation, but i feel provoked by it. i'm not against anyone who has the means - economically and mentally - having children, whether they're in a relationship or not, but that the impact on the child itself is not even covered in the article provokes me. there wasn't a single reason to do so outlined in the article that wasn't incredibly self-absorbed on the part of the single woman.

i think having children is really hard. at times i'm overwhelmed by the sense of responsibility i feel and the energy it takes and the state of world we've brought our child into. i would definitely not want to be doing it on my own. but it's also extremely rewarding and some of my happiest moments are spent with the amazing child that we're raising. but again, i wouldn't want not to share that with her father. i just don't think it's meant to be something we do alone, for our own selfish reasons.

maybe i'm just not a feminist.

a woman's work is never done

happy international women's day!  i first learned about this day in 1994, when i was studying in russia. it was a big deal there. women got flowers, they dressed up, there was a celebratory parade. it was a festive day. fast forward to today - i've seen tweets and facebook updates and our newspaper's front page has a lovely photo of a royal copenhagen musselmalet plate and says "young feminists' battleground for the good life." and i kind of wonder how far we've come.

when i look around my particular corner of the blogosphere - which admittedly is a pretty big corner, covering several continents and multiple timezones - i see women wanting to do traditionally women's work - sewing, cooking, knitting, crocheting. i see them leaving high-powered jobs to stay home with their children. i don't really see anyone on the barricades, trying to bust into a boardroom. what has happened to us?

in my view, we're in need of a new paradigm. a new way of working. a new way of assessing value - of time, of work, of career. i don't think i'm the only one who no longer wants my identity to be tied to what i do for a living. maybe we as women need to take up the struggle in a new way. i'm not saying that i know exactly what i mean by that - it's more a feeling that we need to look at things from a new angle. in some sense, the women's struggle has taken the world on the male terms which are already set - demanding equal wages, equal rights, equal chances. and in many countries, we have achieved those those things.

but maybe we need a more feminine way of organizing things - less hierarchy, more intuition, more compassion, value expressed in a different way than it is today. because it seems that male way of organizing the world is showing itself to be flawed (to say the least).

so perhaps that's what we need to ponder on international women's day.

feeling ranty (or am i a woman yet?)

i'm feeling a little ranty (i blame caitlin moran).  so avert your eyes.

rant #1:  i'm still fuming over the far-too-expensive ferry ride we took on mols-linien from ebeltoft to odden a week or so ago. as any of my FB and twitter pals know, due to my obsessive photographing of it, there is a rather large bridge (18km) that takes you to the devil's island (sjælland), but for fun, we thought we'd take an alternate route. mols-linien had been bragging in their ads about how if you took them you'd skip fyn (the island in the middle) and how they had cheap tickets over kattegat. turns out those cheap tickets that compete with the price of the bridge (220DKK or about $42) have to be ordered at least 7 days in advance. so much for spontaneity. and so much for truth in advertising, because that's definitely not clear in the ads. nor are any of the prices clear on the mobile version of their website. which i found worrying as i tried to check departure times/prices as we got closer to ebeltoft. turns out if you don't book in advance you pay the OUTRAGEOUS sum of 775DKK ($147) for the hour-long crossing. and this doesn't come with anything. you then have to pay 3 times the normal price for a sausage (every ferry ride must include a sausage) and a coke, so they are definitely adding insult to injury. my advice?  AVOID MOLS-LINIEN like the plague. there is NO value for money. none at all. and their little high speed ferries are ugly.   take that, mols-linien.

rant #2:  as you know, we live out on a country road. it's paved and the speed limit is actually a shocking 80km/hour.  however, most of the people who are going past (i don't have a radar gun, so i can't prove this) are going at least 120km/hour. it's INSANE. there are people out for a run, or walk or bike ride and the cars scarcely even slow down. in fact, most of them don't slow down. someone's going to get killed and i hope it's not me, my family, our cats or our hedgehog. i do, however, hope there is a fiery crash where one of those speed demons rolls multiple times and i can stand and laugh.

rant #3:  as you gathered, i continue to read caitlin moran's how to be a woman with a mix of the fascination one would feel to see the aforementioned crash and indignation at how in one breath she can claim to be feminist and then refer to women as chicks.  and then i fall a little bit in love with her when she says that lady gaga is the most exciting pop artist since madonna. so i'm torn by her. her writing is like rock 'n roll - it's loud, it's in your face, it makes me feel hyper (and ranty) and it's just really good. but a lot of this shit she's saying is just pissing me off.

ok. ranting over. for now.

EDITED:  wait a minute, hold everything, i totally forgot to rant the main rant!!!

rant #4: getty images. grr.  last week, was pleased to receive a flickr mail telling me that the good folks at getty images had selected a number of my photos and would like to license them. they're mostly ones of the old kitchen, the blue room and sabin's two bedrooms, plus one of my rainbow snail. so, i made haste to the getty images website to sign up. the sign-up is all very official and of course, asks you a lot of questions about your details - address, paypal account, where you pay taxes. and because i live in denmark, i was not able to sign up as anything other than a non-american. i've run into ameri-centric sites before (hello there, eBay and yes, i mean you, best buy), but none that actually wanted me to commit perjury in order to complete the invitation that THEY sent to me. after three days of going back and forth with several different "customer support" people, i finally agreed to commit perjury. yes, i wanted to sell my photos THAT badly. but seriously. i must not be the only expat american living abroad who has ever licensed their photos through getty images. and i think it's downright bogus that i had to pretend to pay taxes somewhere else in order to accomodate a faultily-crafted website. boo. hiss. getty images.  that said, get to selling my photos, will you?

and now i'm done ranting. for now.