MeghanIsMe

It's another of my popular, audience-grabbing walls of text! This time with a content warning for violence against women, transphobia, racism and racist lyrics, and cultural analysis. You won't be able to put it down! ('Cause it's not a physical object! HA!)

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One of the CDs I grabbed for my trip to Posi's place yesterday was The Beatles'* Rubber Soul. One song on that album ("In My Life") reminisces about all the "places and things" and "friends and lovers" the singer has known through his life; how he will always hold them in great affection even as he loves his current partner more than any of them. I love the recognition that there is room in the heart for tender feelings that stretch beyond a single person and a single time. It's really sweet.

Another song ("Run For Your Life") threatens violence against the narrator's partner, telling her she'd "better run for your life if you can little girl," and he'd rather see her dead than with another man. Musical whiplash in one album!

I thought about the context of those two songs as part of the same greater creative work, and what I know about the time that created them, and similar contemporary music (see Jimi Hendrix singing "Hey Joe",), and in the end I could only think to myself, "culture is really complicated."

(And that's not the only such instance in the Beatles' oeuvre. Whenever I hear a snippet of the Beatles' "Getting Better", I think of Lennon singing:

"I used to be cruel to my woman
I beat her and kept her apart
From the things that she loved
Man I was mean
But I'm changing my scene
And I'm doing the best that I can."

But it still worked wonderfully for a GE advertising campaign a while ago because it's such a happy, upbeat, classic song, right!?)

Anyway, this morning, listening to a David Byrne album on the way to work, I heard "Now I'm Your Mom," a potentially offensive song from the perspective of a trans woman, and thought about Lou Reed.

A few months ago at work, Lou Reed came up as a topic of conversation between myself and two co-workers. I think we were talking about Walk on the Wild Side because it had come up in a public to-do about potential transphobia in its mention of Holly Woodlawn:

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"Holly came from Miami F.L.A.
Hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A.
Plucked her eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she..."
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The song was played at a college-related event and some students felt this was inappropriate because it minimized and/or ridiculed the process of gender transitioning. But Reed, and probably the bulk of listeners who understood the context, saw the whole song as a love letter to the weirdos and freaks of New York in general, and the acquaintances of Andy Warhol in particular. “Paul Morrissey made me a star," said Woodlawn, "but Lou Reed made me immortal.”

Because it's relevant, one coworker, 1, is a Black woman. As we talked about "Walk on the Wild Side," the other coworker, 2, clearly felt awkward about explaining why Walk on the Wild Side was racially insensitive. I personally didn't feel like a line referring to "colored girls" singing was out of line as a historical reference, so I quoted the line for 1 so she wasn't sitting in information limbo while we tiptoed around it. Later, when just 1 and I were talking, she pointed me at lyrics she'd found when reading up on Lou Reed. From I Wanna Be Black:

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"I want to be black
Have natural rhythm
Shoot twenty feet of jism..."

"Have a girlfriend named Samantha
And have a stable of foxy whores..."
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And that's leaving out a lot of other lines that would be, to put it mildly, inappropriate in a present-day context.

I think I said something like "Wow. That's really not ok." Because there wasn't really anything else to be said about that at that point. How do you understand and respond to something like that? Later, I looked around the internet to get an understanding of the context and to help me relate the song to the artist and his thoughts and intentions. I'm not going to try to contextualize it here because it's still rather outside my experience and understanding.

Sometimes people's reactions to problematic behavior on the part of content creators means is to believe that all of the content produced by that creator is indelibly stained by their thoughts and words and must be forever shunned. (Of course forever is a short time these days, but that's a tangent.) Whose work could we actually appreciate then, other than perhaps Fred Rogers?

I think there are things that shouldn't be part of the popular culture of TV, radio, and other such media. Things like Walk on the Wild Side and - another piece of media I haven't touched on here - Baby It's Cold Outside for instance. For a significant portion of people who hear them, they exist outside of their context and, in that way, are perfectly legitimate targets of serious criticism**. I still think they can be consciously enjoyed without inherently accepting racism or domestic violence.

Is such media categorically different from Reed's "I Wanna Be Black" or the Beatles "Run For Your Life"? If so, what differentiates them? If not, where is the line between 'acceptable in context' and 'simply unacceptable?'

And lastly, should I just shut the hell up and enjoy music? I guess that question is basically moot though. It's funny how strongly a question I was asked elsewhere on Facebook recently has stuck with me lately.

"Why do you care so much about this?"

How could I not? How could I *possibly* not?

--Footnotes

*I almost feel like Beatles albums don't even need to be introduced as such because everyone knows the names, but that's never really been true, and becomes less so as time passes.

**Meaning is created from, and exists entirely in, context. See the use of the word queer, for instance. If a song is felt to be misogynist or racist, then in a very real and important way, it *is*. To say otherwise; to say "if you knew the context you'd understand and your opinion is not valid" is a form of cultural elitism. But it's not *always* misogynist or racist. Or always *and* not always? Some kind of quantum state of...what? Problematicness? Culture is hard.

I ate a bug on my ride home yesterday. Yuck! Ick ick! I could feel it in my throat for eight miles or so until I got home and had some yogurt. My back is still aggravated; it's fine when riding (though it hurts a little when I stop and put my foot down to stand up) but is sore while working. Bodies could really be a bit better constructed, you know?

I finally made a doctor appointment. I tried a few weeks ago, but the request interface offers you the choice of whether you prefer email or phone, and I always check email and they always call me. I don't answer my phone if I can avoid it, so the appointment doesn't get made. I managed to get setup with the online patient portal and made an appointment for tomorrow without having to use the phone.

I want to talk about beta-blockers as-needed for social anxiety, physical therapy or some other kind of treatment for my wrist pain (since the MRI showed nothing), and get a referral to a psychiatrist since the one I was seeing has moved away.

I'm going to a talk at work today about the history of the LGBT movement. That should be interesting and it includes lunch!

I was talking to a coworker a while back about Erving Goffman's Presentation of the Self in Every Day Life and how I wish I'd had a copy when I was a kid to help me understand how social interaction works. Today, I found a copy in a pile of books that someone left in the library, along with a couple of our discards that someone had apparently grabbed and then set down somewhere. If no one claims them, I'll take it home; it would be nice to have a copy to reference, especially if I ever have kids of my own.

I ordered a couple of books to read. Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built sounds fascinating; just the sort of thing I've thought about for a long time and enjoy exploring through photography of repurposed buildings. First (because it arrived first), I'm reading A Burglar's Guide to the City. A friend on Facebook recommeded it and it was a near instant buy. It's about the different ways people relate to space from different perspectives, and how cities shape and are shaped by crime.

I'm considering going back to looking at Facebook with a strick once-per-day limit. Being away has been beneficial, I think.

I upset the acquaintance whose child was wearing the baby onesie I mentioned in my previous post. That's reasonable and predictable, and I should have given more thought to how to broach the topic; I feel bad about it. But even now I'm not sure what the best thing to do is in such situations.

It's become increasingly important to me to be an active voice against many kinds of largely unexamined social ills. If we don't recognize and talk about these things, they will not change. My worldview has become increasingly socially left and activist as time goes by. The popularity of the kind of racist xenophobia right now thanks to Trump's candidacy strengthens those feelings. I want to do more than not make the world worse; I want to be a part of making it better.

Inevitably, that's going to put me in awkward social situations with people who make unexamined statements with no ill-will, but which I see as part of a marginalizing or unjust social paradigm. I'd ask how you, my readers, deal with those situations, except I think the answer to that is entirely contextual. The internet has complicated things, with Facebook or other social media putting me in regular touch with people I only vaguely know. People are naturally defensive when criticized, especially when that criticism comes from someone who, on the face of it, has no standing to criticize their life choices. I don't see any good way to start a conversation in that situation, nor do I feel ok looking in the other direction. Silence too often equates to consent.

Maybe I should be more direct. There have been a couple instances in the past where I directly expressed to someone on Facebook that a particular political position or belief they expressed was odious enough to me that I was going to unfriend and/or block them. That was a much easier choice to make when it was someone saying, for instance, that police violence against African-Americans was justified, or that anti-Muslim xenophobia is acceptable. When it's an attempt at a cute joke that's only funny because it draws on injurious structural power imbalances that are common enough to be the water we swim in for so many people, it's a lot harder.

I'm leaning toward the direct approach being better. Posting an anonymized version of the issue is too much like passive-aggressiveness and feels wrong, especially in retrospect. Whatever communicative potential exists in that approach that doesn't exist in confrontation is out-weighed by the likely offense given. While an unfriending accompanied by an explanation feels like cutting off communication, it at least leaves a door open for a response. In the broader picture, I suspect that I'll just have to get used to the idea that some people will not be interested in interacting with me due to my inclination to be confrontational regarding some of these things. And while that's not direct communication in itself, there is a message conveyed by enough people expressing that same kind of discomfort. I hope to at least be part of a critical mass of society at large saying 'hey, that thing you just expressed deserves a little bit of a second look.'

In the meantime, I offer pre-emptive apologies for offense given!

It's the time of year for there to be a bunch of discussion (and probably even more of that pale imitation thereof, memes) about what is and isn't ok as an expression of positive holiday sentiment to someone whose religion and/or cultural background you don't know.

I used to be firmly in the 'as long as the intent is positive, the form doesn't really matter' camp. However, having talked about it a lot with my partner Danae, who is from a culturally Jewish background, I've come to realize that there is a certain level of cultural privilege that's hiding in that attitude. "Merry Christmas" as a default greeting is a small reinforcing of hegemonic Christian culture. It's like AD and BC attached to calendar years to indicate some nebulous relationship to the birth of a Christian relgious figure; it forces people who are not a part of that culture into passively validating cultural imperialism. Sure, it's 'just a little thing.' I don't plan to start policing other people's usage of it outside my own space. But it's something that I can keep consciously in mind to to help fight some largely unexamined cultural privilege. The most lasting and transformative insight I've had from talking with her came from me saying that Christmas feels to me like a largely secular holiday. Her response, that it's almost always people from a Christian background who have that attitude, was both something I'd never considered and something I immediately saw the validity of. It's easy to think that these things don't matter that much when the default way of things validates your own assumptions and experiences.

Danae commented on this elsewhere herself, and doesn't mind if I include her thoughts with mine:

"I absolutely hate it when people wish me a Merry Christmas. I know that those who do so do it with the best of intentions, but I think they'd benefit from considering the possibility that not everyone they encounter is Christian or prefers to be constantly reminded that the dominant religious culture in our society is Christian. Part of being in a majority is the obligation to try to understand the feelings and perspective of the minority, not to run slipshod over them. Coming from a Christian background -- even a secular one -- is a place of privilege. You CAN'T know what it was like to grow up in this culture as a non-Christian just as I can't know what it is like to grow up black. For most of my life, I've silently stewed about this. But last winter I decided to take a new tack. When people wish me a merry christmas, I'll respond by saying, "Thanks, but I'm not Christian." I don't want to be combative. I just want to remind them that not everyone is Christian, and that those of us who are not actually have a much bigger emotional stake in this issue than those who are."