'Tis the season

Of food. If you're celebrating something this time of year, you're probably eating.

Chronic pain and fatigue mean that I struggle with energy for preparing square meal. Increasingly this means I make use of one-pot recipes, but sometimes the desire to eat/serve something a little bit different can mean that I spend dramatic amounts of energy and can be tired for days. So I need a new repertoire, and gradually I'm finding new dishes and combinations that work well.

I occasionally browse cookbook sections in bookshops, but generally find these are not as helpful as one might think. See, I know how to cook. The problem is not learning to cook, but thinking up dishes that meet the necessary restrictions. Moreover, most cookbooks seems to have a dramatically different idea from me of what constitutes an "easy" recipe. For example, Nigella Lawson's version of "easy" cooking, that often takes half an hour and uses several pots I'll then have to wash up, is the sort of dish I might consider on a day I was feeling particularly well, not on a day I was feeling tired and in lots of pain.

So what I need are recipes that meet the following restrictions:

• Low financial cost: No posh imported ingredients, no boneless skinless nonsense.


• Nutritional value: It's important to me that I eat a balanced range of vitamins and other nutrients because this helps in the management of my symptoms.


• Low on mental spoon-cost: This will vary from person to person, but for me it means working with foods I'm likely to have already in my kitchen (since I can't usually run out at the last minute to pick up a few ingredients). And while I do buy fresh foods regularly, recipes that rely on ingredients with a longer shelf-life are preferred (since I'm more likely to have those things on any given day). Brownie points if you can make a good meal entirely out of non-perishables. Also: if I can minimise the planning-ahead time, that's good too (so foods that have to be prepared a day in advance are right out).


• Low on physical spoon-cost: This will also vary from person to person, but for me it means minimal chopping, minimal washing up, minimal time I have to spend standing up.

So why is this a social justice issue? Well, as I've written before, the cheapest foods tend either to be low in the nutritional content I need or very high in spoon-cost. Foods that are really easy to prepare tend to be more expensive (because they include the cost of processing, chopping, skinning/boning, etc), and are often less healthy. If they are both easier to prepare and high in the nutritional content that I need, they are high in financial cost; we're talking nice cuts of lean meat and fish, whole grains, fresh fruit and vegetables -- all of these are dramatically more expensive than the less healthy options of tinned baked beans, tinned meat, etc.

And as a feminist, I also note that domestic work -- including the purchasing and preparation of food -- is disproportionately allocated to women. And when the women in question are disabled, these are the issues that arise. Oh, and did I mention? Disabled people and women are disproportionately poor.

Anyway I keep looking for new recipes that meet all of these, but the hope that I will find them in one of the cookbooks all the cool kids seem to be using is beginning to fade. As Kaz and I have often remarked, we may just need to write the book(s) ourselves.

Anyway, happy whatever-you-celebrate, or general happiness, if you do not celebrate anything this time of year. May your spoons be plentiful.

--IP

Geraldine Doyle

Geraldine Doyle died last week at the age of 86. She was the inspiration for the "Rosie the Riveter" poster which proudly proclaimed that We Can Do It. Yes, that one:

Image description: A young White woman flexing her right arm and looking determined. She is wearing a blue factory work shirt, her hair is covered in a red bandanna with white dots. There is a blue speech bubble above her head with the words "We Can Do It!".

And here's Ms Doyle in the 1940s:

Image description: a young White woman is shown leaning over what appears to be a piece of factory machinery. She is wearing a light-coloured factory work clothes, and her hair is tied up and covered with a polka-doted bandanna.

The poster was initially used to recruit women to war service during WWII, and soon became an image of the Women's Movement -- symbolising women's strength, and determination. It's one I've loved for it's positive focus on what women can, and do contribute.

Her obituary in the Washington Post contains this paragraph:

While many people profited off the "Rosie the Riveter" image, Mrs. Doyle often said she never made a penny from it because she was too busy tending to her family and "changing diapers all the time."

I hope the irony is not lost on anyone.

Raise hell, Ms Doyle.

Hat tip: Melissa McEwan at Shakesville.

--IP

Me and You

The individual is a cult of personality, an isolated incident, a dictatorship, an event, a single point. The collective is solidarity, a culture, a democracy, a continuation, a network.

Advantage cannot be given without comparatively removing it from others. One person breaking a glass ceiling does not help everyone else; it just shatters one illusion, leaving shards for everyone who stands below. Now people believe that where there used to be a ceiling, there is none. Don't be fooled; it is still there. One illusion was replaced with another, for there was never a ceiling there in the first place, and now there still is.

Struggle for power and you will find privilege, but look inside yourself and you will find a power without struggle. The difficulty is not an external one, but an internal one, to recognise the power relations that play out every day and to learn to challenge them. It is not about rising up, but about bringing down.

Society exists. We are not just people, but people in relations, a system. We will never be outside such a system, so we must always push at is edges. The revolution is not an event. It is eternal, a fight against inheritance and assumption. It is not outside but within: there is no end state to be achieved, and no inevitability about it.

Even though the struggle is internal, it is not individual. It is a shared struggle against our society, our surroundings, which permeate us and constitute us. It is a revolt against ourselves. But to revolt against your self alone is depression and dulling of the spirit. Collectively it can be joy.

To push against the chains that shackle us all is activity as brilliantly subversive as anything else we can hope to do, and if you do not enjoy it, you're doing it wrong. So: smile at the police lines, dance! When authority seeks control, laugh in its face, for it has no power over your spirit. Rejoice in your disobedience, for it is not merely insurrection but liberation!

"Grow out of it"

When I was at school, I didn't date until much later than everyone else, and I remember that this caused a certain amount of tension between me and my schoolmates. By all accounts, there was something wrong with me: I was a dyke, or I was frigid, or I was a slut who had lots of sex but was too uptight to tell anyone about it, or I had issues with men, or I wanted to date guys but they didn't want to date me.

When I said I simply wasn't interested, that was assumed to be false -- something masking the real problem. If asked whether I wanted to have a relationship or sex eventually, I shrugged, and explained that I had no strong preferences either way, which only confused people more.

Eventually, I did start to have romantic relationships, and in my adulthood that included sexual ones. I resent that that fits the stereotypical narrative of "growing out of it" or "not being ready", because that suggests that becoming sexual is something people do, naturally and inevitably, all on their own. And if that's true, then why did my peers go to so much trouble to make sure I knew, from primary school onwards, that there was something completely and utterly wrong with not wanting sexual relationships? We were in primary school when I first remember being overtly told that this was something wrong with me -- most of my peers didn't even know what sex was (I got unusually good sex ed from my parents, at quite a young age, but it's clear to me in retrospect that this wasn't true of my peers), only that sex wasn't optional once you were at the highschool prom/in college/married (highschool proms, college, and marriage obviously not being optional either).

In other words, from a very young age, we are taught The Relationship Hierarchy. Which is something like: blood ties and marriage ties trump other sorts of ties. Sexual relationships trump non sexual relationships. You have only one partner, who shall be your sexual partner and your lawfully-wedded spouse, and no other partners, and they trump all other relationships. Marriages that produce children trump non-procreating relationships, but Thou Shalt Not Be A Single Parent. "Family" and "Friends" are distinctive sets of people, and "Family" trumps "Friends". "Friends" should mean only people of the same sex, but otherwise, same sex friends trump other-sex friends. You shall be emotionally intimate only with same-sex friends, unless you are a man, and then Thou Shalt Not Have Emotions. (Please note that I think these are social norms, rather than things I agree with -- in fact I strongly oppose many of these ideas).

Well fuck that. As my co-blogger Katherine blogged, important relationships can be constituted not only through blood ties or marriage ties, but also in other ways. Katherine used the example of flatmates, who might well constitute family.

The message here is that although I happen to associate certain kinds of emotional closeness with certain kinds of people and the relationships I have with them, and I also happen to associate certain kinds of (not necessarily sexual) physical intimacy with certain people, those are things I have largely been taught to associate, according to the Relationship Hierarchy. Some of those associations or non-associations are healthy and self-protective (it is not healthy to be close to certain people in certain ways), some of them are arbitrary and deeply harmful.

And that has all sorts of reprecussions. It means that from a very young age, before children really understand what sex is, we have taught them that boys and girls cannot be friends without a sexual connection (and men and men, or women and women can never have a sexual or romantic connection). It means that we teach kids that people who are not interested in sex or romance are wrong. It means we teach kids that queer families are wrong or oxymoronic. It means we teach kids that there is a primacy to sexual relationships above friendships that goes partway to legitimising posessive behaviours in abusive partners.

And in the context of a society in which things are sold by displaying a near-naked or hawt-and-sexy woman, or a society in which street harassment is part of many women's routine experience, this is also how we teach women that they must be sexually available all the time, to men who must always want sex. It starts before we even know what sex is, and it continues, more or less forever. I remember being little, thinking that eventually I would have sex because everyone did. I remember being repulsed by the idea then, which I attributed to being primary-school age, but years later, I'm still repulsed by the idea that one ought, to think that having sex is inevitable, or think that nobody says no to sex. That's not something I anticipate "growing out of".

There are interesting things to be said about how this relates to queer feminism, sex-positive feminism, and the socialisation of children, but this post is long enough already. What I will say is this: Kaz and I have talked about queer feminism having, on the whole, very little to say about asexuality. I've worried about writing about asexuality because I don't identify as asexual, and didn't want to be talking as if I knew about other people's experiences. But part of being a political ally, and part of creating a feminism that works for me, is examining my own investment in sexuality, and how we build the hierarchies that I, and indeed everyone else, is part of, and that harm the people around me. This isn't really a post about asexuality -- but it is me starting to do the investment work.

--IP

Shout out: Spectral Amoebas

Well if this ain't wicked, I don't know what is. Kaz, Ily, and Sciatrix are bringing you a brand new shiny carnival about asexuality and the autistic spectrum. The call for participation says

A blog carnival is an event where various people write posts around a single topic and link them together at the end. The topic of this carnival is the intersection of asexuality and the autism spectrum. The scope of this project is general. Any topic that deals with the intersection of asexuality and autism fits within the aegis of the carnival. If you’re not sure, submit it anyway and we’ll figure it out.

We are asexual bloggers on the autistic spectrum who want to explore the intersection between autistic and asexual identities. The basis of this project is to have a conversation about our unique experiences being autistic and asexual without looking for a “cause”. We want to create a safe, non-judgmental space to talk about the issues that affect us. If you identify as asexual (or demisexual, or gray-a) and as on the autistic spectrum (diagnosed or not, AS, autism, PDD-NOS, NLD), you are invited to write a blog post for this project. If you are not asexual and autistic you are welcome to contribute provided you focus on the issues experienced by this particular intersection. The scope of the project is general, and open to any experiences of being autistic and asexual.

However, please keep in mind that asexuality here is to be discussed as a sexual orientation in its own right, not as discussion of the desexualization imposed on autistic people by mainstream culture.

If you want to write a post but don’t have a blog, please contact Ily at sanfranciscoemily@gmail.com or me at sciatrix@gmail.com about doing a guest post. Please have your post written by 31st January and comment on this post or send an e-mail to me or Ily about your post by then. Note that the hosts reserve the right to reject posts by anyone if they feel they do not follow the guidelines of or are not in the spirit of the carnival. The posts will be compiled on Writing From Factor X for posterity. A post with the compilation will go up here in the beginning of February. Be a part of this exciting project!
–Sciatrix, Kaz, and Ily

An edit: Possible topics include but are not restricted to coming out experiences (both asexual and autistic), relationships, gender expression, young adult experiences, treatment by medical professionals, integrating identities, or dealing with stereotypes. This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive list, only general ideas.

See? I said it was wicked!

--IP

(Tip of the fabulous hattedness: Kaz)

Just the beginning

Earlier this evening, Parliament voted to raise tuition fees to £6000-£9000 per year.

My generation has been hit with a set of really brutal cuts. The elimination of Child Trust Fund, cuts to Child Benefit, cuts to youth services and sports centers and public libraries and schools and now higher education.


I couldn't make the protests today, although I've attended many of the other protests in the last few weeks, so I was home listening to the Parliamentary debate. And what I heard was a room mostly full of non-disabled White men who themselves received world-class free educations, and they are now denying affordable accessible educations to the current generation of young people, and slashing support to women, disabled people, and poor people. I saw a group of people who have benefited hugely from the welfare state decide that children too young to vote but old enough to protest and be arrested, should not themselves receive the same support. And when one MP asked another MP whether he would be willing to pay £9,000 a year for each of his years at university, I saw him dismiss the question and mock it.

But I also heard a spirited defense of public services, or student protests and occupations, of protests against Vodafone, and criticisms of kettling from Jeremy Corbyn MP and others. We have a great deal of public support. Some of our elected representatives behaved shamefully today, and we will remember that. We will also remember that we have huge popular following, that we can win if we work together. As Adam Ramsayreminded me earlier this evening when I was struggling not to cry, Thatcher's poll tax was also approved by Parliamentary vote, and later dropped following civil unrest. We can do that again.

The campaign against cuts to public services is about more than just tuition fees and university. We've lost this round, but we'll be back. We'll keep marching, keep working, keep protesting. This is just the beginning.

--IP

People who do good work can still be bastards

Here's what we know about Julian Assange: he founded WikiLeaks, he has been arrested and charged with sexual offenses, he denies the allegations, he has been denied bail, and his work has generated extensive controversy and animosity among politicians.

Here's what I know about rape allegations: the mass media is particularly shit at impartial journalism when it's about a rape allegation, and we, the general public are also particularly shit at being impartial.

I think what WikiLeaks does is important. I think transparency in governing is important. I think protections for whistleblowers are important.

I also think that nobody is all good or all bad, and that the fact that you do good and important work does not necessarily mean that you're not a bastard. Whether Julian Assange belongs in this category I do not know, and I do not care to speculate. I refer you to the above list of things I do know about him. I note the point here because it's something that people often overlook but I thin it may be part of what is motivating the popular support of Assange against the allegations. That is, I think many people assume that if someone is nice to fluffy kittens then they must automatically be A Good Person who can do no harm. Maybe Assange is the sweetest person you could ever hope to meet, and is particularly sweet to fluffy kittens. Maybe he's a total wanker. I don't know, and what's more, I don't particularly care. What I do know and care about is that supporting transparency and whistleblowing does not require me to excuse or ignore serious allegations.

But I'm saddened to see a number of liberal and even feminist friends talking and writing about Assange and the allegations as if the allegations are obviously trumped-up, or simply unimportant, or who write about supporting WikiLeaks more vociferously and frequently when the media is full of stories about these allegations than at any other times. The people who know what really happened are Assange and the two complainants. The rest of us? We have to stick with the lists at the start of this post.

If you really care about transparency, and you really think whistleblowing is important (and I assume that you do think these things if you support WikiLeaks), your concern should be for the truth. And as you know, if you have been following WikiLeaks, the truth isn't always convenient or simple. So if you're really committed to finding out the truth, your concern should be not to shut down allegations or dismiss them, but to insist on a fair trial.

--IP