The Blog I'm Not Writing

 

 

Trigger Warning

This blog contains content.

 

 

 

 

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Department Of Damning With Faint Praise

From a NY Times review of the movie Indignation:

But despite its faults, “Indignation” is easily the best film made of a Roth novel, which is saying a lot.

To the Co-founders and Co-presidents [1]  of the I Loathe Philip Roth And Other Overrated Sexually Regressive Hipster Wannabe Misogynist White Male Writers Club, [2] that is, indeed, saying a lot…but not a lot of what the reviewer imagines.

Indignation, indeed.

 

 

 

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Department of Missing The Point

I am an admirer of Palestinian-American, Muslim-identified, comedian-actor Masoon Zayid, and follow her FB page.  [3]  I am not a fan of her August 14 FB comment on the recent burkini brouhaha (re the mayor of Cannes banning full-body swimsuits, or “burkinis”, from the French city’s beaches):

I dress like the lost Kardashian AND support a woman’s right to choose to sport a burkini. Your body your rules.

Zayid’s (totally understandable) instinct to support her Muslim sisters is commendable but also, IMHO, naïve and misses a larger point. Translation: I was moved to open my big mouth (or…uh…type with my big fingers?) via FB comment:

“Your body your rules” – if only. That laudable sentiment only works in societies/cultures where women have true autonomy. If a woman is raised with the reality that she can be accosted, threatened, shamed and even assaulted and murdered by boys and men if she is not “properly” covered…gee, I wonder what kind of “choice” she will be “free” to make?

 

 

Some Muslim activists tout the ideal of Muslim women who freely choose “the veil” in some form, be it hijab, niqab, even burqa. Other Muslim women activits are asking Muslim women not to wear hijab, which they feel is “…an interpretation of Islam we reject that believes that women are a sexual distraction to men…(an) ideology promotes a social attitude that absolves men of sexually harassing women and puts the onus on the victim to protect herself by covering up.”

I see those coverings [4] – particularly the suffocating, dehumanizing burqas – as glorified burial shrouds, and signs of social, sexual, intellectual (and certainly sartorial) slavery.

As for the idea that people freely choose to don such cloaking devices, of course all sentient beings like to tell themselves that they freely choose their lot. But when Muslim women can be attacked in a public park for wearing a swimsuit,  stoned to death for not wearing a veil, subjected to an Iman’s declaration that you are asking to be raped if you don’t wear a hijba, or be harassed and beaten for wearing a veil but not the right way, and suffer other persecutions ranging from absurdities to horrific atrocities…[5] how can there be anything resembling honest choice in the matter? Those who declare otherwise have a very different – and I would argue, dangerous – idea of what constitutes “freedom.”

 

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Oh And By The Way While We’re On The Subject

Aka Department Of Sometimes You Just Can’t Win

Aka Department Of Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t….

 

So, not only can Muslim women and girls be assaulted by fellow Muslims – even in this country – for not wearing a hijab, it seems there’s a growing problem of Muslim women and girls who live in Western countries, including England and  Canada and the USA , being targeted for harassment when they do wear one.

WTF is wrong with people?

No, folks. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

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Department Of Must Change Subject To Something Less Disheartening

One afternoon about a year and a half ago, MH told me that, in case I hadn’t noticed, he’d stopped wearing his wedding ring…and in case I had noticed, he wanted to assure me as to why. A combination of The Aging Process © and decades of tapping digits on keyboards had given him arthritis-like symptoms, specifically pain and swelling in his fingers. He removed his ring, hoping that doing so might alleviate the pain, and fearing that if the swelling increased and he left it on, he might have to have the ring cut off.

I hadn’t noticed his wedding band-less finger. After his revelation I decided to commiserate with his situation in the only way that seemed logical to me: by removing my own ring. This has caused just a wee bit o’ eyebrow-raising from people who’ve noticed. I assuage such concerns thusly: my removing my wedding band is not a harbinger of marital discord; rather, it’s a reinforcement of its importance and mutuality.

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I spent many years working in women’s reproductive health care, wherein I encountered several married couples who did not wear wedding rings. The no-ring-thing was sometimes for job-related reasons (rings can be safety hazards for jewelers, mechanics and others who work with their hands), sometimes due to dermatologic allergies, and for women, sometimes due to pregnancy-induced swelling (which occasionally led to a permanent change in ring size).
(from The Ring I’m Not Wearing blog post earlier this year)

Excusez-moi, but I must confess that I love to quote moiself. Not only does it make me feel…well, quotable…it adds that certain, je ne sais quoi to my conversation. Or, in cases when I’m talking about indescribable pastries, would that be, je ne sais croissant?

 

 

 

Once again, I digress. This was supposed to be a segue into MH finding a solution to his/our wedding ring dilemma, [6]  courtesy of man MH works with who recently lost a good deal of weight and thus found himself with an ill-fitting wedding ring, and came upon these (and these and these) companies who make silicon rings. Apparently, it – the market for more functional, versatile alternatives to traditional metal wedding bands  – is a thing, now.

And if it’s a thing that ends up on my and MH’s fingers, you’ll hear about it, here.  [7]

 

 

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Department of Olympic Games Haiku

 

Synchronized Swimming;
Synchronized diving – both are
Olympic events.

This is a big world,
And so I wonder: why no
Synchronized croquet?

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May you appreciate having true freedom to make honest choices;
may you be wary of burdens disguised as choices;
May you take trigger warnings with a grain of salt and croissants with chocolate icing;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

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[1] Which would be moiself and fellow writer SCM…and innumerable others.

[2] We need an appropriately cool acronym.

[3] My favorite of her lines, which she uses to introduce herself to new audiences who might be unnerved by her continual body tremors: “My name is Masoon Zayid, and I am not drunk, but the doctor who delivered me was.” (Zayid has cerebral palsy due to the oxygen deprivation that occurred during her delivery.)

[4] Whether on a Muslim woman or a Benedictine nun.

[5] Go ahead, google “Muslim woman beaten for not wearing ___,” but not right before bedtime or meal time.  And FFS, don’t watch the videos.

[6] MH nixed the solution posed by daughter Belle, that we have wedding rings tattooed on our respective fingers.

[7] No more footnotes, as is noted in this footnote.