Life and the Mind

This week I am in back to school frenzy full steam ahead no
stops. That’s usual for most parents but doubly true for those who also work at
universities. They, the kids, go back Sept. 5^th and though my
classes start two days later in the meantime I have to meet and greet our new
graduate students who are just settling in. I also have to meet with the
ongoing students and discuss their summer research progress. During these chats
I often have to pretend not to notice who did or did not complete a marathon, begin
and end a torrid relationship, spend far too many hours on the patio at the
local pub, etc cte. Being a last minute sort myself it also means a panicky
review of my own summer research to do list as I try to at least cross a couple
more items off. Then there are the haircuts, eye appointments, doctor’s
appointments etc as my schedule pretty much forbids these things during the
teaching term. I used to wait until term had settled in to take care of my own
appointments but I found that students don’t react well to radical appearance
changes mid-term. They are fine with pink hair (or red or purple, whatever) as
long as you start with that colour.

An aside: I’ve been
debating and defending my decision to favour wild hair colours recently and I
think I have discovered the source of some peoples’ discomfort. Older friends,
some of my dear feminist friends, think that women should age naturally. And
for the most part. I agree. I will give Botox a miss, thank you. But I have been
colouring my hair for fun since I was a teenager. I don’t think I even know my
natural hair colour. Brown, I suppose. True it’s now more grey than brown but I
am not sure I need to stop because it’s grey, do I?  At any rate I have decided that it would be
too weird to stop now. Besides I am still having fun. When it gets boring or
tedious, then I’ll stop.

Students are also not fans of serious haircuts mid-semester
and who can blame them really. They’ve just figured who their professors are,
where their classes are and what everyone looks like and then you go and
confuse them. Best not. For a few years I was a fan of the annual haircut, not
something women working in most places can get away with, but I some days think
I got a PhD just to avoid some of those appearance related demands, pantyhose
for example, ugh. I also need new glasses. I am shopping for new glasses right
now with only 11 days left before start of term. The pressure is on. I am also
working on my fall schedule. The fixed chunks are there—class times, meetings
with grad students, department talks, many many meetings—but I also trying to
schedule some time with friends, exercise time, family time. Used to think
scheduled fun was an oxymoron but as a busy person with lots of people and
interests in my life, the schedule helps. Also I find if I don’t begin term
with certain activities scheduled in, they don’t happen. I am a creature of
habit. If I start the first week of term swimming two nights a week, so it
continues. If I don’t, the very idea is doomed. Ditto fun.

So for academics—students and faculty–September is the
month for resolutions. We’ll leave January 1^st to everyone else. But
more on my resolutions later. Right now I have to finish a course outline.

I know that most people make New Year’s resolutions for the actual first day of the new calendar year. The night before January 1st we promise ourselves we will drink less, exercise more, read "great books" improve our French (that’s the anglo-Canadian version), etc. With the wretched excess of Christmas in the past and the nice new shiny spring in the future, people dream of being better selves in the summer months. They imagine standing on the beach, in skimpy bathing suits, sipping club soda, partaking in urbane conversations, in French! But not me. The bitter blah sun deprived  months of January and February seem like bad times to practise deprivation but January 1st also doesn’t feel like anything "new" at all. same students, same colleagues, mid-year, work goes on.

For me, the real new year is September 1. Since pre-kindergarten (1968) to present day, September 1 means back to school, the real new year, the beginning of a new school year. And as a professor now, no longer a student, the year is new in a different way. Each year I get the thrill of meeting hundreds of first year university students. Often living away from home for the first time, their minds slightly more open than they were as a high school students and than they will be as career doctors, lawyers, bank tellers, journalists, sales people etc. They meet me for the first time and so I get a chance each September 1 to be new and improved, a better teacher, to a brand new class of university students. And so inspired not by Christmas excess but rather by the lazy less structured summer months, thoughts fueled by cold white wine and grilled veggie burgers, I turn my mind to the matter of my new year’s resolutions. Here is the first one:

1. I will learn and use my students’ names and care less that I can’t know all of them. Teaching large undergraduate classes (80-400) means that I cannot  learn all of their  names but I do learn some of them. In past years I felt bad not knowing all of them and felt that I shouldn’t refer to those students I know by their names. It showed favoritism. And of course, given who I am it showed a certain kind of favoritism. My university is a conservative place and those professors teaching non-conservative classes get a certain kind of student. When I taught my Death class to 200, I think every brave differently pierced, tattoed, hair-dyed, black wearing gender deviant student on campus was there. I knew all of their names. But the frat boys with ball caps and rugby shirts and the young women in yoga pants and ponytails?  Not a hope. No way. Really, really, they all look the same to me. Try as a might I couldn’t tell "Mitch" from "Josh" or "Joe" from "Peter." Ditto Amber, Madison, Leslie, Becky, and so on. This year when I teach a course on global justice to 100 or so, I will use the names of the dozen or so radical students whose names I know, likley from past courses in past years. There are few rewards for looking different on this very conservative campus of mine. Having me know your name is a pretty small one in the scheme of things. I also know the names of students who participate, whether sorority sister or goth punk, whether by talking in class or by email. Given that students like to have their professors know their names, maybe this will encourage participatory behavior on the part of the look alike crowd. Either that or they will dress less conservatively. Either way it’ll improve my day.

It seemed one thing that participants at the 9th International Bisexuality conference held in Toronto this past June agreed about was how oddly and awkwardly the label "bisexual" fits most of our life experiences. First, there is the way in which it seems limiting in that the label "bisexual" entrenches existing sex binaries. There are two sexes and we, the bisexuals, like both of them. But that’s often not at all how it feels. I once read a phrase to describe a person’s attractions that struck home, something like "it’s when I have to ask that things get interesting." "Bisexual" seems to exclude attraction to trans people or others occupying the murky middle of gender identity. I may be a bisexual but that doesn’t mean I find Ken and Barbie equally hot. In fact, neither Ken nor Barbie does much of anything for me (though that’s overdetermined since Ken and Barble also lack genitals, a real drawback). Second, while the label "bisexual" is limiting, in another way it’s too broad. Straight male friends sometimes try to draw me into their conversations about attractions to particular women. While I appreciate the inclusion, we usually find we agree on almost nothing. Truth be told, I am not attracted to women simpliciter. Of course neither are they but it’s just that our interests tend to veer in pretty different directions. I’m not being politically correct when I say that the models of traditional porn leave me cold (or worse, nervous and insecure about my own body). With some exceptions, I like queer women. I love the cover shot on nothing but the girl: the blatant lesbian image, edited by Susie Bright and Jill Posener (Freedom Editions, 1996).
The basis of my attraction to women identifiable as queer is looks to be sure but it’s also about attitude. And men? Well, that’s even harder to define. There it’s about comfort  and confidence: with women and women’s sexuality, their own sexality too. So unlike straight friends who assume that bisexuals have a larger pool of people to date, that’s not the way it feels to me. And finally the label bisexual implies at least in peoples’ minds, if not explcitily, an equal time and equal affections model as if all bisexuals like men and women inequal measures. In real life some bisexuals are primarily bisexuals in terms of sexual attraction, but only have strong affective ties to one sex or the other. Unlike sex columnist Dan Savage I don’t believe that all bisexuals are likely to end up in opposite sex relationships. I think the the scales can be tipped in either direction. I’ve known a number of self-described lesbians who have occasional sex with men but because they say they’d never fall in love or set up home with a man feel secure in calling themselves lesbians. I object to the idea that all bisexuals are, ought to be, dead centre on the Kinsey scale.

Are there any good alternatives? Short and to the point: Queer; Long but more interesting: Member of the "my sexuality scares the hell out of other people" club; Potentially Confusing: Bi-Queer, Omnisexual, Pansexual. For now I’ll stick with "bi" and do the explaining later.

I’m stealing the title for this entry from a great book, Looking
Like What You Are: Sexual Style, Race, and Lesbian Identity by Lisa Walker. (I think I promised no
footnotes in the blog but I can’t mention a book without giving publication
information, even parenthetically. It’s New York University Press, 2001.) But in this case the identity that concerns
me is not that of lesbian, but rather that of bisexual. How does one look like
a bisexual? One might respond, like many of my straight friends do, by asking
why it matters. Isn’t that a private matter? Why should I care who you sleep
with? That’s easy to say if the world’s assumptions about you match your
reality, if your sexual orientation is sufficiently mainstream to be the norm,
part of the background, and hence not worthy of note.

But if your sexual
tastes and preferences require an explanatory paragraph, and if your sexual
identity is a big part of who you are, then it’s  not so easy not being recognized for what you
are. In some ways my situation is easier than that of women I know who have to
dress a certain way for work. I’m not a lawyer or a business person. Working in
the university environment with all the protection of tenure, I can wear pretty
much whatever I like.  But as it turns my
own tastes and preferences are no help in this matter. I suppose I could style
myself as “femme” except I don’t like make-up and I wear my hair shoulder
length and unkept. Friends say I look “academic” and I think that means rumpled
with glasses and a frequently furrowed brow. So most often I just tell people,
somehow working sexual orientation into conversations.

I am often amused,
though sometimes annoyed by the reaction that since I have a partner and a
family, my sexual orientation is irrelevant. If I insist that it does matter,
that it’s important to me not to be thought of a straight, then people feel
free to ask impertinent questions about my sex life. I feel like I ought to
carry around a list of references, a sexual cv even, complete with names,
dates, activities listed. But I am a private person. This is information I
share with close friends but it’s not the sort of conversation I want to have
with workplace colleagues or casual acquaintances. It shouldn’t matter in the
slightest in what and with whom my recent sex life consists. That’s even
setting aside fantasy life, tastes in porn, fleeting attractions, and various
and sundry crushes and flirtations all of which are part of one’s identity as a
sexual being. Notice that no one assumes that heterosexuals stop being
heterosexual if they haven’t had a partner in a while. Just imagine saying to
a straight friend, “Oh, sex, well you haven’t done that in a few years so you
must be over it by now surely?” (Thanks to Pepper for making this point in his
presentation at the international bisexuality conference in Toronto.)

One solution I
briefly considered is button wearing. I could just label myself with brightly
coloured pins which read “This is what a bisexual feminist looks like.” or
“Don’t assume I’m straight.” or  “Queer.”
Here’s my favourite: “I’m bisexual and I’m not attracted to you.” But I’m also
a sensitive soul and didn’t want to hurt any feelings or have the wrong person
think the button was addressed to her/him. Now back in my ripped jean jacket,
Doc Marten, army surplus messenger bag carrying days this would have worked.
But I am less comfortable pinning buttons on my suit jackets or leather purses.
Besides it’s a cluttered messy look so I buy buttons, think about wearing them,
and instead let them collect at the bottom of my backpack where I prick my
finger while searching for loose change. (Note to self: clean out back pack.)

The problem is
compounded by age. I’m in my early 40s so not so old at all really but I get
occasional glimpses of the future. Older women in our society are assumed to
have no interest in sex whatsoever—the ‘cougar’ phenomena notwithstanding. We
can barely imagine women past the childbearing age as sexually active with
their husbands, let alone if they have broader sexual tastes. Once past 60 in
order to be read as sexual women need to dress outrageously, in overtly over
the top sexual ways. An aside: It also
gets odd as one ages because many more of the 60 + women I meet look like
lesbians. Short, spiky, silver hair abounds. Birkenstocks, comfortable clothes,
no make up, wire frame glasses…. Now it’s not my preferred lesbian aesthetic
but it’s nonetheless a recognizably lesbian “look.” Except that many of these
women are straight. Yet, the message they are sending is one shared with queer
women: a lack of concern for what straight men think of their appearance, a
value of function over fashion, comfort over style. I’ve taken to chatting with
a few such women at conferences only to be disappointed in my assumptions.

I’ve written a brief introduction to the blog. Now a brief introduction to me. I began my adult life as an 80s wanna-be punk with too many black clothes, pink and blue and blonde and black hair, and a faux mohawk. I was a lesbian, an alternative journalist, a philosophy undergrad, hailing from Nova Scotia, travelling through Montreal and Ottawa. I loved radical politics, angry tomes, wrote rants and raves, and for a time, thought straight men were the enemy. Then in the 90s I fell in love with a straight man, retrenched, married, reproduced became an academic, a mother, a wife. a bisexual. I moved to the US, studied 5 years in Chicago, returned to Canada (London, Ontario). I joined the United Church of Canada and voted (once or twice but not always) for the Liberals, was granted tenure. Middle-aged moderation reared its ugly head. Though my hair is still not anything resembling its natural colour, in other ways I’ve mellowed considerably. I am more often puzzled than angry and I much more tolerant of a diversity of personal habits, ways of life, and political views. Questions that once seemed easy look hard. Now in the 2000s, still happily married, and co-parenting, with a spouse, my parents and a large extended family all helping out, I am still trying to figure it all out. Emerging from the years of very young children, I have decided that the 40s are for fun. I bought a red racing bike and learned to ride it fast. I learned how to run (slowly) and to swim straight lines in the pool. I took a Spanish class. Once a fearful flier, I got over it.  I travelled to Sweden (twice), Spain, and Australia. I want to learn to dance. I have many smart, funny, accomplished women (and a couple of men!) I’m proud to call friends. I read a lot. I attended the first ever Feminist Porn Awards, the Emmas, in Toronto. I struggle unsuccessfully it seems to avoid academic administration. I am beginning to broaden my horizons intellectually, engaging my brain and my life. Hence,the blog. And back to why, rather than who.

For the past couple of years I have watched in amazement as friends with full-time writing careers take up blogging. See, for example, my ex Eleanor’s blog, www.opinionatedlesbian.com. Wow. How does she do it? (Well, now she’s doing it less since she’s the newly appointed editor of the Sherbrooke Record, but still. ) In addition to the "how" question, I’ve also wondered "why?" And yet, here I am. I am still not sure about the "how" part but here is my answer to the "why" question.

I write a lot for work. Not as much as I ought to. "Publish or perish" is less dreadful post-tenure. But I don’t always, or even often, get to write about things I want to write about. Now I’m a philosopher and one of the great joys of being a philosopher is that one can roam freely across areas turning all sorts of life’s concerns into philosophical fodder. It would be crazy to deny that my interest in the ethics of parenting, for example,  is unrelated to the amont of time I spend thinking about my role a a parent. But that only goes so far. Specifically, I don’t talk about my own experiences in my academic writing even when there is plausible autobiographical story of how I got interested in that topic. And then there are interests of mine which it would just be too much work to write serious academic papers about. As much as I love biking and thinking about biking, for instance, you won’t see papers on biking on my academic cv anytime soon. And some musings I’d like to commit to print may be quasi-philosophical but they lack the structure and depth of full blown philosophical arguments. Philosophy sets the bar pretty high.

I thought for a time I might return to my first career choice, my first love, journalism. I would do some non-academic writing that I could publish. Back page of the Globe looks good. Some popular book reviews. I thought that, I did, I really did. But it felt too much like work. Word counts, spell check, and a real readership. Blogging seems like it might be a happy middle, something in between a letter to a friend and an opinion piece in the paper. My goal is fairly modest–once a week. Let’s see how I do. And starting as I mean to continue–good advice always–I plan not to edit, fuss or bother. A more relaxed style and a wider range of topics, no footnotes. My weekly escape from the ivory tower.