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E.J. Graff

How Do You Remember Adrienne Rich?

E.J. GraffMar 29, 2012
(AP Photo / Charles Knoblock)

On my Facebook page, I asked friends to post excerpts by which they would remember Adrienne Rich. Here they are:

Good Night to Adrienne Rich

E.J. GraffMar 29, 2012
(Flickr/K Kendall)

She was fierce. Once, when I was a shy young poet-hopeful who wrote for the feminist and gay press, I met her. I worried when she said she was following my writing (did I mention I was shy? and young?), because I couldn’t imagine anyone so august reading my work except to critique it. I preferred to follow her at a safe distance, through her writing, with their searing instructions to be awake, true, and relentless in observing the world honestly.

Son, You Could Be Trayvon

E.J. GraffMar 28, 2012
(Flickr/Albertism)

I’m furious that Trayvon Martin is getting blamed for his own murder. If smoking pot in high school were an executable offense, as the Miami Herald seems to suggest, we would cut the U.S. population by about a third. Add tardiness to the list—again, as the Miami Herald seems to be doing—and I believe we could eliminate Social Security entirely. 

The Hoodie, Part 2

E.J. GraffMar 26, 2012
(Instagram/phoenixwhite)

Exactly.

Friday Miscellany

E.J. GraffMar 23, 2012
(Flickr/shawn)
  • With Passover approaching, it’s time to ask the White House: which haggadah will you use? #Obama #MaxwellHouse
  • Speaking of which, my father had a theory that so many Jews are intellectually limber because they learn Hebrew—an extremely foreign language for English speakers—at such a young age. I wish I could call him up (how stupid he was to die!) and tell him he might be right, according to the neurologists:

The Hoodie

E.J. GraffMar 23, 2012
(Flickr/Manic Street Preacher)

You may have already been outraged to hear that Geraldo is blaming the hoodie for Trayvon Martin’s death. Of course he’s wrong. Short skirts don’t rape women; men rape women. Hoodies don’t shoot Skittles-toting teenagers; overzealous neighborhood watch guys shoot teenagers. The blame lies squarely with the rapist or killer, not the victim. And it lies with the racism that keeps getting passed on through our culture, just below the radar. I am regularly appalled when, on family movie night, we watch some children’s movie that friends recommended—and realize that the only African Americans are the bad guys.

Time for Lessons on “Living While Black”

E.J. GraffMar 22, 2012
(Flickr/Ruddington Photos)

Two days ago, I wrote about Trayvon Martin’s killing and my fears for my own little guy. I’ve been reading about it obsessively, as I suspect many people have been. Adam Weinstein’s explainer at Mother Jones has my go-to stop for the latest developments. Sally Kohn has a good summary of the implicit bias research here.

Is the Blunt Amendment a Wedge to Bring Down ACA?

E.J. GraffMar 21, 2012

You’ve been reading me go on and on. Now you get to see for yourself exactly how much fun I have talking about the contraception wars, et al. Sarah Posner had me on her Bloggingheads.tv show, which was posted last night. This particular excerpt starts close to the end, but if you want more of our chat, go ahead and start it at the beginning.

Oh, and if you want to bring me to speak at your campus, church, or other forum, lemme know!

 

More on Tyler Clementi

E.J. GraffMar 21, 2012
(AP Photo)

Richard Kim at The Nation has the smartest take on the conviction that I’ve seen, combing carefully through the evidence and thinking about the conclusions. Please do pop over and read it (and then come back here, of course!). Some excerpts:

Walking While Black

E.J. GraffMar 20, 2012
AP File Photo

I’m sick to my stomach about the Trayvon Martin shooting that Jamelle Bouie mentioned here yesterday.

Over the weekend, Charles Blow at The New York Times (once again, my favorite columnist) wrote:

Who Killed Tyler Clementi?

E.J. GraffMar 19, 2012
(AP Photo/John Munson)

In September 2010, Rutgers student Dharun Ravi used a webcam to spy on his roommate having sex with another man (he didn’t tape him or broadcast him; he just took a few quick peeps and tweeted about it, according to in-depth reporting by Ian Parker at The New Yorker). Three weeks later, that roommate, Tyler Clementi, jumped off a bridge to his death. On Friday, a New Jersey jury convicted Ravi of 15 charges, including invasion of privacy and bias intimidation. Some of the charges carry possible sentences of ten years in prison. Because Ravi was born in India and arrived in the United States at the age of two, he could also be deported to a country he scarcely knows.

Encyclopedia of Silly Walks

E.J. GraffMar 16, 2012

Here’s a little something to enjoy, posted in honor of the final print edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica:

Silver Lining for the Ladies

E.J. GraffMar 15, 2012
Women protesting at White House in 1917

Tigger and Eeyore are battling it out inside me this week. I can’t tell whether to be depressed over what Maureen Dowd calls “the attempt by Republican men to wrestle American women back into chastity belts” or invigorated by the myriad ways women are chronicling it and fighting back. Are women really gonna get dragged back to the scarlet-letter era—why not just repeal the 19th amendment!—or is all this going to set off a revitalized third feminist wave? 

Eeyore: In a surreal move, the Arizona Legislature’s Senate Judiciary committee has introduced a bill that would:

After Jerry Sandusky

E.J. GraffMar 14, 2012
(AP Photo/Jack Dempsey)

I’ve listened to many women’s stories of childhood sexual abuse. I don’t know why they choose me as their confidante—it’s not my story—but once they start talking, I feel an obligation to listen. And so I cried with recognition, last month, when I read a story that Barry Bearak in The New York Times wrote about Quanitta Underwood, a young woman who’s hoping to represent the U.S. in Olympic boxing—because I have heard precisely this story, more than once. Bearak captures the experiences of Quanitta and her older sister as they tried to cope with their father’s regular forays into their bedroom:

What’s Right with This Picture?

E.J. GraffMar 14, 2012
Getty Images

Lately, I’ve been very Eeyore-ish about women’s lives. There’s plenty of reason for that. Ruth Rosen nicely lays out the backlash against women’s reproductive lives in her article about the current counter-reformation, as she puts it, against women’s bodily autonomy. Of course, any attempt to roll back women’s reproductive rights is an attack on women’s economic independence, since women can only control their educational and financial lives if they can control their fertility.

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