Crucial Minutiae

I contributed to the recent media darling of a report: A Woman’s Nation (co-produced by Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress). After speaking on a great panel with Michael Kimmel and Stephanie Koontz last week, I couldn’t stop thinking about the need to reframe this issue so that men feel like they can really own their own stake in making work policy more flexible, family-friendly, and generally honoring of the fact that we are all more than drones. Here’s an excerpt from the column I penned on this topic:

For all of our progress on framing the issue, however, one challenge remains largely unmet. We have yet to figure out a way to tag these issues as critical to both women and men. We have to stop using “work/life balance” as coded language for “working-mom stress.” Despite ample evidence that men are served by investing more time and energy outside the workplace and “coming out” as fathers while in it, there are very few men who are taking on this issue in a substantive, political way.

I’ve been getting lots of emails from men, in particular, who are excited about my argument, but no one seems to be suggesting a new framing, new language. Any ideas from the CM audience?

The first brag round-up since August! Our Crucial Minutiae writers have been busy.

Jennifer Gandin Le

• The South by Southwest Conference selected Jennifer’s company, Emotion Technology, to present a panel titled “RT: I’m Going to Kill Myself. Preventing Suicide Online” at the 2010 Interactive conference.
• Jennifer’s short film “Small Changes” won the Grand Jury Prize in the Intelligent Use of Water Competition, and was screened at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Her win was written up in the Austin Chronicle.

Courtney Martin

• “American Ignorance and Afghanistan” on The American Prospect Online.
• “Extreme Makeover, Health Care Edition” on The American Prospect Online.
• “The Imperfection and Redemption of Ted Kennedy” on The American Prospect Online.

Cristina Pippa

• In August, Cristina gave (calm) birth to Francesca – the first Crucial Minutiae baby!

Kate Torgovnick

• Kate’s book CHEER! will be made into a TV show for Warner Bros. TV. Read about the show at Variety.
• “Is Your Friend Toxic?” on New York Post.

Check out this fascinating article from the Chronicle of Higher Education the millennial generation and all its critics and champions. As many of you know, I write and speak quite frequently about generational issues, so I’m fascinated by the tension between pointing out trends and making over-generalizations. It’s not an easy sweet spot to find, as I often learned working on my upcoming book on this generation’s relationship to activism:

Figuring out young people has always been a chore, but today it’s also an industry. Colleges and corporations pay experts big bucks to help them understand the fresh-faced hordes that pack the nation’s dorms and office buildings. As in any business, there’s variety as well as competition. One speaker will describe youngsters as the brightest bunch of do-gooders in modern history. Another will call them self-involved knuckleheads. Depending on the prediction, this generation either will save the planet, one soup kitchen at a time, or crash-land on a lonely moon where nobody ever reads.

The article essentially analyzes the analyzers, a whole crew of folks who have created an industry out of: “the idea that people in a particular age group share distinct personae and values by virtue of occupying the same ‘place’ in time as they grow up.” But sometimes it seems like we have less in common with individuals within our own generation than the media makes it sound, doesn’t it?

Do you identify with your generation? Do you see yourself as fitting the generational trends (social justice-oriented, compliant, visionary, distracted) that these experts describe? Or do you think it’s all a bunch of stereotyping dressed up as social science?

I guest lectured at the New School today in the amazing Ann Snitow’s class. The crew of about 80 students asked amazing questions–How do you see perfectionism playing out in terms of gender? What advice do you have for current gender studies students about post-graduation life? How can we heal the rift between different generations of feminism? etc. etc. It was inspiring to be around such thoughtful, diverse students who are really engaged deeply in the questions and actions that I’m passionate about.

One of the dynamics that I left thinking a lot about is the tension between critique and action. A particularly savvy student asked about the nonprofit industrial complex, a concept popularized in an amazing book by INCITE! titled The Revolution Will Not Be Funded. She waxed poetic for a few minutes about the difficulty of removing oneself from globalized corporate conglomerates while doing any kind of institutionalized social justice work (i.e. philanthropic wealth is often a direct result of abusive practices in third world countries that a foundation then ends up funding nonprofit organizations to eradicate…so twisted.) In any case, I understood where she was coming from. She was in that very alive moment when you are discovering these critiques, making some of your own, feeling really powerful and visionary.

But the flip side of that is paralysis and a lot of precious energy being spent on tearing down rather than building up. I think all thoughtful activist-minded people are put in a position to find some balance between merciless, eyes-wide-open critique and imperfect action. I’m sort of on a lifelong quest to find that balance, as I think many folks are. Meanwhile, the older I get, the more convinced I feel that critique is only as valuable when tempered with moving forward on some flawed but progressive path.

I left behind my MLK books and my little Brooklyn apartment and spent last week at a Media & the Military workshop at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The experience was designed to help the military understand the unique culture of the media and visa versa (we’re notorious for not understanding one another). So, after a week in the trenches, I present you with my three biggest surprises about military culture:

1. The physical training is not actually that hard, just constant. I had sort of blown this part of military life out of proportion, thinking that every soldier is a physical machine. In fact, plenty are in amazing shape, but it’s more a product of consistency and community support as opposed to sheer strength or intensity.

2. Much of the work being done in Iraq and Afghanistan is humanitarian work. When I spoke with Army majors, many of whom had spent three and even four tours of duty “in theater,” as they call it, the majority of what they spoke about were their experienced building schools, interacting with local leaders, figuring out sanitation systems etc. There is some serious nation-building going on.

3. I sometimes felt as if I had less in common with the other journalists than I did with the military officers. As always, it turns out that what separates us is often far less significant than what we share, and that a uniform–camo or blazer–doesn’t determine world view.

Supercool event this Saturday!

Come out and celebrate the return of the sun, good art and sustainable living.

Riverside Theatre, The Living Word Project, MAPP International, Mighty4 and Samurai Graphix and Cultural Animators Series EARTH (H)OURS present:

Life is Living

A public outdoor installation to catalyze deeper thought and community action around the value of life and our relationship to our planet.

Featuring:
The Estria Invitational Living Word Graffiti Battle
The Mighty 4 B Boy Battle hosted by Paulskeee

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