cambios

so, today at school, i was sitting in the cubes, and as usual the homepage comes up as blackle. i did some reading about it, and it seems that it really does reduce kilawatt hours expended. so today i came home and changed my homepage from google to blackle too.

and then i decided to go further. i changed my desktop to a dark picture. i changed the background of my blog and other various websites from light to black. i changed the background of my windows from light to dark. my life is dark now, existing primarily in basements and all.

and its silly and small, but every little bit helps i suppose. or at least it can't hurt.

italia

well, they say knowing spanish helps with italian. and there are a lot of cognates, but it didn't help me much. fortunately, i had my (taller) little sister interpreter with me. the trip was good. very very good. aside from hangovers and allergies i have no complaints. wine was drunk, spaghetti was consumed, sights were seen, asses were made (of ourselves), and now i can hardly contain my anticipation for holidays, just so i can see lou again.

there are many stories to be told, but i will stick to my favorite for now: lou, her friends and i were at a gelateria one evening, drinking wine. we had also had wine with dinner. and lunch. this was probably the 7th or 8th bottle of the day. the five 20 year olds and myself finished the bottle and determined ourselves too drunk to order another, so we headed out the door. they headed off in another direction, and lou and i with our trusty map headed toward what we thought was home. we ended up near the river (the opposite direction), and were rather confused. lou decided she had contained herself long enough, and let it loose, as she seems to be doing more often these days. after the quick pit stop, we headed back the opposite direction, hoping to start over from our original gelateria. but we couldn't even find that. fortunately after roaming in circles for about 10 minutes we came across a taxi stand. we hopped in and after 3 minutes in the cab were at the front door. 5 euro got us home. of course by this point lou had the giggles (which were contageous) and we probably woke up everyone in the hall. it was a good night, but the hangover wasn't really worth it. i'm getting old. that never used to happen!

nava-who? miss navajo!

i finally watched "miss navajo" by billy luther, and it was even better than expected.

aside from making me crave some frybread (with a hole for spider woman of course), its quite wonderful. nice shots of shiprock, window rock, open desert. it makes me crave that dry heat (maybe only becaue my apartment is chilly). its such a beautiful place. "beauty that hurts" as the admiral would say.

the documentary followed a miss navajo contestant, who seemed to be from shiprock, based on shots outside their home. it was a nice overview of historical and current issues as framed through the pageant. the historical knowledge quiz only stumped me once, though i certainly wouldn't have been able to answer as thoroughly as the contestants (or in navajo!). it involved the treaty of 1868 (the long walk), changing woman, coyote, and the n.n. seal.

i also appreciated the nuanced way of addressing sheep butchering (though no visuals of "fat sheep 4 sale" signs). they mention its traumatic for some people. which i can attest to. but also seem to take pride in it as legitimizing the contest as more substantial than other beauty pageants. (i also want to note that the butchering was more offputting for me because it caught me off guard, rather than being "gross." though it did reconfirm my vegetarianism....but i digress). they also had to make fry bread, and exhibit a "traditional" talent.

it did an excellent job of addressing language loss. none of the contestants were fluent. most spoke some navajo, but were not able to answer questions completely in dine'. and a little of the history of this loss was touched on, including boarding schools, which i also found excellent for contextualization.

all in all, it was excellent, highly recommended, etc. but then again, i'm not quite an unbiased observer.

atletas embarazadas

my usual athletics consultant, k, sent me a link today about ncaa athletes that become pregnant.
and i, of course, have many thoughts.
first, i have to say that the glaring problem with the article is the complete absence of reproductive justice discussion. sure, i can imagine why, but there are a variety of topics approached in the article that require mention of rj for thorough discussion.

the very first paragraph begins, "The timing wasn't the greatest," bringing to mind my (mis) quoted statement from the chron, "I think that abortion rights are central to women being able to control their own lives." Followed by (surprisingly appropriately named) Junk's appraisal that my comment "implies that women are neither free nor equal citizens unless they can legally end a pregnancy." And her assessment is pretty right on.

I do believe that a woman who is unable to decide when, where, and how to get pregnant is neither free nor equal. The Daily Herald article illustrates both of these aspects. First, women who are not free to choose between abortion and a child are not free from several constraints. They are not free from biology. They are not free from economic consequences. They are not free from social consequences. They are not free to pursue a future of their choosing. But, by this argument really no one is "free," we all make choices within constraints not of our choosing (to loosely paraphrase Marx). And since what sort of "free" is not specified in Junk's article, I'll move on to the second point.

Women are not equal citizens if they are unable to choose. Now, since I've been reading a lot of Altusser, Ong, and other such citizenship theorists lately, I should mention that here I use the term "citizenship" to mean the full rights associated with being an official member of a group. I do not mean mere "belonging," nor do I mean simply the right to vote. Citizenship is hailed by the state and ensured through Ideological State Apparatuses. It includes the full protection of the state, the right to participation in the public sphere, and all benefits associated with membership. And it is not "merely cultural" (Judith Butler, 1997), but implies real material consequences. In the case of pregnant athletes these consequences are the scholarships they receive to attend school. When these scholarships are taken away, at best they are left with paying tuition. At worst, these women will be financially forced to quit school, and may also miss out on a promising professional athletic career (and I'm now resisting the urge to switch gears and launch into a critique of gender inequality in professional athletics).

Of course the consequences for women are only one half of the equality equation (haha). As the article mentions, many college athletes have children. While an undergrad myself, one of nu's star football players was the father of no less than 3 children. he went on to the nfl. Even one child for a female athlete, on the other hand, would not only preclude playing in what could be a pivotal season to be able to play professional sports. Perhaps I verge too closely to equating pregnancy with injury, which in some ways may be appropriate but from a legal standpoint gets, well, "sticky."

It is also important to note that members of a Clemson team did terminate pregnancy out of fear of losing scholarships. Now at risk of sounding like I'm anti-choice (bear with me here), it is an atrocity that a person would be compelled to terminate a pregnancy for such reasons. Of course, it happens all the time, and there are plenty of women who simply cannot afford a(nother) child and terminate pregnancies. Which points to the vast array of underlying problems, with healthcare systems, welfare states, maternity/paternity leaves, day care systems, and plenty of other institutions. All this is simply to say, that perhaps de Beauvoir was too quick to assert that "biology is not destiny." Unfortunately the current state of reproductive justice and the aforementioned institutions do leave women unequally equipped to claim the rights associated with citizenship.

Alright, now...moving on. In large part I agree with the article, but I find it too apologetic. Aside from her complete sidestep of rj issues, Babcock McGraw says she can "see both sides." Female athletes engaging in unprotected sex are being irresponsible, and this behavior is equated with drinking and driving or snowboarding. Sure, unprotected sex is never a good idea, but if female athletes are held responsible for such acts to an extent that they are dropped from rosters (and funding), to maintain equality, male athletes who father children should be held to the same standard. If we regard athletes as having a primary commitment to their institution (as the author implies), a child constitutes a breach of that contract whether the fetus is physically growing in the athletes womb or simply takes half of its dna from the athlete. Any distinction between to the two privileges male-boded athletes (as if they're not privileged enough). If athletes are dropped from rosters for "irresponsibility" this should include all bodily injury or change, drugs or drinking, or anything else that may get the athlete into legal trouble (even a misdemeanor arrest). Isn't this why we have Title IX?

the espnU website has a nice write up of outside the lines that includes a little video.

Ok, so now i'm just rambling on and i've spent too much time writing this instead of my paper on german anthropology. ah, procrastination...