Mrs. Jellyby

"The house in Thavies’ Inn had bills in the windows announcing that it was to let, and it looked dirtier and gloomier and ghastlier than ever. The name of poor Mr Jellyby had appeared in the list of Bankrupts, but a day or two before; and he was shut up in the dining-room with two gentlemen, and a heap of blue bags, account-books, and papers, making the most desperate endeavours to understand his affairs. They appeared to me to be quite beyond his comprehension; for when Caddy took me into the dining-room by mistake, and we came upon Mr Jellyby in his spectacles, forlornly fenced into a corner by the great dining-table and the two gentlemen, he seemed to have given up the whole thing, and to be speechless and insensible.

"Going upstairs to Mrs Jellyby’s room (the children were all screaming in the kitchen, and there was no servant to be seen), we found that lady in the midst of a voluminous correspondence, opening, reading, and sorting letters, with a great accumulation of torn covers on the floor. She was so pre-occupied that at first she did not know me, though she sat looking at me with that curious, bright-eyed, far-off look of hers.

"...‘I have come with Caddy,’ said I, ‘because Caddy justly thinks she ought not to have a secret from her mother; and fancies I shall encourage and aid her (though I am sure I don’t know how), in imparting one.’

"‘Caddy,’ said Mrs Jellyby, pausing for a moment in her occupation, and then serenely pursuing it after shaking her head, ‘you are going to tell me some nonsense.’

"...‘I am engaged, Ma,’ sobbed Caddy, ‘to young Mr Turveydrop, at the Academy; and old Mr Turveydrop (who is a very gentlemanly man indeed) has given his consent, and I beg and pray you’ll give us yours, Ma, because I never could be happy without it. I never, never could!’ sobbed Caddy, quite forgetful of her general complainings, and of everything but her natural affection.

"‘You see again, Miss Summerson,’ observed Mrs Jellyby, serenely, ‘what a happiness it is to be so much occupied as I am, and to have this necessity for self-concentration that I have. Here is Caddy engaged to a dancing-master’s son — mixed up with people who have no more sympathy with the destinies of the human race, than she has herself! This, too, when Mr Quale, one of the first philanthropists of our time, has mentioned to me that he was really disposed to be interested in her!’

"‘Ma, I always hated and detested Mr Quale!’ sobbed Caddy.

"‘Caddy, Caddy!’ returned Mrs Jellyby, opening another letter with the greatest complacency. ‘I have no doubt you did. How could you do otherwise, being totally destitute of the sympathies with which he overflows! Now, if my public duties were not a favourite child to me, if I were not occupied with large measures on a vast scale, these petty details might grieve me very much, Miss Summerson. But can I permit the film of a silly proceeding on the part of Caddy (from whom I expect nothing else), to interpose between me and the great African continent? No. No,’ repeated Mrs Jellyby, in a calm clear voice, and with an agreeable smile as she opened more letters and sorted them. ‘No, indeed.’"

And there you have her, ladies and gentlement: the pre-eminent classic literary example of the mother activist: distracted, negligent, selfish, unwomanly, uncaring, and cruel, eyes so focused on the distant troubles of distant persons that she cannot see her own child.

To which I say: Rubbish.

What? Were you expecting me to say anything else?

Mothers form the backbones of many of the most important social justice movements of our times: feminism, family supports, global climate change, smog, consumerism, poverty, health care, environmental justice, access to physical activity and outdoor spaces, affordable nutrition and housing, and dozens more. We do this not despite our love for our children, but because of our love for our children: because caring for the world our children live in and working to make it a better, more prosperous, more equitable, healthier and cleaner world to live in is a positive expression of our love for our kids and our desires for a better future for them and for their own children.

No one will tell you this is easy.

Children take a lot out of us: time, energy, money, privacy, mental functioning, for starters; and it can be hard and exhausting to chip away from the little that remains some way to express our concerns about the world our children will inhabit as adults. This is one reason why it is so rewarding and so pleasurable to participate in Mad and Jen's Just Post Roundtable again. Yes, I'm there (and I'll admit to a brief narcissistic thrill at also having been linked to by the Disability Blog Carnival and a Science Fiction link round-up over the last week. Score one for eclecticism. By the way, there are worse ways to become familiar with disability and ableism issues than by reading over the Carnival offerings, which are consistently intelligent, well-written and eye-opening). How wonderful it is to see mother activists who manage to be effective advocates and good parents.

This is also why Kim and I are narrowing our WholeMom focus for the foreseeable future to mothers who are working to make the world a better place. Starting March 1, when we unveil a new look and a new publishing schedule, we plan to feature moms who combine motherhood and activism, on whatever scale. As part of this new focus, we will be collaborating with Mad and Jen's montly Just Post Roundtable.

Which just goes to show you that blogging can indeed be more than "a shrine to parental self-absorption."

Posted by Andrea at 12:22 PM | Comments (11)

Beanie Baby Wants YOU

Way back in March, I was once again privileged to watch the implosion of an online community. It was painful and ugly and you've probably noticed me working out some of the issues here on the blog. It also started me on the path to creating an online community for moms and aspiring moms that tries to avoid some of the pitfalls and problems I've noticed in the ten years (sigh) I've been participating in various kinds of online communities.

And yes, it's taken -- let's see -- five months! Egads! to get to this point, which is still nowhere near done, but I would like to formally present the concept for Yet Another One of Andrea's Many Projects:

TheWholeMom.com

Don't go there! There's nothing to see yet. When there is, you will know. I promise.

However, I know from my site stats that anywhere between 80 and 200 people wander through these here parts every day, and you are all such brilliant folk, that I am shamelessly soliciting your insightful wisdom and eventual participation. Be Warned: This post is staying at the top until I have at least 20 useful comments. If you're getting sick of looking at it, say something. I really, really want constructive criticism and feedback, and I'm a very stubborn person.

First, an introduction: What is TheWholeMom.com?

The Whole Mom will be a quarterly webzine for women who feel that mainstream parenting sources give short shrift to a woman's identify outside of family and home (and possibly work). She wants to read articles on a variety of subjects that explore everything in the world, from the frivolous to the profound, from a mother's perspective. Not THE mother's perspective, because we are all individuals and (contrary to what Parenting magazine's editors must think) we do not actually all live in detached suburban homes, we do not all drive volvos or minivans, we do not all shop at JC Penny or the GAP, those of us who work for pay do not all work in the mainstream sectors, and we are not all 24-39. Just A mother's perspective. Possibly yours. I'll get to that.

Examples might be:

- The difficulty of balancing one's environmental/other social justice priorities with the perceived needs of one's kids, or the limitations imposed by having kids.
- How to continue one's career as an aspiring punk-rock guitarist when leaving home to go on tour no longer seems so attractive
- The joys of making art (for a living or otherwise) when all the supplies need to be kept on shelves at least four feet from the ground, and preferably locked
- Getting OUT, either with or without the kids

What there won't be: Parenting articles, of the Ten Magic Tricks to Make Your Toddler Love Green Beans and Stop Having Temper Tantrums TONIGHT variety.

The fact is that anytime a mother talks about anything, she will end up talking about her children because the simple act of becoming a mother changes one's priorities and goals so profoundly. We won't all change in the same ways, but we change.

We are also all mothers with different journeys, and different stories to tell. Some of us actually decided it was time for kids, threw out the birth control, and children arrived relatively on schedule. Many of us did not. There may have been health complications, including infertility. Perhaps your children joined your family from an alternative route, from surrogacy to adoption to stepmotherhood. Perhaps you are a birthmother, and your child joined another family. Maybe you are single, by choice or not; maybe you are in a non-marital partnership; maybe you are struggling by on welfare; maybe you are 18 or 48; maybe you have been trying to have children for a long time now. Maybe the child you have is not the child you expected to have. For whatever reason, you look at the glossies on the newstand and those mothers look like an alien race, with concerns and issues utterly unlike your own. You join an online mothering site and participate half-heartedly, but the values and discussion of the majority of the participants put you off. Casual sexism, racism or classism let you know that this is not the home for you.

The Whole Mom will also have a community forum, intended to be a place where women with children (or women who want to have children) can explore all of the many facets of their identities with like-minded women from all over the world. You can talk about your kids and raising them as much as you like, BUT there will also be places set aside specifically to talk about other things. Like politics, hobbies, fitness--whatever you can think of. There will be no predetermined Conversations You Can Have. There will be no This Is What Mothers Are Supposed To Be Like/Want/Have/Look Like. Because mothers are, contrary to advertisers determined myopia, actual human beings. Who should be permitted to BE full human beings, even after the children are born.

The only restriction on conversations will be those that, due to bigotry or prejudice, might limit or restrict the participation of mothers from demographic groups who are traditionally excluded from mainstream discourse. If you are determined to be sexist, classist, racist, or heterosexist, you might as well resign yourself to not lasting long on theWholeMom.com. No trolling. Some restrictions on lurking. Our every effort to support and foster private conversations where privacy is warranted.

There will also be at least two sections of the forum delineated by geography (Canada & US), because--no offence--sometimes the Americans tend to take over the internet by sheer numbers, and those of us living elsewhere have a hard time having conversations that reflect our own lives and experiences.

Do you have any suggestions or feedback? I would love to hear it. Even and especially criticism.

And I sincerely hope that you will consider participating, especially my faithful Hippos. I have a few of you in particular in mind who I will approach (or dog, as the case may be) when the time comes, because I know you have fabulous and unique stories to tell. I won't be able to pay you, but those of you who have blogs or other projects can shamelessly promote yourselves.

And much thanks and slavish gratitude to the lovely Kim, who has put so much time and effort into this lately.

Now.

Discuss! Discuss, I say!

Posted by Andrea at 8:37 AM | Comments (28) | TrackBack

Online Communities, Safe Spaces and Advocacy

Hi. This is very long, and has nothing to do with Frances. It's a whole lot of rambling about online communities, politics, safe-spaces and advocacy for mothers. And yes, it's all connected. And if you're interested in any of these topics then you might want to read this. Or you might not.

Oh, and before I get started, you might notice I added a few new features. You can now email posts to people (or to yourself, even), not that I think it's very likely you would. But you can! And you can also add yourself to a notification list if you want to be notified when I update the site. Again, I don't think this is going to be an overwhelmingly popular feature, but I thought it was nifty. It's on the right-hand sidebar.

I have been online for a long time. A third of my life! And while that may not seem like much, do remember I'm not 15. Anyway.

I've been online for a long time, and during that time I've participated in a lot of online communities. Mostly because I like to write a lot and they facilitate that, but whatever. I'm not sure my motives count.

Those communities have all been different in terms of structure, rules and participants, and yet in the end all of them have serious failings. Is it the medium, or is it the rules? That is, are all online communities destined to fail, or are we just imagining them the wrong way?

There are wide-open semi-public communities ("semi" because, as long as someone owns the space (and the space is always owned by someone) it is only public in so far that the owner/moderator is willing to pretend that it's public, sort of like shopping malls), and there are smaller communities where one must apply for membership. There are communities where everything happens or is supposed to happen in view of the community, and communities where various forms of opting-out or protecting certain interactions is allowed. There are communities without written or expressed rules of behaviour; communities that run on assumed or implicit rules of behaviour codified into a community-specific form of netiquette; and communities with explicit written codes of conduct such as Charters or User Agreements. There are communities with and without moderation or top-down control. But in the end they all fail.

One community I participated in had a membership of thousands, and viewing was not restricted to members so the number of lurkers can't even be estimated. There were no established rules of conduct, but a strong code of netiquette that was assumed to be common sense but in reality was learned through trial and error. There was no function enabling people to communicate privately, except if emails were exchanged, and this would necessitate posting it publicly on the board. No one ever had their membership revoked; it was intended to be entirely free speech, and the explicit assumption was that free speech would foster democracy, individual rights, accountability and resilience in its members. There were no moderators. It was a free-for-all. You signed up, you jumped in, and if you were smart you brought a weapon (virtually speaking, of course).

Friendships are formed on this site, but the formation of community is problematic, though many participants feel a sense of community on the site. For one thing, trolling is constant and fairly vicious. For another, it is all too easy for a handful of posters with time to completely dominate the board, comprising their own-tightnit community that appears to exclude outsiders, newbies or people with less time. Some posters openly and viciously attacked each other, and there was no mechanism to deal with this as a community.

But the main problem, for me, was the contradiction between the stated community values of equality and progressive politics and the way the ultra-free-speech nature of the site played out in practice. That is, that people with an identity that allowed them the privilege of assuming that people will listen and value their speech in real life tend to be the same people who dominate online communities because they assume that the experience will the same. And ditto for people who for whatever reason (disability, sex, language skills, class, race, etc.) in real life are not used to having their speech validated and valued continue to participate less and be validated and valued less online. In a community without explicit rules, in which no thought is given to the way that rules of expression can mirror or combat rules or experiences of privilege and power hierarchies, the rules of the outside world will be implicitly mirrored. On this explicitly feminist and progressive site, there was a tremendous dominance of middle- and upper-middle-class, white, straight, able-bodied women with good educations, and a surprising element of pissed off guys who hated not having their masculine privilege confirmed and valued. (One would think they would simply move on, but apparently, giving voice to women is an insult to men and an example of 'reverse sexism.)

On another site I participated in, the owners and moderators attempted to combat these problems by instituting rules. There was a user agreement that made posting racist, sexist, or otherwise offensive or anti-progressive materials an offence that led to being banned from the site (nothing to stop them from signing up again, but nothing's perfect). Moderators were available to view and remove offensive materials if they were posted. Otherwise it was remarkably similar to the above community; wide-open to public view with a members list of thousands and a lurkers list many times greater and the regular intrusion of right-wing trolls. However, there was a private message function which enabled one to reply to another member's post privately.

Here, too, there were problems. Many people who signed on to the user agreement didn't support it and openly and regularly questioned its existence and necessity. They viewed it as an infringement of their right to free speech. And in spite of the publicly-stated valuing of progressive and anti-oppressive politics, the patterns of dominance and hierarchy still favoured those with privilege in the outside world: men over women, straight over gay, white over everyone else, and so on. And while offensive material was banned, flaming was not; posting required an extroardinarily thick skin and imperviousness to insults. This probably reflects at least in part the passions and values that led people to that site to begin with. However it started, though, it has the effect of limiting discussion to those people most passionate, most willing to tolerate personal attack, sometimes those most judgemental. Many of the discussions are far from healthy. Certainly it would be foolish to reveal something personal that one was not willing to have roundly criticized, mocked or flamed.

A third community I have been participating in is yet further along the continuum of limiting speech. One cannot even view the community without first signing up. There is a charter of behaviour that one must agree to that does not only forbid offensive materials but mandates that all posts must be courteous, supportive and free of "bad words". One can report posts that do not adhere to this standard. Not only are private messages enabled, but one can choose to ignore certain posters so you don't even have to know when they post, let alone see what they wrote. And again, traditional patterns of power and privilege are replicated. Of course this isn't a political board, so I am probably in a very small minority in seeing that as a problem.

The effect of all of this is to mandate a stereotypical form of typically adolescent feminine behaviour. It's infantalizing and sexist. It's infuriating when there is something that needs to be discussed but you don't dare bring it up because someone might not think you're being nice enough and so report you. Honestly it reminds me of nothing so much as a bunch of teenaged girls operating on that bizarre byzantinian code of conduct where you can do or say anything as long as it's not to someone's face, and it's perfectly acceptable to ruin someone's life or reputation as long as no one can pin it to you.

A fourth community I was involved with was an email list for women who are pregnant or thinking of becoming pregnant and have type 1 diabetes. Membership had to be approved, and the list of members was quite small. There was no explicit code of conduct, but there didn't have to be because the topic of conversation was naturally limited to type 1 diabetic pregnancies and diabetes control. So while it was of all the communities perhaps the easiest and most natural to belong to, in my experience it did not foster friendships or any sense of community, and once women had given birth they tended to drop off the list.

So you'd think by now I'd have some idea of how to make an online community work, eh?

But I don't, not really.

I know what doesn't work.

--not making progressive politics or anti-oppressive values part of the site guarantees that those without a voice in the real world won't have a voice there either.
--making only lip-service to such values has the same effect
--thus there needs to be explicit consideration of the needs of groups who are traditionally disenfranchised in order to counter this tendency. But how does one do this?

--having no rules of conduct gives free reign to people who are willing to be vicious and cruel, and guarantees the presence or development of a community that is at least in some elements so lacking in orderly or respectful conduct that it would never exist outside of the internet. Self-policing by community members has minimal effect if there is no system or authority to back up community rules.
--Having rules that are condescending or infantalizing makes a community look good but robs it of any valuable or adult interaction, thus guaranteeing that all members will at least occasionally behave like kindergarten students. ("Teacher! She called me a poo-poo head!")
--So a community needs to find and walk a fine line between over- and under-policing and regulating. There need to be rules and penalties for breaking them, but it can't be so strict or absolute that it stifles genuine conversation or healthy conflict.

--Wide-open semi-public access and membership fosters the existence and proliferation of trolls and lurkers, which can and usually does inhibit the formation of community.
--But a membership that is too private or closed will also inhibit the formation of community because the level of interaction (in terms of quantity) required to move beyond formalities and limited shared interests will never be crossed.
--But what is the magic number? And how do you find members if you aren't semi-public and wide-open?

What on earth am I talking about? Why do I think this is interesting? How much free time do I have anyway? All valid questions.

The thing is, real communities are not all public or all private, they are both. There's the public square, the shopping mall, the grocery store, the laundromat, the telephone, and individual homes. All sorts of spaces along a continuum from very public to very private. And I think that one of the things causing online communities to function in the often dysfunctional way that they do is that they don't approximate this. Or it's very crude. There are very public spaces galore, a few very private spaces, adn that's it. But if you wanted to, say, draw aside five or so of your closest friends and have a chat with them about something, you couldn't. I'm not sure how to create that experience online, but I think it's important. It's important to have spaces for everyone all together, for each person by themself, and for various combinations of people who have voluntarily chosen to be together.

As it is, it is very difficult to find safe spaces online. If you wanted to discuss something important to you without judgement or censure, good luck. If you are very brave, you can open such a discussion in a semi-public space and hope the hordes of trolls and lurkers keep their mouths shut. In my experience that doesn't last forever. Or you can try to find or start a private community built around a particular issue or problem, but they tend to remain shallow.

There also need to be rules of conduct and methods for enforcing them. AFter all, we don't permit criminals and dangerous lunatics to roam city streets freely. But on the other hand, you don't want to lock someone up because they told someone their perfume stinks. You might not require them to talk to each other, but you probably wouldn't give them a cloaking device to they can both pretend that everyone in the world is good and kind and agrees with them about everything.

Not that real communities are a paragon of excellence or healthy functioning in every instance, but there are some kinds of dysfunction that they are better at avoiding, and I think it is partly due to the physical structures of the spaces they inhabit. And I wonder if it is possible to replicate those structures online.

And this is interesting to me because (I know, I'm a geek) I think that kind of community is important to real, solid advocacy for mothers as a group. It doesn't necessarily have to be online, but I think it is probably easier to foster and establish a diverse group of people online that in the real world, where people strive to divide themselves along so many demographic lines. We live in neighbourhoods divided along class, economic and racial lines. And if we are going to advocate for mothers as a group, we can't permit it to be so divided. It has to reflect ALL mothers, or it's worthless.

So to begin, we have to have some understanding of what mothers as a group might want or need.

And I can't see any way of knowing that doesn't involve a community of mothers from diverse backgrounds and with diverse values and experiences.

This is probably true for most issues, but I'm talking about moms here. Insert the group or issue of your choice, if you prefer.

Is this making sense to anyone but me?

So anyway. For a host of reasons, some very selfish, and others relating to advocacy for mothers as a group, I am thinking more and more of how to go about establishing a healthy and functioning community for mothers. One that allows for safe spaces, for real discussions, for healthy conflict, for the formation of strong friendships, for a strong formal and informal code of behaviour, for good times, and might even foster the potential for change. If anyone has any brilliant suggestions, observations on what does or doesn't work, or feedback of any kind, I would love to see it.

Yeah, I know, it's a bit of a tall order. But it would be nice.

Posted by Andrea at 1:34 PM | Comments (2)