Pop culture treasure, high culture trash.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Ethic of caring less

At work I am archiving photos & press re: the Puget Sound Women's Peace Camp, 1984-1986 (Seal Press did a book on said camp called We Are Ordinary Women), and it occurs to me that, as suspected but never confirmed, all contemporary hipster haircuts originate in 1984. Seriously, if you teleported some of these women out of the photos and into the offices of Troubleman, they'd have an EP out and be up on Cobra Snake within 10 minutes.

Leafing through the May 1984 issue of Off Our Backs, which is off-gassing like whoa after 20 years in storage in a deathly acidic box, it also occurs to me that I hate Carol Gilligan so much because, on some level, I think she might be mostly right. And I don't want her to be. All that generalizing just makes me hella nervous...I mean, it's one thing to have theories about different kinds of ethics, and to point out that some are about fairness and some are about inclusion. But when you start gendering them, it just gets so screwy so fast. If boys want to be fair/just, and girls want to be nice/inclusive, what do you do with the boys who want to be nice and the girls who want to be fair? Do they not count? As a theory it completely fails to deal with outliers--in fact, ignoring outliers is what makes it work, and since I like my feminism to be all about accomodating and recooping outliers, I have never been partial. Kate Bornstein would totes defend me here, I'm thinkin'.

The (2nd) Pitchfork Ryan Adams interview is real, real funny and so, so worth reading. It's how music interviews should be but almost never are: anecdotal, kinetic, specific--fulla conjecture & breeze-shooting & theorizing & fan-fessing, not, "On this album I wanted to do something different" and "It's important to me to always push myself musically." Best moment is "the Ryman" (Adams' name for himself...?) explaining how Pavement & Daydream Nation birthed emo.

I am taking care of two kittens for the next week. They don't seem too interested in my guitar, but they love my Latin dictionary, hiding under my bed, and sitting on my window ledge watching the cars go by. Right now they are sleeping like the kitty dead, limbs splayed, paws outstretched, motionless save for the rhythmic swells of tiny, furry ribcages.

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