Quote of the Day

No one should get an MFA if they have to pay for it...  To me, a writer is someone who writes.  The best thing to me is to read eclectically, to go to readings, to have experiences, to live in the world, to mix with all different types of people, to take some chances, and to find some people and start a writing group.

-- Sarah Schulman

Unknown:

Equality is not when the female Einstein gets promoted to Assistant Professor, but when female mediocrities can climb as quickly as male mediocrities.

As quoted in Sarah Schulman's Ties That Bind, p. 50

Sarah Schulman:

Resistance gets falsely pegged as the inappropriate behavior because it results in discomfort for the perpetrator.

Ties That Bind, p. 9-10

Sarah Schulman:

Oppression is both informative about the powerful other and infantilizing about the self.

Ties That Bind, p. 153

Sarah Schulman:

As my grandmother, Dora Leibling Yevish, used to say, "The Germans will never forgive the Jews for the Holocaust."  In other words, when one person hurts you, they hate you more because you know what they are really like.

Ties That Bind, p. 114

Sarah Schulman:

The final ironic twist is that whenever a situation does arise in which homophobia is pointed to as being socially destructive or personally wrong, the homophobe tends to actually blame his own behavior on gay people themselves.

Ties That Bind, p. 26

Sarah Schulman:

Success is opportunity at one's level of merit.  More than that is privilege, less is deprivation.

Ties That Bind, p. 169

Sarah Schulman:

Withholding creates tension; acknowledgment creates relief.

Ties That Bind, p. 117

Sarah Schulman:

Remember, people scapegoat the powerless because there is no consequence for doing so.

Ties That Bind, p. 97

Sarah Schulman:

When a society is not willing to confront the consequences of its cruelty in public, our contemporary culture offers privatized therapy as the only realm where its consequences might be addressed.

Ties That Bind, p. 61

Sarah Schulman:

Since gay people face false accusations and shunning every day and in every arena of life, our behavior and state of mind can be deeply affected by either withstanding the assaults, or desperately trying to avoid them.

Ties That Bind, p. 14

Sarah Schulman:

Saying nothing while your friend's family or lover or society or cultural institution shuns and scapegoats her is to participate in the process.  Yes, it would be better for you, spiritually, to tell the truth to the perpetrator.  But, more importantly, her chance for a decent life depends on it.

Ties That Bind, p. 171

Bookin' It in 2011

I read the following 15 books in 2011. The titles in bold were particularly influential, inspiring or interesting.

1. Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller - Marshall Chapman
2. Leavings - Wendell Berry
3. Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain - Portia de Rossi
4. Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination - Hugh MacLeod
5. Don't Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit edited by Sonny Brewer
6. Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences - Sarah Schulman
7. The Abstinence Teacher - Tom Perrotta
8. Love, Ellen: A Mother/Daughter Journey - Betty DeGeneres
9. Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man - Chaz Bono
10. Transparent - Don Lemon
11. Untied: A Memoir of Family, Fame, and Floundering - Meredith Baxter
12. Sex, Mom, and God: How the Bible's Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics – and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway - Frank Schaeffer
13. Raw: A Poetic Journey edited by Aimee Maude Sims
14. Truth Be Told: Off the Record About Favorite Guests, Memorable Moments, Funniest Jokes, and a Half Century of Asking Questions - Larry King
15. Me - Ricky Martin

Sarah Schulman:

Silence is the greatest reward a perpetrator can receive, whether the perpetrator is a family, a government, a publishing company, or an individual.

Ties That Bind, p. 170-171

Sarah Schulman:

Telling victims that their abuser is wrong does not help anything.  You have to tell the abuser herself.

Ties That Bind, p. 170

Sarah Schulman:

Human beings have the profound duty to intervene when someone else is being victimized, especially if that person asks them to.

Ties That Bind, p. 170

Sarah Schulman:

Does anyone ever refuse to consider a manuscript because they have too many heterosexual books in the pipeline?

Ties That Bind, p. 162

Sarah Schulman:

What's fascinating about shunning is that people are so distorted by their own sense of supremacy that they actually believe that you will and should follow their command of silence.

Ties That Bind, p. 151

Sarah Schulman:

Truthful lesbian representations teach straight people, through some trickle down theory, to be kinder to gay people.

Ties That Bind, p. 139

Sarah Schulman:

When people refuse to discuss why they are shunning you, when they give no reason and have no terms of reconciliation, it is because to actually talk about it would be to reveal their own behavior.  And their power lies in the ability to command silence about their own behavior.  They can only pretend to be neutral if the mechanics of the moment are not discussed.  Once sequence and substance are laid out starkly, their responsibility is revealed.  Hence, no conversation.

Ties That Bind, p. 122-123