Monday Music: the I love Helen & Shimalsky & Sasha edition

Because they introduce me to cool new music, and are willing to hear me out when I start babbling about the grand failure that is, at present, my life. This first song is like a corkscrew to my heart (thanks for the metaphor, Bob, sorry someone called the cops on you):

Tennessee – Leatherbag
Over the Rainbow – Israel Kamakawiwoole
Stuck in the Middle With You – Stealers Wheel (thanks, Norbizness!)
Bucket – Neutral Milk Hotel
Love or Confusion – Jimi Hendrix
Fortunate Son – Creedence Clearwater Revival
Rayures Venitiennes – Pascale Comelade
Ya vam rebyata rasskaju – Dina Verni
It’ll All Work Out – Tom Petty
Lucky Town – Bruce Springsteen

Here’s a video set to Dina Verni singing “Madame Banzha”:

Look Verni up sometime. She had an amazing life. And not a grand failure either. Something to aspire to. 😉

A man’s 1st wife sparked the horrifying wedding inferno in Kuwait?

Hmm, well, this is what I read on Maktoob this morning, anyway.

Now, how much you want to bet that the groom couldn’t give a rat’s ass about his first wife’s opinion when he decided to marry another woman? And that patriarchal society cheered on and approved his choice – because he, having been born a man, is allowed to make choices that women are not?

I’m not saying this to excuse the behaviour of the person who, they say, started this blaze. Whatever your jealousy, whatever your grief, whatever your sudden irrelevance, or whatever other problem you may have, you don’t slaughter innocents like that. The wedding was segregated along gender lines, and the fact that it was the women’s tent that was set on fire is striking. Without knowing what was going through the alleged perpetrator’s head at the time – it seems that the interloper was being punished, not the husband. Of course, it may have just been easier for her to sneak up to the women’s tent. Who knows? Either way, it was women and children who paid the ultimate price here.

In thinking about this tragedy, I can’t say with any degree of certainty that it was preventable. Who knows how things worked in that particular family, after all? Perhaps the woman in question would have set a birthday tent ablaze, if given half a chance. But this does need to be said – when men have the ultimate say and divorce is stigmatized, when men are like suns and women are like satellites orbiting those suns, it does make for a messed-up situation.

I don’t have an opinion on polygamy either way, though I’ll say that I’m a supporter of polyandry alongside polygamy, if either is to practiced. Marriage is a complicated business, and, regardless of religious teaching (which I, in my infinite privilege as well as general frustration with the very idea of religious society and how it tends to be practiced, tend to ignore), people ought to be able to make arrangements that they can live with. Emphasis on the word live here. As opposed to, you know, destroy themselves and that which is around them.

ETA BBC confirms it as well. Apparently, the original couple were divorced, and the wife was “avenging ill treatment.” Good Lord. Talk about futility. A bunch of women & kids died, but the ex is walking around in perfectly good health. Pssshhhh.

War against whores? Answer with heavy artillery!

Renegade drew my attention to this bit of sex worker news this morning. Like Ren, what I found particularly unnerving about the missive was its insistence that the phrase “sex worker” should be put in quotation marks, and the writers’ very obvious and apparent distaste for this line of work. Considering the fact that the writers, Margaret Brooks and Donna M. Hughes, insist that they wish to “protect people from exploitation,” I find all of this a bit odd. Not all sex workers are explicitly or implicitly forced into the trade, and yet those people need protection from exploitation too. They deserve dignity as much as the next person.

I also found the very obvious slut-shaming of Elizabeth Wood to be jarring and not in line with progressive politics at all. How do you get a woman you dislike to shut up? Why, imply she’s Slutty McSlut. It’s an Old Testament mentality and it is both intellectually lazy and profoundly demeaning.

What gives me hope (as per Ashley’s question)

Ashley has a great post about hope on Feministe right now. I started to type out my response in the comments, but it got long and complicated, so I’m bringing it here. “What gives you hope?” is a great question. I don’t think we ask it often enough. When we fill out surveys and memes, we’re encouraged to think about the things that irritate us or bring us down, our pet peeves and ugly secrets. When we’re moved to give a long response to someone else’s work, we usually do so in order to criticize. And when my cousin texts to meet me for a beer, he writes “let’s get together and bitch,” and he’s only half-way joking.

In light of all that, what DOES give me hope?

Well, first of all, there is comedy.

Second of all, there is drama.

Cats curled up as neatly as pretzels, peonies in bunches, the Dnipro River glimpsed from a plane.

The poetry of Lesya Ukrainka gives me hope, especially when she talks about anguish quieting down for the night.

Hillary Clinton gives me hope when she doesn’t take shit.

Champagne in the grass gives me hope.

My great uncle wrote letters from a war he would never return from, and they give me hope.

The idea that people are at least pissed off about healthcare in the States gives me hope.

The fact that someone once said “we don’t like their sound” about the Beatles gives me hope.

The frescoes at St. Cyril’s give me hope.

I think that’s all the hope I need for tonight, but I could use more tomorrow.