I'm sitting in on a class this semester, and the professor often uses examples of public rhetoric in recent history to illustrate theoretical points. In one class, we were talking about norms. Specifically, the most far-reaching and important consequence of the eighteenth-century European bourgeois public sphere analyzed by Habermas is that it set forth a new norm: might-is-right differences in status and power didn't matter in political discussion; instead, the best argument prevails. As problematic as it is that this new norm emerged in settings that did not always welcome women or people of color, it nevertheless is a powerful new norm, especially when appropriated by said groups.

The discussion then turned to norms in general. The professor claimed that the women's movement, while an absolutely invaluable and much needed stride forward in the overall path to social justice, failed to provide a new norm to address the problem of division of labor in the home, especially an equitable arrangement for how to raise children.

Okay, I know there's a lot to be said for getting rid of norms altogether. For many people, they're oppressive, they're restrictive, and they institutionalize disapproval of perfectly valid choices (or courses of action taken when there was no choice; i.e., many women have no "choice" whether to work outside the home or not). But this professor helped me to see norms in a different way. They're templates, common forms for how to live, he said. Norms make things less complicated, which can be a good thing. They can be useful, eliminating a great deal of the struggle of having to figure so much out at the individual level and then justify the choices made to the community at large.

Right now, for example, I'm reading Feminism, Breasts, and Breast-feeding by Pam Carter here and there on the stationary bike/stairmaster. This set of questions Carter poses helps to show the confusion that comes with the absence of a solid norm:

[N]o feminist practice has evolved around infant feeding. A number of questions can be raised: is bottle feeding in some way equivalent to medical intervention in childbirth? should it therefore be avoided? does breast-feeding offer greater possibilities of control by women? or is bottle feeding equivalent to contraception in allowing women greater control over their bodies and their lives? should feminist support pro breast-feeding policy in order to strive to recapture the time when infant feeding was within the control of lay women? should they try to recreate the kind of conditions where all women breast-feed? or does a safe and (relatively) healthy alternative offer women more control and autonomy? are middle class women being good girls in breastfeeding their babies realizing that 'doctor knows best' providing a good example to the working class? should feminists campaign for private space for lactating women or should they challenge the dominance of public space by male sexuality and refuse privacy? (p. 19-20)

What do the rest of you think? A new norm seems reasonable, at least to try as a thought experiment. Would a new norm reduce the number of mommy wars, alluded to by Linda Fishman, Laura at 11D, Dooce and over 1000 commenters there, and most recently in the New York Times? Or would it not make any difference, because a new norm may still judge implicitly some people's decision to deviate from the norm? Does feminism already point to new norms for the division of labor at home, but they're just not articulated in a way that's clear to the general population? If so, what are the new norms? As I see them, they are:

• Destigmatize stay-at-home fathers. I've probably said here before that the SAHDs I know always seem to feel compelled to explain, even apologize for, their work. Their families don't approve of the fact that they aren't bringing money into the household, etc.
• Destigmatize young mothers (also single mothers). Provide more support for young women who want to have children before starting a career. This would come in the form of social support and free daycare for student parents in high school and college so that they can continue to pursue their studies.
• Provide on-site daycare at work and school.

Other than that, I guess there are only individual systems in which domestic partners split up the chores in a way that approximates 50/50. But that's not as easy as it looks when there are pervasive older norms lurking in the background. Plus, these new norms I've listed only tell social institutions what to do, not individual people. A solid new feminist norm, assuming we're going to try to think of one here, should (I use a heteronormative model here tactically) tell everyone what to do: the woman, the man, and the corporation, school, society, etc. I'd be interested to know others' thoughts about this; I believe I've written myself into a corner here.

In my head in a continuous loop, Young Jeezy's voice:

Every time I do it I do it for my hood
And every time I do it I do it for yo hood
And every time I do it I do it for they hood
It's understood I do it for the hood

You've probably noticed that I did a redesign of my site. "Redesign" here refers to a change in my banner image and color changes on my stylesheet, not a real redesign, since I never really do that. I created the image in Comic Life and edited it in GIMP. I believe the font is called Marker Felt. I like the design, so I'm loath to make any changes to it, but still, let me know if it's giving you trouble. I haven't tested it except in Mac OS 10.4 with Firefox.

Can anyone guess where the image comes from, and give the context for it (the two people in the picture and their relationship with each other)?

It's similar to Flickr for videos, and I found it courtesy of Chuck. Some of the videos I've watched today:

The Scientist

The Gun Show (not really the title, but it amused me)

Random Reggae Moment

The Life of Eoin Griffin, which totally took me back to high school, hanging out with my friends listening to Yaz, Upstairs at Eric's. Inside, you can feel the dif- Outside, you can see the difference. Inside, stop. Outside, stop. Out- stop.

Also: The emO.C.

One snap of my fingers and I can raise hemlines so high the world is your gynecologist!

The models on the Gucci runway wore purple print dresses that barely skimmed their tiny derrieres. They teetered atop platform pumps that seemed to be cobbled together out of iridescent plastic. Some of the tawdry dresses were cut so low that they looked as if they were stuck on backward with double-sided tape and must surely be in violation of some E.U. decency laws.

I don't read fashion stories very often, but this morning I was in the mood for taking in the florid writing style often used in descriptions of fashion shows. This story from the Washington Post had just that, but I was surprised also to find this bit of reflective critique:

Designers here have been engaged in their biannual ritual of defining what it means to be a contemporary woman. Strong. Ladylike. Sexual. Intellectual. Miuccia Prada celebrates what is inside the modern woman's head. The Gucci collection, designed by Frida Giannini, aims to address the lusty desires of a far different region of the body. (Definitions of masculinity are essentially static. With each turn of the fashion season, the only questions in menswear seem to be: How much will the peacock be stroked? Will the Everyman's inner Johnny Weir be coaxed into the light? Or will it be a time for caveman instincts to be set loose?) Each season, the definition of femininity is reworked from whole cloth. Instead of seeing a woman as a whole person with many moods, designers prefer to treat her as an assemblage of characters. Fashion demands and allows a woman to reinvent herself.

Recently, Jill posted about a very handy Author Addendum (PDF) that you can present to publishers when you're asked to sign over copyright. The Addendum was created by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition in conjunction with the Association of Research Libraries. Science Commons also had a hand in it.

The terms of the Addendum give authors the right to "reproduce, distribute, publicly perform, and publicly display the Article in any medium for noncommercial purposes" as well as the right to make derivative works and the right to allow other people to create derivative works, provided they're for noncommercial purposes. Basically, it's like a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivs license, in that, the way the Addendum is worded, it sounds like other people can create derivative works, but they have to ask the author first.

Jill had some modest degree of success using the Addendum with MIT Press, and I think we in rhetoric and composition and technical communication should test it too! I would love to see this Addendum become ubiquitous in our field(s) -- for publishers to come to expect copyright negotiations when they're dealing with us, or with anyone in the humanities for that matter.

The first page gives instructions on how to use the addendum, and it's delightfully subversive. The authors suggest that you write a cover letter directing attention to the addendum and submit it with the publisher's contract and the addendum. They instruct us to sign the publisher's contract, but right under our signature, write "Subject to attached addendum."

AND, if the publisher prints the article and doesn't sign the addendum, that constitutes implicit agreement to the terns of the addendum -- the language in the addendum specifies this. Heh.

Edited: SPARC recently published some presentations from a forum titled "Authors and Authority: Perspectives on Negotiating Licenses and Copyright."

...and it is Oso Raro of Slaves in Academe. Ze combines frank and lucid critique of academia with a command of pop culture, a camp aesthetic, and just an overall sharp cleverness. I know some may think I'm overreacting in my intense appreciation for this blog, but I can't help it. It's right up my alley, what I never knew I always wanted. Please go there and read every post.

Via Johndan, a music perception study. You listen to pairs of tunes and then answer whether you think they're the same or slightly different. I got 22 out of 30 right, which appears to be about average (random guessing would yield a score of 15, according to the researchers).