"When Time and Space Don't Matter, Meet Me at The Bean": An Exegesis

On the feels-longer-than-nine-hour drive back to Pennsylvania from Chicago, Bryn asked, "So what are you going to name the album for all of these pictures?" I didn't know, and after a moment or two of pondering album titles, I stopped thinking about it. "They usually just come to me on whim when I'm uploading the pictures. I'll wait and see, I guess."

As usual, this title presented itself to me rather spontaneously. But I didn't feel very content with it at first. I liked the title well enough but it struck me as long, corny, and vague. When I thought about it some more, though, I realized that it was actually sort of complex for a title, and that was what mattered most about it. "When Time and Space Don't Matter, Meet me at The Bean" captures a lot about the trip for me--comments, memories, future possibilities, and current feelings. That's what makes it complex, and because of this, I really like it now.

Here's one surface reading of things: A friend accompanied me on the drive to a multiple-day philosophy conference in Chicago. Once we got there, we stayed with some of my friends. While we were there, we visited the Bean. A lot.

 

All of that is true. You could just stop there.

Part of the more surface reading also includes these bits of commentary from the car: In Ohio we realized that time and space were doing weird things. In addition to our biological clocks being thrown off from each of us getting up earlier in the middle of morning than we had anticipated, and the fact that the car, GPS device, and cd player clocks were all reporting different times and various expected durations of travel, we noted that by then we had been in the car for nearly five hours, yet in our anticipation, it felt like maybe one had passed. We were far from PA, moving through states on a Wednesday morning, leaving behind our normal routines and typical worries, wondering "how did we get this far already?" It's weird to just be able to jump in a car, hit the road, and go. You end up somewhere so totally far away from where you usually physically and psychologically live your day to day. It reminds you that such changes are not only possible but quite do-able. Despite my attempt to recall how I addressed McTaggart's Time Paradox in my metaphysics class during my senior year, it didn't get too philosophical. That much was saved for when I presented at the Central Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association.

In the car, though, I simply said, "Welcome to Ohio, Bryn! Where time and space do weird things."

Here's another important element of the trip that relates to the title: The day that I presented my paper at the philosophy conference was the very same day that a friend of mine from high school turned 26, and a birthday celebration is a perfect reason to travel from Pennsylvania and reconnect. Even though facebook allows me to be in pretty regular contact with some people from Eagle, Idaho, there are very, very few among those historical peers whom I actually see on a yearly basis when we go home for the holidays. Lee was in my class and he is one of them. He went to Cal Poly for college, moved to Chicago to do improv, and put Bryn and me up for the four nights of our visit. Luke, his older brother, is another one of those friends from high school. He went to Gonzaga in Washington (the state) and has been living in LA for a few years now. The youngest of these brothers, Matt, graduated high school one year after Lee and me and went to college at UC-Boulder. Even though I was just north of him by a little over an hour at Colorado State for three years, we actually didn't see each other much after high school. Lucky break, then, that he also now lives in Chicago. Our Idaho roots brought us from the east and the west to the windy city, where we also reconnected with the other Luke from our high school theater group. Go figure, he moved to Chicago a while back, too. (All three of these brothers were mentioned before in this blog post. They are all still doing very well for themselves.) (It turns out that a couple of other people from theater also live in Chicago. While a key member of our group of friends from theater is currently in Scotland, we missed her and she was there with us in spirit. Furthermore, on the morning that I left, Lee got a message from our other senior class valedictorian informing Lee that he just moved to the city. I didn't see him, even though it would have been totally awesome.)

 Much more than ten years have passed within our various friendships, but this was the very first time that we all met up in a different place. A different city. Even if we didn't actually all go to The Bean together. 

There were a couple of one-on-one meet ups with people who have unique space/time significance for me: I had brunch on Friday morning with someone whom I hadn't actually met before face-to-face. We have been friends on facebook for a number of years now thanks to similar personal and philosophical interests. She is from and lives in Chicago, and while our paths have been aligned for some time, they never quite crossed (she was a participant in PIKSI, a summer philosophy institute at Penn State in 2006. I did PIKSI in 2007). I had dinner with another friend from Halifax, Nova Scotia. We met at Penn State as graduate assistants for PIKSI in 2009. Since that one week that we had together, we've made it a point to try and meet up for an annual coffee or dinner date whenever we find ourselves at the same conference. Apart from our time at Penn State then, this means that I've only had the pleasure of her company for something like ten hours or less, which took place in DC, Montreal, and now Chicago. In a strange way, we've only ever met in time and space. Nevertheless, she is one of my dearest friends for whom I care very, very much.

In addition to my high school friends, one has to remember that newer friends were part of the whole ordeal, too: Bryn and I met just barely over a year ago through a mentorship program at PSU. Now that she's been my mentee and my student, she's also one of my best friends, and it was awesome that she was part of the weekend that I will now lovingly describe as "when friend worlds collided." She met my old friends. We met Lee's improv friends. They were all so cool, so fun, and so chill that we all started acting like fast friends. Brothers, roommates, college buddies, improv teammates, and lots of other relationships from various different places and times meshed together for four days. And that collision was awesome. Seamless even to the point when one of Lee's friends was sitting shirtless at a table in a bar with us (it was for good reason) and he exclaimed, "Man, I just met you guys a couple of days ago and I just feel so comfortable around you that I don't even feel weird sitting shirtless at a table in a bar with you." He was right. It was like that a lot of the time with pretty much everyone. I met Lee's college roommate on this trip, but after seeing a video of him years and years ago I told him that I already felt like I knew him. Bryn and I danced all funky like with one guy who also ended up being our bartender on another night. We all took shots together. And that's pretty much how it went for the weekend.  I suppose it boils down to this: The collision of friend worlds can be great when you have great friends in your worlds.


So here's the summary of a more sophisticated reading of the title, "When Time and Space Don't Matter, Meet Me at The Bean": One of my favorite things about this trip was that all of these relationships, connections, intersections, and run-ins have their unique locations in time and space, and they all converged over the five days that it took to drive from PA, walk for miles around Chicago, go to three improv shows, a funk dance party, a philosophy conference, share lots of meals and beers, see The Bean multiple times, and drive back. Some of those connections have been long running, filled with years of memories or only a few moments from all of those years. Some were familiar for a while before they were realized, while others felt familiar immediately once they happened, like a really pleasant surprise. Being someone who values connections and  the ability to laugh, dance, share, and play with others above pretty much all else, I can easily say that this trip was nothing short of terrific. It felt comfortable. cozy. easy. fun. For being in a new place, it felt like the complete opposite of that alienated feeling that so often sets in when you go to different cities. In many ways, it felt warm and fuzzy and welcoming and familiar and lovely, like home.

 

And here's one more thing that I really love about this trip: There are lots and lots of pictures. That may not seem like a big deal. If anything, coming home with 450 pictures from 2 whole days of driving and only 3 days of actually being in the city might make it seem like we just senselessly felt the urge to capture every inane moment. But beyond the fact that each day, from the 9am start to very late end, was filled with nonstop moments that were definitely photo-capture-worthy (many of which were not even captured, such as the most amazing omelette of my life on the morning when we left), the point that is really cool and new for me is that there was a "we" that felt the urge to take all of those pictures. I love photos. I have photo albums filled with the photos that I love. So of course, I take pictures on every one of my trips. But on this trip, I wasn't the only one using my camera. Never before, in all of my years of taking pictures, has someone asked to take my camera from me for more than a quick second. Yet here there were periods of time during the parties, the walks, the adventures, and the visitations at The Bean when I didn't have my camera. Someone else was taking pictures. The brilliant effect of this is that the photos from the trip come from multiple perspectives. I spent six hours today going through those hundreds of pictures. While I ended up deleting more than half, of the 200 that I kept, many of them were taken by others. It is awesome to see how other people handle the act of collecting time and space in individual frames. And it's very cool to recognize that as my friends on facebook flip through the album, they often won't know who was behind the camera.

For me, there's something very poignant about being in front of the camera on this trip. I often take photos of myself in different locations, usually on timers or through reflections in mirrors, windows, and puddles. But on this trip, and in a new way than before, I have pictures of me there. Seeing myself in my own photos feels different, like seeing how I'm seen, but somehow different from simply being in other people's pictures. I want to say that it feels like a gift--that my friends were there, taking pictures not for themselves on their own camera, but for me on my camera. In a number of ways it feels like an act of sharing; by taking my camera they helped take in the surroundings and all of its happenings. It also feels like a lovely experience of letting go; giving up my camera, being vulnerable enough to be in front of it, and welcoming whatever image someone else takes. I can't dictate the framing, the timing, the spirit of the picture when someone else takes it. Instead, I just really appreciate the moments and images that my friends collected. The point is that the pictures themselves represent a lot of the meaning in the title for me. In a way that feels almost too indulgent, they are little, individual moments in time and space that have taken place and been given back to me, by and with friends.

To Let.

I'm grateful for being dumped.

Not because I was terribly miserable in my relationship. And not because I was dating a complete jerk. Neither of those statements are true. In fact, I have never experienced so much fun in a relationship, such stability, and such a great amount of my own ability to trust, support, and love another person. We were often very silly. In terms of drama, it was minimal. We didn't fight. When there was tension, we acknowledged it, not as something scary that would be big enough to break us but as the very typical and expected kind of tension that can arise when two people have to consider each others' feelings and needs. And we were pretty good about communicating and checking in even on little things when they would occur. I always really appreciated how neither of us would get defensive when we would bring up concerns, worries, or minor hurts. In short, it was the best relationship I've been in so far for lots of reasons. It was in many respects the healthiest. And honestly, it may have been one of the only relationships where I actually put myself into it. Which is perhaps the very reason why I'm grateful for being dumped.

I'm grateful because I was wholly invested in it. In other words, I wasn't thinking of ending it.

But don't let my gratitude fool you into thinking that I haven't been going through a painful process. As a natural romantic, I'm anything but a heartless robot. And just because I can say that I am actually grateful a few days after the fact doesn't mean that I was deluding myself all along into thinking that I had feelings that weren't really there. Of course, I was confused, hurt, and sad and it was precisely because of my investment that the sudden end to the relationship was bewildering, hurtful, and extremely saddening. If anything, when a break up is unexpected, such feelings are to be expected, for when you are met with a decision and not a discussion from the one you love about how your relationship cannot continue, there is very little that you can do. You lose a sense of control, of participation, of choice. Someone chooses for you what you would not have chosen for yourself. I was, and I think understandably so, shocked, disappointed, and angry all at once.

But I wasn't feeling all of those emotions out of a stupid fear of being alone forever. And since I'm one to respect such a decision when it is made, hurtful as it may be, I'm not one to cling and beg and plea or try to convince anyone to stay with me. I knew that my world wasn't going to end right then. I knew that I had put everything I had into being the best partner I could have been, so I also knew that I couldn't take it personally. This means that I trusted even when that old cliche saying,"It's not you, it's me" was said. More than anything, it was the shock that hurt the most. I was angry that I wasn't part of the process, which I read as not being treated with a fair amount of respect. And my sadness was rooted to the simple fact that I had no other choice but to yield, to let. To let--something and someone whom I love--go while I was the one being left.

When I experienced my first wave of gratitude, it was because I quickly saw how my investment in the relationship meant that I would have remained in a situation even if I was the only one in it. Clearly, this is not an ideal scenario. But after years of growing and learning to be a better me, I wasn't in a place to decide against the continuation of everything that we had, not with my hard-fought, newly-found, and highly-cherished levels of patience. I could have continued on for who knows how long. I was willing to move to different cities, to offer support for many more years through debt and the acquisition of more degrees. So, despite often feeling like I was waiting for him to be in the relationship to the same extent that I was, it came down to the simple matter that he would have to gauge his own levels of commitment. If I was fully in but he wasn't, he would be the only one to truly know. And he did. On a whole other level, then, and this one is a bit more complicated, I'm also very grateful that he didn't continue on any longer out of a fear of losing me. No matter how it all went down, at least he also got to a point of being willing to let me go. There's truth in that other old saying, too, I guess, that if you really love someone, you have to be willing to let them go. I know that he loves me, and his ability to make a decision that actually keeps my trust in him intact shows an undeniable amount of respect. So for my sake, in terms of what I was not thinking to do myself and what he eventually decided to make happen for us, I'm very grateful for being dumped.

In all of this, I have been reminded of conversations with my students from last spring in my Asian Philosophies class. I used lots of real-life examples to illustrate how to break the cycle of dukkha (dis-ease, unhappiness, anxiety, fear, and suffering). As one would expect, in an attempt to relate to young college students, heartbreak in relationships was a common theme: "Imagine if you found out that your boyfriend or girlfriend was cheating on you. And then you broke up. How would you feel? What would you do?" As one would also expect, students said that they would be anything from really hurt to really pissed. Images were conjured up of infidelity in a bar scene where punches were soon thrown. Some students who thought themselves to be more enlightened said, "You should just hold it in then and not make a big deal out of it, otherwise you make things worse." Other responses went something like,"To punch someone in the face would only be contributing to more pain. If someone cheated on you, they probably weren't good enough for you anyway." And there we encountered the most subtle slip, one that goes from non-attachment and seeing the intricacies of the situation clearly to simple rationalization. Students wanted to explain it away by asserting things like, "Yeah, you can't really be hurt because it's their loss anyway" and "You shouldn't be upset because you have to know that there are better people out there who would treat you right." However, the skeptics said, "There's no way I couldn't be hurt by that! How are you not supposed to feel hurt when someone hurts you?!?" (To be clear, infidelity was not the cause of our break up. This was only one of our examples from class.)

I have caught myself in these superficially affirming modes of rationalization: "I deserve to be appreciated," "I wouldn't have been happy in the long run," "It's better off this way...." All of those may be true, but I feel weird settling into such statements as if they are magical explanations to make oneself feel better. And I certainly am not the faithfully future-oriented sort who says, "Everything happens for a reason, you just don't know it yet" so that's not going to cut it either. For me, non-attachment and the ability to let is certainly not a passivity founded on blind faith. If anything, it can only grow from a ground of seeing things deeply and clearly. And non-attachment is not the same thing as detachment or apathy. We still feel things, and should feel our feelings without bottling them up or denying them. This helps make clear why the "skeptical" students were not getting things when they assumed that one wouldn't ever feel hurt. We can still, and will, experience painful things, but if we do not cling to the sources of our pain (or even our pleasure for that matter), then that pain can be experienced apart from any kind of suffering.  And finally, non-attachment is very different from rationalization. This is perhaps the hardest one to get, but for me, to let refers to the willingness to see, to encounter, to embrace all of our experiences, even the most painful ones, with a sense of understanding that allows for love, gratitude, and compassion to take the reigns. Rather than bitterness and resentment which foster greater negativity, and rather than rationalization which is more than anything a sign of denial, aversion, an attempt to turn away from and explain the pain away, non-attachment allows us to appreciate everything for what it is.

I'm not a sociopath who is grateful for being dumped because I don't feel any human emotions at all. Neither am I a masochist who is grateful for her pain and desires more of it. Right now, I feel a whole lot. But those feelings are no longer dominated by sadness, anger, or even confusion. I'm filled with love and gratitude for him, for my very supportive friends, and for myself.

And I'm happy. 

Terning Points

It's amazing how things change. One day. Love and Patience. And then another. Pain and Anger. It's not that the previous feelings go away, but they are suddenly accompanied by strangers. Perhaps there were even moments when these others had already arrived, peering through glass windows and knocking on doors, and only just now did they make their way in. Their entrance is unsettling and shocking, as much a shock as it was when it became known that the lock didn't break, there was just never a lock in the first place. Should there have been? Feelings, however, often do not make sense. Neither are they mutually exclusive. The wonder comes from the crowded interior, where the walls remain strong and sturdy, but the space fills in. And who would have known that in this one little house they could find a place to fit? Forget the picture frames that hang, the clock on the desk, the corner in which an end table sits, for only the best can appreciate such beautiful decorations and treat these details with respect. Like lungs, the rooms are finally full of substance. Do we breathe air, smoke, or love? Nevertheless, I've learned from the words of the best, that when the pressure gets too intense that the only way to deal is to find a means for release. Part of that comes with, or from, a stroke of gratitude in a moment of grace. How long does it take to turn all of those "No's" that deny song and dance into one simple "Yes"? How many times must one take this stance? Affirmation waits in the wings until it's offered an embrace, when what forced its way in is finally met face to face. Like a man's recurring nightmare, leading to twenty-some years of being scared, and when he finally owned up to address his own fear. This dreamlike state is unclear but it is not uncontrolled--consciousness of health grows out of commitments to one's strength. And experiences like this work their way from the dark pits of inarticulate stomachs, the weight of lightlessness, into ashen birds that continue their flight, even when they don't know  how far and for how long they can fly.

Photo: Arctic Tern, photograph by Arthur Morris.

Improving The Golden Rule By Going Platinum

Sometimes it hits me that I am getting older. And one thing I've noticed from my experience of getting older is that I've realized just how many little drops of wisdom my father has given me over the years. I didn't notice how they were adding up with time, but there are a few key phrases that he has said enough to make them stick in my mind as, "Things my Dad always said." One of my favorites is something that he got from his father, which actually reflects a key idea in Taoism: "Don't force something or you might break it." While it think that his father mentioned it with respect to fixing cars, it applies to lots of other things, too, from opening paint cans to being in relationships. Another is, "Always follow the highest that you know." Of course it's not about drugs--it is about taking the moral high road and doing what you know should be done in any given situation. Finally, one thing that my dad has always said, which may be most familiar to others since many of us have heard it from our mothers and fathers, preschool teachers and even religious texts, is this: "Treat others they way that you would want to be treated." It's also phrased something like this: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." It's known as The Golden Rule.

I love my father. And I'm not trying to continue my rebellious streak at the ripe old age of 25, but over the recent past I've been thinking about The Golden Rule and I'm getting to a point where I can see more clearly how it doesn't quite hit the mark.

Here's why:

Although The Golden Rule is supposed to teach us compassion and kindness for others, to orient our actions based on how we would like to be treated maintains a focus that first and foremost considers ourselves before it considers others. It says, "What about me? How would I like to be treated? What would I want others to do for me?" Of course, since The Golden Rule is intended to guide us in how we treat others, this is one step in direction that moves us away from simply serving our own interests. It helps us not act as self-centered, inconsiderate children who haven't learned good manners. But it takes our own interests as the ground that informs our actions and then applies that to others. It still focused on ourselves. Me. I. It's still pretty immature after all.

It was nearly eight years ago when I heard of a different take on the The Golden Rule. An older friend of mine, another sort of parent figure, suggested that instead of treating others how we would like to be treated, we should treat others how they would like to be treated. He referred to it as The Platinum Rule.

 
Aside from the epistemological difficulties of actually knowing how another person would want to be treated and the potential risks of acting in ways that could be read as paternalistic and condescending, I think there is a really great kernel of wisdom to be found in The Platinum Rule. Ultimately, I think it serves the same purpose as The Golden Rule, namely, to encourage us to act in ways that reflect compassion, care, and respect. But it just does it so much better.

Perhaps The Platinum Rule hasn't quite caught on with the masses because it is more difficult. It requires that we put in more effort and real consideration to reflect from another person's position, to take the time to understand their needs, to get to know them well enough so that we can actually treat them with respect in the way that they would like and need to be treated. It demands that we step outside of ourselves,our own interests, and perhaps even our own comfort zones and do things in ways that we perhaps wouldn't typically do them. Maybe we wouldn't even think about doing them in such and such a way. But that is why it requires and demonstrates a greater commitment to serving the other and taking care of his or her needs first. That is why it shows a deeper level of care and concern. By seeing through the eyes of another person and stretching our notions of what it means to show love and respect, our actions may no longer reflect how we would prefer to act or how we would prefer to be shown love and respect. They testify, "I'm doing this for you because I know that you would like me to do thus," even it if doesn't jive with my usual M.O. or how I, myself, would like to be shown that I am cared for and loved. While it may be quite possible that the needs and desires and preferences of different people are not totally divergent from one another, actions that follow The Platinum Rule can stand on their own, completely independent from the thought, "I wish that you would also do this for me."

For lots of people, myself included, showing and expressing our love, gratitude, respect, and care for other people can be a hard thing to get good at.  That's why it's helpful to have some basic guidelines that generally cultivate us into being better people: listen to the other person; inquire about their life and how they are doing; accompany them at their side through challenges and hard times; celebrate their joys and victories with them; let them know that you see that they are special and valuable and worthy of being loved, even if they already know it for themselves; let them know when you are thinking of them; check in and say 'hello' just to say 'hello.' But even with fairly standard codes of generally good conduct, it takes more to be able to really love and care for another person. It takes more than good manners (although they are certainly part of it). It requires patience, vulnerability, openness, empathy, generosity, and growth.

It requires genuine love to actually express genuine love. 

These are not traits that we can develop very easily or very quickly, nor are they qualities that we can really embody for everyone whom we encounter. But perhaps for those closest to us, we can work to push ourselves further to really become better, more loving, more giving people. We can start by learning a new principle about understanding and meeting others needs on their own terms and trying to grow into that. And when someone says, "I'm going Platinum, baby!" we can celebrate the possibility that they are not simply ambitious rap artists, but rather ambitious friends and loved ones who mean to indicate to us their commitment and dedication to being better friends and loved ones.

For myself, no matter how old I get, I know that there is always more room to grow. And in this respect, I hope that we all continue to do so.

The Isolated Individual, and one way to resist being her.

A strange and unsettling image haunted me all throughout last semester. It was that of the isolated individual.

It took a while for me to realize that many of  the frustrations I felt during conversations in my ethics seminars, discussions with my own class, and even while processing some of the reactions to the Penn State sex abuse scandal in November were rooted to a very familiar notion that effectively derails conversations, undermines discussions, or truncates the ability for people to makes sense of their own actions (or lack thereof). In all of these situations, we always seemed to hit bedrock once people took it for granted that we, as separate, independent individuals, can only ever do so much.

Here's how the story goes: Especially when it comes to doing the "right" thing, there are very few people who have the purity of heart and fortitude of moral conviction to always buy the right products, donate a sufficient amount of their income, challenge oppressive stereotypes, not live according to social expectations of the norm, and risk their job, reputation, loyalties, and faith in their own life-long held beliefs  in order to protect the interests and well-being of others first. Sure we hear about the really exceptional folks who manage to do heroic, miraculous things. We admire the Mother Teresa's, the Gandhi's, the moral saints, for there just aren't that many of them in the world, and this is precisely what makes their actions so heroic and miraculous--hardly anyone else can or would dedicate themselves so fully to do them.

For the majority of us, we are simply too afraid of what our friends or families might think of us if we "acted out," out of the ordinary, blew some whistles, or genuinely questioned the status quo of how things are. If one already nicely fits into all of the social norms and reaps their benefits, then one would quite literally be self-imposing disadvantages on her own life, including perhaps financial loss, the loss of social privilege, or even risk becoming alienated among one's social groups. None of which are particularly attractive or desirable self-selected fates. Even if we ultimately valued such actions, we often also tend to think,  "Well, geez, it's just not worth putting in all that effort and disrupt the order of things when my actions alone won't really make a difference anyway!" So, even if it we "know" that it would probably be better for everyone if we veered off of the beaten path, even just a little bit, for the most part, we stay on it. And as probably anyone who tries to facilitate conversations in a socially critical, progressive, and self-reflective classroom could attest, the attitudes of students eloquently capture the essence of the brick wall that one hits. The easiest way for a student to conclude a reflection essay or end a semester-long dialogue is to state, "I agree that (fill in the blank with some oppressive attitude, institution, or practice) is bad, but it will never change since things have always been like this." This leads to nowhere new. And that is precisely why I don't let my students say such dismissive (and clearly false) things. [you can read something about this here]

I won't harp on the trouble presented by this kind of cynicism and how it is very philosophically and politically significant in its own right, but I will note one thing that kept occurring to me in all of these frustrating and prematurely-hopeless exchanges--The notion of the separate, independent individually is only an assumption. Many people, from contemporary feminist philosophers to ancient Buddhist monks, have noted that we are not actually, nor are we ever, fully independent subjects. Of course we depend on other things, such as the environment and resources and creatures and all of the people around us. Even those who are very, very far away in time and space whom we will never know, whose faces we can't even imagine, we depend on them, too. And just as we depend on others, others depend on us. This means that we have the capacity to affect those around us. In fact, we always do. So with just a little bit of reflection, we see that we are not independent and that we are not ineffectual.

Instead, we are actually already situated and embedded within relationships, groups, and communities. Now imagine what would happen if we took this for granted.

Rather than mistakenly viewing ourselves as separate and independent individuals, which quickly lends itself to feelings of alienation, isolation, and vulnerability from the outset, we could find ways to recognize, appreciate, and strengthen our actual positions within collectivities, which quickly lends itself to feelings of being more supported, more valuable, and more capable of taking on bigger challenges. Perhaps we would feel more inclined to ask for help because we know that one person just simply can't do it all for herself. And perhaps we would also be more inclined to help those who need our support because we could trust that others would also be there to provide their support. This means that we wouldn't have to shoulder the impossible burden of holding ourselves and another person up, too, because we have the support of others even in how we support each other! Of course individual actions can accomplish great things, but privileging that over the effect of collective actions is like comparing the waves I can make by doing a cannonball into a pool to the waves of the ocean itself. Or, to be consistent with the metaphor, to the waves that my friends and I could make if we all jumped into the pool together at the same time. We could quite literally displace the water right out of the pool.

Anyway, I hope the point is well taken: Thinking of ourselves as isolated individuals is often more disempowering than it is motivating, and the potential for growth, support, and meaningful action that is present by virtue of the fact that we are always already situated in interpersonal relationships with others is often overlooked, under-appreciated, and under utilized.

And now it's time for the connection to my life, which is very far from suggesting that I am a Mother Teresa or moral saint...For me, of course, the connection goes to my work and my relationship with philosophy.

I have finally entered the final stage of my graduate program: the writing of the dissertation! I have set the ambitious goal to get the bulk of my writing done before August. That means in seven months (which includes already-scheduled travel interruptions for about three weeks and a big move to another city). I know it will be difficult, but thanks to another dissertating graduate student friend who shared with me some advice that she got about the whole ordeal, writing that much that fast doesn't seem completely impossible. How will it get done? By writing 300 words a day. At least that's how this guy recommends going about it.

Three-hundred words a day isn't really all that much when you think about it, especially considering how much time during the day that I have to do it. I'm done with courses. I'm on a teaching release this semester. So aside from my commitments through the Rock Ethics Institute to go to a some ethics seminars and continue working on the Public Philosophy Network, the demands for attention from my all-too-human cat, the care I must give to maintain the health of my relationships, and perhaps my own physical health in the process, all I have to do is write. Yep, in all of those hours between waking up and going back to sleep, for seven months, all I have to do is write. write. wriiiiiiiiite.

us, this morning, writing this post. me, sick and congested.

But that, my friends, is also kind of scary. Because what can quickly happen, and often does, is that I find myself sitting with my computer in a room somewhere all. day. long. I've got nothing but my books, the blinking cursor on the screen, and the sea of convoluted words twisting through my mind. I won't make phone calls to friends and family because I could be writing. I don't exercise because I should be writing. And since this is my big project, I don't have anyone to bounce ideas off of, no real philosophical exchange to keep my thoughts fresh. It's an exhausting, consuming process of intense, solitary philosophical immersion (with the exception of my cat's company). I've only ever had intense writing periods like this for final seminar papers, so I don't exactly know what going through this will be like, day in and day out, for seven months. But honestly, the thought of it alone is enough to make me feel nauseated with a deep, unsettling sense of academic isolation. And that's precisely when the frustrations and doubts and insecurities and feelings of being completely overwhelmed usher in. "Why is this worth it?" "Who cares about what I'm writing?" "How is this going to help the world in any way?"

To battle this feeling of isolation and keep my motivation up, I invited some of my friends and family members to become my "daily receivers" of the 300 words that I write each day. In the initial email I explained that if they agreed to it, they would only be signing up to receive my email. They certainly wouldn't have to respond with any thoughts or comments on what I wrote (in fact, it would be better for my progress if they didn't) and they wouldn't even have to read the words from each day. Hence, rather than being my "daily readers" or "daily reviewers," they are my "daily receivers." I guess the basic idea here could be that they help me hold myself accountable to get the writing done each day by holding me accountable to them. But since I'm not really one for shaping people's behaviors by hanging the threat of shame and disappointment over their head, this isn't exactly the position that I wanted to put myself in. Instead, I wanted to find a way to break out of the isolation.

By inviting some of the most important people in my life to receive my daily emails, I have opened myself up in a way that says, "This is gonna be a hard project, and I anticipate many days ahead that will leave me feeling pretty discouraged. I also imagine that I may feel like I can't do it. So, please help me. I would really appreciate your support, because I know that I'm gonna need it. And here is how you can help me." My loved ones have shown me support already by simply signing up for the long-haul, and I've made it much easier for them to respond with little bits of encouragement like, "Good work!" "I know you can do it!" or "Keep it up!" Any and all of which, of course, will be nice little boosts of encouragement as I push on.

I'm still the one doing all the writing. The project is still my own. But I no longer feel so entrenched in my own thoughts and texts, and I don't feel so secluded and cut off from everyone else in my life. This project, which is very personally and philosophically important to me, is also something that I can share of myself with those who I care about and who care about me. In addition to knowing what I am doing all day long, if they choose to read the words that resulted from my effort on any given day, they can peek into the ideas and issues that I have been focusing on for the past six years since I've been doing philosophy. In short, in addition to hopefully addressing some of the vulnerability and anxiety and pressure that I feel about writing for months on end, I've found a way to let people into my academic world, and it might be the first time that they actually get to see why and how I do what I do in philosophy. Finally, the often stifling walls of academia seem a bit more permeable.

Multiple Models of Marketability: My Encouraging Realization from the Eastern APA

I just returned from what a friend and faculty member referred to as "the death-march known as the Eastern APA." Very much like last year, and quite unlike what most people report about their experiences there, I had a really great time. I'm not kidding, exaggerating, or indulging in some weird kind of masochism--I really enjoyed myself, the people around me, and the philosophical content that was being discussed. Okay, perhaps it has to do with the sessions that I attended--I go to pretty cool and inspiring ones (more on this in a bit)--and it probably helps that I am still not on the job market (that's coming up later as well). So maybe this time next year, when I actually will be on the market, I'll be writing a completely different post. Maybe the stress, anxiety, terror, and misery that is usually associated with interviews at the Eastern will finally be felt deep within my bones. But maybe not. And I don't think that it's simply because I've had two years of exposure to this beast-of-a-conference either (more on this later, too).

Some of the delights of this year's E-APA for me were found in the connections that were had there. I met some really wonderful people for the very first time. I saw people again whom I see only about once this time every year. And I finally met a number of people face-to-face for the first time. These are people with whom I've had email exchanges, facebook friendships, Google+ connections, and other sorts of "virtual" relationships for quite a long time...even years. Among my peers, professors, mentors, new acquaintances, and friends, we talked about lots of important things like relationships, planning for the job market, the surprisingly common horror stories from prospectus defenses gone bad, to teaching kids baby-sign language. I know that the Eastern can exacerbate social alienation and awkwardness in many people, but if you are lucky enough to have the social skills and comfort to use them, the whole affair can actually be quite an enjoyable social hub.

All of that aside, the real reason why I went was to present a paper. It was the second time I presented my paper, "Irigaray, (Trans)sexual Difference, and the Future of Feminism." It's funny when people ask me about what I'm going to do with it since I'm not an Irigaray-scholar and I'm not trying to set myself up as one, and although I am serious about the questions that I ask in the paper, it's not part of my current work or even related to the research in my dissertation. Nevertheless, some good things came out of presenting the paper. Just as it was at SPEP in October, I was very pleased with how the audience engaged one another in a discussion afterward rather than simply firing questions at me. I prefer when papers lead to philosophical exchanges among the people in the room who know more and different things than I do, and I've always (even if especially very recently) been skeptical of the productivity of "defense" like attacks from interlocutors. I also got a cash prize for it being accepted to the main program. As one professor said to me that evening, mine was very likely the first grad student paper with "(trans)sexual difference" in the title to ever be accepted to the main program at the APA. That's pretty sweet to think about, but I also like that I just used some of that money to buy a new, cute winter coat. 

I attended some really great sessions while I was there, and while I didn't get to make it to many of the ones that I wanted to, I did go to a session entitled "From Philosophical Training to Professional Blogging." Among the three panelists, two had a PhD in philosophy (the other a BA in Philosophy from Harvard).  Andrew Sullivan, one of the most widely read bloggers at present, had a number of really great things to say that resonated very deeply with me. Whenever he spoke, Sullivan emphasized the importance of philosophical dialogue. Being influenced by Plato's dialogues, he noted how the blogosphere presents greater opportunity for philosophical exchanges in the way of Plato. Dialogues that go back and forth. Invitations to take a step in one direction and see what follows from there. In addition to stressing his conviction that there is a real hunger in people to engage in meaningful, important philosophical questions, he also repeated a few of my favorite key words: "honesty" and "humility."

Without dogging the Academy, which he claimed to revere, Sullivan simply stated that after his time within academia it became clear to him that it didn't fit his style. As he continued to speak, I identified more and more with what he said, and I thought about the blog post that I had written just a week or so before. Academic philosophical writing comes with an air of authority. The arguments have to be well-crafted, exact, and fully-formulated. Essays are written as presenting mostly completed, self-contained ideas. Even if they lead to more questions or rely on previously established notions, academic writing often assumes that it has to come off as "right." But as Sullivan explained, this sense of authority, and the compulsion to write as if one is right, knows the answer, and has it all figured out, stems from a deep insecurity in the Academy about itself. This leads to a defensive sort of writing that asserts itself without really being willing to listen to others, especially those who are outside the walls of the ivory tower. Moreover, this kind of posturing is not conducive for allowing oneself to change one's mind.

In contrast, blogging about philosophical questions, especially when undergone as a philosophical activity in itself, only needs to offer the beginnings of an idea or the start of an argument. Because the writing is more "loose" it's very likely that one will say something stupid, or even wrong. But that's okay, because it can be acknowledged as part of the process...and it doesn't mark a failure unless one assumes authority in the first place. The process is necessarily open-ended, and the one who writes has a more explicit responsibility to respond to readers' comments and reactions. In this way, Sullivan explained that he has often changed his mind on issues in light of what his readers sent him. And if nothing else, he cannot dodge engaging with big issues that columnists and certainly academics can avoid. Sure, being a blogger is different from being a journalist, and both are quite different from being an academic philosopher, but that does not mean that the virtues of honesty and humility are less valuable, if not fundamental, qualities upon which each profession should be pursued.

And importantly, this is all still very much philosophy. Reasons, thoughtful explanations, and logical connections are part of the writing. There is definitely a space to hold a position, one that seems to hold some relation to truth even if that is not a stable truth. AND there is even room from wanting to persuade others through one's writing. But rather than being a political propagandist who seeks to persuade others merely for the sake of promoting an ideology, one is more of a philosopher who engages others through the genuine activity of thought. The entire practice, it seems to me, is housed in making the process the intended result, rather than already having an end point, a position, and a "certain truth" that one only works to preserve.

While I don't have aspirations to become a professional blogger, it was nice to recognize my own thoughts, words, and feelings in Sullivan's words as he continued to speak on the panel (read more of his thoughts here). I saw my own style for writing, which is also often reflected in the way that I teach, present, lecture, and read--one that doesn't formulate water-tight arguments but rather finds connections that lead to asking different questions that in turn spur new ways of thinking. And it's a style that depends on the input from others, whom Sullivan eventually called "friends." I've noted before that I learn most from teaching, and that is because I engage with my students in ways that provoke all of our thinking together. Of course, I start out as the one presenting the material, but I do so in order to provide a launching pad from where we can take-off and not as an authority on the matter at hand (this is a strategy for any grad student who suffers from an "imposter-complex" while teaching: change your attitude and goals for teaching, and realize that you don't have to pretend like you know everything if you don't assume that your students want to know everything that you think you know. My guess is that they are pretty disinterested in acquiring a carbon-copy of your brain anyway).

All in the all, I really enjoyed the session, but I was left with one unfulfilled wish: I wish that there could have been more discussion on movement in the other direction. In addition to noting that maybe there is something significant about the fact that some of the top professional bloggers have philosophical training, I wanted the discussion to at least touch on the other side of the coin, namely, how "professional blogging" could influence "philosophical training." What could professional academics in philosophy learn from those who write in philosophical ways on philosophical questions to public audiences as a philosophical endeavor? I think that could be a really rich and fruitful exchange....Unfortunately, there were a couple of times when it was stated, even by Sullivan himself, "Don't do this unless you want to lose your job. Wait until you have tenure, then you can write in this way and blog about these sorts of things."

This rather disappointing acquiescence to the "standard way of things" is what people usually say about going against the grain. Just wait. Don't do it yet. Despite my efforts to grow into a more patient person, I'm better at this in some areas than I am at others..and after four years of graduate school professional philosophy doesn't get a whole lot of it from me anymore. I don't like to tolerate the status quo without putting in at least some effort in the hope of making deeply desired changes. In that way, I guess I'm at base a pretty idealistic optimist. And ironically, this eventually led to one encouraging realization.

Sadly, I took very few pictures at the conference itself. This is from lunch. At least there's a name tag.

I left the eastern APA with a realization that was actually made from a number of conversations and not just from this particular session. Here's the short of it: I constantly hear concerns about the job market. Aside from the fact that the market itself sucks--there are few jobs, competition is outrageous, and if you are good enough and lucky enough to get a job it will take you to who-knows-where and will overburden you with who-knows-what kind of or how many other unwanted obligations and responsibilities--I hear lots of concerns about doing things differently and how that poorly sets one up for the market. In my own experience, this comes off in comments like "How in the world do you expect to get a job with this?!" Or I've heard it more politely as, "I'm just concerned about how you will get the job that I know you deserve." But what comments like this fail to acknowledge is that there are other ways to be "marketable." If I cultivate my deepest sense of compassionate and open-minded understanding, I can actually see how apparently antagonistic words and actions from my superiors really are coming from a place of looking out for my best interest. Sort of like when parents say,"I'm only enforcing these rules on you because I care about your safety and well-being."

But from my experience of also always being the kind of child who questioned and challenged my parents attitudes about what was "acceptable," "appropriate," and "right," (even when it turns out that at times they were sharing bits of valuable wisdom), I think that parents operate best as parents if they adjust to their kids' specific needs and desires and interests. They can care best if they actually know how their kids need to be cared for (this is a standard line in the ethics of care and maternal thinking..yes, I also went to the APA session in honor of Sara Ruddick's life and work). The same goes for teaching: we are better teachers if we teach to the individual interests, strengths, weaknesses, etc of the student. And the same goes for medicine....and so on and so on.

So in this situation there are a couple of things that I think should be understood and communicated between graduate students like myself and the professors who advise them. First, it was only recently mentioned to me that there are number of types of jobs out there, even among the academic jobs. And there are programs that value research, teaching, outreach, and other things in a diversity of ways that put greater weight on different kinds of philosophical work. So the goal shouldn't be to get a student just any job, and not even "the best" job if that is understood simply in terms of reputation and prestige, but rather the best job for that particular person.

Second, and this is related to the first point, it has to be understood that there are different pictures of "marketability." I can see why some very successful and well-respected philosophers are panicking about how I am going to fare on the job market since I don't conform to their image of marketability. Even though I have plenty of presentations on my CV now and thank goodness I got that prize (not just for the new coat)!, if I wanted to be how they want me to be, I would be freaking out, too. But the good news is that I have a handful of strengths and lots of ambition and passion to fuel me in my philosophical work, and I have other  qualities that I think make me very marketable.  Maybe that means I'm attractive to a different market all together, but I don't think that necessarily has to be the case. I think that there are more ways than one to be marketable even on the professional, academic job market that gives the eastern APA a bad, anxiety-provoking reputation. After all, this session on professional blogging was at the eastern APA and the award for excellence and innovation in philosophical programs this year was awarded to Thomas Wartenberg for his development of the Philosophy for Children.

Maybe doing things differently, being honest, and at the same time humble, in one's work, could actually serve one quite well. I guess only time will tell. Check back this time next year.

Faith in and Frustration with Philosophy

**This week I've been following the conversation on a feminist philosophy listserv about an article that appeared this week in The Chronicle. With each message that gets posted I've wanted to add something from my prospective as a grad student who passionately teaches philosophy to non-majors, but as I started to write, my response got too long. I didn't feel comfortable posting the whole thing on the listserv and thought that maybe people could just follow the link to my blog if they really wanted to read. But that second-guessing is part of the process I've been dealing with for the past few days and even now as I write. I have been self-censoring so that I don't come off as arrogant, but then I swing back and forth, compelled to say something because I am especially frustrated with the lack of internal and institutional support that I have been facing regarding my own research and methods. But I need to write. About philosophy. About life. About my practice of philifesophy. After all, that is precisely why I have this blog. So, I'll write the message that I wish I had the confidence to post on the listserv here.**


I want to thank all of you for engaging with this topic. As a graduate student, I have been following the thread of emails with a sense of optimism thanks to the generally shared sentiments that seem to be coming through in each message. But I've also been concerned about how we seem to be at a loss for what to do about the concerns at hand. I hear the worries about potentially negative student evaluations if one were to bring up relevant, everyday, and very political examples in class, the fears about losing jobs (or in my case, not getting one), the frustrations around philosophy being treated like a mere commodity that could be distributed to bring in more majors, etc. Even though I've only been teaching my own classes now for three years, I've had to face similar worries about how I run a classroom. But I've also had the good fortune of putting together my own course syllabi and use my own pedagogical techniques from the very beginning. While teaching classes like Love and Sex, Race and Diversity, and Philosophy and Feminism lend themselves to difficult yet highly personal and relevant conversations, I've employed the same methods in my Basic Problems and Asian Philosophies classes. I have decided to make sure that every course and every class period takes the issues head on with honesty, integrity, and courage. My students are often surprised by how ethically and politically charged our discussions can become, and I don't even hesitate to show my own cards, but so far, I have had very few students openly state their disapproval of my style in evaluations or on ratemyprofessors.com. Perhaps my students respond more favorably to me because I am relatively young for an instructor and close to them in age. Maybe this allows me to get away with more polemical and often surprisingly outrageous things. But I have to think it is something more than that.

Could it be that they appreciate my style precisely because I'm not afraid to bring up polemical issues and say and do pretty outrageous things?

An overwhelming majority of my students have loved my classes, precisely because it helps them be not only better thinkers but better people (by the way, these are their words--I have them write final reflection papers on their thought processes at the end of every semester). My classes are never easy-A's; I run intro courses more like 300 level classes. They require young 18 to 21-year-olds to actually think, read, speak, and write in ways that they often haven't ever been expected to do before. In fact, at the start of the semester many don't  really know how to think, read, speak, and write well at all. And it's true that in my class on race, some students even admitted in their final papers to being so filled with anger at me and the material we were covering that they said they hated the class. I already knew, of course. I could feel it during the semester from the line up of four white male students against the back wall. But those same students came around with gratitude and eventually wrote about how and why they responded that way for the majority of the semester. The material is personally challenging, but also personally rewarding. For being non-majors seeking a simple gen-ed credit, I've had students re-enroll to take my other classes and decide to become majors (all good things as far as the college is concerned, right?). But more than that, they see value in philosophy and appreciate the work that we do over the semester because it means something to them in the end. And you know what? It means something to me, too. There have been numerous times where conversations with my students have made me think harder and learn more than any of the graduate level seminars that I have taken since my senior year in college. I suspect that they see how I am also learning with and from them.

Related to Marilyn's email, the real shame here, though, is that no one taught me how to teach. I was just one of those undergraduate students who was always frustrated when my own professors didn't seem to care enough to go out of the box in terms of their own teaching. With the exception of two classes as an undergrad, I found the majority of my philosophy classes to be painfully boring and useless, and so I used the experience to note what didn't work. (By the way, I didn't even want to major in philosophy. I only declared a major because I already had some credits from my religious studies classes and a professor convinced me to not drop out as a sophomore. I used those credits so that I could still graduate in four years. During the fall of my junior year I took a crucial class that introduced me to a different approach to philosophy. Then I attended PIKSI at Penn State before my senior year. It was there, not in my department, where I saw what I could do with philosophy and what philosophy could do...I write more about this journey to academic philosophy and what to do with it now, here).  And I'm one of those people whose passion for philosophy is so strong--how it can change us, empower us, help shed new light on our lives and experiences--that I can't even imagine "talking about" philosophy in the usual way. So, with teaching, I've just had to wing it. Ironically, winging it has worked best. Maybe that's because I start from a place that avoids conventional assumptions about teaching...

Whereas some professors above me have said (quite unfavorably) that I am bull-headed about how I do philosophy, I have wished all along that I didn't have to force my way against such resistance, but that there were more mentors and examples around me who supported and demonstrated how to talk with people and students without excluding them or shooting them down, how to ask questions that invite critical thinking rather than dismissive or defensive apathy. But since I see these unhelpful tendencies around me all the time in many professional philosophy settings, I have started to think that many academic philosophers simply don't know how to relate to others on philosophical issues without it turning into a very narrow, unproductive event. I hesitate to even call them genuine dialogues of philosophical exchange.

If philosophers really want to start teaching in new ways and engaging the public in new ways, then we should probably put more effort into making sure that we are the sort of people with whom others (students included) want to and feel like they can have meaningful, enriching conversations. In other words, I agree with Marilyn that professional philosophers should give more attention to teaching graduate students how to teach. But it has to start with cultivating a sensibility for how to communicate, how to listen, how to openly engage with others, and how to encourage people who aren't familiar with philosophy to think philosophically. These are skills that you simply can't learn from reading the work of your favorite thinker in the history of philosophy or from mulling over one specific philosophical problem for years on end. Being the sort of people who can actually do the kind of philosophy that we are all hoping for and talking about through listservs and higher-ed articles requires a different kind of work. A different kind of cultivation of character that, frankly, most philosophers lack.

And here's the real kicker. The "crisis in philosophy" isn't just about being poor teachers who can't engage students. It's also about the very work that we do. Part of how I keep my classes interesting and relevant is by teaching interesting and relevant material (so, thanks, to you who publish such material). And part of how I keep myself motivated to do philosophy and finish my degree is by working on questions that are professionally and personally important and relevant to me. Trust me, I know that there are risks for how I am doing things. People might say that I am too unprofessional in how I teach because we talk about things very openly and casually, but they could not deny that we are also very philosophical. And thanks to the push back that I get from professors above me who don't seem to like or get what I do (I don't know which is worse), I am constantly reminded that I have to do what is "standard" and "conventional" in philosophy so that I can eventually get a job. Put simply, I probably won't get a job after writing my dissertation, which uses contemporary feminist work on affect and Nietzsche's views on physiology and philosophy to reframe how we can think of philosophical practice (in the old school sense of reading and writing theory) in ways that embrace its potential for therapeutically transforming those who do it as a mode of resistance to oppression.

So let's talk about risks. If people in tenured positions are worried about the crisis in philosophy, the budget cuts in the humanities, or what it means for their livelihoods, what are they doing to respect, support, encourage, and defend young scholars, un-tenured faculty, and graduate students who lack any kind of job security (or jobs at all), but are committed to doing philosophical work that stays true to the notion that philosophy is an intrinsically valuable practice, a way of life? I see how the work that I do is especially risky, but I am unwilling to jump through the hoops of conventional standards of philosophy in order to get a tenured position with the supposed promise that I will eventually be able to do what I want to do. (By the way, so far many of the comments from even the top feminist philosophers are making me question the tenability of such a promise.) Yes, I'm bull-headed on this. But let's face it. There aren't a whole lot of jobs out there to begin with. And if I had compromised on how I do philosophy at any point leading up to now, I know that I wouldn't have lasted this long in the discipline or in my program. I would have burned out, thrown up my hands, and said, "Fuck this, it's not worth it"  (which I almost did, multiple times, much like most people I know who've gone through this whole process).

But that's a real shame, because I know lots of people like me who are passionate and dedicated to philosophical practice, but who just get tired of having to fight the uphill battle against philosophical conventions and hierarchical bullying from unsympathetic professors. However, I know that sticking to it is worth it because philosophy is worth it....when it's done in certain ways. At the very least I know what philosophy has done for me and I see how my students react at the end of every semester.

So rather than wringing our hands and worrying about the backlash that we might face if we actually try to do what we feel like we should do and want to do in philosophy, I think it's most important to actually support each other in doing precisely those things. Be bold with our teaching. Be ambitious with our philosophizing. Be humble with our profession. And be open to doing things differently.  We need to learn how to communicate, how to improvise, how to listen, how to really ask genuine questions (with our students but also with one another) without needing to know the answers ahead of time. Perhaps we could also accept the possibility that we won't get to a stable answers, and that's a good thing. We can make these changes much more easily if we know that we are not alone and that we have support from others in the field, even if they aren't in our departments. If we can trust that others are going to be constructive, helpful, and cooperative, rather than just trying to tear us down or prove us wrong, then we can let our guards down, be less defensive, and actually work with a kind of honest curiosity, interest, passion, and sincerity that seems to be so hard to find and maintain.

After writing all of this, I want to thank you again for having these conversations. When I was faced with a challenging question at my prospectus defense this week that basically asked, "So you mean to suggest that you will go into a room of people who are interviewing you for a job and tell them that what they do is boring and irrelevant?" I responded, "In a sense, yes, because it's a pretty safe bet that what I am doing is not what they are doing. Philosophy can do more than it has typically been given credit. And I know that it's a risky position to hold if one's on the job market, but I also know that I am not alone. There was an article in the Chronicle this week that raises this precise issue, and some of the top names in feminist philosophy have been discussing it on the FEAST listserv for the past couple of days."

Your support and encouragement on these issues are appreciated, even by those (like myself) who you may not know are reading along and following your leadership.