NO! NO! Halley is SOOOooooo wrong about feminism being only about lesbian sexiness. Believe me, I was a feminist back in the 70s. I was also a “disco queen” of sorts — high heels, short skirts, sexy and all. Feminism is about owning your power as a female human and all that that implies — including owning one’s own heterosexual sexuality. Girlism winds up undoing all the good that we feminists fought so hard for on the mistaken idea that feminism discounts being sexy. No way! I’m living proof!! Ditch the girlism, girls, and find some role models that show how it can be done without resorting to all that stupid girly stuff.
Not that I’m such a great role model (although at 62, I’ve certainly had some experiences that 40-something women haven’t had), but if you take a look at Frank Paynter’s interview with me, you’ll get what I mean.
Take it from me, girlism is going to come back and bite you in in ass, ladies.

Alice Fulton is a poet who recently won the 2002 Rebekah Johnson Bobbit National Price for Poetry from the UlS Library of Congress.
Back in the ’70s, when Alice was still a student. she and I were in the same poetry workshop led by Lyn Lifshin. We were still struggling to find our voices, our styles. Alice was young, gamin-like, talented even then. I was ….well, let’s just say I was in a troubled marriage and had two young children.
I remember that Alice had a low, resonant speaking voice, and she DJed late at night at a local radio station. One night she read poetry that we had all written in Lyn’s workshop. This is the one of mine she read:
I wake tight
wound in the sheet
(night winding sheet)
wounded
in the lined-yellow-sheet logic
of your woundmind
winding
sheet-tight
around my night.
So, now Alice teaches at Cornell and wins poetry prizes. I take care of my mom and weblog.
Before my daughter gave birth to her son, she had written several (as-yet unpublished) novels, and Alice Fulton wrote a “preview” of her best one. My daughter had a small press interested in publishing the novel, but they went under after 9/11. Now, she is totally into being a mother and has set her writing aside.
My daughter has no regrets. Neither do I. But I do have a little envy.

Picking up on Dru’s suggestion posted here and here, I spent Black Friday creating this fleece poncho for my grandson and learning how to create a pop-up image. That’s in addition to creating a dozen new Blog Sisters, who read about us in the NY Times and emailed me to join. Not bad productivity for a cold and snowy Northeast day.

Today is my one-year blogiversary. I started my old weblog, which is still out there, a year ago today, after my son b!X got tired of my sending stuff (mostly political) to post on his site. With his urging and help, this non-techie tentatively reached out to Blogger, and Kalilily Time emerged.
I had planned to “create something” today, and I was leaning toward hand painting a rising phoenix t-shirt for Shelley as a gesture of support and encouragment, but, as official Blog Sisters registrar, I’m being inundated with requests to join. The article in the NY Times apprarently struck a chord in women all over the world. As a result, Jeneane and I have to come up with some policy guidelines and I have to keep responding to the requests. So, I guess my creative efforts today (as a counter-effort to Black Friday spending) is probably going to be sitting here at the keyboard creating new Blog Sisters.
My alternative creative project was going to be visiting an artist/teacher friend of mine who’s been working at a New Hampshire college and commuting every once in a while to her home in NY, which she shares with the man in her life. We were going to play in her studio, scan some of her art work, maybe put together a digital collage — my poetry and her images. We’ve been talking about doing that for years, but time goes by and bye and bye and bye. My favorite creation of hers is a little table that she adorned with plaster casts of her nipples and then painted white. Oh well, maybe I can find time to get over to her studio tomorrow.
Meanwhile, I celebrate today the way I celebrated November 29, 2001 — at the computer, weblogging. Although tonight I might work on the booties-that-look-like sneakers for my grandson. I couldn’t find a pattern that I liked so I’m inventing my own.
And so, for all those out in Blogdom who criticize women bloggers for posting about knitting. Stuff it!
Isn’t it great to feel that there is nothing we can’t do and that it is soooo OK to enjoy all kinds of activities that are productive and life-affirming! Yeah! Yeah! Go Blog Sisters.

As I was getting ready to run out and buy a few copies of the NY Times (and some beer, since I left what I bought yesterday in the bottom rack of the shopping cart — and Cool Whip for the Key Lime cream cheese pie that’s for dessert today since I like to start my own traditions), it occurred to me that all of the successes in my life were achieved by riding on someone else’s coat tails. I have often credited my son b!X’s for getting into weblogging in the first place. I’m running out to get the Times because I rode into this one on Jeneane Sessum’s. The jobs I’ve loved the most were those in which I was someone’s “Special Assistant,” with lots of influence and no need to find the buck stopped on my desk. And my thanks to the great female archetypes of Lilith and Kali and the many-breasted Artemis for giving me the encouragement to get on in the first place.
So, my thanks to all of the coat tails of the world for the great rides.
I’ve got to start the Thanksgiving cooking. My brother has just walked in with the turkey.
Happiness is not getting what you want; it’s wanting what you have. Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

That thought occurred to me as I was commenting on Blog Sisters, and it seemed important enough to mention here in terms of the “girlism” issue. And it ain’t whatcha wear, it’s how you abuse it to manipulate.
In a comment on Shelley’s weblog, Frank Paynter says God I love a girl in a skirt and nylons and CFM shoes who smiles at me and makes me feel good to be a man.
There’s nothing wrong with that (except for the CFM shoes, which are hell on the feet!) if it’s just that — that simple visual acknowlegment that we appreciate the visual gender differences. It’s when the “girl” or “woman” proceeds to apply her female feminine wiles to manipulate that male’s “good feeling” to get what she wants that it fosters sexism. And it’s when the man confuses that “feel good” feeling with permission to treat the female in any way but as a human equal.
It ain’t whatcha got; it’s how you use it, how you abuse its latent power.

While Burninbird is posting here and here (I’ve repeated what she wrote at the end of this post), even my dreaming is filled with the same frustration!!!
In the wee morning hours this morning, I dreamed that I went with my mother to visit some family who lived way out in a rural area. While there, they suggested that I go and join a bridal shower going on for their daughter. Their (really cute) teenaged son was supposed to give me directions on how to get there (which was quite far away), but he kept telling me to get on roads I never heard of. So I asked if he could give me landmarks or major intersections that I would recognize because I probably knew how to get to those — and then I could find my own way, even though it might take longer. In my dream, the young man continued to do it his way, even taking time to go to his computer and look for a map. At one point I remember telling his mother that I remember reading that women prefer getting directions that give them landmarks. The dream continues like this as my frustration and anger grows and the young man refuses to give me what I need until it’s too late for me to leave for the party. ARRGGHH.
And this is what Shelley posted, in her frustration, while I was dreaming my nightmare.
Shutting down the conversation
What’s particularly difficult about writing something such as my posting Girlism? is seeing the gentlemen in the community linking to Halley’s post, but not my refutation. Huzzahs for Halley’s refreshing honesty and blowing the lid off the terrible games we women play.
Perpetuating the myth by controlling the links, and thereby controlling the discussion. Well done. Is this another lesson we women should learn?
But then, I’m picking on Halley with my posting, aren’t I? And members of the same community are not supposed to do this. We either agree, or stay silent. Another lesson to learn.
Why are more women’s voices not heard in technology? Because men control technology’s voice. I guess the same could be said for weblogging.
It’s in the air, friends, it’s in the air.

It is well known that an awful lot of bloggers are cat lovers. Dean Landsman does a great job of proving that fact. Like so many of us, he’s a pushover for sweet helplessness

My next door neighbor, Clara, died last week, alone in her small apartment, with only her cat to witness the second most crucial moment of her life. When a friend couldn

Among his ongoing commentaries about the politics and poker in America today, bix links to Ellen Goodman