“It’s just tiresome. Damn tiresome.”

Posted on November 10, 2011 by Kate Harding

If you go to the front page of Shapely Prose, the fat acceptance blog I headed up between 2007 and 2010, you will find a big “Sorry, we’re closed” sign under the words “Welcome to the Shapely Prose Archive.” If you still don’t get it, beneath that, I explained even more about how the blog is no longer operational. In September 2010. And if someone arrives today via a link to a specific post, the blog’s fucking tagline is now “2007-2010,” so I’m really not trying to trick people into mistaking it for an active blog.

Around September 2010, I also turned off comments for the whole site, forever, and said I wasn’t going to check the moderation queue again, which is hands-down one of the most liberating decisions I’ve made in recent years. Until tonight, I’d kept good on my promise not to check the queue. I’m not entirely sure how I ended up with 206 pending comments–most of them spam, of course, but many of them real comments from 2011–in the Shapely Prose queue, since the current template doesn’t even offer comment boxes at the end of posts anymore. But I have changed the template a few times, so maybe some did?

Anyway. Tonight I pop over to the SP dashboard to see what kind of traffic I got on a post that was linked a lot yesterday, while the #mencallmethings campaign was going strong. (This is because I am narcissistic and have too much time on my hands, so save your breath. I know.) And I decide I’m going to skim those 206 pending comments to see how many of them are exactly the kind of thing we were talking about. Wouldn’t it be funny if people were commenting on a long-dormant blog in hopes that somehow, someday, I would still receive their very important messages about how I am ugly, disgusting, stupid, deserving of painful death, etc.?

HILARIOUS, is what that would be.

So yeah, here are some highlights of the last few months, on a blog that’s been closed for over a year. Most of these were on two posts from 2007.

The same 2007 that happened four years ago, just so we’re clear.

Everything in quotation marks is verbatim, including display names (and in a couple of cases, choice fake e-mail addies).

1. You make me [sic].

“You fat people disgust me, I mean how hard is it to not eat and do heaps of exercise for a few weeks (not hard). You people may love your body now, but just wait until you are having a heart attack or stroke in a few years time, you sad excuses of humans make me sick. There are so many sick people that would do anything for a healthy body and you putrid fatties abuse yours in the name of ‘bieng proud of your body’.

Do society a favour and eat some more McDonalds so you’ll die faster thus making the world a better place.”

- “You Make Me Sick,” fuckthefatties@hotmail.com

2. Look, we’ve established that I’m fat. I would need a much bigger dignity if I intended to hide behind it.

“What??? This is bull crap. Fat is a sickness and is horrible. Do double chin looks sexy or healthy? People please loose weight and stop mistreating your body. Start today by eating healthy and start doing some exercise. Sedentary people sadly don’t know how to eat and they eat mostly “crap”, processed “microwaveable” food. Lots of refined sugar and white flours, lots of fried foods. Some people is Fat because a medical condition no matter what they do or don’t. But being fat without a reason is a WORSE sick condition because you don’t realize how bad and ugly is your situation.

Of course there are thin people who eat crap and don’t exercise …. and so what??? Fat people do not eat healthy either don’t lie to your self, you get there by just eating bad and toooo much. Stop hidden behind the “dignity” crap and start by showing some guts and self control and lose weight. Stop being a loser, if being fat is a good and acceptable matter why you feel so depressed and you read books about loving your fat body?????? Don’t destroy your self, please wake up! Even if thin people are eating crap and they are not healthy (as you state as your good excuse to mistreat your fat body) No one can denied that fat people look ugly, sick and destructive (of their own body)”

- “What?” at yourareabadfatperson@repentoruwillperisch.com

4. And then there’s the inevitable mind-reader…

“Being fat is disgusting…it ruins lives….you’d be lying to yourself of you say that you’re happy with the way you look”
- “Seneca”

4. And the classics…

“Fat people are fucking disgusting.”
- “Fred Zanford”

“Just put the f**king fork down and think of the Somali children you disgusting pigs.”

- “Weslers”

“all i see is a bunch of fat ass losers bitching because they think they deserve special accommodations for their lack of self control.”

-“John Smith”

5. And let us not forget the SAD BONERs…

“Ok, so let’s just throw it out there that fit looking people are, to the majority of the world, considered more physically attractive. Don’t give me this bull of: “oh, I’m heavy and my hubby finds me so hot.” That’s fine, I’m sure he does; and there are plenty of such folks out there. But in broad numbers, sit people down in a random survey of 1 million people from around the [western] world, fit looking people (with low amounts of body fat), will generally be rated as being more attractive. That’s a fact.

My problem, which I hate, is that I too find skinny and/or low amount of body fat more attractive in women. It sucks, but I just do. I don’t find fat people attractive. I wish I could. Why? Because America is getting so fat. Hell, everybody is fat now days. I’m fit, but damn it’s hard to find a fit/low-body fat girl out there that’s single. That’s what’s annoying. You just get tired of EVERYONE being so fat (even being around fat guys gets annoying). It’s just tiresome…damn tiresome.

And then we get into this article. Ugh, this is tiresome too: the whole “I’m fat and fit and it’s okay”. Brits, Americans, Auzzies: all getting fatter. No, most of you don’t have a thyroid problem. It’s called caloric intake. Just eat less calories. You look sloppy. If you’re going to spend the money to buy nice clothes to look good, why can’t you just eat smaller portions to make yourself thinner in addition to working out. And you know what? If you’re hungry, go chug a liter of water and you’ll find you’ll be full and don’t have to stuff your face.

Ugh!!!!!”
-“Franko.rizzo@yahoo.com” (Yes, that’s what he used as his display name as well as his e-mail; if it’s real, I’m only publishing what would have gone out there if I’d approved the comment.)

“The problem is that men are rigidly held to those standards… bending the rules and/or refusing to hold women to the same standards, is a double standard.I am a man with a 23.5 BMI, 9% body fat, an athletic build. I want a woman who has the same.But all that’s left are these morbidly obese women, all the good looking ones got snatched up. Maintaining a healthy weight IS NOT DIFFICULT. I work out a grand total of 4 hours a week. If I ever really started working out, I could easily get my body fat percentage down and my mass up so that I could have an idyllic 5%. Then, maybe I’d be able to get a halfway decent woman in this world where we pity women, we say ‘oh, that’s okay, you’re fat, you’re overweight, it’s no big deal’.

Women don’t say that to guys – If you’re not perfect you get overlooked and passed up for the next guy. In fact, you could be well above average and get overlooked for something you were born with, like your height or your race.

What kind of messed up world do we live in when we invent things like ‘thick’ and ‘BBW” for women, but for men it’s just ‘fat’?

BMI is one of the last strongholds of men to remind them how attractive they really are in this world that discriminates against them to no end – They can look at their bodies and say ‘wow, I have the build of a semi-professional athlete’.

That’s something that women and their double standards can’t take away.

Please note that I’m not even delving into my personal qualifications as a successful independent business owner, college valedictorian and rock musician. If you want to talk unfair, asking for THAT in a woman in addition to my athletic body type is unfair and impossible.

I’d be happy if you just changed your diets, stopped drinking and smoking and eating red meat. Thanks a ton.”
- “Man Who Is Angered By Double Standards”

6. But of course, the positive feedback makes it all worthwhile.

“I thought there was going to be a load of bullshit written, but this is good.”
- “G”

Grey Goo – The Encyclopedia Show, 10/23/11

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Kate Harding

Here’s the text of my contribution to last night’s Encyclopedia Show on robots, part of the Chicago Humanities Festival.

When Shanny first sent me my assignment–”You, Kate Harding, are to write on the theory of GREY GOO!”–I couldn’t begin to imagine what I’d find when I googled those words. I am a former English major who wasn’t even very good at that, let alone science. And while I am the kind of person who hangs out with–even marries–people who read a lot of science fiction, I generally do not.

Since this is a humanities crowd, I assume some of you might be similarly ignorant, so here are the bullet points. The theory of grey goo is one of those technology-run-amok scenarios that’s basically ridiculous but hypothetically possible, and therefore sort of tantalizing to consider. The deal is, scientists are building these tiny, tiny–like, way smaller than a hair’s breadth–robots, which will be able to do stuff like take incredibly detailed pictures inside the human body and make really, really strong building materials. Or something.

But in order for these little, wee robots to build stuff on a human scale, they will also need to be able to build more of themselves as they go along. And they use bits of organic matter as fuel, which is no big deal when they’re working molecule by molecule. But if we somehow lose control of the off switch, these little, wee, self-replicating robots will just go on consuming all the organic matter they can get–like, for example, us–until there’s nothing left on earth but a thick coating of nanorobot sludge. That’s what a guy called K. Eric Drexler described as “Grey goo” in 1986, and the name stuck.

That’s about as far as Wikipedia will take us. And I don’t know about you, but I still found it difficult to conceptualize grey goo after that. So, like any good former English major, I turned to literature for help–specifically, Michael Crichton’s 2002 thriller, Prey.

Prey deals with the early stages of a potential grey goo scenario, so it offers us some useful tips for averting disaster. In the novel, swarms of hungry nanorobots, numbering literally higher than I can count, are defeated through a three-step process:

Spray the swarm with isotopes to make it trackable at night, when the tiny robots are… asleep?
Track the now-radioactive swarm to its nest–because of course there’s a nest–and bomb the hell out of that.
Spray any remaining tiny robots–for instance, the ones that are more-or-less possessing our hero’s workaholic wife–with virus-infected poop water. Seriously. These particular nanorobots are surviving and multiplying on bacteria, which this particular virus (that lives in the scientists’ fermentation tanks) kills, so poop water saves the day. Our hero, Jack, actually yells, “How’d you like a shit shower?!” before he lets it fly.

And that’s not even the most implausible thing about Prey. The most implausible thing about Prey is that–in the grand tradition of the contemporary American thriller–Jack single-handedly defeats this enormous army of self-replicating robots. Sure, there are a few sidekicks who die or disappear along the way, but basically, one man is responsible for saving humankind. As usual.

Now, I have already both stipulated and demonstrated that I don’t know very much about science. But I feel totally confident in what I’m about to tell you, which is: You guys, when the nanorobots come for us, we will need to work together.

There will be no lone hero who conveniently happens to have the expertise, resources, and stamina to annihilate the entire horde. Marauding tiny-robot armies are not gonna be deterred by a 40ish, white, American dad who’s just a little more committed to seeing his children grow up than the next guy is.

That is not how it works in real life. In real life, individual people need help to survive.

Americans don’t always like to admit that, but these days, we don’t have much of a choice. These days, a whole lot of us are desperate for any help we can get. Michael Crichton, may he rest in peace, knew a lot more about science and storytelling than I do, but stories are just that. It is pure fiction that a single person, armed with only his wits and a solid work ethic, can defeat a relentless series of attacks by enemies that can’t even be seen when they’re still few enough for an individual to take on. It is pure fiction that a lone hero, however dedicated, can defeat a zillion greedy, single-minded monsters of our own creation.

In real life, human beings need each other. So when the tiny-robot armies come, I hope I can count on all of you to stand with me and fight.

About AWP and Diversity

Posted on August 6, 2011 by Kate Harding

The AWP 2012 panel selections were announced yesterday, which means my social networks are blowing up with celebration, bitterness, and some legitimate questions about the selection process.

Right off the bat, I want to offer sincere congratulations to everyone–including some friends and many, many writers I admire–who made the cut. The list is full of people I want to meet and panels I want to attend — way too many for me to fit in– so on the whole, I think the organizers have put together a terrific program. And on a personal note, I am so excited that the conference will be back in Chicago next year, so I don’t have to dither about going for months, only to realize at the last minute that all nearby hotels are sold out, and plane tickets are expensive, and I am lazy, which is what I do pretty much every year it’s not in Chicago.

Having said that, you know me well enough to know I didn’t dust off the old blog just to share happy news. Indeed, I was involved with two rejected panel proposals this year–booooooo–which means it would be perfectly fair for you to count me among the bitter and ignore everything I say beyond this point. But I like to think I belong to the “legitimate questions” camp (at least, I feel a stronger sense of belonging there), so I hope you won’t.

For the record, I have no issues whatsoever with one of the rejections; similar proposals were accepted, and they look at least as good as ours was, if not better. And I really only have one issue with the other (although it’s sort of nuanced, which means people are going to insist I have 43 issues with it that I don’t actually have). Also, I’m not naming any names besides my own, because I don’t want to drag anyone into this conversation unless they want to have it. But in the case of the people whose panel was accepted, those names are obviously public, so I want to note here that I don’t know any of them, and they sound like a really smart, cool, accomplished bunch of women. I have no beef with any of them, and I think their panel will probably be great.

OK. So.

Here’s the panel description we sent in:

Do I Really Need a Blog?: Building Your Platform Online

Your agent says you need a blog and your publisher wants a list of your online media contacts–or you have none of the above and wonder if internet self-publishing is a good way to get there. This panel demystifies the process of creating a strong online presence. Top bloggers and professional writers will address blogging for profit, finding an audience, using social media, fighting to be taken seriously, and laying the foundation for an irresistible book proposal.

Here’s the “statement of merit” that went with it:

Writers are increasingly expected to have a vibrant online presence but are rarely told how to make that happen. These five panelists have founded high-profile and profitable blogs, garnered freelance work and book deals on the strength of their web writing, developed loyal audiences, made countless professional contacts online (including each other) and, one way or another, learned to use blogging as a bridge to greater professional recognition and opportunities.

Furthermore, our panel included:

5 writers who have founded successful blogs, and used them (at least in part) as platforms for our writing careers
5 writers with high-profile publications
4 Chicagoans
4 writers with books out or under contract
3 women of color
2 writers who have earned a living from the blogs they founded
1 former magazine editor
1 former editor of an extremely high profile, well-funded blog
1 former book editor
1 academic

These are all things that should, in theory, have worked in our favor, because they add to our credibility and/or because they represent characteristics AWP has claimed expressly to be seeking.

Meanwhile, the blogging/online platform panel that was chosen has this description:

Sure, lots of writers blog, but what can you do to actually capitalize from your daily posts? A writer, editor, literary agent, and blog sponsor come together to discuss what appeals to them when reading online, how you can better attract followers, make money from your blogging, and possibly even find a job. From sharing success stories to blogging ‘don’ts’, this panel will clarify the murky waters that surround online writing.

So, it’s the same basic concept as ours, only with the additional perspective of a literary agent and blog sponsor.

As far as I can tell from Googling, the five women involved with this panel are A) roughly equivalent to the five of us, in terms of professional accomplishments, and B) all white. This strikes me as problematic.

Let me state unequivocally that I DO NOT THINK there was some racist conspiracy to exclude women of color, NOR DO I THINK that our proposal was clearly stronger than the one that was accepted. IN FACT, as I said above, I fully expect that those five women will do a terrific job.

But here is what I DO THINK: If, as conference organizers, you’re going to bang on about wanting to create a diverse schedule, you need to ask yourself questions like:

If two proposals are substantially similar, but one panel is all white and the other is majority POC, should we perhaps go with the latter?
Have we perhaps reached a point where we should be raising an eyebrow at all-white panels in general? (Disclosure: the other panel proposal I was involved in was all white — I wasn’t the organizer and didn’t know everybody else, but I also did not bow out when I realized that was the case. If it’s one of the reasons we weren’t chosen, I think that’s entirely reasonable.)
If we aren’t going to make any special effort to consider how all-white panels look, and what effect they have on the comfort level of POC in attendance–especially when there are similar, equally qualified panels featuring POC–what does a “commitment to diversity” mean? Are we just talking about genres, or what?

I could go on, but I actually have to go have lunch with someone I’m on a conference panel with later today. But I wanted to put this out there. To recap: I’m super-stoked about AWP 2012! I think the organizers made some fantastic picks! I further think narrowing down 1000+ proposals must have been a miserable job! And I think the blogging panel will probably be really good! But I also think that those of us who claim to be interested in organizing and attending more diverse conferences need to be talking about how and why we still end up with all white panels, especially when there are good alternatives.

For my part, I’m going to pledge not to accept any more invitations to be on all-white panels — there’s a terrific post about just that by someone whose name escapes me, but I know people will tweet it at me in about 5 minutes, and I’ll update this post as soon as I get back to my computer this evening. What does “a commitment to diversity” mean to you? (Answer somewhere other than in my comments, because I’m still me, and I still don’t do that anymore.)

An essay, and an apology

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Kate Harding

So, my horrifying college graduation photo is currently on the cover of Salon, because I wrote an essay for their new “Mortifying Disclosures” series about being an English major who never did most of the reading. Please go enjoy my mortification!

But if you are going right now (or you already have), please also be aware that I just woke up and sent the following e-mail to my editor:

Hey, in the line I threw in about the graduation ceremony, would it be possible to change “poofy-hatted” to “puffy-hatted” and possibly even “fabulous” to “fantastic”? It’s been bugging me all night that some quirk of my subconscious made me write that as if the salient point was “HUR HUR, BEADLES ARE SO GAY,” when I only meant to say the whole thing was ridiculously over-the-top, yet actually sort of cool. The beadles’ hats are like some combination of an ornate throw pillow and a semi-deflated chef’s hat, so I was going for “puffy” and did not think about the pejorative use of “poofy.” And I originally wrote “It is awesome,” but then I threw in the “So that was awesome” line later and went back and changed it to the first synonym that came to mind, which unfortunately was “fabulous.” Now every time I look at it, I worry that readers are going to think I was making a big gay joke on purpose.

So, um, yeah. Could we fix that?

If you’re a reader who saw it and did think that, I’m really sorry.

Update: It’s changed now.

The Book of Jezebel

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Kate Harding

This one.

I’m gonna be working on it!

If this is the sort of news that interests you, you should pay attention to the book’s Tumblr and Twitter, where Anna Holmes, Jez staff and I will be posting updates, announcements, and questions for the hivemind.

In which I rant about Assange support giving way to victim-blaming and rape apology

Posted on December 7, 2010 by Kate Harding

For Salon.

As of today, even Naomi Wolf – Naomi Effin’ Wolf! — has taken a public swipe at Assange’s accusers, using her status as a “longtime feminist” to underscore the absurdity of “the alleged victims … using feminist-inspired rhetoric and law to assuage what appears to be personal injured feelings.”

Wow. Admittedly, I don’t have as much experience being a feminist as Wolf has, but when I see a swarm of people with exactly zero direct access to the facts of a rape case loudly insisting that the accusation has no merit, I usually start to wonder about their credibility. And their sources.

I wrote another thing!

Posted on November 15, 2010 by Kate Harding

On Sarah Palin’s new reality show, for the L.A. Times online:

The claim that “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” is a wholly apolitical travelogue-cum-family tableau, meant only to showcase the rugged beauty of our largest state and the just-folksiness of its former governor, lasts about five minutes into the first episode.

That’s the point at which we learn that Sarah’s enjoyment of working on the “cement slab” outside (naturally the Palins would have nothing so fancy-pants as a “patio”) is hampered by the presence of a new neighbor, the writer Joe McGinniss, who’s rented the house next door while researching what Todd Palin describes as a “hit piece” on his wife. Sarah explains that Todd’s reaction to McGinniss’ arrival was to get out there with his buddies and erect a 14-foot-high fence between the properties (as you do), and before I can finish writing “immigration analogy?” in my notes, she clarifies: “By the way, I thought that was a good example, what we just did, others could look at and say, ‘Oh, this is what we need to do to secure our nation’s border.’”

In which I finally explain where I’ve been and finally decide where I’ll be

Posted on September 15, 2010 by Kate Harding

(And in which I make excessive use of numbered lists.)

So hey, look, it’s me! Kate! Blogging! At one of my blogs!

I really did not expect to neglect all my blogs for the entire summer — which is why I never put up a warning that I’d be doing so — and I sincerely apologize to anyone who was worried. But a couple things happened:

1) I quit smoking, which sapped about 99% of my will to live, let alone my will to blog, for a solid two months in there.

2) I realized how much more peaceful my life is when I don’t blog. More on that below.

Nevertheless, I miss it, so I’m getting back on the horse. Sort of.

The deal is this: all summer, I kept thinking, “I really want to start blogging again soon,” and then not doing it. Usually, that “I’m totally going to except oops I didn’t but I’m totally going to” cycle means I really do not want to do the thing I keep telling myself I really want to do. So eventually, I had to admit I really did not want to blog anymore and ask myself why.

There are several answers.

1) After three years of writing primarily on controversial topics, I am so sick of this shit, I have basically lost my stomach for making any argument more inflammatory than “Personally — and I am in no way saying you should agree with me — I enjoy sunshine and puppy dogs and rainbows.” Except we all know even that will lead to 300 impassioned comments about melanoma, drought, puppy mills, dog fighting, DOMA and DADT, most of which I will actually agree with and be appropriately incensed by, but all of which I will find exhausting because the point of writing about sunshine and puppy dogs and rainbows was to AVOID DOING THAT JUST FUCKING ONCE.

And I mean, I’m sick of writing posts that follow the formula Chris Clarke so delightfully outlined at that link, just as much as I am of reading ones designed to rile me up, and really, REALLY sick of the inevitable comments (familiar types of which are also brilliantly and extensively catalogued there). By last spring, I became increasingly aware that I was doing a lot of “Stock Intro A + Stock Feminism/Fat Acceptance Points B and C + Free-Form Outrage Interlude + Stock Conclusion D = done for the day,” and that is really not the kind of writing I want to be doing.

Which leads me to the next point.

2) I’ve really missed writing longer things that undergo substantial revision over time and actually — get this! — become much better and more interesting than the first drafts I knocked out in a couple of hours. I’m given to understand that some people who call themselves writers actually do nothing but that, instead of making every thought they have public ten minutes after they have it! Can you imagine?

It’s been ages since I finished working on the book, and my plan was always to write one by myself after that — but for a long time, I was too busy writing stuff for immediate publication. Once I deliberately shifted my focus to the next book instead, my brain was usually too tired for blogging when I had the time, and pretty soon, I was well out of “Spit it out and hit ‘publish’” mode, so blogging just didn’t happen.

A couple of weeks ago, I contributed a piece to Salon that only reinforced how different blogging is from the kind of writing I’ve been doing over the summer (well, ever since I could pick myself up off the floor and function sans cigarettes). I had a full day between the assignment and the deadline — a positively luxurious amount of time by paid blogging standards — and still felt like it was about half-cooked (and yet way too long, since part of my “process” is writing twice as much as I’ll eventually use) when the deadline came and the editor gave me the grown-up equivalent of “Put your pencils down NOW.” The piece is okay, but I’m not terribly proud of it as a blog post or a personal essay, because I took too leisurely an approach to the former and too hasty an approach to the latter. I either needed more time or less time to do it right.

At the moment, I am all about the leisurely approach — which is a bit of a misnomer, since it still involves a lot of hard work. But basically, I’d rather work hard on quality and depth than on churning out a mostly coherent argument a.s.a.p. (Unfortunately, it’s much easier to get paid — at least in the short term — for fast, mostly coherent arguments. I am very lucky to have the choice right now.) I’m at the point where I think I can build semi-regular blogging for my own amusement back into my schedule — hi! — but I had to let myself fall off the face of the internet for a while to get back into a slower, more deliberate writing rhythm.

3) And then there are comments. There’s really not much to say here that I haven’t already said 10 billion times, but here’s variation 10 billion and 1.

Even though the comments policy meant we didn’t have too many trolls to deal with, moderating SP was — as all of us who did it noted repeatedly — a ridiculously time-consuming, tiring, and dispiriting job. By last spring, the sheer volume of comments was overwhelming, even if they were mostly quite pleasant (and often fantastic). Part of the reason our commenting policy worked was because we were committed to at least one moderator reading every single one of them — and we generally tried to stay on top of our co-bloggers’ comments, too. But that’s also part of the reason why every single moderator eventually decided she couldn’t keep doing it. And it’s a big part of the reason why, when the blog went back to just me, it soon went totally dark.

The ugly truth is, for the last several months, I haven’t wanted to read comments. Any comments. Not even comments saying, “You’re awesome,” or “Here’s a really smart, unexpected take on a subject that fascinates you,” or “Look at this picture of an indisputably adorable, rescued, mixed-breed, clean, well-cared-for, non-aggressive, hypoallergenic COMPLETELY NON-CONTROVERSIAL PUPPY.” I just didn’t want to read comments at all. Which meant I certainly didn’t want to write anything that would invite a couple hundred new comments. So I didn’t write anything on Shapely Prose and barely wrote anything online at all.

Now, I’m ready to come back in some capacity, but I’m still pretty gunshy and a bit out of practice. So I’ve made a few decisions to minimize my anxiety and maximize the fun, self-reinforcing parts of blogging. Decisions such as…

1) I’m going to officially admit — to myself and you all — what should be clear by now anyway: Shapely Prose is over. Maybe not forever, but definitely for the forseeable future.

The archive will remain up, and I will remain committed to feminism and fat acceptance. I will even keep writing about both things for various publications, including this here blog! But in addition to the fact that nearly a year ago, I was thoroughly burned out on Shapely Prose and really just prolonging the inevitable, I’ve realized it feels too weird going back to it as a solo blog. (I guess that could also have been point 4 on the list of reasons why I didn’t blog for so long.)

Shapely Prose really hit its stride and thrived as a group blog, but as the original members moved on, I just couldn’t bring myself to recruit replacements. I would have felt too much like the former lead singer of a once-popular band desperately wringing every ounce of marketability out of the name, even if none of the other original members want anything to do with the project, and most of the old fans just think I’m pathetic. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I definitely feel like it’s time to admit the glory days of my first internet baby are long past, and I just need to let it go.

Shapely Prose will remain up at kateharding.net, with over 1,200 posts and 100,000 comments for your reading enjoyment, but I don’t plan to add anything new there (unless something changes). When I am moved to blog, it will be here, at kateharding.info.

2) I’m not approving any more comments on Shapely Prose. There are like a million in the mod queue right now, and I’m sure some of them are great and heartfelt and fascinating, and that good people spent a lot of time on them, so I’m really sorry about that. But I just can’t. Please see point 3 on the previous list.

3) Comments on this blog, when allowed, are going to be automatically closed after 24 hours. And they won’t always be allowed; it’ll depend on how much time and energy I have at any given moment/for any given subject. I expect that a long hiatus, a new url and new rules will mean a dramatic drop in the number of readers and commenters, so it’ll probably be far more manageable, and I’ll soon get over being gunshy. But as much as I appreciate the feedback — and really enjoy interacting with readers, I swear! — I cannot ever, EVER again let myself get to a point where posts are going up daily (or close to it) and getting hundreds of comments a piece, and I’m committed to reading all of them, yet it is not actually a full-time job for which someone pays me a great deal of money. I just had no idea what I was getting into before.

OK, I think that’s all my lists. And with that out of the way, I really do look forward to blogging again! I’ll see you here soon.

Love,

Kate

On Productivity and Absorption

Posted on April 6, 2010 by Kate Harding

Cross-posted from Shapely Prose.

So, Al bought an iPad yesterday. Don’t ask me how I didn’t see that one coming, because Al buys practically every gadget that comes along and has a particular affinity for tiny computers. But since he’s not an Apple nerd in particular and has so far resisted the urge to buy an iPhone, when he said “Let’s go look at the iPad,” I actually believed we were only going to look. You’d think I just met the guy.

Anyway, it is indeed a cool little device. And what I like about it is pretty much what Laura Miller talks about in her review here — it’s terrific for consuming all sorts of media – but because I wasn’t excited enough to read a million reviews before it was released, I didn’t realize some people thought that was a bad thing.

Between being a youngish (emphasis on the “ish”) person and having a gadget geek husband (with a job that pays well enough for him to be one), I already consume practically all of my media via small, portable computers. Music comes from iPods and internet radio, not CDs and a stereo. We no longer have a proper TV or a cable subscription, and I can’t tell you the last time either of us bought a DVD — we mostly watch Netflix, Hulu, Amazon on Demand and the like on our laptops or via a Roku box hooked up to a projector. And since I got a Kindle, I’ve pretty much stopped buying paper books unless they were written by friends or aren’t available as e-books. (Also, you probably wouldn’t have guessed this, but I read the internet a little bit every now and again.) As Laura says, a laptop can do all those things, but for various practical and emotional reasons, she’s so far found the iPad preferable for non-work-related media consumption. I think I would too. After Al and I had messed around with it for a while yesterday, my overall impression was, “That’s a really nice little entertainment delivery device” — like a TV or a stereo or an e-book reader, except all of those and much more. Which is kind of awesome.

But I forgot that nobody’s supposed to be entertained without an opportunity to respond anymore, so apparently, just being able to watch TV and movies, listen to music, play games and read books, magazines, newspapers and the entire internet on one device that does all those things pretty damn well is not good enough. (Not that you can’t interact with a lot of the above on the iPad, but it’s not always as easy as it is on a laptop.) So this paragraph of Laura’s really hit me:

The iPad may not be ideal for what the tech industry calls “productivity,” but it’s well-suited for the purpose I had in mind: absorption. Even the most creative individuals will tell you that they have to spend some time simply soaking up the world around them, including the work of other creators, or ultimately the well runs dry. Much techno-utopian rhetoric implies that devoting your whole attention to someone else’s creation, sans interactivity, is necessarily a sad, incomplete, merely passive experience. Not only is that incorrect, it reflects certain troubling psychosexual attitudes about surrender and control that I don’t even want to get into here. When people complain nowadays about not being able to think or read as deeply as they used to, they’re not just acting like a bunch of old fuddy-duddies: They’re noticing a genuine lack of substance, the threadbare sensation of living in a culture where everyone’s talking and nobody’s listening.

I love technology, generally speaking, and I don’t like people who are all “Oh no! The internet is killing genuine human experience!” But I also don’t like people who think that entertainment or art without a high level of interactivity is necessarily inferior to the new kind. That’s a whole other post, but for now, let’s just say that as someone who lives much of my life online, I’m actually finding it makes me appreciate passive media consumption — as Laura puts it, listening – even more.

Al and I spent last week in Toronto, where I lived about 2/3 of my adult life to date. Crossing the border meant the roaming charges were obscene, so we both turned off everything but the phone parts of our phones. Which meant that for 8 days, we couldn’t e-mail, update Twitter or Facebook, end an argument by looking something up on Wikipedia, or read random internet shit unless we were actually in our hotel room with our computers. Now, everyone who witnessed the Sandra Bullock shitstorm knows I was online plenty last week — but I was also offline a LOT more than usual. Because these days, I am used to being online whenever I’m on public transit, when I’m out for dinner (yes, I’m that rude asshole, at least when I’m with my rude asshole husband), when I’m waiting for a movie to start or a friend to show up, etc. So when I realized I’d been out for hours and had no idea what was going on in comments on the Bullock post, for instance, I’d have a moment of panicky frustration before I remembered oh yeah, IT WILL STILL BE THERE WHEN I GET HOME.

I went more than 30 years without owning a smartphone, but it did not take long for me to become disturbingly dependent on one. And living without all those extra features for a week made me really conscious of how frequently that takes me out of the moment. Or, more precisely, it puts me in adifferent moment — I don’t think constant internet access makes you fail to be present or engaged with your own life, as some would argue, but it can mean a lot of your life takes place in your head more than your body.

Sometimes, that’s a wonderful thing, especially for people who for various reasons can’t be physically present everywhere they might like to be, or who find it much easier to be social this way. But for me, the blessing and the curse of it is, I spend much more of my life than I used to thinking about what I’m going to say next. I’m composing a comment in response to what I just read instead of sitting with it; I’m having “chats” with friends where there can be no pleasant silences without one of us wondering if the other is still there; if I’m observing the world around me, half the time I’m thinking, “How do I make this a funny tweet?” When I was writing for Broadsheet, I read other feminist blogs desperately looking for fodder, rather than just taking it all in because it’s smart and interesting — which is exactly what got me interested in them and made me want to start my own in the first place.

All that thinking up something to say gets fucking exhausting. Which is ultimately a big part of why I gave up daily writing for Salon, and why I’ve been so absent around here for so long. (After a day’s work, I’m supposed to think up even more things to say?) And one of the things that made me realize I needed to make a change was that I became obsessed with TV. Like I said, we don’t have cable or a proper TV, and part of the reason for that is because we just weren’t watching enough to bother. It wasn’t a big part of our lives. But over the last few months, I would finish work and just want to sit there for hours watching Hulu/Netflix/Amazon stuff — whatever was available to stream and looked remotely interesting to me. I’ve found a few shows I really love that way (Leverage, In Plain Sight, Better off Ted, the sadly long ago canceled Kidnapped), but I also watched a hell of a lot of crap TV, two straight seasons of 21 Jump Street in a weekend and about a million episodes of Law & Order I’d already seen. Because all I wanted to do after thinking up shit to say all day was sit there and let someone else tell me a story that was easy to follow and demanded no response.

I really do love writing online and talking to other people about what they’re writing and what I am. But man, I also really do love sitting on my ass and letting someone else do all the thinking. I didn’t realize how much I missed that when I was in my honeymoon phase with the blogosphere and totally delighted by all these new avenues for interaction with enormous numbers of people.

I also love reading and writing fiction, neither of which I’ve been doing much of all this time; another reason I gave for quitting is that I’m trying to get back into writing a novel. But getting into the mental space for that involves reading a lot of other people’s work, as Laura notes, as well as sitting with my own work and getting no immediate feedback. It involves a hell of a lot more offline time, absorbing time, listening time — listening to other people and to myself far more closely than I can when I’m writing to deadline every day — so it’s a surprisingly big adjustment, considering it’s what I spent most of my time doing just five years ago. And meanwhile, I don’t want to fall off the radar completely with my nonfiction and online stuff, so I’m still taking the occasional paid opportunity, trying (or thinking of trying) to blog here more, tweeting, commenting and working on personal essays that could go in a book. Which means not writing or reading much fiction, unless I can figure out a good balance.

That’s what I’m trying/hoping to do right now. It’s too early to really say how that’s going yet. But I’ve written a bit of fiction without checking e-mail every ten minutes, I’m reading more books and watching less TV, and that week without a smartphone was surprisingly instructive. It will all still be here when I get back.

I travel a lot, usually with my Kindle and netbook. And I usually work while I travel. When I first considered whether I might want my own iPad — thinking mostly of traveling with it — I thought, “It would be nice to have everything on one device*, but I don’t think I’d like working on it.” Right now, though, I’m thinking that’s exactly why I might want one. Because someday, I might take a real vacation again, go somewhere and not work at all, just explore and observe and maybe passively consume some entertainment on the plane or in the hotel. Just like I did until a few years ago, always carrying several paper books and maybe a cell phone that didn’t do anything else along with me. I’m probably too far gone to want to go more than a day or two without internet access at all, and I’m okay with that.** But I love the iPad precisely because it reverses the netbook’s priorities — it is ideal for absorption, not productivity. And if my TV binge taught me anything, it was that I need to work more absorbing into my life if I don’t want to go completely off the rails.

So yeah, I kind of want one. Probably won’t get one any time soon, because they ain’t cheap. But it is a really cool little entertainment delivery device. And I think that’s all the recommendation it needs.

Also, if you don’t see me around here? It’s generally safe to assume it’s because I’m feeling the need to do more listening than talking. That’s all.

*Yeah, I could read Kindle books on my netbook, but I really don’t like that as much.

**Unless someone wants to offer me a free week on a beach somewhere I can’t possibly get it. I would take that, just for the record.

Congrats, Jaclyn and Jessica!

Posted on November 2, 2009 by Kate Harding

Hey, guess what made Publishers Weekly‘s Best Books of 2009 list?

Yes Means Yes! Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape
Edited by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti (Seal)
Activist writers Friedman and Valenti present an extraordinary, eye-opening essay collection that focuses on the importance of sexual identity and ownership in the struggle against rape in the U.S., as well as a number of related issues, including sexual pleasure, self-esteem and the mixed societal messages that turn “nice guys” bad.

The anthology includes not only an essay by yours truly, but many by writers I love, including Kimberly Springer, with whom I did a Q&A here. Congrats to everyone involved, and thanks, PW!

Kate Harding

Writer, Teacher, Speaker

Category Archives: Writing