incidentally...

i did send MK an email. And forwarded it to ST.

it makes sense not to try to do this in complete isolation.

and random quotation...

"self-immolation they said" "suicide they said"

five pages on five artifacts

put them side by side.

write a sentence on methodolgy for each.

Go.

Looking back at the outline I did for Eileen (not sure when, don't even try to say), I do think it works, maybe. I claim I am tracing the process of producing masculinity through the lens of anxiety. Then I list the productions that I will draw on-- cultural artifacts that illustrate this production.

I am interested in the production process and the way anxiety always plays a part, how sexual orientation is always relevant and co-produced, and how race plays a role regardless of whether it is explicitly mentioned or not.

(I wonder if part of what I am doing is comparing-- white masculinity and black masculinity. Are there some consistently different things based on race? What other factors mediate how race plays in?)

But I am having to study the process through these cultural products, and right now I'm drawing them from across a very very broad range of artifacts. In fact they are in different genres, have different production values, produced for different target audiences, viewed by different audiences, viewed with different tech interfaces, etc.

Is this a problem? Who has done this kind of study?

I am running up against the question of methodology again. How would I describe this methodology? Is it grounded theory? I hate all these "labels". R originally suggested that I go to intersectionality, Kimberle Crenshaw. Maybe I can cobble something together. But maybe I need to just do it first and keep methodology notes [in like square brackets?] as I go along. What if I take five pages on each artifact and place them side by side. Could be worth trying.

These are real questions and I'm really engaged in the process. AND I'm not sobbing or heaving hysterically. Maybe there is hope still.

abject terror (the email I didn't send to SE)

This is the email I started to put together to send to SE, stream of consciousness style, while sobbing hysterically and feeling like i was going to die any minute. i realize the title is melodramatic, but you aren't paranoid if people are really after you. Didn't send it, but came to an idea of someone to ask for help.

Hi SE,

Hope you are doing well. I've been gearing up to try to work on the dissertation. My business cards came for JMU. They have MA after my name. I want phd.

I started a blog today. Not sure if it will work. Actually not sure I can do this at all. After 3 weeks of trying to find a way to get started again, I did this this morning. My philosophy has been to try to discipline myself-- not to give way to the terror but to pretend that I am ok about this, that I don't feel absolutely crushed by even thinking about it.

I'm not depressed now, in my life. I'm still a little lost at times, but hey, my spouse still lives 500 miles away and she's unemployed and still suicidal, I still can't figure out how to pay all the bills, and we don't have a place to live after June (and I can't possibly buy one) and we have all these animals who depend on us to provide for them. But I have plenty of energy and now I tend to respond to problems by trying to solve them, or to feeling overwhelmed by giving myself a break and some perspective.

But thinking about the dissertation is INCREDIBLY UNBELIEVABLY AWFUL. As in even thinking about going there makes me want to die first.

Do you think it's an association with being so depressed before? Or a habit of thinking and feeling? More importantly, I have to figure out how to get started. I'd like to contact R (I mean, no point is working on this if it's too late anyways-- maybe I'm too late to even finish even if I wanted to) but I feel like I should contact her with an idea-- change projects, keep project, etc. I don't have this idea. I don't have a clue. It's all I can do to keep myself in the same room with this email, with this thought process (figuratively, of course).

Then I try to think, you can write while terrified, even though this feels like it will kill you, it won't, you can just live through it and you'll come out the other side. But it is sompletley mind-numbing, I can't come up with a strategy or plan and I can't figure out which ot the 100s of documents I should use to try to get myself to the ideas instead of this paralysis. II keep hoping I'll just cry myself out and out last it but it's not working-- I seem to have an unlimited supply of terror. So I eventually get up and go ride a horse or walk the dogs or work on work for JMU, and feel like myself again.

I apologize up front fro this email, maybe I won't even send it. But I had to feel like I had some audience to keep myself working through this process. I don't expect you, or anyone, to have any answers; I guess I have a need to feel like there is a witness, in case I actually burn up and don't survive someone can at least know what happened.

So so melodramatic. I hate being melodramatic. But I'm not kidding when I say that I'm typing this while feeling like I may burst into flames or explode or die weeping momentarily.

No wonder I don't feel like doing this. But I want my phd. I worked so hard to get to this point, so many other people have done it, i have to be able to figure this out. this feeling has to be an illusion--it can't really be that i can't do this. there has to be a way out of this.

meanwhile, i really need help from a faculty mentor. but i can't even think about this without bawling, and i can't ask anyone for help unless i have something to ask about. i can't ask for help if all i can do is rock in the chair and cry.

i thought maybe the blog would help me, being some other format. I am finding myself posting to facebook. now that i have a job, one where i feel competent and like i'm being treated like an academic, like a faculty member (really -- my boss talks to me like this, and JMU's culture makes it realy important, and folks here treat me like I should be a faculty member), now that that is happening I REALLY REALLY want to find a way to finish this degree. And though my job wasn't contingent on it, it may be necessary to keep my job. At a certain point, not being a phd will impair my ability to do my job effectively.

To step back and be objectvie-- I'm not sure the project I have been working on is a project. I want a project with clearly defined subject matter, with "subjects" (ideally who are interviewed, or who have a distinct identity/demographic), and a very clear (social science?) methodology. Which makes me wonder, do I have to do an entire new proposal? If I can come up with something that's dealing with race and masculinity, can I just do it, and then give my committee a few chapters? I need to figure out these answers... and I'm not sure I can talk to Radhika. I'm wracking my brain to figure out who I can talk to first-- a faculty mentor who can handle the panic without focusing only on it, someone who understands culture studies enough to understand interdisciplinary work but who won't get too bogged down in the details, and who understands the system enough to help me get to the next step....

I'm thinking of people and rejecting them, and finally, I'm coming to MK, director of the women's center. time to email her and ask for a chat.

no one is here to take a picture, which is a serious shame. Boris (5 month old fluffy orange tabby kitten) has just climbed on top of Simon (Pomeranian), who is sleeping on my lap in front of the keyboard. Boris is lying down too.

Being masculine, being manly, serves as a sort of social capital. I think there are a huge number of heterosexual (and heteronormative) men who are not particularly anti-gay (need to talk about what I'm saying anti-gay and not homophobic) but who say and do things to make themselves appear masculine. These statements are both damaging to gay men and to women, though the men themselves are not particularly trying to be hateful or hurtful to women, or even to gay men. The men who make these comments are trying to be successful personally and professionally. They are trying to climb the social ladder, keep or grow their careers, attract women as mates and spouses, impress their peers, play sports well, in other words, trying to live the happy and normal lives they have been taught to want.

My point is that putting non-manly men down is a form of social capital. If I can point to someone who isn't achieving masculinity over there, I can point to how I am achieving it here. I don't have to reference myself, or even to do anything, other than call someone else's non-manliness to attention. The act of being able to recognize that others aren't manly enough builds my masculinity credentials. Even if I'm not right (insofar as I can be "right" when I claim someone else is a pansy), I get status by being the kind of guy who calls other guys pansies.

I need to write about why the italics, why the emphasis.

I have a lot of words written about how theories of race and theories of sexual orientation build on and relate to each other. I need a project, something to study. As often as R says that I already have one, I can't identify a methodology or research. I can't identify the subject either. (Process note: I'm making a concerted effort, in this free writing exercise, to continue to act as though I am not terrified, as though I don't want to just say "I can't" a million times. I'm doing it by refusing to allow myself to repeat the same phrase over and over, and by trying to make myself focus on content, not on process notes like this. The thought is, act as though you know how to write and how to be a researcher, and that should be enough. Right now, I am unconvinced.)