let's face it

I recently turned 24. When I was 16 I wasn't sure I'd make it this far! Hell, when I was 23 I wasn't sure I'd make it this far.

Shit's still happening in my life that makes me feel helpless and unstable, but instead of turning my anger inward I'm turning it outward, exploring curses and shit. In a book that has sections titled "The Homewrecker: [for when] you want to destroy a marriage." The first sentence below that is, "Do you really?"

Do I really. Is it a marriage or just marriage that I want to end? To be sure it's one in particular, because the people involved in this particular marriage really fucked me over and I am angry. It's hard to know what to do with that kind of energy. A friend recommended that I make pretty things while thinking about the friend who got married and then moved away and then fucked me over, so that I would be able to move on. But I'm less convinced that I can make pretty things at all, and I'm not convinced at all that I was ever able to sublimate my anger into anything productive.

This girl, my friend, she got married to this creep. I will tell you what kind of a creep he is. He's one of those dominant dudes, like BDSM dominant. Did I ever tell you I give those kind of dudes a wide berth? They're fucking creepy. Something about dudes, especially white dudes, wanting to own women, control them. Explicitly, like it's part of their sexual identities that they've put a lot of thought and consideration into. (And BDSM isn't something that freaks me out or that I think is necessarily antifeminist or whatever. By the way.) How do these dudes not understand what the fuck it is they're saying and what kind of ideas they're promulgating?

I thought about all of this and I lost hope. I lost hope in women, I lost hope in men. I lost hope in friendship. I lost hope in love. I lost hope in kink. I lost hope in feminism. I lost hope in philosophy. None of these things will work because they don't make women stick together. As long as a woman is content to remain, psychologically, twelve years old, to abandon friends who care fiercely for her for a man who cares for her as long as she remains his property, it's all for nothing.

She told me before she left. She was afraid that she was going to lose something. She liked the person she'd become over the summer while she was hanging out with me. Something clicked for her, I guess, because I had never heard her say anything that even remotely suggested she liked herself. So I didn't want to let go of her and I tried to keep in touch with her. I didn't care if I was the one trying to call her and the one trying to hang out with her when she was in town. I made her promise to stay in touch with me before she left. A couple facebook messages, a couple posts on twitter and that was that. I started demanding she pay me the money she owed me and then nothing at all anymore.

What makes women do this?

I'm not a feminist anymore. I can't claim a label like that. Gender parity? I don't believe in it, because it doesn't exist, because we'll never get there. Not as long as women keep themselves under these structures. Not as long as they're willing to let dudes separate them from everything just for a little taste of approbation.

I don't want to change anything in this society. I just want to take a few women and get the fuck out because I am tired. There is nothing here for us anymore. There is no progress. We're just regressing, and not just along gendered lines, either. It's all lines. Somehow the powerful are just gaining more power. We got a black president here in the U.S. I think we've peaked. Somehow in a strongly Democratic, supposedly liberal executive and legislative branch we got campaign finance reform which basically said the pantomime is over. The rich have won. Arizona isn't the end of the immigration reforms that say let me see your papers. So the whites have won too.

And let's face it. The men have always been winning.

Pessimistic? Sure. But what exactly do I have to be optimistic about? The HRC has bought Harvey Milk's camera shop and now they're planning on selling mouse pads with his face on them, with the proceeds going to HRC, of course. Never mind the fact that when he was still alive they didn't exactly get along. Slow change and all that. Never mind that there could be a crisis center for gay kids there. It's much more important that the HRC inflate its wallet so they can more effectively fight for white, wealthy gay folks.

See? The same shit keeps getting kicked around. The same people keep getting kicked around. Back in October all we could think about was young white gay men killing themselves. But this months it's back to basics. DADT and marriage.

It's sure good to be back where we were.