Facts (and Other Fiction)

let's face it

2010-12-16T03:21:00.003-05:00

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.

2010-10-20T19:43:00.004-04:00

I'm going a little bit stir-crazy lately because my life! It has gone completely downhill somehow! The Rent is Too Damn High. I've become completely isolated from my friends because I'm an idiot and have not been taking my meds since forever. Even with my friends, the few times I can bear to be around them because I've showered that day and am not filthy and therefore will at least not be a gross burden on them, I feel completely detached from them and their affection. Although I know, intellectually, that they care about me and don't want me dead, I don't feel it when I'm around them. I always feel like they're just resigning themselves to having me around. I feel like that about everyone. Even when people travel from another city to come see me.

I've been obsessively making art, which is better than the coping mechanisms I've used before. Namely, sex.

I'm not getting down on casual sex. There have been a few times, in my life, where I had casual sex that did not make me feel even slightly down on myself, that only improved my mood. Because I was coming at it from a place where it just was what it was. It wasn't a desperate reach for intimacy because I was so starved for it. I was horny and that was that. And it worked out fine. All of this seems like an absolutely desperate attempt at showing up for all my ethical slut sisters out there, feels like people will perceive my defense of casual sex as me doing it because that's what feminists do. (nb: I've never actually read The Ethical Slut, I'm just using the phrase because I kind of like it.) So listen up, Slut Shamers of the Internet: you're wrong. That's it.

Not getting down on casual sex, it's just that most of the times when I was having it, most not all, it was me trying to find something that I was missing. Stupidly. I went into all of these different situations not really wanting sex, just wanting a kind of companionship, however short-lived it might be.

So obsessively making art is probably healthier. I don't do it if I don't want to. I like to think I've sublimated the need for companionship into this infinitely-healthier endeavor, but I've gone from needing a ridiculous amount of attention and desperately seeking it, to needing a ridiculous amount of attention and denying that part of myself entirely.

This is the place I inhabit when I'm unmedicated, this land of extremes. I go from near-sex addict to celibate in the space of a few months. I go from attention sponge to recluse. I have a hair-trigger temper that's also completely unpredictable, to the point that it alternately terrifies or supremely fucking irritates the people around me, depending on who happens to be on the receiving end of it. There's so much that I want to that it gets overwhelming and I just sit here writing stupid blog posts. I cry in the shower. I cry a lot. I don't know if anyone's ever been so ashamed of themselves as I was this morning when just thinking about Sheryl Crow's cover of "The First Cut is the Deepest" made me start bawling. I ask you, what the fuck is that shit?

The menu for next week is rice and gravy. Rice because the 5 pound bag of it was ridiculously cheap at Food Lion this week, and gravy because god dammit I need something that tastes good, even if it's crappy powdered gravy. Also, waffles. I bought some waffle mix and my roommate has a waffle iron. I've got it better off than some people, I know. My rent and bills are paid for this month. I live in a place where I can get to work easily even if I don't have enough gas in my car. Deep breaths.

say it right

2010-10-04T15:50:00.003-04:00

So last month was rough for gay kids. Well, the five gay kids who killed themselves, at least. Any given month tends to be a rough one for gay kids.

Brace yourself for some unresearched opinionating.

Dan Savage, whom I love like a teacher who has some problematic attitudes sometimes, started a project for homo adults to address homo kids directly on YouTube to let them know life isn't always going to suck. It's called It Gets Better and it's a great idea because it's so honest. Teenagers need someone who won't bullshit them with platitudes and I think the people who've made videos for this project are doing a good job of that.

Meanwhile, on another prominent gay blog:

Gays and lesbians are not allowed to legally marry. Gays and lesbians are not allowed to openly serve in the military. Gays and lesbians are not protected from being fired for their sexual orientation across all 50 states. None of these rights and protections exist on a federal level.

So, then, why are we so surprised when teens pick on gay kids? When a government says it is OK to discriminate against gay people, kids think it's OK to hate them. All politics are personal, and nothing is more personal than being treated like a second-class citizen.

So this, this is why Prop. 8, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, etc. all matter so much. While on the surface they may seem like they’re about a single issue — marriage, military service, employment — they’re a gauge of what we as a people believe is important to protect. They’re the legal harbingers of our overall acceptance and, ultimately, full equality.

And they’re also why it is so very important to vote come November. Will the repeal of DADT or Prop. 8 end GLBT bullying overnight? No, of course not. Are they are an important step to creating a culture of tolerance? You'd better fucking believe it.

Oh really? I didn't know it was so easy to build a culture of tolerance just like that, by campaigning for legislation that affects gay adults specifically and that happen to be super-popular among white wealthy gay people especially. I didn't know that all we had to do was politicize the fuck out of some gay kids' deaths in all the wrong ways.

I know what she's trying to say, and there's a way to say it right:

Just remembering to vote in politicians who will protect wealthy gay people's interests is not enough to make sure gay kids stop killing themselves because they're being bullied.

Another way to say it right would be to encourage people to focus on protecting gay kids at school by drawing attention to legislative issues that would have an immediate effect on them, like the Safe Schools Improvement Act and the Student Non-Discrimination Act. That would be a fucking perfect way to say it, instead of conveniently dropping bits of the Gay Rights Movement (sponsored by Bud Light)'s agenda and leaving out the really crucial stuff.

Of course the message sent by the fact that DADT isn't repealed and gay people can't get married isn't the best one. But remember that the Civil Rights Act certainly hasn't stopped people from hating on black people. It hasn't ended institutionalized oppression against racial minorities. It was just a step in the right direction. The Gay Rights legislative package is a step. But it's not one that will make everything better.

All these calls to rainbow-emblazoned arms aren't going to help those kids.

On self-policing

2010-09-28T11:24:00.000-04:00

I just posted a comment on a livejournal discussion community for queer people. It was just a supportive comment about some relatively annoying things the original poster had to deal with at work. The content of the post and my comment is really not important.

What matters is that my comment was only about three sentences long and yet I was constantly second-guessing myself, my internet presence, and my language, trying to make sure that it was as neutral and positive as I could possibly make it. My default user icon is a creepy-looking van with the words "HOGWARTS EXPRESS" painted haphazardly on it. I didn't want to upset anyone who may have had a history of abuse so I changed it to something that didn't have those unpleasant connotations. I was going to use the word "idiot" to describe someone the OP had talked about in their post, but then remembered the ableist history of the word so I deleted it and changed it to "douche." Then I remembered that some people might be bothered by using that in a derogatory sense because of its association with women's bodies. So I deleted that and changed it to "jerk." No one likes jerks. As far as I know.

I found myself about to use the phrase "you guys" but then I remembered someone might be bothered by it because of its phallocentrism. So I deleted it and just used the word "you" to describe the OP and their friend.

Even now I'm being careful not use the word "she" to refer to the OP because OP might be a man or might be another gender entirely and I want to remember to check my assumption that everyone on livejournal is a woman.

I don't know how relevant it is to talk about all the backlash that happens whenever someone tries to use what people like to call "PC language." "Oh noes, the PC police!" is usually the gist of the complaints.

And it sounds like a lot when you write out every little instance where you have to check yourself re: the language you use, and just your presence in general, especially on the internet where we don't have neat things like nonverbal communication to help someone feel non-threatened. It sounds like a lot to catalog all these instances of self-policing but honestly it's not a lot. It was a three-sentence post, with all these little things that needed to be corrected. It took me less than a minute.

But even if I had written a Russian-novel-length post, I still would have done it. The language we use has destructive potential. I couldn't stand the thought of upsetting someone because I didn't check myself. I couldn't stand the thought of triggering someone by using that user icon. I couldn't stand the thought of hurting someone just by being there and not filtering myself.

I don't know how people can look at their language, acknowledge that it upsets people, and still continue to act the way they do.

humanity's Dr. Kevorkian

2010-09-12T20:37:00.000-04:00

In this post I talked about a church I frequented for a while when I was still a CAP worker for a particular person I worked with. The pastor there talked about a lot of things which I don't really remember. Victorious Christian living was the theme every time we went there. I talked about that and what it maybe meant in that other post, but it's not really necessary to read that right now to understand this post. Or ever, let's be honest.

The pastor there really was a nice man who seemed to eventually care a good deal about me and my client. At the end of every meeting he would ask everyone to close their eyes and bow their heads, and he would say that he does this at the end of every meeting, that he always asks people to do this and he wants anyone who isn't sure whether they're saved or not to raise their hands because he wants to pray for them, and he doesn't believe in pointing them out and embarrassing them so he would never do that.

One night he said all of this after talking about how the end times are coming. He talked about the end times rather a lot. Not in the way that people think Christians are always talking about the end times. He wouldn't devote entire lectures to it. He would just allude to it every now and then, saying that we needed to make sure as many people as possible would be raptured. I think that's what he would say. I know the end times came up a lot, but only briefly. Anyway.

I have been experiencing this kind of despair recently. It's this despair that has kept me from really being able to engage with what's been going on politically. I haven't really been able to pay attention to much of anything that has to do with politics since Obama got elected. Not because I thought all of our problems were solved. It was mostly because I realized pretty soon after he was sworn into office that our problems will never be solved, because it's far too late to fix some of them (climate change. It's been too late for that for the past twenty years, really) and some of them are dependent on radical changes happening to our political system that will never happen ever. It got to the point that I just stopped believing any kind of change was possible.

The pastor said we all needed to be examples for people to follow. That was how we would be able to witness to people and convert them. Something weird happened when he said "witness." For a second I guess I saw myself as the humanity's Dr. Kevorkian, or maybe as the priest reading the Last Rites to a dying person. In all my despair I thought that the most helpful thing I could do would be to convince people to just let the Earth shake us off, to stop fighting what was coming. So maybe it was more like I was seeing myself as humanity's end-of-life counselor.

And I raised my hand when he asked for anyone to raise their hands if they weren't sure they were saved.

I don't exactly remember my reasons for doing this. Maybe I wanted to make sure I was strong enough to do this task that I had suddenly seen myself doing. Whatever my reason was it sure as hell wasn't the reason the pastor had for asking people to raise their hands so he could save them.

I felt really guilty about this later because I realized the pastor had thought that his church was actually reaching people, was becoming something more than the tight circle of people he perceived it to be.

It was reaching me in a way he surely hadn't intended.

Friday Random Ten

2010-08-13T16:05:00.003-04:00

In an effort to keep myself on top of this blogging thing. Behold!

1. "Two Kinds of People" - The Magnetic Fields
2. "Highway 61 Revisited" - PJ Harvey
3. "Screenager" - Muse
4. "Clint Eastwood" - Gorillaz
5. "Who?" - The Brian Jonestown Massacre
6. "Cherry Blossom Girl" - Air
7. "Dreams Are Not My Home" - Rosanne Cash
8. "Dead Flowers" - Townes van Zandt
9. "Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod?" - The Mountain Goats
10. "When He Calls Me Kitten" - The Kelley Deal 6000

"Highway 61 Revisited" - PJ Harvey

"Who?" - The Brian Jonestown Massacre

"Cherry Blossom Girl" - Air

"Screenager" - Muse

And a random stand-up clip celebrating the fact that I must conquer my fear of flying and fly to Atlanta in a few days:

I heart Arj Barker. Bee-tee-dubs.

a highly unoriginal treatise on why I really can't get behind most Christian denominations

2010-08-13T04:06:00.003-04:00

Let me first say it's not because I begrudge people their beliefs. I stopped reading Pandagon years ago because of the shit the bloggers there said about religious folks. This was years ago, mind you, and I haven't been back since, but my point is that, at that time I perceived a lot of biases against religious belief itself that I just couldn't deal with. This, at a time when I basically identified as an atheist.

I've read somewhere, recently, that when Karl Marx wrote, "Religion is the opiate of the masses," he didn't mean that it was something that made people dull and stupid and complacent. He meant that it was something that eased the pain they felt just from the hardship of existence. That's a powerful statement. How could I sneer at anyone for that?

I've got my own beliefs. Weird and scattered beliefs, at that, ones that I haven't really figured out just yet because I'm just coming into this new way of thinking about words like "soul" and "spirits" and other loaded terms like that. They're also not the reason I'm writing this post.

When I do go to church for personal reasons (I sometimes go for work-related reasons; I work with adults with developmental disabilities, and sometimes the job involves going with them to church), they are generally Episcopal churches. The Episcopal church is basically, from what I can tell, the American version of the Anglican church. All the things I like about the Catholic Church - meaning the Latin and the rituals and the pretty ornaments - minus everything I don't like about most of the rest of Christianity. I'll put it this way. Ash Wednesday service, 2009. Ash Wednesday marks the start of the Lenten season, the time for serious penitence and reflection about one's transgressions. Typically, this means lots of guilt for sins of the flesh and materialism and things that separate one from God. Things that make one forget Christ's sacrifice, maybe. Sin has mostly been defined in recent memory as bodily sins, things that make the individual impure. Vice. Homosexuality. Masturbation. Not giving enough of one's time or money to the church. Whatever. A whole lot of guilt piled on top of someone like so much graveyard dirt just for enjoying the body that was given to us by God or whom/whatever, in ways that don't hurt anyone else.

Back to Ash Wednesday, 2009. There is this huge church that I go to occasionally, with the enormous organ that thunders through the stone walls and floors so that you can really feel the music, which I always appreciate. The sermon at this particular Episcopal church is not one about how we are lowly because of who we are or what we do with ourselves. Not about how we're not giving ten percent to the church. It's about how we've failed, of course, because it's Ash Wednesday. It's not the beginning of a happy season. It's about how we've failed other people, how we've failed to do everything we could to relieve the suffering of others.

We forget this a lot in American culture, I think, this society built on an idea called rugged individualism that is really impossible. We forget that we do not exist in a vacuum, that we as individuals are not free of the influence of others and we are not free of the fact that our actions influence others in turn. That we do, in fact, have a responsibility to other people because it is simply the humane way to exist. Not free of the fact that when some of us are downtrodden it really affects all of us. I'm not just talking about charity, although that is certainly part of it. I'm talking about awareness, the courage to constantly examine one's privilege, the refusal to turn a blind eye to oppression.

That Ash Wednesday service was about that. About realizing that one's inaction is also sinful, that we are not free of the pain other people feel just because we turn away from it.

I had never heard something like that in a church. To be fair, I was not raised in a religious household. The number of times I went to church as a child is probably in the single digits.

My church attendance lately has mostly been while I'm working, like I said. I live in North Carolina, and the Baptist church is one of the more prevalent denominations here; the churches I have been to with my clients are churches that are obviously leaning toward Baptist theology.

There is a lot of rhetoric in these churches. The sermons are never ones that I can easily parse because at the best of times, they are so vague that it is hard to see exactly how the pastor wants us to apply to our own lives the things he is saying. I have spent time in two churches as part of my work: one of them I've attended with a client on a fairly regular basis, the other I've been to only once. It's weird but I am realizing now exactly how much alike their teachings are. It's not just because it's the South and I am not enough of a churchgoer to tell much of a difference between any given group of Southern churches. The church I attend semi-regularly has been doing an ongoing series of sermons about something called victorious Christian living. (I'm not sure what this means, really.) The one I attended only one time happened to be on a day when the pastor was talking about perseverance, and going all the way when it came to ... something. I'm still not clear on what. Belief? Not giving up one's religion just because things get hard, I suppose.

And victorious Christian living sounds a lot like that, I suppose. Keeping up one's belief and growing as a Christian, and not stopping even when things get difficult. I understand that part. It's kind of what the earliest teachings in the Christian church were about, which makes sense, considering that the earliest Christians lived in Rome in a period when this was quite difficult.

Here's the thing: no one seems to be sure about how victorious Christian living really works pragmatically. The things that the pastor always comes back to are reading the Bible, going to church, and prayer time. This will help you grow as a Christian, he says. This is the basis of victorious Christian living. How does one grow out of reading the Bible - a book which is inconsistent, at best, and incomprehensible at worst (see the entire Book of Revelation) - and then going to church to listen to a sermon that seems less and less meaningful as it goes on? I have listened to this man speak for up to an hour about these things, and the thesis of any given sermon about victorious Christian living seems to come down to this: Grow as a Christian. Open your eyes to God's will. Convert people. That is victorious Christian living.

Converting people - or "saving" people, as they usually call it - is, of course, the best thing you can do for them. I understand this - I don't agree with it necessarily, but I understand where they're coming from.

But people can't eat salvation, and it won't keep their children from freezing in the winter.

The pastor at the church I attended this past week, the one I've only gone to one time, summed up exactly the thing that bothers me about churches like this in his sermon. He was the one talking about perseverance, see, and he said something like, "God gives us glimpses of what heaven is like every now and then, to help keep us going. Times like when we're all singing and praising and fellowshipping, here in the house of God, those are the glimpses of Heaven He's giving to us."

That is the only part of the Christian church I can really see most of the time. It's the part that only looks in, where its people look only at each other. Occasionally they'll spare the rest of the world a look, but it's usually only to talk about people like me. Sinners. People who damning America. People who have fallen into temptation. The things that are wrong with the world. Examples. People who need help.

Both of these churches, and the few others I've been to throughout my life, are just echo chambers. Where the windows and doors are sealed and blacked out.

I AM A VICTIM OF H8 AND WILL CONTINUE TO BE EVEN THOUGH SOME SHIT GOT DECLARED UNCONSTITUTIONAL IN CALIFORNIA

2010-08-05T04:23:00.006-04:00

God help me, I'm going to piss all over everybody's parade.

I wrote that post a couple days ago not realizing that the Prop 8 hearing was going to be yesterday. I thought I was just screaming into the ether, as I do.

I got mildly nauseated at the outpouring of sugary sentiments after the decision to overturn Prop 8. My RSS feed got blown up almost immediately. Same thing with my facebook feed.

Perhaps 'nauseated' is a bit strong. Now's not the time for hyperbole. Just honesty. I was majorly fucking irritated at all that young idealism that flowed like molasses just because one judge had the courage to say that maybe homos are people too and the desire to give them a different legal status than the straight folks is not exactly constitutional.

Like I said before, just because I oppose gay marriage doesn't mean I oppose equal rights. Of course it's good that the straight people are slowly - slowly - chilling out and giving people the rights that should have been theirs all along. I suppose when I say I oppose gay marriage, what I really mean is I oppose the fact that this is our cause. I oppose the fuck out of that. Simply put, I'm looking around at all this excitement and I'm wondering if I'm just not gay enough because it's not hitting me in all the right emotional centers. I am not particularly excited about my people - and god help me, that's what all those freaks and queers and all the rest of you are, I'm right there with you, no matter how many tokens you willingly accept from the straight folks - being political pawns again and again and again and willingly stepping onto that chessboard. Willingly taking to the streets over this shit with big old signs that say EQUALITY and some rainbows and other shit on there too.

There are some very specific people that are benefiting from this particular kind of equality. It is the people who are willing and able to fit into a scripted role, a role that puts them somewhat above the rest of us who cannot or will not fit into that role. The role of property holders, heads of nuclear families. Who willingly take all the rewards you get for staying in character and who can blame you. I certainly can't.

Marriage does solve some problems. A person who has no health coverage can ride on their spouse's policy (if they have one). Jointly-held property is protected in case one person dies and their family members want to pitch a fit. Not to mention the tax breaks married couples get. Living wills and hospital visitation rights and the rest of it.

But people who aren't married or in a long-term monogamous relationship have problems with health insurance. And this certainly won't help the transfolks who get shafted constantly by the medical industry. People are still poor and sick and down and out because they're black or undocumented or mentally ill or or or.

And I guess that's what my point is. Intersectionality. Enjoy your equality, gay people, because the rest of us sure as fuck ain't seeing it. There is a social justice movement that is entirely separate from the gay rights movement, because the gay rights movement is all about these few little things to create nice communities of wealthy gay people. Soon the homos will be happy. Soon they will put away their banners and placards because their work will be done.

From Dorothy Surrenders: We won, finally, we won. After so many defeats, so many bitter rejections, so much heartache and so much needless hate, the simple truth won out. Our love is no different. Our love is not wrong. Our love deserves protection. Our love is just love.

Maybe I'm just not gay enough, because I don't see how adding more leverage to the institution of marriage, under the auspices of love, is going to help anything much. It takes more than love to keep a revolution going.

It's just that. Revolution for some people. We can forget about the rest. As long as we have enough equality and rainbows we'll know we're in the right. Couch it all in the language of human rights, disregarding all those other humans who have rights, those humans we don't exactly have a stellar track record with. People of color. Transpeople. Low-income people. And jesus, that's just the people in this country that we're totally disengaged from.

What intersectionality means is that oppression does not occur along a single axis. It's not just gay vs. straight. It's not just men vs. women. It's not just white people vs. people of color. It's not just rich people vs. poor people. A variety of different factors play out in the oppression of different groups. And while one group is still oppressed none of us are truly free of oppression. It's why gay men are not free of the oppression visited upon women by misogynistic society, for example. By having sex with other men, gay men fail to fulfill gender expectations and fall victim to patriarchal culture in the same ways women do.

That's why NO H8 isn't revolutionary enough. You will all take this little bit of validation from the straight people - validation of something we knew all along, that we aren't fucked up and wrong, at least not because of this whole, y'know, gay thing - and you will hold it close to your hearts and it will be the thing that they wanted. Now the homosexuals and their money can be subsumed into straight society and everything will be alright.

Maybe I'm just not gay enough, because I'm not going to quote Harvey Milk and I'm not going to celebrate this. There is nothing to celebrate. The oppressed are going to become the oppressors, as newly-privileged people invariably do.

the Great White Hope of San Francisco

2010-04-10T03:16:00.007-04:00

I don't update much because I don't have a lot to say.

This is not to say that I don't have opinions. I have a lot of those.

Opinions about gay folks, for instance. I am one. Hopefully you know this.

That said, I've noticed that "gay issues" in recent times comes down to two things: fags wanting the right to serve openly in the US war machine I mean military and how a gay teenager can't go to prom with her girlfriend.

Fact: Fags are butching it up army-style! Oh I know it's not just fags who want to play army - the dykes want all up in there too. Wanting to do their patriotic duty. Military service is a career option for people who otherwise might not have many options. It's kind of like the Roman Empire, where the disenfranchised or completely unenfranchised folks can get themselves some social mobility by killing for a country that hates them and is all too happy to let them get themselves maimed and killed in straight white people wars. Patriotism! Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. It is sweet and proper to die for one's country. Even when that country is always looking for ways to make sure you're as irrelevant as possible because your very existence offends a small minority of your fellow citizens!

Fact: It sucks to be a gay kid in America! Not news, people. Stop the gum-flapping and the arm-waving. Jesus Christ Superstar, do you know how many teenagers don't get to go to their prom with their homo significant others? Why the fuck is this a big deal now? What is so special about this one particular case? Why is everyone surprised this has happened? In Mississippi, for god's sake! Has the American South become some bastion of progressivism and I just haven't noticed at all? Because let me tell you, I live here and it hasn't exactly been an overnight metamorphosis of tolerance for the homos up in here, even in liberal-ish North Carolina. It does blow my homo lady brain cells that local parents would have an entirely fake prom just to psych her out and humiliate her. It wouldn't surprise me at all to find out that the parents who organized this two-prom event were the ones who spawned the kids who are giving this girl a bunch of crap! It's almost like homophobia is a learned set of attitudes!

I'm not saying that this is something that can safely be ignored. All I'm saying is there are a few pieces here that show a bigger picture of what it means to be a homo to mainstream people, and that picture is not really illustrative of what happens in real life. I'm also saying that facebook status slacktivism is not the way to keep this from happening. What will it accomplish when you change your facebook status to "let Constance take her girlfriend to prom!" All that will say to straight folks is that once people finally come around and get over this prom bullshit, they'll pat themselves on the back and say to each other, gosh look what we've done.

And the homo kids who are homeless? Well no one really thinks too much about some hoodlum street kids. For that matter, what about all the rest of those kids who are homeless? Hoodlum street kids.

It's not a secret that the Homosexual Lobby (by which I mean, the Gay Rights Movement, sponsored by Bud Light) has limited itself to a very exclusionist agenda. 1. Spend time with family. 2. Be treated equally. 3. Buy milk. 4. Assimilate into respectable straight society.

Assimilate. There are lesbian couples and gay couples and we're just like you straight folks! We're white, and attractive, and wealthy and have cable and we read all the right magazines and if you would just let us get married we'll shut right up.

Meanwhile the rest of us fags and dykes and people who are outside fags and dykes are just shit out of luck because we don't have all those pretty white people speaking up for us.

Marriage can suck my asshole. I don't want it. I never have. I understand that some people do and I can respect that, because my way of being does not have to be your way of being. It probably isn't a lot of people's way of being. Of course I'm for equal rights. Of course I want that. Who doesn't want to be treated equally?

But y'all is suckas if you think that selling out to the straight people is going to make it all better for all of us homos. When I said marriage can suck my asshole I meant the HRC can suck my asshole. I meant the Courage Campaign can suck my asshole. What a fucking joke. Did I ever tell you about the time Equality NC invited me to their annual conference/banquet? This was when I was just coming into it as a queer kid. I'd read some books. Wore some rainbows. Went to Pride. It was awesome.

They wanted me to give them $150 for the privilege of listening to some rich homos talk about what great work they were doing for equality. Listen homos, I thought to myself, I'm 19 years old. I don't have half that much money. I live with my dad, for chrissakes. I felt excluded.

Listen homos. You have got to snap out of the post-Pride afterglow. It's awesome that Obama gave us our own month. It's in the middle of summer and as we all know, homos love a parade.

He's hoping we'll all die of heatstroke. He's hoping we'll shut up and take to the streets and melt into a fabulous puddle of glitter and feather boas.

He wants us to settle. They all want us to settle. There is so much more than marriage that we need. It just so happens that the things we need are the things that everyone needs.

I keep coming back to this whenever I think about the Gay Rights Movement, sponsored by Bud Light. It was some gay youth org that published this. 48% of homeless youth are homeless because they got kicked to the curb for being homos or trans.

Gavin Newsom, the Great White Hope of San Francisco, cleaned up San Francisco in the 1990s. By "clean up" we mean gentrify. We mean get the riffraff off the streets and make it nice and shiny and safe for the rich people. The poor people will find somewhere else to go. They're like cockroaches, we'll never really get rid of them.

Homeless kids. Street hoodlums. Instead of helping these people we sweep them under the rug. Or throw them under the bus. Get them out of the way so the rich folks feel better.

That's what the Gay Rights Movement is about. Making homosexuality nice and shiny and safe for the rich people. The ones we're trying to convince to let us get married. Because once we can get married, and protect our health insurance and estates, we'll finally have arrived. That's equality.

There's that weird hobo on the corner again. Should we call the cops?

Fact: My use of the n-word is just satire! I'm not a racist, f'real, guys.

2008-10-29T15:55:00.007-04:00

[Note: Yeah, the post I'm talking about is old; so what. I have known people like this guy, and what's more, I was once like this. I once was confused and kind of pissed off that white people don't get to use the n-word. And I'll bet you know this guy, or maybe, like me, you were once that guy, too. Also, I am aware the author of the post I discuss here never claimed it was satire and as far as I know no one's called him out on why it's racist, etc. I've simply seen too much of this shit, followed by backpedaling where the author is all "doodz i was just writin satire okay? HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR BITCHEZZZZ." And as a side note, I am sick to fucking death of people equating 'satire' with 'plain sarcasm.' Difference, folks!]

Look, white people. This shit (among other things) has got to stop.

What shit? This shit. And you know it's shit, because it's a white boy acting all socially aware and junk, and by that I mean he's kind of whining 'cause us white folks don't get to use the n-word in public. Because we have all kinds of non-racist reasons for wanting to use the n-word. Srsly! I myself don't like the word, and don't particularly want to use it, but I understand that it's kind of off-limits for me anyway, because I'm a white person. But guess who doesn't feel she gets to dictate whether black people get to use it? Me.

In the interest of full disclosure I'll admit I am a humorless feminist and let's all be honest here: sometimes really well-done satire can just go right over the heads of even the best of us. Guilty! So I'll admit that's a possibility, and I'm just not perceptive [read: smart -- ed.] enough to read between the lines of Pinkerton's impressive wit and insight which so thoroughly permeates the piece. Let us dissect the piece, which does contain some truly brilliant and incisive instances of satire.

For instance, you say? Check this out, this masterful opening line which is reminiscent of ethnographic films of the early 20th century, wherein a camera goes to Africa to live among the natives and give us a close look at the lives of ~~all them savages~~ Third World folk:

I lived in a fairly integrated neighborhood in New York and would often overhear black teenagers using the n-word in casual conversation.

Here, the ethnographer takes an undue amount of credit for living among and studying an indigenous people. I'm with you. Continue, sir.

When I say “using” I’m understating a little. These guys were giving the n-word the most exhaustive workout I’ve ever heard, substituting it for adjectives, verbs, punctuation and proper nouns in ways it was never meant to accommodate.

The ethnographer is confused; the natives speak their strange hodge-podge language composed of a bastardization of one of the good, upstanding Western (possibly Romance) languages and their awkward clicky-clacky language.

Taboo, incendiary, upsetting: the n-word is many things. What it isn’t is versatile.

The well-meaning ethnographer, seeing the indigents' stagnant culture, decides he must intervene in their backward lives. This is getting to be much too funny.

At one point in the conversation, for instance, one of the teenagers turned to another and said “N—–r was goin’ to the n—–r, n—–r, but n—–r n—–red it up on the n—–r.” I’m not joking. That’s a direct quote.

Here we are introduced to the exemplary member of the group, whom the ethnographer chooses to focus on specifically, as if one member of even a small group of people could be representative of all of them.

I spent the better part of five minutes walking quietly behind them parsing through all the name and place substitutions, but eventually gave up: I had no idea what the hell this kid was talking about.

Now we have the - to me, hilarious - image of the white scholar literally following these black teenagers, taking notes and listening carefully to their conversation, presented carefully in a neutral tone, ignoring the absurdity and rather creepy reality of an adult white man following and observing several black youths intently. The ethnographer here is just so dumbfounded at the customs and mannerisms of these people who are so different from him. Yet the important similarities remind him of the fundamental humanity of this gentle people:

His friends seemed to grasp his meaning,

Yes, it's the similarities that are so important. Perhaps he can see a bit of himself in the group of teenagers:

though personally, I like to imagine the opposite is true: that they, like me, were completely lost. Their enthusiastic overuse of the n-word had started as a loud and provocative public exercise meant to embarrass guys like me and establish them as “screw-you” teens with a healthy disrespect for social mores. But it had somehow managed to get away from them by the ten-minute mark, and now they could only soldier on, helpless, none of them wanting to be the first to admit their conversation had descended into a hopeless gibberishy mess composed of a single word.

Or perhaps he's going to take us deeper into the mind of the ethnographer, and show us the real thought process of the people who so blatantly objectify and profit off of the exotic, the Other. I can just imagine the ethnographer's inner monologue: How could anyone possibly understand that clicky-clacky nonsense? God, what language is that anyway, gibby-gabby? How could a group of friends develop their own language? It's not as if small groups of people who spend a lot of time together sometimes have a lexicon all their own that's virtually unintelligible to outsiders. And so, completely ignoring a number of the concepts one can find in any introductory sociology class, the ethnographer instead concludes that they must be pulling one over on the stranger in their midst. Here, he shows us the over-inflated sense of importance white people place on their whiteness, and hence, themselves, in relation to people of color. Even young people in mixed-race neighborhoods in New York recognize and value his whiteness, much as Kong in the 1933 film King Kong valued Ann Darrow's whiteness over that of the native women. However, they feel social pressure from their friends to affect a contempt for whiteness; reaction formation occurs, and they hatch a plan in their idiosyncratic language to rebel, in their own small way, against the white man.

But now he begins to make a brilliant connection between ethnography and modern-day racism in PC white people who just can't stand that black people got something they don't. Check it:

Come on now, though: “N—–r was goin’ to the n—–r”? As a swearing connoisseur, I’m sorry, that’s just lazy. If we were walking down the street and I turned to you and said “Motherfucker was going to the motherfucker, motherfucker,” I’d like to think you’d have the decency to pull me aside and tell me how ridiculous I sounded. “Your heart’s in the right place, motherfucker, but you really need to learn to swear properly before you try and do it in public, bitch.”

In this paragraph, he steps back from the ethnographer persona and assumes the average white dude persona again. Average white dudes, of course, have a tendency to view the n-word as a simple swear word, one that is not loaded with hundreds of years of violent oppression which continues today. As Pinkerton says later, to these average white dudes, it "doesn't really mean what it used to mean anymore." This is loaded with assumptions, which Pinkerton is clearly aware of. Most prominently, it assumes that all black people use the n-word as a non-derogatory term, that not one single black person takes offense to it when other black people do it (of course, you and I - and Pinkerton, of course - can think of at least four prominent black people who do), and therefore that some black people are representative of all black people. It also assumes that the word should mean the same thing coming from different groups of people - say, black people vs. white people. And if the n-word is a simple swear word with no power to offend outside of the inherent offense caused by its simply being a swear word, well. Why shouldn't white folks get to use the word?

Next, Pinkerton depicts the appropriation of the word by youth culture as a simple thoughtless act of teenage rebellion, ignoring the process of reclamation of historically derogatory words by oppressed groups and turning that word into a label to be proud of, rather than continue to allow it to oppress (this has also been seen in other communities of people of color, as well as within queer communities):

Because any new generation loves nothing more than to flagrantly violate the taboos of their parents—teenagers are dicks, after all—the n-word doesn’t really mean what it used to mean anymore.

Here Pinkerton marginalizes the effect that reclamation of oppressive words has on the people who reclaim it and implies it is simply a silly act of teenagers being "dicks." (Note here that I recognize that for some people the process of reclamation is problematic. As a queer who uses words like faggot and dyke in positive ways, I have engaged in it myself, but I feel uncomfortable generalizing my own experience to all marginalized groups, and I only remark upon it positively since the positive aspects experienced by some people who engage in reclamation seem to be part of the point of Pinkerton's critique of white culture, the history of ethnography in American culture, and his connection of the white desire to use the n-word to the desire to observe exoticized cultures but not to actually understand them.)

White people discussing race and race relations in the United States always come from a place of privilege, a privilege which has led them to believe that their opinions, even the ones which are rife with specious reasoning and have an evident lack of examination of other perspectives, are important, and that their right to free speech means having the right to be, well, as Pinkerton might put it, a dick; when someone rather more well-read than they are comes along and tells them everything that is wrong with their poorly-researched and poorly-stated opinion, they become sensitive to what is often called a "PC culture," and every time in the future that they wish to discuss race, they begin, for fear of being called racist, to disclaim their (still) poorly-researched and poorly-stated opinions, saying that of course racism still exists but only in the Southern U.S., lol hillbillies amirite? Pinkerton's piece, of course, must then contain the following to completely critique white racist thinking:

Admittedly, I’m positive there’s still an uncomfortably large number of ignorant hillbillies who employ the n-word in its original racist sense. But that’s the point: they’re ignorant hillbillies.

Here, Pinkerton demonstrates the notion that only ignorant hillbillies are racist (incidentally, I've known some ignorant hillbillies who weren't racist. Imagine that.) and the notion that if one simply insists they aren't racist, then they aren't, since good intentions, no matter how willfully ignorant, never hurt anyone.

The use of the n-word by many successful rappers has led to something of a commercialization of the word, and some have equated the so-called harmfulness of rap music, which some regard as harmful to black people as a whole because of its glorification of black-on-black violence and rampant misogyny, with the use of the n-word. However, the commercialization of the word has led some people, like the ones Pinkerton satirizes here, to claim the very opposite: that its very commercialization means that it is distinctly not harmful now, that really is just another word:

For the rest of us uncool white people, who’ve grown up in an age of bestselling hip-hop albums and overpriced Sean Jean-branded leisurewear, “n—-r” managed to become a cool word for “friend” that black people get to use and we can’t, because our forebears were racist slave-owning assholes. [...] As a constant guilty reminder for my generation that it wasn’t too long ago that things were a lot different, it’s incredibly effective. But the fact remains that it’s the last taboo swear word on the planet, dammit, and I can’t help but feel jealous.

In this paragraph, Pinkerton also approaches the subject of white guilt, and the resentment that many whites now feel at being forced, at times, to check their privilege - a resentment which is doubled because now there is something that is truly out of their reach, something to which they are not entitled (at least in polite/right-thinking company): the use of a word which black people get to use, but not us. Admittedly, for me, the concept of white privilege was once a difficult one, because it is easy to conclude that, as a white person who has inevitably benefited from white privilege at one point or another, one is actually a racist oneself. In American society, being called a racist is quite offensive, even if you've just said something that is undeniably racist: just watch Bill O'Reilly bristle at being called racist. What is not often said to white people who have just had that astounding moment where they've just been called on racist statements is that there is a certain level of ignorance that comes with privilege that isn't really one's own fault, it's just symptomatic of growing up and living in a society where you are intrinsically valued more because you happen to have less melanin in your skin. It's not often said because the white person in question will often immediately fly off the handle at being called racist, and then shrug off anything said to them as overly-sensitive and symptomatic of "PC culture," where everyone gets to say offensive shit but white people.

And PC culture is implicitly indicted in Pinkerton's final few points:

Personally, I think it’d make huge in-roads to racial harmony if a representative body of the black community—the NAACP, perhaps—let the white community take the n-word for a spin on a designated day, with the tacit understanding that we’re only allowed to use it to address other white people. It’d give us the thrill of a whole new swear word while avoiding all the unpleasant racist history associated with it.

Whenever someone from a marginalized group or allies of marginalized groups speaks up against racist jokes and comments, the inevitable trump card of the one making the racist comment basically comes down to something like this: All them minorities should just chill the fuck out. This is present throughout Pinkerton's piece, which culminates in a brilliantly absurdist reductive suggestion: racial harmony is well within our reach, if black people would just chill and let us use the n-word. Of course, a corollary to this is that it is black people's fault that there's so much of that pesky racial tension in the air. When in doubt, the privileged person always blames the person who is harmed by his or her privilege. It's black people's fault they get so offended when we want to use the n-word because they won't let us use the n-word because they get so offended etc. To top it all off he reprises the white person assumption that any group of black people - any group at all - is representative of all black people; I'm sure he mentioned the NAACP by name in response to the move by certain members of the NAACP to discourage the use of the n-word by blacks and whites alike, perhaps calling into question the efficacy of attempting to stop the use of any word, which often serves only to make it more powerful.

I say Pinkerton's suggestion is absurdist because it really digs at the folly of the whole white urge to use the n-word: placing a ridiculous restriction on the usage of the word which is clearly conscious of the very real meaning which Pinkerton has denied for the duration of the piece. If white people are only allowed to use the word in reference to other white people, then we will literally be calling white "black". White is not black, yet in Pinkerton's incisively satirical world, it is. White can be black, but Pinkerton seems to take comfort in the fact that white will only ever be black in name only; remember, the desire is to observe and participate in an Othered culture while making no real effort to understand:

I can’t imagine I’d even use it that often. Mainly I just I think it’d be hilarious to sneak a “n—a, please” or two into an otherwise maudlin wedding reception toast.

So I guess it's possible after all. Maybe all these average white dudes who so passionately claim that their oft-voiced desire to use the n-word is really just satire really are just trying to get at the heart of it all, to show us all how white privilege so permeates all us white peoples' existence that we'd even insist on using a word which many regard as terrible, with a long and brutal history behind it, just because all them black people use it.

Or maybe I was right to begin with. Maybe Pinkerton's vaguely-defined group of urban black youth is really just a pack of lies. There may very well be some group of black kids, somewhere, who think it's pretty funny to use the n-word as every part of a sentence - I mean, I think it's pretty funny, too, especially if they were doing it to freak out that creepy-ass white dude following them so closely. But I doubt Pinkerton's ever encountered them. I think he's just an average white dude with a whole lot of fucking privilege who can't stand that some social restraints are placed on his white dudeliness. And it really pisses me off that he'd hold up a group of strawblackpeople who apparently know only one word - the n-word - as an example of why us white people really are entitled to use the word. He reduces and reduces, until he comes up with a word that is entirely meaningless to him but probably means a lot to someone like this lady, for example. Or it might not mean anything to her. She might be the funny old grandmother who slips in a "nigga please" into a maudlin wedding toast. And that would be awesome. I think he's kind of a dick for writing something like this and posting it to his blog, and I think all those other white people who write about it and talk about it as this stupid little thing are dicks, too. I think he is like most white folk, and I think we white folk have been led by our privilege to believe that our opinions, even the ones which are rife with specious reasoning and little examination of other perspectives, are important.

But like I said. I am a humorless feminist.

Shouldn't John McCain release his medical records??WW?Efqwerfkm1111!!!?

2008-09-14T22:30:00.006-04:00

No. I did not just fucking read this.

Yeah. I get it. People are worried about Sarah Palin becoming President, yes yes. I feel it.

But the thing is, I'm not voting for John McCain. There was never any doubt in my mind of that, and I doubt that any of the people on the liberal blogosphere who are clamoring to see John McCain's medical records experienced any kind of indecision, either. Because John McCain's health problems will not make him a bad president. John McCain's sheer desperation to be president - a desperation that leaves him in the thrall of the GOP and their wingnut wackjob leaders - will make him a bad president. John McCain's shameful lack of knowledge regarding anything except POW BITCHEZZZ will make him a bad president.

The leftwingosphere-whathaveyou knows this. And the demand to see John McCain's medical records is creepy. Not to mention ageist and ableist. Ageism and ableism? Kind of go along with all the other -isms I can think of. Including sexism and racism. Liberals don't get to go after conservative politicians because of this kind of thing, any more than conservatives get to go after Hillary Clinton for being a woman or Barack Obama for being black.

Seriously, John McCain doesn't do enough for which he can be attacked fairly?

I'm Glad the Old Bastard is Dead (Jesse Helms edition)

2008-07-04T22:43:00.002-04:00

Jesse Helms has died, and let me be one of many North Carolinians to say that I am glad the old bastard is dead.

Despite all the slack-jawed credulous yokels interviewed on every local news channel in North Carolina praising his "convictions", I am sure there are many blacks, gays, women, poor people, terminally-ill people (including people with AIDS), and people who are not members of these groups but suppose that one's membership in one or more of these groups should not affect the quality of their lives who are glad the old bastard is dead and who didn't think his "convictions" were all that great either. If it is someone's conviction that as many people as possible should be excluded from as many rights and liberties as possible (providing they are not a white wealthy straight Christian man, of course), including those of lifelibertyandthepursuitofhappiness, then he's not only an asshole, he's a stubborn asshole. Fuck that.

He told a good number of people - gays and women seeking abortions in particular - that they could all just fuck right off and die. If you're gay and have AIDS, Jesse Helms didn't give a shit. If you're a pregnant woman who is not so fond of the pregnant part, Jesse Helms didn't give a shit. You could fuck right off and die.

I know liberal blogs are under constant surveillance by choads in the news media [hi, BillO! I should be so lucky as to have you piss all over my blog, I suppose -- ed.] for hateful language and the like, but fuck it. Jesse Helms was a hateful bastard. Jesse Helms was a hateful, deplorable human being whose soul was filled with garbage and piss and vinegar, and I am glad the old bastard is dead, because here we have a man who dedicated his entire career to pro-segregation, anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-poor, anti-non-privileged-folk politics. He wanted me and my kind to die horrible slow painful deaths of either AIDS-related illnesses (AIDS patients) or sepsis (any woman who ever wanted to have an abortion ever). Those were his convictions.

My convictions are, of course, that I am glad the old bastard is dead.

2008-05-03T08:37:00.000-04:00

I had briefly entertained the notion of becoming president when I grew up. This was in sixth grade. I wanted to change the world. I was disgusted by what I saw on the news, but not defeated by it. I believed in myself.

It's weird what happens to girls at a certain point in their lives. One moment they're these tough little things, racing around, jabbering, excited about just waking up to see what else is new in the world. Everything just opening for them, it seems like. That was how I felt. And then suddenly I was Vile. I hated everyone. I never spoke in class. I gave up wanting to be president.

(from Violet & Claire by Francesca Lia Block)

All throughout high school I read the same few books by Francesca Lia Block. I often tell people that this woman's books got me through high school, which they did. She writes about girls and friendship between girls. She writes about daughters and mothers and fathers. She writes about being straight and being gay and being somewhere in between and being somewhere outside straight or gay and being fat and being anorexic and being young and being old (I notice a lot of it is about being these things and being white, though). Her books are so heartwrenchingly beautiful, and even when I'm rereading them for the second or third or tenth time I cry. I say her books got me through high school because high school was such a hard time for me like it is for everybody (everybody I know, anyway: my best friend got arrested twice when he was in high school for something he hadn't done, my guy friends had controlling girlfriends and it made them kind of misogynistic, a couple of friends had fathers who generally made their lives a living hell, one friend I don't talk to anymore was struggling with issues that her stepfather had given her, one friend had a mother who was emotionally abusive. The list goes on) and we all find something to cling to, something to get us through it. I didn't believe in the magic that Block always writes about, and I never thought that I would find it, but it was nice to think about. Nicer to think about than anything else in my life.

I read Dangerous Angels when I was in ninth grade. It took me years to really get it, because even though I got it, and I identified with it, this fucking culture still made me feel like I wasn't important, that girls aren't important, so although the books were about girls and how amazing and powerful they are, I still didn't absorb that message. And that - girls being important and valid and complex and real - is what she writes about. In high school I always said I never needed anyone else to know who I was and feel valuable, but I never believed it. I still don't. I am still not close to really understanding that concept, although I understand now that it was lost on me all those years ago.

There's been some internet drama lately that's really affected me, because in some of these writing communities I'm in, girls' writing is being trashed and just picked over with a fine-toothed comb and people are laughing like fucking hyenas about it, even though these girls are young (I'm talking pre-teen young) and couldn't possibly fucking deserve to be treated the way they're being treated (a note: I don't actually think anyone should be treated poorly and flamed because they're bad writers, and I don't think people deserve the abuse they get on the internet. The flimsy excuse used by most of the people who are assholes in these communities is that these people know what they're getting into when they get on the internet, but that's not the case for a child. It just isn't). And why does this have to happen to girls? They reach a certain age and all of a sudden all the potential is just squished right out of them, so they can either become ... what can they become? I don't want this train of thought to be derailed and become a diatribe about high school subcultures and cliques and shit, so I'll just leave this part of the discussion at this, because when I started thinking about this, I was thinking in terms of what girls could choose to be, and I boiled it down to this:

This all seems so obvious as I'm typing it. Obviously high school is much more multi-faceted than the portrayals of rigidly-defined cliques you'll see in stupid animated sitcoms or less-stupid movies (I'm looking at you, The Breakfast Club and Mean Girls - I love both of these movies, especially Mean Girls, but honestly, is this really an accurate portrayal of Anywhereville High School?), but I feel that girls essentially have a choice between being the popular girl here, who pleases everyone but herself and is rewarded for it, or they can be the girl trying to please herself only to be punished for it. In my overly-simplified list of options, it's down to Connie D'Amico or Meg Griffin for girls entering junior high and high school. Connie D'Amico, that stupid self-absorbed bitch (*snort, high-fives*) is, of course, verbally pwned by Brian Griffin here, 'cause she's a skank, you know? Meg isn't treated much better in the show, either, but you know that if you watch an episode or two of the show (adultswim.com even has a fucking countdown entitled "Meg's Top 10 Most Humiliating Moments" for fuck's sake). So you're either Connie D'Amico or Meg Griffin, but either way you're still screwed. You can be the most popular girl in school or arguably the least popular, and either way the men around you are going to completely fucking devalue you and degrade you and make you cry and make you feel like you're absolutely nothing for their own amusement and self-aggrandizement.

Like I said, this all seems obvious. But it's been in my head for days now, especially because of the internet drama I mentioned. I've been thinking about why it goes wrong for girls, and why girls are the ones perpetuating all of this aggression against girls (Connie D'Amico often antagonizes Meg on Family Guy - who doesn't antagonize Meg? - and the people tearing young girls apart on the writing communities I mentioned are girls and young women). Patriarchy is a simple answer, but I want a solution.

When I was a kid, I wasn't exactly confident and I didn't really have the best friends that lots of little girls have, but I felt that my family loved me, and I knew that was pretty good. I was in love with Sailor Moon - this was when I was nine. I was so completely enamored of the idea of a girl superhero. Actually, it was five girl superheroes, and while there was a guy around every now and then, he wasn't the one saving the god damned universe, now, was he? Cartoons like Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? had strong women and girls in them, but relationships between girls were mostly nonexistent; it wasn't like Sailor Moon, where a group of five girls saved the universe constantly and loved each other so much that they would (and sometimes did) die for each other. There are fewer girl-positive cartoons now (Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends is my favorite, and Goo is one of my favorite girl cartoon characters ever), and I can't think of any that show relationships between girls in the foreground - and I watch a lot of cartoons (yes, I am 21 years old). There are live-action shows for younger teenage girls that do show relationships between girls (iCarly seems as if it might have potential - because unlike, say, Hannah Montana or The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, the girls depicted are not wealthy or heiresses or whatever, and they're depicted doing something interesting [the concept that drives the show is the girls' video podcast] although the little bit I've watched makes the characters seem absolutely boy-crazy), but girls need exposure to that when they're younger, because girls need to not be something that girls hate. I hate hearing women my age saying that they don't have friendships with women, that most of their friends are men, because women are so catty, and they're such bitches, and I can't stand being around other women. I hate hearing that, because if you don't like other women, how do you feel about yourself, and who are you doing to turn to when the men around you degrade you and devalue you and make you cry? Another man? All he'll tell you, overtly or covertly, is that you deserved it, for whatever reason. Sure, Connie D'Amico has some tragic personal issues (side note: who wants to bet that the people she was giving handjobs to when she was twelve weren't other twelve-year-olds?), but she's such a cunt that it totally overshadows her deep-seated fears that no one will love her unless. She's castigated for engaging in the exact behavior that every male character on the show has engaged in. She is the painfully-thin supermodel on whom we blame the rise in eating disorders among girls and young women, while the men behind the scenes get virtually no mention at all. She deserves to feel like nothing.

This has been on my mind because I'm realizing that it's painful to be a girl. Because the girls in the writing communities I watch have found that writing is fun, that it's something they can do that they enjoy that doesn't cost any money, that they don't have to leave the house for, and that they can define completely on their own. Building a whole world of people and places is a satisfying feeling - just ask all the dudes who make lots of money doing it, huh? - and these young girls have found that. And then someone comes along who is older, and has nothing but horrible things to say about it, because the writing is bad and she deserves no fucking slack just because she's young. And then more people come, attracted to the smell of blood and fresh meat, and before you know it this thing that was so satisfying to her before becomes a source of shame and embarrassment. She stops writing. This happens offline, too, when people grab a girl's diary or the story she's been writing. People laugh. She's humiliated. At any rate, she learns not to write for pleasure again.

So I've been thinking about Francesca Lia Block, and why I never got that girls are important until it was way too late to help me avoid doing the things I did for love and attention when I was a girl. I've been thinking about girls and superheroes and writing and girls writing, and the more I think about it, the more frustrated I am with where I am now: broke and in college, no means to support myself or the million things I want to do. The idea that's been kicking around my head the most has been writing workshops for girls. Young girls, preteen and young teen girls, teenagers. I think about how cool it would have been and how it might have helped me if I had had access to that when I was a girl. I think about how cool and amazing girls can be, and how that's stunted when girls are basically brainwashed into being boy-crazy and girl-hating. Why didn't I ever have a girl-superhero-friend who I loved so much and who loved me so much that we would die for each other? Is it because I was shy and afraid of the other girls, or was it because I was too busy playing with the boys? Why was I playing with the boys?

Right now I am reading Violet & Claire, a book by Francesca Lia Block; I just finished another FLB book, Echo. These are not the books I read repeatedly in high school; those were Dangerous Angels, Girl Goddess #9, The Hanged Man, The Rose and the Beast, and Nymph. (The last one is a book of erotica - sssh!)

A woman's ability is not adversely affected by how many babies will/have pass(ed) through her vagina.

2008-04-21T17:54:00.000-04:00

Hell. Yes.:

Spain's defense minister Carme Chacon reviews troops in Madrid, Monday April 14, 2008. (via Shakesville)

Chacon, who was housing minister in the last government, wore heels, a black pant suit and white maternity blouse as she reviewed troops Monday at a ceremony in which she officially took over her post. Her husband is Miguel Barroso, who in the past has worked in Zapatero's press office.

She called the troops to attention, ordered them to join her in saying "Long live Spain, long live the King," and gave a brief speech in which she said her appointment was a sign of progress.

Look at that shot! That woman looks bad. ass. All business and absolutely in her element. (Psst: I think I have a crush.)

This came just a few hours after I read this article from Scotsman.com, entitled "Pregnancy risk puts employers off women." (via Feministing) Fun fact: 52% of bosses will "weigh up the chances of a candidate getting pregnant" when considering women for employment - specifically, it's women at "risk" for pregnancy (hint: that means young and/or recently-married women. 'Cause, y'know, all young and/or recently married want babies!) who are getting shafted. Brilliant:

Only five per cent of bosses have employed someone knowing the candidate is pregnant and a total of 76 per cent said they would not take on a new recruit if they knew they were going to become pregnant within six months of starting.

Meanwhile Spain is not fucking around:

The surprise appointment of Carme Chacon, age 37 and with no military experience, is the boldest statement yet from a Socialist government that has made gender equality one of its top priorities.

... Chacon is now one of the most visible members of a government that has enacted sweeping social legislation designed to rid traditionally male-dominated Spain of gender discrimination.

It legalized gay marriage, streamlined divorce procedures, forced political parties to field more female candidates and passed a law designed to promote women in the workplace and pressure companies to put more of them in their boardrooms.

This time Zapatero even created a new department, the Equality Ministry, to press these goals. The portfolio went to a 31-year-old woman, Bibiana Aido.

Oh, hell yes. Spain is sounding better and better.

Sexual harassment, child sexuality, sexual abuse, and the internet (OR: personal history is personal)

2008-04-16T15:54:00.000-04:00

Warning: this is going to get rambly and disjointed, and probably uncomfortable. If children's sexuality is something that makes you uncomfortable - and I would hope it makes you at least somewhat uncomfortable - then you probably should not read this. Also, this is a potentially triggering post regarding sexual victimization. If you might be affected by something like this, you might want to turn back, too.

I was sexually harassed when I was ten years old.

I didn't know what to call it. I was a sexually precocious child (not a phrase I take pleasure in constructing - more on that in a minute), and I knew what sex was and I had the impression that maybe one day I would come to enjoy it. This was before I could (probably because it was before I should) enjoy it, and before feminism had come to represent something important to me, and before I really knew what sexual harassment even was; I knew that there was inappropriate touching involved, and I knew that it was bad.

I tried to tell my mother, but I couldn't tell her all of it, and I wonder if she knew that. I just told her he was telling me that I should date him, that he had given me his phone number and that he wouldn't stop saying it. I didn't tell her about the tongue-waggling, or the hair-touching, or the fact that he sat behind me on the bus whenever he could. I couldn't tell her those things because it made me uncomfortable to do so, in the way that kids are uncomfortable discussing sexuality with their parents, in the way that "I have experienced this thing that you perceive as immoral, and I didn't do anything to stop it." But there was something else I didn't know how to tell her, and that was how fucking filthy it made me feel. How fucking filthy he made me feel. (In these cases, you have to be careful to frame your language so that it's obvious who is to blame.)

He was a seventeen-year-old junior in high school; I was ten, and in sixth grade. (In the school district I was in, there wasn't enough money for separate school buses for the middle and high schools, so middle- and high-school students were bussed together; this, perhaps unsurprisingly, caused a lot more problems for the middle-school students, who were already fucked up anyway, because middle school is just the time for kids to be fucked up.) I heard the things he said to his friends, who sat near him (and thus near me). I remember one asking him if he really liked me, if he really wanted to go out with me. He said no, he just wanted me to think he did. And I thought for a long time that since he didn't mean it, that it somehow meant that what he was doing was less punishable.

When I told my mother about it, I told her that part too, and she said no, it didn't.

(I have decided to say fuck it; I'm going to tell you his name. It's Lee. He was a seventeen-year-old named Lee. I don't know his last name, and I'm not sure I'd give to you if I did. I just don't know.)

My mother said Lee was sexually harassing me, and I didn't believe her. I said no, he's not, he's just fucking with the fat girl, trying to make her think he likes her. I'd gotten a lot of shit for my weight at that point, and I knew enough by that point not to believe anything anyone close to my age said to me. She told me she would call the school, and tell them to do something, but I begged her not to do it. I told her I would take care of it. I don't exactly remember now if I really thought I could do anything, or if I was just telling my mom what she wanted to hear, but I said it, because I knew, as most kids do, that when I told an adult about the bullying I was being subjected to it would only make everything worse for me. So I convinced her not to make any phone calls. And the harassment continued, because I didn't do anything either. Maybe, I thought, maybe if I just ignore him, he'll stop. He didn't. Maybe, I thought, maybe if I just suck it up for one more day, that'll be enough. It wasn't. Every day I let him touch me, and I never said anything. I just kept reading my book (or playing at reading my book, anyway, because it's hard to focus when someone won't stop touching you) and trying not to cry.

It didn't stop until he stopped riding that god damn bus. I didn't stop crying every day once I got home until he wasn't there anymore. I remember hoping he was dead.

I guess, if I'm really honest about it, I thought I deserved it. That was because I'd done some things with some boys that I shouldn't have done. Here's where that sexual precocity comes in. Because I'd experienced something I perceived as immoral, and I didn't do anything to stop it. I didn't stop it because I liked it. So I sucked them off in the woods, on this old couch someone had dragged out there. I asked them to tie me up. I let them touch me. And I liked it. And that made it feel worse. And when I heard them talking to their friends on the bus about me, about what I'd done and about what a slut I was, it made it worse, because we had shared something and I felt horrible about it, and I needed some way to understand it, and I thought that they were the only ones I could really turn to for help on that, and they didn't need the help. They didn't give a shit, actually, and after it was over I was the one stuck with the guilt while they were the ones bragging about what a whore I'd been. About what they'd done to me. I was just dirty and disgusting anyway, I figured. Maybe Lee heard what we'd done.

Maybe that was why he did those things.

When one of them came to my house and looked at me with the same expression that I would later recognize on Lee's face, I felt like the lowest piece of shit on the planet. I felt so exposed, even in my sweatshirt and jeans. That was when I learned, I think, to stay hidden. That while I shouldn't use my body for my own pleasure, even I still had the ability to use it to get what I wanted out of people. And that while I was doing that, I needed to stay unavailable, and unreachable.

That concept was clear enough, but I never actually understood how to use it, which is probably a good thing.

But even that wasn't the first thing. The first thing had occurred over the internet, which is really lame, I know. I had the internet when AOL was still a big deal, when everybody who used the internet used AOL. I was nine, and a Sailor Moon nerd, so I hung out in Sailor Moon chatrooms a lot. And I met someone: a twenty-seven-year-old woman. And we talked about a lot. And eventually "a lot" included sex. She told me how much she loved me, how she couldn't believe I was only nine years old, because I was so mature and so smart. We talked about sex, and we talked about fucking. She showed me porn. And I'm looking for a delicate way to put this, but there's no other way to put it: we were in a relationship. (I've only told two people about this [both of them are people with whom I'm romantically involved], and both times I've felt like such an idiot for talking about this, but I think I need to talk about it. So let me disclaim this, mostly for my sake: I know there are people whose introduction to sexuality is much much worse than this. I am not attempting to compete in the Sexual Abuse Olympics. I am not doing this for attention. It is okay to talk about this.) We were in a relationship. She asked me where I lived. We found out that she was only a couple of hours' drive away from me, and she told me that if I ever wanted to meet her, we could.

She was grooming me. This has just become apparent to me recently. She was grooming me, and this could have turned out so much worse. I get chills when I think about what could have happened if I had disobeyed my mother and given her my information. Best-case scenario, we'd have had sex eventually - god, what am I saying, you cannot "have sex" with a nine-year-old. She'd have raped me. God, how do I tell you that I wanted that? How do I say that the nine-year-old me had sexual desires and fantasies surrounding this woman? I was consenting, or I would have, but a nine-year-old can't give consent. She'd have raped me. Best-case scenario. Worst-case scenario, I could have been dead, or tortured, or whatever else fucked-up people do to kids. She could have killed me. Neither of these things happened, because I didn't tell her where I lived: I said it would be hard for us to meet.

That was a lie. We could have met, because my mother worked long hours. I could have skipped school. There were ways I could have met her. But I was afraid. Not of her. I was afraid of my mother, afraid of getting in trouble. To me, the whole situation was bad because I knew my mother would be angry about this, not because I felt like there was anything inherently wrong with it all. I wanted to give this woman my information, I wanted to meet her, I wanted to do the things with her that she talked about, I wanted her to do things to me. I trusted her.

The mindfuck of all of this is that there is no past tense about those things. I still trust her. I still want those things. I know I should hate her, but I don't. How could I? She was my closest friend.

Such was my introduction to sexuality. Nine years old, in love (it was love to me, I guess) with an older woman who, now that I can think rationally about it, was probably grooming me. For something. I experienced something that I did not perceive as immoral, and I don't know how I would eventually come to think of it that way. I still didn't do anything to stop it. I still liked it.

Now that I think about it, it might be a bad idea to post this. Because I can see this being seized by rape denialists who say that some ten-year-olds just ask for it. I can see them saying that I, as a girl who had recently become sexually active, was no longer someone who could be victimized because I had given consent to someone before, and that was why Lee could do what he did. I can see them saying that, because I was an active participant in what happened to me, that all young girls in a situation kind of like mine are, too. That the people who do these things to them are blameless, that little girls are just too tempting for them to be expected to resist. I can see them saying that I didn't feel that I didn't think it was a bad thing until I had reason to think otherwise. I liked it until I became aware it was supposed to be a bad thing, and I liked it even after that. Clearly, I was asking for it.

I was convinced that if I went to someone about the whole thing, Lee would bring that up. Someone would bring it up, because everyone knew. How could they not, when Shawn and that other kid - who was Lee's brother, Jesus, that must be it, why Lee chose me and not someone else - talked about me the way they did? I didn't know it, but I was experiencing the same thing that adult women do who have been sexually harassed, crushed with the knowledge that my sexual history and reputation would be evidence against me. I didn't say anything.

I've never told my parents about these things. I can't imagine how they'd feel, knowing that their daughter did these things when they weren't around. I imagine they'd be angry at me, though. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't want to find out. I don't want them telling me it was my fault, too. Over ten years since this happened and I'm still in its thrall, in that ugly Venus flytrap guilt that says it was my fault.

I am not saying this is what happens to all children who are sexually victimized. I don't pretend to know what happens. But I don't think I'm the only one who feels a guilt she can't put a name to. I don't know why I'm making this post. Part of it, I think, is because all of this is coming back to me, and I want to express it, so that I can be done with it, so I don't have to bury it and all the things I experienced and felt and said and did, only to have them return years later. Because every time it comes back (it's done so a couple times) my head is really messed up. I don't like that. I want to let it go, and if I can't do that, I just want to be able to say I've thought rationally and clearly about it. I want to make it make sense to me.

Reading all of this over and over again, debating whether I should post it, it all seems too dramatic. It seems like story material. And that's probably because films and books and television make sexual abuse into a plot device rather than a very real thing that happens to so many kids. It seems like fiction because it's fodder for fiction all the time.

I also find myself wondering if maybe I am blowing this all out of proportion, if maybe the people who point to my enjoyment of it would say that I only feel this way because someone told me I should. That the first thing happened online, and the fact that worse things happen invalidates my experience. That the second thing happened because I let it, because I wanted it. That the third thing happened because I was asking for it. Intellectually, I can say that that argument is a product of patriarchal culture which hates women and girls, which is full of men who want their rights to fuck little girls with impunity. Emotionally, that doesn't do much for me at all. I still feel like shit. I still feel like maybe I don't have a right to my own feelings.

And I don't know what to say about the anti-homo bigots who would point to the fact that the person who introduced me to all of this was a woman. I know that someone will use that as ammunition, say that homos do abuse children, and that homos were sexually abused as children. I can only say that I don't perceive my sexuality as something bad, or something to which I'm a prisoner. I am not queer because something bad happened to me, I am queer because I like it. I like men and women and people of indeterminate gender. It is something I share with people I trust. People to whom, as an adult, I am capable of giving consent. People who give freely and to whom I give freely. Fuck them for making me afraid to share my story. I should be able to talk about this. It should be okay to talk about this. I shouldn't have to worry about repercussions to a community of people about which I care deeply. I shouldn't have to worry about them appropriating my story for their own sick agenda.

I know I'm buying into the culture of confession we've built. The culture which demands everything and gives no privacy. I know I'm trying to fight a power structure here, one which has given me the very tools I'm using to fight it, and that it won't work. That being silent and refusing to confess are the ways to function outside the system, but what will that accomplish? How do you fight a power structure by being silent?

I realize this is one of the least coherent things I have ever written, and if you stuck it out, thanks. This all happened over ten years ago, all around roughly the same time, so it bleeds together, and my head is confounded with feminist theory that I'm not entirely sure I understand. I don't know how one comes to terms with abuse, if that's even possible or what the phrase even means.

And I think that's what feels the worst. Confessing and telling and laying myself out and knowing that I'm making myself open to criticism, all to try to fight a structure of power with the tools it's given me.

FACT: "They are plotting and planning all over the world to destabilize the world, to inflict terror ..."

2008-03-04T00:11:00.000-05:00

... and we have carte blanche to bring "them" down by any means necessary, including bombing the hell out of a village in Somalia which happens to be somewhere in the vicinity of an East African al Qaeda stronghold:

While referring details of the strike to the Pentagon, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe stressed that "the United States is going to go after al Qaeda and al Qaeda-affiliated operatives wherever we find them.

"They are plotting and planning all over the world to destabilize the world, to inflict terror, and where we find them, we are going to go after them," he said.

Any means necessary, ya'll.

The strike destroyed two houses -- killing three women and three children, and wounding another 20 people -- Dhoobley's District Commissioner Ali Nur Ali Dherre told CNN.

... Dherre told CNN he did not know of any Islamist extremists in the village.

This was a deliberate attack, made worse by the fact by the claim that there was some passing attempt to avoid injuring any civilians. And yet, that's exactly what happened: women and children killed, people injured, houses and property destroyed, and they didn't even accomplish the goal they set out to accomplish.

And all the language being used here, to explain away why some innocent people died, is the same language being used in every aspect of U.S. foreign policy justifying U.S. actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, NSA spying on American citizens, and it's all been building up this culture of fear that keeps being perpetuated by the mainstream media. Old news, I know. This shit is out of control.

And did we mention RON PAUL?

2008-01-02T18:44:00.000-05:00

You'd think Ron Paul was the hero of my fucking generation. At least with college-age dudes who:

feel shafted by feminism
beat off while reading Maddox's "Greatest Page in the Universe".

His supporters remind me a lot of Paul himself, what with all of the yelling. Paul doesn't yell, of course, but I notice that he's near-hysterical about taxes, the mere existence of any kind of U.S. foreign policy at all, and is terrified of the federal regulation of anything.

And all of his supporters are dudes.

Via Shakesville.

Well, maybe not. But in the video, James Kotecki of Politico.com finds the lone woman in an entire group of perhaps fifty Ron Paul supporters (who are strongly reminiscent of sports fans, really, repeating Paul's name, and only Paul's name, over and over again. That's very persuasive/manly, boys! Keep it up!). "It's just kind of a message that [women] don't really resonate with, I don't know, I'm not sure why," she says in response to being the only woman present.

Maybe it's got something to do with Paul's self-proclaimed status as "an unshakable foe of abortion". Or perhaps women give a shit about things like federal assistance for lower-income families and affordable health care. You know, issues that affect women, but not, typically, white college-aged men who are stuffed to the brim with privilege. Duh.

EPIC FAIL: Online classroom edition

2007-10-27T21:06:00.000-04:00

[sic sic sic] for all these quotes.

I believe the biggest factors facing the black community are: failure to get past racism, an education deficit, and lack of morals.

Racism will always be an issue, so I cannot say that it’s something to easily overcome. However, I do believe blacks are able to make it in America if they are willing to get past racism. I mean, just because racism exists doesn’t mean one has to dwell on it. I think that far too often blacks use racism as a reason not to try. I also think the race card is used as an excuse to scapegoat whites.

For instance, in the case of the Jena 6: the DA was wrong to charge those young men with attempted murder, however, I don’t think it’s right to make heroes out of them, which is what I believe is happening. For example, two of the young men were presenters at the BET awards. I do not understand how you glamorize men who gang beat a fellow classmate until he was unconscious.

Education in the black community is not something that is enforced. In 2007, a black child is still ridiculed for “acting white” when he/she studies to make good grades and speaks proper English. If lower-class blacks would realize that education is a good and necessary thing like the Koreans, I think all members of the black community would be further ahead despite the racism they face. In an age where affirmative action is abounding to help blacks at every angle, there is simply no excuse for more blacks not to try and take advantage of these resources that are there for them. The fact that 1 out of 3 blacks drop out of college is only further proof that education is not something that is being enforced on a constant basis.

Single parent households, unplanned pregnancies, absentee fathers, and drug dealers on every corner exacerbates the fact that morals in the black community are at a decline. Even during the Jim Crow era, when racism was encountered at every turn, black people still valued family above all and were not afraid to enforce order and good conduct. If a child acted out, he/she was quickly corrected. That’s not the case today. If it were so, I believe there would be less prisons, less unwed mothers, and more households headed by fathers.

So says a classmate of mine in an online class about race and ethnic relations. The question she's addressing is one about the most pressing issues facing black Americans today, and true to her almost certainly white privileged background, she blames all them Neegrahs for their own failings in a society which favors whites and whites exclusively.

I'm new to debating issues of race, because for a long time, I felt that because I was white, I didn't really have much of a relevant perspective, since most of my exposure to black culture involved listening to a lot of Public Enemy and occasionally reading bell hooks. However, I'm starting to get past that reservation, since I live in suburban North Carolina, where my boyfriend lives half a block away from a group of white supremacists and where people can say shit like, well, that and have people agree with them. Take this trainwreck, for instance:

I agree with you on so many levels as usual. I am outraged by the fact too, when the black communities want to glamourized bad behavior of people. I do not believe either that those boys should be made out like total victims. They are not! The whites were wrong too. So, then it makes it okay to be just as wrong? And be rewarded for it? I don't think so. What is this saying about the priorities for blacks. Just be on my side even if I am wrong? Apparently it seems to be the popular vote for some. And I am certainly not speaking of all blacks. However, the blacks that want to blame others for the lack of educational opportunities, or proudly display gang membership signs and activities, make me just a bit upset. The education is there. You just have to fight for it. Would you think a young person would be happy for themselves knowing they fought for something positive instead of waiting for someone to give it to them? I know I work hard for my grades and I am extremely happy to tell anyone that will listen. You are correct in saying that if a black student does seem to be doing well for him/herself they are teased for speaking correct english and dressing like a clean cut kid usually wants to. I just don't get it and I really get tired of trying to figure it out. It all seems to boil down to the same "pointing the finger" attitude and deliberate "self-sabotage". All I know is that all of our foundations and early lessons that will define our character and start at home. And black people are letting themselves down as a "people". You did an awesome job.

You'll notice the recurring theme that black kids get "teased" for "speaking correct English". As if the default, proper way of speaking English is white. As if the default, proper way to even fucking exist is white. As if white people speak correct English all the time!

Then there's their opinion about the Jena 6 case, which seems to be that those kids were unprovoked and went out to kick a white kid's ass just because. They seem to have forgotten that one of them good ole Lusianna boys done pointed a fucking gun at them Neegrahs, and after he was disarmed, the people he was aiming at with malicious intent were charged with theft of the gun.

So how the hell do these people deemphasize the significance of this case and what it means about racism in America (namely, the fact that it's alive and fucking well)?

Easy. A little thing called white privilege. White privilege which allows people to assume that racism is dead and gone, and that its ugly corpse is some nebulous thing which roams around the Southeastern United States, randomly calling people niggers and letting that be that. The reasonable people of the world recognize that racism is in fact Dick McMiddlemanagement getting two identical resumes and calling back the applicant with the more white-sounding name. Chad gets a call back and an interview, Tyrone gets shafted because he's named Tyrone. Racism is the raw material, discrimination is the product.

White privilege also built us this nifty bomb shelter we call a PC culture, which Bill O'Reilly and Larry Elder would like to tell you is harmful because it prevents them from spouting their disgustingly racist views on national television. Actually, PC culture is bad because while it keeps white people from throwing ethnic slurs all over the place, it also makes sure that white people uncomfortable with their own privilege (or more accurately, with losing their own privilege) can sweep racism under the rug by accusing anyone of bringing up topics regarding race and racism as "playing the race card". Suppression of discourse about the nature of race in America allows for the racist attitudes of many white people to fester, and to manifest themselves in more subtle ways - like the example of our friend Dick McMiddlemanagement.

The original poster also mentions affirmative action as if it's some government body when it's really just a loose set of guidelines that many companies and workplaces have in place to make sure open racism (note the word open) doesn't occur, and while it is illegal to deny someone a job or to fire them because of their race, things like that have to be contested in court - which requires either a lawyer or an extensive knowledge of that specific kind of law, which is something that many people cannot afford, black or white.

Also note the sexism inherent in the original post, and mentioning problems like unplanned pregnancy, single motherhood, absent fathers, and high rates of drug abuse as if they are problems which plague only or mainly the black community, when in fact these problems are more accurately defined as linked to socioeconomic status. Also the fact that those first three issues can really be tied to lack of education about sex, and the dreaded abstinence-only sex education. You know, the method of teaching kids about sex by saying that abstinence until marriage is the one-size-fits-all solution to all those urges bouncing around inside them, that condoms don't work, and that girls' value is intrinsically linked to their hymens? Gee, it sure is easy to blame girls and young women entirely for their unplanned pregnancies once you make sure that the onus is totally on them to prevent it, even in the absence of easily-accessible contraception. Don't forget that male-headed households are important! It certainly isn't a case of institutionalized misogyny which allows men to leave the mothers of their children to fend for themselves almost without impunity, because most states are totally on top of the whole "child support" and "deadbeat dads" issue. This problem is absolutely one restricted to the black community.

I do question the validity of submitting individual anecdotes as evidence, considering that people have been pulling the Oprah card on blacks for a while now - you know, the assumption that since Oprah managed to build herself a media empire means that all black people can, too! But that's an extreme example of anecdotal evidence. The thing I find really telling about just how deeply racism is ingrained in our society is a response to that post I quoted here, in which another of my classmates recounts how her (black) daughter came home from school saying that another girl on the bus had told her that she was allergic to black people, and demanded my classmate's daughter move. When my classmate asked her daughter what she had done and whether she had moved, the little girl said no, but she turned to face the window, and sat very still because she didn't want to make the other girl sick. My classmate's daughter felt like she had done something wrong, of course, and felt like crap about the whole incident.

I'm telling you this because I've often heard it said how kids don't generally discriminate based on race when they're that young (around five years old). But the fact that it happens just demonstrates how deep this goes. When a five-year-old can basically say "Oogie-boogie, nigger!" to a classmate just like that, I'd say we have a pretty big fucking problem.

Moral Panic and You: Trying to Cope With Being a Fatty in an Obesity Epidemic

2007-10-05T22:51:00.000-04:00

Once on a livejournal community I read an entry wherein the poster detailed a moral conflict sie experienced during hir workday at a fast food restaurant.

Said conflict involved the poster’s heartbreak over the fat people who came into the restaurant and ordered whatever they god damned pleased. Should the poster inform those poor fatties that they were, in fact, overweight, and that eating fatty foods would just make them fatter?

As if it was hir business. As if those fat people did not know they were fat in a culture where they are being constantly reminded, in everything from advertisements to television shows and movies and music, that they are huge and that they are disgusting, and that their size is intrinsically tied to their value in society.

(Incidentally, I hope the person posting that livejournal entry did remind a fat person they were fat in that same nauseatingly sanctimonious tone, and I hope that fat person promptly put them in their fucking place, hopefully by having a chat with the manager.)

I hate my body. Which just extends naturally into hating myself.

I hate eating in public, because I get nervous that the people across the cafeteria or restaurant are laughing at me: an anxiety I developed in elementary and middle school and have never been able to shake—I am twenty years old and I still worry people are laughing at me for being fat.

I hate the unsolicited medical advice from my family. Everything from eating less bread/cheese/milk/tacos/etc. to buying ‘healthy’ groceries for me (low sodium/fat free/low carb blah blah blah, most of which doesn’t reduce the sodium/fat/calories/carbs by much at all) without any input from me. The first time my mother suggested I consider weight loss surgery was when I was seventeen years old, and it’s rare for me to go a day without actually considering it.

And of course I know I'm not the only fat person who hates her body and who thinks about weight loss surgery and crash dieting and Alli and all the shit we're supposed to think about, as fat people (women). And it's not just fat women who feel like shit about their bodies, judging by the types of bodies I see in ads for everything from Weight Watchers to Slimfast to cereal that helps you lose weight (as long as you replace two meals a day with a bowl of Special K/Total/whatever), for god's sake.

And there's sometimes when I say screw it, when I look at studies like this, which tells me what I knew all through middle and high school: fat teenagers exhibit the same disordered eating habits that thin teenagers do; they just aren't stick figures. (Lending more credence to the hypothesis, by the way, that that diet pills/starving yourself/puking after every meal/etc. doesn't work anyway, so thanks very much to the people who tell me that all I have to is eat less to lose weight.)

And then I find projects like Shapely Prose, Kate Harding's blog which is all about fatness and the lies that the media feeds us. And then I stick around long enough for her BMI Illustrated project.

And I really wonder why I still think about inviting a surgeon to slice me up and make me thin and pretty.

On that note, you should really check out adipositivity. It takes a lot of courage for a fat woman to take off her clothes. Particularly in front of a camera. It almost makes me not mind being fat.

Wonderful.

2007-08-21T19:27:00.000-04:00

Meet Omaha-Bitch. Their music video certainly is charming - what with literally using women as their musical instruments - drums, bass, guitar, even the mic. Classy.

Their Myspace page is also particularly sickening. Who knew that women drenched in blood, wrapping their legs around a pole could be so sexy?

Not-so-vague memories from seventh grade

2007-08-19T23:56:00.001-04:00

I went to a middle school in rural North Carolina. "Rural North Carolina" should really tell you a lot about my early years; though I wouldn't call it "backwoods" (many - if not most - of my classmates were army brats, if I may use the term), I'll tell you one thing about my school: in 1997, our Social Studies textbooks still referred to the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. Also, those people came by and passed out those little green plastic New Testaments, and I got in trouble for asking if that was a violation of church and state.

So I randomly remembered this girl I sat next to in seventh grade Social Studies. She was a cheerleader who had written in white-out on her backpack "Hold my poms while I STUNT with your boyfriend."

Just like that. In not-quite-backwoods North Carolina, that message of female competetition for mates in middle school. And it stuck with me, only in the back of my mind, I guess, for nearly ten years. I guess I just thought the sexualization of young girls was relatively recent, because I could never remember it when I myself was a young girl, but thinking about it now, I can see that it was starting even then, with a little implication that a.) having a boyfriend is one of the most important things about your young female life, and b.)since she was prettier than me, she was inherently superior - at least enough that she could steal my boyfriend. The fact that I was (am) an ugly thing and had no boyfriend only drove the message home even further.

Getting angry at sexism in advertising is like [insert simile here]

2007-08-19T02:26:00.000-04:00

I know it's fruitless to get angry at this, but god help me, I do love a losing battle. I can't be the only person who's sick of this. Not only am I supposed to buy my identity, but if Old Navy had its way, I'd only have three choices to pick from. Unfortunately for me, I'm not a "Diva", nor a "Flirt", nor a "Sweetheart".

So where are my "Dragonlady" jeans? My "Ballbuster"s? "Riveter"s? I'd settle for some god damn "Not-trying-to-impress-anyone"s, you know?

Seriously. Next you'll be telling me companies are selling their product with blonde/brunette jokes, talking about battle between the hair-colors.

Oh, wait.

Much love for McSweeney's

2007-08-14T00:45:00.000-04:00

It's a bit late, and I can't imagine anyone is actually still blogging about Christopher Hitchens' charming explanation of why the ladies aren't funny, but I thought it only fair that I point you to this piece on McSweeney's Internet Tendency (mcsweeneys.net) by Kate Kershner entitled "Christopher Hitchens Visits St. Margaret's School for Young Women, Where He Discovers Little Girls Aren't Funny, Either".