Mighty Ms.

Day Eight

2012-01-30T23:10:00.000-06:00

Day Eight: Something you hope to change about yourself and why

I hate to admit it, but I'm sensitive. It kinda doesn't jive with the whole strong-butch thing. Although I do think that butches and men should be allowed and encouraged to cry and feel, and be all of the things that are associated with "woman's emotions". But I'm the type of person who doesn't like people to know I cry. But I am secretly really, really sensitive.
I'm not sure what part of that I'm least comfortable with: the fact that am super sensitive or the fact that I am uncomfortable with my sensitivity. I think I'd like to become a more whole emotional being...one who isn't afraid to show emotions, and who isn't so sensitive that the littlest things are taken personally.
Because I am one of those who will find meaning if meaning wasn't there. So often I'll have to ask others "was this meant in the way that I understood it?" because I genuinely don't know whether or not I should be hurt. My reaction is immediately just "ouch!". Often that "ouch" is warranted, but sometimes it's just me. And on those occasions, it's pretty damn hard to get me calmed down once I'm rattled up.
I think I want to be more secure in my emotions. I want it to be okay that I'm sensitive, that when you jab at me, I hurt. Well, I'd rather we all get along and you stop fucking poking at me, but if you have to stab, I want it to be okay that it hurts. And I want to be okay with expressing that.

One of my guilty pleasure songs....Goo Goo Dolls, "Better Days". Lyrics

Day seven

2012-01-30T00:25:00.000-06:00

Day Seven: Something about which people seem to compliment you

I don't like to talk about myself. Especially not if you like to talk about yourself. I'd rather sit back and listen to you tell me about your ex and your ex's ex and your kids and your dog and...well, you get the point. In listening rather than talking, people often find me to be a worthy confidant...someone to tell the things that they can't tell anyone else. Eva calls it bus-stop syndrome....I can sit at a bus stop and get the life story of the person next to me while I wait for the bus.
It cultivates empathy, compassion, hearing so many stories. I never know what you're going to say next, and since I say so little, I come across as understanding and unjudging. Maybe I am. Maybe I genuinely don't care enough to judge. Not "don't care" in a don't-care-about-you way, but in a fuck-society-and-its-norms way. Hell, maybe I don't give enough of a shit about your personal story to care, but that's not really it...I just listen. I don't think about it...I just listen. If you ask for advice, I give it, otherwise I keep my mouth shut.
So I guess it's...a quiet listening that people often tell me I'm so good at. People like to talk about themselves (hey, I'm doing a 30 day blog challenge, aren't I?). I sit still long enough to let them. They like that, I guess.

And for your nightly song...an old classic. Simon and Garfunkel all the way. "The sound of Silence" Lyrics

Day Six

2012-01-29T00:25:00.000-06:00

Day Six: Something at which you've been the best

Best implies perfection. Perfection sucks. I would say it's an unattainable goal, but when there's concrete numbers involved, it's not actually out of reach. I mean, you get straight A's through college, you graduate with a 4.0. Best. You have a perfect 10 dive/gymnastics routine/whatever. Best. But there's so much wiggle room there.
I think of it as an asymptote (ooh lookit me using math terms)...you can get closer and closer and closer and closer...but there's always room for improvement. In your perfect dive, your splash could always be a tiny bit smaller...even if you got a 10. You could arial a centimeter higher off the ground.
Maybe my cynicism comes from mediocrity (damn I had a hard time spelling that). I don't believe in best because I've never been "the best". I've been good...damn good even. But never the best. And that's okay with me. Being the best leaves very little room for improvement. And what's life without improvement?
I know that sounds cheesy as hell. I can make it a little cheesier. Don't believe me? I don't care about being the best at something, about being held to somebody's standards...those are totally arbitrary anyway. I just care about being the best me I can be. Told you it was gonna be cheesy!

This doesn't follow the prompt at all, but I like the song and it's been stuck in my head tonight. "Bliss", by Muse. Lyrics.

Day Five

2012-01-26T23:01:00.000-06:00

Day Five: Something that excites you and fills you with joy

I am having the hardest time with this prompt. It's not that nothing excites me or fills me with joy. In fact, it's quite the opposite. I find that I can find joy in the smallest places. A warm day when the sun is out and people smile and you can't help but smile back. Driving on the highway with the windows down and the music up with nowhere to go and all the time to get there, not caring if cars who pass you hear you singing as loud as you can. Snuggling up for an extra hour under the covers with a bunny and book (and trying to get the bunny to stop trying to eat the book). Waking up in the bed of the woman you love, her arms around you, your head resting against her bare chest. Playing in the snow. Saying hello to tiny flowers. The smell of bookstores.

That's summing me up right now. Tiny shivers of joy. Small, seemingly inconsequential moments. Repetition of anything, even something exciting becomes mundane. It's the new, the constantly learning, constantly feeling that brings me joy. Joy is in the smallest flower, the cloud shaped like a mouse, a used book with a touching inscription to people you don't know.

I don't try to find joy. Joy finds me. I leave myself open to it and it happens. It shows up, beautiful and...there. Sometimes once a week, sometimes ten times a day, it finds me.

And while this song isn't particularly about joy, something about it for me, just opens up snapshots of those moments. Dar Williams-"Southern California Wants to be Western New York". Plus, she's really adorable when she messes up. Lyrics

Day Four

2012-01-25T21:15:00.002-06:00

Day Four-Something in your life that gives you balance

My feet. No, just kidding...I'm way too clumsy for that joke.

Recently, I've been leaving the spirit of hermitude that I'd fallen into since...well, forever...little by little, I get out of my shell. I'm finding that even as an extreme introvert, sometimes getting out is nice. And not the type of getting out that involves lots of people and loud music. That's the best way to throw me off balance. But lately, I've been having study sessions with a friend. These study sessions are about 30 minutes of talking about the week's readings and about four hours of drinking wine and eating homemade hummus and denouncing postmodernism and neoliberalism. Often we compare cultural artifacts, as she's from Russia. We spent an entire night comparing the rhetoric of 90's music in Russia to 90's music here.
Dorky, I know. But for some reason, that's proving to be my saving grace this semester. It's amazing how much you can use a little companionship, even if you're used to being so solitary when the semester begins to get crazy. It helps me not to drown in my readings.
I hadn't realized how much of a loner I'd become. There was no balance. There was only me, on my own, doing my own thing. And while sometimes that's lovely, I realized that I needed that little bit of human companionship. This is proving to be the perfect amount of alone and with-people time for me. A few hours every week where I force myself out of the house, not thinking about work, just allowing myself time to create a space outside of my head.
It's amazing how much I didn't know I needed that.

So, in the spirit of 90's music....one of my favorite 80's bands doing 90's stuff....Blondie with "Maria" (Lyrics)

And yes, I've seen Blondie in concert, and yes, they're as awesome in concert as you'd expect!

Also...my latest guest post over at Card Carrying Lesbian is causing quite a discussion....go check it out....I meant to stir the pot but not THAT much!

Day Three

2012-01-24T21:08:00.000-06:00

Day Three: Something that is a part of your routine that you enjoy

Every morning I wake early, allowing the light from the drawn blinds to slowly rouse me from sleep. Before the world starts moving, I let the bunny out and take a few minutes (15-30 minutes, depending on my level of laziness) to sit quietly on the floor and meditate on the previous day, the coming day, and where I fit in with all of that.
Often, meditating on the floor with a bunny on your lap proves to be a difficult task, one that morphs quickly into a snuggle session with a wiggly-nosed creature who wants nothing more than to climb all over me and lick my sleeve.
At this hour, the world seems more peaceful than usual. No matter the amount of reading or writing I have to do, I ignore my work until after breakfast and take the time for myself. Often, I unfurl the yoga mat, and the bunny and I do yoga together (well, I do yoga, she licks the mat). My soft jazz mix on Pandora (inspired by Madeleine Peyroux...do it...you won't regret it) complements the birds outside my window (and often the reply by the parrot in my roommate's room).

All too often, I find myself swept up in the course of the day, forgetting the power of silence or quiet music, hearing only the theories from the day's readings as a refrain. I fall asleep with my head spinning, making lists of everything I have to do, uncertain of when I'll be able to do it all. But when I wake up with the sun, I allow myself blankness.

And for your listening pleasure, since I couldn't come up with a song for yesterday, "I'm All Right", by Madeleine Peyroux. Lyrics here.
Don't you just LOVE her voice???

Day Two

2012-01-23T21:08:00.000-06:00

Day Two: Something with which you struggle

I've been raised to be an academic. I'm from an area where everyone went to college....and to a good college at that. Most continue on to graduate school and get high powered jobs in their fields. I've always been one to want to do my own thing, but the pressure from the community was often too great to resist.
I went to a good college, got a few degrees, and then, as was expected, continued on to graduate school. The problem: graduate school wasn't really what I wanted. The expectations of society, so ingrained in me, made me think this was a good idea.
It is a struggle to get through each reading, to fill my days with academic bullshit when I know that the world is sitting outside my bedroom, outside my textbooks, waiting for me. I'm here because I didn't want to let anyone down. I'm here because I wanted my parents to be able to say "yeah, she's gay...but she went to grad school" and get some redeeming points for the fact that I'm, in society's eyes, a fuck-up for who I sleep with.
But yet, each time I have to sit down and read theory, I feel the pain, almost a physical pain of not wanting this for myself. That I think I've learned enough to not be a bumbling asshole in the world....to make a difference without oppressing. The rest is postmodern/poststructuralist fluff. I don't need to know poetic meter to make a difference in the world. But yet, for some reason, I'm still here.

30 day blog challenge starts NOW!!!

2012-01-23T00:03:00.000-06:00

Well, here goes...
Most of the prompts were taken from DanaCreative, except for the ones that were requested by friends. If you have a request for a prompt, let me know...I'll consider it. And just for shits and giggles, I think I may add a video clip that reminds me of each prompt, since I like music and don't get to post enough of it.

Day One: Something you're looking forward to this year.

I define years in terms of school. For me the year is half over. If I were to define a year the way the normal person would...that would start me at second semester...in January. I guess that means that this year goes all the way until next January...my final semester of grad school (holy crap, scary thought).
This year I'm looking forward to finally working on creating that life with Cowgirl that for some reason, we never really got around to creating. Winter break showed me that we really can live together, have a life together, build a home together (sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively). I look forward to a summer when we actually get to spend every day together (I know we did that last year, but she had a roommate and it was different), and the prospect of a time when I won't be in school anymore. I look forward to waking up in a real bed, not an air mattress in a lonely apartment for three whole months over the summer, and cooking dinner, packing lunches with little notes in them, falling deeper in love.
I know that sounds so super cheesy, but it's true. I've never thought I was one for settling down, but this year feels like the year to do it. And yes, that surprises me as much as it surprises people who know me. I'd never been the settling kind. I used to say I wanted to live like a nomad...going wherever the wind blew, just seeing where my life would lead me. But the thing is, the wind deposited me on the doorstep of a little house in the middle of nowhere and now I want to cling to the rosebushes that surround the front steps and never ever let go. That feeling both confuses and excites me. I want to follow it. I want to see where it leads to not go anywhere...to sit still, realize I don't have to go chasing dreams because for once, they fell right into my lap.

And in honor of Etta James.."A Sunday Kind of Love"....(lyrics can be found here). This is so completely what I want. And I'm realizing that it's actually what I have. And how fucking lucky I am.

Random New Year's Post...again!

2012-01-09T01:11:00.000-06:00

Since last year's random New Year's post had the highest stats of any of my posts by a landslide, I figured that come 2012, I'd give ya another.I guess y'all like when I give you personal details?
I know it's late and it's no longer the first of the year, but it's my first post of the year, and I'll explain why in a later post. But without further ado...12 things you never really needed to know about me.

1. I think the 80's had the best music of any decade...by far. I love 80's music. A little too much.
2. For my whole life my favorite color was purple. As of the past year, it's green. Forest or pine green to be exact.
3. I love to tie-dye. Most of my friends have at one point or another indulged me in this silly obsession.
4. I love chocolate, but I will not touch chocolate ice cream. Something about it is weird to me.
5. I have five piercings (two earlobe and one cartilage) and two tattoos. I could see myself getting more tats, but certainly no more piercings. They hurt too much. Plus, I'd look silly with an eyebrow ring, as much as I'd like to think I wouldn't.
6. I dance in the rain. Barefoot. A bit hippie, yes, but so satisfying...physically and emotionally.
7. My favorite foods, in no particular order: pomegranate seeds, avocados, and peanut butter (smooth, not crunchy).
8. I've been a vegetarian since I was 11. I tried to go vegan a few years ago. I lasted a week.
9. When I was a kid (about 6 or 7) and you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my standard answer was "Stevie Nicks". Adults found that quite amusing. I just thought she was beautiful, wore the best outfits, and could fucking sing. Now, I too find that amusing (although I do still love Stevie...).
10. I love camping. I would spent every weekend in a tent and cooking over a campfire if I could. And none of that air-mattress-in-the-tent shit for me. Cowgirl brings an air mattress...AND a space heater!!!
11. I am killer at backgammon. And boggle. Challenge me. I dare you.
12. I'm not one for staying up late (ironic, as it's after 1 am right now). If I had my way, I'd go to bed at 10 and wake up at 6. Sucked in college...my friends called me the grandmother!! I could never stay up late enough to hang out with people! But I'd rather be up with the sun than sleep all day.

I want to tell you

2011-12-17T12:09:00.000-06:00

I've been thinking a lot about writing, but haven't figured out what I want to write. For the first time in a while, the problem is reversed: it's not that I have nothing to write, it's that I have so much to write and don't know what I want to write first. So instead of diving in, I haven't written anything.
Eventually I want to write about religion...or lack of it. I want to write about creating a home that isn't the home you'd planned, and I want to write about why the fuck pandora plays so many versions of "hallelujah". There ARE other songs out there, you know!
But for real, there's so much I want to write. I want to tell you about the mini plants on my windowsill, about how only the ones in the waterbottles, the makeshift pots, grew. Not the ones that were supposed to grow in their little clay pots. I want to compare that to life. I want to tell you about what it feels like to carry the cage with the rabbit in it down three flights of steps, stick her in the truck with me and feed her slices of banana on the four hour drive home. I'd make that about love. About longing. And about how wonderful tasty fruit is. I want to tell you about my desire to do art. I don't want to say too much on that front yet...not until I do something worth telling about. Right now, it's just a desire for creativity.

My little suitcase is packed, sitting on the floor in my bedroom, with all I'll need for three weeks inside a bag that's not supposed to carry more than for a weekend trip. I pack light. I hope it's nice enough outside to read outside, to spread a blanket in the bed of the truck and call the cat up with me and let her snuggle my feet to keep them warm. I want to paint for you a picture of a charmed existence, of open fields and country bars and a cold house with a warm body pressed close to you at night. I want to show you what it feels like to drive down a dirt road, windows down, Vivaldi blaring, the rabbit's ears moving in rhythm to the cellos. Headed home.

Blog Spotlight-Fleur De Renaissance

2011-12-05T13:45:00.000-06:00

Hey y'all. Back from the depths of finals week to bring you the December blog spotlight.

This week, for your reading pleasure, I bring you (warning sometimes NSFW)....Fleur De Renaissance.

S. Elle is an amazing writer, an activist, and just downright brilliant. Her posts range from sexy stories that she writes (*swoon*) to personal narrative, to really intelligent, witty analyses of topics (most often around gender and sexuality). Plus, she does sex toy reviews! If you like sexy, smart blogs, this is absolutely for you.

This is one of my all-time favorites blogs, and I can't believe I've waited this long to share it with you. You'll scold me for that, I promise. Go read it and find out why.

Seriously though. Stop reading this post and go click on the link already!

Country Mouse in a City Apartment

2011-11-28T16:47:00.000-06:00

For the first time in a while, I am noticing the warmth from when the sun shines through my window, landing on the row of tiny flowerpots Cowgirl got me this weekend. I tend the soil meticulously, I do everything meticulously this afternoon.
I woke up early this morning, was on the road by 5, leaving the country where I could see a million stars, so dark that the arm of the Milky Way was visible, headed back for my little apartment , for my quiet room. Leaving the cold, hard, tile floors of Cowgirl's house, the thermometer reading 37 degrees inside, the single space heater to warm the whole place.

My room still has traces of her from this weekend. An empty pack of cigarettes on the desk. Loose change on the dresser. A glass of water next to the bed. A red flannel shirt on my chair. My bed smells like her perfume. Wild Musk. The bunny looks at me expectantly; she's gotten ten times the number of treats in the past few days as usual. She misses Cowgirl, I think. I'm frugal with the apple chips.

I cried as I drove home on Wednesday to pick her up. The moment my truck hit the dirt roads, an hour and a half from the middle of nowhere, I turned up the country music and let myself cry. I forgot how much I like the trees bending over the roads, dogs chasing next to your truck, dirt billowing up behind you. I forgot how much sometimes, you need a break from the city. You need to see stars.

You can't see the stars here. Cities aren't good for natural beauty. You can't see the stars, no. But right now, for the first time in a long time, I can feel the sun.

Where I am now...with a track metaphor

2011-11-22T21:26:00.000-06:00

Finally. A break. I can't even begin to tell you how much of a toll this semester is taking on me. Between books for class and writing syllabi and thesis proposals and the 25 page paper due in two weeks that I don't even have a topic for, I haven't even had time to THINK. Yoga is out of the question...30 free minutes in a day are so rare, and when I have them, I don't have the fucking energy to do anything but snuggle in a puddle on the floor with the bunny nuzzled in the crook of my arm.
This week, everything has gone wrong. Okay, not everything, but it's been a pretty shitty few days. I work myself all up in a panic about something, only to realize that, as I've been saying semi-constantly recently, "the world won't end". First it's work drama. Then it's school drama. Then it's hole-in-my-airbed drama. Then it's show-up-to-a-cancelled-class-when-you-could-have-gone-home-hours-ago drama. For someone who hates drama, I'm sure attracting a lot of it this week.
But yet at the same time, I feel this weird, intrinsic peace. It's like, everything is swirling, spinning so fast, so far out of my control, but my attitude is just "eh, fuck it". And with that "fuck it" attitude comes a sense of self I haven't felt in months.

Earlier this week I finally put pen to paper and started to iron out potential thesis topics (shoutout to the person who seriously saved my ass, asking all the right questions, you know who you are). In the four pages of proposal, I found a renewed sense of energy. It was more of a spurt of strength, the last 100 meters of a 400 meter dash when you know you have to finish it but you're so...tired...but...you see the finish line. It's there, in front of you. The end is in sight. The break with the water bottle and the towel to mop your face and a welcome chair to collapse into until the start of the next race. And so you push on, faster, harder, forcing yourself to just finish this one damn race...

That's where I am. That burst of energy is getting me through the thesis proposal and the syllabus-writing. I feel myself slowing down as I think about the 25 page paper I don't have a topic for yet, not to mention the three other papers I haven't started. I'm fighting the urge to lie down on the track and just let the other runners fucking trample me on their way to the finish line. But I'm not one to give up a race without a fight. Only once. And only because I collapsed (yes, literal now).

The peace I feel is welcoming. I feel like I'm slowly drawing out of the fog I've been in for the past month or two. It's a weird feeling, knowing I have the capacity for this sense of inner calm when everything around me seems so insane.

I've got smarter posts to write, less personal pieces, but right now, I'm going to watch the bunny confuse herself on the bed (it's not springy! She sinks!) and listen to Dar Williams. In other words, I'm taking a fucking break. See you next week, interwebs.

Memories and Reflections

2011-11-10T23:51:00.001-06:00

Tonight I'm reminiscing with an old friend, a friend who knew me when we were toddlers to the fourth grade. We're sharing memories, snapshots of our lives that we had forgotten until reminded by a person we now don't know. That's a weird feeling, to catch up with someone after almost 15 years of not having seen or talked to them. All I know of her are the pictures I saw on facebook, pictures of a tall, full figured woman who still completely looks like the little tomboy who lent me shorts to wear under my dresses at schools so we could play kickball with the boys.
It's making me think about the past. People from the past. People who came into my life in fleeting moments, but I have such strong memories of. Most of these people were queer, or associated with queer feelings. There was Mel, the janitor at the elementary school, an old school butch. I never understood her as more than just Mel, why the adults didn't like her, why they didn't like that she was nice to us. I remember her being a bigger woman, a shaved head, and a smile, even when she was pushing around a mop after a cafeteria of messy kids. She was young, maybe early 30s. I wonder who she was, where she found queer life in that segregated, urban city...a place where difference wasn't tolerated. There was a fifth grade teacher I never knew beyond a name. Middle aged, severe, her hair pulled back in a bun. I would always have these dreams of rescuing her from bizarre situations in the school (I was like 8....). I recognize that feeling now as a desire to know someone you feel is similar to you. She was the only unmarried teacher of the upper grades. I looked back at an old yearbook. Obviously queer.
I didn't know these things then. But there's this weird pull I had towards people, unexplainable. People I had no other connection with. I look at myself, at the way people relate to me. When I'm at work, the way kids relate to me. The two little girls who dress like boys who come in from soccer practice every Friday afternoon and beam when I call them "dudes". I wonder if they see a connection in me, something unexplainable, that ten years down the road, when they're out of college and in the world, they'll understand as a connection to gender-variancy, an everyday affirmation of identity.

My writing has been more personal lately. My thoughts have been more personal. If I don't write them, I fear I may explode from lack of understanding of myself. I don't let myself feel, only write. The need to process things I didn't know I was thinking about, well, I'm trying. People tell me they like my personal work better. It makes me uncomfortable to share this much of myself with you, with myself. But hang on, lovely readers. It's going to be a wild ride.

Blog Spotlight-Absurd Grace

2011-11-07T10:30:00.000-06:00

Hey y'all. I've got something really special to share with you this month, as I'm in the middle of a hellish few weeks of schoolwork. I hope this blog brings you as much joy in the reading as it brings me. So without further ado, I present you....
Absurd Grace. Sophia has been blogging for a while, but she's just starting off on a new blog (so if she sounds familiar to you, that's why). And with any new blog, she needs help getting the word out. So here's what she's all about:
Poetry, life, love, beautiful stories, wisdom, compassion, oh, and did I mention beautiful writing??

You need to go check this blog out (especially one of you, dear readers, who is in the process of moving...yes you, my friend). And then once you read this blog and fall in love with Sophia and her writing, you should go do all of the technology stuff; friend her on facebook, "like" her fan page, and follow her on Twitter (Sophia, please put your twitter name in the comments, m'dear).

So I'll stop distracting you. Just go read her blog!

A moment of self-reflection

2011-10-31T10:56:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a dream. Not one of those dreams where unicorns fly you around orchards full of candy-apple trees, and not one of those dreams from which you wake up terrified, heart pounding, and check the closet for monsters. No, it's more of a numbness than a dream, sort of...being present...but not at the same time. It's that feeling where you look out the window and you see the flowers on the tree outside and you think to yourself "there's flowers on the tree", but you don't stop to think "wow, they're beautiful", or "I've never seen flowers bloom this close to Winter", or "I should go climb the tree and pick one to see what they smell like". It's that feeling of passive noticing. And I'm not sure how I feel about that.

I've never been a passive person. Well, that's not true. In my interactions with people, I'm a very passive person. But in the way I relate to the world, in the way I see life, with me, it's always been very active. It's always been a sense of presentness, a sense of importance, a sense of beauty. I've been known to make myself late to meetings because I wanted to stop and play with butterflies, or taken the long way home because I love the way the trees made a canopy over the road at dusk. I have always been one to actively seek these things out.

So this morning when I looked at the tree and noticed the flowers and then turned away and went back to my reading for class, I realized something had to change. I don't know what it is yet. I don't know why it is that I'm so unmotivated to go seek out the world. And to be honest, I don't know how to change it. It's hard to change something when you're not sure what's wrong.

Maybe I've been working myself too hard. I've been focusing so much on academia, on writing the papers, on trying so hard to sound intelligent, that I've lost myself. I was telling a friend the other day that the academy is sucking the creativity out of me. I wonder if that's what this is: a manifestation of the loss of creativity. I'm taking winter break to get back into art. Last night I wrote a poem in my head, but decided it wasn't worth writing down. Maybe tomorrow I'll write one down. Maybe I'll even share it with you.

All I know is that this passivity has got to stop. I'm remembering the way I was a few years ago, and I know I'm not that person anymore, but there are aspects of myself that I miss. Eva used to always tell me I was intense. People used to not be able to look me in the eye because they were afraid of losing themselves in me losing myself in theirs. That type of intense. I don't know if I want to come across quite that strong anymore, but I miss the quiet calculation I used to have, the precision before I spoke, the way that words came out in poetry rather than in prose. My favorite time of day was dusk, when the shadows made everything look different than they were.

Now I sleep through the sunrise. I wake up when the sky is already blue, but I don't notice its color. There's no magic in daytime for me. There never has been. I think I need to change my hours again, let myself be inspired by the breaking of the day, and sit out on the grass outside and make myself one with the world in the morning.

I want to stop saying the things that don't matter. I've never been one for talking without reason. I want to see the world in color again.I'm sick of having a muted palate.

Update, and I made a friend!

2011-10-16T20:24:00.001-05:00

Time for an update, me thinks.

School is crazy, work is crazy, bunny is crazy (fat)...

More? Okay fine. School is proving to be more of an emotional and mental challenge than I expected. I really anticipated a lot more of an intellectual challenge, but I didn't expect the ways in which it would make me question my capabilities. Part of that probably has to do with a bad professor who creates a ridiculous classroom hierarchy (there's eight of us, and there's one that she always uses as a go-to, thus making the rest of us feel completely inadequate), but I find myself questioning everything from my writing skills to my articulation skills to my social skills. I'm learning when to speak up against this sort of behavior, and when to keep quiet, and recognizing the consequences that calling out the department chair on being racist, classist, and yes, even sexist can have on me as a student and on my funding for next year. So often, I find myself being quiet when I want to stand up, only because this person is in charge of money. And without funding, I can't be here.

On the plus side: I got my work hours cut a bit (almost too much), and now my job is really just a teeny bit of extra pocket change. BUT, I made a friend. And for me, you have to understand, that's sort of a really big deal. I'm actually quite shy and it's really hard for me to make friends. I don't trust easily, and I give very little of my own emotion and my own story at first. But there's a subway right next door, and the woman who works there on Saturday nights, I'll call her Hot Subway Chick, is slowly winning over my trust. For some reason, I'm not all that shy around her (maybe it's because she's so incredibly flirty, that I find myself trying to at least look confident), and I find myself warming up to her more than I usually do to people after this short of a time knowing them. Saturday nights, we both close alone, and we take really good care of each other. We check in about once an hour when it gets dark, and she always takes her smoke breaks out front where I can keep an eye on her. At the end of the night, we take down the trash together, and wait until both cars start (because sometimes, hers doesn't) before we leave.

(FUCK! I just had three more paragraphs, and somehow deleted them).

But it's nice to have a friend who isn't in my cohort, someone who I can talk to about something other than postmodernism or Derrida. I realized that since moving here, I hadn't met anyone. I guess that's why I really crave Hot Subway Chick's company; she's really my only friend out of my program.

Let's see, what else is there? Cowgirl is good...her work schedule changed drastically and we aren't able to talk at all during the day anymore, but we're managing. With my work schedule, it's impossible to see each other, but we're doing our best. It isn't always easy, but as she reminded me last night, this schedule won't be forever. We're starting to think a little more concretely about the future, where we want to live, what we want to do, that sort of thing. One thing is for sure...we both want out of small town Texas.

Oh! My bunny! She's sweet and fluffy and cuddly and growing enormously large. She was the size of a box of cigarettes when I got her...now, she's about eight times that size. We don't get as much snuggle time as we'd like, but she's learning to amuse herself.

I think that's a pretty good update for now. More to come when I'm not so crazy busy!

Oh wait! Before you go! Go check out my new guest blog at Card Carrying Lesbian! It's about Lady Gaga...from a queer, feminist perspective!

Blog Spotlight- Making Space

2011-10-04T14:00:00.000-05:00

Hi folks!
I know, I've been slacking on the Blog Spotlights (hence the fact that it's already Tuesday and I'm just now getting around to putting this up). Who knew that working almost full time and being a full time grad student would be difficult!! No, but seriously, I've been so tremendously busy that I'm having to remind myself to breathe, and remind myself that I have to stop and do something for myself every day. Today, my something for myself is also something for you...I went back and caught up on the past week or so of one of my favorite blogs, and now I'm going to share it with you.

So here it is...Making Space. I love this blog. I want to be Amy when I grow up! This blog is a little bit of everything; music (omg, she's a professional singer!), queer (and a professional lesbian!), parenting (twins!! Ahh!), cooking (no exclamation for this one; you know how I feel about cooking...), and life in general (yoga! Meditation! Self Reflection!!!). This is the most real, down to earth, honest blog I've ever come across. She holds nothing back in the way of emotions, storytelling, and life.

Also, she periodically posts pictures of hot women. Win. I really encourage you all to check out Making Space. It's so poignant, so deep, and yet, so much fun at the same time...I guarantee you'll fall in love as much as I have!

Feminism and anti-capitalism

2011-09-28T21:39:00.000-05:00

Hey folks!
I've got a question for you tonight. Can you be a feminist and not be anti-capitalism?
I say no. Here's why.

Feminism at its core is concerned with equality, right? Second wave feminism was pretty much only about gender equality, but now we have race/class/sexuality/ability/nationality etc as intersections in feminism as well.

Here's what people know about anti-capitalism (at least what Americans are taught): socialism is bad. Communism is worse. However, from a feminist point of view, we can't be so quick to dismiss anti-capitalist economies. We're worried about equality from an intersectional point of view. And clearly, we do not yet have that equality. (White) women are still payed 77 cents to the (white) male dollar. Women of color are undergoing forced sterilizations and experimental "birth control". Queer people can get fired for being queer. I could go on and on for pages about inequality, but I won't.

The thing is, under capitalism, we're all just stuck. Women's caregiving (and it is still women doing the caregiving) is unpaid labor. The whole society is about money, about getting money and about maintaining wealth. But feminism doesn't just concern itself with middle class white women (sorry, Betty Friedan). Under capitalism, women of color and poor white women are screwed out of money.

Under socialism, women could work while their kids got free (!!) childcare by the state. It wouldn't matter that I didn't have insurance; I could go to the hospital and get treated for free. With capitalism, we only matter if we have money. Poor women who can't afford childcare? Society says "too bad", and doesn't recognize that the reason they can't get jobs is because they have to take care of their kids...and they can't take care of kids because they can't get jobs to afford childcare!

Like third wave (and beyond?) feminism, socialist feminism doesn't just concern itself with (white) women's issues. Other axes of oppression, particularly race and class are also given weight, as it recognizes the ways in which capitalism hurts not only women, but poor people, people of color, and those with disabilities as well. We talk so much about how to involve men in feminism. Capitalism divides men and women. Under capitalism, women can never achieve the status (read: financial) of men. Socialism wants to work with men to end not only gender oppression but all of these other forms of oppression as well.

As a bottom-up movement, it starts by recognizing the power and the need for those at the lowest points on the hierarchy. Let's face it; men are oppressed too (now don't take me out of context. The straight, middle class, white man is NOT oppressed). However, a working class man, or a man of color, or a working class man of color, while privileged in gender, is still oppressed under capitalism. If we believe in equality, how are we supposed to say that we only believe in equality for women? That's my biggest problem with radical feminism. Yes, patriarchy is a problem. Yes, women are oppressed because of patriarchy. But this is not the only form of oppression that works in our society. In order to form coalitions, shouldn't we try to join with as many people as possible?

So back to my original point: why I think you can't be a feminist and be pro-capitalist. To put it bluntly, capitalism embodies all of the male values of competition, wealth, and power. Capitalism LOVES power. It's all about "if I can get more than you, I can buy a nicer car, a bigger house, better clothes and prove that I'm better than you because I make more money". Socialism says "well, it doesn't matter if you're a person of color, a queer person, poor, Deaf, or in a wheelchair, you should get the same privileges as everyone else".

Feminism is no longer solely about women. Radical feminism, while it has its merits, still blames everything on men. Socialism blames corporations, blames the rich for the oppression of everyone except the rich (as of course, they're not oppressed). So to be anti-socialist means you're anti-equality-for-everyone. To be anti-socialist means that you think that if I walk into a hospital, I should be denied free treatment, regardless of who I am, if I am uninsured. To be anti-socialist means that it's okay for workers to be exploited, for the poor to continue to do the work for the rich, but to continue getting poorer as the rich get richer.

I know socialism has its issues; what system doesn't? But let's face it: capitalism is on the brink of a meltdown. It backfired. In socialist countries, there is still free healthcare, free childcare, and women make as much as men for equal work. How can we say that we're against that?

What do you think? Can you be a feminist who is in favor of capitalism?

(I'm sorry for the extremely reductive views of socialism for anyone who is used to the theory. I know I missed most of the big points, but there are always more blog posts...this is my coming-out as a socialist feminist on this blog...I don't think you've seen the end of my economic theory yet...)

Activism and Theory-the great divide?

2011-09-23T17:52:00.000-05:00

I'm having a conflict. And I'm trying to resolve it, but I think trying to write about it will help.

One of the reasons I was afraid to come to grad school was because I'm not really sure where I stand with academia right now. It sort of seems pointless. After spending the summer in the real world (and I do so hate that phrase, but by it I mean the non-academic, working class, people actually fighting-to-survive-world where a college degree is a luxury that most will never be able to afford), I've become a bit exasperated with the academic world, and with theory.
I see both sides of it. I know that to do the work I want to do, having the resources to learn as much as I can are extremely valuable, and that the fact that I'm in graduate school and not paying for it is not something I should take lightly. I got funded to come here, therefore I really need to make the most of it. But the thing is, I'm having trouble finding ways to bring that into the world.
I like theory. I study theory because it makes sense to me. I don't like politics or policy studies or anything that can directly change the world. And that's odd, because I'm so activist minded. But I can't help it; theory is where my interests lie, and for better or for worse, it's what I read a lot of. The problem with theory, though, is that it's so far from the rest of the world. Theory is very ivory tower. It's very removed from activism and honestly, from reality.

So how do I reconcile being an activist with being someone who considers reading Foucault fun? I've been turning to theoretical pieces written about this divide in hopes of finding something, but I'm coming up against the wall that is my actual problem: you can't wander through life using theory alone. I don't know how to bridge this gap for myself, without having someone write about it and tell me how!

I emailed a professor from undergrad when I got here. She's an activist who works inside the institution to survive, but does not agree with privatized, capitalist education systems. I asked her these questions but in a more frantic, less coherent way (although I know most of you are telling me this is not coherent at all...). The email looked more like "What am I doing here? How do I find a way to be in a system that I hate while still trying to get something out of it? Where is theory in the real world? How in the hell will I ever use all of this reading to change the world?" Basically, what in the fuck did I get myself into??? Her response to me really made me think. She reminded me of how I wanted to change the world just last year, and asked me where that radical, feisty spirit went. She told me that I was spending too much time looking for answers; in reality, I needed to be looking for questions. And she scolded me about giving up, and then told me to get off my ass and get out in the community and start changing the world, because it's the only way I'd be able to feel like I was doing something.

I needed that. It was a swift kick in the ass, but someone had to do it. I've been trying to find community issues to get involved in, but I feel so apathetic. I've been protesting the death penalty lately, and considering volunteering with an organization that brings theater to women in the prison system as a way to rehabilitate them, instead of just sending them back out into the world. So there's the activism. How do I bring the theory into that? I feel like I've learned a lot, yes. But at the same time, the things I am doing, I don't need to be reading Wendy Brown. So why do I do that? I want to find a way to intricately weave theory and activism into something that works for me, something that will leave me feeling fulfilled. I want to be able to go out into the "real world" and say look, it doesn't matter that I have these degrees, I'm still doing something! I'm still changing the world.

I just haven't figured out how to do that yet. I know some of you will tell me that the job I pick can have something to do with activism, but is it still activism if you do it for money (that's another post, very soon)? I need to learn to define activism, to define theory, and to figure out where they both fit in together, and how to work that into my life.

Is this a common issue? Have you struggled with this in one form or another? How are you resolving it? No one can answer this for me, and I know that. I just am doing "research" on my own now; figuring out what has worked for others, and seeing if I can glean any wisdom from that to bring into my own life.

Big News arrives!

2011-09-20T14:00:00.000-05:00

Hey y'all!
Remember when I told you before that I had big news??? Well, here it is. I'm going to be guest blogging over at Card Carrying Lesbian.
Are you totally stoked about this?? I am! First of all, it'll force me to write more, and second of all, CCL has a huge readership!

On that note, I plan to get back to my regularly scheduled blogging very soon here. I want to get back to the guest blog spotlight every month, and hopefully get some somewhat intellectual discussions going.
I'm going to try to make that a goal, to write at least once a week.

In other news, I'm really getting into the swing of grad school, writing conference proposals that I don't actually intend to submit (that involves talking in front of people!), and reading a LOT! I promise to write later this week!

Long time, no see!

2011-09-07T10:11:00.000-05:00

Hey, y'all...I'm back!
I know, I've been back for several weeks now, but one thing or another (school, life, bunny) kept me away from writing. Where to start, where to start?
I guess I should start with the obvious...school. Um, grad school is a lot of work. Even for me, the ultimate slacker. I'm finding the program to be actually waking me up in ways that I didn't think I would wake up again. It's a slow process, and I'm by no means back to my normal, radical self, but I think I have potential to get there. I need to find things that make me passionate and throw myself into them, and slowly, I think I may start to get excited about what I'm doing again. I've felt so dead creatively this summer. I've had no desire to get out and do activist work, or even for art projects or anything. I just feel like living in the real world took away that radical intellectual spark. And I wasn't sure I wanted it back. I'm still really not sure. But I think I want to try to slowly integrate it back into my life.
As for other things (little white fluffy things), the bunny is doing wonderfully. She's growing to be huge (considering she was the size of my phone when I got her), and she loves my apartment. There's very much running and bouncing that goes on in here (and very much anxiety on my part trying to keep her sharp little claws off my air mattress!) I've learned that having a little creature that depends on you and loves you really does give you something to look forward to each day. Knowing that I'm going to come home from class and open the cage to sweet little bunny cuddles makes me want to do all my work so I have time to play.
I guess this update is like my re-radicalization process; it happens slowly. I'm going to write more soon, I promise, but I needed some way to just get back into this blog. I will have more of my usual posts coming soon, but the intimidation of writing again got the best of me, and I need to get over my apprehension slowly.

In the meantime, stay tuned...I have a very big announcement regarding my writing coming up in the next few days.

Blog Spotlight: Can I help you Sir?

2011-07-03T13:25:00.000-05:00

This post comes to you courtesy of the bunny's new playgrond (aka our bedroom), where Cowgirl is trying to nap, and the bunny is trying her hardest to not let that happen (and periodically I'm making sure the smaller of the two doesn't fall off the bed).

So in between bunny/bed rescues, I bring you a blog spotlight!

This month, I'm featuring Can I help you sir?; one of my favorite butch blogs. G not only writes about her life as being butch (with wonderful commentaries and stories on family and the workplace), but she also does Butch 360 (which, when I have fast internet, I contribute to). Butch 360 gives butches from all different social locations a chance to answer biweekly questions (assuming of course, that biweekly is every two weeks, not twice a week...), and then G compiles our answers.

I highly recommend that you go check this blog out, whether you're butch or not.

(Side note, I just went to check on the bunny, because all had been quiet on that front for a moment, and they're nestled up together fast asleep...the bunny in the crook of Cowgirl's arm. AWW!).

Changing lenses: a post on cultural relativism

2011-06-28T07:53:00.001-05:00

The best thing about being back at my parent's house (even if the circumstance was less than ideal, and the trip was less than planned), was getting a break from the routine that I've fallen into and getting to see my friends. I got to see everyone, which was delightful, but two conversations really stuck out to me. The other night, I went over to Nina's. She's a night owl, so it was already close to my bedtime when I went over, but I'm super glad I did. We ended up having a conversation that really got me thinking about the things I'm struggling with, and trying to locate them within the contexts of the frameworks I already use (and then realizing I might need some new frameworks). The next day, I had lunch with Eva, my yoga teacher. We had a serious conversation as well about perception of the world, and the merits (and challenges) of being on the fringes. I want to put out there in writing what has become my biggest challenge, in hopes that in writing about it (I'm much more articulate as a writer than a speaker, if you can believe that) will help me make peace and figure out a little more where I stand. Bear with me...this may get....convoluted.

As I've written about before, my biggest adjustment to the small-town south is the racism. And it's more of an everyday racism than a malice, which is what confuses me. When I've heard racist comments, racially derogatory words, they're meant in a malicious way. Now, when I hear them, they're used as descriptors of people. I'm not saying that's right, I'm just saying that's it's a different culture, and it's quite strange to me. And makes me very uncomfortable. But at the same time, if I try to say something about it, I get told that "oh, I'm not racist, I was raised by a Black woman, grew up not knowing the difference between me and my Black friends...", you get the picture. And I've come to realize that what I perceive as derogatory racial terms actually are just ways that they describe people.

So here's my dilemma. If I were going to another country, one where the value systems were different and maybe parts of the culture were not what I was used to, you would remind me to practice cultural relativism (not thinking that the way that I know to do things is the only right way...that everyone thinks that about the society that they're in, even if we see it as wrong from our vantage point). So if I was going, let's say to study abroad, you would remind me that the culture is different there and I need to remember to not see the way that things in that country are done as wrong, but that they're different than what I'm from, and therefore, there is no ultimate right or wrong culture.

I've been trying to employ this. I come from a very different place than what I've moved to. I come from a not racially diverse upper/middle class town in the north. I have never had to worry about not having enough to eat, or not being able to pay for medications, or electricity. My hot water has never been shut off because my family couldn't afford to pay the bills. I have moved to a racially diverse (but still pretty segregated...although just as segregated as the north) very small town in the middle of the south. We are working class/poor (and out of Cowgirl's group of friends, we live more comfortably than most). The way I grew up and the place that I grew up has shaped the way that I view the world. I see things through the lens of a middle/upper class, pretending to be accepting of everyone but still segregated northerner. And that lens is different than the lens that they employ. Follow?

So can I use the practice of cultural relativism to get used to the way of life there? Is that the necessary thing to do? What now? I recognize that they see me as weird and backward in my views and in my culture, and that I see them that way too. We have both accepted each other; all of the people there opened their arms to me, and I am trying to take that hospitality and friendship without worrying about the way I'm viewed, and trying not to judge based on my social location. That's hard to do. Is it the right thing? I'm not sure. If I was going to another country, you would tell me that it's necessary. So why is it that everyone gives me shit when I try to do it within the country I have grown up in?

I talked with Nina about this for a while the other night. The idea of racial politics came up. The entire goal of radical politics is to enact change. I had of course, been wondering how to enact change. But the change I wanted to enact was from my perspective, it was ME changing THEM. How, using cultural relativism, is that okay? Why is my way right, and their way wrong? Who says it's not me who needs to be changed? They sure would. This makes me feel like it's not really right to go around trying to change their way of life. But at the same time, that brings up the issue of stagnancy. If no one tries to change it, it will never get changed. How will we progress if you can only work within your culture, within your social location to enact change?

Geez, I agree with Nina...a liberal arts education was both the best and the worst thing I could have done for myself. It changed the way I see the world, but ruined me for the real world!!

Any feedback on working through this issue would be greatly appreciated!

Blog Spotlight: Sassy Skillet!

2011-06-05T19:41:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone! Hope you had an awesome weekend! Cowgirl and I just got back from a weekend trip checking out grad school (holy shit the campus is huge), meeting my roommate (he's really, really nice and knows the city so well), and just sightseeing and getting out of the routine for a day or two. But now...I'm back! And it's time for another blog spotlight!!

This month, I'm spotlighting the only cooking blog I follow (I don't cook. At all): the Sassy Skillet. Jenny is one of my best friends, so when she got this blog started just a few short months ago, I got really excited for when she'd be able to build up enough of an arsenal of posts to satisfy my hungry readers (bad puns, bad puns). Now she's there...so you oughta go check this out.

What I love about Jenny's blog: she's vegetarian-friendly (although not vegetarian), gluten-free friendly, an advocate for locally grown food, and pretty much always healthy. Plus, all of her recipes have stories that go along with them, and she's a really great writer, so the stories are always cute.

So head over to the Sassy Skillet and immerse yourself in food posts until I manage to have time to write again.

Southern Charm

2011-05-30T10:36:00.000-05:00

I'm all settled in here at Cowgirl's place. All of my boxes are unpacked, her room is clean, and when I say that I'm in the routine of daily life, there actually is one. It's kind of nice. Currently, she's outside mowing several acres with a push mower, and I'm finding a little down time to write (hey, there's only one lawnmower, after all!).

It's weird being in the South. There are things I really like about it: we drive to the store and people yield for you at intersections! Everyone smiles and waves. Life is a whole lot easier. Work all week, play all weekend (unless you're us and have yardwork all weekend...). I can get used to that. There's so much less pressure, so much less rush. I can actually SIT! Idle time is allowed! Encouraged!

But...here's the thing. I've never seen so many confederate flags in my life. What the fuck is up with that? The south lost the war. Get the fuck over it. The south will NOT rise again. And don't you dare try to tell me that the civil war wasn't actually about slavery. What was it about? Freedom? Geez. You can tell I've had this conversation a few times.

And....the other thing...I'm used to racism. But I'm used to racism of the institutional sort. I'm not used to racial slurs and things that I consider racist that other people consider normal. Like pointing out a car and saying it must belong to a Mexican. Oh, and by the way, people, not all Latinos are Mexican. But seriously, the racism is grating on me. I've heard the n-word thrown around before, but never really like this. Never used by white people to DESCRIBE a person! Example: we took Jo's car to the mechanic. Jo's son was with us. He's about my age, maybe a year or two younger. The mechanic was a very sweet young Black man. Couldn't have been older than 25, and cute, too! When he was done working on the car, Jo's son said something along the lines (under his breath but loud enough to be heard) of "yeah n*****, let us get out of here." And that's just how people are. I'm not used to that.

I wonder how much of this is small town and how much of this is Southern. Because I go into the city and a lot of it seems different. It seems a lot more open. Maybe not as open as I'm used to, but certainly not as bad as the small town.

Although you know what's surprising? I've heard very little anti-queer. There was a really awkward retelling of a conversation at work by Jo the other day in the car, about how she and a co-worker were discussing how glad they were that their kids were straight, that they could love a gay kid but never accept it, but honestly, I've heard so little of that. And the other night, I was really pleasantly surprised on that front.

We were at the bar for Jo's birthday. I was the DD, so I wasn't drinking, but it was still pretty early in the evening, so only Jo was already drunk. Cowgirl and I were talking to a friend of hers, a really sweet older woman. Cowgirl told her that we were going to be roadtripping this weekend to the city where her friend's sister lives to check out grad school (car trouble, and we ended up not going, but that's a different story). Her friend got really excited and started telling us about how her sister is a playwright, an actor, a singer, and does eco-friendly plays to teach kids about how to save the environment. I decided she sounded really cool. Cowgirl suggested that maybe she and I could meet up. Her friend goes "if you're okay with a straight and sober lesbian, I think you'd probably really get along". Needless to say, I said that was just fine with me.

This woman and I got to talking a little later, and she again mentioned that her sister was queer. I think she seemed a little afraid that I wouldn't accept it. To quell her nerves a little, I told her I was just fine with lesbians; I was one. She goes "I thought so", and proceeded to tell me about all of the queer oganizations she had in her email and in her phone. It was a very affirming experience.

In all, I'm doin' quite alright here. Cowgirl is learning to cook for a vegetarian, I have avoided being eaten by the Rottweiler (currently she's got her head on my lap and is trying to get me to take a hand off the keyboard to pet her), and I've already read about seven books.

I'll tell you right now though, you better stay tuned next weekend; I've got a blog spotlight coming up. I only read one cooking blog, but it's a good one. You'll want to check back in next weekend to see.

Onwards and upwards (where the internet doesn't reach)

2011-05-12T13:44:00.000-05:00

Graduation weekend. Damn. Where the hell did the time go? Currently I'm packing up all my shit so there's a whole lot less to do when Cowgirl gets in tomorrow. It's gettin' done. Actually, pretty well.

Here's the deal though...we're going to her place in middle-of-nowhere Texas on Tuesday. That means my internet connection for the summer will be sporadic at best. When we save up enough to get real internet, we will, but currently we're still working off of dial-up. That means I'll be blogging less, and commenting on all of your blogs less. However, it doesn't mean I love you less!!

Once I get to grad school, my laptop will turn back on (goddess willing) and I'll be back to blogging full force. But until then...you can reach me on facebook, or leave a comment on a blog post...or send me emails! I love emails! mightymsblog@gmail.com

Blog Spotlight-Queer and Clueless

2011-05-07T23:16:00.000-05:00

I love these blog spotlights! I've had several people message me after last month's posting of Rock, Paper...Shut Up and tell me they love them too, so here goes another!

It seems appropriate that as my college career is ending, I should spotlight a babydyke (sorry, Momo) who is just coming into her own in college.
So for this month's blog spotlight, I present you with Queer and Clueless.

Momo and I started commenting on each other's blogs and getting to know each other at about this time last year when she was starting up writing. We hit it off pretty quickly and became fast friends. She doesn't post often enough (maybe now she will!), but when she does, it's always witty, adorable, and well written.

I promise there will be a real post or two this week. But for now, go read Queer and Clueless. You'll like it!

The Intersectionalist Movement?

2011-05-01T15:25:00.001-05:00

I've been thinking a lot in the past few weeks about the connotations of the word "feminist". Feminism is no longer (if it ever was) a movement solely about women. But yet, the language of it makes it seem so woman-centric.
In the past few days, I've had several friends tell me that they don't identify as feminist because they don't think that women are better than men or should get special rights. I agree. I didn't realize that this was such a pervading thought about feminism. Some of my friends for a group project interviewed a bunch of people about their views on feminism, and this seemed to be a dominant thought with them too (especially the men): that feminism was just for and about women.
This is problematic. But what's the alternative? Humanism's been taken.
A friend of mine proposed "intersectionalism", since it encompasses different intersections of identity, other than just being a straight white woman's movement. So does that work? Will it catch? If I call myself an intersectionalist?

I personally don't have a problem with feminism, or with the term feminist, but I also recognize that it's not just about women. My definition of feminism encompasses so much more than just women. So for me, feminism works. But I see where it wouldn't, especially in the mainstream. So many people hold the views that I associate with feminism, but yet, they refuse to associate with the word.
This is a serious dilemma for me, as I'm considering my views, critiquing the language that I use and hear others use, and wanting to know where I stand.

Where do you stand on the word "feminist"? Should we move to make it an "intersectionalist" movement?

On to what's next...

2011-04-23T15:24:00.001-05:00

I've been trying all day to think of something constructive to write, but words were evading me.I started this post about 15 times and deleted it before I went to do some homework. Now, I'm midway through my project on the protest strategies of the suffrage movement, nearly done with my paper on "Paris is Burning", and haven't even thought about starting the one on labor unions in the garment industry. But since I'm feeling creative academically, maybe I can move that over a little bit into this, to write a little.

I'm trying to get all this stuff out of the way because this is my last semester here, and I'm having trouble with the idea of staying cooped up indoors during all of exam week, doing work. I'd rather be out spending time with my friends before we all go and graduate and leave this place.

It's weird to think about what comes next. I mean, I've been thinking about it, dreaming about it for years. But it's weird to think that I have a one way ticket out of here for less than 4 weeks away, and that there's a little house in the middle of a pasture in Texas that's been waiting for me. I mean, I knew I was moving in with Cowgirl. We've talked about it for a long time, and actively made steps towards it in the past year or so. I've been sending her boxes of books. Currently, her bathroom is full of my books, and her extra drawers are filled with my clothes. Her bedroom and her bathroom are unmistakeably "ours".

But it's weird to think of her little house as ours. She says it. Sometimes I do too. But the idea of having a house, of living in the master bedroom, of having a library with my books, and my desk, and a place for me to go to work on my grad school stuff still constantly surprises me. I feel grown up, adult.

She's taking it so well, the idea of not being a bachelor anymore. She's making plans for my arrival: she goes out searching for good pieces of wood to make the shelves for my books, got a vegetarian cookbook, and has started to go to garage sales to see if she can find things that she can surprise me with for grad school. She wants to pick out my dishware (I'd just eat off of clear plastic plates!)!! She's even looking to find me a part time job at the place where she works for the summer!

I'm so lucky. I recognize this. So many people graduate undergrad with no idea where their life is taking them next. I've got a home (and not an apartment where I have to pay rent that I don't have), a family on the premises (her mom and brother), and concrete plans for next year (grad school). I have a girl who loves me and would do anything to make me happy.

But leaving here is bittersweet. I'm ready. Undergraduate studies are getting boring and repetative.I'm searching for creative ways to do everything, to challenge myself creatively if not intellectually. I'm learning the same thing over and over again. I'm ready for a change. I'm ready to pick and topic and start caring about one thing, to read things that interest me, and to write for someone other than myself.

But this year, I've made the friends that I want to keep. It took until this year, really. And now that I've found that, it seems strange to leave it. We're all scattering again. Well, some of them are staying, but a few of us are going, and when we go, we're going to end up all over the US! I'm going to miss the silly things like plopping down on the floor in Regi's room for hours and listening to her play guitar, or going out to tea to have intellectual conversations, or sitting on the grass and knitting.

Cowgirl always tells me that this isn't the real world. I dunno, feels pretty real to me. The real world is whereever I am. Maybe I'm delaying reality even more by just moving on to more schooling, because really, how's a graduate degree going to help me in life, but the fact of the matter is, this is the only reality I know.

So I'm moving on...to whatever is next. I have one week of undergraduate classes left...and then look out real world...unprepared dyke on the loose!

Funny, you don't look gay...

2011-04-13T21:51:00.003-05:00

I had several experiences today that led me to be thinking about privilege. I'm going to try to work through them here...bear with me as I may not be particularly eloquent (and may be controversial/mildly offensive). *Also, I know I am not covering intersections of identity and the way that multiple privileges/oppressions play into experience in a way that I should, but I'm really trying to focus on a single axis tonight because, even though I know these things cannot exist independently of each other, there's one in particular I'm trying to process.*

It didn't start tonight in class, but that was the impetus for my really thinking hard about writing about this. Tonight in class, we were talking about civil disobedience, and I mentioned that I'd gone through CD training a few weeks back. My professor asked me to talk about some of the concepts, so I mentioned things like affinity groups and hassle lines. One of the women, during a discussion of the purpose of hassle lines looks at me and goes "you can do this sort of thing because you're white and attractive. Not all of us can do this." She went on to accuse me of not recognizing my privilege in being able to choose to do CD.

I consider myself someone who recognizes my privilege. I hadn't gotten there yet because she cut me off, but I had planned to talk about how that was something I brought up after the training because it made me uncomfortable...that with the institutions we have to work with here in the US, it's not safe for everyone to do CD. So I agreed with her and I mentioned my discomfort at having that racial privilege. And then I brought up queerness. (Now let me preface this with the statement that this is a seven person class where we have fostered a very safe environment, so I came out about three weeks ago to the class. So they know I'm queer.) I said that even though I had racial privilege, CD is something that excites me but scares me because I am queer, and I understand fully the reaction of law enforcement to queerness (although not from personal experience).

The woman then said "well you don't look gay. So you still have that privilege." This wasn't the first time today that's come up (more on that later). I didn't say anything to that, because, well, what could I say? She then went on to say "I just thought you really liked plaid" (to which even I started laughing). One or two other people chimed in that I passed as straight until I outed myself, saying things like "I just thought you were a little...." (and not finishing the sentence).

So here's my dilemma. Long way around to it, eh? Passing as straight. Today, I was eating lunch with two visibly queer friends. We were talking about places that were not queer friendly around campus, and one of the bars came up. They said that they didn't feel safe in that bar...but that I could probably do okay.

I am extremely uncomfortable with that. I don't like the idea of having privilege that my queer-looking friends can't have. I don't feel like I should have any sort of entitlement because I don't "look gay". I recognize the privilege that I do have, but I feel guilty for it, because I'm just as queer, but I can move around much more safely than they can. Sure, I may get offended at the homophobic remarks or may not like the way other queer-seeming people are treated, but I don't have to worry so much about that being part of my life.

But at the same time, it's kind of nice, knowing I can walk into a homophobic bar and not get beat up because I look like a dyke, when a lot of my friends don't have the luxury of that. I feel guilty for having this privilege, but at the same time, I have internalized so much of it. I have friends who tell me all of these horror stories, whereas I've had someone yell "dyke" out the window of a car and spit at me once. Just once. And I was walking away from the LGBT center right off campus, so I was marked by coming out of that space. But I have friends who live that routinely. I'm sure a lot of you readers live that. I don't know that type of fear. Yeah, I know apprehension and fear in certain situations, but I can walk into a bathroom and people won't kick the shit out of me. They just take it that I'm a girl, and probably a straight one. That's privilege.

And to be honest, I don't know how to reconcile that. I recognize my privilege, but as it was pointed out to me in class tonight, that doesn't change shit. The fact of the matter is I'm white, I look straight, and I feel like I'm in very little physical danger most of the time because of that. Do others of you feel like this? If so, what do you do about it?

Basically I want to know your views on your privilege, guilt, and the way you move around in the world.

Oh, and shameless plug...please don't forget to go to Show me your Feminism and submit. I have to present it soon and desperatly need more submissions.

Behold! The Activist Project!

2011-04-08T14:44:00.000-05:00

Remember a few weeks ago, I told you I had a project in the works? Well, the time has come...it's going live!!

Show me your Feminism

Here's what I need from you. Go click on the link. Submit something (come on, please, it's for a class!). Share the link widely and with everyone you know. Plaster it on your facebook wall. And the walls of your friends and feminist groups! Then, tell them to do the same. And tell them that I love them.

I really need people to submit to this! Get it out there for me, submit to it. Y'all are my network. I beg of thee.

Shoutout to everyone who helped me get this set up, since my grasp on techology is weak at best, as well as to all of you wonderful people who helped me process my ideas. A special thank you to Nic for the tumblr tutorials, and Miss Ash for helping me with taglines.

Also, any suggestions? Comments? Post them in the comments here!

Thank you all so much.

Blog Spotlight: Rock, Paper...Shut up!

2011-04-01T15:42:00.000-05:00

Welcome back to the third monthly blog spotlight! Last month, I spotlighted Perilously Precocious. Since then, Miss Ash Tuesday has done her hair up in dreadlocks and written more fiction (and some awesome creative nonfiction). If you haven't been back, do so.

But the main event....this month, a new blog...Rock, Paper...Shut up: Bipolar. Lesbian. Mom. In no particular order.

Now, when I say a new blog, I'm not kidding. Natalie just got this blog off the ground a few months ago (and already has the same number of followers as me...) and I'm glad she did! I'd been following Natalie's comments over at Card Carrying Lesbian for a while now; she's articulate, brilliant, and best of all, I agree with her about 99% of the time!

So when she emailed me that she'd started Rock, Paper...Shut up, I was super excited. Natalie is extremely articulate in writing about queerness, motherhood, and her views on being bipolar. You really need to go click on the link. Now. She's candidly honest, open about her struggles and her life, funny, engaging, and a really talented writer.
So go on, git! Enjoy!

Blog Spotlight: Rock, Paper...Shut Up

2011-04-01T15:39:00.000-05:00

Welcome back to the third monthly blog spotlight! Last month, I spotlighted Perilously Precocious. Since then, Miss Ash Tuesday has done her hair up in dreadlocks and written more fiction (and some awesome creative nonfiction). If you haven't been back, do so.

But the main event....this month, a new blog...Rock, Paper...Shut Up: Bipolar. Lesbian. Mom. In no particular order.

Now, when I say a new blog, I'm not kidding. Natalie just got this blog off the ground a few months ago (and already has the same number of followers as me...) and I'm glad she did! I'd been following Natalie's comments over at Card Carrying Lesbian for a while now; she's articulate, brilliant, and best of all, I agree with her about 99% of the time!

So when she emailed me that she'd started Rock, Paper...Shut up, I was super excited. Natalie is extremely articulate in writing about queerness, motherhood, and her views on being bipolar. You really need to go click on the link. Now. She's candidly honest, open about her struggles and her life, funny, engaging, and a really talented writer.

So go on, git! Enjoy!

On Making Herstory

2011-03-23T21:23:00.000-05:00

Tonight I came from a really interesting class where we were talking about the suffrage movement and what we learned about women's suffrage prior to college, and particularly, prior to this class. It really got me thinking about the herstory that's left out...why all we learn is history, and what the point of creating our knowlege in K-12 schools actually aims to achieve.

You know me, when I try to reinvent a thought process, I often lose a great deal of the articulateness (see, I'm already making up words) that I had when I spoke originally, so I'm going to try to piece this together, but bear with me.

One of the people in our class brought up the episodic nature of the way history is taught: we learn about the Civil War, and then WWI, WWII, the Civil Rights Movement, in that order, but it's all in chunks, no lead-ins to anything. We don't learn the post-WWII conditions that lead to the Civil Rights movement, rather, they're separate entities with no connections, no links. This got me thinking about process. We get a before and after shot, but we don't know anything that happened in between, this girl brought up.

So what is it about the process, about the lead-ins, about all of the contexual situations that make them omitted from the history we learn in schools? Honestly, I think it's that our society finds process dangerous. Knowing how history (but especially how herstory) is done lets us have the power to do it again. And in a culture where so much is suppressed and forced back, especially around the topic that inspired our talk, women's rights, the danger in allowing everyone to see process is clear. If we knew that women's suffrage was more than Susan B. Anthony asking for a vote, then voting, and then women could vote, if we knew the process, we could re-create it asking for more rights.

We know injustice, we crave change. But without knowing the processes of the history/herstory that came before us, how are we to know how to make change? And this, my friends, is why we learn a certain version of history (or at least, it's my theory). If society is able to keep us from knowing how change was made, there's less chance of us demanding more rights, of working for more rights.

Do you see my logic here? When we thought Susan B. Anthony was the suffrage movement, putting on pants and going and voting, and then POOF, women could vote, that doesn't tell us the story. That doesn't tell us of the years and years of lobbying, not only by Anthony, but by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage at the beginning, joined with hundreds and thousands of others and over 70 years. Hell, Susan B. Anthony fought her whole life and didn't ever get to see the suffrage amendment passed. There's a process in there. If you think that asking for our rights is just "ask and you shall recieve...and quickly", you give up the fight so easily. And that's what the system wants. For us to give in, to decide it's too frustrating because it's taking years and years of constant fight...

Matilda Joslyn Gage knew about making herstory. Not for her generation. No, she didn't think she was doing this and would get a result immediatly. She did this for future generations. And I think that's the mentality we need to take when we do our activist work. Things aren't always going to get accomplished tomorrow. Especially not the big things. They take work. Years. Process. But here, in this process, there's a vision of what can become. There's something to learn.

Our history cuts out the process because it doesn't want us to become. But we are becoming. We just can't lose hope. The fight is continuing. The fight is ongoing. And there is process. There is more than just ask for your rights and immediatly have them. We are fighting for the next generations.

Musings on small-town gay, and an activist project in the works

2011-03-21T21:13:00.000-05:00

Hey y'all,
So after much airline drama, I got back to the frigid North last night (err, this morning, if we wanna be technical). Spending the past week in a small town in the South where it was perpetually warm and sunny and the grass was *gasp* green, it's been quite a shitty experience in the day I've been back. I forgot you have to wear socks with your shoes, and that if you leave the house without layers, you'll get cold. How quickly we forget....

It was interesting, while I was there, to quietly note the way gay stuff was handled in this itty bitty town. I was staying with my lady, whom I've finally decided to blog name Cowgirl (although she is in fact, not a cowgirl, and if you call her one, she gets all defensive and says she's just a country girl and looks bad in hats anyway) in a town of 3,000 people. I was at my sharpest, eyes and ears, looking and listening for all signs of out gay life. Shocker, I found none.

But...one night we went up to the bar, and Cowgirl had told me about a woman who had just started showing up there in the past few months that she was pretty sure was gay. Now it's funny, because it's just in the past few months that she's taken to noticing these things, let alone verbalizing them. This night, I think it was Friday, it was pretty dead in there. I was intrigued by the sexy tattoo artist who sat at a slot machine and didn't utter a word to anyone the entire time she was there. You know how some people just...grip your attention? She was one of them. Not only was she all tatted up, she had this air of...something. It took me a while of quietly watching her while Cowgirl shot pool to figure out what it was. I'm pretty sure she was a dyke.

But anyway, this woman that Cowgirl was telling me about showed up while I was busy observing tat girl. As she sat down at the bar to talk to the bartender, Cowgirl nudged me. She was in a red and white horizontal striped shirt, short white hair, and to be honest, I wasn't quite sure...she didn't look like the type of gay I'm used to...but then again, all the straight women there look at least a little gay...it's the country girl thing. And then I walked by her on the way to the bathroom. She gave me the once over, and then the dyke nod! I felt like I was in the 50's in the bar scene, trying to figure out who was safe. I nodded back, and she smiled a tiny smile. When I came back from the bathroom, our eyes met and she gave me this look of "I got it" as I walked over to where Cowgirl was standing.

It was a pretty cool experience, that sort of quiet acknowlegement. And in that setting, I know she won't tell a soul about us. Don't get me wrong, I don't care if people know my sexuality, but I don't want to put Cowgirl on the line like that.

The only other time I encountered queerness was a girl who works with Cowgirl. She's just a few months older than me, and obvious. Rainbow stars tattooed on her arm and all. Not a soul would mistake this girl for straight. I don't think she realized my queerness, but that's just as well...no need to get people at work's suspicions up...but it was interesting to see the way such an obviously queer woman moved around in that space. Granted, now we were out of the small town and into a real city, but still. The girls who worked there, all three about my age, were under this dyke's full protection (although she not so secretly wanted to get in their pants). One of the guys hit on May, and Laurie, as I'll call her, swept in, told him to not fuck with May unless he wanted to take it outside and deal with her (and she's an intimidating looking gal). May looked intensely grateful, with this air of "wow, didn't know that about lesbians" sort of way.

So those are my only encounters with queerness my trip. It was lovely, though, to be in the presence of my lady, and to just...be on break. I know those encounters are mildly disappointing, but hey, gave me something to write about.

But now, part two, very quickly. I am doing an activist project for one of my classes, and I wanted to do some sort of community based forum. So I'm going to be creating a tumblr page (if I can figure out how to work the fucker) that will be calling for submissions for a topic that I will be posting here later this week. Now, I'm going to ask you, my lovely readers, for a favor. When I write this topic, y'all can submit me a short answer to it. It can be in any form: poetry, prose, drawing, comic, photography, whatever. And then I'll need you to share it far and wide with everyone you know.

Just letting you know that's coming up shortly.

And...I'm back in the game!

2011-03-09T22:29:00.001-06:00

What game, you ask? Radical street activism!!
Today, I went to a protest against right-wing activists who are pro-defunding Planned Parenthood. It was a great experience. There were over 100 people there for an impromptu protest (we just found out about the people spreading lies about Planned Parenthood two days ago) wearing pink and holding signs.

I learned a lot about protest strategies. We got more space than they did because we were better at filing for permits. We were able to surround them. We stood on the corners, silently, taking up a lot of space. That was a shitload of pink. Pink overload. And we didn't engage. That was hard...my friend Jack (because she loves Judith Halberstam) was called out by a guy with a sign that had a picture of aborted fetuses and told homosexuality was a sin. Jack's an obvious lesbian. She was excited to be recognized, but restrained her urge to debate (just jumped up and down and thanked him).

But we didn't engage. We stood there the whole time the outdoor conference was going on, silently surrounding the people speaking lies about Planned Parenthood. And we were very effective. We were seething, but my group stood far enough way that we couldn't hear them speak...which was fortunate because it would have just flat out made us mad.

So that was the best of both worlds: we got to support Planned Parenthood, but we also didn't have to listen to the rally spew their shit.

This got me back into radical action. I forgot how good it feels to stand holding a sign for a cause you believe in. I didn't have to write my number on my arm this time...I didn't think I had to worry about getting arrested...we had a permit. But even though it wasn't like, civil disobedience, it was radical action.

And our society is moving more towards that. I like that. We need to radicalize, to mobilize, to move towards more kick-ass street activism. If you see a cause, support it! More than just on facebook. I know I'll be doing a lot more of that. It felt good, invigorating, powerful. I felt like I could move the world. I let the energy of the protesters flow into me, I let myself be open to radical change. And it felt great.

Sorry this is short, scattered, and unedited. Our power is out and my computer is about to die. I wanted to get this written out at least a little before I went to bed.

Blog Spotlight-Perilously Precocious

2011-03-05T12:06:00.000-06:00

Hey y'all, it's that time of the month again (no, not that time of the month)...time for my monthly spotlight of some of the awesome stuff I read that you should be reading too.

Remember last month when I spotlighted Terms of Enqueerment? Cool Ireland pics and a great sense of humor?

Well, get ready, because I've got another fabulous blog for you today. May I have a drumroll please? ...Please? ....Thank you.

Today's blog spotlight is...Perilously Precocious!

Now, this blog's writer, Miss Ash Tuesday is possibly one of the most badass women I've met through the blogosphere. She's a poet, a lit critic, a tea reviewer (!!), and writes some pretty awesome fiction. We've connected through Pablo Neruda poetry and have become friends...I think she's worth keepin' around!

Her blog is fun but deep, inspirational, and quirky (like Miss Ash herself), and ~~some~~ most of her poetry and posts are powerful enough to move me to tears.

If you fall as much in love with Miss Ash's writing as I do, you can find her fan page on facebook if you search "Miss Ash of PerilouslyPrecocious.com". She posts updates of her posts, which is often quite useful because they don't pop up in my google reader (but I check back daily anyway).

Now, before you go mad with excitement, there's one other component of her blog that I have to share with you. I know I've got some (fellow) crazy bookaholics who read me...so prepare yourself. Miss Ash does a book review blog as part of her blog. It's crazy-well organized and easy to find your way around.

Enjoy!! (Oh and Miss Ash? Now that I'm spotlighting you, you oughta write the next part to Mostly Fiction...I won't be the only one dying to read it!)

Radical Masculinity and a Third-Wave fuck-up

2011-03-01T23:20:00.000-06:00

Hey y'all! I changed a setting or two and I finally have a link button! Yeaaaa!! (Just don't ask me what I did because I've got no fucking clue.) But it's about time...now I can link you to some of the shit that I've been talking about. Especially with another blog spotlight coming up on Friday....and trust me, you'll want the link for this one...

But anyway. News. Saturday, I went to a workshop with the one and only Mr. Sinclair Sexsmith of Sugarbutch Chronicles (totally NSFW, y'all). First of all....omg. Not sure whether it was the radical gender, or the dashing good looks, but Mr. Sexsmith won my heart...instantly. And shy little me waited until everyone else had left and went up and introduced myself! RadDyke:1, social anxiety: 0.

Anyway, it's midnight and there's not a whole lot I can say about this workshop other than it was awesome. It was on "Radical and Responsible Masculinities", and while I didn't learn a whole lot (hell, I read this shit for fun), I had a fucking blast. Totally geeked out and awesome. I'd do it all again in a heartbeat. My favorite part of the afternoon: one of Sinclair's theories: "gender hurts us all". Best quote, "in sort of an, 'ouch, you stepped on my gender' sort of way". I'm head over heels, y'all. Ouch, you stepped on my gender?Brilliant. Get your fucking feet off my gender, people!

Now, you can tell I have a little bit of anger tonight. So here's the deal. Tonight, I went to a panel with two editors from Feministing.com (damn, these links are fun!). Let's just say it wasn't as cool as Sinclair's workshop. In fact (and this will bite me in the ass, I'm sure), I left early. Yeah, I said it. I left early. After an hour and a half of Feminism 101, polite and respectful me politely and respectfully picked up my bag and left. I just couldn't take it!

Now, internet activism is another (ironic) topic for another time (erm...and place?). But let me say this: slacktivism is not the same thing as activism. Slacktivism is signing internet petitions and changing your facebook status to a picture of a puppy to raise awareness for animal abuse. What the fuck is a picture of a puppy gonna do to change the way animals are treated?? Activism is getting out and doing something. Something my generation has (embarassingly) forgotten that we need to be doing more of.

I am not an activist because of blogging. I am an activist because of other things that I do (not as much of an activist as I would like to be), but not because I sit in front of my computer about once a week and write out some feminist rants. Dear internet bloggers: I love you. But you are not the face of third wave feminism. At least you shouldn't be. And no, people of lesser-known blogs, this is not directed at you. This is directed at the big ones, the ones that everyone reads (but no one admits to reading).

(This post is going to get me in so much trouble. I should shut up now. But I'm angry, so I won't).

I hate when one person is given the job of being the "face" of third wave feminism. Guess what: you're not. Just because you write for a "mainstream" blog or a "mainstream" feminist publication (Ms. Magazine, anyone?) and your name is the one out there doesn't mean that you should be credited with a movement. Now, granted, these people aren't the ones crediting themselves. Other people credit them. Just as other people credited Betty Friedan with second wave (um, okay, she sorta credited herself....). But the fact of the matter is, if you're going to be the face of a movement, get off your asses and out from behind your computers. Stop writing articles about how we should protest and lead the fucking revolution. Because you know what? If you don't, I will.

Location, location, location

2011-02-23T21:53:00.003-06:00

I've been thinking tonight about locating the self, and how it could be vital in understanding where we all come from in our opinions. I doubt I'll be long or coherent tonight; I'm tired...was on campus for 12 hours straight today, and I'm ready to just curl up and go to sleep, but this came up in my night class tonight, and I think it's worth weighing in on.

How important is it to locate yourself when you make a point? Does that change if you're in a feminist classroom? Here's my take...

I think it's important to know where people come from. If you're speaking out about union rights (Yay, Wisconsin!!), your background helps us understand why you think about things the way you do. Are you from a profession with no opportunities for unionizing? Are you a member of a union? Could you be but decided not to for political reasons? Do you have no need for one? These types of things help us to see your point of view.

If we're talking about homophobia within a specific location, are you a member of that location (e.g. a school, a city, etc)? Are you queer? Where are you hearing your information, from the two gay friends you have, or from being immersed in queer culture?

Does your race, class, sexuality, gender, gender expression, ability, religion, education level, etc play into the way you view the world? I think it does. And I think that to adequately understand your view, some of these things need to be brought up.

I know I'm not articulate tonight. I'm talking in circles and I'm just not making a whole lot of sense.

But here's the thing: tonight in class, we were talking about how we related to the readings. And everyone (all six of us) went around and located ourselves. Most of the people (read: everyone but me) are new to women's studies. They didn't know they were locating themselves. It wasn't intentional. But they all did it. So then it came to my turn. And I don't know what happened. I think the class knows I'm queer...I don't really hide it, but I haven't outed myself in that class. But I froze up. I talked vaguely about rights and about privileges and oppressions....NEVER ONCE LOCATING MYSELF!

And now I feel like shit about it. I wonder if the rest of the class can understand where I'm coming from because they don't know anything about me. I don't know why I didn't locate, but I didn't. And it's bothering me.

So for you, so you know who you're dealing with:

I'm white, early 20s, was raised middle class (with aspirations of upper class...one of those suburban societies that wants to out-rich everyone) but am currently working class, I'm a college student, queer (but I'm okay with dyke...gay if you must...), a butch woman, spiritual but atheist, raised Jewish, born in the United States, able-bodied, and more. But that's the basics.

Now you know who you're dealing with. You know where I'm writing from. And to understand me as a writer, as an intellectual, you have to know that about me. You have to know my background.

Or so I think. What do you think? Is locating yourself necessary to fostering understanding?

Update, news, and a political project

2011-02-15T22:03:00.003-06:00

Sorry I've been quiet on here lately. This'll just be a quick update. Edit: actually, this turned out to be a not-so-quick update. And an actual blog post.

I've been stressed lately, stressed and tired. I've had a lot of work to do (much of the reading has not and will not get done), and I haven't been eating or sleeping well at all. There's a lot going on in my head right now that I won't translate out here. But enough of the personal woe-is-me shit.

Tonight I found out I got into graduate school. Early acceptance. With a preemptive fellowship. Aka they really want me. I'm feeling slightly inadequate...keep expecting them to call me back and say 'whoops, we had the wrong person...you actually didn't get in". It's hard for me to believe this is real.

I built myself up to being okay with not getting in, because I didn't really think I was going to. I'm one of those people who prefers to prepare for the worst and get a little pleasant surprise than prepare for something decent, get my hopes up, get crushed, and be miserable for a while.

So then I got in and tonight has felt like a dream. Not the type of dreams I've been having lately where I wake up screaming at 3 am...no....the type of dream that feels quiet...surreal. I've missed having this feeling in my life. Like after a good yoga workout...when your head feels all fuzzy but clear and you feel invigorated and full and just...like you want...to....sleep all at once.

I'm ambivalent about grad school. I rationalized it when I thought I was going to be harshly rejected by telling myself all the crap about the institution, about the systems of power, about who creates the knowledge. And that I'd be creating that knowlege. And I was uncomfortable with that. So uncomfortable in fact, that when I got the call, the first person I emailed was a professor of mine, a poet and activist whom I greatly respect and I emailed her all freaking out and "how do I do this without being one of those people who perpetuates the system that they hate?"

And then I did what I always do when I'm conflicted on where I stand about something. I hopped on gchat and messaged my friend Nina, a radical-as-hell, spacy, adorable, and absolutelyfuckingbrilliant person. She's been a close friend of mine since sophomore year of high school, and seeing our political journeys evolve on similar routes leaves me feeling less isolated in my mind. I digress. I messaged Nina and asked her what she thought about being a part of the system that you disagree with. And her answer really worked for me. She told me that if I didn't get into the system to see how it worked, I wouldn't know what needed to be changed, or how to go about changing it. Profound. I was only looking at it from one side. Again. (Gracias, Nina. Te quiero.)

So now grad school will be a part of my political journey. I have to see what's in the system...what's fucked up, what makes me mad...and then I have to find ways to change it. I can't say how yet, because I'm not there. I don't know.

That's what's going on in my life. Sorry to the few of you who are friends from real life who read this and have had to find out little details like this. I haven't had the strength to talk lately, to be social. But I feel it changing. I feel a shift. Tonight, especially, with an email from Eva, I found myself in that state of calm...the calm before the storm, I know. But it's been a while since I've had the calm. So I'll take it. The storm doesn't last forever...there will be calm again. But for now, I'm savoring it.

All my love, dear readers,
RadDyke

Is there a word for this??

2011-02-08T20:09:00.005-06:00

I have a dilemma. A serious dilemma. Y'all, I've found a need for a word that doesn't exist. Help me find one that fits? Or make one?

Those of you who know me academically know that I'm really into coalition building, and figuring out how to do so. But honestly, lately, I've been wondering about the possibility of finding a space that works for everyone. Can you do it? How?

So the other day in my feminist action class, we were split up into groups, choosing an idea that best fit our activist interests. I'm in a group with two awesome girls, I'll call them Cynthia and Rosy (I'm not sure where Cynthia came from, only that I see it as a fun name and she's really high energy and fun, and Rosy because her cheeks are always bright pink in an adorable, lively way). Our topic of interest: building trust across difference. Both of them decided that they wanted to do something involving how to get people together into a feminist space, people of all different social locations. Knowing me, of course I was fine with that idea.

We jumped right in, listing our social locations. It was a really interesting experience, seeing how both of them chose words that worked for their social location, and even among a similar location, how the language could be so different. We wanted to find commonality across our own selves first before we tried to figure out how to do so across "feminism" as a whole.

So then, the hard part. We tried to put our mission statement into words. And we realized that the words weren't working with us. Hear me out, here. So here we are, trying to figure out how to motivate our classroom: racially, sexuality, gender(edly), (need I go on?) diverse to form one big happy feminist coalition. And we realized that what was important was....drumroll please....

KNOWLEGE.

So. We moved to the idea of knowing. Knowing each other's privileges and oppressions and the ways in which the system works to enforce that. Not enough. You can't build a coalition on knowing. So...scrap that. So what's important to building that...

UNDERSTANDING.

Yeah, bull. I will never know what Cynthia and Rosy face being Latina. They don't know what I face being queer. I don't know what Alden faces being genderqueer. You get the picture. So how are we supposed to understand if we can't put ourselves in those locations? Yes, we can do consciousness-raising. We can tell each other all about our experiences and what it is like to live in the world as us. But we can never actually understand. Only empathize.

So....does that means....we've got empathy as our cornerstone to coalition building? No.

So what is it? Engaged, active participation of acknowleging each other's idenitities and social locations? Sounds decent...but....it's not there yet.

But by now, y'all probably understand what I'm trying to say. And so I'm putting out a plea.

What do you think is the best way to build coalitions? Is there a word for this concept that I'm trying to grasp? HELP ME! Comments section. Now. Go. (Oh...and thanks!)

New! Blog Spotlight-Terms of Enqueerment!

2011-02-04T11:21:00.005-06:00

Hey y'all. So I wanted to find a way to show you all of the cool, awesome blogs that are out there that I'm totally obsessed with. So, once a month, I'm going to give you a little write-up of one of my favorites. (I'm going to try to link, but using Vista, I can't do the cool text link things that most of you can).

So, to start you off....drumroll please....Terms of Enqueerment! http://termsofenqueerment.wordpress.com/

Madeline is one of my closest friends (and a fabulous blogger). Currently she's doing a semester in Ireland, so she's got a sort of photojournal of a lesbian let loose in Ireland going on (and yes, alliteration intentional). She's extremely literaryily inclined and will often mention books (for all of you bibliophiles out there). She's also quite a good photographer, and posts all sorts of fun Ireland pictures (and she's cute...I know that just got several more people to click).

So...if you like my blog, or if you trust my judgement that you'll like hers, you should run, not walk (what's the equivilent of that in blog terms?) over to Terms of Enqueerment and immerse yourself in pretty Ireland photos and wit.

Butchness (to me)

2011-01-29T22:17:00.003-06:00

Tonight I was talking to a friend of mine from a previous life...after much deliberation, I think I'll leave her unnamed. I can't find a name that fits her.
Said friend is old school butch. She's not significantly older than me (in her 30s), and we've always had a lot in common. She was sort of my role model when I was coming out...I hold the place of quasi little sister to her.
Anyway, tonight we were talking about what it means to be butch. And to be honest, we quite disagreed. Here's my list of what butchness is FOR ME (and then I'll explain myself to you). This is by no means an exhaustive list, just the first and few most important things I can think of.

Dress: Pants. Sensible shoes. Button-downs. No skirts, dresses, or heels.
Attitude: Confidence. That's the most important thing. Quiet respect.
Walk: Big steps. Brisk. Hands usually in pockets. Head high. Don't-fuck-with-me.
Mannerisms: Sitting with your legs apart, feet on the floor. Or sitting with one ankle across the other leg. No cross-ankle daintiness.
Chivalry: Holding the door open. Helping your lady into (or out of) her coat. Paying for the meal (or offering, if she's as stubborn as my lady). Being polite and genuine.
Love: Being tough but not afraid to show your emotions to people you care about. Wanting to cuddle. Saying "I love you" and meaning it. Wanting someone to say it back to you.

Now that's just me. That's a real basic list. But here's the thing...I fit all of those categories. But yet, you see me and you think I'm femme. You invalidate my identity by calling me femme. You tell me I can't be butch.

But these are my definitions. This is how I define butch. Therefore, I fit into these categories. Why wouldn't I be butch? I like self-definition because it makes me feel valid in my identity. However, if you don't recognize those identities as valid, it's pretty hard to be confident in myself.

I was raised to be dainty. I've had to unlearn for the past few years the first 18 years of girl training. I've been raised to sit with my ankles crossed, straight up, and fold my hands in my lap. Keep my voice quiet. Be polite. Always defer to men. Clear the table at dinner parties. Stay in the kitchen with the other women.

I was very good at being feminine. Too good. I convinced a whole lotta people. Unlearning it is proving to be a challenge. Reminding myself that no one is going to yell at me if my ankles aren't crossed or if I don't lower my eyes when a man looks at me is the first step. Not an easy task.

So to me, butch can integrate some of those things. What my friend tonight called the "femme" part of her butchness, the wanting to cuddle and wanting someone to say they loved her, a part that she seemed almost...ashamed of because it was feminine, I embrace it. I don't defer to men. But I prefer to stay quiet in social situations, only speaking if I find something of worth to say. I don't like or need to assert myself.

My identity also complicates things with a manifestation of the physical. I've written before about my hair. It's long. Nearly to my chest. I'm making peace with it. I like it. It's pretty. It's not tough or masculine. But it's pretty. My body is small and feminine. I am built like a girl. They don't make bras small enough for me, let alone binders. By being a long haired butch who often doesn't wear a bra, my identity is taken less seriously.

But I think I define myself well. This label is starting to fit me better and better. I can outline what it is about butches I find sexy, what it is that makes me want to be one....and realize I am starting to fit most of those categories. So maybe I'm doing something right.

I'm letting myself be butch in the ways that work for me. What works for you? Add/subtract/move shit around on my list. What are the most important parts of a butch identity? Or a femme identity? Or just of you?

On being with someone who doesn't identify

2011-01-27T18:06:00.005-06:00

My girlfriend is not gay. Understandable. She's bisexual, you ask me? No. She's not. Oh...so she's queer. No, she's not queer, either. I watch you (collective you, y'all) try to wrap your head around this. How can that be, you ask me? What is she? Well...she's just...herself.

Being with someone who doesn't label a sexuality is sometimes a bit difficult. Sometimes it feels liberating. Sometimes, my labels confine me.

I want to try to deconstruct it, today. I'm realizing how much I'm missing the academic aspect to my writing. I want to slowly ease myself back into my tagline of "somewhat intellectual". I worry I've been getting too personal. But I've been told that the personalness is strong. So I'm going to try to integrate a bit more of the acadmic into the personal. We'll see how it goes.

So...loving someone who doesn't identify. It's an interesting dilemma to find yourself in. I'm into the ideas of identities: what makes us claim the labels we choose for ourselves, what makes us reject certain words, certain concepts. That being said, I'm not gay. I'm a lesbian, sure. A dyke, sure. Queer, sure (although since queer is the rejection of identity, claiming it as an identity is problematic in and of itself). I like to say that I'm a queer dyke, a queer lesbian. It queers the idea of lesbian (or dyke) to encompass a greater fluidity of sexuality. That being said, a label is a part of my identity.

So my lady not identifying brings about an interesting concept of what I am. Can I be a lesbian if I'm in a relationship with someone who isn't? I think yes, but many people would contest that. It makes for a tricky navigation in that sense, because identities tend to be relational, and without having that counter-relation, I have nothing to base my identity, my selfhood off of. Sometimes, that's fine. Sometimes, it confuses and surprises me, just as much as it does others.

Often, I look at her unlabelled existance and am jealous of the way that she is so able to navigate the world without needing labels. There's no part of her that says "well, I'm dating a woman, so could I be gay?" or a part that says "but I've had relationships with men, so could I be bi?" or a "well, I can't let go of the word "straight". You ask her how she identifies, and her answer is simple: "I don't". It doesn't bother her. She can easily get through life without needing to be a part of a certain community. Often I wish I could do that. I tried to go unlabelled. It didn't work. I got all anxious because I didn't know who I was if there was no word for what I was.

The idea of identifying yourself based on language is a tricky concept. Sometimes, the labels feel too small. There's a certain idea of "lesbian", a certain view you get of "dyke". I am not those views. I wonder if maybe she has it right: when the labels confine you, make you uncomfortable, well....fuck 'em. Leave them behind until they work. Fitting into these feels like a way to avoid figuring out who you really are sometimes. I like the idea of leaving them behind when they get confining.

So...one more little point of labelling while I'm talking about it. You ask me RadDyke, if you identify as butch, does that mean she's femme? No. So...she's butch too? No. Rejecting the labels again, here. Get it? Got it? Good.

How do you feel about labels? Love 'em? Hate 'em? Know anyone who can sucessfully live without 'em? Do tell, do tell.

(Why don't ya) come out?

2011-01-23T18:58:00.005-06:00

I've been thinking a lot in the past week or so about coming out. Not just about me doing it, but about coming out in general.

It's such a Westernized concept, coming out is. People from non-Western countries don't place the same emphasis on it. Personally, I like that view. If you know me, you know I'm queer. Not something I ever have to say, you just...know.

I tend to subscribe to that There's no big sit down and "there's something I've got to tell you...I'm gay" conversation with me. I let you know by slipping my partner into conversation, or by referencing something queer, or I just flat out let you assume.

I'm not at all closeted. In fact, I'm quite "out". I wear my pride quietly, but it's there. There's very little about me that chooses to hide my queerness.

But...we (as queer people) feel the need to tell our coming out stories to anyone who will listen. What's up with that? Ten minutes into meeting a gay, I inevitably hear "when I was 15..." or something along those lines. Why do we feel the need to assert our outness to everyone?

I understand that for some, you need to have that sit down conversation. That's fine. I'm not that person but I respect your decision to be. BUT, that doesn't mean everyone wants to be regaled by it upon meeting you. I know I don't. If we get to be friends and you want to explain to me what your life story was like, that's fine. I'm okay with that. But I don't know about you, but the coming out stories of perfect strangers bother me.

That and when you ask me "how long have you been out?" Goes back to the personal information thing. If I don't know you well enough to tell you my life story, why would I tell you when I knew I was gay? I'm not gonna tell you how old I was when I first started getting my period, or when I got my first kiss.

It confuses me. I feel like I should want to come out and tell the story, seeing how anti-assimilation I am. Coming out is not a normalizer. But yet, the mainstream (Western) queer culture (that is so focused on coming out) is so focused on normalizing! Counter-intuitive, eh? I don't want to be just like my straight friends. I like that little bit of queer that makes me...well...queer. But at the same time, I don't wanna tell you how old I was when I knew, or explain to you about that sit down conversation I (haven't yet) had.

Is this just me? I know it's a hot button issue, so I welcome your dialogue with me or with each other about this. I'll probably be writing more about issues around coming out in the next few months, just because it's currently at the forefront of my mind.

Everyday Activism

2011-01-15T15:26:00.003-06:00

This wasn't what I was going to write about today. I was going to write about ethnocentrism and why it's bad in classroom settings. I'll save that one. Right now, I need to hop up on my soapbox, if you please.

Okay, now that I'm up here....I want to write today about discourse. About how the discourse of today's societies are both based in and contribute to our views about the world. About how the discourses of heteronormativity have worked their way into queer life, making us oppress ourselves in ways that are just as harmful as when heteros do it to us. About violent discourse. And about action.

You're telling me cut the academic crap? Get to the point already? Okay. The point: gay meaning stupid (and similar statements). What the fuck, y'all?? Are we in high school? I think not. Let's have a basic vocabulary lesson here.

Gay: either quite happy, or queer.
Stupid: stupid.

Do you see the word stupid in definition of gay? No, neither do I. So why the hell are we using it that way? And by "we", I don't mean high school boys. I mean grown up gays. I mean those of us who are oppressed when other people equate those two words!

Straight people using "that's so gay" or other negative connotations of "gay" get reprimanded by gay folks (and allies!). But queers using it? That doesn't seem....logical to me. How about contributing to your own oppression! You can't get mad when straight people do it if you do it too!

So...where does everyday activism come in? Being an activist doesn't mean only protests. It doesn't mean calling your congressperson or having your senator's address memorized. Being an activist can mean halting the progress of these negative discourses! Being an activist means standing up to people who say "faggot" or "that's so gay", queer or not.

Words can be violent. And not violent in the sense of "I'm gonna get you". But violent in the sense you never know who's reading. You never know who your words impacted. I heard a story the other day from a radical dyke. She was telling me about her nephew, and how someone commented on a facebook status he wrote using "gay" in a negative way. And she wrote back on the status, posting to kid she'd never met, that his words affected her, as his friend's lesbian aunt. He apologized and took down the post. That is activism. Those words, she felt them. I feel them, every time I hear someone say "no homo" or "man, that was totally gay". Your words can hurt. You never know who is affected by them. That's violent discourse. The question is....what do we do?

I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. I'm painfully shy. I avoid confrontation like the plague. Doing this, this activism, this reminding people of the consequences of their words, that's hard for me. Damn hard. In person, it's virtually impossible. Through writing, it takes me a few minutes (and usually some coaxing and guiding from friends) to form adequate responses. But I'm trying.

You know I don't make New Year's resolutions. I make resolutions as they come to me, as I see them to be needed. I just resolved to do this. To speak out. This is a type of activist I can be at the drop of a hat, without needed protest signs, without needing to know the number of the person who makes the laws that I follow. There is nothing wrong with high profile activism. I believe in its necessity, in its importance. It's what I want to do. BUT...I also see the grave need for everyday activism.

I'm not the only one with the power to stand up. I'm not the only one with a voice. You have a voice. Yea, you. What makes you angry? Is it when people, queer or not, use "gay" as a synonym for stupid? Is it when people say "retarded"? When they call someone a pussy? Combat it. Say something! Write something! It's time we unite, as activists, as people, as individuals and a collective. It's time we figure out how to shut all this negativity, all of these condescending words and phrases and comments that are so everyday to us down.

I'm standing up ending this violent discourse. Who's standing with me? What are you standing for?

More thoughts on weddings...and heterosexism

2011-01-07T20:48:00.003-06:00

Tonight, I went to the craft store with my best friend, whom for this blog, I'll call Penelope (when we were kids, she'd name everything Penelope), my little sister, and her best friend (I want to blog name her "the brat", but I'll refrain). My little sister....well, she's in a relationship. I don't want to say too much about her relationship, but he seems perfect for her. They've only been dating for about four months, and they're already starting to talk about the future. For some reason, I was more okay with their relationship when it was secret, because then it meant that we had something in common, but now that she's open with people about him, everyone....loves it. Fucking loves it.

Back to the craft store. The Brat (whom I just decided I'll call Keenan) and my sister went off to look at stuff that little sis could make the boy for Valentine's Day. She settled on a photo album (although I suggested a travel journal). She and Keenan ran off to look at albums. And then to look at scrapbooking supplies. When Penelope and I found them, they were squealing over wedding crap, trying to figure out what to do that the groom in all of the stickers is taller than the bride, and my sister is taller than her boy.

I wandered away after hearing one too many jokes about weddings and eloping and "What to Expect when You're Expecting". Walking through the aisles of yarn, I almost started to cry with the injustice of it all. Who is going to validate my relationship? After four months, my best friend didn't know about my partner. After over three years, she still doesn't know. And no one was making wedding jokes to me, picking out my scrapbooks to "save for the next few years". You know why? 'CAUSE I'M A DYKE.

I know about heterosexism. I'm not ignorant. I'm not an idealist. I know it's there, I know it affects me every day. But yet, here I am, oblivious to the heterosexism that's all around me until someone (namely, the little sis), does something perfect and....straight and forces me to wake up and smell the coffee. I hate coffee. I also hate weddings. And people who think that I'm not valid because I don't want to have one....because I CAN'T have one.

I took all of that frustration out on my sister tonight. I feel bad. I made snide remarks about weddings and about her boy. I don't think she understands that I don't really mean anything by it, it's just that I'm jealous. I'm jealous as hell. She hasn't yet recognized her privilege. I understand. She's still adjusting to having a lesbian sister....how to tell people, how to not tell people. That's okay. I understand. But she doesn't understand all of the benefits she has, just by being in a relationship with a boy.

It scares me, it frustrates me, that some of my best friends don't know about my relationship. No one is picking out the stickers and trying to decide which bride looks most like me, the brunette or the one with the jet black hair...making (good natured) jokes about my love life and about my relationship. Because people are afraid to talk about this sort of stuff. People don't want to stand in the craft store and say "now, which two packets could we splice to have the best two brides for your scrapbook?"I'm not blaming them.

I just want answers. I want validation. I want to figure out how to navigate heterosexism without jealousy, without hurting those who are in my path. And you know what? I'm thinking about forever with my lady. I want someone to set aside a scrapbook for my wedding.

Random New Years Post

2010-12-31T16:21:00.002-06:00

So, in honor of 2011, I got the idea from Jolie over at thissideofchanged.wordpress.com to do a list of random facts. She didn't do it quite like this for this reason, but hey, Jolie, I'm stealing your idea. Thanks!

As it's almost 2011, I figured I'd write 11 things that you probably didn't know about me (although if you're one of like, the four people who reads this blog who knows me well in my daily life, you probably do know most of these things). Enjoy!

1. I do not own a pair of white socks. Or a pair of black socks. And I have very few pairs of solid colorful socks. I am a crazy sock fiend.
2. I cannot chew gum in a bathroom. No explanation for this one...it just grosses me out to an extreme.
3. I'm ticklish. Like, I'll break your nose from kicking so hard if you try to touch me ticklish.
4. I tried to learn to play guitar for several years, but my hands are too small. I couldn't play bar chords.
5. I hate carbonation in my drinks. No soda, bubbly water, or champagne for me.
6. My dream in life (that a certain someone is making come true) is to have a library in my house. I'm a bibliophile.
7. I have very poor eyesight. I need glasses to walk from my bedroom to the bathroom in the house I've lived in most of my life.
8. I have a bumper sticker that says "visualize whirled peas".
9. I only write in purple ink.
10. I'm petrified of feathers.
11. My Meyers-Briggs personality type is INFJ. It suits me well. Weirdly enough, my little sis is also an INFJ.

Happy New Years, y'all. Have a safe, wonderful, inspiring evening/morning. Can't wait to start writing again next year (okay, I know, those "next year" jokes get old after you're about...11).

Pink

2010-12-24T17:52:00.001-06:00

My bedroom is pink.

Hot pink.

With flowers, and butterflies, and snowflakes.

God, I wish I was kidding.

Something in me when I was about 11 thought this was a good idea. I've put up with it, especially because I don't live here anymore. I've had a love/hate relationship with the walls in here since high school, but didn't ever have the energy to repaint.

I've jokingly called it the Pink Palace, or Prep Hell, but I'd never really wanted to change it.

I've been back here for just a few days now. I haven't been spending a lot of time awake in my room. Except right now. I just looked at the walls and felt....out of place.

Yes, this is a girl's room. Girly as can be. Maybe at one point I was girly (or just played the part, as the case may be). But right now, I am not. The pink and the fairies and the sparkles are nauseating.

It looks funny, looking at my floor and seeing all the plaid shirts and boy's jeans, seeing my wallet sticking out of the back pocket of the pants I wore yesterday, a purse nowhere in sight. It looks out of place here. I look out of place here.

I'm not really sure how to feel about being in such a feminine space. I just know I don't like it. I'm okay with some girly things. I don't mind my period, I think diamond stud earrings are pretty, and I wear a little bit of jewelry. I don't own a pair of white socks. Or black socks. Or a solid color socks. I'm petite (okay, fine, I'm fucking tiny) and everything I wear shows off my chest and my hips...not because I want it to, but because that's how stuff fits me.

I can deal with all of that. That's all part of who I am. This pink room, on the other hand....so not.

I never feel like a boy. Sometimes I feel like a masculine woman (I love that feeling), but I never feel like a boy. Lying in here in my red plaid shirt, typing on my lavender sheets and staring into a lava lamp with flowered cut outs on the side, I feel like a boy. I imagine that this is what it would feel like to live your life as a gender you don't belong in, pretending to like the pink and the butterflies to appease everyone around you.

I don't know that for sure. I just know that I feel really wrong here, I feel really out of my element. There is no way to pretend to be masculine in this room. There is no way to pretend to be me. I'm reverting back into who they want me to be, the top button of my shirt undone enough to show that I am feminine, the shoes with enough heel to make me look slimmer, trimmer, and longer legged. I don't like this feeling.

I want the freedom to be myself. I want the freedom to show who I am, who I can be. My yoga teacher/chosen big sister/dearest friend told me the other night that my energy was different. She told me I was more masculine, that I carried myself with a confidence that I never wore when I was feminine. That's what I am. That's who I am.

Right now, looking around these pink walls, I wonder where she saw that in me. I feel it slipping away, moment by moment. I become less butch, more docile, more of the perfect daughter sitting with her ankles crossed and using the right fork when we're out at restaurants, lifting her pinkie when she drinks a glass of water. I want to feel the confidence that comes from being who I am.

I'm sick of feeling like a kicked puppy, hiding in a corner, whimpering because I'm scared. But it's hard to get the strength to build myself up to be confident and assured when I use the light from a flowered lamp to button my shirt.

MAKE IT BETTER!

2010-12-21T10:30:00.005-06:00

Hey y'all. Three step process here.
Step 1. Watch our video.
Step 2. Come back and read the blog post (step 2 can be completed before step one if you'd like)
Step 3. Leave comments. Any comments you leave will get shared with the others in this video...so tell us what you think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj-0omAmXG4

So yeah. You wanted to see what I looked like, eh? I'm in the video. I'll tell ya that much.

So this was done by a queer writing class that I'm in. The class was on rhetoric, and as the whole "it gets better" campaign was in full swing, we were watching the videos and analyzing the rhetoric of them.

And we hated the idea. We hated the ageism. Oh, I'm sorry, we have to wait 'till we're older for it to get better.
And the elitism. When you're like us, it'll be better for you.
And the boldface lies. It DOESN'T get better for everyone. There are intersections of power, of identity that can cause someone to not have it get better. LOTS of someones.

We wanted to combat that. I heard about the Make it Better project through....well, want to give credit where credit is due, but I honestly can't remember where I heard about it. I brought the idea into the class one day, and we started watching MIB videos. We liked the rhetoric of those a lot more.

Our professor (who is seriously one of the coolest people I've ever met...and totally radical) decided we make one of these videos as well. The whole class was on board.

There is something I want to address about our video before you jump down my throat for it. I know it's not a very diverse group. However, sexuality wise, we are fairly diverse. It is not just queer people in this video. In fact, we're pretty evenly split.
BUT, I know the video is pretty white. And pretty female-identified. This is not oversight on our part, this is just who was in the class. There were two other class members, one queer, one a woman of color, but they didn't want to be behind camera. We struggled very much with the fact that this video is not diverse. But in the end, we worked with the people we had, and this is who we had. I just wanted to tell you there's a reason for that before you went nuts on me.

So yeah, this is a group of us, queer and not, radical and not, who all wanted to join together to do something radical. And this is what we came up with. Please tell me what you think.

A little PSA from me: to anyone reading this who may need a little extra help getting through whatever you're going through right now, GET THAT HELP. Your life is valuable. You deserve to have a chance to make this world a better place for people like you, people like me. Get out there, make the world better. And if you need to get a little extra help to do so, do it. Because we need YOU to make it better.

Oh, and I will transcribe in the comments for anyone Deaf or hard of hearing.

A personal piece

2010-12-15T02:56:00.002-06:00

It's pretty late and sleep is evading me right now. Been having some dreams to scare the hell outta the bravest of dykes, and I'm certainly not the bravest of dykes.
Since my personal life is sort of....messy right now I'm posting you some snapshots, seeing me. All names have been changed.
I'm not sure why I wanted to post this piece. It's much too intensely personal for this blog. I may regret it and take it down tomorrow. But right now, when my grad school app is due today and they won't accept my transcript and one of my letters of recommendation has yet to be turned in and nothing is rainbows and fucking butterflies....maybe I'll let you see me. Just a little.

The prompt was about photographs.

In the beach house, there’s a wall of pictures, at least 20 square frames with photographs collaged inside. They’re mostly organized chronologically, or by family. Often, they’re from the beach, all of the kids in bathing suits, up to our knees in sand. I skim the photographs for ones that stand out, ones that I can remember the stories.
Towards the floor on the left by the door to the room with the two queen beds, there’s a picture of the grandkids, only six of us because Ashley wasn’t born yet. All of us were wearing tie-dye. I, the oldest, can’t have been more than six or seven. Ben was just an infant, sitting in my arms because I was the only one mature enough to hold a baby. My sister, sitting on the top step, holding a plastic baseball bat, Kevin crying because that bat had just been used against his two-year old shins.
About level with my hip is a photo of my dad holding me and wading into the ocean. I’m about five, in a purple and pink frilly bathing suit. At first glance, it looks like I’m having fun, but a closer look deems me sobbing. I remember being terrified of the vast ocean, and my dad disgusted at my fear. I was not the son he wanted. A son would not have been afraid to get his feet wet, to get swept up into the water that rolled around our feet.
Me in my first bikini, age nine. It’s yellow with big flowers and looks ridiculous against my tan skin and little boy’s frame. I’m standing next to the door looking miserable, hating every second of being stuffed in that suit. Conveniently this picture is on eye level, next to the stairs, in the middle of a frame. Can’t miss it. It’s almost as if my femininity had to be put on display for everyone to see, as if that would make it real.
As the photos get newer, we grow up, styles change. All of us still stand together, but with the emotional distance more and more obvious the older we get. The tearstains are still on Katie’s face from when her bratty 10 year old self refused to stand next to 15 year old me. She cried and screamed when they made her.
I move from the forefront of the pictures to the back, standing where no one can see me, trying to blend into the wood panels of the house. One frame I’m ridiculously skinny, hiding behind an oversized t-shirt from my uncle’s heavy metal band, trying to not show how much weight I’ve lost. The next I’m in large pink polka dot wedge heels with a tissue paper flower behind my ear. Bottom left: a hot pink halter with my hair blowdryed out. Someone, most likely my aunt, had put blue goop over my eyes, in hopes of making me look more feminine. I just looked beat up.
The past two years, I’m not in the pictures. I’ve refused to go to the beach with the whole extended family, all 15 of us and their verbal abuses. There are no recent pictures of me on this wall, no pictures that show me the way I look now. My femininity has been displayed in a certain way, put in these pictures to show the side of me that they want to see. I can’t help but notice, there are no photographs of me in my men’s swim trunks.

A Fun Question

2010-12-06T23:16:00.002-06:00

Since this writing sample is giving me a run for my money...here's a post to keep you amused.

Please leave a comment with your answer.

If your vagina was a board game, what would it be?

You've got hair WHERE?

2010-11-24T22:32:00.002-06:00

Okay, friends...tonight, we're talking about hair. Yes, hair. The ever present feminist hair debate.
So to start this one off, I have no problem with body hair. Yeah, I'm one of those. Honestly, if my lady wasn't turned off by hairy legs, I probably wouldn't ever shave them. As it is, I shave them only if she's going to see them...like twice a year.

So what is it with feminists and hair? Hell, what is it with women and hair? I can't tell you how many times I've gotten into debates with people starting with "you're a feminist. Do you shave your legs?" And god fucking forbid I say no. All hell breaks loose.

But my thought: it grows there. Therefore, it's supposed to be there. We all have it. It's not a mistake. You know who loves hair removal? Capitalism. Capitalism fucking LOVES hair removal. You know why? Because the three blade razor isn't good enough, you've gotta get the five. And god forbid you're using a five blade that doesn't have a built in moisturizer. Or a bar of soap. Or both. And then, you're using the wrong shaving cream. Here's 50 products JUST LIKE IT...but ours is better.

So yeah, capitalism loves hair removal.

But what about hair....down there?
First, watch this lovely clip from the Vagina Monologues. This was the best presentation of this monologue I could find on youtube. And I'm going to try my first link insert. I have no idea how to make the link something to click on with a cool word that says "click link here". So just click this link. Or plug it into your browswer or whatever. (If you are Deaf or hard of hearing and need a transcription of it, shoot me an email and I'll type it up for you).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiXsaSVfZUQ&feature=related

You can't love a vagina unless you love hair.

What do we think? Personally...I love vaginas. I love my own, and I love my partner's. Both have hair. You know why? Because hair is supposed to be there. It's to protect you from all sorts of icky shit that could get in there. Yeah, hair's good for you.

Plus (and I know some of you might disagree), when it's shaved, it looks like a little kid's body. And ew. I don't want to be sleeping with a kid. And I don't want someone thinking I look like a little kid (insert height joke here). So you've got a naked cunt. Why does our culture like that??

I'll tell you why. Porn. Yes, porn. Go watch some. How many of the women have a full bush? None. Maybe a strip, or a star, or a little triange, all trimmed to perfection, but what about the rest of it? Shaved. Gone.

So we're emulating porn stars. Lovely. But that's my theory. The porn industry said it was hot. So therefore, all these dudes watching porn tried to convince their ladies (pardon my heteronormativity) to shave. And then all these ladies went and told their lady friends how happy their man was that they'd shaved, and how "hot" they looked. And voila. We have a culture of hairlessness.

Now, I know some women will go "but I LIKE shaving...I do it for me!" I don't really believe that. Maybe for a few people. But for most of us? I started shaving my legs because 12 year old me was sat down by my grandmother and told I'd never get a man. She put a razor in my hand before we went to the beach, and told me to shave my legs. Been doin' it ever since. Is it to attract men? Hell no. Do I shave because I want to consciously conform to hegemonic beauty ideals? No! Do I do it because everyone does? Maybe.

What are your takes on the matter? Hairy legs? Hairy cunts? Hairy armpits? Love 'em? Hate 'em? Don't give a rat's ass either way?

Need opinions on this piece

2010-11-17T21:49:00.002-06:00

We have a reading we have to do in my creative nonfiction class. I'm considering editing this one and reading it. What do you guys think? Decent piece of creative nonfiction? I know it needs a little more; I want to infuse it with some details, but it's something. Want feedback on it. Oh yeah, and it needs a title. Sorry, it's kinda long.

Untitled (For Now)

I stood next to the great oak door in her bedroom, her red silk pajama shirt coming down mid-thigh on my skinny frame. I wore my black panties, but you couldn’t see them under her shirt. She laughed and told me I looked cute. Something in her voice gave away more than that. This was the effect that I’d been going for.
I’d been looking for something sexy to wear for her, something that would make me look special. My roommate and I had perused the lingerie departments of Charlotte Russe in search of a teddy or something that would make me comfortable but not too hyperfeminine. For everything I tried on, my boobs were too small to hold it up, or it didn’t sit right in the hips. Ivy laughed and told me I’d be sexier in the nude, teddies weren’t my thing.
I went home and examined my body in the mirror. The features that I usually loved about myself: my broad shoulders, my small breasts, my flat hips all of the sudden seemed unfeminine and wrong. My slender fingers ran over my chest, my sides, lifting my hair up off my neck to look at the curve of my shoulder blades trying to figure out where the feminine met the masculine. I seemed foreign to myself, the day’s shopping excursion had me second guessing my femininity, my masculinity, and my form.
So when I saw my butch lover’s three silk sexy dresses hanging in her closet, my heart sank. She could wear them, why couldn’t I? I pulled one out and asked if she’d wear it. “HELL no! Never worn them.” I felt instantly better. I told her about the teddy search, how I wanted something that would look sexy for her. She kissed me on the lips “baby, you look sexy all the time”. My eyes welled up, threatening to spill over.
She gracefully got up and went to the drawer where she kept a lot of the things he gave to her before he died, giving me time to wipe my eyes and compose. She came back with a box filled with tissue paper. Sitting next to me on the blue striped sheets, she pushed back the paper and took out the two piece outfit: the red silk shirt and the matching pants. I touched the collar, knowing how much sexier this top would be on me than the teddy, and praying she’d let me try it on. She unfolded it gently. It had never been worn. “The pants won’t fit you. Your hips are too skinny.” She pinched my side lovingly. “Try this on”.
I don’t know why I got shy all of the sudden. Maybe it was the need for her to see the body that had failed me in the search for something sexy in what she wanted to see, but I took the shirt with a kiss on the cheek and went into her spacious bathroom. Something about this felt sacred. I folded the shirt that I took off and left it on the dresser, the dresser that would soon hold my clothes. Bra on or off? I decided off, and left that next to the shirt.
The silk was cool against my skin. I checked the color in the mirror. Perfect against my hair and olive skin tone. I couldn’t picture my ghostly pale, blue-eyed girl in this hue. I unbuttoned the top two buttons, exposing enough flesh to feel secure, and took of my jeans. Black underwear, nice. Taking a deep breath, I padded gently to the door and framed my body against the wood, waiting for her to look up from the laundry she was folding to see me as he would have seen her.

What do you think? It needs a little work....but is it a good start?

Kate Bornstein with Post-Modernism on my campus!

2010-11-11T21:12:00.004-06:00

So, anyone who's my facebook friend (hint hint, wink wink you can find me as Rad Dyke or like the page for Mighty Ms.) knows that I got to meet Kate Bornstein yesterday and today.
Fucking awesome.
Absolutely fucking awesome.

Usually it's pretty hard to sucker me into postmodern theory. As a general rule, I try to not like it. My mind is changed. Thinking of a room as not just four walls, a ceiling and a floor, but the different properties of each makes sense. Thinking of a person not just as a man or a woman but of the different intersections of identity makes sense. So why have I been so damn scared of postmodern theory??

I think part of what was so cool about Kate was not just that we sat in a waffle bar today and compared tattoos (she has lots more, and hers are cooler), views on hook-up culture, and shared a brownie sundae (mmm, chocolately heaven), but that she made her lecture non-academic bullshit-esque. My friend and I were commenting after we dropped her back off at the hotel and were walking (very sadly) away that she did not use the three academic bullshit buzzwords...not once. (And in case you're wondering: discourse, hegemony, and dialectic.) Her lecture was not high theory. But it was deep. And it was memorable. It made me laugh, and also get a little teary. But most of all, it made me challenge the ways I viewed the world. My lens of modernism clearly isn't gonna work anymore. Maybe it's time to try on a little harmless postmodernism. It doesn't bite...I hope.

What I found most impacting from these two days with Kate was her candid honesty, the way she would be telling a story and slip in life details, things about anorexia, about cutting, about sadomasochism. And then all of the sudden, there we were in the middle of a discussion about suicide, talking about killing off the parts of you that don't work rather than killing yourself. And it makes me wonder, as someone who has lost friends to queer teen suicide, what if every person who was struggling with crises of identity, of who they are and where they fit in the world, not just in terms of gender and sexuality, but in terms of EVERYTHING got to hear Kate speak? Would more people just off the parts of themselves that didn't work?

Example. I've been struggling a lot lately with gender, with presentation, and with how others view me. I've really wanted to shed a lot of the heteronormative femininty that society puts on me and "do" my gender in a different way. And the losing of the social norms along with femininty have been sort of throwing me for a loop. Or two. Or three. Admitted, I've been spiraling around in circles. And last night, listening to Kate's lecture, I realized that there's no reason to be depressed about this. Why would I? Why can't I just get rid of that part of me that's upsetting me? Kill off the heteronormative femininity and move on with my life? I like it. I think I'm gonna do it.

And I'm gonna continue doing what makes me happy, what makes me fulfilled. And fuck you if you disagree with me. And I can say that. I can strive for my own happiness. You know why? Because I've got a "get out of hell free" card. So I'm good.

I'm your token WHAT?!

2010-11-02T20:11:00.002-05:00

Okay...it is about time for a rant. It's been building for a while now, but today I came to a screeching (metaphorical, not literal screeching) halt in the buildup and am ready to write.
So, let's get comfy in our chairs here...today's topic: tokenizing.

Now, I'm specifically talking about tokenizing in an academic setting...well, mostly. There are two ways of doing this I want to uncover. The first, assuming someone knows shit about something just because they belong to a certain identity category. The second, people in a higher position of power assuming it's okay to call you out on something because you're _____.

Route to tokenizing number one: Who says I know shit about gay events just because I'm queer? Yeah, I said it. If you want to know what events are being put on in the queer community on campus GO LOOK ON THEIR CALENDAR! Isn't that easier than searching for my email address on the school's site (for which you probably had to search for my real name because when you typed in my name it didn't come up as existing) and sending me an email asking me when there are events?? Like, WHAT THE FUCK! Just because I'm the only queer person you know doesn't mean I know every single thing that's going on all the time. Especially if it's something I don't care about. Seriously people?
And it's not just me. I have friends of other identities who say the same thing. My freshman year roommate: "Oh, whenever people want to know what any Latina group is doing on campus they come to me". A feminist friend "whenever someone in my male dominated field mentions something that concerns women, they come to me". You get the picture.
The thing is, I understand if you genuinely want to know more about certain things. That's cool. Learning is great. Knowledge is power. Diversity is hip. Whatever you want to use as your motive. But going to someone of a member of a group you want to know about and assuming that they automatically know everything for the group? Not cool.

Route to tokenizing number two: Don't look at me when you teach about gay issues!!
Yeah, that issue. Anyone who is of any minority status in a college classroom knows about that one. The professor (and shouldn't they know better?) will mention something about your identity WHILE STARING YOU DOWN THE ENTIRE TIME!
Example: Today in class we were talking about David Valentine and his book "Imagining Transgender". Cool. I like David Valentine (although I've heard him speak and I'd rather read him than listen...but he does have a pretty cool accent...but I digress). I sit next to a self-identified genderqueer person. I shall call this friend Alden (only because I think it's a really damn cool name). As we talked about trans issues, the professor kept looking over at Alden. Now, ze and I sit next to each other. We are also the only queer identified people in the room (EXCEPT THE PROFESSOR!!). Therefore, when a comment needs making about queer issues, who is looked to? I mean, yeah, from peers I sort of come to expect it. But from professors? Really?
Another example: I'm in a class where I quickly outed myself as a feminist. At any point in that class, the professor is bound to look at me and say "what does our feminist have to say about this?". What do I have to say? Shut the fuck up. That's what I have to say (but don't....).

So yeah. Tokenizing. Fun stuff, right?
How about self-tokenizing? Where does that one fit in? Consistently making yourself the one queer, the one person of color, the one disabled person, the one whatever, time and time again! What's up with that? Is that different? When you tokenize yourself are you doing any less harm? Or are you setting up a culture where tokenism is completely acceptable?

Just some thoughts....

As promised....

2010-10-24T19:09:00.003-05:00

Well, the first draft (read: total shit) of the personal statement is done. So, as promised, a piece of creative nonfiction. My professor loved this piece, not because it's the best piece of writing ever (it isn't), but because the story it told was clear, concise, and fun. It's been edited for the blog world: names have been changed, certain details have been taken out, but it's essentially the same.
The prompt: take an event that was absolutely embarassing and describe it in a way that makes the reader see it as amusing.

Philosophy of feminism was dragging. It was a Thursday morning, but the last class of the day I was going to go to. Yeah, I’m that girl. I skipped all my afternoon classes for the prospect of a good ol’ college hookup.
She was coming in from across the country that afternoon, and honestly, astronomy class hadn't been leaving me starry eyed lately. Why not go get myself…cleaned up? I hadn’t shaved my legs in a month. I absentmindedly stroked my left leg with my right foot, my sandal somewhere under my chair.
Hmm...what was going to happen this evening? I was envisioning a night of hot sex and baking peanut butter cookies...
My friend Kim kicked me under the table and snapped me back to reality. Kantian views on ethics as relating to feminism? Shit, I’ve got no idea. I make up some bull, knowing we were talking earlier about the happy housewife syndrome and how it related to Simone de Beauvoir.
“Very good, RadDyke.”
“Thanks, babe”.
Babe?? Babe? Where’d that come from? I wasn’t just having wild sexy fantasies about my professor...was I? I turned bright red. The whole class had heard. Babe. She was by no means an unattractive professor, unfortunately my desires for my lover had transferred out of my mouth and projected...straight onto her.
She blushed crimson, and I couldn’t help but notice the way that the redness spread across her face like fire. I blushed deeper, realizing I was thinking this way. We both stammered apologies as the entire class snickered.
I went back to my daydreaming. What else was there to do? Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my professor look at me and wink.

Grad school and research and thesis, oh my!

2010-10-17T22:12:00.003-05:00

Okay, so the time has come...I'm starting to apply to graduate schools. Terrifying. Utterly terrifying. Who the hell decided to make us all grow up eventually? Just wrong. I shouldn't be old enough to be applying to grad schools...I'm a little kid playing kickball at recess. Right?? Right???

Since this is coming up, though, I've had to start thinking about research. I was asked the other day what my thesis was going to be on. Um....I dunno, I'm not in grad school yet? And then I was of course told that I had to come up with my research topic BEFORE I got into school, I made some shit up on the spot.

But actually, I'm sorta liking the random bullshit "of course I've thought about this..." idea.

So I'll run it by you.

There's been some research done on the emotional presentation of butch identities. But there hasn't really been a whole lot done on the media representation of butch gender. So I think I want to do something involving the physical attributes of butchness, rather than the emotional aspect.

So yeah, getting excited, getting nervous. But first I've just gotta get in.

But maybe this explains my disappearance. I've been pretty reclusive as I try to get stuff done. Once apps are in I'll be blogging a whole lot more. I've got a writing prompt piece in the works that I'm nearly ready to share a draft of.

I'm joining the ranks of technology!

2010-10-11T21:56:00.003-05:00

Hey y'all...I just made a facebook page for the blog! You can find me on facebook as Mighty Ms.
You should all "like" my page!

I tried a twitter, too...I have one, but someone's going to need to teach me how to use it. I've yet to figure that out...but one step at a time....

See you on facebook!

Edit:
It looks as if you can "like" Mighty Ms. as a writer, or you can friend Rad Dyke (yeah, I know, it's two words because facebook is crap and won't let me just have a first name). I suggest you do both...just for shits 'n giggles....

An open letter, and a call to action

2010-10-06T00:10:00.002-05:00

I started this as an email, knowing it was one of those I'd never send. So it's written as if it's to one of my queer studies professors, although I didn't send it to her, and probably won't.

You said in class about activism, and how the community needs to respond to the Rutgers tragedy. I'm having trouble putting my thoughts into words around this. I'm sitting here, sobbing, feeling powerless at it all. This is an issue that in the past (and the past never stays in the past) has affected me very closely.
So what do we do? Sitting here at 1 am eating ice cream out of the pint isn't going to change shit. Conversations with people aren't going to change shit! What the hell is there that we can do that will even come close to having an impact? I just, I don't know. I just know that when it happens, I have to be part of it. Now, more than ever, I feel pressed to DO something for once.
In academia, it's all about talking, it's all about sitting tight, theorizing the damn solutions and letting the activists put them into action. Well, here's the merge. I think some academics are ready to step up and start doing something that's not theory. It sucks that something like this has to set it in motion, but the thing is, right now, we've got momentum.
We need to get off our asses and just, do it. So what the hell are we going to do? The world needs changing.
I'm not saying that we're gonna change the world. But one life can be the world to someone. We've gotta try.

Can you tell I'm passionate about this? Sometimes, you have to separate yourself from the issue. Right now, I can't do that. I'm emotionally charged with this. I'm not going to apologize to anyone for my emotions, although proper society tells me I should. I just want to, need to find somewhere to throw this anger, this sadness. I can't sit back and watch more people die, more lives lost because of senseless violence. Don't call this an accident. Don't call it anything but what it is. But what is it? We have to decide that.
And we have to decide what we're gonna do about it.

Identify Me

2010-10-01T10:56:00.003-05:00

Alas! A non-writing prompt post for once!

Wednesday night, I went to the weekly discussion meeting for LGBT(QAII...) undergrad for the first time this year. It was...an experience. I was very active in the group last year. I was on the board and led meetings. The usual group was small, but close-knit.

Well, this week was different. I don't know if it's because I'm a senior, or because I'm finally secure in who I am, but I felt ridiculously old and out of place. There was a good sized crowd there, and almost entirely freshmen. I don't think we were that loud and obnoxious as freshmen, were we? I actually left a few minutes before the meeting let out because I just flat out couldn't take their shit anymore.

I'm used to being around academics. The people I spend time with tend to be quiet, mild-mannered, and intellectual. I'm not used to such blatant shows of disrepect for others. Let's just say I wasn't pleased.

The topic of conversation for the night was about identity, about different types of identity. All these kids did was say who can be what, and who can't be. I was essentitally told that I couldn't define a certain way because of certain characteristics...TWICE! The first time, they defined "butch". It was of course, the antithesis of femme (for which the definition was blatantly wrong and ignored the identities of many people...including a friend of mine who was there, and is a femme, and felt personally attacked). I brought up the point of self-definition, and whether you could label someone as something without knowing how they themselves identified. Point of consensus: of course. Depending on how they look. I mean, WHAT THE HELL? I asked them, these little freshmen, how they classified me. They all said femme. My friend, let's call her Julie, the femme, looked at me and raised her eyebrows. But no one challenged that notion.

So here's what I want to know. Especially within the queer community, can you stick a label to someone without knowing how they identify? I'm not saying do people do this, but CAN you? Is it about presentation, or is it about identification? Am I a femme because I look more feminine than your stereotypical butch, or am I a butch because I say I am?

I do genuinely want people's takes on this. I want to know, am I me because I say so, or you say so?

Hair!

2010-09-27T18:34:00.002-05:00

Another writing prompt: Hair! Basically just write about your hair. I had more tacked on to the end of it that I scrapped. In the final copy, I think I'll try to work it in. It was about long haired butches and our place in the lesbian community. But for now, enjoy my very rough draft. I feel like with a lot of work, this piece could become fairly decent, so tell me what you like/don't like.

I am afraid to cut my hair. I’ve often been told I have long, thick, beautiful hair. Admittedly, sometimes, I look in the mirror and I love the long tresses that, as I got to puberty, have started to wave and curl. They used to be stick straight and ugly. I’ve made peace with my hair.
But at the same time, part of me doesn’t want it. Part of me knows that to reach the gendered being I wish to become, to be seen the way I want people to see me, I oughta cut my hair. I oughta cut it short and spike it up in the top. But I like not having to brush it in the morning. I like walking out the door and having an automatic good hair day. Having butch hair is too much work.
I’m afraid to cut my hair. But I’m not afraid because I worry it won’t grow back. I know that if I give it a year, I’ll be back to the me that I’m used to in the mirror. I’m afraid to cut my hair because I don’t want you to see the me that I see in my head. I don’t know how you’ll treat that version of me. You might hurt me, make assumptions and beat the living shit out of me just because my hair gives away who I really am.

Update

2010-09-25T19:21:00.002-05:00

My computer is broken. Way broken. It broke Thursday night. And hasn't recovered. Dell says they'll be over Tues to mess with it. We shall see if they hold to that.
Anyway, if comments are short or seem curt this week, it's because I'm doing such from an ipod. Yeah.
On the plus side, the dead printer has been replaced by a new printer. Just nothing to plug it into yet. So I'll be back when I get this shit fixed.

Women Only

2010-09-23T19:22:00.003-05:00

I've been doing a lot of reading for classes this semester, and a lot of talking to people. One of the issues that just keeps coming up is the idea of women's only spaces. I just finished reading some Emi Koyama, specifically "Whose Feminism is it, Anyway?", but also the "Transfeminist Manifesto" (love aspects of it....especially with her revisions to understanding intersectionality....)

But here's the thing that set me off: usually (and I say this even still), it's feminists who yearn for women's only spaces. Now, don't get me wrong, there's something awesome about being in a feminist theory class that's all women. Add some men to the mix and I'm not sure how people would feel discussing certain issues (extremely problematic in itself, I know, but topic for a whole nother post....). But I saw an ad for an event yesterday that was advertised as a women-identified only space.

Now, here's my problem with women's only spaces: bio women only. So you have biological women who don't live as women and don't identify as women, but are allowed, but yet, you have trans women who live as women but aren't biological women who are not.

So seemingly, saying women-identified is a viable option, right? But what about trans men? Should trans men be barred from women-identified only spaces? The thing is, trans men have helped the transfeminist movement to come extremely far. And who's to invalidate their connection to womanhood? I feel like that's just as bad as barring trans women from women's only spaces.

So basically, what I wanna know is this: what's the solution? How do we fix this? Having women's only spaces clearly doesn't work for everyone. Having women-identified only spaces clearly doesn't work for everyone. But there are some spaces in which women would object if men came in (consciousness-raising groups?). Should there even be a such thing as women's only spaces?

Oh, and one more thing. What the hell would you say if someone said it's a men only space? Feminists would freak the fuck out. So what are we doing right now? Put up your dukes, feminists. Let's get some healthy debate!

Based on Audre Lorde

2010-09-15T12:10:00.002-05:00

Another piece for creative non-fiction. A response to a question from Audre Lorde: "To whom do I owe the symbols of my survival?"

To whom do I owe the symbols of my survival?

At night when I’m alone I wrap myself in her jacket. I touch the cool leather and it reminds me of where I am. Where I should be. It’s not her wrapping me in close on these cold, Northern winter nights. I wish it was, and tears soften the material closest to my eyes, soak in, I rub them in. I mix my tears with the smell of her cigarettes, faded from two years in my bed. I hold her material close to me. Remember the times we made love? Right here? You wore this jacket. Niagara Falls, you wore this jacket. When you held my hand and called me “baby” and touched my hand inside the pocket as the water rushed over the waterfall, and you looked attentively over the edge.

One sentence of ME!

2010-09-03T17:35:00.003-05:00

This was for my writing class. I had to define myself in one sentence (that could be very long and moderately grammatically incorrect)and my relation to sexuality and sex/gender. This is what I came up with:

I am a womyn-identified, female bodied wanna-be butch queer dyke who would love to be androgynous and use gender neutral pronouns and be mistaken for a boi (but knows I never can), and who is attracted to the shared experience of womanhood (womynhood) more than the body part that it represents.

Okay. Your turn. In the comments, have at it. Reading these are SO interesting!

Maybe an excuse to post more often

2010-08-31T21:50:00.002-05:00

This semester, I'm taking a class on writing creative nonfiction with an esteemed queer poet. This being said, I will possibly have several more blog posts than I'm used to, because I plan to steal material that I write from the class, tweak it enough to post it here, and do so. So far, it seems to be that it will work out pretty nicely that way. We do several writings a day. I can probably salvage a few of them a week.
I'll have to edit personal details out of my work, details that I may keep in for the writings of the class, but just assume that all names in the blog have been changed and that all places, things, everything that could make a post too personal have been edited out.
That being said, these may not be the greatest samples of my writing ever, but hey, the thought's in it. I'll always post what the prompt was.
I hope you have fun reading these....I hope I have fun writing them too!

Community

2010-08-21T13:51:00.004-05:00

Wow, I suck at blogging frequently. It's been a busy few weeks, all work and no play. But I head back up to school on Friday for my senior year. It'll be nice to be in the company of gays again. Around here, there's no queer community. I sort of like the idea of having a community right there.

I mean, there are a lot of problems with the gay community, especially in college. It's not cohesive at all, although in a different way than back here in a rich, suburban, white town. Around here, if you see a dyke, you give them a nod to say "yes, I recognize you" (Go see Krista's post on dyke nods over at Effing Dykes...sorry, haven't learned how to link yet) and then go your own way pretending that you're not screaming "OMG A LESBIAN!!!" in your head. The gays around here try really hard to assimilate. Almost too hard. That's one of the things I like about the gays up at school.

You've got your cliques, yes. There's the drama gays, the gays who like drama (different, of course!), athlete gays who stay far away from the mention of a queer community, radical dykes, social gays, you get the idea. But among all the cliques, there's still this feeling of family. I can have a class with an athlete dyke, and even though she's totally out but not involved, there will be this connection. Even if we can't stand each other.

I miss my radical dykes. Those are the gays that I love the most. We sit and talk politics over cups of bubble tea and garner a lot of stares because we're all so OBVIOUSLY gay. That's the type of community I wish you could find here. The people you call in the middle of the night when something happens that's so antifeminist that you just have to RANT right then and there, the ones who have your back in class when you make a point that everyone else disagrees with. There's no gay community like that around here.

I'm not sure if you can find that anywhere except a college campus, to tell you the truth. People always tell me "Girl, college isn't the real world...don't get used to it". And that's true. It's not. But at the same time, there are aspects of college I wish we could just grab and bring into the real world.

Cookie-cutter white suburbia needs a community of radical dykes to come in and stir things up a bit. Remind those lesbians with the big fancy houses and 2.5 kids and a dog (not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just all there is around here) that HEY, you can be gay in all sorts of ways. I wanna pick up that community I have and bring it with me to the small town in the South where my partner has a home. See what an invasion of flaming drag queens will do to spice it up (think "To Wong Foo"). I just...I wish everywhere could have that community that I'm going home to in a week.

Good Allies

2010-08-06T10:35:00.003-05:00

I've been thinking a lot about allies lately. Pretty much everyone you meet in my medium sized (very liberal) school calls themselves an ally. They even wear the little "ally" pins that the LGBT Resource Center gives away. And that's all fine and dandy. I like seeing people in the pins; it makes me feel safer and more at home.
But are they good allies? I think there are certain qualities that make a good ally. I guess I'll use my roommate as an example of a good ally, because she is. There's a definite difference between her and the people wearing ally pins.

My roommate, let's call her Ivy (like Poison Ivy...she's a redhead) gets mistaken for a lesbian more often than I do. She takes queer classes and never prefaces statements with "I'm straight, but...." like almost all straight people tend to do it queer classes. She lets people suspect. And if they choose to treat her differently because of it, she calls them out on it. She takes education classes with absolutely no queer people. And she's the token gay rights advocate. She gets in arguments with people in the class about why including queer lit in the curriculum is important. All of her group projects for education (if she gets to choose a topic) are queer related to bring attention about queer issues into the schooling system. If the project topic is assigned, she makes sure to get a queer spin on it. For example, last year, she had to do an interview project about sex ed. She made sure to get queer voices in there and made sure that their perspectives were also heard (I would know...I was interviewed!). Her group loved it. They said they never would have thought of that.
She goes to LGBT events on campus with me. If I have to be there, it's pretty much a given that I'll walk in with Ivy on my arm. People always think we're together, she comes everywhere with me. I call her my "straight date", she calls herself my "date" (but always checks with my lady first to be sure that's okay!).

I mean, that's a good ally. She's going to wear a rainbow cord at graduation, one of the few allies who is brave enough to do so. When one of her students says "fag", she lectures on the history of the word and basicallys scares them into never using it again.

It makes you think, all of those people with ally buttons? What are they doing for the community? Ivy is an actual part of the LGBTQAI (add more letters if you choose, I just write "queer") community. And I wish others who wore the pins would take her lead.

What about you? Know any great allies? Are a great ally? Do tell!

I now pronounce you....

2010-08-01T12:19:00.003-05:00

I've been doing a lot of thinking about weddings. It's mostly because my cousin's engagement party was this weekend. She's three years older than me, so it's sort of a big deal to my family that she's now going to marry a rich, Jewish boy.
But at the engagement party, the entire family was all "so you're next in age....when are you getting married? Do you have a boyfriend? Should we start watching for the wedding invites?" I just smiled demurely and said "not yet". Not the right time for a large family coming-out scene....

Anyway, but as I said, I've been thinking about weddings. Not only my cousin's (which I will not be attending), but weddings in general. And I realized something seriously problematic. Now, I've only ever been to three weddings. None of them were a gay wedding. But my problem with weddings stems from one line: "man and wife".

Even in modern times, (hetero) weddings invalidate women! The man gets an indentity as an independent being, a type of being. The "wife" is not an independent being. She just IS, in relation to the man. Isn't that problematic?!? Why couldn't they say "I now pronouce you husband and wife"? or "I now pronouce you a married couple"?

So what do they say at a lesbian wedding? "I now pronouce you woman and wife"? So which one of you gets to be the one who society recognizes as a person? And which one has to just be her wife? Know a whole lot of women who would say "I don't wanna be recognized as an independent woman (or even as a woman)....I just want to be recognized as her wife"? Yeah....neither do I. So do they say "wife and wife"? Because that puts you both on an equal plane? Or what about "a married couple"?

Now, this isn't the reason I'm not going to my cousin's wedding. It happens to fall conveniently smack-dab in the middle of exam week. But in deconstructing my problems with weddings last night, I realized how problematic this actually was, and how this contributes to my problems with the institution of marriage as a whole. This post was going to be longer and more intellectual, but I was just told that I "need to find some proper shirts because you look like a lesbian". Teehee! So yeah, shopping trip. More marriage rants later.

Eek!

2010-07-28T08:00:00.002-05:00

It's a little too late for this dilemma, as I'm about to head off to the surgeon right now....but I'm having a medical procedure done in an hour, and only now am I starting to wonder about the feminist implications. No, I'm not getting a boob job or anything, it's a procedure on my mouth, but there is no real reason why I NEED to get it, except that it will make me feel more comfortable in myself.
So I ask you, is that the same as saying I want a nose job to look prettier? Something that will help my speech and make me less self conscious? Well, I've got a 45 minute drive to try to weigh in on this one, but I'm just reminding myself that although this is the most major procedure I'll ever choose to have, it's a surgery they usually do on 10 year olds, and it really is really minor.
But really?? I hope this isn't against what I believe in, because I do so want it done.

Swimmingly Queer

2010-07-08T10:09:00.003-05:00

I know, I know, it's summer. You're sick of hearing about dyke swimsuit posts. But trust me, this one isn't a fashion guide (heh, I have no sense of style anyway), just my observations on swimsuits.
I have two (swimsuits, that is, not observations!). One is a black and white 1950's looking one piece. Sexy, but covering. My femme suit, I call it. The other, I just bought. They're little boy swimming trunks (with flaming flowers!!!) from the boy's section at Target. I love them. They come down to my knees and have pockets!!! I usually wear them with a red beater and a sports bra for that little bit of binding, although I would not be opposed to wearing a red bikini top (a modest one) with them.

So here are the observations, before I go on and on about my cute new suit!
When I wear the femme suit, men look at me. Women look at me. But neither look at me in a way that I want to be looked at. Men sexualize me, it's obvious. I have curves (itty bitty little 14 year old boy type curves, but I'm petite and skinny and supposedly guys dig that?) and the suit emphasizes them. I'm often afraid to wear it around people because I don't like being looked at like a piece of meat. Doesn't quite fit in with the way I gender myself. Women also tend to look at me when I wear it; somehow I get the impression that when I wear that suit, I'm a threat to them. Single ones tend to not notice me, but women who are with a man (regardless of if they're 15 or 50) tend to look at me, not with distain, necessarily, but more of with wariness. Like a "get away from my husband with your perky little boobs" look. I don't much like that either.However, society (and by society, I mean people in my life) are much more comfortable when I wear the femme suit. They see it as more traditionally feminine, and therefore, what I should be wearing. I don't get shit for not showing my curves. I'm constantly told "why can't you wear things like this more often?" Needless to say, now that I have a suit I'm comfortable in, the femme suit has been feeling a little left out this summer.

My new suit has been giving me problems of a different kind, though. I feel sexy in it, not all exposed and revealed like I do in my femme suit, but most people don't see that. I went downstairs in it at the beach and my grandmother flat out bitched me out for not showing off my body. When I got it, my mother told me I couldn't wear it out because it was embarassing to have a daughter who dressed like a boy (um....I do wear a top with it....), and my dad told me to not get used to wearing men's clothes because people would get the wrong idea about me (um....like what....that I'm GAY??). But men don't notice me in it. And women don't look at me like they want me to stay far away from their men. The only people who really sized me up in that suit were the other women wearing them (most who looked much more dykey than me). For some reason, that didn't feel sexual. It felt like they were trying to find something in me that would equate to their experiences. It was sort of a nice feeling.

Has anyone else noticed anything similar to this in their bathing suit experiences?

The Pen and the Sword

2010-06-18T16:33:00.002-05:00

"Why are you threatened by words? They're just words." This, from my partner the other night. Actually, it led to a pretty interesting conversation. But first, a bit of background. She had been on her facebook that evening and a status from a woman she sort of knows came up in her feed. It involved the words "carpet munching bitch", "slut", and "fag". Supposedly some chick had been pretty into her and her husband, and she'd just realized that the woman was actually after HER and not her husband. So her status was about how she would never swing that way. Now, my partner read it, and promptly starting giggling because she'd never heard the word "carpet muncher" before. She told me I'd be extremely offended by this woman's status, and not to bother reading it.
Curiousity killed the cat. I read it.
Which led us to the pen/sword conversation. My partner, a dear, sweet, trusting woman, said she wasn't at all offended by this post because it wasn't written about her. The way that this woman views lesbians somehow doesn't apply to her because it's just words. It's not like she's going to come out and slap the shit out of us because we're together.
I, however; disagree. I think the pen is WAY stronger. I read this post, and now I never want to meet this woman, I never want to cross paths with her, and I never want to see her name/picture again. I felt extremely threatened by her post, even though it wasn't directed at me. Even though she doesn't know I exist. Because what makes you think she'll treat me any different than she treated "that fag...carpetmunching slut" when she finds out I'm one too?
I think we have to be careful for our safety a lot more than people realize. My partner, (very new to queer life) has yet to realize that. That this woman is no longer "safe". She is now marked in my book as a homophobe, and someone I'd be deathly terrified to have to be around. Because there is a lot more self-preservation here than there really should be. I see someone, I don't like the way they talk, and they're pointedly avoided. I mean, I hate that the world is like that, but at the same time, I'm so glad that people give us these warnings of the pen. Otherwise, we may accidentally run up against the sword.

A Golden Feminist Girl

2010-06-04T00:32:00.002-05:00

It's very late at night, but sleep isn't coming easy tonight, so just a brief post in memory of a fabulous actress, Rue McClanahan on (admitted) my favorite TV show ever: Golden Girls.

For anyone who hasn't ever seen an episode (any episode) of Golden Girls, Rue's character Blanche was often portrayed as the selfish, Southern belle of a tramp. I have to admit, my feelings for Blanche were quite different. After having seen way too many episodes of the Golden Girls late at night in my apartment when I couldn't sleep this past year, I realized something: yes, they portray Blanche as, for lack of a better word, a slut (as she is very often called, on the show). But in Blanche's promiscuity comes something else.

The show was set in the late 80's, early 90's (ish), I'd guess by the clothing. The women are all in their 60s or older, with the exception of Blanche, whose age is never mentioned, although she is most likely late 50s. So, this sets them being born....when? Being raised....when? Being young wives and mothers....when? So Blanche's promiscuity isn't just done to have the slutty character on the show. No, Blanche is a trendsetter, the one who not only says that women over 50 can have a sex life (thank goddess!!), but who proves that the sexual revolution clearly impacted women of more than just the "young hippie" generation.

Rue's character is strong in her choice of men. She knows what she likes, and she knows how to get it. Often, she does the chasing until the men chase her. While, at first glace, she doesn't seem particularly feminist, when you think about it, she really is. She set the standard for women of her age (in their late 50s and onwards) in our generation's sex lives. She allowed women to be everything she was, merely because she was. Her character was strong, intelligent, and very much the modern, older woman. The only difference, she was having lots of wild sex. Lots and lots of wild sex.

So here we have this unlikely feminist icon in a culture in which promiscuity is frowned upon by most women of Blanche's age cohort. Blanche defies the norms, works by her own desires, rather than what society says she should do. Granted, there are some flaws in the feminist ideology of her character, but for the most part, when you take her in a historical, societal context, Blanche is more than just the "slut-puppy" (ahh, don't you love to hear that come out of an 80 year old woman's mouth?) of an old-lady sitcom. She's the sexual revolution.....untrapped, unleashed, and ready to go out and prove to women of all ages that their fun doens't have to stop at 30.

So basically, I love the Golden Girls, and I'm really, really sad that Betty White is the only one left. RIP, Rue McClanahan.

What's in a name?

2010-05-27T16:55:00.004-05:00

So I had an interesting moment while working this evening. The little girl I watch (9years old) and I were in the car and we passed a street that had the same name as me.
Now, my given name is a very gendered, female name. I chose for myself a more gender-ambiguous name years ago, and have all but ceased to have anyone refer to me by my given name.
When we passed the street, she commented very nonchalantly to me that when she heard my name at first, she thought I was a boy. In fact, she said she thought I was a boy until her mom refered to me as Ms. (which was obviously before she met me, as my gender presentation is undeniably female).

Which leads me to why I love my name. She (also has a boys name) and asked if I was ever embarassed that I don't know any (or many) other girls with my name. You could tell she was speaking from experience. I admitted that no, it doesn't embarass me because I like when people mistake me for a boy before they meet me, like she did. She giggled and asked why, and I said that I like to confuse people. They expect a boy, and a girl walks in. She decided yeah, that was sort of fun.

But on a note that I obviously didn't share with her, I really like the gender abiguity and fluidity that comes from having a male name. I think that it actually can help me in the world. And I hate to sound like one of those women who doesn't believe that women can do anything they want, because I'm not at all one of those, but I love that when I walk into a job interview, with my resume in front of them and nothing but my name and my job experience to go off, people assume masculinity. The look on their faces when I show up is always of sheer shock, usually accompanied by stuttering. Sometimes I feel like this helps me. I'm not sure why, its sort of hard to explain, but when you expect a man, you set higher expectations. And then when the female candidate can meet all of those expectations....well....

I guess another reason that I like having a traditionally male name is that it helps me with my sense of gender. Since my body does not really allow for me to present as signifantly more masculine than I do (and I still often get mistaken for a femme), it helps me feel a little more queer. My female name, coupled with my girly appearance is like "ah! Girly-girl alert!" And it just doens't do it for me. If I can't be butch in appearance, at least I can have a more gender-neutral name. It just suits my identity a bit more.

But what I love about names is that you can change them at will. I can decide tomorrow that I want to be called something completely different, and there it is. That's kind of cool.

Deaf Rights Now!

2010-05-23T21:52:00.007-05:00

EDIT: Okay, so this happened at my high school. I took down the link because I was tracable on my blog if you searched the name of the high school and "deaf". I cannot have who I am affiliated with this blog, so I took down the link. BUT, I will update you and say that after a bit of a fight, the school has agreed to let the students sign, however, the still will not let my friend have a cue. So she's trying to decide whether or not to pick a fight for this one too.

So what happened was that students were not allowed to sign the graduation song. They put up a fight, took it to the principal, who gave feeble excuses, took it to the board of ed, who also gave feeble excuses, and then flooded everyone's inbox with hundreds of letters. But think about the problem at hand....

This is ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. I am very close friends with the Deaf student mentioned in the article (the only Deaf student at the school). This is the high school I went to, and the year my little sister graduates. IT'S NOT FAIR!

So what you're telling me here is that Deaf students shouldn't be allowed to be able to enjoy their graduation song just like their hearing friends? That the CODA (child of Deaf adults) who sings in the chorus and all the school plays shouldn't be able to sign his graduation song so that his parents can see him perform? That the students who labored to learn the song in ASL to sing and sign in solidarity with their Deaf friends and Deaf community can no longer sign???

This is discrimination!

I want to see my friend be able to sign her graduation song, and not from her seat, like the principal told her to do.
I want to see my sister stand next to her and sign.
I want all of the brave members of the Deaf community who are starting to take a stand to be able to see their children, their friend's children, and their family members sign, especially if they can't hear them sing.
I want to stand up and silent cheer and be able to sign "You did it" to my friend as she walks across the stage.

And....now....we've done it. Thank you to all who wrote letters.

Diva Girl

2010-05-14T15:17:00.003-05:00

Okay, so I tried the Diva cup for the first time yesterday. Yes, I read about it in "Cunt". And yes, it weirds out my squeamish friends.
BUT...
I'm in love. Totally and completely. Diva cup, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways:
1. Obviously, no changing your tampon every four hours. Ahh, to sleep through the night when you're on your period? Fantabulous. 12 hour protection...beat that, cotton balls with strings.
2. Something made for women by women? Wow. Impressive, society! But really, women-made products for women are the best. Like really, whoever invented tampons (and wonderbras) were obviously male. I like supporting the ladies.
3. 30 bucks a year? Hell yea. Need I say more?
4. I feel like I'm doing my part to end capitalism, one say-no-to-tampons at a time. I'm really against the whole mass market, zillions of different ways to make the same thing? Doesn't do it for me. I prefer having my money go away from the kajillion dollar corporations, thankyouverymuch.
5. Um....it works! Fancy that, period stuff that works! No leaking, even on my crazy heavy flow. And doing yoga, and all of the other delightful things I do in the course of a day. And it's comfy.

So there you have it. The top five reasons why you should run, not walk to the nearest Whole Foods or cute woman-owned co-op and get a Diva cup. Plus, they come with a cute little flower pin. And a bag for it (also cute and flowery).

On strange men

2010-04-27T19:22:00.002-05:00

I don't know if it's a fear that most lesbians share, but I am terrified of a straight man I don't know being in my apartment, especially to sleep. I don't care how well you know him, I don't like him crashing at my place. My straight female friends sort of take the attitude of "eh, it sucks, but there are worse things that could be on your couch". I, on the other hand, as do several lesbians I know, freak the fuck out.
It's not that I've got a problem with dudes. Nah, I'm no man-hater. A lot of my close friends are straight men. I love hanging out with them. They're great drinkin'-and-talkin'-'bout-women buddies. That doesn't mean though, that when darnkess falls and I slip into my boyshorts and oversized t-shirt, I still want them around. That's when it's get-out-and-lemme-have-my-girltime.
I'm not sure if it stems from an inherent fear of the rape culture that's ingrained in the minds of many modern women, or the fact that as a lesbian, the thought of my male friends snuggled up on the couch fast asleep, morning wood and all just makes me go "ewwww" or if I have internally percieved all men as a threat to me while I sleep, but the fact of the matter is I'm not cool with that.
I guess, delving into my own feelings here, it seems silly to say, but it's so very true, that when I'm awake, I can kick some ass, and I'm respected. But I guess, a little part of me (the non-PC part) worries that when I sleep, I am defenseless. I'm not sure if straight women feel that way too, or if they're more used to being around guys that it doesn't bother them as much, but I can tell you that when the lights go down, I sleep with one eye open. It's stupid, I know.
Maybe it's an issue of trust, Freud would say it has to do with penis envy (fuck you, Sigmund), but that's one thing that's not okay in my book. Maybe I've gotta loosen up a little and let down my guard and realize that just because he's got a dick, doesn't mean he's Mr. Hyde when night falls. But can't that revelation wait 'till tomorrow? Tonight, I just wanna sleep in peace.

Damn, Womyn!

2010-04-21T21:13:00.004-05:00

Okay, so the current buzz of my day has been this: womyn.
Personally, I like it. I like it a lot. I posted a facebook status this morning asking my friends for their views on "womyn". After just a few minutes, I had several responses, not one that was positive! All but one of the (woman-identified) people who commented identify as feminists.
So I did what any confused feminist would do. I called my radiqueer friend. I don't know what it's like by you, but radicals are hard to come by up here, so yes, I have a radical friend. Just one. I didn't preface the conversation at all, just asked her for her view. Her response, "Like! Like!"
Glad to know I'm not alone.

Sometimes, it seems important to take the man out of it. Not always, but sometimes. I just wrote a paper about the feminist powers of "cunt", for example. Talking about reclaiming womanhood, it felt weird to use anything but womyn. I don't want any men in the radical reclamation of my womynhood.

I don't understand the feminist opposition to womyn, though. Google it, look at all of the responses on sites like Yahoo answers and Ask.com. Not one person on any of those sites is in favor of the use of "womyn". Why not??

I love it! Yes, I'm radical, I'm not ashamed to admit that. I don't think we need to use womyn all the time (I'm not THAT radical), but there are times when I most certainly think it's necessary. I've used it in papers for school (it always comes back circled as a spelling error), I've used it in poems, in letters, in random notes I take in class. There are just times when you want a be a womyn. When you want to reclaim your womynhood without having any men involved.

Eh, maybe I've got a little separatist in me. There have been worse things, womyn!

My first time organizing

2010-04-14T16:50:00.004-05:00

Damn, I'm bad at this whole blogging thing! I have a list of topics I want to eventually get around to writing about, but right now I'm midway through a halfway decent paper abour reclaiming "cunt", and that will take over my life for the next week or so; when you write something like that, it better be polished.
About two weeks ago, I had my first activist-organizing challenge. It didn't work out the way we wanted it to, but that was in no fault of mine; that's just what happens sometimes when you stage a counter-protest.
Even if the protest itself didn't go the way I planned, I did learn a lot from doing it. And by that, I mean that in 16 hours, we'd pulled together a protest with over 130 confirmed guests to a facebook group, press releases, and complete university support. I even got a personal email from the chancellor after I invited her, professing her support for what we were doing.
In all, I felt it was pretty successful. It put me in a really good mood; we ended up having a pro-gay rally. Not the protest I went for, but hey, we all had a really good time.
Sorry this was a pretty short, boring post. Just wanted to put something there on my page, since it's been a while.
I promise to write more later.

On Activism, and Fear

2010-03-29T00:01:00.003-05:00

Tonight, my roommmate and I sort of fell into a deep conversation. It was not really intentional; it's late and we both need to do some more work before we go to bed, but the mood was just right for it, and once we started, it was pretty damn hard to stop.
I don't really remember how it started, I just know where it ended up. Somehow, we got to talking about fear. And then about hate crimes. She (and granted, she is a very good ally, really knows her stuff) was floored to find out that hate crimes do happen on this campus; a very safe one. And she was shocked to know that, with all she does in the queer community, she'd never once heard about any of them.
Which got us a-thinkin'. What, if anything, can we do about this? It's the double-edged sword that I was discussing with a journalist friend the other night: on one hand, you really need to get it out there. On the other, getting it out there could mean that there will be even more fear, since the issue is now out in the open. It's at the front of people's minds.
So what can we do about hate crimes within the queer community? Especially the thought of hate crimes that all of us queer people know too well. You know, the walking out of a queer space and back into the cool night, and having that feeling that someone watched you come out. So you splay your keys between your fingers and pray to whatever the hell you believe in that no one looks at you, that no one bothers you. And there's that fear, that "what will I do if that person marks me as queer and wants to give me a hard time?"
My roommate was adamant that we do something. She was annoyed with my hesitation and kept shooting down any excuses I could find. Because frankly, I'm afraid. She has the privlege that if she walks out of a queer space, she can summon up her football player size boyfriend and no one will bother her. No one will mark her as queer, unless she wants them to. I don't. I have to worry about that every time I leave the house.
Bringing these issues to light is important, critical. But at the same time, I need to find a way to do it so that I don't have to worry about being marked. So I don't have to mark my friends. But at the same time, I still have to find a way to reach people.
The activist in me is off and running. Unfortunatly, she hasn't given me any clues as to where she's headed....

"Hey pretty girl"

2010-03-17T15:48:00.004-05:00

Today, I had lunch with a very awesome radiqueer friend. The weather here was finally good enough to sit outside, and we took full advantage of that. As we were walking down the street finding a nice place away from the creepy pigeons to sit, a man on the street corner asking for money called out to us "hey pretty girls, could you spare some change?" Now, the friend I was with is pretty butch. And today, I was not particularly feminine looking either.
As we walked away from him, I looked at my friend and couldn't help mentioning that I was offended to be called "pretty girl". I'm obviously female, even when I try to hide it, but my gender expression right now doesn't really want you calling me out on it. Recognize me in your head however you want to or need to, but you don't call two butch women (okay, a butch and a wannabe butch) "pretty girls". Now granted, my friend is very attractive, but she gets called "sir" more often than "pretty girl", I'd assume.
One of us commented afterwards that had it been a woman, it may have been flattering. Since it was a man who approached us, I can't say for certain how I would feel if called "pretty girl" by a woman I didn't know. But I probably wouldn't be writing about it (either that, or I would be for different reasons....).
Part of me wonders if that's wrong. Should I be equally offended to be gendered (and sexualized) based on my appearance by a man and a woman? Or because I'm unusually wary of men, am I more inclined to be offended by a man calling me out? Honestly, I don't think it would bother me if a woman called me "pretty girl". I'd be flattered. But from a man, that type of flattery makes me uncomfortable. So should I be okay letting myself be sexualized by the gender I prefer, or, had I been placed in that situation, would I be beating myself up for being flattered at a blatant attempt at sexualization for someone else's own needs?
Just my thought for the day.

It's a Drag

2010-03-01T19:50:00.003-06:00

Drag shows. They're such an integral part of queer culture, but are they really helping us?
Here's what I mean. Recently, I went to a huge drag show. And when I say huge, I mean a sold out auditorium over 1600 people. In a college town. The queen hosting the drag show asked how many people identify as gay/lesbian/straight. The majority of the audience (over half) identified as heterosexual!
Now, a lot of my activist friends would be extremely excited by this. They'd say something along the lines of "look at all of this visibility for the queer community! How can that be bad?"
I'll tell you how. Now, I enjoy a show as much as the next person. Years in theater made me no stranger to the stage. But it also made me quite a harsh critic. So when you come to a drag show, there is an emphasis on the word "show". You go to see a spectacle.
How is this positive press for the queer community? People go and stare at you on a stage and laugh at your funny antics. Seems like a circus to me. To me, drag shows are ways to sexualize a whole new group of women: drag queens. You have the already sexualized drag kings pulling money out of women's shirts with their oh-so-suave mouths (okay, admitted, that's kinda hot), but then you have the queens doing seductive, provocative dances that basically screams "SEX!!" How is that good for us?
So now we've got lesbians as hypersexualized, gay men as hypersexualized, bisexuals as the most sexualized of all, but then the entire trans community gets lumped into this idea of drag. I had someone comment to me after the drag show, making a comment about a genderqueer person walking across the campus quad that went something like, "I see him so differently now after the drag show.I wonder if he's a dancer?". The person in question is not a dancer and would not be caught dead "shakin' it" on stage. But here we are assuming that all trans/gender-nonconforming people must be oversexualized too.
Drag may be good visibility, I can't dispute that point. More straight people come to this event than any other queer sponsored/queer themed event on campus. But that doesn't mean that what they get out of it is respect and tolerance and all of the things we say for the newspapers. Drag gives people a fragmented view of the queer community and furthers the negative stereotypes.

Love Without Roses

2010-02-12T22:49:00.005-06:00

Okay, so I've kind of failed at the blogging thing lately. It's been crazy busy around here.
So seeing as it's soon to be February 14, it seems that a Valentine's day rant is in order.
I have been seeing paper hearts and decorations everywhere. Everyone's going nuts. Am I the only one who hates this? And it's not like I'm one of the single girls who hates Valentine's day because I have no one to share it with. I have a valentine, only she's miles away. But that doesn't stop the consumerist crap from flooding the bookstore, the mailbox, and even the apartment. It seems that everyone cares about sending chocolates and roses.
I'll admit I'm a romantic at heart. I'd love to get a dozen long stemmed white roses with a sweet note attached. Just not on February 14th. Why does it have to be that today is the day to celebrate your love? The only day. What if I want to go out to dinner for a day in March? If I buy you flowers in September. And heaven forbid, chocolates in July!
I don't understand why people in our culture can't celebrate love any day. To me, it's like saying people don't care any other day. You don't see flower stands on the side of the road or cute little teddy bears with hearts that say "I love you". Valentine's day has become what our society wants: a day to spend money. So maybe you like the hype. I, for one, want to take down all those sticky hearts and save them for a day in September.

Quiet Anger

2010-01-24T19:58:00.003-06:00

This week, I've been laying low and waiting for something to make me angry. Well, okay, I see a lot of things in the world that make me angry. But I've been waiting for something blog-worthy. Maybe it's the fact that I haven't really left the apartment, or maybe it's just that being back here makes me feel calmer than I've felt for the past month. Whatever it is, I've somehow managed to keep my anger at society at bay.
Now, for someone as radical as me, I wonder if that's a good thing. Sometimes I feel like I have to be angry, have to be passionate, have to have something to say "fuck you, world" about or I'm not happy. And I see a lot of injustice, especially against women on TV, in movies, in books, everywhere.
But I was totally and completely fed up with the chauvanism I saw in classic literature as well as commercials for TV shows about slutty teenagers. So I turned to queer literature to get my fix of injustice. The past weekend has been spent curled up in the apartment, lying on the couch reading "Drag King Dreams" and "Stone Butch Blues" for the second or third time. I adore Leslie Feinberg's writing. Even as a cisgendered person, it hits home for me. I see my partner in Jess, myself in Theresa. And I'm comforted knowing that my injustices are not mine alone.
At the same time, I read and I cry because of the severity of life. I hate myself for being cisgendered, although that's one of the only dominant societal positions I fill. I have never known the pain of being beaten on the streets, of waiting for my lover to emerge from a bathroom that some people disagree should also belong to her. And as grateful as I am to not know that pain, I curse my privilege. I curse the fact that I can only understand through books, through detailed accounts of other's lives. Understanding my privilege helps me to see oppression in everyone else.
So maybe something did make me angry. Not as blatant as the anger I had several weeks ago, hearing my father make a chauvinistic comment, or when someone leered at a butch friend of mine. But anger nonetheless. Maybe this is a deeper, a stronger, a more passionate kind of anger. The type that inspires change.

That's Ms. Consumer Whore to You

2010-01-12T18:50:00.002-06:00

This past week, I've had to do a lot of thinking about consumerism, dignity, and how I fit into all of that. I'm quick to trash society, I'll give you that. I'm the first to say how fucked up our world is and how people are the problem. I'll point out flaws, one of which that makes my top three is always the fact that we are materialistic, stuff-needing addicts. And then I go out and buy into all that.
So the question comes, at what point do you say, "fuck the system" and be yourself, and when do you sit back and quietly take one for the stuff-ridden, bogged down, advertised-out team? If only I knew.
A bit of backstory: A not particularly feminine girl spends three weeks in her parent's house after two years of living on her own. Said parents are emotionally and verbally abusive and have always been that way, so there's no hope of them changing anytime soon. In those three weeks, our heroine goes from looking in the mirror in the morning before leaving the house and regardless of the face or the hair or the outfit that looks back, responding "that'll do" to complete and utter insecurity and obsession over flaws. That sucks. Eventually, fed up with the comments about her skin not looking good enough, she goes out and buys a skin care product (no, not make-up, but almost as bad) that she can't afford. Parents are satisfied, she's....sorta iffy.
So here's my question. I've got two battles: dignity, and compliance, I guess I'll call them. By "compliance", I mean feeling like you're the problem in the system by becoming one of those materialistic, all-the-same bitches that you hate. But do you accept the fact that you may or may not be more than just okay-looking (and being totally fine with that) and say "fuck you" to all the people who say otherwise, or do you sit down, do what they want, and make them shut up?
The radical in me, the proud in me, the ME in me has always been quiet,taken it, and just let it break me silently while cursing myself for being forced into the consumerist mentality. Lived on my own a while, learned to stop hating myself, start being genuinely okay with who I am and how I look, totally avoided the consumer mentality, and was happy for the first time. So now what? I wonder if I can have both. Can you be anti-consumerism while preserving your dignity and (literally) saving face by buying top products? When I have to shop, I shop only green, only organic things. But in this case, am I just being a consumer whore myself? So I wonder that, and I wonder if there's any way to come to a solid answer about this. The more I delve into all of the shit that I've pushed in a corner left over from my days of giving-a-fuck, the more the writing on it will follow. Until then, I muse over the unexplainable.

The One in the Mirror

2010-01-03T22:08:00.004-06:00

What is it with the media saying how people (women-identified in particular) are supposed to look? And everyone buying it? Who made that shit up? I hate that people throw on me that I'm supposed to have glossy shampoo commercial hair and eyelashes that extend halfway across the country. So what if I don't? Am I not beautiful?
I hate to admit it, but I sometimes fall prey to the whole commercialized-woman syndrome. I look in the mirror and despise the person who looks back at me. Sometimes, for a moment or two, I think that maybe I'd be prettier with clearer skin, longer hair, or bigger boobs. I have to stop myself and say "you're beautiful as you are" but the face in the mirror usually laughs at me.
That makes me mad. I see girls (mainly) starting so young to care about how the world tells them they should look to be beautiful and wanting more than anything to fit that ideal. I remember using the flat iron on my hair just once in the seventh grade. When I went to school, I saw that I didn't look like the girls from the magazines. I just looked like a false version of myself. And I never did it again. But so many young people don't get that message. I see all the girls with their straightened hair and identical outfits. They're as young as elementary school, usually about nine, and then clear on through college, some into the adult world, not ever realizing that under all that makeup, without all the expensive designer clothes, they're beautiful just as they are.
And that saddens me. I want a world where people, women especially, can look in the mirror and not say "what face product should I try to make my skin clearer", where parents won't ever pressure their kids to look like everyone else just to fit in, where people's true beauty can shine through, and no one will think that's strange.
But until we find that world, I think I may avoid the mirror.

Double Standards

2009-12-22T18:03:00.005-06:00

Today I realized that no matter how much we say we have done, we really haven't gotten anywhere. Backstory: Friend (female) has a little brother. Little brother has a girlfriend. His parents let him go to co-ed sleepovers where his girlfriend will be. They find it adorable. Friend asks dad what would happen if she wanted to go to a co-ed sleepover. He says he'd never let her because that's how girls get raped.
Umm....excuse me??? That's how girls get raped? SO many flaws in that argument. First of all, girls getting raped at co-ed sleepovers? There are other friends there, male and female. That's not real likely. Second of all, assuming heteronormativity (as so many do), who does the raping?? BOYS. Like their son who is sleeping next to a girl? So they automatically assume son has angel standing because he's their son, but any other boys are rapists?
I mean really, talk about oppression. You have women being told they could never do things that boys are so readily able to do. And why? I was talking to my partner about this scenario. She's the middle child with two brothers. She told me that this is how it's always been. Maybe because I don't have brothers, I don't get it. She told me brothers can stay out later than sisters. They can date younger, don't get punished for doing bad things, and have their parents always turn a blind eye when something goes wrong. She also told me to think about how far women have have come since before we were allowed to vote. At least some can HAVE significant others now. But no. That doesn't do it for me. Oppression starts in the home. You have all these mothers who call themselves feminists raising kids in a completely gendered, oppressed setting. What happened to women who "understand" oppression? If you understand, why do you go on allowing it to happen? You would think in an era with more feminists, there would be so much less gender oppression of children. Now I'm not saying parents should be gung-ho for co-ed sleepovers. But if you let one gender do it, you're raising a whole new generation of people who think that you can be a feminist and oppress women.
This isn't based in any book, this isn't based on any fact. It's just what I have observed from my time looking around the world. Boys can do things girls can't do. And my partner says that'll never change. And I'm starting to agree with her. I always say that you have to know what you want to fight for. Where do you draw the line? How do you know if this is something you can change or not? Who says you can (or can't) do it all? And if this isn't something that we should ever fight to change (because changing the impossible is, well, impossible), what is?
The idealist in me says we should try to change all the injustice in the world. The realist doesn't know where to start. I feel like starting in the family is a good place to begin. Maybe if boys were brought up thinking girls were equal,they wouldn't have the "helpless female" mentality as fathers. Maybe if women were brought up knowing they could do whatever their brothers could do, they wouldn't think it was okay to oppress their own daughters. So where do we start? I can't answer that. But I think it has to start with each of us. I think it has to start from the base, from the family. It has to start by recognizing our own oppression, how we are bound by the double standard.

Where it all begins

2009-12-11T15:13:00.002-06:00

A wise activist told me last week that sometimes it's better to not know how to articulate your words. Sometimes it's the sense of humanity that draws your coalition together, not the fact that you read from a perfectly formed speech.

So this blog is exactly that philosophy in action. This is me, speaking from my heart and my mind on topics that may be of interest to me on a certain day for various reasons. I'm no scholar, no writer, no activist. I'm just a person wanting to see if my views make sense to anyone else. So pardon the convoluted ideas, the half formed thoughts, the non-sequitors. I am in front of you at face value, hoping to put words on a page to express my rage at society, the beauty I find in simple things, and the way that ideas form somewhere in the mind of a wanna-be scholar, activist, and writer.

In our lives, we all grapple with ideas, thoughts, and concepts that are new to us. These are mine. Feel free to comment, enlighten me. Let others enligten you.
Peace.