on healing and heart-pain. (words of wisdom)

a few hours ago, i sent my very good friend, e, this question:
people say that nobody ever died from working on this kind of healing work.
but, given how much my heart hurts right now, i'm having a hard time believing that. believing that it won't just up and give out on me. i never thought i'd get to the point of being afraid of dying from these wounds. and yet, here i am. with that as my new biggest fear.
my question, then, is this.
have you ever heard of anyone dying (as in, just dying, not directly by their own hand) because of this?



and she sent me this answer, which i re-post here, because this is wisdom that just begs to be shared:

i have not, thankfully, heard of anyone dying from this kind of work. i have, however, had the feeling -- this hurts too much. this hurts. this is so huge. i once said to beth, "i feel like i am dying." and she said, "perhaps you are just learning how to live... how to really truly love and hold your own self through your life." and i think she is right on.

it's like when you are out in the cold (all those difficult memories) and it's freezing, freezing, and your hands go numb. and they just stay numb, and you keep skating or skiing or whatever you are doing. and you do fine... it's good enough (is it?). and then you walk into a warm space -- a house (a therapist's office) for instance -- and your hands start to warm up. and the feeling starts to come back. and the first sensation is pain. unbelievable pain. and you wonder if it would've just been better to keep those hands numb because, well, OUCH! but then the warmth returns... slowly, slowly... there is tingling and it starts to feel better but a little bit weird and unfamiliar... and then they keep warming. and the feeling returns. and then you can use those hands to hold things and make things... beautiful delicate things...

writing as healing

to start off:
new memories are fuckin' hard.

(at one point, i would've looked at this as an obstacle to be avoided. who knew that i'd ever get to the point where i look at this as an obstacle to be surmounted, healed, learned from?)





and to expand, in a completely depersonalizing (or, well, not "depersonalizing" so much as "masking the too-revealing personal truths") way:
writing as healing.

i've had a long, long, long post in the works about this topic for over a month now.
it's still not nearly finished - in fact, it might be one of those that never gets "finished" - but here's a little bit of it. a little taste.


this one's about writing and healing, about healing through writing and writing as a conduit of healing.
(i love that word, “conduit.” i’ve recently rediscovered it. “a means of conveying something from one location to another.” moving from (wounded) location to (healing/healed) location. appropriate, no?)

so here we go, some thoughts on writing, healing, the process, telling the truth, and so on.

the woman whose (adorable!) daughter I babysit, Nerissa Nields, has this quote on her website:

I believe that our stories are what make us sick AND our stories are what heal us.

i'm also currently reading this absolutely incredible book by Louise DeSalvo: Writing as a Way Of Healing.
in this book, she quotes Wayne Muller:

our own wounds can be vehicles for exploring our essential nature, revealing the deepest textures of our heart and soul, if only we will sit with them, open ourselves to the pain,...without holding back, without blame.

in this same book, DeSalvo talks about how not telling our stories makes us sick, both emotionally and physically. by extension, then, telling our stories heals us, not only emotionally, but physically as well.

over time...the work of inhibiting traumatic narratives and feelings acts as an ongoing stressor and gradually undermines the body's defenses. like other significant stressors, inhibiting our stories and emotions can adversely affect immune function..

this isn't really a new concept for me; a good friend - we'll call her T - and i have been talking for a while about how this kind of suppression / repression / woundedness is probably behind her severe anemia, my roommate's borderline narcolepsy, my own poor immune system, my mother's fifteen (and counting) physical disorders, even T's mother's death.

so.
our stories make us sick, yes. holding them in, inhibiting them, repressing them sets off an extremely unhealthy cycle: we get sick because we don't open up to our stories, we tell ourselves we can't open up to our stories because we're not well enough to deal with the ramifications we imagine would come with this kind of openness.
and we can't get well by constantly, actively repressing our stories, the traumatic events of our past. we get sicker.




that paper i tried to write at the end of my senior year at smith centered around "breaking the silence." i came to kind of hate that aphorism. it seemed overused and, after reading writer after writer using it to describe how they Healed From Abuse™, i was sick of it. i'd been talking about the abuse for years, since i was 15. i'd broken the silence, and i wasn't healed. my "healing" path, my silence-breaking, wasn't achieving that kind of healing catharsis that was supposed to come from telling my story, from "breaking the silence."
yet, despite my cynicism, my argument in the paper was still based on the revolutionary aspect of breaking the silence, particularly, the community- (and self-) imposed silences around being both queer and a victim/survivor of sexual violence. i knew i didn’t fit into the model of The Survivor – at least, the one who Healed by breaking her silence – but i still saw the potential of that model. how breaking the silence could be revolutionary, could be a (the?) path to healing…even if i hadn’t quite found that path yet, or figured out how it worked. i’ve always seen the value of breaking the silence, always repeated that aphorism, even as it frustrated and eluded me.
frustrating and elusive because i was talking. i was writing. i was, at times, talking and writing at length about the abuse. breaking that silence. but something was missing. it wasn’t helping. i wasn’t healing.

what i didn’t realize then, what i didn’t realize until recently, is that there’s a particular kind of breaking that silence that is healing; just talking in facts, sans emotion, the way i had been for years, isn’t the kind of healing silence-breaking that i’d been seeking.

not feeling feels safe. being numb feels safe. but it’s not healing.

DeSalvo cites a study that forms the basis of her book, her program for writing as healing. the study was done by James Pennebaker and Sandra Beall, and they found that writing a full narrative -- with both facts and emotions -- of a trauma was healing in a way that writing only half (only facts, or only emotions) was not.

We must write in a way that links detailed descriptions of what happened with feelings – then and now – about what happened. Both thinking and feeling are involved. Linking them is critical. Feelings about the traumatic event in the past and the present are expressed and, perhaps, compared so that the writer unravels how the past impinges on the present but how, too, it’s different.

so that’s what was missing.


when amy, my last therapist, first asked me what i felt during the abuse, i was lost. i didn’t have anything to say.
“i’ve never really thought about that. nobody’s ever asked me before.”
she was floored that, in my years and years of therapy, nobody had asked me about what it felt like to that little girl who was being abused. it didn’t seem all that strange to me; people wanted to know what happened, they wanted to know what my parents did, what john did, what i did. why would they care about what any of us felt? the feelings seemed irrelevant….because nobody had ever let me believe that they were relevant or told me that the “safety” i felt by avoiding them was actually a totally false sense of security. i’d become really good at telling the facts of what happened, with little or no feeling. feeling anything about it was dangerous, opened up things that i didn’t think i could bear opening up. so i didn’t.
and, until about three months ago, i kept up that stoic façade. and then i met T, a woman who, for the first time, offered the kind of safety that i’d always sought, but never found. when i told her my story, it was different. the story itself was the same, the facts didn’t change, and i still consciously left out those parts that felt (still feel) too shameful to share, but what i opened up in the telling of the story was profoundly different. when she asked me to tell her my story, and i obliged, i felt it. for the first time, when i told the facts that, over the years, have become a little mundane, i felt them in my heart and in my gut. i told a full narrative – a short version, but full nonetheless – of the story. i opened up, with her, a package with both facts and feelings.

“ah.” i thought, “that’s what it’s supposed to be like to break the silence. this is the kind of healing that people have been talking about.”

it’s all part of living fully, of living with your heart and your head. it’s bigger than a healing way of writing, it’s bigger than me telling my story in a full way, it’s bigger than my friendship with this woman who first showed me what heart-living was about.

writing in a way that heals is just a part of living in a way that heals. but i’m a writer, always have been. so, for me, writing in a way that heals is a big part of living in a way that heals. writing in a way that links my heart-understanding of what happened with my head-understanding of what happened…that’s what it means to “break the silence.” that’s what it means to live that old, possibly overused, easily misunderstood aphorism.



so, in that vein, let me tell you a story.
...............


...and this is where the post i've been working on veers off, unfinished, into convoluted storytelling, unorganized narrative, and totally non-healing writing. so instead, i'm going to end it in a different way. read on.

i could tell lots of stories. i've considered, thoroughly, my options for which story/stories to write in this way that's supposed to heal, which stories i could share on this blog.
there are plenty of easy ones. plenty. but they're "easy" because they're things i've already done a good deal of healing around/over/in. the ones i need to tell are the ones that...are hard.
like this new memory.
the one that i tried to tell my therapist about today...and couldn't get through all of it.

it's the things that are the hardest that i most want to do. i've never liked settling for the easier tasks. i thrive on challenges, on things that are supposed to be impossible or implausible.

so i can't tell you these "easy" stories.
because the stories i want to tell aren't easy.
and i can't tell you the hard stories, either. (because i can't tell myself these stories yet, either.)
but there will be stories. they'll come.
i promise (myself. and you).

generational legacy of wounded women

when i decided to write today*, i intended to write about this topic, one of my "to-come" posts:

3) the ways in which a lot of women's reluctance to reject and deferment to the desires of (especially hetero) men is not only a sign of her own individual woundedness, but also indicative of our shared woundedness. i also want to discuss how "the patriarchy" (and everything that goes along with it) contributes to our own individual woundedness, how the oppression we feel is rarely capital-p Political, and how healing from it doesn't need to be Political. (healing, though, is inherently political, inherently an act of social change.

i thought about it, thought about Gerry, the (much older hetero male) customer at the cafe who seems to think that i want him to be more than just another regular customer i'm friendly with. i thought about my huge, huge difficulty with saying no to him, with refusing his gifts (...he gave me pearls. and a half dozen roses on valentine's day. i know, i know.) i thought a little about what that meant, given my own personal history and my socialization as a "nice girl."
i was about to write a long, well thought out post about the implications of my woundedness on my present life, how my past wounds carry on and continue wounding me now...as exemplified by this situation with gerry.



and then...my mother left me a message on my voicemail.
and, unsurprisingly, the direction of this post shifted dramatically.

this seems like a trivial anecdote, but it epitomizes the codependent, dysfunctional woundedness of my relationship with my mother (or, more accurately, of her relationship with/to me).

i recently changed my voicemail message. it's now much calmer, more peaceful, more mellow. a couple friends - friends who are part of this healing community of mine - have commented approvingly on it. they like the calmness, adultness, maturity of the new greeting.
my mom called today and left a message on my voicemail.
it started with a halting, seemingly distracted, uncomfortable: "you changed your voicemail. it just..it's...it throws me off every time i hear it."

yes.
of course it does.
because when i recorded it, i felt at peace. i wasn't in excruciating, life-impeding pain. the person on the voicemail isn't the daughter that you've grown used to, that you've cultivated. the person on my voicemail isn't a slave to the pain that you have created / rely on.


when i heard her remark, i laughed out loud. shook my head.

at some point, i know, the grief will set in. i'll mourn for the woman my mother never was, for the mother i never had, for the peace she's never felt, for the healing she will probably never feel.

but for now, it's funny. sad-funny, definitely. that kind of funny where you laugh, but you think that maybe you should also be crying. but still, funny.




the point of this anecdote? it's a generational thing, this pain. the generational legacy of abuse, of trauma, of woundedness. my woundedness, even if it weren't directly caused by my mother's wounded actions (and a big ol' chunk of it was), would still have a lot to do with the legacy of my mother's woundedness. because when a woman as wounded as my mother tries to parent, she inevitably passes on that woundedness to her child.
so, yes, in a way, my wounds are hereditary. my depression is hereditary, my PTSD is hereditary, my addictions - to unhealthy relationships, to self-injury - are hereditary. but it's not the hereditary that's passed along in genes (or maybe it is). it's a different hereditary trait.


this all means that generations of women are still wounded, grow up wounded, because they were raised by wounded women. these girls, raised by wounded women, will also raise wounded women...unless they address their wounds. acknowledge them. try to heal them.

this woundedness, this generational woundedness...it's sad. it's sad to see women, just about everywhere, in so much pain. my heart goes out to the women i see with unhealed, unacknowledged wounds. but it also makes me angry. because this legacy of woundedness is another one of those things that supports the continued prominence of patriarchal structures. it's this woundedness that, on an individual level, enables patriarchal dominance over women who are too wounded to embrace their power, who can't see that they deserve something better than what they have.



_______________________________

*"today," at first, referred to monday, march 3rd. but i didn't get around to finishing the post until today, sunday, march 9th. noted just in case the chronology of these events matters...even though i'm pretty sure it doesn't.

the best book i'd somehow never heard of

Yesterday, I finished this book: The Obsidian Mirror, by Louise Wisechild.
It took me close to two weeks to finish it.
Not because it's particularly long - it's typical memoir length, a little under 300 pages.
Not because it's intellectually dense or particularly difficult - it's well-written, but in a perfectly accessible way.
Not even because I wasn't dedicated to reading it -- there were few days I didn't have the book with me, in my bag, few days that I didn't pick it up and have a hard time putting it down.

No, it took me so long to finish this book because it was just that intense. Because there were entire chapters I didn't want to forget, so I finished, then went back 20 pages to re-read it. Even the preface (by Laura Davis) and new introduction (by the author) were read twice.
This is a book I took out from the Smith library. I don't really want to return it. I'm now torn as to where to spend the remainder of my book budget for March; I had planned on buying Writing As A Way of Healing by Louise DeSalvo (about which I've got another post in the works for), but I also need this book as an addition to my library.



Why am I so enamoured with this book?
Part of it, I don't deny, is because I see myself in it, in what Wisechild is writing. I see my healing journey reflected in this memoir of her healing journey. It's my own journey, just as hers was her own, but it's a journey that reminds me that even in these hardest parts, I'm not the only one who's ever been there. Reminds me that not only have other people been there, they've gotten through it. That's huge.
But the bigger part of why I'm kind of astonished by how much I love this book is this:
It tells the story that nobody else tells. It's brutally honest about what "healing from sexual abuse" means.
I've been bitter about the myth of the Survivor, about the rhetoric around surviving / healing for a long time. Most books, stories, movies, and whatever else I've ever read or seen have emphasized the telling as The Healing Moment. Have given the impression, intentionally or not, that telling, breaking that silence, is the thing you need to do to "heal." Made it seem like healing comes automatically afterwards -- as in, speak out about the abuse, call it what it is (rape, abuse, incest, etc), tell your therapist, confront your abuser(s), and suddenly, you're healed! You're officially a Survivor!
Except...that's not how it works.
Maybe for some people, it really is that simple. But not, I don't think, for most. And certainly not for me.
Which isn't to say that the initial telling isn't important - it is, it's vitally important, and essential to starting that healing process. But that's what it is: a start. Of a process. Not the be-all and end-all of healing.

So what I love most about Wisechild's book is that it's honest about the up and down (and down and down and up and down) nature of the healing process. It's honest about it being a process. It's up-front and frank about the things she's healing from, without inaccurate metaphors and allusions to abuse. It's real, and it's true. It's not beautiful. It ends beautifully, in a very healed & still healing place, but she doesn't gloss over the ugly, ugly, painful parts of healing. In this book is so much truth, so much truth that's so often overlooked or (intentionally? subconsciously?) left out of the larger rhetoric of surviving, the larger myth of the Survivor.








And, to be totally honest, another reason I've developed such an attachment to this book is because it triggered a lot of things for me. Her story hit places in me that I needed to uncover. Places I'd been somewhat intentionally avoiding, things I'd been resisting. It hurt, to read it. It was painful. But it wasn't an unpleasant pain. It was a pain that opened, that triggered the pain of opening. It reminded me a lot of myself, I saw myself reflected often in her story...and then I also - briefly and distantly and uncertainly - saw myself in the last couple chapters, when her healing journey becomes calmer, when she's a more healed woman. A more whole woman. It hit home.
A moment of irony, fate, coincidence, something:
I'd been using a flyer as a bookmark. For the Block Island Poetry Project. I was interested in the weekend, even though I knew I could never afford it. I'd taken the brochure from the cafe's bulletin board, though, just so that I could pine away for my lost opportunities of writing poetry in a place like Block Island. I'd been to Block Island before, and had fond memories of it and its beauty. Reading this book triggered a new memory for me, something that hasn't happened in years, something which was painful beyond what I can describe here. The new memory?
From our trip to Block Island in 1998.
Ironic, don't you think?

healing comes in memories, in monologues, in rants, and in prayers.

I'm currently reading A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant, And A Prayer, an anthology edited by Eve Ensler. It contains writings about (and to stop) violence against women and girls, from 49 amazing writers.

It's incredible.

And so intense.


I can't read it straight through; I don't think any person with a connection to hir own heart would be able to read heartbreaking (but also heartening) story after heartbreaking/heartening story all the way through.

So I've been flipping around.

One that really resonates with me is called "Rescue," by Mark Matousek. Which explains how his childhood, growing up with a single mother and three sisters, affected his life -- that is, how growing up in a family of raped women made him into a "rescue artist." the familial, generational legacy of violence against women.


But also, Jane Fonda's afterword, which talks about healing, and also talks about that familial/generational legacy of sexual abuse.
Specifically, this sentence, regarding "healing activism":
"It's important to create an intentional community of love, friends who are also committed to living as fully and wholly as possible."
an intentional community of love.
i love that idea.
part of creating a community. part of integrating healing into activism. part of putting love, and heart, and wholeness (back?) into social justice movements.
I'll expand on this more in some (or lots) of posts to come, but for now, I'll just leave it at this:

Yes, I am indeed creating (and finding) my own intentional community of love.
And I do, sincerely, hope that you can find your way into one of your own.

updated list: upcoming posts.

my list just keeps growing.
seems the act of living does that.
there are always more (and more and more) things to write about.


so, here goes:
1) organizing, sans self-abandonment.
2) healing and intimate (romantic or otherwise) relationships.
3) shared woundedness, individual woundedness as played out in women's relationships with (hetero) men (examples, in my case, from the food service industry).
4) creating/finding/being in communities.
5) activism as woundedness/victimization, played out. (or not.)
6) writing/healing


and, new to the list:
7) heartbreak. as a heart-opening experience? (as in, the heart breaks, and the heart breaks open.) as exquisite pain. as pain you can learn from. i want to write something about not closing yourself off to feeling that pain. about not trying to erect those walls around your heart again. i want to write something about heartbreak as inspiration for more than angsty love poetry and whiny pop music. i want to write something about heartbreak as opening your eyes to different wounded parts of you that need healing. about not stifling that heartbreak in order to appear "above it" (when you're clearly not), but still containing it when it's not a safe place to express it.
i want to connect heartbreak to a larger picture, i want to explore why we, as a culture, avoid and silence and censor heartbreak so much...with ice cream, distraction, bad movies, chocolate. why we try so hard to not feel it.
i want to write all these things.
but i can't. not yet. it's all a little too raw still.
it will come.

the power of lies, the power of truth-telling.

i've got a couple of those "works in progress" posts started. i've got one about writing / healing about halfway done. (only half-)surprisingly, it's kind of hard to write. mostly because i'm not only writing about writing, but i'm trying to use the post as a beginning of the process of writing to heal. which means i'm trying to tell one of my stories in a complete way, linking both facts / events and emotions. i, of course, am trying to do so with one of those stories that i don't tell...the story that i've only told to a total of two people thus far - my old therapist and a very good friend. so writing this post the way i want to write it? is tough. to say the least.


however.

i've got a couple things i can start saying about writing.
or, more specifically, about words.
(inspired in part by a conversation i had recently with one of the incredible women who's part of this healing community i'm slowly finding / cultivating here in western mass.)

a lot (far too many) of us grew up in environments where words were used only in the form of lies. we couldn't speak the truth about our pain, about our real experiences, about our woundedness. our words became the things we hid behind, the things that provided us with a not-so-safe kind of safety. we might've used them to pretend that everything was fine, to sacrifice ourselves so as not to rock the boat. lied our way into convincing other people (and ourselves) that we were ok, that we were safe, that we weren't in the pain that we maybe couldn't really handle at that time. or we used our words to control other people, other situations, because at least that way, we could ignore what was really going on. we could avoid the situations that were far beyond our comprehension, our maturity level. and, of course, words were used almost entirely as lies told to us; telling us we were loved when every action by our parents or siblings or relatives or other adults clearly told us otherwise. telling us we were safe when we were anything but. telling us how important "the family" was, how important it was to look the part, do whatever we needed to do in order to give that illusion of a happy family. of a functional family. telling us that our acceptance and approval depended on being "beautiful" -- i.e. skinny, feminine, athletic, intelligent. telling us we weren't good enough. pretty enough. smart enough. white enough. or just simply enough. never, or rarely, telling us the truth.

so words, for so many of us, were a kind of betrayal. putting trust in these things that so often and for so long let us down, left us wanting, becomes difficult, incredibly so....but not impossible.

because we can reclaim these words. all of these words, all of this language that was for so long used against us. we can use them to tell the truth, instead of lies. use our voices, our mouths, our hands, our ink, our fingers, to tell the truth. claim and embrace our truth.

the truth, too, is just as powerful as these lies. more so, even, by virtue of it being the truth. more powerful because we know what the alternative is. more powerful because we're more conscious of what it is to tell the truth. more powerful, for ourselves, because in telling these truths, we're healing the parts of ourselves that have been so deeply wounded by the lies we've had to tell and the lies we've been told.

which means, of course, that writing -- writing truth, writing the truest reality -- is an exercise in healing. is a form of healing. it's a (potentially) public form of healing. which means, further, that its potential is immeasurably powerful. if writing the truth is healing for the writer, reading a writer's truth - her raw, uncensored, real truth - is healing for the reader, as well.



the power of words is, well, awesome. almost unbelievable. in the very literal sense of both of those words.




......it's funny. i'd started out this post thinking that i would make a couple statements about words-as-lies / words-as-truth, then move on to discuss #2 on my works-in-progress list - on relationships and being whole & open & healed/healing within them. seems my fingers and mind had something else in mind, though.
maybe next time.

in the works.

a (numbered, of course) list of some posts that i'm thinking about, some things which may turn into full-fledged posts (or, you know, may not) in the near future:

1) how to be an organizer, an activist working for social change in a social movement environment that devalues, even discourages, individual healing. how to not lose or abandon yourself or your needs in your dedication to creating social change.
(in the works 'cause i have yet to find a solution to this dilemma. i'm workin' on it.)

2) on a much more personal note: on healing before and/or within (romantic?) relationships. this will mostly be a comparison, a record of my evolution from thinking i needed to hide my past in order to be in a relationship to my thoughts and beliefs about it now. both the post and my thoughts on the topic are works in progress.

3) the ways in which a lot of women's reluctance to reject and deferment to the desires of (especially hetero) men is not only a sign of her own individual woundedness, but also indicative of our shared woundedness. i also want to discuss how "the patriarchy" (and everything that goes along with it) contributes to our own individual woundedness, how the oppression we feel is rarely capital-p Political, and how healing from it doesn't need to be Political. (healing, though, is inherently political, inherently an act of social change.)

4) communities. creating them, finding them, being whole in them.
(intentionally vague.)

5) connecting activism to its root, the thing that spurs individuals to take action. how often is this a way of playing out (and replaying, fighting this time) their own woundedness and/or victimization?

and, also:
6) writing. my relationship to it, to words. the different forms. (prose, stream of consciousness, personal essay, memoir, poetry, spoken word, etc.) how it can be a conduit of healing.

path-finding.

i visited my hometown, very briefly, this weekend.
it was....well, i don't really have concise words. but it was.




what i want to talk about now, though, is something i realized while i was talking with my grandmother over dinner.


she was asking me about what i was doing with my life, what i wanted to do with my life, where i was headed.
(as a side note: as similar as she is to my mother, her daughter, there is a key difference that allows me to be more open and loving with my grandmother: she trusts me, trusts that what i'm doing with my life is best. mostly, though, she wants me to be happy simply for the sake of my own happiness. she would be proud of me and happy for me if i were to move into a box on the streets of northampton, as long as i was happy.)
i'm well aware of how this path-finding / path-discovery happened. this weekend, more than before, i made a very conscious effort to be always connected with myself, with the spiritual part of myself, with my higher self. that, i'm convinced, is where the following came from. it came through me, but it came from somewhere higher, because of that strong connection i'd cultivated especially for this particular weekend.

i was telling her about my eventual plans for grad school (a joint JD / MPH in reproductive & sexual health), and about what i hoped to do with that degree. i gave her my usual answer: become legal counsel or do some kind of policy work for a reproductive justice organization. but then, without putting much thought into it, the following answer spilled out:

but more than that, and in that kind of position, what i want to do is to bring something else into social justice work, into feminist activism. i want to bring in the aspect of individual healing, i want to help transform the movement into one where activists and organizers take care of themselves, heal themselves, help others to heal. i want to bring that healing environment into the often unhealthy environment of the social justice movement.

i've voiced this desire before, but more in the context of my own individual life, my own individual activism. i hadn't integrated this concept into my career plans. but now that i've voiced it, now that i've explained it - to my Roman Catholic grandmother, of all people - it makes so much sense.
i've always wanted to make a difference.
but it's always been an abstract, very general idea, something about "making things better for women."
this is it, though. this is the difference i want to make.
my calling, perhaps?

a couple of short updates:

1) Regarding this post, decrying the rash of male entitlement i experienced in the duration of one short day....the first man I talked about, parasailing Peter, who signed the Freedom of Choice Act petition because he thought the girls asking him to sign were cute....he's a regular at the cup & top cafe, where i work. he's actually, every so often, a decent enough guy. my read of him, now that i know him a little better (he likes mochas, by the way, but sometimes just goes for a regular coffee), is this: he's a lonely guy. he probably thought that by giving me and my co-volunteers a compliment on our looks, he would be able to engage me in conversation for a while, and be a little less lonely. and it worked. and it still works, at the cafe. he's getting his needs met through a totally manipulative, entitled avenue, but he has good reasons for those needs, and for feeling he needs to use these manipulations to meet them. i didn't think it would happen, but i'm growing compassion for him. for this entitled white guy who chuckled when i said i thought women were still second-class citizens, who was pro-choice solely because he thought we pro-choicers were hot....i have compassion for him.

this approach to those we might deem our "enemies," or at least the people whose interests oppose ours, has potential.
that whole "catch more flies with honey than vinegar" thing, i guess.


2) Regarding this post, on authenticity and belonging and passing and community:
I noted that there was no place where I could be my whole self, where there wasn't some part of me I felt I needed to censor or de-emphasize.
That's not entirely true now. That community is small; currently made up of 3 or 4 people, but it exists. And I'm whole in it. Or, at least, working my way towards being wholly myself with these select people.
I still can't be wholly myself within a lot of the communities I was trying to be part of. Still do sometimes try to be a part of. I don't know that I ever will be, though I hold out some hope that maybe these communities I yearn to be a part of will one day accept all of us not-quite-enough people in our wholeness. But in creating my own community, one that's not exclusively survivors, or queer women (well, actually, they are all queer, but that's out of chance rather than intentional identity politics), or women of colour....in creating this community for myself, I've created / am creating that space that I crave so much. That space that I can be whole in, that space where I can have company in my wholeness.
How's that for an uplifting note to end on?

heal the world: on healing and (truly revolutionary) social movements.

in line with the things i discussed in my last post, i've been re-working a lot of the theories in my head, very consciously revising them. in a lot of ways, it's another revolution. but a contained one, a revolution of my own personal world.

which, i guess, is where it's got to begin. where the revolution's got to start.



this is still very much a work-in-progress theory, and i acknowledge that it's less than fully fleshed out. here goes, anyway...

i mentioned, in passing, that the inner bonding therapy that i've been doing has been making me re-think what a revolution should look like, what a healthier, just world would look like.

a woman i know wrote an article on the IB website entitled "Protest + Politics - Healing = No Revolution." to be honest, i'm not entirely sure what exactly it says, since it's only available to paid members, and i'm too poor to pay the $10/mo. but based on conversations i've had with one of our mutual friends, the woman who turned me on to IB in the first place, i think i have a pretty good idea. i mean, the title is pretty self-explanatory: a social movement without an emphasis on healing doesn't - and can't - spark that revolution that we keep talking about, keep striving toward.

the model of second-wave feminism seems so hokey and silly now; consciousness raising groups seem just like versions of group therapy, and have been, in popular thought at least, completely de-politicized. getting a group of women together to talk about how they can't get their husbands to respect them, to talk about how their male bosses won't stop harassing them, seems so antiquated. "the personal is political" is still touted as a feminist rallying point, but most feminists are hesitant to put too much emphasis on things that are "too personal," things that don't (seem to) affect the community at large, or things that don't (seem to) affect the political system.

but it's not hokey, and it's not silly, to emphasize personal healing and personal journeys. it's essential.
without first healing our individual wounds that have been inflicted on us / irritated by the hetero/patriarchal/white supremacist culture that we live in, we can't expect to heal the wounded and dysfunctional society as a whole.

what i mean to say is: activists who don't take care of ourselves, who don't heal our own wounds, have very real limitations to the amount of good we can give to the world. if we don't have love inside of ourselves, for ourselves, we can't possibly extend this healing love to the rest of the world. if we can't model what a healed, healthy person would look like, we can't truly envision a healed, healthy world.

which isn't to say that these two have to be mutually exclusive; focusing on personal healing doesn't necessarily preclude social activism. they can and should coexist; that coexistence, though, needs to be truly "co" - complementary, cooperative, co-equal.



a dear professor of mine, nancy whittier, is making (some version of) the following argument in her forthcoming book on the politics of child sexual abuse activism: a lot of CSA survivor activists bemoan the shift from an overtly political/protesting activism to that of a "therapeutic culture." that is, the shift from a primary focus on Take Back The Night rallies and more radical models of activism around CSA and sexual violence to a focus on individuals, on therapy, on groups of survivors healing together in relative isolation from one another. while this makes sense, on some level, to view as a loss in a lot of ways, it's a mistake to completely discount the "therapeutic culture" as non-revolutionary. if our identities and behaviours and beliefs are so often shaped by the dominant culture - something which is especially true for survivors of CSA - then trying to heal these harmful beliefs, trying to inject some kind of (non-patriarchal, non-hegemonic) truth and love into these identities and beliefs and behaviours is very much an act of resistance.


i think that a lot of times, love is diminished in the activist realm.
personal healing is seen as something you do individually, but not something that has an immediate or even important effect on feminist/social justice movements as a whole.
but truth is: without individual healing, political movements can't succeed.

and, further: integrating the ideas of healing into political movements is, i think, essential for a true revolution to happen. think about if our political leaders actually did their own healing work, and were full, healed, loving beings. think about how much more peaceful our world would be. how much more respect we would all have for each other. how much more love there would be. how much less oppression/hatred/violence/pain there would be.


and yes, we need community movements, and yes, we need larger political movements.
but we also need individual healing. we also need to emphasize that, to not discount the political impact of, say, a woman healing from sexual abuse.
and it's that individual healing that will fuel a truly revolutionary movement.
it's that individual healing that needs to form the basis of these truly revolutionary movements.


in short:
individual healing --> a healing movement --> revolution.



the next post in the works:
on being a political organizer and being emotionally healthy. on prioritizing your individual healing while still being an effective organizer. (or: on not actually needing to spend every waking hour on your cause, on not needing to use your cause as a distraction from the healing work you're not doing.)

evolution of thought, of my feminism, of myself.

this is going to be short, sweet, and to the point:


i'm going through a major transformation.

this has been a long time coming, of course. just looking back at my evolution as a feminist, i've changed profoundly. i've become less reactionary, more thoughtful, less intense, more pragmatic, a little more cynical, and, in some ways, a little less radical (but in some ways, slightly more radical).

and i'm still changing. as i should be, because that's what life's about.

with this Inner Bonding therapy that i'm doing now, i'm radically revising and re-forming my life. my outlook on life, my view of myself, my view of what a "revolution" would look like, of what we need, as a society, in order to be healthier. (the website looks a little hokey, i know, but i really couldn't recommend this process highly enough.)

and i'm reading more, more of the things that i should've been reading during college, but couldn't, because i kept getting bogged down by mostly inapplicable (or limitedly applicable) theory (e.g. judith fucking butler). things like The Color of Violence: The Incite! Anthology and brownfemipower's blog, La Chola. things that aren't mainstream-white feminism. things that actually apply to my life, as a not-quite-white, not-quite-passing, not-quite-"enough" (but really, more than enough) queer woman. things that are actually, well, revolutionary.



so i won't be posting for a while, and if i do, it'll be very much about working through my thoughts and theories on what it means to plan and organize this revolution, on what it means to heal this society.

what i want to say most is:
if you happen to read back through old entries, things i've written before, and they strike you as ignorant or less-than-informed or aligned too much with a certain brand of white/mainstream/ineffective/inapplicable feminism, not quite thought through, you're probably correct in your impression. but please don't judge, and don't think that i necessarily still believe all of these things.




i'm a work in progress.
a lot like this movement, this community i'm trying to find / be part of / help to develop / mobilize. for the revolution i'm still trying to figure out.

on communities, and belonging, and authenticity, and legitimacy, and being "enough," and......

I haven't posted much.

By which I mean: I haven't posted at all. In a long time.

But I needed to post this.
I needed to post on this. About this.

I'm not sure where I'm going to go with this, but it will be what it is.

Today, I read this post over at brownfemipower (now La Chola). About ambiguity, and passing, and fitting in, and having/finding/being shut out of a home or community.

She doesn't come to any conclusions, really, and I'm not sure there are any to come to. But it's one of the most honest pieces of writing I've read in a long time.

It's here. And it's pretty essential reading.

It's all so good. But this is the small chunk of truth that I'm going to repost here:

I’m sick and tired of being ambiguous. I’m sick and tired of never being able to have a solid identity that isn’t suspect wherever the fuck I go. I’m sick of being scared and worried that if I don’t live up to some preset standards, I’m going to lose another community that I love dearly.

I’m sick of having the threat against my existence constantly hanging over my head. But goddamn it, I want to go home! I want desperately to go home–but what do I have to give up to do it? What do I have to be to do it? What do I have to deny to do it? And why why why WHY is going home about molding and shaping rather than loosening and exploring?

Sudy's comment, too, holds so much truth. And love. Which, really, is what this is all about anyway:

find home in yourself, not with others. To be a non-conforming, radical womyn of color means isolation, it does. It means being bypassed by the lines, boxes, and rules that everyone else adores. It means being an “N/A” a lot of the time. It means telling yourself that you’re TOO much and it’s the chains around people’s minds that are not enough for preventing you from simply rejoicing in the magnificent human being you are.
...We live in the space that is motivated by LOVE, not by lines. You’re the one that taught me that the only feminism I want to be led by are the hearts that trust love above all other things.

(And here is the writing following this spark, this catalyst for thoughts -- true thoughts -- of passing and community and belonging and authenticity.)


The last paper I ever wrote at Smith was about queer victims/survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Or, more specifically, about the rhetoric around queer victims/survivors of CSA.
It wasn't exactly one of those feel-good topics. And it was, by far, the hardest paper I've ever had to write. Not necessarily because the theoretical concepts were challenging - they were pretty straightforward (without being straight, of course), but because the subjects of my paper, the people I was writing about - queer victims/survivors of sexual abuse - reflected the most painful parts of myself. Because I was one of those people I was writing about, theorizing about.

The paper is still not finished.
Sure, it got handed in (a couple days late, of course). And my prof, the incredible professor who helped me through the topic by drawing on her own similar experiences of deeply personal academia, gave me an A on the final paper.
But there's a big part of the paper I never wrote. I've tried to write it since graduation, 7 months ago now, but it hasn't come together as more than a few ideas.
The part of the paper on queer survivors of CSA that remains unwritten is the section on authenticity. On what the effect of having an abusive sexual past has on your sexual identity, and how that authenticates or invalidates your identity. What that means for what communities you can belong to. What that means for what you can talk about in the spaces you inhabit.

I haven't written it because I don't know what my conclusion will be.
I haven't written it because I can't come to any conclusion about my own authenticity or lack thereof. Because I don't know what the truth about my own authenticity as a possibly not-quite-legitimate survivor or my authenticity as a possibly abuse-caused queer woman might be. If I can claim those identities authentically. If I can join those communities with my whole self.

Or, more accurately: I'm afraid to find the truth about authenticity, because I'm terrified that I'll find myself inauthentic. Not "enough."

(to loop this back around to bfp's post, this excerpt:

And as a result, every single community I belong to, every space I occupy, I’m *constantly* in danger of being kicked out of the community. People who are not “enough” of a particular thing are “suspect” no matter where they turn. They are under constant surveillance, under constant demand to prove themselves loyal–and under constant threat of being punished if they don’t live up to the required standards.

)


I sorta belong to a lot of communities and identities. I'm sorta a woc, but not really, 'cause it's only my skin colour, not my ethnicities. I'm sorta mixed, but not really, 'cause you have to go back soooo far to get to the "legitimate" person of colour in my ancestry. I'm sorta poor, but not really, 'cause my parents always put food on the table and I went to a good college and I have my B.A. and probably don't really need to be living below the poverty line, if I would just try my luck in a better job market than western Mass. I'm sorta smart, but my grades in college were only Bs, not As. I'm sorta a Baha'i, but not really, 'cause I sleep with women and I occasionally drink alcohol.
And, most relevant to this post and this conversation: I'm sorta queer, but not really, 'cause there's a decent chance that I love and lust after and identify myself with/by women because I can't bring myself to ever really trust men. I'm sorta a survivor of child sexual abuse, but not really, because I did a, b, and c, and didn't do x, y, and z. I'm sorta a survivor of rape, but not really, because I kinda consented at first, and so it doesn't quite count.

I'd love to have a community where I could be all of these not-quite-enough things without worrying about being ostracized or invalidated. I'd love to have a community where I wouldn't be alone in being not-quite-enough or just sorta-but-not-really.
But.
I don't.
And I have communities. I'm just not a whole person in any of them.
I can talk about experiences of visually-based discrimination in the woc community. But I can't talk about being "just" Sicilian and European with these women. I can talk about men trying to exoticize me while they try to flirt with me (so much more common in the food service industry than I thought possible). But I can't talk about my distancing response, which is usually: "Actually, I'm not [insert legitimate poc cultural/ethnic identity here], I'm just Sicilian."
I can talk about issues of racial and gender equality/justice in the Baha'i community. But I can't talk about sleeping with women or loving women or issues of queer social justice within community (not that I'm active in any Baha'i community...and this is why).
I can talk about high feminist theory and academia with other academic-type people. But I can't talk about my actual grades at Smith when I talk to other Ivy League people.
I can talk about being one of the "poor kids" at my (mostly rich-kid) high school and college, whose family can't afford to take fancy trips or get fancy cars as birthday presents or get the kind of therapy and mental health care we all so badly needed because the insurance wouldn't cover it enough. But I can't really talk about still getting new shoes every year, new clothes every year, growing up in a nice house.

I can talk about being a big homo, make jokes about softball and flannel shirts and u-hauls and cats with other queer women. I can talk about that hot girl over there and, damn, why is she not single? But I can't talk about being unsure that my attraction to women has nothing to do with being abused and raped by men within this community.
I can talk about doing this anti-rape and anti-abuse work "for personal reasons" and I can tell incomplete stories about my experiences with other victims/survivors. But I can't tell them the whole story, about why it really was my fault (more than the typical tendency blame yourself).






I'm terrified of being found to be illegitimate. I'm terrified of my suspicions being proven right, and being kicked out of these communities for being not enough. Only sorta, but not really.

I would love to find this unconditional acceptance within myself, and I would love for that to be sufficient.
I would love for Sudy's suggestion that we all must create our own home within ourselves because we'll all always be isolated in our not-quite-enough-ness to be attainable and enough.

But thing is, I need a community. I long for a real community. I think we all do. I long for a place, not just within myself, but with others, where I can be accepted, unconditionally, in all of my not-quite-enough and sorta-but-not-really identities.
Where do I find that?
(And would creating that community have to mean creating a whole 'nother set of required standards to live up to?)

Blue Blanket (Andrea Gibson)

I'm not sure why it's taken me this long to discover slam poet Andrea Gibson.

I found this Youtube video of her performing the piece, "Blue Blanket." (via)

I can't really say much about it. It kind of defies a wordy reaction, kind of defies speech in general.
But I will say this: I'm not a crier. I very rarely, if ever, cry. Especially about this kind of thing. Not anymore. But this piece? This performance? Brought the tears pretty close to falling. I still have chills.

And the words to "Blue Blanket," in print form.....

still

there are days

when there is no way

not even a chance

that i'd dare for even a second
glance at the reflection of my body in the mirror
and she knows why

like i know why
she
only cries
when she feels like she's about to lose control

she knows how much control is worth
knows what a woman can lose
when her power to move

is taken away

by a grip so thick with hate
it could clip the wings of god
leave the next eight generations of your blood shaking

and tonight something inside me is breaking

my heart beating so deep beneath the sheets of her pain
i could give every tear she's crying
a year---a name
and a face i'd forever erase from her mind if i could
just like she would
for me

or you

but how much closer to free would any of us be
if even a few of us forgot
what too many women in this world cannot
and i'm thinking

what the hell would you tell your daughter

your someday daughter
when you'd have to hold her beautiful face
to the beat up face of this place
that hasn't learned the meaning of

stop

what would you tell your daughter
of the womb raped empty
the eyes swollen shut
the gut too frightened to hold food
the thousands upon thousands of bodies used and abused

it was seven minutes of the worst kind of hell
seven

and she stopped believing in heaven
distrust became her law
fear her bible
the only chance of survival

don't trust any of them

bolt the doors to your home
iron gate your windows
walking to your car alone
get the keys in the lock
please please please please open
like already you can feel
that five fingered noose around your neck
two hundred pounds of hatred
digging graves into the sacred soil of your flesh

please please please please open
already you're choking for your breath

listening for the broken record of the defense
answer the question
answer the question
answer the question miss

why am i on trial for this

would you talk to your daughter
your sister your mother like this
i am generations of daughters sisters mothers
our bodies battlefields
war grounds
beneath the weapons of your brother's hands

do you know they've found land mines
in broken women's souls
black holes in the parts of their hearts
that once sang symphonies of creation
bright as the light on infinity's halo

she says
i remember the way love
used to glow like glitter on my skin
before he made his way in
now every touch feels like a sin
that could crucify medusa kali oshun mary
bury me in a blue blanket
so their god doesn't know i'm a girl
cut off my curls
i want peace when i'm dead

her friend knocks at the door
it's been three weeks
don't you think it's time you got out of bed

no

the ceiling fan still feels like his breath
i think i need just a couple more days of rest

please

bruises on her knees from praying to forget
she's heard stories of vietnam vets
who can still feel the tingling of their amputated limbs
she's wondering how many women are walking around this world
feeling the tingling of their amputated wings
remembering what it was to fly to sing

tonight she's not wondering
what she would tell her daughter

she knows what she would tell her daughter
she'd ask her
what gods do you believe in
i'll build you a temple of mirrors so you can see them!

pick the brightest star you've ever wished on
i'll show you the light in you
that made that wish come true!

tonight she's not asking
you what you would tell your daughter
she's life deep in the hell---the slaughter
has already died a thousand deaths with every unsteady breath
a thousand graves in every pore of her flesh
and she knows the war's not over
knows there's bleeding to come
knows she's far from the only woman or girl
trusting this world no more than the hands
trust rusted barbed wire

she was whole before that night
believed in heaven before that night
and she's not the only one

she knows she won't be the only one
she's not asking what you're gonna tell your daughter
she asking what you're gonna teach

your son

untying the hands of international health NGOs

(Click to enlarge)

On a happier (!!!) note.......

The global gag rule could, potentially, be a little less of a "gag" soon.


Rep. Nita Lowey, (D-NY's 18th), successfully attached an amendment to the appropriations bill that would allow international NGOs working in developing nations who don't comply with the global gag rule (also known as the Mexico City Policy) to still receive contraceptives from US government aid agencies. The House voted 223-201 on the measure yesterday.

(One thing that's not clear in any of the articles I'm finding is whether or not this means that these NGOs would be able to receive monetary assistance from US aid agencies, which is also restricted now under the global gag rule. The articles I'm finding only mention them being able to receive donated contraceptives, not funding.)


Of course, any funding they get still can't go toward abortion services themselves. But that's not all that surprising, since federal funding can't even go toward abortions in our own country.


And, unsurprisingly, Bush is almost definitely going to veto the legislation when it comes to his desk. Because, obviously: Those cute little foreign babies! Abortion is murder! Decreasing the birth rates of brown people! Awful! (wait....so now we're encouraging the population growth of people Not Like Us? I can't keep up with this shit. Oh, right -- giving them rights over their own bodies is encouraging their agency! We can't have that. All those people over there would get all uppity.) *coughcoughvomitvomit*


(The press release from Lowey's office about her amendment is here.)

Rape is in the eye of the beholder. Or something.

Maybe, at some point in my life, I'll actually write for this on a regular basis. But until then, it'll have to be saved for when I'm procrastinating or I have something really! important! to share or when, like now, I'm bored out of my mind. (Currently, the source of my boredom is this borrrrrrrrrrring temp job where they have nothing for me to do. Sup, ennui.)


So, we'll start with one of the most fucked up stories in the past week, out of Nebraska.

A judge there, Jeffre Cheuvront, presiding over a sexual assault case has (again) banned the words rape, sexual assault, victim, assailant, and sexual assault kit from the trial.
Doesn't make sense, right? You can't just bar a word that accurately describes a criminal act on the basis that it's allegedly "prejudicial."
More, this is actually the second trial for the same case; the first time around, the jury was hopelessly deadlocked at 7-5 after the judge had put in place the same language ban. Coincidence? I think not.

The best part: the word that both the defense and the prosecution are supposed to use? Sex. Because that, apparently, is an accurate term for rape. Same thing as consensual sex, you know.

As if there weren't enough hurdles to calling rape what it is to begin with. As if there wasn't enough victim-blaming as it is. As if victims don't blame themselves enough, don't minimize the attack enough themselves, don't feel quite enough shame about being raped. As if we needed something else like this.

take your entitlement and shove it.

I will never understand men's sense of entitlement and privilege. I mean, sure, theoretically, I understand it. It's a product of the patriarchy, one that has always privileged white (or at least white-looking), heterosexual, financially stable men. And when you're given that kind of privilege automatically, I can imagine it would be hard, and less than appealing, to give that up.

But on a practical, real level, on the level of actual interactions between myself and men with these entitlement issues, I will never understand it.

Yesterday, I spent 2 1/2 hours downtown, collecting signatures on the petition for the Freedom of Choice Act with PPLM. It was incredible, for the most part.
Except for the men.
Overprivileged Fuckfaces, Part 1:
I know the fact that I was in Northampton probably had a lot to do with the liberal / ultra-liberal tendencies of the people I talked to. But every woman I talked to was very, very pro-choice. The only people I talked to who weren't? Two white men. Three, if you count Paraglider Pilot Peter. When I told them what I was gathering signatures for, the two men (both walking by themselves) both said something to the effect of, "Oh, I don't believe in abortion." and/or "I don't think women should be allowed to kill their children." (I didn't engage these men in conversation, totally not worth it.) Paraglider Peter might have been the worst, though, just because he was so fake-sweet about being sortakindamaybe pro-choice. He said he'd signed the other girls' petition across the street because "I wanted to support you girls, you just looked so great out here," but that he didn't really know exactly what he'd just signed.
(news flash, Peter: you can't be pro-choice because you think pro-choicers are pretty. fuck you.)
But he seemed ok, besides that, and so we talked for a while, and I tried to explain to him what the Freedom of Choice Act actually was, why it mattered. He was dense. But only because he's a white man, and the right to reproductive freedom and the right to have an abortion had never even occurred to him as something that was frought, under attack, or even something to give a second thought too. And then he asked, "Wait, so do you think that women are regarded highly in our society?" And when I said "No, absolutely not - women are still very much second class citizens," he looked like he wanted to laugh.
When he asked what I wanted to do with my life, I told him that I wanted to be an activist, and that I wanted to change the world. He said that was a laudible goal, and hoped that I did. I made the mistake of mentioning that I was getting a tattoo to that effect (of changing the world) later that afternoon. When he asked if I already had one, and I said yes and pointed to my hip, he leaned forward expectantly, completely assuming that I was going to show him - A perfect stranger. A white hetero man trying to hit on me - the tattoo that goes down below my belt line. Um. No.
So fuck you, Peter. Fuck you and your entitlement and your blinders that only let you see your own narrow world, that doesn't even put women on the radar screen except as things to be consumed by your fucking objectifying male gaze.

Overprivileged Fuckfaces, Part 2:
I was wearing my "my body, my choice" shirt yesterday. Apparently, this shirt is a welcome mat for entitled men to comment on my body.
Walking into the Campus Center, a group of three men: "my body, my choice? nice!" and then, "ooh, hey, what's your choice, baby?"
Outside the Haymarket (coffee shop), gathering signatures, under his breath: "Yeah, your body...nice choice..."
Fuck you.


Overprivileged Fuckfaces, Part 3 (The Worst):

--Something that all heterosexual men need to understand: When you learn that a woman is a lesbian, that is not a challenge. When you spend an evening in the company of women who identify as lesbians (or at least as "mostly gay"), get the fuck over the fact that you are not going to be their object of affection. When a lesbian pays attention to you and talks to you, it is not because she wants to fuck you. And, most importantly, when a lesbian is in your presence, it is not your job to try to "turn her straight." That is not part of what you are entitled to. You are not entitled to her vagina, simply because she has one. Get the fuck over yourself.--


So, my good friend (and facebook-wife) Lauren had a guy up as her date for Senior Ball. From what I could tell, he was a decent guy, so I was ok with hanging out with him. His main problem? He's a man.
He's a white man.
He's a white, heterosexual, upper middle-class 24-year-old man.
He's got a few issues with entitlement.
He was sketchy in general, but some of the things he did just....reminded me a little too much of one particular boy back in Fredonia who, apparently, likes to try to "turn" lesbians. This Fredo boy, though, likes to do the whole lesbian-target rape thing in order to do so. Omar, Lauren's date, at least stopped short of that.
He didn't get touchy until we were all sufficiently wasted (him more than anyone else) at the ball. He put his arm around me a few times, accidentally-on-purpose brushing (very briefly) my breast. He fixed my tie, very slowly, very much touching me, and as his hands were brushing against my collarbone area, he asked, in a fucked-up-flirtatious way, "Does it make you uncomfortable to have a man touching your upper chest area?" "No, actually it doesn't, because you know I'm very gay and would never fuck you." That stopped him, for a little while.
When we were sitting outside, though, after senior ball had ended, he propositioned me for sex. I can't even remember exactly what he said anymore, but it was something along the lines of "if you're weren't that sure that you were a lesbian, we could have some fun..." and "just so you know, even though you're gay, i'd still love to..."

I have no doubt in my mind that had I not been in the lesbian-friendly environment of Smith where I could feel empowered to tell him (politely, somehow) to fuck off, had his privilege been any less checked, the lesbian-target rape that I was a victim of last New Year's would have happened again.
Fuck you, Omar. My vagina does not exist for your penis. My vagina wants nothing to do with your penis. Don't assume that it does, or that it just doesn't know what it wants. It's a smart vagina. It's figured itself out. And it doesn't want you, let alone your overprivileged, entitled bio-phallus.
Fuck off.




The people who hate me, and who hate feminism, say I'm a man-hater. I defend myself, say, No! Of course I'm not! But, in reality...I am. A little bit. But it's not men that I hate. I hate that sense of entitlement that they can't get over. I hate that privilege that goes so, so unchecked and stays invisible. I hate the everyday oppressions that women go through as a result of men's unchecked entitlement and privilege. I hate that these same men will end up marrying a woman, and will try (and probably often succeed) to oppress her in that same way and make her yet another victim of his privilege.

So no, I don't hate men. I just hate everything they stand for.

why I'm thrilled to go to a women's college, part 542

At least at Smith, this kind of shit would never fly.

Reading this made me, quite literally, want to throw up.

How can anyone really think this is ok?
I know it's not the first time this shit has happened, so maybe I shouldn't even be surprised. Maybe it was the picture that did it. Four men, so proud to be part of the "intramural rape league." Or maybe the quotes, about dark alleys that are perfect for raping, where the team "practices."
Regardless,
It makes me vomit a little in my mouth.

(click the image to enlarge)

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And, speaking of misogyny....
You wouldn't think that Mr. Toby "put a boot in your ass, it's the American way" Keith could sink much lower. And you wouldn't think that one would possibly need any more reasons to hate him. You'd be wrong.
Apparently, domestic violence is SO! FUNNY! when he puts it to music. But, I mean, he never actually hurts her! So it's totally ok! And it's got an ironic twist at the end! I mean, really, the only people who don't find that funny must be humorless feminists!

(vomitvomitvomit|eyegouge)

(via)

warning: feminism is bad for your health

I thought about trying to make up a creative, catchy, witty title for this post.
But there's not much point.
The title of the original article is really better than any humorous one-liner I could come up with.

Yes, they're seriously arguing that gender-equity (which has been reached, don'tchaknow) is contributing to lower life expectancies.

Because it's not, oh I don't know, the weight of the patriarchy hanging around these women's necks and pressing down on them for actually being successful or anything. Nope, patriarchy's got nothing to do with it. Neither does capitalism or racism or heterosexism/homophobia. It's those damn feminists. Obviously.
(Who, by virtue of being "pro-abortion," are also to blame for human trafficking, child abuse, poverty in Africa, the commodification of sex, and sexual assault. At least, according to 'Dr.' John Diggs [yes, that's from WND, and normally I would give it no credence, but I saw this guy talk, and he really does believe this crap].)


(Jill has a better, more well-researched and well-cited commentary.)

what it means to have no racial/ethnic identity

guess there's something wrong with me, guess i don't fit in
no one wants to touch it, no one knows where to begin
i just want more than one membership to more than one club

Ok, so the title is slightly misleading.
I know that I do have a racial/ethnic identity; I'm a European mutt, and the highest percentage of ancestry is probably Italian (Sicilian!), although the plethora of ancestral countries makes it hard to say for sure. Being European, I know that I have that privilege, and I don't try to pretend that I do not.
So, technically, I'm white, or Caucasian.
But that's not my identity. That's not how other people identify me. That's not how I identify myself.

I've never identified as white, or seen myself as very similar to white people. It wasn't until I learned that "European" (especially western and southern, which is my heritage) meant "Caucasian" that I started to try to see myself as such.
When I first filled out a form on my own that asked for my "Race/Ethnicity," I was probably in 3rd or 4th grade, and I had to ask my mom, because I didn't know. I don't remember which box I wanted to check, but I know that it was one of the "brown" categories, and I was surprised when my mom told me to check "Caucasian." I'd seen "Caucasians" and white people on TV, and I knew I didn't look like them.
I checked "Caucasian" from then on, without really thinking about it, but knowing that I didn't fit in with the other people who always checked that box.

I have very dark skin. My best explanation for this is my Sicilian background; my dad, who's half Sicilian, is also very dark (we'd have tanning contests in the summer, to see who could get darkest). Sicily is a large island in the Mediterranean, pretty close to Somalia and a couple other African countries on the northeastern coast, which means that at some point, one (or more) of my ancestors probably got jiggy with an East African who traveled to Sicily (or vice versa).

I've never had anyone assume I was Italian. The identity that people ascribe to me has ranged from Ethiopian/Somalian (understandable) to Spanish to Middle Eastern to South Asian to Mexican to South American (and more). All "brown" identities. All people of color.
When I got to Smith, a friend asked me if I was in Prism - the org for queer people of color. When I joined Prism, they put me on the mailing list of queer people of color (as opposed to just the "allies" list).
It's not just white people who assume I'm "Other." Almost all of my friends who identify as women of color have been surprised when I tell them I'm "just" Italian. They've all assumed I'm "Other" as well.

When applying to colleges, I almost always marked "Caucasian" or "white," because I know that I'm not "really" a p.o.c., and I didn't want to be fodder for these institutions' surface attempts at increasing diversity or take any benefits that may have been extended to "real" p.o.c.'s. Sometimes, I'd mark "other," but I would never specify when they asked.

But in high school, when I realized that I was almost always being treated as "other," as a woman of color, I stopped checking "white" when I didn't feel morally obligated to proclaim my privilege.
Because, truth is, nobody ever extends that privilege to me. I have white privilege, technically, but not because anyone's ever assumed I have it. Often, I would assume I had it, and often, I would be denied access to it because my skin colour does not fit as "white."


The identity other people ascribe to me is almost invariably "Other."
The identity I give myself? I have no answer to that. I'm brown-skinned. I'm Other, but I'm still other than Other, because I'm technically not that kind of Other.
I have white privilege by virtue of technicality, but I'm never afforded that privilege by anyone other than myself.


I'm filling out my registration form for the 21st Annual Reproductive Rights to Social Justice Conference at Hampshire College (shameless plug: go register! It's free!), and it asks for "Ethnic/Racial Background."
I don't feel comfortable checking "Caucasian."
I checked "Other," but it requires a specification.
I have no specification. Because I have no racial/ethnic identity. I have no clear background. I'm brown, but I'm white. I'm Other, but I'm the norm that Other is defined in opposition to. I'm a walking contradiction of identities.

Who do I become, then? Who do I identify with? What do I identify as?
I can't answer these questions. Because I have no "real" or "authentic" identity.