quick hit: my life, bullet-pointed

• I moved to Denver! Still in the repro justice nonprofit world (as I always will be -- I'm a lifer), but now, with mountains!

• In KC, I was working for an organization that did both direct services and political advocacy, so the line I had to walk was sometimes complicated and tricky. In Denver, I'm at an organization that only does political advocacy & civic engagement/voter education. I still have to walk a fine line sometimes between 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) activities (I hate tax law, but thanks to the lovely folks at Alliance for Justice, I sorta-kinda-almost understand it. Sort of.

• I have the. cutest. apartment. ever. Garden level, but not basement-y. Hardwood floors. Exposed brick in the living room. Adorable little kitchen, complete with a totally adorable breakfast nook. The nook has a little heart in the detailing on the leg. ADORABLE. Plus, the sweet adorable apartment has wide window sills, where kittyface contentedly spends most of her days.

• I submitted my piece to this call for submissions (which, btw, has been extended to May 1st. You still have time!) I won't lie; it was kind of terrifying to send it in. It felt like one of those secrets you're not supposed to tell. But luckily, I had a couple of smartypants feminist friends who were willing to read through it first and reassure me that no, I won't lose all credibility as a queer woman or a victim/survivor or a feminist if I submitted it. Here's hoping they're right.

• Speaking of secrets that feel like they're not allowed to be told, April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Check out National Sexual Violence Resource Center's SAAM page, and check with your local rape crisis center, statewide coalition against sexual assault, and/or local college campus. They probably have something going on this month. Fun/not-so-fun fact: I've already been to one SAAM event, by the CO Coalition Against Sexual Assault as a representative of my new employer-organization. I forgot how much it sucks to have to act professional and pretend like the stories of assault and abuse don't hit so close to home. Sigh. At least I've had lots of practice at putting on a good face?

• Lastly, a quick hit blog post that I love. One of those Shakesville posts that leaves me saying, "Shit, why can't I express it as succinctly and clearly as Melissa?" I've tried to make this argument before, on why "exceptions" to abortion restrictions are bullshit, but Melissa does it so much better than I ever did. The post is here. And here's a little excerpt:

How ridiculously incapable of self-reflection can one be that one is able to acknowledge that rape (forcing a woman to do something with her body she doesn't want to do) is a Terrible Thing, but the denial of abortion (forcing a woman to do something with her body she doesn't want to do) is a Moral Imperative? I'm really hard-pressed to see why I should be any less contemptuous of a man who sits at a big mahogany desk in Washington making decisions about my body without my consent than I should be of a man who used physical force to make decisions about my body without my consent. Undoubtedly the Exceptioneers would be outraged and horrified to be compared, even obliquely, to sexual predators.

the end.

(re-posted) Call for Submissions: Queering Sexual Violence

(re-posted from womanist musings)

I think I may submit an essay for this.
This is something that I've been frustrated by for years. I wrote this (ugly-messy truth) post almost 2 years ago. I spent my last semester at Smith immersed in theory and stories of and around queer survivors of childhood sexual abuse, writing a paper on how these stories are told. Thesis, way boiled down: aside from a few incredible, brave exceptions, these stories are not told. Not in a way that allows one to link (in a queer-positive way) the identities of being queer and being a survivor.

Almost 3 years later, I still think about that paper every other week or so. I still have it in a beat-up manila folder that I carry around with me when I'm heading to coffee shops, re-reading it and seeing what can be edited.

Anyway.
All of this to say:
I'm stoked that this project is happening!

And, like I said, I may very well submit an essay. We'll see.

Call for Submissions: Queering Sexual Violence

An anthology of LGBTQ writers, survivors and activists confronting heterosexual privilege and the gender binary system while creating a dialog about the limitations of the anti-sexual violence movement in hopes of creating change.
Edited by Jennifer Patterson

Queering Sexual Violence seeks 20- 25 LGBTQ writers who are interested in submitting pieces that confront the current state of our anti- sexual violence climate. Part memoir/ part criticism/ part call to action, this anthology seeks to address the limitations of a society that is not only unequipped to deal with rape culture but also unable to look at it without the lens of heterosexual privilege and through the interests of a gender binary system. The anthology seeks to destroy the image of the “perfect survivor” and motivate the anti-sexual violence community to embrace a more radical perspective in order to foster sustainable change.

For general purposes, the definition of Sexual Violence attached to this anthology is as follows:

Sexual Violence is an unwanted or non- consensual act, whether completed or not, that is sexual in nature and violates a person physically, emotionally, spiritually and/or politically.

To be more clear, Sexual Violence can be a range of non-consensual sexual exchanges, from unwanted interactions on the street, to non- consensual rape from either a stranger or within a relationship, to incest or also invasive sexually based comments in regards to ones gender presentation or identity, among many other things.

The pieces submitted should be of the writer’s personal experience and explore the intersections of ability, sexuality, race, class, religion, citizenship, gender identity, sex, age, ethnicity and how these either magnify or minimize your experience/ work and your history with sexual violence. I encourage you to write about living as a “survivor” but also the ways in which you navigate and celebrate not being a “typical” survivor (as I am sure most of us are not, by the larger societal definition.)

I believe that organizing from the center of our many different and overlapping marginalized communities could do nothing but improve the current anti- sexual violence movement.

I am looking for pieces 1200- 2000 words, Times New Roman Size 12, double-spaced in length. Upon publication, I will supply moderate compensation for pieces picked. Also, please provide a short bio (150 words or less) with your submission.

Please send submissions and/ or questions to queeringsexualviolence@gmail.com by March 31, 2010. For extension requests, please write.

well, this complicates things.

last year, in july, i wrote this post, telling what was then my messy, mean, politically incorrect truth. in that post, i rejected the clear-cut version of survivorhood and queer identities - i.e. the insistence by both the CSA survivor community and the queer community that abuse could not, does not, will not ever cause a victim to "go gay." in that post, i stated my (then) truth that i am gay because i was abused.

i didn't say as much, but a big part of what i saw as that causal connection was the fact that i was abused by men and now have relationships with women. implying, of course, that i can't be with men because i was abused and raped by men.

but what if i discover memories of being abused by a woman, too?
what of my queer identity, then?
if so, i couldn't say, "i sleep with women because they're safer, because i have had violent and abusive experiences with men."
i couldn't say, "i trust women more because i have only been betrayed by men."
does it then go to the opposite extent, where i'm a lesbian because i was abused by a woman? that argument is usually used against gay men who were abused by other men. but i suppose it could apply here, too.


except, the thing is....i know that's not true. it doesn't feel true, or real. saying, "i'm a lesbian because i can't trust men, or picture myself being with someone of the same gender that so abused me," seems real, and a little bit true, still. but saying either, "i'm a lesbian because i was abused by a woman" or even "i'm heterosexual because i was abused by a woman" feels wrong. not because the latter is just 100% untrue, but because i don't think that experience really affected the development of my sexuality. it affects my sexuality, absolutely -- only one person has ever so commanded my attention that i don't fall into painful memories halfway through sex. i haven't been fully present for the majority of sexual acts with every other person i've ever been with. but it doesn't affect how i view my sexuality regarding the people i'm attracted to.
for this piece of the abusive puzzle, it doesn't connect. the two are completely unrelated.
but each of the other assaults? yes. they absolutely factor in to who i am attracted to.


does it make sense? no.
but is it true? yes.
it's true, and complicated, and even messier than i thought it was a year ago.
it's not a generalization, and this may very well not apply to the rest of the survivor community, but what's a community without individual truths? these are not the truths that the mainstream community wants to tell. hell, they aren't truths that i want to tell.
but it's a truth, and it's real, and in the inclusive survivor community i want to be a part of, individuals tell their full, messy, complicated, ugly truths.

if the L word were facebook...

because this is just too brilliant not to post....


Some genius (with the username stuntdouble) over on AfterEllen.com has translated The L Word episodes of Season 6 thus far into facebook news feeds.
One of the funniest things I've ever seen. (Only if you've seen the episodes will it make sense, though. Warning: spoilers in the following facebook news feeds.)


(see the original post here.)


And for the other brilliant installments:
Episode

Episode 6.4

Episode 6.3

Episode 6.2

Episode 6.1







Oh, and if I may, on a more serious note about season 6 of the L Word, a letter:

Dear Max Sweeney (and the clearly poor researchers of the L Word writing crew),

I'm not sure if they're pulling you through all of this bullshit for the sake of some really awful trans storyline (for now, I won't even delve into how poorly they've conveyed your transition on the show), but you, my dear, were lied to.
You claimed, in your rightful burst of anger in the clinic hallway, that "It was too late" and that you were 4 months along.
4 months, dear Max, means 16 weeks.
Past the first trimester, yes, and so you were beyond the limit for the common form of abortion - a vacuum aspiration. Those are generally only done up until 12 weeks. However, California's got pretty liberal abortion laws, and abortion clinics in the state will do the more difficult kind of abortion - dilation and evacuation - up at least through 20 weeks. The Planned Parenthood in San Diego, last I knew (which was about 5 or so years ago) was doing D&Es through at least the 22nd week. I presume, then, that a Planned Parenthood clinic in LA would have a similar policy, and would not have turned you away at 16 weeks.
No abortion clinic in California would turn a 16 week pregnancy away without at least a referral.

Now, a D&E is more involved procedure, and it does cost more. I'm not sure what kind of insurance you have as a -- what is it you do again? website designer? -- but if you had the funds to pay for top surgery, you've got the funds for a D&E.
If it was that you decided you wanted to keep the baby, or if it was that you decided it wasn't worth it to go through the D&E procedure, sure, I'd understand that plot line.
But NO, Max, it was NOT too late for you to get an abortion.

I'm disappointed in you, L Word writers. You did so well with the crisis pregnancy storyline a few seasons ago! What the fuck happened?


Oh, and for the record, I'm not sure if you were at a Planned Parenthood, Max, but most Planned Parenthood clinic staff around the country go through queer & trans sensitivity trainings. So, a receptionist or clinic assistant who was doing her job right would not have treated you so poorly.

this is the midwest?

In yet another hit to my east coast stereotypes of the midwest, I heard about this amazing protest that happened right here, about 15 minutes away from my apartment in Kansas City.


I've never really thought of Kansas as being gay-friendly. I knew the KC metro area was generally pretty liberal, at least as far as MO & KS go, but I would never have expected this to happen here.


A Shawnee Mission, KS high school was the target last week of Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church (of GodHatesFags fame). Shawnee Mission East not only has a GSA, but, according to the KC Star article, they elected a gay homecoming king in 2007. (Horrors!)

Fred Phelps' group turned out 14. Including two small children.
They were met by counterprotesters, organized mostly by the incredible students of Shawnee Mission East High School.

450 of them.

Yes. That's in Kansas. There were 450 of them. That's 32x the number of people that WBC had.


To make things even better, they used the counterprotest as an opportunity to raise money for AIDS and cancer research. They had a goal of raising $250 for each minute that Phelps' group was out there. When the reporter talked to the student with the donation bucket, he said they'd so far been meeting that goal. I don't remember what the final number was, but it was a very substantial amount.


These students totally made my day.

(my) truth about causality, queerness, and abuse

When I came out to my birth mother, one of her first questions (or, more accurately, accusations) was: “This is because of what happened with your brother, isn’t it?” She couldn’t speak the words that held the truths of my life; “this,” for her, was as close as she could get to admitting that her only daughter was queer. “What happened” was as close as she could come to admitting that her only daughter had been abused by her own son. The causal link that she saw linking these two unspeakable truths about this girl she birthed was terrifying to her, but at the same time, made it easier to dismiss and refuse to engage with each hard truth.

These are my terrifying, real, hard truths:
I am queer.
I am a survivor* of childhood sexual abuse, a survivor of emotional abuse and neglect, and a survivor of rape.
I do not see these aspects of my identity as separate, or separable. They do not exist as isolated truths. Each identity plays into and informs the other. (Yes, intersectionality applies here, too.) I cannot say that the abuse does not affect my current sexuality, just as I cannot say that my sexuality wasn’t an aspect of the abuse as it happened.
I was victimized in part because my sexuality was already a point of vulnerability.
And here’s the other part of this truth that nobody wants me to say, nobody wants to hear: I am queer because I was sexually abused.

Yep, I said it. The way my life has panned out, there is a connection. There is a link. It is, at least in part, a causal one.

Which isn’t to say that every queer woman is drawn to women because she was sexually assaulted (although the number is a little overwhelming), or that every woman who was victimized “goes gay.” But it’s my reality. And I do not think I am alone.

I’ve spent almost the entirety of my “out” life (5 years now) running away from that truth. Denying it and downplaying it and making it not mine, fitting myself into the mold of the (already marginal) rhetoric of queer survivors of sexual violence. I was terrified to lose that legitimacy as a queer woman, terrified to open up that most painful part of my past to scrutiny and disbelief (as if it weren’t already). And maybe, in most people’s eyes, and certainly in the eyes of the mainstream alphabet-soup (LGBTQ) movement, I just lost my claim to a “real,” “legitimate” queer identity. But when it comes back to it, this is my truth. This causal link between sexual violence and my queer identity is real.

(so much more to say after the jump)

Here are some more truths about that link:

dear lesbians,

this is why you should care about what's going on in the reproductive justice world.

because refusal clauses cover more than just those pills for those straight girls.

because Guadalupe Benitez represents more than just one wronged woman in California.

because people like Americans United For Life, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists, and the American Civil Rights Union (the asshole counterpart to the ACLU) are organizations that all hate you, my fellow queer women, just as much as they hate women who've engaged in PIV intercourse and want to be able to exercise control over their bodies.

because these organizations and people aren't just going to stop with trying to control contraception and abortion, which applies more directly to het women than to my women-loving women friends. because you've got vaginas too, my dear lesbians. and the anti-choicers? they want to control your vaginas (and the rest of your reproductive systems), too.





yes, what happened in Benitez's case, when she was refused IVF (in vitro fertilization) treatment because she was an unmarried lesbian, is different from the use of refusal clauses by pharmacists, hospitals, and doctors when women are denied EC or other contraception because these health care professionals have "moral, religious, personal, or ideological objections" to providing this kind of health care. of course they're different. the individual discrimination in Benitez's case isn't always involved in your everyday invocations of the "conscience clause." but they're fruit of the same fucked up tree.
make no mistake: these doctors were able to refuse to treat Benitez based on her sexuality exactly because of the groundwork laid by anti-choicers. this "conscience clause" that they've pushed so hard for has worked...on a much larger scale than we usually recognize.
it's worked on a level that directly affects us, as queer women.




now, my dear lesbians, i know that there are few of you that i need to speak to here. most of us already have what seems to be an odd, misplaced investment in the reproductive rights movement. from the outside, it seems weird that all of these women who aren't engaging in PIV intercourse and don't usually need ready access to contraception or abortion would care so deeply about repro rights.
i don't have sex with people who have organs that can get me pregnant. i don't really need to care about whether or not my pharmacist is going to be able to refuse my prescription for birth control. except...i do.
because i might want a kid someday. and i might want to use a fertility doctor to make that happen (for my partner - no baby is squeezing out of this vag). i don't want my doctor to be able to cite some bullshit piece of legislation that says he doesn't need to treat my lesbian partner, and i don't want to sit in that office, years from now, and think, "fuck, i guess i should've paid attention to that refusal clause shit."

this movement is something i need to be invested in.
this movement affects me, directly.
and, my dear fellow lesbians, this movement affects you, directly, too.

trauma, large-scale (societal/national)

via feministing, a disturbing, sad story from South Africa:
"Traumatised South African children play 'rape me' games".

reproduced in full, emphases added:

(byline: Chris McGreal, Johannesburg)
* Thursday March 13 2008

South African schoolchildren are so affected by crime that they play games of "rape me, rape me" and mimic robberies in the playground, according to the country's human rights commission. In a report on school violence published yesterday, the commission said schools were the "single most common" site of crimes against children, such as robbery and assault, including rampant sexual violence, some of it by teachers.

The commission said it had identified a number of games pupils played in response to the violence, including one in which they pretended to rape each other. "This game demonstrates the extent and level ... brutalisation of the youth has reached, and how endemic sexual violence has become in South Africa," it said.

The report said that a fifth of all sexual assaults on young people occurred at school. A survey of 1,227 female students who were victims of sexual assault found that nearly 9% of them had been attacked by teachers.

......

A separate study by the Thohoyandou Victim Empowerment Programme found that a quarter of secondary school students said that forced sexual intercourse did not necessarily constitute rape.

The human rights commission report said that more than 40% of the young people it interviewed had been victims of some form of crime. It recommended that the education department consider introducing metal detectors and fences at schools, after the Red Cross children's hospital in Cape Town said it commonly treated school pupils who had been assaulted with fists, knives, machetes or guns, or who had been raped.

when i first started this blog entry about this article, i had it up in another tab on firefox. the full title didn't show up in the tab - i only saw "traumatised south afr." looking at the title as it appeared on the tab, i didn't connect it to the full title of the article. in my mind, that excerpted title turned into "traumatised south africa," as in: a traumatized nation.

and, really, that would also have been an accurate title. because south africa is a traumatized nation. and the cycle of trauma continues there: the atrocious societal and individual traumas that it's endured in recent years aren't being healed. instead, they're being passed down, generation to generation. passed down from the adults of the country to their children.
the fact that children are playing "rape games" on the playground is disturbing and sad, yes, but not all that surprising. kids act out and play at what they know. i wish it surprised me that they know rape and sexual violence. but it doesn't. it doesn't surprise me about south africa, and it wouldn't surprise me about the u.s.
if you think of it from a child's perspective, it makes perfect sense: if they're playing these games, if they're doing it "willingly" (however "willing" something that comes from such a wounded place can be), they have control over it. if they can control this violence that they see all around them, this violence that they endure, then maybe it's ok, maybe they'll be ok. they don't even have to play games that pretend the outcome changes, they don't have to pretend that they get away in the end...just by playing it, by choosing to play these games, they can have the illusion of control. and that's vital for these abused kids to have.

(we, as adults, play these games all the time, too. they're not as obvious as running around the playground, running from a pretend-rapist, but we have the same underlying intention and seek the same kind of control.)



i get the impression from this article (in a newspaper from the country that colonized South Africa for so many years), that there is an assumption about traumatized nations. being that: South Africa, a new democracy, is so fucked up that their kids are playing rape games. that South Africa, this backward country trying to forge their way "into civilization," is so different from us developed western countries. that South Africa has created this rape culture because it's had such a turbulent history.
thing is:
we're pretty traumatized over here, too. we've got a rape culture every bit as damaging as South Africa's; ours is just more concealed. our kids rarely breathe the word "rape," even though it happens to them at what's probably a comparable rate to South Africa's. (and let's not forget that it was Britain, the country now reporting on this recent report, that colonized and, in a lot of ways, raped South Africa for years and years, contributing a good deal to their national trauma.)

[for further reading, see also my good friend's blog post on this article, here.]




moving on to a second, related point:
the ellipsis in the article as posted above was my decision to leave out a small section of the article, since it's a bit of a subject change. however, it's a subject i still want to pursue here, so here's the paragraph i left out above:

The commission also found that some boys committed what they called "corrective rape" on lesbians, justifying the assault by claiming that it would make the victims heterosexual. "There is a growing phenomenon of corrective rape. This refers to an instance where a male learner [student] rapes a lesbian female learner in the belief that after such a sexual attack the learner will no longer be lesbian," the report said.

...i wasn't aware that there was actually a term for lesbian-target rapes. "corrective rape." it's chilling. (literally: a shiver just shook my body.)

again, though, this doesn't surprise me. it chills me, but the chill doesn't come from being astounded that this happens. i'm well aware that this happens. i want to say that i may be more aware than a lot of queer women, but i don't think i can -- being raped for being queer isn't exactly an unheard of phenomenon.

i wish i had more to say about this. something wise, revelatory, beautiful, or touching. i wish i could say more about the fact that the level of homophobia in South Africa, a country which actually has protections against discrimination written into its constitution, is so high that lesbians - lesbian schoolchildren, even - have boys trying to "correct" them through sexual violence.
but all i've got is:


my heart is weighed down with rocks, stones, pebbles, sand.
this news story? it's more than a news story.
it's her story.
and her story.
and millions of women's stories.
all different, all the same.
millions of women with heavy hearts,
weighed down with rocks, stones, pebbles, sand.

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?)

Sweet. Shopping Spree! For Free!

We all know that I'm all about promoting the gay agenda.
After all, I am gay. They send you the manual on Gay Proselytizing and Queerification Of America when you come out. It's pretty handy, really.
Oh, and I'm pro-choice, which means I'm a baby-killer too.
And I'm against the war, so I hate America.
And I'm for sex education, so I want 10-year-olds to be having sex.



But now I can do it for free! No more buying ice cream shakes for 10-year-old pre-gay kids (because, you know, queers are pedophiles too).
You, too, can take money from the wonderful people trying to save the world from baby-killing, pedophilic, anti-Americans like me.

The Stranger has an article up on how to get free stuff from Focus on the Family, "Dr." James Dobson's hate-mongering "Christian" group of evildoers.


I just screwed Focus on the Family and James Dobson out of $85!

"Bought" things such as "101 Frequently Asked Questions About Homosexuality" and "The Homosexual Agenda" (I should know what I'm promoting, after all).
And, of course, a lovely book called "The Feminist Mistake."



I should receive my items in about 7-10 days.
I can't wait.




*Note: This is not for people who are easily infuriated. Only those like me who can easily laugh off these assfaces should venture onto the site. If you have high blood pressure or a heart condition mixed with any sense of human decency, you should not visit Focus on the Family. If you are prone to high stress, you should also avoid the site.


Happy shopping!

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And just in case FoF catches on and somehow makes The Stranger take down the article, I reproduce it in full here:

Shopping Spree
How to Get Free Books, CDs, and Movies from Focus on the Family—Thereby Taking Money out of the Pockets of Anti-Gay Bigots—in 12 Easy Steps

BY NOEL BLACK

Gay marriage is on the ropes and you may be feeling despondent about the tedious process and dim prospects for any kind of meaningful change in the near future. And why wouldn't you? There are a total of eight states in the U.S. that don't have Defense of Marriage amendments either on the books or in the works, and Massachusetts is still the only state that permits same-sex marriage. The Washington State Supreme Court handed down its anti-gay-marriage decision several weeks ago and Washington's gay community is licking its wounds and contemplating an incremental push for civil unions.

When I'm feeling despondent over the state of gay rights in America—or the concurrent assaults on reproductive freedom, science, and rational thought—there's just one thing that helps me overcome my feelings of despair: getting free shit from Focus on the Family!

Few people know that Focus on the Family—the powerful evangelical Christian para-church based in Colorado Springs—will give you, absolutely free of charge, books, CDs, and DVDs. Usually people pay for these products, and the millions of dollars raised helps Focus on the Family produce yet more books and CDs featuring Dr. James Dobson and other Focus "experts." (Focus on the Family's experts, when they're not chatting on the phone with Karl Rove, run around the country teaching people how to stop being so gay and when it's appropriate to kick their kids' asses.)

Not only does ordering free stuff from Focus on the Family—sent to myself or people I don't like—satisfy a deeply juvenile impulse, it has the added benefit of taking money directly out of homo-hater Dobson's pocket. The one drawback is that getting free shit from Focus on the Family is a tad time consuming and a bit tricky, but it's well worth the effort.

Here's how to do it:

1. Go to www.family.org and you will see their home page.

2. Once you're at the home page, look for the "Resources" link in the blue bar on the left-hand side, right above the "Search" box, and click it.

3. Under the "Resource Category" menu on the left-hand side, you'll notice categories such as "Homosexuality." Go ahead and click that for shits and giggles.

4. It's time to start shopping! Scroll down a little bit and feel the homophobia flow. How about a nice copy of A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality? Go ahead and click the "Add to Cart" button.

5. Now comes a tough decision: Do you have the book sent to yourself so you can sell it on eBay for cash (my personal favorite) or do you keep it on your mantel as a high-larious conversation piece to point at and laugh when your friends and family come over? Or do you send it to a jerk? I always opt for sending it to myself. Yes, you may end up on the Focus on the Family mailing list (though I've been doing this for some time and have never received anything beyond what I ordered), but reading Focus on the Family's junk mail is a good way to keep tabs on their activities and it will cost them even more money in postage.

Please note: Focus on the Family won't send you more than $100 worth of materials for free in any given shopping trip, so be sure to keep it reasonable and return often.

6. Select "Add New Shipping Address" and click "Proceed to Checkout." Or, hell, continue to shop and pick up a box set of The Chronicles of Narnia on CD.

7. The next screen will ask you to sign up for an account and give your information. Don't worry, they don't ask for your credit-card number. Enter whatever name and address you like, because you won't be paying. You might want to make up a phone number, too.

8. Once you've filled out all the required fields (you can also create a fake e-mail account if you're super paranoid), click "Proceed to Checkout" one more time. You'll now find yourself at the "Here Is Your Cart" field. Annoying thing alert: You may have to reenter your info again after this field to actually set up your account. But just keep going until you get to the "How Much Would You Like to Donate?" page.

9. So, how much would you like to donate? Zero dollars, obviously. Don't be fooled by the field in the lower-right-hand corner that shows you the suggested donation amounts. Simply select "Enter other total amount" and enter 0.00 as the amount you would like to pay. (Don't put in a dollar sign or it will ask you for credit-card information!) Proceed to checkout.

10. You'll now be led to a screen that will try to make you feel guilty about the amount you haven't donated. But don't feel bad! Just proceed to checkout again.

11. Jesus! Here you are on the twelfth step and you still don't have your self-hatred materials! And you thought preventing homosexuality was supposed to be easy! Click "Checkout Now" and you're done.

Congratulations!

You have just removed a few dollars from the coffers of a major anti-gay organization. You can further capitalize on your brief investment of time by selling the item/s on eBay. You'd be surprised how much money you can get—a friend of mine makes a few hundred extra dollars every few months on this perfectly legal activity.

And if your conscience begins to bother you, think of it this way: Focus on the Family would probably like for you to have the materials anyway, because there's that minute chance that, once in your hands, the materials may inspire you to have a personal relationship with Jesus.

Finally, don't forget to pass this information on to all your friends. Proselytizing isn't just for Christians, you know. Go gay!

you've got to be kidding me...

Can this man integrate any more hate into his life?



We all know that Coretta Scott King passed away on Tuesday. I would not have expected anyone to view this as anything less than a tragedy. This woman did so much for everyone in the way of civil rights that it's hard to imagine anyone seeing her as anything but absolutely amazing.

Evidently, I've been proven wrong.

Fred Phelps, the man without a heart, plans to picket Coretta Scott King's funeral, which will be held in Georgia on Feb 7th.

The flyer:




*sigh*
I don't even know what to say to this. I'm dumbfounded. What is wrong with this man???

(hat tip, pam at pandagon)