Alright, y'all. I'm working on something more comprehensive for this topic.
But I did want to update those of y'all not following the debates, the folks who know me personally who don't have blogs, that sorta thing. Because the rest of y'all on my blogroll already know what's going on.
For me it started with 90%, over yonder at The Den of the Biting Beaver, and I just kinda treaded from there to Witchy-Woo's place At the Foot of Her Stairs, and on backwards to all the other stuff that got referenced, which in my stumblings and scurryings was this post on Alas- A Blog, which truly made me think that my head was gonna explode, well-intentioned as it might have been. Etc. and so forth. But if you haven't been keeping up one way or another, please go to these places and follow these threads and read up. Please.
Debate, argument, whateveryouwannacall it, it all has to do with fuck-me "feminism" and it's infiltration and divison of the feminist movement. And this is more than just a debate, y'all. This is a real itchy ISSUE. There's more than just differences of opinion at stake here. Differences that could lead to actions that could make or break the final outcomes for our movement, IMHO. This ongoing discussion's very important, and it's made some wierd shit kinda click together in my head.
Expect a big, blathering rant about it here within the next three days. Still putting the shit together.
7.06.2006
Lackluster Blog Entry #1, From Sunny Orlando
I was just kinda idly scrolling through my friend Stan's blog a little while ago, when I realized just how lax I've become in my militant feminism as I've "settled" into my new job, if you can really call it settling, and as I've had little or no access to the internet over the last month.
It's really pathetic. I shit you not. I am surrounded by really cool and intense people who are highly dedicated to the labor movement. Thing is, most of them are men, and they don't really see the need for said movement's infiltration by radical feminism. At least not in such blunt terms. So I've been just rolling along, and my attitudes, at least externally, have been warped by this wierd instinct I have to just act like "one of the boys."
No, I've not been out smacking asses or renting pornography. In fact, I've been pretty open about my opposition to pornography, and I haven't met any open hostility....yet. So I guess I've not been "bad" enough to flog myself or anything that irrational.
What I've done is re-adopted this whole, kinda competitive, kinda angry attitude that I find very "masculine." And I've not been able to really admit what's really eating at me, out of a sort of "take-it-like-a-man" sense of pride. I'm blaming my woes on shit like the stress of the job, or the newness of where I live, or the people that I work with, or my hormonal cycles.
Yesterday, which was my first full day off in a long time, I put on my bathing suit and I went out to the hotel pool. I was only able to splash around for a little while before it started storming outside. But as I floated on my back I was staring up at the clouds, watching them grow. The clouds are so big and fluffy and the sky is so white here in Florida. I've never been so close to such violent clouds. I was floating in the water, and the temperature was perfect owing to the impending storm, and I was watching those fucking clouds swirl and toss about, churning electricity and wind inside them, and a gigantic vulture flew across the sky so high that I couldn't tell it from a plane until it finally flapped it's wings and swooped downward. I felt the raindrops hitting my face when the thunder started, and the whole scene was so gorgeous and wierdly idyllic, and my gut siezed up with an urge to talk to somebody about it. When I came up to my room I started to call somebody back home, and then I stopped myself, 'cause who the hell in their right mind wants to hear about some clouds and fucking scavenger birds? Who??
And I guess that's when it really hit me. And this wacky aside really does fit into the larger non-scheme of this blog entry.
The truth is I'm fucking lonely as hell and I don't want to admit to it. I don't want anydamn body to know that I'm overly worried about what's happening with my family back home. I don't mention that I miss my friends, not anything more than a passing, fleeting comment, anyways.
I haven't felt like this in a really long time. Back home I had friends to vent to and to go to, physically, after work was over. These were people I had deep connections with and whom I'd known for a really long time. I still talk to them every week or so, but it's not the same when they're not in a physical proximity that allows me to look into their faces. Back home, if I was down or gloomy or whatever I could just hang out with my girlfriends, or my sister or my niece, and I could tell them all my crazy political ideas and they'd listen and they wouldn't tell me that I was crazy, and I could get the same feedback from them.
I've met some really cool people since I've been here. But nobody who's working on this particular campaign really knows anybody else who is, I mean closely enough that it would be a relief to talk and just let it all out, you know? And I DO have issues with trusting people. Especially when I know, I mean they haven't outright told me but I do have some sense and I've figured out that most of the people I've been hanging out with around here have a job, for the better half of the day, to ASSESS me. My career is in their hands. They HAVE to like me or I'm pretty much homeless. So yeah. I'm in a place where I don't have time to cultivate a "life outside," I have to always be on "good behavior," and it's a strange town and I don't know anybody here and I'm fucking LONELY, dammit.
And you know what? I've noticed that maybe 4 out of r5 of these coworkers of mine has a human lifeline outside of work, a "significant other," a person that they call and talk to every night when it's all said and done.
I'm realizing that my friends back home, they kinda had become that outlet for me, and in a way that wasn't damaging in the ways that a "romantic entanglement" or a sexualized relationship can be. I was in the middle of cultivating something really, really cool with a bunch of really, really cool women, and then I moved away and it busted. I ain't saying that my friends at home wouldn't talk to me on the phone at the end of the evening, but their lives are busy too. They ain't as sleep-deprived as me, they never really have been. So it's a sort of "you gotta be there" situation.
It's been probably two years since I actually dated anybody, and I haven't missed that until this month. I haven't wanted to admit it (another decidedly masculine trait that I've internalized) and I've tried to just brush it off, say that the work will fill up the space that's just sitting there, in the front of my cerebral cortex. And my sexual organs still WORK. They still jive up with my endocrine system to secrete hormones that make my body want to be close to other bodies. But I find myself actually being envious of my coworkers who go back to their hotel rooms or their apartments or houses and have some kind of "mate" there to talk to, to engage with, for cryin' out loud, to have SEX with if that's what they both feel like doing. Even if that person's at the other end of a cell phone signal.
I don't know how to be a person who's not a sexual hermit without doing it all the wrong ways, and now I find myself craving that kind of engagement with someone. I guess I'll have to admit that this thing, this wierdness, this isolation is actually showing me ways that I've grown. There was a time when I would react positively to a random stranger's tasteless, vulgar signals that told me that I'd be a fun fuck for the night. I don't do that anymore. But I'm not happy with celibacy anymore, either. I don't know what the hell to do, and to be perfectly honest and maybe a little bit vulgar myself, I sincerely DON'T know that the muscles in my left wrist can take the strain.
So I guess, for tonight, my energy's getting spent here, in my crummy ramblings.
I wish there were a training programme designed for the up-and-coming sexual automaton. Maybe there are and I just don't know about them. With my social network dissolved and my time eaten up, I'm kinda stumbling here. I thought that just ducking and covering from the whole "love" or "lack thereof" issue would be easy- and to be honest I don't understand why I'm so hung up on it, cause it's not like I have the time or the emotional resources for it if anything good DID come down the pike, anyways.
I'm just lonely. And it's cold in my hotel-room. I'll get up in the morning, have my coffee, and go to work, maybe listen to some Celia Cruz.
That's all for tonight.
It's really pathetic. I shit you not. I am surrounded by really cool and intense people who are highly dedicated to the labor movement. Thing is, most of them are men, and they don't really see the need for said movement's infiltration by radical feminism. At least not in such blunt terms. So I've been just rolling along, and my attitudes, at least externally, have been warped by this wierd instinct I have to just act like "one of the boys."
No, I've not been out smacking asses or renting pornography. In fact, I've been pretty open about my opposition to pornography, and I haven't met any open hostility....yet. So I guess I've not been "bad" enough to flog myself or anything that irrational.
What I've done is re-adopted this whole, kinda competitive, kinda angry attitude that I find very "masculine." And I've not been able to really admit what's really eating at me, out of a sort of "take-it-like-a-man" sense of pride. I'm blaming my woes on shit like the stress of the job, or the newness of where I live, or the people that I work with, or my hormonal cycles.
Yesterday, which was my first full day off in a long time, I put on my bathing suit and I went out to the hotel pool. I was only able to splash around for a little while before it started storming outside. But as I floated on my back I was staring up at the clouds, watching them grow. The clouds are so big and fluffy and the sky is so white here in Florida. I've never been so close to such violent clouds. I was floating in the water, and the temperature was perfect owing to the impending storm, and I was watching those fucking clouds swirl and toss about, churning electricity and wind inside them, and a gigantic vulture flew across the sky so high that I couldn't tell it from a plane until it finally flapped it's wings and swooped downward. I felt the raindrops hitting my face when the thunder started, and the whole scene was so gorgeous and wierdly idyllic, and my gut siezed up with an urge to talk to somebody about it. When I came up to my room I started to call somebody back home, and then I stopped myself, 'cause who the hell in their right mind wants to hear about some clouds and fucking scavenger birds? Who??
And I guess that's when it really hit me. And this wacky aside really does fit into the larger non-scheme of this blog entry.
The truth is I'm fucking lonely as hell and I don't want to admit to it. I don't want anydamn body to know that I'm overly worried about what's happening with my family back home. I don't mention that I miss my friends, not anything more than a passing, fleeting comment, anyways.
I haven't felt like this in a really long time. Back home I had friends to vent to and to go to, physically, after work was over. These were people I had deep connections with and whom I'd known for a really long time. I still talk to them every week or so, but it's not the same when they're not in a physical proximity that allows me to look into their faces. Back home, if I was down or gloomy or whatever I could just hang out with my girlfriends, or my sister or my niece, and I could tell them all my crazy political ideas and they'd listen and they wouldn't tell me that I was crazy, and I could get the same feedback from them.
I've met some really cool people since I've been here. But nobody who's working on this particular campaign really knows anybody else who is, I mean closely enough that it would be a relief to talk and just let it all out, you know? And I DO have issues with trusting people. Especially when I know, I mean they haven't outright told me but I do have some sense and I've figured out that most of the people I've been hanging out with around here have a job, for the better half of the day, to ASSESS me. My career is in their hands. They HAVE to like me or I'm pretty much homeless. So yeah. I'm in a place where I don't have time to cultivate a "life outside," I have to always be on "good behavior," and it's a strange town and I don't know anybody here and I'm fucking LONELY, dammit.
And you know what? I've noticed that maybe 4 out of r5 of these coworkers of mine has a human lifeline outside of work, a "significant other," a person that they call and talk to every night when it's all said and done.
I'm realizing that my friends back home, they kinda had become that outlet for me, and in a way that wasn't damaging in the ways that a "romantic entanglement" or a sexualized relationship can be. I was in the middle of cultivating something really, really cool with a bunch of really, really cool women, and then I moved away and it busted. I ain't saying that my friends at home wouldn't talk to me on the phone at the end of the evening, but their lives are busy too. They ain't as sleep-deprived as me, they never really have been. So it's a sort of "you gotta be there" situation.
It's been probably two years since I actually dated anybody, and I haven't missed that until this month. I haven't wanted to admit it (another decidedly masculine trait that I've internalized) and I've tried to just brush it off, say that the work will fill up the space that's just sitting there, in the front of my cerebral cortex. And my sexual organs still WORK. They still jive up with my endocrine system to secrete hormones that make my body want to be close to other bodies. But I find myself actually being envious of my coworkers who go back to their hotel rooms or their apartments or houses and have some kind of "mate" there to talk to, to engage with, for cryin' out loud, to have SEX with if that's what they both feel like doing. Even if that person's at the other end of a cell phone signal.
I don't know how to be a person who's not a sexual hermit without doing it all the wrong ways, and now I find myself craving that kind of engagement with someone. I guess I'll have to admit that this thing, this wierdness, this isolation is actually showing me ways that I've grown. There was a time when I would react positively to a random stranger's tasteless, vulgar signals that told me that I'd be a fun fuck for the night. I don't do that anymore. But I'm not happy with celibacy anymore, either. I don't know what the hell to do, and to be perfectly honest and maybe a little bit vulgar myself, I sincerely DON'T know that the muscles in my left wrist can take the strain.
So I guess, for tonight, my energy's getting spent here, in my crummy ramblings.
I wish there were a training programme designed for the up-and-coming sexual automaton. Maybe there are and I just don't know about them. With my social network dissolved and my time eaten up, I'm kinda stumbling here. I thought that just ducking and covering from the whole "love" or "lack thereof" issue would be easy- and to be honest I don't understand why I'm so hung up on it, cause it's not like I have the time or the emotional resources for it if anything good DID come down the pike, anyways.
I'm just lonely. And it's cold in my hotel-room. I'll get up in the morning, have my coffee, and go to work, maybe listen to some Celia Cruz.
That's all for tonight.
7.02.2006
I'm Still Alive, I Swear
Hey everybody.
I've been working on a kinda blitz/campaign and have been working something like 80 hrs. a week, much of it is in front of a computer entering data, the other much of it blazing through and around-about the great city of Orlando, knocking on people's doors and trying to get them excited about joining up with the Mighty, Mighty Union.
It's working and the campaign is picking up speed and steam, and so I am a slave to the union.
They did bump me up from Intern to Apprentice, which means basically that I am still a slave to the union, but a slave with bigger responsibilities. But I'm enjoying the work.
So that's why I haven't posted in FOREVER. I miss my blogosphere buddies.
I should have a wireless card in a week, so I can get back to the blogogrind. I've gotten emails/comments from folks who seem a tad concerned and curious as to my cyber-whereabouts, and so I thought I'd update/touch base and let everybody know that I didn't get abducted by the Pinche Rata that owns this place, or any of his cartoon pals.
Love y'all!
I've been working on a kinda blitz/campaign and have been working something like 80 hrs. a week, much of it is in front of a computer entering data, the other much of it blazing through and around-about the great city of Orlando, knocking on people's doors and trying to get them excited about joining up with the Mighty, Mighty Union.
It's working and the campaign is picking up speed and steam, and so I am a slave to the union.
They did bump me up from Intern to Apprentice, which means basically that I am still a slave to the union, but a slave with bigger responsibilities. But I'm enjoying the work.
So that's why I haven't posted in FOREVER. I miss my blogosphere buddies.
I should have a wireless card in a week, so I can get back to the blogogrind. I've gotten emails/comments from folks who seem a tad concerned and curious as to my cyber-whereabouts, and so I thought I'd update/touch base and let everybody know that I didn't get abducted by the Pinche Rata that owns this place, or any of his cartoon pals.
Love y'all!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
