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!
6.12.2006
In the Land of the Motherfucking Mouse
Howdy. Reporting in, briefly, from Orlando. *crosses fingers, hopes blog will post on this
decrepit machinery*
I been in Orlando three days, and my internship started officially on Saturday. Needless to say, this town kinda looks like Walt Disney took a technicolor dump on everything. But they haven't issued my my red-star mouse-ears yet. I keep askin', and the union folks keep lookin' at me all funny.
Baltimore was pretty awesome. I met some of the coolest people up there at my orientation (which was actually only 5 days, and now I'm already in Orlandolandia. Anyways) and I kinda wish we coulda all just went to the same place and started a fucking revolutionary army. Just kidding. (not really)
We have the first tropical storm of the year, Alberto's his name, I believe, and it's rain rain rain rain rain rain rain. Yesterday I drove around in the rain and found the Florida Mall, and spent some money on fucking presentable clothing. Lemme tell ya, walking around at the mall is NOT my idea of a fun day. But I did find that the JC Penny's there has a plus-size section that is as big or bigger than the Torrid or the Lane Bryant in the same mall. Sweeeet. Today I left my hotel in the rain and followed my boss to the Waffle House in the rain and then we had some eggs and looked at the rain and we drove to the office, in the rain.
Funny thing, just something I wanna chime in on. You know what I hate? I hate it when white people don't bother to figure out how folks say words that we commonly coopt into English with some sort of a semblance of at LEAST trying to figure out how to pronounce them. Then you tell them that they're pronouncing the shit wrong and they're like "oh really? Thanks for the heads-up." And they proceed to ignore your suggestion.
It's "La Quinta" not "La Kwinta." OKAY??????? It's not like I'm asking you to say Xochimilco or Tlaxcala or fucking Huitzilopochtli with a fucking exact dialectical rendering. Gah!
Sorry. Just an aside-rant.
Or maybe I'm wrong. But I don't think I am.
Anyhoo, just wanted to update y'all on the new job and all that shit, and give y'all a head's up on my status in the place where Mickey Mouse goes to shit and take a smoke break. Everythang's cool. I'll hopefully be back online regular-like in just a few days.
Much love to all those who read my shit. I miss y'all.
decrepit machinery*
I been in Orlando three days, and my internship started officially on Saturday. Needless to say, this town kinda looks like Walt Disney took a technicolor dump on everything. But they haven't issued my my red-star mouse-ears yet. I keep askin', and the union folks keep lookin' at me all funny.
Baltimore was pretty awesome. I met some of the coolest people up there at my orientation (which was actually only 5 days, and now I'm already in Orlandolandia. Anyways) and I kinda wish we coulda all just went to the same place and started a fucking revolutionary army. Just kidding. (not really)
We have the first tropical storm of the year, Alberto's his name, I believe, and it's rain rain rain rain rain rain rain. Yesterday I drove around in the rain and found the Florida Mall, and spent some money on fucking presentable clothing. Lemme tell ya, walking around at the mall is NOT my idea of a fun day. But I did find that the JC Penny's there has a plus-size section that is as big or bigger than the Torrid or the Lane Bryant in the same mall. Sweeeet. Today I left my hotel in the rain and followed my boss to the Waffle House in the rain and then we had some eggs and looked at the rain and we drove to the office, in the rain.
Funny thing, just something I wanna chime in on. You know what I hate? I hate it when white people don't bother to figure out how folks say words that we commonly coopt into English with some sort of a semblance of at LEAST trying to figure out how to pronounce them. Then you tell them that they're pronouncing the shit wrong and they're like "oh really? Thanks for the heads-up." And they proceed to ignore your suggestion.
It's "La Quinta" not "La Kwinta." OKAY??????? It's not like I'm asking you to say Xochimilco or Tlaxcala or fucking Huitzilopochtli with a fucking exact dialectical rendering. Gah!
Sorry. Just an aside-rant.
Or maybe I'm wrong. But I don't think I am.
Anyhoo, just wanted to update y'all on the new job and all that shit, and give y'all a head's up on my status in the place where Mickey Mouse goes to shit and take a smoke break. Everythang's cool. I'll hopefully be back online regular-like in just a few days.
Much love to all those who read my shit. I miss y'all.
6.01.2006
I Quit!
My job, that is. Last night was my last night as a residential, direct-care support provider.
I'm so sad, in so many ways. Excited in others. La vida. Ay.
I now have to divvy up the shit that's in my bedroom, move my music stuff, clean out my vehicles, pack, go through my clothes and figure out what I'm gonna keep and what I'm gonna give away, and sort out my books.
My books. My god, my books. I think I'm gonna just sell most of them. I'm keeping my political stuff and my Spanish stuff. But I want all my books to fit into one box by the time I'm done.
And I been sick. The air quality around the TN valley has been more suck-ass than usual, of late. The other day I noticed that my local news does a daily index; I didn't know that. At any rate, the gist was "if you have asthma stay inside today." Needless to say, I didn't, and it's been hell on my lungs.
The heat in East TN is an especially opressive heat. It came on strong and sudden this year, like a big, sweaty palm planted squarely on the face of the state. The lush foliage, the bowl-like topography, the waterways all play in a harmonious humidity chorus. Which sounds all picturesque and southern, but feels all slimy and sweaty in the dead of summer.
At any rate, I felt compelled to stop in and point the blog-folk in the direction of The Primary Contradiction, a bright new feminist blog by a friend of mine that's already rockin'.
I think I might rest a bit, then maybe sleep a couple hours before I tear up my TN hole. Anybody know where I can score a cheap lap-top? Argh... it might be a while before I can post again....
I'm so sad, in so many ways. Excited in others. La vida. Ay.
I now have to divvy up the shit that's in my bedroom, move my music stuff, clean out my vehicles, pack, go through my clothes and figure out what I'm gonna keep and what I'm gonna give away, and sort out my books.
My books. My god, my books. I think I'm gonna just sell most of them. I'm keeping my political stuff and my Spanish stuff. But I want all my books to fit into one box by the time I'm done.
And I been sick. The air quality around the TN valley has been more suck-ass than usual, of late. The other day I noticed that my local news does a daily index; I didn't know that. At any rate, the gist was "if you have asthma stay inside today." Needless to say, I didn't, and it's been hell on my lungs.
The heat in East TN is an especially opressive heat. It came on strong and sudden this year, like a big, sweaty palm planted squarely on the face of the state. The lush foliage, the bowl-like topography, the waterways all play in a harmonious humidity chorus. Which sounds all picturesque and southern, but feels all slimy and sweaty in the dead of summer.
At any rate, I felt compelled to stop in and point the blog-folk in the direction of The Primary Contradiction, a bright new feminist blog by a friend of mine that's already rockin'.
I think I might rest a bit, then maybe sleep a couple hours before I tear up my TN hole. Anybody know where I can score a cheap lap-top? Argh... it might be a while before I can post again....
5.24.2006
New Job, Etc.
I've turned in my notice. I've got one more week of working at the group home, then a few days off, then I'm off to Baltimore where I start an internship in union organizing. It's way more money. It's away from HERE. It should be good stuff. I can't wait to leave.
Last night was such an idyllic group-home night. Everybody was in a good mood, the sun was shining outside, the flowers in the group-home garden had just opened up. I cooked a really wonderful supper and everybody loved it. An inspector came, and only stayed an hour, was really impressed with the house and the environment and how happy and independent our guys are. Everything got done early.
I remember, after bathing one of the clients, I threw together the casserole-thing I was cooking and put it in the oven, then went outside to sit on the patio table and brush and braid my client's hair. The group-home kitties sat up on the table with me, two torties with bubbly personalities, and I made a gorgeous french-plait in this woman's long, blonde hair. I nearly cried, then, when I thought about leaving.
When I get to these emotional places at work, when I'm having a good time with the guys or when we're doing a project that's totally awesome and cool, or we're all working together cooking some big thing- and I want to cry, because I'm going to be walking away from all that family in a week- I think back on where I actually LIVE. I think about my mom, and how hard her life is, and I think about how I have to get to a place where I can take care of HER when she finally gets sick and starts to die. It's kinda the mental equivalent of pinching myself real hard.
I mean, to be honest, I've been acting kinda selfishly. I *could* have gotten a fucking corporate job at a collection agency, making mad money harassing people in Spanish to make their trailer payments or whatever. I could already be helping my family, but my fucking stark-as-hell principles and morality won't let me do that kinda work. The whole mess has made me look like a fool to people I love dearly- keeping this job, whose administrative ass-end I complain about all the damn time, that doesn't pay enough to let me have my own place and pay rent, forgoing other jobs that could lead to strategical political involvement or at least more money, a hand-up outta poverty.
At least what I'm gonna get paid for now is a more officially "Fight the Man"-type job. I wish that Radical Feminism had more ground-level material benefits. I'd love to find a job working for a fist-in-your-face, radical, feminist organization. But it looks like any work I do for this movement will be unpaid, at least for now.
I ain't all that bound up with money or material comfort. If you could see the place where I live now, you'd understand what I'm saying. But I gotta pay rent. There's no room for me in mama's house anymore. I work a lot, already, and it's fucking hard as hell to find time to research articles for this blog or absorb myself in feminist political work. My work schedule right now doesn't allow for political meetings. SO this is what y'all get. But hopefully that's gonna change real, real soon. I'm prickly with excitement just as much as I hate to leave the family-setting of my current workplace.
I told the inspector yesterday, who asked me why the hell I was leaving, after my boss bragged to him about my bilingualness and my college degrees- I told him I had to go somewhere where I could draw a fucking paycheck. He'd worked in the field for quite some time, so he just responded by nodding his head.
After a four-week stint in Baltimore, I head for either Atlanta or Orlando. I hope I get Orlando, mainly 'cause I never been there.
Shit! I just looked at the clock. Time to go to work! Ugh!!! I hate bloggus-interruptus. More later.
Last night was such an idyllic group-home night. Everybody was in a good mood, the sun was shining outside, the flowers in the group-home garden had just opened up. I cooked a really wonderful supper and everybody loved it. An inspector came, and only stayed an hour, was really impressed with the house and the environment and how happy and independent our guys are. Everything got done early.
I remember, after bathing one of the clients, I threw together the casserole-thing I was cooking and put it in the oven, then went outside to sit on the patio table and brush and braid my client's hair. The group-home kitties sat up on the table with me, two torties with bubbly personalities, and I made a gorgeous french-plait in this woman's long, blonde hair. I nearly cried, then, when I thought about leaving.
When I get to these emotional places at work, when I'm having a good time with the guys or when we're doing a project that's totally awesome and cool, or we're all working together cooking some big thing- and I want to cry, because I'm going to be walking away from all that family in a week- I think back on where I actually LIVE. I think about my mom, and how hard her life is, and I think about how I have to get to a place where I can take care of HER when she finally gets sick and starts to die. It's kinda the mental equivalent of pinching myself real hard.
I mean, to be honest, I've been acting kinda selfishly. I *could* have gotten a fucking corporate job at a collection agency, making mad money harassing people in Spanish to make their trailer payments or whatever. I could already be helping my family, but my fucking stark-as-hell principles and morality won't let me do that kinda work. The whole mess has made me look like a fool to people I love dearly- keeping this job, whose administrative ass-end I complain about all the damn time, that doesn't pay enough to let me have my own place and pay rent, forgoing other jobs that could lead to strategical political involvement or at least more money, a hand-up outta poverty.
At least what I'm gonna get paid for now is a more officially "Fight the Man"-type job. I wish that Radical Feminism had more ground-level material benefits. I'd love to find a job working for a fist-in-your-face, radical, feminist organization. But it looks like any work I do for this movement will be unpaid, at least for now.
I ain't all that bound up with money or material comfort. If you could see the place where I live now, you'd understand what I'm saying. But I gotta pay rent. There's no room for me in mama's house anymore. I work a lot, already, and it's fucking hard as hell to find time to research articles for this blog or absorb myself in feminist political work. My work schedule right now doesn't allow for political meetings. SO this is what y'all get. But hopefully that's gonna change real, real soon. I'm prickly with excitement just as much as I hate to leave the family-setting of my current workplace.
I told the inspector yesterday, who asked me why the hell I was leaving, after my boss bragged to him about my bilingualness and my college degrees- I told him I had to go somewhere where I could draw a fucking paycheck. He'd worked in the field for quite some time, so he just responded by nodding his head.
After a four-week stint in Baltimore, I head for either Atlanta or Orlando. I hope I get Orlando, mainly 'cause I never been there.
Shit! I just looked at the clock. Time to go to work! Ugh!!! I hate bloggus-interruptus. More later.
5.18.2006
Just Some Random Thoughts
I'm sitting in the living room, at my brother's desk. Right now there are 2 teenage boys, one of them my nephew, getting ready to play "Risk" and making some noise directly behind me. These are the things I deal with in order to sit at a computer long enough to do a blog-post.
I'm currently engaged in some high-level procrastination; I need to draft a resignation letter before I go in to work today. I'm getting ready to leave a job I've had for nearly 8 years, and it's a bit intimidating. I got an apprenticeship with a union, so it looks like that's what I'll be doing for the next little while.
I just got done reading a post at Biting Beaver on Fuckability. It upset me some, not because I disagree with any of it, it just kinda triggered some emotions that I have a hard time dealing with. I was moved to post a comment-tirade there about an encounter with a man in Durham in which he apparently thought I was a prostitute, and inquired as to my rates. I guess that when that happened it didn't NOT bother me; I knew I was a little preturbed but when I read BB's post today I cried, and I don't do that too often.
When I went on my NC trip, and when I go on many trips, I didn't wear any makeup or bring any fancy or sexy clothes. It's just a kinda pragmatism I have, I kinda treat trips like camping and go minimalist. I don't like to carry around extra shit and I'm not much for dressing up anyways. When I'm navigating in normal life, here on my home turf, so to speak, I don't get the "random-guy-staring-at-me" unless I'm wearing makeup and/or something that's low-cut.
I always attribute this to my status as a non-pretty woman, by most standards (that is, most ways of thinking of "attractiveness" under the Gringo White-Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy.) I guess that's why the whole "incident" in Durham threw me off; I wasn't wearing anything at all revealing, I was sweaty, my hair was a big fuzzy mess, and I was just sitting outside a deli smoking cigarettes and reading an Andrea Dworkin book, for Christ's sakes. Then this dude comes up and puts his paws on my and wants to know how much I "charge, you know, for the night. Or for an hour or 2."
Now. I think that BB's reference to "fuckability" needs a little clarification, since all women are "fuckable" under patriarchy. We all have the necessary holes and we're all kinda stuck in this place below the men-folk, where "being fucked" whether we like it or not is a constant threat hanging in the air over our heads, in our field of vision.
The guy who "propositioned" me was, as far as I could tell, street-folk. There were people walking by on the sidewalk the whole time the exchange was happening, and nobody stopped to say anything to him or ask me if I needed help. I was on my own for that 5 minutes leading up to his ask and for the few minutes it took me to get back inside, away from the guy. I had to disengage from him, get his hands off me (he'd moved in real, real close, grabbed my hand, and also put a hand on my shoulder) and scoot without pissing him off, in my mind. I also, in spite of his fucking audacity, felt compelled to do it without letting him think I was recoiling from a "creepy street person." I wasn't. I was recoiling from a big man whose nasty breath was in my face and was touching me without my permission. I felt "lucky" when one of the guys working in the Deli, who'd previously been hitting on me "the nice way," (just making chit-chat, saying I had pretty eyes, making comments about my tattoos, that kinda stuff ) came out and shooed the guy away.
So I guess that the point that I'm struggling to come to, here, is where that difference lies, in what BB talks about with "fuckability" as she's defining it, (and correct me, please, if I missed something, BB. I ain't the brightest crayon sometimes) which seems to be in terms of a kind of "attractiveness" that one is born with, the physical proportions and characteristics that a person has that allows them to "fit" the "attractive" mold and seems to act as a sort of "invitation" to men, if that makes sense, and gives them this sense of entitlement to make comments and touch and grab.
Under this definition, I'm not "fuckable," and I certainly wasn't wearing anything provocative or any makeup and I thought I looked a mess. I weigh 260 lbs and am 5'4" tall. Most folks don't even think I'm attractive. But this shit happens to me. This wasn't the first time I've encountered the intrusive, male entitlement to comment/proposition/confront/inquire/touch me in a suggestive way, one that assumed that I wanted some sort of sexual contact.
But there is a difference in experience, here. I've had men who will insult me because of my fatness and my lack of fashion sense and then ask if I'll fuck them in the same breath. I've had men yell at me from car windows, all of what they're saying being insulting and objectifying; they'll say I'm "ugly" and say they want to "tap that ass" and it's all the same tone of voice.
I think the difference in the form or context of objectification comes in the percieved "trophy-ness" of the woman in question.
See, men don't ask me out on "dates", generally speaking. I'm much more likely to get stared down if I look like "SOMEBODY" than if I'm just walking around in my normal street gear, or get some kind of fucked-up misogynistic piropos shouted at me, or even to get my ass smacked or whatever. But even when I'm all dressed up and cleaned up, conforming as much as my physical proportions will allow me to do so to what "beauty" and "standards" are in our society, even then men don't ask for "dates." They only will ask to "fuck." If I tell them to fuck off, they get very angry and insult me based on how I look. When I've told them that I'm not into men, which at this point in time is pretty much the truth, they say they can "fix that."
And I HAVE dated men, after I've asked them out, and they've agreed. But I have NEVER, ever been asked out on a date. I dated one of these guys for a damn long time. But I was never a real human being to him. I was a "sex-kitten." I was a goddam fuck-toy.
I've been that woman that a man will fuck in secret, in a motel-room, on the side. When I was dating, the guy I dated did stuff like showing naked pictures of me to his friends, people that knew me and he even offered that I would be interested in sex with them, usually without asking my permission to do so, only telling me about it after he'd done it already.
I have attraction for men, still. But the ways I've engaged with them intimately make me think that I shouldn't engage any more, if that makes any sense at all. I'm not a trophy, not worth keeping around or adding to their "public" image, unless they're the type of man to fetishize certain body types (and living with a fetishist is fucked-up as hell. Been there, done that, and won't go there again.) And so I have friendships with them. But if they "desire" me in a physical sense, it's not in a public way, it's behind-the-scenes, it's a tryst or a fucking one-night-stand. I've had men who I formerly called friends proposition me, ask to sleep with me, but never ask to "go out" somewhere or tell me that they had feelings for me, other than friendship. I've done it, too. I've screwed them, I've attempted to be that fantasy-woman for them, and while they've come back for sex at times it's always been in a disengaged format- something that I'm supposed to understand "inherently" I guess, that I'm NOT a real relationship and that I'm only there for them that minute in that way, and that anybody else would have "done in a pinch." And then they roll off you and it's like nothing, NOTHING ever happened.
Since I've quit engaging in this side of the male/female relationship miasma, I've had this realization that I'm not the kinda woman that men want to date. I'm "fuckable," that's for sure, but it's something that I should be grateful for, since I'm so damn ugly or whatever. I've been a sounding-board and a bedpost-notch.
What's happened is that, whenever I'm around men, even men with what you'd call "good politics", I'm super self-conscious and I take in every move they make and everything I do with my own body to stave off giving out the "wrong signals." I've learned to keep this tally in my head and the dudes I hang out with don't even know that I'm doing it. When the incident in Durham happened, I spent a good part of the afternoon in self-scrutiny and wondering what the hell I did to prompt the whole thing. I will watch what I say. I made a comment to a friend yesterday, at lunch, about how I do everything I do very deliberately, especially when I'm in a room that's got a heftier portion of men than women sitting around, or milling about.
I've emotionally and physically detached myself from men. My wall's gotten pretty high, and I didn't really realize it 'till the past week. The fucked-up thing is, it makes me kinda sad.
When I was little, I didn't have my own room, so I slept with my parents. My dad would hold me when we slept, he'd play with my hair and on the weekends, I'd wake up and stare at him until he woke up and spend the day with me. I remember back to that time, feeling sleep as something secure and safe, if he was there.
Then my grandfather molested me when I was 7, and since then it's almost impossible for me to sleep with anybody. At that point I DEMANDED somewhere of my own to sleep, and I didn't want to touch or hug my dad, or my mom, or anybody in my family for many years. That's when my lifelong struggle with insomnia began. I wish to hell I could sleep again the way I slept when I was 6. Now sleeping in a bed with a male is out of the question, unless I know I'm going to have sex with him. I slept good when I lived with the aforementioned guy that I dated, when he would cuddle up with me, I slept like a fucking rock. This guy who treated me like I wasn't human, who fucked around on me and lied about it, who wanted me to be his live-in porno star could put his arms around me and I'd sleep just like a fucking baby. And that's something I can't go back to. So I guess it's insomnia, kicking, and fighting sleep for me, unless I want to take heavy-duty antipsychotics to induce dead, drunken sleep.
And in coming back to this fuckability thing, what I was really wanting to know is if there's not a better word for that specific form of objectification. But something opened up the floodgates, and now I'm just rambling without a point. But I wanted to illustrate how ALL women have fuckability, ugly or attractive according to the norms we usually go by. The women who fall into the "trophy-ification" category, I guess, are more likely to get the "emotional relationship that's also sexual" "benefits". Not that I really think they're benefits. But it's a different thing.
I know that this post is all over the map, and I apologize for it's lack of coherence. I'm just trying to find something to pin down this struggle that my brain's having with itself. I mean, I think it's important given the wedges that are driven among women, among sisters, who don't get along, and who judge other women on the basis of how attractive or not that they are.
I'd like us to collectively realize that, one way or another, we're all just fuckholes to the patriarchy. We DO come to that place via different paths, and through different experiences. I've come across women who've judged me based on my appearance, I've met women who say that all fat people are lazy and don't care about themselves. The fat and ugly thing is what gave me my overall sense of pugnacious rebellion, and I'd never been able to attach it cohesively to my experience as a woman before. While the attitude I mention does make me angry, I have to stand up for my "pretty" sisters here, too. Because they didn't ever create the dichotomy, they just "benefitted" from it in some ways. And the ways they've been hurt and mutilated themselves and starved themselves, well, it far outweighs most benifits, except those that are hard-line economical.
I'm gonna say it again, ALL of us are seen by the patriarchy as potential fuckholes. The differing routes to fuckholeness are shaped, in many ways, by the bodies that we're born into, the way that these bodies look, the degree to which they "naturally" or not fit the "mold" of different, patriarchally constructed sort of archetypes of "feminity" or "femalesness". And we all have to move and bend to what the patriarchy wants, keep a tally on what we're doing, how we look, how we move, how we talk based upon these proscribed demands and expectations.
Black Women, Latinas, Asian Women, are expected to try to look more "white." Fat women have to play up those features that can't be "ruined" by their fatness. White women are supposed to strive for housewifedom. Pretty women are immediately percieved as brainless and "fuckable." The list goes on and doesn't end.
We're all out there, grabable and pinchable, our asses a source of public discourse. We are all fetishized to some degree. We're all expected to strive for a starved, white, fragile, breakable perception of what beauty "is." We're all open to the on-the-street "proposition," the catcalls, the stares.
We have to fucking strike back. This isn't a friendly "struggle of opposites." This is a fucking war, and we're the fucking insurgency.
I have to go get ready for work now. Guess I'm not gonna get around to that resignation letter.
I'm currently engaged in some high-level procrastination; I need to draft a resignation letter before I go in to work today. I'm getting ready to leave a job I've had for nearly 8 years, and it's a bit intimidating. I got an apprenticeship with a union, so it looks like that's what I'll be doing for the next little while.
I just got done reading a post at Biting Beaver on Fuckability. It upset me some, not because I disagree with any of it, it just kinda triggered some emotions that I have a hard time dealing with. I was moved to post a comment-tirade there about an encounter with a man in Durham in which he apparently thought I was a prostitute, and inquired as to my rates. I guess that when that happened it didn't NOT bother me; I knew I was a little preturbed but when I read BB's post today I cried, and I don't do that too often.
When I went on my NC trip, and when I go on many trips, I didn't wear any makeup or bring any fancy or sexy clothes. It's just a kinda pragmatism I have, I kinda treat trips like camping and go minimalist. I don't like to carry around extra shit and I'm not much for dressing up anyways. When I'm navigating in normal life, here on my home turf, so to speak, I don't get the "random-guy-staring-at-me" unless I'm wearing makeup and/or something that's low-cut.
I always attribute this to my status as a non-pretty woman, by most standards (that is, most ways of thinking of "attractiveness" under the Gringo White-Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy.) I guess that's why the whole "incident" in Durham threw me off; I wasn't wearing anything at all revealing, I was sweaty, my hair was a big fuzzy mess, and I was just sitting outside a deli smoking cigarettes and reading an Andrea Dworkin book, for Christ's sakes. Then this dude comes up and puts his paws on my and wants to know how much I "charge, you know, for the night. Or for an hour or 2."
Now. I think that BB's reference to "fuckability" needs a little clarification, since all women are "fuckable" under patriarchy. We all have the necessary holes and we're all kinda stuck in this place below the men-folk, where "being fucked" whether we like it or not is a constant threat hanging in the air over our heads, in our field of vision.
The guy who "propositioned" me was, as far as I could tell, street-folk. There were people walking by on the sidewalk the whole time the exchange was happening, and nobody stopped to say anything to him or ask me if I needed help. I was on my own for that 5 minutes leading up to his ask and for the few minutes it took me to get back inside, away from the guy. I had to disengage from him, get his hands off me (he'd moved in real, real close, grabbed my hand, and also put a hand on my shoulder) and scoot without pissing him off, in my mind. I also, in spite of his fucking audacity, felt compelled to do it without letting him think I was recoiling from a "creepy street person." I wasn't. I was recoiling from a big man whose nasty breath was in my face and was touching me without my permission. I felt "lucky" when one of the guys working in the Deli, who'd previously been hitting on me "the nice way," (just making chit-chat, saying I had pretty eyes, making comments about my tattoos, that kinda stuff ) came out and shooed the guy away.
So I guess that the point that I'm struggling to come to, here, is where that difference lies, in what BB talks about with "fuckability" as she's defining it, (and correct me, please, if I missed something, BB. I ain't the brightest crayon sometimes) which seems to be in terms of a kind of "attractiveness" that one is born with, the physical proportions and characteristics that a person has that allows them to "fit" the "attractive" mold and seems to act as a sort of "invitation" to men, if that makes sense, and gives them this sense of entitlement to make comments and touch and grab.
Under this definition, I'm not "fuckable," and I certainly wasn't wearing anything provocative or any makeup and I thought I looked a mess. I weigh 260 lbs and am 5'4" tall. Most folks don't even think I'm attractive. But this shit happens to me. This wasn't the first time I've encountered the intrusive, male entitlement to comment/proposition/confront/inquire/touch me in a suggestive way, one that assumed that I wanted some sort of sexual contact.
But there is a difference in experience, here. I've had men who will insult me because of my fatness and my lack of fashion sense and then ask if I'll fuck them in the same breath. I've had men yell at me from car windows, all of what they're saying being insulting and objectifying; they'll say I'm "ugly" and say they want to "tap that ass" and it's all the same tone of voice.
I think the difference in the form or context of objectification comes in the percieved "trophy-ness" of the woman in question.
See, men don't ask me out on "dates", generally speaking. I'm much more likely to get stared down if I look like "SOMEBODY" than if I'm just walking around in my normal street gear, or get some kind of fucked-up misogynistic piropos shouted at me, or even to get my ass smacked or whatever. But even when I'm all dressed up and cleaned up, conforming as much as my physical proportions will allow me to do so to what "beauty" and "standards" are in our society, even then men don't ask for "dates." They only will ask to "fuck." If I tell them to fuck off, they get very angry and insult me based on how I look. When I've told them that I'm not into men, which at this point in time is pretty much the truth, they say they can "fix that."
And I HAVE dated men, after I've asked them out, and they've agreed. But I have NEVER, ever been asked out on a date. I dated one of these guys for a damn long time. But I was never a real human being to him. I was a "sex-kitten." I was a goddam fuck-toy.
I've been that woman that a man will fuck in secret, in a motel-room, on the side. When I was dating, the guy I dated did stuff like showing naked pictures of me to his friends, people that knew me and he even offered that I would be interested in sex with them, usually without asking my permission to do so, only telling me about it after he'd done it already.
I have attraction for men, still. But the ways I've engaged with them intimately make me think that I shouldn't engage any more, if that makes any sense at all. I'm not a trophy, not worth keeping around or adding to their "public" image, unless they're the type of man to fetishize certain body types (and living with a fetishist is fucked-up as hell. Been there, done that, and won't go there again.) And so I have friendships with them. But if they "desire" me in a physical sense, it's not in a public way, it's behind-the-scenes, it's a tryst or a fucking one-night-stand. I've had men who I formerly called friends proposition me, ask to sleep with me, but never ask to "go out" somewhere or tell me that they had feelings for me, other than friendship. I've done it, too. I've screwed them, I've attempted to be that fantasy-woman for them, and while they've come back for sex at times it's always been in a disengaged format- something that I'm supposed to understand "inherently" I guess, that I'm NOT a real relationship and that I'm only there for them that minute in that way, and that anybody else would have "done in a pinch." And then they roll off you and it's like nothing, NOTHING ever happened.
Since I've quit engaging in this side of the male/female relationship miasma, I've had this realization that I'm not the kinda woman that men want to date. I'm "fuckable," that's for sure, but it's something that I should be grateful for, since I'm so damn ugly or whatever. I've been a sounding-board and a bedpost-notch.
What's happened is that, whenever I'm around men, even men with what you'd call "good politics", I'm super self-conscious and I take in every move they make and everything I do with my own body to stave off giving out the "wrong signals." I've learned to keep this tally in my head and the dudes I hang out with don't even know that I'm doing it. When the incident in Durham happened, I spent a good part of the afternoon in self-scrutiny and wondering what the hell I did to prompt the whole thing. I will watch what I say. I made a comment to a friend yesterday, at lunch, about how I do everything I do very deliberately, especially when I'm in a room that's got a heftier portion of men than women sitting around, or milling about.
I've emotionally and physically detached myself from men. My wall's gotten pretty high, and I didn't really realize it 'till the past week. The fucked-up thing is, it makes me kinda sad.
When I was little, I didn't have my own room, so I slept with my parents. My dad would hold me when we slept, he'd play with my hair and on the weekends, I'd wake up and stare at him until he woke up and spend the day with me. I remember back to that time, feeling sleep as something secure and safe, if he was there.
Then my grandfather molested me when I was 7, and since then it's almost impossible for me to sleep with anybody. At that point I DEMANDED somewhere of my own to sleep, and I didn't want to touch or hug my dad, or my mom, or anybody in my family for many years. That's when my lifelong struggle with insomnia began. I wish to hell I could sleep again the way I slept when I was 6. Now sleeping in a bed with a male is out of the question, unless I know I'm going to have sex with him. I slept good when I lived with the aforementioned guy that I dated, when he would cuddle up with me, I slept like a fucking rock. This guy who treated me like I wasn't human, who fucked around on me and lied about it, who wanted me to be his live-in porno star could put his arms around me and I'd sleep just like a fucking baby. And that's something I can't go back to. So I guess it's insomnia, kicking, and fighting sleep for me, unless I want to take heavy-duty antipsychotics to induce dead, drunken sleep.
And in coming back to this fuckability thing, what I was really wanting to know is if there's not a better word for that specific form of objectification. But something opened up the floodgates, and now I'm just rambling without a point. But I wanted to illustrate how ALL women have fuckability, ugly or attractive according to the norms we usually go by. The women who fall into the "trophy-ification" category, I guess, are more likely to get the "emotional relationship that's also sexual" "benefits". Not that I really think they're benefits. But it's a different thing.
I know that this post is all over the map, and I apologize for it's lack of coherence. I'm just trying to find something to pin down this struggle that my brain's having with itself. I mean, I think it's important given the wedges that are driven among women, among sisters, who don't get along, and who judge other women on the basis of how attractive or not that they are.
I'd like us to collectively realize that, one way or another, we're all just fuckholes to the patriarchy. We DO come to that place via different paths, and through different experiences. I've come across women who've judged me based on my appearance, I've met women who say that all fat people are lazy and don't care about themselves. The fat and ugly thing is what gave me my overall sense of pugnacious rebellion, and I'd never been able to attach it cohesively to my experience as a woman before. While the attitude I mention does make me angry, I have to stand up for my "pretty" sisters here, too. Because they didn't ever create the dichotomy, they just "benefitted" from it in some ways. And the ways they've been hurt and mutilated themselves and starved themselves, well, it far outweighs most benifits, except those that are hard-line economical.
I'm gonna say it again, ALL of us are seen by the patriarchy as potential fuckholes. The differing routes to fuckholeness are shaped, in many ways, by the bodies that we're born into, the way that these bodies look, the degree to which they "naturally" or not fit the "mold" of different, patriarchally constructed sort of archetypes of "feminity" or "femalesness". And we all have to move and bend to what the patriarchy wants, keep a tally on what we're doing, how we look, how we move, how we talk based upon these proscribed demands and expectations.
Black Women, Latinas, Asian Women, are expected to try to look more "white." Fat women have to play up those features that can't be "ruined" by their fatness. White women are supposed to strive for housewifedom. Pretty women are immediately percieved as brainless and "fuckable." The list goes on and doesn't end.
We're all out there, grabable and pinchable, our asses a source of public discourse. We are all fetishized to some degree. We're all expected to strive for a starved, white, fragile, breakable perception of what beauty "is." We're all open to the on-the-street "proposition," the catcalls, the stares.
We have to fucking strike back. This isn't a friendly "struggle of opposites." This is a fucking war, and we're the fucking insurgency.
I have to go get ready for work now. Guess I'm not gonna get around to that resignation letter.
5.14.2006
Road-Hangover with a side of Bus-Rash
I guess that's what my problem is this mornin'. I just swallered 800 mgs of ibuprofen and am guzzling coffee to get this allover-fatigue feeling to go away in time for me to go and get my truck and get my ass to work. Jesus Christ.
I had a wonderful time in North Carolina, even though my hillbilly sense of place and time was skewed by the fact that I couldn't look out the corner of my eye and see mountains no matter where I went-- I've lived right next to the Great Smokies all my damn life, and it's wierd them not being in the background- but otherwise, the Triangle area is quite charming.
Yesterday I spend roughly 14 hours on Greyhound buses. The bus that left the Charlotte station broke down or something, I'm not sure what but we had to turn around and board a different bus, and then when we got onto the interstate and got rolling we had to bow up and stop due to a blockage in traffic. For miles, signs read "merge right. Left 3 lanes closed."
Apparently, Charlotte drivers can't read. Or something. They just kept ignoring the signs and driving on, and this caused a big 'ol road blockage that it took 2 hours to get out of. Everybody on the bus was tired, groggy, and stuck on the damn highway.
To make up time, our lovely driver sped like a madman from that point on. Jesus christ. I don't know if y'all have ever driven through the Smoky Mountains at night time, or during a wet, windy electrical storm, or both. I have. But I'd never seen it at God-Knows-How-Fast, in a gigantic Greyhound bus. The big windows made for good storm-viewin', but I gotta say that around a couple of those curves, every part of me that could clinch up did. But hey, how much is the admission price to Dollywood? This was much more entertaining.
Ok. I gotta go and get my shit together. Tomorrow, I might unmod comments and I WILL get back to the radical feminism thing. Today I'm just thinking about my trip and the folks I met and how I can't wait to get away from my crazy family for a little while, all that kinda stuff. I need to chill. I guess I can do that after work.
Aaarh. More later.
5.09.2006
Yo Tengo Problemas
Alright, all y'all who have commented and shit and your comments haven't shown up, well, I'm working out my own mental delays on the blog moderation thing.
I keep trying to "publish comments" and it keeps telling me that the post I'm looking for was not found.
I'm spending the next 4 days in beautiful North Carolina. So if I don't get to posting/fixing this thing this week, please accept my apologies.
I gotta go to bed now.
I keep trying to "publish comments" and it keeps telling me that the post I'm looking for was not found.
I'm spending the next 4 days in beautiful North Carolina. So if I don't get to posting/fixing this thing this week, please accept my apologies.
I gotta go to bed now.
5.05.2006
Oh yeah, one more thing...
I did want to mention that I've turned on all my feeble "controls" and now everything's mod-ed. Just 'cause I want to see what it's like to be dictator over my little corner of the blogosphere, mua ha ha ha. *puts off sleeping*
God Dammit Why the Fuck Can I Never Sleep
I'm having committment issues with this blog. I have committment issues with everything, it seems, except for shit like education and paying jobs. But right now the issue's with the blog. So here's the deal.
I just got news this week that I got accepted for an internship, a good one, one that pays. One that will lead to a new paying job. That's cool. I have to quit my current paying job, one as a caregiver for the disabled. I've worked here for nearly 8 years. This job has taught me a great deal of things. It's one of those sad cases of a job that could be really, really satisfying... if it didn't pay poverty wages. But at any rate, there's this emotional-attachment thing going on, and I'm kinda getting walloped with the fact that these people who've kinda turned into a family for me are gonna be out of my life, for a long time at the least. And my friends here, my god, my friends here. My best friend since I was 12 is leaving for New York. It's just all a lot of stuff. I've lived here for damn-near 28 years and I'm about to leave and I don't really know where I'll finally end up. It's wild as hell.
I'm trying to stay focused and excited.
I've wanted to blog all fucking week about Monday-- Worker's Labor Day. This year there was a boycott and general strike aimed at this fucked up administration and it's wish to turn persons living in the U.S.A. without proper documentation of their birth in this fair land into real, no-shit FELONS. Have y'all been reading about the Sensenbrenner bill? Noticing it in the news? Seeing, hearing, feeling the giant, mass movement rising up around us? Some of my blog-pals talked about it. Very few of them, though. And I hope it was just cause everybody was so busy actively showing their solidarity by joining the strike, not going to work, going to protests in your areas, not buying shit, that sort of thing. This proposed legislation is mighty fucked-up and it would do folks a lot of good and lend a lot of perspective, when talking liberation talk of any kind, to read on it further.
I can't be too damn judgemental, though, I didn't blog about it either. But it's really 'cause I went to the damn rally.
Now. If any of the feminists who read this blog have some sort of philosophical opposition to "illegal" immigration into Gringolandia, I have got to remind you that this movement of immigrants and the mass of people living in the U.S.A. deemed as "illegal" beings on the basis of their lack of suficient paperwork, consists of millions of women and children, all of whom are susceptible to the exact same horrors that we all are, and are protected even less by our sham of a fucking legal system; women are making up a good deal of this movement's leadership. These women are standing up against something GIGANTIC. They are demanding that our government treat them as humans. I'm working on a bigger post on it.
Anyways, I have to go now because I have to get up in 3 hours. I have very big stuff to do tomorrow/today/this morning. And then I'm going out of town for a few more days.
The next couple months should be very interesting.
And the only reason I keep on blathering on is 'cause I don't want to be accused of not keeping up with my fucking blog. *yawns*
More later.
I just got news this week that I got accepted for an internship, a good one, one that pays. One that will lead to a new paying job. That's cool. I have to quit my current paying job, one as a caregiver for the disabled. I've worked here for nearly 8 years. This job has taught me a great deal of things. It's one of those sad cases of a job that could be really, really satisfying... if it didn't pay poverty wages. But at any rate, there's this emotional-attachment thing going on, and I'm kinda getting walloped with the fact that these people who've kinda turned into a family for me are gonna be out of my life, for a long time at the least. And my friends here, my god, my friends here. My best friend since I was 12 is leaving for New York. It's just all a lot of stuff. I've lived here for damn-near 28 years and I'm about to leave and I don't really know where I'll finally end up. It's wild as hell.
I'm trying to stay focused and excited.
I've wanted to blog all fucking week about Monday-- Worker's Labor Day. This year there was a boycott and general strike aimed at this fucked up administration and it's wish to turn persons living in the U.S.A. without proper documentation of their birth in this fair land into real, no-shit FELONS. Have y'all been reading about the Sensenbrenner bill? Noticing it in the news? Seeing, hearing, feeling the giant, mass movement rising up around us? Some of my blog-pals talked about it. Very few of them, though. And I hope it was just cause everybody was so busy actively showing their solidarity by joining the strike, not going to work, going to protests in your areas, not buying shit, that sort of thing. This proposed legislation is mighty fucked-up and it would do folks a lot of good and lend a lot of perspective, when talking liberation talk of any kind, to read on it further.
I can't be too damn judgemental, though, I didn't blog about it either. But it's really 'cause I went to the damn rally.
Now. If any of the feminists who read this blog have some sort of philosophical opposition to "illegal" immigration into Gringolandia, I have got to remind you that this movement of immigrants and the mass of people living in the U.S.A. deemed as "illegal" beings on the basis of their lack of suficient paperwork, consists of millions of women and children, all of whom are susceptible to the exact same horrors that we all are, and are protected even less by our sham of a fucking legal system; women are making up a good deal of this movement's leadership. These women are standing up against something GIGANTIC. They are demanding that our government treat them as humans. I'm working on a bigger post on it.
Anyways, I have to go now because I have to get up in 3 hours. I have very big stuff to do tomorrow/today/this morning. And then I'm going out of town for a few more days.
The next couple months should be very interesting.
And the only reason I keep on blathering on is 'cause I don't want to be accused of not keeping up with my fucking blog. *yawns*
More later.
4.30.2006
Women's Weekend
A special shout-out goes to my galpals who kidnapped me this weekend. I got to spend two glorious days without dudes around. It was wonderful.
I also didn't get shit done this weekend, besides hanging out with my friends.
Doesn't it say something sad about our culture when we have to deliberately sequester ourselves, as in not answering our telephones and generally hiding from public view, in order to be in a space that's free from male-centric bullshit? Arrgh.
Anyways, this is just a quick update and a note on why I didn't put anything new up over the weekend. I have to go to work now. :-(
I also didn't get shit done this weekend, besides hanging out with my friends.
Doesn't it say something sad about our culture when we have to deliberately sequester ourselves, as in not answering our telephones and generally hiding from public view, in order to be in a space that's free from male-centric bullshit? Arrgh.
Anyways, this is just a quick update and a note on why I didn't put anything new up over the weekend. I have to go to work now. :-(
4.27.2006
Special Olympics
Today I got to work at a little past 8AM, got on a van full of my pals, and went to the area's Special Olympics. I didn't get off work until 10:30 this evening and I'm beat, 'cause I don't sleep much anyways and I didn't last night as usual.
But it was a really fun day. I was a "coach", and everyone at the place where I work came back with medals.
It would have been more fun, had they used their rain date. The folks didn't get to do the parade, which for them is usually the highlight of the day's festivities.
And like I said, it was a fun day, but sitting in the bleachers with "my athlete" and looking at the whole football-field fiesta I was struck by the pomp and circumstance, about how very, very important this event is in the culture of developmentally disabled persons in Gringolandia, and it was so wild. So dang wild.
"My athlete" got a silver medal and a bronze medal.
Then I had to go to the regular "work" of my work, and do all that shit.
So I'm tired.
I think I might put on my PJ's and go to bed.
But it was a really fun day. I was a "coach", and everyone at the place where I work came back with medals.
It would have been more fun, had they used their rain date. The folks didn't get to do the parade, which for them is usually the highlight of the day's festivities.
And like I said, it was a fun day, but sitting in the bleachers with "my athlete" and looking at the whole football-field fiesta I was struck by the pomp and circumstance, about how very, very important this event is in the culture of developmentally disabled persons in Gringolandia, and it was so wild. So dang wild.
"My athlete" got a silver medal and a bronze medal.
Then I had to go to the regular "work" of my work, and do all that shit.
So I'm tired.
I think I might put on my PJ's and go to bed.
4.26.2006
Traffic & Such
My thanks to Biting Beaver. She puts up something good nearly everyday, and if you haven't yet you should go to her blog. She mentioned me today. Her blog and the others I've linked to are pretty much the reason I made THIS thing, along with others that I've still yet to link to (but will very soon!) Gah! It's awesome to see how many folks are doing this. Not just the blog thing. This radical, pro-woman thing.
I'm about to go and dig into Biting Beaver's latest post on "Nice" guys. Then I gotta go to bed, 'cause I'm a coach at Special Olympics in the morning.
I'm about to go and dig into Biting Beaver's latest post on "Nice" guys. Then I gotta go to bed, 'cause I'm a coach at Special Olympics in the morning.
Fuck Trolls
Alrighty, troll-babies.
We're all reasonable human beings with a good deal of intellectual capacity. If you can read this, then you most likely know what "debate" is.
To be perfectly honest, I prefer the company of those with values and opinions similar to mine. I spend a good part of the day banging my head against the wall, already, and I'd rather not have to add ANOTHER argument in there. I will deal with debate, when it's respectful, as it comes.
I decide what's respectful 'round these parts. I'm a pretty good judge. So.
Man-hater comments...deleted. This shit sucks comments... deleted. Making fun of women in general or women who post here in any way that I DEEM as patriarchal...deleted.
In fact, I can and will delete what I want when I want without further explanation. This space is one that I'm carving, and it's a fucking safe space for women to talk about their shit. Punto.
See, to me the safety and well-being of women is far more important than the principles of those that some would call our "founding fathers." And besides, I don't believe that the first amendment says anywhere that I have to fucking put up with your stupid bullshit, anyways. Don't try and wave the constitution at me....'cause I just won't fucking care. How's THAT fer yer liberal law?
This is an anti-porn safe space.
And if I've seen you fucking with people on other sites, then it should be obvious. Forget it. I'll just delete your shit. If I don't just delete it, I'll probably just answer with "so what?" or "fuck you." But I'll probably just delete it. Depends on whether or not your display of idiocy or immaturity makes me giggle, on account of how stupid it is.
So that's my policy on trolls.
We're all reasonable human beings with a good deal of intellectual capacity. If you can read this, then you most likely know what "debate" is.
To be perfectly honest, I prefer the company of those with values and opinions similar to mine. I spend a good part of the day banging my head against the wall, already, and I'd rather not have to add ANOTHER argument in there. I will deal with debate, when it's respectful, as it comes.
I decide what's respectful 'round these parts. I'm a pretty good judge. So.
Man-hater comments...deleted. This shit sucks comments... deleted. Making fun of women in general or women who post here in any way that I DEEM as patriarchal...deleted.
In fact, I can and will delete what I want when I want without further explanation. This space is one that I'm carving, and it's a fucking safe space for women to talk about their shit. Punto.
See, to me the safety and well-being of women is far more important than the principles of those that some would call our "founding fathers." And besides, I don't believe that the first amendment says anywhere that I have to fucking put up with your stupid bullshit, anyways. Don't try and wave the constitution at me....'cause I just won't fucking care. How's THAT fer yer liberal law?
This is an anti-porn safe space.
And if I've seen you fucking with people on other sites, then it should be obvious. Forget it. I'll just delete your shit. If I don't just delete it, I'll probably just answer with "so what?" or "fuck you." But I'll probably just delete it. Depends on whether or not your display of idiocy or immaturity makes me giggle, on account of how stupid it is.
So that's my policy on trolls.
4.25.2006
'K. If you're my friend...
...You'll take this pledge.
More or less you put your name in a public place, and you say that you'll not embibe in porn and you'll not get intimately involved with anyone who does. So do it.
'Cause really. Stopping the degradation and exploitation of women and children across the globe IS more important than a handful of your ejaculate, or your next whopping orgasm.
And if you're a guy and you've stumbled on my blog, and you have your own blog, I'll fuckin' add you to my Men's Auxiliary if you take this pledge and lemme know. Pickin's are slim over there, I need recruits.
More or less you put your name in a public place, and you say that you'll not embibe in porn and you'll not get intimately involved with anyone who does. So do it.
'Cause really. Stopping the degradation and exploitation of women and children across the globe IS more important than a handful of your ejaculate, or your next whopping orgasm.
And if you're a guy and you've stumbled on my blog, and you have your own blog, I'll fuckin' add you to my Men's Auxiliary if you take this pledge and lemme know. Pickin's are slim over there, I need recruits.
4.24.2006
Duke Rape Post #3- Rape on Campus
Newsweek put out it's breakdown on the case in Durham. I read it.
There's a few questions I have.
We hear about the lacrosse players, and are windswept with visions of their lives, pictures of the privilege they live with at home and on campus. We hear about their good grades. We hear how community big-heads back home think they're upstanding young men, who are good, good, good, who don't have any capacity for this kind of hurt within them.
A picture of upper-class, white, sporty-types, who graduate to become Wall-Street types.
Why are we supposed to think that this "image" is divorced from that of a person who commits rape? Why is this supposed to add to the "surprise" factor? When I think of men who commit rape, mainly due to my own campus activism and SEEING THE FACES OF MEN outside fraternity houses as they jeered and leered and catcalled at a SILENT MARCH of women who were victims of sexual abuse and assault, if any sort of pre-fab, stereotypical image pops into my head it is that of the mythic "Frat-Daddy." The white guy with the SUV and the really nice clothes shod in flip-flops, the cocky guy in the class who doesn't want to let anybody else talk but who's not admonished by the professor when he hogs the show himself.
So, perusing the MSNBC site I found another article on rape on campus, this one detailing the stories of three women who survived sexual assault and who attempted to get the universities involved in removing their assailants. In one case, the male in question had committed another assault BEFORE the woman in the story reported him; they still gave her the runaround and barely, oh so barely and lightly, slapped this boy on his beefy wrist when it all came out in the wash.
*spits out ire and bile, rubs it into the carpet with her shoe*
The thing is this: I don't think it's OK to say that what happened with the Duke lacrosse dipshits is rare. It's not an isolated thing. Rape happens on college campuses A LOT. And rape happens to adult dancers A LOT. It's a total logical fuck-up, the way this thing is being spun. On the one hand they are treating this incident as if it happened in some sort of academic vacuum, on the other hand you have university officials saying that this kind of behavior tarnishes the "good name" of their school, puts it in a league with "other schools" that aren't as "exclusive." I doubt that this is the first rape to happen at the hands of men on that particular campus. I wonder why the news wants us to think that this kind of thing is rare, or odd.
One of the Duke Lac-rapists was involved in a violent crime not even a year ago, one that led to him signing up for community service, during which he helped two other dudes beat up a man based upon his percieved "gayness" by his attackers.
The defense, a team of more than 12 hot-shot lawyers, is trying to say that since the accuser didn't pick the accused out of a bewildering and muddling pile of hundreds and hundreds of pictures of men, and since she DID NOT do a live line-up (essentially putting herself once more in close proximity to those who attacked her,) that her case is flawed to the xxxxxxxth degree. The other dancer at this fucked-up white-guy soiree is held up for intense scrutiny, too, because she's being really blatantly honest, it seems, about her situation and her options.
To be perfectly honest, I don't see how, after the descriptions of the situation in question, these women are supposed to remember every little bit of minutiae. I don't see how they're supposed to fucking remember the exact times they were there, and I don't see how they wouldn't be confused - especially if one of them was drugged, and especially if it's the woman who's charging rape. Think about it.
Two black women, with barely any clothes on, amidst a swarm of 40, mostly-white, men, taunting them and groping them, most likely hurling obscenities at them, wanting them to do really fucked-up shit for the amusement of the crowd. Add in that one of the men throws a broom into the fray, tells one of the dancers that she should basically fuck herself with it.
I don't know if any of y'all have ever been in a situation where you're performing, and you're doing sexually-charged stuff in front of a more or less male audience. The only experience I have with this kind of situation comes from when I performed as a dominatrix/fire-breather with a rock band, something I did for shits and giggles in my early twenties, for a couple of years. I had a partner who acted as my onstage "slave-girl," and we'd do these little vignette-type deals when we worked together onstage, very provocative stuff without full-on nudity.
I was more or less rudimentarily armed with either a whip or a cat or a crop the whole time I was performing, and I had my clothes on. The female who sometimes performed with me wore less clothes while onstage, and while she wasn't onstage she'd wear a big coat to cover herself, and we stuck together. We were with the band, a group of 5 male musicians, and they DID keep an eye on us. My situation is different on many, many levels (the most obvious of which being that I was never raped by audience members.) But working the crowd in that up front, middle-of-the-swarm context; well, I can say a little bit about it. Men are Fuckin' Scary when they get together and drink to pounding music. They would fuck with us, a LOT. Skinheads and thugs, for the most part. It's a gig I wouldn't have done, a crowd I wouldn't have gotten that close to if I didn't have some sort of battering implement in my hands or wasn't carrying live torches and a mouthful of accelerant. I did come close to burning a guy's mohawk off his head one time, 'cause he KEPT getting in my face and fucking with the band.
When those things happen, you tend to get fuzzy-headed. I don't know if it's adrenaline or what. But it's a bit of a stretch, logistically, in my view, to expect somebody who's facing attack in that kind of context, or any sort of context which involves violent sexual assault, for that matter, to remember everything in stark and clear detail.
And as for the timing, I don't think it's odd or off or wacky to think that these things could have happened in a very short period of time anyways. It just doesn't take that long for the average guy to "finish his business," not if he's worked up enough. Ask any woman who's been there, and by that I don't mean ask any woman who's been raped. I'm saying, talk to women who've had crummy sex. It doesn't take long at all. And it doesn't take more than a few minutes to make a woman feel like she's going through an impossible stretch of time when she's being brutalized, especially when there's more than one attacker present, ESPECIALLY when her orifices are being all jammed up without her consent.
I can say pretty much certainly that if I were in her shoes, my thoughts would be muddled as hell.
I have to go to work now.
There's a few questions I have.
We hear about the lacrosse players, and are windswept with visions of their lives, pictures of the privilege they live with at home and on campus. We hear about their good grades. We hear how community big-heads back home think they're upstanding young men, who are good, good, good, who don't have any capacity for this kind of hurt within them.
A picture of upper-class, white, sporty-types, who graduate to become Wall-Street types.
Why are we supposed to think that this "image" is divorced from that of a person who commits rape? Why is this supposed to add to the "surprise" factor? When I think of men who commit rape, mainly due to my own campus activism and SEEING THE FACES OF MEN outside fraternity houses as they jeered and leered and catcalled at a SILENT MARCH of women who were victims of sexual abuse and assault, if any sort of pre-fab, stereotypical image pops into my head it is that of the mythic "Frat-Daddy." The white guy with the SUV and the really nice clothes shod in flip-flops, the cocky guy in the class who doesn't want to let anybody else talk but who's not admonished by the professor when he hogs the show himself.
So, perusing the MSNBC site I found another article on rape on campus, this one detailing the stories of three women who survived sexual assault and who attempted to get the universities involved in removing their assailants. In one case, the male in question had committed another assault BEFORE the woman in the story reported him; they still gave her the runaround and barely, oh so barely and lightly, slapped this boy on his beefy wrist when it all came out in the wash.
*spits out ire and bile, rubs it into the carpet with her shoe*
The thing is this: I don't think it's OK to say that what happened with the Duke lacrosse dipshits is rare. It's not an isolated thing. Rape happens on college campuses A LOT. And rape happens to adult dancers A LOT. It's a total logical fuck-up, the way this thing is being spun. On the one hand they are treating this incident as if it happened in some sort of academic vacuum, on the other hand you have university officials saying that this kind of behavior tarnishes the "good name" of their school, puts it in a league with "other schools" that aren't as "exclusive." I doubt that this is the first rape to happen at the hands of men on that particular campus. I wonder why the news wants us to think that this kind of thing is rare, or odd.
One of the Duke Lac-rapists was involved in a violent crime not even a year ago, one that led to him signing up for community service, during which he helped two other dudes beat up a man based upon his percieved "gayness" by his attackers.
The defense, a team of more than 12 hot-shot lawyers, is trying to say that since the accuser didn't pick the accused out of a bewildering and muddling pile of hundreds and hundreds of pictures of men, and since she DID NOT do a live line-up (essentially putting herself once more in close proximity to those who attacked her,) that her case is flawed to the xxxxxxxth degree. The other dancer at this fucked-up white-guy soiree is held up for intense scrutiny, too, because she's being really blatantly honest, it seems, about her situation and her options.
To be perfectly honest, I don't see how, after the descriptions of the situation in question, these women are supposed to remember every little bit of minutiae. I don't see how they're supposed to fucking remember the exact times they were there, and I don't see how they wouldn't be confused - especially if one of them was drugged, and especially if it's the woman who's charging rape. Think about it.
Two black women, with barely any clothes on, amidst a swarm of 40, mostly-white, men, taunting them and groping them, most likely hurling obscenities at them, wanting them to do really fucked-up shit for the amusement of the crowd. Add in that one of the men throws a broom into the fray, tells one of the dancers that she should basically fuck herself with it.
I don't know if any of y'all have ever been in a situation where you're performing, and you're doing sexually-charged stuff in front of a more or less male audience. The only experience I have with this kind of situation comes from when I performed as a dominatrix/fire-breather with a rock band, something I did for shits and giggles in my early twenties, for a couple of years. I had a partner who acted as my onstage "slave-girl," and we'd do these little vignette-type deals when we worked together onstage, very provocative stuff without full-on nudity.
I was more or less rudimentarily armed with either a whip or a cat or a crop the whole time I was performing, and I had my clothes on. The female who sometimes performed with me wore less clothes while onstage, and while she wasn't onstage she'd wear a big coat to cover herself, and we stuck together. We were with the band, a group of 5 male musicians, and they DID keep an eye on us. My situation is different on many, many levels (the most obvious of which being that I was never raped by audience members.) But working the crowd in that up front, middle-of-the-swarm context; well, I can say a little bit about it. Men are Fuckin' Scary when they get together and drink to pounding music. They would fuck with us, a LOT. Skinheads and thugs, for the most part. It's a gig I wouldn't have done, a crowd I wouldn't have gotten that close to if I didn't have some sort of battering implement in my hands or wasn't carrying live torches and a mouthful of accelerant. I did come close to burning a guy's mohawk off his head one time, 'cause he KEPT getting in my face and fucking with the band.
When those things happen, you tend to get fuzzy-headed. I don't know if it's adrenaline or what. But it's a bit of a stretch, logistically, in my view, to expect somebody who's facing attack in that kind of context, or any sort of context which involves violent sexual assault, for that matter, to remember everything in stark and clear detail.
And as for the timing, I don't think it's odd or off or wacky to think that these things could have happened in a very short period of time anyways. It just doesn't take that long for the average guy to "finish his business," not if he's worked up enough. Ask any woman who's been there, and by that I don't mean ask any woman who's been raped. I'm saying, talk to women who've had crummy sex. It doesn't take long at all. And it doesn't take more than a few minutes to make a woman feel like she's going through an impossible stretch of time when she's being brutalized, especially when there's more than one attacker present, ESPECIALLY when her orifices are being all jammed up without her consent.
I can say pretty much certainly that if I were in her shoes, my thoughts would be muddled as hell.
I have to go to work now.
4.22.2006
Blog Reification
In an attempt to make this blog more like a thing I've added a picture of part of my face.
I don't know how that's supposed to add substance, but there you have it.
I will be posting later this evening on something interesting, I'm sure. More later.
Also, I was serious when I asked how in the holy fucking jesus of blogly living I can change the way this thing looks. I'm totally backwards here, folks. Any help would be appreciated.
I don't know how that's supposed to add substance, but there you have it.
I will be posting later this evening on something interesting, I'm sure. More later.
Also, I was serious when I asked how in the holy fucking jesus of blogly living I can change the way this thing looks. I'm totally backwards here, folks. Any help would be appreciated.
4.19.2006
White Male Vermin- (Duke Rape Post #2)
What I'm gonna say next shouldn't be too much of a surprise to anybody.
Fuck Michael Savage, and fuck his ilk. That's who I'm referencing with the title, here.
I recently read some stuff from a transcript of one of his broadcasts. A very nice person posted it in the comments section of Stan Goff's blog. This motherfucker (Savage) seems to think that women and people who aren't white simply aren't human. He seems mighty testy about growing community solidarity around the rape at Duke university, and awfully antsy about the possibility of women coming together, especially on college campuses to do something definitive to bring about a drop in the occurrence of rape.
Why do men get so angry when we start talking about VERY HARSH rules against rape in a general sense? Why is it that all of a sudden, when this shit happens and we're forced out of isolation from and insulation around the "ugly" topic, why is it that men get so bloody goddamned defensive?
It's starting to sound to me like y'all (men) are scrambling to preserve your rape culture. Your access to OUR bodies is a privilege that maybe you took for granted, and when people start talking about taking it away, well, y'all get all weirded-out and start stamping your big 'ol feet and demanding "due process" for your rape-culture bretheren. Generally, your access is something that we don't talk about out loud; it's usually implied. You don't want us to take away your "right" to rape us. And the burn's gonna be especially bad on your fragile egos if we somehow manage to do it without any damn help from y'all.
I know that exceptions to the rule exist among you. I'm not saying that every man out there is gung-ho for rape, at least not superficially, and hopefully, I hope to hell not consciously. But think about that little nugget the next time you leap to the defense of an "alleged" rapist.
Here are some facts: The white men who raped the Black Woman at Duke University had enough money to go their bail, which was substantial. That speaks to the high degree of privilege they're privvy to. If they're put away, they won't get 25-life, they won't be executed, they won't be tortured. They'll be supported and fed by the state for however long their sentence is, and they'll have to dive into prison culture. That ain't no fucking picnic, but then again, when we think of the Black Woman who actually got raped, well, I have to say it looks more like a picnic to me than the scenario she's in now, and that she's gonna be in probably for the rest of her life.
These boys don't have right-wing-nazi-shock-jocks pleading with the rest of fundamentalist white america to refer to them as "vermin." Who's the fucking vermin, the woman who does what she has to do to, no matter how degrading or unpleasant, take care of her kids or a bunch of beer-swilling, woman-attacking, queer-bashing, racist, rich, white perverts, who'll end up leeching off the state if they're in jail? Which human critter more closely resembles the "vermin" of the fucking animal world?
I know, I know. This talk of humans as vermin is a very clear explosive emergence of the "white man" in me. I realize this. This situation, the ways that fucking white male supremacy touch the lives of women everywhere, of my friends and my family, the more ugly seems to want to come out of me. I'll try and keep that part held in, as much as I can. I'll call the above my humble attempt to point out a logical fallacy, wave my magical first-amendment wand to protect my "right" to "free" speech, and leave it at that.
*Invokes the northern wind of truth, cast protection spell, tosses 20-sided di, puts on magical patriarchal-healer cloak*
You're damn right, white men need to be shaking "on the golf course," Mr. Swasti-Savage. If more and more women start making the connection between your fucking defensive, vitriolic spew and sputter and your UNWILLINGNESS TO GIVE UP RAPE AS A MALE PRIVILEGE, then you ALL just better fucking watch out. 'Cause you're outnumbered.
And don't go getting pissed at me for pointing all this shit out. Y'all comply with the bed-making, don't bitch if it's fucking bumpy unless you've been active in removing the lumps.
I have to go and try to sleep with this shit on my fucking mind. I CAN be raped, by Y'ALL. Tell me why the fuck I shouldn't be more hostile than I am.
Fuck Michael Savage, and fuck his ilk. That's who I'm referencing with the title, here.
I recently read some stuff from a transcript of one of his broadcasts. A very nice person posted it in the comments section of Stan Goff's blog. This motherfucker (Savage) seems to think that women and people who aren't white simply aren't human. He seems mighty testy about growing community solidarity around the rape at Duke university, and awfully antsy about the possibility of women coming together, especially on college campuses to do something definitive to bring about a drop in the occurrence of rape.
Why do men get so angry when we start talking about VERY HARSH rules against rape in a general sense? Why is it that all of a sudden, when this shit happens and we're forced out of isolation from and insulation around the "ugly" topic, why is it that men get so bloody goddamned defensive?
It's starting to sound to me like y'all (men) are scrambling to preserve your rape culture. Your access to OUR bodies is a privilege that maybe you took for granted, and when people start talking about taking it away, well, y'all get all weirded-out and start stamping your big 'ol feet and demanding "due process" for your rape-culture bretheren. Generally, your access is something that we don't talk about out loud; it's usually implied. You don't want us to take away your "right" to rape us. And the burn's gonna be especially bad on your fragile egos if we somehow manage to do it without any damn help from y'all.
I know that exceptions to the rule exist among you. I'm not saying that every man out there is gung-ho for rape, at least not superficially, and hopefully, I hope to hell not consciously. But think about that little nugget the next time you leap to the defense of an "alleged" rapist.
Here are some facts: The white men who raped the Black Woman at Duke University had enough money to go their bail, which was substantial. That speaks to the high degree of privilege they're privvy to. If they're put away, they won't get 25-life, they won't be executed, they won't be tortured. They'll be supported and fed by the state for however long their sentence is, and they'll have to dive into prison culture. That ain't no fucking picnic, but then again, when we think of the Black Woman who actually got raped, well, I have to say it looks more like a picnic to me than the scenario she's in now, and that she's gonna be in probably for the rest of her life.
These boys don't have right-wing-nazi-shock-jocks pleading with the rest of fundamentalist white america to refer to them as "vermin." Who's the fucking vermin, the woman who does what she has to do to, no matter how degrading or unpleasant, take care of her kids or a bunch of beer-swilling, woman-attacking, queer-bashing, racist, rich, white perverts, who'll end up leeching off the state if they're in jail? Which human critter more closely resembles the "vermin" of the fucking animal world?
I know, I know. This talk of humans as vermin is a very clear explosive emergence of the "white man" in me. I realize this. This situation, the ways that fucking white male supremacy touch the lives of women everywhere, of my friends and my family, the more ugly seems to want to come out of me. I'll try and keep that part held in, as much as I can. I'll call the above my humble attempt to point out a logical fallacy, wave my magical first-amendment wand to protect my "right" to "free" speech, and leave it at that.
*Invokes the northern wind of truth, cast protection spell, tosses 20-sided di, puts on magical patriarchal-healer cloak*
You're damn right, white men need to be shaking "on the golf course," Mr. Swasti-Savage. If more and more women start making the connection between your fucking defensive, vitriolic spew and sputter and your UNWILLINGNESS TO GIVE UP RAPE AS A MALE PRIVILEGE, then you ALL just better fucking watch out. 'Cause you're outnumbered.
And don't go getting pissed at me for pointing all this shit out. Y'all comply with the bed-making, don't bitch if it's fucking bumpy unless you've been active in removing the lumps.
I have to go and try to sleep with this shit on my fucking mind. I CAN be raped, by Y'ALL. Tell me why the fuck I shouldn't be more hostile than I am.
4.18.2006
Duke Rape Case Post #1
About a month ago, a Black Woman was brutally raped by 3 white men from the Duke Lacrosse team (Durham, NC).
The case has drawn national media attention. This in itself is news- most rapes go unreported, and even the reported ones don't get any media attention, usually. Especially when the person who's been raped is not white, especially when the person who is raped is employed by the sex industry, as is the case with the Black Woman who was raped in Durham.
Every time I've read about this in the news, the modifier "alleged" is placed before the noun "victim;" the adverb "allegedly" is consistently used to modify the verbs "raped", "attacked," etc. The reason for this language-play is to keep the idea in the heads of the general public that this Black Woman, whose name I do not know, and who I do not want to call "victim," might very well be making the whole thing up.
Well. Apparently one of her attackers, Collin Finnerty, "allegedly" participated in a group gay-bash in DC with two cohorts. Allegedly, this dipstick hurled "homophobic remarks" at the "victim" before and while he beat the shit out of him for being homosexual. Sounds like a familiar M. O., for those of us who have read about the rape case at Duke. Allegedly, this "supposed" assailant went to a diversity class and will just have to do some community service for his participation in the assault.
It's a sad fucking social commentary, to say the least.
Two arrests were made today, that of Finnerty and also an asshole by the name of Reade Segilmann. They've both either posted bond or will be doing that today. Nice.
I have to go to work right this minute. I'll be posting more on this tonight. My head's a-reel.
The case has drawn national media attention. This in itself is news- most rapes go unreported, and even the reported ones don't get any media attention, usually. Especially when the person who's been raped is not white, especially when the person who is raped is employed by the sex industry, as is the case with the Black Woman who was raped in Durham.
Every time I've read about this in the news, the modifier "alleged" is placed before the noun "victim;" the adverb "allegedly" is consistently used to modify the verbs "raped", "attacked," etc. The reason for this language-play is to keep the idea in the heads of the general public that this Black Woman, whose name I do not know, and who I do not want to call "victim," might very well be making the whole thing up.
Well. Apparently one of her attackers, Collin Finnerty, "allegedly" participated in a group gay-bash in DC with two cohorts. Allegedly, this dipstick hurled "homophobic remarks" at the "victim" before and while he beat the shit out of him for being homosexual. Sounds like a familiar M. O., for those of us who have read about the rape case at Duke. Allegedly, this "supposed" assailant went to a diversity class and will just have to do some community service for his participation in the assault.
It's a sad fucking social commentary, to say the least.
Two arrests were made today, that of Finnerty and also an asshole by the name of Reade Segilmann. They've both either posted bond or will be doing that today. Nice.
I have to go to work right this minute. I'll be posting more on this tonight. My head's a-reel.
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