That this is my piece of the blogosphere and that comments are added or rejected solely at my whim.
Martha. Look at this post before you decide to comment again, if you do.
This blog acts as a platform for 1. my thoughts and 2. well thought-out commentary from others that sticks to the topic at hand, when there does happen to be a topic. It is NOT a platform for puerile libertarianism. Thanks.
1.11.2007
12.31.2006
Blogger- UGH!
Ok, I think things LOOK a little better for the new year.
Bless yer heart, V, for doing all that work. I still want to use the thing you made- but the thing is when I tried to paste it in, blogger said it wouldn't work!
Blogger is stupid.
I must now go and buy a camisole for a party, then I will be back either this evening or in the morning to post my resolutions. *shudders*
Bless yer heart, V, for doing all that work. I still want to use the thing you made- but the thing is when I tried to paste it in, blogger said it wouldn't work!
Blogger is stupid.
I must now go and buy a camisole for a party, then I will be back either this evening or in the morning to post my resolutions. *shudders*
12.30.2006
I'm Fuckin' GORGEOUS.
Saddam Hussein was executed this week. James Brown died. All this shit's hitting the fan.
But I'm blogging about how "beautiful" I am.
I did two of these things, with two different photos. Here's one.
Who the hell knew? Take that all you misogynist bastards who thought I was just a fat, bitter, ugly man-hater. I'm fucking beautiful. The internet said it, so it has to be true.
Gotta love the internet.
But I'm blogging about how "beautiful" I am.
I did two of these things, with two different photos. Here's one.
Who the hell knew? Take that all you misogynist bastards who thought I was just a fat, bitter, ugly man-hater. I'm fucking beautiful. The internet said it, so it has to be true.
Gotta love the internet.
12.12.2006
Nearest Book Tag from Yolanda
So my pal Yolanda over there at the Primary Contradiction tagged me with this wierd thing. And I have to tag somebody else.
Here's the rules:
1. Go to the nearest book in your reach and turn to page 123.
2. Go to the fifth sentence of the book.
3. Copy the next three sentences, then tag someone else.
My tags are Nelson H., Spotted Elephant, and Amananta.
Here's what I got:
"These anti-union workers formed networks that militated against unionization and exerted social pressure on anyone who dared venture the opinion that a union might be a good idea, thus raising the costs of being pro-union- especially in the kitchen, where the leaders of the anti-union group worked. In the summer of 1998, I visited two kitchen workers who had disagreed with the "just vote no" committee. However, both had been intimidated into silence. "You don't understand what it's like in here. The kitchen is a closed environment."
From: Rebuilding Labor: Organizing and Organizers in the New Union Movement, Edited by Ruth Milkman and Kim Voss.
Loves y'all.
Here's the rules:
1. Go to the nearest book in your reach and turn to page 123.
2. Go to the fifth sentence of the book.
3. Copy the next three sentences, then tag someone else.
My tags are Nelson H., Spotted Elephant, and Amananta.
Here's what I got:
"These anti-union workers formed networks that militated against unionization and exerted social pressure on anyone who dared venture the opinion that a union might be a good idea, thus raising the costs of being pro-union- especially in the kitchen, where the leaders of the anti-union group worked. In the summer of 1998, I visited two kitchen workers who had disagreed with the "just vote no" committee. However, both had been intimidated into silence. "You don't understand what it's like in here. The kitchen is a closed environment."
From: Rebuilding Labor: Organizing and Organizers in the New Union Movement, Edited by Ruth Milkman and Kim Voss.
Loves y'all.
11.30.2006
Youtube Stuff. Yup. I'm an addict.
So I decided to throw some vids up here. The one above is El Cantante de los Cantantes, Hector Lavoe, from Ponce, Puerto Rico. He's become one of my favorite singers EVER. I like this video in particular 'cause it starts out with him singing this song, made famous in Plena form by a guy named Ismael Rivera (A.K.A. Maelo), called "Elena, Elena", which is basically my name. And so. I'm obsessed with it, obviously- and besides that, many of my new Boricua friends sing it when they see me. SO.
The above is a video of Celia Cruz doing a live performance of "La Vida es un Carnaval," one of my favorite songs by yet another of my favorite singers. Never did agree with her politics, or her Fidel-bashery, yet... I mean, shit. She's over 75 in this performance.
So. I been sad this evening, and now must go to bed.
Is it a bad sign when you look forward to laying down in bed to cry yourself to sleep? Probably. Oh well. One more video, another Hector Lavoe (I'm in love with this guy.)
That's all for tonight. Sleep well.
11.13.2006
THIS ...
...is actually what a Feminist Looks Like. A Radical White Fat Southern Feminist Race-Traitor, when she's all pissed off at the FMF, to be precise.
So. I rattled off an email to their customer service folks this morning. I'll post the exchange as soon as I hear back from them. If I hear back from them.
11.12.2006
Enraged. As Usual. (or Fat Blog #1)
So I'm fumbling throuth cyberlandia, as I am wont to do on a random Saturday night, and I fumble right over a picture of this here shirt:
And so I think to myself, "Glorious! I will toodle right on over to the Feminist Majority Website and maybe order one of these."
But my toodle was toddled when, upon arrival and investigation, I learned that the largest size the store carried was a sub-standard XL, said to fit a size 14. And then I nearly threw my new laptop out the window.
My plea to all y'all, petty as it might sound, is to please prattle off some angry emails. My plea to the FMF store is that they remove the word "radical" from the shirt until they offer them in a size that will actually fit fat people. You can email them at store@feminist.org or you can send some thoughts to the customer service folk at fmfsupport@mindspring.com. I am saving my spew for tomorrow, because seeing this sent me into a kinda whirlwind that's just the tip of the iceburg after a couple months of dealing with fat-phobia up close and in person.
You know, back home, I'd cultivated deep and long-suffering friendships with damn near everyone I knew. The people who surrounded me knew me, and if I got any bullshit about my fatness it was from strangers or, occasionally, from my mother. I can deal with that.
Now I'm at a relatively new job. Forcing people to acclimate to me has been difficult. I have to work very hard to prove myself, because people have a lot of fucked-up assumptions about me, based on my appearance.
And of course, it's nothing that anybody's gonna be brash enough to say out loud. I feel fat phobia from the assumptions that people make about what I can and cannot do, about my presumed lack of self-esteem, about my percieved lack of attractiveness to the opposite sex, and about a lot of other shit that has absolutely DICK to do with whether or not I have a big, fat ass.
I'm relearning that fat people are expected to be losers. People think that we are fumbly or we are lazy, or that we are afraid to do outrageous and energetic things. We get unsolicited advice on what we should or should not eat, as if we are totally ignorant to the basics of nutrition. When we go shopping with friends, friends look at us all funny like when we want to pick flashy or fitted clothing. Oh, and this is also another arena for unsolicited advice.
"You should buy this, it will hide your belly." "If you buy that shirt, you'll have to get something long-sleeved to wear with it to cover up your arms." "You need a bra like this to lift your boobs up." "Are you gonna get That??"
People think, though they never have the guts to say it to your face, that you can't be a good, confident leader if you are fat.
People constantly wave their own fears of becoming what you are in front of your face, without a thought as to how you will feel about it. Anti-fat thought is presumed to be correct thought.
"Oh, I need to lose this tummy of mine." Wait, you barely have a paunch. "Well, being fat is just not good for ME."
People inadvertently insult you even as they attempt to compliment you. "You've got such a pretty face." "You'd be so pretty if you just lost some weight."
The reason that this is so hard for me, this new period of adjustment, is that I'm now having to do in a matter of months what I've had a lifetime or a matter of years to do with all the people I've cared about previously. I think that when folks hear about me, or when they read my resume, they are surprised when they see me for the first time.
Ok. Here's the deal. I have a college education. I am fluent in 2 languages. I read, I write, I can add and subtract. I'm not lazy, and I won't get freaked out by having to climb stairs or walk a few blocks. I don't think I'm ugly. I don't think I'm stupid. And I ain't scared of nobody. I don't need coddling and my fatness isn't what makes me unhappy and crazy. Living in a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy makes me unhappy and crazy. OK???
Here are some tips for the non-fat, to evade crossing over into the territory of fat-phobic assholedom:
1. It's none of your goddam business what we eat. Keep your fucked-up and ignorant opinions and advice to yourself unless we ask for it, explicitly.
2. If you've really never known a fat person then you live under a goddam rock or something. Chances are you've known a few fat people but your oppressive notions of what fatness are force you to refuse to accept that good people you know can be fat. Get over that, and do it swiftly. Fat people are more of the norm than the exception. That's the reality.
3. If you have a question, ask it tactfully but in a straight-forward way. Passive aggression is always an unattractive quality. Questions about personal hygiene and our sex lives are fucked-up, degrading, and none of your goddam business to begin with. We aren't circus freaks. I'll repeat, we are the norm, at least here in Gringolandia.
4. Stop making fat jokes. Period. It's fucked up and mean, and there's no excuse for it. Making fat jokes and generally poking fun at fat people is dehumanizing, it's a form of oppression, and even if you're the king or queen of social justice in your own mind, when you make fun of fat people you are acting like The Man. Stop it.
5. Don't try to set us up on dates with people you know unless we specifically ask you to do that. Fat does not mean abhorrent or socially awkward. Fat means fat- nothing more, nothing less. Learn that, now.
6. You have no right to presume that our fatness means anything more than we weigh a certain amount over what's been deemed by capitalist white supremacist patriarchy as the "norm."
7. Do not assume that we are lazy or unintelligent.
8. Do not assume that we are weak.
9. Do not assume that we are obsessive-compulsive about food.
10. Do not assume that we are desperate for your friendship and/or your sympathy.
11. Do not assume that we think that we are less attractive than you are, or that we hate our bodies, or that we strive to be like you.
12. Do not, I repeat Do NOT EVER look us in the face and tell us that we are not fat. We know that this is a lie, and so do you. It's insulting and it is an attempt to deny us full humanity as we are, as we exist right now. We do not need your lies to know that we are human, and we are unapologetic about the amount of space we take up in this world.
13. Oh yeah. Quit bitchin' and moanin' and whinin' about your fat roll, or your wiggly thighs, or your love handles, or your OWN fucked-up, delusional, self-image problems to us. You don't know shit about what it's like to walk around in this world and actually be fat. We have to fight every day to accept ourselves in a world where you and everyone else screams at us that we don't fit in, that we are freaks, that we will never be accepted. We don't have the time to work out those problems for you, and it's just fucked up and rude, on top of all that. You might as well just say, "shit! If I ain't careful I'll end up like you." That's how it translates. So shut up and go do some crunches if you feel so damn bad.
Now. The reason that I was so enraged by what I found on the FMF website has a lot to do with what enrages me about the culture of activism, as it has evolved under the auspices of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy in Gringolandia. The standards that "good activists" are held up to lean towards reflecting an oppressive aesthetic, one that mirrors that of the system that we fight. Activism in our country carries a sheen of "chic" that makes me want to vomit, partly because we live in the belly of an overfed, overprivileged beast. This movement is not a place for folks to stomp on their soapboxes, wallow in self-righteousness, and shake their fingers at people while they convince themselves that they are "fighting the good fight." It is not a place where stars are born, it is not a place that welcomes your self-righteous condescension. Cockiness and arrogance are not reflective of confidence. They reflect a need to dominate. We are fighting for an end to domination.
Fat phobia keeps potential leaders and activists and revolutionaries from thinking they are good enough to fight with everybody else. It acts to maintain the status quo, it's a tool in dehumanization.
Fuck fat phobia. And if you don't think it is a problem, then you need to reevaluate your place in the movement.
11.08.2006
Upcoming Bloggerly Changes and Other Stuff As Such
Due to, ahem, technical difficulties (read: my own inability to stick my finger up my ass with both hands here in blogolandia) I have been poopy about blogging.
However, thanks to V at reSISTERance, I will be once again re-emerging, with a much much more kickass blog. It will have a new url and everything, which will be revealed as soon as it's put together. It really, really makes me all gooey-grateful that V has offered to help me out.
I read this last week and it upset me, very very much.
Fuck a bunch of patriarchal assholes. Fuck 'em for making those of us with the most beautiful, most clear, most piercing voices too scared to stand up and sing out loud. Fuck 'em for making us think that our song ain't worth hearing; that our song ain't vital soulful music that isn't just relevant to our cause, it's necessary if we want to keep living. Just fuck 'em all to hell.
Our choir can't stand to lose any more voices. What the hell are we going to do about this?
Anyways.
However, thanks to V at reSISTERance, I will be once again re-emerging, with a much much more kickass blog. It will have a new url and everything, which will be revealed as soon as it's put together. It really, really makes me all gooey-grateful that V has offered to help me out.
I read this last week and it upset me, very very much.
Fuck a bunch of patriarchal assholes. Fuck 'em for making those of us with the most beautiful, most clear, most piercing voices too scared to stand up and sing out loud. Fuck 'em for making us think that our song ain't worth hearing; that our song ain't vital soulful music that isn't just relevant to our cause, it's necessary if we want to keep living. Just fuck 'em all to hell.
Our choir can't stand to lose any more voices. What the hell are we going to do about this?
Anyways.
10.28.2006
Another Concrete Illustration of the Fucked-upedness of Electoral Politics
The Democrats are schmarmy liberal rich bastards who've managed to whitewash and water-down the labor and social justice mass-movements and who've brought us blatantly imperialistic policy (see NAFTA, etc.). But they're not as bad as the Republicans. At least the damn Dems give lip service to social movements, right?
I'm gonna be absolutely honest. I'm currently not able to register to vote in FL (gasp!) and to tell the truth I'm disillusioned enough with the system to not really feel that bad. I understand, barely, the need to foster a democratic majority in congress, blah blah blah.
But this chunk of fascist horseshit from voteourvalues.com is almost enough to motivate me to fill out an absentee ballot, or whateveritisI'msupposed to do as a future Floridian living in a motel who's technically supposedly registered to vote in TN- just to go and vote a straight Dem. ticket, just to make some bastard nazi Republican feel a little bit worse for losing an election. I don't get it. I honestly don't. Go there, the few of you who haven't seen this on the
Primary Contradiction or Feral Scholar already, listen, discuss. You have to click on the link that says "listen to the ads" to hear the hooey. Goddam.
So it's either the Republinazis or the Other White Party. I oftentimes think that our resources would be better spent stockpiling weapons and buying up land in Alaska. But hey, that's just wacky, 'ol me.
I'm gonna be absolutely honest. I'm currently not able to register to vote in FL (gasp!) and to tell the truth I'm disillusioned enough with the system to not really feel that bad. I understand, barely, the need to foster a democratic majority in congress, blah blah blah.
But this chunk of fascist horseshit from voteourvalues.com is almost enough to motivate me to fill out an absentee ballot, or whateveritisI'msupposed to do as a future Floridian living in a motel who's technically supposedly registered to vote in TN- just to go and vote a straight Dem. ticket, just to make some bastard nazi Republican feel a little bit worse for losing an election. I don't get it. I honestly don't. Go there, the few of you who haven't seen this on the
Primary Contradiction or Feral Scholar already, listen, discuss. You have to click on the link that says "listen to the ads" to hear the hooey. Goddam.
So it's either the Republinazis or the Other White Party. I oftentimes think that our resources would be better spent stockpiling weapons and buying up land in Alaska. But hey, that's just wacky, 'ol me.
Double Fuck You Beta Blogger
I don't know what the hell happened just now. I'm in tears, I worked very hard to get my shit to look how I wanted it to look and it disappeared and now my men's auxiliary's gone, I'm gonna have to do it over again, and I'm gonna have to do the other links too.
I don't have time for this shit! I changed my blog 'cause I thought it would be easier (going from old-school to beta) and now I lost all my shit that I worked on.
And then I have to think about the implications of not working on actual content and instead working on how my blog looks, which is what I do to avoid actual writing, which I've been having a real hard time with lately, I've been having a hard time with a lot of weird shit lately, and this is just making me very explosively angry!!!!
Why in the fuck can't I just get my shit together??? This thing looks like shit. I had to pick a generic template from the COMPLETELY SUCKY AND STUPID ONES that goddam beta-blogger offers, and it took me HOURS to do the other one. I saved my shit in notepad, can anybody please tell me what I could have done to make the whole thing go blank? I tried copy/pasting it in again and it just gives me nothing.
I swear to god. I try and have one little outlet and if I use the shit I actually worked on I have nothing and if I use this I hate it and it's not complete and it will take me fucking hours to fix it that I don't have to spare and I just don't know about this. I just don't know.
I bought a goddam computer and spent tons of money so that I could do this. OK. That calmed me down some.
Goddam, it's been a long week. Next time I'll post about something important, I swear. I just don't have a lot of folks to talk to and I wanted to SCREAM AT SOMEBODY!!!!!!!!!
I don't have time for this shit! I changed my blog 'cause I thought it would be easier (going from old-school to beta) and now I lost all my shit that I worked on.
And then I have to think about the implications of not working on actual content and instead working on how my blog looks, which is what I do to avoid actual writing, which I've been having a real hard time with lately, I've been having a hard time with a lot of weird shit lately, and this is just making me very explosively angry!!!!
Why in the fuck can't I just get my shit together??? This thing looks like shit. I had to pick a generic template from the COMPLETELY SUCKY AND STUPID ONES that goddam beta-blogger offers, and it took me HOURS to do the other one. I saved my shit in notepad, can anybody please tell me what I could have done to make the whole thing go blank? I tried copy/pasting it in again and it just gives me nothing.
I swear to god. I try and have one little outlet and if I use the shit I actually worked on I have nothing and if I use this I hate it and it's not complete and it will take me fucking hours to fix it that I don't have to spare and I just don't know about this. I just don't know.
I bought a goddam computer and spent tons of money so that I could do this. OK. That calmed me down some.
Goddam, it's been a long week. Next time I'll post about something important, I swear. I just don't have a lot of folks to talk to and I wanted to SCREAM AT SOMEBODY!!!!!!!!!
What the Fuck Just Happened?????
I tried to tweak my blog just oh such a little bit (just by adding a quote to the sidebar) and then my whole damn blog disappeared. Please somebody, tell me my blog is still here before I get ill and hurt someone.
I'm on the verge of tears, here.
I'm on the verge of tears, here.
10.27.2006
More Fucked-Up Shit from the Patriarchy
So yeah. I been working and lazy about blogging, as per my usual. But there's been some shit that I've run across on ye olde blogosphere that has ruffled my feathers.
As y'all might know I frequent the pages of the Feral Scholar (my friend Stan Goff) and get into some shit-flinging, drag out arguments there about the Patriarchy. Y'all should go and have a look-see at the conversation that was spurred when Stan posted Yolanda's thoughts about a case in which an abused woman lashed out, unfortunately by hitting her abusive asshole boyfriend with her own child. Yolanda's intention was to highlight the underlying system, but as not all radicals are all that radical, the meaning of the post was lost on some. Surprise.
I found out about this one over on my pal's fantastical and wonderful blog, the Primary Contradiction.
Then there's this striking, disturbing, but alltogether understandable article by Julie Bindel, published in the Guardian (I also saw it on PC and Feral Scholar) that delves into the reasons that women don't necessarily leap to report rape to the authorities, and deals with the whopping bullshit urban-myth/lie that men believe, all to easily- the one that posits that there are women, everywhere, making up "rape stories" like mad to enact vengance and ruin men's innocent lives.
Yeah. I dunno how many times I heard that shit from my guy friends. Anyways.
I have to go now but will probably be back tonight, as my departure now is owed to bloggus-interruptus (a.k.a. WORK.) Go look, then chew, then discuss. Make some coffee. Big implications. Y'all know the drill.
As y'all might know I frequent the pages of the Feral Scholar (my friend Stan Goff) and get into some shit-flinging, drag out arguments there about the Patriarchy. Y'all should go and have a look-see at the conversation that was spurred when Stan posted Yolanda's thoughts about a case in which an abused woman lashed out, unfortunately by hitting her abusive asshole boyfriend with her own child. Yolanda's intention was to highlight the underlying system, but as not all radicals are all that radical, the meaning of the post was lost on some. Surprise.
I found out about this one over on my pal's fantastical and wonderful blog, the Primary Contradiction.
Then there's this striking, disturbing, but alltogether understandable article by Julie Bindel, published in the Guardian (I also saw it on PC and Feral Scholar) that delves into the reasons that women don't necessarily leap to report rape to the authorities, and deals with the whopping bullshit urban-myth/lie that men believe, all to easily- the one that posits that there are women, everywhere, making up "rape stories" like mad to enact vengance and ruin men's innocent lives.
Yeah. I dunno how many times I heard that shit from my guy friends. Anyways.
I have to go now but will probably be back tonight, as my departure now is owed to bloggus-interruptus (a.k.a. WORK.) Go look, then chew, then discuss. Make some coffee. Big implications. Y'all know the drill.
10.20.2006
Too Bourgeois
I'm talking on my fancy-assed cell phone and typing on my new (yup) laptop, all with a tummy full of sushi. I'm feeling a bit too bourgeois for my own Levis at the moment.
But at least I'm back, right?
Soon to be with pictures. I hope. If my technological windfall doesn't blow me away.
Oh yeah. And fuck Phil Bredesen. I just heard that he wants to make health insurance more expensive for fat people in TN. So he's a fucked-up dipshit bastard. Like we didn't know that already. I hope he gets fat before he dies.
Anyways, I'm off to zip up this new machine. It's good to be back.
But at least I'm back, right?
Soon to be with pictures. I hope. If my technological windfall doesn't blow me away.
Oh yeah. And fuck Phil Bredesen. I just heard that he wants to make health insurance more expensive for fat people in TN. So he's a fucked-up dipshit bastard. Like we didn't know that already. I hope he gets fat before he dies.
Anyways, I'm off to zip up this new machine. It's good to be back.
10.10.2006
Howdy Y'all from TN
SO this week I got to come to TN to pick up my truck (photo in post below of a truck that's pretty much like the one that I have...) and I been spending time with my friends and such and haven't been near the internet in eons.
I've cut my hair in the past few weeks, and have decided that FL it is. Looks like I'll be there for quite a little while.
I leave tomorrow morning for FL. It should be a neat road-trip. And now I am equipped w/camera-phone, so I can chronicle in pictures, as it were. Just gotta figure out how to get the pics from the phone to... a computer out there, somewhere.
But I did want to stop in and say, hey y'all, I'm alive and well, still fighting the patriarchy and working. Well, not this weekend. But generally any other time I'm working. I'll be up and running again soon, I'm sure of it. I can smell it on the wind.
>>send me a laptop>>
I've cut my hair in the past few weeks, and have decided that FL it is. Looks like I'll be there for quite a little while.
I leave tomorrow morning for FL. It should be a neat road-trip. And now I am equipped w/camera-phone, so I can chronicle in pictures, as it were. Just gotta figure out how to get the pics from the phone to... a computer out there, somewhere.
But I did want to stop in and say, hey y'all, I'm alive and well, still fighting the patriarchy and working. Well, not this weekend. But generally any other time I'm working. I'll be up and running again soon, I'm sure of it. I can smell it on the wind.
>>send me a laptop>>
10.03.2006
A Guilt Trip
For folks who never, ever leave comments.
If you don't leave comments on my space you are not supporting a struggling feminist, and will be held accountable come the revolution.
Just a reminder in the 2.2 seconds I have to post a blog today. Send me a laptop.
If you don't leave comments on my space you are not supporting a struggling feminist, and will be held accountable come the revolution.
Just a reminder in the 2.2 seconds I have to post a blog today. Send me a laptop.
9.25.2006
Fuck you, stupid Blogger.
"Why the hostility?" you might be asking.
I just attempted to post something, then I got this fucked-up message saying that it could not post, due to faulty tagging, then it said it had INDEED posted, twice, and then I tried to delete one of the posts and it said that the other post that I didn't delete was "not found." I didn't even tag ANYTHING. Fucking Blogger's supposed to do that shit for you.
So FUCK YOU, stupid Blogger. Sometimes I hate you more than I hate eating shit.
Not that I've ever eaten shit, or eat it as a rule. I just imagine I would hate it intensely.
I hope this post posts. Or whatever.
I just attempted to post something, then I got this fucked-up message saying that it could not post, due to faulty tagging, then it said it had INDEED posted, twice, and then I tried to delete one of the posts and it said that the other post that I didn't delete was "not found." I didn't even tag ANYTHING. Fucking Blogger's supposed to do that shit for you.
So FUCK YOU, stupid Blogger. Sometimes I hate you more than I hate eating shit.
Not that I've ever eaten shit, or eat it as a rule. I just imagine I would hate it intensely.
I hope this post posts. Or whatever.
Still Sans Computer
Hence the delay in thoughtful bloggage. It's incredibly difficult to manage this into my day without my own equipment, and clandestine office-postings have been impossible, since they took my key away to give it to the database-woman. I was once the god of data. Now I am not. But I DO have a key. So I'm posting tonight.
And for those who know, I KNOW that I'm supposed to be doing something else. Bless my heart. I'm a-have to find a way to get a new computer.
The news is such: I will be in Orlando for at least another three months, if not more. Most likely Florida will be my new permanent home, at least for the next few years. Yeah, that makes about as much sense as tits on a bullfrog. But there you go.
Now I have to go and get some food and get on with what I'm supposed to be doing *winks* but expect slightly more regular blog action to be forthcoming. It's looking like Sundays will be the day. Maybe. Who the fuck knows. I don't.
So I'm looking for a bit of public opinion. Here's a link to the shitty poems I had on the web before (note: these bits of stuff are highly introverted and a bit, well, abstract and not really related to anything that's important anymore. And please forgive my lack of proudness for my poultry. It's just how I am. ) It's called Crap-Assed Poetry. I been thinking on reviving, or rather, reconstructing a poetry site since I've figured out how to make the blogger look a bit more fancy. What do y'all think?????
Of course, all these things and more would be easier if someone would, out of the kindness of their hearts and depths of their pockets, send a poor organizing apprentice a new laptop.
Just a suggestion for the philanthropically inclined.
Lately it seems I know nothing of national news or anything but the wacky Florida weather. My own brushes with the patriarchy, though as frequent as one would expect, have been scrawled in illegible shorthand in a notebook somewhere. I been speaking Spanish a whole lot and working my tail off. It seems, though, that soon I shall travel to Tennessee again to pick up my truck and drive it back here, along with some very important belongings (like my upright and electric basses, books, etc. and so forth.) My truck looks kinda like the one randomly pictured in the upper left-hand corner. Mine, however, is not a 4X4 NOR is it a Sport edition. But that's the general idear, up there.
So if anybody wants to buy me a cap for my truck in lieu of flowers or a computer, then that's just fine-diddly-ine.
Till we next cyber-meet, amig@s. Sorry for all the delays. Again. *Makes pouty face that will only be relieved upon shipment of new laptop. Or truck cap.*
9.08.2006
My Laptop Died
Hey, everybody. I just wanted to put out a heads-up; my postings here might become even more sporadic. Last night my laptop stopped working. I've tried nearly everything to revive her. She got stuck at the point, after going into DOS mode of her own accord, at which she offered to run a "scanreg" and then started doing it and then........ nothing. I think she might be dead for good.
She was old. She had a full life. But what about ME???
Anyways.
So if anyone just randomly wants to send me a fantastic, free laptop, post a comment and let me know. I'll find a way to find you. 'Cause I know you're all independently wealthy and want to keep me fighting the good cyber-fight, right?
Yup. I'm just that shameless. Because without the internet I'm nothing. NOTHING. *Kills self*
I'm going to go now, since I'm currently keeping my friend from sleeping by hanging out in her room and checking out all my internet junk. *cries*
Hopefully I'll have this resolved, one way or another, sooner rather than later. Keep stopping in, though, and checking in!!! And for real. If anybody's generous enough to give me a laptop, I'll take it. I wasn't joking when I said I was really that shameless.
She was old. She had a full life. But what about ME???
Anyways.
So if anyone just randomly wants to send me a fantastic, free laptop, post a comment and let me know. I'll find a way to find you. 'Cause I know you're all independently wealthy and want to keep me fighting the good cyber-fight, right?
Yup. I'm just that shameless. Because without the internet I'm nothing. NOTHING. *Kills self*
I'm going to go now, since I'm currently keeping my friend from sleeping by hanging out in her room and checking out all my internet junk. *cries*
Hopefully I'll have this resolved, one way or another, sooner rather than later. Keep stopping in, though, and checking in!!! And for real. If anybody's generous enough to give me a laptop, I'll take it. I wasn't joking when I said I was really that shameless.
9.04.2006
On Class
Sliding in just before the deadline; as usual. I been thinking about this all week. It's a mighty big topic.
As a radical feminist, my class-politics are interwoven with my experience as a woman. While women from every economic class are oppressed as women- that is, forced into opressive gender roles and contexts and sharing the potential to be raped and abused sexually, and reproductively- women from lower socioeconomic classes suffer more, their suffering is ignored more frequently. This is reflected within the movement for women's liberation; collective social consciousness of/commonly held misconceptions of tenets of feminism and radical feminism seem to reflect the ways that racism and classism have fucked up the works, for a long time. I hear women of color tell me, and more radically-political white women, too that feminism has become "whitewashed," that feminism promotes an "ivory-tower" mentality, it's hidden and confined in academia, and is crafted purely out of theory and not within the grasp of those working-class women of color, without much regard for how things would play out in "material reality."
I guess that's true. I mean, I don't necessarily have too much "cred" when it comes to the interconnectivity of oppressions. My degrees are not in Women's Studies, they are in Anthropology and Spanish. And I don't publish articles regularly. I am from a working-class or upper-lower class family background, I'm white (the Appalachian kinda white) and I am a woman. I have faced social hostility on both bases. I was a direct-care worker for eight years while I was in college, getting paid shit to do a job that's seen as "women's work." Both of my parents dropped out of high school, and both got decent-paying blue-collar jobs (my dad worked for Coke driving a route and delivering soda pop to grocery stores, mama still works at a unionized grocery store) after starting their life together and then had some kids, and plummetted into a monstrous debt spiral that became beyond their control (of course, the compulsive gambling addiction didn't help matters) and declared bankruptcy by the time I was five. They had to sell the house and we rental-hopped for the years that followed, until my mom bought a trailer when I was fifteen so that my dad could have a decent place to die in. She still lives there in a Faulknerian squalor that I'll have to write a book about to ever describe appropriately with all the people she still supports on her middle-class salary (just over 13/hr. after 25 years on the job.)
But I had a class-dysphoria as a child that my adulthood has forced me to come to grips with- and I DO have debt, demons, thousands in student loans, not to mention the smaller shit that gives me random stomach rumblings and pangs- I thought that we were "middle class" because we had shit (thanks to credit cards and that whole redneck, spend-while-you-have-it, bravado with money and laughter in the face of fiscal chainery that so many southern, working-class, white folks have) and I wasn't starving and because I didn't have to have a job while I was in high school and so on and so forth. Then when I was nineteen mama said I had to go live on my own and pay for college my damn self if I could figure it out, and so I did. Go out and live on my own, that is. I still haven't figured out how I'm gonna unravel all the knots I've got myself in to get me through college and to where I am now. I borrowed so much money, money that kept bills paid and kept me in a car and kept me with clothing and food while I was in college, that filled in gaps where my low-paid job couldn't stretch, and that got me 2 college diplomas and books and so forth.
So this is what it takes to lift oneself up, from below, in our country. A nosedive into debt. Of some sort. MOST FOLKS ARE IN SOME KINDA DEBT. Even folks who are well-off. Folks who have nice things and nice houses and nice cars. Folks with money, decent portions of money in the bank. Folks choose to go into debt freely and at will nowadays. Ahhhh, the multitudinous expressions of maladaptive cultural evolution. But I'm wandering away from my point, now.
The way that I see class influencing the women's movement has a lot to do with what I'm talking about. I promise.
I mean, I don't think we're really at a stage where the whitewashing and class oppression can be denied or refuted. All we have to do is ask a non-feminist what the first thing is when they think of the "women's movement" and the most likely answers will probably have something to do with voting and the "pro-choice" movement. I think this illustrates, in a figuratively phenotypic sort of way, where most resources have been pumped to fuel activism. I feel that a shortcoming among the women's movement is it's acceptance of the current governmental/electoral system and willingness to spend lots and lots and lots of resources attempting to "work" said system, or use "proper channels" to strive for some sort of abstract "equality" in a world system where that "equality" CANNOT exist.
In other words, some women took the name "feminist" and took their money and decided where that money would go- and left out a whole bunch of people in the process- political decisions have been made for us by the so-called "leaders" of our movement who, while valiantly struggling against the tide for their own lives and selves in a lot of cases, seemed to forget the rest of the crowd when they attained certain levels of economic/class privilege. "Opened it up for everybody," so to speak. So I have to say that there is NO political party out there for Gringolandia-dwelling women, especially working-class women, that fully encompasses our needs or our wishes or our interests. The Democratic Party is not the party that will exacerbate "equality" for women. The "democracy" we live in only happens to be democratic if you're bourgeois. According to the feminists with the most economic power, our biggest and most life-threatening problem is tied up with whether or not we can "choose" to have an abortion. But the lived existence of women from the working class shows us that, while the right to abortion is something that's definitely important, there's other pressing junk out there that we need to deal with right this minute, too. Like rape and how often it happens to us. Like abuse and molestation. Like the economic conditions that lead to us living in situations that make these things more likely.
It seems to me that if this feminism stuff is going to work, we have to be able to come together and agree on a more radical politics, on formulating a politics where we are all first fully human. We have to understand that it's not a free "choice" that makes us "unequal" to men. We have to start seeing where, in Gringo government and philosophy, the system we live under is not equipped to deal with, much less dole out liberation, and in fact is designed to keep the oppressed right where they are. I think that some of the bases for this new women's party, politically, economically, philosophically, are out there, but there hasn't been a model generated yet that takes radical politics to a level that would guarantee an end to patriarchy. And here in the USA, liberalism and libertarianism keep slipping into ALL the movements, somewhere, somehow, and to me that seems to be a determining factor of where the movements go.
One place where the influence of libertarian thought, with all it's "socially-liberal" ooze and individualist machismo, and financialy sociopathy, has become increasingly evident in our movement is with the growing popularity of fuck-me (a.k.a sex-positive) feminism. Women claiming to be feminists claiming that they don't have to put the needs of women as a whole before their own sexual "pleasure," women claiming that because they're relatively privileged enough to enjoy the sex work that they do that the sex industry doesn't keep us oppressed, even though it's a minority of women in the sex industry that they represent, and the many, many women out there who still think that liberation is synonymous with "equality" as we grow up thinking about it in this country, especially as white and rich males have constructed it for us.
I don't think that real "feminism," or any real movement toward's women's liberation, can afford any kind of classism. Currently, it's rife with it, in terms of "feminist" groups that have any actual political clout. Why the hell else could I NOT find any kind of paid internship when I went out looking for a "feminist" internship? We cannot step away from classism without stepping away from avant-guardist libertarianism, in all aspects of life. The fuck-me feminism that I've read about and heard defended seems to be most popular among really young women, and when I hear really young women defending this particular philosophical view I have to ask where they are in life, what kind of socioeconomic class do these women come from, how many of them have not YET been hit over the head hard enough by our economy to see what life is REALLY like for most of the folks in the sex industry. It's hard for women to see that it's really better to listen to other "women" when taking notes about constructing a sexuality that is not oppressive than it is to listen to what men construct as "non-oppressive." Hugh Heffner is not a real good guide to sexual liberation, if sexual liberation is to be part of a world where women have equal rights as human beings. It's hard for a woman to grow up and see sex as it's presented to her, in the media and in pornography, and from parents who (most of the time) constructed their own notions of sexuality from patriarchal resources- and understand that her own sex life can never be a truly free one, if she just does the "easy" thing and copy-pastes male-generated and replicated ideas and fantasies of "good sex" based on images and fucking archetypes that reflect this man-centric worldview into her own view of what's good or what's good for her. It's hard for a lot of us to come to grips with the fact that NO we are not equal, and therefore we can't construct a liberatory sexuality, yet, not until the dominant constructs of sexuality are thoroughly overturned and the institutional powers behind them destroyed.
To me, this kind of liberalism, when it manifests itself in feminist activism and feminist groups, is just as classist as, say, the white middle-class women running the women's movement. It denies the existence and the need of a majority of women. It bases sexual experience and rates and measures the quality of it in elitist terms.
I have to wonder how many of the women who support fuck-me feminism really see feminism as something revolutionary, and I have to wonder how they think they'll tear down the master's house using his own How-to manual for their destruction as a class of human beings.
I wonder this just as I wonder how the pro-choice movement and women's magazines can think that the very best candidates for internships are the ones who can afford to work for free. I wonder this as I wonder how the hell it is that a bourgeois white dude got to be the chair of a women's group at my old college. I wonder this as I wonder how women can look at the "reproductive rights" battle and think that protecting Roe v. Wade is the ONLY step forward, and not just a baby step in a bigger war.
What we fail to see is where our practice, daily, illustrates how classism has eaten away at feminism as activism and the women's liberation movement as a whole.
I think it will help radical feminists and men who support radical feminism to look at sexual oppression as another manifestation of classism; class male dominating class female- and not to automatically relegate manifestations of sexual oppression to the identity-politics dustbin.
Must stop. Head explosion imminent. Too much fun this weekend, must wake up early and have breakfast with my mother then get on a plane to Orlando. Sorry this wasn't put together better, but watcha gonna do?
As a radical feminist, my class-politics are interwoven with my experience as a woman. While women from every economic class are oppressed as women- that is, forced into opressive gender roles and contexts and sharing the potential to be raped and abused sexually, and reproductively- women from lower socioeconomic classes suffer more, their suffering is ignored more frequently. This is reflected within the movement for women's liberation; collective social consciousness of/commonly held misconceptions of tenets of feminism and radical feminism seem to reflect the ways that racism and classism have fucked up the works, for a long time. I hear women of color tell me, and more radically-political white women, too that feminism has become "whitewashed," that feminism promotes an "ivory-tower" mentality, it's hidden and confined in academia, and is crafted purely out of theory and not within the grasp of those working-class women of color, without much regard for how things would play out in "material reality."
I guess that's true. I mean, I don't necessarily have too much "cred" when it comes to the interconnectivity of oppressions. My degrees are not in Women's Studies, they are in Anthropology and Spanish. And I don't publish articles regularly. I am from a working-class or upper-lower class family background, I'm white (the Appalachian kinda white) and I am a woman. I have faced social hostility on both bases. I was a direct-care worker for eight years while I was in college, getting paid shit to do a job that's seen as "women's work." Both of my parents dropped out of high school, and both got decent-paying blue-collar jobs (my dad worked for Coke driving a route and delivering soda pop to grocery stores, mama still works at a unionized grocery store) after starting their life together and then had some kids, and plummetted into a monstrous debt spiral that became beyond their control (of course, the compulsive gambling addiction didn't help matters) and declared bankruptcy by the time I was five. They had to sell the house and we rental-hopped for the years that followed, until my mom bought a trailer when I was fifteen so that my dad could have a decent place to die in. She still lives there in a Faulknerian squalor that I'll have to write a book about to ever describe appropriately with all the people she still supports on her middle-class salary (just over 13/hr. after 25 years on the job.)
But I had a class-dysphoria as a child that my adulthood has forced me to come to grips with- and I DO have debt, demons, thousands in student loans, not to mention the smaller shit that gives me random stomach rumblings and pangs- I thought that we were "middle class" because we had shit (thanks to credit cards and that whole redneck, spend-while-you-have-it, bravado with money and laughter in the face of fiscal chainery that so many southern, working-class, white folks have) and I wasn't starving and because I didn't have to have a job while I was in high school and so on and so forth. Then when I was nineteen mama said I had to go live on my own and pay for college my damn self if I could figure it out, and so I did. Go out and live on my own, that is. I still haven't figured out how I'm gonna unravel all the knots I've got myself in to get me through college and to where I am now. I borrowed so much money, money that kept bills paid and kept me in a car and kept me with clothing and food while I was in college, that filled in gaps where my low-paid job couldn't stretch, and that got me 2 college diplomas and books and so forth.
So this is what it takes to lift oneself up, from below, in our country. A nosedive into debt. Of some sort. MOST FOLKS ARE IN SOME KINDA DEBT. Even folks who are well-off. Folks who have nice things and nice houses and nice cars. Folks with money, decent portions of money in the bank. Folks choose to go into debt freely and at will nowadays. Ahhhh, the multitudinous expressions of maladaptive cultural evolution. But I'm wandering away from my point, now.
The way that I see class influencing the women's movement has a lot to do with what I'm talking about. I promise.
I mean, I don't think we're really at a stage where the whitewashing and class oppression can be denied or refuted. All we have to do is ask a non-feminist what the first thing is when they think of the "women's movement" and the most likely answers will probably have something to do with voting and the "pro-choice" movement. I think this illustrates, in a figuratively phenotypic sort of way, where most resources have been pumped to fuel activism. I feel that a shortcoming among the women's movement is it's acceptance of the current governmental/electoral system and willingness to spend lots and lots and lots of resources attempting to "work" said system, or use "proper channels" to strive for some sort of abstract "equality" in a world system where that "equality" CANNOT exist.
In other words, some women took the name "feminist" and took their money and decided where that money would go- and left out a whole bunch of people in the process- political decisions have been made for us by the so-called "leaders" of our movement who, while valiantly struggling against the tide for their own lives and selves in a lot of cases, seemed to forget the rest of the crowd when they attained certain levels of economic/class privilege. "Opened it up for everybody," so to speak. So I have to say that there is NO political party out there for Gringolandia-dwelling women, especially working-class women, that fully encompasses our needs or our wishes or our interests. The Democratic Party is not the party that will exacerbate "equality" for women. The "democracy" we live in only happens to be democratic if you're bourgeois. According to the feminists with the most economic power, our biggest and most life-threatening problem is tied up with whether or not we can "choose" to have an abortion. But the lived existence of women from the working class shows us that, while the right to abortion is something that's definitely important, there's other pressing junk out there that we need to deal with right this minute, too. Like rape and how often it happens to us. Like abuse and molestation. Like the economic conditions that lead to us living in situations that make these things more likely.
It seems to me that if this feminism stuff is going to work, we have to be able to come together and agree on a more radical politics, on formulating a politics where we are all first fully human. We have to understand that it's not a free "choice" that makes us "unequal" to men. We have to start seeing where, in Gringo government and philosophy, the system we live under is not equipped to deal with, much less dole out liberation, and in fact is designed to keep the oppressed right where they are. I think that some of the bases for this new women's party, politically, economically, philosophically, are out there, but there hasn't been a model generated yet that takes radical politics to a level that would guarantee an end to patriarchy. And here in the USA, liberalism and libertarianism keep slipping into ALL the movements, somewhere, somehow, and to me that seems to be a determining factor of where the movements go.
One place where the influence of libertarian thought, with all it's "socially-liberal" ooze and individualist machismo, and financialy sociopathy, has become increasingly evident in our movement is with the growing popularity of fuck-me (a.k.a sex-positive) feminism. Women claiming to be feminists claiming that they don't have to put the needs of women as a whole before their own sexual "pleasure," women claiming that because they're relatively privileged enough to enjoy the sex work that they do that the sex industry doesn't keep us oppressed, even though it's a minority of women in the sex industry that they represent, and the many, many women out there who still think that liberation is synonymous with "equality" as we grow up thinking about it in this country, especially as white and rich males have constructed it for us.
I don't think that real "feminism," or any real movement toward's women's liberation, can afford any kind of classism. Currently, it's rife with it, in terms of "feminist" groups that have any actual political clout. Why the hell else could I NOT find any kind of paid internship when I went out looking for a "feminist" internship? We cannot step away from classism without stepping away from avant-guardist libertarianism, in all aspects of life. The fuck-me feminism that I've read about and heard defended seems to be most popular among really young women, and when I hear really young women defending this particular philosophical view I have to ask where they are in life, what kind of socioeconomic class do these women come from, how many of them have not YET been hit over the head hard enough by our economy to see what life is REALLY like for most of the folks in the sex industry. It's hard for women to see that it's really better to listen to other "women" when taking notes about constructing a sexuality that is not oppressive than it is to listen to what men construct as "non-oppressive." Hugh Heffner is not a real good guide to sexual liberation, if sexual liberation is to be part of a world where women have equal rights as human beings. It's hard for a woman to grow up and see sex as it's presented to her, in the media and in pornography, and from parents who (most of the time) constructed their own notions of sexuality from patriarchal resources- and understand that her own sex life can never be a truly free one, if she just does the "easy" thing and copy-pastes male-generated and replicated ideas and fantasies of "good sex" based on images and fucking archetypes that reflect this man-centric worldview into her own view of what's good or what's good for her. It's hard for a lot of us to come to grips with the fact that NO we are not equal, and therefore we can't construct a liberatory sexuality, yet, not until the dominant constructs of sexuality are thoroughly overturned and the institutional powers behind them destroyed.
To me, this kind of liberalism, when it manifests itself in feminist activism and feminist groups, is just as classist as, say, the white middle-class women running the women's movement. It denies the existence and the need of a majority of women. It bases sexual experience and rates and measures the quality of it in elitist terms.
I have to wonder how many of the women who support fuck-me feminism really see feminism as something revolutionary, and I have to wonder how they think they'll tear down the master's house using his own How-to manual for their destruction as a class of human beings.
I wonder this just as I wonder how the pro-choice movement and women's magazines can think that the very best candidates for internships are the ones who can afford to work for free. I wonder this as I wonder how the hell it is that a bourgeois white dude got to be the chair of a women's group at my old college. I wonder this as I wonder how women can look at the "reproductive rights" battle and think that protecting Roe v. Wade is the ONLY step forward, and not just a baby step in a bigger war.
What we fail to see is where our practice, daily, illustrates how classism has eaten away at feminism as activism and the women's liberation movement as a whole.
I think it will help radical feminists and men who support radical feminism to look at sexual oppression as another manifestation of classism; class male dominating class female- and not to automatically relegate manifestations of sexual oppression to the identity-politics dustbin.
Must stop. Head explosion imminent. Too much fun this weekend, must wake up early and have breakfast with my mother then get on a plane to Orlando. Sorry this wasn't put together better, but watcha gonna do?
8.30.2006
Anti-Street Harassment Stuff... And I'm Going to TN
I get to go home and see folks this weekend! Yay!
But before I went I wanted to post some links (and I've been meaning to add the Holla Back thing, which relates, to my 'roll for some time now) to web stuff that my friend Cathy helped out with re: street harassment and shit that we can do about it: The Street Harassment Project and Daily Disrespect, the last of which is a zine that she created as part of a senior project/thesis thing. I'll also add them to my links list over yonder. *glances to the right real quick-like*
How's that for "concrete?" Mua. Cathy rocks.
And yeah. I get to go to Maryville, if the Orlando Airport don't blow away tonight during the storm.
Maryville's right down from Knoxville. It ain't a bad place. I look forward to seeing my friends. I'm excited. Anyways.
So I'll be back next Tuesday-ish. Hope that everybody who gets the luxury of a weekend has a good one, and that the folks who are working this weekend get the props they deserve on the job. It is Labor Day weekend, after all.
I know that working for a union should compell me to post something on the history of labor day, but I have to be somewhere soon and must pack my things for tomorrow right now.
So I'll see y'all on Monday, Labor Day, for the blogging against classism.
But before I went I wanted to post some links (and I've been meaning to add the Holla Back thing, which relates, to my 'roll for some time now) to web stuff that my friend Cathy helped out with re: street harassment and shit that we can do about it: The Street Harassment Project and Daily Disrespect, the last of which is a zine that she created as part of a senior project/thesis thing. I'll also add them to my links list over yonder. *glances to the right real quick-like*
How's that for "concrete?" Mua. Cathy rocks.
And yeah. I get to go to Maryville, if the Orlando Airport don't blow away tonight during the storm.
Maryville's right down from Knoxville. It ain't a bad place. I look forward to seeing my friends. I'm excited. Anyways.
So I'll be back next Tuesday-ish. Hope that everybody who gets the luxury of a weekend has a good one, and that the folks who are working this weekend get the props they deserve on the job. It is Labor Day weekend, after all.
I know that working for a union should compell me to post something on the history of labor day, but I have to be somewhere soon and must pack my things for tomorrow right now.
So I'll see y'all on Monday, Labor Day, for the blogging against classism.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
