Nine ways to talk about race

1. I am teaching in an almost all African American neighborhood in Brooklyn, comprised mostly of projects.  I am teaching special ed. kids, many of them diagnosed as "emotionally disturbed," many of those kids in the foster care system.  I am 22 years old, and I am taking weapons off of children larger than me.  One student in the school, not mine, Donovan, tries to strangle me.  He gets three weeks suspension.  When he returns to school, none of his actual teachers, in the grade in which he is supposed to be in, will let him into their classrooms.  They just lock him out.  He ends up staying in my classroom for the five months left of the school year.  Even though I teach a grade lower than he is supposed to be in.  And he tried to strangle me.  Donovan is a perfect angel for the rest of the year. 

The kids are exceptionally belligerent one morning.  One kid is trying to pick a fight with Donovan, who is lighter-skinned, and has freckles, by yelling two inches from his face, "YOU PUSSY NIGGAH WHITE MOTHERFUCKER I SNUFF YOU!"  Donovan just looks around the kid at me, eyebrows up, like, "This kid, the fuck?"  I know he won't fight - he has become one of my babies now, and I love him like mad, and he knows he is a lucky little fucker, considering.  I don't even get out of my chair.  I sigh, and say, "You know, guys, the only white person in this room is me." Because, seriously, I have like two Latino kids, and everyone else is black.  And they are not even JUST making fun of the Latino kids for being white.  It's just a generalized insult.  Not pegged to skin color.  White = bad.

The kids go quiet when I point out I am white.  "You ain't white,"  one my kids informs me.  "Really?"  I ask.  "What am I?"  Silence for a beat.  "But you ain't white," he insists.  "Yeah, you don't talk white," says one of my girls.  "You don't act white. You one of us."

"But my actual skin color is white," I insist.  "Look."  I point at my eyebrows.  "See?  My eyebrows are white."  My kids are silent.  "Ok," I try again.  "So, what am I?" 

"You light-skinned," I am informed.

I am fresh out of college.  I am already aware of the fucked-up power dynamics here, me as this young white privileged lady going into a poor, black school to teach.  It already makes me uncomfortable.  I don't want to not own my privilege.  So I say again, "Guys, look, I'm white.  I. Am."

One of my loveliest boys with the longest of eyelashes comes up and takes me hand and pets it and says, "Yo, Miss B, don't say that about yourself.  It's ok, don't say that, you just light-skinned."

2. I am on a train, on an overnight trip, on my way to a South Asian human rights conference in Pune, India.  I love overnight train journeys.  They are so novel and yet so antiquated and magical.  Like a child's picture book.  I am with my girlfriend; there are two young men in the four bunk cabin with us.  They are gentle, kind, seemingly; they speak little Hindi, and I speak no Tamil, so my girlfriend does the translating for the little halting conversations we strike up.  They aren't bothering us, or me especially, being a white lady, as Indian men are wont to do, and so I have decided that I like them.  Especially as they haven't asked us where are husbands are yet. 

Finally, one of them inquires something about me.  My girlfriend tells me, he just asked me if you are in movies.  What?  I ask.  Why?  She questions some more.  She gets angrier and angrier as they continue to speak.  The exchange gets heated.  Then she is yelling at them.  They excuse themselves and extract themselves from the cabin.

She won't translate for me for an hour.

The two men had asked if I would be willing to have sex with them.  The only other white women they had ever seen had been in porn.  They assumed I would just happily blow them if asked.

3. I am walking down the hallway to the bathroom with my 5th grade class's read-aloud book, The Giver, in my hand.  I have resorted to having to carry the damn book with me everywhere, because the kids keep trying to steal it and read what happens next, so antsy are they to know where the story goes.  I haven't realized that three of my kids have managed to sneak out of gym early, and are creeping up behind me.  Suddenly, WHOMP, and I am down on the ground, tackled by a boy and two girls, and we are shouting and squealing and they are trying to grab the book and I am trying to keep it away while not laughing so hard I drop it and and we are generally just making an unholy commotion.  In the middle of the hallway.  In the middle of the school day. 

My boy tells me while we are wrestling for the book, which I have clutched under both my arms while trying to dodge the flutter of grabby little hands, "Miss B, we're Arabs!  Give us the book or we'll blow up the school!"  I laugh and retort back, "I'm Jewish, man, I can't give up anything!" and we dissolve into even more hysterical giggles and only when we have laughed so hard we can't even wrestle anymore and we are lying in a heap on the floor, momentarily quieted to catch our breaths, do we turn to see that our principal is there, with families in tow who would have potentially enrolled their children in our school after this tour, all of them eyes wide, mouths agape.

4. I have gone back to visit my kids in Morocco, and I am hanging out with a family I just love.  The daughter, whom I taught, is one of the most thoughtful little people I have ever met.  We love each other very much.  Her mother, who is Moroccan, and Muslim, went to school for a year in the United States on an exchange program.  She's funny, and we enjoy exchanging ridiculous gossip.  She (the mother) is telling me a story about earlier in the day, when a terrorist came to work on their pipes.

"Uh, what?" I ask.

"We had a terrorist come to work on our pipes!  Well, not really.  So we needed a plumber and we called for one and this man showed up looking like Osama bin Laden.  Seriously, like, long white beard, white robe, turban, the whole thing!  It scared me half to death!  I was wondering if he was going to fix the pipes or bomb the house!  I got so scared I made my husband come home to talk to him and make sure it was ok.  He was fine, he was very nice, but it was scary, having one of those like Saudi Muslims show up at your door."

"You're Muslim,"  I point out.  "Also Arab," I add.  And my student laughs and says, "Mom, you sound like a racist American!"

And I think about how if this family were to ever get on a plane in the United States, and they spoke Arabic to each other like they always do, they would be the terrorists.

5. It is two weeks and one day after the bombing of the public transit in London.  It is a day after the failed attempt to set off another round of bombs - luckily, none of the bombs went off.  I am visiting a friend in London, staying with her while I go to an international teaching seminar.  The seminar is about teaching kids about race, racial profiling, hatred, and anti-semitism.  A Holocaust survivor comes to speak.  The seminar is almost too heavy to bear.  Especially now.  All of London is tense, wary, a bit scared, totally unnerved.  There are times we are all herded off of buses or out of tube stations for unknown reasons, police officers swarming, everyone attempting not to panic and maintain that stiff British upper lip.  It's hard.  Nerves are raw and frayed.

I get on a bus with my friend on our way to Westminster Abbey.  The weather is characteristically London - this is the middle of the summer, but the day has turned very cold and rainy.  We stop and buy jackets at the H&M by the bus stop we are so cold.  We get on the bus and head to the top deck, in the front, for the view.  The stop after we get on, a young man gets on.  He is dressed in the traditional white gown of Muslim men, with the white cap, a long salt-but-mostly-pepper beard.  He is carrying the exact same backpack as the brand and style that held the bombs that didn't go off the day before.

We both go silent, our muscles go tense.  We both begin to silently panic.

The inner monologue starts running on a loop in our heads: "I am racially profiling.  I am being racist.  I should not assume this man will blow me up.  I am being a bad person.  Even if this man is exactly in all respects like the men who just tried to blow everyone up, INCLUDING THE DAMN BACKPACK.  The backpack.  Stop staring at the backpack.  Stop staring at it.  Stop jumping to conclusions.  This is racial profiling.  You are being a terrible racist person.  You are NOT getting off this bus early.  Don't you dare."

Neither of us moved a muscle, or I think really breathed, until we got off the bus five stops later.  We then let out this huge sigh.  "We might be terrible people," my friend said.  "But we are also really afraid," I responded.  We looked at each other, and she took a deep breath and said, "Ok, enough of that," and we walked off toward Westminster Abbey.

6. My students in Brooklyn admit to me, with impish grins, that they call the black-furred squirrels "squiggers."  I laugh so hard I nearly fall out of my chair.

7. When I am in the Bronx teaching, the folks I hang out with most are: my Puerto Rican boyfriend, my Dominican lady teacher friend, and my black co-teacher.  We go out drinking together.  Although often, it is just me and a bunch of dudes of color hanging out in the library talking shit.

Everyone says a lot of shit, me included, we would never say around (other than me) white folks [ed. note: which is not to say that anyone ever forgot that I am white.  I am sure there are plenty of things my friends STILL didn't say because I am white.  My only assertion: after two years, there was a level of trust].  At some point, fucking off in the library while everyone has a break, we get on the topic of Clarence Thomas.  "Fucking house nig*er," is everyone's agreement (I am using asterisks, because I don't want any racist googlers showing up and weighing in).  Even though I am the white lady, I am allowed to agree on this, and weigh in on this, because: I am amongst folks with whom this is cool.  And when it comes down to it, everyone admits I am the least racist person in the group.  I do more calling out of everyone else's bullshit.

There is also that way in which sometimes, if you "get it" enough, your whiteness is not a huge issue, if you're the only white person.  At some point, with some people, no one's race is really a huge issue.  Because we are all on the same page.  And we all know how to make jokes that are not racist jokes, but jokes that actually poke fun of the racist stereotypes.  I have not been able to do this with anyone since I came to law school.  Because nearly everyone is white. And everyone is uncomfortable and prickly and awkward about race.   And no one "gets it" and is on the same page.

My first year in law school I am in class with a bunch of (white) law students.  Clarence Thomas comes up.  I chuckle.  I say, "Most of my friends of color refer to him as a house nig*er."  Everyone gasps.  And looks horrified.  And I go, "But he is!"  And then, after a couple stuttered attempts to converse, I realize no one actually knows what that term means.  They are utterly appalled though that I, of all people, used the work "nig*er."  And I remind myself I am not in the company of folks who get it.

The following week, I will be asked by a white boy why I am making such a big deal of a white person calling a black person, "uppity."

8. I am 20 years old, and on spring break with the crew team.  We are in Gainesville, Georgia, and all we do is sleep, and eat, and row, and then repeat.  It is glorious.  I am around folks whom I love rowing beautiful windy rivers, and my roommates at the hotel, one of whom is a black lady, are funny and charming.  I am having a wonderful spring break.

At some point, we start talking about race.  And at the end of a long talk, my friend the black lady looks at me, and says, "You know, it is not really okay you keep using the term 'colored people.'"  And I went, "I have?!?!"  And then I clapped my hand over my mouth.

I had always thought of myself as kinda The Cool White Person Who Gets It.  And I knew the correct way to speak of people of color was 'people of color.'  I said it all the time.  I said it in classes all the time.  I knew better.

I apologized to my friend profusely.  She laughed and said it was no big deal and she knew I wasn't meaning it like that and it was just slipping out and don't worry.  But I was horrified that something derogatory like that would just slip out, without me even thinking.  I felt terrible, having used a derogatory term that could have really bothered someone I cared about deeply.  But also, it was a little reminder of how insidious racism is, even in me.

9. My students in Morocco, we had done a lot of work that year on what I called "media education," looking at racism and classism and sexism and homophobia.  We had the "Wall of Shame" in the classroom, where the kids ripped out ads from magazines that were sexist or racist and put them on the wall to show how pervasive oppression is.  The entire classroom wall was chock full of ads.  Soon, a couple days after they took the test, they would get together and decide they wanted the wall taken down because it was, to use their word, "violent."  It was upsetting.  They couldn't look at it anymore.

But for now, we are going to take the end-of-the-year standardized test.  We have ten minutes to get all the scantrons filled out with all their personal information.  They start howling right after they have bubbled in their names.

"Why are there only two genders on here?"  "Why does it say "sex" instead of gender?" "Do I have to fill this out?  What are they going to do with this information?"  "If I feel male today, can I just fill in 'male'?"

I say guys, look, I know, this is problematic.  This is another example of everything we've talked about.  I am sorry I am asking you to participate in this, but I am.  I just need you to fill these out so we can take this test.  They don't do anything with this information, I don't think, because it's not used to look at how American kids are scoring.  So, just please, pretend like you don't know better and fill in a bubble for "sex."

The next bubble-y thing?  Race.  Forget it.  They were having none of that.  "What happens if you are mixed race?  How are you supposed to bubble that in?"  "They don't even have Arab on here?  What the hell?"  "Ms. B, do you think there should be 'Jewish' on here?  That's sorta a race."  "Can I leave this blank?"  Finally, one of my kids calls out, "Can I check 'other' and then write in whatever I want?"

"PLEASE DO," I tell them.  Because we are going to run out of time for this damn test.

And thus, a chunk of my class took their standardized exams as "martians."

OK, I am in the movie Office Space. Or a fucking Dilbert cartoon.

God, I hate being an intern sometimes.

So, ok, right now, for the organization I am with, I am working in a cubicle.  But it is large and open and I do not hate it (I think they call them "workstations" or some shit)(Pointless aside - I also worked in a "workstation" at my last internship, but it was just me in a little nook, and I had a big window RIGHT NEXT TO ME that looked out directly on the U.S. Capitol building, and I could watch the sun go down behind the Capitol and the Washington Monument every evening.  I also was separated by a tall wall from the program associate, and I loved her, and we would yell things back and forth to each other, and it was stellar.  So not all "workstations" are created equal).  But ANYWAY I was told this morning I cannot stay in THIS cubicle, I have to move to the one diagonally behind me, which is currently empty.

Why can't they just put whomever is moving into this cubicle in the empty one?  WHO FUCKING KNOWS.  No good reason, I am sure.  But now I have to transport all my shit to a different cubicle, which is making me farther away from the organization I actually work for (I am working on a floor of an office building with several organizations).

Also, I will lose my view of the outside world once I move.  And my African violet, whom I have named Emily (shut up, I don't know, she looks like an Emily, and I at least did not name her Violet) will have to come home with me, because she'll get no sunlight at all.

I hate working in an office.  I so so so so so so do.  I completely understand how it can get to the point where if they touch your stapler, you will be compelled to burn the whole motherfucking building down.  It's the fucking fluorescent lighting, man.  I think it eats your soul.

It is Female Gaze Sunday, I have decided.

And here's to the U.S. Men's World Cup team.  You didn't think I was cheering for them just because I am American, did you?

All pictures courtesy of Interview Magazine.  Go watch the video here.  No, trust me.  Go watch it.  You're welcome.

Seriously, I think I just spontaneously ovulated.

If you're not excited about the above pretty, we will return to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.

Happy Sunday, loves!

Going public

I just want to say this now, upfront, and I'll say it again later, but to be crystal clear: There is no ethical or moral duty to protect your abuser.  I said this to a friend a couple days ago, but I didn't realize until just as it was coming out of my mouth how true it is.  Because silence is deadly.  Other people, more eloquently and in writing about more terrible occurrences, have said that about silence, but it holds too in all the small, "private" tragedies.  It is, after all, the reason this blog exists.

My mother, for those of you who are new readers (Hello, new readers!  Welcome!), has borderline personality disorder.  She is difficult to deal with.  That is probably an understatement.  A couple years ago, when I restarted therapy, my mother decided she was going to stop speaking to me for 6 months, because she was FURIOUS at me.  Why?  I refused to tell her what I was discussing with my therapist.  So she just KNEW that I was going to a therapist to tell lies about her, she said.  She KNEW this must be why I was going to see someone.  And she was ANGRY, and she refused to speak to a daughter who was so "fucking selfish" and "unkind" and "a liar."

Of course, the funny thing is, I almost never discussed my mother with the therapist. 

But it didn't matter what was actually being discussed in therapy.  What mattered was that my mother realized she couldn't control the relationship anymore.  She couldn't keep power over me if I was going to speak to someone else.  She couldn't threaten or cajole me in the same way, because it wasn't just the two of us in the relationship.  Other people had come into the equation, and they weren't necessarily on her side.  There was probably embarrassment, too: no one likes to be shamed in front of anyone, whether they know the third party or not, for their bad acts.  But the thing is: my mother knew she had done wrong.  She wouldn't care if I were talking to others about her if she hadn't done anything wrong.  The problem was, I was seeking help.  I might put up boundaries.  I might get perspective.  She was losing her ability to dominate me and define the relationship.

What abusers want most from their victims is their silence.  It's much easier to control those who have no support, help, other perspectives, and who are dependent.

This always ends up so gendered.  Men who control women often cut the women off from friends or family.  My partners or friends who have been the most abusive have been the most secretive about our relationship; the abusers are the ones who have gotten angry when I've told other people what is going on.  And, of course, secrecy hurts men, too, as they usually have less of a support system to help them when their relationships go wrong, meaning that men actually pine over lost relationships longer than women.  But abusive men, they don't like when you reach out for support, because they think you are "making them look bad."  By telling the truth about them.

It never ceases to amaze me, when abusive men in my life have called me immature and selfish for merely telling the truth.  The gall is stunning.  As if there is a right to "privacy to enable abuse." 

These men are, obviously, not interested in my recovery, my well-being (even though they have often told me they love me).  They are merely interested in retaining control and saving face after being bad human beings.  They don't want other people to know what they did.  They never argue that I am not telling the truth; no, they merely argue that what happened between us was private.  And it is inappropriate for me to tell anyone.  Notice who the bad guy is now - not them, for the abuse, but me, for not keeping their abuse of me secret.  I somehow had an ethical duty to keep their "private" acts of abuse from public scrutiny.  Because god forbid they be held responsible or accountable for their actions by others.  Since they are clearly not interested in holding themselves responsible or accountable.

Privacy in relationships can be really dangerous.  For so long, domestic violence was considered a private dispute between a couple, and women continued to suffer inside abusive relationships.  It took time for activists to rally enough support around the issue of domestic violence to bring it public; they pointed out, correctly, that such widespread abuse wasn't merely a private issue, it was a public one.  There are public ramifications to abuse in private relationships.  Besides, calling abuse a private dispute makes it sound like the two people are merely at disagreement, and there are no inherently unbalanced power dynamics underlying it.  We know that's not true.  The public narratives on masculinity and gender contribute to private abuse, and private abuse has ramifications in the public sphere.  There is no dividing line.  There is no set boundary between public and private.  No relationships exist in bubbles.

Speaking of which: this blog.  I created it as a space to recover from "private" abuses.  And what's been amazing is how not private those abuses have been; so many people have commented or written emails saying yes, their abuser had done the same thing.  They had a similar experience.  They knew what it was like.  And that has been comforting, for me, to know that I am not alone, and for others, to find out they are not, either.

It has become hard, lately, to speak here.  I considered not adding fuel the fire, currently, of someone is very mad that I have gone public with his mistreatment of me.  He is furious that I published anything about his abuse.  And I thought maybe I would let the fire die down, and maybe not post what I was really thinking and feeling.  But I thought about that, and realized, well first, that would be contrary to everything I have committed myself to doing in this space, but also, I have no duty to protect him.  If he doesn't want to be called an abuser he could, you know, stop being abusive.  My only duty is to protect myself.  And recover (and what has been so brilliant in the past couple of days, since this kinda blew up in my face, are the recent comments from ladies who said, "Yeah, I totally had something similar to this happen to me, too."  Thank you, ladies.  You have helped so much).

Abusers want us to remain silent, so that they can retain their control and ability to abuse.  They argue that their victims should protect them, shield them from judgment and accountability.  But there is no ethical or moral duty to protect your abuser.  When what happens in your private relationship becomes abuse, it is not private anymore.  It is the story of far too many women now.  We need to keep going public.  We will not be complicit in our own abuse.  We need to tell these stories.  We need to reject those who tell us we are immature or selfish for outing their abuse.  We are trying to survive, recover, thrive.  And it is easier when we find we are not alone.   

Fuck love

So, like yesterday, or two days ago, I don't even know, a friend of mine had this as her gmail status message:

love is not a fight, but it is worth fighting for

And my reaction was to say aloud (uhhh, I don't talk to myself, I have cats), "Oh, fuck THAT."

I am extraordinarily lucky in so many ways.  And one of those ways is that I have a lot of love in my life.  I have wonderful friends who say it all the time to me, but they don't just say it, they show it, in a million different ways (I just got flowers this morning!  Thank you, lady-you-know-who-you-are!  I love you, too!).  I have an incredible support system of generous, funny, beautiful people who I know would be there as soon as I asked.  One of my friends has been dubbed, absolutely correctly, the Angel of Love, and he calls me and showers me with love and we pray together to thank the universe for our selves and all that is wonderful in us and in this world.

But that isn't because of love.  Love isn't doing any of those things - it isn't creating my support system, it isn't allowing me to email people the second I start feeling out of control or hurt and know I will get immediate help.  It isn't prompting the phone calls to make sure I am ok.  I mean, maybe that is part of prompting the phone calls, but it isn't the sole motivation.  Love doesn't create good friends.  It doesn't make people kind.

And that word has often been used in the greatest perversions.

My mother would tell me one day how much she loved me, that I was the love of her life, but the next day she would inform me, "If I would have known I would have had a daughter like you, I never would have had a child."  My rapist told me before, during, and after he raped me how much he loved me, over and over and over.  The abusive former friend who has decided to haunt my blog, and is reading these words, of which I am acutely aware, he used to tell me he loved me all the time.  And then again he would be abusive.  And then again.  And then again.  And still.

So, it's not love I want to fight for.

Like I said, love doesn't make people good friends, or good partners.  It doesn't even make them loving.  Because every one of those people, when they said they loved me?  They weren't lying.  I do not doubt they did.  And we can play the, "That's not really love, then" game, but that's bullshit.  For some people, love really does mean control and abuse.  Or control and abuse mean love.  I mean, my mother did love me.  She just had a mental illness.  The illness didn't make her NOT love me, it just meant she wasn't able to show care and kindness in the way we usually associate with love.

Love can be wonderful.  It can be a beautiful thing.  But it is just love.  It is not generosity, mindfulness, thoughtfulness, empathy.  And love comes easy, or at least for me.  I love so many people.  I fall head over heels in love all the time (I use the phrase "fall in love" when I am talking about friends, too.  I don't think love gets reserved only for those people you fuck or date or STALK like in Twilight)(stalking: also a problematic expression of what folks call love).  It is not something I have to fight for, like the quote suggests.

No, what I have to fight for is kindness, empathy, generosity.  Because there are people who have and continue to try to abuse me.  And I often let them do this for far too long before I move to protect myself.  I have to fight for myself, more.  I think we women tend to not fight for ourselves.  We have been socialized to accommodate others before ourselves.  I have spare tools and knowledge of how to protect myself, how to build boundaries and walls.

This is not my most eloquent post.  I am trying to regain my sense of control in this space.  I am trying to figure out how to make my blog feel like home again.  And, as always, I am trying not to pretend, not to put on an affect, to be as honest as possible.  It's hard, because there is an abuser here.  Who I let stay far too long, because no matter how much I knew I shouldn't, how much I knew it was causing me to be hurt, I loved him.

That love did me no kindnesses.

Love is not worth fighting for.  Fuck that.  Love comes.  It is being treated well that we need to fight for.

I write letters.

Dear abusive person,

I hope you get trampled by a MARMALADE OF PONIES.*

Or maybe?:

WHICHEVER.  Seriously, just fuck off now.

-  Gayle

* For the rest of you, it will make your day - go check out the list of animal group names.  Because not only are a bunch of ponies a "marmalade," but a group of girafffes is a "stretch," and a passel of sharks is a "shiver."   Ha ha, OF COURSE THEY ARE.

Reason 4,332,596 I won't vote for Obama

You guys?  This is the headline:

Obama Thinks About Releasing Innocent Yemenis From Guantánamo

He is THINKING about it?

FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

Read Judge Kennedy's ruling from the D.C. District Court in Odaini's case here, for a taste of how egregiously wrong this is. 

Continuing to detain innocent men, after 8 years already in detention: God bless America.

It's this kind of night.

The fucking cutest post EVER.

Seriously, Readers?

Ok, so: on Friday, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture visited a bunch of the organizations where I work, and we had an hour and a half Q & A with him, and I learned a crapload, but it was depressing.  This weekend, I've been researching sex trafficking, and reading reports and watching documentaries, and I have learned a crapload, but it has been depressing (and I've been crying a lot).  Tomorrow, I have to put on a suit (will there ever be a time in my life when putting on a suit will stop feeling like I am playing dress-up at being an adult?  Probably not!) and am going to an all-day State Department-sponsored international law meeting, chaired by Harold Koh, who will probably make shit arguments about how what the U.S. is doing isn't against international law when it, in fact, is, and I will learn a crapload, but it will be depressing. 

Given this!  I needed the cute!  Desperately!  So I give you the cutest thing I could think of: THE BEST CHILDREN IN THE WORLD, READING.  Yes!  Compliments of my former students.

These first pics are from when I taught in Brooklyn.  Many of my kids were "emotionally disturbed," and so a lot of lessons revolved around working on emotional stability and being functional little people.  I worked with a 2nd grade teacher, and my 5th graders would act as "mentors," helping the 2nd graders read (uh, many of the 2nd graders read better than my 5th graders (many of whom were ALSO 13 and 14 years old) but no matter!  It was about learning to  be responsible, caring people!).  And man oh man, was it cute:

Next we have my kids in Morocco, on a Read-a-thon day, where they brought sleeping bags and pillows and wore their pajamas to school and we lay around and read all day.  The hats and scarves are because it was winter and always chilly in the classroom.  I love these pictures, because the kids mostly didn't even realize they were being taken, they were so engrossed in their books:

And finally, these were taken in the Bronx, where my second year of teaching there, I got a classroom that was CARPETED.  Which meant everything! got done! on the floor!  So they were happy to be curled up under tables, and I was happy, because they were reading AND they were so fucking cute:

Cutest thing EVER, yes?  I feel way better now.

Theory: It's not about you (and you are not a unique snowflake, anyway)

Ok, so it has occurred to me that sometimes, posts on feminists websites?  They talk right past people.  And that is because some people do not understand how to discuss things in the abstract.

This came up when I was talking to Silvana about how her Tiger Beatdown post on marriage had been reposted over at Feministing and the comments at Feministing were painfully missing the point, and the commenters were all butthurt, but about things Silvana wasn't even saying, and it was a mess.  This happened in my marriage post, too, which ended in someone being all, "Well, oh YEAH, my marriage was a RITUAL, and what do YOU know, you CAN get married????" the implication of which was somehow that I didn't know what I was talking about (ummm, I don't know?), and me being PISSED at the poor reading comprehension skills because I am queer and that isn't even a true statement (depending, obviously).

But here's what's happening in those posts: those folks do not know how to talk abut theory.

We're going to stick with marriage as an example.

Marriage is an institution.  When I say institution, I am taking into account history, cultural practice across the globe, and the patterns that have been repeated over and over that make marriage what it is, patterns that have been repeated over hundreds of years and still are every day.  It is this amalgamation of clear patterns (i.e. women usually get screwed in marriage) and history and cultural practice that make up the institution.  The institution also has power dynamics in that it can confer certain rights on and legitimatize some people (and their relationships), but polices its boundaries, making it clear who is excluded and Othered.  There are a whole set of social narratives that go with the institution, legitimizing the fact that it is often exclusionary and to the detriment of many people (women, gay folk)(and if we include the narratives about sex and morality and the proper role of sex (only in marriage, naturally!), we'd have to include single people, sex workers, and people who choose to have sex out of marriage (which is just a fuckload of people)).  I am talking about marriage in the abstract.  I am talking about marriage as the larger thing, beyond how we all choose to individually define it.  It has a meaning and a history which does not disappear when you say, "My marriage was all about love!" 

If you are still confused, substitute racism, which is ALSO an institution, and see how it works the same.  And racism doesn't disappear when a white person insists that they and all their friends aren't racist, either.  I mean, I can say marriage means X and you can say marriage means Y, and though these meanings totally conflict, you know what DOESN'T happen?  Marriage doesn't disappears.  And so obviously there is something to marriage that is far larger then our individual meanings and experiences.

If you are still confused, just go read some Foucault or something.  I don't know.  I am not a Women's Studies 101 class.

Anyway, people tend to get all butthurt when they can't talk about things on a theoretical basis, because they think you are trying to define THEIR experience and take away whatever meanings they have put on THEIR actions.  But of course you're not, because you are not talking about them.  But people get all annoyed, and make comments about how, because their mom was a feminist, and married her dad for 25 years, and had two feminist daughters, marriage is not an unfeminist tradition!  (No, really).  Or they make comments about how marriage is about commitment and love and sharing a life together and being able to make such a deep promise to another person (I love these comments, because of what they end up saying about people who DON'T get married.  People who are single can't commit?  They cannot make life-long relationships?   It's like white people who insist they are not racist, but white people in their experience are just more upstanding.  One of the big things in theory is not what is present, but absence, what you are saying without saying it, the meaning conferred on that absent thing by purposefully not including it.  So if a white person says white people are upstanding folks, what is the implication of that for black people?  You get the idea).    If someone is talking about an institution, and criticizing it, and you invoke yourself or the people you know in response to prove the point wrong, you've already missed the point, and have sailed way over into like Not my Nigel land.

A perfect example, from the Feministing post:

I personally find the suggestion that all (or even most) relationships are fluid and that monogamy is a fundamentally constrictive situation to ring false based on my own relationship, the experiences of my friends, colleagues and family.

See?  Elvis left the building.

Anyway, this butthurtness and inability to do theory most often occurs when you are challenging someone's privilege or a thing they choose to partake in.  They feel like maybe they are supposed to feel guilty for partaking in it and don't want to feel guilty, or they reason that if they are partaking in it, it can't be sexist, because they are not sexist.  I have seen this in posts where people talk about make-up, let's say, and commenters BUM RUSH the thread to point out they wear make-up FOR THEM, not for the patriarchy, and they won't let you make them feel bad about their eyeliner!  But of course this stupid and not what the blogger was saying - the blogger was talking about the greater patterns that emerge on how the patriarchal beauty standard affects women, not you and your damn eyeliner (note: I am not against eyeliner).  But women rush in, going, "I don't wear my make-up because of the patriarchy!!!!!"  The thing is, of course they do.  We all do.  I do (see?  I am not against eyeliner).  It's like that mansplaining post I wrote, about people who try to pretend that sure, there is patriarchy, but NOT RIGHT WHERE THEY ARE STANDING.  The thing is, the patriarchy (and heterosexism and racism and ableism) are the very ground we are standing on.  You can't pretend that what you are doing can't be furthering the patriarchy, because look: did you grow up in a bubble?  I didn't.  None of us did.  You cannot pretend you were not influenced by it, and you make your decisions in a bubble.  So quit that.

But also: You can do something you know has sexist implications and history, and still do it anyway!  Really!   Your head will not explode!  I can dress up all sexy and know that I am trying to meet a patriarchal beauty standard and still feel sexy anyway!  We can wear make-up and recognize it is probably not the most feminist thing ever!  That's ok!  If we all walked a hard line, we'd never get to leave the house.  And that was what was so good about Silvana's post, I thought, explaining that she understood why marriage was problematic, but she was choosing to do it anyway.  And Silvana's head did not explode!  I talked to her yesterday!  We all contain multitudes, people.   Embrace the conflicts.

Also, there is that knee-jerk reaction, which some of the commenters ALSO did on Silvana's and my posts, and I have heard before, that if you point out something is problematic, on an institutional level, people get all clutchy and grabby about it and assume you are arguing about taking it away (even when that makes no sense!  I mean, Silvana's entire post was about how marriage is problematic but she is getting married anyway, and the commenters were all: DON'T BAN MARRIAGE.  This happened on my post, too.  What is WITH that?).

If you are pulling this shit, you are probably not happy that someone just called out your privilege.

The most obvious corollary I see everyday is language.  Someone will use the word "retarded."  I will ask them not to, because it is a hurtful word.  They will explain how they didn't mean it that way (as if their individual intent erases the history and the power dynamics and the privilege and the hurtfulness and the very mean Othering of the word.  See - just like the marriage protests above!).  Then they will get defensive: well, I am not going to stop using it, it is MY WORD.  And I will ask: so, you want to retain the right to say hurtful things?  Because that is what they are saying.  It is their right, their privilege, to be insensitive gits.  And that's probably because they haven't, like me, taught retarded children, or no one in their family is retarded, and so that word doesn't sting for them.  And lucky them.  But it is about privilege, and wanting to retain it.  If you are suddenly arguing something a blogger didn't even say, going to an extreme saying we shouldn't stop doing this! ever! because! when the blogger hasn't even suggested that, you might want to look at what privilege you are now unnecessarily defending. 

So, kids, just to reiterate:  there is this thing called theory.  And sometimes people talk about everyday things on theoretical, institutional levels.  And sometimes they even talk about their personal interactions with and how they relate to that institution.  If you are about to make an argument about how you and your friends disprove the assertion about the institution, you may have missed the point, or can't play in the abstract with everyone else. That is ok.  Just go read some Foucault until you can.  No, really, go read him.  He's good.  I promise.  And you won't miss out on the discussion, because until we crush the patriarchy, and I bet that won't be in the next couple of weeks, we'll still be talking about this stuff for a while.



p.s. This is NOT DIRECTED AT ALL to the vast majority of lovely people who comment here at Unnatural Forces.   Seriously, I have the world's best commenters.  I am super duper grateful for you folks.  Please don't stop being smart and engaged and argumentative.  It is awesome. 

p.p.s.  Can I just share my favorite dumb comment from the Feministing thread, you guys?  Seriously, this comment is so dumb:

The state does not enforce monogamy [blogmistress note: except for all the state laws that criminalize adultery, apparently]. So long as you and your partner agree, you can have sex with other people. Most couples don't want that, though [blogmistress note: ?], and are probably glad they can divorce someone who cheats.

Haha, that wacky commenter!  You guys, if you ever leave this comment or similar intellectual black hole on my blog, I will bite your head off in a subsequent comment.  OUT OF LOVE.  Because that is how I define my comment smackdowns, I have LOVING INTENT, and don't you tell me it's about anything else.

Happy motherfucking Friday!

Hey - anyone remember the Portugal vs. Netherlands game in the last World Cup?  I watched it with my kids in Morocco - it was me, and like 5 of my boys, and various adults, and we spent the whole game going, "Um, whoa."  "Holy shit."  "Did he really just fucking do that?" "Ouch."  "OH  MY GOD JUST STOP WITH THE FOULS ALREADY, JESUS!"

So, while there has been some seriously! shitty! reffing today, nothing has approached a game where the ref has completely lost control.
 
For your Friday: the dirtiest, most out-of-control football match I have ever seen.

Yeah, I know, I am a CAPITULATOR and maybe a WEENIE

I have a twitter account, you guys.  I gave in.

I started it to read other people (Silvana, this is your fault).  I have thus far used to say hi to folks, and complain about WHAT THE FUCK WAS WITH THAT CALL, MOTHERFUCKER???!!??!  when the U.S. World Cup team got a goal stolen from them.

I don't twat very often (this is the proper verb tense, shut up), but I will twat when I have posted something new on the site, so, um, if you need to know immediately about what is happening at Unnatural Forces, you can.  

And I am telling you all because, seriously, I have like 5 twitter followers, and at least one is spam, and it is a little sad-making.

So, if you want to get my occasional tweets (twats? HAHA I am like 12), I'm @GayleForce22. And if you would like, please do put your twitter handle in comments, and I will happily follow you!

Also: I have a gazillion posts in my head.  Just need to find the time to write them, loves.

See you in the whirl!

A Government

I'd forgotten this story until I was watching the Jon Stewart clip below.

When I was in South Africa last year, I was interning with a constitutional law and international human rights organization that provided pro bono legal services and brought high impact litigation up to the Constitutional Court.  This organization is incredibly successful and respected and has been around since before apartheid was dismantled.  The organization started in 1979 and began fighting apartheid by chipping away at it through the courts - especially in the area of worker's rights.  The lawyer who was head of my office when I was there, he had begun working there in the 1980's, and had been a tireless anti-apartheid advocate even before he began bringing lawsuits against the Nationalist government.

I worked with this gentleman on an op-ed about the complete disaster that was the land-redistribution program.  It was published in the newspaper on my last day there, and to celebrate, and say goodbye, he took me out to lunch.  We were talking about what a mess government in South Africa has become - the rampant cronyism and corruption, the power-and-ego trips, the silencing of dissent, the lack of dialogue going on in the ANC, and the failure to improve living conditions for millions of poor South Africans.*  Some South Africans maintain that living conditions are still almost exactly the same as they were under apartheid, no matter the promises from the African National Congress and the momentum for change inspired by the belief that everything would be better once apartheid ended.  We talked about how sad it was, that the party of Madiba had become what it had become.  And how disappointing it was, when the promise and the hope and the potential of a post-apartheid South Africa had at one time seemed limitless, but in reality wasn't enough to bring actual change for so many.

I asked the lawyer what was the hardest, or what had he been least prepared for, in this post-apartheid reality.  And he looked off for a second, thinking, and then said, "I wasn't prepared for our government to become A Government."

Maybe Machiavelli was right, about power.  Because not promise or hope and change or a Truth and Reconciliation Commission or dreams of an entire oppressed people can make a government do right in the end.  Promising hope and change is all well and good.   The corruption of power, however, is a mistress with which it seems few governments do not lie down with eventually, no matter their lofty words.

Next election, I won't be voting for Obama.  And I know people will give me the: but what about how awful it will be if the other person wins, and your ideals can't trump reality, and you have to be pragmatic, and whatever.  But you know what?  I voted for Obama because he was the lesser of two evils.  And in the area of the law in which I work, he wasn't even less evil - he's been MORE evil.  So fuck it.  I am not playing the evil game anymore - the dice are loaded, we can only lose.  If there is going to be evil, I want no part in it.  I opt out.  I don't want to reward the kind of behavior that has allowed liberals to lose every battle they have waged since Obama took office, while yet some keep screeching that we need to just fall in line behind the party.  I believe in holding people RESPONSIBLE.  And while I love the hopes and dreams and promise, I want to believe in a world where we can meet our own expectations.  I believe we can do better.  I don't just want the inevitability of A Government.  I want to create a world where Machiavelli is not right.

And that will start with my vote.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Respect My Authoritah
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

*The book that was recommended to me when I asked to read more about this was After the Party.  It isn't the clearest book (some things aren't quite linear in it, and I think if you don't know the actual timeline of events, you can get slightly confused), but it really highlights what has gone wrong in the ANC and why things are the way they are now.  I recommend it.

Sometimes I start poems!

And then they get stuck.  See? -

there are stories that fail in the telling
and there are stories
that fail.
it is the telling that rives me,
the blood and guts of it,
teeth gnashed down to the jawbone.
i'd weave the words into the dark, if the silence
were gentle enough;
and i'd tell you the ending, if
i were brave enough;
if i didn't mind it killing me, spine broken,
binding bent.
i cut as smooth as flame-warm wax;
under my flesh i am dark and royal and richly red,
kingly beneath my skin.

stories are voodoo magic and mouthy.
they tell the scars on my arm a metonymy,
my limbs a plot woven by delicate digits from
the softest ether.

Um, does anyone know where this goes, or how this ends?  Because I am at a loss here. 

The conundrum of the former fucked-up friendship

Dearest Readers, I had a friend.  And he became very abusive.

There were signs he would become increasingly abusive.  Like: he had a habit of raising his voice and yelling when we would fight.  I would ask him not to raise his voice, it made me feel unsafe, it made me shut down.  The last time someone yelled at me like that, had anger at me like that, they raped me.  So, if he could please stop doing that, I would appreciate that.

I did indeed say, "please," Readers.

And he didn't stop.

What he was telling me was that he valued his voice and anger and expression of that anger more than my feelings of safety.  He was telling me he didn't respect my boundaries as much as he wanted to reserve the right to make me feel unsafe.  He felt like he had the right to hurt me in that way.  Because when I asked him to stop, he would say, "I have to express myself, I have a right to get out my anger.  This is how I need to get out my anger."  His needs were greater than mine.

This friendship was the kind that two people cling to when they think it's the only thing keeping them afloat.  Instead, it's actually drowning them.  But you cling to it till your knuckles turn white and sometimes till the water fills your lungs and sometimes even after that.

I have had more of these relationships than I would care to admit.

The funny thing about abusive relationships, with their cycle of abuse (the gradual slide into harmful behavior, then the bottoming-out, then apologies and kindness and sincere-sounding renewals of love and friendship, until you have committed fully again, signaling the beginning of the slide back into harmful behavior), is that once you let go and take a step back out of the cycle, once you stop clinging to the very thing that is drowning you, it's so easy to swim away.  Once you have that perspective from outside the cycle, you can look back on it from the outside, at a distance, and say, "Well, THAT was fucked up."  And off you go to find better waters, hopefully.

Which doesn't mean that you are healed and whole and this abusive relationship won't continue to take its toll on your self-esteem, your mental wellness, your strength.  But once you have left that abusive cycle, once you have truly let go and seen it for what it is, you don't go back to it.  You can't.  You understand it was drowning you.  And if you had the wherewithal to kick back up to the surface and break free, you are not going to let it drag you back down again.

So here's my dilemma.

The example listed above was just the beginning of the abuse; it became far, far worse once I revealed that I had been raped, that I suddenly remembered and realized I had been raped, that I was having a really difficult time of it all.  Needless to say, the friendship is over.  However, this person emailed me at the start of the summer with an email that began with this:

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it is that has happened between you and me.  I don't know if I'll ever understand it, and if not, then I guess I'll just have to live with it.

The fuck, right?  He'll have to live with it.  As if it is HIS cross to bear, being a hurtful, unkind person to me.  ALSO, if he doesn't know what has happened between the two of us, HE HASN'T BEEN HEARING A WORD I'VE BEEN SAYING FOR MONTHS.

I haven't emailed him back.  I haven't said a thing.  And even though we were the closest of friends for so long, I don't miss him at all.  It is a great relief he is out of my life.  But what I have found in the space his unkind-self used to inhabit is anger.  Lots and lots of anger.  Nearly crippling anger, sometimes.  At the shit I put up with, his lack of humanity, his selfishness; all of the anger I could not manage while I was in this abusive relationship was all there, below the surface, gathering in pools, and since he's been gone, it's been flooding out.  This isn't even, like, a pond, or a crick of anger.  This is a VERY BIG LAKE, or even sea-size, kind of anger.

I would just as soon never email him back, because I don't think I could even manage it around the anger, except: 1. I will see this kid undoubtedly when I start school again in the fall; 2. We have some of the same friends (although, they are more my friends than his, so I am not worried about losing them as friends); 3. He will definitely try to bring it up again, force a conversation on the friendship, not let it go (abusive controllers can't get over their lack of ability to control you anymore.  It drives them batty).

So I am trying to decide what to do.  If I could compose the perfect email that would make him not email back, that would perfectly sever the relationship, preclude any of his attempts to interact again, I would.  But he will jump on any opportunity to reconnect, even if it is just to fight.  I would cold cut him off, but I can't - we will be in too many situations where we will have to see each other and play nice next year.  I could just ignore him all summer and then deal with whatever shit he decides to throw at me this fall, but I don't want that to have to be in person, and I am petrified by this - I get anxious even just thinking about it.

Basically: conundrum. 

I am trying to figure out how I can handle this in the best way possible for me to assuage my anxiety, not fall into the very deep and threatening anger sea, and not make every time I have to see him next year so fraught I am petrified to go to school.  And I am PISSED that he has put me in this position, that I even have to go through this entire fucking exercise, when HE was the douchebag.

But then, this isn't that different from my interactions with men historically, and all the time.  Daily, we ladies have to negotiate and plan and minimize the douchebaggy guys.  And goddamnit, it is exhausting.

But I can tell you, Readers, the one thing I don't want?  Revenge.  To hurt him.  No matter my anger, I don't need to actually cause him pain.  Because once this has been laid to rest, and my anger has run out, I will never, ever think of him again.  And if Gayle fucking Force has cut you out of her universe entirely?  That is a horrible, sad thing for you indeed.

I live a charmed existence

Tomorrow, I start work and research on figuring out how to bring a civil case in US domestic courts under the customary international law norm prohibiting sex trafficking.  The question is: Can a woman or child who has been trafficked sue hir trafficker for damages where criminal law has failed? 

Basically, I get to figure out how to use law and the courts to help people, and make justice happen.

I am the luckiest girl in all the world.  I am so excited to begin.

More Mad(ness)

I just finished watching the season finale of Season 3 of Mad Men, Readers.  I am all caught up.

Roger: God, I'm tired.  Peggy, go get me some coffee.
Peggy: No.

That little bit right there made me cheer out loud.

Ok, I am not going to ruin it for anyone, except to say: WOW, with the third season finale.  I keep wanting to write about the show, but there is SO MUCH THERE, and there are SO MANY CHARACTERS I LOVE, who are all so complex and interesting, I have been overwhelmed about how to start.

So!  Here is what I am going to try to do: the new season of Mad Men starts July 25th.  I am going to blog about each episode, and talk about some of the larger themes, like how aggressively feminist the show is, or how it addresses racism, or the the changing culture of the '60's, or whatever, and/or maybe just declare my undying love for Joan and Peggy and how I have the biggest crushes on both of them AND everything Joan wears.  And everyone can feel free to add comments or discuss the show.

If you aren't watching the show or don't care you can skip the posts (also, having never had a TV, I can understand the annoyance when everyone is all gaga for a show and you are extremely whatever about it)(I am looking at you, Glee).  But if you want to play along, but haven't yet watched Mad Men?  You have until July 25th to get on it!  Let's go!  Go catch up!  You've only three seasons to make up!  Once you start, you won't be able to stop anyway! 

If some of you begin to watch, I can't WAIT to hear what you're thinking.  Feel free to add comments below as you go.

Let's go Mad, kids.

A word on the US vs. UK game

IT NEARLY MADE ME GET AN ULCER.

Seriously, guys, I don't remember being ever so anxious or invested in anything in years.

So, if you are not a football fan (I actually, despite my Americanness, have spent time saying both "football" and "soccer" interchangeably, especially since living abroad quite a bit.  I'll probably switch back and forth here), the US played the UK on Saturday, and it was a brilliant game, ending in a 1-1 tie.  Which, when it comes down to it, the US kinda won that one, given it's underdog status.  I don't care if we won on a goalie fumble, the US played well, until the last 20 minutes of the game, when it looked certain the UK was going to score before time ran out, hence my nearly having a bloody heart attack in the fucking bar where I was watching with folks.

But it also reminded me how emotional I can get watching sports.  Especially soccer.

Because, ok, I started playing soccer on a team when I was 5.  5!  I should see if I can dig pictures up of this.  But I played soccer competitively until I was I think maybe 14, when other sports became more important to me (field hockey and lacrosse, specifically).  But I loved soccer.  It was fun and rough and I played because all the girls on my team, well, we'd been playing for so long together, it was a joy to be on the field with each other.  When I got to middle school, a bunch of us girls decided we didn't want to play competitively or seriously, and created a "B" team, and we didn't practice and we didn't go to tournaments and it was basically us getting together every Saturday to play a game and fuck around and insist a parent STILL had to bring us orange slices.  One year, because we were good, we went undefeated, and the next year when they moved us up to the "A" league, with girls who practiced and cared and went to tournaments, we lost every game.  And no one gave a fuck.  Parents would comment how we would come off the field just as happy whether we won or lost.  And we did.  Because football is just really fucking fun.

The last time I played might have been with my kids, in Morocco.  This is the story of how I earned immediate respect from my kids in Morocco: When you are a teacher, by the third week of the new school year, the kids start to try to push your boundaries, challenge you, see how far they have to go until they get a reaction (answer: forever and until the end of the world, because I was one of those teachers who never.  ever.  yelled).  Anyway, they were starting to kinda quiz me, see how much they could like me, and so one day one of the boys asked, yeah, ok, do you like soccer?  And I responded, of course, I played for a decade.  And the boys especially?  DIDN'T BELIEVE ME.  Because there are few club sports teams in Morocco, and none for girls.  The kids decided I could not possibly be good, because I was a girl, and I was probably lying to boot.  So one day shortly thereafter when I was walking the kids out to dismiss them, one of my braggiest kids about what an awesome soccer player he was grabbed a ball as we walked past the field and said, "Ok, Ms. B, you're so good, let's see you score on me.  I'm a good goalie.  You'll never score."  And the kids were all, "Ooooooooooh, "  because there was a challenge, and WHOA, I took the kid up on it.  I was like, yeah, ok, done.  Penalty shot.  Let's do it.

So the boy placed the ball down, and got in goal, and started trash-talking me, and the kids on the sidelines were totally either cheering for him or me, but it's raucous.  I should point out I was wearing teacher shoes here, also, and a skirt, if I remember right, so while I was pretty sure I could score on this kid, I wasn't 100% confident.   Anyway, I ran up to the ball.  I shot.  And it floated in right under the crossbeam, way over the kid's head.  A perfect goal.  The kids went silent, mouths agape.  My kid in goal started protesting, no, lucky shot, do it again, do it again, I wasn't ready.  DON'T YOU KNOW, I floated another beautiful shot right into the corner that he had no chance of saving.  I said, "I think you've had enough humiliation for the day."  The kids in my class on the sidelines went apeshit.  I was a hero, and I never had another boy challenge my authority, I tell you what.

And: the World Cup.  I have such specific memories.  I remember, when I was 14, watching the US beat Columbia 3-1 in a giant upset in '94 the night before I graduated middle school.  I watched the World Cup in '02 in neighborhood bars in New York, having just moved there and being in the city for the first time and learning to love it.  The last World Cup, I was in Spain and Morocco.  I saw the Spain vs. France game in Spain.  It was a shitshow.  (France won.  The friend I was with, we started rooting for France halfway through the game, because the Spanish fans were being so fucking racist).  I watched the Confederate Cup last summer in South Africa, where they were awesome, and the US was awesome, and it meant having great conversations with lots of locals about games the next morning.  I love football.  It's so important to so many people, it is truly good at bringing the international folks together (I know I sound like a fucking Coke commercial, but shut up, it's true).

So, the game this Saturday, right?  A good game.  I cared a lot.  It's one of the few times I feel ok being extremely nationalistic, these World Cup games.  I feel ok about cheering for the US here.  And cheering loudly and unrepentantly and obnoxiously.  So the game made me totally anxious, because I was so invested, but you know what?  I have not been anxious the rest of the weekend.  I have been so calm after nearly suffering heart failure in an Irish pub yesterday.  And maybe this is why sports fans are so big on their sports?  Because you can really care and be anxious and exuberant or whatever and get it all out, because the worst thing that can happen is you lose, but that's ok, in the end.  This isn't, like, my anxiety about money or finding a job or my grades.  It's about a thing that I love to do, and love to watch, and it's ok to lose, but it's really fun to win.  I expelled all that anxiety, all at once on Saturday.  It's been smooth sailing ever since.

And also, England soccer fans are really fucking obnoxious (sorry, Brits, you are), so AHAHAHAHA SUCK IT.  Is all I have to say.

U! S! A!   U! S! A!

Shhh, don't tell.

I MIGHT be watching the South Africa vs. Mexico World Cup game streaming at work right now.

No one alert my supervisor.

A post on football (soccer!) to come . . . 






GO SOUTH AFRICA!!!!!!!!

Quote of the Day

You guys, I HEART HER SO HARD.

"Lots of [the clothes I wear are] meant to be kind of a rejection of what people think about women. I guess I'm a feminist. I am a feminist. And I want to change the way people view women."

                                                 - Lady Gaga, in an interview with Larry King, transcript here.

Welcome to the club, Lady.

h/t Shakesville

p.s. I loooooove Lesley's take on subverting the male gaze in the Alejandro video here.

Getting off to Gaga

There are many odd nuances to my body dysmorphic disorder.  One of them is: If you are my friend, my partner, my lover, some person on the street, and you tell me I am beautiful, I will think you are a liar.  If you compliment my face, my eyes, my body, I will think you are just trying to make me feel good about myself out of pity, and I will not appreciate it, and resent you.  But if you ever fuck me and tell me what an awesome lay I am, I will be like HELL YEAH I AM, MOTHERFUCKER.

For some reason, my BDD only applies to my physical body, the aesthetic still-life aspects of it, but it does not apply to anything it can do.  I will be super uncomfortable with you and self-conscious and feeling hideous and grotesque up to the point where we both have our clothes off in bed, but the second we begin to interact in any physical, sexual way, all of that dissipates, it completely falls away, and I am the most confident, sexy, erotic thing on earth.  It's a bizarre, immediate switch for me.  I am really comfortable with anything and everything having to do with sex.  It's when my clothes are on that I have a problem.

I can't really tell where that weird fissure comes from.  It may exist partly because I grew up hearing my mother pick on my body, not my sexual abilities, and the dominant culture tries to police my appearance more so than it nags me and sends me negative messages about my competence in the bedroom.  The predominate way I've gotten feedback about myself as a lover is from other lovers, and if I have a skill in life, it might be in picking really wonderful lovers. 

And it may partly be that the BDD is reinforced by the disassociative disorder I have from being raped.  But rape is not sex.  It is the farthest thing ever from sex.  I don't connect them in my head at all (I know other women who have been raped who don't, either, which is why we go back to having sex after being raped and then think there must be something wrong with us, not fitting the dominant narrative of what rape survival is supposed to be).  When I am having sex, I am very much in my body.  I am not disassociating at all.  Sex is what is best at bringing me back into my body; well, ok, that and cutting.  And (surprise!) I prefer the sex.

But there have been some confounding factors to me using sex to be present in my body lately.  The first one?  FUCKING LAW SCHOOL.  Seriously, gentle Readers, there is no greater homicidal maniac to murder your libido than having to be in your fucking head all. the fucking. time.  Like, you just live there, in your brain pan, and you work all the time, and you just kinda forget that you have a body.  Or that you are a sexual creature.  After a while, I can't feel anything.  I've asked people I love and trust to flirt with me, touch me, turn me on, fuck me, because I have so completely turned off due to the head-y-ness and stress and pressure and general intellectual all-consuming bullshit that is law school.

The second thing is my rapebrain.  Which doesn't really have a problem with sex.  But it has a huge thing with control: control over who touches me, who has access to me, who can even see me as a sexual being.  And a little over 6 months ago, I shut down any access anyone had to my body.  Even people who wanted hugs would have to ask me (and I usually said no).  There was to be no touching without express permission.  And that was really great and important and helpful to me for a while.  But that's becoming less important to me now.  I am starting to feel like maybe I don't need to control all access to my body.  Or, ok, I still don't like the idea of casual touch.  But maybe if I want to have sex again?  With the right person?  And we walk through all my control stuff slowly?  I can really, really see that again now.

Especially, because have you seen the Lady Gaga "Alejandro" video in the last post?  Holy shit, is that video sexy.

There is a lot to be said about the gender politics of the video, and how the men are basically doing all these "female" moves and actions and taking on all these female roles that are normally reserved for women in music videos.  And that's all really cool, and frankly kind of hot, that role reversal.  But then there is Lady Gaga.  With her leather strips to tie folks up.  And being aggressive and kinky and sexual and dominant.  Which I find incredibly erotic, that woman-taking-prisoners attitude when it comes to sex.

But what makes it so much sexier, for me, is the group of men kind of throwing Gaga around at the end.  Why?  Because it's not at all threatening - I mean, after all, these dudes were just wearing heels and writhing like women, so I think they are coded as less menacing and violent already (also, the homoeroticism previously to the final scene doesn't hurt).  And there is no imbalanced power dynamic; these are all these guys she just lorded over in a previous scene now ravishing her.  It's clearly consensual.  She is at no one's mercy.  It's the poorly named "rape fantasy" to a "t".

I mean, right?  And I find it an incredible turn-on, to be submissive.  I've talked about that here before.  Lady Gaga manages to be both dominant AND submissive, switching from one to the other, with a little kink involved, in the span of this video.  Not only can she be aggressive and dominant and sexually controlling, which I love seeing women be and sometimes like being myself, but she can turn around and have all these men use her body and toss her around.  But the tossing is not tossing in any at-their-mercy way.  All these men are playing at "control," but it's still all about Gaga.  She's at the center, all the men reach out to touch her, and then cover her, when she looks from upside down at the camera.  This is about her pleasure.  This isn't "gang rape"; this is my fucking fantasy. 

I watched this video a couple times today, trying to think about what I wanted to say about it (did I want to write about the portrayal of violence in Latin America - and was it a bad, callous thing to co-opt it or could Gaga be saying something smart about it?  Should I just see if I can name all the video's influences?  Did I want to go back to Madonna's and Annie Lenox's old videos and talk about them vs. Alejandro?).  Yet every time I watched it, I just couldn't get over the sexiness.  I couldn't stop staring (maybe a little open-mouthed!) at the most sexual scenes.  It was ridiculously erotic, and I was having a hard time focusing on anything else. 

This video was the first thing that made me feel really sexual, or make me want sex, since the rapebrain took over all those months ago.

So, we can say a lot of things about Lady Gaga, but I will leave them to other folks to say.  Mostly, all I have is thanks for her right now.  Because holy shit, Readers, is that video hot.

A Lady Gaga post (and how have I not had more of these???)

So, if you were unaware, Gayle is a HUGE Lady Gaga fan.  For lots of reasons!  Some of which may be another post!  But Gaga's newest video for "Alejandro" just dropped today.  And it is: interesting!  It is essentially a Madonna video, with way more gender-queering.  Which is ok, because I have always loved Madonna's video for "Express Yourself," because it is ridiculously sexy.

But, gentle Readers, thoughts?  About the war imagery, the police force, the use of religious iconogaphy, the fucking with gender?  Is there meaning here, or just a parade of Madonna tribute-type scenes?  Also, regardless of meaning, do you just like it or dislike it? This is, after all, a very pretty piece of film-making, and I'll have to watch this video like 4 more times before I get over looking at all the outfits and cinematography and various other aesthetic distractions before I can pay ANY attention to the meaning of the cross taped over Lady Gaga's crotch (I think?  That's what's going on, right?).

This is NSFW!  Obviously!  (Also, if you are in another country and can't watch the video, where can I link so you can?  Let me know!  Or drop the link in comments for others.  Thanks).

No (ok, hardly any) comment.

So racist, WTF.  It's fucking 2010, you guys.  Gah.

Given the dialogue in the U.S. right now, I predict that someone will screech charges of RACISM!!11!!!1! for pointing out how fucking racist the racists are in 3 . . . 2 . . . . 1 . . . .


p.s.  Also, you know, these folks?  Must be TOTALLY STREET.  I mean, right?  The movie's name is Kick-Ass!  I can't wait for someone to call them that "street."  I can't imagine why they wouldn't be.   

Things that are striking.

Right now for work (well, not right now, but until 2 minutes ago), I am trying to compile a bibliography to help people read up on what the ostensibly knowledgeable people are saying about the terrorist threat within the United States.  It is a shitty task, because I am a really excellent, capable legal intern, and my job wastes me (I have already asked my supervisor to ALSO do a bunch of long-term legal research projects - we'll see if that happens.  My organization is really good at trying to find quick band-aids for the bullet wounds anytime one of our concerns get shot, but no ability to think about what legal issues we need to address now BEFORE they are lying bleeding on the floor.  And let me tell you, if you are doing national security/counterterrorism law and human rights, all of your ideas will eventually be hit by snipers from Congress or the White House).

ANYWAY.  So, I am poking around via google into the echo chamber that is habituated by Serious People with Serious Thoughts on such things.  And I was looking at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy for any useful speeches.  And as I scrolled down the page, I stopped looking at the titles of the speeches to see if they should be included in my bibliography, and started looking at the pictures.  Wait, I'll let you do it. Go look here.

Notice anything?

Not only is there not a single woman, MAYBE ONE of these dudes is a person of color, by image or name.  ONE.  And I don't think the name "Juan Carlos Zarate" is Arabic or anything.

Not that I'm surprised, necessarily.  It's just a sad reminder of how far we have to go (and how stupid our fucking terrorism policy is.  I mean, really, you can be the an organization that solely produces "Near East" policy with no one from the Near East?  For fuck's sake).

Singing, and sickness

So, today I got sad about my mother.  Or not really having a mother.  Or, no, ok, I got sad about having a mother, but a mother with borderline personality disorder, and so I specifically got sad about not having a mother who played the actual role of "mother,"  and instead having a mother who played the role of "a crazy person." 

There's a lot to unpack, my relationship and history with my mother.  And I am so normally unwilling to provoke any of her fury or her disaster that when I started this blog, I didn't think I'd ever write about her, lest she find it somehow.  My mother is very, very good at terrorizing me, making me feel anxious, or small, or like a worthless human being.  She has had many years to practice.  And even when she is not actively trying to make me feel bad in order to try to manipulate me, she is trying to be really nice and gain my trust and secrets in order to try to manipulate me.  There's really no winning.  The best thing I did for myself a couple years ago was stop playing the games with her, in the hopes she'd finally be a good mama, and stop wishing for her to be someone she's not.

And, of course, I do appreciate my mama for the things she did right in raising me - convey to me that there should never be any shame surrounding sex, teach me to question authority, encourage me to be a feminist.  But walking home from working tonight (yeah, I know, I worked on a Sunday (HUNGOVER), what the fuck) I thought about some of the little, painful things she's done, and how they've followed me.

When I was little, I looooooooved to sing.  Loved to!  I would sing all the time.  In the car, the shower, walking around the house, to myself in bed at night.  And all while I was growing up, my mother would make fun of me.  She would laugh at me, tell me I couldn't sing, tell me I was tone deaf, tell me how painful it was to be in the car with me when I was singing, I was just so awful.  She told me this whenever I opened my mouth.  She also sang a lot, but, she maintained, at least she could hit the notes.  I just was so totally, totally horrendous, it was like nails on a blackboard, she said.  

So, as I got a little older, I gradually started to sing less.  Because, I mean, I couldn't sing, right?  I became embarrassed to open my mouth.  I didn't want to make anyone around me have to suffer through it.  But I always secretly coveted the singers, the people in choir, the people who took lessons.  I always wanted to do that, to know how to really use my voice, sing my heart out, join in the music and let myself go.  But I knew that wasn't something I could ever try to do.  Instead, I would try to sing so quietly, so low, no one would hear me but me.  I sang as secretly as possible.  My voice, whisper-y, loaded with shame.

When I hit high school, and I've written about this before, we ladies were all about the singing all the time.  To pass the time, to be silly in the car, whatever, and no one cared at all if you could sing or not.  It was about the togetherness of it.  There were bands to sing with and folks with guitars and get-togethers at houses where someone would play the piano and we'd all just sing along.  And people started to tell me I had a lovely voice.  That I could sing.  That there was absolutely nothing wrong with my voice.  I hit the notes just fine.  But I was still convinced I couldn't REALLY sing.  I wasn't a singer.  I was ok, I could hold a tune, but I couldn't be GOOD.  So I still never tried out for choir, for chamber singers, for anything in high school, even though I secretly still wished I could.

My first year in college, on a complete whim, I tried out for the school choir.  And I made it!  I was thrilled.  I was told I had a lovely voice by the choir director!  Like, someone who would really know!  And here I was, my first practice, sitting down with all these like, trained singers, people who really sang, were really good, were officially singers.  And that first day, they handed out sheet music.  It just had notes on it. And I just froze.  I didn't know what to do.  Everyone around me burst into song, knew exactly what they were to sing, which notes, which parts, and when, and I was totally lost.  I stayed silent the entire first practice.  I was the only person there who couldn't read music.  I'd never learned how to read music; that was for real singers.  And I wasn't a real singer, because I was kinda only in this choir by accident, a lark, I probably barely made it, I wasn't ever good enough to learn things like sight-reading.  Tone deaf kids don't learn notes!  I only went to three more choir practices before becoming so discouraged I quit.  I couldn't keep up.  I couldn't practice on my own, because I never heard each song enough to memorize all of them.  I was overwhelmed and frustrated and felt so out of place.

The thing is, I actually really can sing.  I mean, ok, everyone can sing, but I can do it well.  A friend of mine, who was a music major in college, has said to me how much he hates me because I have perfect pitch.  When I was teaching, my students would beg me to sing to them all the time.  When I teaching in Morocco, I played Dorothy in the staff play The Wizard of Oz, and I sang "Somewhere over the Rainbow" in front of hundreds of people (and, admittedly, I didn't sing it very well during the actual production, because as it turned out, I had walking pneumonia.  YEAH.  And, you know, I couldn't really breathe.  It is not easy, or terribly fun, singing "Somewhere over the Rainbow" when you cannot breathe, let me tell you).  But the first time I practiced the song, with everyone in the play in the music room with me, several people had tears running down their cheeks at the end.  I am not the ashamed, secret singer anymore.

Recently became friends with all these real singers.  Like, trained-for-reals-and-can-read-music singers.  And, still, I am kinda jealous.  And I still feel kinda left out.  Because they can do what I've always wanted to do, they can sit together in front of the piano with the notes and sing, they can breathe right and sing crazy ranges and know how to work their voices, they can go in public and feel confident and just let the songs fly from their throats.  I wish I could do that.  But I believed I couldn't for too long.  Because it was my mother who told me that, and when you're little, and you hear it over and over, that's the only truth you can imagine.

I don't see or speak to my mother that often anymore - every couple months.  A few years ago, I had somehow screwed my courage to the sticking place and was staying with my parents for a visit (it's gotten easier, dealing with my mom, now that I've stopped caring about our relationship.  Go figure).  And I was in the car with my mom, and she started to sing along with a CD.  And holy SHIT she is tone deaf, you guys.  It's PAINFUL.  Like, she did NOT HIT A SINGLE NOTE.  I was totally blown away.  All that time she had told me what an ugly voice I had, how I couldn't hold a tune, how I was painful to listen, and there was nothing wrong with my voice.  It was really just her.  She couldn't hear whether I was hitting a note or not.  So she had just been telling me, my whole life, what a crappy singer I was, for gods only know what reason.  Maybe she was jealous?  Perhaps.  But mostly, me knowing her borderline personality disorder, I think she told me I couldn't sing because she knew how much I loved doing it.  And she knew she could take that away from me.

And that's just what's it's like having a mother with borderline personality disorder.

I continue to sing in the shower.  I sing in people's cars.  Singing is still the best way I know to get things out,  relieve stress, be really angry, or have any kind of catharsis.  I still have to fight, though, the urge to sing quietly, secretly, so no one can hear.  But then sometimes, I imagine my mother is right there, having to listen to me, whining about how painful it is hear.  And that always helps remind me to sing at the top of my lungs, loud as I can, and let all that shame go.