Friday cat blogging

This is how Amouch sleeps.

I just . . . I don't even know.

Love the sinner, hate the sin

This is a post is a not really a finished product, but an attempt.  It is me muddling through the ideas of sex work, and prostitution, and legalization, trying to reconcile Annie Sprinkle and every feminist text I have read and everything I know about my friends who did sex work and all the research I just did on trafficking.  I've been thinking about it all a lot.

Because, I mean, the thing is, also: I have been given money for my body.

Never regularly, and never for what most people think of as "prostitution."  But when I was 20, I went with my girlfriend on a completely comped trip to Las Vegas for the 2000 New Years.*  Her friend/former employer was a huge concert producer, and he had been gifted plane tickets and hotel rooms for him and ten of his friends.  I was her date.  We got flown out to Vegas, put up in the Venetian, had our meals completely paid for, and were usually given about $500 a day from this dude to just go blow on whatever (we ended up putting aside nearly half of everything we got.  I remember we referred the stash we would take home as "book money" - neither of us had had any idea how were going to pay for books that next semester before this trip.  I think I came home with close to a $1000.  It would help me pay for study abroad in India that next year).

If I can say anything about Vegas, it is: THERE IS SO MUCH MOTHERFUCKING MONEY IN VEGAS.  It was easy to get swept up in the debauchery of it all, get drunk on the excess.  I have never seen so much money exchange hands as I did that week, and it was unnerving, and neaseating, and strange - I never got over the feeling, the entire time I was there, that I did not belong there, that I was an intruder, some random no-name schmuck who had wandered into a celebrity party by mistake.

Anyway, so there we were, in Vegas, and seriously guys, men like THREW money at us.  My girlfriend was stunningly beautiful, and we were both pretty femme, and were happy to dance close and be affectionate and make out with each other (and others) in public, so we ended up with a lot of male attention very quickly - we were like the fucking porn fantasy of "lesbians" piped in to everyone's hotel rooms all night.  And my girlfriend, well, she proclaimed loudly and often that she was very pro-sex.  But pro-sex in that: "I am going to wield my sexuality against guys, and control them with it, and that will make me powerful!" sort of way.

Which it doesn't.  Make you powerful.  I have had women (and men) argue with me that women using their sexuality to get shit from (straight, obviously) men makes them powerful.  And that would not be any definition of power I can think of - it makes the women manipulative, or shrewd, or savvy, but they are still dependent on someone else to provide them with something; some dude withholds his goodies, the woman loses all her power.  It is at someone else's whim.  This would be the opposite of powerful.**  Women can use their sexuality to access power, but they never hold it themselves.

I recall our very first evening there - we were standing in the Hard Rock Hotel talking, waiting to meet with the group we had come with for dinner (and then go see Tina Turner and Elton John in concert after that - seriously).  I was talking to my girlfriend, and a guy walking by just strolled up, grabbed my ass, said, "NICE," and then went to go on his way.  I turned around to chew him out, but as I started he interrupted me with, "Yo, chill, this is how things ARE here, get used to it."  And I just shut up.  I realized he was right, in a way, the rules there weren't like the rules in the outside world.  Everywhere, there is a patriarchy; in Vegas (and especially in the Hard Rock, whoa) it was multiplied exponentially, and no one batted an eye as if that were maybe a problem.  My body, just being in that space, was ASSUMED to be public property.  By merely being somewhere, I was implying consent to everything that followed.  Even if I wasn't dancing, or in a bar, or flirting, or wearing a miniskirt (oh, maybe I was, I don't remember) and was in fact just standing in a fucking lobby, the rule still held.  I remember thinking, ok, if there are different rules, I will learn to play by them, and I will learn to win.  I bet you can guess now: I  never could win.  The house always wins; everybody knows that.

So my girlfriend was all gung-ho about this powerful, well-compensated force we were going to have over men with our sexuality (when I would argue, she told me to stop being "prude," which just annoyed the piss out of me enough that I stopped arguing).  And while I knew her reasoning behind this "Let's take them to the cleaners!" attitude wasn't so feminist and didn't really hold up as "empowering," I had my own reasons for going along.  I was fresh off a number of women's studies classes in college; I was pro-sex, and I was pro-sex worker.  I had passionately argued, along with my classmates, for the legalization of prostitution, for sex workers to unionize themselves and/or fight for better working conditions, for women to be able to speak out against abusive johns and pimps without fear of being thrown into the criminal justice system themselves.  I walked into Vegas with the full feminist belief that sex work was just work, and for the good of women we needed to de-stigmatize it, legalize it, remove the moral values that had been placed on it.  It was a job, it was about exchange of money, and if there were two (or more) willing participants, who was I to tell anyone they couldn't earn their living as they pleased?

And then it suddenly seemed like I could make myself a hypocrite - who was I to turn down sex work, either?  Was I really a prude?  Did I really still have moral values attached to sex?  I was just making a business transaction, wasn't I?  I needed the money.  I had the opportunities to make it.  If I set my boundaries, my limits, and some dudes were willing to give me money, well, who was I to refuse to take it?  Because there was nothing immoral about what was happening, right?  This wasn't dirty.  I was voluntarily consenting to, at first, just being pretty arm candy to wealthy men, sometimes make out with my girlfriend in front of them to get their unlimited credit-card-type things to go gamble to our hearts content.***  Then it became more, letting men see parts of me, and then more parts of me, naked.  Then it was letting them touch me.  The boundaries kept moving.  My girlfriend dove into it with a zeal I was only later able to recognize was self-destructive (not two months earlier, she had put herself in the emergency room after trying to take her life; she would end up there again for the same reason five months later.  Still, on her most wanton and dangerous exploit that week, I would refuse to join her), and I went along, because sex wasn't supposed to be moral or immoral, right?  This wasn't a problem, was it?  I mean, it was a business transaction.  I was in control.  I could call stop.

And you know?  It felt dirty and awful and wrong and I hated it the entire time anyway.  I left Vegas with a lot of money and a hollowed-out feeling, like there were breezes blowing between my ribs.

No matter how many of the variables I controlled in these business transactions, I couldn't take the patriarchy out of the equation. While I wasn't intellectually processing it, I could fully feel how skewed the power dynamics were, how exploitative it was, how there was no way to erase any of the ugly history and context that went with what we were doing.  I couldn't do sex work in a vacuum.  And in the end, it meant I couldn't do sex work and also feel ok.

Obviously, there are women who do do sex work, and enjoy it, and get something out of it, and happily choose it as their living.  And I do not judge them.  I am pro-woman, and pro-sex worker.  But I don't like sex work, and it's because we can't do it in a vacuum.  I know, after researching an awful lot about sex trafficking, that legalizing prostitution actually makes it harder to find trafficking victims and child victims and prosecute their pimps.  I know that legalizing prostitution in Vegas has not made things much better for women.  And when I think about it, most of the women I know who were sex workers and personally advocated for the legalization of sex work were pretty privileged within the sex work industry.  If the average age that women enter into sex work in this country is 13 (and they are often poor, and women of color), and the legalization of prostitution makes it harder for us to help them, then . . . well, I don't know if I can get behind the legalization of prostitution.

At the same time, I don't want to deny women their right to earn their living however they choose, and I do not think we should continue to throw women into the criminal justice system for a transaction we have placed a moral judgment on and thus made illegal.  Sex between two consenting, of age people, where money is exchanged, isn't a good or bad thing (mostly - obviously, the patriarchy elephant is in the room).  It can be victimless.  But many times, it is not.  I am very pro-sex worker.  But I am kinda anti-sex work, or at least how it plays out in the real world, where those who are most oppressed and vulnerable and need the most help are funneled into it and abused.

I know that there must be other options.  I don't wish to deny anyone the enjoyment of their work, or the income it generates, and I don't wish to force women who may have few other options to make money out of work, but there has to be some way we can make things better.  When I took a public interest class at law school two semesters ago, we had to do proposals of some sort, and one guy did a presentation about a legislative solution to prostitution.  The legislation he proposed was really comprehensive, thoughtful, and sex-worker- and woman-centered - it made johns paying for sex an illegal act, but did not criminalize prostitution for the sex workers.  It had a way of collecting funds (I think there was a tax on something?) to help train cops, and then would use other moneys, including payments of fines, to fund drug rehab centers and help pay for counseling, as many of the women who go into sex work have been raped and abused, sometimes even before they ever became sex workers.  It was a stellar presentation and sadly I don't have a copy of it.  But it means we have other options out there, ways of changing the law that don't follow the rules of the patriarchy, different ways to try and solve the problem.  And again, the problem isn't sex work per se.  The problem is that no one can do sex work in a vacuum.  There is no sex work without the patriarchy.  And there is no sex work without the myriad of oppressions that leave those who are most in need, most vulnerable, like children, those with drug addictions, those who have been abused, women of color, and trafficking victims the most likely to become its victims.

So.  This is me muddling through sex work, the question of legalization of prostitution.  It's not something I feel I should really get to weigh in on; it doesn't really affect me on a daily basis.  I just did a lot of research into what effects the global sex trade, though, and I think it has finally pushed me off the fence onto the anti-legalization side.  I understand that there are women who enjoy sex work and need it to make a living, but I think that we need to build laws and policies around the least powerful, those most vulnerable and least able to fight back, all while fighting unemployment and lack of opportunities for women as well.  My goal isn't, obviously, to make anyone or their family go hungry.  And if folks think I am wrong, or totally off base here, or do not know what I am talking about, I really hope they show up in comments, because I would love other perspectives on the question of legalization.

But also, maybe, deep down, part of me doesn't think sex work is worth reforming.  I don't think it is worth trying to improve.  If we could do it in a vacuum, and we could take out the patriarchy and all forms of oppression, yeah, maybe.  But I remember what it felt like, and how I couldn't divorce what I was doing from its context.  I was calling the shots, I was getting paid, but the whole time, even while men were showering me with every compliment under the sun, I was pretty sure that I wasn't the one who was powerful in that situation.  Like I said, the house always wins.



*Apparently, not everything that goes down there stays there.

** Yeah, I know the argument too that most men are pretty easy to seduce (and SORRY, they kinda are)(this is not meant as an insult; many women can play-act that socially-constructed "seductress" - I have switched into and out of that character on a dime as a party trick, and Megan Fox gets in trouble for pointing out this is just her job and an act and she doesn't actually want to bone all men all the time), but they are not dependent on anyone else to have the power they already have.

*** Did you know these things exist?  They do.  I haven't the faintest idea how you get them, or if only certain people get them, or if you have to throw down a lot of money to get one but: it is a card, it is unlimited, and you can blow thousands of dollars with it on anything (drinks, food, gambling).  And, in fact, that was expected, once it was put into our upturned palms.

I am finishing a post . . . .

but in the meantime, the Daily Show rocks it.  Enjoy!

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

Wearing my national security and civil liberties hat today, kids

And as I twatted,* clearly these kind of people should DEFINITELY not be burdened by having to show probable cause to a judge before accessing our full scale digital biography.

The half-written post on sex and sex work will have to wait for now . . .



*That is the correct conjugation, SHUT UP.

Your evening awesome.

Care of David Foster Wallace.

Mad Men Season 4, Episode 1

Well, well, well.  Much has changed since the third season, no?

First off: Joan's navy blue dress with the cream ruffles like gingko leaves in the front?  WANT.  BADLY.

With that out of the way, it seems Don has done well for himself- this Glo-Coat advertisement apparently was a Thing in the time between seasons and has made him a well-known ad man - and was that Trudy in the ad?  Peggy seems to have found her niche - she is far more comfortable in her skin and her position than we've ever seen her, and while she is still deferential to Don, she doesn't let him shame her, or let him get away with anything - I like this.  I also like how she is CERTAINLY the one in control of her relationship with this new dude - I love how down-to-earth and rational and practical she is about her relationships - she is like the foil of Betty, who still is hoping to find the fairy tale with Henry Francis.  SCDP has new offices which seem to be filled to bursting, there was not enough of Pete or Joan, what was WITH Roger continually making fun of a guy who had lost his leg in Korea, and Don is just all over the place, brilliant or angry or loving, all in one episode.  Also, I am really surprised Betty and Henry are living in the old house - didn't Henry say he didn't want to have anything to do with Don, or have Betty owe him anything, in the last season?  Apparently things haven't quite gone as he wanted, either.

There is also the scene that Frank Rich highlighted in his Sunday column - and the young woman, after the three civil rights workers have been killed down in Mississippi, asks, "Is that what it takes?  To change things?"  And what is so glorious about Mad Men, is we know that yes, more deaths will be what it takes to change things - but there is something so compelling watching the fear and confusion and wonder in those who had no idea yet about the dark places our country could go.  And when I say those who had no idea, I mean white people.  I would bet you everything I own that people of color in the early 60's were fully aware of what it would take, that lives would be lost, and that the white folks would never give up their power or privilege, not even a sliver of it, easily.

But if you know me, you know the thing I most want to talk about: Don is hiring a sex worker, and it is the same sex worker, more than once - you get the feeling they have had sex many times, because she knows exactly what he wants.  And what he wants is for her to be on top and slap him in the face while she fucks him.

Ok, so.  My first thought was, ooooh, Mad Men is showing kink!  But it wasn't hot, Lady Gaga's Alejandro type kink.  No, it was more personal, more specific to Don, not something that would turn the rest of us on.  He needed to be slapped for some reason.

And hey, maybe the slapping just gets him off.  I am rather into kink myself, and I don't want to pathologize anyone's sexual turn-ons.  Some people just like whatever they like.  But I happen to know my kink is about working stuff out - about being raped, about always having to be in control and holding everything together, about knowing that letting go of control can turn out not only ok, but wonderful, pleasurable.  That I am safe, and that not every person I trust intimately will then hurt me.

Two things immediately occurred to me watching that scene.  One is, I have had several friends who have done sex work, but one who worked specifically as a dom.  She had friends who got her into the work, and she told me their stories as well as her own.  But specifically, she told me that the clientele were always the very picture of power and influence - they were judges, huge banking industry CEO's, Wall Street tycoons (this was in NYC).  And these men, these movers and shakers of the city, these men behind the curtain who pulled all the strings, deeply wanted one thing: to be abused (think: Q-tip up the urethra).  Part of it is because sex is play, and especially, maybe, when you hire someone, it is more playful, because there is none of the baggage of a relationship, or any expectations of intimacy, or emotional vulnerability.  And these men were looking for some kind of experience of letting go, a play act of just releasing everything . . . I mean, I GET these men.  When I am most tightly wound, highly controlled, over-worked and desperately holding on to myself to keep my bipolar brain together, when I am trying to juggle everything at once, including my very sanity, then is when I most want to play at being a sub.  It is a release, a break, an ability to let it all go.  All those balls I was juggling can just fall to the floor.  I can finally unwind.

But of course the other side of that is that sometimes we sexualize our greatest fears.  Thus, women have rape fantasies.  CEO's of giant banking companies love being ordered on all fours and humiliated by a dominatrix.  And I, who am most scared of losing all control, well . . . that is the surest way to get me off.  It can be both our greatest release and our greatest nightmare, and in sex, well, these don't actually contradict.

I have also used pain in sex as a form of punishment, where I have felt so debased it only makes sense for someone to debase me - and in something as loaded and shameful, in the social narratives, as sex, well, that's an obvious way of making myself feel punished.  Sometimes, we want our chastening so we can feel we have atoned and moved on.  Or so we can nurse our wounds and feel sorry for ourselves.  We want our shame to be physical, embody itself in some manifestation on our bodies, because coping with that pain and abuse is much easier to handle than the deep sorrow and anger that roams beneath our skin.

So, here's my question: what did you think of that scene?  Was Don trying to punish himself, was it about a control fantasy, was it his greatest fears sexualized?  Or did you read that scene another way?

All other comments welcome!  And there was a LOT there in that episode about Betty being pretty actively terrible to the kids, and Henry's mother calling her out for essentially what she is - I would love to get into that in comments, too.

It's yours!

Adding more thoughts (I do my best thinking in the shower in the mornings): Don has always bought into the idea that good, married people only have "good," "married" sex - as in, the missionary position, with the lights off.  I remember Betty once asking him to have sex with her with the lights on, or some such tame request, I can't remember, and he responded with something to the effect of that being prurient and he wouldn't do it.  There was (is, still) that shame about sex, and that "dirty" sex was not something you were supposed to do after marriage, or ever, not with the woman you love.  With sex workers, yes, but they were already "whores;" you couldn't treat the mother of your children that way.  I have heard stories from women even now that after they married their male partners, the men shrunk the scope of what sex they would have based on that ridiculous notion that certain sex acts are improper for married, "good" couples.

So maybe Don has liked being submissive and being hit during sex all along - but he would only "disrespect" his partner by asking for it and having it if she were already "immoral" - a sex worker.

On not being the very thing you decry (a pre-Mad Men post while I wait for iTunes to stop sucking)

I am currently reading Russel Banks' Cloudsplitter.  It is a beautifully written and compelling fictional account, based on all the historically available information, on John Brown, the homegrown evangelical Christian terrorist who attacked Harper's Ferry to protest slavery.  It's easy to give John Brown a pass, because he was fighting an instituion we all find abhorrent today.  But his religious fundamentalism, myopic views, war-like nature, self-righteousness, and certainty of purpose give him more in common with Scott Roeder, who murdered Dr. Tiller, than with any one of us reading this.  The rightness of your cause does not the rightness of your actions make.  Especially when we all differ on what is "right," and I do not think the militias in Idaho or Michigan or the anti-choicers bombing abortion clinics think they are wrong.  I bet they are just as certain and sure as John Brown, and I think that kind of certainty, which makes no room for mercy or humanity or critical thought, which spurs on vigilantism and violence, is dangerous and scary, whether or not it is "right."

The book, the reading of which is an exercise in being uncomfortable, seems, at least to me, odd, in that the writer is practicing the very things for which he holds his characters to be judged.  For instance: women and people of color are used as plot points, lessons, examples, and nothing else.  And FORGET IT, when it comes to a woman of color - she is merely used to develop the character of the white male narrator.  The book is narrated by Owen Brown, one of John Brown's sons, and so of course his perspective is indulged. But no real character development is given to any woman or person of color.  These people never speak, they are never given interior lives, they are never sketched out.  Are we to assume Owen, though surrounded by people of color and women, never engaged with them, thought of them, saw them take actions that were particularly revealing of the people they were?  And while the book is really supposed to be all about John Brown, from his son's perspective, and some would argue of COURSE no one else is rendered at depth except for John Brown, that's a cop out.  While Owen Brown is busy narrating all about his father's attempts to end slavery, the author is busy rendering women and people of color as two dimensional paper characters.  How can a book about John Brown erase the voices and persons of people of color?  That seems to be perpetuating a different sort of racism itself, where the white man is again lionized, and despite his cause, the minorities around him are made invisible.

The easiest example as to how women are used as character development for the white male narrator is when Owen meets a young woman on a ship to England (by the way, the novel highlights John Brown's insistence that too many don't see women or black people as real people, real equals.  The author, it seems, did not heed his advice.  Also, I recognize the difference between narrator and author - I suppose one could argue that the narrator is the sexist, and thus women are represented as mere plot-movers.  The problem is that the narrator may well be sexist, but the author doesn't have to use women as plot points to move along his own story. The author could very well show his narrator's sexism without employing it to tell his story himself).  SO.  Owen meets a young woman on the ship, and she herself is escaping America because she is pregnant with a married man's child.

Owen meets her for one night - she is the first female in the book to actually speak at any length (meaning: more than two sentences put together).  She points out how constrained she is, as a female, as she is not free to remake herself, change her mind, change her path in the world; she points out Owen needs to stop being a sad sack and just make his own life better.  If he wills things, as a man, he can make them happen.  She, on the other hand, is very much trapped.  It is incredibly feminist, and incredibly true, and sad, these things she says, the way she upbraids him.  Then, Owen leaves her.  The young woman that very night?  Throws herself into the sea.  But that is ok!  Why?  Because this young woman, Sarah Peabody, was only needed to bring a transformation in the character of Owen Brown:

I saw that there had been completed, almost without my intending or even hoping for it, a thorough-going transformation in my character . . . completed by the sad, wasted death of the young woman.  pg. 359-360

This was what I had learned the night that I spoke with Miss Peabody aboard the Cumbira - her last night on earth and, in a sense, my first.  pg. 384

GRRRRR.  And then, THEN, not a hundred pages later, Owen Brown it turns out somehow has been magically in love with a woman of color who has spoken but TWO SENTENCES MAYBE in the entire book, only one that I am sure of, and all she did was tell her husband, "I'm sorry" for losing the baby she had just given birth to.  A woman who has been rendered nearly invisible - we are suddenly to believe the narrator is in love with her?  HOW?????  

You can imagine why he's in love with her.  IT WILL BE TRANSFORMATIVE, I can assure you.

I said this was a Mad Men post, and it actually is, and this sort of  all clicked when I read the letter at Jezebel from Carla, the black maid, to the Drapers, which held the show itself accountable for not developing her character.  And that's the thing - Mad Men is trying to point out racism, and it does.  It is trying to capture the the way white people thought at the time about civil rights.  But it does not go so far as to actually develop a black character.  Black characters are still mostly absent, silent character actors that are there to serve as character development for the leads.  And so while we are meant to see the racism through the lens of white experience, the show manages to reinforce the very racism it is trying to point out. 

And this is where I saw the parallels with Cloudsplitter - because the same defense could be made of Mad Men, that the show is about white people and focusing on their experiences.  But the show itself doesn't have to silence black characters, just to illustrate white racism, just like Cloudsplitter doesn't have to erase women, black folks, and especially black women to get its message across, either.  You don't get to conflate subject with method.  Your SUBJECTS may be racist folks and your MESSAGE may be about racism, but your METHOD of telling that story need not be.  And if it is, then I am going to take your righteous anti-racist message with a grain of hypocritical salt.

So, I love Mad Men, folks, you know I do, but: I want better.  Let's continue to hold people accountable for their methods of storytelling, as well as their messages, because hearing the voices and perspectives of more people can only make our stories richer, the tales more compelling, and advocate for the change that we still need to bring.

GAH.

You guys, I am giving itunes my EVIL GLARE OF DEATH but it won't download the first episode yet.  I am in agony.  Do I have to wait for the episode to end before it downloads?  When does it update?  I have already had hints about that episode from that damn Twitter thing.

ITUNES GET IT TOGETHER.

I am posting pictures of Joan to distract me.  I may be up really late writing up this episode, folks - it's a good thing this is the last week of full-time work for me!  Can't wait to post the discussion . . . I'm looking forward to seeing you all there!  (Which, I will see you there tomorrow, it's gonna be a late night :)

 

Update:

SAD.  My google search has informed me I won't get the episode until tomorrow.  WHAT IS UP WITH THAT????  So everyone hold their thoughts until then, ok?   I won't be able to watch and write until I get home from work.

Update 2:

While you're waiting, this will have to do.

From the comments: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that, a young man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of an uppercut to the jaw & a kick to the kneecap, followed by the removal of his wallet and running like hell."

On being broke

MAD MEN HAS BEEN PURCHASED!  And I will put up the email receipt here when I get it - not because I think you won't believe me, but that purchase, for me, is so incredibly meaningful now.

Five very kind people believed enough in my writing to give me money to buy the Mad Men season when I am scraping by this month, and just couldn't conjure the money from anywhere (and also, we have an extra $2, which we are going to use to single-handedly change the world.  If we donate to Planned Parenthood, it will be those very $2 that make the difference and turn the tide and repeal all the chipping away at abortion rights.  Those $2 will stop state control of women's bodies, and maybe save a kitten from a tree).

This is incredibly humbling.  For many reasons, and some of them very personal - I started this blog without any expectation of a readership, but then it went ahead and became a community.  The blog has been a supportive space, a constant joy, and a place to connect; there are people here who have come to be my email friends and my in-person friends, and I hope some of my email friends will some day become my in-person friends (Miss Minx and William and Shannyn and ASP, I am looking at you).  I get emails and comments telling me that I was a help in some way to someone, and that is a glorious thing, to know that you can tell your (often painful) story and have it become a positive force.

But then, for people to believe in my writing enough to pay to help me do it . . . I am very thankful, and so very complimented.  Feminist blogs have addressed before the fact that women often do not value their own work or worth, whether it is in asking for money for the services they are usually expected to provide for free, or asking for a raise at work.  Women have always been asked in childcare, home care, care of elders, care of family members with disabilities, to silently sacrifice and do the work of taking care of people, and often society's most vulnerable people, for free, or at low pay.  Women's work outside the home is criminally underpaid - "women's" jobs, like teaching, are not valued through salaries and women still don't get paid the same as men in comparable positions.  It's endemic, and when I contemplated asking for money, I knew that, I knew that my own devaluing of my work and time and product had greater implications.  It was a part of the reason I asked for the money.

I was a little frightened that if I did ask for donations, then Mad Men would seem like work, something owed, an obligation; but right now, this morning, having just purchased it and knowing I get to start writing about it tomorrow, I am absolutely tickled and thrilled and it makes it so much more special, in a way, to know that the writing I will do is a gift that has been given to me.  It makes it precious.  I cannot wait to begin.  And also, I hope that everyone sticks around, and lets their friends know this space will exist every week to discuss Mad Men. Discussion spaces do exist, like at The Onion's AV Club, but they are not explicitly feminist, anti-racist, queer; they are not predominantly interested in discussing, say, the intersection of class and gender roles, and can veer into some very misogynistic places.  I am hoping we can discuss the show from a feminist, queer, anti-racist place here, and if any show is ripe for that, it is Mad Men (and speaking of which, if you'd like to start, read the letter printed at Jezebel to the Drapers from Carla, their black maid.  It's very good).

But also, while this post is a big thank you letter (THANK YOU!), I was sitting on the couch working on a memo yesterday when I realized something: people never talk about money.  I mean, we talk about economics, but not our own personal finances.  I will go around and tell people the story of my worst sexual nightmare, of being raped; I will tell them about my period and how much my cramps suck and how I have really heavy bleeding; I will tell them how dysfunctional my family is and how my mother is crazy.  But while I can tell the story of how I was raped, I will NEVER, EVER tell anyone about how broke I am, not really, not how much I am struggling or how it keeps me up at night and causes panic attacks and makes me worry how I will eat for the week.

For the past two weeks, I haven't slept for the panic attacks at night over money.

I think much of it is a shame thing; here in America, we have this American Dream, and we are all supposed to be yanking ourselves up by our bootstraps (which: what are those, anyway) and to need money or be broke or god forbid poor is a shameful thing, a personal failure, evidence of poor character.  It is YOUR fault if you are poor - America is the land of opportunity!  It must be YOU that is the problem.  And so you have this current streak of people of wealth and means saying that poor people are lazy, they choose poverty, they just want to mooch off the state, they are just refusing to help themselves, poor children should just dumpster-dive for food.  And, of course, this is all tied to race - Tim Wise gave an excellent speech at Netroots Nation yesterday (it's here, starting at about minute 26, and I REALLY recommend watching it) about how the lack of an economic safety net for everyone now is due to racism - if the Right can portray social services as something that black people take advantage of, those services get defunded.  So, with welfare - the average person on welfare is white and female and lives rurally.  But in the '80's under Reagan, and then again when Clinton signed the welfare reform bill in '96, the Right used this spectre of the black welfare queen who was lazy and living off the state to turn public resentment against welfare programs.  It is white racial resentment that means we do not have the public option in healthcare - the Right has managed to characterize this as "racial redistribution."

You can see the racism when white people are now forced to go on welfare; I wrote about it here, where the white woman wants to assert she isn't like THOSE (black) people on welfare.  You see it in the way racism is used in the Tea Party; it's no surprise that the Tea Partiers are white and wealthy and, CLEARLY, often racist.  They talk about how it's not fair for THEM (black people) to get their hard earned money, how it's a CRIME, I tell you, to have to pay taxes to support those no good, lazy unemployed people who are of course referenced with racist dog whistles.  Of course, the racism helps keep poor folks divided, to point out who is really oppressing them - the rich.  I mean, LOOK:

 

And people are running around calling Obama socialist.  OVER THIS:

I think it is not without reason that Martin Luther King was assassinated just when he was turning his attentions to uniting all poor people, black and white, in a struggle against classism.  And it was Shirley Sherrod's very similar speech, that was really about how it's the haves and the have-nots, NOT white vs. black, that got her fired.

And all this social taboo and racism and shame over money matters means: no one I know really talks about personal finances, or how they personally struggle, or how they are drowning in credit card debt.  Not really.  Most people I know have parental support to get through law school, or are married and have a working spouse, or got a hell of a lot more scholarship money than I did.  And I have trouble admitting how broke I am, how scared I am, how I am honestly worried that I will be unable to get a bar loan after I graduate law school, which everyone needs (to pay for rent and food while studying for the bar, but also pay for the bar, which is $3400.00, you guys) and won't be able to take the bar or the classes to pass the bar and I will be fucked.  Because my credit is so bad now and I am drowning in credit card debt (LET ALONE school debt, which with my law and undergraduate school combined, will be over $200,000.  WHO KNOWS how I am paying that back).

So, I am going to talk about my being broke here.  And maybe you are broke!  Or were previously broke!  If you would like to also share about this, please do in comments!  Because it occurs to me, we have no feminist economic theory.  We cannot learn how to manage money better, get tips from others, plan better, or come together, if we are silent about it. 

My family has never had much money - we were lower middle class, working class, and it was always hard.  My parents struggled, a lot.  I remember many, MANY yelling fights over finances growing up.  The looming monster of finances always threatened to eat us up.  I spoke to my mother yesterday, and she said she felt like money was part of what ruined our family - she could go to work every day and forget those money problems, leave them, and be a different person, a person who doesn't stay up all night worrying, who doesn't have the deep dread that lives at the bottom of your gut when you sit down to do bills.  But then she would come home.

My lesson from that growing up?  Was to hate money.  But also, not manage it well.  I don't save (which, ok, not that I have had much choice - I have never been an adult without education debt to pay off, and it makes no good financial sense to save before your loans are paid off, because: interest), but mostly: I like using money to make people happy.  If I get money, I buy people things, use it to go out to dinner, spend it to make people happy.  Because money, for me, growing up, was all about misery and struggle, and I love when I can make it something else.

So why am I so broke now?  Well, I taught for 6 years, and never got paid much.  I was always paying off college loans.  I couldn't save.  But then one of those "life happens" type things came along, and it threw me deeply into the red.  And let me be clear: I am VERY LUCKY - this was no great tragedy.  For many Americans, it is the bursting of the housing bubble, the draining of their pensions, the lack of healthcare or having crappy healthcare (which is the only kind we have in this country) and sudden huge healthcare costs like the diagnosis of cancer, that suddenly left them spinning off their axis without any ability to get their finances back on solid ground. 

For me, my sudden financial emergency was much less money, and a much smaller thing.  In fact, he is lying right next to me.  Here is a large reason why I am in debt:

I seriously just leaned over and took this picture.  He's always this cute.

Amouch is the most expensive thing I own.  Before I went to law school, he swallowed a very long red thread that to this day I do not know where he got.  It looped around the bottom of his tongue, but the rest went down, and then began bunching up his intestines, as they tried to push the string though, but couldn't, and instead got wound around it.  He was fine one day, and then bad the next - I wasn't sure what was going on, I waited a day, thought maybe he ate something bad, but by the time I finally rushed him to the emergency vet, he was dying.  They would put him in surgery for hours, cutting open his intestine in six different places to get the string out, cutting away the intestine that had died from lack of blood flow and sewing the healthy parts together.  All told, this would cost me $6,000.

Which I still think is a bargain - hell, if a similar surgery had happened on a person, I can't even imagine how large the price tag would be at the end.  My boyfriend at the time (he is a bad person, I know) ragged on me about paying it, saying how could I have done that?  How could I have put that much money into just a pet?  I didn't have to put myself into debt like that.  And no, I guess I didn't, but when your sweet cat is dying in your arms and you are crying and you can save him by just handing over your credit card, how do you NOT just do that?

So I did.  And Amouch is still alive!  And purring next to me!  YAY!  I mean, look at that picture!  SO CUTE.  But that money on the credit card, I couldn't pay it off.  I was applying to law school, which was INSANELY expensive (why are people in law school such privileged fuckers?  Because only privileged kids can afford to go), and then I had to move, and that was expensive, and then I went on student loans, which aren't quite enough to cover my expenses.  So I had to keep relying on the credit card, which not only could I not pay off, I was adding to.  I had to miss a couple of payments, because my loan money ran out, and then my interest rate got jacked up to 25%, which is where it is now.  My monthly payments are outrageously high, but with my interest rate what it is, it will still take me 30 years to pay off.  (A note on the credit card interest rate - I HATE CREDIT CARDS.  I originally got the card with a really low interest rate back when there were ridiculously low interest rates - it was 4.5%, I DO NOT KID.  But then, that credit card company got taken over by another bank.  And then that bank got eated by a third bank.  And every time a new bank took over, they jacked up my interest rate, though I had NOT MISSED A PAYMENT.  Just because they could).

And so currently, I am very much in credit card debt, with extraordinarily high minimum monthly payments, am not getting paid a living wage, and am worrying about making rent payments.  THE END.

Now, in my life, I have worried, like my mother, with the deep dread in my belly, about dealing with money.  I have refused to look at my bank account out of just sheer fear and panic for so long I've over-drafted.  I spent one summer in undergrad eating the free samples at a supermarket for lunch because I couldn't afford to buy anything else.  I have lived for months only eating the sweet goods that were left over at the coffee shop I worked in, because I had no money for other food.  I could never ask my parents for money - they didn't have any.  But this dread and fear about my credit going awry and not being able to pay a credit card debt down, this is new.  And I hate it.  It sucks.

And there are those desperately fearful moments when you just so need to be able to conjure money somehow, some way, and you know you just can't.  It's like slamming into a wall.  And I am just broke, guys, and it is just at the moment.  I am not poor.  I cannot even imagine what poverty is like.  I feel like those surveys that are always done to show us that money doesn't make you happy or that poor people are not unhappier than rich people are meant to justify taking away social safety nets and make rich people feel like it's fine they give no money to charity.  Happiness is NOT the right question.  I want to see a survey about levels of anxiety and stress and worry in people's lives, and I bet THOSE studies will come out all different.

So, that's the story.  I am trying to look at options, and see if I can get my parents to co-sign on a private loan (assuming they are even solid enough financially as per the bank to co-sign, I don't know), even though I hate asking them, because, well, my mother is crazy, and I don't like having to go to her for help.  But, student loan is WAY BETTER than credit card debt.  And right there, look at that privilege!  Many people have no options, and I may have some kind of band-aid right now.  Won't fix the bullet-wound, but most people don't even have that salve.

That's the story of my broke-ass self.  There are so many stories, I am sure, from people reading here of poverty, of struggle, of barely making ends meet.  If you would like to share them, please do.  Because we cannot be ashamed anymore, of our poverty, our broke-ness.  It keeps us from fighting back against unfair economic systems, the racism that takes social safety nets away from everyone, the way that the Right controls the message about poor people being lazy and rich people shouldn't be have their hard earned money "looted."  And it keeps us from examining the privileges we do have, and seeing what further divides us (I just had the time to spend a couple hours writing a blog post.  In many ways, I am a lucky, lucky lady).  Steve Biko said, "The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."  Given the racist, classist war on the have-nots in the United States right now, we can not allow them to have that weapon.

TWO DAYS. Also, I contemplate the donation thing, uncomfortably.

I love Mad Men.  I love it for what it says about race, class, gender, sexuality; I love it for its slick, controlled beauty that hides the chaos and dark tragedy underneath; I love it for its messy characters, never easy, making me love them and then hate them and then love them again in the span of one episode.  I love how sorry I feel for Betty as a fellow lady, stuck more than I will ever be in a role which bores and angers her; but then I hate her for her privilege and entitlement, which makes her mean and small and ungenerous.  I love Peggy and Joan as my feminist fore-mothers, although they may not have called it themselves that, for they were the ones who hit those glass ceilings and pushed and pushed and knew that they were better than what they were told they could be, that the system was unfair and gamed against them, and they refused to give in, even if the ways in which they fight back are so different.  And I can't help but love Don Draper, despite the fact he is a terrible human being sometimes, because he was such an underdog once, and a wounded human being, and we are all that wounded, desperate human being, too.

I said that I would start blogging about each episode of Mad Men, and give people a feminist space to discuss the show here.  I also don't have a TV, and buying the season on itunes is $30.  Which: I will just scrape by paying rent for this month.  I don't have that $30 (by the way, I have definitely contemplated going to friends homes to watch episodes, but I know I am going to sometimes need to watch an episode at least twice or rewatch certain parts (I have the world's worst memory for moving pictures, you wouldn't believe) or even not go all the way across the city to get to a friend's TV for a show that starts at 10pm Sunday night before I can post, which is why I sort of need the itunes subscription).  And I am torn about if I should ask for help from readers here, if they can, so that I can pay for the season and blog about it and we can all talk about it.  I am conflicted because there are other causes and people that need more money than me, and this is essentially a gift, a pleasure, for me, to watch Mad Men and write about it, and NOT a necessity, and people should reserve money for those who really have needs; because I have hardly been around long enough as a blog with a solid readership and enough product let ALONE good enough product for me to feel justified in asking for any money; and also, because I struggle with the honest truth that I just don't value my writing, or my time, very much, and I don't think other people should give money towards something that is not worthy of being supported yet.  This is more a personal thing, this last one; I could write sentences like Don motherfucking DeLillo and I would still think my writing was not valuable because, well, those are the (especially lady) demons I deal with.

I change my mind by the hour, whether I want to ask for donations for this, or not.  I tell myself that it would be a feminist act for me to value my labor and time, and I should ask for donations; then I tell myself it would be a feminist act for everyone to go give their dollars instead to Planned Parenthood, who is doing infinitely better feminist things than I am watching Mad Men and dishing about what Joan was wearing (I promise I won't only dish about what Joan was wearing when I blog about episodes, but come on, how can one NOT at least mention what Joan is wearing?).  I wonder if I will write better blog posts because we have all  made them possible and I am contributing to this very amazing little community with each post, or if it will just be harder to write blog posts, feeling it is a job now, a thing of obligations, not merely a pleasurable endeavor.

So.  I am totally unsure of how I feel about a donate button.  I guess if I am going to put a donate button here, I would say: if you are thinking about giving me money, cut it in half, and give the other half to a good cause.  Or, just give all of it to a good cause.  Or maybe you are super broke right now like me and you need to keep your buck to buy food, which: I HEAR YOU.  Also, I don't know how to shut this thing off after I get to $30, if I get there?  I guess I will just post STOP.  If I get more than $30 (well, technically, $29.99 - and don't you hate when things are priced like that?  WE ARE NOT CHILDREN, businesses, we know that's $30 really) I will donate the rest to charity, and feel free to suggest somewhere you think the money should go.  Otherwise, I will give it to Planned Parenthood or Medecins Sans Frontieres or the DC Rape Crisis Center or something.

Ok, I can't tell if this is making me a terrible person or not, but here it is:

[NO, IT'S NOT.  I just took it away.  There is $32 towards the Mad Men fund!  Already!  Thank you ever so much to people who gave - you'll hear from me tomorrow - but also, to everyone else, thank you, too.  More shall be written in the morn . . . it's stunning to me, in asking for donations, how much shame, for me, revolves around struggles with money.  And tomorrow, I wanna talk about it.  But for now: THANK YOU, again!]  

Oh, god, that is freaking me out.  Ok.  Breathe, Gayle.  ALSO.  If you do give me any money (and please don't feel the need to give me like more than a buck, because if everyone just gave me a buck, that would be PLENTY) and some of my personal information pops up, can you let me know?  Because I will whisk that damn button down sooner than you can say, "But maybe I also want to donate?"  I would, as mentioned before here, really, really not like certain people to find me (meaning my rapist, who has certainly tried, but especially now that I have, uh, trashed specific people (like professors) and my job before on this site?  Also those folks).  And my safety is way more important than Mad Men, obviously.

And finally: thank you.  Thank you, thank you, thank you, whether you can donate or not, whether you care about Mad Men or not, whether you think I am out of line asking for money for this or not.  If anything, this is an exercise in me attempting to value my own time and effort.  And in that vein: I am practicing this.

Storytime - on how I was almost a kept woman

I just watched the film An Education last night, and it was good, though problematic - it was too easy, too tight, not messy enough to be like real life.  It was terribly amoral in some ways as well - I think the NY Times review catches that perfectly.  Also, it was clear it had not been written by a woman.  There is a certain tone, ability of speaking, way of looking at the world when you are raised as a girl - it is not inherent, I absolutely do not believe, but it is cultural, and even the most feisty of us, the most rebellious, adopt it; it is merely the consequence of having been raised as a female in a patriarchal society.  I am thinking of the book Middlesex, here, which an awful lot of people liked, but I thought wasn't very good - the narrative voice rung totally false with me, it was too pretentious, too contrived, it took up too much space for a person that had been raised many decades ado as a woman to have used.  Which isn't to say that all women speak alike.  It is merely to point out that the patriarchy, it takes its toll, and we cannot escape it; if the narrative tone of a movie or book seems to be coming from somewhere that has never been oppressed or unprivileged, then I cannot wholly buy into the female voice.  In these cases, male authors seem to have come to the endeavor with all their privilege unchallenged, and so miss the mark on writing about the experience of being a girl or woman.

As it turns out: the screenplay of An Education was written by Nick Hornby.  Enough said.  (Who!  I do not dislike.  But: he is not a good fit, I think, for this story).

ANYWAY.  I am not attempting a movie review, although there is plenty to talk about here, especially as a feminist; the movie presents the two options open to women in the 1950's - either being asexual, prim schoolmums off to college to make their own ways, or marrying into wealth and being kept women.  When the lady protagonist finds a man who seems to be of great wealth, her father completely gives up his quest to get this young lady to Oxford - why do it the hard way, he says, when you've gotten where you want to be through a man?  There is a lot going on with class, too, in the movie, and race,  and there is much to say, but, as I said, I am not attempting a movie review.

No, instead, I am going to tell a story, a story I had rather forgotten, rarely ever repeat, and if I do, I will spend no more than a handful of sentences in telling it.  When I was 19, a man of wealth offered to "keep" me.

After my first year in college, I wanted to do something fun with my summer, take a break; I'd had an awful bout of depression at Smith, so I wanted to run around, be in the sunshine, do something that wouldn't be so terribly heavy - I didn't feel strong enough to apply to internships doing activist work or anything.  So I started applying to be a counselor at summer camps.  One of the camps, an arts camp deep in the Adirondacks, took me as their sport director, which seemed perfect.  I'd grown up in the visual arts, and I was happy to play glames with children all day.  I couldn't think of anything better.

And the camp truly was beautiful.  It was really in the center of nowhere, deep in the woods, with a gorgeous lake, and plenty of forest land to tramp around in.  I got there early to help set up, and found myself among a terrific amount of foreigners - it is a thing, I suppose, to have counselors come from abroad; the camp paid them less, it seemed, but then they used whatever money they earned to travel about in the U.S. before heading home.  I was around mostly guys, too, in the beginning, and I would remain closest friends with boys all summer.  Though I made good lady friends, my frequency of mucking about with the dudes, combined with my frankness about sex, inspired all manner of crazy rumors to spread about the camp about who I was fucking and when and how often and where (and, of course, I wasn't fucking anyone at all, at the height of these rumors - but then, slut-shaming is about keeping women in line, not about the actual sex they are having).  Also, these dudes were wonderful; after not seeing one of them for a decade, I went and stayed with him in London for several days, and it was so lovely.  He is still as stunningly brilliant a person as I remembered.  So.  Camp was a good time (also, I learned how good I am with kids, and how much I love being surrounded by them.  I have to thank camp for making me realize I could be a good teacher).

At some point, towards the beginning of camp, there was a Scottish bloke who took a fancy to me.  He was a bit older, though I can't remember by how much - perhaps he was 28?  29?  He did a lot of the maintenance work around the camp, and took to it with a cheeriness I didn't understand at first - it helped when he explained later that working with his hands and doing grunt work was a vacation of sorts for him.  He was an incredibly gentle, good-natured guy, always smiling and laughing, and one of the first things he told me was that he was bisexual, as if I would reject him for it, instead of the case that it made me like him more.  There was pain, too, underneath, something dark that haunted him though he tried to tamp it down, and that also drew me to him.

It wasn't serious, me and this dude.  Or: I didn't think it was serious.  It made no sense that it would be serious - we had maybe two months left of camp, and then we'd go off to do other things, like, for me, go back to college, but also, we never DISCUSSED it being serious.  I never claimed to be not making out with other dudes, because I was, and I wouldn't lie.  It just never came up.  We didn't call it "our relationship."  We were dating, yes, but it was at a summer camp, and I suppose the close proximity of everyone and everything in that fixed place and time would seem to scale any open, loose thing down - I think I never quite got that, although he did, and everyone else there would act inexplicably dramatic, to me, about what needn't be.  For me, it was summer camp.  There were pretty boys to kiss.  I wasn't planning on marrying anyone. 

Well.

At some point, I realized that this Scottish gentleman was becoming a bit too overly enamored with me.  And not me, really, per se, but the Manic Pixie Dream Girl that I seemed to represent (I have spoken with my friend Silvana before about why this tends to happen to me, but we have never come up with an answer - the idea of me is intensely lovable, apparently.  But the idea of  me seems to obliterate the actual me).  As this was a pretty tired trope as far as I was concerned, even at 19, I started to be concerned about where this was going.  And just when I was thinking, um, maybe I should address this, he decided to tell me the story of the deep, painful thing that plagued him.  And he told me because I asked about the ring he always wore, a silver ring, of maybe 5 braided silver strands, thick and heavy.

When this bloke was a much younger man, he decided, after watching his parents struggle financially, that he was going to make money.  He had no interest in school, dropped out, and became, after much time and working himself up, the equivalent of Avon Barksdale in The Wire - he was a big drug kingpin.  He didn't do the drugs, he moved them, distributed them, he was the business manager over a great deal of illegal product all over Scotland.  He explained a great deal of this business to me and how it worked and how he worked in it, everything from fake IDs to mules to money laundering, but I have forgotten the details, and had a hard time focusing given the shock of the strange news.  The ring belonged to his former best friend, who had also been his bodyguard, and was subsequently was killed over a drug money dispute trying to protect him.  And this guy, well, once his best friend was killed over nothing more than cocaine and money, realized how bankrupt he was as a person, and he wanted out of the drug trade.  He began to ferret away a great deal of money, more than he already had in his possession (which was considerable), and started to extract himself from the business, which I remember sounding like not so easy a thing to do.  It involved moving and cutting a lot of people off and basically building a new identity from scratch.  And now he was out, had been sticking to only legal work for over a year, but he wore the ring of his best friend to remind him how dear the friend was, and how fucked up what he had been doing had been.  He cried, explaining this.

. . . . I know, right?  But he also told me how much money he had, and it was A LOT.  Like, A LOT.  I cannot stress how much A LOT.  And he had invested it, but mostly didn't touch it (he was living off of interest, I think) because it felt like there was blood on that money.  Which there was.

So!  Ok, I didn't break up with the kid.  Because: how the fuck do you break off your casual dating relationship after that?  And the entire story, it was so emotional, and fascinating in how unbelievably fucked it is.  I remember my first question being, "So . . . you're wearing a dead man's ring?"  This was completely beyond the pale for me.  That ring, in my head, symbolized not his friend, but how through his own stupid greed he had gotten his friend killed.  There was blood on that ring, too, not just on his money.  And it bothered me, the very physical presence of that silver band.  I felt like that ring represented something evil and pointless.  I wanted it away from me.  But I didn't say anything at the time.

The summer went on.  I continued to date this boy.  He continued to grow ever more enamored.  It was beginning to really irk me, how in love with the Manic Pixie Dream Girl he was getting.  I was beginning to feel invisible, underneath.  But he was a terribly kind, gentle man, as I'd said, and was so generous and good to me, I couldn't really put my finger on why I needed to stop seeing him, let alone find the language to explain it ("Manic Pixie Dream Girl" would not be coined for a number of years, kids).   He grew increasingly agitated as the summer wound down that he would lose me.  He started using the "l" word, and I always said thank you, though I never told him I loved him back. 

Maybe two weeks before I was to leave to go back to school, we were sitting in the woods together, talking.  And he slipped his ring off, the one from his dead friend, and out of nowhere, proposed to me with it.  My head nearly exploded.  I physically withdrew from the offered ring, because I hated that thing.  I spluttered.  I think I may have laughed at some point.  I remember asking him, "What are you thinking?"  He barely knew me, I had to go back to finish school, I had never wanted to get married.

So he changed his proposal.  Look, he said.  I have so much money.  I don't use it for anything worthwhile.  You told me how far into debt you are going with college.  So why don't we put the money to good use - Edinburgh has an astoundingly good university.  Let me pay for your college.  You are terribly clever and love to learn and I would be so happy to be able to do that for someone.  You will save the world one day.  Come to Edinburgh, and I will pay for anything.

Outright, I said no.  No way.  It was a trap, I told him, a cage; I'd always be indebted to him, always have to be bound to him, and not out of choice.  I could not bear the idea of being so stuck in a relationship as that, required to play a good, willing partner, because if I stopped the charade, I would be left with nothing.  I could not agree to be a pretty thing he kept on a leash, with his money.

He assured me that wasn't what he had meant.  He wanted to use some of his money to create something, do good in the world, pay for something that mattered, and as he said, if anyone would use their degree, I would.  He would not make it contingent on any relationship.  I could see him or not as I liked, and we could put the money in a trust, drawn up by a lawyer.  But he loved me very much, and he wanted to do this for me.  I ran out of protestations in the face of his calm solutions, and I told him I would think about it.

I will never know, to this day, if it would have been as easy as he'd made it sound.  Maybe it would have.  But rarely does anything in life turn out easy, and I knew that there would be strings attached with the money he gave me no matter what legal barriers and protections we put in place.  Still, I was a bit intoxicated by the idea - I mean, I'd been aching to go abroad (I would spend the next summer in India).  And Edinburgh was supposed to be lovely, and the university was excellent, and to graduate with no loans, well . . . that seemed like freedom itself.  And why shouldn't I accept this ill-gotten money?  Why not put it to good use?  Why look a gift horse in the mouth, as it were, when I could stop struggling over money, my parents could stop struggling over their inability to help me pay for college?  Maybe this was really a gift from the universe.

I did think about it, over several days.  To every concern I raised, he talked out an answer.  He spoke of setting me up in my own apartment, of taking me shopping and seeing to anything I needed, going traveling with me over school breaks to Paris, Vienna, doing everything I'd always wanted to do if money were not a constant worry.  And because he was so reverent, almost, of my intelligence, my dedication to learning, my adoration of school, it seemed like part of what he really wanted to do was be able to cultivate in someone else what he had never had but had always admired.

Here I am, right now, so obviously: in the end, I had to decline the offer.  He was heartbroken, because I believe he loved me, and also because he loved the idea of doing something good with his money, something high-minded and useful, of contributing something to the world through me.  But I knew, if I accepted, I would be inescapably bound to that man, regardless of any contract we wrote up, and I would always feel that I would have to be grateful, and that I could never be grateful enough.  I would be plagued by my inability to ever properly give thanks, and thus never be able to tie up affairs and walk away.  I wonder about this Scottish gentleman sometimes, though I don't dare search him out; I do not think I want to know him now, though I wish him well.  I do know that I did hurt him, and break his heart a bit, and for that I am sorry, as I am sorry for anyone who have hurt, even if incidentally.  But I cannot imagine who I would be and where I would be now, if I had accepted the offer to be "kept," to be completely provided for.   

At the same time, this boy never knew me, not really.  If he had really known me, and seen me not as just the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, he would have known that I could never have said yes.  That was what made me so sure, ultimately, that I would have to say no.  He had no concept, no hint of who I was, at all, to have even proposed this in the first place, and I could not bear the thought of someone so large and domineering in my life, legal protections or not, never being able to see me.  I could not resign myself to invisibility, no matter the exchange.

And that's the story of how Gayle, unrepentant feminist, could have become a kept woman.  Now I am going to actually go do my work for today, because a girl has to get paid, and there is no wealthy Scottish bloke to whisk me away from it all.  And: word.

Fighting and fatigue. And poetry.

Right now, I am sitting in my cubicle thing, listening to a civil rights organization that does work on criminal law strategize over how to make federal drug sentencing laws only 18 times more racist, as opposed to the 101 times more racist they currently are.

I spoke to a young intern with the group while getting coffee, and she said they'd like to get it down to only FIVE TIMES MORE RACIST, but they definitely wouldn't have the votes in Congress for that.

And I think: what the fuck is wrong with us?

How did we get here?  How has the dialogue about race in this country gotten so inverted and cowardly?  How is Congress even thinking about dipping into social security and plunging seniors into poverty?  Why are we fully funding two wars but allowing massive teacher layoffs? 

Digby has written about this before, but shit has gotten sadistic.  And in the face of this, I am trying not to give in my urge to cut and run - give up, stop fighting to save the world, throw up my hands and go, "FINE, Americans, FUCK YOU.  You wanna ruin everything GO AHEAD."  It feels like too much; it feels like there is a storm of stupidity, and it will blow everything away.  I feel helpless in the face of this tornado of ignorance, rabid meanness, blatant lies, lack of generosity, dearth of wisdom or grace, and resentfulness of intellectualism and thought.  I want to give up.  I want to give in.  I feel like I am in the fucking NeverEnding Story where the Rockbiter says that his two strong hands were not enough to save his friends from the Nothing, and so he will just sit there and let the Nothing take him, too.

If I had to choose either giving into the Nothing or continuing to fight, it would be a hard choice, at the moment.

And.  This is what happens  - you fight, you lose a lot, and I mean A LOT lately, and you want to give up.  This happens when I start judging my battles for good by successes or failures.  That is a dangerous road.  Of course we are fighting in the hopes of succeeding - no one fights a battle they don't want to win.  But it can't just be about the winning, because sometimes, the winning doesn't come in your lifetime, or it doesn't come at all.  And do I think that is actually a reason to give up?  Not really.

I have the tendency to think long-term, think big picture, and when I do that, I am overwhelmed, and I want to shut down.  If I look at the big picture, I am a grain of sand in the face of a tsunami rushing towards the beach to wash me away.  Those long-term, big picture views are helpful for strategy, for planning, but that cannot be how I judge the value of whatever I am fighting for.  Or the usefulness of fighting. 

So instead, I know I need to remind myself of the rightness of what I am trying to do.  The blessing that really being able to help people is.  The gratefulness that I am in a place where I can help people, try to do good, that I have been able to attend law school and then use that to try to bring justice.

I don't fight because I think I will win.  I fight because it is the only thing worth doing.  Either I find succor and strength in the fighting, or I won't find it at all.  Because even if we win a battle, there is still a greater war waiting.  And I know what happens when I "give up."  I know that is when I lose.

So over-dramatic sounding, I know.  But it is that dramatic, isn't it?  I mean, what else am I doing here, taking up space on this planet?  I do not deserve anything.  I am entitled to nothing - not even my life.  So unless I find some meaning, some reason, some way to get up in the morning . . . well, then, what is there?  What are we but what we create, imagine, fight for, live for?  What am I but my idealism, after all?  And my desires, my beliefs, my humanity, my righteous anger?

I have become very attached to the poem Stanzas, Sexes, Seductions by Anne Carson lately.

"I do not want to be a person. 

              I want to be unbearable."   

Those two short lines have been echoing in my mind.  Because once I separate myself from being a person, I feel less small.  Less frustrated.  Less like I am going to be swept away.  Being unbearable means I cannot be confined, cannot be carried, moved, drowned, destroyed.  I am a force, and not an object.  If I am unbearable, I am larger, more diffuse, more powerful than anything that was held in the envelope of my body; I have become the forces that inspire me to work to do good, the humanity, the hopes, the idealism.  I want to forget the the winning or losing, forget the score.  I want to be something that cannot be defeated, put down, discouraged.  I want to be why I am fighting, not just a fighter.

So, today, I am working on becoming unbearable.  I am working on being what I have so often been called - a force of nature.  I am working on reminding myself of why I ever took up arms in the first place, why I have been saying since I was 5 years old that all I ever wanted to do was save the world, and letting the rightness of that attempt and its humanity and humility and hope shore me up, rather than any faith in winning.   

And then, I will begin again.

I am having one of those days . . .

. . . where I have decided to eschew intimate relationships with other people FOR EVER AND EVER UNTIL THE END OF TIME THE END.

You have had that day, undoubtedly.  And probably more than once.  There is that extraordinarily gutting form of loneliness that only other people can bring.

It has always been a thing of awe, to me, that we manage to buck up and heal and then trust, throw ourselves wholeheartedly into relationships, love again.  At the moment, though, I can't imagine I could do any such things; I haven't even begun to contemplate the reverberations of having someone with whom I was very much in love and intimate for over a decade rape me.  I act like there aren't any reverberations.  That's probably not right, though.  I think this most recent scrape with an abusive friendship has sent me off my orbit into some outer space where I just can't ground myself all, or keep myself upright, or know which direction I am facing.  I'm just . . . floating.

I'll come back down to earth though, eventually.  My feet will again find solid ground.  Right?

Ewww.

I am supposed to be doing work right now (yes, on this lovely Saturday night), but I can't not tell this story.

So, I have three new roommates.  The crazy old roommate who drove everyone batty and my two other perfectly agreeable roommates all finished their masters programs and have gone forth to other things.  One of my three new roommates, M., the one who lives on the top floor with me, is just lovely.  She is smart and funny and very enjoyable to be around.  We tend to make fun of my other two roommates who came as a pair, and who are very young, and immature, and act like children, and are also, just, well . . . dumb.  The two of them combined have less good sense than a dresser drawer.

These two dim people are also just crappy roommates - they leave shit everywhere and never clean up after themselves and let the mail pile up by the door because they just throw it on a chair and ignore dirty dishes for ages and if they make a mess they just walk away from it, etc.  You may have had these roommates.  They have, by any objective standard, the world's worst taste in music, and they insist on playing it as loud as fucking possible.  Also, they must be the kids we were warned about who would grow up on youtube and thus develop ADD, or something, because they can't even finish a shitty song without switching to another shitty song.  They have bitchy catty screaming fights with each other (I know the implications of using bitchy and catty, I am using them on purpose - last time they fought as LOUD AS POSSIBLE at MIDNIGHT, they were fighting over who was really flirting with a boy or not or something.  They are backstabby to each other).  Their favorite movie is John Tucker Must Die.  One of them, her favorite books are the Twilight series; the other, her favorite book is The Secret, and she owns the movie (did you know there was a movie?  Me neither.  There is).

So.  Ok.  About a week ago, there started to be this awful, rancid-food smell in the downstairs.  It would hit you as soon as you walked into the front door.  It just pervaded the first floor (or ground floor, for you Europeans), and it was getting worse.  It wasn't coming from the trash, and so the source was just kinda a mystery.  M. wondered if the cats had killed something and left it somewhere, but we'd never had any mice or anything before.  I decided it was coming from the drain in the kitchen sink, as it was really strong right around there, and M. agreed.  After grabbing breakfast at the diner this morning, M. and I stopped by the market and picked up white vinegar and a lemon (because, clearly, if we didn't deal with this, the other roommates sure as hell wouldn't).  We dumped the vinegar down the sink, waited a bit, and then I threw a lemon through the garbage disposal.  The stench seemed to subside, somewhat, although that may only be because the kitchen now smelled like vinegar and lemon.

About an hour ago, I went downstairs to make dinner, and the stink was STILL THERE.  Ok, I told myself, we just need to air out the house.  It's just lingering.  I went to make food, and decided I really wanted some steamed broccoli to toss in my salad.  And because it was such a little amount, I figured I'd just steam it in a bowl in the microwave.  I dumped the chopped broccoli in a little round tupperware and opened the microwave door.

The stench slammed me in the fucking face.  I staggered back like I had actually been physically struck and started gagging.  It was so disgusting, I thought I would retch.  Inside the microwave was chicken breast, still in the package from the store but the plastic distended to its utmost due to the rotting, gone all liquidy and greenish and generally just decomposing in the most odorous manner it could.

Someone put that chicken in the microwave at least a week ago and forgot it. 

Thank god I am a vegetarian; if I weren't already, I might have just become one. 

And also, after law school, I am never ever ever ever ever having fucking roommates again.  The end.

Update:
So as it turns out, now when the mircrowave is used, as I tried this morning, that foul smell left by the chicken just fills the kitchen again.  I've cleaned the damn thing out with white vinegar, twice.  Any ideas how I can get rid of the lingering smell?  Will baking soda do the trick, you think?  Or are we just going to have to wait this out?

Second Update:
One of those two roommates came to see me late last night, after I'd already wrote the post.  It turns out the two roommates I wrote about are not speaking - the one who left the chicken in the microwave has a boyfriend, but has been cheating on him, and actively going after the boy that this lady who was confiding to me likes.  The bad-chicken lady has been, in fact, saying TERRIBLE THINGS about this lady confiding to me, to the boy the confiding lady wants to date.  Then I got a WAY too much information story about the bad-chicken lady getting pregnant with a boy while cheating on her boyfriend and then lying to her boyfriend and saying it was his and getting him to pay for the abortion several years ago.

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE, YOU GUYS???

Third Update (I KNOW):
I was just gmail chatting with a friend of mine who has met my roommates, albeit briefly.  I sent her this post, and this is how the conversation went:

R:  i have to know if pregnancy girl was "twilight" or the secret

me:  twilight!!!

R:  HAHAHAHA OF COURSE

Fuck you, Democrats.

Hey folks.  It has been a WEEK here, let me tell you.  I have been so tired and busy, nothing has even gotten me all self-righteously angry.  That is, until yesterday, when GarlandGrey's post, which I think is fantastic and I totally agree with, precipitated my getting salty in the comments.

I'm going to tell you a story:  So once upon a time, there was a woman who ran a national security and human rights law and policy organization.  This was a very impressive, very respected, very well-known lady - she had brought lawsuits defending civil liberties!  And written bills!  And done all kinds of amazing things, like work against racial profiling after 9/11!  She is really expert, this lady.  Well, one day this lady gives a task to her intern, to research and write about the national security exemption to the Freedom of Information Act, and look into other nation's laws and policies about balancing the need to reveal information for the public good against any supposed harm to national security (our courts are WAY OVERLY deferential)(I am going to stop being legal here, bear with me).  So, the intern says, oh, like, when there are human rights abuses, it should be weighted towards disclosure, like that?  And the woman says yes, like that!  And the intern says, oh, ok, like the Abu Ghraib pictures should be released, and the woman freaks out and says NO, YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT, YOU ARE CLEARLY UNINFORMED AND NOT THINKING.  (She said this).

Now the intern is all, uhhhh, whuuuut?  Because under the standards we just talked about, standards you just made up yourself, those pictures should be released!  And then we can prosecute the people who committed crimes against humanity, right?  This is what we want!  And then the woman, she gets VERY mad, and lapses into a speech about Them (aka, "our enemy")(she also said this), how the intern doesn't understand Them, and They come from a culture that only understands an eye for an eye, and They will not think courts and justice are legitimate, They will want blood, and They will hurt our soldiers because They cannot actually understand anything but violence.

"They."

The end.

What is the moral of this story?  THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU ARE IN THE BELTWAY ECHO CHAMBER AND HANG OUT WITH THE VILLAGERS FOR TOO LONG.

Politics, as peddled in Washington, is a load of hogwash.  Have you ever watched a Senate debate?  DON'T.  You will fear for the future of the U.S. and the free world.  The media/lobbyists/talking heads are Villagers who pretty much repeat the same things to each other in the Echo Chamber here, and generally are totally morally and intellectually dishonest, only care about power, and could give a fuck about the public good.  The Echo Chamber of D.C. is what allows Serious People to get credit for intensely asinine or beyond-the-pale things, the Washington Post op-ed page to even exist, and the disconnect between, say, the supermajority of the American population wanting no one to touch Social Security and politicians running around talking about mucking with it.  But this same Echo Chamber has kept torturers safe, the Democratic party from passing any progressive legislation or a decent healthcare bill, allowed the Bush counterterrorism policy to go on unchallenged, and will get the Obama administartion to focus on reducing the deficit instead of creating jobs and getting the economy moving, no matter how shrill The Shrill One gets.  It also means that people who know better start echoing shit they have heard, because it's all you hear, the bullshit.

Look, I have sat in on panels and meetings that are off-the-record with the real movers-and-shakers, including people from the Obama administration, I have tracked legislation, I have gone to hearings, I have researched the legality of all sorts of American actions, and I can tell you: our side, the side of the angels - we are losing.  With a Democratic president and a Democratic majority, we are losing BIG TIME.

We are losing the fight on everything from reproductive rights to civil liberties in the "War on Terror" to getting equal rights for gay folk (yes, we just got a victory in the courts against DOMA, but it's the Obama administration who decided they were going to use our tax dollars to vigorously defend the law).  And so when Garland suggests maybe we shouldn't just continually support DNC anymore, which continually sacrfiices the rights and needs of minorities because "the Other Side is worse," there are a lot of angry commenters who insist that we need to GET IN LINE.  Because the Other Side!  They are worse.

Which is funny, because in my line of work, THE DEMOCRATS ARE THE OTHER SIDE.  I hear the same from a friend of mine who works in immigration and racial profiling.  We are not even the lesser evil, as Nader once pointed out; we are just The Evil.  There is no worse.  We have become the very thing we are pretending to decry.

How did that happen?  Well, we can blame it on the echo chamber, maybe.  But the entire DNC agenda has shifted rightward. Why?

Because no one on the left dug in their heels and said, "No more."  We let our fears trump our idelas.

And this is what allows the Democratic party to be the abusive partner.  Because we women and queer folks and trans folks and all these other minorities, we want things!  Like our BASIC EQUAL RIGHTS.  And the DNC says, yes, give us your money, and we will make that happen.  And then we give the DNC our money, and once they have it, they disappear, they stop caring about our issues, they focus, once again, on only what those in privileged positions care about.  They never call.  They get all "bipartisanship" and date Republicans and leave us at home, waiting by the phone and creeping them on Facebook to try and figure out what they've gotten up to.  We get burned.  But then, an election comes up, and the DNC comes wheedling back, and says, please, we promise to care about you, please give us money!  We're sorry!  We'll do better!  Unlike all the other times!  We still love you!  And if you don't: the Other Side is worse!  They will hurt you! 

Aaaaaand then repeat this cycle ad nauseum.

THIS, Readers, is an abusive relationship.  If this were going on in your personal life, your friends would be all over you to dump this fucker already.  

But my favorite response to refusing to just support Democrats blindly: DON'T BE SO SELFISH.  There are other issues than yours.  Suck it up and be a Democrat, because there are more important things, and you are being unrealistic and egocentric.

Those people who say that?   They don't give a fuck about your rights.  Because they had a choice - they could either support you, or they could not.  They chose not to.  When people say there are other issues that are also on the table, it really means you should subordinate your "little" wants to the ones the privileged majority wants.  Asking that of any minority group is not being an ally.  That is being part of the problem.  That is taking sides, and taking sides against the oppressed group.

Besides, and I mentioned this in comments, have we noticed how crap the Democrats are at governing and getting any progressive legislation passed?  Seriously.  I mean, we got the shittiest option of a health insurance bill out of a hundred better options.  And that HAPPENS because a whole bunch of people said, don't be unrealistic, we'll never get universal coverage or single-payer, STOP BEING SO SELFISH.  Let's just go for the something-is-better-than-nothing approach.  And thus, we have a system that will continue to fuck people over, run by the former CEO of a health insurance giant, that the Democrats will get blamed for for decades.

Look, I understand, and I have written about before, the hard choices that people face in this broken, two party system.  But there is something to be said for making your own personal vote matter (what?  electoral college?  Shhhhhhh, I can't hear you LALALA).  In the sense of: I cannot vote for a man for President who does things like this.  I cannot sleep at night with that on my conscience. 

So, fuck the falling-in-line arguments.  I have played the lesser-of-two-evils game, and we have all lost.  I do not want to turn into that progressive woman who invokes "Them," who has lost her bearing in the Echo Chamber.  I am going to insist any political candidates I support not be part of the problem, not marginalize minorty issues, not have been part of the Village so long they have lost all sense of what needs to be done.  I want better.  I demand better.  And I am going to work towards that actually progressive party I want to see, one of my votes at a time.