writing furiously

i've been thinking a lot lately about who i was and what i was doing a decade ago, a decade and a half.  i was writing writing writing writing.  writing furiously.  writing on my blog.  writing comments on other people's blogs.  writing on message boards.  writing to my friends. 

in person interaction was a lot more limited and frankly that's the way i wanted it.  there's no block button irl.  there's no time to erase, edit, rewrite.  it's not safe.

of course, I learned that the internet isn't safe either.  "sticks and stones" is bullshit WORDS FUCKING HURT whether they're yelled at you in person or typed.  online you can be swarmed, you can be doxxed.  you can be thrown out of virtual community with little effort (this is where that accessible block button shows it's shadow side).

but i took comfort in the distance created by the screen.  frankly, I still do.  if there's a difficult thing to be said, something full of emotions, i'd still rather write it/type it out before i have to deliver it.  because i know words hurt.  I know words are limited, meanings multiple, interpretation real and imagined; and being misunderstood is incredibly painful for me.  and because when i'm in the middle of emotions, I have a very hard time feeling and articulating what I'm feeling at the same time. 

i don't write like that anymore really.  i journal for myself, often lately.  i share the words of others on ig and fb.  i listen and read more.  i'm working on being present with my feelings and not trying to rush through them to articulation.  i'm trying to be more curious.  i talk things through with people i trust and love.  sometimes i wonder what is better, and then I think "not better or worse, just different".  i reflect more now.  i'm learning how to have joy in my life (i hope).  i'm finding that's easier in person.

it also seems like the blogosphere is not what it was.  do people read blogs anymore?  if you are reading this, hi.  :)  but also there's a freedom in anonymity.  it's nice to write this way again after so long.  and maybe some of what i've been working on will be good to share.  maybe it would be nice to be able to trace my evolution here...  if i do, it will be very different than it used to be.

anyway, in the style of my old blogs I will share what I'm reading right now -- adrienne marie brown's "Pleasure Activism" on advice from my sister/friend/life coach/spiritual advisor, Natasha.  It's been interesting, and i'd recommend it.  especially if you, like me, have been trying to find ways to bring more joy into your life, but not divorce it from the very-serious-politics that matter to you.

also, I saw a couple of drafts I left here from 4 years ago and was stunned how much they resonate with my current inner work, i'll probably edit and roll those out also. 

with love and solidarity in joy and chaos,
whatsername

As Soon As You Put Me Down I Run Away

When my friend Natasha did Reiki on me a few weeks ago she noted that in my solar plexus chakra there was an intense and deep seated well of shame.  Juxtaposing this, as she worked on this area she got a very clear image of her child running away joyfully with his father chasing him.

Before she was even halfway through describing this image of her child I was welling up with tears.

That child was me.

As soon as I could walk - I was running.  Ironically I detest running now, but as a toddler and child you couldn't stop me.  It was such a common thing that it became a trope of telling childhood stories about me.  In fact while Natasha was recounting this I thought of one image in particular, one that hasn't left me since.

There's a home movie I've seen a few times of my Dad and I in Tahoe, probably in the summer as I don't remember there being snow.  I think he and my Mom are laughing as they film me.  Or maybe they were just laughing when they showed it to me.  Either way, my Dad is holding me and then he puts me down -- and I promptly take off running in the opposite direction of both of them. I'm small, so he is able to keep up with me fairly easily, but it really was remarkable to watch.  If they'd taken their eyes off of me for a second I'd have gone quite a ways before they could have caught me.  But they're clearly used to this.

I was a fearless child.  I gave exactly zero fucks and you couldn't tell me anything.

I don't really remember now what that felt like.

See, remember the other thing that Natasha got from my chakra energy?  Shame. Intense shame.

That child?  Didn't make it past elementary school.

I guess maybe that's normal.  We do a lot of growing in those years.  But by the time I hit junior high school you wouldn't have recognized me in that child.  Hell, you wouldn't have recognized me as that child by the time 4th grade came to an end.

Part of me is glad of this.  That child was starting to grow into someone that was arrogant and self-righteous.  I can still be rather self-righteous, so gods only know what would have happened if I was left unchecked to develop.  Actually, I think I do kind of know -- I probably would have turned out a lot like Jennifer Lawrence.  I have a lot of empathy (and endless critique) for J Law because gods do I see her.  Do I know her.  Us Leos are SO MUCH if we never learn how to be humble.

Another part of me is kinda pissed that things turned out as they did.  Because through bullies and a constantly anxious mother and poor boundaries I turned into someone who takes everything deeply personally, who was shamed repeatedly for who I was, who felt fear of the world around me and closed myself off to so many experiences because of it.  My teenage and adult life have been spent trying to get 1/8th of that fearless confidence back.  And it's only now, in my early 30s, that maybe I'm just starting to get there.

And yeah maybe that kid would have turned into an asshole if left unchecked.  But they weren't one yet.  They were just a little tomboy femme wanting to experience the world, trusting that their parents had their back, that if they fell down they could get back up, that if they bumped their head they'd be ok after a good cry.  She just wanted to express herself fully, to sing, dance, express -- to enjoy life.  And when I think about her I want to cry, for so many reasons but perhaps foremost because I know they were me, but they feel like a stranger.

Can I re-integrate that energy and harness it for good?  Can I experience that fearlessness and joy again?  Can I come to a humility that isn't based in shame and second-guessing my self-knowledge but in compassionate, non-judgmental and honest assessment of my actions?  I hope so.  That's what I'm working on now.

Crisis of Identity: Green Day and Me

I'm not precisely sure why I am choosing to share THIS of all the stuff I have been writing privately over the last year, but I guess something in me wonders if anyone else might be interested or find it useful or just more generally what responses I might get.  Like, honestly, this is kinda trivial in a way.  Maybe that's why, maybe it's a safer thing to share, sort of.  Anyway, whatever, the point is: I went to a Green Day show tonight and it brought to the surface things I have been feeling for a while but did (well, DO) not want to admit to myself.

I am not connecting with Green Day like I used to.

Let me put this in context: Green Day has been my favorite band since I was about ten years old. So for almost two decades now.  Their being my favorite band is a huge component of who-I-am and how I understand myself.  Their albums have gotten me through (quite literally) the worst times in my life; from coming to terms with my depression and self-hate as an adolescent to coping with my aunt's murder in 2009, and everything in between.  Every album has had something important to say about something that was core to my life at the time that I heard it.

Except this latest one.

I mean there are some good songs on it (and just to make it easy I'm talking about Uno, Dos, Tre! as one album), songs that have gone into rotation as some of my favorites.  But, with the exception maybe of Stay the Night, none have spoken to me in that way that was unique between me and Green Day's music; songs that talked to me about something I needed to hear before I knew I needed it.  Or that said something about myself/my life that I was only just coming to understand.  More generally, and more troubling to me, is that this is the first album that has had songs on it I actively dislike and don't want to listen to, EVER.  I mean it's only one or two but literally that has never happened before.  Even worse, apparently some of the stuff they think is their best on that album, I'm indifferent to at best (like 99 Revolutions).  But, generally, I've been purposefully ignoring this and refusing to admit it to myself.

That ended tonight.

I went to the Green Day show tonight in Berkeley.  It was good.  It was what I have come to expect.  It was familiar in a way that I have found comforting in the past.

But it wasn't what their shows usually are for me.

Generally, going to a Green Day show for me is like going to Church (or rather what going to Church should be).  I feel super connected to the larger world/life/the gods and dance and sing my heart out like no one is watching (a state of bliss I basically never otherwise achieve).  While I had a good time tonight, that feeling did not emerge.  Out of 8 shows I have been do over the past 12 years, this is the first time I haven't felt that way.  And on reflection that really shook me.  Now...maybe this is the case because I did something different this time and went down on the floor and ended up contending with moshpits and almost getting crushed to death for the first half of the show.  That context did make the show hard to enjoy at times, although seeing them pretty up close for the first time was worth it.

But also the show was basically the same one that I've been going to since 2004.

I mean obviously there are some differences in song choices... They've had a couple albums come out since then.  BUT, largely the format (and many of the songs) have stayed the same.  And where that familiarity has been comforting in the past, this time it was...not boring...but less exciting and meaningful than previous.  If you listen to Bullet in a Bible you'll basically hear this same show.

Something has changed; I'm just not sure if it's them or it's me.

I felt this when Billie Joe went into rehab too - like that maybe they are becoming cliche old rock stars. Not totally happy with themselves because their brilliance is spent or in hiding because being-a-rock-star is so much work inofitself that how do you find time for your mental health or family or inspiration?  And so you just keep doing what you've been doing even though you know deep down it's getting stale.  The possibility that this is happening to Green Day quite frankly frightens me.  I fear this is part of why I am not connecting with their music as I once did.  Along similar lines, while I have been deepening my political understandings, theirs seem to have lost some of the incisiveness of American Idiot (and even 21st Century Breakdown); again 99 Revolutions comes to mind.

And to be PERFECTLY clear, I don't think this is about "selling out;" that whole conversation completely annoys me.

But I do wonder how they may have compromised themselves or lost perspective on who they are and what they do and their place in the universe over the years.  And I do wonder how that is effecting their mental health and creativity.  And I think some of that can be found in Billie Joe's stint in rehab, or more accurately, the things that led to him getting to that point (according to his recent Rolling Stone interview).  But here's the reason I have been running away from even allowing myself to voice any of this in my own head much less aloud:

WHO AM I IF GREEN DAY IS NOT MY FAVORITE BAND???

That might sound completely ABSURD and SILLY but I am very serious.  I mean, go back up to my third paragraph where I told you all the things that they have gotten me through.  Look at the fucking name I use to blog with.  There are certain things that are major pieces not only of my life but in WHO I UNDERSTAND MYSELF TO BE and HOW I come to understand myself.  If that ceases to be, if I move away from them, if another band takes their place...does that mean I am becoming someone new?  Or has that already happened and I am just playing catch-up here with myself?  What will it mean if I no longer have them to rely on?

I know this is going to seem patently ridiculous to some people, but I hope there are others who have had something so important for so long that can relate to what I'm trying to think through here.  I'm not expecting to get any answers out of writing or posting this, but it is a marker of...something...that I think is going to be important for my own personal journey over the next...however long.

Imagining Social Justice Through Sci-Fi TV: From "Trek" to "Torchwood" (Part One: Introduction)

I've often shared the work I have been doing in the academy on this blog, and with my latest project I figured the tradition should continue, thus TJH's newest series is born: Imagining Social Justice Through Sci-Fi TV.  You've already seen pieces of this in rougher forms, but hopefully it will be more interesting when you see how they all came together.  And it must be said, this is still a work in progress, or at least, is part of a larger work in progress.  But that will probably become apparent as you proceed through it.  So without further ado...

INTRODUCTION: WHY STAR TREK AND DOCTOR WHO?

"A dream that became a reality and spread throughout the stars"

– Captain Kirk in "Whom Gods Destroy" (Erwin)

There are reasons both personal and political behind my choice to examine the worlds of Star Trek and Doctor Who.  At its heart, this project is an examination of myself.  It is also more than that, but whether it is apparent or not, what you have before you in the following pages is Me.  I’ve spent many years delving into and considering the ways of thinking I have taken on in childhood and young adulthood, those things that I believe and/or have “always” believed, about the world, about myself.  What I could not help noticing is how much popular culture influenced those beliefs and continues to be a central point of reference for my own imaginary and culture.  These stories, in all their complexity and nuance and beauty and fault, exist inside me, for better or for worse.  I am a geek.  More than that, I am a feminist geek.  And how feminism has worked its way into my geekdom is only now, years after it began, starting to become clear to me.  Because of all this, when conceptualizing a project I wanted to spend two years thinking about and researching and writing, there was no real choice in the matter: it had to be Star Trek: The Next Generation. 

Growing up watching TNG in my house was a family event.  My Mom didn't care for the show, but my Dad and I loved it, and we (and eventually my brother) sat down often over the seven seasons it aired to watch it together.  One vivid memory is of my little brother and I flinging ourselves to the sides of the television set as the Enterprise-D zoomed diagonally across the screen over and over during the now iconic opening credits (given my brother’s age, this was most likely after the show had gone to syndication).  I remember us laughing as we pretended the Enterprise might come out of the screen and run us over if we didn't get out of the way.  Looking back on it, this moment illustrates well just how real these characters and stories were to me, even as I knew they were fiction.  No wonder then, that on re-watching the series I would discover such moments as Captain Picard expressing a perspective on knowledge and education that I have long held as my own:

“Anyone can be trained in the mechanics of piloting a starship. It takes more. Opening your mind to the past…art, history, philosophy. All this may mean something” (McCullough)

What Picard is telling Wesley Crusher here is that often the things that are really “important” are not on the tests we are given, but require us to immerse ourselves in a wide range of thought, to wrestle with complicated ideas, ways of seeing, and an understanding of the legacy that produces you as an individual.  “All this may mean something” and only by exploring these spaces of differing knowledges can we find those that are meaningful to us and our lives.  It is this viewpoint that led me to the Humanities and the resulting educational journey that now culminates in this project.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, And the Making of Me

As many of you probably know, I'm a graduate student.  And I'm in my last semester, in the process of writing my thesis.  It's coming along ok and it's an interesting change of pace having only this one thing to work on for once, a first in my academic career.  Anywho, over the winter break in prepping for this project I kept being bothered by some very personal reflections that demanded to be written down.  Who am I to argue with my subconscious?  So I wrote them down.  That is what follows.  It's, yeah, very personal, and will be reworked before it's printed up in my thesis pages, but I thought I might as well share it with you in it's initial form to give you a taste of what I'm thinking about lately and why so many of my posts are reposts, links and action alerts.
Enjoy.

How did you become the person you are today? This is a question that has been haunting me for the past few years. It is a question that is probably unanswerable, as the events which shape my life slip in and out of what I consciously remember and bubble somewhere beneath the surface of that memory, ready to emerge at (in)opportune moments.

The roots of this question lie in another question, one that all feminist scholars are at some point initiated into: nature, or nurture? Essentialism, or constructivism? I take for granted my own conclusion that we are some combination of both, where what is essential about us can probably never be proved, but where we can trace some of the elements we have taken into ourselves and allowed to change us.

A search for those elements in myself, to better understand myself, my perspective on the world, my attractions, my insecurities, my place and function in the world around me led me back intuitively to television. And not just to television, but to very specific television, to Star Trek: The Next Generation.

There are other places I could have landed.  Books I read and re-read like Pollyanna or A Little Princess or the American Girls series' or The Hardy Boys.  I could have gone back to other shows I watched religiously as a child like The Wonder Years or The X-Men or Boy Meets World, or later The X-Files (and indeed The X-Files almost ended up in this project as well).  Or it could have been films I loved like Star Wars or Beauty and the Beast or The Little Mermaid.   Or the music I spent hours upon hours in my room memorizing the lyrics to and in fact still listen to like Green Day or Garbage or Alanis Morissette.  But even as I have thought on all the ways I learned to be who I am today, none has quite the resonance of The Next Generation.

Still, I could easily write another thesis on the complexities of the Disney movies I watched, on the femininity played out there that I adored from afar and felt like an impostor trying to embody, on the years I spent trying to embody it anyway and hating myself and other women for its limitations and my failure to live up to it as the less than graceful tomboy I was and am. But, that is not where I landed in my search. And as I have thought on it, much of these same things were represented on The Next Generation (TNG) too, and in fact they seem to have lodged themselves much deeper in my psyche by virtue of being so.

Perhaps that is because, as I remember it anyway, the watching of TNG was a family event. My Mom didn't care for the show, but my Dad, brother, and I all loved it, and sat down once a week for nearly the whole seven seasons to watch it together. One vivid memory is of my little brother and I flinging ourselves to the sides of the television set as the Enterprise zoomed diagonally across the screen over and over during the now iconic opening credits. I remember us laughing as we pretended the Enterprise might come out of the screen and run us over if we didn't get out of the way. Looking back on it, this moment illustrates well just how real these characters and events were to me, even as I knew they were fiction. No wonder then, that on re-watching the series I would discover such moments as Captain Picard expressing a perspective on knowledge and education that I have long held as my own (“Samaritan Snare”). It is this viewpoint that led me on the educational journey now culminating in this project.

Jay Smooth: Martin Luther King on Extremism

Something to think about.

Something I am thinking about as someone who is called an "extremist" from time to time, and who is often in conversations in which the idea that "extremism" is always bad is often touted.

On Naming

"We are obsessed with naming ourselves
because for so many years we were named by others."

- Angela Davis

(LINK)

Blogoversary at The Jaded Hippy!

I always miss these...  But this time I actually noticed!

As of today I've been blogging publicly for three years.  A lot has happened in that time, growth and stasis and growth again.  Pain and laughter.  Bonding and ostracism.  Life, I guess.

It's been fun, and I look forward to the day when I can devote the time to it, to both the reading of others' work and the writing of my own, once again.   And for those who have been with me since very early on (I know there are a few of you) thank you for everything, the comments and encouragement and all that friend-like crap.  Thank you.

Here's to another three years. :)

I am Guilty of This

Ota to Ishi, Malia and Philly

I want to stop hearing words like " can't believe, and unreal and unbelievable".

Because all your telling me is when we say there is racism, you don't believe us .

All it tells me is that for every cred from the left to the right you flash, you still believe the ultimate decision of racism is up to you.

Save me your indignation that "forced you to write a letter".

All that says to me is that for you , a letter will fix this.

For these few morsels , it is expected that some vein will be slit open , some damaging memory laid forth , some heartache on display , attached like a post it note

" This one this time you should do something ,here's my soul to prove it"
Your shock and amazement and horror show me nothing except that when we spake and spoke and speak.

You do not listen, except for the show.

here you are excited because you can use your force your screaming your yelling.

And I will quietly think that every news source that looked like us... Had between two and three days ago.

I read this post and I thought: "oh fuck."

And like the title of my post here says... "I am guilty of this."

And you know what else, I think this is probably worthy of a: "stuff white people do," because most white people I know do this.

There is some amount of social conditioning at work here, I think, because I see this mimicked all around me. If something is offensive enough, horrifying enough, "I can't believe it!" is the way we express that.

But as Black Amazon points out here, what exactly are we saying there?? If we "can't believe it" then did we not believe such things happen? Doesn't that mean we don't believe the people who have been telling us so? Doesn't that directly contradict what we say elsewhere, which is specifically that we DO BELIEVE these things happen?

Um. Yes.

I have had, for, I don't know, maybe the last six months, had a growing discomfort with my own tendency for such words to be the first to pop into my head. It was a quiet discomfort in the back of my head. And one to which I clearly did not pay enough attention and which apparently didn't bother me quite enough to dive in and unpack it.

Instead, once again, I have relied on a woman of color to point something out I should have done myself.

I am very grateful to BA for that.

But I am frustrated with myself (as I should be) for it.

Hopefully, I will at least do something by this post.

My Banner, My Name, and My Avatar

This post is a really long time coming. I've had this blog for well over a year now, and yet I've never addressed it (though I've sat down to write it a few times). I've also, surprisingly, gotten no comments about it (though I have had comments on my avatar. Someone asked me why, if I was such a feminist, I used a picture of a woman with her mouth "so obediently covered". I had to laugh, and informed the asker that it is a picture of "Drusilla", a vampire from BtVS, who is anything but obedient, and is probably just covering her mouth to call more attention to her eyes; so she can hypnotize you and slit your throat. :P BTW, yes, that is specifically why that particular picture is my avatar.). What I'm talking about here, is my banner.

An intersectional feminist blog that uses a white man on her banner?

Maybe it's the look on his face, who that character is, or the message on the poster behind him. Or maybe it's expected that white feminists will identify with a white power structure figure (I hope that's not it), or something along those lines. Or perhaps quite simply no one, if they did find this incongruent, felt the need to mention it.

But every time I see him sitting there, knowing that the reasons have gone unsaid, it's struck me; so here I am.

I have always had a vivid imagination. It's how I kept myself sane when the world around me wasn't so pleasant to be in, it's how I retain my optimism about the world, it's how I empathize with people who I've never met, and it's also why I can't stand horror movies (they stay with me). Often, what this means is I get terribly attached to characters. Most often, TV or book series characters. Growing up, there were lots of them; Troi and Roe from Star Trek: TNG, the little bratty girl from The Secret Garden, Mara Jade and Leia from Star Wars (books and movies respectively), Tom Paris and B'lanna Torres from Star Trek: Voyager, Dr. Ross on ER, and of course, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully (it wasn't until I was older that I discovered Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Firefly, which is why I'm not going to discuss them). My two greatest loves as a "tween" and teenager were the X-Files and Green Day, and the walls of my old room in my mom's house prove it; pictures everywhere. To this day The X-Files is still my favorite TV show of all time.

Why?

Shit if I know for sure! But there are some things I think I've figured out over the years of a rising consciousness. For one, there is what both Green Day and The X-Files had in common, a serious lack of respect for authority. I love a rebel, I love counter-culture, I love defiance. I saw all of that in the character of Fox Mulder. If you want to put a feminist analysis on it, it's really what Laura Mulvey was talking about; the gaze and the two sorts of desire for a character, I both wanted Mulder and wanted to be Mulder (rather similar to why I fell in love so hard for Spike from BtVS too I think). There was also something in the Mulder-Scully dynamic that I found irresistable. I will admit, I didn't have a great working model for partnership; my parents, by the time I was old enough to figure this out, had their own problems and were growing apart, to eventually divorce.

The model Mulder and Scully set out was one I could identify with, circumstances bringing them together, and a shared mission keeping them so, respect and love growing between them, and always the files to work on together. I could identify with Mulder because his defiant, sarcastic way of handling things felt familiar. His constant ostracization from "normal" society was painfully so. I was quite convinced that all I could hope to do in this world was beat out my own path and pursue my own passion, because I'd never been able to do anything any other way. And growing up being teased, I found solace in the fact that he was too, but so rarely let it get to him. He also had an optimisim and faith in what he did that I envied. "I want to believe", is a catch phrase for so many situations I found myself in, then and since. I'm convinced that growing up with this idealization of him and their relationship formed a lot of my own self identity, what I looked for in a partner (I found it), and how I think relationships should function.

While I loved Scully's character, I couldn't identify with her strict scientific method and rationalism. That wasn't (isn't) how my brain works. In watching every week, how her strict science both inhibited and enabled Mulder; I think is where I learned a respect for people who challenge me. Yet I would grow frustrated at her attempts to rein him in, seeing Mulder as everything that is pure and good in the world and simply wanting him to be vindicated; she often stood in the way of that. Watching now, I interpret much of this differently, but hey, I didn't know much about feminism at 12 and 13. :P

But this is why I knew I had to use this picture for my banner. There is so much I want to believe in, and I'm willing to work for it. I wanted something at the top of my blog that was loaded in meaning for me, even if it wasn't obvious to the casual observer. The way he's looking up from his desk, he probably fell asleep working again; books and papers piled up everywhere; jacket off, sleeves rolled up... He is me. And he is the perfect man (or at least my idealized vision of him is).

So.

That's why.

I could probably ramble on, but I think that pretty much covers it. And now you know why I picked the avatar I did too!

That only leaves my alias, so why not? I'll get into that too.

I have had one comment on my alias, a friend of mine said he though it was "self deprecating, in the worst way" and didn't like it. I found that terribly interesting, and have since wondered what others think about it when they first see my name next to a comment or post; but no, self deprecation is not why I chose it.

I had longed for a good online name ever since I started on the internet (about the same time I started watching The X-Files, actually, and oh yes, I researched UFO's like you wouldn't believe :P). And I had always wanted a name drawn from a Green Day song (my first great love, like I said). I tried on so many screen names over the years, drawn from all sorts of sources meaningful to me. "Serenity" finally stuck, for quite a while, but just didn't keep fitting. I very much wanted "Haushinka" to work, but the song didn't echo anything from my life, and it just never stuck. And then American Idiot came out. To say I was proud when I first heard that album all the way through doesn't even begin to cover it. My hometown boys had finally grown up, finally gone political, and not in the lame U2 way (sorry U2 fans) but in the Green Day way, and I was so on board. I first started using lyrics from "She's a Rebel" in signatures on message boards, but it wasn't until I thought about blogging that "Whatsername" really clicked in my head.

1) I love the song.
2) In the blogging world, there's a certain amount of organic anonymity (also why I don't capitalize). Your ideas can be sucked up and distributed by others and there's not a WHOLE helluva lot you can do about it. Yet, in some way, you live on through those ideas being disseminated.
3) Well, it IS an alias.
4) In the lyrics to "She's a Rebel" they say, "she's a rebel, she's a saint, she's the salt of the earth and she's dangerous...she's the one they call old Whatsername". So there's a link back to that song, which I identify with, as a sort of ideal to live up to (kind of like Mulder...).
5) Long after I'm done with all this I do hope that something of me is remembered. Like the lyrics say, "I can recall the face, but not the name. Now I wonder how Whatsername has been" and "Forgetting you, but not the time".

To me, there is something profound in that. It's like dying; your matter and energy is spread to the winds, personality dissolves, you are just an almost nameless essence that has effected those around you and carries on afterwards. I don't know if there's another song written that is so bittersweet to me, that makes me both sad and hopeful.

"They say home is where the heart is, but what a shame. Cuz everyone's heart doesn't beat the same..."

So, that's it, my avatar, my banner, and my name.

Why is Net Neutrality Important?

Please watch this video, if you do not already understand the unbelievable importance of the neutrality of the internet.

Thank you Bint Alshamsa

Strength Through Diversity

I have recently realize, that while this very important philosophy has come up in more than one place on my blog, that I don't actually have a post dedicated solely to it. Since this is so important to me, I think that fact needs to be rectified. However, as simple as this concept appears to be, it's a rather complex web of interacting, interwoven concepts.

What is meant by strength?

I went first to the dictionary to see if it held any helpful hints for me. A few definitions popped out at me.

2. mental power, force, or vigor.
3. moral power, firmness, or courage.
4. power by reason of influence, authority, resources, numbers, etc.
6. effective force, potency, or cogency, as of inducements or arguments
7. power of resisting force, strain, wear, etc.

I think all of these apply more or less to what I'm talking about. A movement, a philosophy, a society, gains strength in all these ways, through diversity.

So what is meant by diversity?

Differences. Of perspective, of experience, of opinion. In my post grappling with my own white privilege I say:

I think every person, by virtue of their families; politics, money, race, ethnicity, religion, education, social standing, geography and life experience (for a brief list) has a perspective absolutely unique to that person. Thus every single voice in the chorus has something to add. Each perspective brings something different to the party.

I go on to note:

Connected to this though, is the fact that people will thusly speak out about what matters to THEM, which will leave issues that aren't at the forefront of their minds to others to cover. This can be, and is by some, considered a weakness of the feminist movement (and paganism, actually)[...]Yet, I don't think this phenomenon is a weakness. Truthfully, I think this is the best way we can go about making a true feminist movement.

But whatsername, won't that encourage divisiveness and arguments!? Yah, it can. The "problem" with diversity is that people in general seem to have this need (I absolutely believe encouraged by our patriarchal society) to be Right. We want the Truth. But the Truth is, there is no fucking Truth. And, if there is, we can't fathom it. We see our lives through our own lens. No two people will ever see it the same, even if their backgrounds are identical. Yet people more or less strive for uniformity. The idea of strength through diversity flies directly in the face of these common and encouraged perspectives. It even flies in the face of the "us vs. them" mentalities most of us buy into. Even me. How do we reconcile the Rush Limbaughs' of the world with the Mike Malloy's (whom, btw, I love)? Only by swallowing the jagged pill of knowing each is coming from their own truth, and trying our best to listen before we react. Only by realizing that it is through the polarity of two such opposites that new thoughts emerge.

And if we can come at being part of society, or at least part of a movement, with this perspective of strength through our differences and not just our samenesses I believe we will be stronger for it. I think it's the only real way to come to mutual understanding with, to grok, the people around us. Only when we respect each other enough for the communist to see where the libertarian is coming from even though they still disagree can we find a middle ground everyone can live well within. And shouldn't that be our ultimate goal as social beings?

My purpose here

I've been contemplating having a little blog all my own for a while.

I have a livejournal, but that's more my personal place to bitch and contemplate with my friends...

I probably won't post here a ton, but it's where I want to gather my more intelligent contemplations about mostly serious topics. So, this will be a blog dedicated to discussing issues I care about, most often revolving around current events and feminism, but also diving into issues of religion, paganism, feminist spirituality, married life and polyamory.

I think I'll start by reposting some of my favorite posts from my lj.