Radical Seeks Enlightenment

Submission Deadline Extended to May 17th

2010-05-03T17:31:00.003-04:00

Were you interested in submitting an entry to the anthology on transmasculine sexuality but didn’t get a chance? One more shot…

Call for Submissions: Transmasculine Sexuality

Attn: Queers, gender fucks, gender deviants and lovers thereof. This is a submission call for an anthology of transmasculine desire. If you are a trans or gender variant, masculine-identified person (whether AMAB and AFAB) or if you want to talk about a relationship with someone who is, then your contributions are welcome.

Lets talk about how we negotiate sex. How does gender identity come into play? How do you manage consent and body disphoria? When have you been surprised by your own attraction and how have you dealt with it? What role has community played in how your sexuality has developed? How have your desires and boundaries changed as your identities have evolved? What do you think needs to be said?

Submit any printable original work (including essays, short stories, comics, prose, photography, etc.) addressing the theme NO LATER THAN May 17th, 2010. Any comments, questions, suggestions, or submission can be sent to inthemarginszine@gmail.com . Please remember to include a name you want to be published under (or specify that you’d prefer for it to remain anonymous) and two sentences to introduce (you or) your submission.

Submission Call: Transmasculine Sexuality

2010-03-22T17:13:00.001-04:00

Attn: Queers, gender fucks, gender deviants and lovers thereof. This is a submission call for an anthology of transmasculine desire. If you identify as somewhere along the transmasculine spectrum (Aggressive, FTM, Boi, Tranny fag, etc.) or you find yourself attracted to those who are, then your contributions are welcome.

Lets talk about how we negotiate sex. How does gender identity come into play? How do you manage consent and body disphoria? When have you been surprised by your own attraction and how have you dealt with it? What role has community played in how your sexuality has developed? How have your desires and boundaries changed as your identities have evolved? What do you think needs to be said?

Submit any printable original work (including essays, short stories, comics, poetry, prose, photography, etc.) addressing the theme by April 24th, 2010. Any comments, questions, suggestions, or submission can be sent to techietranny@gmail.com Please remember to include a name you want to be published under (or specify that you’d prefer for it to remain anonymous) and two sentences to introduce (you or) your submission.

Body trust

2010-02-15T14:55:00.000-05:00

Last week I referred to going on T as the most anticlimactic life-changing event I’ll ever experience. Moments of impatience accentuate my reverence—that one can change so completely, that this body can become almost anything I am willing to make it, that the very constraints of possibility can be pushed to their limits. A half wall of mirrors entices me to examine these curves for traces of overnight body alchemy

T has changed the way I relate to my body. What has long been a no man’s land riddled with insecurity and mild contempt has been renewed by curiosity. My body has become the site of progress, of new potential, of possibility. It is as if, after being estranged for so long, I am considering reconciliation. I withhold judgment, studying it, trying to see it anew. I let it reveal itself to me. It is as if I am learning to trust—both myself with my body and my body with myself.

The Letter

2010-02-13T01:50:00.000-05:00

It’s been months since I resumed therapy. In past years talk about relationships dominate the 50 minutes of gaping awkwardness. I had shared a sustained suspicion of therapy as practice, but I wasn’t about to insult what she did. I returned from my summer internship with an agenda. Our eyes lock during session. “Why do you come?,” she prods me

“because I have to.”

Silence.

“Because mid-century, a well-meaning and well-respected physician decided that you get to decide that I want what I want.”

“You don’t see the advantage? You know… not everyone thinks through things as much as you do.”

“I talk to trans people everyday. It’s not something people take lightly. Every time you tell someone, they ask you if you’re fucking sure. They practically beg you not be.”

She was sympathetic. A sympathetic professional whose career is built on the assumption that people can’t solve their own problems. I built my life on the conviction that I was the only one who could change anything that mattered in my own life. We spent months grappling for common ground. I demanded a letter, and eventually refused to return. I graduated and moved half way across the country. A week later I got my letter in the mail.

Urbanity

2009-12-25T13:39:00.005-05:00

Spent my time on the train contemplating urban life. What drives people to and away from cities... How different my perception of mobility is than other people I know... How transient queer and youth cultures have developed over decades. Then, I designed some desktop backgrounds from copyleft and self-made imagery.
Enjoy.

Unexpected compliments

2009-12-16T05:59:00.003-05:00

As a graduating senior, I have find myself being called upon to reflect upon the last several years of my life. One such occasion was Monday, when I had to defend my undergrad thesis. "Defend" hardly seems like an accurate adjective as it was much more of a conversation dedicated to fostering my ideas and acknowledging my accomplishments.

My examiner arrived early and we built a rapport pretty immediately. She was engaged from the beginning. I felt as though I was speaking too much, but I pushed on, reassuring myself that I felt like I was taking the spotlight because it was indeed the appropriate time to do so. After a full lunch, we headed into the academic building to squat a room for the occasion.

Much to my surprise, many of the questions they asked directly or indirectly we about myself. Partially because my work is very important to who I am and what I am about, partially because I criticized myself in my work for not talking more about where I was coming from through out the process. For whatever reason, I ended up expounding on how my understandings had been shaped over the last few years and how the shifts in my own sense of what is important changed the kind of work I wanted to focus on. I nailed most of the questions.

I left as they deliberated my grade. When I came back in, they had written it on the board. It was anti-climactic. After having thought about all the ways my education has given me the space and support to deconstruct and recreate myself, the letter felt like a hollow representation of that process. What came next was the most striking phase of the process, as my outside examiner and the two faculty I worked intensively with stepped forward to compliment me. One by one, they told me how inspirational it was to work with me, how genuine my dedication was, how interesting and thoughtful my perspective. But then they moved on to say things I never could have imagined being said about me four years ago. About my perseverance, about my willingness to take risk. And it hits me that while I was busy talking and writing and shooting and editing, I missed myself becoming who I am.

Messy Chef: Baking extravaganza

2009-12-09T20:11:00.002-05:00

I had my first real day of freedom today as the snow froze away all my obligations and I was left with an oven, a slightly colder than I could be comfortable in living room, and a graphic novel about prison life in Japan.

Like any good geek, I decided I'd make my house warmed by baking confectioneries and f document myself in the process. Please enjoy the fruit of that labour:

Why I’m No Longer Outraged by Sexism (repost)

2009-11-11T13:09:00.002-05:00

Posted October 21, 2009
by Subversive Submissive

I’ve been trying and failing to write something on this for weeks, now. I guess I’m just tired of pointing my finger and yelling “sexism!” every time I see it. There’s just so much of it around me, every day, that I can’t bring myself to get pissed off any more. I keep thinking of that self-righteous bumper sticker, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention!” But I’ve been “paying attention” to this shit since I was, oh, ten years old, and I find it harder and harder to become outraged by it — not because I’ve come to accept things as they are but because once you realize how institutionalized sexism is and how deeply fucked up our entire civilization is, nothing really shocks you anymore.

To get to the point, the issue at hand is an episode of “This Week in Kink”, a podcast put on by the folks that run FetLife. On this episode, which aired over two months ago, one of the guests invited on the show said the following:

I firmly and strongly believe that it is a woman’s role to be submissive to a man. . . . I think that women in the past couple of hundred years have gotten entirely too high on their own power and eventually need to be slapped in the fucking head and put in their place.

A couple of years ago, I would have crusaded against this man and against the people who run the podcast. (How dare they allow such a thing to be broadcast.) I’d have demanded an apology and a retraction. Today, my reaction is a sigh and a shake of the head. What an asshole. I browse the comments on their page and leave one of my own. And I’m done. Next.

I did a bit of link-hopping and read Maymay’s take on the issue, in a post called “Don’t You Fret, Sexism Is Alive and Well in BDSM.” His post addressed a lot of stuff I’ve also written about — basically, making the point that while anti-BDSM feminists are wrong in their assessment of “BDSM = patriarchy,” we should acknowledge that there is a lot of sexism in BDSM as a culture and in how a lot of people practice it.

He linked to a blogger named Delilah, who writes that what troubles her the most about this is not that it was said — there will always be bigoted, ignorant jerks in the world — but that “in the BDSM world, where we’re meant to be playing with power, subverting some traditional norms and amplifying others to erotic effect, there are people who still truly believe this kind of outright nonsense. Even worse, that someone with such opinions is such a strong voice in the community.”

To me, what this says is not that there is a troubling streak of misogyny or at least sexism in the BDSM scene, but that (as I’ve written before) the values of the BDSM scene are fairly mainstream. Rob may be more outspoken and brash about his sexism, and it comes coated with d/s-specific language, but I strongly sense that the root of what he’s saying here is actually what the majority of men and women think — that there are biological differences between men and women, that these differences create “natural” inequalities between the sexes in some ways, and that the feminist demand for equality goes against woman’s natural role in the world.

Of course, none of this means that I’m throwing up my hands and saying, “Well, if the rest of the world thinks I should be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, I guess I’ll start taking off my shoes.” I’m still angry. I still argue. But I’m not outraged; I don’t feel like I should expect the world to not be sexist, and that this individual person has just violated that unspoken agreement. I go out into the world expecting that most people I meet will have, on some level, an understanding of gender and gender roles that I do not share and that I feel is harmful to me in some way. I expect exactly the same thing when I encounter people in the BDSM scene. (The unfortunate difference, of course, is that within the world of BDSM, “this is my kink” can be used to justify stereotypes and prejudice, and thus people like Rob can speak a little louder than they would, perhaps, on the street.)

Perhaps I’m just having a very cynical day. But perhaps not.

Consent, Consent, Consent

2009-10-29T19:56:00.002-04:00

I've been thinking and having a whole lot of conversations about consent. I might write more, but for the moment, I will begin by posting the article that kicked it all off for me...

Schrödinger’s Rapist: or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced

Phaedra Starling is the pen name of a romance novelist and licensed private investigator living in small New York City apartment with two large dogs. She practices Brazilian jiu-jitsu and makes world-class apricot muffins.

Gentlemen. Thank you for reading.

Let me start out by assuring you that I understand you are a good sort of person. You are kind to children and animals. You respect the elderly. You donate to charity. You tell jokes without laughing at your own punchlines. You respect women. You like women. In fact, you would really like to have a mutually respectful and loving sexual relationship with a woman. Unfortunately, you don’t yet know that woman—she isn’t working with you, nor have you been introduced through mutual friends or drawn to the same activities. So you must look further afield to encounter her.

So far, so good. Miss LonelyHearts, your humble instructor, approves. Human connection, love, romance: there is nothing wrong with these yearnings.

Now, you want to become acquainted with a woman you see in public. The first thing you need to understand is that women are dealing with a set of challenges and concerns that are strange to you, a man. To begin with, we would rather not be killed or otherwise violently assaulted.

“But wait! I don’t want that, either!”

Well, no. But do you think about it all the time? Is preventing violent assault or murder part of your daily routine, rather than merely something you do when you venture into war zones? Because, for women, it is. When I go on a date, I always leave the man’s full name and contact information written next to my computer monitor. This is so the cops can find my body if I go missing. My best friend will call or e-mail me the next morning, and I must answer that call or e-mail before noon-ish, or she begins to worry. If she doesn’t hear from me by three or so, she’ll call the police. My activities after dark are curtailed. Unless I am in a densely-occupied, well-lit space, I won’t go out alone. Even then, I prefer to have a friend or two, or my dogs, with me. Do you follow rules like these?

So when you, a stranger, approach me, I have to ask myself: Will this man rape me?

Do you think I’m overreacting? One in every six American women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. I bet you don’t think you know any rapists, but consider the sheer number of rapes that must occur. These rapes are not all committed by Phillip Garrido, Brian David Mitchell, or other members of the Brotherhood of Scary Hair and Homemade Religion. While you may assume that none of the men you know are rapists, I can assure you that at least one is. Consider: if every rapist commits an average of ten rapes (a horrifying number, isn’t it?) then the concentration of rapists in the population is still a little over one in sixty. That means four in my graduating class in high school. One among my coworkers. One in the subway car at rush hour. Eleven who work out at my gym. How do I know that you, the nice guy who wants nothing more than companionship and True Love, are not this rapist?

I don’t.

When you approach me in public, you are Schrödinger’s Rapist. You may or may not be a man who would commit rape. I won’t know for sure unless you start sexually assaulting me. I can’t see inside your head, and I don’t know your intentions. If you expect me to trust you—to accept you at face value as a nice sort of guy—you are not only failing to respect my reasonable caution, you are being cavalier about my personal safety.

Fortunately, you’re a good guy. We’ve already established that. Now that you’re aware that there’s a problem, you are going to go out of your way to fix it, and to make the women with whom you interact feel as safe as possible.

To begin with, you must accept that I set my own risk tolerance. When you approach me, I will begin to evaluate the possibility you will do me harm. That possibility is never 0%. For some women, particularly women who have been victims of violent assaults, any level of risk is unacceptable. Those women do not want to be approached, no matter how nice you are or how much you’d like to date them. Okay? That’s their right. Don’t get pissy about it. Women are under no obligation to hear the sales pitch before deciding they are not in the market to buy.

The second important point: you must be aware of what signals you are sending by your appearance and the environment. We are going to be paying close attention to your appearance and behavior and matching those signs to our idea of a threat.

This means that some men should never approach strange women in public. Specifically, if you have truly unusual standards of personal cleanliness, if you are the prophet of your own religion, or if you have tattoos of gang symbols or Technicolor cockroaches all over your face and neck, you are just never going to get a good response approaching a woman cold. That doesn’t mean you’re doomed to a life of solitude, but I suggest you start with internet dating, where you can put your unusual traits out there and find a woman who will appreciate them.

Are you wearing a tee-shirt making a rape joke? NOT A GOOD CHOICE—not in general, and definitely not when approaching a strange woman.

Pay attention to the environment. Look around. Are you in a dark alley? Then probably you ought not approach a woman and try to strike up a conversation. The same applies if you are alone with a woman in most public places. If the public place is a closed area (a subway car, an elevator, a bus), even a crowded one, you may not realize that the woman’s ability to flee in case of threat is limited. Ask yourself, “If I were dangerous, would this woman be safe in this space with me?” If the answer is no, then it isn’t appropriate to approach her.

On the other hand, if you are both at church accompanied by your mothers, who are lifelong best friends, the woman is as close as it comes to safe. That is to say, still not 100% safe. But the odds are pretty good.

The third point: Women are communicating all the time. Learn to understand and respect women’s communication to you.

You want to say Hi to the cute girl on the subway. How will she react? Fortunately, I can tell you with some certainty, because she’s already sending messages to you. Looking out the window, reading a book, working on a computer, arms folded across chest, body away from you = do not disturb. So, y’know, don’t disturb her. Really. Even to say that you like her hair, shoes, or book. A compliment is not always a reason for women to smile and say thank you. You are a threat, remember? You are Schrödinger’s Rapist. Don’t assume that whatever you have to say will win her over with charm or flattery. Believe what she’s signaling, and back off.

If you speak, and she responds in a monosyllabic way without looking at you, she’s saying, “I don’t want to be rude, but please leave me alone.” You don’t know why. It could be “Please leave me alone because I am trying to memorize Beowulf.” It could be “Please leave me alone because you are a scary, scary man with breath like a water buffalo.” It could be “Please leave me alone because I am planning my assassination of a major geopolitical figure and I will have to kill you if you are able to recognize me and blow my cover.”

On the other hand, if she is turned towards you, making eye contact, and she responds in a friendly and talkative manner when you speak to her, you are getting a green light. You can continue the conversation until you start getting signals to back off.

The fourth point: If you fail to respect what women say, you label yourself a problem.

There’s a man with whom I went out on a single date—afternoon coffee, for one hour by the clock—on July 25th. In the two days after the date, he sent me about fifteen e-mails, scolding me for non-responsiveness. I e-mailed him back, saying, “Look, this is a disproportionate response to a single date. You are making me uncomfortable. Do not contact me again.” It is now October 7th. Does he still e-mail?

Yeah. He does. About every two weeks.

This man scores higher on the threat level scale than Man with the Cockroach Tattoos. (Who, after all, is guilty of nothing more than terrifying bad taste.) You see, Mr. E-mail has made it clear that he ignores what I say when he wants something from me. Now, I don’t know if he is an actual rapist, and I sincerely hope he’s not. But he is certainly Schrödinger’s Rapist, and this particular Schrödinger’s Rapist has a probability ratio greater than one in sixty. Because a man who ignores a woman’s NO in a non-sexual setting is more likely to ignore NO in a sexual setting, as well.

So if you speak to a woman who is otherwise occupied, you’re sending a subtle message. It is that your desire to interact trumps her right to be left alone. If you pursue a conversation when she’s tried to cut it off, you send a message. It is that your desire to speak trumps her right to be left alone. And each of those messages indicates that you believe your desires are a legitimate reason to override her rights.

For women, who are watching you very closely to determine how much of a threat you are, this is an important piece of data.

The fifth and last point: Don’t rape. Nor should you commit these similar but less severe offenses: don’t assault. Don’t grope. Don’t constrain. Don’t brandish. Don’t expose yourself. Don’t threaten with physical violence. Don’t threaten with sexual violence.

Shouldn’t this go without saying? Of course it should. Sadly, that’s not the world I live in. You may be beginning to realize that it’s not the world you live in, either.

Miss LonelyHearts wishes you happiness and success in your search for romantic companionship.

Man Trapped in a Woman's Body

2009-10-04T17:37:00.002-04:00

Why I am not a man trapped in a woman's body:

1)I am not a man
2)My body is not a woman's body. It is a genderqueer body. It is lanky and sinuous and androgynous. It flails about and crashes into things. It often moves like puppy--awkwardly, with little balance but with excitement.
3)I am not trapped within it.
4)I am in the prolonged process of making it my own
5)I have the imagination and creativity to recognize my own contradictions without being afraid of them
6)I have lovers and friends who recognize these truths

Belated Yom Kippur...

2009-09-28T19:23:00.007-04:00

Lately I feel as though I've been reaching out a lot, trying to make connections but not getting far along the way. I've extended a couple invitations a week to my house. I've posted a craigs list ad or two and even signed up for an OK Cupid account. I sat entranced by the endless barrage of questions... How often do I keep promises? How often would I expect my ideal mate to? How important is it to me? I find myself once again stead-fast in what I demand from myself but floundering when it comes to defining what I might expect from (an)other(S).

A little less than a year after my first romantic relationship ended, I find myself calling my ex about 3 times a month. Sometimes she answers. Sometimes, I have intense dreams where we are part of one another's life at some pivotal moment (her having a baby or me coming out to my family), but most of the time I'm just glad to hear her voice and know that we still care abut each other. Most of the time I'm glad that I can love her without having to be anxious that it means I should want/need/ask anything from her.

Lately she hasn't been as good about answering when I call. I question whether or not I should continue to call her. Clearly, she is more important to me than I am to her. We talked about how this would happen before we even got together, and it has.

I contemplate whether or not I am pushing forward where I am not wanted, and I wonder if I am just being insecure. The moment feels so ironic when I think back to how aggressively she pursued me when a romantic relationship was the last thing on my mind. And then it hits me. It wasn't just her.

It was also all the other people in my life with whom I've had serious relationships. It's my best friend when I came to college and the girl that I got close to after arriving in Chicago. All people I grew to love, after the told me they loved me first. I realize that most of my relationships have been imbalanced, but I never noticed because I was always the safe one.

I am grateful to those who have taught me to love in whatever reckless or ill-fated ways they have done so. And I'm sorry for never having said that before. Gmar Chatimah Tova.

update on me

2009-09-13T23:01:00.003-04:00

I've been having the most intense dreams lately. They featured people who have wronged me, people I aspire to be, people who confuse me. We are never in notable settings doing notable things, but each scene has so much tension, so much history (real and imagined). I feel these scenes the way I've rarely felt real life. They move me to tears more often than not. Last Sunday I woke up so happy, I couldn't describe or understand it. The word limitless pulsated like a metronome across the inside of my scalp, and I was practically convinced that we were gods.

I day dream for hours. It's becoming something I have to build into my schedule. My imagination running laps around the bed springs. They get tighter, more dense and then push outward. Small explosions bleeding into my mind. I'm more emotional, than I can really comprehend these days.

I'm attracted to more people than ever before in my life. Sometimes a couple a week. And in my last semester at college I have my first crush on someone I don't know well. My fifth in the past three and a half years. My second in the past 4 months. That's practically girl crazy (for me).

So I dunno what any of that means or how long it will continue. It blows my mind just a little. But it's also a relief. Maybe there are things about myself that I am only beginning to explore.

Testing Our Skin

2009-09-01T16:54:00.004-04:00

This week I moved back to VT for my final semester of college, and I've been spending a lot of time thinking about testosterone. I began making phone calls to therapists and insurance companies and naturopaths. One to my ex girlfriend who I wanted to be the first to know about my shift in plans.

It feels so strange that something I qualitatively denied only months ago feels more familiar by the day, like coming home. I've been meditating on what body modification, BDSM and Transexualism have in common. I've been thinking of all the ways we inscribe meaning onto our flesh, of all the events in my life that have marked me against my will. What drives some people to veil those markings and others to display them brazenly?

I think of a scrawny genderqueer lifting up their shirt to reveal the phrase "Faggots Kill Fascists" etched across their pelvis. They told us if they ever go to jail, they want us to raise money to get the tattoo covered up. We joke, what about if we can only raise half? Our our nods build rythms like shudders when he responds, "Let's be honest, the word "Fascist" is what matters here. The others are inscribed over and over in ways I can never erase."

I pause briefly to contemplate what happens in the space where needs converge... the need to make what is felt real, the need to make what is imagined imminent, the need to make what is marked visible. Then, I find a piece of paper as I unpack with a phrase scrawled across it--Where our imagination cannot stretch, we must test our skin--and I wonder if I ever left this place.

Hammers, Roofs, and Radios (The Podcast)

2009-09-01T16:44:00.007-04:00

Location: Marlboro VT, 05344

This is a podcast created by a student-led group during a five-day orientation trip. Andre Perez led four college freshman on a voyage to learn about housing justice that took them from Brattleboro, VT to Northampton, MA to Boston, MA. Along the way the group learned interviewing skills, recording skills, story boarding, and editing. Not only did the group interview experts in the field of affordable housing but they also spent their time doing service learning projects that actually benefited the neighborhoods and individuals featured in this podcast.

Sober and OVer It (Rant)

2009-08-22T20:55:00.004-04:00

Party culture. I feel like I can't get away from it.

When you live on top of mountain, there ain't much you can do for fun but get wasted. At least that's what quite a few people from my college woiuld say. I know that all colleges have a hig level of alcohol-induced stupidity and in fact Marlboro culture is probably better than universityies in the sense that we don't ahve insane binge dirnking. But stuffed away in the backwoods alcoholism is nonetheless an insidious ever present problem. Our school allows students to designate money to activitie and a large portion of the budget annually goes to serving alcohol. When our licor liscence was revoked a week before what usually is one of the biggest parties of the year, the party attendence went from 300 to 30.

So I looked onward in search of a community. I spent the summer in a radical collective that didn't do much in terms of organizing, but was a strong hold of the Chicago radical scene socially. By this, I mean it was a good place to meet people who believed a lot of similar things to me, there were zines around all the time, we threw concerts to benefit political prisoners, and every activist and their brother spent a couple nights on our beat up couches. This summer I learned in a big way how radical culture can be party culture. Sex party, beer party, whiskey party. Even though the house passed a policy discouraging drug use in the house, the party was on. Five days a week the stay-up-till-3-o'clock-drinking ethos imbued the first floor traveling upstairs (where I lived) to the roof for smoke breaks.

What I learned was I am really done. I am done with people yelling outside my door for no reason. With waking up to recycling bins full of beer cans. With floors sticky from god knows what.

I've been back for a "training" which has been a thinly veiled excuse for people leading orientation trips to drink every day, get high, and bar-b-que.

I'm over it, and I don't even know how to get away.

Distance and Interest

2009-08-22T18:03:00.002-04:00

I feel like so many of the things I have dealt with in my life have made my feel more distanced and disconnected from the people around me.

When my mother was crazy, it made me feel crazy. Apart. Estranged from notions of friendship and family that were illusory to me yet somehow implied in the existence of my peers. I needed to be away from her, and so I went to Peru. I gave myself what I needed. I was independent. Competent. Strong. But for all the good it did me in my life, it was another experience that only makes the distance seem somewhat spectacular. Sometimes I feel as if I’ve learned how to be an interesting person at the expense of being a relatable person. It’s another in an ever expanding collection… my very own cabinet of curiosities where my life is what is on display.

Now I want to transition. When I first started thinking of transitioning, I had people in my life who valued me for my gender ambiguity, people who loved and coveted my genderquuerdom, people who I related to more because of my boyish desires. Now so much has changed in my life in terms of relationships. I feel like to transition would be to transition out of community, to taking another step away from support with no foreseeable corollary on the other side.

It’s no wonder that so much of what I focus my energies on is trying to find community in struggle. I worry that dealing with rather than striving for is the only future I’m prepared for. As if I have reached a point in my life where the only kind of connection that seems authentic is the relationship between people learning how to deal with shit together. As if the only love I believe in is love among comrades.

appologies and promises

2009-08-19T21:20:00.001-04:00

As some have noted, its been forever since I have blogged. Mostly it's because the nature of doing video work is that I get stuck inside for 7 hours a day when it's gorgeous outside. When I"m off, I've been trying to find green space in the city, and soak in the rays before heading back to to VT.

At the moment, I am getting ready to be sequestered, but in the meantime, I will be writing and I'll post some of it.

Things I promise to reflect on soon: where I'm at with trust & play, and My changing thoughts on sexism.

Trans Oral History update

2009-07-22T10:16:00.002-04:00

I have finally uploaded the second interview clip from bet power, entitled Legacy. It's better than the first, so I urge you to check it out.

Also, I am going on the Gay Liberation Network's Chicago Public access TV show on Friday. I composed a clip from the project to show on air, and that can be viewed on youtube if you look on the channel TransOralHistory. There is also a link on the webpage under short docs.

DIY Animation

2009-07-17T14:15:00.004-04:00

DIY Animation

My first session was awesome. It was hands on animation. We begun by watching some pieces for inspiration. Here are some of those sweet examples:

We split into group to work on our own separate pieces. My group took some chalk outside and a still digital camera. We created a storyboard and drew out several different frames...comic style. Then we took images of each frame, uploaded them to the animation program, and pushed play. 25 minutes. 5 first time animators. 1 free program. 30 seconds.

I'll upload it before the end of the weekend. I promise.

Been a While

2009-07-17T10:24:00.002-04:00

I have kind of dropped the ball on updating all of my blogs.

My internship at the queer youth center did not work out. But I have begun workign with a community art program that rocks my socks. I am co-teaching an intensive video production program with inner city youth until I leave Chicago. It is long and intense and the youth needs alot of direction and guidance and they are amazing and I love it!

I am wirting up notes as I go along so I will be posting some of those field notes.

At the moment I am stupid happy to be at the Allied Media Conference. It brings together everything I want most in my life right now: media education, youth empowerment, and community organizing. With workshops on trans representation in independent media, Palestinian divestment strategies, and "magical education in magical settings"I don't think there's is anywhere in the world I would rather be.

Create. Connect. transform.

Boi's Night In

2009-06-22T16:01:00.003-04:00

I have been overall pretty pleased and excited with everything happening in Chicago. However, with the warm weather, I am definitely feeling a little tranny-boy withdrawl. Where's a boy supposed to find lazer tag partners? So I have decide to host the first BOi's Night In at the Cunt Collective. Spread the word if you know any transmasculine folk in Chi-town...

Tshirt brainstorming

2009-06-21T14:04:00.007-04:00

I'm working on a few tshirts. One will be a kink shirt, one will be a trans masculine pride shirt, and one will be an anarchist shirt. They all will be using words in order to draw out different identifiable symbols.

So I am in the process of brainstorming transmasculine gender identities. SO far I have: aggresive, stud, butch, boi, trannie boy, trannie fag, transman, genderqueer, genderfuck, Tomboy, gender variant, androdyke... you got more?

(Just a reminder that all images I create and post on this blog are property of me)

Chicago youth center: A new chapter

2009-06-09T15:35:00.001-04:00

I have begun interning at a queer youth center in Chicago that will go unnamed, and I am presuming that most of my posts will be looking at the issues the center and the youth who access the center are dealing with.

I am working with mostly African American gay men and trans women. They are largely homeless and experiencing all sorts of violence that comes with that. I've fallen in love with them already. It's so intense, but I'm in a great place personally, so I feel fortified to deal with it all.

Some of the center's attitudes towards youth are problematic. It is supposed to be dedicated to anti-oppression, but of course it fails this charge sometimes. While there are some radical elements in the center, it is overall pretty progressive in nature. You can look forward to me posting in length about those grievances as they come up.

Hammers, Roofs, and Radios: A Subversive Transmission

2009-05-24T08:43:00.002-04:00

Construction dyke and techie tranny seek 7-9 curious adventurers passionate about housing justice, manual labor, and quirky documentaries. Participants can expect to build with and interview a local chapter of Habitat for Humanity. As we gather material to make a podcast about our experience, we will be talking about affordable housing issues and embarking on a day trip to Boston for a gentrification tour. Must be ready for:

-life-altering shenanigans
-mind-expanding discussions
-mind-altering connections
and heavy doses of caffeine.
*positive results guaranteed and no experience necessary

Leadership Camp

2009-05-24T08:42:00.001-04:00

I packed up my swimming trunks and granola bars and headed out for a post-graduation leadership camp. The occasion was me having designed a 5 day trip for my school’s unique and apparently award-winning orientation program (see next entry for details on my specific trip). I was a little stressed about giving up three days out of my already tight schedule, but I was dedicated to making the trip a success, and I figured getting to know some of the other leaders could prove useful.

We arrived at a low-key place named “Neringa” without having any idea what was to befall us. The campground was actually a Lithuanian nunnery the school had rented out. We stayed in a gorgeous lodge with exposed wood everywhere. The spacious kitchen was lined around the parameter with cabinets laminated white labels no one could read. There were 22 of us in all.

We played a variety of games led by a too-cheery-to-believe woman with obvious new-agey inclinations. I’ll spare you the details of most. Suffice it to say we spent time rubbing strangers, improvising blindfolded, and no one ever won anything. I wonder what kind of person I would have grown up to be if this all were more familiar than awkward.

My main objective in being there was to get to know my co-leader. I had designed the trip on my own, but needed someone else to help make it a reality. There was A, a woman short in stature but bulky in physique. Her face was full of metal, her tongue split, her dreads ¾ inch in diameter. She exuded toughness and had most recently worked as a bouncer to boot. She was interested in the trip for the construction aspect but her father was a sustainable architect in Boston. Our energies and resources complimented each other. I was impressed by how good of a match we were, and found a lot of comfort in her unfamiliar laughter.

Half way through the trip, she sat down on an unfinished floor and got impaled in the ass. Now, I never saw said splinter, but I hear it was an inch and a half long. I was impressed by how she owned it in the middle of the meeting, I mean really, that might be the most embarrassing moment of her life. Several unsuccessful attempts with and without tweezers resulted in a trip to the hospital. After a one-on-one session with a scalpel, she spent the next two days hocked up on vicodin, which was understandable but rendered her pretty much useless. I did all the work with maybe a little resentment but it’s hard to be grumpy in a beautiful place, in one of my last moments of familiarity before I thrust myself into the unknown.

At the end of the training, I left with a desire to spend more time getting to know A, regret that I hadn’t skipped out on a few activity times to explore the land, and a quiet anxiety about whether or not I was the right kind of person to lead one of these trips.

Yo Mama's So White...

2009-05-17T15:23:00.001-04:00

Two black teenage girls linger in front of a Boys & Girls Club off of the main drag of a town that is big for Vermont but never the less minuscule. One leans lazily against a brick wall. They seem to be arguing about something interesting enough to animate them but not important enough to take seriously. The conversation soon devolves into a trickle of half-hearted teasing comments,

“You’re mama’s so stupid, she can’t find her way out of the co-op parking lot.”

“Yeah? Well, yo mama’s ass is so big, she can’t fit through the door when she gets there.“

“Yo mama’s ass is so white…” She doesn’t finish her sentence, letting the silence dictate her victory.

I inhale deeply and try not to break my stride. The word “white” sounds like the moment of impact when hammer and chisel meet. Abrasive, like flakes of stone flailing to the ground. White like lambs and judgment and God. I want to tell her that she doesn’t know what she just did. I want to say, “Once you go real, you can never come back.”

I want to talk about how I grew up convinced I wasn’t authentic enough for my own name. About how I spent three months in Peru and yet I still play Anglo when I go into Mexican restaurants. I want to tell her how disappointed in myself I am of all the times I said “she” because I was embarrassed to be asked about my pronouns. I want to say you don’t have to play that game.

You can help one another be brave. Because you’re young people. Because you’re becoming women. Because on this street in this moment, it doesn’t matter how white her mama’s ass is when passersby are thinking nuisance and street crime and holding their purses a little closer to their bodies.

I want to tell her that I fell in love with the first person who treated me like I was real. I want her to know she can be that for someone. It’s a choice.

Website Finished (for now)

2009-05-16T01:52:00.002-04:00

So,I have been cheating on this blog with my Transgender Oral History website... www.TransOralHistory.org . After a couple months of fiddling with it, I am pretty happy at how it came out. I will be uploading content to it and posting on my TOH blog when I do, so you should subscribe to the RSS feed on the blog.

Now to catch up for lost time...

Andy for Editor

2009-05-01T11:14:00.003-04:00

I've finally become the quintessential Malrboro student. I bitch and moan about how much I have to do, and then I wake up and over commit myself all over again.

That being said... Vote for me

Haikus or Fragments form the narrative of my last couple days

2009-04-29T11:49:00.001-04:00

April 28th
The smell of sweat and
Dirt gathered under her nails
Was like growing up

The disappointment
Of never having learned to
work for a living.

April 29th
Estranged initials,
Letters open, unexpected
Rounded but not worn

Fell through my inbox
Hitting a nerve on the way
Back into distance

Productivity, thou art my master II

2009-04-22T14:02:00.002-04:00

Endeavors I want to be pursuing:

-Writing a zine about trans issues and feminism
-Writing an article for an anthology about butch submissives
-Making a documentary about my mother
-Making up with my best friend
-Interviewing more transactivists

On Wanting II

2009-04-22T13:08:00.003-04:00

The fact that I claim I don’t know what I want seems farcical to many people who know me. After all, I am ambitious and have the work ethic of a puritan Ox (I way want an image of that). The question that I can see in their eyes when the ask: What am I afraid of wanting? What am I unwilling or unable to admit that I want?

When it comes down to it, I want for those I care about—I want that they feel safe and cared for; I want that they feel good about who they are and what they are doing; I want that they see how strong and capable I know they are. I want many of the same things for myself.

But the question that always seems so untenable is what do I want from them. What do I want from my relationships with them? And thus I falter. I want to be a good man; I want to be a good brother; I want to be a good friend; I want to be a good parent. I want to be what they need. I want to show them they are already enough. I want to be a mirror that reflects all the things I admire about them. I want to love them in ways they can’t love themselves. I want to show them how much they have to teach me. What does any of that mean?

I know Buddhism is attractive to me because it tells me I am virtuous because I don’t want. I know that is ego. I know wanting things makes me feel vulnerable. I know that is ego too. I know that all the things I know only get me farther from what I want. So where the hell does that lead me?

Productivity, thou art my master

2009-04-09T10:18:00.002-04:00

I'm the kind of person who likes to keep busy. I always have a few big projects and a few little projects I'm working on at the same time. I am only a little bit obsessed with productivity. About two weeks ago, I finally reached a point where I can say I am over-committed. But it wasn't until this morning that I paused to realize all the things I am actually working on at the same time (and break down how many hours per week I spend on them)...

1) I am developing a website (2-6)
2) I am continuing my oral history project (1 every other week)
3) I am editing and soliciting content for a history exhibit for this winter (2-3)
4) I am coordinating a college orientation trip for next semester (1-2)
5) I have been applying for internships and related grants (3-5)
6) I am co-teaching a photography class at a local community organization (4-6)
7) I am publishing a book (for money) (9-13)
8) I am coordinating a small-scale literacy initiative (4-6)
9) I am part of a core group of people organizing a divestment campaign on my campus (2-3)
10) I am trying to fix my health issues (which includes weekly doctor or naturopath appts) (2-3)
11) I am trying to write an undergrad thesis (included below)
12) I am posting more regularly on my blog (2-3)

That folks means 32-50 hours on top of being a more than full time student.

For the 19 credits I am taking, I have 10 hours per week in class and am supposed to do 47 hours of work outside of class.

How is this possible? I get academic credit for a couple fo the projects (like the wbepage and the photography class), I get paid for others, I colorize drawings while I wait for my doctor, I e-mail interviewees during class, and I haven't made the progress I need to on my thesis.

Certitude: A Conversation

2009-04-06T12:13:00.003-04:00

Conversation with my therapist:

A: "So I feel like I kinda put gender on the agenda when we started meeting, but I never really find the occasion to talk about it."

T:"Because it's over whelming?"

A:"No. Because it's not that problematic. I mean I normally feel like I should talk about relationships because they have been causing me a lot of grief, especially recently. Gender's pretty comfortable to talk about."

T:"So talk about it."

A:"Well, what do you mean? I feel like I could talk forever, but I want to focus. Can you ask something specific?"

T:"Why does it come to mind now?"

A:"Well, I'm making post-graduation plans. I'm thinking about health insurance. I'm thinking about my goals for the next few years. I'd like to have a couple thousand saved up when I graduate. If I live somewhere where I don't need a car, then I'll be able to afford top surgery. I don't need a date for that, it's just inevitable, so I think about it in passing."

T:"That's the first thing you've ever talked about with that level of certainty. I mean why are you confident about this and not the other things we have talked about?"

A:"I don't see how they are analogous. Surgery is just something that is going to happen. Relationships are confusing and ambiguous and involve a high level of uncertainty. I know what I need from a surgeon. There are steps. I just have to save up the money. It's not something I need to worry about."

Ophans II

2009-04-05T21:01:00.006-04:00

My roommate is moving out in May. She is moving forward with her plan to get an apartment and adopt her teenage sister. The state approved the adoption papers, and last month's rent is in.

She got a voicemail from her brother today saying his girlfriend is pregnant. Yes--the boy whose been homeless for the last year, who didn't manage to apply for a single job the entire month he lived with us, who got a ticket last month for having sex in public in a saab, who referred to the ticket and the act he was caught during ("doing his girlfriend doggie-style") as his "rite of passage into manhood."

"They are keeping it." Her voice quivered, too exasperated to play parent again.

Oy. I hope Daniel's not straight.

The Hunt is On

2009-04-04T18:52:00.005-04:00

I've been looking for apartments for this summer to live in during my internship at a queer youth center in Chicago!

As always, Craigs list has turned up sme awesome looking opportunities and some fucking wierdos. Here are some highlights...

"THE OWNER IS A UNION MAN AND HAS A OPEN MIND SO THERE ARE NEVER ANY PROBLEM THAT CAN NOT BE SOLVED. "

"we are friends with a good many spaces about the city which may be able to host your friends from alaska who play screechingly incredible noise music, we just can't really host it here. so, we are mostly looking for individuals who are, ya' know... chill, intelligent, personable, caring, engaging, and inspiring... but we'll settle for a few of those if your pretty old skool kool."

$1 Gay guy need Couch
This is a honest offer... Three social and easygoing gay guys 23-46 seek guy who needs some help starting on his own or a low cost place to stay. Perfect for bad weather, late night, visiting Chicago, internship, live in suburbs, between apartments or relocating/looking for a job...
The following is from notes sent by actual quests who stayed with us.

"I really felt like at home at your house. Really you guys make me feel like this is my home, which is hard to achieve." Alex- 3/09
"Thanks for everything. I had a great time with you guys." Matt- 3/09

Boytown Terror

2009-03-26T12:48:00.006-04:00

I'm feeling pretty down-to-the wire with this whole internship thing. I've gotten a few preliminary responses, but when I attempt to follow up by phone and e-mail, I haven't been very successful. I got a call today from a queer youth center in Chicago. Our conversation went well; the woman was encouraging but realistic, and the organization itself seems pretty on top its stuff. She indicated that I would have the freedom to develop the kind of project I wanted but also that I would have support of the staff if I needed it. Sounds great, right?

Here's the catch. It's in boytown. Most of the population is African American males, there are a handful of latinos, a couple of white guys, and a decent amount of transwomen mixed in. As she said this, my face fell. I realized that for all intents and purposes, I meant female-bodied when I said queer. All kinds of questions rushed thorugh my head... What if living in Vermont has handicapped me as far as dealing with people of color goes? Will young me listen to me if I try to teach them? Can I get over my discomfort with femininity enough to bonds with young transwomen? What does my life have to do with thiers? They won' t look like me. They won't talk like me. They won't listen to the same music or read the same books as me. It's exciting but in its own way, it's terrifying.

Banking on Andy

2009-03-24T19:21:00.003-04:00

Last week I got my first check from my employer. I had worked for six weeks, but since I didn't see my boss or have any co-workers, I hadn't thought to ask about how I was going to get paid (I know, unique problem, right?). I finally figured out how to write an invoice and got a check in the mail a few days later. I luxuriated in the crisp sunlight as I walked to the bank. When I moseyed up to the teller counter, I slapped my check on the counter and glanced through the picture window.

"Who's Andy?"
"Excuse me?"
"Andy. Who is he?"
"They didn't, they didn't write it out to Andy. Damn it."
The teller squished her face into confusion, and I felt blush dart across my own.
"I'm sorry..umm..I'll fix it." I stared at the floor as I grabbed the check and stuffed it hastily into my jacket pocket. I was shaken.

I scuffled down the sidewalk towards my boss's office. I couldn't believe it had happened, and yet I fully expecetd it to. Mostly, I was upset with myself for not checking first.

As I pulled her office door open, Betsy seemed glad to see me. Her pleaseant demenor and self-consciously encouraging ptter of speech calmed me down, and I explained to her that I couldn't cash a check that was written to Andy. After an unsucesfful call tot he accountant, she told me there was no reason I shouldn't cash it. Dave chimed in that he cashes checks for Dave not David all the time. I wanted to say, but it's different. But I caught myself.

"It's the same thing. It's ridiculous. What did they say?"
"The teller just said she wouldn't." I lied. If not in fact than in intention.

Betsy gave me her card and sent me to her bank. I set off down Main St but as I neared the unfamiliar building, I felt uncertain. Why couldn't I just have another check? What if they asked me why I am called Andy? What if they wouldn't believe me? I knew I'd have to go into my bank again eventually, so I went ahead and did it then. I walked up tot he same teller, and I told her this is my nickname. She called her anager, and after endorsing the check as Andy, I walked away feeling exonerated.

With the proliferation of female Andy's (two that work for the same organization I do and two more at to co-op), my name outs me to only the people who knew anyways. It only has to be an issue if I press it. Last week was unsettleing. To feel embarassed, like I was caught doing somethign I'm not supposed to. To feel as if someone has the power to negate my claim to myself. Some days, I feel more trans than others.

Spring Break Updates

2009-03-24T13:52:00.005-04:00

For the first time in a long time, I've been enjoying my time alone lately. This refresher course in why I believe in free schooling that has left me with greasy hands, a full fridge, and a restocked closet. What's been on the menu for break?

-Web design. I have a working template up (when I'm done, my real site name will be TransgenderOralHistory.com). The "learn more," "participate," "blog updates" buttons are working. I'd love some feedback on the design and on the writing (hint, hint)!

-Work. I run a small literacy initiative in VT, which encourages kids to write for fun and money. I've gotten a handful of kids to start thier own zines/comics, and am coordinating a program for them to write movie reviews in exchange for free tickets. My second job is helpign publish this book Anatomy of Hatha Yoga, and I've colorized about half the grpahics so far. I've finally made enough so that I don't feel way stressed about ti all the time.

-Shopping. If you know me, then it will come ot no surprise to yout hat I hate shopping. I'm cheap, poor, andsuspicious of new things (basically I am a young version of your grandma). However, I went out looking for a summer wardrobe that is 1) more gender appropriate, 2) could be construed as business casual 3) low maintainance & 4) apparently somewhere between "metro" and "dykey".

-Divestment. There is a gorup of people at my school whoa re looking into our investments. We are having trouble figureing out the paper trail, but I am going to a conference on divestment that will hopefully help us figure out the next steps towards challanging the college to divest from comanies profiteering off of the gaza occupation.

-Hands-on adventure training. Which is to say, I have also fixed up my bike, gone hiking, built stuff, learned to hem, done a photo shoot (for a friend's awesome online print shop), silk-screened, and dyed clothes.

Damned If I Never Learn

2009-03-17T17:42:00.001-04:00

So I am at that time of year again, when I feel downright crazy. I’ve spent the last week or two trying to figure out why I feel alternately excited and passionate or obsessive and anxious. My summer plans are starting to fall into place, I’m making great progress at both of my jobs, people at my college are actually taking initiative on a campaign without me having to be the leader, I’m working on community projects that are interesting and fun as well as useful, and post-graduation is beginning to seem more exciting than daunting. When so much is going right, why have the things that bother me been getting at me?

In an odd way, I don’t really know how to deal with having energy. After prolonged periods of being depressed and discourage, I’ve grown unused to feeling as if I am ready and able to take on whatever challenges I my face. When I begin to feel this overwhelming energy, my heart starts to race. I can feel the adrenaline building, and I can only assume I am heading for a panic attack. Sometimes I actually stop myself mid-process, realizing that it is literally the expectation of anxiety that is bringing it to fruition. How much does interpretation justify what we are already feeling and how much does it shift the very nature of those sensations?

I’ve recognized for a long time that that crazy energy makes me more effective at almost everything I am trying to do. I depend on waves of it to sustain my all-too-ambitious lifestyle. It makes me a more dedicated activist, a livelier teacher, a more focused student. Lately, I’ve started seeing a downside to the mania (little “m,” not big). For some reason, it rarely registers to me that I can’t just take up my personal relationships with the same urgency as the rest of my life. A flurry of IM’s inspired by a sudden burst of energy isn’t going to make me closer to the people I care about. I can’t stack people like library books barricading me into my futon. I can’t chart our progress into spreadsheets, crunch some numbers, and have an output ratio. Not all too surprising granted, but damned if I never learn…

Giving Up

2009-03-07T10:45:00.003-05:00

So I've went through stages in my life where I gave up a lot of things: gave up collecting things I don't need, gave up my car, gave up control in unpredictable situations. They were a series of campaigns driven by this bizzare sense that deprivation was inherently strengthening to the spirit. Sure, at times it was a catalyst for personal growth, but mostly they were thinly vailed exercises in self-indulgence. I've become weary of the seduction of asceticism, I even imagine at times that I have given that up.

But it goes further than that, what about people I've given up on? I have this uncanny ability to cut my losses so-to-speak, to choose to not pursue relationships with people who I can logically evaluate are not good for me. It doesn't matter how I feel about them. Choices are about reason in my world. Sometimes I think that unyielding disposition towards the logical is my only instinct of self-preservation. Often, I'm ashamed of it. And, on at least one occasion, someone I care deeply about told me it scared her.

I'm left contemplating times I have voluntarily chosen to give things up because this past week I've finally found myself in the position to give up on something I feel like I have no say in. I've given up on a relationship that means a great deal to me, one that was formative for me, one that has caused me a great deal of pain in the recent past. I'm giving up after holding on too hard, and it feels like a first in all the worst ways--confusing, frightening, dramatic, ill-prepared. However, I can't help questioning if this is a new decision or one I've making for a long time now...

Orphans

2009-02-14T11:33:00.005-05:00

One of my roommates is an orphan. Her parents died when she was in college with her brother at 19 and her sister at 16.

The situation beckons a consideration of the systemic arbitrariness that left her and her brother to fend for themselves (she had to drop out of college to support herself) while her sister became a foster kid. Fast forward about a year and L, the twenty one year old works full time for a grocery store so that she can pay off debts (from a bout of shopping addiction that left her thousands in the hole), and save up so she can afford to adopt her little sister. She recently found out that her brother was living in a homeless shelter, so she invited him to move in with us. Today her sister came for a rare visit. I wonder if its the first time they've been together since it happened even though they've lived with hours of one another.

The contrast of the three of them is remarkable as the sister spends breakfast sharing wild stories of drunkenness and sexual scandals. L tells her sister she's getting involved with dumb shit. But she listens. I've only talked briefly with the brother, but he comes off as a high school kid--laid back and unambitious.

I think about what it means that they're foster kids... about which statistics they'll end up proving right. I want them to have more of a chance than they do.

The similarities between her situation and mine have not been lost on me over the past couple of months. The sense of having now where to turn if things go wrong. Of not having the time or patience to deal with people our age who can't get that. Maybe I haven't talked to her about personal stuff because I don't know if she'd appreciate me comparing our situations.

I can't help myself.

I've lived with L and I've never heard her laugh as much as they do together.

I remember growing up jealous of my friends with fucked up childhoods that brought them closer to their siblings. Why did mine just make me further from everyone? Why does it still?

Last week, I went on a field trip, and I had no idea who to put on my emergency contact form.

L would never tell me, but she worries. She worries like I worry about my brother. She worries like she has a reason to...

Asexy Superlative

2009-02-04T18:34:00.001-05:00

I was asked today if I wanted to accept the superlative (for a yearbook edition of the school magazine), "most sex positive asexual."

I'm still a little stunned.

And unsure how to respond.

Slowing Down

2009-01-31T08:11:00.002-05:00

This year seemed to reveal some promise as it began...that I could some how become more of myself than I am in the habit of being lately...that I could find a place in my life to stop stumbling and stand firmly...that I could abandon this failed project of relationship building in order begin anew. For the moment, I feel more tired and worn than I have the right to be. I feel the slovenliness seeping into my bones. I know I can fail. And I am afraid that caffeine can't fix me.

Breaking up with Bank of America

2009-01-18T21:49:00.006-05:00

_________________________________________________________________
I encouraging people (especially Marlboro students) to participate in the mass day of account closings action against Bank of America. There are a couple of organizations with ongoing campaigns to get BOA to clean up its act, and with the billions of dollars pouring into it from the government, we are pushing for it to stop fucking people over. Below are more details...
_________________________________________________________________
*NATIONAL CALL TO ACTION*

BREAK UP WITH BANK OF AMERICA ON VALENTINES DAY

FEB 14th, 2009: MASS DAY OF ACCOUNT CLOSURES

STOP ALL EVICTIONS AND FORECLOSURES!

STOP FINANCING COAL AND CLIMATE CHANGE!

Contact: valentinesday@risingtideboston.org

This Valentine's Day, February 14th, 2009, join Rising Tide Boston (RTB) in demanding that Bank of America stop its funding of the dirty and deadly coal industry and demanding, in solidarity with City Life/Vide Urbana, stop its unjust foreclosures and evictions of working families. Closing your account with Bank of America (BOA) is an important step in bringing closure to this unhealthy relationship. In Boston, we are planning a day of coordinated bank account closures in at least two locations, and encourage people in other places to organize something similar.

It is completely within Bank of America's power to stop evicting people from their homes, and such a step wouldn't be unprecedented. Mortgage giant Fannie Mae recently announced a moratorium on evictions of tenants in foreclosed houses after facing pressure from housing justice activists. Now is [the] time to let BOA know in no uncertain terms that we won't allow them to push any of us or our neighbors out of our homes, and that we're certainly not going to trust them with our money.

Soledad Lawrence, a community organizer with City Life / Vida Urbana says that the racist foreclosure crisis is "like Katrina without the water." We will not allow Bank of America's predatory lending practices to displace poor people and people of color in our city or anywhere. The same working-class communities that are most oppressed by the economic system these greedy banks support are now facing the worst effects of the environmental devastation that it causes. While communities in Boston continue to struggle in the face of the ongoing disaster of foreclosures and evictions, communities in Appalachia are fighting back against the disaster of the coal industry, which is poisoning their water and displacing them from their homes. Climate change is a social justice issue, and we must build alliances now to confront the corporations who put profit before people and the planet.

Recently, Bank of America attempted to salvage its relationship with the movements working to end mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR) by releasing a [statement on] Coal Policy, in which the bank failed to commit to a timeline or any concrete action to halt their financing of MTR. In this "policy", BOA touts "advanced technologies such as carbon capture and storage" as solutions to climate change. BOA does not seem to understand that we need is a livable planet that hasn't been turned into an overheated toxic wasteland, not token gestures or promises to support false solutions. The recent devastating coal-ash spill in Tennessee is a reminder that we already have enough ongoing and imminent disasters from the coal industry- we don't need any more. BOA's first step should be the immediate cancellation of loans to destructive corporations such as Peabody Energy, Massey Energy, Arch Coal, Dominion, and all others involved with mountaintop removal and trashing the climate.

We encourage everyone who does business with Bank of America to take time this Valentine's Day to tell them "it's over between us." In Boston, we're encouraging people to pledge ahead of time, so we can know how many people to expect and let them know which branch we will be at. Even if you don't have a bank account at Bank of America, you can still participate at a support rally. We are calling on social and environmental justice groups around the country to work together organize account closings in their communities on this day. Without our money, greedy banks cannot continue to destroy the planet and exploit marginalized communities.

For help organizing a day of mass account closings in your town, or to make a pledge to close your account in the Boston area, write to: ValentinesDay@RisingTideBoston.org.

Stay tuned to www.RisingTideBoston.org for some suggestions or logistical support.

For information about City Life/Vida Urbana, check out www.clvu.org.

Creamy White Bean Soup

2009-01-18T17:34:00.005-05:00

I've been getting back into cooking these days since I have the time to spare. I always forget how relaxing it is to me, and how much i enjoy the challenge of trying new fancy things. Tonight I pulled off an original recipes on my first try: Creamy White Bean Soup in a sourdough bread bowl.

Creamy White Bean Soup
Serves 2

1 can of White Northern Beans
1 small potato
2 sprigs of fresh thyme
1 sprig of fresh rosemary
2 Basil leaves
1/2 cup of unsweetened soy milk
1/2 cup of veggie broth
Salt and Pepper to taste
1 small onion
2 cloves of garlic (less if you don't love it as much as I do)
optional:
Green onions

-dice potato and steam
-empty beans and veggie broth into pot and simmer
-sautee the onions and garlic until almost translucent
-add onions, garlic, potatoes, and herbs
-add soy milk
-simmer for 20 minutes or longer
-salt and pepper to taste
-serve in hollowed out sourdough roll
-garnish with green onions

Almost my first coming out

2009-01-14T21:24:00.009-05:00

I was tempted to say the account below was my first coming out but then I remembered a friend who always catches me making these sweeping statements that aren't really credible. He's actually the first one I came out to.

In an event, this entry is about how I just came out to my Aunt. Oddly enough, I'm pretty virginal at this whole coming out thing (maybe I'll write an article about how I think coming out plays a really different role in the lives of tans people than in the lives of GLB people).

Anyways, here's the interaction (My aunt's responses are italicized):

Are you going by Andy?

Hey,

Do you remember when you said I looked like  a boy in the picture I took of myself at the bus stop? That
probably had to do with the fact that I've been using a binder instead of a
bra for the past six months to flatten my chest. I like how it makes me look and
makes me feel. I was finding that people responded to me with confusion when I
introduced myself as Chlirissa. I was also feeling more and more uneasy with how
girly the name was. I felt like it shaped people's expectations of me in
ways that made me uncomfortable. When I introduce myself to new people as ANDy,
I feel more confident and honest. I've been gradually asking more and more
people in my life to do so as well. I would appreciate if you coudl try to call
me Andy too.

Thanks for asking,

Andy

HI Chlirissa ( Andy, I am trying, it will take awhile):

I dont recall saying that you looked like a boy, but evidebtally I did. I checked my sent emails and I'm not finding the conversation in there. Reguardless it really doesnt matter. I will try my best to call you Andy (no guarantees, but I will try).

Andy, the discissions that you make in your life are totally up to you and no one else. For me to say that you need to live differently, would really be none my business or anyone elses. I did think that you were waring some type of binder on your chest, not that I could see anything, but one thing I do know is that your not flat chested (so for me that was a given) and again if thats what you want to do, than thats what you should do.

I feel rediculas in asking this.. but you dont know unless you ask,,, right ! Are you gay?

My guess would be yes, but different people do different things, and it doesnt mean that their gay.

I will say that for the past 2 years I have thought that you were... my innerself telling me. Now if I am wrong, please dont be upset.(at least you know if you ever were gay that I would be willing to accept it) It would not matter to me if you were straight, gay, blue, green, short, tall, rich, poor. Really when it comes down to it, your sexuality would have no bearing on how I feel about you,,,, that will never change. You find out how people really are when their "out of their comfort zone (family)". The LOVE I have for you is uncondituional and will always be.

Nothing would change, I may have a few tear drops, but would it be possible for you to still keep my middle name as one of yours (Alana). If your not comfortable with that I'll understand, it's just always meant a lot to me. But again that would be your decission.

Thank you for emailing me back, I have to go...I'm starving or at least I think I am.

Be safe and take care.

Love,

Denise

I'm very proud of you ackcomplishment, and determination "in Making it" in this world.


Hey,

The comment about looking like a boy was something you said in passing
when I came for a visit and showed you a picture on my computer. I
mostly remember it because I had already stopped wearing bras but I
decided to buy a sports bra expressly for the visit because I didn't
want anyone to notice and ask about it.

As for the gay thing. I'm not sure how to answer. In general I don't
really have sexual attractions or desires. I've only had about two
crushes ever, and even then, they weren't really strong enough to act
on them. Then, about eight months ago I met someone named D. We fell
in love pretty quickly, and then started dating. She graduated from
Smith College and then moved back to where she was from. We dated
long distance for about six months. I spent Thanksgiving and some of
Hanaukah with her family. I mentioned it to Mother but she didn't
inquire any further about it. We actually just broke up over New Years.
It was mutual, and we agreed that we wanted to be friends. However,
she's asked me to not call her for a couple of weeks to give her time
to process, so that's been pretty hard. I mentioned all of that because
I didn't want to avoid the question of sexuality, however binding my
chest and changing my name are about gender, not sexuality.

I do not identify as a lesbian, although I understand if that is how
you see me. One of the things I loved about being with Dane was that
she was really supportive of me in terms of my gender identity. She
encouraged me to go to support groups and talk to people who I might be
able to identify with and she helped me test out some other names
before I decided on this one.

But it's important to say that my decisions weren't because of her by
any stretch of the imagination. We actually started talking at the
Transgender Pride rally, something I was involved in organizing. I
identify as transgender. That word probably calls to mind the pregnant
guy who went on Oprah a while ago. It can mean a lot of different
things, but for me it means I don?t? feel like a typical woman. I don?t
feel like a man or a woman most of the time (the word for that is
genderqueer), but I do tend to prefer being treated like a guy over
being treated like a girl. For the moment I do NOT plan on starting
hormone therapy or having surgeries. More important than altering my
body is altering the way people perceive and treat me. For the moment,
I am in a place where I can ask people to call me Andy or make other
requests in order to be treated how I would like to.

I have attached some excerpts of an article from the New York Times
that I really related to. It was originally about transmen at women's
colleges, but I trimmed it down to the most relevant parts.

I understand that this is probably confusing and surprising to you.
Many times when family members learn about it they are uncomfortable
because they are uncertain how to react. You may be scared or relieved,
skeptical but wanting to be supportive. It will probably take time for
you to sort out those feelings. What I want you to know is that I am
safe and happy. I have a supportive community near by, and I feel great
about the changes I am making in my life.

Let me know if you have questions or concerns I can address.

Andy

Cooking or Break Up II

2009-01-06T20:09:00.000-05:00

We went to bed unconscionably early only to find out that neither of us were tired. Somehow we fell into a nighttime rhythm. Teeth brushing then PT exercises, and it wasn’t until we laid awake in the dark that I leaned over to question what we had done. “Aren’t you tired?” she responded.

“Not really,” I wondered what cues we had each given each other and misread so automatically that neither of us noticed. It was 9:30pm for Chirst’s sake.

At least it was an opportunity to talk though. “I want us to cook together. For two people who claim to love to cook, we’ve spent so little time in kitchens, so much time in restaurants.” She was a little defensive about the restaurants. It had been a source of contention for some time (originally due to class issues then because of our differing tastes). I pressed her on it, hoping to reverse what was rapidly becoming clear: we were boring together. Surely there were things we could love together besides one another.

“Why don’t we cook for New Years, at your friend’s house?”

“Because he’s my best friend, but we eat because we have to. I want to cook like two people who enjoy it.” All but one of my adult friendships have evolved over cutting boards and immersion blenders. Make-your-own calzone parties. Excited whispers of vegan recipes. Name dropping Indian dishes. Exchanging produce tips.

After a week solid of doubts (on my part), I wanted us to get excited about something. I wanted us to cry over the caramelizing onions, and bounce along as we shook on the bread-crumb coating. I wanted latin music and the smell of garlic to linger late into the night. I wanted us to giggle about how obsessively I arranged the sushi. I wanted to watch her eyes light up to the lathering of butter as I nestled layers of filo dough one-by-one. I wanted us to pull a golden nutty sheet out of the oven, and marvel at how good of a team we were.

“You don’t even like to eat. It’s not fun if by time we get to the good part, you’re already done… Why do you even like cooking?”

“It’s making something you didn’t know you could. It’s taking flavors that entice you and finding ways to mix and match, to infuse them with creativity. It’s taking something old and making it new.” What I didn’t tell her was that I used to have a whole shtick about how cooking was creativity. It’s the essence of functional art. It’s giving yourself permission to take longer than you have to just because you want to. It’s indulging in the process instead of the product. I like to cook because I like to make things that feel extravagant. Cooking lets me lavish my focus and attention into creating something others enjoy. It’s been a long time since I felt like I had something worth sharing.

But I didn’t get that far, before she called me analytic. My heart sank, and I rolled over. It didn’t matter what she said after that.

In the morning I woke up first, hoping to find the new thing-we-could-both-be-excited-about. I made us eggs florentine. It was my first time. Half way through the meal, she started apologizing about insulting my kitchen the night before. I had a hard time swallowing with all the words caught in my throat.

At least we had other firsts.

Ritual and Softening

2009-01-03T19:32:00.002-05:00

We were in the youth center alone, printing flyers for an open mic night. She had been flirting hard all evening but not getting very far. I was tolerating her over-polished soliloquies because she was good, because I liked not giving her what she wanted. But then she slipped a prayer between poetry recitations. She rocked as she explained to me what the melody meant to her. She closed her eyes when she spoke Hebrew, and told me Jews are nothing without books. I began to soften. Her hands cradled the air when she described the netted cloths that stretch across men’s shoulders during the ceremonies. She told me she always wanted one with little disks of gold.

***
I thought of old ladies hunched in moo-moos and Sunday pearls, clapping as they shifted their weight to the beat. The way their heads quaked when their hands shot up mid-sermon quickly followed by thundering tongues drawing out the syllables—“praise to the LORD!” I remembered how my heart clenched during these eruptions that scared and enthralled my thirteen year old longing to believe. I remembered how I admired those feeble-legged women, petering as if they were ready to topple over. They stood for hours in white tents, sweat rolling down their faces because the only bursts of wind were the agreeing moans and breathy “Preach it” of other parishioners.

For years I had idolized those dramatic scenes, jealous that sheer breathlessness could feel like truth. But I was never moved like those wavering, gasping Southern Baptists. I was hot under those revival tents. I enjoyed the orchestral music and impressive AV displays of the Mega churches. I smiled at the austerity of the silver crosses hung on sparse trailer-thin walls.

***
I woke every morning at five. In those caffeine-free days, the yoga teacher’s dry sense of humor was enough to sustain me. We had three meditations a day: morning chant, group meditation at lunch, and evening chants.

Monotone voices kept pace with the drum. My own tried desperately to resonate, carrying away my breath with my thoughts. Each morning I stared at the Tonka painting as I plucked few dozen Sanskrit words out of my throat. To me they were representations not of the stories they told but of my own willingness to give myself over to this practice that it might feel meaningful.

My eyes watered when they burned the inscents. My heart carried the beat of the drum when there was one. My ass fell asleep during lunch. Eyes-lowered, I sat with a stubborn pride, and I waited.

***
She could tell I was scared. We were laying in bed, and all I could feel was my heart beating. I had never had someone so close before. She wanted to know about my shelf, about the thin black Buddha surrounded by slim candles. I tried so hard not to be pretentious about it, and we were talking ritual again. I explained that I had grown-up loathing the symbols of a church that condemned me for what I could not feel. I explained how being at Shambhala helped me understand formalism as the safe spaces we create to feel what we need to. I conceded that the sacred still captivated but eluded me. She offered to meditate with me. And I softened.

***
I told her I was asexual, and yet it had happened. I asked her for it. She was grateful at the time, but afterwards confusion lingered in her face. My eyes traced the curves of the ohm symbol on the wall, “Do you know what a container is? It is a way to describe a space that is sacred. In Shambhala there are a group of people who patrol the land, who sit in doorways of ceremonies. They are warriors of sorts. When they mark the entrance into something that is to be protected, they are said to hold the space.” She nodded, and we held each other.

***
She lay on the bed, book in hand as I wrote and rewrote a cover letter. Her giggle made me smile as she read out passages from a novel about a woman at an ashram. The witty and ironic account made me remember those days spent hoping and sitting. I should have asked her to sit with me. I at least could have learned more about the book. But I didn’t.

***
She told me not to talk to her for three weeks, and I pleaded with my eyes for more time. She spoke resolutely, asking for a “closing ritual.” I poked fun at her partly in a flirtatious tone that had to be all-too-wrong for the situation at hand, partly in an attempt to indulge her escapism for a fleeting moment, partly because I wanted to belittle her (I resented that she had made the argument that her experience is what was guiding her to choose to not contact me, which I took as a condescending slight at my age and lack of prior relationships). I said yes because I was glad she was willing to occupy the same space as me for a little bit before she left.

A day passed, and I was waiting for her to come take her car. It didn’t feel final. I was ready for my goodbye but it felt like the time had passed. I told myself that two people who love each other can say a better farewell. I wanted funny stories and singing. I wanted candlelight casting shadows on our faces. I wanted to sit with her and make something that we could burn together. I wanted that ritual I had taken a shot at her for asking for. I wanted that ritual I had never been able to connect with. I was pleased she had come in, if only to the entry. A few white matches gave way to swirls of smoke rising from the small black bowl. My eyes watered. She bowed to me, and I softened, "namaste."

That night, as I fell asleep to burning sage and candlelight, the New Year seemed oddly awake with possibility.

More stuff to do

2008-12-25T13:53:00.003-05:00

You may find my to-do lists tedious and boring. I am putting them online in an attempt to pressure myself into actually completing them. Nothing like commitment to a largely anonymous and nebulous audience, right?

More stuff to do:

13) Make mix CD's for friends
14) Get back in contact with people I've abandoned
15) Have Important Conversations
16) Call Family members
17) Clean room
18) Clean car
19) Sell car
20) Read something fun

Happy Hanukkah Y'all

2008-12-21T12:43:00.010-05:00

I made a cute hanukkah card and thought I'd post some images from it here.

Goals for the Break

2008-12-20T20:29:00.002-05:00

So here I am in Brattleboro where it seems that living in VT is catching up with me. Recovery from the ice storm is sill challenging many of the residents of Marlboro and snow is piling high everywhere I look. This time it's the light fluffy kind, cotton snuggling around the cars, and dandelion fuzz collecting in heaps at the end of driveways.

Knowing that I may bes tuck in my house for more of this break than I'd like, I am reverting back to old habits. I am making lists. Here is my list of things to do before I go back to school.

1)Write a submission for La Revista, a feminist-anarchist publication in Barcelona
2)Do my take home final exams and final papers
3)Write an article about polyamory for a zine
4)Turn my Trans Pride paper into a zine
5)Start up the queer resource library at school
6)Intern at the Sexual minorities archives
7)Make a proposal to organizations in town for internships
8)Edit together Jamie's plan performance
9)Send holiday cards
10)Sell my car
11)Edit together interview clip for my website
12)Do something really sweet for my girlfriend

Weathering the storm

2008-12-15T15:01:00.003-05:00

Despite days without power and a full campus evacuation, things are settling down. There is a provisional power line up at the college so the administrative building is there and we can make contact from town.

The college sent everyone who could work remotely home. An all-community meeting gathered to hear the president give a belated fire-side chat.

The hum of chainsaws emanate from the recesses of the Marlboro woodland. Carpools are heading into town to restock cupboards. Men with cranes will be picking up wires for days yet. Vermont has risen again in community and kindness, with a slightly more pronounced survivalist undertone.

My email works.

My final exam was canceled and my other deadlines got way extended.

And the world turns...

Ice Storm Wreaks Havoc on Marlboro College

2008-12-14T08:49:00.007-05:00

It's been days since Marlboro, VT has had power. Power goes out in our backwoods corner of the universe fairly regularly. Students stop working and start drinking. The campus becomes a playground of sorts with sleepovers in unlocked buildings with better insulation that the dorms. We joke about it. We got Marlboro College flash lights at registration one year. But this is not the normal power outage.

Two days ago there was a huge ice storm. They closed Route 9, the only main road to the college. It's one of the largest roads in this part of Vermont. I hear from an EMT that there are hundreds of trees down on the 3 mile stretch of South Road, upon which the college is located. power lines, cell towers, even landlines are decimated, lying acros the road in frozen heaps.

I have a friend who cannot get into his driveway because there are three trees down before you even get there.

The dorms are all equipt with electric heating and the only stoves on campus are electric too. The water stops when the power goes out because we depend on an electric pump to get the water up the mountain. We only have a back up generator for one of the dorms and for the Dinning Hall. After two days, the students have been ushered from their dorms. Several are sleeping on the dining hall floor in sleeping bags. Others are crowded into the common spaces of the dorm. Professors and staff members are taking kids into their personal houses. Despite the road closures, the college took a van of kids to hotel rooms for the night.

The server (read e-mail and website) is down, so the school has no way to contact the students like me who live in town and have heat, water, etc.

Finals were supposed to be this weekend into early next week. I have no idea what we're gonna do.

Stay Tuned for more.

Fucking Queers: A Dream

2008-12-14T08:03:00.006-05:00

I just had a fucked up dream:

I was in a large building. Marble-lined corridors and stone archways made me feel as if I were in some lesser-known of Jefferson's creations. I emerged from the voting booth in time to hear a voice from above me say that the NAACP had endorse this candidate. I looked around in confusion and closely-shaven black man on the second floor veranda. It was Zorn (a real person I know, believe it or not) dressed in a black general's coat with gold buttons that stretched almost to the floor. He strolled down the elaborate, sprawling staircase with them.

Zorn is an african-american liberal. Why wasn't he supporting Obama? Furthermore, why was he tricking voters into thinking he was with the NAACP? I walked over deliberately, assuring myself that if I confronted him, he'd stop misrepresenting himself. "The NAACP doesn't endorse political candidate. It's a political action coalition. It pushes legislation, not candidates."

His eyes lowered, "Oh. Oh well, that's cool." He took of the jacket that had given him some aspect of importance and esteem. He put on his red hoody, and he was gone.

A security guard sitting in a fold out chair summoned me over. "Hey kid, did you know thatwe have the original charter for the NAACP in this very building." The excited whisper with which he told em this information mad eit seem somewhere between telling me a secret nd braging to me. "we once had this guy working here. e was crazy. he tried to destroy it! It took several fulll-grown men to save it from him." I was vaguely intrigued, so I indulged the old man in tell-me-more faces. Then a friend fo mine passed by and offered me a ride back to wherever the hell w came from. I was disappointed to not hear the ending but I couldn't remember how I got there, so I decided I'd go with them.

"I'll be right there." I hollered and turned to the man oping he could consolidate this story for my trip. When I finally left to catch up wit them, I walked out into a parking lot, were there were about 70 people hanging around. Majority of the crowd were people of color, and I didn't see my ride anywhere around.

Assuming that most of them were Marlboro people (even though my college has nowhere near 70 people of color associated with it. More like 10.) I walked up to one of the drivers ad asked him, "Have you seen Charlie and Clire and Gabrielle."

"No, those chicks are probably bitches anyway." He made a contemptuous face before being corrected by some woman in the back seat,

"They're two dudes and girl, you idiot."

"Fucking Queers!" I back away from the car hesitantly. He was murmuring under his breath and was increasingly agitated. I decided to go stand over by where other people were, hoping that would minimize the chance that he would come after me.

As I walked up, I was looked around for someone, anyone who would acknowledge what had just happened. I just wanted to get out of here. Then, two large black women emerged form behind a car. "Fucking Queers!?!?!"

"What the Fuck's wrong with you?"

They approached the crowd, and at once there was a mob. I felt uneasy, they seemed to be on my side, but I could have been interpreting the situation wrong. I backed up to the outskirts of the crowd in response to her rallying cry. All at once the crowd poured forward beating on his car. One of the leading women held open the passenger door as he scrambled to unlock his driver door. They drug him out of the car. Part of me was exhilarated that an army of strangers was coming to my defense. Part of me was scared of how this was going to end. I knew it was beyond my control.

The man yelled out, "Hey white boy, you know you're gonna tell the cops what you see. You Ain't gonna turn your back, you ain't gonna stickin' up for any of them." The only white man in the crowd turned around in veyr deliberate fashion. He planted himself with his back on the whole scene for a few minutes before he casually walked away.

It seemed as if the stage was set. Like the point where they get to the barn in the Emit Till story or Bredan Teena. This is when bad shit happens.

The man managed somehow to break free of the people long enough to wedge himself into a weird padded box in the hood of his car. It looked almost like a squished up coffin. But it had a built-in helmet, the kind runway directors use. The mob closed in on him. The continued to beat into the frame of the car. People were trying to pull him out. A woman picked up some piece of detris from the parking lot and was wailing on the helmet.

At this point I was sure that no one would notice if I left. What would it mean to go get help? Had I settled upon a self-regulating community and this was how they settled things? What if he died?

And then I woke up. Pretty fucked up, eh?

HRC is not for me (poster)

2008-12-11T19:02:00.006-05:00

I just finished a thirty page paper and am putting in some original graphics. Here is a United ENDA poster I made using GIMP and a youtube video of people protest at an HRC banquet. If you want to find out more, look it up. Short story: the Human Rights Campaign fucked over trans people.

Activist Rehersal

2008-12-07T21:12:00.002-05:00

I haven't been posting because I don't feel like I don't have much to tell you most days.

Unless you want to hear about Jewish Anarchism, about a history of radical political counter-culture in America, about assimilation and whiteness making, about radicalization through construction of the Judeo-Christian tradition in the armed services.

Or trans activism. How when we aren't explicit about our motivations, we can undermine them through our organizing. How the trans movement is endebted to second wave feminism. About how empowerment, consciousness-raising, and community building are ways of resisting transphobia in it multifront battleground. About how we forget this.

Thus is the life of an academic I suppose. Here's a try...

I remember the moist air that clung to my jugular as I climbed the stairs to a mod at Hamshire College last semester. Sweat mingled with pizza fumes as I pushed my way through the patch-clad clusters of grunge hold-outs and trannarchists. The room settled for the concert. Young people sprawled haphazardly around the anarchist with a guitar. Piercing matted faces hung in the doorway. Women in flannel sat Indian style, flowing over into cuddle piles on the floor. I came as I had spent most of my days since I moved to Northampton-alone.

The fragrance was distantly reminiscent of a place I could not stand to be anymore but the contrast was real. I felt at home here more than I had in months. Brattleboro hung on their tongues shaped in words like ecology and sustainable agriculture, but they fell silent as he began to wail. Indictments. Patriarchy and corporations. Train-hopping through tunes that laid bare my frustrations. I felt too vulnerable to make eye-contact. I felt to cozy not to.

I invited Evan Greer to my college hoping for a sense of community that always falls short of my expectations. I hoped he could some how jump start my commitment to this place I'd turned my back upon. For all of his charm, he could not. I choreographed the privilege walk effortlessly. I sketched the outline of social justice with my eyes closed. I day dreamed through the mind map of climate change. I was a learned yet terrible activist. I was bored. The exercises felt passe', rote, self-congratulatory even. I feel like I'm stuck in an activist rehearsal, and I'm waiting for the stage call...

Always Pretend You're Shopping

2008-12-07T20:45:00.001-05:00

Lifted verbatim from a friend's blog (twice removed):

Two months ago 800 people were rounded up and arrested simply for sitting around in a park nearby a protest nearby the Republican National Convention, and charged with "conspiracy to riot."[Dane's insert: one of them was a poet-acquaintance who is currently fighting the charge]

Today 2,000 people trampled a Wal-Mart worker to death, and continued to harass and trample the police officers trying to give him first aid. Nobody was arrested or charged with anything. No rubber bullets were shot. Nobody was tasered. Nobody thought riot gear would be necessary.

The lesson? Always pretend you're shopping.

2008-12-07T20:15:00.006-05:00

Name and pronoun update

2008-11-30T19:01:00.002-05:00

I am now going by Andy and ze.

Transgender Oral History Exhibit

2008-11-25T11:38:00.002-05:00

Background

I started The Transgender Oral History Project as a means to uncover the rich, though often invisible history of transgender political activism. Stories including trans people often become a tiny portion of a subgroup that is largely dominated by normative elements who marginalize them in order to create an image that is more palatable to the mainstream. Furthermore, the narratives Americans are exposed to are so limiting—they are the stories of an individual who struggles with their own body or else the story of victimization by illogical violence. I want to tell different stories… ones that highlight how trans people have been pushed out of self-proclaimed safe spaces and have been abused by the psychiatric and medical establishments under the guise of treating them. I want to talk about the violence that happens when our entire society operates on logics that systematically force trans people to exist on the margins of society—refused healthcare, left out of government programming, and refused gainful employment. But I it would be missing the point to tell a history of oppression without the correlating history of resistance. I want to tell the stories of riots against police brutality, volunteering services in trans-specific health centers, reclaiming public spaces for people who have nowhere else to go, and civil rights marches for legal protections—a legacy of empowerment through community organizing.

Overview: The Basic Idea

I would like to create a multimedia historical exhibit that leads the audience in exploring the
issues that have fostered the evolution of the trans community over the past fifty years. I hope to engage viewers in the passage of time by creating a spatial representation of a timeline that they move through as they move through space. The timeline will portray the events and conditions trans people were operating within, but also the collective responses that enabled trans people to deal with these circumstances. I hope to make viewer think about how this community necessitated by a hostile environment that is not of its making but more importantly, to see the means by which this community has constituted itself.

I plan to accomplish this through using a combination of text, photography, ephemera, audio, and film. The central three AV elements will be video clips of vignettes from the Transgender Oral History Project situated within the context of the time period as created through the timeline. I am concerned with showing how the historical moment frames what is possible for people’s lives by showcasing stories that exemplify how this intersection is experienced.

Audience: Marlboro and Beyond

I see two distinct audiences for my piece—one of normative people with liberal political sympathies and one made up of people who understand themselves as gender-variant.
Of primary concern to me are people who understand themselves as gender-variant. I believe collective action and movement building begins with seeing ourselves as having common experiences and drawing from a shared sense of history as well as having shared ambitions for the future. This project is, at least in part, my own search for community, but I want it to extend further than that. I hope that I can engage other people who identify as transgender as seeing themselves as part of something larger. I want to reach people for whom exploring how the trans community has been shaped and where it is going, is a profoundly personal matter.
My goal is that I can communicate the continuing need for community while encouraging collective action.

My secondary audience is the Marlboro community. I anticipate this exhibit being different in two major ways. First of all, I intend to have more contextualizing information, more explanation and analysis. The purpose of the Marlboro version will be to introduce this community to the transgender community’s struggle and to make connections between the trans community and other communities we study or may even be a part of. In the process of exploring how transgender activism has intersected with, been co-opted by, and collided with the womyn’s and Gay and Lesbian rights movements, I want the community to think about inclusion within their own social circles and subcultures. Secondly, I will be hoping to address to concern stated above about how limited the portrayals of trans people are in mass media by presenting competing narratives. I want viewers to see a more multidimensional version of how trans people understand themselves within the context of broader society.

Logistics: Venues and Timing

Because it will be more of an overview, I feel like I already have access to the material I need in order to create this exhibit on campus. For this reason I would like to explore creating the exhibit next semester. I also understand the drawbacks since it would be more competitive to get gallery space and it would mean my outside examiner could not experience it. I am not even sure that the gallery is the best space for the project because of acoustics (I am concerned about how loud it will be if there are multiple, differing AV components), monitoring (I will be using electronic equipment that is expensive and am unsure of how to ensure it does not get stolen), and space (movement is central to my idea and I am unsure of how to create the kind of movement I want to in that open of a space).

Because my target audience is necessarily a scattered population, I do not know what kind of venues would be most appropriate for this exhibit. There is a yearly conference put on at UVM that I have attended for three years now: the Translating Identities Conference. It seeks to build community and provide a forum for the exchange information among trans communities throughout the northeast. I see my project as being very in line with this goal, so I think it would be a good fit.

Financial Aid... maybe improving

2008-11-21T08:45:00.000-05:00

Financial Aid has been driving me crazy. I'm stressed about meeting tuition. I've vented some of my frustrations with the school about various policies in well-crafted letters. about our compulsory health care plan that forces students to be on it even if we are already covered by parent(s) health plan(s). Today, one of my professors whom I had confided some of my frustrations in told me I should go to Fin Aid again, that the president had been on a soap box at the most recent faculty meeting talking about wanting to make sure that students can still afford to go here even during this time of economic crisis. She urged me with fingers outstretched and eyebrow elevated as if she knew something.

I trudged up to the attic of the admissions building, where the people that I like to think of as the Powers That Be reside. I approached the office sheepishly, gathering up the wear-with-all to bear my financial soul in a plea for institutional humanity. I breathed in deeply before crossing into line of site of the head officer's door in an attempt to fortify myself so as to avoid showing the disappointment I assumed would ensue. As soon as I entered, she leaned over and said "I think I know why you're here." I'm a trace of "thank god" meshed with the usual skeptical gestures that take hold of my facial muscles.

She gave me a form. She said I can ask the school for more money if my situation has changed. She said I had to be detailed enough but not too much. She said be honest and ask for what I need. The anger, the frustration and resentment I have been carryign arounf with me for the lst week dissipated as we went on to talk about work I've been doing with my Transgender Oral History Project. I felt like things might be okay for the first time in days.

Towards the end though, our conversation returned to what I needed to put on the form. My living expense and income. Not money I don't report to the IRS. Not my mother's information. She was specific about that last one. She said I needed to include a letter explaining how my situation had changed. She phrased in such a way that I knew she was thinking it had something to do with gender/sexuality (after all aren't they one in her mind?). At the very least, it had something to do with some new development. I took the form and am filling it today tonight and turning it in. I hope that the sympathy can get me somewhere. I'm a little conflicted that she is going to resume something that isn't directly connected, but I am not going to state it. I am after all a good student struggling to come here just as I've always been; maybe economic meltdowns are good for something...

beginings of a poem

2008-10-25T21:52:00.000-04:00

There are mornings when I wake—
my mother’s hands firm in my mind
her jagged skin, split nails,
engine grease lodged into their cracks.

Class Issues and the Transgender Community

2008-10-22T18:23:00.007-04:00

I've been at the task of making generalizations about the trans people I've met over the last 6 months of researching and being fairly active in trans communities in the area, and the one set of issues that comes to the surface most blantantly is class issues.

If the standard of living of normative society could be measured on a 1-10 scale, I think the whole spectrum of transfolk could fit within 1-6 and probably would cluster around 2-4. What does it mean that I was part of an organizing body whose six core members were mostly underemployed or unemployed despite having marketable skills (the group included a lawyer, a marketing executive, a web developer)? These are the leaders. They and others like them are the people in our community who have the most education and stability who are most willing and able to start families. These are our success stories. And among the people I admire most in our community, none of them have health insurance. Many of them are married to bio-women who make more money than they do (we all know that bio-women make 75% of what bio-men do). Many are part-time employees. Few own the houses they live in. Most do a little bit of a lot of things to barely make ends meet.

It's not just that the trans community are poor, but that we are one of the only downwardly mobile communities I can think of (if you ave others then please leave a comment). This means that on average trans people have less wealth than their parents. Whereas most people maintain the same level of wealth as their parents or even gain wealth (because they have access to cultural capital that helps them accrue wealth) to pass onto future generations. What does it mean that our children are less likely to go to college than we were, less likely to own a house, less likely to have access to any number of opportunities purely by virtue of their parent's gender identity/expression?

Most frustrating of all is that I don't know where I'm going to end up even within this community. I know that my life (materially and in other respects) will probably look a lot more like the trans activists I interview than like my mother's life. However, I don't know if I'll end up transitioning. I don't know if I'll ever get that male privilege. I doubt that I'll ever get straight privilege or even gender-normative-woman privilege. I guess the more I think about the future, then more I feel oppressed.

Muslim Children Gassed after Documentary Showing

2008-10-22T10:34:00.004-04:00

I try not to repost things but this article is all I can think about at the moment. I will try to write a response later...

Muslim Children Gassed at Dayton Mosque After "Obsession" DVD Hits Ohio

by Chris Rodda

Sun Sep 28, 2008 at 08:50:29 PM PDT

(From the diaries -- kos)

On Friday, September 26, the end of a week in which thousands of copies of Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West -- the fear-mongering, anti-Muslim documentary being distributed by the millions in swing states via DVDs inserted in major newspapers and through the U.S. mail -- were distributed by mail in Ohio, a "chemical irritant" was sprayed through a window of the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton, where 300 people were gathered for a Ramadan prayer service. The room that the chemical was sprayed into was the room where babies and children were being kept while their mothers were engaged in prayers. This, apparently, is what the scare tactic political campaigning of John McCain's supporters has led to -- Americans perpetrating a terrorist attack against innocent children on American soil.

Chris Rodda's diary :: ::

I read the story as reported by the Dayton Daily News, but this was after I had received an email written by a friend of some of the victims of these American terrorists. The matter of fact news report in the Dayton paper didn't come close to conveying the horrific impact of this unthinkable act like the email I had just read, so I asked the email's author for permission to share what they had written. The author was with one of the families from the mosque -- a mother and two of the small children who were in the room that was gassed -- the day after the attack occurred.

"She told me that the gas was sprayed into the room where the babies and children were being kept while their mothers prayed together their Ramadan prayers. Panicked mothers ran for their babies, crying for their children so they could flee from the gas that was burning their eyes and throats and lungs. She grabbed her youngest in her arms and grabbed the hand of her other daughter, moving with the others to exit the building and the irritating substance there.

"The paramedic said the young one was in shock, and gave her oxygen to help her breathe. The child couldn't stop sobbing.

"This didn't happen in some far away place -- but right here in Dayton, and to my friends. Many of the Iraqi refugees were praying together at the Mosque Friday evening. People that I know and love.

"I am hurt and angry. I tell her this is NOT America. She tells me this is not Heaven or Hell -- there are good and bad people everywhere.

"She tells me that her daughters slept with her last night, the little one in her arms and sobbing throughout the night. She tells me she is afraid, and will never return to the mosque, and I wonder what kind of country is this where people have to fear attending their place of worship?

"The children come into the room, and tell me they want to leave America and return to Syria, where they had fled to from Iraq. They say they like me, ... , and other American friends -- but they are too afraid and want to leave. Should a 6 and 7 year old even have to contemplate the safety of their living situation?

"Did the anti-Muslim video circulating in the area have something to do with this incident, or is that just a bizarre coincidence? Who attacks women and children?

"What am I supposed to say to them? My words can't keep them safe from what is nothing less than terrorism, American style. Isn't losing loved ones, their homes, jobs, possessions and homeland enough? Is there no place where they can be safe?

"She didn't want me to leave her tonight, but it was after midnight, and I needed to get home and write this to my friends. Tell me -- tell me -- what am I supposed to say to them?"

When acting as a representative of Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), the 501(c)3 non-profit organization that I work for, I cannot engage in political activities. The distribution of Obsession, however, although a political campaign scheme, clearly crosses over into the mission of MRFF. So, I'm going to make two statements here -- one in my capacity as MRFF's Research Director, and another as an individual whose disgust at the vile campaign tactics of John McCain's supporters completely boiled over when I opened up the email about children being gassed.

My statement as MRFF's Research Director:

The presidential campaign edition of the Obsession DVD, currently being distributed by the Clarion Fund, carries the endorsement of the chair of the counter-terrorism department of the U.S. Naval War College, using the name and authority of an official U.S. military institution not only to validate an attack the religion of Islam, but to influence a political campaign. For these reasons, this endorsement has been included in MRFF's second lawsuit against the Department of Defense, which was filed on September 25 in the Federal District Court in Kansas.

My opinion as an individual and thoroughly appalled human being:

John McCain has a moral obligation to publicly censure the Clarion Fund, the organization that produced Obsession and is distributing the DVDs; to denounce the inflammatory, anti-Muslim message of Obsession; and to do everything in his power to stop any further campaign activities by his supporters that have the potential to incite violence.

[article from http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/28/203016/697/536/613742]

Freewrite: How did your family produce gender?

2008-10-18T17:53:00.001-04:00

I grew up with a mother who was a jet engine mechanic. When I think of her, I think of greasy fingernails and engine oil. She wore a dress to church because her theology demanded it. She got a nose ring when she retired because she could. I think of intelligibility.

I learned how to hate shopping during adolescence, against the backdrop of a perennial argument over which section to buy my clothes in. She couldn’t bear to buy her only daughter (the only child) clothes in the men’s department. “They didn’t fit well” she reasoned, and when logic would fail her, she knew shame could always do the trick, “why don’t we just forgo the pants and save up for the operation.”

I never knew what the operation was. I knew it only as a cue. I was supposed to roll my eyes and laugh…to protest that, of course that wasn’t what I wanted. It was a mysterious character evoked to loom over my decisions. The operation was a threat placed precariously on the brink of desperation—hers and mine—when we entered into split-in-down-the-middle mall stores.

I remember the day I told her I was jealous. She was admonishing me on how I’d need to grow up someday and wear woman’s clothes like an adult. “But Mom…you don’t,” I pointed out. She wore combat boots and dungarees to work. She got to shop in stores that didn’t even have a woman’s section. I felt more like her failure than my victory when we walked out of the store, cargo pants in hand, towards a silent ride home.

Freewrite: When do you pass?

2008-10-09T13:44:00.001-04:00

I’m more aware of when don’t pass than when I do.

I pass when I pass out of danger. When mistakes and assumptions make me more safe rather than less. I passed in grade school when boys were too afraid of loosing to fight me. I pass when I came to college and northerners confided in me about how racist and ignorant those southerners are. I passed in grocery stores when I was on food stamps and I went to the self-check out line, so friends assumed I was using my ATM card.

I pass when I escape scrutiny. When people don’t imply that I secretly want to be something I don’t allow myself to be. I pass in Pride meeting when lesbian couples want to adopt me. I pass when other people make my life easier because they think I’m like them. I pass when I’m hitchhiking and mothers stop their cars because they wouldn’t want their daughters to be picked up by skeezy truck drivers.

I pass when I want to and when I don’t. I pass when other confer a privilege on me that I have not come to expect.

Halloween circa 1990

2008-10-07T21:48:00.006-04:00

I've been working on a documentary about the military and my family (see previous post entitled documentary abstracts for synopsis). Only recently did I start asking for pictures. I was nervous about asking for any kind fof compliance. I'm still scared of my mother.

There are so many stories I could tell (and have told) about my mother, but for a moment today, my mother sent me a picture of the two of us, and I could have sworn we were a family...

It was Halloween circa 1990 (as if you couldn't tell by the hair) and we were living on base in Sicily. Dressing up for Halloween is a quintessentially American thing to do of course, so it was only celebrated in the barracks with the handful of kids at the school on base. The correlary, of course, was that there was no place on the whole island where she could buy me a costume. Even the NAVY exchange (a government owned and operated department store) didn't have costumes in my size except princesses. I was pretty clear that I would rather not go than be a princess. My mother, wanting for her daughter to be able to celebrate with the other kids, decided to make my costume for me. It took months of gathering appropriate materials (they were exotic and therefore expensive. Also, she earned very little since she hadn't made rank yet). She would sew it together on weekends. But finally it was done. I sat through painstaking hours of make-up application. I was a clown for all three years we lived in Sicily. It's a great picture, no?

"Activists are my people"

2008-10-07T15:46:00.001-04:00

My girlfriend asks me good questions. It’s one of the reasons I like her so much. She asks me why don’t I ever talk about personal growth outside of political growth. I try to explain that for some people personal growth is inextricably intertwined with a social and historical moment. For some people personal growth is melded seamlessly into the times, into the reciprocal relationship with their environment shaping and reshaping one another in their own image. For some people, community is movement in a way that nothing else can be. We argue over whether or not my answer if just some updated version of “personal is political.” I don’t know how to explain to her that jews are her people and queers are her people but activists are mine.…

acknowlege defeat

2008-10-05T20:57:00.003-04:00

So here's the part where I acknowledge defeat. My blog's not going to be what I want it to be. The content is what I want. Te fequency isn't as I had hoped. I am feeling utterly uninspired. I feel like my life is going nowhere, and I have nothing insightful to say. Basically, I'm feeling depressed in a huge way.

Oh yeah, and I'm thinking about going by Dillian.

Coming Out Headaches

2008-09-22T22:20:00.005-04:00

I'm thinking about being "out" and what the hell I should be out as. I realize that on campus, people from last fall know I am asexual because I lead a discussion on it (which was only attended by 2 people, btu which provoked consistent individual inquiries). Now that I am back, many people notice that I display a lot of interest in transgender topics and I am open about being involved in several related projects. However, newbies (especially freshmen who met me at pride) have incessantly felt the need to refer to me as a dyke, carpet-muncher, and bulldagger (in a jestful, accepting way but in a none the less something-I-don't think-of-myself-as-kind-of-way ).

I'm thinking about coming out to my mother and father, though its been months since I talked to either of them, and I have no idea what to come out as. I feel gender is more important to who I am than any kind of identity based on romantic relationships. I think about gender in every interaction I have, whereas I've has three crushes in the last three years. The catch is that I do have a girlfriend now, and I feel like I have to choose between acknowledging how much I care about her and anyone thinking of me in any of the ways I think of myself. I feel like her existence makes dyke trump trans in the public eye. I feel like our relationship undermines my claim to asexuality. It's as if she is everyone's confirmation that everything they assume about me has always been right. Now, how much are people really thinking about my sexual identity and gender identity? It's not that I think they are, it's more that there are a lot of unspoken assumptions that are coming into play more directly as I'm being more open. I feel like I'm on the defensive with this whole coming out process, doing damage control, dispelling myths, and disarming rumors. As I sit down to script out another conversation with a friend about it all, I can't escape the nagging condemnation that I make things this complicated on purpose...

What I've Been Thinking...

2008-09-22T21:54:00.003-04:00

WARNING: This is going to be a rambly as hell post.

I've been thinking a lot about relationships, about what self-exploration can do for you versus the kinds of growth and learning that comes from interactions with others. I've been thinking about how I've spent 19 years figuring out everything on my own, a years debating what the place for others was in this schema, and now that I've decided to let other people help me, I'm confronting the possibility that I am leaning too much on others to challenge and push me. Is it true that I have ceased to push myself?

I've also been reading a sweet blog by a kinky anarchist genderqueer on the west coast (they always are). http://subversivesub.wordpress.com . It makes me think I should post more about kink...

To My Adoring Public

2008-09-08T10:18:00.001-04:00

With school starting, I will be posting less. My goal is once a week. Let's see if I can keep up with that mediocre pace.

Chlirissa

I can't get to sleep...

2008-08-26T22:26:00.004-04:00

Our hot water heater ran out of oil two days before I left. We figured out that's what the problem was the next day, but I was too busy getting ready to leave to do anything about it. I offered to schedule it if anyone would tell me a good time. no one did.

A week later someone started rounding up the money. By time I came back, I expected it would all be settled. Disappointed. The tank had been filler, but it had been a few days and no one knew how to light the pilot light. I came home to cold showers.

This morning I woke up and started complaining. I was pissed that I had to pay 80 dollars for oil I'll never use, and I still can't take a damn shower. I started cleaning to sooth my anxiety about it. The fridge smelled, and I didn't know why. I usually clean it out every three or four days, but I had been gone for a while. SO I started to unload things that looked too familiar. I wanted to clean out the veggie drawer before p

Publish Post

utting my vegetable in because its gross to store food in a dirty space. Then I saw brownish water in the space beneath the drawer and the bottom of the fridge. I took them out to wipe it up and saw mold floating in it. I gagged as I sopped it up, freezing cold with a towel I had found wadded up on the floor. This place was disgusting.

I spent the better part of an hour muddling around with the furnace down stairs to no avail. I grumbled under my breath as I moved bags of clutter out of the way to find the tools to work on it. When I finished, my pants were stained and my hands reeked of oil. I couldn't believe some people had lived here for a year and didn't know how to do this damnit.

I went on the porch to update people on the situation and hint that someone else needed to pick up where I left off. My room mate's cigarette smoke rolled into my space. I coughed a little and then went inside.

As I lay in bed on the edge of sleep, I'm unable to go under. I'm kept awake by the smell of oil mingled with stale cigarette smoke, by annoyance translated into compulsion and neurosis, by the insistence that others have wronged me. I'm going to bed disappointed, critical and alone. I'm going to bed the same way my mother went to bed for the last 20 years, and I can't get to sleep because I'm a little scare of how I'll wake up when I'm through.

Disappointment Strikes Again

2008-08-23T19:47:00.005-04:00

I pressed my greasy finger against the cool glass of the airport check-in kiosk. I’ve been sweating since I woke up this morning and now I’m enjoying the AC in another over-sized glass building where I’ve spent too much waiting since I’ve been here. I was in a bad mood because I had only slept about an hour the night before and for no good reason either. “This flight may be full. Would you be interested in volunteering your seat for compensation?” the kiosk offered.

“Sure.” I thought in my easily impressionable state, “Why not?”
I arrived at the gate moments after the agent pushed the little red button of the walkie-talkie and articulating my name in a perfect accent into the speaker. My timing seemed too good.

“Soy Chlirissa Perez”

“Do you still want to give your seat?”

“Yeah. I mean, wait… when can I get another flight.”
He described to me how I’d have to spend a couple hours here and then couple in Chicago. I’ve slept in Chicago. Really, it’s worth the flight to an unemployed soon-to-be student. Whatever vague thoughts I had about the situation, I was registering value not experience… what was my time worth not where would I go. Last year I had wanted to visit Ashley and Tessa, but they didn’t move. They broke up, and neither of them are leaving the East for a while. Instead, I went to Detroit for a conference because the ticket was on the verge of expiring.

When I’d done this before, it seemed like it could be the kind of adventure I dreamed about as a child toppled over in a fort between the couch cushions. Moreover, under the pretense of dharma, I was carrying out an ego-driven quest to prove to myself how rugged and resourceful I could be. Groundless ground had grown less novel in the interim since though, and I had had more than my share of spiritually challenging travel stories. All the same, I nodded my head at the man and grumbled that I was fine with it. What is a couple more hours of waiting if I’m going to be dazed out on miserable already?

It was only after I sat down and begun typing that I remembered I have someone I want to see who lives a plane flight away. I’m sure this seems an absurd detail to overlook, but it wasn’t until I returned to my niche (I’ve learned to treat any seat within two feet of a power plug as a home away from home at this stage in my life) that I remembered how desperately far away the West Coast loomed. I remembered how sleepless I had been since she told me she had made that final decision to move. I let myself begin to imagine what it might be like to share another first with her, to stretch further across the country than I’ve ever imagined myself going. I’ve said before that the West Coast might as well be another country, and I set to work in my mind illustrating my passport so as to make it more believable.

My day dream was interrupted as the agent announced that the plane was to leave late. I strolled up to the desk to get information so that I could leave an excited message on her answering machine. He told me he had changed his mind. Why had I let myself indulge that daydream? A woman once told me expectations are premeditated disappointment. It sounded cheesy at the time. But as I sat sulking in my missed connection and the hours of waiting that ensued only to learn that I had to take a plane the next morning, I damned myself.

She's been dangerous from the beginning. She challenges me to want, to know what I want, and to let myself entertain my wants. She makes me want to have dreams. When I think of her I give myself permission to believe in things just because I dream them. And the airline is just the latest co-conspirator…

Going Everywhere Going Nowhere

2008-08-23T19:45:00.000-04:00

“Where do you want to go? The beach? The water park?” the daily inquiry fell on my ears stale from the first time.

“No me importa. I’m not here to see Puerto Rico, I’m here to see you.” I responded as honestly as I could, fearing I may hurt her feelings by not giving her the answers she wanted.

“Well, you’re seeing me and Puerto Rico. Just tell me where to take you. I want you to tell me how you have a good time.”

The harder we each tried, the farther away we got.

“I just like to explore… take walks... see how people live”

“Oh, explore and walk. You want to go on a tour of the rainforest.”

“Sure…I guess…”

Biolumenescent Bay

2008-08-19T10:16:00.006-04:00

As the sun sank behind the picturesque horizon, we paddled two by two into a single file line. I thought of baby ducks clad in yellow life vests advertizing our tourism company. My uncle and I struggle for control of the boat. Our paddles clanked with the stubbornness of him refusing to take my lead, and me insisting on leading anyway.

As the entrance of the mangrove approached, the wind grew still and the water shallow. The ripe odor of stagnant water mingled with our repellant drenched bodies. As was swerved back and forth, zigzag with and against the channel, we did our best to avoid the roots that stretched out into the inlet. Did you know that Mangroves are the only trees that can stick their roots in salt water and thrive? I wonder they can ever feel it burning and still continue.

We could hear whistling and hooting, the hollowed sound of some special kind of frog. When we’d reach a particularly intergrown bunch of threes they’d form roofs over our heads that blocked out the light in a perfect display of blackness. We had been seeing little glitter like specs of the bioluminescent creatures we had come to admire through the clear bottom of our kyaks. In these enclosures where we couldn’t even see one another or the shore, we began to see our paddles like up as the swept through the water. We kept paddling.

After twenty minutes, we finally came to the opening in the tunnel. We could see the light of the full moon brilliant on the surface of the bay. And as we broke through that curtain of light, the creature greeted our paddles fervently. When we lifted them out of the water, a glistening streaks of light would flow down, leaving bright green drip marks all over the surface of the water. My hand felt the water warm and smooth like melting butter as I swooshed it around to reveal a trail of glow like fireflies and light sticks. We splashed the shimmering water at one another and I found a strand of vegetation from the bottom that when I ran it through the water appeared like a comet trailing my finger tips.

We paddled to the opposite side of the lake and turned around for the most picturesque moment imaginable. The moon peaked up gradually through the densely interwoven branches. It was so many layers of beautiful piled on ontop of the other. The moon, the silhouetted mangrove trees, the serenity of a secluded bay brought alive by the playful kyakers splashing around in amazement. Wonder filled the moment like magic.

Puerto Rico Prelude

2008-08-18T11:29:00.002-04:00

I've gt lots to say about this place, but for now I will elude to upcming srticles that I will hopefully post.

Tags for my experience thus far in Puerto Rico…

Early morning, Planes, missing love ones, the l word, coast line, No walks, not safe, gated communities, vegetarian, wheel chair, not safe, hording food, Spanish, English, Spanglish, mas espacio por favor, corporations, new party, eco-tourism, amigo, Wal-mart, parking lot guard shack, toys r us, not safe, largest mall in Caribbean, separate cars, traffic jam, not safe, steak house, Caribbean cruise, not safe, beach, motorcycles, high-femme, moonlight, bioluminescent bay, mangrove, beautiful, manicured…

Advice to my fifteen year old self

2008-08-10T00:11:00.001-04:00

my advice to my 15 year old self...

Drop out of school--you spend too much time there trying to please other people because it hasn't occurred to you yet that you need to figure out what you want. Besides, you can make your own reading lists and project assignments.

Learn to surf before you leave Virginia Beach. I know you hate the potheads, but learn anyway. It's fun.

If you think someone's cool, there is probably a reason. You should connect with them.

Don't stop writing. If you do, then one day you'll meet someone who will remind you how much you loved it, and it will make you sad.

Drive someplace other than school and work. It's hard to imagine that other places exist, but actually, there are people who care about things you don't know you care about yet and when you meet them, it will be awesome. (not to mention that if you listened earlier, you wouldn't have a school to drive to)

Skip the NATO dinners and get politically active instead.

Tell your mom to get lost. Maybe not in such a way, but realize that she has her own family issues she's dealing with. Realize you're a worthwhile person regardless of what she says, and that the problems you guys have are largely based in a major difference of values.

Spend more time with Daniel. One day you won't be able to.

Read Stone Butch Blues--it will help you make sense of experiences you're gonna have later on.

When you go to Peru, stay there a while. College can wait.

But most importantly... don't be afraid of people just because they care about you. It doesn't make them sick, delusional or untrustworthy. Just accept it dude.

Updated Children's Book list

2008-08-04T23:12:00.001-04:00

I have once again been spending time bumming around the children's shelves of politically correct new england bookshops (this time at Raven used books; all under $10). Aside from fawning on some dyke families (I will never grow tired of seeing women with inch-long hair pushing double strollers on Northampton street corners), I also accomplished adding a few titles to the my list of children's books that promote radical values.

In case you haven't noticed the pattern, I'm updating it at the beginning of each month (the link is in this article title, so you don't have to dig through the archives for June) and the newest set will appear in burnt red. Share some ideology and indoctrination with a child you love today. Or maybe just start a conversation about something you care about.

Enjoy.

Cats in Krasinski Square: a review

2008-07-30T13:12:00.001-04:00

The Cats in Krasinski Square by Karen Hesse

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This recounting of the Warsaw uprising tells the story of a little girl from a family outside the ghetto trying to help support the jews inside who are resisting the nazis.

It's a story of small heros that deals with issues of privilege, passing, and resistance in a manner that is age appropriate. A great book for starting a conversation about social responsibility and how people who have safety can help those who are in dangerous situations. I'd recommend it to any kid, but especially to anyone looking for people's history.

View all my reviews.

Beyond, beneath, and in search of our means

2008-07-30T10:49:00.007-04:00

My mother and step father got divorced years ago. They were both working the same job, living in a brand new condo in a beach town, and making about 80,000 a year together. They split up and I ran off to college, so you could say we each struck out on our own. Our interpretations and performances of class couldn’t be more different.

My mother moved to Michigan because she couldn't take the hour and 1/2 commute while being a single parent. She's remained unemployed since she’s been there, collecting 1,200 a month in retirement (before taxes). Her income is now 15,000 a year, but when I went to visit her, everything in her house seemed new. She was installing oak encasements on the windows and doors, she has custom designed sinks put into the bathrooms, she drives a new envoy (read SUV that gets 15 iles to the gallon), she bought another TV and DVD player (even though she hadn't figured out how to use the one I bought her years ago), and the list goes on. She spoke of how she was poor a lot. She lamented about all the things the house "needed"-- like plusher carpeting, tile to replace the linoleum, another TV for the kitchen, etc. She obviously believed it and yet, in my mind there was excess in every inch of her new 21,000 square feet of house.

My step father stayed with the company and now makes 4,000 a month. He lives in a house in NC that is half the size of hers. Moreover, it has gaps between the wall and the ceiling, that has no door knob on the front door, that has broken windows. He eats out every night at olive garden, his house has nothing of value in it, and he owns a junky, old (20+ years) car and a similarly beat-up truck.

It’s inconceivable to me that either of them can live the way they do making the amount of money they do. When they were together, they mediated one another’s excesses, and so my home life was more or less congruent with their income—we ate out often, but they had the same cars forever; we had TV’s in the living room and bedroom but only basic cable; my mother bought expensive tools but did all her own home and car repairs.

I’m sure my upbringing has been formative for my worldview (whether I like it or not), but we must also remember that my attitudes and practices are heavily influenced by the ideologies I embrace as a Buddhist and an anti-capitalist. I don’t buy new things. I rarely buy old things. I sometimes collect free things. And I always make sure I get rid of one thing for everything I acquire.

I’ve been unemployed for 6 months now. I’ve made $760 total in that time and supported myself entirely. I buy fresh produce and go to coffee shops on my credit card. The first thing that sticks out to me is that I think of these as luxuries, and sometimes I even feel guilt about them. However, I rationalized that when you find yourself in a period of extended deprivation you have to afford yourself “luxuries” because they are important to your sense of well being (honestly, I am rather successful at staving off the feeling of being deprived by allowing myself my luxeries). The second thing to note is that I have 1,000 worth of credit card debt to show for it. That means my cost of living for the entire time I’ve been out of school is on average 550 a month in a town where I pay 400 in rent w/o utilities. I’m not sure which sensibility I take after more since I’m living beneath the poverty line but above my means.

Now I think about how my 6 year old brother is growing up with two reference points that are each imbued with their own sense of class unreality. I wonder how he will make sense of money, of finances, of budgeting. I wonder more how he will connect those things with social standing, which excesses he will indulge, what he will think he needs, and how will that compare to what he can afford to need…

Updated Children's Book list

2008-07-28T12:33:00.004-04:00

Jokes and the Unconscious: A book review

2008-07-25T20:10:00.002-04:00

Jokes and the Unconscious: A Graphic Novel by Daphne Gottlieb

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book isn't your typical graphic novel. It takes the mundane: a college aged girl loosing her father, and twists it into the surreal.

The story itself reads largely like a written novel with the art adding layers more than detail.

Paced by uneasy jokes, this graphic novel pushes its tale forward with all the pithy desperation of fight club complimented by haunting artwork.

If you're looking for Allison Bechdel, you won't find it here, but if you're up for a somewhat nihilistic walk through the grieving process, then the experience is well worth the read.
View all my reviews.

Food and class

2008-07-21T23:05:00.001-04:00

Foods that indicate low status
Pasta
Anything from jars or cans
Bologna
Spam
Junk food
Rice
Ramen
Fried foods
Frozen juices
Asian food (especially Curry & Stir-fry)
Skim milk
Cooking with oil instead of butter

Foods that indicate high status
Meat (boneless, skinless, and white)
Non-water beverages (coffee, juices, milk, etc)
Wine
Steak
Seafood
Cheeses that aren’t cheddar
Fresh produce
Foreign (read European and Mediterranean) foods
Bakery/hard-crusted bread

Varied condiments (ie. More than one type of mustard, salsa, etc.)
It was important to my mother that we didn't eat "like poor people." When I would petition for vegetables (and eventually when I came out as a vegetarian), my mother would scoff and say things like "we can afford meat so we shall have it. Why settle for things beneath you?" It was similarly important that we were not the kind of people who ate processed meat, who ate meat from a can (to this day I’ve never had tuna salad), who ate meat that had been pressed into patties; we were the kind of people who ate white meat, who ate pulled meat, who bought boneless everything. My mother bought an extra freezer to house the bulks of bargain priced flesh. More than any other aspect, food was the way my mother choose to assert her class ascendancy.
When I would complain about chicken again, she would tell me of days when she was of a lower military rank (with a correspondingly lower pay scale) and she would eat an English muffin for dinner three nights a week. I once told her, “You could buy so much ramen for the price of a pack of English muffins” Disappointed that I had missed the point, she embarked to instill in me that if you have to, then you should eat less, not compromise the quality.

What the thing poor people didn't understand was how to shop wisely (buy in bulk) and how to buy foods that were nourishing. Her tone would be full of judgment as she would list the junk food in my aunt’s cupboard (they were on food stamps). Surely I could see that it was a grievous miscalculation on the part of the government to let poor people decide what to buy with their aid.

Things seem to come full circle as I stall grocery shopping in wait for Wednesday, when I can apply for food stamps…

A Quirky Fairytale Part 1

2008-07-18T14:06:00.002-04:00

There was once a young Genderqueer who had avoided the pitfalls of romance rigorously and successfully all of hir life. A believer in love but a cynic to romantic relationships (surely the sweet sounds of adoration have a thousand times more range than this single octave), ze could oft be heard sneering at newly weds and scoffing at those who would try to court hir.

Many a year had ze spent enjoying d&d free (d&d = drug and drama, not dungeons and dragons) misadventures punctuated by moments of friendly though transient intimacy when ze moved to the “lesbian capital of the east coast.

Ze spent months alone in a castle-like estate amid all manner of vagrancy and partyers. Ze was in search of employment that never seemed to manifest, in search of stability that eluded hir, in search of something ze had no point of reference for, and it was with a predictable yet all the more virulent strain of frustration that. Ze was afflicted.

When the squalor of the house seemed overwhelming, ze cleaned. Ze did most anything ze could to avoid leaving until one sweltering mid-morning ze woke to an anxious cross-between-a-squeal-and-howl that wouldn’t stop. The neurotic canine lept around in the filthy of the living room, rubbing his head manically into the clothes strewn about the decaying surplus of salvaged furniture. Driven uncharacteristically on edge, ze packed hir books, sketchpad, and laptop and took off.

In search of a path, ze stumbled into a SesamePride planning meeting. Others may have stayed because the event was a first, with all the attendant excitment and intrigue, but ze stayed because it was something to find direction in, something to get lost in, something to get found in…

The Beat of Urban Hip Hop: A review

2008-07-12T18:06:00.001-04:00

The Beat of Urban Art: The Art of Justin Bua by Justin Bua

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
The author has developed the art of story telling through the combination of visual and written means. It's a story book for adults that features the history of hip hop through an autobigraphical lens. The composition of words and images is intriguing and brings with it all the vibrancy of city life in a highly stylized and idiosyncratic language.Fun and beautiful book.

View all my reviews.

Personal Update: Job

2008-07-12T17:24:00.001-04:00

I won a veggie peeler today.

After 6 months of searching for a job and only finding temporary work, I’ve finally broke down and became an independent contractor with a corporate marketing company. I think that means I sold out.

I’ve spent three days being bombarded by incentive programs, get-rich-quick ambitions, and luxury car examples braided through company lore. I don’t know how to relate in the strange landscape of salesmanship were everything is a contest and success is an attitude platitudes are planted along every path.

It’s not as glamorous as it sounds. I sell knives. Rather, I am getting trained to get paid to visit people who have been referred to me through my social network and show them a few party tricks with high-quality cutlery. As my boss pointed, “They will always want it. That’s not your job. You just ask if they are buying it or get the names of who will.”

I’ll be doing about thirty hours worth of training, which I’m not getting paid for. I had to work through the first weekend. I am having trouble brainstorming people to show because I haven’t been in the area too long. My success is very much in question.

My goal for the night is to get an appointment. For the weekend is to get a sale. For the week, I wouldn’t mind earning a leatherman, but I’d settle for a pay check.

Response to Class Blog

2008-07-07T21:30:00.007-04:00

Someone in my life has been keeping a class blog. She writes in it everyday. She doesn't have to. She doesn't even have to think about class. But she's committed to it. I respect that. A lot.

The following is a post she made of an interaction we had, and then my response.

"four cabbage perogies, four potato perogies, and the same for you...together or separate?"

*glanceglanceglance*

"what do you think?"

"ahh, i don't know."

"you suck at making decisions"

"that's true! ahhh"

"it's up to you - together or separate?"

"uhh..uhh...together"

wtf happened? what does it have to do with class?

What happened was that you offered to pay, and that made me uncomfortable.

I thought of when I worked at Panera, and the couplings of old ladies would doggedly seek out my cash register at the most conceivably inopportune segment of busy o’clock in order to argue teasingly about who would pay. Each would throw their preferred method of payment onto the counter for me to choose while they exchanged strings of compliments and I-owe-you-so-muches with one another, occasionally professing to me, “how good of a friend she’s been to me all these years.” On good days it was coquettish and endearing, but on bad days, I wanted to pick up the damned cash/card and say, “We are getting 6 dollars and hour. We aren’t allowed to accept tips, but why don’t one of you adopt a Panera worker in the other’s name if ya wanna do somethin’ sweet?”

I thought about how you paid before, at Haymarket, and it didn’t seem fair for you to do it again. Fairness means equal, right? Except I know better. And you’ve told me you do too.

I reminded myself that I don’t have a job and you do, and I cashed in my last savings bond to pay the minimum balance on my credit card. I felt frustrated that I don’t have a job. I felt disappointed that we weren’t gonna act out that old lady scene. I wanted that generosity back in my life. I felt like I had lost the opportunity to do something nice for someone I care about. I recognized that that was a freedom you were exercising.

So I joked about my indecision, (which does, in fact exist). I let you pay, and I recognized that those miniature jolts of guilt and shame I was feeling had a little something to do with internalized class oppression. And I decided that having you around was good for my class-consciousness.

Privilege Walk

2008-07-06T15:03:00.006-04:00

*Intro*

Privilege walk n. - A clever game devised to raise consciousness, to help people apply abstract concepts to their lives, to their classrooms and workshop spaces. It all begins by standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a row down the middle of an empty room (If you wanna make it more intense, the participants can also hold hands). One person reads off of a list, commanding the others to step forward if ___ (fill in the blank with any given marker of privilege) and to step backwards if they experience x, y, or z instance of oppression. The object is for everyone to take at least one step forward and at least one step backwards. The object is to see how these looming concepts intersect with your experiences. The object is to illustrate how both privilege and oppression apply to all of us, but also to highlight how we experience them differently than other people. Differently from people we already relate to.

So I’ve done a privilege walk or two in my life. Hell, I’ve led a couple. Each time I’ve found it captivating, scary, enlightening, and surprising. Each time I realize I know much more than the last but not nearly enough somehow. It wasn’t until my last privilege walk though, that I got a little hurt in the process.

*The real thing*

Tables eked familiarly across the hard wood floors of the tiny one-room cabin, where I had participated in this exact exercise weeks before. Arriving late but feeling none-the-less prepared, I nestled myself in-between a queeny man and the straightest, blonde I know.

As we began, the game unfolded itself similarly to before, which is to say that I found myself in the back quarter of the room almost immediately but with some company.

A dainty hand tugged on my own a little less with each question, transforming the knowledge of belonging to marginalized categories into the feeling of being left behind. From the beginning I had accepted that it was only a manner of time before I let go of her finely manicured hand. She tried harder than I did to keep contact, taking progressively smaller steps forward until the impending fracture was inescapable.

As the questions grew harder, the flamboyant one on my left was in lock step with me, our bodies shifting uncomfortably as we watched the rest of the class approach the front wall one declaration of security and virginity at a time.

Step backward if you have ever been put in a position to lie about your sexual identity out of fear. We flashed one another an uneasy smile as our feet shuffled in reverse. Comradery felt like our fleshy palms greeting one another warmly.

Step forward if your parents told you that you could be anything you wanted to be. The fissure between us began with a hot wave of shame accompanying my stillness in the face of twenty unhesitating steps. That wasn’t a revelation, but damned if I needed the reminder.

Take a step forward if your parents graduated from college. Another moment of feeling the harness of my past burden me. I thought about stepping anyway, but couldn’t bring myself to lie. I had noticed that any given student had parents who were in medical school or went to far-flung places on business trips, but the cumulative effect of the word “professionals” had not come to bear on my mind yet. My vein attempt to conjure an image of childhood in the context of office jobs and grad placement was interrupted by the nagging sensation that I was loosing grip with the last warm body in my vicinity.

There were a thousand small injuries that more-or-less nicked the surface of my armor that day. They were tiny charges of fear, ounces of memories I’d rather not been subjected to, but all-in-all they were things I knew, things I had dealt with, things I may even have been able to admit. But the questions kept placing us further and further apart. Two separate times the entire class had to take a couple steps back in order to afford more space to those whose noses pressed up against the front wall of the room.

By this point, he and I were several steps behind the others, knowing that two outstretched fingertips stood between us and the obscure form of loneliness that came from participating in a private education that didn’t belong to us. It was as if we hoped that by virtue of extending ourselves we could ward off that moment when one of us would leave the other behind for the last time. No one else would know if we let go. But we would.

Take a step forward if there were more than fifty books in the house that you grew up in. I froze. A sharp intake of breath later, he was gone. Really, they all had fifty books? It suddenly occurred to me that I had never seen my mother read any book. Ever. Surely, I was exaggerating. I searched my mind desperately, probed for instances of newspapers or pop science magazines, on that day even a cheesy romance novel could have been my salvation.

How did I even know she could read? I mean, I’ve always assumed it, but truthfully, is there anything in my mother’s life that would be different, if she were illiterate. I scanned through the list of things I watch her do: carpentry, plumbing, sketching, fixing stuff, cooking- not a single word-centered activity I could think of. I panicked. What if she was?

The space between my mother and I suddenly took on geometrically large proportions. This place I chose to spend so much of my time, her money, and my good credit on suddenly became a symbol of all the things I loved that she never would understand. It wasn’t just that she had never been to college, that she never was given the luxury of space and time to figure out what mattered to her, that she hadn’t been taught what to do with it even if she had ended up with it.

I realized that my mother’s never read a book that changed her life. I’d grow out of it, she told me growing up. Here I was growing into academia, growing into queer theory departments and primary research. Here I was growing into my conferences and workshops, growing into my multicultural education class. Growing into someone she never had the chance to become.

Work-in-progress

2008-07-05T15:47:00.005-04:00

I was thinking today about the connection between domestic violence and state violence, about violence that comes from desperation and the enforced poverty of our economic system. I was thinking about what role choice plays in violence and whether coercion itself is a form of violence. I was thinking about my relationship with my mother and her relationship with the military, about dependency and abuse, about my past...

Here is a poem I started a while ago but that still isn't finished. I want it to be better- clearer, more direct, more personal. But details are hard these days. I'm working on it.

I tried to write you a letter today
The pen, tossing and turning,
Bold typeface grasping and yearning,
For words that might makes sense
Against the backdrop of our estrangement
Against the space and time we don’t know our way through
Against the walls laid over bricks and years
Mortar bound in custom granite, tears
Mortar rounds in children’s ears
Sound like each time the streets reverberate with
An invocation to bring wars home
landing too close to the home I never had
In the seventeen year old signature
that was desperate enough to exchange twenty years
for security, poor medical care and a pension.
In the throbbing veins of his neck synchronizing
With his grip pressing me firmly against the wall
As spit shrapnel bombarded my face.
In the smoke-glazed eyes that couldn’t find
the courage to soften for your daughter
once in twenty years and counting.
You’d think I would have learned how to write to you
During the absences that permeated my childhood
with the stale bitterness of sea salt and engine oil
Fermented over the six months you lived on
Meclazine* and the conviction that you were better
than those Dirty, poor people.
How much anger can I write away or leave behind
Like not-so hidden mines
Exposed partially but fully loaded?

*Naval generic of sea sickness medication

“I am going to write a poem today”

2008-07-05T14:58:00.002-04:00

*Warning weird and the first poem in months. Literary criticism invited*

I am going to write a poem today,
lit by the flickering memory of your gestures,
hunched and buckled, hard-bellied
with tweezers in-hand, oddly akin to
the staunchly stubborn postures we both have taken,
molded our bodies over barbed-wire
that we may escape comparison
to the soft tenderness of a raw sore.
I am going to write a poem today,
Because I feel like punching bruises,
Peeling up the encrusted corners of scabs, and
Plucking each word like an unwanted body hair,
snatching it painfully from the taunt layers,
buried underneath who I’ve learned to be
amidst expectations that guild the silence
in unmistakable shades of anticipation and wax burn.
I am going to write a poem today,
Even though I let us pace ourselves in circles,
Tangential, smooth, going nowhere
while we will poke at spaces in-between
the bent and contorted, turning inwards, spines
that have formed pustules not-quite beneath the surface
and pretend that we don’t have ingrown hairs.

Updated Children's Book list

2008-07-04T13:54:00.003-04:00

Inspired by an awesomely sweet person in my life, I've went ahead and added 20+ titles to my radical children's book list. This includes adding categories for latino culture, immigrants, labor, anti-racism, interracial, animal rights, etc. and weeding out some of the primitivist variety.

[Click on the title of this post for easy access to list]

Butch Is A Noun: Audio Exceprts

2008-07-04T12:33:00.002-04:00

Okay, this is my last promo for Butch Is A Noun, I swear it.

I know most people will not end up reading Butch Is A Noun, so I thought I'd post the three essays that resonated most with me from it. I guess I feel like they each convey a little shard of who I am, and ones that I'm not necessarily disposed to expose.

without further adoo...

"Wrestling" by Bear Bergman
read by Chlirissa

"When I Can't Help" by Bear Bergman
read by Chlirissa

"Why I'm Not A Nice Young Man (Yet)" by Bear Bergman
read by Chlirissa

A word that does not mean listless

2008-06-30T14:30:00.001-04:00

I’m in search of a word.

Often I imagine my life a segmented off into discreet boxes, stacked neatly into columns, packaged into blocks that coincide with some version of time that’s hybrid of linear and whatever else exists beyond it. And when I’m compulsively making my to-do lists, I color code those blocks of time to correspond to whatever I’m compelled to achieve for the moment. Only sometimes, I stand at the precipice of one block, peering into the abyss of undone, unwilling to cross over. It’s then that I push, ever so gently on those flimsy lines that quarantine off what I have done from the web of things I have yet to do in order to make a little space for that yearning to just linger…

What do I call that?

Folksonomy Musings (article and poem)

2008-06-30T12:00:00.005-04:00

In a moment of insomnia, I've decided to post the only real pearl of wisdom I gained from the technology portion of the Allied Media Conference, and it can be summed up in the equation: Folksonomy= folk + tagging = more democratic pathways of information.

I know, it sounds so theoretical that you're probably either wanting to click away in annoyance or preparing to commence mental masturbation, but if you make it to the end, then there is a geeky yet kinda cute (if I do say so myself) conclusion.

It seems that even the "experts" find Web 2.0 to be a nebulous concept, but from what I gather, it refers to a new way of creating, accessing, and thinking about information that has come about via the internet, but what makes it 2.0 is how we're using it. When the process of creating content becomes communal like in open source, when the process of distribution becomes social like in youtube, when the process of cataloging becomes collective and democratic like in tagging (the blue highlighted words at the end of each blog entry that are actually searchable key terms), that's when we're operating in Web 2.0 space.

[skip this if you want to avoid theory] Let's take a second to deconstruct Folksonomy (folk + taxonomy) or "the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content" according to wikipedia. With tagging, we assign arbitrary associations that, rather than being based upon external, standardized cues, add meaning from our own experiences, allow us to highlight which aspects of a give piece of information are important to us, and allow us to connect with other people who categorize in similar ways to what we do.

Tagging is like identity. It is created based on reference points that shift according to whom is interpreting what and in which context. Content can inhabit multiple varied, intersecting and/or overlapping categories at any one time. There is a portion of it that has to do with the actual content but most of its meaning comes from how the user relate to it- how they call it, who they send it to, what they associate with it. Where as old-school internet searches operated by a tree-like structure, with one category embedded underneath another one (ie. to find soccer scores you would look under entertainment then sports then soccer then statistics), tagging only privileges one way of categorizing information above others in so far as it is more commonly cited and understood.

But is that enough to call it folk? Some of the distinguishers of things that fall under the category of folk in my mind are... it's something easy to teach yourself, something can be done almost anywhere by anyone, something that requires relatively little investment of time, and training, and/or money upfront. Let's remember who does and does not have the access to the internet and under what circumstances (things that make sense to check out on my laptop which I have 24 hour access to are different than what I would check out if I were on a public library computer for 20 min blocks). Let's remember who has the confidence and spare time to teach themselves (I only learned how to use some of these programs when I flew half way across the country to go to a conference). Lets remember that we only occasionally do it in the same room and almost never do it in the streets...

Other neat things to think about:
Zipcode tagging = what’s going on around you? Who could you meet? Possibility of real world connection.
Pivot browsing (browsing by using tags) = conversational flow

[You've made it past the techy part!] Why is this important? Because it means that we are learning new ways to relate to content, we are becoming actively engaged in the media we are consuming at each step of the process. Of course there is the issue that all of the infrastructure we use (like blogspot) is corporately consolidate and sustained mostly through data mining. Even though there are promising alternatives to corporate monoliths (such as Storiesforchange.net instead of youtube), they have only a fraction of the traffic, and in a cyber world where there is too much everywhere all the time, distribution is an important consideration. It's democratic in the way that political parties and lobbying are, which is to say it's easy to bully.

In the end, web 2.0 is not anyones salvation. It is a tool that is less limiting, less consolidated, less inaccessible than television was, but its not local, its not class-blind, and it doesn't belong to us. We should let our imaginations be freed by it in-so-far as it creates new ways of relating to and with each other via technology but we should be cautious that we don't let it technology circumscribe our notions of what community and social networking actually mean.

Tags for my life 06.30.08
Lost, wandering, VA beach, Northampton, Marlboro College, in between, liminal, intersticial, borderlands, genderqueer, queer, white Puerto Rican, abstentia, unemployed, Buddhist, groundless ground, vulnerability, stronger, Afraid, Recovering, compassion, asexual, romantic, intimacy, connection, wrestling, kink, play, boi, post-modern, writing, teaching, Meg Mott, creating, media, documentaries, reflexive, Truth, dysfunctional family, baggage, lies, silence, confusion

Homade Seitan Recipe

2008-06-29T15:26:00.004-04:00

Many of you who are reading this may be familiar with the yummy goodness of seitan, a protein source made of wheat gluten. However, I'm sure there is someone who is not, and this reproduction of what is heralded as the best seitan recipe is for exactly that deprived soul. Enjoy!

by Isa (Recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance)

prep time: 15 minutes | cooking time: 1 1/2 hours - 2 hours | makes about 4 cups

Traditionally wheat flour is washed and kneeded 3 times and over 2 days in order to make the wheat gluten, but this seitan is made quicker by using Vital Wheat Gluten flour. The flavoring for this goes well with pretty much anything, but depending what you are using it for you can change the flavors up a bit by adding finely chopped herbs to the mixture, or if you're making something Asian or Indian, some grated ginger wouldn't hurt.

Equipment:
Large ceramic or glass bowl, Smaller bowl for liquid ingredients, Skiller (Cast Iron is best), Large soup pot with lid

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups vital wheat gluten flour
1/4 cup nutritional yeast flakes

1 cup very cold water or vegetable broth
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 cloves garlic, pressed or grated on a microplane grater
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest

Simmering Broth
10 cups water or vegetable broth
1/2 cup soy sauce

Directions
In a large bowl, mix together Vital Wheat Gluten Flour and nutritional yeast flakes.

In a seperate bowl, mix together reamining ingredients: water or veg broth, soy sauce. tomato paste, garlic, lemon zest.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and combine with a firm spatula, knead dough for about 3 minutes until a spongy, elastic dough is formed. Let dough rest for a couple of minutes and prepare your broth, but don't start boiling it.

Now roll your dough into a log shape about 8 inches long and cut into 3 equal sized pieces. Place the pieces in the broth. It is important that the water/broth be very cold when you add the dough, it helps with the texture and ensures that it doesn't fall apart. Partially cover the pot (leave a little space for steam to escape) and bring to a boil.

When the water has come to a boil set the heat to low and gently simmer for an hour, turning the peices every now and again.

Now you've got gluten. Let it cool in the simmering broth for at least a half an hour. It is best if it cools completely.

What you do next depends on the recipe you are using. If it calls for gluten use it as is. If you want to store some of it for later use put it in a sealable container covered in the simmering broth.

If your recipe calls for seitan cut your peices up as desired. I prefer to use a cast iron skillet for the frying because it produces the best flavor and texture. Use as little oil as possible to coat the bottom of the skillet, 1 teaspoon may suffice. Heat the skillet over medium high and add your gluten. Cook for about 20 minutes, turning the pieces occasionally. And there you have it. Yummy seitan.

Queer Open Mic Moved

2008-06-28T14:46:00.009-04:00

This flyer now is no good. I think the 17th would be better!

Ps. flyer desIgned by Chlirissa
with artwork by Christy Road aka Croadcore

Digital Storytelling Scheme

2008-06-28T14:06:00.003-04:00

My current mission statement is that I want to explore how to use media in the context of social justice organizing with youth. What does that mean? I want to teach kids from marginalized communities (latino and/or queer to be exact) how to use media in order to tell the stories that are important to them. This means 1) affirming that what they have to say matters 2) sharing a technical skill that has practical applications, and 3) creating media that could potentially be employed towards a variety of educational and political ends.

All that seems great, but what does it look like? Well, I learned about two models when I attended the Allied Media Conference. On was presented by The Center For Digital Storytelling. They travel around doing 3 day workshops with other non-profits.. Here are my notes…

7 Elements: point (why that story at that moment), dramatic question, emotional content, voice, soundtrack, economy (300 wds), pacing.

Workshop Model about 12 students w/ two instructors

Day 1: Elements, writing time, idea discussion, adobe training, production time

Day 2: Scripting, story boarding, photo workshop, voiceovers, DV tutorial Final Cut, Production time

Day 3: Rough edit, special effects, production time, screening

How to use: Silence Speaks National Center for Lesbian Rights compile include w/ manual for outreach to social workers, include with letter lobbying congress, include with grant proposal

Funding: grants through community organizations, work exchange

Website: Storiesforchange.net; decentralized youtube; Storycenter.org

Similar organizations: Mass Impact in Boston, Creative Narration in Seattle…

It produces impressive results in terms of stories (which are normally a series of still images put to narration), but not in terms of relationships. It’s training more than growing with the learner, but that being said, it takes a lot less investment from the trainer or the learner. It’s logistically manageable.

I’m thinking that it would be feasible to follow more or less this model in making an afterschool program that would meet a couple of hours a week for a month or so. Perhaps if we were to target a group that already met regularly, like a Queer Straight Alliances, then there would be a group of people who felt already felt comfortable talking about personal things, then it may work. The first step seems like it should be finding a partner in crime...

Short Hair

2008-06-28T12:25:00.001-04:00

It’s been so long since I’ve had to be anywhere I didn’t want to be, that I forgot how public space feels against my skin.

“You in the service?” an older man with a worn expression inquires. I look him over, reading the loose threads of his cut-offs, the wrinkles in his over sized shell of an sweat suit draping down from his carefully trimmed neck line to mean he was.

I’d not been asked this question when I grew up in my navy town. In the moment of hesitation, an image of myself registered in my mind, short curly hair above a tall body clad in board shorts and a sports bra. I forgot how reference points shift with cultural territory, how a sense of place mediates the meaning that etches itself into our bodies. What, in Northampton, is decidedly dyke boarding on queer wedges itself into the military discount arena once I set foot within 10 miles of a base.

“Naw, but my mother was an aviation mechanic. She did twenty years on fighter jets at Oceana.”

He nods approvingly in an effort to mask his surprise, “I didn’t know women did that. Ya know…back then” I want to tell him that fuck yeah some women did that, and some still do. Instead, I shrug it off refusing to indulge the novelty of his statement. After all, it’s always been normal to me.

Signals from Strangers

2008-06-28T12:21:00.003-04:00

**something I meant to post last month**

A stranger started a conversation with me in the coffee shop about transgender history. It was only days after I decided I was going to embark on the transgender oral history project. At first it seemed awesomely serendipitous, but then the questions crept upon me: How did he know this is something I’m interested in? What made him think I had an investment in it? What was his connection to trans issues? What did he presume min was?

The encounter went from being exciting to seeming dangerous. My body recoiled in retreat. He had spoken what I had spent so much time convincing myself people didn’t notice.
I was exposed. He knew something about me that I could hardly find the words for. Something I had tapped into while groping around in the darkness. Something familiar I kept there half for the comfort of tracing its outline and half in fear that the light might prove it to be less real than the sinews of its shadows.

Sometimes the signal becomes irrelevant. It only matters how strong the winds have blown, how quickly the rain beats into the pavement and how much the antenna have been bent and rusted in the process.