Pagan Spirit Gathering isn't easy to explain, and I'm not sure I can encapsulate its mystique in a blog post. I've spent some time being introspective on the whole experience and I'll convey as much as I can, but it's definitely something one should experience for themself.
Showing posts with label Basics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Basics. Show all posts
Friday, July 5, 2013
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Quick Post: Talking Without Training Wheels
I haven't posted anything in much longer than I'm comfortable with. Such is the power of the magic of finals. Beltane, May Day, and Pagan Coming Out day all fell by the wayside since my last post, and while I thought about sitting down to right something related to them if I didn't handle school first it would have put at risk my future prospects for school, housing, and insurance. None of this is what I want to talk about today, though. I'm picking and poking at some more important posts but today I have positive up-beat news for once.
I'm in a relationship again. It's been quite a while since this has been true and I'm all warm and glowy about it, even though most of the interaction between us occurs at a distance. I also have metamours (people that are dating my partner but not myself) for the first time and it's a unique kind of experience. As it happens my partner seems to draw in Queer loves like a magnet, and I can't blame them for pursuing zir.
Over the last weekend I had many incredible experiences as my now-partner visited and we formalized our relationship. I don't have zir consent to discuss some of them, although I will say they were revolutionary praxis at its best. What I can talk about is how amazing it is to talk to someone at a similar level. Not to suggest that most people I know are lacking in intelligence, nor to suggest that the conversations I do have involve someone that knows less about most subjects than I do (often quite the opposite) but rather that most people I speak to do not have the particular range of experiences and knowledge that I do. This isn't a value statement, most people just don't have the privilege to be able to spend six hours in a day delving into sex worker blogs to make up for not knowing what the views of actual sex workers are. All I can claim to be is incredibly well read and fairly well spoken. My partner shares these traits, which was a large part of our coming to connect with each other.
When the two of us talk we touch on a variety of subjects, but being activists most of them have to do with queerness or other maligned identities. Normally when either of us discusses these subjects we bump into some problems. We're often speaking to people from outside our respective communities that don't have the background on issues we feel passionately about. Other times we're speaking within the community but about subjects that aren't on the radar of the average (if there is such a thing) Queer student just trying to get by. Why more people don't spend their time thinking about ways to clarify concepts of privilege and oppression in their daily lives is largely beyond me, but it's the sad truth of the matter. This all means that when we bring up complex ideas put together from a dozen different sources we're more likely to spend the conversation explaining background than diving right into things. I'm thankful to know a lot of people for whom this isn't the case, and when it's not we get to do something my partner playfully referred to as "talking without training wheels."
It's amazing to talk to someone that self-analyzes and self-corrects. Someone that doesn't need to hear zir argument is ethnocentric because there's already a clarification of the limits to which the argument would reasonably apply. Someone that says things like "not that that isn't also valid" and "because clearly that makes a difference" and knows just why I'm smiling in response. Someone that not only has a broad understanding of zir own identities but of the needs and identities of others. These aren't things we get to take for granted in a heterosexist, racist, classist, tranphobic, and otherwise oppressive world. They are not givens, even if they should be. So when we talk with someone like ourselves, someone that knows that anger is justified and when a phrase is problematic, it's an incredible thing. It's beautiful. It can cause a deep and abiding connection over the simplest of topics. It's something more people deserve to feel.
While it's not easy to explain the value of abstract learning until you've actually had it, this is definitely one of those things more people need to do. When you realize you've spent so much of your life talking with training wheels, bumping into people with your words and crashing awkwardly against concepts, the freedom to converse down mountain trails and through shaddowy woods with someone you love is intoxicating. I highly recommend taking the time and learning how.
I'm in a relationship again. It's been quite a while since this has been true and I'm all warm and glowy about it, even though most of the interaction between us occurs at a distance. I also have metamours (people that are dating my partner but not myself) for the first time and it's a unique kind of experience. As it happens my partner seems to draw in Queer loves like a magnet, and I can't blame them for pursuing zir.
Over the last weekend I had many incredible experiences as my now-partner visited and we formalized our relationship. I don't have zir consent to discuss some of them, although I will say they were revolutionary praxis at its best. What I can talk about is how amazing it is to talk to someone at a similar level. Not to suggest that most people I know are lacking in intelligence, nor to suggest that the conversations I do have involve someone that knows less about most subjects than I do (often quite the opposite) but rather that most people I speak to do not have the particular range of experiences and knowledge that I do. This isn't a value statement, most people just don't have the privilege to be able to spend six hours in a day delving into sex worker blogs to make up for not knowing what the views of actual sex workers are. All I can claim to be is incredibly well read and fairly well spoken. My partner shares these traits, which was a large part of our coming to connect with each other.
When the two of us talk we touch on a variety of subjects, but being activists most of them have to do with queerness or other maligned identities. Normally when either of us discusses these subjects we bump into some problems. We're often speaking to people from outside our respective communities that don't have the background on issues we feel passionately about. Other times we're speaking within the community but about subjects that aren't on the radar of the average (if there is such a thing) Queer student just trying to get by. Why more people don't spend their time thinking about ways to clarify concepts of privilege and oppression in their daily lives is largely beyond me, but it's the sad truth of the matter. This all means that when we bring up complex ideas put together from a dozen different sources we're more likely to spend the conversation explaining background than diving right into things. I'm thankful to know a lot of people for whom this isn't the case, and when it's not we get to do something my partner playfully referred to as "talking without training wheels."
It's amazing to talk to someone that self-analyzes and self-corrects. Someone that doesn't need to hear zir argument is ethnocentric because there's already a clarification of the limits to which the argument would reasonably apply. Someone that says things like "not that that isn't also valid" and "because clearly that makes a difference" and knows just why I'm smiling in response. Someone that not only has a broad understanding of zir own identities but of the needs and identities of others. These aren't things we get to take for granted in a heterosexist, racist, classist, tranphobic, and otherwise oppressive world. They are not givens, even if they should be. So when we talk with someone like ourselves, someone that knows that anger is justified and when a phrase is problematic, it's an incredible thing. It's beautiful. It can cause a deep and abiding connection over the simplest of topics. It's something more people deserve to feel.
While it's not easy to explain the value of abstract learning until you've actually had it, this is definitely one of those things more people need to do. When you realize you've spent so much of your life talking with training wheels, bumping into people with your words and crashing awkwardly against concepts, the freedom to converse down mountain trails and through shaddowy woods with someone you love is intoxicating. I highly recommend taking the time and learning how.
Monday, April 22, 2013
My Face Was in Boston
I can't get over how similar the captured Boston bombing suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and I look. Oh, there are certainly differences, I'm something of a European mutt, but it's easy to envision him as an ancestor of mine at a young age. Someone that grew up in the area could probably visually distinguish my ambiguously defined Russian ancestry's bone structure and what-have-you from Chechnyan if such a distinction exists, but we're both Caucasian with ancestry from roughly the same region and I see my face in his face.
We're similar in a lot of ways. In addition to sharing a roughly similar appearance we're also fairly close to the same age. We've both lived most of our lives in the United States. We've both been subject to an indifferent or hostile system and felt alienated. According to mainstream society we both hold extremely radical views (though in very different directions). While there is no way I can sufficiently condemn his decision, and that of his brother, to murder innocents in pursuit of whatever goals he had, I recognize that if I had been raised in different circumstances I could easily have been Dzhokhar. His path isn't mine and I have no interest in becoming a killer for my ideology, which will forever create a gulf between us, but as I look at his picture I still see in his face a face not unlike my own.
Society doesn't see my face in his face. In fact, society, mainstream media sources, and politicians do not see his face at all, because his face is problematic. His face, like my face, is a white face. He is quite literally Caucasian. His face is disruptive to all of the carefully laid propaganda about brown faces and brown bodies being the source of terrorism in the United States and throughout the world. That's why it's being ignored in favor of his religion which fits into that messaging more easily and is more easily recoded back to a hatred of brown faces and bodies.
Despite having a similar face to one of the actual Boston bombers I will never be tackled and have my apartment raided due to the color of my skin. My ancestry won't be called on to question my patriotism, and in fact my utter lack of patriotism won't be connected to my ethnicity at all. I won't be accused of sympathizing with the bombers by people that see me on the street just because of my ethnicity or perceived ethnicity. I do not have to fear a sudden wave of anti-Russian violence. Russians, as well as most groups that make up my ethnic background, became generically recognized as White when it was convenient for the United States to incorporate us into a coalition to stand against civil rights for African Americans. Now I'm immune to the level of racism that has swept the media and Boston itself since the bombing.
White people aren't profiled. We aren't even acknowledged as a group until we're placed in some sort of conflict with People of Color. We make up the majority of reported rapists, are responsible for the majority of terrorist attacks in the history of the United States, are more likely to use illegal drugs than any other racial group, and are more likely to be serial killers. In fact, while the casualties of the Boston bombing are by no means insignificant and each of them deserves justice, more people in the United States have been killed by White Christian terrorists within the last year than died in Boston. None of this is used as evidence of a deficit in the morality of Whites, or for that matter Christians, as a whole. White school shooters aren't even discussed as being White. They're "mentally unstable". Racism can't touch us, because it's a system we've invented to elevate ourselves.
Instead of targeting me and others that look like me in the wake of an act of terrorism, or really any tragedy deemed newsworthy, people across the United States are looking for other scapegoats. When a shooter is a White male from the United States he suddenly becomes subject to mental instability. Gun control debates after shootings by White men are based around keeping guns out of the hands of those with mental illness, even though they are more likely to be victims of gun violence than perpetrators. Gun violence in major cities is addressed as a deficit in the stability of families of color. White Christain bombers like Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph have their religious identities debated, invisiblized, and denied. Muslim bombers regardless of race are seen as representing all Muslims and a deep current of violence inseparable from Islam. Immigrants are stigmatized while terrorists born and raised in the United States are not grouped on that basis.
These ideas are playing out across a national stage once again in the wake of the Boston bombing. Politicians are feeding into Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment, media outlets like CNN are playing on racial fears to stir up anti-Arab violence, and gun control debates will again be sidelined to pass laws increasing the size of the police state. To quote a news monitor on drones on Twitter, somewhere someone is certainly whispering in ears the question, "Could drones have found the Boston suspects faster?" Immigrant communities will be targeted broadly enough to blanket as many brown bodies as possible under the label of "terrorist threat."
There will be no attempts to address the ways in which American culture radicalizes people. No mainstream voice will speak up about the ways anti-immigrant sentiment fostered this violence. No source of this violence outside of the bombing suspect himself will be sought. No one will ask if this violence is characteristic of White men. No one will look at me twice because of my resemblance to a terrorist.
We won't come to see why the construction of this debate is itself breeding hatred, desperation, and future acts of terror.
We're similar in a lot of ways. In addition to sharing a roughly similar appearance we're also fairly close to the same age. We've both lived most of our lives in the United States. We've both been subject to an indifferent or hostile system and felt alienated. According to mainstream society we both hold extremely radical views (though in very different directions). While there is no way I can sufficiently condemn his decision, and that of his brother, to murder innocents in pursuit of whatever goals he had, I recognize that if I had been raised in different circumstances I could easily have been Dzhokhar. His path isn't mine and I have no interest in becoming a killer for my ideology, which will forever create a gulf between us, but as I look at his picture I still see in his face a face not unlike my own.
Society doesn't see my face in his face. In fact, society, mainstream media sources, and politicians do not see his face at all, because his face is problematic. His face, like my face, is a white face. He is quite literally Caucasian. His face is disruptive to all of the carefully laid propaganda about brown faces and brown bodies being the source of terrorism in the United States and throughout the world. That's why it's being ignored in favor of his religion which fits into that messaging more easily and is more easily recoded back to a hatred of brown faces and bodies.
Despite having a similar face to one of the actual Boston bombers I will never be tackled and have my apartment raided due to the color of my skin. My ancestry won't be called on to question my patriotism, and in fact my utter lack of patriotism won't be connected to my ethnicity at all. I won't be accused of sympathizing with the bombers by people that see me on the street just because of my ethnicity or perceived ethnicity. I do not have to fear a sudden wave of anti-Russian violence. Russians, as well as most groups that make up my ethnic background, became generically recognized as White when it was convenient for the United States to incorporate us into a coalition to stand against civil rights for African Americans. Now I'm immune to the level of racism that has swept the media and Boston itself since the bombing.
White people aren't profiled. We aren't even acknowledged as a group until we're placed in some sort of conflict with People of Color. We make up the majority of reported rapists, are responsible for the majority of terrorist attacks in the history of the United States, are more likely to use illegal drugs than any other racial group, and are more likely to be serial killers. In fact, while the casualties of the Boston bombing are by no means insignificant and each of them deserves justice, more people in the United States have been killed by White Christian terrorists within the last year than died in Boston. None of this is used as evidence of a deficit in the morality of Whites, or for that matter Christians, as a whole. White school shooters aren't even discussed as being White. They're "mentally unstable". Racism can't touch us, because it's a system we've invented to elevate ourselves.
Instead of targeting me and others that look like me in the wake of an act of terrorism, or really any tragedy deemed newsworthy, people across the United States are looking for other scapegoats. When a shooter is a White male from the United States he suddenly becomes subject to mental instability. Gun control debates after shootings by White men are based around keeping guns out of the hands of those with mental illness, even though they are more likely to be victims of gun violence than perpetrators. Gun violence in major cities is addressed as a deficit in the stability of families of color. White Christain bombers like Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph have their religious identities debated, invisiblized, and denied. Muslim bombers regardless of race are seen as representing all Muslims and a deep current of violence inseparable from Islam. Immigrants are stigmatized while terrorists born and raised in the United States are not grouped on that basis.
These ideas are playing out across a national stage once again in the wake of the Boston bombing. Politicians are feeding into Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment, media outlets like CNN are playing on racial fears to stir up anti-Arab violence, and gun control debates will again be sidelined to pass laws increasing the size of the police state. To quote a news monitor on drones on Twitter, somewhere someone is certainly whispering in ears the question, "Could drones have found the Boston suspects faster?" Immigrant communities will be targeted broadly enough to blanket as many brown bodies as possible under the label of "terrorist threat."
There will be no attempts to address the ways in which American culture radicalizes people. No mainstream voice will speak up about the ways anti-immigrant sentiment fostered this violence. No source of this violence outside of the bombing suspect himself will be sought. No one will ask if this violence is characteristic of White men. No one will look at me twice because of my resemblance to a terrorist.
We won't come to see why the construction of this debate is itself breeding hatred, desperation, and future acts of terror.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Why I'm Not Excited About Same Sex Marriage
As a Queer identified person I've found my romantic and sexual attractions range a fairly wide gamut, including some people that would be identified as being the same sex as me by the state and/or federal government. With this in mind same sex marriage sounds as though it could have a major impact on my life and open up all sorts of possibilities. Additionally I largely see same sex marriage as a foregone conclusion even if it may take a while. So why aren't I more excited?
As people that know me have gradually realized I'm a marriage resistor. I see the institution of marriage as unnecessary to create stable families and view the insistence on marriage promotion amongst politicians as a method to subtly control individuals. I also see a number of the every day acts of violence and oppression perpetuated against Queer people as being more important to focus on than, and in many ways unrelated to, the legal status of same sex marriage. Naturally this has caused a lot of conflict with the mainstream Gay rights movement that seems to be all about marriage as a way of obtaining legitimacy in the eyes of straight society.
As people that know me have gradually realized I'm a marriage resistor. I see the institution of marriage as unnecessary to create stable families and view the insistence on marriage promotion amongst politicians as a method to subtly control individuals. I also see a number of the every day acts of violence and oppression perpetuated against Queer people as being more important to focus on than, and in many ways unrelated to, the legal status of same sex marriage. Naturally this has caused a lot of conflict with the mainstream Gay rights movement that seems to be all about marriage as a way of obtaining legitimacy in the eyes of straight society.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Labeling the Boxes
Words are important in activism. It's not just about saying the right things, or explaining things in the right way, it's also having the right words to describe what it is you're talking about. That's why I made the (probably futile) effort to coin the term gnostivism. Words can be harmful but they can also be helpful in mitigating harm. Identity labeling is considered by some to do more harm than good, and I really disagree with that. So I'm going to try to explain why I see it as beneficial, at least for right now.
The main argument against identity labeling is that it only serves to divide people. There is a certain notion amongst particular groups of progressives that by eliminating all distinctions between people we'll be more likely to treat each other equally as human beings. This is a fairly positive idea all by itself, and isn't a bad thing to want to work toward, depending on how one does that work. I would say that, in fact, I do believe that in an ideal world identity labeling will be de-emphasized and people would be allowed to just be people, in whatever way they happen to express that. However, jumping to the elimination of labels in any situation short of an ideal world can lead to a lot of problematic responses to real world issues.
The main argument against identity labeling is that it only serves to divide people. There is a certain notion amongst particular groups of progressives that by eliminating all distinctions between people we'll be more likely to treat each other equally as human beings. This is a fairly positive idea all by itself, and isn't a bad thing to want to work toward, depending on how one does that work. I would say that, in fact, I do believe that in an ideal world identity labeling will be de-emphasized and people would be allowed to just be people, in whatever way they happen to express that. However, jumping to the elimination of labels in any situation short of an ideal world can lead to a lot of problematic responses to real world issues.
Monday, March 18, 2013
The Horror of Steubenville and Every Other City
Trigger Warning: Rape, Rape culture, misogyny, violence against women, victim blaming, possibly incoherent swearing by me, ALL links contain potentially triggering material
Friday, March 1, 2013
Quick Post: Intentions and Bad Cookies
Depression is horrible. I know this is a pretty controversial sentiment, right up there with bee stings aren't fun and Boys Don't Cry is "not a feel good movie." Depression is so horrible that when combined with a persistent illness it's very difficult to drag one's self out of bed some mornings, or even some afternoons. However, things are expected of me. Health and mental well-being are great concepts and all but they don't serve the capitalist machine or help me fulfill my get-a-piece-of-paper-to-signify-my-intelligence plans so I need to prioritize. Since that's hard to jump right into from a position of "if I lay here all day and don't move, maybe I'll feel better tomorrow" I'm doing some blogging first to get warmed up for the important things like journal entries that aren't graded on content.
Here's a slightly more controversial fact: intentions don't matter. It's kind of depressing when you think about it (or maybe that's just me) because intentions are given so much importance in our social interactions. "It's the thought that counts" may be as well recognized for its passive aggressive implications as it is for its honest sentiment but it's still a cultural standard for our feelings on intentions. In America, at least, we've really embraced this concept that well-meaning gestures are much more important than shallow but practical ones. When a surprise goes wrong because your partner turned out to be allergic to the chocolates you bought it's still supposed to be better than if you had ruined the romance by asking beforehand. Romance is a good intention, surprise is a good intention. Here's a better cultural standard: "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."
We treat intentions like some kind of magic spell. Simply by informing someone that our intentions were good and pure there's some kind of expectation that the mistakes we made in the actual implementation should be less painful to us. Imagine if surgeons used this logic. "I only meant to cut out the cancer, I didn't mean to lacerate all those internal organs. Hey, there's no call to get upset, I didn't do it on purpose!" The well-intentioned speakers expect to get away with their mistakes, in fact they will actually be upset if something that they didn't intend to be harmful is called out when it actually causes harm, simply because they're well-intentioned. Consequences aren't nearly as important as disposition for the person that doesn't have to receive the consequences.
Would someone ever forgive a drunk driver for causing a loss of life solely on the basis that their only intention was to get home before the police caught them? It's absurd to imagine.
So what does this mean for those of us in oppressed groups? We're continuously bombarded with messages about who we are, what we want, what is expected of us, and some of those messages are harmful. Actually, I would say the vast majority of what oppressed groups hear in the world is constructed in a way that causes harm to their sense of self and well-being. That's part and parcel of being oppressed, it is itself an aspect of oppression. Some of those messages are aimed at us by people that honestly just want to help. The concerned uncle that's sure just telling you to "suck it up" will help beat back the depression, the police officer that tells a group of young women to watch what they wear when they go out at night, and the politician that tells an African American audience that the best way to reduce gun violence is to have stable monogamous marriages are all probably genuine in their desire to help produce a solution to problems they see. They're still wrong to say it, the effects of their words can still lead to incredible suffering for the people that they're unconsciously disempowering. They ARE at fault for these words.
My point is simple: you are judged based on what you actually say, not what you mean to say. Your words are harmful based on what people hear, not what you think they SHOULD hear. If you are striving to be a genuinely good person this means you have to take responsibility not just for your words but for the effect they have and respond in kind. Don't be defensive, don't try to shift the blame to how the other person perceives what you said, just accept that they have had a reaction and you now need to operate from that situation instead of the one you envisioned. This applies to everything: misgendering, racial insensitivity, slurs you didn't know where slurs.
There are no rewards for trying not to be a horrible person and not making it. There's no way to request that reward in a well-intentioned manner. No one wants to give you a cookie just for trying, and if someone does it's probably full of salt.
Here's a slightly more controversial fact: intentions don't matter. It's kind of depressing when you think about it (or maybe that's just me) because intentions are given so much importance in our social interactions. "It's the thought that counts" may be as well recognized for its passive aggressive implications as it is for its honest sentiment but it's still a cultural standard for our feelings on intentions. In America, at least, we've really embraced this concept that well-meaning gestures are much more important than shallow but practical ones. When a surprise goes wrong because your partner turned out to be allergic to the chocolates you bought it's still supposed to be better than if you had ruined the romance by asking beforehand. Romance is a good intention, surprise is a good intention. Here's a better cultural standard: "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."
We treat intentions like some kind of magic spell. Simply by informing someone that our intentions were good and pure there's some kind of expectation that the mistakes we made in the actual implementation should be less painful to us. Imagine if surgeons used this logic. "I only meant to cut out the cancer, I didn't mean to lacerate all those internal organs. Hey, there's no call to get upset, I didn't do it on purpose!" The well-intentioned speakers expect to get away with their mistakes, in fact they will actually be upset if something that they didn't intend to be harmful is called out when it actually causes harm, simply because they're well-intentioned. Consequences aren't nearly as important as disposition for the person that doesn't have to receive the consequences.
Would someone ever forgive a drunk driver for causing a loss of life solely on the basis that their only intention was to get home before the police caught them? It's absurd to imagine.
So what does this mean for those of us in oppressed groups? We're continuously bombarded with messages about who we are, what we want, what is expected of us, and some of those messages are harmful. Actually, I would say the vast majority of what oppressed groups hear in the world is constructed in a way that causes harm to their sense of self and well-being. That's part and parcel of being oppressed, it is itself an aspect of oppression. Some of those messages are aimed at us by people that honestly just want to help. The concerned uncle that's sure just telling you to "suck it up" will help beat back the depression, the police officer that tells a group of young women to watch what they wear when they go out at night, and the politician that tells an African American audience that the best way to reduce gun violence is to have stable monogamous marriages are all probably genuine in their desire to help produce a solution to problems they see. They're still wrong to say it, the effects of their words can still lead to incredible suffering for the people that they're unconsciously disempowering. They ARE at fault for these words.
My point is simple: you are judged based on what you actually say, not what you mean to say. Your words are harmful based on what people hear, not what you think they SHOULD hear. If you are striving to be a genuinely good person this means you have to take responsibility not just for your words but for the effect they have and respond in kind. Don't be defensive, don't try to shift the blame to how the other person perceives what you said, just accept that they have had a reaction and you now need to operate from that situation instead of the one you envisioned. This applies to everything: misgendering, racial insensitivity, slurs you didn't know where slurs.
There are no rewards for trying not to be a horrible person and not making it. There's no way to request that reward in a well-intentioned manner. No one wants to give you a cookie just for trying, and if someone does it's probably full of salt.
Monday, February 25, 2013
The Gender Room
It has one toilet and one sink. There is no
stall and no urinal. The door locks. What makes it a men's room?
Perhaps the lack of changing table means that it has asserted itself a sense of resentful masculinity? Is it the kind of room that despises even the slim progress of equality that has lead to nurturing fathers, single fathers, and pairs of fathers? Could it disdainfully relegate those duties to the women's room down the hall, no doubt full of frills and lace and things more appropriate for changing a baby?
Does it silently criticize those that don't fit its image of masculinity? Are the business students that pass by too slight for it? Is it upset by my long hair, shocked that a man would walk through the world this way? What would it feel like if I had come in wearing a skirt?
Can it imagine the ill woman, clutching sadly at the locked handle of its sister room? Will it consider the man standing outside its anonymous door, not obviously suggesting its singular nature, and wondering if he passes well enough to go in or if he must find the tucked away gender neutral restroom, laying unadvertised in some other hallway, before his need to go becomes an infection? Would it refuse to serve its purpose if they'd entered? Would it stop its long months, still too newly built to have gone years, of uncommenting silence in order to object?
Does it resent its label? Has it always wished to be some other sort of room? Would it sympathize with those people that have rejected their own societal label? Can it even tell when someone walks inside it what society has labeled them from the moment of their birth?
There is nothing that passes in or out, no person, no substance, no horrific drunken expulsion or clogged overflow that is more degrading, more obscene, more thoroughly revolting than the image it holds no responsibility for. The sign that proclaims something the room can never convey on its own, has no reason to convey, has no need to convey. The glaring fault, terrible only because of all of the things that must be the wrong in the world before that label would exist. Like a scarlet letter, labeling all who enter as under the sway of society's judgement.
Superfluous.
Ridiculous.
Meaningless.
"Men's Room"
Perhaps the lack of changing table means that it has asserted itself a sense of resentful masculinity? Is it the kind of room that despises even the slim progress of equality that has lead to nurturing fathers, single fathers, and pairs of fathers? Could it disdainfully relegate those duties to the women's room down the hall, no doubt full of frills and lace and things more appropriate for changing a baby?
Does it silently criticize those that don't fit its image of masculinity? Are the business students that pass by too slight for it? Is it upset by my long hair, shocked that a man would walk through the world this way? What would it feel like if I had come in wearing a skirt?
Can it imagine the ill woman, clutching sadly at the locked handle of its sister room? Will it consider the man standing outside its anonymous door, not obviously suggesting its singular nature, and wondering if he passes well enough to go in or if he must find the tucked away gender neutral restroom, laying unadvertised in some other hallway, before his need to go becomes an infection? Would it refuse to serve its purpose if they'd entered? Would it stop its long months, still too newly built to have gone years, of uncommenting silence in order to object?
Does it resent its label? Has it always wished to be some other sort of room? Would it sympathize with those people that have rejected their own societal label? Can it even tell when someone walks inside it what society has labeled them from the moment of their birth?
There is nothing that passes in or out, no person, no substance, no horrific drunken expulsion or clogged overflow that is more degrading, more obscene, more thoroughly revolting than the image it holds no responsibility for. The sign that proclaims something the room can never convey on its own, has no reason to convey, has no need to convey. The glaring fault, terrible only because of all of the things that must be the wrong in the world before that label would exist. Like a scarlet letter, labeling all who enter as under the sway of society's judgement.
Superfluous.
Ridiculous.
Meaningless.
"Men's Room"
Sunday, February 17, 2013
I Will Not Go Quietly
I was planning to put together a post today discussing the formation of a coalition. I actually have about a third of it put together already, but I'd hoped to finish it later tonight. Then someone told me that I should go back into the closet.
It doesn't matter who it was. It doesn't matter that they probably meant it as honest advice with no actual malice. If anything that makes it worse. Quite honestly it also doesn't matter that they eventually tried to apologize. It happened.
I am a Polyamorous, Pagan Queer. I am a man and I wear skirts. I march at rallies, I vote, I speak, I protest. I have strong feelings about the society that allows homelessness and foreclosures to exist in the same nation and I'm vocal about them. I am also white, fairly well off financially except for my crushing debt burden, and fairly young with no dependents. I have more of an opportunity to be out than most people in the oppressed categories I'm in, but I still face all the prejudices and oppressions that coming out brings. I walk my campus in femme cut clothing along with masculine. I wear things associated with women: makeup, nail polish, skirts and leggings. Pictures of this are already online and there's not much chance of getting them off now, not that I'd want to. I've peppered the internet with essays, blogs, posts, and for several glorious seconds I've even appeared in Daily Show footage for speaking at a rally. I am out.
To be out to me means to be free. To have cast off my closets and my broom closets and my men's section clothing racks and women's section clothing racks. To have sat across from my parents and said "I love both of these women, and they love me. This is because of who I am" even knowing we wouldn't last beyond college and even knowing they might not understand. To have stood in front of hundreds of people, sat on panels, stood before classes, and told them I'm Queer. To have stood up before professors and said "I'm Queer and I am NOT okay with what you said."
To me being out means to be watched. To know that only one police officer needs to be the wrong one to come across me walking at night in a skirt and make an assumption, and so to fear all of them at least a bit. To know that my employment and my housing are always in a tenuous state because of a lack of legal protections, and no will to back up those that exist. To know that a gendered bathroom is never an entirely safe space for me.
For someone that has never had my experience, someone apathetic to activism, to tell me that because it might be safer for me in the short run I should go back in the closet is an absolutely heinous act. Closeting someone is an act which dismisses all of their identities as being secondary to the ones they are expected to have. It is an act of intense violence, stripping someone of their autonomy and acting as an apologist to their oppressors. Pushing someone back into the closet is no less than a dismissal of the entire movement that spawned a response to the AIDS epidemic. If someone wants to be closeted, or needs to be closeted out of concern for their own well being, they should never be condemned, but to tell someone that is free of the closet that they would do better to go back embodies the force of all subtle oppressions, microaggressions, and assumptions into a phrase. "This world is better than you. Your place is where it put you. It's better if you just see that."
If I lose my home, if I cannot be employed because I raised my voice for the thousands of people that cannot raise theirs, I would rather live on the streets like Sylvia Rivera than to allow myself to be silenced. If I am subject to violence I will face it as has every activist before me that refused to be moved, to be pushed away, to be quieted, to be closeted. Let my name be sung in a hall somewhere like a hero, shouted out like a demand that violence be addressed, that suffering be addressed, that oppression be addressed, and that the apathetic not sit idly by because I went out with my head up and out.
I refuse. I reject. I deny. Unequivocally, without exception and in no uncertain terms: The Closet. I am burning my closet down, right here, and right now. Here I stand for all the internet to see.
-Thorin Sorensen
It doesn't matter who it was. It doesn't matter that they probably meant it as honest advice with no actual malice. If anything that makes it worse. Quite honestly it also doesn't matter that they eventually tried to apologize. It happened.
I am a Polyamorous, Pagan Queer. I am a man and I wear skirts. I march at rallies, I vote, I speak, I protest. I have strong feelings about the society that allows homelessness and foreclosures to exist in the same nation and I'm vocal about them. I am also white, fairly well off financially except for my crushing debt burden, and fairly young with no dependents. I have more of an opportunity to be out than most people in the oppressed categories I'm in, but I still face all the prejudices and oppressions that coming out brings. I walk my campus in femme cut clothing along with masculine. I wear things associated with women: makeup, nail polish, skirts and leggings. Pictures of this are already online and there's not much chance of getting them off now, not that I'd want to. I've peppered the internet with essays, blogs, posts, and for several glorious seconds I've even appeared in Daily Show footage for speaking at a rally. I am out.
To be out to me means to be free. To have cast off my closets and my broom closets and my men's section clothing racks and women's section clothing racks. To have sat across from my parents and said "I love both of these women, and they love me. This is because of who I am" even knowing we wouldn't last beyond college and even knowing they might not understand. To have stood in front of hundreds of people, sat on panels, stood before classes, and told them I'm Queer. To have stood up before professors and said "I'm Queer and I am NOT okay with what you said."
To me being out means to be watched. To know that only one police officer needs to be the wrong one to come across me walking at night in a skirt and make an assumption, and so to fear all of them at least a bit. To know that my employment and my housing are always in a tenuous state because of a lack of legal protections, and no will to back up those that exist. To know that a gendered bathroom is never an entirely safe space for me.
For someone that has never had my experience, someone apathetic to activism, to tell me that because it might be safer for me in the short run I should go back in the closet is an absolutely heinous act. Closeting someone is an act which dismisses all of their identities as being secondary to the ones they are expected to have. It is an act of intense violence, stripping someone of their autonomy and acting as an apologist to their oppressors. Pushing someone back into the closet is no less than a dismissal of the entire movement that spawned a response to the AIDS epidemic. If someone wants to be closeted, or needs to be closeted out of concern for their own well being, they should never be condemned, but to tell someone that is free of the closet that they would do better to go back embodies the force of all subtle oppressions, microaggressions, and assumptions into a phrase. "This world is better than you. Your place is where it put you. It's better if you just see that."
If I lose my home, if I cannot be employed because I raised my voice for the thousands of people that cannot raise theirs, I would rather live on the streets like Sylvia Rivera than to allow myself to be silenced. If I am subject to violence I will face it as has every activist before me that refused to be moved, to be pushed away, to be quieted, to be closeted. Let my name be sung in a hall somewhere like a hero, shouted out like a demand that violence be addressed, that suffering be addressed, that oppression be addressed, and that the apathetic not sit idly by because I went out with my head up and out.
I refuse. I reject. I deny. Unequivocally, without exception and in no uncertain terms: The Closet. I am burning my closet down, right here, and right now. Here I stand for all the internet to see.
-Thorin Sorensen
Thursday, February 7, 2013
What is it? Polyamory
What is it? is one of several types of posts I have planned
for Polyamorous Paganism. I hope to use it to outline the basics of an
identity, concept, practice, or act that not everyone floating around
the internet may be familiar with. These aren't 100% comprehensive
posts, and they aren't infallible. I can only explain my personal views
on what a subject is, and I don't speak for the entirety of any
community. Additionally, I'm still learning. In many of these
communities I'm still a student and in some of them I'm still new. What is it? is only meant to be an introduction to a subject and an invitation to start learning along with me.
I am polyamorous. At one point that was one of the hardest things I've ever had to say to another human being. I've said it online and in classrooms, and most of the time I'm as comfortable mentioning it to a casual acquaintance as I am to an auditorium full of people. I've helped start the Polyamory discussion group for the Fox Valley, although I haven't been able to attend in months, and I'm the go-to activist for any speech or presentation on the subject on campus. I actually get to do two presentations on the subject on the same day later this month, one of them for a class full of freshman. At the same time this was one of the most difficult subjects I've ever spoken to my family about. It has inspired some of the happiest moments I've ever had in relationships. It makes up the root of the first word in the name of my blog.
I am polyamorous. At one point that was one of the hardest things I've ever had to say to another human being. I've said it online and in classrooms, and most of the time I'm as comfortable mentioning it to a casual acquaintance as I am to an auditorium full of people. I've helped start the Polyamory discussion group for the Fox Valley, although I haven't been able to attend in months, and I'm the go-to activist for any speech or presentation on the subject on campus. I actually get to do two presentations on the subject on the same day later this month, one of them for a class full of freshman. At the same time this was one of the most difficult subjects I've ever spoken to my family about. It has inspired some of the happiest moments I've ever had in relationships. It makes up the root of the first word in the name of my blog.
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
What is it? Queer
What is it? is one of several types of posts I have planned
for Polyamorous Paganism. I hope to use it to outline the basics of an
identity, concept, practice, or act that not everyone floating around
the internet may be familiar with. These aren't 100% comprehensive
posts, and they aren't infallible. I can only explain my personal views
on what a subject is, and I don't speak for the entirety of any
community. Additionally, I'm still learning. In many of these
communities I'm still a student and in some of them I'm still new. What is it? is only meant to be an introduction to a subject and an invitation to start learning along with me.
There are only two days left before the start of MBLGTACC, the Midwest Bisexual, Lesbian, Gay, Trans, Ally College Conference. While the word Queer doesn't make it into that title it is one of the largest queer events in the Midwest. It's also one of the two big events I look forward to every year for reaffirming and enhancing my identity (the other one is Pagan Spirit Gathering in the summer) so I want to include it as part of my blogging experience.
So what is Queer? How is an event or a space queer? Why am I so inconsistent with capitalization?
There are only two days left before the start of MBLGTACC, the Midwest Bisexual, Lesbian, Gay, Trans, Ally College Conference. While the word Queer doesn't make it into that title it is one of the largest queer events in the Midwest. It's also one of the two big events I look forward to every year for reaffirming and enhancing my identity (the other one is Pagan Spirit Gathering in the summer) so I want to include it as part of my blogging experience.
So what is Queer? How is an event or a space queer? Why am I so inconsistent with capitalization?
Sunday, January 27, 2013
What is it? Paganism
What is it? is one of several types of posts I have planned for Polyamorous Paganism. I hope to use it to outline the basics of an identity, concept, practice, or act that not everyone floating around the internet may be familiar with. These aren't 100% comprehensive posts, and they aren't infallible. I can only explain my personal views on what a subject is, and I don't speak for the entirety of any community. Additionally, I'm still learning. In many of these communities I'm still a student and in some of them I'm still new. What is it? is only meant to be an introduction to a subject and an invitation to start learning along with me.
I am a Pagan. This has been true to varying degrees over the past ten years of my life, sometimes in the guise of Wicca, sometimes as a general polytheist, and, since starting college, a fully embraced identity label with an understanding of what that commitment entails. To me this is one of the most meaningful parts of my identity. It's also part of the second word in the name of this blog. So what is Paganism?
The Pagan Pride Project provides the definition I've come to consider to be the most accurate to my understanding of Paganism.
While avoiding expectations of universal identifying factors here are a few characteristics that tend to be accurate about Pagans:
All of these points and the ones above are contentious. The number of different ideas about what Paganism is and what it involves are staggering. I'll go into much deeper depth later on for those who are interested, but this is a good functional definition going forward for people looking to understand how Paganism connects to other identities.
If you're interested in learning more about Paganism About.com is an incredible starting resource. Patti Wigington really knows her stuff and she even has an article on Pagans and Polyamory. For more advanced information check out the Pagan portal over at Patheos.com
Update: I'll be adding basics, intermediate, and advances labels to content so readers can find an identity they want to learn about and read from their own individual level of understanding
I am a Pagan. This has been true to varying degrees over the past ten years of my life, sometimes in the guise of Wicca, sometimes as a general polytheist, and, since starting college, a fully embraced identity label with an understanding of what that commitment entails. To me this is one of the most meaningful parts of my identity. It's also part of the second word in the name of this blog. So what is Paganism?
The Pagan Pride Project provides the definition I've come to consider to be the most accurate to my understanding of Paganism.
A Pagan or NeoPagan is someone who self-identifies as a Pagan, and whose spiritual or religious practice or belief fits into one or more of the following categories:If this sounds vague it's because it has to cover a huge swathe of people. Paganism is accurately understood as more of an umbrella term than the name of a single religion. Under that umbrella lies hundreds of belief systems both new and ancient which are further subdivided into covens, churches, temples, groups, and solitary practitioners. Most of the people in all those different groups worship some number of thousands and thousands of gods, goddesses, and spiritual beings. I say most because one of the truisms of Paganism is that there are very few truisms. We're an incredibly individualistic bunch that come to a lot of different belief systems mostly through experience rather than direct conversion.
- Honoring, revering, or worshipping a Deity or Deities found in pre-Christian, classical, aboriginal, or tribal mythology; and/or
- Practicing religion or spirituality based upon shamanism, shamanic, or magickal practices; and/or
- Creating new religion based on past Pagan religions and/or futuristic views of society, community, and/or ecology;
- Focusing religious or spiritual attention primarily on the Divine Feminine; and/or
- Practicing religion that focuses on earth based spirituality.
While avoiding expectations of universal identifying factors here are a few characteristics that tend to be accurate about Pagans:
- We're a non-proselytizing religion. You'll never find us knocking on your door during dinner because we don't care what your practices are as long as we're allowed to practice ours in peace.
- We tend to be based around experiences rather than texts. There's a joke that refers to Pagans as "People of the Library" since we have so many books, but our connection with the divine tends to be based around personal gnosis, not scripture.
- There are more of us than you think. Due to both subtle and overt forms of oppression that are enforced by more populous religious groups Pagans aren't always out about their religious beliefs. You may know a few without even realizing it.
All of these points and the ones above are contentious. The number of different ideas about what Paganism is and what it involves are staggering. I'll go into much deeper depth later on for those who are interested, but this is a good functional definition going forward for people looking to understand how Paganism connects to other identities.
If you're interested in learning more about Paganism About.com is an incredible starting resource. Patti Wigington really knows her stuff and she even has an article on Pagans and Polyamory. For more advanced information check out the Pagan portal over at Patheos.com
Update: I'll be adding basics, intermediate, and advances labels to content so readers can find an identity they want to learn about and read from their own individual level of understanding
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