To the Allies

tw: rape

We, the oppressed, need to have allies.  We need White allies, straight allies, male allies, etc. and we need them for two reasons.  One, we need them in order to be taken more seriously.  That's a problem.  It's not right that the rest of society (namely, the oppressors) will give our movements and causes and fights for equality less credence if we don't have someone they can relate to on our side, but that is the reality of it.  That's why the current system is fucking broken!  If we did not need allies to help get through to the other side, then we wouldn't be in this predicament of being treated like sub-humans in the first place.  That would mean that the ones holding the positions of power would have already seen that we deserved to be treated with the same respect and given access to the same rights and means to success as everyone else, from the start.

Two, we need people around us who treat us like people, whether they can relate directly to our troubles or not.  And if some of those people are the ones who don't share that identifier with you, it kind of gives you hope about the world at large.  And that's probably wrong too, but it's because we expect others like us to get it.  Maybe we shouldn't but we expect that our experiences being queer or being female or being poor, etc. are sort of universally felt throughout the people in our community.  Because, while there is that overwhelming sense of alienation and solitude that comes with feeling "different," there is also that reassurance that comes with finding others like yourself.  And even if the differences between me and the next bisexual woman that I happen to meet  are like night and day, we would still both be part of the 24-hour span; we would still both be bisexual women.  

So when we meet other people who are "different" for the same or similar reasons as we are, we pretty much expect that they will also want to be treated with more respect and stuff.  Maybe you will disagree on the ways in which the movement should go about attaining equality, which is another issue entirely, but unless one of you has some seriously internalized issues, it would be safe to assume that you both want society to make some room for you and your pursuit of happiness.

It's when we encounter the people who do not understand that experience firsthand that we feel our guard go up.  It's when the other person couldn't possibly have the same things at stake that we prepare ourselves for their disgust and ignorance and hatred, etc.  So, it's when that other person doesn't treat you like the rest of the world has treated you that you kind of start to have hope about the rest of the world because, hey, this person gets it.  This person was able to catch on to the fact that I'm a person and I should have rights- maybe there's a chance that others will too.

But that stuff, in no way, makes it okay for allies to demand things from the oppressed in return.

As an ally, you do not get to congratulate yourself for treating someone with basic human respect because that should be on your agenda anyway.  Similarly, but to a much greater extreme, it's not a favour to someone if you don't rape them.  You're supposed to not rape them.  You don't get to cash in on it later because you didn't rape them.   

(Frankly, I'm uncomfortable with the fact that I made this into a rape analogy and I totally understand if you are too- but I couldn't think of a more obvious example of when you shouldn't expect everyone to congratulate you for doing the right thing.  And, actually, rape culture is definitely relevant to this discussion about oppression and respect.  So, if you'll forgive me for doing that, I have a bit more to say.)

If your being an ally is conditional on the behaviour of the queer, disabled, female, PoC, trans*, etc. company you keep, then you are a very shitty ally.  And no one needs the shitty and faux allies.  People need the allies who think that helping others and treating everyone with equal respect is a given, and who recognize their own privilege and understand what that means.  You're not helping to bridge the gap between how people deserve to be treated and how they are being treated if you are using the time and energy to tell them what to want and how to behave when they ask for it.  Also, and perhaps more importantly, oppression is not about you, personally, if you have privilege.  Your opinions on oppression matter, they do, but they do not deserve equal or more attention than those of the people who are actually suffering the discrimination and the injustices.  Yet they do get equal or more attention, usually more.  That's because, as I mentioned earlier, the current system is broken.  So if someone is telling you to check your privilege and stop talking, you need to check your privilege and stop. fucking. talking.  Your actions do a lot more than words.  Honestly.

Look, I get it; you want everyone to know that you genuinely care about this stuff.  You want to stand out from the rest of the bad guys who are actively making things difficult for your friends.  You want them to know that you're someone they can trust to be on their side.  But it's so much better if you just do the work that it takes to fix things and stop trying to make it all about you.  One way to do that is to understand that no one is attacking you on a personal level for having privilege.  And if you do feel like you are personally being attacked, maybe- just maybe- it's because you are doing something wrong.  It would be incredibly disrespectful of you and a shitty ally thing to do if you immediately chalked it up to that person being "too sensitive" or getting angry just for the sake of getting angry, or a case of reverse [insert any -ism here] instead of taking the time to try and see their side of it. 

I'm not saying that these attacks are never just pure anger and frustration.  But you do have to realize where a lot of that anger comes from, nonetheless.  What I'm saying is that you need to understand what your privilege means.  It means that no matter how your personal experiences have actually shaped your life, you still stand to benefit more from the fact that the system is broken.  You might not have benefitted from it in a way that you can see, but you have definitely lived your life with an immunity to some of the struggles that the oppressed face daily.  And when you fail to recognize that, you are helping to keep the broken system the way it is.

If you want a round of applause for occasionally treating someone who gets a raw deal from society slightly better than they are used to being treated, that's not helping.  Because, essentially, what you're doing is applauding yourself for not being the person who broke the system, instead of being someone who's trying to fix it.

The Year I Lost Everything (and Gained So Much More)

before you read this, this is long and this is more personal than most of my posts, but that's why I wanted to post it.
tw: suicide, drug abuse, and depression

 
Today was a Friday last year.  I didn't have class but I had a routine, yearly check-up scheduled with the Women's Health Center and then I was gonna see a friend's show in the evening.  My girlfriend wasn't on campus that weekend but we were planning to have some really terrific sex when she came back, 'cause it had been a while.  I had five final papers to start worrying about and working on, since I am a masochist who signs up for five classes a semester whenever I can.  It was all okay, though, because it was nothing I couldn't handle.
 
And then the year of absolute shit was upon me.

At my routine check-up (that never takes more than 20 minutes), the nurse practitioner found something.  "I'm feeling something that isn't supposed to be there" she said as she examined me.  There was a lump, an irregularity, something that required an ultrasound.  So there I am in the lobby, chugging glasses of water to prep for the ultrasound, texting my friend that I don't think I'll make it to his show and I'm really sorry but something just came up.

The ultrasound technician definitely sees something wrong and it's probably an ovarian cyst but we won't know until later tonight.  So, you know, just walk back to campus on this dark, cold December evening, alone and weak from not eating all day in anticipation of the check-up.  

I get the call around 9pm, the one from the nurse practitioner that says I'm definitely going to need surgery to remove what they believe is an ovarian cyst.  And now it's real.  I have no idea how to handle this information.  I remember filling out forms before freshman year and talking about the parent's contribution to my tuition with my father and how, when it came to the health insurance, he told me that he probably couldn't afford that part.  "Just take care of yourself and let's hope you don't get sick for the next four years."  Okay.  Fuck.  Because now I'm halfway through my Junior year and I never could have foreseen needing this surgery.  And I will never be able to afford it.  This is the shit they don't prepare you for when you go away to college, when you live on your own, when you try to make it in the real world.  They never tell you that one Friday you're just gonna go in for a routine check-up while your girlfriend is out of town and have your whole world shatter before your eyes.

So my girlfriend and I spent the next two months in and out of the Women's Health Center on campus and the Cancer Center at [local hospital].  We would spend the next five or six months worrying about my emotional state and the obvious deterioration of my mental health.  The surgery itself, which happened in January, radically altered everything about my life (which I blogged about) from how I ate to how I had sex to how I was as a student, etc.  We were advised not to have penetrative sex before the surgery for fear of coming into contact with and harming the thing that had to be removed, and were not allowed to have any sex for two months after the surgery.  It was difficult to leave my bed most days and I was so drugged up on painkillers that I didn't even have the inclination to, so I missed a lot of classes.  I missed a lot of everything, actually, because I wasn't getting exercise or fresh air, wasn't going to work at my campus job, wasn't eating regularly, wasn't showering more than a couple times a week, wasn't going out and being with people, wasn't doing my schoolwork, and worst of all, I wasn't really telling anybody.  I was slipping into a real depression, especially since my sister was back home and could only make the trip up to see me once, and my girlfriend was taking a semester off and we rarely got a chance to talk.  So, I developed a sort of dependency on my painkillers... and lied to my girlfriend about it whenever she confronted me.  She wasn't physically present which made that part really easy.

I was supposed to take my Percocet whenever I felt pain from my incision but it wasn't just pain from my incision that I was feeling.  I was getting headaches from my poor diet and terrible sleep schedule, and getting dizzy from standing up for too long.  My back started hurting from having to put effort into standing up straight because the incision made it more comfortable to hunch.  I couldn't masturbate, so I couldn't rely on the natural endorphins that are released and make you feel good from having an orgasm.  I couldn't even fucking laugh without it hurting.  I didn't like being awake and missing my girlfriend and knowing I had work I wasn't doing and thinking about how much money I still owed for the surgery (even with the school's standard health insurance covering most of it) and worrying about how I wasn't talking to other people and hating the huge scar on my body now and having anxiety about how I wasn't leaving my bed.  That's when I started taking my Percocet for any random reason I could come up with.  And one night, I thought about taking enough to kill myself. 

I never actually went through with that, and I wish I knew what made me decide not to.  It was a real low point and, honestly, I don't even know how to feel like that again, thank god.  I wish I could explain what prevented me from doing it.  All I know is, my girlfriend saw me mention my suicidal feelings on Tumblr and reached out to me right away because she is actually the best human and gave me as much emotional support during the whole thing as she could.  But I don't know how effective that was in stopping me because I was still lying to her (and everyone who asked) about how I was abusing my Percocet, regularly.  It's no one else's fault, I just wasn't being honest because I didn't want to be told to stop.  I'm just so grateful that I ran out of my prescription when I did.  It forced me to deal with a few things on my own and without any drug dependency in the mix. 

The Spring semester that started a mere week after my surgery proved to be the most difficult semester of my college career.  I actually had to drop one of my five classes for the first time since freshman year and now, my finals week was rapidly approaching.  Time for all of that work I wasn't doing to finally collapse on me.  My finals week was the most isolated, sleep-deprived, mentally draining period in my life, but I managed.  And then, in my first week home after all that, my girlfriend broke up with me.  Now, to a normal person this probably seems like the coldest, most terrible thing to follow the months I just went through- but my ex and I are far from normal people.  In actuality, this was the best thing to happen to me since our getting together in the first place. 

You see, we are adult humans who talk about things.  And the things we talked about that night were how we knew we had to break up because after nearly two-and-a-half years of being together and trying to work things out, we realized that maybe we're just shit at fulfilling each other's needs... WHICH IS OKAY!  You can get along really well with someone and love them and respect them and communicate with them and just not fit well together.  And part of communicating really well with someone is realizing sooner rather than later that the relationship doesn't work, and being okay with that.  And I feel like that's something else that they never tell you, especially not when you're 21 and ESPECIALLY NOT when you're a girl. 

We have really unhealthy ideas about relationships because there's this heterosexualized notion of monogamy and romance and these unrealistic ideals of finding that one person, and smoothing everything out despite all your differences and your incompatibilities because you're supposed to complete each other.  And when you're a woman, it's even more important for you to find that match because your life depends on the man you give yourself to.  It's hard to believe that you can actually be truly happy when you're single when this is all you're hearing.  Maybe you disagree with me because you have had a different experience but these are the things that I've learned about love and relationships from actually being in them.  It's what I've observed from being a girl in this time and place and being told from the media and from cultural traditions and all sorts of things that I need to find the one person who completes me.  Well, what if that one person who completes me is me?

I was in that relationship, happy because we get along so well but unsatisfied because we weren't necessarily compatible.  And when you are insecure, you need more love and attention than another person can really give you, because you're trying to make up for what you don't have yourself.  That's the terribly sad but true paradox of insecurity.  And maybe this moment will never happen for you- and for that I am truly sorry- but when we broke up, I immediately realized that I didn't need to try to salvage and cling to a relationship that wasn't working because I was afraid I couldn't find better.  I have been told that I'm ugly or undesirable, so no one would want me.  Others have wrongfully believed that I'm ugly and undesirable, and have lost out and denied themselves the pleasure.  Oh fucking well.  Right now I can't be bothered.

Getting through the semester that I needed her most without my ex-girlfriend, and coming out of it relatively unharmed, taught me that I could survive without her (which I sorta didn't think was possible sometimes).   And looking back, I know I couldn't see it then but, I had so many people around me who cared about me and who tried to make my life easier.  I had bosses who understood when I couldn't cover my shifts.  I had professors who consistently encouraged me to rest and take extensions rather than force myself to come to class and hand everything in on time.  I had a medical staff that was working on getting me back to normal.  I had friends who literally devoted huge chunks of time in their weeks to just staying with me and bringing me food and helping me put my shoes on and just making sure I wasn't alone.  I had family who checked in with me and asked about me and drove me to the airport and the hospital and back to campus.  I had a girlfriend who gave me all the love and support that she could, that she knew how to give, that I was actually capable of realizing. 

And those things are hard to see and appreciate when you're hurting as much as I was, when you are as scared as I was, when you are in the downward spiral of losing motherfucking everything.  Okay, so I'm still paying medical bills a year later, and I still have this massive scar on my body, and I still get terrified at the thought of ever having to get another surgery sometime, later in my life.  But at least I can recognize that I am not alone.  And at least now I understand my own worth and can appreciate myself, which is something you don't expect to gain in the year you lose everything.

diary of a queer woman of colour/film student

This is something I posted on Tumblr last night.  I decided to put it here as well.


I like intense films.




I like when important characters die.  I like when their death means something deeper than just another one biting the dust for the sake of beefing up the body count, when someone who they loved and trusted is responsible for it.


I like when the person responsible loves them too.  I like when they are conflicted about the murder and have to live with the guilt.




I like when actors look awful.  I like when make up artists spend their energy making their eyes look puffy and when they have stubble and disheveled hair and bruises and look like they haven’t showered in days when their characters haven’t showered in days.  Or when they look like they just woke up when their character just woke up.




I like when time is malleable and the film doesn’t unfold in chronological order.  I like the challenge, having to figure out what’s going on and hate being led by the hand.




I like when actors surprise themselves and everyone else.  When they leave their comfort zone, when they ad-lib and go out on a limb and even scare me.




I like when questions of morality are used to disrupt the status quo.  I don’t like when they reinforce it.




I don’t like when films insult my intelligence.




I don’t like the way some human beings are reduced to stereotypes while others enjoy the warm hues of complexity.  I don’t like narratives with double standards or when women are objectified and not treated with the same respect by the camera as men or when people from oppressed groups are made the butt of the joke… or the villain.




I like films.  I like to watch them.  I like to analyze them.  What I don’t like is feeling like they don’t like me.

The Problem with Pretty

I got hit on in Spanish yesterday.  This is nothing unusual; I tend to attract older, Spanish-speaking men as I walk through the city, minding my own business.  It was this particular man’s phrasing that stood out to me. 

“Estás muy linda,” he called out to me when I walked past him, which translates to “you are very pretty” but, which implies that this statement is not always true, that my prettiness is temporary, short-term, fleeting. 

My inner drag queen started to amuse herself with the thought “He must’ve meant ‘eres’ (the permanent version of ‘estás’) because I am ALWAYS pretty.”

But here’s the problem with pretty:

I spent so many years of my life truly believing that I am not pretty.  It didn’t matter very much to me because I always knew that at least I am smart and funny and I care about other people, so I stopped putting beauty on a pedestal.  I simply accepted that it was not an adjective that many people would use to describe me.  I didn’t realize that, although I said that I didn’t care about something as superficial as physical appearance, I was, in fact, selling myself short and filling my head with this idea that I deserved less than what I wanted.  And worse: less than what I needed.

I figured that since I wasn’t pretty, I should not turn down offers from the handful of people who were deluded enough to believe that I was and I felt I owed it to myself, and them, to be with them, even if they did make me feel awful about myself in other ways.  Sometimes that didn’t even manifest in other ways at all.  My first boyfriend praised my tits but told me on our first date that I should lose a few pounds.  And I stayed with him for nearly a month after that!

That’s what insecure people do: we stay in abusive or otherwise unhealthy relationships longer than we should because we have trouble realizing that we have options.

Unfortunately, we live in a society that is constructed on beauty worship- which I would be more or less okay with, except that it is one idea of beauty.  One nearly-impossible-to-achieve standard of beauty.

Take my breasts for example and how that boyfriend I mentioned was under the same mistaken impression that most people are under: tits should be big and waists should be small.  For the most part, it does not work like that.  Of course there are always rather thin people with rather large breasts, and vice versa, but usually, the body is naturally proportioned to support that abundant tit-meat you’re carting around.  

But if your breasts are “too small,” you must be anorexic or “under-developed,” and you undoubtedly wish you had a bigger rack.  If you happen to have that large chest that everyone is supposedly dying for, but also happen to be fat, you must be “too fat” and could stand to lose some damn weight- and you are obligated to hear that sentiment expressed by anyone and everyone.  And forget it if you’re a man.  If you’re a man and you have (big) breasts, you are either “not a real man” because gender is entirely dependent on secondary sex characteristics (SARCASM!!) or you have man-boobs brought on by too many cheeseburgers and not enough exercise.  No one is allowed to be content.

And I honestly wish that the presence, absence, and/or relative size of breasts were the only areas in which beauty is scrutinized, but we all know better.

And it isn’t as if those precious few who actually fulfill the criteria can even enjoy their adjective much.  There are all kinds of counter-attacks for the “beautiful people.”  We accuse them of not having substance, of being obsessed with their looks, of being stuck up, of being mean, of being self-absorbed.

We objectify them.

We pick them apart, making fun of their “imperfections” until we are no better than the masses who called us ugly.

We call the beautiful women who don’t want to fuck us “bitches.”

And the worst of all, we say that women who have the audacity to embrace this beauty that we worship, by wearing the revealing outfits the fashion industry convinces them they need, are all “asking for it” when they are raped.

We are conditioned to think that being pretty is the most important thing in life.  More important than being intelligent, or being compassionate, or being independent, or any other thing that a human being is capable of- so we all break our backs trying to look beautiful, forgetting that we already are, and forgetting that external beauty does not measure human worth.

Asking for the Moon

Last night I had a dream that my father was talking smack about gender equality.  You probably don’t know my father, but this is very realistic.  He was arguing with another man about how bitchy feminists are, how cold and unforgiving they are… when they fight for basic human rights.   

In my dream, I started arguing with him, defending that fight- much like I do with him in real life.  After listening to me for a few minutes, he responded with what he must have considered a very poignant misquoted line from Now, Voyager*:

"I gave you the moon, why can’t you be happy with the stars?"

What my dream-father meant, of course, and what dream-me actually understood (because I was unconscious) is “men have given you so much, so many things, why can’t you be happy with what you have? Why are you asking for more?”  

My response to him went something like this:

"Because we want the moon.  Because the moon shouldn’t even be yours to give, you stupid asshole.  Because having the moon is a basic human right. And how can you say that you gave it to me and then ask me to be happy with less anyway?!"

I stand by those words even now that I’m awake.  I’m actually really proud of myself for being able to make such an articulate argument while I was unconscious.  Now, if only I could transfer that awesomeness to these final papers I still need to write...  

Maybe I was able to think so clearly in my dream because it is an argument that I constantly have to reiterate when I’m awake.  It is an argument that so many of us, suffering from all different kinds of oppressions, have to make all the time.  Asking to be treated like a human being is not asking for too much.  And, as nonsensical and contradictory as what my dream-father said was, it perfectly encapsulates the kind of bullshit that we often encounter.  

Because the 14-year-old girl in me likes to stare at fan manips of James McAvoy with sloths and prevent 21-year-old me from actually getting work done, I am a very passionate Tumblr girl.  I recently got into an argument about race and gender with a sexist, transphobic, racist asshole on Tumblr, like you do, in which I had to defend my major and career path in addition to my role as a woman of colour.  In the same post, he told me “you already have your equality” and, at the same time mind you, accused me of wasting the opportunity I’ve been given with my college education by studying about injustices rather than studying to be a scientist because too many women “complain about the lack of females in scientific subjects, and with this decide to study feminism to ascertain why, rather than actually break the chain and enter these fields themselves, thereby contributing to the trend that they oppose.”

I mean, it’s a valid observation; not enough people are trying to be the change that they seek.  I will grant him that.  However, I must take his criticism with a grain of salt because a) I have been through his blog and he is an asshole and b) he said all this and still claimed that I “already have [my] equality.”  Furthermore, I don't think he understands that women are socialized to pursue careers that do not focus on math and science.  We are encouraged to do other things because the misconception is that women are not as good as men in these fields.  This, of course, leads to stereotype threat and the internalization of that harmful belief that women are actually not good enough, and then women do not try to become scientists.  And the few that do are so clearly entering a man's world that, more often than not, they begin to feel intimidated by the majority. Additionally, I don’t think it’s fair to charge some people with that kind of responsibility while others just walk around, pursuing whatever profession they desire without having to worry about how it reflects their whole gender or race or sexual orientation, etc.  So I said this:

"What I am majoring in/plan to do with my life is not the issue.  The issue is that no matter what I do, I will be held up as an example of what my entire group as a whole is capable of in a way that men never have to worry about- unless they are not white or straight or cis or neurotypical or able-bodied or from a middle-class background because that’s the whole point here; when you have privilege, you do not experience marginalization and therefore do not understand the imbalance.

And I don’t understand how you can tell me that I already have equality and reinforce the fact that I clearly don’t, and NOT even realize it. If there was true equality, as you suggest there is, I would not have to tailor my career path to fill that gap because, by definition, there would be no gap."

What faux-allies and most people with privilege see when they look at us, the oppressed, fighting for our basic human rights, is a group of people asking for more than they need.  They think our demands are outrageous and blame us for our own dissatisfaction.  They expect us to be content with the crumbs offered, to sit here repeating to ourselves *“Let’s not ask for the moon, we have the stars” (the actual quote from Now, Voyager).

So, let me make this really simple and easy to understand; if you have the moon, a.k.a. privilege, you don’t get to tell other people not to ask for it, a.k.a. equality. 

#ToMyUnbornChild

Since this month began (you know, Women’s History Month, the month that’s supposed to make me happy and proud) I have been bombarded with overwhelming true stories of ridiculous hate crimes and it’s fucking appalling.  There is no other word for what’s been going on. 

First, there’s the story of George Hodgins, the 22-year-old autistic man who was killed by his mother in a murder-suicide that will likely be remembered as another “act of desperation from a long-suffering mother” instead of the despicable murder it really was.  The next thing was the murder of the 28-year-old Mexican transgender activist Agnes Torres.  Unlike George, she was not killed by her own parent, but she was the sixth member of the LGBTQ community to be murdered in the town of Puebla since January.  Now, on the heels of these horrific stories I’m learning about (but, sadly, am no stranger to) comes a Twitter trend so disturbing that I have to put my foot down and address it. 

Expecting parents and people who fantasize about someday having children often write letters or make promises to their offspring about how they intend to raise them.  I know that when my sister was pregnant with her first child, she wrote a letter of undying love and unconditional support to him.  Similarly, my girlfriend often vows that anyone who dares to hurt her future babies will suffer unimaginable pain.  This is typical, protective, parental devotion.  What is decidedly not “protective,” “parental,” or a display of “devotion” by any stretch of the imagination is the string of unsavory and homophobic tweets found on the hashtag #ToMyUnbornChild, a trend which has been absolutely blowing up recently.

Here are just some of the grotesque things people have been tweeting:

 

 

So basically, I am praying that every single one of these people just puts the kid up for adoption instantly so that someone who would actually like to be a parent can have a chance.  Or, they should get an abortion- and that brings me to my Women’s History Month angle. The way I understand it, Republicans are all gnashing their nails because sexually active (and responsible) people all over the country have the outlandish idea that they are entitled to reproductive rights.  This includes access to contraceptives and birth control as well as the right to abort the unwanted fetuses they have become impregnated with.  Scary stuff indeed.  It is so scary, in fact, that women were not allowed to attend the meetings in which these issues were discussed (the Republican Hearing on Contraception).  Anyone with a uterus (i.e. the people who typically become pregnant) was automatically disqualified from these hearings.

Apparently, the only people allowed to attend the hearings were people who would rather let unwanted and unloved babies grow up and be murdered at the hands of their own parents than allow the unfit parents-to-be to abort the potentially gay fetus they so despise.  A fetus is not a living being; a baby is.  When a person gives birth to the thing that they were carrying in their womb during their pregnancy, when that creature breathes air independently for the first time, that is when it is another living being.  So, abortion is not murder.  And even if everything I've said is suddenly rendered inaccurate and this debate regarding the abortion/murder struggle becomes more clouded than it currently is, you know what is a perfectly simple example of murder?  Killing your 22-year-old son because you consider him a burden. That is homicide, straight up, and sympathy for that is disgusting.  Killing your gay child would also be an example of murder, but I guess not many Republicans would care to back me up on that observation. 

As an unwanted child myself, it disgusts me to think that someone should have to grow up knowing that their parents hate their very existence.  Whether it’s because they are gay, bisexual, autistic, transgender, or just happened to be born to people who didn’t want them, no one should live in fear of one day being murdered by anyone, least of all their own parents.  That is fucking disgraceful. 

So, To My Unborn Child (the one I’m not planning to have any time within the next ten years, if at all),

I really wish I could promise you a world that does not suck at its very core.  I wish that when you are born, you don’t have to endure this despicable environment that champions ignorance and hate and snuffs out any sign of deviation at the source.  I wish that I could give you assurance that the people you meet would only judge you based on your character, like Martin Luther King preached, but I can’t and for that I apologize.  I’m sorry that I couldn’t do more to change the harmful way that people think and act to make this world safer for you.

The only thing I can promise to do is raise you with unconditional love and support from my heart- even if you do end up being straight.

Love,

Mom

The Twilight Effect

First off, Happy International Women’s Day!  That’s right!  We get one little month to celebrate our history; one measly day that people hardly remember for women all over the world.  But, hey, it’s something.

It was a pretty sad day for me, though, because I finally finished reading Twilight today.  I know.  I KNOW! 

It was assigned reading for my Women’s Studies class and I’m just a painfully good student.  I say “painful” and I absolutely mean it because I found this book so distressing that it was actually hurting my brain.  Now, since this harmful piece of literary shit has been floating around for nearly a decade- with a movie franchise that seems as impossible to kill as Edward Cullen himself- anything I might say about the abusive relationship or Meyer’s horribly inept writing has been said before and said to death.  Suffice to say, the Edward/Bella relationship is abusive and unhealthy and no one should emulate it, ever, because Edward

1.       is possessive- way beyond the point of flattery

2.       stalks her, but actually!, and gets creepily intrusive (she specifically tells him NOT to listen in on certain conversations and he does anyway without a hint of remorse)

3.       uses physical force to get his way (dragging her around, carrying her against her will, kidnapping her to take her to prom…)

4.       spends no less than THE ENTIRE BOOK “laughing,” “chuckling,” or “suppressing laughter” at her whenever she does/says anything

5.       is a vampire that wants to drink her blood (more than anyone else’s blood… ever)

and then, of course, Bella has absolutely no sense of self-preservation.

I get that the book was relatable- believe me, I understand.  I knew exactly how Bella felt in those 140-odd pages towards the beginning she spent over-analyzing every interaction she had with Edward.  But that hardly means I want to read about it!  And I honestly cannot recall another book in which the villain (and actual plot) was introduced in the last quarter of the fucking novel.  But my problem with Twilight is not entirely centered on the fact that it is awful (AND HARMFUL!); my problem is that it makes me embarrassed to be a woman.

On this day, of all days, I should be able to look at the things that my badass predecessors achieved and fought for and be proud.  Instead, I had to finish reading Twilight- a book whose heroine is a self-proclaimed “damsel in distress”- and I just can’t find anything to be proud of right now.  Obviously, there are lots of things to be proud of and inspired by- just in the way of women writers alone- and yet, I have this overwhelming sense of despair.  Why?  Because as a woman, and as a woman writer, I’m terrified that Stephenie Meyer will have some bearing on the way people view women writers.  It’s obvious that she already does, but I really fear that her terrible books and views will endure as the kind of things that women write.  I find that unacceptable.

When a man writes a shitty book, he is not held up as an example of all masculine authors.  Instead of singling Meyer out as one awful writer, people tend to expand on it and make it an issue of her being a woman, specifically targeting young girls.  That offends me.  I think we should just say “Stephenie Meyer wrote some terrible books, not because she is a woman, but because she can’t write.” and leave her gender out of it.  It was insulting to have to endure that book, all the while, knowing that this is how people will expect me to write, what they will expect me to write about.

And, while I’m on the topic, I would like to express my disgust with the current meme “Still not as gay as Twilight.”  This meme is appalling on so many levels and I know “it’s just an internet meme, calm down!” but I don’t think anything as persistent as that can be considered innocent.  It stems from this idea that something is “gay” if it centers on romance or appeals to women.  I will admit, dousing your leading man in pride parade glitter is hella gay, but that’s kind of the only thing in this whole story that isn’t 100% heterosexual- and I don’t mean that as a good thing.  The story, the characters, their interactions, every last thing in this book reinforces the gender binary and the institution of heterosexual romance.  Again, SHE CALLS HERSELF A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS!!!! Need I say more?

So, to recap,

1.       Happy International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month

2.       stop blaming all women writers for Stephenie Meyer being shit

3.       stop calling Twilight “gay”

4.       don’t emulate the Edward/Bella relationship