Almost Too Good to Be True

Right-wingers love teabagging, and NOM (who I can only assume are I Can Has Cheezburger enthusiasts?) have created Two Million For Marriage (2M4M), a campaign against gay marriage (apparently, no one tried googling m4m before the launch).

All of this has me itching to create the Board for the Defense of the Sanctity of Marriage (BDSM), just to see how many join up.

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Some Things I Needed

So. It might be redundant to say gender issues are a theme of my life right now, but the past few days have just been... you know when you're reading a book, and you get to the chapter that uses the title in a bunch of sentences? It's been like that.

I had dinner with the wonderful Jennifer Miller on Tuesday. Here's the short youtube version of the documentary Juggling Politics about her political Circus Amok:

On the way to see her screen the film and perform that night, I got harassed for the first time about my buzz cut. Nothing traumatic - a gang of ten-year-olds shouting. I didn't hear most of it. A friend told me later that they asked if I was a boy or a girl.

The next day, we workshopped a short story in a fiction class that had a scene implying rape was justified/healed by pregnancy. I wish I was surprised that some other people didn't understand why it was upsetting.
Later that day I watched the single most disturbing film of my life. There were multiple graphic rape scenes. My professor apologized afterward for not warning us about them. I was trying not to break down for the rest of the three-hour class.

Today in another class were talking about Alison Bechdel's Fun Home. That's always a little bothersome because I'm practically a Bechdel fangirl, but also because the book deals with sexuality and gender a lot, and I'm constantly being reminded that my understanding and experience with these topics (and therefore the connections and reactions I have with the book) doesn't match the majority. There's a lot of examples I could pull out, but what affected me today was Bechdel's story about seeing a pornographic wall calendar and feeling inexplicably exposed and ashamed, and then telling her brothers to call her Albert instead of Alison. Other students assumed it was just another example of wanting to be butch and masculine, but I think the inclusion of the calendar points to something else - the inherent vulnerability of being female.

So my head is swelling with all of this and more. Shaving my head has spurred some thoughts on where I fall on the gender spectrum. The other day a friend online posted something I really needed to read: she, like me, was wondering about her gender identity, and she, like me, had the thought, "Who the fuck am I to be transgender? How dare I?" I have this feeling, like, if I wasn't strictly female, I would have figured it out by now. Which is, of course, bullshit.
I also found Alison Bechdel's coming out story online this week, and this scene was really significant:


Speaking of shaving my head, I posted some photos on my facebook account, and somehow the whole of my extended family knows about it now. I expect this entry itself will be read by at least one or two family members that google me with enough intensity. I don't know if I can express this without sounding like a hypocrite, or self-important, but, the thing is, if I write publicly about my personal life (which I have, more in song than here, but I hope this blog is headed for a more personal tone), I don't do it for people that I know. I'd prefer if people that I know let me choose how and when I share things with them. I write publicly in the hopes that someone else needs to hear something that I have to say; just as I needed to hear about Jennifer Miller and Circus Amok when I came to accept that my body would never match ideals about hair (without much unwanted suffering), just as I needed to read that Alison Bechdel was still struggling with her identity at age nineteen as I'm still struggling with mine at age twenty-one, just as, in that fiction workshop, I needed to hear that one other person was upset by that scene before I could say it myself.

Today on Feministing, this song was posted:


I've been listening to it kind of non-stop all day. After a week of feeling drained the casual nature of misogyny and the normativeness of ignorance about gender's complexities, I needed this.


(edit: CocoRosie's history of racism has been pointed out in the comments on Feministing. Ugh. Their song made me cry, but, ugh.)

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Reflections on Head Shaving

After saying for years that I would do this soon, I hunted down a pair of clippers and just did it. I have never been happier. I have urges to fix my hair throughout the day, and instead I touch my fuzz and just smile. I feel like I've escaped somehow.

All of the attention I've received has been positive so far, but I haven't strayed far from my college campus. Here are some things I have noticed, though:
1. Several people have asked if I did this for charity, or gave my hair away. It wasn't long enough, but I didn't really think about that option. I don't think that's a bad thing, or a good thing, just neutral: didn't think of donating my hair. Just wanted to chop it off. No reason required.
2. I have been compared to every Famous Bald Woman I can think of, save Britney Spears (whose head-shaving incident, I maintain, was awesome). Natalie Portman, twice. GI Jane. Sinead O'Connor. Deb from Empire Records. Though I liked all the comments, since I like all of these women, it baffles me that shaved heads are still abnormal enough on women that this sort of thing happens (and that people focused on Britney's baldness as a sign of insanity). Also, thinking of fictional shaved women, I couldn't help but notice a trend: Portman's character was forcefully shaved. Demi Moore's character shaved for the military (I haven't seen the movie, but I imagine it's either compulsory or, more likely, to prove herself). Robin Tunney's Deb freely chose to shave her own head (a scene which really stuck with me and I've posted it below), but throughout the film she's poorly adjusted and in a place of desperation. I looked for more on the web - Sigourney Weaver in Alien 3 apparently shaves to avoid lice. Where is a happy well-adjusted fictional woman who ditches her hair?

The idea to write this down came from the popular What I Learned By Shaving My Head.

Share in the shaved head heaven with me:


There's a longer version of the following scene on youtube, with embedding disabled.

Watch more Empire Records videos on AOL Video

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My Ada Lovelace Day Conrtibution: Diana Eng!

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, and I'm joining many bloggers by celebrating women excelling in technology. The first one to come to mind was one of the first people I wrote about in this blog. If you've been here before, you may remember it all started with a little show called Project Runway, just before their second season. My favorite contestant on that season, and I contend the most kick-ass person to ever be on the show, nay, reality television:

Diana Eng, self-proclaimed "Nerd and Fashion Deisgner". She was an automatic favorite of sorts because she graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, not twenty minutes away from where I grew up, but I was completely swept away when in her audition, she introduced a hoodie that contained a small camera and a heart monitor. When the wearer's heart rate increased, the camera snapped a photo of whatever they were viewing.
Eng didn't make it to the final rounds on Project Runway, unfortunately, because, among other things, Michael Kors doesn't understand how magnets work. (Me? Bitter?) There's also the fact that the time and material constraints of the show didn't make room for her skills with technology (though in 2006, she did design and create ablogging purse with two teammates in less than 24 hours).

Of course, Eng is too good for me to define her through the show. When she was only 22, an inflatable dress she designed had been featured on ID Magainze. Here's the cover, and her blog entry marking it:

"I've dreamt of making it into ID magazine since I was 13. As a child I made really awful pamphlets and brochures documenting my latest design ideas for things such as nesting tea cups and landscape inspired furniture. Then I would send the brochures off to ID mag editors positive that they would feature me the next month. I was never selected. And after going to art school I've often wondered what they thought of my subpar entries. But this month I made the cover with the inflatable dress I made with Emily Albinski. The gorgeous girl in the photo is my roommate JungIn You."

Her first book, Fashion Geek, came out March 17th, full of projects for tech-savvy. She also helped found the hacker group NYC Resistor, where members "meet regularly to share knowledge, hack on projects together, and build community". She's included in their own Ada Lovelace day post, wearing what I believe is the same fibonacci scarf pictured above - a fibonacci scarf!

You can follow what Diana Eng is up to at her blog, Fashion Nerd.
Thanks Diana, for being my technology heroine, and showing literally millions of girls and women how fashionable math and science can be!

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Damn you, Joss Whedon

For getting me so emotionally invested in this show.

So, not a full recap or analysis or anything, but yeah, the Episode That Changed Everything delivered. We abandoned the adventure-of-the-week set up, and I'd be happy to never go back- Echo is still central, but we got really involved in the other characters.

Sexual violence got serious treatment this time, and I thought these things were important: It was clearly treated as rape even though Sierra didn't say no or physically resist; and the rapist handler, whose name escapes me, tried to excuse his behavior because the Dollhouse is "in the business of using people". Obviously the excuse isn't acceptable, but I think Joss was wisely making a connection of sexual violence to the environment of objectification and exploitation.
Things that bothered me about Sierra's storyline: I can't recall if they actually used the word "rape" - I know Dr. Saunders said "Sierra's had sex" after the exam, but I don't know if they changed the language after it became obvious that she didn't (and really, couldn't) consent. Also, a little mad at Boyd for letting the other handler attempt again in order to "catch him in the act" instead of, oh I don't know, asking Sierra about him. Of course, it was hugely satisfying to have him punched through a glass wall with his fly down.

The big thing that changed with me is that I am now completely invested in the fate of Mellie/November:


I saw the reveal coming, but it was still a bit heartbreaking. Previews for future episodes indicate possible revolt against the Dollhouse. Can she just be the main character now, please?

Unrelated to this episode: another blog pointed out how wildly inaccurate the homebirth scene was... which I really should have noticed, since I've seen homebirths. Though Topher's probably not a mifwifery expert, and you probably couldn't get away with a completely accurate homebirth on TV (we need to throw a sheet over her- for medical reasons!), this is a still a case of ball-dropping. Oh well. I appreciate the attempt, if not the execution.

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The Problem with Echo (which is not actually a problem)

Alright, so. I've been putting off writing about Dollhouse because - besides the fact that I've only been casually engaged blogging lately - the series is young, and I felt analyzing the shit out of it was a little premature. It was episode two, and a lot of people seemed to be complaining that "this is not a feminist masterpiece yet!", and, you know, wait.

But, I want to get some writing on it in before the alleged mind-blower next Friday. I don't really want to talk about this past Friday's installment, True Believer - except for Victor's man reaction, which I'll get to in a minute. I want to talk about episode four, Gray Hour, because for me, it solved a fundamental problem a lot of people seem to have with the show, and it made me realize a direction the show could go in, which excites my obsession with the construction of identity to no end.

Particularly after the first two episodes (once again - dude, you have to wait) I read a lot of complaints along the lines of "there is no one to root for". Or relate to, or sympathize with, or what have you. Everyone who works in the dollhouse is evil (Dominic), borderline evil (Topher), or at least has big whomping moral gray area (Boyd). The dolls are either a completely fabricated person or a completely empty person. Well, people with moral gray areas seem to be a staple of the Whedonverse, so I think the answer for a lot of people was to root for Boyd, especially after episode two, The Target, in which we realize that he actually cares for Echo and prioritizes her over the dollhouse itself.

But, Echo is the main character. Though I hope, and think, we will see an episode with someone else in the A-Story (though I suppose it could be argued that The Target was really more about Boyd than Echo), this is clearly Echo's story. And the story we're following is about a person without an identity. And that's a problem. Right?

I think the pilot, Ghost, partially answered this concern for me: we can relate to Echo in an imprinted state, because even though we know it's all made up, it's incredibly real to whatever person she is that day. So we can relate to the main character for the length of the episode, which can be effective, as I think it was in Ghost - especially since we were reminded that, even if it wasn't Echo's real experience, these bad memories were real. But maybe this only works to an extent. Without something steady, it'll get harder and harder to buy into Echo's persona-of-the-week.

Episode three - I don't actually know what it was called because it was, admittedly, the weakest episode so far, the only time so far I've felt THE METAPHOR! was being shoved in my face. But the revelation that Echo was "adapting" to her assignments indicated something important - that Echo does not have a consistent identity on assignments, but she does possibly have a consistent underlying personality, that her self is shading her imprinted personalities. This doesn't really solve the relating-to-Echo problem either, though, I think, since it's not really clear what these glitches imply, except of course plot twists aplenty.

And that still leaves blank doll-state Echo to deal with. The tabula rasa state may be the closest thing to the dolls' "true" personality, and they're, you know, empty hats. Which is why Gray Hour is my favorite episode thus far, and why Victor's man reaction is important (I'll get to it in a minute!).

In Gray Hour, we're watching Echo - not Caroline and not an imprint, but wide-eyed empty-headed Echo, and we find out she's not an empty hat - she's a person. She doesn't just sit around gaping and asking where the massage table is. She gets scared, she thinks about art, she makes a connection to one person and abandons another - she's not a plaything. She's not a blank slate, not really. She's a person who just isn't given a chance to be one. And this, for me, solves the who-do-we-relate-to problem once and for all, but also asks a lot more questions.



Victor's man reaction, i.e. his crush on Sierra, is another example of this. We're being shown that not just Echo, but Dolls in general aren't robots, they're people. DeWitt's cold demand that Victor be "scrubbed" and the whole forced utopia is, you know, goddamn disturbing in this light.

I took a college course called "Science, Literature and Gender", in which we read The Cloning of Joanna May, which deals with identity in a different sci-fi scenario. Sparing the details, since this is already really long, the class talked about the idea of a whole identity versus fragmented identity. The former is usually what we think of as "identity", but the latter isn't necessarrily a bad thing. Joanna May had several outward "selves" whereas Echo has several inward "selves". Joanna May ultimately doesn't become "fragmented", but multiplied, her power increases by virtue of being split up. This possibility for Echo - which I thought of when she uttered the heart-stirring line, "I'm not broken" - really excites me.


Ok. Miscellaneous other things about Gray Hour:

I like the midwife intro, because the show finally winks at us about having too much sex, and because, yay midwives! Even though it seems only the super-duper rich can afford them - or maybe the super-duper rich don't trust ordinary midwives. Whatever. "Yay midwives" stands.

Alas, A Blog took issue with the portrayal (or lack thereof, I suppose) of sexual violence in this episode, which is totally understandable. For me, though, since the people in the show are programmed to consent, I feel much more disturbed by the "consensual" sex that's constantly happening and so far hasn't been dealt with at all. Here's hoping for improvements in this whole area.

(If I could make a subtitle for this post, it would be "And a Journey of Self-Discovery for... Topher?")

Topher knows from the get-go that Alpha would be able to achieve a remote wipe, only thinking it's impossible because he assumes Alpha is dead. If no one understands this technology but Topher and Alpha, and imprints are made from real people, could this imply that Alpha has an imprint of Topher, or at least part of Topher? It's not implausible - if something happens to Topher, how else could they keep the Dollhouse running? I've been toying with the idea that some of the faculty in the Dollhouse are dolls themselves, that this may even be the true meaning of putting someone in "the attic", and this reveal would put a new angle on the exploration of identity. We don't sympathize with Echo's constructed identities because we seem them come and go, sure, but if, say, Boyd or Saunders or Dominic were revealed to be a doll, then how does our relationship to the character change? How does the character's relationship to other characters change? Would they defend their long-term constructed personality or reject it? Of course, I'm thinking more and more that this isn't going to be the case.
BUT, if Alpha has an imprint of Topher, what implications could this have for Topher's sense of identity? Could this be the thing that takes him from witty loveable douchebag to - well, something more interesting?


Alright, that's all. My fangirl is showing.

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Are you fucking kidding me?

I'm constantly bewildered by facebook advertisements, trying to get me to shave all my body hair, or telling me to OBEY this new diet tip, but seeing this yesterday was a whole new low:


The media has had a series of fucked-up and dangerous reactions to this relationship and the violence against this woman. This takes the cake though: trying to make a quick buck with direct victim-blaming.

I marked this shit as offensive, but, really? Does a giant site like facebook really have NO standards for their advertisements outside of user preferences? I shouldn't have to mark this offensive. I shouldn't see it.

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Big Breakdown of 300 at Racialicious

Please read it. Because I'm sick of explaining why I hate this fucking movie. I am continuously flabbergasted by its popularity.

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Dude.

I enjoy the antics at Cracked.com. Daily, even. They've got this goofy internet culture thing down, but often manage to be a little more involved and intelligent in their content. They've made swipes at sexism, racism, and even implemented the f-word.

But the article I read this morning bothered me, and revealed something that often rubs me the wrong way on Cracked and about internet culture (though that's hard to define) in general: the assumption of maleness.

Of the Dream Jobs that Would Actually Suck, "video game tester" and "brewmaster" may seem stereotypically masculine, but believe me, I know enough women that have considered these options. The #3 job, however, is "stay-at-home dad". This item makes some seemingly progressive points: stay-at-home parents deserve a three-figure salary and end up with squat. Of course, it then goes on to say that wives break up with their househusbands because nurturing is not sexy, and traditional gender roles preserve relationships. Without pointing out that the deal inverted still fucking sucks for stay-at-home moms, even if it's better for the relationship because of "instincts" (bullshit).

But the real problem is that this article assumes an all-male audience. I have enough headaches about people assuming that there's only two genders, but more and more I'm noticing instances that people only assume one. It goes both ways, of course- I realize that I assumed the Hollywood's Attempts at Feminism article above was written by a guy. Why did I assume that? Because male is the default, and female is a specialty. This should be news. But it's still as annoying.

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clearly the most important thing that happened today

Michelle Obama chose clothing to wear to her husband's historic inauguration. And it was yellow.

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Can Someone Explain To Me

How do the little pictures next to stories on Google News get chosen? Because sometimes they are only vaguely related. For example:

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My Blood and Sweat is in Kaniakapupu

I suppose I've been writing here semi-regularly, so let me share just a little something from what I'm doing. I'm on an anthropology travel course right to Hawaii, learning about the islands' history and culture. There's a million things I could tell you about, but I'm exhausted so for now I'll just point you to a few resources:
Support the Friends of Iolani Palace
Defend Oahu Coalition
(I wish I had more... keep checking back!)

Some books to look for:
Music, Past, and Present at Kamehameha Schools
Dismembering Lahui: A History of the Hawaiian Nation to 1887
Ethnicity and Inequality in Hawaii
From a Native Daughter
Hawaii's Story By Hawaii's Queen

And this video is almost the exact tour I took of the ruins of the summer palace at Kaniakapupu with Dr. Baron Kaho'ola Ching, except, of course, we didn't have the guy with the cheesy-TV-host-sounding voice and after the tour my roommate and I chopped down a tree that was degrading a wall (something tells me cheesy-tv-host-sounding-voice-guy didn't jibe so much with the manual labor). I can't begin to describe the experience and this youtube video, despite its 27 minutes, pales in comparison.

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It May Not Be Cold Enough to Freeze Your Winebago

But I still hope all five of my readers are somewhere safe, warm and loving today.

This year I was quite excited to find out that A Muppet Family Christmas, the special that pretty much makes Christmas Christmas for me, is on youtube in five parts. If you've never seen it, you are missing out. Here's part the first:

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Double Shot at Love: I Feel a Rant Coming On

Ok, so I was really excited today, because I found out that a person I used to work with is on Double Shot at Love, which gives me a legitimate excuse to both watch the trash and blog about it! But as it turns out, I can't stomach blogging about this shit. I'll still root for the guy I know and all, but the first episode seriously made me physically ill. During the "big reveal" in which Rikki tells the contestants they've been meeting both her and her twin Vikki, Rikki leads with "I was born with another part." Cut to shocked contestants, guys saying things like "I can't believe I kissed her!" and "Please don't have a penis!" and girls saying things like "This happened to me before... twice in a lifetime is too much."

Most of the negative stereotypes this show plays with, I can take because I naively imagine that people, you know, KNOW better. They know that this is MTV and if a bisexual woman is slutty and petty and fake, well, that's not saying much because everyone is slutty and petty and fake on MTV. But using severe and apparent transphobia for drama and laughs is nothing short of appalling. Because one month ago, there was little known day called the Transgender Day of Rememberence. Because for some people, and I want to stress that world - we are talking about people, not a concept, people with families and friends and lovers and jobs and childhoods and hopes - for some people, "twice in a lifetime" might represent too many times they found out someone they cared for was disgusted by their body. "Twice in a lifetime" might represent too many times they were harassed for trying to use a restroom. "Twice in a lifetime" might represent too many times they've had to face discrimination from teachers, employers, doctors and other officials that made life more difficult to navigate. "Twice in a lifetime" might represent too many times they felt threatened just for existing. "Twice in a lifetime" might represent too many times they were a victim of violence. "Twice in a lifetime" might represent too many times they read about a person like them being killed for being a person like them. But probably not, you know. It was probably a lot more than twice.

Don't tell me I'm overreacting when I say: according to MTV, transgender people don't deserve a shot at love.

You see, sometimes things are said or done, and I can hear the average person twenty years from now saying sternly, "I would have never let something like that happen." You know, how we say now, "If I was around when the Native Americans were being slaughtered, I wouldn't have contributed," or "If I was alive during segregation, I wouldn't have just sat back". But here's the thing: you most likely would, and that doesn't mean you're evil. Everything around you would encourage you to be oppressive or apathetic. This retroactive denouncement bothers me to no end. It accomplishes nothing except covering one's ass from being called prejudiced. Listen: it's much more impressive to own up to your prejudice and privilege, to acknowledge that the world around us still encourages us to treat some people as "normal" and others as deviations from that norm, and therefore less worthwhile. White does not mean normal, male does not mean normal, able-bodied does not mean normal, straight does not mean normal and cis-gendered (born with a biological sex that matches one's identity) does not mean normal. When a kid asks you twenty years from now if you tolerated prejudice, fear and violence, what are you going to be able to say to them?

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Reason to Love Jeffrey Rowland #46

So, I've expressed Overcompensating love here before, but my admiration reached new heights tonight. This just showed up on my friend list:



First glance, no big reaction. I knew he was mocking the internet's penchant for thinking rape jokes are the most edgy hilarity evar, not embracing the notion, but still. Then I read the accompanying blurb, and had one of those oh-so-satisfying "THANK YOU" moments:

"Let's talk about rape for a moment. Rape is not what George Lucas did to your childhood. Rape is not what happens when a sports team beats another sports team by a wide margin. Rape is not what happens when your electric bill is higher this month than it was last month. Rape is when a person violates another person in the most despicable, degrading way imaginable and among the myriad of terrible things humans can do to one another, rape is among the worst. I think the casual misappropriation of the concept of rape extending all the way to its widespread comical usage is disgusting even by Internet standards. Off my chest."

LOVE.

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Shocker: Frank Miller Sexist

I admittedly know little about Frank Miller's work. I cracked the graphic novel versions of Sin City and 300 in the bookstore, was not charmed, and moved on. I saw 300, and I saw the sped-up no-special-effects version of Sin City on the DVD (then decided that was all I wanted to see). That's all.

Yet, I'm entirely confident in saying: I don't like Frank Miller. I could tell you my full thoughts about 300, which I was coerced to attend, which I laughed through, which is in fact The Second Least Enjoyable Movie I Have Ever Seen (the first, for the curious, is Urban Legend, either because of or despite the fact that I ate up books about urban legends as a kid), but I'll spare you, because 300 sucking is old news. I don't know much about Alan Moore, either, but I do like him, mostly because he called 300 "racist, homophobic and sublimely stupid", which about sums it up. If you saw 300 and don't see how I could get political shudders out of a harmless action movie, maybe you should watch it again keeping in mind that the creator once said of those we're at war with (linking 9/11 to Iraq, of course, and treating other cultures as monolithic and savage):
"For some reason, nobody seems to be talking about who we’re up against, and the sixth century barbarism that they actually represent. These people saw people’s heads off. They enslave women, they genitally mutilate their daughters, they do not behave by any cultural norms that are sensible to us. I’m speaking into a microphone that never could have been a product of their culture, and I’m living in a city where three thousand of my neighbors were killed by thieves of airplanes they never could have built."
So, yes, I saw some symbolism in 300.

Anyway! I've written more than I intended.
I'm posting because, via io9, turns out the women in the new movie based on Miller's The Spirit are stupid stereotypes that completely revolve around the male character.



Not surprised. A woman with whom I work was telling me about how she saw Sin City, and how it's a feminist movie because there's Good Guy Heroes saving poor women for Bad Guy Rapists, and I gently explained that this idea wasn't quite empowering.
I'm thinking this one will fail the Bechdel test.

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Clinton

Which person do you think of when you read that name? Hillary, Bill or both? Apparently we can't think about Sen. Clinton without thinking about her husband, too, as evidenced by every political cartoon I've seen since Hillary Clinton was rumored to be the next Secretary of State. If that link stops working, here's just a few examples:





(Ok, I do kind of like that last one, but...)
I seriously sometimes forget that they're married. During the primaries, Sen. Clinton became such a huge public personality in her own right that when people brought up Bill without referencing his wife's campaign specifically, I took pause to remember how he might fit in. Not joking, an anchor would say "Bill Clinton is on the road" and my brain at least once reacted "I wonder why?"
Maybe I'm young or naive, but it can't just be me that is at least a little bothered like this. A very successful and famous woman is married to a very successful and famous man, so he must have some part to play in every professional happening of her life. Excuse the weak metaphor, but it's like... if Angelina was working on a new project, and all anyone could write about was what it's like having Brad on the set. That actually might be more apt than I give it credit for, as part of the problem is that we treat political news like gossip column material - Hillary's Hubby's Hijinks, and of course The Clinton-Obama Faux-Rivalry Drama.

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I Understand Now

Today, I feel constantly on the verge of tears.
Some people are telling me that this doesn't matter. That this won't change anything. That tomorrow we will wake up and the world will be no different. But I am personally in awe of how important this is to me.

My twenty-first birthday is on Saturday. I have never voted in a presidential election before. This is important, but not why I feel so frantic today. I've been following the race closely and have some firm opinions. This is important, but not why I feel so frantic right now.

I'm overcome today because I realize I have no recollection of any president other than George Bush. I was twelve when he was elected, and the idea that politics had something to do with my life had just barely wafted into my consciousness. I'm overcome today because I have no idea what it is like to have faith in my government. I'm overcome today because I think that tomorrow, my world will be different. It certainly won't be perfect. Obama was not my first choice in the primaries, as you know if you've been here before. But I'm overcome because tomorrow, I have hope for the first time that I will not be struggling against the person with power over my country, I will be struggling with him. I'm overcome because I think for the first time a person with respect for my intelligence and my rights will be in charge of many public aspects of my life.

I've been overcome with anger today. Not at those who oppose my candidate, really; but at those who show no preference, who don't want to vote, that they are forced to choose 'the lesser of two evils', who don't claim they can't see the goddamn difference. The difference for me is between continuing the uphill battle which I have been engaged in my entire politically aware life, or having the relief of knowing that at the very least two men who care about human rights are in the white house. Maybe someone else sees the difference differently. But there is a difference, and to claim you don't care or it doesn't matter strikes me as either ignorant or spoiled. I do have to accept that everyone doesn't care about politics as much as I do, but I don't accept that politics don't affect every single life. The personal is political, and all. I don't say "ignorant" as an insult; I sincerely hope these people realize how these issues and how which guy is sitting in the big chair affects them directly. Because it does.

I'm overcome today with gratitude, because nothing is closer to my heart than social justice, and so I'm acutely aware of how I got this right to vote. Who gave their life for me to have it. People complain about the electoral college (though they're entitled to do) without pausing to realize how corrupt this system was before. What this meant to those who had to fight for it. I don't think I understood before today, thinking about what it would be like to watch this process and have no power in it. When you think of that possibility, which was reality less than one hundred years ago, voting is not a pointless endeavor, even if no candidate is your ideal.

I don't use the word "empowered" often.
I usually don't understand it.
I understand now.

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Needed Noting...

I'm not 'back' yet, or maybe ever, but I have a story concerning the last episode of Project Runway (which Korto should have won, in my little opinion- I think she or Leanne would be my favorite, were I actually watching on a regular basis). Let me say first that I've been waiting for a drag queen challenge since season one. I predicted RuPaul as a judge way back when I started blogging about this show. I was incredibly excited about this. But it occurs to me that this challenge was a bit strange to some folks. My mom brought home this heart-warming story from work the other day:

A woman she works with always watches Project Runway with her five-year-old daughter. When the models entered out of drag, the young girl asked her mother,
"Mom- why are they putting boys in dresses??"
"Well, some boys just like to wear dresses."
"They do?" The girl said with shock, then asked: "Is that ok?"
"As long as they're open and honest about it," The mother, a psychiatrist, replied, "It's perfectly ok."
"Oh. Ok."

One small step for a man, one giant leap for a man in high heels, eh?

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Youtube Favorite Friday: Cuteness (and apologies)

Yep, can't get enough of going "aw" at this one:


I love Sesame Street, so much.

So, sorry I've been totally neglecting this thing. Taize was good, but also hard, I still don't know how to convey the spiritual experience in words, but some more concrete highlights:
- Chocolate and butter sandwiches, for breakfast, everyday.
- Being humbled by people who walked there... from Italy.
- Picking up a slew of dirty ASL signs (prooobably just our group).
- The catchy tune stuck in your head is sung by monks (well, and everyone else).
- Sobbing with people you just met, and some of whom do not share a language with you.

So. That's that. I start work at camp tomorrow, so yeah, blogging is not my priority right now. I may stop in occasionally to link somewhere else, but don't expect too much original content until September.

Speaking of linking other places, here's a few of my favorite stories. I'm limiting myself to ones I found this morning, or else I'd just go on and on:
-Feministe: Latina teacher fired for not regurgitating the same old crap. Oh social justice, how you need to be a requirement- for students, and apparently school administrators. It's fucking scary that challenging Eurocentrism is so dangerous.
-Queerty: "Can’t I Just Have Mayonnaise?" Whines O’Reilly Over "Gay" Commercial O'Reilly's homophobia and glaringly obvious straight privilege here is endlessly amusing/distressing to me. He totally can't grasp the concept that the loving housewife being replaced by a New York deli man is "gender play". Because he totally can't see past two guys kissing. Because if it was a man and woman, it would be normal. Because straight people are normal and gay people are a disturbing and political affront to all straight people. I just feel bad for him at this point. Could someone educate him, please?
-Bitch Magazine: Factory Girl: Dora the Explorer and the Dirty Secrets of the Global Industrial Economy I'm kind of envious of how many issues the writer managed to neatly packed in this one article. I tried to sum it up, but please, just go read it.
-Fourfour: She just doesn't get it Oh, how I hoped- or perhaps rationalized- that Tila Tequila was at least slightly positive for bisexual visibility. But, alas- she's gone and spouted another old bisexual stereotype, and to make matters worse, still thinks she's helping.

Ok, I found another video of the kid, so today you're lucky enough to get two youtube favorites:

I wonder where she is now?

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