Caveat Lector

A brief interlude

2007-07-30T15:57:00.000-04:00

Yes, I came back from France...yes I haven't posted as promised....give me a few more days to settle my life down. For now, I thought this was worth a few laughs. One of the biggest problems with Wikipedia:

Commuted

2007-07-03T13:20:00.000-04:00

Wow...I did not expect him to actually do it. Scotty Libby will now spend no time in jail. I think Keith Olbermann says it best:

Quick update, how fast the time goes

2007-06-28T06:40:00.000-04:00

So, I admit? I am in France now and I have been for a solid month and yet I did not update. Why? Incredibly busy. I promise pictures of chateux and the French countryside when I return. For now, I just wanted to drop a note on here for anyone who actually still reads this thing aplogizing for the silence.

Il faut que je m'en aille!

A quick note:

2007-05-24T02:14:00.000-04:00

Something that's definitely on my 'to read' list: The Gospel of Judas.

I hope this won't be my last post before France. I'm hoping for a longer one. However, I will TRY to blog from France (et en francaise, j'espere).

A new trend in music videos?

2007-05-21T12:54:00.000-04:00

What is it about really terrible bands who make really terrible music making really fantastic music videos. Case in point, Nickleback's 'If Everyone Cared' and Linkin Park's new one 'What I've Done':

American Feminism and Islamic Countries

2007-05-16T14:36:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine sent me a link to a a story in the weekly standard about American Feminism's response (or lack thereof as the author would claim) to the oppression of women in Islamic countries. I suggest reading the entire article, though I'll quote from it here. I'd also ask people to keep in mind that the author of this article is a repeated critic of feminism (often using arguments of gender essentialism like in her book The War against Boys) as well as a harsh critic of psychological therapy (she apparently thinks it makes us 'weak'). So you can imagine how she might not be on my 'favourite person list', but I'll try and approach this with a fresh attitude.

There are various problems that become apparent as one gets further and further along in the article. One that doesn't take too long is a great hostility towards Islam in general (well, it IS a neo-conservative magazine, I don't suppose that should be surprising). For example, the very first thing Sommers says:

The subjection of women in Muslim societies--especially in Arab nations and in Iran--is today very much in the public eye.

I say this is hostile towards Islam because Sommers does not bother with distinctions here. She simple says 'Muslim societies', not 'Muslim theocracies' or 'radical Islamic states', just merely 'Muslim societies' (as though its a general rule that the Islamic faith is anti-woman, anti-freedom, etc). She DOES say 'especially Arab nations and Iran', which makes me wonder which Arab nations she's talking about (and I know why she picked on Iran instead of any other country, as that's the favourite next target for neo-conservatives). If by 'Arab nations' she means places like Pakistan and Afghanistan, this reeks of the neo-conservative tendency to lump all nations in the Middle East into being 'Arab'. The Afghans are not 'Arab'. They are 'Afghani'. It's a little nit-picky of me; but, especially when you are writing an article that addresses aspects of culture, you need to comprehend this distinction.

She goes on to criticize American feminist groups for not rising up and helping women in Islamic countries to become free from the oppression of their state. She blames anti-Americanism, which boggles my mind and seems to come from nowhere. I'm not quite sure what she is trying to say. Even if these women's groups are anti-American, does that immediately make them pro-anti-American-Muslim-theocracies? Sounds like a 'you're with us (in every way shape or form imaginable) or you're with the terrorists' attitude (again, neo-conservative magazine, so not surprising, and probably what she was going for).

There are a few things wrong with this, but let's take some of her article point by point. She says:

It is not that American feminists are indifferent to the predicament of Muslim women. Nor do they completely ignore it. For a brief period before September 11, 2001, many women's groups protested the brutalities of the Taliban. But they have never organized a full-scale mobilization against gender oppression in the Muslim world. The condition of Muslim women may be the most pressing women's issue of our age, but for many contemporary American feminists it is not a high priority. Why not?

A quick mention of 9/11 is standard for this type of magazine (that doesn't really go anywhere or say anything...so are you saying that Sept. 11th made feminists LESS interested in oppression in theocratic Muslim countries? and what are you implying with that statement?). Also, calling the condition of Muslim women 'the most pressing women's issue of our age' is stretching to hyperbole, and it's exactly that sort of rhetoric that makes nothing get done. The explanation (of American feminists not making this a priority) that seems the most logical for me at first is that, well, they are American feminists, and they will probably deal with American issues. We can't exactly 'heal the world' if we still have some bones to mend.

But let's move on to her explanations.

That worldview is--by tendency and sometimes emphatically--antagonistic toward the United States, agnostic about marriage and family, hostile to traditional religion, and wary of femininity. The contrast with Islamic feminism could hardly be greater.

Well, like I said before. I don't know where antagonism towards the US comes in here. But the rest actually seems accurate. Feminists are agnostic about marriage and family because, in the West, both have traditionally been methods of suppressing and oppressing women. The same applies to traditional religion. With femininity, we are wary of it because we recognize that it is socially constructed. This brings up an interesting point, though. You cannot use American feminism in Islamic countries. It just won't work. You need a different method, because the historical and cultural elements that are affecting practices over there are different. In terms of food (I'm hungry at the moment), it's sort of like cooking a soup and a stew the same way. You'll either come out with good soup and bad stew or bad soup and good stew. This goes to a crux of something that is wrong with neo-conservatism, but more on that later.

So when Sommers criticizes the feminist response to Nussbaum's article, she attacks them for ignoring the complaints of her philosophy. However, people like Spivak are correct when they say we have to be careful lest we get into a 'civilizing mission'. The problem comes when we view Islamic countries as pre-modern or 'barbaric' (a term that Sommers uses over and over again, which is interesting when you consider it's history...). We have to avoid the White Man's Burden attitude, this idea that we, by virtue of our high-minded modern ideals, must spread our ideology across the globe. We need to work for feminism that works in an Islamic society (and this is what most feminists on this topic actually suggest). Eventually we might reach a cultural consensus, but until then, proposing all the advances women have in this country to a country like Iran or Saudi Arabia is silly, and simply will not happen. Sommers seems to be advocating that feminism take up the American torch to light freedom across the globe. It's the same sort of misguided ideology that's landed us in Iraq at the moment.

Sommers also criticizes the discourse in western feminism that equates oppressive states. She quotes some passages from articles that might be considered controversial (out of context, of course), so that it seems as though feminists are equating practices in Mid-East and the West. Then she says:

Pollitt casually places "limiting young people's access to accurate information about sex" and opposing abortion on the same plane as throwing acid in women's faces and stoning them to death. Her hostility to the United States renders her incapable of distinguishing between private American groups that stigmatize gays and foreign governments that hang them. She has embraced a feminist philosophy that collapses moral categories in ways that defy logic, common sense, and basic decency.

Well...no. You see, the feminist philosophy that Sommers is referencing here is the idea that these oppressive acts all come from a similar oppressive ideology between the two cultures she's discussing. Limiting the knowledge of sex does tremendous psychological damage to an individual, and it is a very serious thing. Sommers, who obviously disagrees with this point and many of the things that feminists fight for in the US today, is using the 'there are more important things' excuse to deflect attention away from the inequality in our country and to make feminists look like heartless witches at the same time. This is an argument that applies to our most irrational emotions, and her saying that feminist philosophy 'defies logic, common sense, and basic decency' manages at the same time to reverse what is an is not logically sound (as opposed to being driven by pure emotion) and makes a moral pronouncement as fact ('basic decency'). The fact that we have a society that causes women to hate their bodies if they do not match an unattainable ideal is serious, and we should not just ignore such problems because something judged as 'worse' is happening elsewhere. All of these things are horrible, and all should be dealt with, by different groups (which is what seems to be happening...). NOW should not, once again, not give up its fights to pass this 'torch of freedom' on.

The article suffers from a lot of this reasoning, as though the ideology behind women seeking genital surgery does not share its vein with that which forces genital mutilation. Our point is that both need to be stopped, and that we need to realize that, in a lot of ways, we are not 'better' than a society that has brutal practices, because we have our own form of brutality (albeit self-inflicted). Sommers also seems to think that rape is 'rare':

Given her capacity for conceptual confusion, it is perhaps not surprising that Ensler cites "gang rape in a suburban high school parking lot" to show how women in America are menaced. Yes, that is an atrocity. But it happens rarely, and America's allegedly "misogynist" culture reacts to it with revulsion and severe punishments.

Actually, rape is quite common, any University study on the frequency of sexual assault will show you that. Also, rape victims often receive harsher social ostracization than the rapists themselves. Rape victims are still viewed in this country as women who 'deserved' or 'asked' for it. The most common defense in a rape case is a defamation of the victims character that 'proves' that she's a 'whore'. They might not be expected to kill themselves, but it's still horribly wrong and should be fought against. Sommers has this minimizing qualities throughout the article. Like when she discusses NOW's work to educate about and prevent eating disorders:

This is pathetic. To be sure, serious eating disorders afflict a small percentage of women. But much larger numbers suffer because poor eating habits and inactivity render them overweight, even obese. NOW should not be encouraging college girls to indulge themselves in ways detrimental to their well-being. Nor should it be using the language of human rights in discussing the weight problems of American women.

Besides the meaningless pejorative, the idea that 'serious eating disorders afflict a small percentage of women' is in the typical neo-conservative fashion of stating a random idea as though it is a solid fact. She forgets that the commonly quoted numbers are all reported cases of eating disorders (just like reported rapes she talked about earlier and reported domestic violence that she talks about later). Plus, the common way of clinically diagnosing anorexia depends upon a person's body weight (which is particularly awful because it's not based upon the behaviors but the actual success of those behaviors). Sommers would rather repeat the rhetoric that's getting us into the trouble in the first place, talking about 'healthy' eating, a 'higher' rate of obesity, and how indulging every now and again is not OK.

Sommers ends by again criticizing feminists for equating treatment of women in radical Islamic countries with the position of women here in the United States, but this is exactly what she wishes to do when she wants our feminist organizations to champion women's rights in those countries. This goes back to one of the biggest problems of neo-conservatism.

One of the largest tenants of neo-conservatism is this idea that we can somehow spread American democracy and freedom throughout the world. The problem is that these are American ideologies, and they simply do not work outside of the context of American society. One of the main reasons why our 'mission' in Iraq failed was the insistence that somehow democracy would just be this magic pill that turned the country around, when in fact the culture was so rooted in sectarian divisionism that this simple would not happen overnight. It took America one hundred years and a civil war to work out the largest kinks in our republic, and we still haven't perfected it. Likewise, it's taken the feminist movement just as long to get where it is today, and we still have a LOT of things to work on in our country before every feminist group can go to other countries and pass on this 'torch'.

I agree that we SHOULD be doing something within their cultural context to help women in these countries, especially countries like Saudi Arabia. I agree that we should stand up and denounce a country that hangs gay people; however, does that mean I should completely ignore the inequalities I face here? The key is everybody getting involved at different levels. And, on a personal level, I would say that Sommers' use of the plight of women in Islamic theocracies in order to 1) grind her axe with American feminism and 2) promote her 'we must carry the torch' neo-conservative ideology is rather disturbing and even a little shameful. American feminism has a lot of problems; but a focus on the problems in America is not one of them.

More on Going to a Town and Atheism

2007-05-12T00:37:00.000-04:00

So I hope that you go the chance to view Rufus Wainwright's new music video, which I posted below. As is typical of him, the video is visually stunning and the song is deep and gripping. This song is actually more straightforward than we're used to getting from Wainwright (he's said so himself in an audio commentary on his Myspace page). His songs have a tendency to grow on a person after listening to them over and over (it took me several times listening to 'Grey Gardens' before the melody drilled itself into me and I finally started to 'get it'). He also says that 'Going to Town' shouldn't be confused with a diatribe against America. It's 'a break up song'. And I think this is a wonderful way to describe the tone I had perceived throughout it. While there are brave moments which might be considered slaps to the face ('After soaking the body of Jesus Christ in blood...'), listening to them again reveals a very sad tone. Most especially the line 'You took advantage of a world that loved you well' encapsulates a feeling of let-down more than anger. And it really is true. The majority of the world really did/does love America. We're a symbol of freedom, democracy and, most importantly, discourse (or at least we used to be). I get this feeling that we just don't talk anymore.

Which brings me to YouTube, and the surprising amount of discussion I have seen going on there since I finally started exploring the community. It reminds me of the old USENET system (heh heh...the 'old' usenet system...) and the long and surprisingly informative discussions that would occur on there. For all the trolls that prowled, there was a lot of well thought out posts on these message boards.

So, I'd like to take a quick look at one or two of the debates that have caught my eye recently and specifically one of the YouTubers who seems to have a great production quality in his videos as well as well written monologues. These debates centre on two very important philosophical and scientific questions: The existence of God and evolution. Now, I remember growing up in rural Alabama, arguing till I was blue in the face that (1) the theory of evolution presented the most probable account of the origin of life and (2) that evolution and God were not mutually exclusive. I still believed in God at the time, though I still don't find the two as logically opposed. More on that later.

In any case, a YouTuber named Firefly515 posted a video asking Atheists on YouTube to respond to certain questions he had regarding their beliefs. A fresh YouTuber screennamed Albert10110 responded eloquently with his own video. Albert10110 calls himself Al in his videos, and since typing 10110 over and over again will get tedious, I'll just refer to him this way from now on.

So here is Al's video. If you want to see Firefly's original video, follow the link on Al's video's YouTube page. It's just easier that way. I feel that Al's video is important because the arguments that Firefly uses have been used for as long as these discussions have been openly going on. It's refreshing for those of us who have seen Pascal's Wager (among other things) get thrown around time and time again to see them called out in a clear and concise manner.

And again, a few months later, and his most recent video, where he debunks another YouTube user's 'proof' that the Earth is 6,000 years old. Of course, these are the same bodies of 'evidence' that have been floating around the internet in places like Answers in Genesis, which have been swiftly and consistently debunked at one of my favourite sites growing up, Talk.Origins. However, Al takes them on once again, step by step. There's no need to include a link to the original video, as Al uses clips from it in his own video:

Keep an eye out for Al in the future. I'd really like to see him handle some more of the topics surrounding these issues. If you'd like to see the rest of his videos, check out his YouTube site.

That's all for now.

Going to Town

2007-05-10T18:53:00.000-04:00

Because Rufus Wainwright is a god among men, here is his latest single, 'Going to Town', off of his new album 'Release the Stars', which comes out on May 15th. A more in depth analysis of the song to follow, but for now, just enjoy:

Reminders of a compassion

2007-04-17T02:51:00.000-04:00

I won't comment on what happened in VA today. I don't think it's the time to say what will probably need to be said.

Rather, I'll bring you a few exercises in the mentality of individual worth that I was expressing in one of my recent posts. Here are a few examples of posts from the website postsecret, a website where people anonymously send in postcards that reveal a secret of theirs. This simultaneously releases them from the pain of holding it as well as allows others to know that they're not alone with what they're facing in life. Unfortunately, you'll need to follow these links, as I'm having trouble embedding these pictures:

Here

Here

and Here

And finally, a note from Craig Ferguson on the misunderstanding of Alcoholism in the media. Of particular importance is the comment he makes at the end of the clip:

Now I have found this, you can't beat it (alcoholism) with money. If you could beat this wrap with money, rich people wouldn't die. You can't...I have found that the only way I could deal with it is find other people who had similar experiences and talk to them.

Photos in 6 years

2007-03-31T18:22:00.000-04:00

I know I'm late getting to this, but it's interesting when you consider how life changes and such:

I realized that I should explain: This is Noah Kalina, he took a picture of himself everyday for the last 6 years. What you see are the pictures put in order into a video. (He says he only missed 22 days out of all 6 years).

A long time coming

2007-03-25T03:18:00.000-04:00

So, I haven't blogged in a considerable amount of months, contrary to my promises. Chalk that up to graduate school applications. I won't post information regarding my decision here just yet, as I think it would be prudent of me to wait at this moment. Needless to say, my life will change a lot.

So what's on my mind lately? The usual stuff, mostly, also the idea of leaving Penn, which has been my home for the past 5 years. I have a lot of fantastic memories here, and a lot of incredibly awful ones. I guess it goes with the whole 'home' concept, right? I had a conversation with a friend today about these memories, about how difficult it is sometimes to remember the good ones over the bad ones.

I have spent a lot of time in the past two years dealing with depression. I say so here because I am not ashamed to of this, nor should I be. It's something that affects a lot of people of all walks of life for various reasons, and one of the best things we can do as a society is to stamp out the stigma associated with it.

So, how, exactly, do memories invade space, including the space of my mind? One can read the voluminous current scholarship on this, both in the scientific field and the humanities, but I'm thinking in 'general terms' at the moment. Living in such an enclosed space for 5 years just piles memory on top of memory. I suppose it's a symptom of the college campus; but I'm really 'good' at remembering memories (so I like to think anyway). A single sight or sound or reference can bring on the flood, and the thing is, I don't just remember the sensory experiences of the memory, but the emotional ones as well...in full force...and sometimes even stronger than the first time around. When I walk past the place where I first made out with a guy, I remember not only that moment, but the entire history of subsequent moments, some of which are extraordinarily painful. The problem with me is that I never seem to remember good memories right away. My mind always leaves to the pain, the upset, heartache, disappointment.

So where is this going? Well, during my conversation with my friend today, he told me that I need to focus on and remember the lives of people who I have touched during my existence, and just think of the positive impact that I have had on others.

This goes along with the thought I would think just about everybody has had, 'If I die, who would be there mourning me at my funeral?'

What my friend reminded me of, which I had forgotten, is that I used to believe that touching the life of one single individual actually meant something, not so much in a 'grand scheme' as just in a real, emotional, humanistic sort of way. You know, that story about the starfish that probably resides in a 'Chicken Soup' book somewhere?

A man runs across the beach earlier in the morning, and he see that the tide has brought an uncountable number of starfish, which will certainly die in the heat of the coming sun. He then sees a man on the beach bend down, pick up a starfish, and throw it into the water before moving to the next one. Curious, the runner walks up to the man and says, 'Why are you doing this? You can't possibly save them all! What does it matter?' The stranger responds by bending over, picking up another starfish and tossing it in. He looks at the runner and says, 'Mattered to that one.'

And with a collective 'awww' we realize that the moral of the story is that one person can truly make a difference. 'Even the smallest person can change the course of the future', as it were. And even though the story itself is sugary enough to give us tooth decay, it espouses a great principle which I believed at some point, but am not sure when I forgot. This is why I became so involved with political causes, and why fought so vehemently for my fellow Queers even before I came out of the closet. It was from that belief that that one person, that one gay high schooler stuck in Alabama or that man who couldn't see his husband in the hospital mattered.

Now, I feel as though my efforts in this arena were met with scorn and bitterness from the queer-powers-that-be at Penn, but is this an excuse for giving up entirely? I can't really blame it on the failure of the 2004 election, either. There's something deeper involved, a forgetting of beliefs that I have historically held dear, yet because of which I continually feel drawn to too many causes to count, not all of which lie in the political field (my earlier mention of stigma being a prime example). I feel limp, powerless, unable to effect any change whatsoever. 'What can men do against such hate', after all?

But I'm starting to remember the power of the individual, not so much to make changes on such a grand scale (we have been at no loss in humanity for such individuals, although we are at such a loss today), but the power of individuals to be personally affected by one another.

So, on the Q front...I wish that I could close my eyes, wish really hard and open them with all the problems in the gay community just gone. I also wish that days and months and years of fighting against these problems could yield some result, but they won't. The simple fact is, right now, the queer community will be racist, they will be classist, they will be biphobic, they will be so wrapped up in their consumer culture of instant gratification.

I can't fix the problems of the queer community.

But I CAN help a queer person.

I can't heal the wounds of our collective queer society.

But I can help a person heal. If they want it.

And, as has been the case for me historically, I'll need them as much as they need me. And that's OK. We'll get through it together.

And in the end, that's what being human is all about, right?

Thanks for reminding me.

Friends

2006-10-29T01:02:00.000-05:00

Had to say...after this weekend...I feel very loved and appreciated. Joshua, M, Gigi, Rob, Ame, Aussie, David....thank you...more than I can bring myself to say, thank you.

Learned something just now

2006-09-19T20:59:00.000-04:00

Matthew Shepard, if he had lived, would have turned 30 at the beginning of December this year.

Not a good reminder for me to get when I'm losing faith in humanity.

For those of you who don't remember (and be really fucking ashamed), almost 8 years ago (October 7th, 1998), Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered by two men who specifically sought out a gay man in order to assault him. He was beaten almost beyond recognition, tied to a roadside fence, and left for dead. He was alive when he was found the next morning, and never woke up, dying 5 days later in his hospital bed.

Among the many victims of violence against queer people, his attack probably gained the most national attention. The ones who murdered Shepard said they did it because he came on to them. As a result, they flew into a homicidal psychosis...a 'gay panic', they called it. Thankfully, they were found guilty and setenced to life in prison for their crime.

But now what? Now we have a president who vetoes a hate crime bill SOLEY because it contains a clause protecting gays and lesbians...now we slide backwards into something WORSE than invisibility, we slide into COMPLACENCY. Gays have become exactly like the venomous society around them. If you're not a rich, white man, TOO FUCKING BAD...they don't care. It doesn't matter if you live in an area like Alabama or Mississippi and have to wake up every morning afraid because of who you are. They are comfortable. That's all that matters. Can we forget so quickly?

I remember the killing of Matthew Shepard, 8 years ago. I also know the history of ALLIES at Penn, created in response to the killing, so that straight students could stand together with their friends and classmates in a show of support. Hopefully it will become that again one day.

My fellow queer students at Penn...do they remember Matthew Shepard? Somehow I doubt it. Their generation is one full of that complacency, like the one before mine (the one who forgot the horrors of war and leaped headlong into it).

I remember the killing of Matthew Shepard...and I remember the fear. I was a fourteen year old, close to fifteen, who was just beginning to realize that I was different. It scared me out of fucking mind, because I finally realized that it is DANGEROUS to be who I am. Those who are two or three years younger than me, I wonder if they remember. I wonder if they felt that fear, if they knew what it meant. The talk on homophobia we had at a meeting once led me to believe that they don't.

Funny how that generation thing works, huh?

Short update

2006-09-17T08:43:00.000-04:00

I'm back with a short update that might turn into a longer one later:

I've started my post-bac year and it looks like I'll learn a lot this year. I'm starting to realize that becoming proficient in 4 languages is going to rock and look amazing on my applications.

I've also picked up a small tide-me-over job in the city at the Naked Chocolate cafe. It's new, it's swanky, and the co-workers and bosses are GREAT. They treat us all very well (it's a small business) and I actually enjoy being at work most days.

I guess I'll say more later...for real this time.

Once in a lullaby

2006-08-02T03:19:00.000-04:00

Ah, nothing like a news story from the depths of bumblefuck to get your blood boiling.

http://www.towleroad.com/towleroad/2006/07/rainbow_flag_br.html

So, a child brought home a rainbow flag as an innocent symbol of one of his favorite movies and the town goes apeshit when the parents hang it up. Honestly...I was ok, and thought this just another news story indicative of homophobia until:

Local resident, Keith Klassen says the flag is a slap in the face to the conservative community of Meade. “To me it's just like running up a Nazi flag in a Jewish neighborhood. I can't walk into that establishment with that flag flying because to me that's saying that I support what the flag stands for and I don't," says Klassen.

...excuse me...but how fucking DARE you say something like that? You're comparing the fight for gay rights to the Nazi's imprisonment and mass slaughter of the Jews?!

I guess the good Mr. Klassen isn't aware of how many homosexuals were rounded up and murdered by yhe Nazi's in the same fasion simply because they were gay.

These people make me sick...as for the family who put the flag up, I wish that we had more allies like them. Ironic that they're named the Knights, no?

More later

Lance Bass....gay

2006-07-26T17:20:00.000-04:00

I think my roomate said it best: In other news, water is wet!

While this comes as no great shocker for a lot of people, it's still a great step for him. However, I have a small beef with this.

While I am certainly not the person to claim that coming out is somehow some sort of obligation for anybody, I still can't help but feel a tad bit resentful of Bass' decision to stay in the closet so long:

"I knew that I was in this popular band and I had four other guys' careers in my hand, and I knew that if I ever acted on it or even said (that I was gay), it would overpower everything," says Bass, referring to bandmates Joey Fatone, Chris Kirkpatrick, JC Chasez and Justin Timberlake.

"I didn’t know: Could that be the end of ’N Sync? So I had that weight on me of like, ‘Wow, if I ever let anyone know, it's bad.' So I just never did," he says speaking about his sexual orientation for the first time with PEOPLE.

I understand his mentality and his reasons are very valid (not that it's my place to judge them). But, to be honest...we could have used you, Lance. I could have used you. When I was growing up and discovering my sexual orientation, on some levels a very frightened teenager, having a celebrity who I could look to as an inspiration for being OK, someone who was relatively around my age, just old enough to look up to was definitely something that would have soothed me. But, ever the business man, you decided to take the business-like route. This upsets me. I know I have no right to judge you, and I'm actually quite happy for you, as I am happy for all my LGBT brothers and sisters (him, her, or hir) who have made it through the struggle of coming out. It's a very brave thing to do, especially for someone in your situation. But the frightened 15 year old in me just can't feel that way.

I also don't believe you when you say this was an all business decision. You haven't even mentioned if the guys knew. How long did you keep this from yourself? Was this all to keep the band afloat, or were you just as frightened and ashamed as the majority of us? You can't play yourself off as this guy who's always been proud to be gay. It's quite obvious you weren't.

No matter what, I hope that you will join in the fight now. You've put yourself out there, you're on the front lines. Use this attention the media is giving you to do something! And I don't mean making some cheap sitcom. Become a voice for those who can't raise theirs.

You might think this ends your struggle. Like all of us who have come out have learned, it's just the beginning.

Tired

2006-07-17T20:20:00.000-04:00

I'm tired of being used. I'm tired of guys either not being interested in me or being only interested in using me. I'm tired of having no hope for the future of my love life. I'm tired of hearing of a gay couple and feeling longing and impossibility.
I'm tired of people juding me without knowing me or talking to me.

Fuck this, and fuck all of you. I need a new life and to go somewhere where more than 4 people actually understand me (I love you guys, but I'm actually certain you know how I feel here).

I used to wish I were straight because I hated the pain and the shame I felt as a teenager. Now I wish I were straight because the gay men here are spoiled, shallow, selfish assholes. I'm so fed up with this shit.

Explication

2006-06-30T00:02:00.000-04:00

Why do I have months between posts?

Life.

In case you were wondering.
I'll try and write more a later time, but not a month long, I swear.

Incommunicado

2006-05-21T01:01:00.000-04:00

It's been so long...and so much has happened...

First, the most important thing: Graduation. A hundred times more emotional than my high school one...the goodbyes came really quick after the ceremony. People literally had to leave that night to fly to different places, to start their lives. There's this friend of mine...he was actually the first guy I ever allowed myself to fall for. He also happened to be the first person I EVER came out to (when I told him I liked him)...and he's straight...but he was so supportive and awesome about it. I remember just Monday, not even a week ago, giving him a peck on the cheek and holding back tears as I said goodbye. Or giving my last hug to one of my best friends, one of the first people I met here at Penn, and one of my lifelines through one of the toughest moments of my life. I have so many memories invested in this place...in these people. A ridiculous amount of emotion. I can't even comprehend it at the moment. Not sure I want to.

So, I've moved in to my summer sublet and my roomate just made me watch The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy which was pretty awesome and touches nicely on so many elements of the gay world. My mind's sort a mess now, as usual. Perhaps i'll elucidate more later.

Response

2006-04-20T03:40:00.000-04:00

Journal entry written in response to Judith Butler's Violence, Mourning, and Politics for my intro to literary theory class:

At several times throughout reading this chapter out of Judith Butler’s book, I felt like applauding. Many elements within this essay touched me deeply, and reflect how I have been made to feel almost my entire life. I say this so that you might understand how this response is somewhat lengthy, emotionally charged and filled with personal emotional experience.

I (like Butler, it seems) personally find violence deplorable. I always felt as though there was something more within my belief than the simple libertarian viewpoint of the self-owned body that Butler describes.[1] Butler’s argument has given me a new perspective. Our bodies cannot be thought of as completely our own, because our very existence and our language dispose us and our bodies to the outside world. I can never separate myself totally from other human beings. Complete autonomy is, in essence, impossible.[2] Violence, therefore, is a morally reprehensible exploitation of this connection.[3] Society justifies violence through the dehumanization of its targets (after all, the violence cannot be immoral if its target is just an object and not a ‘body that matters’).

It is then that I Butler, through her discussion of how this dehumanization has operated on queer people, added kerosene to the queer rage that I sometimes manage to forget burns inside of me.[4] I have long understood that, as a gay man, there are those in this country (and especially in the small-town Alabama environment I grew up in) who do not consider me to be a human being. This semester I took a class on theories of gender and sexuality which introduced me to texts that, much to my personal emotional relief, justified this thought in print. Butler’s article has done this even more so. This is the silent rhetoric that surrounds opposition to hate crime legislation (often accused of being ‘discriminatory against Christians’); it is the limitation of discourse that does not cause a public outcry when Fred Phelps creates a website entitled ‘God Hates Fags’ that includes an animated picture of Matthew Shepherd in flames; it is the dehumanization that allows those who murder queer people to cry ‘gay-panic’ and receive a lighter sentence.

For my gender and sexuality theory class, I am writing a paper discussing the definition of ‘Queer.’ My definition is one that focuses on ‘Queer’ as an experience. Butler excellently describes an element of this experience, ‘Those who are unreal have, in a sense, already suffered the violence of derealization.’[5] I cannot express how profoundly this idea has manifested itself in my life, yet I also know that it pales in comparison to the experiences of other queers in the past and present. I wonder if the rest of the class knows what goes on and what has gone on. I wonder if they know about the and torture, murder, and rape of queer people throughout the last few decades that the perpetrators have justified (and even moralized!) through our dehumanization. They are acts of violence that are permeated and perpetrated through the discourse of the everyday. As Butler says it is the everyday dehumanization that ‘gives rise to a physical violence’.[6] I am reminded of my sophomore year when a campus group put on a production of The Laramie Project. This docu-drama is not as much about the killing of Matthew Shepherd as it is about its aftermath. During his interview the pastor of the church says something that strikingly illustrates what Butler is saying. Every time someone calls a queer person ‘fag’ or ‘dyke’, it is an act of violence. From Butler’s point of view, it is terms like these that permeate and justify the physical violence done unto queer people. It is a violence that aids in the assumption that our lives mean nothing. How many people in our class will even remember the name Matthew Shepherd or even have heard of Venus Extravaganza? Butler mentions the queer lives that were whisked away by September 11, and how they are summarily ignored in the obituary pages.[7] Can this be more true than in the case of Father Mychal Judge, who is sometimes considered ‘the first victim’ of the attacks? He is the priest who strode into the site in order to give the last rights to fallen firefighters, a great American hero, right? Yet God-forbid the fact be mentioned that he was gay!

This is where my rage comes from. It comes from being violated. From being done violence upon. From being excluded from the human race. I already see that my response is becoming overlong. I will end with saying that I feel this is the perfect text to end class on, as it brings into play many of the most profound authors we have ready, from Plato to Austin to Derrida to Wittig. Hopefully, I’ll be able to pick up this book and read the rest of Butler’s essays surrounding this topic.

[1] 25

[2] That is not to say that individualism is impossible, nor do I think that Butler is saying this; rather, it seems she argues for a new way of perceiving individualism through our relation to others.

[3] 27

[4] Forgive the emotional rhetoric and blame it on the rage.

[5] 33

[6] 34

[7] 35

MySpace

2006-03-29T18:30:00.000-05:00

My new MySpace profile...I sorta went a little nuts...

I'm a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, though that's hardly a definiton of me. I am a student of literature, mostly of the classical persuasion. I love reading, writing, and theory. I engage a text, whether I am reading or writing it, as I would a living, feeling human, with compassion, energy, anger, joy, sadness, and empathy. I focus on classical literature for its veiled beauty rather than for an idea of teleological origin. We are traced to these moments of classical beauty not through a direct line, but through a varied voices floating through time. Genealogy is not a destruction of origin, but a recognition of its multiplicity. By studying classics, I hold a supernatural mirror to our culture that shows not the face of its father, but that of its youth. When I say I write in a classical tradition, I merely recognize the inability to dissemenate ourselves from our past.

I am a FEMINIST because I am a student of HISTORY, and only a FOOL or a CHAUVANIST could deny the existence of of the PATRIARCHY when studying the history of the Western world. I know that the feminist fight and the queer fight are ONE, for their enemies both rest upon the foundation of the idea of the PREFERED GENDER. My gender performance as male says nothing about me beyond the fact that it exists. The fact that my GENDER and my SEX coincide with most of society's expectations is a mere (lucky) coincidence. A GAY MAN who insults his 'flamming' counterpart or ridicules a drag queen is NO BETTER than the chauvenistic pig that degrades women. You insist on others maintaining gender norms because your homosexuality makes you insecure in your manhood. I am not macho, I am not flamming. My personality does NOT come with an easily readable label.

I am an intellectual, more importantly I am a QUEER intellectual. This does not mean that I am obssessed with my being gay, it means that I do not deny that my personal experiences as a gay man influence how I process my intellectualism. My QUEERNESS is NOT an identity. It is an experience that has assisted in the molding and shaping of my SELF. MY identity flows THROUGH my existence as a queer; it is not ruled by it. I say that I am QUEER to describe these experiences. I say that I am GAY because I have a sexual and affectional attraction to my own SEX, and nothing more.

All things considered, I am a nice guy. I enjoy intelligent (and sometimes even inane) conversation and dialogue, and I am thrilled to meet new people. Please feel free to drop me a line, even if it's just to say hi. My AIM is AlexandrBarca.

Oh, and check out my blog if you would like: http://cavelector.blogspot.com

Once again

2006-03-24T15:49:00.000-05:00

Work wraps me up and prevents me from blogging for over a month. I don't really have much to scream and shout about. Could go into a vitriolic tirade over the Daily Pennsylvanian's 'coverage' on the Kinky Karnival last night, but those who have commented on the pictures' page have done so already. How about I just say this...my thesis is done and turned in...and I'll post a better update some time later.

Blogging from the Penn Library

2006-02-16T02:03:00.000-05:00

About to head back to the dorm from Van-Pelt and just thought I would add a blog entry on a few things.

First...Cheney...OK, so it takes him accidently shooting someone on a hunting trip (such hunting accidents happen a lot more often than one would think) in order for the media to ask questions regarding how open and honest this administration has been with the people of the US?

You've got to be kidding me...
I mean, seriously, I know that the fact that they bungled such a small incident, and ran around for 3 days trying to craft lies and spin, evidences said lack of openess and honesty, but why didn't we get this level of interrogation from the press, say, before we went to war? Did it take this long for the press to grow a spine? Or perhaps they're just miffed at the fact that they were deliberately kept out of the loop as to the goings on of this event.

Whatever.

So, grad school hopes are starting to materialize. My year next year as a post-bach is starting to look more and more like a year of growth, introspection, and investigation. Hopefully, I'll be able to use that year to become more widely published, get my hands onto a lot of material as a research assistant to various professors, look into grad schools, and flat out acquire skills and knowledge that will not only be valuable for grad school, but also look frigging HOT on a resume.

As you can tell, I have high hopes.

And, I cannot end this post without asking my friends and readers to consider voting for me in the entry writing contest that I entered. There are some really great entries in any case, and you should check them out.

Windows

2006-02-13T21:55:00.000-05:00

Because I'm interested:

Pick the positive traits you see in me
http://kevan.org/johari?name=AlexP

And then the negative ones:
http://kevan.org/nohari?name=AlexP

Domus, Dulce Domus

2006-02-08T00:41:00.000-05:00

So sweet, they say, is a home that you are drawn inexorably back to it...but then, where is home, what is home? They say also that 'home is where the heart is', to remind us that it is not merely that place where our physical body resides, yet a boring cliche cannot capture the essence of the 'home'. Home, I think, is the indelible metaphysical plain where the soul happens to reside.

For so long, the closet was my home, and though it might sound terribly unoriginal to place that assertion in a gay blogs contest entry, I feel its worth mentioning. We've all been there, have all made it our home, some for longer than others. Let's be honest. Although the closet is a cold, dark place of self-doubt, delusion, and derision, it offers a certain sort of comfort. We portect ourselves with that door, from not only the harsh hatred and bigotry of the outside world, but from the very notions of attraction, desire, and love.

Love (and you can probably see this coming if you've read my old posts) cannot be held back by this door. Either it kicks it down from the outside or sneaks through that small crack beneath, destorying it from within. Our shell of comfort is torn away, willingly or unwillingly, and we are left exposed to the world.

Or is it exposed? Perhaps not. Perhaps we are not so grounded as we might think. The world, as brutal, unfair, and unforgiving as it is, sucks our souls out of this place of comfort and thrusts it into the realities of life, lust, and love. Romantic notions of castles or princes or poems or roses all fight to survive in the tumultous world of reality.

Thus, our soul must find a new home, a home so often seperate, a home that must be seperate from where it grew up, learned to feel, learned to cry...and many times learned to heal. For even though I just said the closet shields us from the realities of life, that is but a farce. It is but a way for the soul to feel as though it has some sort of comfort away from the tragedies of life. Some people (straight and queer) live in a closet of privilage, never exposed to the harsh realities of hatred, injustice, and bigotry. Some never feel the pains of loss, the hungers of poverty, the chilling fires of unwantedness or the violation of assault. Their souls are weak, and their homes glass houses in which they are so often apt to throw stones. When their glass closet shatters, most cannot handle reality, and turn into bitter, hateful people who direct the fallout of their own inadequacies and insecurities at others. They don't seem to know how to deal with it any other way. They will not find a home. They do not seek a home. They are too busy gripping to the memory of that faux security that they lost.

Then there are those among us (and I say 'among us' for I am now considering myself in their number) whose souls continously wander about to find a home. Like sweet Dido, erramus silva in magna, we wander in that great forest of love lost wonder and we wander on searching for a home.

Home...in another man's arms perhaps a sweet home (domus dulce domus) of kindness, love, affection, understanding...home among his arms, among his soul, two souls in one home...one home that we have always been away from, one home that we are continuously searching for...

I used to consider Penn home...I really still do. It is where my soul is, it is where my friends are. As I often say, when I am unable to stand with my friends and protect them in times of danger or comfort them in times of pain, I stand with them still in spirit, for my soul is theirs just as much as it is mine. I am made of them and exist through them. They are my light, my energy, and my salvation. I feel as though they are my home...yet my soul still wanders...wanders for that home...where my soul can go to clense itself...be one, yet two...so am I truly home?

I left the closet...but was I prepared for what I found (or what I didn't)? For the search? For the wandering? For the errores? For my soul to seek and seek and seek?

What does home mean to me?

Not somewhere to lay my head or a wearied body or a soft bed or apple pie or such corporeal things...

It is a soul, a heart, a unit, and a love in which I can finally rest my wandering, romantic soul.

That is what home means to me.

This entry created for a the contest at HomoMojo.com. The winner recieves a 50 dollar donation to the charity of their choice.