1TBM

Negotiation space...

2009-07-14T12:08:00.035-04:00

I met someone on the dating site on Pride weekend...the friday night.

A man.
Younger.

We had lots of interests in common. And he was engaging, conversational.

I was having a brunch on Saturday morning. So I invited him to come be in my environment where we could have a look at each other in a low pressure space as opposed to going on a Date which I wasn't really up for emotionally given what was happening in my life right then.

He came and we chatted as I cooked and got ready to go to the Dyke March.

Then we, Papi, Shmolee and another friend a woman I've been friends with off and on for years now, walked in our neighbourhood and then rode the subway downtown to the march. Then we split off. Papi and new friend went for a stroll while us wimmin went to find the march...which we missed because we got downtown late...heh...figures. :)

We went on two more dates week before last. I liked him. He was a nice man. But he was, as I've mentioned, a very young man (in his early twenties) and also clearly, a fairly inexperienced man, having been raised quite sheltered in the suburbs north of the city.

As we talked and got to know each other it became clear that there was quite a bit he did not know or understand.

As we talked and got to know each other I stored bits of information and ran an ongoing dialogue with myself in my head about whether he would work as a lover and regular date partner.

When it became clear a few days later, that he wanted to go on another date, I invited him to have a conversation with me about what he was seeking.

I enjoyed the conversation mostly because of the space his honesty and forthrightness offered me.

Basically he said he was looking for someone experienced to show him the ropes, to teach him things, to guide him basically. He said he was seeking someone patient to work with him as he learned and grew. I'm massively paraphrasing. But that was the gist of what he said.

This I already understood from interacting with him. But I wanted to see if he could articulate this to me. When he did, I offered him information about the life I had lived over the past ten years or so. I described my relationship with Papster, what had worked, what had definitely not worked and how, in my estimation, my relationship with Papi had evolved and in some instances devolved to get us to the place we are at presently.

I also talked about my experiences with attempting to build intentional community with people, mostly wimmin, who were all younger and less experienced than I was in a variety of really crucial ways. I talked about the lack of honesty and the ways I saw these wimmin attempting to perform clear and in control and in the know when they were so clearly not any of these things.

I talked about being a mama and about how much time I spend guiding and teaching and being patient.

Then I talked about being a human being, imperfect, needing, searching for new experiences that will offer me space to grow. I shared that I am seeking people who are experienced in a variety of ways, either comparable to what I know or completely different. I said that I either want to learn and grow alongside someone who is equally competent or with someone who clearly has more skills or experience than I do so that I can learn new things from them.

I said I want to grow via challenging experiences I have not so far encountered.

I said that functioning as more in the know teacher doesn't serve me in that I have struggled too much in the recent and distant past with people I encountered who attempted to hide their lack of skills and knowledge, as they attempted to suck from me ideas, skills, knowledge, expertise. I said that multiple experiences of this sort have aged me, stressed me out, upset me, tired me and made me very, very wary.

I said that it is not my destiny (I hope) to only encounter people who seek understandings they think I have while offering me very little in terms of life growth material I can feed from and grow by encountering. I said that it is not my responsibility to function as proxy teacher/mama to every single untaught, unmothered human I encounter.

(That's not my job. That was never my life mandate. To those who mistkenly believe this is a career aspiration for me I say: I quit.)

I said that I actually don't have any patience to do this kind of work because many of the people who encountered me before he did attempted to utilize me as tool, attempted to take what I did not and would not offer as altruistic mama/teacher figure.

We talked back and forth. I saw him very gently, conversationally and forthrightly attempting to see if my boundary could give or shift in any way.

When he realized it would not, our conversation ended with both of us saying that we would still be open to hanging out from time to time.

I need to say here, that I have very rarely encountered people who have come open about their agendas in terms of what they want from me. And I've never encountered someone who responded favourably and truthfully when I've asked them to be clear about wanting me to function as a mama/teacher/guide.

I appreciated him being so transparent about what he was after in that it allowed me precious space to be equally forthright about what I do not have, cannot do and am not interested in offering. Clearly he understood that I had/have a right to my boundaries and that his Need did not take precidence over mine.

I think him being a man helped in a wierd sort of way.

Let me explain...
Having spent so many years as an out dyke and being as forthright about who I am in my profile on the dating site usually gives most men a heads up about me, sort of gives them pause to take a moment and look at who is approaching them.

There is also a way that me writing intelligently about myselves, my identities and my criteria can (at least initially) create a particular kind of space I'm thankful for in my engagements with the men I meet. This is a space that acknowledges my "difference", that bids them move in a respectful and intelligent manner.

This space of understanding can either increase or decrease depending on the kinds of choices I make whn dealing with them and of course depending on the kinds of choices the potential Potentials make.

Nonetheless, I've found that the way I present textually, as a sentient human female, poses enough of a challenge to widely accepted patriarchal norms applied to wimmin against our wills, that I have a certain amount of manouvering space to at least try and invite the men I meet into respectful engagements with me that are not completely mired in oppressive patriarchal shit.

There have been exceptions, some of these were men who were not conscientized and did not want to be. Those conversations got stoopid really fast. But again, some of the men who I had difficulties engaging with were folks who expected that because they had managed to gain a certain amount of "feminist" education or consciousness, that I would make allowances for them. And sometimes, depending on how horny or needy or lonely or craving simple human contact I was, or of course, if they seemed as if they'd be useful to me in some really fundamental way I wanted to have access to, I have...all the while storing information about the ways these men moved and making choices about how much of their stuff I would engage with.

I also think my date's having an experience of being white skinned Jewish raised very sheltered inside community, younger, pretty much heterosexual but theoretically bi-defined seemed to create sufficient distance in that who I was/am as a Black, older, queer, woman - did not allow him to feel an amount of familiarity sufficient enough to allow to just latch on and begin to suck my life energies.

And again...I will explain...
You see, there was an alienness that occupied the space between us, that ruptured the space between us, that defined the space between us in such a way that made it possible to slow down a process that I've noticed often happens lightening fast, often without my consent, when people understand there to be less degrees of separation between me and them.

Ironically, very real political critiques related to who should be allied, who should work together that I do believe in can end up being linked to doubtful, totally essentialist assumptions about who should be compatible, who should socialize, who should share love and affection, who should take care of each other, have proven to be my achilles heel, time and time again. Often folks who understand me to be part of communities they are affiliated with can be the absolute worst in terms of what I'm describing.

So for instance...
If someone is a woman and feminist, there is an understanding that usually has nothing to do with me, who I am, what my experiences are or what I need, that tells them it's okay to attempt to engage with me intimately, intimately being a euphemism for getting really comfortable accessing my energies, attentions, insights, knowing.

If someone is a Black or of colour, a woman and feminist, there is often even more assumption about how quickly and deeply they can attempt to enter my sovereign space.

If someone is a Black man and understands themselves as political, again, that entry can be swift and completely predicated on assumptions about what I will offer in terms of attention, emotion, intimacy, energy, alliance.

If someone is any of the above and queer, ditto.

If someone is any of the above and younger and not well mothered or parented in ways that offered them a grounding...holy FUCK, batman! :)

And if the person understands themselves to be oppressed in a variety of ways, but has undeclared and therefore unexamined class status and was raised to understand themselves as entitled because of that class status, their methods and approach can be horribly oppressive and disgusting, ofttimes leaving me feeling as if a good scrub with a stiff wire brush is in order.

Sadly the most difficult attempted emotional and energetic intimate space invasions I've had to deal with, struggle with, name and defend from have come from people who I would voluntarily offer some care, nurturance and safe harbour to, but am still not interested in having to repeatedly defend my boundaries against.

These are people who experience particular forms of oppression who are also struggling to consciously unpack various horrible, horrifying, inexcusable, soul destroying abuses inflicted on them as children, teens and adults.

This is especially an issue in feminist/women's communities where so many wimmin define as survivors of some sort of abuse. These were the friends, allies, lovers and partners I spent my twenties living and loving among and in many instances struggling to not be utterly consumed by.

As a feminist who has a critique of violence against wimmin, who has walked and lived and worked among abuse survivors, I recognized many years ago how difficult it is for me to set appropriate boundaries with people who need so much support, care, love, attention, presence, but whose coping mechanisms can very often be so downright destructive and toxic.

For someone like me who isn't a front line violence against wimmin worker and who does not function inside a professional environment where there are rules governing client/worker interactions which protect those who offer support, being in close proximity to the survivors of violent abuse for any length of time, especially if they're not engaged in any healing process with a skilled and legitimate practitioner can be really difficult.

This is because even the most brilliant, lovely, fascinating, worthwhile individual/survivor may end up unwittingly but very skillfully engaging with me in ways that replicate and inflict some of the abuse they themselves are struggling to deal with.

They may also repeatedly attempt to rid themselves of the emotional residue from daily triggers via engaging in emotionally charged conversations, verbally or psychologically abusive or guilting conversations with me.

They may also attempt to forces me into a position where I serve as trauma receptacle although I would never agree to receive the pain they carry without setting appropriate boundaries.

This has been my experience.

This is why I have no choice but to protect myself by setting appropriate boundaries and by stringently defining who I will call friend, who I will love or let in close.
So yeah...
sigh...
All this to say, I've had political types attempt to lecture me about who I should be giving my energies to as if I'm a fucking quickie mart that should be open 24/7 for particular groups of people, offering sales and cut rate deals if people bring price club membership cards.

I fuckng hate that way of thinking because it still positions me as resource to be accessed and mined without at all taking into account my feelings, my needs, my aspirations, my growth, my humanity. In a lot of ways that approach to relationship is fundamentally ageist, patriarchal and racist in that it allows me little or no space to resist the elder crone/woman teacher model, the selflessly nurturing, unconditional mother model or the forced caregiver/worker Black mammy model.

All of these are offered to me against my will when people come seeking care, nurturance and support without being able to see what it is I need to live, love and be (relatively) happy.

Notice served:
I will give energy, space, love, flesh, care, attention to whoever tha fuck I choose based on my agendas and my agendas alone. If someone can't respect that and can't understand that I know what's best for me...if they can't see that my identities are complex enough that what I'm after may not come in a package that may not at all be easily recognizable to others...then we will have difficulties engaging.

I have fairly tense conversations with people who I might be interested in building relationships with or who I have built relationships with who don't know how to forthrightly name and claim what they want let alone negotiate openly and honourably for what they want, let alone hear me when I clearly and forthrightly point out that I'm not able, willing, interested in offering what they want or need by way of support if they will not be respectful of my time, energies and limits...if they will not be open and honest about the issues they're facing and if they're not interested in actively unpacking these issues in ways that will help them locate themselves as insightful, intentional, cardinal Powers not as victims.

sigh...
I spend a lot of time, way too much time struggling with people who are already intimates as a way to make sure my sovereign boundaries are respected.

With people I don't know, who I might not even want to deeply know conversations are even more sticky...especially if it's clear that there are similarities between us based on social positioning and experiences of oppression,

The oddest interactions happen between me and almost complete strangers on the sidewalks, in bars, at events, at festivals, perfect strangers who make assumptions about who we be to each other, who intentionally attempt to cross my line of justice in ways that feel harmful and invasive to me. They might use my given name, as if we're good friends. They might attempt to hug me, as if we're good friends. They might attempt to engage me in (gossip and inuendo based) conversation about my family, as if they have inside information about me, have years of past interactions with me, as if we're good friends.

But mostly they attempt to socially dominate as a way to get whatever it is they're after.

They attempt to see, without checking what they have to offer me, without checking to see if they can even be honest with me, without thinking about if they are actually equipped to share intimate space, without checking to see if they even know how to make friends or if it makes sense for us to be intimately connected.

Without checking within themselves to ascertain whether they actually have something profoundly present, real and valuable to offer me by way of friendships they decide to demand that we be really good friends...right. now.

Usually, I will send them on their way fairly fast after an equally lightening fast assessment of their movements.

Sometimes I might engage with them conversationally if I'm not already feeling too cranky due to having to walk in an oppressive world where most do not respect my boundaries.

Rarely, if I assess them and see something or someone who might actually be useful or fun or powerFULL or present or different or new for me in some way, I might give a little and see what they do.

On a very few occasions these days I might completely call their bluff, accept their invitation and fully come front and center prepared to engage...at which point every single one I've ever done this with has balked, told copious lies about themselves and who they are, contradicted themselves all over the place repeatedly, tried to cover all this in face saving ways and just generally made it completely impossible to continue engaging with them in any authentic way.

If things go well after that, I back away and they back away. No harm, no foul.

If things go poorly, as often they do, firestorms ensue.

I hate that. I really hate that. Drama is so...predictable and bo-ring.

That conversation went well...better than I usually hope for when I'm attempting to set healthy boundaries.

I appreciated our conversation...
because he did not bring me drama,
because he did not attempt to take what I did not offer,
because he used his words,
because he allowed me to use mine,
because he did not attempt to smear me or guilt me or manipulate the outcome of our negotiations via expressing his unprocessed, unclaimed, unexplored, half digested emotions linked to his painful and/or abusive childhood, teenage or adult experiences...he did not offer me his internal whirlwind to process with him for him.

I appreciated our conversation because even if he was secretly thinking of moving in the direction of bringing me any of his stuff, my intelligence, combined with my political consciousness, combined with my use of words, combined with my personal power was enough to keep the conversation moving in a manageable direction.

I appreciated our conversation because I was able to have a civilized and respectful and intelligent dialogue with someone who did not repeatedly lie to me as they attempted to achieve an agenda that was completely not about me, that completely erased me, resulting in me having to sit with them and excruciatingly unpack their shit before their eyes as a way to get them to admit to the lies they were weaving, resulting in them freaking out and telling themselves and me that I am mean and unfair and brutal, resulting in them having space to do some really fucked up and unnecessarily aggressive and covertly violent things, resulting in drama that could have been completely avoided if they had just been honest and honourable to begin with which would have allowed me space to just...say...no...thanks.

To him I say "Thanks, I really appreciated how well that conversation turned out."

To those who still insist on doing things the difficult way, I say..."You might want to rethink that program. It's never too late to rethink that program."

Membership, belonging, group validation, identification...shifting...

2009-07-13T21:52:00.002-04:00

Clearly it's been on my mind...for like...ever.

Feel free to observe, offer suggestions, ask critically insightful questions that increase not block my flow, as I work things through.

I'm muddled right now. But I'm definitely still a rebel with a cause continuing to grow without pause. :)

"Membership" and "Belonging"...take three...

2009-07-13T20:33:00.023-04:00

The last version of this post needed some serious editing. There were places where it didn't make sense. There were places where words needed to be deleted.

But there were also things I had left out, things about my thought process, about what has brought me to this place...

My identity is morphing again.
I went to Pride and had a blast...a distant blast...a non-engaged good time where I did not feel much in the way of pain over the distance I have placed between me and the people who I have met and known and worked with and loved and admired...the denizens of those queer communities.
I didn't miss them.
I didn't yearn to be around them 24/7.
I'm not one hundred percent sure, but...
I don't think I need to be queer anymore.
I suspect that I might not need to claim membership in queer communities in order to breathe and live and love and walk with head held high at this particular point in my existence.

hmmm...
I've been wanting to blog about what it means to move through different tribes, recognizing places where I have had some sense of belonging, while still being able to pay attention to a profound sense of alienation and disconnect arising from the places where who I am butts up against...the price of belonging.

This spring/summer I've engaged with Potentials who have brought me into close proximity to groups of people I was unfamiliar with. These are groups of people whose identities and existences as misfits felt familiar to me. I felt something...an affinity to their worlds. I would have dearly loved to stay and make family and make "home".

But affinity is fleeting for someone like me, a misfit, whose understandings and identities are so layered and multiplicitous that the very idea of long term engagement with people who have come together around a powerful cause or way of being feels like annihilation, like erasure...like silencing and dumbing down who I am - a complex and multifaceted being defined by a life lived learning, reading, exploring, growing, seeking...

Yeah...
Navigating group spaces is tricky as it usually involves one (me) interacting with the needs/beliefs/ways of the many made One.

Belonging can end up feeling disturbingly like self destruction when the price is the silencing of voices and the denial of perceptions so as to stifle heterogeneity and contradiction...privileging and singing the praises of the supposed safeness of imposed and maintained homogeneity.

Still...
I'd like to find "home".

Actually I'd like to find "homes" filled with people who don't pull back, who don't play safe, who don't blunt their identities as a way to embrace membership, legitimacy and group validation.

I was walking with a date recently and spoke with him about having met many different people from many different spaces and places who I've loved deeply and lusted after intensely. As I walked with this date I remembered all the times I had connected with communities via these loverships and/or relationships. I entered through falling in love, through loving, through being in lust. I entered spaces and felt at "home" in particular ways and in so doing parts of me found voice and took shape...powerFULLy.

Wow! This way of doing things has always been a passionate adventure for me. These minglings grounded in breathless newness, meeting new people, moving in new ways, testing compatible understandings for soundness, trying them on, embracing alien yet totally viable ways of being...Beauty.

sigh...
Experience has shown me that feeling comfortable in any group has a lot to do with mirroring back to group members what they understand as"normal". But because my authentically layered self always ends up being more important to me than presenting as a "normal", acceptable, useful cog in any great wheel, I don't ever quite feel one hundred percent at "home" for very long. Certainly never past the point where a lovership ends.

So...
I fall in love with people, with individuals who are affiliated with different identities and communities. I don't tend to fall in love with their communities, with their tribes, with their cultures, per se...certainly not so much that I'm willing to submit, subsuming who I am to the demands of any hive mind...which is often the expectation when people who understand themselves as similar gather together and identify or believe or develop agendas as groups.

I can't do that. I don't know how.

So I move in and then through mostly. I mostly don't fit well enough to stay put for any extended period of time. I think the longest I ever stayed past an initial encounter was in gay and lesbian...queer community. I stayed past meeting and then ending a good friendship with white gay man and meeting and doing a four year relationship with a Black caribbean woman partner...and had many other relationships, loverships and friendships with Black wimmin and wimmin of colour.

Yeah...
After those two initial relationships happened and ended, I stayed and learned independently, tried to make a go of it independently, tried to fit directly. I saw myself staying in lesbian circles, in women's community circles, in feminist academic circles for life...
I worked to realize that vision. But at the end of the day it wasn't a viable dream. I didn't need to be there. My life, my safety, my sense of self wasn't predicated on remaining there. Who I was becoming didn't need that cocooned, slightly incestuous womb place to survive.

I didn't belong there. No more so than I belonged with black lesbian separatists or lesbian feminists or wimmin of colour or with politically conscious diasporics or with bdsm and leather folk or with sluts or with queer femmes or with radfems or with lefties or with hippy folks or with poly folks or with fat wimmin or with pagan folk or with people of colour/queer activists or with academics or with SOFAS or with SAHMs or with homebirthing mamas or with radical parents or with attachment parents or with working class caribbean people or with writers or with spoken word poets or with circus peoples or with drumming circle people or, or, or, or...

I don't know how to belong in any single issued, uni-identified way.
I'm not a joiner.
I don't fit easily or fully inside any easily recognizable grouping.
I don't have full and unquestioned membership within any peopling.

I have, however, learned from differently articulated peoples. And although my understandings of who I am, complex as they are, have been shaped by standing, moving, living, loving, creating in close proximity to people who gather, who are understood to represent various cultures and subcultures. I am thankful for all I have learned on my journeys and attempts to engage with groups and communities. But in some ways, having never been content to just stay put, I am the quintessential rolling stone...coming and going...entering and exiting...

sigh...I have not felt a sense of true belonging (whatever that means) since I was a young (people pleasing, self effacing, validation craving) child.

I don't know if, after having that sense of similarity profoundly disturbed at such a young age due the impact of immigration and family abandonment...
if after having never having received the programming that urges humans in groups to do whatever they can to safeguard and prioritize the unity of the group, even if that safeguarding means harming themselves, means silencing themselves, means silencing each other, means destroying at a really fundamental level what makes the group a safe place for many...
I don't know if having not been taught to engage in ways that construct the well being of the individuals who make up the group as of lesser importance than the ongoing existence of the group itself...
I yearn deeply for home. I yearn deeply for a place among people who know me, who see me, who pleasure in my words, perceptions, beliefs and ways, where I can rest and breathe...easy. I just don't know...I don't know if I will ever be able to do what it takes to "belong".

I don't think I have it in me to be that self sacrificing. Actually, I know I don't. It doesn't serve me. In none of the places I've travelled have I had the sense that if I take care of the group by tailoring (also known as censoring) my words, my thoughts, my beliefs, my perceptions, my identity in ways that benefit and foreground the beliefs and homogenous cultures of the whole, that I would be taken care of and protected...that I would be content...that things would be better...that our agendas would be realized or furthered.

I never believed that. I never saw logical evidence to back up a group based interrelational model predicated on self effacement and deprivation and silence and avoidance and pretext.

Never.

But still...
Damned if I do. Damned if I don't.

I don't ever feel comfortable trying to pretend that I am simple, unilayered and willing to play the game.

Conversely, being out about being a verbal, open, multifaceted, thick, jagged whole interested in pursuing my own agendas, seems to upset people who prioritize the ongoing existence of their groupings, their communities, their cliques.

sigh...
Belonging...
I mostly belong to mySELF.

But I do connect powerfully with disparate individuals who "belong" in different ways in communities defined as alternative where the price of membership is as high as in the outside world, perhaps even higher as everyone knows if a misfit has to leave the relative safety of community and go into the outside world, that person is really out in the cold and alone...they're really fucked.

As I've sat with myself and examined where I've been and how I've managed to find these places, I've come to terms with the fact that I have often strategically, enviously and vicariously navigated via engaging with lovers who "belonged". I've often explored with a human safety net, a native informant, an insider, a lover or partner who "belongs".

So fucking and lusting and relationship building are ways for someone like me, a complete, utter mis/fit, to connect with individuals but also, through them, to encounter new worlds and cultures, whole groups of people...community.

This is as good as it gets.
This is coming out of isolation.
This is learning.
This is growth.
This is resisting binaries and hegemonies and "normalcy" and sameness.
This is advocating on my own behalf.
This is agitating so as to more effectively disturb the oppressive constructed iconic identities foisted on me against my will.
This is what I know best.

This is me accessing experiences (I might not be able to link into otherwise) in ways that are pleasurable and intimate and indirectly yet deeply connected via the flesh.

This is why the people I meet and connect with mean so much to me...especially now in my present incarnation.

This is part of the reason why I wholeheartedly embrace the possibility of new Potentials and with equal gusto mourn the loss of a Potential, especially someone I flesh-on-flesh and/or emotionally linked to.

It's not so much them or him or anyone. It's loss of exploration potential, about a loss of possibility and about loss of an exciting life learning avenue.

And always, I continue to seek out safe space where I can fuck "belonging" and "membership", where I can observe, love, french kiss and grab hold of the positive aspects of community without it fucking me over...too badly. :)

"Membership" and "Belonging"...take two...

2009-07-13T14:16:00.011-04:00

The computer crashed while I was editing and I lost this post.
Reconstruction in progress...

I've been wanting to blog about what it means to move through different tribes, recognizing places where I have a sense of belonging but also still being able to honour the multiple places where there is a profound sense of alienation and disconnect.

This spring/summer I've engaged with people who have brought me into close proximity to groupings of people whose identities and existences speak to me in different ways. I feel an affinity to their worlds and would dearly love to stay and make family and make home.

But affinity is fleeting for someone like me whose understandings and identities are so layered and multiplicitous that the very idea of interacting with a grouping of people who have come together around a powerful cause or way of being feels like annihilation, erasure...silencing, dumbing down my ways of being rendered complex and multifaceted by a life lived learning, reading, exploring, growing, seeking.

Yeah...
Belonging is tricky as it usually involves one (me) interacting with the needs/beliefs/ways of the many.

Belonging ends up feeling like self destruction when the price is the silencing of voices and denial of perceptions that offer heterogeneity and contradiction rather than the illusory safeness of imposed and maintained homogeneity.

I'd like to find "home". Actually I'd like to find "homes" filled with people who don't pull back, who don't play safe, who don't blunt their identities as a way to embrace membership, legitimacy and group validation.

I was walking with a date recently and spoke with him about having met many different loves from many different spaces and places who I loved deeply. I remembered again and again connecting with communities via these relationships. I entered spaces and felt at "home" in particular ways as parts of me found voice and took shape...powerFULLy.

It's always been a passionate adventure. These minglings grounded in breathless newness, meeting new people, moving in new ways, testing compatible understandings for soundness, trying them on, embracing viable ways of being.

Beauty.

But I said because being allowed to feel comfortable in any grouping has a lot to do with mirroring back to group members what they understand as normal, and because I privilege what I understand as my authentically layered self over presenting as similar and therefore as a useful cog in any great wheel, I don't ever quite feel one hundred percent at "home" for very long. Certainly never past the point where any given relationship ends.

I fall in love with people, with individuals who are affiliated with different identities and communities. I don't tend to fall in love with their communities, with their tribes, with their cultures, per se...certainly not so much that I'm willing to submit, subsuming who I am to the demands of any hive mind...which is often the expectation when people gather together and identify or believe or develop agendas as groups.

Can't do that.

So I move in and through mostly. I don't often fit well enough to stay for any extended period of time. I think the longest I stayed past an initial encounter was in gay and lesbian...queer community. I stayed past initial encounters with one good friend, a white gay man and with a four year woman partner. I tried to make a better fit. I tried to belong. But I didn't actually fit there. I didn't need to be there. My life, my safety, my sense of self wasn't predicated on being there.

But I tried for years.

But I didn't belong there anymore no more so than I belonged with black lesbian separatists or wimmin of colour or with politically conscious diasporics or with bdsm and leather folk or with sluts or with queer femmes or with radfems or with lefties or with hippy folks or with poly folks or with fat wimmin or with pagan folk or with academics or with homebirthing mamas or with radical parents or with attachment parents or with caribbean people or with writers or with spoken word poets or with circus peoples or with drumming circle people or, or, or, or...

I don't belong in any single issued, uni-identified way.
I don't belong.
I don't fit easily or fully inside any of these groupings.
I don't have full and unquestioned membership within any of peopling. I've learned from being among differently articulated peoples. And though my understandings of who I am have been shaped by standing, moving, living, loving, creating in close proximity to a variety of folk, I have never had a full sense of seamless, easy, comfortable membership. I've never been content to just...stay...put.

sigh...
I have not felt a sense of true belonging since I was a young child.

I don't know if, after having that sense of similarity profoundly disturbed at such a young age, if after having never received that programming that urges humans in groups to do whatever they can to safeguard and prioritize the unity of the group, even if that safeguarding means harming themselves, means silencing themselves, means silencing each other, means destroying at a really fundamental level what makes the group a safe place for many...I don't know if having not been taught to engage in ways that construct the well being of the individuals who make up the group as of lesser importance than the ongoing existence of the group itself, I don't know if I will ever be able to do what it takes to "belong".

I don't think I have it in me to be that self sacrificing. Actually, I know I don't. It doesn't serve me. In none of the places I've travelled have I had the sense that if I take care of the group by tailoring (also known as censoring) my words, my thoughts, my beliefs, my perceptions, my identity in ways that benefit and foreground the beliefs and homogenous cultures of the whole, that I would be taken care of and protected...that I would be content...that things would be better...that our agendas would be realized or furthered.

I never believed that. I never saw logical evidence to back up a group based interrelational model predicated on self effacement and deprivation and silence and avoidance and pretext.

Never.

Damned if I do. Damned if I don't.

I don't ever feel comfortable trying to pretend that I am simple, unilayered and willing to play the game. But conversely, being out about being a verbal, open, multifaceted, thick, jagged whole interested in pursuing my own agendas, seems to upset people who prioritized the ongoing existence of their groupings, their communities, their cliques.

sigh...
Belonging...
I mostly belong to mySELF.

But I do connect powerfully with disparate individuals who "belong" in different ways in communities defined as alternative where the price of membership is as high as in the outside world, perhaps even more so as everyone knows if you're forced to leave, you really will be out in the cold and alone...

I strategically, enviously and vicariously navigate through spaces of "belonging". I live out a fantastical, legitimized existence through lovers who "belong".

So yeah...

Rough hacked
Ill formed
cuckoo's egg
foreign issue
never belongs

Unable to
unwilling to
ill equipped to
direct interface

Momentary
Shoe horning
is plenty
for me

love/lust
alien migration
exile touches
connection sense
intensely grafts
temporarily binding
works betta
does me just fine

Do me.
Do it.
Hook me up
Link me
Tie off
this caribbeaner
razor's edge play

Mouths open, tongues dance, saliva flowing, breathless...sweaty sighings, need stripped, exposed, taut muscles, grasp, tug, push, pull, teeth claim, sink in, flesh rebels swells, fingers probe and delve, cocks and pusses collide, bloodlines viscous fluid bond merge stick hold fast...theirs, mine, ours, hive mind bypass, "home" center invasion, nomad enters back door, finds fleeting familial frontier uplink...

Alien cuckoo's egg
Multiply mis/laid
intrusive incursions
planned and executed

processing...
processing...
fuck...
fuck...
fuck...
belonging...
fuck...
legitimacy...
fuck...
membership...
fuck it...
fuck me...
as I...
fuck it...
as I find it...
as I embrace it...
catch and release
catch and...
release...
catch...
and...
....release...

"Membership" and "belonging"...

2009-07-13T12:13:00.001-04:00

This is a place holder.

I want to blog about what it means to move through different tribes, recognizing places where I have a sense of belonging but also still being able to honour the multiple places where there is a profound sense of alienation and disconnect.

This spring/summer I've engaged with people who have brought men into close proximity to groupings of people whose identities and existences speak to me in different ways. I feel an affinity to their worlds and would dearly love to stay and make family and make home.

But affinity is fleeting for someone like me whose understandings and identities are so layered and multiplicitous that the very idea of interacting with a grouping of people who have come together around a powerful cause or way of being feels like annihilation, erasure...silencing, dumbing down my ways of being rendered complex and multifaceted by a life lived learning, reading, exploring, growing, seeking.

Yeah...
Belonging is tricky as it usually involves being one not many.

Belonging ends up feeling like self destruction when the price is the silencing of voices and denial of perceptions that offer heterogeneity and contradiction rather than the illusory safeness of imposed and maintained homogeneity.

I'd like to find "home". Actually I'd like to find "homes" filled with people who don't pull back, who don't play safe, who don't blunt their identities as a way to embrace membership, legitimacy and group validation.

I was walking with a date recently and spoke with him about having met many different loves from many different spaces and places who I loved deeply. I remembered again and again connecting with communities via these relationships. I entered spaces and felt at "home" in particular ways as parts of me found voice and took shape...powerFULLy.

It was always a passionate adventure. These minglings grounded in breathless newness, meeting new people, moving in new ways, testing compatible understandings for soundness, trying them on, embracing viable ways of being.

Beauty.

But I said because being allowed to feel comfortable in any grouping has a lot to do with mirroring back to group members what they understand as normal, and because I privilege what I understand as my authentically layered self over presenting as similar and therefore unthreatening, I don't ever quite feel one hundred percent at "home" for very long. Certainly never past the point where any given relationship ends.

I fall in love with people, with individuals who have membership in different circles. I don't tend to fall in love with their circles, with their tribes, with their cultures...certainly not so much that I'm willing to submit, subsuming who I am to the demands of any hive mind.

Can't do that.

So I move in and through mostly. I don't stay. I think the longest I stayed past an initial encounter was in gay and lesbian...queer community. I stayed past initial encounters with one good friend, a white gay man and with a four year woman partner. I tried to make a better fit. I tried to belong. But I didn't actually fit there. I didn't need to be there. My life, my safety, my sense of self wasn't predicated on being there.

I didn't belong there anymore than I belong with black lesbian separatists or bdsm and leather folk, or with queer femmes, or with radfems or with lefties or with hippy folks or with poly folks or with fat wimmin or with academics or with homebirthing mamas or with radical parents or with caribbean people or with writers or spoken word poets or, or, or...

I don't belong.
I don't belong.
I don't belong fully to any of these groupings.
I don't belong to any of these peoples. I've learned from being among all these people. And though my understandings of who I am have been shaped by standing, moving, living, loving, creating in close proximity to all these folk, I don't belong fully or solely with any of them.

sigh...
I have not felt a sense of true belonging since I was a young child.

I don't know if, after having that sense of similarity profoundly disturbed at such a young age, if after having never received that programming that urges humans in groups to do whatever they can to safeguard and prioritize the unity of the group, even if that safeguarding means harming themselves, means silencing themselves, means silencing each other, means destroying what makes the group a safe place...I don't know if having not been taught to engage in ways that construct the well being of the individuals who make up the group as of lesser importance than the ongoing existence of the group itself, I don't know if I will ever be able to do what it takes to "belong".

I don't think I have it in me to be that self sacrificing. Actually, I know I don't. It doesn't serve me. In none of the places I've travelled have I had the sense that if I take care of the group by tailoring my words, my beliefs, my perceptions, my identity in ways that benefit and foreground the beliefs and cultures of the whole, that I would be taken care of and protected...that I would be content...that things would be better...that our agendas would be realized or furthered.

I never believed that. I never saw logical evidence to back up an interrelational model predicated on self effacement and deprivation and silence and avoidance and pretext.

Never.

Damned if I do. Damned if I don't.

I didn't feel comfortable trying to pretend that I was simple, unilayered and willing to play the game. But conversely, being out about being a verbal, open, multifaceted, thick, jagged whole interested in pursuing my own agendas, seemed to upset people who prioritized the ongoing existence of their groupings, their communities, their cliques.

sigh...
Belonging...
I mostly belong to mySELF.

But I do connect powerfully with disparate individuals who "belong" in different ways in communities defined as alternative where the price of membership is as high as in the outside world, perhaps even more so as everyone knows if you're forced to leave, you really will be out in the cold and alone...

I strategically, enviously and vicariously navigate through spaces of "belonging". I live out a fantastical, legitimized existence through lovers who "belong".

I love/lust their sense of connection...
Mouth open, tongues twirl saliva flowing, sweat sighs need, arms grasp, tug, push, pull, teeth sink in, flesh rebels swells, fingers probe and delve, cocks and pusses collide, bloodlines viscous fluid bond merge stick hold fast...theirs, mine, hive mind bypass, "home" center, nomadic back door entry, fleeting familial uplink...
processing...
fuck...
fuck...
fuck...
belonging...
fuck...
legitimacy...
fuck...
membership...
fuck it...
I...
fuck it...
I fuck it.

A message to the members of ABORIGINAL WOMEN PROTEST DUMP SITE 41 on facebook

2009-07-12T12:07:00.003-04:00

Subject: RALLY JULY 25 at 1:30 pm at SITE 41

It's not too late to stop this imminent threat to Georgian Bay and the purest groundwater in the world!

Come out to dumpsite 41 on Saturday July 25 for the Rally! We are advocating for a one year moratorium on the issue. Speakers include:
*First Nations speakers
*Maude Barlow, first Senior Advisor on Water on the United Nations and Council of Canadians Chairperson
* David Crombie, former Toronto Mayor and federal cabinet minister
etc.

Fill a car, bring your entire household,- as well as lawn chairs and a water glass to toast the best groundwater in the world!

Participating groups:
Anishinabe kweag, Federation of Tiny Township Shoreline Associations, Stop Dump Site 41, Council of Canadians

Please show your support and stand up for the water. The time is now BEFORE the water gets contaminated.

Together we are strong
For the next seven generations,

Shelley Essaunce
Minwaabe Kwe

I got this youtube clip from Second Waver...

2009-07-11T06:02:00.004-04:00

I appreciate what he's saying. But I can't help but note that he's not quoting Malcolm X who was considered a threat to the state because he was not a patriot. But also, this discourse is decades old. It's depressing in that people like Dr. Rozena Maart were posing much more eloquent challenges, much more pointed challenges, discussing terminology like white supremacy and drawing fire for being too overt, not subtle enough have been doing this work much further back.

The very fact that he's discussing this issue but not referencing who he's actually read, where he got his ideas and his terminology, what sort of process he went through in order to even be able to speak those words without shitting himself, but instead going way back to W.E Debois, it's a little dishonest.

The ideas he's offering aren't his. He encountered them and then claimed them as his own. He was taught. He's not saying who taught him. He encountered ideas that were surely considered unpalatable in the academy. He heard things and then made them consumable. As a white man, he has sufficient privilege to be able to say some of what he's saying and still keep his job.

"Well, one piece of evidence might be the course catalogue of the University of Texas at Austin. If you open that course catalogue what do you see reflected? Do you really see reflected an equal valuing of knowledge from all ;parts of the world and all people in the world? Or do you see a valuing of the knowledge that comes out of Europe, out of white northern Europe, especially? In n other words, what's reflected in the way in which we educate our young people? It's a reflection I think of the belief still that what came out of Europe the politics, the art, the culture is still superior to that knowledge that comes from the rest of the world. But that might be an institutional feature. There's also a kind of unconscious way we think that can be revealed in research. Take for instance take the research that is done on hiring practices..."

...even in academia...

Now, if he implicated himself personally as a white amerikkkan male academic who probably has tenure...we'd be cooking with gas.

A facebook message sent to the members of ABORIGINAL WOMEN PROTEST DUMP SITE 41.

2009-07-10T17:23:00.001-04:00

Subject: PEOPLE DESPERATELY NEEDED

On Monday, July 6th, 2009 it was decided that a blockade at all entrances to Site 41 would be erected . This is in response to the Federal Government NOT taking action to protect the natural resources of First Nations People. The Federal Government and the Province of Ontarion BOTH have a duty to consult First Nations people in terms of land and natural resources.

A Certificate of Approval for Dump Site 41 should never have been issued without first consulting the surrounding First Nations as it will adversely affect the drinking water supplies of Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay. It also has the potential to adversely affect the whole eco-system of Central Ontario. This water has been proven to be the purest in the World. This is a resource the needs to be protected.

Facts,
-We know all liners leak and this WILL POLLUTE OUR WATER
-We know the Province of Ontario, specifically the Ministry of Environment is in bed with the County of Simcoe and this is CORRUPTION ON THESE TWO GOVERNING BODIES
-We know the ALOT of people stand to make ALOT of money of this landfill site
-We know that there are plans for an integrated waste management system
-WE KNOW WE NEED TO STOP THIS NOW!

THIS IS A PERMANENT BLOCKADE UNTIL THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, SPECIFICALLY PRIME MINISTER STEPHEN HARPER INTERVENES AND REVOKES THE CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL FOR DUMP SITE 41.

We desperately need people to help us man gates. This is a peaceful blockade without the use of weapons, drugs or alcohol. We encourage families to attend and sit on the side of the road by the cedar trail out of harms way of passing motorists. Gates are blocked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

At this point, we know there are negotiations between the County of Simcoe and the OPP, however, because of the demographics of people and the amount of people there they have taken no action to intervene. As long as we remain peaceful and keep our numbers up, the more of a chance we have at winning this battle.

I hope to see you all at the Gates of Site 41.

Sincerely,
Vicki Monague

then there some clarification...

CORRECTION!

The Federal Government needs to intervene with the Province of Ontario and have the Certificate of Approval revoked on the basis that First Nations people WERE NOT CONSULTED and under the basis that the Federal Government has a duty to protect our natural resources, including water.

THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE BEEN ASKING OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF CANADA FOR THE PAST 67 DAYS OF PROTESTING AT SITE 41.

As stated in many previous updates, we all know that the Province of Ontario, specifically the Ministry of Environment are the culprits who issued the Certificate of Approval for the County of Simcoe Landfill Site 41.

Dear darkaughta...

2009-07-10T17:08:00.018-04:00

...I know you're not feeling a hundred percent right at this moment.

I realize you've taken a bit of a beating at the hands of people who clearly do not love, care for or understand you.

Please remember, this is part of what it means to wander and to seek.

We both know that us exiles end up in the strangest places, interacting with the oddest folks, encountering cultures that are mostly alien to who we are.

You do this all the time, girlfriend. This is what you seem to want for yourself, that constant searching for experiences outside your ken. It seems to drive you. You hunger for it.

Encountering ways of being that you don't get or that you find painful or uncomfortable will always be part of your journeys. As a result no one you meet is ever going to do things like relationship or friendship quite in the same way you do.

The overlap, your ways with theirs will ignite and energize you. But these frontier places are also tectonic and volatile. Interior land masses will tend to collide explosively, riding up one over the other.

Collision can mean sweatsalivajuicesemenfleshpassionjoy.

But sadly, it can also bring misunderstanding, miscommunication, assumptions, fear and even pain.

I know you.

I know how you move.

I know you're feeling it right...now - the effects of your latest frontier collision/encounter.

There was pleasure. Much. You claimed it. Revelled in it. Wrote it. Spoke it. Held it. Touched it. Full abandon.

But now there is...head shaking, waste, avoidance, silence, turning away, shit, loss.

I see you trying to claim it.

I see you trying to not regret it.

I see you trying to make sense of it, madly yet pointlessly rubic's cubing it.

I see you trying to not run away from it even as every impulse tells you to scrape the sticky foul remnant stench off the bottom of your shoe.

I see you trying to share space with it.

It...

It rips.

It tears.

It bleeds.

It cuts.

It embarrasses.

It abandons.

It touches corechildpasthurt.

It...

Is fucking work.

darkdaughta, I feel how difficult this work is right now. You're wondering if you really need to stray, trek, travel so far from "home" in order to find the ones you seek.

We both know that even in the midst of your hurt, your bruised ego, your annoyance, your doubt, your anger, the answer for us is still a resounding "YES!"

Yes.

You and I will continue.

You will feel whatever it is you need to feel right now.

You will complain about the unfairness of things.

You will curl your lip disdainfully at the thought of easy going, mindless, patriarchal pretties who do not ask questions or challenge, who instead compete and indirectly aggress.

You will try to make it about another lost and tormented middle passage sib's willful stupidity and about her ability to inflict pain.

You will try to ignore his culpability and then...time and time again return to basic yet difficult truths about who he is and what he chooses...you will force yourself to see unavoidable facts that implicate him in the mess and call for him to be accountable, communicative and clear.

You will bargain with fate and reality.

You will fantasize and tell yourself little white lies.

You will pretend.

You will struggle.

You will tantrum.

You will moan.

You will masturbate frustratedly and cum furiously.

You will sleep in and hide from the light of day.

You will behave like a baby at home and then shower, dress yourself, colour your face and leave the house each and every day looking like a woman on a mission...because you are.

You have a mission.

You Risk.

You Dream.

You Seek.

In time you will set whatever boundaries are necessary to offer you increased peace of mind and distance from their world and ways.

As you do, just remember you are special to me. You are deeply loved, profoundly understood, heard and held securely from within. Nothing about that changes.

Go.

Seek.

Find.

Your friend and constant companion,

darkdaughta.

gonna go chain smoke lung cancer sticks now...

The School of the Amerikkkas Watch on Honduras...

2009-07-10T16:16:00.000-04:00

Dear darkdaughta,

I write to you today from troubled Honduras.

For the past several days, our delegation has been meeting with the people here who are struggling to peacefully resist the military coup that recently took place. Yesterday we stood with our partners at the U.S. embassy, demanding that the U.S. stop training Honduran soldiers, withdraw its ambassador from the country and pull all American troops out of bases there. You can help us continue the Honduras solidarity work. One of the members of this delegation has generously pledged to match up to $5,000 of your donations.

You have probably already been working hard to help restore democracy in Honduras. Thank you! SOA Watch helped organize a rally with twenty of our partner organizations at the Department of State and many of you joined demonstrations here in DC and around the country.

In just a few days, SOA Watch supporters like you sent tens of thousands of messages to call for the unconditional reinstatement of President Zelaya. I want to personally thank all of those who took the time to send these messages. Now you can take the next step. SOA Watch rapidly shifted gears as a result of the coup and you can contribute to keep our activities going.

I want to let you know that we've been in touch with members of Congress and mobilized support for legislation condemning the coup. We're also helping to host a delegation of Honduran human rights leaders next week. A delegation of human rights organizations will be meeting with the Department of State in a conference that we arranged. To stand in solidarity with the people of Honduras is of the utmost importance, and with your support we can continue.

I've been inspired by our allies here in Honduras who have put so much at risk to defend their democracy, and I'm proud that SOA Watch is able to stand with them throughout their struggle. I hope that you will support us during this crucial time.

Thank you,

Father Roy Bourgeois, MM
SOA Watch

I liked the chorus for this song...

2009-07-09T15:03:00.005-04:00

So I tweaked it...The original "That's not my name" can't be embedded. It's here...

My version is called...

Those aren't my names

I read lots of books just to get me along
It's a gift to me and I never bite my tongue and I
I keep speaking and always be resisting
People around gotta find some new ways now

Power games, everyday the same
Don't wanna be oppressed
Just listen to me, oh yes
I write it all down again and again
But with everything considered
They forget my names ames, ames, ames

They call me bitch
They call me danger
They call me liar
They call me slut
Those aren't my names
Those aren't my names
Those aren't my names
Those aren't my names

They call me loud girl
But I'm a smart girl
Maybe a weird girl
Never the same
Those aren't my names
Those aren't my names
Those aren't my names
Those aren't my names

Don't play the game, they expect me to fall
I'm the one who stands back against the wall
Keep defying, their words they keep me fighting
Getting pissed off, no sitting on the fence now

Not alone all the time but I
Lock myself away
Try to listen to myself now
Although I'm dressed up, passing and all with
Everything considered
They don't know my names (ames, ames, ames)

They call me crazy
They call me danger
They call me problem
They call me harsh
Those aren't my names
Those aren't my names
Those aren't my names
Those aren't my names

They call me bad girl
Never the kind girl
Don't tow the line girl
Never the same
Those aren't my names
Those aren't my names
Those aren't my names
Those aren't my names

Are you calling me "wifey"?
Are you calling me minion?
Are you calling me "low class"?
Are you calling me "stupid"?

Context supplied via Code Pink...

2009-07-09T14:09:00.003-04:00

July 9, 2009

Dear Tenacious,

As the media shines its spotlight on the death of one celebrity this week, so many other profound losses go unreported-particularly those civilians killed by unmanned US drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Since 2006, unmanned drone attacks have killed at least 14 Al Qaeda leaders and approximately 700 civilians--a 50:1 ratio of innocent victims to targeted enemies (watch Brave New Films' latest videos on civilian casualties and the impact of war on women). Since the news isn't covering this, we need to be the media ourselves.

Won't you write a letter to the editor? You can use our template or craft your own words of outrage to educate your community about drones and encourage others to speak out against their use and the tragedy and destabilization they bring to the region. Click here to get started (it will only take 3 minutes)!

And spread the message to your online community!
Tweet this: When Drones Attack ... http://twitpic.com/9pyqa
or this: Is the US flaming extremism with its drones? http://bit.ly/BHfs7
or this: Generals agree...ground the drones! http://bit.ly/RB2ee
Facebook status update: When drones attack...civilians die. http://twitpic.com/9pyqa

This week also saw the death of war criminal Robert McNamara, who lied to us into war in Vietnam. He later regretted masterminding our military involvement there, but that does nothing to heal the deep pain left in its wake. The death of seven more US soldiers in Afghanistan continues to highlight the futility of war and its horrific costs. Afghanistan and Pakistan are now Obama's wars, wars he will likely one day regret. Like Vietnam, they are wrong.

Generals and other military officials, including David Kilcullen, former adviser to General David Petraeus, have spoken out against the US use of drones. "They've given rise to a feeling of anger that coalesces the population around the extremists and leads to spikes of extremism," Kilcullen said before the House Armed Services Committee. Yet the US State Department continues to deny the attacks and our tax dollars continue to fund them! Read more about what Generals, CIA and others have been saying about drones and stability in the region.

We need to raise awareness about these inhumane, unjust military practices, funded by our taxes. Some of our brothers and sisters in the peace movement are putting not just their words, but their bodies, on the line to stop drones. On July 13, CODEPINK is partnering with other activists, including the illustrious Father Louis Vitale, to hold a Ground the Drones! vigil at the gates of Creech Air Force Base near Indian Springs, NV, where the drones are operated via remote control. To find out more click here and follow us on twitter and read our blogs!

Thank you for joining us in saying, loudly, "There's no place for drones or war in creating peace and dignity in our world!"

The voice of Prisoner 88794 - Cynthia McKinney...

2009-07-09T13:51:00.003-04:00

This is her speaking from prison...

This is her speaking yesterday after her release...

Rethink Afghanistan documentary...

2009-07-09T13:39:00.002-04:00

I don't have all the parts to this doc. But here's what I've found so far...

part three:

part four:

part five:

Neither kkkanada day nor the fourth of july...

2009-07-06T10:51:00.002-04:00

I posted this over on okc yesterday. It was quick and to the point...

I realize I neither celebrated kkkanada day nor wished any amerikkkans a happy fourth of july.

This was purposeful.

I did however have conversation, as I always do, with my daughter about what it means to wantonly celebrate the theft of land, the abuse of its peoples and genocidal murder that continues today.

I reminded her that although we, as Black folks, are low level colonized settlers, we do not, will not celebrate blood shed and domination.

That's just disgusting.

Picture in your minds for one moment, that scene in The Matrix where Neo and Morpheus are poised to fight. Neo holds out his hand and beckons Morpheus forward.

This is me saying, if you need to attempt to debate with me. Just bring it.

But truthfully, I won't even be here to watch any who attempt to mindlessly defend the horrific...the indefensible.

I'm going on a road trip across the blood soaked land. Toodles! :)

I think the new header photo will serve me well for the foreseeable future...

2009-07-03T11:34:00.002-04:00

Papi took it last weekend on Saturday night of Pride weekend when we were roaming. Thanks, Paps. :)

I guess not posting the words was pretty melodramatic...

2009-07-02T21:14:00.002-04:00

I've sort of done this split thing.
I post here mostly about politics. I post on okcupid about things related to my (lack of) love life. And I post on facebook about stoopid shite...but I will publish political information there from time to time.

There's bleed over, though.

This is what I posted on okc today...

Today - 1:47pm
I will get better...

Last night I went for an eating and then walking date. Both of us, it seems, tend to love with ease. We talked about meeting people who do not willingly develop emotional connections and about how dirty, mutant and weak we end up feeling when in close proximity to people who are emotionally challenged, when we find ourselves loving or at least attempting to lovingly interact with people who do not know how to let themselves feel themselves.

I love with ease.

I like it.

I don't pretend not to.

I don't hide it.

I developed an affection. I became extremely accustomed to someone being in my orbit, being in my home, being in my family, being in my bed, being in my life...being in my heart.

Now I'm unpacking what that meant and means for me.

The excavation, the taking of responsibility for what I chose to pursue even as I saw the mess, even as I understood their mess...it's tortuously frustrating, painful, annoying, embarassing, crazy making.

I keep wanting to assign blame. I keep remembering that I share responsibility for the good, the bad, the odd, the uncomfortable, the difficult, the mess...the beauty.

Personal accountability. That's a real bummer. Unaccountable victimhood would be so much easier. :)

I feel buoyant and light when I think about what he actually brought to me and seminalson that was so fucking wondrous. The oddly configured, bent, exuberant, wildly explorational energy he brought with him, clicked with ours...clicked...serving as catalyst in particular ways that we wholeheartedly treasure and are still reveling in. We both have much affection for him still.

I feel tearful and deprived sometimes, though. I feel the loss. I feel as if there is a hole...something important missing...someone special...gone.

I can't sleep in my bed right now. It looks vacant. The sheets trigger memory. I'm buying new sheets and comforter. Different colour. Different pattern. Different smell. Different feel. Different memories.

"darkdaughta, why are you so intense?"

"I dunno. I'm just hardwired that way. That's how the universe made me." :)

I'm really glad I feel things.

I'm really glad I'm in here fully feeling with me. :)

_____

I've got mood music. I thought I'd share the words, too...

Lost in time I can't count the words
I said when I thought they went unheard
All of those harsh thoughts so unkind
'cos I wanted you

And now I sit here I'm all alone
So here sits a bloody mess, tears fly home
A circle of angels, deep in war
'cos I wanted you

Weak as I am, no tears for you
Weak as I am, no tears for you
Deep as I am, I'm no ones fool
Weak as I am

So what am I now I'm love last home
I'm all of the soft words I once owned
If I opened my heart, there'd be no space for air
'cos I wanted you

Weak as I am, no tears for you
Weak as I am, no tears for you
Deep as I am, I'm no ones fool
Weak as I am

In this tainted soul
In this weak young heart
Am I too much for you

In this tainted soul
In this weak young heart
Am I too much for you

In this tainted soul
In this weak young heart
Am I too much for you

Weak as I am
Weak as I am
Weak as I am
Weak as I am, am, am

Weak as I am
Am I too much for you
Weak as I am
Am I too much for you
Weak as I am
Am I too much for you
Weak as I am
Am I too much for you
Weak as I am

Stand in Solidarity with the People of Honduras...

2009-07-02T20:51:00.000-04:00

This I got via the School of the Amerikkkas Watch mailing list...

Stand in Solidarity with the People of Honduras

Take Action: Click here to send a message about the military coup to the State Department
The School of the Americas graduate-led military overthrow of the democratically elected government of President Zelaya is in its fifth day and the resistance by the Honduran social movements continues to stand strong despite the increasing repression. Yesterday, the Honduran Congress announced a suspension of citizens' rights in Honduras for 24 hours. Citizens may not organize or otherwise congregate for any reason, and homes may be entered by government forces without permit. The curfew that has been in place since Sunday has been extended for 6 more days.

SOA Watch is in constant contact with our friends in Honduras, who are courageously defending their democracy against the coup. The social movements are resisting the military takeover through protests, occupations and strikes. Thousands are again taking to the streets right now for a march from the Obelisk to the center of the city and to the Congress building. Repression is expected to occur. The Honduran democracy protesters are calling on the international community to speak up in defense of real and direct democracy, for life, justice, liberty, dignity and peace.

SOA Watch activists are among the organizers of solidarity actions against the military coup throughout the Americas and some have traveled to Honduras in the past few days to stand with the Honduran people. The national SOA Watch staff is in close communication with activists in Honduras. We are engaged in media outreach around the coup and we are networking with partner organizations to defend democracy in Honduras. The Washington, DC staff took part in protests at the White House, the Honduran embassy, the Organization of American States and the State Department.

Witnessing the determination of our friends in Honduras, we believe that the coup can still be reversed and that President Zelaya will return to Honduras as the rightful president. However, for that to happen, we also have to step up the pressure on decision makers here in the United States. Click here to download a flier to mobilize your community.

Call the office of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and ask that Secretary Clinton takes action for the unconditional reinstatement of Honduran President Zelaya. Call 202-647-5548. Click here to send a message online.

The Pentagon claim -- that the School of the Americas / Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation instills respect for democracy and civilian leadership while teaching combat skills to Latin American soldiers -- has once again been disproved by the actions of the institute's graduates. The SOA/ WHINSEC needs to be shut down without delay. Despite the decision by the U.S. Southern Command to suspend interactions between the U.S. and the Honduran militaries, Honduran soldiers have not been withdrawn from the School of the Americas (SOA/ WHINSEC). SOA/ WHINSEC trained militaries continue to violate human rights - not only in Honduras but in Colombia and other parts of Latin America.

Video: Father Roy Bourgeois on Democracy Now!
Generals Who Led Honduras Military Coup Trained at the School of the Americas

Romeo Vasquez, a general who led the military coup in Honduras against President Manuel Zelaya, received training at the US School of the Americas. The SOA has trained more than 60,000 soldiers, many of whom have returned home and committed human rights abuses, torture, extrajudicial execution and massacres. General Vasquez attended the SOA in 1976 and 1984. The head of the Air Force, General Luis Javier Prince Suazo, also studied there in 1996. Watch the interview with Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of the SOA Watch.

I'm mourning something...someone...yes, pure melodrama :)

2009-07-02T14:30:00.000-04:00

Bail out PEOPLE not disgusting corporations...

2009-06-30T17:57:00.001-04:00

A CALL FOR A GLOBAL MOBILIZATION
AGAINST THE G20 SUMMIT IN PITTSBURGH, PA., U.S.
SEPTEMBER 24 AND 25, 2009 ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE – BUT WE MUST FIGHT FOR IT!
BAIL OUT THE PEOPLE
JOBS & SOCIAL NEEDS--NOT WAR AND GREED
The third G20 summit is going to be in Pittsburgh, Pa., on September 24 and 25, 2009. The challenge before the movements for economic and social justice, as well as the antiwar movement, is that the next meeting of the powers that govern the world economy be met with a powerful mass mobilization demanding that jobs and social needs, and not war and greed, prevail--here in the U.S., and across the world.
The G20 summits are taking place in response to the greatest worldwide economic crisis since the 1930s. However, the purpose of these high-level meetings of governments and bankers is not to rescue the people of the world from depression-level unemployment, evictions, homelessness, poverty, social and economic inequality, and war. These summits are about fixing the economic and financial order that puts profits before people--and fixing that system by creating more poverty, misery and suffering.
The last G20 summit, held in London in early April, was met with massive protests both in London and throughout Europe. Now that the G20 is coming to the U.S., it is up to activists and organizations in the U.S. to take up the challenge of uniting and working together to organize a mobilization to Pittsburgh during the summit.
Many had expected New York City to be the location of next G20. Yet once it was confirmed that Pittsburgh would be the summit location, organizers immediately began preliminary logistical planning for a mass mobilization there in September.
Organizing for the G20 summit in Pittsburgh was the central theme of a People’s Economic Summit meeting in New York City on May 31. Consistent with the theme of that summit, “A New World is Urgently Needed–But we must Fight for it,” the more than 200 activists and 35 organizations in attendance agreed to work tirelessly over the summer to expand the network of grassroots activists and organizations to bring thousands of protestors to Pittsburgh.
Activists at the People's Economic Summit also agreed that the response to the next G20 should not be confined to the U.S., and that there should be a global response to the summit. Accordingly, activists and organizations across the world will be urged to endorse this call for protest against the G20 summit meeting in Pittsburgh, and to organize globally coordinated protests during the summit in September.
The potential for massive global mobilization in September is truly infinite. Together, let’s begin the work required to realize that powerful potential.
Another world is possible, but we must fight for it.
The Bail Out The People Movement
What you can do:

Endorse: http://www.bailoutpeople.org/septg20endorse.shtml

Spread the word - forward this message to friends, fellow activists, community organizers, trade unionists, and student organizations.� Ask them to endorse and participate.

Donate to help with organizing expenses: http://bailoutpeople.org/donate.shtml

Volunteer: http://www.bailoutpeople.org/septg20volorgcents.shtml

Become a local organizer or organizing center: http://www.bailoutpeople.org/septg20volorgcents.shtml

Bail Out the People Movement
Solidarity Center
55 W. 17th St. #5C
New York, NY 10011
212.633.6646
www.BailOutPeople.org
Email: bailoutpeople.org/cmnt.shtml

Subway ride...

2009-06-29T22:03:00.001-04:00

So on the weekend we were traveling between Pride and Pedestrian Sundays which is where we can count on space to let the toddler run free without having to hold his hand and keep him really close.

We're on the subway and the train is just pulling into our station. Around us are a group of international homestay students. The city is overrun with them. Japanese students who are really cool come year round. The summers mostly bring a lot of european students.

Funny how europeans always complain about boorish amerikkkans who visit their ancestral lands on vacation. Really ironic. I've never met such rude, entitled, boorish, cliquish, narrow, undereducated children as the children of affluent europeans sent abroad to do homestay.

We've had a few of them stay with us. Continental spanish and german mostly. They don't stay long. We sort of don't get along...water and oil. And we're not the hired help. They always seem to have difficulty assimilating that information.

We much prefer the japanese students who do not assume that everything will be as per their specifications. They are the absolute antithesis of obnoxious. I always love it when they come to visit. I make wild foods for them, teach them cuss words and just generally attempt to bend their english study into a more fascinating form.

I remember our one friend who stayed with us for six weeks and then continued to stay connected after that. I told her about stolen land and explained to her what exactly north amerikkka is...a settler state built on theft and murder. When she had to do a project on kkkanadian foods, we researched first nations foods because those are the only foods that are actually native to this part of the world. French fries, hamburgers, macaroni and cheese, steak and potatoes, roast beef...none of those, I explained are actually native to this continent.

Then there was the time she asked me to explain "kick...ass..." :) That was fun. :)

But I digress...

This particular group on the subway were spanish speaking. It was of course easy to identify them linguistically. Who doesn't recognize spanish when it's spoken?

Papi and I move to get off with Shmolee in his stroller. I should explain that I'm wearing a corset, jeans, sleeveless blouse unbuttoned to expose cleavage yum. :) Tall kinky yellow 'do specifically envisioned for the weekend is probably part of what attracted their attention.

Two of the boys, they look like maybe late teens glance up at me as I stand with Shmolee's in his stroller.

Me. Spanish study from grade nine to second year university.

A giggling, clearly discernable conversation ensues between them. They don't gesticulate much in my direction. But it's clear they're discussing what/who they're seeing.

I don't get to use my spanish at all. But I really like languages. And I can still recognize individual words even if the train is full. Still I don't bother to try and follow what they're saying at all. Nonetheless, a word anyone with even half a brain would be able to understand, jumps out at me clearly. One of them uses it with confidence.

Puta.

giggles...

I turn and look at him making a loud tsk, tsk, tsk sound with my tongue. Loud enough for him and his friend to hear. Loud enough to attract their attention. Loud enough for them to know I'm going to engage with them.

They glance up and I look him in the eye smiling indulgently: "You called me a puta."

They both look flabbergasted. I smile at them in a way that lets them know they're silly little morons of no consequence.

Then, to let them know that in a city as large and heterogenous as Toronto, they might want to think about what they say even in their own language, I say: "You should be careful. You should be really careful."

They're lucky that they encountered me who was only passingly interested in humiliating them rather than someone else who might seriously physically harm them for being little pissant asshole tourists. :)

The subway doors open and I walk away with my family leaving them to hopefully adjust the ways they choose to move through my city. :)

How does sexual orientation work...not so sure anymore...

2009-06-29T10:08:00.021-04:00

So Pride weekend was amazing.

It was better than amazing. It was the best Pride I've ever had I'd have to say.

Ironic...
No girlfriends...not even any dyke friends to hang out with.
I spent time with another woman I've known off and on for almost twenty years. We met when I was a young Black lesbian who wore men's clothes, shoes and underwear instead of an older queer femme mama with two children and a man...whose membership card has long lapsed.

Friend and I strolled and had conversation.

I told her that I've been thinking of "coming out" (probably a misnomer) as heterosexual. I think my relationship to these communities, even to this event, definitely to my own sexuality has morphed to the point where I had to admit I was wondering if a name change was necessary.

As I strolled through the neighbourhood, I spoke almost entirely with men who were responding positively, adoringly, interactively to the way I had chosen to present.

I appreciated their appreciation so forthrightly voiced, their come hither glances, their ready smiles.

The wimmin, my "sisters"...
Some of them flat out looked and then attempted to ignore me.
Some looked on scandalized.
Some watched energetically cowering, uncertain, needing to stay at a distance.

The wimmin who did respond favourably, interactively, with fascination and voice and positive energy, I interacted with responding in kind, talking with them, thanking them for being loving, smiling with them, laughing with them.

But they were such a small minority.

I was part of the problem.
You see...
I had come dressed as a massive amazonian physically and aesthetically projecting fierceness and alien/ness, utilizing their assimilationist and sanitized beliefs against them. To be safe for so many of them is to not present as too strange, too odd, too queer. If you insist on presenting as openly, happily, powerfully strange, odd, queer they are taught and they teach the young that others will be fearful, intimidated and threatened. Life experience, mine and theirs shows this to be true in most cases.

But still...
when you come "home" still passing, still woefully full of internalized isms forcing you to function completely on the down-low, still banking your fierce flames, presenting as nonthreatening, I have to wonder, why even bother to come at all? Why bother to come in from the cold if you bring the chill in with you?

Knowing how many of my former allies and friends move, knowing how not comfortable with overtly expressed female power unbridled they are, I've made a habit of using their own internalized fears and discomfort against them in order to create safe passage for myself as I've walked among them.

In all these years out, in, passing or not, presenting full throttle hasn't failed me yet. :)

On the weekend it worked like a charm. Mostly any folks I've had unh...interactions with in the past stayed away and I was free to roam as I wanted.

Come to think of it only two Old Ones, ones who were here before I came out, caribbean wimmin, came up to remind me that I am now primarily not amazon, clearly not of the queer nation, but instead Patriarchal possession and "Mother".

one of them: "How's the baby?"
me looking down on them from fairly high up: "How are you?"

They mouthed some other words that had no power over me. I remembered that brief period in my youth when I had understood them and their clique as possessing more knowledge than I did, as being more comfortable with their Black lesbianness.

As I watched these two wimmin who are understood as powerhouses in certain circles be so small and petty while standing before me, I realized that although they've managed to accrue much power, money, respect and status, they were in some ways more lost and confused than the Black dykes who came directly after them.

They had less supports. They had less books to draw from. They wrote books and I read them but found precious little in them that spoke to me.

They were really good at organizing, though. That was their special scooby power. They could and still can bring people together...what folks do after they bring them together is a whole other story.

I am thankful that they were here writing the little bits they did understand and struggling to make links even if those links never actually crossed over into how they lived as out Black lesbians in certain crucial ways.

I'm glad they were present, treacherous, insecure, hierarchical, mean spirited, insulting, pompous, classist (some of it with me, the vast majority of that shit with others while I watched and made mental notes) and out about all of it so that they could serve as an example of what not to do when attempting to be out and live proudly.

I am glad their lives lived without much safety or acknowledgement of the tons of coalition work they attempted to do in such close proximity to oppressive Black heterosexually and patriarchally dominated, classed communities showed me clearly that it would make no sense for me to waste my energies there. I would only be ignored, spat upon, generally disrespected, work and writings erased and downplayed as has been the case with many of them, in ways that would never be openly talked about...until after they were dead and people were gathered at the steelworkers union hall to try and make them having been left dead for days in their apartments by themselves during the holiday season, look less...disgusting.
Disgusting.

I didn't feel sad seeing those two wimmin. I only felt on red alert for about two seconds, though. But now that I sit and type I think about what it means to live so close to such intimately expressed community based domination and about how it can suck the very marrow out of a person's bones.

So sad. They are not my sisters. In fact, they were never my sisters.

That interaction went as well as could be expected.

Another caribbean woman heterosexual, aged before her time who I thought tried to be a friend at one point but who then bowed to Black supposedly artsy intelligensia community pressures that had already demanded my blood in the form of shunning. She, like many others I've know over the years, is much more interested in external validation and group acceptance. I understand that in communities filled with networking freelancers, it's important to follow the herd or you won't get paid. I understand. :) Well, she said "hi, t.j." in passing as I was adjusting my boots. I did not turn to greet her but simply threw a quick hullo over my shoulder and went back to what I was interested in doing.

There were other semi interactions. But nothing that upset or threw off my equilibrium. So the weekend went well.

Suffice it to say I did not spend my time wrapped in woman energy. Did not crave it. Did not miss it, as I have my own direct line via mySELF.

I think that was why I started wondering what exactly I am clinging to at this point in terms of membership and belonging. I ran into a few individual entities, people who I could spend some time with and talk. I described the world I presently inhabit. I talked about spending most of my time outside queer spaces. I talked about developing a modicum of comfort dealing with the denizens of the outside world and about learning to move cloaked yet still conscious.

I said that I didn't feel much in the way of kinship to the old queer community center now turned into a sterling beacon of corporatized, sanitized architectural renovation. In fact I howled in disgust when I saw it and afterwards when I spoke about it I screamed in horror.

I think I blacked out when Papi told me that the Executive Director of Pride this year was a straight woman. Maybe he got his facts wrong. If he didn't. Hip, hip, hooray! How far we've come! I'm so pleased!

As I strolled and smiled broadly for the cameras...of people who asked politely, who addressed me in a way that showed they understood me as human and therefore worthy of respect, I looked around and realized I didn't need this place anymore. I didn't need to make community here in order to ground.

With all the community organizers and really small independent queer business owners sort of faded into the background in ways that highlighted the presence of big business, I realize Pride was more emptied fun than anything else.

Pride wasn't a defiant experience for me.

I don't need to gather in numbers in order to feel powerful or to fight the power. I can do that all by myself...and I do.

So yeah...I can't say I had some wonderful community based, grassroots dykely experience. In fact, I came there to that place and time and found myself being mySELF, way more wrapped up in male energy, vibesin' off testosterone as I usually do, as I always have, really.

Sexually and socially I prefer men. :)

The male energy I like best is queered, bent, odd, unrepentantly sexual, playful...

I've been having crushes on gay men and bisexual men for years. I don't think I ever got the hang of successfully cruising them or getting them into bed with me. I think I lost patience and hope in my twenties when it was clear that a lovely queer male lover would not suddenly materialize out of thin air and present himself to me. In hindsight I really think I should have stuck to it. But I did not even understand that there were wimmin like me.

The closest relation as far as most people understand would be the fag hag. And I was that for a while. Pretty, pleasing, flitting, flirtatious, decorative flower. Yeah, I was that for a while.

But that wasn't me. It wasn't quite what I was after. I have a better idea now. Of course I'm still no closer to actually having what I want. I'd have to say that one brief fling with an absolutely pretty and energetic yet conflicted bisexual boy has put a lot of things into perspective for me in some ways, though.

I'm clearer.

Pride,
It was sweet. I danced in the streets and in parks at Pride and at Pedestrian Sundays to Samba beats. I felt power course through my body. I felt graceful and sexy and filled with laughter and hope and promise and horniness and irreverence. :)
I have...
So many pretty pictures of lovely men and boys flashing in my mind's eye.
And all the while...
I'm trying to reconfigure my relationship to my queer nations.
Hoping...
To again articulate this existence, these desires in ways that offer me more conscientized life journey space.
I think I'll be happier and have a better understanding of my place when I do.

This a notification I got via a facebook group I'm a member of...

2009-06-29T09:54:00.002-04:00

Ashley Nikki Baker sent a message to the members of We Will Never Forget Gwen Araujo. <3

--------------------

Subject: This is important.. I just received a message regarding Teish Green.

If you don't know her story, here it is.

"I just wanted to call your attention to the murder of Lateisha Green, a 22-year old African American transwoman who, last November, was shot with a rifle at close range while sitting in her car with her younger gay brother, Mark. They had attended a party, some guests started yelling at them, and Dwight DeLee is accused of shooting them with a rifle. The trial starts 7/13 in Syracuse, NY and will be tried as a hate crime. This is an especially important trial (apart the obvious tragedy of losing Teish and trauma to her family and friends) because there are a large number of African-American transwomen murdered each year. This one was a classic hate crime... it had nothing whatsoever to do with sexwork, and the accused murderer didn't even know Teish or her brother... he shot them because he was uncomfortable around them."

PLEASE JOIN THE GROUP BELOW AND SHOW YOUR LOVE, RESPECT, AND SUPPORT.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=91245428796

Michael Jackson...he was a nasty little pedophile...contextualized...

2009-06-28T15:39:00.001-04:00

I wrote this note to someone who had written a journal post on the dating site about Michael Jackson being a pedophile...

I read what you wrote. It was truthful...in a limited context.

What I wrote about him in my journal was tinged by a lot of things that incorporate what you understand as well as some things that you couldn't possibly understand.

He was a pedophile. That's clear. That's true. He touched and probably fucked or at least attempted to fuck people's children.

There is no getting around that. It's disgusting. It's awful. That is true.

Because I look at things in layered ways I can acknowledge that he was other things, too.

He was still a nasty little pedophile.

In a country like yours where much of the culture is informed by hollywood and the music industry, the pop music industry...where much money is made by popular music and where popular music has been so defined by Black people's unwitting contribution to that form via blues, jazz and the early roots of rock 'n roll, as a Black dance innovator and singer, his contribution was/is significant.

He was still a nasty little pedophile.

As the roots of the musics your people like to listen to and play, the roots of even metal and punk, are obscured by a virulent ahistoricism that seems to run rampant, it make perfect sense that it would be necessary to obliterate consciousness of where those musics were born.

He was still a nasty little pedophile.

But y'know what, bucky? :)

Jerry Lee Lewis was clearly a pedophile and a perpetrator of incest and he is hailed as a musical genius. People usually mention him marrying his (I think fourteen year old) cousin. But they when he dies (or is he already dead?) I doubt they will be foaming at the mouth calling for his blood.

Michael Jackson was a nasty little pedophile and I wouldn't have trusted him around my children.

There is a way that people hold Black folks to particularly rigorous lines of conduct, lines of conduct that they tend to waffle over when it comes to white people, especially those who are considered powerful or famous.

Michael Jackson was a nasty little pedophile and if he had touched my children I would have killed him with my bare hands.

I just thought about OJ Simpson. Did you know that just after OJ was publicly humiliated and tried in the media for killing his (white) wife, William Shatner's wife who was just about to divorce him and take probably a good portion of the wealth he had accrued, was found suspiciously dead in a pool?

William, who she was trying to divorce was of course, completely distraught, but never suspected of killing her so he could keep all his money. I saw that. It was...fascinating. :)

Michael Jackson...
was still a nasty little pedophiliac musical genius who was horribly abused as a child, who comes from an entire peopling who were verbally, physically, sexually, emotionally abused for a few hundred years.

The perpetrators were never charged or held responsible.

Their descendants remember that Africans were enslaved, but do not understand exactly what that brutal and inhuman enslavement entailed in excruciating detail:

"here fuck your fucking sister/aunt/cousin/mother, I think the two of you will make good babies for my plantation. when you're done the two of you had better get back to work."

"here, suck my white cock if you want to have any breakfast today. as a matter of fact, suck all our white cocks and then get back to work."

"i don't care if you're pregnant, put your belly in that hole in the ground so my foreman can whip you senseless for not working hard enough. i think he might like to stick it in you when he's done the hundred lashes. then you'll be needing to get back to work"

"oh, your daughter is ten? perfect, she's fertile. i will fuck her first and then my men will take turns with her. get back to work. when i'm finished with her for today, she'll be ready to get back to work"

I am the descendant of that fucking disgusting, abusive mess.
My parents are the descendants of that fucking disgusting, abusive mess.
As are their parents and their parents before them right on back to when...?

Michael Jackson is a descendant of that fucking disgusting, abusive mess.
He was clearly fucking insane and dangerous.
He was raised by people who were clearly fucking insane and dangerous who managed to mask how insane and dangerous they were so well that amerikkka showered love and respect down on them and their dancing puppies...unh...children for decades...the children they raised in the finest abusive style, as they were no doubt raised, as their parents were no doubt raised, as their parents were no doubt raised...
as I trace the nasty fucking mess right back to...
who...?
:)
Michael Jackson was a fucking disgusting, messed up, abusive little perpetrator.
I appreciate all the white people who are willing to describe and speak to and cry out against the abuses he perpetrated.

I firmly believe we should get all up in exactly what happened. I do believe that any given day is a fine time to discuss in excruciating detail what actually went on with him/me/us.

Are you prepared for that? I think it would be a good way to get acquainted. :)

Michael Jackson was still a nasty little pedophile. It's just that there is context for everything in our world. Context is so crucial. :)

She asked...

2009-06-28T12:46:00.004-04:00

Last night as Papi and I walked with Shmolee through the late night Pride crowds a south asian woman came up to us and asked if Shmolee was alright.

I looked at her quizzically.

She said that she was worried about him and wondered if he was getting enough air and whether he was hot.

It seemed that the fitted, aerated plastic dome that comes with Shmolee's stroller which we had put on so that there would be a barrier between him and the night air and the smoking crowd was causing her some upset.

It makes him feel secure. Last night he also asked for his blankie. So he had himself wrapped up in that.

I knew that some single queer person with very little experience with children would say something. Later on that night, in fact, I heard some people commenting. Clearly their own lack of child friendliness, combined with a belief that queer spaces are adult spaces, combined with their internalized homophobia led them to believe that queer'd nighttime spaces are inherently not suitable for children.

Who knows what a child might catch?...queerness, AIDS, a cold...

Funny, whenever Papi and I go to nighttime, outdoor events in the city, there are middle class heterosexual patriarchal families with children roaming with babes in strollers, stumbling toddlers just learning how to walk, older children.

Enfolded in power and privilege, these families do tend to roam the night without anyone saying "boo" to them.

Papi and I actually don't bring out children out at night as much as other families we've seen, do. I wish we did more. But two children and two adults, with one child not in a stroller, but who could easily get tired and expect to be carried as she sleeps, is a lot to manage.

So often we'll take turns. One of us goes out and the other stays home with the kids.

Last night Stinkapee was at Ophelia's. So we only had Shmolee who still likes to snuggle in his stroller. Two of us and one toddler out in the night air at Pride was definitely workable.

I wonder what that brown woman saw.

Or rather...
I wonder what the little cunting assumed she was seeing when she encountered me and Papi dressed as we were, in matching black kilts, Papi with his fauxhawk and beard, looking every inch the young'un he is not, me with very diva, bright yellow kinky extensions done in a crazy ass take on a geisha inspired chignon wearing my corset and cleavage looking every inch the tramp I aspire to be.

I wonder who she told herself she saw.

I spoke to her, my annoyance kept in check, voice and words clipped and to the point.

me: How old are you?
her: I'm 30.
me: I'm 41.
she looks surprised.
me: this is my second child.
she stutters and falters.
me: we don't live in a tenement slum. we live off the (name of our extremely trendy, middle-class, very white neighbourhood)
me: have you thought about the racist implications of your brown self trying to talk to my oppressed black self about how well i take care of my child?
her, looking sobered: unh, no, not really, I hadn't.
me, holding her faltering, embarrassed, STOOpid, deflated gaze: well, maybe you should.

Papi and I walk away at a relaxed pace with Shmolee sitting in his stroller still amazed by all the activity he sees around him.