Beep-Beep-Ba-Beep

We interrupt our normal broadcast to bring you: Racism Today in HarborCity (and the US)

First, you have to understand that I ride the train to work every day for 45 minutes in each direction, in this time I eavesdrop, read, read newspapers over people's shoulders, drink my coffee, and sleep. Over this past week, I've been keen on the reading over people's shoulders.

In the little newspaper that they hand out for free they have this column called "The Debate" where they ask three people off the street their opinion on something and write it up with cute little pictures of the poor fools. On Wednesday the question was: "How do you feel about violence in the city?" This is a totally valid question HarborCity has a homicide problem, particularly in poor communities of color where folks are poor, desperate, etc. So here is my beef with the piece.

All three respondents were white, two were students and the third was a business analyst (also all from comp. safe neighborhoods, and under 30) their three responses were:

"I've never felt threatened or intimidated. You just need to be smart about where you go and what time you go there"

"It's not as bad as people make it out to be"

"It's terrible that such a thing can happen in a city where you feel safe. It seems to be centralized in certain neighborhoods"

Ask people from the affected communities. If you don't it's a sham. Oh, those poor people in those poor neighborhoods, I guess they just made a bad choice to live there. This is such a lie. We don't choose where we live, for the most part that is decided the urban geo-econo-politics that surround, envelope, and drown us. Further, do not claim that something you simply don't experience isn't that bad. I think I'm more angry with the choice of people than any one thing they said -- but if you want to start a dialogue about the role of violence in our community, you're shutting it down by printing bullshit like that.

Also, Bush signed the Voting Rights Act this week, to make it effective through a few more shitty elections. The headline I saw was "Bush OKs Voting Rights". This made me laugh, and it made me really sad that that is all he did. He didn't celebrate the Voting Rights Act, or commemorate it, or do anything more than put his rubber stamp on and have some people take some pretty pictures. This is an outrage. If he *actually* cared about the principles of democracy there would have been..... well, nevermind.... I guess democracy was just a dream we had once.


PS. If you can't tell, I'm moving out of my funk, I've got my snarky on, and I'm in steamy, steamy, BigCity hangin' with SIster, Esq. and her partner. These things make me very happy.

Calculations of Self Worth

I know I've been MIA, and it's because I've been in a funk. My insides churning with reformulations, and my mouth tightly shut. I've been disengaging from the world, pulling into myself and trying to figure some stuff out.

So, in the past month, I've picked up my running program again, sent a loved one thousands of miles away, started a new job, and started doing creative writing with some intention. All of these things have made me wonder who I am, what I'm doing, what I'm worth. Not without some anxiety and self-deprecation. I think that all of us have these demons gnawing at us, and I am trying very hard to keep them at bay in my own head.

NewJob is going well. I haven't screwed up royally yet, though I'm inclined to think that it could happen any day. The whole idea of this job, for those who missed the memo, is to figure out whether I like research and economics enough to pursue a Phd in that accursed discipline. The trouble is with the word enough. I feel like I've chosen a path, but I think that I might define anything as 'enough' to not have to admit that academia isn't what I want, because if it isn't that I have no idea what is.

TP left about a week ago. The visit was wonderful -- not without disagreements or hard days, but each of those led to growth, and I miss hir everyday, more than I can quite admit to. There is more to say, but the wheels of my brain are still spinning desperately trying to make sense of my heart.

I went to a writing workshop last week, and wrote and read what I had written. It was wonderful and intense. The format was to receive a fairly open prompt, my favorite was a miniature slinky passed around the group, and then write for 20-30 minutes, and then read. In three hours we did three prompts, and I wrote about: marriage/committment/divorce, body issues, and my own contested and conflicted gender identity. I left feeling like I'd voluntarily slammed myself against a concrete wall, but it was a cool wall, and the day was so warm... I'll be going back there. Plus, it's an explicitly queer space, and I need more of those. (I might post some workshop pieces if it seems worthwhile -- any votes?)

And then there is the running. I think that the above three things have been enough to throw my sense of self a little out of whack. Especially some combination of the career apprehensions and the renewed interest in creative writing, something that 8 years ago would have been at the top of my life goals.

So how do I handle these waves? I take them out on my body. When my other measures of self-worth are failing, I fall back on crappy societal standards of body image. So, I'm back to old tricks (that aren't quite mine) -- logging 20 mile weeks, and counting calories. I bought a heart-rate-monitor yesterday, and was running at 6am. The thing is that running is good for me: it lets me clear my head, and enables me to feel okay about my body, and is a way to be outside. But it slips far too easily into a scary terrain I've always kept myself on the edge of, and I'm still there on the edge, just this side of the numbers.

There are so many measures of self-worth -- intellect, integrity, compassion, work ethic. I've used each of these models. But there is also a way in which I was taught to gauge my self-worth off of my grades and my body. It was never that explicit, but I did grow up in an imperfect radical feminist household where grades were posted on the fridge and everyone went around the table at night and said how many grams of fat they'd had in the day.

Is it any wonder that I don't know what to think of myself?

(PS: I'd find a better ending, but I want to go watch the sunset with my gin n' juice, and who can deny me such a simple pleasure)

Sliding Scales

On Thursday TP and I went to a QueerOpenMic which is one of my favorite queer spaces in HarborCity, hands down. I read Good (Almost) Man and it was well received. I think that on Wednesdays I'm going to start going to a workshop run by one of the folks there to work on my writing more, because, while economics is cool and all there is a part of me that will always want to write poetry. And God knows I need more fun queer community in my life.

Both of these places, and many others I go to, operate on a sliding scale/pay what you can system. In the past I have depended on that policy to be able to go to these events, and I honor the diversity that policy allows and engenders. So, here is the story, NewJob pays me well, better than OldJob and includes benefits that make me feel a little bit like EliteU doesn't know what to do with all its money and so throughs it at its employees in the form of really cheap gyms and incredible healthcare. I can no longer pretend that I have anything but a middle class paycheck. So I'm a radical queer with a middle class paycheck, who spends a lot of time in fringe cultural spaces. This is new to me. On Thursday for the first time, I paid the upper end of the sliding scale at the open mic. On Wednesday I will need to decide how much to spend on this workshop that I'm going to.

Frankly, I'm not sure how to negotiate this income shift. Sure, I'm putting more money in my savings account. Generally I think that I am the most radical investment I can make. The world will benefit from me being able to afford graduate school, and the books I want to read, but probably not all the books I want to read, and certainly not the cute clothes that I sometimes want to buy. And none of it will mean much at all if the community organizations that I depend on crumble due to lack of funds. From an economics standpoint it's an interesting model -- it would be better if I had the energy to actually create/find a graph for y'all to see. But basically you pay a price for something, and some people want it, but are only able/willing to pay less for it than the price, and so they don't get it and some people are willing to pay more for it, but don't and sort of get their cake and eat it too. The sliding scale/pay what you can system asks everyone to pay what they can and what the "service" is worth to you, eliminating that eat your cake and eat it too phenomenon, but also providing access. So what I should do is ask myself this question: How much would it need to cost for me not to go? One dollar below that is the amount that I should pay... hard to do in practice.

But this doesn't even scratch the surface of how uncomfortable people are with differences in wealth and the ways that having money are connected to being inauthentic. When I pay more money I am sincerely thinking about investing in spaces, and holding them dear and trying to help them balance their books. Yet, I also don't want to distance myself from people by paying more money. Keep in mind that these are small communities where 'nigh on nothin' stays private. Privilege is best when it is easiest to abdicate, to cast off and spread around, like so much shit (compost metaphor), and I think this is one of those cases where that can happen, if there weren't so much angst around it.

But, for real, bottomline:
I hate money.

P.S. It's Saturday night, tonight TP and I grilled veggies, and walked up to the pond in the sunset, and now we are listening to Louis Armstrong, I'm blogging and ze is reading the latest Harry Potter book. Totally priceless.

Queer Theater

On Saturday night TP and I went out to a play put on by a queer theater group in HarborCity.

For us, going out is an excuse for TP to be charming, dark, and handsome, if not tall, and an excuse for me to be a flirty femme, who is sometimes fatale. Really, for us, the theater started far before we made it to the actual location of the event, and the costume designers were the stars. I was wearing a v. low cut wraparound black dress with a lace hem, my new heels, and my new red dangly earrings. TP was wearing a nice shirt and tie that I love, and, in the interest of full disclosure, was a present from me. We looked nice. Hot, even.

There was some drama about getting to the theater (that pun was not intentional). But we got there and got our tickets and watched a play set in a pink motel room, that was very queer and highly, highly surreal. Now, as we walked in, there was a lady, who was maybe 70, and had a nice white bun of hair on her head, and a nice husband at her side. She smiled and winked at me. She was starting to flirt. As we sat down and looked through the programs, she caught TP's eye and gave hir an approving look, and then looked me up and down, as if to say, "Nice catch". It was hilarious.

After the show there was a little gathering with wine, cheese, and disgusting Mike Hard Iced Tea. It was fun, the cast and crew were maybe 10 people, and the audience was only 15, so it was an intimate crowd. Or at least that's what the little old lady thought. She flirted with everyone, could talk to anyone. It was amazing, the thing is that it was this very funny mix between the somewhat standard old-lady-nice and the classic somewhat bawdy flirt. I loved it.

We talked to one of the troupe founders about potentially touring one of their shows to ELAC and URedState. We mingled. We never mingle -- we are both shy and sometimes awkward, but somehow that husk started to fall away in that setting. I love being queer out in the world. Being femme, holding TP's hand, having people recognize us for who we are -- so often we get read as something other than how we think about ourselves, even, and most painfully, within GLB communities. But in that theater our performances were respected.

That was a big part of what made it such a lovely evening. There was also the moon, the booze, and the sweetness of any moment spent with TP. Ze is flying home next Wednesday, and I'm very sad about it. But that is a whole 'nother story. I want to find more places where I can feel recognized in a sexy black dress as the radical queer I am, and I also want those places to be comfortable with me being in carhartts and a button-down shirt. Do you think I'm asking too much?

Requisite Update

Some things you should be aware of:

• This was my first week at NewJob. It was exciting and challenging and a little mundane. Basically I am ResearchGirl for two economists who do fascinating work and each see their role in my life as very different. A communication challenge, let's say. It'll work out
• TP has been here for several weeks now and is leaving in about ten days. It's been good and complicated, and I will be very sad when there isn't someone to come home to, and talk to, and kiss, and all those nice things that TP does in my life.
  
• NewRoomie arrived on Monday and thus far has been fabulous introducing a nonchalant attitude about food, making yummy bread and dinner, going for runs with us, and practicing her violin beautifully. She's a keeper. Her initial is B.
  
• I just made the most orgasmic Rosemary Olive Sourdough, and it might be what I have for dinner along with the Hit the Trail Ale from Vermont, which is a lovely state with incredible beer.
  
• **** Nubian "features" some of the most fucked up shit I've seen in a while. ****
  
• I have a long list of blogables in my brain. They'll be "uploaded" soon enough. Hang tight, kids.
  

Fun on the Monkey Bars

File this in the "Every Day I Live in the Patriarchy" Section of your lives.

So today I went for a long run, and along my run I came across some bars upon which to do pull-ups, so I was doing my routine of tricep-dips, pull-up negatives, chin ups and push ups. This list makes me seem much more cut than I actually am.

As I was doing my routine, I heard a child's voice behind me saying "Look at HER!" I turned around and saw a little girl pointing at me. She was walking with her brother and father, and her father looking up and seeing me said, directly to his son, said, "Do you want to try that?" The boy, who never responded to anything in the interaction, didn't respond the question at which point the man came over the bars and sort of winked/smiled at me and did a few pull-ups and went on his way with his children.

What the F?

A. Girls, when they express interest in being strong, should be allowed to be f-ing strong.
B. Dude, you have issues with strong women if you're so scared of:
1. Your child becoming one.
2. Needing to assert your physical dominance over the one that you see, or bizarrely attempt to hit on her.

BUH.

I love my life in the patriarchy.

P.S. Did Title IX actually exist, or was it a good dream I had once?

An Honest Day's Work

The federal government redefined work yesterday, or, rather it redefined it for the 53 million families who received TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families) in 2005 (calendar year). There is, naturally, at least one snarky comment to be made about whether a body that does so little work, and work of such poor quality has the right to define what is work for 53 million families that are struggling to make ends meet? That is an important question, but there are other axes I want to grind with their decisions.

Work and Values
The ideology that underpins this provision of welfare reform from 1996 to the present is that work is valuable for work's sake. The idea is that children learn important lessons from having their parents be part of the workforce, they learn about the value of money, the self-esteem and feelings of self worth that can come from work. Maybe, maybe, but I don't know how much you learn about those things if you never see your parent because ze is working ten hour days and multiple jobs. I also don't know how many low-wage workers would say that they got their self-esteem and self-worth from their jobs. I don't want to deny that possibility though, since I've had minimum wage jobs that I've loved and living wage jobs that killed my soul.

There are problems with this ideology, it privileges wage labor over home production and education. This came out strongly in the regulations put out by the Feds yesterday. It is no longer considered work to care for a disabled relative. What values does that teach our children? Do you think these people have the resources to ensure that their relatives are cared for properly by someone else? But apparently caregiving is lazy. If the federal government said that about middle and upper class stay-at-home parents there would be a media war (oh wait, that's already happened).

Another highlight of the new regulations is that homework time for job training programs only counts if it's in a supervised study hall. What? These are people with kids, do you think that they can pay for another hour of childcare so that they can go to bloody study-hall? Do they need bathroom passes?

Doing More Work?
All of the statistics point to the fact that TANF caseloads have decreased over the last ten years, and that more people are in wage earning jobs. However this might also mean that there are many families who don't bother to apply for welfare because they know that they will be shut out or who are "saving" their TANF months for a time when things are even worse. Also it's not entirely clear that they are better off when they are working than when they were collecting welfare. These rules also don't ensure that more work will happen, even if we agree with them that that is a goal which makes sense. If anything I think it makes it likely that people will leave the programs because they can't make those studyhalls or just have to take care of that sick family member. Which means that the caseloads will continue to go down and things will continue to look good, while the fruit rots under the skin.

The people who it will mean more work for is the people working in welfare offices across the nation, because they Feds also issued new guidelines for tracking the work activities. This tracking will be a near impossible task, taking up resources that could be devoted elsewhere... if we actually wanted things to change.

I know a lot of people who did an honest day's work yesterday -- but they sure weren't the people writing these rules.

(Full Disclosure -- I haven't read the new rules yet, just the NPR story and the I can't find them right now, but I will read them soon and get back to y'all if they have any redeeming value)

Ten (Tipsy) Confessions

1. I'm starting to think that living as a couple might be something I could do after all, after years of saying that community living was all I would ever want.
2. Oral sex, as a blogging topic, bores me - I haven't read the posts, I haven't read the posts in response to posts or the comments. (Sorry y'all).
   
3. I've found the *actual* oral sex in my life delicious, boring, hot, gross, and confusing in turns... fortunately, now we are on an upswing.
4. I hate it when TP talks on hir cellphone for long periods of time.
5. Who am I? I got tipsy after one beer (granted I hadn't had dinner yet).
   
6. I'm really looking forward to starting NewJob next week, I love vacation, but I get fiesty and stircrazy.
7. I drank a beer today while my two roommates went for a run -- this will catch up with me eventually.
8. I've been wearing shorts that are shorter than any I've worn since childhood, but it's fecking hot up here. In my defense, I think they are average femme-woman length, but they aren't my norm.
   
9. I'm painting new roommate's room and walked all over town covered in paint today, in the short-shorts; no one seemed to mind.
10. I'm so pathetic at thinking of interesting confessions that I've asked TP for help, ze is feeling equally unoriginal.
    

Mix(ed) Tapes and Marriage

So, the car that L and I just bought dates from the mid-nineties, which is fine. It's a Toyota and so I have perfect faith that it will continue to drive along in its understated loveliness for some time. On the music front, it's a little sad. I think that I need to find some way to adapt my iPod to the tapedeck, for now, I and anyone who rides in my car is stuck in my seventh grade life.

Now, there are some great mixed tapes (Is there a standard here, mix or mixed? What should that modifier be?) from that era, it was the period of my first eposure to the Indigo Girls and Ani DiFranco, but they remind me of being desperate, bitter, angsty and in the closet. Not a scene I wish to revisit. I think that the music you listen to makes a difference. As the main character in one of my favorite movies says:

"People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?" (Rob, High Fidelity)

So, driving back from Idyllic Ancestral Home, I listened to one of the mixed tapes that my sisters made for me that winter of 7th grade. Who were they at this moment in time? Sister, Esq. had just finished her first semester at Women's College and was coming out as a lesbian, Sister, MD was a sophmore in high school and struggling with her body, her brain, and her peer group. On it there are a surprising number of song that sort of mock marriage -- Liz Phair's "Divorce Song", Mary Chapin-Carpenter "He Thinks He'll Keep Her", the song about a "matchmaker" from some musical I've never seen -- those were the songs both about straight people, and about long term pair bonding. Sure the songs on that mix about queer relationships depicted plenty of torture and anguish, but then I was 12 I wanted anguish, I wanted to experience everything. This mix was very much my older sisters teaching me, picking out these very specific cultural productions and showing me what was "cool". Marriage wasn't cool, at best it was empty and conformist, at worst it was a painful trap. At the same time I was listening to these bitter songs, I was also watching about three romantic comedies a week, the really fluffy kind. "Pretty Woman" was my favorite movie for a very long time. I have no idea how I incorporated these saccharine fairy tales with the bitterness of Ani DiFranco and Liz Phair, but I did. I wanted to fall in love just like that.

I'm not saying that I think that listening to this music turned me into the radical queer anti-ish marriage person that I am, or that the romantic comedies provided me with faith in humankind, but I did learn from them. The things I learned were not always true -- queer relationships can be abusive and stifling (I've been in them), and straight ones can be amazing, and either way, regardless of the sex of the individuals involved marriage is a mixed bag on a personal level. Politically, well, I promise to write about that this week. Maybe this is all about role models. I didn't have very many role models for stable long term happy pair bonding. My parents were divorced, and most of my mother's friends were either lesbians, with quasi-rotating lovers, or not also divorced. My father sort of remarried, but I didn't know enough about their relationship to feel like it was something I would want mine to mimic. So, it was up to pop culture. And really, bottom line is that you should never let pop culture teach your children about something -- not race or gender, not sex, and apparently, not marriage either.

We'll leave it there for now, theory will come soon, promise. Right now, I'm feeling very in love, and listening to the Brokeback Mountain soundtrack... not that that really gives me faith or anything.

The Good Life

(I've been on the computer for about half an hour, putzing about, and go and sit by TP and put my head in hir lap)
Me: Are you waiting for the computer?
TP: I sort of was, but now I'm reading "Pedagogy of the Oppressed", and hoping you will come cuddle.
Me: I thought I was cuddling.
TP: You are, but I was hoping to sustain it.
Me: Oh, okay. (I go and find a more comfortable way to curl up on the couch with TP)
TP: Where is your book?
Me: (Closing eyes, sipping coffee) You're reading, I'm doing the cuddling part.

When did life get so good?

Yeah, I'll get back to something real maybe Saturday.

June In Idyllic Ancestral Home

TP and I are at my mother's house in New England State, also known as Idyllic Ancestral Home. This means that we are eating fabulous fresh produce and drinking red wine. Tomorrow I'm going to visit my ancient Latin teacher (he's ancient, so is the language). Tonight we had dinner with friends L. and M. L was my creative writing teacher in high school and is a lovely woman who reminds me vaguely of Anne of Green Gables, M is her British husband who makes me smile and is tall and lanky and an incredible dork. She is still my most faithful of critics, and I love handing her over my rare little poems to read over and comment on. Someday I'll write some more fiction as she always encourages me to, but it's so time consuming.

This evening the menu was:
-mango salsa and chips
-red wine or rhubarb juice with seltzer
-broiled wild salmon
-broiled asparagus (the fattest I've ever seen in my whole life)
-salad with four kinds of lettuce (L brought it over in an industrial size trash bag) and arugula and beet greens
-creamy basil pesto pasta
-vanilla ice cream and fudge sauce

YUMMY.

I love being home this time of year, everything is so green and eager about life. Makes me feel the same way, and having TP here is special because everything looks new again as I look at it through hir eyes.

I'll get back to the serious stuff in a while. I'm too busy basking right now.

Marriage and Fear

So I've been watching a lot of this recently. Don't ask, just blame TP. But hey, at least there is a queer subplot that is just that -- a subplot and the queer characters have all the normal problems as everyone else (if magic addiction is normal). Anyway, in the sixth season there is an episode where Xander is going to marry Anja (former vengeance demon) except a demon comes back to stop the marriage and poses as Xander as an old man and shows him images of himself and Anja sixty years down the line and how miserable they will have made each other. It freaked me out a little bit and not the least because while I was watching it today I was also working on my wedding present for Sister, Esq. and her partner, and thinking about Sister, MD and her new love, and thinking about TP and me. (Have I mentioned that maybe I should just think a little less?)

I have a lot to say about the politics of marriage and long term monogamous pairbonding. I've been meaning to respond to Mamita's post for almost three weeks at the point, and not being able to find a way to crystallize everything I have to say about marriage into one piece.

A lot of what I have to say is about an idyllic vision of queer politics and poverty reduction, and really hard core theory that I love and can totallly have a dork-fest about. But there is also a scared little girl who really wants to believe that two people can know that they love eachother and decide to make that work, and lively mostly happily for a very long time. This is the same little girl who grew up knowing that that wasn't really a possibility and needing to choose between deciding that people who love eachother can make each other unhappy and believing that her parents had never loved each other, or that one or both of them is inherently unloveable. Of course, really I'm scared that all of these things are true and true about me, and I'm scared that I won't be able to figure it out, and that not figuring it out will be the big way I fail at my life.

I've been avoiding really thinking about marriage for a long time. I just theorize about it, but this fall, when Sister, Esq. and her partner tie the knot I'll have to actually deal with the viscera of it -- this is not a task that I'm looking forward to particularly. I'll write more about this soon, I really do want to lay out some of the theory stuff sometime soon. Hold me to account on this, while this space is totally bizarre in my life, part of the reason that's the case is because it's so very separate and that's a good thing.

Enough babbling for now.

Feminine-Minded -- Indigenous Feminisms

I'm reading a truly excellent novel right now, called The Polished Hoe, written by Austin Clarke (see link in sidebar). It is about postcolonialism, race, and sexual exploitation, some of my favorite themes, right? In it, the main narrator is talkign about her history with her sexual exploiter, Mr. Bellfeels, and touches on feminism, and its applicability to women of color, and women in the postcolonial world. I've heard this sentiment expressed in theory and personal statement before, but never this explicitly or elegantly.

" "That was done in times when a woman, with no education to speak of, didn't know the term 'feminine-suffrages'. We knew we were feminine-minded-women, though. That was driven into us, by instinct...

"There was no feminine-suffrages in my time, Constable. But we still knew what was happening to us, in this Island. As women, we didn't comport ourselves with the talk of English suffrages-women. But that voice was buried inside our hearts. And although we could not, dare not, shout-out a dirty word in Mr. Bellfeels face, or pick up a rock-stone and pelt it at Mr. Bellfeels, and break his arse... Pardon my French!...and watch his head burst-open like a watermelon, and that the blood spurt-out like the water from a water-coconut, all those thoughts and buried acts, and stifled wishes concealed in our craw, were always near the top, near to erupting. We couldn't act like this modern generation of dark-skin women I see walking-'bout this Village, in dresses of African print; and wearing their hair natural; uncomb. But the plot of defiant words and Africa was already hatching inside our heads. Yes. "-Austin Clarke, pg. 59-60, The Polished Hoe

There are very few things that I would say are truly indigenous to the human spirit. Heck, some of the time I don't think I believe in 'the human spirit'. I do think that a desire for liberation is indigenous to the human spirit, I think that the ways that people go after that goal vary drastically over time and space. But it's always there, bubbling up under and against oppression, pushing for resistance anywhere that hegemony gives it a space. I think one think that I like so much about this passage is that it conveys that bubbling, and the very visceral ways in which that manifests itself. I also really appreciate the fact that she identifies this "feminine-mindedness" with exploring and expressing their African heritage. This is not something that white-liberal-middle-class-feminism would take for granted.

The fact that this particular expression of resistance would not be takend for granted brings up another issue with truly believing in indigenous feminisms. It is total hogwash to say that everyone has an indigenous desire to have the right to vote, or access to birth control and higher education, or any of the other gains of the feminist movement in the First World. They might, or they might not. Really believing in indigenous feminsim and having faith in it means taking it on its own terms, and in its own manifestations every time.

Adventures of a Pretentious Tote Bag

1. This is the news and notes post, I seem to tend to write more than one post at a time, one more issues based, the other more newsy. I write and post the newsier one first, so it is further down on the page, I do this to clear my brain of some of the detritus and because I figure that people who just show up here, should read about what I'm actually thinking about and not my mental detritus.

2. My left hand has been cramping really badly over the past couple of days. I can't make a fist and several of the my fingers are in constant tingle mode. I helped Sister, M.D. paint her apartment this morning, and she diagnosed it as a simple strained muscle, but man, does it hurt.

3. I went out to the Human Resources Office at NewJob and they gave me many brochures and pamphlets that I may or may not read, and they gave me a v. pretentious tote bag in university colors with their logo on it, and I mean, really? Could we be more dorky? On the other hand, on the train ride home I realized how useful it was, despite it's dorkage. I'm lost.

4. Sister, Esq. and her partner are going to be in town tomorrow and are staying with me. I feel a little angsty about this because, well, my house is nuts over the next couple months, by July 20th the people who actually will be living here for the next twelve months will be the only people here, but until then it's a little revolving door. This would be fine, except most of it is imposed by my people. On the other hand, I get so little time with Sister, Esq. and her partner and adore them both so much, that I don't really want to sacrifice any of that.

Steady On

When you live in a town that doesn't have a grocery store, an orthodontist, a dentist, a middle school, or... ok, well, anything except a high cow to person ratio, you end up spending a lot of time in the car, add on to that that you are a **Child of Divorce** and you are basically glued to your bucket seat. This means two major addictions are likely to be inflicted upon you -- NPR and particular music selections. One of the lesser known properties of family cars is that they are vectors of inertia*. This means that once a tape is in the car the likelihood that it leaves the car within a decade is close to zero. Heck, sometimes it doesn't even come out of the tape-deck for a good six months.

The other thing about that music that gets left in the car is that it becomes integral to your emotional life. I have a lot of songs that I can attach to a particular moment or person or place, but because these songs never left the playlist they are touchstones to go back to, they are the able to untangle any emotional knot. I was a fairly introspective kid, and at the point where you're spending that much time just sitting and listening to music and thinking... it's inevitable that these songs become so important.

In my family, that music which never managed to escape the vortex was Paul Simon's "Graceland" and Shawn Colvin's "Steady On". They are both really good albums, though clearly you can't really compete with Graceland. Until I was about 12 I thought that Graceland was one piece of music, like a symphony -- then we got it on CD and inadvertently put it on shuffle. It scarred me for life. But I got the CD anyway so that it would make it past the technology change and be safely burned onto computer and loaded onto my ipod. "Steady On" fell by the wayside -- until today. As I was cleaning up TP's room in my attempt to pack after being there for two full weeks, I found a CD copy of "Steady On" and borrowed it, and I'm listening to it right now. Sure, I'm sitting in an airport terminal and typing on a laptop, but I could be driving through rural New England, watching the raindrops on the windows and unravelling the current knot in my heart.

* Yes, vectors of inertia is a technical term. No, I just made it up.

ESPN2

Ok, I know I don't strike you as a sports-watching cable type, and I'm not. But I am right now, because I'm in an airport and have no control over what I watch, and because the Mundial/World Cup is on and I like me some futbol.

But back to ESPN -- there is something very strange about our culture when we relegate both world class soccer and the **national domino championships** to the same backwater channel. Really, is there anyone out there who springs for the extra 50 million channels of cable so that they don't miss that Dominoes final?

Another Post on Pronouns (Plots, and Theory)

Today, I totally can't focus, this is the third post I've started, but I just have too much to say. I need to compartmentalize better, but it all blends together into a post that looks like this oldfriendshoutoutgendermarriagesexqueercommunity.... yeah, I can't make head nor tail of it either.

Anyway. I remember when TP first changed hir name, I put up on my dorm room door (yes, I am that young) that femalename=masculinename to remind myself that this person whose name I was just integrating into my dreams was changing names. In general, the switch wasn't hard, we'd only been dating for about two months, but it took a while to stick, and the time that it finally did was when I went to visit for a weekend and there were others using the new name and finally it felt right and natural to use the newname.

Being down here these two weeks has been similar. In HarborCity, most of the people know me as a queer woman who dates women. This preconceived notion they have of me often means that the feminine aspects of TP are privileged in our discussions, like deep down ze is really a woman. I, too, am guilty of this tipping of the scales for the sake of simplicity. Here, people just know TP and so there are many people who use male pronouns and refer to hir as a "very busy boi" and so on, and so the masculine side of the scales has been getting some more weight. Of course, there are also spaces down here, particularly feminist places on campus that use the "one drop" rule to make TP a woman, because only women are feminists, right? I don't know if TP thinks of these masculine markers as just as wrong as the feminine ones, but for me they are helpful.

It's not just about pronouns.

Let's think of the definition of pronoun for a minute:

1. (grammar) A word that takes the place of a noun or noun phrase in a sentence, but which cannot ordinarily be preceded by an article and rarely takes a qualifying adjective. English examples include I, you, he, she, it, we, they.

(from wiktionary.com)

Something that takes the place of a noun or noun phrase in a sentence. TP is illegible, there is not language that adequately takes the place of the TP noun phrase in any sentence or situation, this is probably true for most people. However, we need to use these markers as place holders for a much more complex reality. In some ways, once we think of it this way, all language functions like a pronoun, a mere marker for the noun phrase that is our world.

Let's think about a scatter plot for a minute, nothing more than a map of markers. Imagine all the markers that are used for TP, drawn onto a scatterplot. In trying to understand, love, and support the noun phrase that is TP, I've been trying to find a line of best fit. Until I came down here I only had one set of markers, I didn't have the set provided by grad school friends, some of whom are (gasp!) bio-men, or the set provided by the queer community friends. This is what we call a data selection problem.

The line of best fit is shifting, and it all feels very natural.

East Nowhere, RS

TP and I temporarily surrendered our sanity when we decided to drive all the way to HomeTown, DRS on Friday and then all the way back on Saturday. This amounted to about 24 hours of driving in 40 hours. See what I mean?

On the way back at about hour 20 of driving I got pulled over and got my first speeding ticket ever. It is expensive, it is money that I don't really have, but it was also legit. I was driving through a residential area too fast. It was one of those roads where the speed limit is 65 between towns and 30 in the towns, and the towns are the size of the head of a pin. Since my mother lives on one of those roads I can sympathize with the residents and their desire to have a quiet street. So sure, RS can have my precious dollars to pave their roads or build washed out bridges between East Nowhere and Central Nowhere. Fine.

But why, oh, why do cops have to be jerks? Are they trained especially in some kind of special asshole tactics? Of course they are, they are trained to have no respect for the people they are "protecting" to ensure "public safety". At the end of the whole experience, I was glad that all he could find to rag me on was my intelligence and powers of observation. But it seems to me that I should be able to be pulled over for a traffic infraction without driving away thanking the stars that the person that guy pulled over wasn't trans or of color. Because then, I think that all hell could have broken loose, or, rather, I have no reason to think it wouldn't. I hate that the thing that made it ok, was that I played into his idea of who the public was, of who he was out there to protect instead of criminalize. I was the nice, blonde, straight woman, who was "Real sorry, sir". I hate that he thanked me for my courtesy. Like I had options.

Is all of that really in the best interest of Public Safety? Not when my communities are part of the public.

Rural Arkansas

TP and I drove through rural Arkansas on the way from RedState to DarkRedState and back. Here's the thing about places you drive through. You know nothing about them. I can read their culture off of the billboards, but if all cultures were judged by their advertising we would all be in trouble. That said, it's all very telling.

Huge porn stores, coupled with huge churches and the occasional fireworks warehouse. What is that about? Is it the theory that every force must have an equal and opposing force? My favorite billboard was one with TONS of hearts on it that said "Love Video: All Ratings". Naw-uh, that is not about love.

The actual land that we covered in our drive was beautiful. Arkansas is the southern terminus of the mountains that are mine, up in NewEnglandState where I grew up. (Kudos to my father for pointing that out). So maybe the affinity that I felt for the rolling green hills, herds of cows. Mainly it was all just brighter and a little bit bigger. I'm still put off my guard by how huge the sky can be here. It makes me feel exposed like something could swoop out of the sky and get me. On the other hand, driving through East Nowhere, RedState I encountered a rural landscape that was very foreign, and I still found it deeply beautiful. This made me think that maybe, despite my cosmopolitan leanings, I really am a country girl. My basic affinities are to places where there is a lot of space, and small clusters of houses that cling to each other against some harsh environment, and of course, where the sunsets are stunning and the cows are plentiful.

Therapy, of a Kind

It was my first full day here in LiberalCity and TP and I were jumpy, on edge, not quite used to each other and jumping at each other constantly. We get like this after not having seen each other for a while... it takes us a while to get back into our rhythms.

TP had therapy in the afternoon, and after that we went to a bar with a couple friends and commenced the boozing process. Which is to say we ordered margaritas. After those were had, I was debating whether to have another drink -- but not just any other drink a "Mexican Martini", which is like a martini, but with tequila (yes, there is a God).

Me: Should I get another drink?
TP: Do you want one?
Me: Well, as much as this makes me sound like a budding alcoholic, I think it would take the edge off and calm me down a bit.
TP: Well, it's only fair you didn't have therapy

We kiss. I buy a martini.

The Paradox

The paradox is that when life is full enough to have stuff to say on one's blog one doesn't have the bloody time to do so, or is away from high-speed internet having adventures. It's nearly one in the morning, less than forty-eight hours since TP and I left LiberalBlueCity in RedState to go to DarkRedState to meet hir father.

There are stories, and musings.

But first a shower and one more thorough tic check and then lots of sleep.

Back Porch Blogging: An Update

Right now I'm sitting on my backporch using Roommate L's computer to blog. My computer is packed cozily into my carry-on luggage so that I can fly to RedState this evening to go see TP for two weeks. I wish I had a digital camera so that I could post a picture from this porch. I love it, it is one of the best things about this apartment, and I really feel like I have my own private treehouse when I'm out here.

My weekend was wonderful, and totally insane. Friday night, I was flying because I had left OldJob and gotten New(nee Dream)Job, so I drank many Dark and Stormies and snuck into the graveyard up the street and it was all *delicious*. I spent a lot of Saturday helping a sister with a broken car, and driving her through HarborCity to her new place to help her paint and thither and fro. The rest of Saturday I forgot eat lunch, then I went for a run, then I waited three hours to eat, and then ate a LOT of chinese food before falling asleep.

Sunday was my birthday. I woke up next to a doctor. How did this happen you ask? Isn't TP a doctoral student thousands of miles away. Yes, I woke up next to my sister, who recently became an MD. Now, unlike many, my sister is absolutely adorable when she's sleeping, and so I rolled over and watched her sleeping and thought how nice it was that she was moving to HarborCity and then I did a total double take because I realized that the person I was in bed with was VERY well-educated. I don't know why this struck me... but, well, I'd never slept with a doctor before. Sunday night I had a lovely party with barbeque, beer and friends. I have yet to be given a book for my birthday, which is perfect because I have far too much to read as it is.

Tonight I'm flying to RedState to see TP. We will spend most of our time in Liberal City, but we will take a detour to DarkRedState to visit TP's ancestral home and I will meet hir father. I will keep you all posted. In driving from RedState to DarkRedState we might drive through New Orleans, and I will definitely blog about then if/when it happens.

Some things to read:
-- Jackadandy's post on outdressing the grooom at a wedding.
-- Mamita's post on marriage. I'll get back to that later.
-- FarmGirl thinks of something so delicious I wanted to eat it off my screen.

Please Don't Forget

About this

It's still important and the struggles there are still very real, if there is going to be a movement against racism and classism in this country, I think it might start in New Orleans, but only if we don't forget about it.

Three Excellent Things About Today

1. I got DreamJob (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
2. It's my last day at OldJob
3. To celebrate both our office is ordering Thai take-out, and so a spicy order of Pad Thai has my name on it.

After All the Nights Apart Is There a Home for the Travelling Heart?

The post formerly known as The Rollercoaster, Part II.

I wonder how many consecutive blog posts I could name after random remembered Indigo Girls lyrics.

Tonight after my penultimate day of work (!!) I met two good friends from ELAC, W and B for drinks. W is maybe the most straightforward person I've ever known, blunt, really is the word. Many find her abrasive, but we jive in this pleasant way, and I haven't seen her for about a year so we had a lot to catch up on. Including TP and hir decision to go on T. W was no less blunt talking about this than she is talking about anything else. It threw me off guard.

It probably wouldn't have thrown me quite so much if I hadn't decided today what my least favorite thing in the world is. I think my least favorite thing (or certainly high up on the list) is when someone I love asks me if something is going to be okay, or expresses a fear that something will go badly, and I can't tell them that everything will be fine because I'm struggling with the same fears and insecurities. It sucks. I want to be able to tell TP that everything will be fine, but I just can't. I'm not that good a liar. While I believe that everything will work out, that T will not be the deal breaker that W imagines it might be, I can't promise that, and so I say nothing.

W is grilling me about T, and I want to present to this (somewhat concerned) friend* of mine that I'm grounded and realize both the immensity of this and my faith that it'll be okay, and the (important) fact that overall the relationship is good for me. Period. This much representing can really tire a girl out. I hate that too. The fact that I'm constantly representing this relationship and teaching people about it. Part of it is the long distance, part of it is the queerness. So I try to be honest to present the good with the bad, I fairly accurately describe myself as 25% scared shitless and 75% excited.

However the more she asks me these blunt questions the more I feel poked. The more I feel like I'm 75% scared. This song, quoted above is so sad, about leaving, and only being able to leave, and being unsure that the "fire will burn on [her] return". I always thought of that fire as the homefire until tonight. Homefire is a fairly neutral domestic thing, but then I realized that it could just as easily be the fire and passion between two people.

In five days I'm seeing TP for the first time in about two months, and all the usual fears we both have are amplified by all the changes going on in both our lives, but T does loom large. I know that things will go much more smoothly if I can manage to be 75% excited, and not be scared shitless. I have faith that if we make it through the first 24 hours, we'll make it through an amazing summer. I just can't be paralyzed with fear and doubt, I need to be 75% excited so that TP knows that nothing approaching a dealbreaker has occured due to this crazy chemical. And all this representation would be easier if I could quash** my own fears.

OH! Unrelated. The drink I had with B and W was amazingly good. Bellini Martini. Vodka, champagne, peach nectar. Booze of the gods, folks, booze of the gods.

*W has every right to grill me about my relationships. She had to sit through two years of me almost deciding to leave my abusive girlfriend in college before I finally did, and she didn't even say "I told you so" once. So bonus points for W.
**Excellent word. In the Thursday New York Times crossword, which I finished this very evening with Roommate L. and friend M.

The Good, the Bad, the NPR

NPR was full of wonderful things this morning. I love NPR, the theme song is like Pavlov's bell since the news was constantly on in the kitchens of my childhood, and I would be an uneducated idiot without their news... and then there is always Will Shortz on Sunday mornings, CarTalk, This American Life. Yes, yes, I love it.

I've been here. It was one of the most amazing weekends of my life, and his description of the process of traveling to get there almost does it justice. Let me say that it took me longer to get from Quito to Tiputini, than from HarborCity to Quito.

This story has some interesting perspectives on women, men, family, and the once and future workforce. Sometime I will blog in earnest about motherhood, but not today.

And finally, Frank Deford starts talking about gender and sports, and almost does a good job, until he makes it seem like it would be better if we were still living in a cult of womanhood. I'm all for being lily-white, except when I'm not.

Carrots in My Mama’s Garden (Another Post that began Its Life in my Journal)

Digging carrots is my favorite chore. In late October the ground is cold, dark and already barren. It looks like there may be nothing there, perhaps a stalk, withered, emerges here and there. But we know from experience that there is a wealth underground. In the deep, dark, cold chambers that they have created for themselves, the carrots are waiting. Because my mama never really thins her carrots, they are intertwined and twisted, growing together and shaping each other.

Your fingers are cold, and the ground is hard. The carrots want to stay hidden, their sweet goldenness hidden from your soup pot and eager mouth. I like to dig carrots with my bare hands, loosening the soil, exploring the dark, my own pale fingers mirroring the carrots themselves. Sometimes you can only dig two up together they have grown together so, and seeing their intertwining makes you feel like you have uncovered a dirty secret, a carrot sex scandal. It is a slow chore, pulling together details until you have a bushel of them and all their connections and intertwinings, their hidden twisted shapes, are revealed. This digging up of roots, this slow chore on the cusp of winter exemplifies the kind of radical I want to be.

We are on the cusp of a winter. The ground can feel pretty barren. It is hard to have conversations about the sexism, racism, heterosexism, and fear that grow tangled under the surface of our society. To say that they are there is easy; to admit that at times they ‘intersect’ is simple – and inherently insufficient. Intersection, a mere crossing of paths, fails as a description and analytical tool. Race and gender do not intersect, they have been growing around each other in the fertile ground beneath our feet for a very long time. To explore them is to sit, getting dirty, getting cold, loosening soil and gathering details. Digging through our lives and common history we find a stray news clipping, from last week or the last century that tells the same story. We add this to our basket. Digging carrots takes a skill and patience. As a child eager to collect and gather, I would break them, leaving their deeply buried, probing tips still in the earth. I do not want to make this mistake with my radicalism. You have to loosen the soil fully, wiggling the carrot you can see to create space to find the other half, or its still hidden partner.

In this world our ideologies have grown thickly and without tending. Once dug, you can take carrots that grew together, separate and put them back together, matching their cleanest, softest sides to each other. These are their repulsive, gleaming bellies, where they grew together, rubbing, untouched by dirt. These are the vulnerable spots of our ideologies. It is in the intertwining that they reveal their true oppressive capacity. When shown the belly of our oppressive techniques we recognize their true gruesomeness and are more willing to fight their continuing dominance.

Once dug I want to place details side by side, showing the way in which they fit together. There is value in realigning the carelessly planted bed, tracking history and current alliances. Surely in knowing both the true power and the true geography of our ideologies they become more vulnerable to our desires to rework them in a revolutionary way. The formerly smooth barren ground will be rutted, it’s secrets exposed,

It is lonely. In high school I was blessed by the fact that we were not wealthy enough for me to have access to a car and I spent most of my time declining the few invitations I got, saying that I couldn’t come. Secretly, for in adolescence so many things must be secrets, I was glad for the chance to spend time by myself or in the company of my mother. There are things you learn in the loneliness. Songs that you can sing yourself and stories you tell about why you like being alone. There are ways to glorify it to friends and family. And there are ways to truly enjoy it. Annie Dillard once wrote that writing a book was not an act of creation, but more akin to sitting up with a sick friend. Such is my relationship with these harvested details. I have stayed up with my mother past midnight canning vegetables, at time raucous and at times in reverie at our task. Now, I want to explore so many questions following their twists and turns toward unexpected connections. I want to steep and distill my findings. Scattering them across a table, with a pot of tea holding their corners together, rearranging them, like a quilter.

I feel an urgency about this project, I hope I'm starting it here, the carrots are continuing to grow and in that growth getting woody and bitter. Resistance, possible anywhere there is power and room to move, is the work of digging carrots, the push against the hardened frozen ground.

Things I Need to **Not** Do with my Last Four Days In this Cubicle

1. Avoid all the work that is still on my to-do list.
2. Track all the food I've eaten today into a calorie counting website.
3. Obsess over said tracking.
4. Lose precious hours looking at websites that mean nothing to me, like the character defect personality test, and sites about which scale is the best one.
5. Blog.

Cold Beer and Remote Control*

I had my second interview at DreamJob today and I think it went fine. I didn't get a strong gut feeling in either direction. The people I talked to were certainly interesting and nice, and I hope they liked me as much as I liked them and their shiny, sparkling research projects.

I'm heading home in a few minutes. Tonight we are giving our friend the check for the car, and then roommate L. and I will own a car together -- and I will officially have wheels to escape to friends still at ELAC and the idyllic ancestral home, and more mundane destinations like a decent grocery store.

And yes, I am also looking forward to having one of the cold beers that are currently residing in my fridge. I don't know whether there will be a remote control in my evening since the only thing we have from Netflix right now is a Jim Jarmusch movie about New Orleans, which feels like an undertaking. I might not be rated for an undertaking, especially since I didn't really sleep last night on account of the nerves about the interview.

*I love this Indigo Girls song, even though, apparently they were bad for music.

The Trojan Horse

3.10.2005
I'm at a conference on the relationship between American Studies and "Ethnic" Studies, George Lipsitz is talking, later in the conference Robin Kelley will also talk, and I have no idea that I am in the presence of extreme greatness, I'm sitting in the back, worrying about my thesis and feeling for the first time in months like I could be an academic, like there was something worthwhile to the whole enterprise. These folks have figured out some things that I haven't. The conference was held in a room at ELAC that is pretentious to the nines -- painted a historical color with historical plaques, and captain's chairs. I take copious notes when I listen to people speak, I can't help it. I have to, part of them are snippets of things they say, some of them are questions I ask myself as they speak. Later I go back to those cramped sheets and pull things out of them. From that Lipsitz talk I remember him saying that you shouldn't do your scholarship out of habit lest it become like scandinavian cooking. I remember him saying that there are serious people everywhere thinking about hard issues and the task of a radical scholar was to make our work like a Trojan horse, to carry with you all of those people who don't have access to places like ELAC and then to open it up and give them a voice. It was after this conference that I really started to think about where I would want to fit into academia in a real way and asked myself really hard questions about that space.

3.15.5
I'm writing in my journal for my senior seminar for Women's and Gender Studies, it's part reaction to the conference, part reaction to a class discussion -- recreated here.

Last week in class S. and I talked optimistically about taking economic theory and radically infusing it with a sense of the value of caregiving/mothering. H. rose the issue that maybe we don't want to marketize everything and maybe this feeds right back into the system. I still agree with my previous statemet that true change can be achieved through invading the system/status quo; but the ways in which these are possible is highly circumscribed. you have to use data that is out there, you have to build on previous studies and write the way that everyone else writes - stupid peer review. It's not really unlike the way that legal reform will never really be radical because it depends on stare decisis and precedent.

There are two sets of reasons for these rules. One is to prevent the deconsolidation of power. The other is to have a code and language that is intelligble. (Not that the language reason is disconnected from the power one). I digress. How do I hold onto my previous idea? This past weekend at the conference, Lipsitz talked about our ability, as people who make it into the academcy to have our work be a Trojan horse for every serious thinking person we come across who doesn't have access.

I agree with this while also acknowledging that there are real ways that this invasion is more challenging in the discipline of Economics. That suburban lawn is particularly dense, coated with extra layers of pesiticide. Can I be a different kind of Trojan horse? There are fields that have a traditional connection with liberation struggles and radical political actions, like ethnic studies, I have never head of any Econ student/faculty ever hunger-striking for anything. Economics, for the purpose of this metaphor, is the inner citadel. I'm in that citadel. I am bi-lingual. I'm there, not by mistake (as it sometimes feels), but because at some point that was a strategic choice I made. I just didn't know what I would do once I was where I am.

So, back to the Trojan horse, and smuggling more generally. Can I smuggle things out, can I take what I know and translate and reconfigure and produce it on the liminal? Is that possible?

5.21.6
DreamJob is as a lowly-research-thing in academia. I have my second interview in T minus 33 hours, and I want this job, so bad. When I heard Lipsitz talk last March, and wrote about it for class, I believed in the Trojan Horse idea, and I believed that there were serious people navigating their lives in every community and doing that with grace and some analytical skills. I know it now in a way I didn't before, and if I never leave academia again I'll be happy to have had the realness of this year of shitty non-profit job. Further I find myself in a similar place that I was in last year. As a lowly research thing, my ability to translate and smuggle will be limited. When I think about academia I keep putting off smuggling until I've gotten my degree, until I've gotten tenure, and by then I might have forgotten what I was supposed to be smuggling in the first place, and to whom.

Like most things posted here, I have no answers, it's just something I'm mulling over as I try to fall asleep.

In other news:
--My window is open and fresh spring air is coming into my window, I can smell rain and I think I can even smell the leaves growing on the trees.
--I miss TP terribly because hir phone is kerflunk and may not be resurrected for some time; on the other hand we are seeing each other in 10 days.
--Room L. and I finally put up a shelf in the kitchen that we've been talking about putting up for ages... like since we moved in.

Pronouns and Privilege: An Essay in Vignettes

1. I'm seventeen and dating a boy for the first time. He is a gentle, sweet, young man, and I'm pretty in love with him. I hate being seen in public with him. Having dated girls for most of high school I was used to walking around ready for the abuse to fly from people on the street, and I was ready when it did. Walking around with K. I was constantly and painfully aware of the privilege I had. Privilege is funny that way -- before you know that you wear it, it's an invisible cloak and you never know how much it protects you and lifts you up -- once you have it, you notice the distance between you and others (or you and who you were) constantly, and it's painful, hard. It's hard to give privilege back, say "no, thank you". I didn't like being read as straight, I didn't like the approving glances I got from strangers, like this relationship was so much better than the ones I'd had with girls. I hated it.

2 . ED, my gay, biracial, boss at OldJob, is talking to me about something, and I say something about "someone I used to date" and he says "Oh, did he...". And then he catches himself and talks about he can't believe how sexist he of all people just was. I say that we all do it sometimes, and that with me it's a good guess either way, and with TP (who he has met) you would be equally accurate either way.

3. I'm having a networking coffeedate with someone who works at the DreamJob place of employment and mention that I'm going to RedState for a visit in June to visit the person I'm dating, and she uses "he" and I use that to, wincing slightly, knowing that it doesn't quite fit, but not ready to go seven rounds on gender identity in an already tense situation. Ditto with regards to my aunt's reaction to finding out that TP lives in LiberalCity in RedState. "Oh, what does she do there?"

4. I had been dating TP for longer that I would like to admit before I fully integrated hir gender identity in the way I see hir. For a long time I (mostly) unconsciously continued to think of TP as "really a woman", as the decision to start T loomed closer, and as we talked about it more, I realized that this has to change and, finally, I think it has. How do I know? My boss, mother, and sisters continue to use "she" for TP, even after meeting hir, and I wince the same way I wince when someone uses "he". Sometime I'll have to decide whether to enforce the most complicated grammatical shift ever onto my family, but for now I'm just happy that I wince.

5. I'm talking to my queer neighbor (as if I had just one, ha!) about her partner who is working class (a cop, so sexy in the uniform) and butch, and about TP and pronouns. She says that she doesn't think her partner identifies as a woman, but neither does she have pronouns to use to describe the place where she is -- the partner identifies this as being about "not having read Kate Bornstein, or Butler". Those two writers aside, I point out that I think it is about class, and priorities. TP is getting a Phd in English Literature. Pronouns will be important to hir because language is of primary importance.

TP, and the people that surround hir, use privilege everytime we use the correct pronouns for hir. Beyond that, I shift in and out of privilege, like a garment that is visible only to me. Everytime I use "she" or "he" they are both inaccurate, but differently so, I never thought that letting people assume I was straight could feel so subversive or that being recognized as queer could feel so erasing. I don't know how all of this works, or what I think about it. But I do know that I feel the same way I did when I was seventeen and walking around with a boy on my arm for the first time, without the tools to handle the new ways the world was handling me.

Competition

Mac of Good (Almost) Man fame stopped by my office today to hang out and shoot the breeze. I love it when he does that, I almost always learn something about his grandkids, life, dreams, etc. He really is a remarkable person and community activist, but that's a story for another day.

He was telling me about how a few years ago his old lady left him because she found God. He told me this story and then said, shaking his head and playing with his whiskers -- "and how can a fella compete with that? I'm a good man, but I can't compete with God."

Second Interview at DreamJob!!

Please cross any free appendages in my honor.

Value Judgements (cont) -- More Politics, Fewer Equations

In which Lisa Duggan, queer academic extraordinaire, says in two sentences much of what needs to be said in the world today, and I nod my head in agreement, too tired to write a more indepth post, but too connected to the blogosphere to crap out on my promises.

“In the real world, class and racial hierarchies, gender and sexual institutions, religious and ethnic boundaries are the channel through which money, political power, cultural resources, and social organization flow. The economy cannot be transparently abstracted from the state or the family, from practices of racial apartheid, gender segmentation, or sexual regulation” (Lisa Duggan, Twilight of Equality, xiv)

Value Judgements

Everything has an ideology. Or rather, ideologies come out in most of the things that we do in this life. Nothing bothers me more than when people claim that economics is objective, that once you create an economic model you have created some divine and authoritative account of it. Models are no more authoritative than a poem. They are just poems that people tend to believe, and listen to.

Deciders, All of Us
Being an economist means making a lot of choices that your readers never see. This is why there is that quote about "liars, damned liars, and statisticians". Let me give you a couple of examples. For any model to work you have to make assumptions; assumptions are based on your point of view, which is based on your set of preferences, your worldview, your upbringing, on and on. The problem is that economics has gotten very rigid in what assumptions are made. For instance, we always assume that people act rationally. People might not act rationally. Period. We also might assume a certain set of preferences onto people, like a preference for labor over home production -- or home production over labor depending on the gender of the person. Heck, some of the Becker's theories in A Treatise on Family are premised on the idea that there are biological differences between the sexes that predisposes woment to have a comparative advantage at housework. Think about that for a second. You can't include everything in a model, it cannot recreate real life in equation form. That means making decisions about what to include and what to assume away.

Assume that the credit market works, poor people should be able to pay for education by borrowing money and therefore pull themselves up by the bootstraps. Can we assume that? Does that make sense given what I know about the world? No, would things work more smoothly if the credit market did work, yes. But it shouldn't be assumed a priori like that. It's irresponsible. Decisions we make matter, they hide or expose people's lives.

Choosing Costs, Choosing Benefits
Along with these decisions of modeling, we also have to make decisions about what costs and benefits to include in our calculations. Let's think about a basic problem -- how many gallons of GOOK Factory A should produce. I'll give you the answer first, and then explain it a bit: Factory A should produce where marginal benefit equals marginal cost.

1. GOOK is good for the residents of East Gookville who buy it, they use it for a lot of things -- it might even cure cancer. There are benefits to the production of gook for the people who buy it. We will call these benefits to people who buy GOOK marginal private benefit or MPB ( for now, don't worry about why it's marginal, or ask me in the comments and I'll write another post with graphics to explain).
2. GOOK costs money to make, Factory A has to pay residents of East Gookville for their labor, and there are the raw materials that go into GOOK. We will call this the marginal private cost (MPC) of GOOK.

So we should produce X number of GOOK when

(Equation 1) MPB(x)=MPC(x)

Incidentally, the price of GOOK will be equal to MPB or MPC at this point.

Got it?

Good, now, let me complicate things. This is the private equilibrium point, all the private costs and benefits are taken into account.

The production of GOOK produces this nasty smoke and gross slime that pours out of the factory and into East Gookville. It smells bad, it makes kids sick. It's Erin Brockovitch territory. There are two ways to think about this smoke and slime. It is either a increase in the cost, or a decrease in the benefit. It really doesn't matter which way you think about. I'll go with the cost model here. Normally, in the market, the slime and smoke would not enter into the equation, neither Factory A nor the people who buy GOOK have to pay to help clean up East Gookville. It is an externality -- a cost or benefit not borne by any of the agents managing a transaction. They are maybe my favorite thing you would learn about in the first semester of microeconomics.

So imagine that we added in the Social Cost (SC) or the slime and smoke (if you want to think of it as the Slime Cost, I'll support you).

(Equation 2) MPB(x)=MPC(x) + SC(x)

This will increase the price, right? Because this number will be bigger than the number in Equation 1. And an increase in price means fewer units of GOOK are sold, which means that the benefits of GOOK to the community of East Gookville offset the costs. Now, we are producing a socially optimal amount of GOOK.

Here is the trick -- which costs do you include. If you think that there are social costs or benefits to an action that has a market (or one that doesn't have a market) they need to be taken into account if we want to reach a social optimum, and as the person writing the equations I get to decide what to include, and how to quantify the benefits.

Warning: Once you start doing this, and applying it to your everyday life, you can rationalize *anything*. I should have this piece of cake, because it will make me happy, and my happiness will confer a social benefit on all the people I smile at in the train. You see what I mean, tricky business, and economists rarely talk about the decisions they are making behind the scenes and the implications that they have. A continuation including my "most quoted quote" will follow sometime before bed.

Haiku/Senryuu Festival

My contribution is up here, and there are lots of good, funny political contributions -- so take a peek, and everyone has some time for a 17 syllable poem.

I hold one red glove
fitting two or three fingers
wet, unlike leather.

[edited to add my haiku, for curious minds who want to know]

Here is a Shocker!

You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis. Postmodernist 100% Cultural Creative 63% Materialist 50% Modernist 38% Idealist 31% Romanticist 25% Existentialist 13% Fundamentalist 13% What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com

Bestiality and Contraception

If that title doesn't get me some google hits, I'm done for.

An update on my personal life is at the bottom of this post, if you care about that and not about bestiality, you have a bizarre sense of what is interesting, but you can scroll down nonetheless.

So, last week Shorto wrote an article for the New York Times about the ongoing and burgeoning war on contraception in American society. It was a flawed article, sure, but he made some good points, and opened up the eyes of many about the slippery slope problems that could be associated with letting some rights to abortion fall to the wayside.

Another thing that I think he did fairly well was pull out the logic of those who would like to reserve sexuality for Christian heterosexual marriage, and think about the arguments they make. I think those folks really do think that back in the day, when sex only happened in marriage, and the body was a temple, there was less homosexuality, and not the undue emphasis on sexuality that there is today. As Shorto says, "Contraception, by this logic, encourages sexual promiscuity, sexual deviance (like homosexuality) and a preoccupation with sex that is unhealthful even within marriage."

If you are wondering how the availability of contraceptions increases homosexuality, this is not the blog to answer your questions -- I am flummoxed as to how they got to this conclusion.

Stephanie Coontz in writing about marriage and how we think about it today, has pointed out that we have a false and rose-colored idea of what marriage used to be, and in all of our romanticizing and white weddings we are harkening back to an ideal than never existed. The same is true with these people's ideas of sexuality in heterosexual marriages back in the olden days.

It wasn't all it is cracked up to be. Sure, we don't know a lot about how marriage really worked for the people involved because history decided as a discipline a while ago to pay less attention to the private sphere, but some good scholarship has been unearthing it. Sure, men had sex with their wives, maybe their wives only had sex with them. But marriage is certainly not the only place that sex happened.

a. It's called the oldest profession for a reason. Enough said.

b. Casual MSM sex was a lot more common. Men who have sex with men were more common than they are now. Men were often bedfellows, and often had sex with each other. Usually whoever was the penetrator got to keep their identity as a man, and whoever was penetrated lost that identity -- or at least that identity became more troubled.

c. Bestiality happened. I think in part it happened, like MSM sex, because there was no fear of pregnancy. In those days, we lived more closely with our domestic animals and livestock, and opporutunity was definitely a factor. If you want a conversation of this that doesn't rely on the vague and unsatisfactory term "in those days" check out the first chapter of this book. It talks both about MSM sex and bestiality/buggery. Also, if you are in this field, it's a great teaching text.

Do I think that if contraception is made illegal or inaccessible in this country there will be an increase in prostitution, casual homosexuality and people screwing their sheep? No. I don't. But I am also very wary of people who say that it will make marriage in a sacred and pure (barely) sexual union that it never was.

Personal Update:
I was in BigCity this weekend for the exciting FamilyEvent. It was nice, I'm so proud of my sister it makes me cry. It was also very stressful, as spending time with broken and blended family is.

I greatly underestimated my aunt and uncle who live in LiberalCity in RedState where TP also lives. I had been putting off coming out to them for months because they are Republicans and Catholic, and maybe the most classist people I've ever met and I was terrified of them. When I told her that I was going to be in LiberalCity for two weeks, she asked why, and I said that the person I was dating lived there, and she immediately said "Oh? What does she do there?". Which was a relief. We'll deal with gender identity another day. Honestly, I think their biggest concern is that I promise to always call when I'm in town and let them take me out to dinner, mooch off their privilege, and, of course, drink their ginger margaritas (YUM).

I haven't heard from DreamJob. Fingers still crossed, should hear about whether I'm getting a 2nd interview this week.

Rape (again)

I posted a comment over there. But think it's important to add here. Basically a quick discussion on why rape crisis counselours need to believe the people who call them.


I think a lot of this hangs on our definition of the word “advocate” and “counselor”. I’ve been a rape crisis counselor for an anonymous hotline on a college campus. I fielded calls from women who thought that they had been raped, women who thought they had had “a bad hookup”, and once even a guy who was *terrified* that he might have raped someone. In each and every case my job was to be an advocate for that person — to help them through how they were feeling about the situation, listen to them, help them make decisions, present them with options so they could decide what they needed to do to keep themselves safe. It wasn’t my job to tell the women who had been raped that I wanted DNA evidence to continue the call, and it *equally* wasn’t my job to tell the woman who had “a bad hookup” that she had been raped, or to tell the guy that he needed to learn how to talk in bed, or his sex life would suck for a long time.

We ask lawyers to be advocates for people, to help them tell their stories in the court so that they can receive a fair trial. Rape crisis advocates should (and do) have similar standards of professionalism, that involve listening, and believing. Period.

For more about how I feel about rape, read this.

Notes from Backstage

I love performances – live music, movies, plays, even sports events take on a certain kind of loveliness to me. But my favorite performers are everyday people; their performances are live, candid and fresh. I like to watch them from the other side of coffee shops through car windows and from afar in public forums. Some of the performances that I have enjoyed the most though are the ones with which I have been most intimate – the ones where my friends have designed the lighting or watching someone I know talking to a stranger. All the things that I love about them become new again in watching them deal with something new. I can see how her eyes imagined this sunset and how she designed it. I like being in on that part. I like knowing the art and craft that goes into that performativity.

Gender is also a performance. The way that we wear clothing and take up space and relate to others is all part of complex performance that constitutes gender identity and expression. My steady is genderqueer, doesn’t identify as a man or woman and uses gender neutral pronouns, ‘ze’ and ‘hir’ whenever possible. For hir gender performance is particularly important. The name ze uses is one that folks usually assume is male. Ze presentation is fairly masculine – the performance is important to hir. And most people don’t get to be backstage for that. I am. And sometimes that’s uncomfortable. There is something hard about having the person for whom you perform be the person who is backstage. Not in a cool backstage pass, meet the band kind of way; in a nitty-gritty I’ll do the grunt work kind of way. I love that intimacy – being the one who knows how to help choose a binding, or talking about the consequences of going on hormone therapy. We talk about the parts that are painful and we talk about the consequences. Sometimes my steady worries about letting someone in… I’m the first girlfriend ze has had since starting to blur the gender categories and I think that I’m the first person who has ever been in hir backstage.

My gender is in some ways easier to pin down which makes the performance harder to pin down. I am feminine for the most part, except when I let my inner butch come out and play. But I’m just as anxious about handing out those backstage passes. I don’t know if TP knows that, that for me it is as terrifying to talk about wanting to be equally sexy in a three piece suit and a velvet dress, as it is for hir to talk about hir body and how ze wants it to change.

Sometimes this all puts me in a funny place in the trans community, especially in HarborCity where no one knows TP, and I just look like another femme-ish lesbian on the train. While they are dismissing me, I’m looking for clues -- shorter men, with acne, and a voice that sounds like they have a cold, that extra curve of hip under men’s pants. I notice things I never did before. It’s like being part of a club by only looking through the windows.

A while ago TP mentioned something about how I have a queer body. In that queer theory sort of way. I think of TP’s body as queer all the time; but mine, with the gender identity and sex assignment nicely lined up, I, unfairly, put into the “normal” and straight” categories. However, in reality, my performances pull my body to the edges of woman, but to different edges than the ones that TP goes to with hir performances. Once you add in my desires, and the performances I watch mesmerized and entranced – I’m back behind backstage in this queer liminal place, finding folks to kiss before I know what their genitals might look like. In the meantime, no one even knows that I have a backstage.

I don’t know what implications this might have for my life, this invisible backstage, but welcome, so far only TP and the blogosphere really have a pass.

Read the New York Times

If you haven't already find some way to read the Shorto article on Contra-Contraception in the Sunday magazine of the New York Times (I'm not linking here because you can find the NYT, I know you can, and I can't figure out how to link without you learning my user name, which is pas de cool). The article is pretty shocking, and therefore hard to read, but is so very, very important. In the, joking, words of a good friend, "No, you can't have your body back".

-- In other news, I need to start finding ways to organize and follow-through on blogging ideas as they come up -- does anyone have a system for this? Things that are still on the list are: men who contra dance, bestiality and contraception, queer femininity, what I wear when I'm not in drag, and more things that I do that are radical fun that I thought up over the weekend.

-- I had a first interview for DreamJob today, it went well, I think. My interviewer was a graduate from ELAC, which was weird, but not altogether unsurprising.

-- Roommate M. is moving out on Saturday, I'm leaving town on Wednesday (for the first of a series of exciting family events)-- I'm sad about her leaving. L. and I sent and email to B. (who might soon be roommate B.) formally inviting her to join the People's Republic of OurHouse, I hope she gets back to us soon.

-- Work is insane.

Radical Fun

Today is Radical Fun Day!

First of all I apologize because I had totally forgotten about it, and so blogging more about testosterone, teen motherhood, and my interview will all have to wait. I have to have fun!

Radical fun. Part of being queer, in my head, is being disruptive of normative places. Sometimes I do this by having loud sex (yes, college dorms are still normative places), sometimes I sit like a man on public transit, taking up a full seat, sometimes I ask the 'wrong' question in a meeting or classroom. But my favorite way to do it -- is to laugh.

My laugh is loud. Really loud. It sounds like I'm choking, and really when I laugh really hard it is difficult to breathe because I'm laughing so hard.

In high school, every morning we had Chapel, it was non-demoninational -- full of announcements and inspirational readings. We sat in our Advisory Groups. I sat next to a wonderful queer boy for four years. He was also a close friend, he had all the dance moves of Britney Spears memorized, we would have a BadPopSong of the week to sing to each other in the hallways, and every once in a while he would bite me in Chapel.

You have to picture an old auditorium, with a lovely and moldering proscenium stage. You have to picture an overweight Catholic arch-nemesis with a face that resembles a beet trying to be inspirational. It's quiet, other people are saying the Pledge of Allegiance, and then I start laughing. I'm about two thirds of the way back and the whole place can hear me, and I can't stop. I am a total disruption, and I don't care, I'm having too much fun.

I was pretty quiet in high school -- the only times I was loud was when I was angry and railing against aforementioned Catholic Arch-nemesis, and while playing lacrosse (when I was known to growl at my opponents). But there was very little joyful noise in my life, I was struggling to feel like I had space in the world, my laugh was always a disruption. Now there is a lot more laughter and a lot more space -- or I take the space more freely than I did then. I'm not sure which.

I love laughing, I love the way it takes my whole body and demands attention. I love the fact that my joy takes over and I can't stop it sometimes. I love it for the same reason that I love sex -- the ecstacy. From the Latin ex-stare, to stand outside oneself, to be taken outside oneself. It may not sound so radical, I hope it sounds fun. But it's what I hope to be doing in the face of this old, tired, beautiful, screwy world... that and you know, agitating

TP Alert

1. I had to give TP the URL to the blog so that ze could cite some of it in a paper for a class. While I was at it, I gave ze the permission to look this place up and leave comments. So be aware, TP might lurk, and might comment.
2. So, in case there were any illusions, my real name is not Corinne. Most people in my life don't know about this blog, and I'm strangely protective of it.
3. TP is also not TP's real name, it stands for Theoretical Partner. Language is a funny thing, because we have developed gender neutral terms for pretty much everything except the people we date. If you have a life partner you can use "partner". But there isn't really a gender neutral alternative to "girlfriend" and "boyfriend" unless you resort to the saccharine "sweetie", "babe", "main squeeze". So TP is my theoretical partner, not quite a partner, we haven't really made that committment, but something more than simply "the person I'm dating". Also, TP loves theory, queer theory, literary theory, theory for theory's fuck's sake; and I love that about TP. Hence the nickname.
4. I'm going to blog about teen motherhood later. Check back.
5. I have a very exciting (!!!!!) interview on Monday.

Queer Family Quiz

Roommate L. and I are looking for a new roommate for our lovely apartment in HarborCity. Roommate M. is moving out a week from tomorrow, though we don't really need someone to move in until July 1. There are a couple alumnae from ELAC that would be good roommates. The problem is we aren't really sure a "roommate" is what we want. L, M, and I live much more like family in ways that are hard to quantify, and we like it that way. So in an effort to figure out which ELAC alumn to have join our family, we sent out this email. Feel free to write your own answers in the comments, it could be amusing, although I don't think any of my (2.35) readers are prospective roomies in HarborCity.

Some questions we have for you:
- We, in the past, have split all food and made meals together fairly
often. What are your expectations and thoughts about food, grocery
shopping, and meal cookin'? Do you have any dietary restrictions?
- What are things you like to do with rainy saturdays?
- What kind of hours do you anticipate keeping?
- How do you deal with stress? Conflict? How would you like others to
deal with your stress or conflicts with you?
- Are you looking for an apartment to come home to with family-like
friends or are you looking for more of a roommate situation?
-What are you feelings on nudity in the apartment, and open bathroom doors?
-What's your favorite room in a house?
-And, finally, do you have any questions for us?

For the Next X Number of Years

Friday night, my roommate L was marooned on a side of HarborCity that is hard to get home from by public transportation, but easy to get home from by car, so I took the car and my good friend who was over for dinner and we embarked to pick her up. Relatively easy driving in HarborCity means you might get there if you don't really care about seeing any road signs ever or having to deal with insane drivers.

My friend and I started having a heavy, deep, and real conversation about what I'm going to do with my life. Do I really like economics more than I like queer theory? Would there be a way to blend them? Would that way be martyrdom? How do I feel about that? Do I really want to be doing economics graduate school until I am in my thirties? What then?

The problem was that I was driving in the dark, and could only sort of answer all of these questions that she was so gently posing. I can also only sort of answer them when I'm not driving, it's brilliantly sunny and I'm sipping lemonade (yes, lemonade works like truth serum). I have mixed feelings about economics. Can the master's tools dismantle the master's house? What other tools do we have, especially in academia, don't we all use the master's tools sometimes? Every weapon is a tool if you hold it right, every tool is a weapon if you hold it right. I think I could hold it right. On the other hand I endured years at ELAC of being the outsider in my economics classes where the thing was talked about the most was the "profit maximizing firm", and I had amazing EconMentor, who taught me how to disagree with them and showed me the place I could have in that field, and believes in me. (Curse mentors who believe in you and push you to be your better self/academic).

I also have an unhealthy and large dose of self-doubt. I don't know if I can emotionally survive more years in an economics department dominated by men who are maximizing profit at every turn, often at the expense of people in their department. I also don't know if I can do the math.

But I do know that I like economics. The games that it makes you play with your brain have never grown stale for me. I also think that I could be a good teacher, and have interesting research. I also have accumulated some pretty specific human capital (come now, can you draw the Solow Model and explain it in spanish? I thought not). It seems like a waste to throw that away.

It is also the strongest and most flexible tool I have at my disposal, and getting a Phd in Economics does not mean that I have to end up somewhere like ELAC, I could end up somewhere like here So right now, I'm still driving in the dark toward a Phd in Economics. I'm not quite sure where I'm going, there are trickier intersections ahead, but I also haven't run right smack into anything yet.

First Injection

Friday, 1:30.
First injection of testosterone for TP.
Grinning, excited, slightly nauseous.
Fingers crossed.
That's all.