Nothing to Say

I suppose it's the depression. I don't know. Every other day I start some essay or another for the blog; politics, feminism, gender, identity, sexuality, pop culture, how I've somehow assed myself out of most of my fuckin' pants AGAIN even though I now own pants ranging 10 sizes and how in the holy hell is it even possible that everything I own is either too small or too big, whatever. None of it goes anywhere that interests me. All of my writing lately, blogging and otherwise, has felt...off. Can't put my finger on why, exactly, but even in the act of writing it, it just feels wrong, and then later I read it and think to myself: omg so fucking boring. I am more bored than I have ever been in my entire life. Virtually nothing is interesting to me, it's not just my writing.

Anyway, since I've said very little online either here or elsewhere in quite a while, I just wanted to throw a post up to let people know that I'm okay, more or less, I've just got nothing to say. As always, I hope you are all well.

To Spite Me, That's Why

The post title is the answer to the question: Why is it raining its ass off outside right now? And the reason I know it is the answer is because this is how the past 24 hours of my life have gone:

5pm yesterday: Starts raining its ass off, so I rush outside and haul all my just-watered baby plants under the house ledge so they don't get too drenched. This requires some effort as my muscle weakness/pain is acting up and I recently planted a lot of new plants.

7pm: Clears up totally, cool, so I drag all the plants back out again.

9pm: Are you kidding me with more rain? And did that weather guy just say the word "hail"? All right, fine, I'll be responsible and move it all again but I am leaving everything under the damn ledge all night and the morning sun can bite me.

Asscrack of dawn this morning: I go to roll over and the sound of thunderstorms and rain pounding on the roof wakes me up. I grin smugly, ha take that, and go back to sleep.

10am: Wow, what a gorgeous day. Rain has finally cleared. While coffee is brewing I go outside and put all my baby plants out into the sun.

11am: Get ready to install bedroom shelving and discover missing pieces, crap, have to go to the store.

12pm: Back from the store. Was it raining at the store? Barely. Is it raining at the house? Like I should've bought enough wood for an ark. ::sigh:: Tromp out into the yard, which is now a swamp, and haul all of the plants back under the ledge.

1pm: It stops raining but I don't buy it. I leave everything under the ledge and start installing shelves.

2pm: Still no rain. I give the sky the finger and go back to installing shelves.

4pm: Still no rain. Nary a cloud in the sky. A little windy, but the plants really do need some sun. I am finished with the shelving so I go outside and haul all of the plants back out into the sun again.

5pm: OMG EFFIN RAIN. Screw it, I hope those plants don't drown, because hope is all I got left.

And for some unknown, ungodly reason, my entire neighborhood smells like poop.

Blessed Beltane

Unless I'm dragged into them, I don't really do holidays, but this one is my favorite and usually all it takes to get me to celebrate it is an invitation. Growing up, I didn't yet know that I actually have Irish ancestry (my mom had only said vaguely that her family was "British and Spanish"), but I was an Anglophile from the time I first picked up Shakespeare in around second grade or so, and even as a little kid I was fascinated by and drawn to Celtic design elements and mythology. When I was a teenager and found out that Beltane was all about fires, sex, flowers, and late night partying in the woods, I was intrigued, as those things can definitely be counted among my favorite things.

I am not a believer in any religious tradition, but I have had some fascinating adventures of consciousness that defy explanation so I have tried a lot of them out, seeking something like understanding or enlightenment, genuinely hoping that one or another would stick, but none ever have. With the exception of Judaism, I've never been a big fan of the monotheistic traditions. They all strike me as being so overly serious. I just don't trust anyone who takes life that seriously. Plus which, far too many logical contradictions, far too many rules, few with any halfway decent reason, and then there's that vigorous disagreement over the term "stoned to death". The pagans have the best parties, and polytheists in general have way better stories, and since I can't quite get my mind to believe in any of it, I'm really just on board for the parties and the stories.

My funnest Beltane was spent with some Radical Faeries in the mid-90s in the Tennessee woods. The land there was primarily men's land, and the biggest part of the Beltane gathering was boys only, but the portion of the woods that the guys had set aside for women included some of the most beautiful little creeks and waterfalls I've ever seen. The entire acreage smelled like forest rain and bluebells (you would think it would totally just smell like dirty hippie, but there was a pretty cool bath house) and even though it was cold as fuck the entire time my friends and I were visiting, it was a groovy gathering and I still remember the people I met there fondly. (It may indeed be easier to remember people fondly when you've met them naked in the shower, watched them paint themselves blue and then trip acid, or helped them find a missing buttplug by firelight, but whatever.)

I wish I was going to a Beltane party tonight, but I don't know any local faeries, druids, wiccans, or pagans, so I think I'm just going to go out and buy some flowers and plants to decorate the yard perimeter, and then tonight, it's probably going to be all about low-key intoxicants, Lost, and my ongoing lustful hope that on Grey's, the very sexy Dr. Hahn turns out to be a big ole lesbo.

A blessed Beltane to all of you!

Sprung

Spring is finally here (although it seems to intend to play some head games as the forecast includes overnight temperatures barely above freezing tomorrow night) as is well evidenced by all of the lawn mowing in the 'hood and the eruption of flowers and leaves and plants all over the yard. E's been sick so I've had to mow the yard twice already and while she likes to do it, for me it's a major chore plus it makes me feel way too much like a suburban drone and blegh.

I've been too fatigued to dig up a giant section of the backyard and plant anything like a real garden but I have managed to get some containers planted, so there's an herb garden hanging from the branches of the pine tree outside my bedroom window consisting (so far) of: rosemary, thyme, mint, lavender, parsley, green onions and chives, which I'm going to add to, and which I'm very much looking forward to using in my cooking throughout the summer and fall. There were a few containers left by the previous residents of this place already hanging from that tree when we moved in, and stuff is coming up in those, too -- it will be fun to see what it is.

There's a small bricked in hill at the back corner of the yard that I'm going to get some strawberry plants into, but other than that it's going to be container gardening all around, including lots of salad stuff, a few miscellaneous veggies, and the occasional decorative/just-for-fun thing here and there. A lot of the specifics will depend on my energy levels and how fast E is back on her feet, and all of it is going to get sown piecemeal because that's the only way I can do anything anymore. So far, besides the little herb garden, I've only gotten a couple of tubs of variety-style lettuce planted (so I can still bring things inside if it gets too cold the next couple of days) but as soon as the tubs were out on the patio we noticed a curious garden visitor sniffing around them that very evening.


That salad is not for you, my little friend.

It's freakin' adorable, but I know it wants to eat my damn salad, because it not only comes every night to sniff around the tubs and check to see if there's goodies yet, but the last time I saw it, it had brought a friend along, too. Obviously, I'm going to have to set the lettuce tubs up on something. I was a city kid, though, and I have no idea about the preferred diets of wild bunnies or their behavior. Does anyone know what else they eat, or how high they can hop/climb up?

Because Silence is a Betrayal

If you read the feminist blogsophere, you're already aware of the most recent controversy over appropriation, writing, citing, publication, and racism. I haven't known what to say about it that hasn't already been said better by other bloggers, so I haven't said anything. Which, I have realized, is totally wrong, because my silence on the issue as a white feminist winds up coming off like complicity, like I don't think the issues are important, like I support the status quo, and none of that is true.

So, just for the record, I basically agree with the position expressed and explained here. There are tons of links there if you want to go clicking around to get more background on what's sparking me to make this post, but out of respect for one of the women who has quit blogging and quit feminism over this, I'm leaving names out of this post and just trying to speak to the relevant structural issues in a more general way.

I'm still learning how to be a more effective anti-racist ally, but this particular conflict -- along with the larger pattern of racist behavior among prominent white feminist bloggers that it is a part of -- has gone a long way toward instructing me in how not to behave. To a certain extent, I understand the defensive reaction white people tend to have whenever we are told we are exhibiting racist behavior. I've had that defensive reaction myself. I can definitely relate to how it feels to be told that you're doing something that you genuinely don't believe you're doing and that you find viscerally repulsive.

However, with nearly 40 years of womanhood and nearly 30 years of feminism behind me, I'm also pretty damn clear about just how many men there are out there who do not see all of the sexist patterns in the social organization that function to oppress women in countless different ways. It's like the death of a thousand paper cuts. It's everywhere. And men not seeing it is frustrating, but often understandable. What's not even a little bit okay is whenever there's a roomful of women telling men, "Yes, that is straight-up sexist, and here's why," and the men ignore the explanations, dismiss the criticisms, accuse the critics of being hateful, and/or defend the behavior, sometimes all of the above. "Blah blah blah, you're being oversensitive or you must just have an agenda, because you certainly seem very angry and we don't see any sexism here at all, so if you want our help you're going to have be a lot more reasonable." omg, giant assholes.

So it ought not be such a big leap for any white feminist to figure out that one of the foundational requirements involved in being even a halfway decent anti-racist ally is that you have to accept that people of color in general absolutely know how to spot racist patterns in the cultural structure better than white people do. And that whenever people of color whose voices you generally respect speak up and tell you that you have done something wrong, chances are extremely high that you did, in fact, do something wrong. You will never learn what you did wrong, and thus you will keep doing it and keep hurting people, unless and until you engage the discussion and make a concentrated effort to see a perspective on the world that is not your own. A refusal to do so perpetuates racism, and a hostile refusal to do so pours salt in an open wound.

For white feminists, this move should come a lot easier than it does, because we are organized in the first place to correct the various structural power imbalances that privilege men in society, and making a concentrated effort to see a perspective on the world that is not their own is the exact same thing that we are constantly demanding of men. We want them to learn to be our allies, to trust that our perspectives about sexism are generally more valid than theirs because we're the targets of it and it's easier for us to see what hurts us than it is for them to see where they get privileges; if they claim to be allies then we expect them to not be defensive jerks and to listen for long enough to understand where and how they are participating in sexist social patterns that hurt women. We legitimately expect them to listen, to learn, and to change.

White feminists owe this same behavior to people of color on feminist principles just as much as on anti-racist ally principles. We cannot do effective equality work without recognizing that sex-based discrimination is not the only structural factor that oppresses women -- indeed, for many women, it's not even the most powerfully oppressive category, which I understand all too well as a genderqueer/queer type person (and which is one reason why I am not a radical feminist*). Feminism simply isn't a functional women's equality movement unless it acknowledges and seeks to eradicate all of the power imbalances that affect all women, which means that feminists must necessarily also be anti-racist allies (among other things), and that we must press the movement as a whole to work for all women equally.
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*I don't really do qualifier feminism. Ideologically, I'm probably most closely aligned with the weirdo theory-head anti-hierarchy postmodern/post-structuralist anarchist feminists. My particular brand of feminism is like a pastiche of multiple kinds of feminisms; it changes and grows over time and experience; it makes alliances with any movement it can find that furthers equality; and it keeps its allegiance tied directly to the concept of equality.

Newsflash: I'm Not Dieting

To my doctors: No, none of the symptoms of my autoimmune disease are arising due to my failure to get enough fat in my diet, and I don't understand why the fact that I tell you that I have "a healthy diet" makes you suspicious that I'm not eating real food. I'm solidly within the recommended height/weight range on your dorky little wall charts. Yeah, I eat lots of veggies and greens and I make it a point to keep the deep fried intake moderate, but that's about my heart, not my pants. I don't eat "fat free", "low fat" or "low cal" anything, and I never have. I firmly believe that there are virtually no foods that can't be improved by adding butter, cheese, and/or chocolate sauce to them, and I will wrestle you to the ground if you try to take away my frosted strawberry poptarts.

To serving staff at restaurants: No, I don't want the diet pop. Did you notice that I did not ask for the diet pop? Why the hell do you think I want the diet pop? Did my boobs order diet pop when I wasn't paying attention? I detest diet pop, that shit is nasty. If I were stranded in the desert with nothing but a case of Diet Pepsi, I'd probably die.

To advertising agencies: No, meat isn't a man's food, you assholes. I know it's hard for you to wrap your heads around this, but man type people and woman type people actually do belong to the same species, and we have predominantly been, for many thousands of years, omnivores. Unless you can prove that you're eating that steak with your penis, I don't want to hear any more dumbass commercial advertising about man food.

To mass media at large: No, I am not "watching my figure" or "trying to slim down for swimsuit season". No, I have never in my life been on a single diet. Aside from concerning myself with good nutrition and health, and trying to avoid toxins and manufacturers/commercial farmers who capitalize on oppression and dangerous food production*, I eat what I want, when I want. Your constant assumptions that women are obsessed with dieting just because we're women and we must be wired that way is, in fact, woman-hating. But you know that. Fact is, I like my tummy, and I like my thighs, and I like lots of other women's tummies, and lots of other women's thighs, and yes, that includes women of all shapes and sizes.

In conclusion, I resent the hell out of all of you misogynist fucks for shaming other women into hating their bodies. Thanks, and have a nice day.
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*It's not like I'm not a lefty. I'm outraged by human exploitation, I'm furious at the reckless emphasis of capital over health and sustainability, and I'm extremely alarmed by the current global food crisis. If it were up to me, I'd cut our military budget drastically and feed the world immediately, even though I know for a fact that it'd get me killed to do so.

Apologies If Necessary

I know I have been very temperamental for a while, and especially lately, and while I'm sure that's coming through in my writing, my blogging, my communication in general, I don't really know whether it's just showing or whether people are perceiving it as coming at them. I'm usually a patient person. I'm usually that person who's willing to gently educate the ignorant, who's willing to debate civilly for hours over radically different perspectives, who's willing to give a whole lot more than I ever get.

But lately? Can't do it. It's like my fuel tank is on empty. I'm short-tempered, I'm frustrated, I'm depressed, I'm angry at the world's injustice, I'm fucking exhausted.

Then I saw this story late last night:

U.S. President George W. Bush's most senior advisers approved "enhanced interrogation techniques" of top al Qaeda suspects by the Central Intelligence Agency, ABC News reported on Wednesday, citing sources it did not name.

ABC reported that the so-called "principals" discussed interrogation details in dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House.

Then national security adviser Condoleezza Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by a select group of senior officials or their deputies, ABC said.

"Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding," ABC reported.

In addition to Rice, the principals at the time included Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft, the report said.

And now it's basically gone from the news pages. As I write this, CNN's top US headlines on the front page are about the weather and a "squirrelman". Reuters has the pope and the Olympic torch. MSNBC has a wider range of stories, some of them actually news, but nothing about this on its front page.

I make jokes sometimes about fleeing the country but I'm seriously starting to think it might be time to get the hell out. The amount of ignorance and apathy, and violence, and outright hatred in this country, even on the left, is goddamned alarming. And that there are scores of people who actually believe that there's such a thing as "left-wing media" is almost as impossible for me to wrap my brain around as if someone were telling me they just saw a pride of lions flying over Iowa, or George W. Bush playing competitive chess.

Apparently, we are not going to do jackshit about torture. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi famously took impeachment off the table in 2006. The stated strategy at the time was that the Democrats were going to be the party of bipartisanship, not divisiveness, and that's when all this ridiculous "reach across the aisle" nonsense starting floating around, as if it weren't obvious to anyone with more wits than a bowl of fruit that if you try to reach across the aisle to these people they'll cut your motherfucking hand off. (The real reasons, of course, were more about lacking the votes for impeachment, and that Democrats are guilty of collaborating.)

What we needed out of this election more than anything else was for a passionate candidate to come forward and propose a radical change of direction; for someone to argue fiercely against the power-mongering and the wars and the imperialism; to remind us of all the irrefutable proof we have that violence only begets violence; we needed an innovator, a firebrand, a leader to persuade the nation to embrace peace and equality and charity, to revive the spirit of American invention, and to inspire the country to want to become a responsible global citizen. We didn't get that candidate*. And it's to our eternal goddamned shame that even if we had, we'd have probably just shot them.

Because of all of this, and a lot of personal crap as well that I'm not going to get into, I feel like I'm at a pretty major crossroads in my life. I don't know how things are going to shake out just yet, but if I've been coming across as far more impatient and pissy than I used to, this stuff is why. I'm nearing some kind of limit, and likely to continue freaking out for a while, so if you can't be patient and charitable with me I understand that, but fwiw I'd appreciate the effort.
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*The closest we came to it was weird little Dennis Kucinich, to whom I had just warmed up after many years of strong distaste based largely on personal vibes and his now-discarded anti-choice position, but whose campaign platform was actually very decent in many areas, for a Democrat -- and then he said he'd ticket-share with that whackjob Ron Paul, and I was like: Oh Dennis no.