Category: Personal

The War Against Non-Christians

tekanji

By now, I’m sure y’all have heard about the so-called War on Christmas. Because, you know, Christians in America are an oppressed group. Unlike Jews, Muslims, pagans of various stripes, or atheists. It’s not like their God is in the pledge that children have to speak every day… oh, wait, it is. Well, it’s not like the majority of their religious holidays are national holidays… oh, wait, they are. Uh. Er. They’re oppressed, really! I mean, prayer in school has been outlawed, evolution is taught in science class, the god-given commandments are not allowed to be in public buildings, and now… now they have to put up with “PC” phrases such as “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings” being said alongside “Merry Christmas”. If this continues, people of other faiths (or lack of faith) might start thinking that their beliefs are equal to those of the God Warriors!

I, myself, became a casualty of this vicious war when I was dealing with a credit card issue just a few days ago.

I was on the phone with the representative and after we had resolved everything she said, “Ha… Merry Christmas.”

I replied, “And a Happy Holidays to you.” Truth be told, what I really had wanted to say was, “Where the hell do you get off assuming that I celebrate Christmas?” But, really, it might not have been the rep’s fault. From the way she started saying something else, it sounds like it’s company policy. And that, my friends, is just not cool.

In other related news, my mom was at Safeway today getting a bunch of stuff for dinner (we’re celebrating my sister’s b-day ’cause she’s in town and so mom is making the main course, I’m making soup, and my sister’s fiance is making her cake) and she wanted to pick up a nice holiday card for her friend. Safeway stocks Hallmark cards, by the way. Row after row had “Merry Christmas” but nary a “Happy Holidays”, “Season’s Greetings”, or even “Happy Hannukah” was to be seen. She searched and searched and searched and, just as she was about to give up, the person working that area (described as “a nice old lady”) asked her if she needed any help.

“Why, yes,” she said as nicely as possible. “I’m looking for a holiday card, but all I see are ones that say ‘Merry Christmas’.”

“Oh,” the employee said, “Let me help you find one.”

So, she searched and searched while my mom (in a still nice, but loud enough voice to attract attention) talked about how she was so surprised, since she’s never had trouble finding a proper holiday card before. After a little bit, the employee asked mom why a Christmas card wouldn’t just suffice.

“So you’re saying that I should give my Jewish friends a Christmas card?!” was Mom’s response.

Abashed at her suggestion when it was stated like that, the employee replied, “Oh, no. Of course not. We’ll find something suitable.”

At the point where she was venturing into the generic “Thank You” cards, my mom had to gently tell her that, no, she didn’t want a card that said “thanks”; she wanted a holiday card. When none were to be found, she told the employee that it was all right and she’d just see if she had any left over from last year. At that point, a few other customers had been looking over the shelves (as most of us will do when someone is having trouble with something) and coming up empty, as well. Thanking the employee for her help, mom checked out with her purchases and came home sans-holiday card. With any luck, the employee will tell her boss that they lost a customer because of the lack of appropriate holiday cards.

I’d just like to give a big “thumbs down” to Safeway/Hallmark for excluding me, my family, and our non-Christian friends with your Christian-only holiday cards. I’m sick of being excluded by the wingnut branch of Christians who think that inclusive language or policies are an “attack” on Christianity. No, idiots, the attack is on the groups you’re trying to exclude.

Build, Order, Whine [My Voodoo, Part 1]

tekanji

So, I ordered myself a Voodoo laptop today. After a frustrating website experience, I decided to write up a series on how my Voodoo weathers the next few years. Seeing as I just ordered it, and therefore cannot write about the machine itself, I decided to make this an introduction/rant about the website.

As soon as I get it (which, given that I’m going to be in Miami for the next two months, better be a month after it arrives), I’m going to write a First Impressions post on it, and then I’ll update things whenever a new problem crops up. Because you know problems are gonna come up.

I. Why Voodoo?

Ringing in at a whopping 4186.96 USD, my Voodoo Envy 732 qualifies as the most expensive computer I’ve ever bought. It’s a few hundred dollars shy of being more expensive than my current desktop (hand built, mid-line for its time) and laptop (light weight, best bang for buck) combined. I knew there was a reason why I never told Dad what I wanted for a birthday present last July. Happy birthday to me. If I didn’t have to rely on it for my computing and gaming needs for the next 3-5 years, there’s no way I would have spent that much, so the darn thing better be worth it.

Let me give some of a back story: I had known I needed a new laptop to be my desktop replacement when I go to Japan in April for over a year, but I had decided to put it off until the last possible moment so as to get the best hardware I could. I was still annoyed about what happened with my Toshiba laptop – three months after I bought mine my sister got the same model with significantly better hardware. Although her software is even more screwy than mine, which has caused a bunch of problems for her.

I chose Voodoo not because I think that they’re the bestest laptop makers ever, but because my research didn’t turn up any major problems (except that they’re spotty with customer service, which I tend not to make use of anyway) and because I know from experience that whatever laptop I get will have problems that no one on the internet seemed to talk about. Like Toshiba with their massive overheating problems (mine is small, so it’s not terrible, but the larger model that my cousin and friend have get really hot really fast) and their odd software problems (both my and my sister have issues with our internet connections that have no discernible reason that I can find).

I also chose the company, I admit, because I liked the idea of having a decent degree of customization that they offered. My laptop style probably won’t be the only one like it in the world, but my guess is that it’ll be the only one like it at my school. And that’s cool. What’s not cool, however, is gendered designs.

Yes, you heard me, there are “boy” styles (read: tribal) and “girl” styles (read: animals). To their credit, the cost is the same for both. Some people may think it’s cool to do things this way, but I find it 1) annoying and 2) limiting. Annoying because what if a guy wanted the Phoenix design? I know some guys who would avoid it simply because it was labelled as a “girl” design, even if they liked it. Even if the phoenix had a special meaning to them. Limiting because breaking it into descriptive sections would make it easier to branch out into several other kinds of designs. I’d like to see celtic, or logos, etc. I ended up going with the Wheel of Time because I didn’t like any of the other tribals and I liked it better than the Phoenix animal.

They don’t gender their colours, which I like. I ended up with pink because it was the only colour I really liked. The red wasn’t awful, but it just didn’t look right for some reason. The green was a nasty shade. They call it “monza OLIVE” but it’s more of a forest olive. And an unattractive one at that. My ideal colour would have been a lime green, like my car. Oh well.

II. Have You People Even Heard of W3C?

Now, I had enlisted my mother’s partner as my sounding board for the purchase because something as significant as my only computer for the next 3-5 years of my life is not a purchase to make alone. He knows pretty much what I do about the hardware (which was not much about the specific devices, but a decent amount of the companies involved) and, aside from a fateful Gateway purchase back in the 90s, he has been pretty sensible about what computer he buys. My mom relies on him to do the initial footwork because she’s too lazy – I mean “busy” – to look stuff up on her own.

I went to the website and logged into my account. It was loading a lot slower on this connection than it had for me when I had been on my laptop in Vancouver, which was an annoyance but not necessarily the fault of Voodoo. I went to the laptop page and the first thing he said was that he wanted to see a comparison of the Middleweights (the style of laptop I wanted). Yeah, me too, buddy, me too.

There is no option to do a one-click comparison of all laptops in a given section. We tried clicking on a link called ‘See The Difference’ and the header picture, which was apparently Flash, went blank. Loading it in IE produced a Flash menu about their company, almost exactly the same as the navigation at the top of the page. Thanks, Voodoo. Thanks. I just love it when companies 1) don’t program for multiple browsers, and 2) abuse Flash, javascript, or any other potentially bandwith intensive goodies. Goodies should be used sparingly and with purpose, not for things that can be done better with straight up HTML.

So, then we were like, “Ok, there’s a little button named ‘Technical’ that might have it.” I clicked it. A blank javascript window appeared on the page, obscuring the description of the computer model, and Firefox went into its “Loading” animation and……………………………….did nothing for like a minute. At this point my mom’s partner was like, “Are you sure you want to buy from these people?” He was annoyed, rightly, that their website was a slow loading, Flash & JS intensive, obtuse POS. Me, too, but I just wanted my damn computer at this point and I didn’t want to go through the hassle of researching other sites and dealing with their BS, etc.

Eventually I got fed up, clicked the back button, then the forward button, then tried the Technical button again and it worked. Thankfully. So, yes, indeed there was a comparison chart that we then clicked.

A javascript window popped up. I’d just like to take the time to say just how much I hate pop up windows. I specifically have Firefox open them in new tabs because I hate them so much. Except that javascript doesn’t work that way. So much hatred. But, my annoyance aside, the window let us compare the Middleweights against the Heavyweights and I confirmed in my mind that yes, the Middleweights are for me. Most of the Heavyweights didn’t have as good of a video card as my 732, which is one of the biggest bottlenecks for gaming. My poor little Toshiba has like 32 megs at most. Maybe less. My 732 has a NVIDIA GeForce Go 7800 GTX GTX 256MB. Mm, tasty.

Fast forward through talking about pros and cons of weight, performance, battery, etc. I finally went to the build page and did a couple of upgrades: I got 2 GIGs of RAM instead of 1, a Seagate 100 gig 5400 instead of a Hitachi 60 gig 7200, an Intel M 750 instead of 740, and got MS Office Small Business Ed. I read through their TOS as specified, and got slightly annoyed that they referenced an Online Privacy Policy that was not defined anywhere, but not annoyed enough to wait until they open tomorrow to call and complain. Oh, just looked at a sheet I printed out. Apparently there was a link at the bottom of the previous page to it. Not that a Google search turned it up. Argh. Anyway, after another eternity of waiting for things to load, I finished placing my order.

III. My Journey Has Just Begun

“Your customized Voodoopc Machine has a 30 day ETA,” they say. We’ll see, Voodoo. We’ll see.

Carnival of Bent Attractions

tekanji

In commemoration of the launch of the Carnival of Bent Attractions (which features a post from yours truly, much to my surprise), I’ve added a new link grouping in my Blogs section for Carnivals. Right now I have the Carnival of Feminists and the Carnival of Bent Attractions. If you know of another good one you’d like to see, let me know and I’ll include it.

I’d like to be one of those good bloggers who posts with updates on carnivals, but truth be told I think I’m too lazy for that. We all know what happened to me with the Sunday Link Blogging (hint: it went the way of the dinosaurs). So, for right now, I’m just going to talk about carnivals when I think about them. It’s safer that way, trust me.

It's not "just a song" when someone believes in it

tekanji

Moby (as in the musician) apparently has a blog. On this blog, he blogs about stuff that’s not music. Apparently he’s pretty outspoken about many issues surrounding intolerance and hatred. I don’t know if it’s real sentiment or just an attempt to get more fame, but I really don’t care. What I do care about is his post on misogyny. I care not only because I’m a feminist who focuses on how pop-culture influences individuals and society, but also because the link between misogynistic lyrics and abuse/domestic violence is a very personal issue for me.

I’m not going to reproduce the post here (except to yoink quotes as my section headers). You can find it at the above link to read it. This post is not about moby, really, this is about me and my experiences with misogynistic music, domestic violence, and my “friends” who thought it was appropriate to marginalize my experienes by saying, “it’s just a song!” and other excuses like that. Just in case it wasn’t clear enough: the following material is triggering for domestic violence an abuse surviors. Read at your own risk.

I. Making a big issue out of something that no one else seems to care about

Go through enough of my “personal” section and you’ll find out that I was abused by my first boyfriend. He never took a bat to me, or even smacked me around, but all he needed were words to systematically destroy my life for the year and a half that we were together.

I’ve gotten used to the idea that most people don’t understand the form of abuse I went through because most of them have either given it or recieved it in lesser doses as a part of their “normal” relationships. When I bring up potential red flags with my friends they say I’m being “oversensitive” or when they see one of their friends being verbally abused they make excuses like, “Well, she’s not perfect either! I’ve seen her go off on him before.” Emotional violence is seen in our society as an acceptable, if not ideal, part of a relationship.

Case-in-point: the “boys will be boys” mentality. Just this weekend when I was out to dinner with my family, the subject of my female cousin’s now-ex boyfriend came up. I made the case, as I always do, that his behaviour (ditching her on their aniversary to get drunk with his friends, getting into fist fights with people, etc) was unacceptable. They – my uncle, aunt, uncle’s cousin and his wife, everyone except my male cousin who removed himself from the situation – ganged up on me, telling me that “he’s 20 years old.” And I, being 23, said, “Yes, that’s my point. He is 20 years old. He should know better.” But, no, they argued things like “girls mature faster”, “he won’t always be this way” (really? if no one tells him it’s not okay to act that way, why would he ever change his behaviour?), and my uncle even had the audacity to say that “men aren’t in total control of themselves.” He compared men to rabid dogs. Rabid. Dogs. It took all my willpower to not make a pithy remark about rape and rape culture, because that would have only served to make the situation worse.

The point I’m trying to illustrate this is misogynistic culture and the way even the most innocuous things can contribute to it. My family sincerly believed that “accepting” his behaviour (ie. dismissing the real hurt it caused because my cousin would “move on” eventually) was not the same as “condoning” it. But if we don’t speak up about these things when they happen, does our silence not imply our complicit acceptance? And if we continue to defend injustice because “that’s how life is”, does that not give a green light for the injustice to continue to perpetuate itself? My family members may never have raped anyone. Or physically abused them. Or even systematically mentally abused someone. But, even if they have never engaged in the “lesser” forms of emotional violence (which I doubt; I’m fairly sure that all of us have in some way or another), they are contributing to misogynistic culture by dismissing the importance of recognizing all violence as unacceptable.

II. Music that glamourizes misogyny

It’s no secret that misogynistic messages are part of many song lyrics, but yet so many people act shocked – shocked! – when you point that out. When you use clear-cut examples that talk about doing violence to women people pull up the, “Well, the musician wasn’t serious!” defence or say, “Chill out, it’s just a song!”. Instead of engaging in a discussion on how, and to what extent, these songs may contribute to Western culture’s continued silence on violence against women, they dismiss the possibility as unimportant or unreasonable. Or they act as if I was trying to say that there is a singular and direct causation between misogynistic music and violence against women. Please, these people know better than to confuse correlation with causation.

As with all problematic expressions of pop-culture, the “extreme” – and I use the term loosely in conjunction with the subject of domestic violence – examples are often dismissed out of hand. While I can understand the rationale – that a sane, rational person wouldn’t take a baseball bat to a woman in this day and age – it also misses a bigger picture: the impact isn’t confined to major violent outbursts, but can and does affect the way women are viewed and treated by our fathers, brothers, friends, and even other women. You can’t listen to music that degrades women without being affected by the message. And when you couple that with a blanket refusal to critique the music, and the culture it is a part of, what that means is that you internalize the messages and begin to see what they preach as normal and acceptable.

III. Maybe there’s no connection. Maybe there is. It’s disgusting that we even have to ask that question.

When I was still with my abuser, and quite aware of his hatred of women, I learned that he and his brother listened to Eminem. Loved his music. Loved to sing along to it. Especially the parts about raping and killing women. They’d be singing it while I sat in the room. I tried to bring the subject up, once. I was told that it was funny, you see, because Eminiem was just being offensive to create controversy. You know, singing about raping and killing women is funny. Ha. Ha. Okay, well, I expected that from him. I was too used to his other BS remarks that I just asked him to not listen to it/sing it in my presence and went on with my life, filing Eminem as another artist I never wanted anything to do with.

Who I did not expect it from, however, was my friends. On several occasions I got into arguments with them about the impact of the lyrics.

“Come on,” they said. “Eminem doesn’t really endorse that kind of stuff. He’s just a showman. And a good one at that, look how many fans his controversy has gotten him!”

“That’s not the point,” I replied. “The point is that there are people who listen to his music who believe in it. The message behind his songs is that it’s cool to treat women this way.”

“Well, it’s not like I’m going to run out and buy a bat to beat women with after I listen to his songs.”

The conversation would continue on in this vein with me explaining, for what seemed like the thousandth time, how Eminem’s violent lyrics had directly connected to the violence that I had experienced in my own life. Not that my personal anecdote swayed them in the least. One of them, who was intimately acquainted with many of the scars I carried from my abuse, had the audacity to respond to my story with, “Men get abused, too, you know.” I had no response to that; I was so shocked that he’d dismiss my arguments, and my very real and very painful experiences, with such a callous remark. Without Eminem, or others like him, would my abuser still been abusive? Certainly. But if we lived in a culture that condemned expressions of violence against women, it would have been a lot harder for him to pass off his violence as “normal”.

IV. You have blood on your hands, and you should be deeply, deeply troubled at the culture that you’ve helped to create

Musicians, actors, video game designers, journalists, writers, families, friends… we all have blood on our hands. We may not be criminal, or evil, but every time we condone violence with our silence, or our excuses, we are contributing to the problem. It is not enough for us to simply be against violence, we must actively be against it. And I, for one, am deeply troubled at the culture we’ve all helped to create.

Via feminist.

Girly kissing, raunch culture, and me

tekanji

Apparently there’s been a lot of discussion on Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs in the blogsphere, but I’m not really here to discuss that. What I want to talk about is Amanda’s post, Getting approval (which discusses the girls-kissing-girls part of the raunch culture), and my own experiences with it.

First things first: I am bisexual (or pansexual, more accurately). For years and years and years various things kept me closeted to myself and to those around me, but I finally came out sometime in 2003/2004. It was hard for me, especially since I was met with some scepticism from loved ones. My mother believed that people were “gay, straight, or lying” (to borrow from that hideously stupid study done a while back) and a friend said that I had to be mistaken, that I was confusing love/lust for “appreciation” of the female body. It didn’t help matters that I’ve only had one real sexual experience with a girl, especially since neither of us had any interest in pursuing anything outside of that one encounter.

So what does my personal story have to do with the pressure for straight girls to kiss each other? More than I care to admit, but admit I will.

First off, it was one of the “various things” that kept me closeted; I pushed my attraction to girls into the deepest recesses of my mind, telling myself that since I was attracted to boys I had to be heterosexual, any crushes I had were just “girl crushes”, and pursuing my attraction would just be me giving in to the “fad” of girl kissing.

The second is that after I had come out, I fell right into the viper pit I had tried so dearly to avoid. My biggest failing was that I wanted to kiss those pretty girls. I thought it would make me happy, but it didn’t. In fact, it made me feel ashamed, unhappy, and angry. Ashamed because I had known better than to do that, but I still had given into the pressure of one of my guy friends (who never would have suggested such a thing to me when I was IDing as hetero) and the straight girls who wanted to please him and/or wanted the attention of the other guys around. Unhappy because those girls didn’t want me. And angry at them for kissing me anyway, angry at my friend for pressuring both of us into it, and angry at a culture that normalizes and encourages such destructive behaviour.

I’m with easilyirritable when sie says:

I really, really, really fucking hate the fact that our culture is such that every attempt I might make towards owning my sexuality is thwarted by the fact that the majority of men in the world will take it as me trying to turn them on, when really all I want to do is turn myself on.

Angry Blogging Musings

tekanji

A looooong time ago, Sour Duck did her first post on inhibited writing, in which she reveals some of her own concerns about criticizing Kameron Hurley:

In other words, I became concerned that if I disagreed with her, she might come on over to my blog and leave a hostile or semi-hostile comment, or post one at her blog. This concern/fear/anxiety, as you can imagine, greatly inhibits your writing.

Now, I’m the kind of person who speaks her mind and damn the consequences. Sometimes that means that I find myself needing to apologize for unintentionally hurting someone. When that happens, I apologize for what needs apologizing and move on. I am an angry blogger. This is not going to change any time soon; there’s too much in this world to be angry about. I try to be an intelligent blogger (although I’m not above making a couple crap posts here and there when I feel like it). I try to live up to my own standards when it comes to eradicating divisive discourse. I don’t always succeed. But I’m only human here!

Anyway, one thing I’ve been finding is that the reaction to me criticizing a group or an individual is a lot different to the reaction of any number of my other angry posts. I can blog in generalities and only my fans care enough to comment on it. The moment I go into specifics – whether it be American Apparel, Suicide Girls, or referencing an article by Charlotte Croson in a post berating transphobic feminists – suddenly random surfers have a vested interest in me.

Now, don’t get me wrong! I’m not against people coming on here and voicing dissenting opinions. It’s part of what makes blogging interesting. And, let’s face it, if the whole world agreed with my opinions then I wouldn’t have anything to blog about. I just think that it’s interesting that my anger doesn’t merit discussion until I, to steal from Sour Duck, step on some toes.

On Being An Oversensitive, Man-Hating, Embarassing Feminist/Progressive/Whatever

tekanji

If you told me several years ago that I would be accused of being an “oversensitive feminist”, an “embarrassing liberal”, a “lesbian man-hater”, or “self-righteous” to the point of ignoring dissenting viewpoints, all simply because I unapologetically stand up for what I see as right and wrong, I would have laughed at you. Of course, back then I thought all people, except for ones who wanted to hurt others, were feminists and believed in equality of the sexes. What can I say? I was, and still am to a large extent, a naive idealist.

Sure, I can be sanctimonious. Sure, I’m self-righteous. But when did it become a crime to passionately believe in ideals? Why does my criticizing an organization, idea or belief, or espousing my own personal view on the matter translate into me telling everyone that they must believe as I do or die? Why is it okay for other people to dehumanize a group I belong to, such as the GLBT crowd, but ridicule me when I ask them to give me some consideration because the pejoratives make me uncomfortable? And why, oh why, do people feel the need to engage in a divisive discourse simply because they personally think the arguments are extreme? I’m not telling you what to do with your time, bodies, minds, or anything else, people! I’m just asking you to respect mine.

While this post was inspired by some recent events in the blogsphere, I don’t want to specifically name them because I don’t want the posters involved to feel that I’m targeting them. This isn’t about any one poster, this is about the common divisive discourse that critiquing anything from a company to a set of beliefs is tantamount to attacking the individuals within. And, again, if any Shrub.com readers see this and want to discuss/dispute their potential part it in, feel free, but my point is not to single out any individual; I’ve gotten this not only from the blogsphere, but from my ex-WoW guild, my friends, and even my family.

Under this discourse, if you say “[group y] did bad thing [x]” then they tell you how “not all people who belong to [group y] do [x], so stop attacking them!” Does this mean that people shouldn’t voice their opinion on things because someone might think that they’re unfairly targeting an individual? Do we all really need to put a disclaimer up every time we talk negatively about a group to assure people that “not all [group y] are part of [x]”? If someone is talking about male dominated areas, are they attacking all men? What about speaking out about homophobic hate crimes, are they accusing all straight people of hating gays? Is it hard to see the difference between criticizing an idea or practice and engaging in an ad hominem attack?

Another argument I’ve come across is the “[group y] has done some really good things, so lay off them already.” If I do something good, then, does that make me exempt from criticism too? I have no problem with someone saying, “I hear your point, but don’t ignore the good things that [group y] has done.” To use a specific example, Anika, on the American Apparel thread, called me out on ignoring that AA had some good practices, like employing 60% women in their upper levels. I acknowledged this point, although I argued that it didn’t negate the gender relation problems that they had. It is important to note that, just as doing something good doesn’t mean covering up the bad, so does doing something bad not mean covering up the good.

Yet another aspect of the divisive discourse is dismissing an argument simply because one has not seen the criticism in action. We all should step back and recognize that our own privilege will shelter us from things. Yes, I realize the need to make sure that the argument isn’t accusing all people of [group y] of holding [x] stance. All conservatives don’t hate gay people, but it’s still a valid thing to discuss how the conservative stance often marginalizes the rights of people in the GLBT community. All feminists don’t think male abuse victims are faking it, but it’s a valid thing to discuss how the feminist stance has in the past, and in some ways continues into the present, marginalized the experiences of men who are victims of abuse. All Men’s Rights Advocates don’t hate women, but it’s a valid thing to discuss how the MRA position can sometimes marginalize the rights of women. It is not helpful to derail a conversation about oppression/privilege/exploitation/etc. by implying that the subject isn’t worth discussing because you’ve met people who aren’t like [x]. Bring it up, sure, but in a way that acknowledges the validity of the original argument while emphasising that the criticism should remain confined to the idea, not the individuals who belong to the group espousing that idea.

And, finally, another tool of this discourse is to distance oneself from one’s opponent’s position by ridiculing their beliefs as so extreme they’re laughable. In this case I’m going to pull from a comment I made on a thread discussing this discourse in the feminist community. Sour Duck actually recommended that I make it a post in itself, although I’m not sure this is what she intended. It’s certainly not what I thought of when I said I would do it. Heh.

Anyway, pertaining to a conversation I was having with Darth Sidhe, I said:

I may not agree with spellings like “womyn” and whatnot, but I do understand their underlying point. Words have power.

[…]

The negative conntation to the term “politically correct” is also rooted in conservatism. I have no problem discussing the merits (or lackthereof) of using certain words, but to dismiss the arguments (and the women using them) as merely trying to be “politically correct” is offensive. It’s the same tactic used on us to try and shut us up any time we step outside the box that the men in power have tried to shut us in. Think reproductive freedoms are important enough to challenge the dems support of “Democrats for Life”? You’re just one of those PC, humourless, women’s studies types, aren’t you?

[…]

I guess what I’m saying is that you don’t have to understand, or agree with, everything these people say. I, certainly, don’t agree with the feminists who believe that all (female) homemakers are brainwashed zombies. I have run into some of them who, in other areas, are quite sane. But that does not mean that I’m going to use the stereotype that they fit to defend against women-haters, or even sit by and be silent while other people use the stereotype.

My example of disagreeing with an assertion without belittling an entire group is not limited to feminist stereotypes. In the Great Parent Debate (yes, I’ve given the kerfluffle a grandiose name) that I blogged about, part of what I was trying to convey was that agreement, or full understanding, of a point is not necessary for respecting the other side and their argument. Just because non-parents can’t understand how hard it is to raise a child doesn’t mean we should belittle the job that parents do. On the flip side, parents should also not belittle us because we non-parents don’t have, and sometimes don’t want, kids. If we cannot respect those who have differing opinions from us, how can we expect anyone to respect us?

What do we gain by pointing the finger at others who may share similar values as us and go, “At least I’m not like hir. Sie’s crazy!”? All we’re doing is adding fuel to the fire of our ideological opponents’ ad hominem attacks against our blanket movements, and making enemies where we should be forging alliances based on our common goals. It does not always have to be an either/or argument! We can disagree with each other and still work together. We can debate points back and forth without dismissing and belittling the other side.

What I’m trying to say is that if we don’t enter into arguments with respect and the intent to understand, then all we’re doing is pissing each other off.

Killing to be Kind

tekanji

Buffy and I have scrapped pretty much all of our written chapters for our second novel in our trilogy, Children of the Storm, again. At one point she remarked, “This is what – our third time?” The outline fared no better under our scrutiny, but it doesn’t quite have the same impact to cut a scene that’s only there in theory than it does cutting one you spent so long on.

Welcome to the world of writing. It only gets more painful from here.

Sure, on the long road from writing to publishing there’s no doubt that we both have become significantly better writers. Heck, I’d be willing to bet money that our skills will continue to improve as we seek an agent and a publisher. But if there’s one thing I’ve come to believe, it’s that if you really love your novel you have to be willing to edit the crap out of it. After all, what’s the point of getting your beloved work out there if it isn’t your best?

During the publishing process, I have lost count of the number of edits our chapters have seen (to give an idea, there are 20 edits of chapter 1 of the first novel on my laptop, which is maybe 1/3 of the total number sitting on my desktop). Right now we’re in our second complete overhaul of the first book. And I do mean complete. Last time we added a prologue and tightened up the prose. This time we’ve changed the narrative voice, re-written a few scenes, and cut superfluous parts. That means meticulous back and forth editing of what was an 186,110-word novel. Sounds like fun, eh?

Right.

So, back to tonight. We were sitting with the document open (we do our best outlining in person) and going, “Do we need this scene? What’s the point of that scene? That’s boring, cut it.” The second half of the outline survived mostly intact, although that’s because the majority of the scenes are relatively new. The first half… nothing that survived the previous massacre escaped unscathed this time. We kept, maybe, six scenes total from chapters 1 through 7. Of course that chapter 7 is now chapter 4, I believe, though that may change again.

All this is a pain in the ass, but it’s worth it. Even if our trilogy never sees the light of day (which it damn well better after all this!), it is still worth it. Seeing our novel grow into a better, tighter, and more interesting piece of fiction is an experience in itself. Knowing that our sequel will blossom in much the same way makes all the false starts and dead ends easier to bear.

In writing, sometimes killing your scenes really is the best way to be kind.

And the rest was… Silence.

tekanji

I can’t seem to scrub that “part-time hypocrite” stamp completely off my forehead. I made a personal category, yet I’m still loath to use it. When I first started this blog, I made an “abuse” category. I’ve used it once for its original purpose, and even then it was just posting excerpts from an article because I was too chicken to involve my personal experiences. I don’t want to air my dirty laundry, but what else is having a blog for if not to be a space where I can express my opinions and experiences? Even as I write this, I’m not sure I’ll ever post it.

About seven years ago, I was in the middle of a year and a half long emotionally abusive relationship. Now, anyone who knows me for long enough will likely know that. If it comes up, I mention it. If not, I don’t. But very few, if any, of the people close to me really understand what happened. It is, after all, such a simple thing to say I was abused, but such a hard thing to actually talk about.

For a year and a half, I bore all the pain he gave me in relative silence. My family and friends knew he wasn’t good for me, many knew that I felt I couldn’t leave him, but I kept most of it for myself. I want to say that it was out of some misguided nobility to not want to burden them, but that would be a lie. The reality is more selfish and more stupid: I loved him. I knew if those close to me knew all of it that it would damn him irrevocably in their eyes; at least if they were in the dark they could only hate him for the things they could see.

After he dumped me, I still kept quiet. This time it was because I didn’t want to appear weak. I could handle it on my own, I told myself. I was strong. Everyone said so. Everyone still does. I moved on. When he came to my house to return my belongings, he gave me the “let’s still be friends” speech. I had learned long before we broke up to understand exactly what he meant under the ostensibly friendly words; he wanted booty call without the emotional attachment, leaving him free to use me while breaking in a new victim. Outwardly, I was strong. I told him with increasing volume to get out of my house. But he knew me well, too. I still loved him. His hold on me was gone, but not forgotten. Eventually my dad had to come down and throw him out because he and I were at an impasse. My dad lauds me for my courage that day, to stand in the living room telling him to get out. I still curse myself for my weakness. I was not strong; I was stubborn.

I did not always want to be silent. There was a time, soon after I became involved with my second boyfriend that I wanted to speak out. Even after six months the wound was still fresh. At that point in time, my abuser was still harassing me from time to time, pouring salt in the wound as it were. My boyfriend saw the pain it caused me, saw how panicked I would get. In the beginning, he tried to help me. He did what he thought was right. But how can one inexperienced person cope with something that I myself still cannot?

He did so much for me just by loving me as a partner should, by so obviously thinking the world of me. Through him, I saw myself as a human being. I saw myself as someone who was not only worthy of life, but also capable of achieving my goals. I will be forever indebted to him for that.

But in the end I had to be silent around him, too. He could not understand and whenever I tried to explain it would just make things worse. His disbelief that I stayed with my abuser for so long, indeed even after I was aware of what he was doing to me, fed into my own shame on the matter. After all, it wasn’t even me in the end who got out. He dumped me. For all of my talk about partnerships, equality, for all my feminism I couldn’t get out. I had a responsibility to get out. I was at fault.

My silence was not absolute. At the most inappropriate times it would come bursting forth from me, manifesting as wracking sobs or irrational anger. My boyfriend didn’t understand what was happening to me; he took the burden onto himself and refused to listen to any explanation I tried to give. He did not want to hear about my abuser, or my time being abused. Since I could no more keep silent than he could hear what I needed to say, we worked our relationship around the triggering points. We remained very emotionally close until the end, but our intimacy suffered greatly because of our problems.

My life went on. Changes happened; my boyfriend and I parted company, I decided to rediscover joy in myself and my sexuality, but my silence remained constant. It had become a habit. I used that silence to create an invisible wall between me and everyone I cared about. It was so easy by then. Easier, for sure, than facing the truth. It took me a little over a year to recognize the wall. I wanted to overcome it. I wanted to be whole.

I chose the wrong people to help me, and I suffered from it. Suddenly I was the abused girl all over again. I lost two of my friends, one of whom had been my very best friend, right before graduation because of the situation. In truth, the whole fiasco cost me most of the self-esteem I had built up in the intervening years. And still I get ridiculed by some of my remaining friends on how my lack of friendship with my ex-friends is “stupid”. Fuck, if I wanted to be called stupid I would have let my first abuser stick around.

I want to talk about my experiences. I need to talk about them. But I’m afraid. Every time I speak up, I get punished for it. No one wants to hear the truth. No one wants to know how fragile I am. How much I’ve suffered. They want to think of me as the strong one, but I’m not. For once, just for one time, I want to be able to share a painful moment and be supported. I don’t want to be told that I’ve ruined my second boyfriend’s life because of my freakouts. I don’t want to be told I’m stupid for my feelings. I don’t want to be told that I’m strong and therefore can handle things. I don’t want to be “supported” only to be left high and dry when I need support the most.

But, most of all, I don’t want to be silent any more.

Parents are from Mars, Non-Parents are from Venus

tekanji

I’ve suffered from yet another Attack of the 50-line Comment, so I decided to make a post about it instead of cluttering Jenn’s comment box. Jenn has done what I’ve come to believe is tantamount to death in many feminist circles: she has spoken up for her rights as a non-parent in her post, baby wars. She was firm in her opinions, harsh (perhaps too harsh) in her judgement, and made the mistake of bringing up breastfeeding. Her criticism of our baby-worshipping cultures brought the attention of Dru Blood, a mother very much concerned about parental rights. If you can stomach the tense exchange, I recommend reading it. Just keep in mind that this post is a general response to the arguments, so I’m not pulling quotes or anything. Anyway, on with the show.

One of the main arguments from the non-parents is that we don’t hate parents (or kids), we hate bad parents. The kinds that refuse to teach or discipline their kids, who let them run wild in inappropriate places (sometimes to the point of endangering the kids and those around them), and who freak out at even the most polite suggestion that they, I don’t know, at least keep an eye on where their children are. Overall, I support this stance; kids are kids and therefore it’s the adult’s responsibility to make sure they’re protected and as well behaved as possible. This is, more-or-less, the stance that Jenn took. Dru, arguing for the parents’ side, pointed out that there’s a fine line between parents trying and failing and not trying at all. In many cases it simply is not easy, or possible, to tell which is which. And, she’s right. If the world were black and white, we wouldn’t need to be having these kinds of conversations.

Her point also brings up another issue. While I think that non-parent (childfree or otherwise) advice is valuable, since we offer an outside perspective, I acknowledge that it is that very outside perspective that makes it impossible for us to truly understand a parent’s situation. The same, however, can be said about parents talking to non-parents; yes, your kids may be your world, but that doesn’t mean that everyone wants to have a kid right now, nor or even ever. There is a point where parents and non-parents cannot truly understand the other, but I believe that, while it’s an important point, it is ultimately a superficial one.

In my studies on the matter as both a feminist and a childfree woman I’ve found that it is the very same parts of the patriarchy working against both sides of the divide: the institutions/social conventions that want to force mothers into some pre-conceived notion of motherhood (and punish them when they don’t fit into them perfectly) also work against childless and childfree women (and, to a lesser extent, they also work against fathers and non-parent men). One glance at the childfree livejournal community shows that, beyond the anti-[bad]parent venting, many posts are about the frustrations that childfree people face when total strangers shame them for not making the “right” reproductive choices. Having lived in mostly liberal areas, I haven’t personally encountered some of the worst horror stories, but I have had to get into more than a few terse conversations with my friends over my choice to be childfree. The worst I got was my uncle, who I love very much, calling me an “idiot” for wanting to get a tubal ligation.

Again, even though I tend toward the non-parent side, I fully believe that the parents’ arguments are valid, and furthermore I think it’s important for parents to bring some perspective to non-parents in this argument. But, just as I feel Dru Blood got hostile towards Jenn, so too have I felt in the past that many individuals in the feminist communities I lurk in are automatically hostile towards non-parents who are trying to understand but still refusing to slip back into the default value of acknowledging parents’ experiences as more valuable than our own. And, I guess, that’s what I feel feminist circles as a whole have a hard time understanding: individuals may get that the experiences of parents and non-parents are equally valuable, but society doesn’t.

No one is saying parents have it easy, far from it. The patriarchy is about control and it doesn’t care if the women are childed or not. But I would argue that the pervading opinion, in the US at least, is that having a child is the only way to become a 100% human being. And those without children are, by proxy, lesser and therefore we have to just suck it up and deal with it if our lives are intruded on by someone’s child. That doesn’t excuse some of the more extreme non-parent positions, just as the valid arguments of parents who want the ability to go out of their house with their young children doesn’t excuse the more extreme parent positions. All I’m saying is that the valid arguments parents have about their hardships are not exclusive of the valid arguments that we non-parents have.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t go to a park and expect to have a nice, quiet stroll sans-children. I wouldn’t expect to go to a matinee G or PG movie on a weekend and not be surrounded by kids of varying age and varying rowdiness. I respect family-friendly spaces; heck, I think we should have more of them. Referencing a point that Jenn made in her original post about flying with a kid kicking your seat (my experience is with a kid dropping hirs pacifier on my foot), I would absolutely love for airlines to offer three kinds of flights: normal (like they are now), family-friendly (designed for kids, with G-rated movies and stuff), and adult-friendly (no kids under 13 allowed, designed for adults with PG-13 movies). With three choices, I see it as a win-win situation. Of course, with the airlines in some serious financial trouble it’s not feasible at the moment (too many people would get shut out of flight times they need), but I hold out for one day in the future.

Bottom line: I want to respect the rights of parents without giving up my own. I think our problem right now is entitlement complexes on both sides, with society goading us to fight each other so we don’t notice how badly our governments are shafting us. The problem isn’t parents or non-parents, per se, but rather a society that wants to control our choices rather than help us make them. An example of what I mean is that when Katrina blew through Miami schools were closed but my friend’s company was not. Because of this, the parents who didn’t have the luxury of having a stay-at-home spouse had to bring their kids in. The workplace had no daycare facility and was obviously not set up to handle children. In my friend’s work area there were four or five children, bored out of their skulls, making a ruckus and making it very hard for anyone to work. I don’t blame my friend for being annoyed (I would be, too). I don’t blame the parents for bringing the kids in (what other choice did they have?). I blame the company and our stupid government for not mandating that a company of that size have a daycare facility for the children of its employees.

As long as we continue attacking each other, nothing will get done. It’s not helpful for us to get all up in each other’s faces about the little things because we’re all fighting for the same reason: we want to be heard and acknowledged. We want society to fix our problems because we can’t do it ourselves. Discourse is good, but not if all it does is divide us further. Neither sides can respect each other as long as we continue to fight as if we’re diametrically opposed. We need, as Jenn has proposed, to communicate with each other. There is common ground and both non-parents and parents alike need to find it. Because otherwise it’s just all of us being oppressed, inconvenienced, and just plain getting the short end of the stick.