wilddeerbabybrd

I'm probably moving to Cleveland for the winter.

I don't know how I feel about it, exactly.



Danny just met David Dondero, and I'm missing The (now-defunct) B.D. All Stars. I'm always either late for the party, or I leave too early.

However, yeah, I'm gonna have a wicked time anyway.

If radical feminism were a recognized academic discipline, I feel like I would have a master's degree by now. I would at least be working towards my thesis, with a Ph.D in mind.

So the other evening, I had the familiar but unpleasant experience of getting "schooled" by an undergrad. At least, it was an attempted schooling.

I feel as though "sex-positive feminism" is undergrad feminism. Reason? Sorry, folks, but fucking does not in and of itself dismantle patriarchy. People can fuck until their vulvas are blue and still never understand the fucking patriarchy. So while the issue of consent, etc., is important and good and hooray for you, even fucking-with-consent* is not in and of itself very radical. Or even important.

Thus, when listening to someone describe herself as "sex-positive", I asked, "What's sex-negative?"

She got very offended, and attempted to explain something that I already understood with my bone marrow. That fucking someone who would rather not fuck is anti-sex, and communication is paramount.

I kind of take that all as a given. (Practicing that is another thing, though; I still find myself in the dangerous position of throwing myself under the bus when it comes to actual life, because I still struggle with things, coming up.)
I guess a lot of people don't.

The thing is, sex isn't THAT political. Patriarchy is political. Power structures are political. We can all fuck and fuck and fuck and fuck and not solve a fucking thing. Perhaps a lot of radicals miss this idea.

As someone, a male someone, commented at I Blame The Patriarchy:

Instead of assuming that sex is always this constant force in our lives, I think it has seasons and different intensities. What do we see in our culture that examines or reinforces this feeling? Nothing! The culture says we are all horny youngsters ready to drop everything and fuck like bunnies whenever we want.

And radicals are part of the dominant culture. Maybe with stranger hairdos and more grandiose ideas, but part of the culture we are. Fuck, I sure am.

Here we go. The day I figured this out was the day I realized my vagina was not a hole. It's an organ, and most of the time its walls touch. It's like a throat.

vagina = throat

Just because I have a throat does not mean people should force-feed me whenever they feel like it, whenever they decide they have a right, even if they think I "look hungry."

I do not want to have a sandwich all the time. If I do not wish to eat sandwiches, at any particular time, I am not less cool or less liberated.
Sometimes I think about sandwiches all the time (if, say, I am very hungry and a sandwich looks good). Other times, I do not think about sandwiches and in fact am repulsed by the very idea of a sandwich. (Ew, all that dry bread, all getting stuck in my throat!) That is pretty normal.

In radical circles, fucking a lot of different people is super popular. However, if I don't want to eat all kinds of sandwiches, sample any or every kind of sandwich that comes my way, I do not have some sort of problem. Nor am I denying someone else's right to eat sandwiches. I personally think a lot of very varied and different sandwiches are fucking delicious, but that doesn't mean -- again -- that I am always hungry for a sandwich.

Lastly, if I have a sandwich or two on my plate and don't want to share, I'm not a bad radical. If someone else reaches over to my plate and I say, "Sorry, but this sandwich likes me and I don't want to share," I am not oppressing the sandwich (yes, this is an imperfect metaphor). Nor am I clinging to some archaic ideas about food-sharing. If it were another sandwich, on another day, maybe I would share. That does not mean I need to share every sandwich, ever.

Sex is like eating, to me. Sometimes I am very hungry. Sometimes I am really hungry for a certain food item. Sometimes I couldn't be arsed to give a fuck. Sometimes I eschew eating for political reasons. Perhaps only someone with an eating disorder could really make this analogy.

More comparisons to radical feminism and food, coming up.

* Especially because the word 'consent' implies concession -- "Okay, I will permit you to do this thing to me." What about doing things -with- someone? Consent =/= desire. An entirely other discussion that makes my brain weep.

or, Emotions and Your Average White Guy.

honeybeemeadows, I hope you like this one.

I've been thinking recently about a music article I once saw that basically made the statement that Bright Eyes was too "gay." It was Esquire (which kalinichta tells me has now changed its tune, probably because old Conor has decided to look more unambiguously male and less like a delicate androgyno elf child), but that's not important. Every major music publication (that isn't ... whichever one did the loving spread of unshaven Coberst) has the token "OMG BRYTE EYEZES SOOO GEEEEH!" article.

Mocking Coberst for his "gayness" is more or less ubiquitous for anyone with any kind of indie proclivity. Sometimes it's kind of funny (see the Uncyclopedia article, which had me in stitches throughout), but mostly it's kind of depressing.

Conor Oberst likes women. He does like some men, but in case you haven't been around me and witnessed my similar relationship to "heterosexuality", I do not find this unusual or strange at all; I also don't think a person should be defined by their sexuality, nor
that a person's sexuality defines THEM.

But the funny part is, more or less, the dude likes girls. The dude is, in fact, "straight."

So why the fuss over "the gay"? Why the dismissal of his discography as a bunch of whiny drivel?

Okay, yes. I've listened to 'Water' (one time, which is minutes of my life I will never get back). I waded through 'A Collection of Songs Written And Recorded.' Some of his shit IS whiny drivel. We can't expect a whole lot different from a white boy from an NPR family who grew up in Omaha in the early nineties. It's really no different from anything most kids write when they're ages thirteen through eighteen, except the rhyme scheme is occasionally classier.
So is hating Coberst for his teen works perhaps a bit of self-hatred, O Indie-merica? Do you so loathe your awkward, silly, angsty young self that you must paint all others with the same brush? Fact of life, angst is basically a phase we all go through and must learn to laugh off. Laugh off 'Water.' Coberst himself has.

Something unexpected happened in the early 2000s. Conor Oberst stopped writing so much about girls not liking him (although he did write a lot about that too, which I will touch on shortly) and turned his angst on his dissatisfaction with his sense of self, the status quo, Western civilization, etc.
This is a theme that has continued through to Cassadaga, and on to the Mystic Valley Band as well. The kid has had some smart things to say. Really smart, eloquent things. Less so when he was 22, of course, but even then his use of metaphors was pretty good.

If most people feel that expressing dissatisfaction with the status quo and the limited roles that society enforces upon each of us is mere whining, then why do I even bother to get out of bed?
If you both agree with and see the delicious humor in that statement, consider us on the same side.

Does the average dude who listens to indie rock consider the expression of emotion to be 'gay'? I think they do. I think Conor Oberst thinks they do. I think neither he nor I can be arsed to give a flying fuck. Coberst emotes all over the fucking place, whenever he goddamn feels like it, but he brings with it a depth, a concern, a sense of questioning that elevates it above the average emo band (most of the time). That, I suspect, is somewhat of a radical act.

Judging by the typical white-dude response to Conor Oberst, it is.
"He's a faggot." For expressing tenderness? For admitting to sadness? For refusing to languish in ennui? For confessing that he desires love?

Ah, love. Conor Oberst and girls. Conor Oberst has done a lot of whining about girls, and that is for sure. Genuine whining. And a lot of other times, he's just plain missed the fucking boat. I do wonder if he has ever grasped the concept that, for all he dislikes the
constraints he feels as a white dude, women have that + 1,000,000. A lot of his disciples, like my ex Danny, fail to see that point by about a mile. We may never know what Conor really thinks.

However, sometimes there is a glimmer of getting it that I see through the fog of obliviousness. Coberst writes about, among other things, letting women soullessly fuck him just out of his desire to please them. Whoa, an experience I can relate to! Hey there, Coberst, can you then use this feeling in terms of empathy, and thus actually relate to
a female person?! I see a possibility there, which I do not see in most dudes. By which I mean, indie dudes, because there are no other kinds of dudes that I even bother gifting with my attention.

So thus, clearly, Conor Oberst is gay. He can empathize with women (maybe). Proof positive of Teh Gay. I don't even think I have to write any more about it.

Other than the fact that my queer male-female transgendered former roommate looooooved "Teh Coberst". That's another dead giveaway right there.

Dixie and I both felt that, for all the sleeping with women that Coberst does or did, and the voting for Obama (as opposed to Dennis Kucinich, his logical soulmate and the dude he will probably become when he gets older) that he encouraged, the guy crosses a lot of what society takes for granted are boundaries. Without even seeming to think about it. It's just what he does.

If anything, I wish he did it MORE. I wish he took it EVEN FURTHER.

 From previous post.

I think a preoccupation with grooming rituals and clothing articles that men would eschew or that would not make sense in a truly egalitarian culture is generated by the media and is more or less a money-suck. Opting out of things like shaving (as contentious as this may be) is probably the best road to equality there is. And the more of us who do it, the more 'normal' it becomes, and the more people (read, women) will feel comfortable doing it too.

That being said, we live in a patriarchy where we are judged by what we wear or don't wear and punished accordingly. Always punished.

Wear "sexy" clothing (ie, tight tops that shows cleavage, short skirts, high heels)? In the eyes of men, you're a slut who's looking for sex even if they have to give it to you by force.
Wear jeans, tee shirts, and sneakers? In the eyes of men, you're frigid or a dyke who needs sex with men, even if they have to give it to you by force.

Other than deciding not to date or live with men and locking yourself inside forever, there's really no way around it. I feel that it is possible to both mitigate the effects of the prurient male gaze by dressing in things that please me but don't appeal to the mainstream (whether this is the Playboy/frat crowd's or the Pitchfork/PBR crowd's version of 'mainstream') gaze. It has a way of weeding out the people who are worth talking to, and I don't have to feel like I'm hiding (which often draws more attention, in the way I described above).

Don't get me wrong, I'm still trying to hide. I'm just hiding in plain sight.

So as long as we're at it, let's de-gender code the idea of wearing clothing. Hey, David Bowie and all of the Felice Brothers still like clothes more than I do. (James's pale tailored suit still impresses the shit out of me.) Bowie also likes makeup more than (I swear) almost any woman-born-woman likes makeup.

(The difference, of which I am not ignorant, is that, of course, he is still judged the same with or without it, whereas women are not afforded the same luxury.)

It would be sweet if eventually we could all just do what we want. In whatever clothes we want or don't want. No social pressure to wear (or in fact, do) anything. That would be amazing.

 Today I re-read What Would A Dude Do? on Nine Deuce's blog. It's a pretty valid idea: take what you do, imagine a dude doing it, and see if it seems ridiculous or impractical. If so, you're doing something sexist.

However, people came out in droves to say things like, "But I LIKE wearing makeup!" or "I love wearing high heels!" or "What's the matter with shaving?"

That confused me (although I "get" it). I like wearing clothes, sure, but I see the problems with every single possible fashion choice under patriarchy. I've been known to put on eyeshadow, but I'm not going to defend my doing so. Why do people get defensive about this?

Hey, I really like starving, too. I get to seeing really pretty things and feeling like I'm floating on the ocean. Doesn't mean I'm going to fight somebody tooth and nail if they suggest that maybe anorexia isn't healthy.

Maybe it's because I know I would have never had an eating disorder if I hadn't grown up in the patriarchy. That I never would have started shaving my legs, etc., if someone hadn't told me it was a good idea -- and in fact the only way to get A Man to ever like me, no less!

I've never been super interested in Getting Men to Like Me. Yes, I've been known to desire male companionship and affection, but not ALL dudes. The thought of inspiring multiple men, if not all men in a given area, to bonership has always seemed a little impractical to me. A little ... gross.

I've mostly wanted to avoid getting harassed (either "positive" harassment, ha ha! -- "Gimme some 'a that, baybee!" -- or "negative" harassment -- "You're dead if I catch you, fat fucking dyke"). Ah, harassment. Aren't men lovely? Shouldn't we want to cater to their every desire?!

As someone at ND's pointed out, women who fail to adorn themselves and offer their bodies as sacrifice to the Peen-God of The Male Gaze are often deemed as having "low self-esteem." Really? So needing the visual attention of All Dudes is now a sign of healthy self-esteem as opposed to a sign that the patriarchy has warped your thoughts? Glad to learn.

Feminists critiquing the standard P-approved dress code (all T&A all the time! or else you're a dyke, and that's bad) are often said to support the opposite dress code: tee shirts and combat boots (hint: this is a lie).

I've always maintained that this is not a real-life dichotomy, and have selected my wardrobe to reflect what I see as the middle ground. I don't wanna be "sexy" (because I don't think the current standard code of 'sexy' is sexy or has anything to do with sex at all), but I also don't really like wearing tee shirts too much. (They are hot and stick to me in the summer.) There has got to be a no-man's land in between.

Which, there is. If I throw on something really simple, like a pair of trousers and a blouse (preferably with snazzy details and a fun pattern respectively). I automatically become invisible to most men. Likewise something really ridiculous and not conventionally attractive, like a jumpsuit (I do not wear jumpsuits that are considered attractive, only mechanic/aviator jumpsuits or one-pieces that look like something an eccentric suffragette would throw on before swimming). 
I try to be the anti-boner machine.

However, it has occurred to me that this is still catering to men. If it were completely up to me, I would go outside in frayed Huck Finn shorts and a tube bra. I'd swim topless (female toplessness is totally legal in New York State). Hey, no more tan lines! 
But I know that doing so would cause hordes of dudes to descend upon me, not because they think I am attractive, but because boobies - any boobies - are a sign of vulnerability. A chink in the armor. Fuck that. I just wanna go outside in a comfortable way. I do not wish to be vulnerable to anyone, especially not some dickface who wants to 'see boobies'.

I find that wearing strange clothing and failing to shave myself attracts a better caliber of friend. A man who is not willing to accept my hairy legs and bushy pits is not my friend, and I do not wish to be intimate in any way with anyone who is not my friend. 
Women rarely have this problem with my fuzziness, so I don't even have to worry. Punk rock women, that is. Oddly, a lot of punk rock dudes still do have a problem, or else they've fetishized not shaving -- "oh, it's HAWT that she doesn't shave!" as opposed to just accepting that, no, I don't shave. I blame the supposed iconoclasm of porn viewership -- mainstream dudes watch porn because that's "just what dudes do", while punk rock dudes watch porn because they think it's "subversive." 

Couture, fashion trends (even and especially hipster fashion trends), and makeup are just ways of sucking time, energy, and money out of women. After all, if she's too busy worrying that some dude who likes Pitchfork won't pork her unless X, Y, and Z and spending money to that effect, she won't have the time or resources to fight against oppression. 

Also, I'm totally sure that David Bowie was far, far more into clothes and makeup than I ever will be. Likewise Prince. So dudes can just STFU about these things being so vapid and silly and the purview of "dumb women", and start analyzing them as above. You're welcome.

Out-of-town houseguests using my roommate's room woke me at approximately 6:15 am with their awkward sex noises. Fine and well, I say; since I couldn't get back to sleep I used the opportunity to listen to music, and anyway I'd thought they were getting busy the night before.

The thing that actually bothered me was -- they sounded so FAKE.

Not even theatrically fake. No over-the-top screaming, begging, or other bullshit. Just ... fake. 

And it sounded a lot like I'm sure I sounded, prior my boy-cott.

In the summer of 2008, I had my huge 'aha, holy shit!' moment -- when I realized that I'd only ever seen myself as an object. Thus started me on the path to becoming the angry manhating fun-cop, I mean, radical feminist, I am today.

Prior this flash of insight, I'd thought I was a pretty liberated, free woman; I'd had sex with a ton of guys, never had a monogamous relationship, had even experienced orgasm. There! Free! Right? Wrong.

As others have elsewhere written more eloquently, for one thing, it is nearly impossible for a woman in this culture to experience true personal agency untainted by outside influence.

For me, the outside influence was Cosmo magazine. Yep -- even the outside-the-box-thinking, smartass post-grunge questioner of authority known as Teenaged Joy turned to Ye Olde Urban Sexbot for advice on fucking.
Hey, it's true that the Bush administration outlawed sex ed, but even the scraps we were tossed under Clinton were pretty inadequate to begin with. Once I decided abstinence was for losers and the Christ Club, and made the choice to venture forth into rampant promiscuity, I had no one to ask about proper blow job technique or whether or not my vagina (vulva, the proper term for which I scoffed at until I was nineteen; "everyone knows what I'm talking about, psh") was normal-looking. So, onto Cosmo to fill in the gaps.

That, of course, was a bad call. I learned how to give (apparently) the best head on the planet, but at the cost of viewing myself as a complete human being. While I didn't buy into the ads telling me I needed all the latest makeup and accessories, I did internalize the implicit message that I was an accessory for a man. Even though I knew I didn't want monogamy or marriage, I still swallowed the subservience pill. While supposedly pursuing my own independent "sexuality", I learned to subvert my sexuality to that of men.

This is not uncommon. In fact, it's miraculous that I managed to be an unconventional thinker at all; blaming me for internalizing one of the messages thrown at all women all the time is not relevant. But it was something that had to be undone.

One of the things I "learned": men hate cuddling. Men barely tolerate kissing. So I learned how to disdain cuddling and kissing. I can remember a boy cajoling me into kissing him -- when I was twenty. After I'd already been handing out blow jobs and fucking boys for several years.
I didn't want to do it. I thought he was lying when he said he wanted to. I couldn't believe that men actually enjoyed affection. Learning otherwise made me kind of sad -- and mostly because I'd denied myself that kind of affection, just to be more pleasing to men. To mold myself to the image of what I thought they wanted.

That was probably my first wake-up call, that being even a punk-rock back-talking headstrong sexbot was still being a sexbot -- and a sellout.

So discovering radical feminism, as opposed to take-it-all-off feminism, was like freedom for me. But I still didn't know how to act in ways that had not been dictated from outside. I despaired of ever discovering a genuine way of being intimate with another person. It took two years for me to figure enough out to even live with myself in a meaningful way.

I think I have a pretty good idea now, just have yet to put it into practice and don't know if I ever will. There is still a long way to go in terms of my sense of self before I can even think about looking for a suitable male companion, much less find one and try to build an egalitarian interaction with him. (Yes, I am going to try out monogamy now. It seems to make more sense to focus on one dude at a time at this stage of the game, all other unequal dynamics involved with poly- aside.)

Such as, I just realized today that I sounded like I was 'faking it' every time I previously had sex with a man. I wasn't faking my enjoyment, a lot of the time -- I had some really enjoyable encounters, although not in what I would now consider enjoyable ways. But I was faking the expression of my enjoyment, so as not to puzzle the poor dumb creature working away at my insides. Dudes seem to recognize only a limited number of female expressions, and most of them are based off of porn. All of them, like the sounds I heard today, are exceptionally 'feminine', meaning soft and submissive. That's not really what I want to do -- but it's what I did, to keep my partners from being puzzled and/or pouting about their performances later.

Performance. I'd rather we all stop acting.

 I swam in the ocean for the first time today, and while this might sound ridiculous, it was a really redemptive and beautiful experience.

It was certainly more intense than lake-swimming. Some of the waves were taller than I am. I figured out how to float on them (just lie flat with my ankles crossed and arms out), but not how to wade into them. They bowled me over quite a few times, knocked me flat and turned me ass over teakettle more than once.

I was more or less prepared for the waves. I was not prepared for the salt water. The way it feels in any open cut on the body, in the eyes, in the mouth, down the nose. Like swallowing liquid potato chips. And the undertow was terrific, enough to pull me to my knees -- thus putting me right in the path of the next overwhelming wave.

At first it terrified me, filled me with the fear of drowning. Then I remembered. Like I wrote in blue blue water baby -- I'm not afeared of getting drowned. I just let go, and lo and behold I always bobbed to the surface. If I drifted out too far, all I had to do was roll over onto my belly and let the waves take my boat-shaped body to shore. Oddly, I was safe with the sea. As much as it could drown me at any moment, I was also safe. Completely and totally safe.

I'm now Cajun-brown, a little red around the edges (especially on the less sun-loved parts of me -- did you know that it's legal to be topless on NY beaches? it is!), and still washing salt out of my hair. It was beautiful. I'd go back tomorrow if I could get there easily.

Tonight I want to put on lavender balm and dream about the waves. I can still feel them, pushing and pulling on my body. I still feel safe. So safe.

The stars look beautiful from a mattress placed on a stranger's roof in Bushwick,with the illegal fireworks going off all around us.

There were a bunch of hipsters dancing, and I briefly castigated myself for not joining, but the odds are fairly high that I wouldn't have made friends anyway. That is not, when you get down to it, what parties are for.

I'll go at my own pace, and that's fine.

I keep wanting to write more on a variety of topics, but whenever I've sat in front of a computer lately my brain has turned into a block of duh.

However, I have secured a new apartment with two very excellent radical feminist girls. WOo! We do exist! I am not the last of my tribe!

Today I must spend my morning journeying to Astoria, Queens, and convincing a friend that we should not base our future radical-feminist collective out of Astoria, Queens. It is an hour, and two trains, away from anything I do. Yes, rent is New York-cheap, but I could pay $650 a month to NOT spend an hour and a train transfer whenever I want to do anything outside of my home. I would rather not become any more of a shut-in than I already am.

If her heart stays set on Astoria, however, I guess she can have her collective there and I can have mine in Brooklyn. I'm sure there are six radical feminists in New York ... right? Now if they are only all looking for roommates.

I move on Tuesday or Wednesday. It is going to be exciting. I've still barely packed. Lucky thing I don't have much stuff.

: persistent melancholy, fear I'm wasting my life !?!1!, lingering sense of missing out on something ... OMG, is this a quarter-life crisis?

I'm not unhappy, just dissatisfied.

Always a little dissatisfied. Always have been. Maybe always will be.

I know exactly what I want. Too bad it's just a nebulous sense of something out of my reach. So I like to pretend I want something a little more concrete and nameable, and accrue a collection of enjoyable things thusly, but never get what I really want and maybe never will.

I do want my banjolele back, although I don't really know why.