Everyday Feminism: A Rant

triple irony points. not, i do not know where you can get one; yes, I made it.

More sexytime stories soon to come. But for now, a tirade. Really and truly. Consider yourself primed.

Sometimes, I feel like I'm going through a second adolescence. It's not the butterfly stomach about my man or the weird unpredictable body - although these things are also hilariously reminiscent of my more heavily poxed days. Nope, it's that sometimes, these days, I find myself embarrassed, and it's a flavor of embarrassed I haven't felt since those greasy days of yore.

It's the shame that comes with enthusiastic, almost zealous conviction. It's the moment of realizing exactly how loud I've been yelling, and for exactly how long, and that maybe it's a little louder and little bit longer that is deemed entirely appropriate for that particular situation. The level of passion reminds me of the way I used to feel about my future, about my parents, about my school and what I was learning and what I was planning on doing with my life. There's a desperation in this kind of security, a zealous knowledge that yes, this is really is so important, can't you see? It's a grasping, a pushing to the edges of what is acceptable emotional fervor behind a concept. But it's okay. I was a teenager. It was understandable that I would hate (instead of dislike) things, that I would cry (instead of be a little upset). That I would yell. A lot.

(I would also sing and dance and generally, bodily, try to get the volume of feeling out through me anyway I could).

And I've noticed, in the last year or so, that I'm doing many of these things again. And, like when I was a teenager, I'm getting embarrassed about them again. Although more so now, because I'm a damned adult, so these "outbursts" are... less acceptable than they were. By some arbitrary terms of some arbitrary set of societal niceties that tell us what is and isn't appropriate. Grrrrrr.

Feminism. Passionate feminism, gender awareness. Violent conversational smashing-of-patriarchy. These are the things that boil my blood. And these are the things that, in moments of rage or passion or exasperation or, yes, righteous indignation, I get embarrassed about. I wonder if I'm seeing it everywhere. I wonder if I'm reading into things. I wonder if I'm giving people too hard a time, I wonder if I'm not enjoying my life as much because I can't un-see the misogyny, the entrenched stereotypes, the language.*

(*for more on this, read: How to Like Problematic Things. Warning: it doesn't have magical answers to solve your problems. I know, I hoped it would too. But nonetheless, it's well written and informative).

Mostly, though, I wonder, even if all these things are true, if I would just shut up about it, then everything would be better. People tag me when they take pictures of feminist buttons on bags. A friend of a friend asked, at a party, if he could play me a song he'd written and if I could tell him whether or not it was sexist (the strangeness of this question is... another story). I come to be known, due to my own loudness, as the feminist. And this embarrasses me.

Here are maybe some reasons wherefore the shame:

- I wonder if people think it's stupid.

- I wonder if my friends are quietly disagreeing with what I have to say, but not wanting to make a stink about it.

- I wonder if it's just... well, if it's annoying. If I have become annoying.

- I wonder if I'm that feminist, a social justice friend, who my "regular" (whatever that means) friends just tolerate.

- I wonder if my adamancy for this idea isn't allowing room for other people, or I wonder if they're all just sick of hearing about it, and fed up with my zero tolerance policy for shittyness.

Wait. Hold on. Pause.

This is all bullshit.

You know who else was annoying and adamant? You know who else everybody pointed to, scoffed, rolled their eyes, and said "would you just shut up already?" The fucking suffragettes. Simone de Beauvoir. bell hooks. Margaret Atwood. The abolitionists, and the LGBT rights movement, and the fucking civil rights marchers, motherfucker.

Every fucking progressive revolutionary ever.

So, yeah, maybe I'm obnoxious. Maybe I'm annoying, or maybe you're sick of stopping conversations or derailing arguments into the sticky, mired swamp of gender relationships and power dynamics in this world. But guess what? I believe in this. I believe that it matters what we say and how we say it; I believe that tiny social interaction can actually change the way we think about gender and power in our daily lives. And those beliefs aren't going anywhere. If you want to be my friend, or my acquaintance, or play me a song, that's the me you're going to get.

Because I don't want to be "that social justice friend." I want everybody to be that social justice friend. There was a time when being comfortable with women's rights, gay rights, race relations: you name it - there was a time when this made you a crazy progressive free-thinking hippie liberal. And now look around you. Have any friends who aren't?

So to all that doubt I've got, and all that teenage embarrassment, I say: fuck off. Good for you, you feminist, for finding something you're so passionate about, it reminds you of a time when your body was coursing with hormones and you had the whole world at your feet. Leave that other shit behind.

There was a great analyses, post-Louis CK/Tosh debacle, about why it is that feminists and comedians are "natural enemies." Amongst other reasons (found in this article, which is... mostly good), there's a history of "smile and shut the fuck up." There's a history of "take the joke that's super misogynist and shitty, and laugh at it." It was one of the first sticking points, way back in the first wave. No, I won't smile. No, I won't keep  my mouth shut. It isn't just that feminists are loud and won't let it go; it's that being loud, and not letting go, are sybmolic acts. They are linked to the history of being a woman in this country, in this world, in your family, with your friends. It is not just that I believe in this, and I want to tell you. It's that the action of telling you is actively supporting my beliefs. It's that I want to show you.

I'll show you my revolution, baby, if you show me yours?

So, on the heels of MLK day and the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I say: fuck no, I'm not shutting up. Take it or leave it. And if you leave it, better remember: it's probably gonna knock down your door someday, whether I'm the one doing the knocking or not.

Punchy, over and out.

Kink Documentary (and James Franco)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Savage OKStupid

Since Jamie left, I've been doing a lot of things I don't usually do. Daily routines have shifted. Eating alone more, sleeping alone, masturbating a lot, and generally being a recluse from the world. Which is fine by me, for as long as it feels good to be that way. This new shift has left me with a lot of internet time, and a lot of walking-with-headphones time, which means a lot of OKCupid response rampages, and listening to podcasts. Specifically, new-to-me-recently, the Savage Lovecast with Dan Savage.

And I like these two things. I like meeting new people and I like listening to (mostly) sex-positive advice shows. But between them I've gotten pretty frustrated over some recent events (errrr, maybe not so recent - it's been a while, I suppose), pointing out once again, I guess, that's it's that much more heartbreaking when something almost not shitty does shitty things (as opposed to things you knew were shitty from the beginning).

I get a lot of messages on OKCupid. Lots of women do. And for the most part, they're just sort of... boring. Unoriginal, clearly copy pasta, a general form message sent out to every mildly compatible person. Sometimes they're especially weird, or creepy, and sometimes they're just very, very boring.

A while back, before he left, Jamie and I were talking about the trends on OKCupid, and how the vast majority of women don't send many messages, and the vast majority of men do. It's a self-reinforcing cycle, which even knowing about, I experienced first hand. Getting three or four shitty messages a day, I don't even want to bother writing back, which means my response rate goes down, and I don't want to bother looking in a proactive way, because I'm so exhausted. A nonexistent offense for the necessity of a good defense. Gender essentialism of the internet, a feedback tornado.

So I decided to change it. I decided to try and write back to every message I got, even if it was just a "fuck off, thanks." I wasn't about to let some stupid gender paradigm drop my internet percentage response rate. Nobody can take away my 100% but me, dammit.

And this is one of my favorite examples of that endeavor. 

(I know the initial response seems pretty harsh. And it is. I was probably cranky. I don't think it actually matters - pretend his initial message was shittier, if that makes it work for you. I'm in the red, he's in the grey).

I am, I think, as clear as I can possibly be about not wanting to talk or interact with the fellow. I'm downright rude. And what do I get back? A "hey, I like your energy." Like what I had said doesn't actually matter at all.

Keeping that in mind, I was listening to the Lovecast this morning, and while my issues with Dan Savage cover a broad range of misogynist flavors, he hit on one this morning that was particularly... shitty. Not to excuse my own exasperation (I'm exasperated: no apologies about it), but I will say that Savage is, a lot of the time, great. Which is part of the reason why I wish he was better when it comes to women. Because there is the possibility there. Because he isn't a shithead. Most of the time.

A man called in, describing a situation wherein his wife and he were at a bar, and the wife went off with a lady friend of theirs to the bar next door, saying she was going to "get into a little trouble." The lady friend and the wife ended up making out in front of a random dude (let's call him dude number two), and dude number two made a pass as this guys wife. It's unclear (but doesn't really matter) whether or not husband and wife and lady friend know dude number two prior to this interaction. The wife declined, and then dude number two tried again, at which point wife left. End of situation.

(I know it's shitty language to use - "wife" and "lady," but for differentiations sake, I'm gonna keep it there. I use "husband" too, so I think I'm alright).

The caller expressed, at first, frustration with dude number two (understandably), and after a while, frustration with his wife. For not talking to him about kissing someone else, I assumed, but after a bit more listening to the call, it came out that he was in fact frustration with her for "putting herself in that situation." And in defense of the caller, there could be a lot of complex emotions going on with why he was mad at his wife. Which he could confuse for victim blaming, I guess. It's super shitty, but emotions are complicated. Although what the caller posited feeling, and why, isn't actually so important.

As the call ended, I expected a two-part breakdown from Savage, as he sometimes does. I expected a "you and your wife need to talk about what your boundaries are, so that's number one, and that's probably why you're mad at her," as well as a "nothing about that was her fault, and I don't know if you need to be worried, but that guy sounds like a dick, and if you know him, maybe you don't want to know him anymore."

The first, yes, that happened. As he tends to be in areas of poly, Savage is right on point. But the second, not so much. Instead, he said something along the lines of "Yeah, your wife probably should have known, making out with a lady is the sort of situation where you might get hit on by dudes. They think the ladies might be down to fuck, which is understandable, because that situation sometimes means that. So don't be too hard on him."

No, Dan Savage. Just no. That is not understandable. That is victim blaming, and you don't have a complicated emotional standpoint to come from. Granting the shitty state of our culture around consent, sexuality, and women, a first pass *might* squeak by. But a second? A second after a clear "no"? That's assault.

Which brings me round to the big philosophical point of all this. And it's sort of beyond the pointing out of "no means no," in both cases. It's more a sort of wondering of... where this comes from. The complicated and interconnected reasons behind all the shitty. This idea that sex, or consent, or conversation in the dating world, is contingent upon vagueries. The idea that when someone is clear about what they want (or in these cases, don't want), it is ignored, or that ignoring it is somehow part of what's hot.

I think the ambiguity is a combination of things. I think it's gendered, for sure. I think we take "no" as an answer as much more definitive from men, and I think (as evidenced by the OKStupid conversation), we ignore what women say outright, most of the time, and just focus on (as that person did) that they're responding at all. But more than this, I think it's an attitude we have about sex and dating. That push-pull is sexy, that ambiguity is hot, that the human mating dance is one of intentional ignorance and charging blindly forward.

And I just think that's bullshit. It's a feminist issue, surely, but it's also a people issue around sexuality, I think. Part of sex positivity, for me, is acknowledging that these kinds of instances are what's wrong with our view of sex, and trying to find a way to change that. Because sex if fun and pleasure is good for you, and so is basic decency and the agency of humans.

Negotiated ambiguity? Super hot. But like all things kinky, it's based in explicit, enthusiastic, and clear consent. It's what separates kink from abuse, full stop. Anything else is bullshit.

Bring to a Boil

It feels like a long time since I've posted here, and not for want of things to post about. But life has gotten life-y, like it does, and it seems that, in the time I usually stop to think "hey, I could write about that thing I've been meaning to pontificate to the internet about," I've ended up thinking "hey, I could write about that thing, but I have ONE MILLION OTHER THINGS TO DO OH GOD." Not that it's a good excuse, but it's what's been happening.

The show I'm working right now (right at this very minute, actually - and there are few things better than sitting in the dark, at work, updating your sex blog) has a monologue where a character talks about cooking, reads a poem, sort of, about cooking, using only verb phrases from recipe books. It's lovely, and sort of fitting for what I have time/energy for here. So, instead of "bring to a boil/season/taste," here's a little verb-phrase stream of consciousness about what's been happening lately, with more detail to come once I'm over the hump (a week or so, probably).

It seems fitting, in part because lately, it's felt like there's so much to do, so many actions to complete and get done and accomplish, that there's no space to be at all.

Profound, eh?

Here goes nothin.

A Verb-Phrase Poem That Turned Out To Just Be A Poem (or; It's Been A Very Long Time Since I've Put Poetry On The Internet. Fuck It).

Shiver
It's getting colder, this northwest winterdark
And he's leaving
To where the cold doesn't compare
To where here huddle weather
Is bask on the porch
Is linger in the evenings
To where here snuggle down deep
Is cast off the blankets and breathe luxurious. 

I study study
Move the money
Pay the bills
Study study
Change the names and the schools and the fonts and the format
Make it perfect
(never actually, but as perfect as you can stand
given the time
given the sleep)
Submit
Tick it off the list
And another
And another. 

Date, have a date
Timing, and it's like fun
But with a clock ticking
Because the seconds when he is home
And you are not
Are limited.
And they're limited anyway,
But the scope so much smaller now,
A more visible finite. 

Make the paperwork
Schedule the calls
No, we don't have that yet
Yes, I can find a replacement
No, I can't
Yes, I'll figure it out
Yes, no, I'll check on that later
(remember to check on that later)
Theater magic
On my hands and knees
In the sawdust, in the paydirt
(which pays sometimes enough)
Much less fun
That kneeling and feeling like this
Usually means. 

The weary ends of days
Forgotten kisses at the door
Remembered, meeting in the hallway
After notes, after applications, after props and run lists,
After a wash and a brush and after
Everything is charging
And most things are clean
And some things are folded
And none of the dishes are done,
Take a minute
Keep your eyes open
Like a prize, forget all of it.
Because in light of this
In this light
The rest slips away like easy, like letting.
And just live in it, the touch, his mouth,
What your body can be under his fingers.
And for a moment
Remember: this is home.

That was less explanatory than I thought it would be. Oh well!