Video Artist. Activist. Student. Life.

re-mapping our (his)Stories

2010-08-18T08:03:00.001-07:00

Please support my latest project:

http://www.indiegogo.com/Re-Mapping-Our-histories?i=pite

this is an amazing project and I've only raised $100 of my $3000 goal with 54 days left to get the rest!

check it out! (i promise itll be worth it)

and remember a $15 dollar donation will secure you a limited edition re-mapping our (his)Stories t-shirt!

drama

2010-08-02T14:31:00.000-07:00

it kills me the most that the biggest down fall of my community as I see it is that we allow drama to create walls and borders between us which prevents us from uniting as a whole, as a community. For all this talk about communities and building strong communities I consider it a tragedy that we allow ourselves to be divided in this way.

(his)story

2010-07-03T19:03:00.000-07:00

The L Word, Season 2, Episode 3-
(This is an extreamly brief background) For weeks now Jenny and Shane’s roommate, Mark, has been secretly recording the girls every move via hidden video camera (in the living room, kitchen, bedrooms) under the guise of “making a documentary” he has been collecting footage (While attempting to receive funding from a sleazy porn company). Jenny accidentally discovers the tapes one day and confronts Mark:

Jenny: “Do you have any sisters?”

Mark: “Yes, I have 2 younger sisters…”

Jenny: “I want you to ask them a question, and the most important thing is that you really listen to their answers, I want you to ask them about the very first time they were intruded upon by some man or a boy-.”

Mark: “What makes you think that my sisters have been intruded upon?”

Jenny: “Because there isn’t a single girl or woman in this world who hasn’t been intruded upon, and sometimes its relatively benign and sometimes its so fucking painful that you have no idea what this feels like.”

…

“Im going to decide when you can get those rapey cameras down, now get the fuck outta my room”

My relationship to Jenny on the L word is strenuous at best and yet there are times in which I can’t ignore her. The crudeness of the statement that there isn’t a single woman or girl in this world who has not been intruded upon by a man was strangely validating to me when I first heard it at maybe 17 years old, freshly out of the closet I spend a summer watching the L word with my girlfriend. Watching the same clip now 4 years later I am concerned with the lack of nuance in that statement and yet I feel part of me slipping away even as I write the former statement.

I do believe that there are power structures that function off of our socially constructed but mentally ingrained capitalistic society that emphasizes competition for “scarce” resources which creates the necessity of in-equality a battle which has been dominated by the straight, white, rich able-bodied, gender conforming etc. etc. etc. male.

(his)story

It is no wonder that in a world such as this the male takes a dominating position in history that ignores the roles of those who are not the straight, rich, WASP, male; specifically, within this country. This dominance thusly solidifies the role and the gaze of the male for centuries so long as it continues to be taught.

What is changed when a man is in control of the story, how does that lens modify/ignore the lives of those who are not male?

At a crossroads to understanding how to change the course of history for future generations it is necessary to learn history, real history, her-story, (his)story, my-story, your-story because together these narratives can show us errors and unite us as we fight the powers that create inequity.

Crucial to this project is my belief that through reclamation of histories communities can find space to strengthen, empower themselves and take ownership over the future. While this is not a systematic change it is my belief that gradually if people are able to re-frame the way that they see history it will change what is taught, thus creating greater systematic awareness and ability to fight the system.

Launching The Midnight Media Coup and the Re-Mapping Our (his)Stories Project

2010-07-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

http://midnightmediacoup.webstarts.com

Long Time, No Update: Detroit June 2010

2010-06-19T07:01:00.000-07:00

I am sitting on the campus of Wayne State University as shady campus police slowly drive by. I am brought here by a convergence of amazing events soon to end in the 2nd United State Social Forum. The Allied Media Conference is in its 12th year. Every year amazing media makers converge on this campus and collectively create, inspire and explore the issues that we all fight for. Yesterday I did a workshop in street art, computer building and then took an incredible tour of economic injustices in Detroit. Starting tonight there is also the Assembly of Jews Confronting Racism and Israeli Apartheid, the first convergence of its time. People started rolling into town last night, its sure to be an amazing time! Then the last 4 days of my trip here will be consumed by the 2nd United States Social Forum. The USSF is based on the model of the world social forum and is not a conference but an opportunity for people to come together and work to create real change within their communities.

Getting here was a journey in itself, after a cancelled flight and a cancelled van ride I got on a greyhound bus at midnight wednesday night and 16 hours, 3 busses and 1 taxi later I found myself at the Allied Media Conference. AMC is incredible and inspirational and whatever happens in the next week I'm ready for it.

Ashkenazi Privilege Checklist

2010-05-01T22:52:00.000-07:00

Ashkenazi (ashkenazi - is a term primarily used to refer to jews of eastern european descent) Privilege Checklist

This checklist was developed by members of the Jewish Multiracial Network online discussion group, 2006–2009. You are welcome to distribute this checklist, use it in workshops, and add to it.

Please check all that apply to you.

___ I can walk into my temple and feel that others do not see me as outsider.
___ I can walk into my temple and feel that others do not see me as exotic.
___ I can walk into my temple and feel that my children are seen as Jews.
___ I can walk into temple with my family and not worry that they will be treated unkindly.
___ I can enjoy music at my temple that reflects the tunes, prayers, and cultural roots of my specific Jewish heritage.
___ I can easily find greeting cards and books with images of Jews who look like me.
___ I can easily find Jewish books and toys for my children with images of Jews that look like them.
___ I am not singled out to speak about and as a representative of an “exotic” Jewish subgroup.
___ When I go to Jewish bookstores or restaurants, I am not seen as an outsider.
___ I find my experiences and images like mine in Jewish newspapers and magazines.
___ My rabbi never questions that I am Jewish.
___ When I tell other members of my synagogue that I feel marginalized, they are immediately and appropriately responsive.
___ There are other children at the religious school who look like my child.
___ My child’s authenticity as a Jew is never questioned by adults or children based on his/her skin color.
___ People never say to me, "But you don't look Jewish," either seriously or as though it was funny.
___ I do not worry about being seen or treated as a member of the janitorial staff at a synagogue or when attending a Jewish event.
___ I am never asked “how” I am Jewish at dating events or on Jewish dating websites.
___ I can arrange to be in the company of Jews of my heritage most of the time.
___ When attempting to join a synagogue or Jewish organization, I am sure that my ethnic background will not be held against me.
___ I can ask synagogues and Jewish organizations to include images and cultural traditions from my background without being seen as a nuisance.
___ I can enroll in a Jewish day school, yeshiva, and historically Jewish college and find Jewish students and professors with my racial or ethnic background.
___ People of color do not question why I am Jewish.
___ I can send my child to Hebrew School/Young Judea camp without him/her being subjected to racist slurs from other children.
___ I am not discriminated against in the aliyah process as a Jew of my particular ethnicity.
___ I know my ethnic background will not be held against me in being called to read the Torah.

I was directed to this checklist via Facebook and I find it seems to fit rather interestingly with my observations/studies regarding judaism and ethnicity.

Artist Statement?

2010-04-30T22:11:00.000-07:00

here it is- (hopefully, revisions to possibly come...)

The Trek Project is the culmination of a journey. For me this project has been an experiment, an investigation, an interrogation. Creating this project has sent me into some of the most uncomfortable places in my soul; time spent interrogating systems of oppression that I have both opposed but also supported. Examining all of this I repeatedly asked myself what is my stake in all of this? Who am I to create this story?
It is a question that this movie does not answer, rather it pushes it further, complicates the lines of borders, travel and story. I created this project to give back to an organization that has given me endless opportunity and perspective. What I give to you, the viewer, is a piece of this, a piece of the journey and a chance for perspective. What will you do with it?

Dear Parent:

2010-04-28T19:34:00.000-07:00

A letter to parents dealing with talking to your kids about puberty and bodies.

DEAR PARENT:
Perspectives from a young, queer, genderqueer, disconnected, late blooming, female body:

OK, so I am writing this letter to talk to you about how girls develop shame around their bodies and the way that girl’s bodies are thrown even more into the spotlight as they begin to develop. I am sure that most females out there understand for the most part what I am talking about but I think that it is extra important to re-iterate this especially as you prepare to talk to your child about their body changing. I’m writing this in the form of a letter because I think it is the best way for me to share with you my own experiences with my changing body and what I wish my parents had known, or atleast expressed understanding/support of. Growing into my female body, especially as a late bloomer was always strange for me. I think the Pussycat Dolls, while they perpetuate the images that often oppress young women, do make a good point about growing up in the song “When I Grow Up”-

When I grow up, I wanna be famous, I wanna be a star, I wanna be in movies
When I grow up, I wanna see the world, Drive nice cars, I wanna have boobies
When I grow up, Be on TV, People know me, Be on magazines
When I grow up, Fresh and clean, Number one chick when I step out on the scene

Now, I know that not every girl wants to be a superstar, but most girls are fighting against invisibility and shame in a very real way and they strive for positive attention. They have been engaged in this struggle all their lives and when a “woman’s” body begins to develop this is emphasized. Within my own history, although I began to develop shame around my body when I began to notice the differences between girls and boys. This happened around age 5, when my parents told me I couldn’t run around without a shirt on, and it started to become inappropriate for me to bathe with my male bodied cousins. While, my male cousins were learning how to take off their shirts and run around in the hot sun, when I stripped off my top to join them I was scolded. This and countless other incidents taught me that my body was something to be hidden. When puberty started to hit the other girls in my peer group, I felt ashamed for new reasons. I was flat until age 14, and didn’t start my period till second semester of my freshman year of high school. Within my peer group my development was delayed in often-visible ways and I was teased. We live in a world where society sets standards on beauty, which are often hard and impossible to reach, but girl culture does not make this easier. I spent most of my teenage years trying to fit into a cookie cutter mold of what my body should be like, at first the mold was too big, and then all at once it became to small. Female standards of beauty ask all girls to immediately embody a tall, white, blonde, skinny ideal. There are hygienic standards that must be kept to as well, legs and armpits shaved at all time, no acknowledgement of her period, or for that matter any bodily functions.
From birth our bodies are called into question and judged, when an adolescent enters puberty their bodies are judged on a whole new scale. Judgment and body talk comes from all over, parents, peers, medical professionals, teachers, the general population and ourselves. Parents struggle with accepting our changing bodies. Peers judge our development timeline. Medical professionals evaluate if we are “on track” and tell us if our bodies are appropriate or not. Teachers attempt to tell us what these changes mean, and what is “normal”. As our bodies develop the general population begins to judge our appeal, and believe me, no young female is safe from being judged by older men. And of course, we judge ourselves, as a combination of all of these other judgments and as we start to deconstruct the images that we see we build up judgments around ourselves as to whether or not our bodies are “good” and appropriate.
I know that this is not what you would typically expect to find in a packet about puberty, but I think that it is important for parents to understand the battle that girls go through, and especially those who struggle with a sexuality and/or gender identity. Puberty, and the teen years, are a time when bodies are put in the spotlight, they are emphasized by peers, parents, medical professionals, teachers, the general public and ourselves. Learning to deal with body shame is important for all girls attempting to reach 20 in one piece. I don’t have any solutions, or key lines that you can tell your children, but I think beginning to understand is important, and so that is why I wrote this letter. While there are not any magic words that I can tell you, I do think that for me I would have appreciated more support in experimenting with my body. The adjustment to a changing body is hard, it is not something that anyone should have to learn to embrace all at once, and it often takes a great deal of time to come to terms with one’s body. I would have appreciated it if my parents and other adults had not called out the changing parts of my body. They were mine to deal with, not theirs to criticize or judge. Feeling safe within the home is the first step to feeling safe within the body, so please, allow your children to feel safe within their homes and bodies.

-Helyx
Video Artist. Activist. Student. Life.
HHspeaking.blogspot.com

go jump off a bridge

2010-04-08T00:41:00.000-07:00

Will Phillips made national headlines last fall in Arkansas when he refused to stand and recite the pledge of allegiance on the grounds that there was not "liberty and justice" for LGBT people. When asked to stand and recite the pledge he told his teacher, 'politely', that she could go jump off a bridge.

What do we learn from Will Phillips? According to Will what he did took a bit of a risk but it was worth it in the end and he encourages others to take a risk as well. I do commend this 8 year old for standing up for others and possibly himself (that remains to be seen?), but why was he specifically thrust into the spotlight. Well, for one, he is white and male, images of him and his family evoke the prototypical "american" family aesthetic. What about the thousands, and probably hundreds of thousands of kids who refuse to stand or recite the pledge of allegiance everyday, those who are swept under the rug and forgotten?
And how does his position as a young, innocent white boy allow him to tell his teacher to "jump off a bridge" and still he is enrolled in school and now glorified for his actions (although he did issue an apology for the manner in which he talked to his teacher)? How is this boy able to take this risk and be safe within that?

division III, say what!?

2010-04-06T23:51:00.000-07:00

For those of you who do not know in the final year at Hampshire College students embark on a year-long massive independent study project:

Re-Mapping Our (his)Stories

This division III is a collection of stories, a preservation of lives and a reconstruction of histories. Untold stories posses the power to analyze, restructure and overthrow the systems that hold us captive. Communities must unite around stories of common history to seek the roots of oppression and fight the systems that hide those stories in the first place. Re-Mapping Our (his)Stories is a multi-media exploration of history, her-story, my-story, and your-story.
The (his)Stories project is the central focus of my Div III, other components of the project feed into and are fed by this project. The project will also incorporate a website as an online forum for showcasing and archiving the stories that are captured and created as part of the project. Additionally, this endeavor will become the first undertaking of the Midnight Media Coup, which is the organization that I will be creating throughout the course of the next year to support my work and the work of others when I leave Hampshire.
The Re-Mapping Our (his)Stories Project is an opportunity to explore the borders of our lives, and the ways we cross them; borders of technology, government and community. Those who choose to participate in Re-Mapping Our (his)Stories will have the opportunity to explore who their communities are and how the histories of those communities have been recorded. Participants will then have the opportunity to create a media history of their community; which is a cross between an oral history and a more standard interview; media histories give the interviewer the opportunity to present their interviews in multi-media formats. This project provides space to tell and re-frame these stories, which have been appropriated, misrepresented and simply untold in the past.

Snippets

2010-03-21T11:20:00.001-07:00

The following are snippets of thoughts from the past few months that never made it into full entries, its been hard to get my thoughts to that point lately, but I wanted to publish these anyway:

"lately I have found myself full of increasing anger, anger at things and systems beyond my control, anger that has prevented me from writing."

"I think that Michael Moore taught me that informational documentaries could be exciting and fun. Marlon Riggs taught me that they could be beautiful."

"It starts with the call from the police-
"yes, she is my friend, and no, I havn't heard from her lately"

he is friends with the cops and she is under 18, so when she runs away from home because he beat her again they just lock her up as a runaway, and when she gets beat up there for being gay, and butch and genderqueer, and runs away again, they put out the search warrant.

and so I call her, by now I know the protocol, hide in the woods, avoid main roads, bus stops. I get to see her for a few hours, and then she goes away again. A few days later I get a call from my friend, they got her at the bus stop, and put her back.

since when did the victim become the perpetrator. where do you go for help? "

"I wonder sometimes at night why I have never seen my future past the age of 40. Perhaps its my youth, incapable of imaging spending another 20 years on this earth, but at the same time I realize that I have almost no role models past the age of 40. I exist in a community with few visible elders, and I wonder, does 'gay' age well?"

Vanguards

2010-02-22T21:21:00.000-08:00

A Review of the Book Gay LA-

What occurs to me as I read Gay LA is the way that we as gay/queer/homosomething or other in the 21st century think about and regard our history. “A group cannot be effective without a sense of urgency” (320), I fear that it is this urgency that we lack today. We “survived” the AIDS crisis and gay bashings of the past, although it is not so much survival as normalization of these tragedies. Queer youth grow up today with no attachment to the history and trauma of the past. Although the homophile movement declared that homosexuals are a cultural minority, the fact that we often disassociate so heavily with family structures that pass down cultural memory seems to lead to a youth culture of vanguardism.

"'Vanguardism had long poisoned the movements of the Left, most recently in the sixties. Casting yourself as the 'vanguard' meant that you were morally superior because you had suffered the most and had therefore gained the right to lead the much-awaited 'revolution'"

This Quote is from The World Split Open: How the Women’s Movement Changed America by Ruth Rosen. In this she describes the struggles that the women’s movement went through as it evolved over time. Often intersecting with the Lesbian/Queer movement women’s liberation can offer insight into the problems that Queer movements also face.
Since when is the vision of liberation that exists at the end of the book actually liberation. “Among the most encouraging developments for lesbians in the industry has been the comedy-drama series The L Word.” (360). The L Word does little more than thrust over sexualized rich white femmes into the spotlight. Meanwhile the lack of portrayal of women of color (or very few), working class women and gender variance excludes and hides the struggles and lives of these groups. What happened to the chapters on the struggles and great contributions of communities of color early on in the book? The epilogue seems to exist in a post-racial world of indifference where representation, any representation is positive. And yet these representations of lesbians are stabbing us in the back. They seem to empower, but really these tokenized queer characters enforce models of passivity and quell the urgency that we once had, the drive for liberation. Where is the radicalism in watching our stereotypes on TV?
Queer narratives are riddled with poor associations with birth families. Since most queer kids are not raised by queer parents they often do not have queer role models in their lives from an early age. Having no cultural role model means that queer youth grow up with out the same cultural historical memory that members of other minority groups might experience. Without these histories queer youth growing up today lack the association with the trauma and struggle that an earlier generation of queers fought through. This community of elders dealt with hostile circumstances to pave the way for the youth of today, and yet our interrogations of their identities and choices in time of crisis do not account for the context of the situation in which those decisions and identities were formed.
This failure to learn and understand histories leads us into patterns of disarray. Each new generation believes that it is the best, the vanguard, the improved model of the former. Because of this association our tendency is to disregard the histories that others have created. If only we built up the tools to unite the history of our movements with the present conditions of them. There are surely strategies from early resistances and attitudes that we would benefit from; not to mention more acknowledgment of history can help queer youth to develop a better understanding of their place within a broader less selfish movement.

Internet Pacivity

2010-02-22T02:00:00.000-08:00

I fear that what results from this fast paced world of Web 2.0 activism, is a pacivity of sorts. It is not that we as people, as activists, etc feel as though our electronic efforts are solid and yet in these efforts are often in vein. We feel as though we make change and yet, there is no change made in the actual systems that create the oppression we feel that we are alleviating.
These new forms of activism make us feel as though we are making changes and yet as we sit back and send virtual rice or buy 'crops for Haiti' on Farmville we become rapidly blind to the systems that set Haiti up for destruction. We feel as though we can make a difference without actually questioning our lifestyles or mindsets.
Change cannot come without a change in mindset, a change in government a change in culture and lifestyle. And yet with easily accessible "change" available in the comfort of our homes, our worlds, our computers, we alleviate our guilt, alleviate the urgency we that brings about massive change.
We have become a passive audience, we think we create change behind the protection of keyboards and yet it is this distance that causes us to go about guilt free, thinking that we are changing when really we are supporting.

2010-02-10T18:59:00.000-08:00

why ftq? ---entering 2010

2009-12-25T23:38:00.001-08:00

So the movie mean girls is based on my high school, well not my high school experience, but Tina Fey's experience when she attended my high school. She has said in interviews that she based the character Damion on a boy who attended the catholic school down the street. When I think of the boys I know who attended that high school it makes me laugh, one in particular, we worked together, life-guarding at the Y near both our schools. The homophobia, sexism, antisemitism and racism he could poses was sometimes shocking at at the same time, we had a thing going on. Mutual flirtation, which worked out well until I told him that his personality made me not want to spend time with him and that ended things pretty quickly. I think about the life that I lead as a straight girl and what that was, the webs that I wove and the ways that boys hurt me.
Repeated patterns of what had happened before over and over. Spun me into cycles of pain and depression. Never physical violence when I was a straight girl; but oppression hurts.
The pain that I have spent years running away from I begin to confront in myself as I journey into the blury lines of transgender-whatever.
I say FTQ because I hope and pray and feel, that there is something out there that can fit me, without me replicating the pain that I have felt. There must be a place outside the borders and lines and divisions we create for ourselves that will allow me to find myself. Until then I don't know.

I have lived many lives, I have experienced things through viewpoints that now seem so strange and foreign, but at that point seemed the only answer. Moving foward I do what I have always done, I take the best parts of the lessons I have learned and the truths that I have found.

I move on in a way that respects the former aspects of myself, because I cannot turn my eyes on myself, I need to have my own back, or who else will?

And yet respect for the connections, between myself and others, the struggles that we share and the ones that others carry that I do not even know. If I only stand up for myself, then what am I?

There is no good time for me to come to an answer, there will never be a convinient time, the only way to live is to understand that we cannot wait for change, we must start it, within ourselves. It must be now.

The new year brings a new decade, it brings the end of a project that has taken me on intense and long journeys of self reflection, years of growth have changed me in the last decade and the new year brings a time of cleansing. For myself, for my community, for my country, for my people and for everyone, I hold out that there is something good that we can create.

to the next decade, and all that it brings.
to life, לחיים

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
But if I am only for myself, who am I?
If not now, when?

אם אין אני לי, מי לי?
וכשאני לעצמי, מה אני?
ואם לא עכשיו, אימתי

Upper Drive-by?

2009-12-23T20:11:00.000-08:00

At a recent football game between my previous high school, Upper Darby High School, and another high school in the same league, Lower Merion High School, "spirited" chants turned in hate speech, the media portrays the incident as primarily anti-semetic; however, there are a lot more complicated issues going on here.

From what I have heard/read here is what happened:

The game started out with friendly chants the LM team shouting "Merry Christmas" at UD and UD responding with "Happy Chanuka". Things escalated when Lower Merion students began rhythmically chanting "SAT scores". A few Upper Darby students responded to this with "warm up the ovens". Additionally, a few parents overheard some students saying something along the lines of "we'll send you letters in Auschwitz". Lower Merion students have also been reported as having signs that said "Upper Darby", and chanting something to the extent of "you are poor" at students from Upper Darby.

My response to the situation is split.

I have been thinking a lot about growing up in Upper Darby lately, they just tore down the only synagogue in UD. It had been filled by a population that was old and dying 15 years ago when I was young, I am sure there are few left in Upper Darby who even knew of the buildings existence or mourn it's loss. Growing up as a jew in Upper Darby I understand the anti-semitism that permeates the school district and the students. From the truant officer who came after my mother for pulling me out of school for so many jewish holidays in 3rd grade to the ex-boyfriend who threw pennies at me. Not to mention countless more taunts and ways that I was made to feel my existence as a jew in a negative way over and over again. With this in mind I am glad to see the school district forced to confront it's anti-semitism.

On the other hand the media reporting of this incident almost exclusively fails to confront the classism and racism of the chants being spewed by lower merion students. The constant taunting of Upper Darby as a poor, dirty and dangerous place is also something I grew up with and continue to hear echoed to this day. The students in my jewish middle school thought that by opting to attend Upper Darby High School instead of applying for scholarships to a private jewish high school I was signing away my future and likely to get stabbed before my high school graduation. Even this past semester someone at Hampshire repeatedly referred to UD as Upper Drive-by and said that we were too dirty to get swine flu.

While I do not wish to excuse the chants of UD students, I find it despicable that while 4 UD students were expelled and 12 suspended and yet no action was taken against the students from LM. This is not a one sided battle of anti-semetic students from Upper Darby. But rather a larger problem between understanding, media coverage, anti-semitism but also jewish privilege, class privilege and many other factors that have been ignored in the coverage and response to this incident. Why did UDHS need to issue an apology while Lower Merion walks away to resume business as usual?

working conclusion of queer gender research journal

2009-12-10T04:47:00.000-08:00

men create impossible standards of beauty, seduction and femininity that pit women against each other in the struggle to achieve them and to gain the affection of the male. This competition among women is such that their power is undermined, which has the effect of strengthening the power of the man, or any of those folx who are benefiting from women fighting for sexual attention; which, includes not only cis-men, but also dykes, trannies and female bodied people who like to fuck female bodied people. Someone who participates in the system of laying back and watching/enjoying the benefits of over sexualized women is participating in the epitome of masculinity and is swimming in misogyny. The level of analysis that both sides possess can only go so far, the actual actions do carry significant weight. Within the society that we live in it is impossible to separate masculinity from it's connections to misogyny; unless the system of binary genders was to be destroyed and entirely new constructs were to emerge (in which case 'masculinity' as a word would likely have a different meaning.

And yet a world continues to spin outside of Hampshire

2009-11-12T17:46:00.000-08:00

I guess with Thanksgiving coming up I have been thinking a lot about traveling home; the ties and strains between me and my home, my community, my values. As a Jew I believe that I life in Diaspora, both at my home in Philadelphia and here. On a much smaller scale living away from my culture at home I believe that I live in somewhat of a cultural diaspora/disparity. My home is like the everyday, anti-climactic. Here in this environment (hampshire/academia) it is a narrative of destruction, of imminent danger. Just as Hampshire college radicalizes everything else, we radicalize the everyday, we create danger and urgency out of the experiences that we have experienced our entire lives and will continue to experience after we graduate. And this environment of the academic and excitement is fun, challenging, and easy to get caught up in, but it is not my home. It is not what I come from. I would try to make the case that institutions such as this are a vehicle for academic imperialism and yet I choose to come here. But then again, how much of a choice do I have?

In this society what value am I without a college degree? The only way that I can prove my validity as an intelligent person is by participating in this institution. I realize that which college I go to is (for the most part) my decision; however, I cannot get past the disparity in values and urgency between here and my home. I suppose what it comes down to is my struggle in my purpose for being here. There are many facets to this. For one, coming from my family the only question around college was which one I would attend, it was not so much an option as a requirement. However, I wonder, if I were not attending Hampshire if I would have made it this far. I am constantly frustrated living in this valley so far away from home because I feel like it is a disservice to my home, there is so much I could be doing, and want to be doing, and yet, here I am for another year and a half. And its lonely up here, without other people who come from where I come from. I don't see grad school in my future, or at least my near future, there is very little that the continuance in academia would qualify me to do. At the same time I am learning to embrace the opportunity that I have here, to soak it in for everything I can, because this is an experience I will never be able to replicate. The environment and energy is incredible and I am pushed past my limits on a regular basis.

So perhaps what I can take from this strange, possibly fabricated urgency, is the energy and knowledge. The endless realm of possibility and places where we can go. However, I also believe it is crucial for me to remember that I will leave from this place, and return to my home, to a place that doesn't see things the way that we have been transformed by this school to see things. A place outside the bubble.
My ultimate departure from here is what prompted my name change, I see my name as a way to identify and mark myself in the world away from Hampshire. A world in which I will likely always be perceived and gendered as female. And in many ways I am OK with that. I don't need the markers and the fight for my identity, I would rather speak with my actions and presence then fight for words with limited meaning in any other setting.

And so, in about 2 weeks I will leave for home, to see my family that doesn't always understand or respect my identity. And yet, I love them and love the part of me that exists with them, and will never exist here. Just as I take the best parts of every kind of Judaism I have learned and turn it into something that I support and embrace, I must take the best parts of what academia has taught me and combine those parts with all of the knowledge that I receive in the rest of my life and only when I can put all these parts together will I be able to move forward in my life and my thinking. And perhaps then I can begin to reconcile the disparity.

What does a Colonizer Look Like?

2009-11-10T07:45:00.000-08:00

There are 4 elements at play in the definition of a country as a colonial power over another:

(1) the economic: appropriation of land, exploitation of labor, and control of finance; (2) the political: control of authority;
(3) the civic: control of gender and sexuality;
(4) the epistemic and the subjective personal: control of knowledge and subjectivity.

With regards to the US and Latin America the United States has some hand, if not a full fist, in all of these areas. I have started reading the book The Colonizer and the Colonized by Albert Memmi. The first section of the book attempts to define and depict the colonizer.

"Today, leaving for a colony is not a choice sought because of its uncertain dangers, nor is it a desire of one tempted by adventure. It is simply a voyage towards an easier life." Memmi goes on to describe the colonizer as one who leaves their country not simply for adventure, because if that was the case why would they not go somewhere among their own country men? "Our traveler will come up with the best possible definition of a colony: a place where one earns more and spends less". As he goes on it descibes the difficulty for a colonizer to leave the colony. After a few years returning to the "slow progress" of home, and more expensive lifestyle is no longer appealing. Additionally the colonizer has laid roots in their new home, and lost roots in their old one. Why should the colonizer then leave the colony, especially when their privilege makes life in the colony easier then it would have been in the home country.

This perspective on the colonizer brings me back to the expatriate community that I saw when I was in Guatemala last January. For the most part the people I met were white US citizens who for one reason or another (primarily political) had decided to leave the United States. While I understand the desire to leave the United States out of frustration, I also feel the need to stay out of loyalty and obligation to my people. One of the fellow students at the Spanish school where I was taking classes mentioned to me that all the expatriates there seemed to be lost. To me the idea of leaving the US in political protest seems to be in vein. First off, no change can come from a few individuals, that were likely to radical for the government anyway, leaving. Secondly, their efforts to escape the US government may as well be void because they have moved to a place that is, in many crucial ways, a colony of the US, or at the very least a place that the US holds colonial power over.

In his book, Memmi describes 3 types of individuals in the colonizer/colonized relationship. They are the colonial, the colonizer and the colonist. The colonial is described as a European (or for our purposes one from the United States) living in the colony but having none of the privileges of their position. "a colonial is a benevolent European who does not have the colonizers attitude towards the colonized", in the next sentance Memmi goes on to say "a colonial so defined does not exist, for all Europeans in the colonies are privileged".

What I am attempting to begin to examine here is what is the role and power that one posses in moving to an expatriate community in Latin America. How can one move in an effort to escape the imperialistic policies of the US while simultaneously re-enforcing that colonialism.

Respect the Elders and Envision a Future

2009-10-28T02:46:00.000-07:00

I wonder sometimes at night why I have never seen my future past the age of 40. Perhaps its my youth, incapable of imaging spending another 20 years on this earth, but at the same time I realize that I have almost no role models past the age of 40. I exist in a community with few visible elders, and I wonder, does 'queer' age well? There are aspects of queer society that do not in fact age well, through a combination of disease, substance use, depression and other issues that infect our community there are many who live on a different time-line of life events, much shorter than the hetero-normative standpoint.

Another factor that plays into that is that the concepts of queer and genderqueer as identifying terms is rather new and there are very few older queers who grew up around this language, and while some do identify with these terms many do not. However, that does not mean that sexualities and gender deviance that we think about today in connection to the queer and genderqueer community, are not represented in the older generation. Speaking with my aunt once she told me that had the terms 'transgender' or 'genderqueer' been available to her at my age she would have likely chosen to identify as such. However, despite not having these terms as definition I would say that my aunt still lived a very genderqueer life.

Within the "young/hip" queer community today we have created labels and identities that "fit" our needs. However, in the mess of this search for identity we often loose the people who could be of most value, the elderly. Queer chronology doesn't work in the same way as hetero chronology. While we all have families and connections to them, we also have a legacy of gay people who came before us a paved the way for us to be there. WE need to stop thinking about terms that only apply to modern subcultures as the end all be all of identity. Identity is molding and changing every second; within the ways that we perform for the camera and with the ways that we perform for others (/how others see us).

Regardless hopefully as the queers I know begin to age I will be able to envision a model for myself; although of course, there is always something relieving in the concept that I will die before age 50.

Who wears the strap-on?

2009-09-21T02:50:00.000-07:00

I had gotten up to go to the bathroom before the movie started during a date with my high school girlfriend and when I returned to my seat I sat down and kissed her. As I settled into my seat we heard the 20/30 something (presumably) straight male behind us turn to the female that he was with and say "I wonder which one wears the strap-on?". Of course we turned and pointed at each other.

Binaries of gender are perpetually created by the queer community as often as they are projected on us my straight communities. Who wears the strap-on? How does that legitimize sex, specifically looking at couples where the dominant partner does is not the typical hetero-normative masculine figure. What does it mean for the femme to strap it on and fuck the butch? Does this act take some how diminish the masculinity of the butch, or better yet can a trans-man identify as a trans-man and still like to be fucked by a cock?

We use our roles in the bedroom to legitimize our identities, to examine ourselves and to define our selves. And yet if the concept of queer is about embracing fluidity then why must we divide ourselves into who wears the strap on?

Response to GenderKid

2009-08-10T12:22:00.001-07:00

I have been reading the blog Genderkid (http://genderkid.wordpress.com/) for a while now and occasionally we comment on each others blogs, looking at my blog earlier I found this comment and as I wrote my response I found myself wanting to post it in a way that people would be more likely to see it-

Comment on the last blog post (Memories, 8/5/09):

"I really liked this poem. I haven't been in any situations like that, but I'm also afraid that, when I'm perceived as male, people will see me as menacing. They probably won't --I'm small--, but I still do my best not to look intimidating when I see a woman walking alone at night. Even if I'm just as scared as she is."
Genderkid (http://genderkid.wordpress.com/)

Response:
"yea, I definitely try to be aware of how my perceived masculinity can effect women in ways that I may not even notice, because in many of the negative experiences I have had with men were not overt, but rather there are subtle ways that masculinity is enacted that establish men as dominant over women.

Also, I totally hear what your saying about being as scared as she is though, it is strange because the violence that is enacted on me is enacted and felt by me because of my female body, and yet I also participate in systems of masculinity that perpetuate violence.

I wonder is it possible to operate masculinity without playing into misogynist gender roles and privilege? "

The concept of transmasculine misogyny as well as the delicate relationship among transmasculine folks, masculinity, misogyny, and straight men is something I hope to continue to touch on with more posts, but I wanted to keep the discussion going.

-helyx

Memories

2009-08-05T09:27:00.000-07:00

Cotton Underwear, newly cleaned
5-year-old tighty whiteys
That was the first time.

Everything else is a blur
Until the words come to me at age 12
campfire, telling stories
take back the night

and then the blur comes back
photographs of memories
so much hard work to forget
but his body is always the same
spread out,
gripping onto doorways,
and bus seats, same pose, same male body stance
fighting back

I always managed to get away, after that first time
And I thought it couldn’t happen again
And I thought it couldn’t happen with a woman
Until that sweaty afternoon when I told her to stop.
but I never fought back when she didn’t.
She couldn’t have done it, she said she loved me.

And now as my body becomes more like his
I know that it is the subtle movements become my memories
I fear that I am creating these memories for others.

1 year and almost 60 posts later...

2009-07-26T09:08:00.000-07:00

I began this blog in July of 2008 and now as July of 2009 comes to a close I thought it might be appropriate to acknowledge the year anniversary of my blog. I started this blog to as a way to deal with the issues that came up in the production of Impacting Girls Influencing Life, Now that that documentary is completed and I am working on my next project (thetrekproject.blogspot.com) this blog has become a way for me to process and express all the issues that come up within my life. With the new project, my focus has also shifted to examining global systems of power and concepts of global influence. Ilha Das Flores is a short non-fiction video orginally created in Portugese that examines the value of human life and the caste system of human worth that has been created by the capitalist system we are born into as members of this world:

it is in two parts and about 10 minutes long total (not including credits), definately worth watching.

scars

2009-06-10T22:50:00.000-07:00

For the one that I have know all my life:
How can you tell me that my body is a temple.
How can you tell me that my body is perfect.

When you do not know the scars that it contains.
When you have made no effort to uncover my scars.

And for the one who I know so well, and yet not at all:

How can you tell me that my scars don't compare.
How can you tell me that mine do not exist.

When you have never taken the time to hear my pain.
When you have never given me the safety you expect me to give to you.

The story of the scars that I carry with me:
moments like photographs of time, positions, my body, his body, her body.
violations of our bodies.

Scars that I cannot control replaced by scars that I can.
Blood and violence out of choice to regain my control.
To fight against the scars of the past.

A fight for my life.
A fight to get back my life from the memories of the scars.

babylon

2009-06-04T11:01:00.000-07:00

LIVING IN BABYLON
The Oxford American Dictionary defines diaspora as the Jews dispersed from their homeland. In the sub definitions it continues to define diaspora as the dispersion of any people from their homeland and the people so dispersed. Why is the Jewish diaspora so emphasized in academia? The privileging of the Jews despite their status as an oppressed people is a difficult one to dissect. While Jews in Europe and early American history (until the early 20th century) were systematically oppressed, the Jewish people today receive a great many rewards for their position as such. The factors related to this are vast but the paramount factor lies in skin tone. For Jews to assimilate and pass within white America it is easy. I myself pass all the time as Christian and this is true for most Jews even those who are not of mixed ethnicity. Therefore, while Jews live within a culture of diaspora and oppression they can also escape this culture with ease.
"This is precisely what the generality of while Americans cannot afford to do. They do not know how to do it--: as I must suppose. They come through Ellis Island, where Giorgio becomes Joe, Papavasiliu becomes Palmer...So, with a painless change of a name, and in the twinkling of the eye, one becomes a white American".
(Baldwin xix).
Due to the fact that white Americans of European decent can assume the white privilege that maintains oppression within the US that is and has always been denied to those without white skin they must work to realize their own diaspora, as well as their own privilege, so that they can move forward in working against the oppression of others.
Do all people with the exception of Native Americans in America live within a Diaspora? Throughout his introduction to The Price of the Ticket James Baldwin discusses the idea that, even white Americans are living separately from their homelands. For a person of European decent in America to live in diaspora they would have to not abandon their ethnic heritage. The ability to shed ethnic heritage is something that was never afforded to the black inhabitants of the United States. Thus diaspora is forced onto them, whether they be from Africa or other places. And the diaspora is something that is enforced by the neo-colonial structures that maintain the Black Nation as a nation within a nation.
"Later, in the midnight hour, the missing identity aches. One can neither assess nor overcome the storm of the middle passage. One is mysteriously shipwrecked forever, in the Great New World" (Baldwin xix). In this quote Baldwin alludes to the pain of diaspora, the loss of cultural connection, a pain that I feel in my heart, and that I know Baldwin feels. But it is a pain that is ignored by so much of the country as they retreat into manufactured "American" culture. The pain of missing a language and a culture can be seen in the efforts to maintain languages, such as Yiddish or Geechee.
"The colonialist bourgeoisie is aided and abetted in the pacification of the colonized by the inescapable powers of religion" (Fanon 28). Many things create the connection between African-American tradition and religion; the syncretism of African traditions and Christianity and the adoption of the story of exodus are indicative of the roots of the connection. In the fields slaves were allowed to sing because it was believe to increase productivity and in their own time the church (or center of prayer) became a crucial meeting spot for slaves. In modern times the black church has become a crucial point in the examination of black culture. The traditions of African Diaspora often connect with the tales of Jewish diaspora in unusual, and sometimes powerful, and sometimes uncomfortable ways.
1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
2 There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
3 for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
4 How can we sing the songs of the LORD
while in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, =
may my right hand forget its skill .
6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.
Psalm 137
This psalm originally referenced the exile of the Jewish people from the land of Judea to Babylon and the destruction of the Jewish temple. Throughout the years, as with other biblical stories, Babylon has become a symbol of the exile of the African American people from Africa. One of the primary ways that this adoption of “Babylon” can be seen is through the musical renditions of the song "By the Rivers of Babylon". The song, originally psalm 137, has been covered by numerous Jewish as well as African American artists. This song is extremely powerful for both the Jews and African Americans, as the "missing identity aches" (Baldwin xix), the people yearn for a connection to their land.
The random house dictionary defines diaspora as:
-noun, 1. The scattering of the Jews to countries outside of Palestine after the Babylonian captivity. 2. The body of Jews living in countries outside Palestine or modern Israel. 3. Such countries collectively. 4. Any group migration of flight from a country or region; dispersion. 5. Any group that has been dispersed outside it’s traditional homeland. 6. Any religious group living as a minority among people of the prevailing religion.”

With the common definitions of diaspora predominately reflecting the Jewish diaspora the question of what then qualifies as a diaspora emerges. Diaspora is a loss of connection to a place; however, the ties to the lost land hold a great deal more weight then simply a sour real estate deal. For most, the exile from a homeland is also an exile from the guaranteed language and culture of that land. Preserving this culture then requires work and living as the other in a strange land. For Jewish Americans it was easy to avoid this painful existence if they so chose to. As Baldwin continues to explain, for African Americans this was impossible. To maintain diasporic communities those communities must remain at least culturally bound to the homeland, and remember the loss of the homeland.
The Gullah people used to inhabit the lowlands of the Carolinas all the way to Florida, but now only inhabit parts of South Carolina and Georgia. Gullah culture originated when black slaves were left alone a great deal to grow rice in the rice fields during the 1700s because yellow fever ran rampant and whites fled to the high lands leaving overseers in charge of the plantations. In this less restricted environment a culture emerged. While the slaves had been stripped of everything when they came to this country, all possessions, clothes, even names, they had not, and could never be stripped of their cultural identities and collective memories. Out of this environment a unique culture evolved, one that is uniquely diasporic. Gullah can be linked in many ways directly to the culture of Sierra Leone; which, is impacted in many ways by the city of Freetown, where thousands of freed African-American slaves were sent.
The movie, Daughters of the Dust, directed by Julie Dash, is a narrative about the migration of the Gullah people from the Sea Islands to the mainland. The Sea Islands and the mainland, while they both reflected a diasporic culture did so differently, the islands were much more secluded, and isolated from the rest of the world. The movie demonstrates a number of things about the contrast between American Culture and Gullah Culture. For one, the pacing of the movie defies the rules of most American cinema. As the film continues to take on unconventional styles as well as portray the culture, which, in itself is vastly different from American Culture. These techniques further the actuality that there is a divide between African-American diasporic culture and mainstream/White American culture.
To live in a diaspora can have many interpretations. The biggest theme seems to be strictly geographic, removal from one’s homeland. However, diasporic culture must reflect more than this, it must reflect a connection to one’s home due to a loss of one’s home. However that loss may come about, through physical removal, or colonial structures, and often a combination of the two.
In the story The Seabirds Are Still Alive Toni Cade Bambara breaks from her usual settings within the United States to demonstrate the internationalism of the Struggle. This short story about a displaced young Vietnamese girl being interrogated opens up the discussion of diaspora in numerous ways. Farah Jasmine Griffin writes about the story, “She uses a vocabulary familiar to the African Americans, the loss of home, of language, of culture-- and the creation of a new, dynamic culture of resistance in the New World”. As Griffin emphasizes throughout the rest of the piece as well, but especially in this quote, African American experience within the United States is always connected to life in the Diaspora. One need not live within the closest connection to African culture to be part of this diaspora. The diaspora is part of the collective memory; and will remain there as a part of the culture.
“From the earliest days of the colonization, white Christians had represented their journey across the Atlantic to America as the exodus of a New Israel from the bondage of Egypt into the Promised Land of milk and honey. For black Christians, the imagery was reversed: the Middle Passage had brought them to Egypt Land, where they suffered bondage under a new Pharaoh” (Raboteau Strangers and Neighbors 57-8)
Diasporic cultures that connect a people to their homeland can never be considered neo-colonial appropriation. While it is true that most African-American family trees were erased by the middle passage and subsequent slave trade, the one thing that could not be taken from the people who were brought to this continent from Africa was the collective memory. The position of the Gullah is unique in that they were able to develop a culture predominately free from white interference because they were isolated and left behind in the rice farms. For many, the collective memory drew out certain elements of culture that contribute to what is now termed African American culture; the roots of which lie in what can only be seen as the maintenance of diasporic tradition. Within the Jewish context it has been nearly impossible to trace any family back to the destruction of the Temple; however, the story remains within Jewish culture and community and within the collective memory of the people.
Walter D. Mignolo defines colonialism as:

“(1) the economic: appropriation of land, exploitation of labor, and control of finance; (2) the political: control of authority; (3) the civic: control of gender and sexuality; (4) the epistemic and the subjective personal: control of knowledge and subjectivity.”
(Migolo 11)

It is easily seen that this definition of colonialism can be applied to black people residing within the United States today, a nation within a nation. And a colony within a "free" nation. It almost seems oximoronic, until we consider the systems that put it into place. Since the writing of the constitution the black population has been othered and set aside as a separate nation, a separate entity to be dealt with. From the 3/5ths clause to the 1 drop rule, white institutions of power have continually set up the black population as a separate unit, present for exploitation but never allowed to step out of the bounds that maintain that oppression. The American machine needs people at the bottom in order for "free" market capitalism to function. In my high school history class we discussed the motives for the civil war and spent a great deal of time discussing the economic motivations of the south to maintain a system of slavery. Although, today slavery is illegal, these systems of oppression are maintained, primarily to continue to fuel the US economic system. By maintaining this colonial structure that has been in place since the middle passage the US maintains the need for a diasporic community. Diasporic culture is inevitably tied to culture of the oppressed; to live in a diaspora means that there is somewhere else waiting, a homeland is out there somewhere.
So what is the path forward? Baldwin might suggest that first white Americans need to examine their own histories, to find their diaspora, and then once they have found that there is no way that they can ask of him a song, ask of his captivity a performance. How can the oppressor remember their oppression and still continue to perpetuate the systems that create oppression. Within the Jewish context it is necessary that Jews in America today reverse their mindset, out of the mindset of the colonized and oppressed, because we are a people with great power and only after that is realized can we move forward as activists, as allies and as people.

Dear Mother.

2009-04-21T15:04:00.001-07:00

Dear Mother,
You ask me if it offends me to use the woman's restroom because that is the only way that you see your gender interacting with your life...
in short, yes. It does, I learned to pee fast because public bathrooms make me uncomfortable, you probably don't notice the anxiety in my eyes everytime I walk through the woman's bathroom with you, but it is there. And you probably don't notice the relief I feel when we walk into a place with a unisex bathroom. I often do not go into the bathroom even when I need to... In the same way that I do not speak at events because I am paralyzed by anxiety over what name to use and how that will effect me and those around me.
I am affected by my gender every time I see myself in the mirror, or in a reflection or a shadow and every time I touch my body I am reminded that it is not a reflection of who I am. And I have known since I was little that it never felt just right, this label of woman, this body of woman.
I think that it grows from your second wave feminism, this idea, that your gender has no impact on you, and I think that is good, I do not mean to diminish you, or your gender, or your ideologies. But they do not work for me. I do not belong at the Michigan Womyns Festival. Believe me I would like to go to Michigan, I've been intrigued since I found those pictures hidden away in a box of photos, or since my aunt told me of the time the two of you went together. But my vagina does not make me a woman, and I have been living this life knowing that I float somewhere in between not only the societal definitions of man and woman, but in the actual space between male and female.
I am not attempting to cop out, and hide, or thinking that it would simply be easier to become a man and assume that privilege. In fact, I feel that it would just as easily be a lie to call myself a man, I consider myself to be an effeminate boy, where I will go next I do not know. In fact, I know very little about where my life is headed, or what it or I will look like.
That is why I chose my new name, I am sure that you remember mother, how I never liked my female name, it was popular and feminine and I did not feel like a Hannah. I don't know if I feel like a Helyx, but what I do know about that name is that it rests in the middle, much like myself, it gives me a chance to define me for me, outside of labels of femininity and masculinity.
So, yes mother, it does offend me to use the woman's restroom, every time I enter that space I am scared, of what I am never sure, certainly of the fact that someone could call me out on my gender in a second, certainly of the strange looks I get from young children, the people who have to look twice at me and the old women who hold their purses closer...
I know that my gender does not soley rest on my outward presentation, but I attempt to create a presentation that reflects the way I feel inside... and this is what I get...
so mother, please try to understand, I am not trying to leave you, but this second wave feminism isn't working for me, because I am not a woman, I am not female, I am female and male and neither all at the same time, and I do not like the labels available... so I try to just live, without the need to identify in one word...

to tell you the truth

2009-04-15T02:40:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,
I am passing this on for a friend of mine who is about to embark on a new project...
its a really great project and I am excited to see it happen!

Dear fellow mamas and community caregivers,

I am writing you today to share news about my new project- To tell you the Truth- with you. You are receiving this letter because you have have been an inspiration to me; sharing your work with me, your lives with me or simply by sharing your presence. As fellow mama's and caregivers I wanted you to be the first to receive this letter. Many of you have previously expressed interest in, and support of my work as an artists, mama, organizer and program coordinator. I hope you will be as excited about this project as I am! To tell you the Truth is a multi-media project with a strong community building and self-empowerment emphasis. I am writing today to ask for financial support in beginning the workshop portion.

As many of you know, I am an experienced multi-media arts maker, arts educator and community organizer, most recently working with Video Vanguards (Youth Action Coalition) for 4 years as program coordinator, where I created and implemented programming that supported young people of color and their allies as they empowered themselves through use of video making, media analysis and youth leadership development. In 2007 I completed my first multi-media performance piece entitled, Permission Perform. Permission Perform was based on the interviews of 40 women and created a space for self-identified single, teen and welfare mama’s to tell the truths of their celebrations and struggles. Permission Perform was accepted into the 2007 WORD Multicultural Theater Festival and was performed for two sold out shows upon its opening. As a media-maker and community organizer I believe in the power of arts to create personal transformation and as a tool for healing. I have seen this manifest in the projects I’ve worked with, and, this belief has guided me to begin work on To tell you the Truth.

To tell you the Truth is a healing project. It is a call to create a network for mamas/daughters and caregivers who are invested in transformation; a transformation which integrates healing tools and subversive media making as we vision and support an anti-violence agenda that is informed by our voices and our experiences. This work is about self-empowerment. It is about creating spaces where we can gain back our power to vision and move out of the spaces where we hold ourselves as victims. This work IS about lived and experienced social justice. We will explore arts for healing and ritual; combine personal narrative with systemic analysis and subversive media making within a space that honors and affirms self and communal care.

Through the use of a workshop and multi-media performance process we will explore questions such as; where does personal choice and systemic oppression intersect? What are the complexities that we need to navigate to support mamas/daughters and the caregivers of our communities more fully? How can we heal our communities and still honor and create the spaces for personal healing to be at the helm of our work? How do we effectively move from victim into visionaries? Beginning with an honest look at inter-personal violence and moving through an exploration of what forms of systemic and institutional violence (re)victimize us this project provides space for our mamas/ daughters and caregivers to name what they need. The workshops series is designed to support this exploration and will be implemented in collaboration with community organizations, academics, artists and healers.

Some themes that we will explore in workshop are:
• Our body as home- how public policy impacts our sacred spaces
• Re/Imagining ourselves- how the media impacts our identity
• Using Sacred Tools- using art as ritual, personal transformation and healing, and;
• I know what I need- naming the support that we need to create a more just society

I believe that healing spaces should be accessible to ALL, and in order to work towards a true social justice agenda we MUST make space to heal on a personal level as we simultaneously address social injustice on all levels. Therefore, in an effort to provide workshops that are accessible to participants of all income levels, I am reaching out for your financial support. I would like to avoid asking participants to cover costs towards their participation. There will be plenty of ways for them to contribute towards this project. I am asking each of you to contribute towards co-sponsorship of a seat.

There are several ways to do this:

1. Personal Donation: Though no amount is too small or large I am suggesting a contribution of 70.00- 20.00 per seat. Please give as much as you can.
2. Become a Fund Raising Agent: Commit to raising funds from friends. Please help distributed this letter and begin taking checks/pledges. Contact me for more information about this option.
3. In- Kind Donations: We will need art supplies, ongoing community collaborators and space to hold meetings. Please contact me for more information.

If you choose, in exchange for your sponsorship, your name will be included in the program and accompanying literature for this project.

I believe that we are all able to make this project possible on a grassroots level. Thank you for your support and I am so glad to have you all in my extended community. If you, or someone you know, would like to participate in this project please contact tikisone@gmail.com. Thank you for your time in reading this and, thank you in advance for your support!

In peace and light.
-tk

International Outreach Granting Group

2009-04-15T02:18:00.000-07:00

I have just been awarded $400 dollars through the International Outreach Granting Group:

"IOGG supports individuals engaged in activities that support international understanding, justice and peace; travel outside one's own country for purposes consistent with Friends concerns. Any project within the United States must have an international aspect to qualify." (http://www.pym.org/pm/more.php?id=1590_0_196_0_M)

This money will be primarily dedicated towards the purchase and creation of the solar charging unit so that I can re-charge my camera batteries while living in the Nicaraguan village.

Thank you to the International Outreach Granting Group!

This brings the total up to- $1120.68

Again thank you to everyone who donated! I am having another event May 1st and everything seems to be going well!

Academic Privilege

2009-04-05T22:29:00.000-07:00

So one thing that seems to come up a lot lately both personally and in my conversations with others is the privilege associated with academic language. There are a lot of things I think about when I look at the stark contrast with the language I built in high school and the language I built after coming to Hampshire...

People at home don't use the same vocabulary that people around here use, even those who are enrolled in colleges, seem to be less a part of 'the academy' than I see around here. Which leaves me to examine the concept of academic elitism. Academic superiority. While the concepts that are analyzed in my home environment are no less complex than the ones I study at length in my classes and talk about amongst other students, they lack the vocabulary of superiority, and because of this seem far less complex.

Additionally, these issues come out of a place of necessity, it is far different to study queer oppression than it is to feel someone shove you into a locker and call you a dyke or rush to your girlfriends house in the middle of the night because she threatened to take her own life (which are experiences I had in high school).

Being at Hampshire, being enclosed in the bubble of Hampshire allows me to forget the reality of the things that I dealt with on a daily basis in High School and that my friends, who continue to live in the same area that I grew up in continue to deal with daily. Instead of confronting the issues that shaped me I am allowed to forget the very real ways that I was hurt and study the roots of why systems of oppression exist. This is not to say that the ability to study these systems is invaluable, in fact I feel that it has been of great personal reward, but none the less every time I go home, or talk to the people I know who still attend my former high school, or watch video footage of my high school, I confront the reality of life and the privilege of my academic status.

I also consider where this academic privilege comes from, it comes in many ways from a lack of necessity, my white skin allows me to ignore the oppression of others and internalize my own oppression. My parents academic knowledge is undeniably both a product of their own hard work and my own academic inclinations are indeed a product of their emphasis on my education, which translated into me in the form of access to educational tools that they did not have and that many of my peers did not have, including the ability to consider attending a school which costs $50,000 a year. College was never a question, but an answer. My parents academic pursuits were in many ways limited by finances and because of this they promised me a long time ago that mine never would be. For years, they went to every end possible, driving themselves into the ground, and limiting our mobility in order to secure the best education they could for my brother and me.

I learned early to transcend academic places and ‘street’ places within different social groups. There was always a disparity between the students at my private school and my friends from my neighborhood. Even when I was young I realized that there were communities I did not belong in, communities of class, which are forever inundated with academic privilege.

I think that one of the things I really like about video and most art forms, is that when using visual analysis, vocabulary is not important. I can express things visually that I cannot express in language because I still find myself on the outside of this academic language, and I believe that I can show other people concepts through video no matter what the language barrier may be between the two of us.

Recently I visited an installation that contained a portion with a significant amount of voice over that was composed using high academic language. As I sat there listening to the track repeat for the third time that day I realized how inaccessible this installation would be to most of the people I know outside of the Hampshire community. The self-perpetuated rhetoric of both Hampshire College and the academic world only serves to fuel itself. It is language and practice that serves to fuel the oppressive systemic institutions that create the normative discourses that my art, and this instillation strive to comprehend and take apart.

As for how I proceed it is hard to say with certainty. I do believe that it is necessary to learn the tools of the master but I also realize that these are tools of oppression, and tools of the spaces that I have not be allowed entrance to on the grounds of my class, sexuality, gender and societal status.

During the Arts and Activism workshop at the Civil Liberties and Public Policy conference at Hampshire College we began to enter this discussion. One of the participants mentioned that in order to avoid compromising ones art to enter the spaces of the academy, she finds it more effective to build her own spaces. But I am inclined to remember that while art can be a powerful way to carve out space for marginalized communities we have to bare in mind what the intentions of carving out that space are.

Do we carve out are space to simply live among those like us, or do we seek to reach out to others, outside of our community?

As marginalized artists with academic privilege we can choose to be with each other and create our own space.

Or we can attempt to enter the ranks of the un-marginalized through our art by compromising the message.

Or we can choose to speak back to the communities we came from, where we felt so alone so others won’t feel so alone.

But we must beware of the corruption of the revolution, the “marketing of revolution”…
It comes in the form of “be green” pins for sale in target and anti-authoritarian screen prints at Hot Topic, Obama posters with black power fists that you buy at FYE…. and many other forms.

What was the last political craze you remember? I can tell you that right now Obama, and the Prius occupy the majority of the glamorous hipster activist’s time. But once these messages reach the mainstream they are so diluted that there is often little point and they lack the passion that they started with.

So what is the point of my art? What is the point of yours?

My art is a conversation with my former self, an examination of my journey and an attempt to bring out the lessons and truths of my journey so that others can embrace theirs. I want to speak to the 13 year old me, I want to speak to my community, because I want to speak to the 13 year olds who feel more alone than anything because no one knows what to tell them about themselves and they sure as hell can’t figure it out, and when they try to read books they just don’t understand the language that those books are written in. (I mean damn, is that stuff even English?).

How do I reconcile my journey through academia and the ultimate product of finding my self on the other end?

How do I create art that is accessible to those without my language that would have been accessible to me when I needed it?

How do I use my languages as a tool of inclusion, instead of exclusion?

Passed on to me... examples of things I like!

2009-03-25T04:08:00.000-07:00

passed on to me from my aunt-

"I was with my mom today, she’s looking at apartments. So we’re in the leasing office, and the bathrooms are “one person at a time”, but there are two of them, marked Men and Women (of course). The women’s is in use. The rental agent sees Mom waiting and says, “If you need a bathroom there are more. Go through that door, down the hall and on the left you’ll see mens and womens”. Mom thinks she’ll be funny and says “and which one should I use?”, and this very ordinary middle-aged woman pauses for a moment and then says with a perfectly straight face “whichever one makes you comfortable”

… I thought that was great!!"

and i thought it was great to...

just sharing stories (and making up for almost never posting in March)

check out the blog for The Trek Project --> http://thetrekproject.blogspot.com/

Fundraiser Update

2009-03-25T01:25:00.000-07:00

SO!

The Fundraiser was pretty good. Didn't really have the attendance I would have hoped for but none the less between the actual event and the call for donations before hand I raised about 600$

remember my ultimate goal is 2000$

so 1400$ to go, but 600$ is a great start!

look out for more events to come, in Philly

I am looking to set something up with the A Space, and Cafe Mocha.

As a point of clarification right now my working title for this experience is "The Trek Project". Right now this consists of two parts, the first is a study on the ways that Western structures (specifically United States of America based), on a governmental, NGO and personal level interact with Latin America. It is an examination of US perspectives on Latin America, as well as a study of how organizations that do work within Latin America function, choose locations and ultimately "improve" the lives of "those people". I will pay particular attention to the concept of "helping those people" and where this attitude originates.

The second part of the project is the larger goal, the actual documentary about the Trek for Knowledge. This documentary will explore the ways that we construct communities as well as the idea of accountability to one's community on a local and global level.

I am publishing the full descriptions of the project and its components at http://thetrekproject.blogspot.com/

please follow that blog for full updates on the progress of The Trek Project.

If You Seek Amy/cheesy pop songs/the soundtrack of spring break 09.... in my head

2009-03-20T23:45:00.000-07:00

I wish... that I could be your romeo...
"marry me juliet, youll never have to be alone,
I love you and thats all I really know..."

but alas, I have spent way too much of my spring break listening to the radio...
which brings up the point of my newfound appreciation and mixed feelings about Britney Spears....

ok, so yea yea big deal, at this point most people know but I will reiterate,

"All of the boys and all of the girls are begging to if you seek Amy"
'if you seek amy" - eff.u.see.kay.ME - f u c k ME
that line at first doesn't make sense but if you examine the sounds of 'if you seek amy' what comes out is the spelling of 'fuck' me. This would be part one of the appreciation, but part 2 of admiration and mixed feelings come out in the first half of that line...
if she is indeed saying (and I for one believe she is) fuck me at the end, then what does it mean that she says that both the boys and girls want to fuck her...

so points of interest as I continue to explore this song...

the meaning of all of the boys and all of the girls
the implications of the constant representation of seeking> 'amy', a clearly feminine name
the idealism of Britney eventually heading out side the suburban home with the pie 2.5 kids, husband, etc... as she retreats from the world of the wild partiers and into the psuedo rhelm of the american dream...
the role of the news clips placed on either side of the "actual video"...

and more...
there are answers coming I swear...

and btw- incase you forgot the josie and the pussycats existed, now seems like a good time to put some in...

ps- remember to count down...

6 whole hours,
5 long days,
4 all your lies to come undone, and those
3 small words came way
2 late, cuz you cant see that I'm the
1...

o, and i do know that this has been a little scattered, but its kind of like watching a little brain explosion...

thetrekproject.blogspot.com

2009-03-07T16:50:00.000-08:00

Madly Multi-Arts Party to Back Documentary Filmmaker on Saturday, March 14
March 7, 2009, Philadelphia – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
What unites a rapper, a singer/songwriter, three jewelry-makers, a documentary on women in the media, a raffle, a silent auction, and a music video? Stumped? They’re all coming together for an Arts Free-for-All Party to raise money for filmmaker Hannah ‘helyx’ Horwitz’s documentary about American teens in Nicaragua.
All that and more will be happening Saturday, March 14, from 6-9 at Saladworks on the Penn Campus, 3728 Spruce Street, 19104. Lee G the rapper/singer will host and perform, and songwriter Kevin Ricci will sing. Works by artists and jewelry-makers Julia Eckenrode, Lisa Horwitz and Danny Kulp will be offered at silent auction, and Horwitz’ documentary on the impact of media images of women on girls will be shown. Rounding off the eclectic mix will be a raffle of a CD set, and a showing of Sandsnake, a Lee G and Delon music video filmed and edited by Horwitz. In short, the evening offers a madly mixed arts menu making one fun party.
The event is part of a broader fundraising effort to support Horwitz’s trip to Nicaragua this summer with a group of Philadelphia teens who will work with a small community there to build a school. Their trip is part of buildOn, (www.buildon.org) an organization that combines after-school service in teens’ home communities here in the states with raising money and sending volunteers to build schools (295 to date) in developing communities around the world. 13 Philadelphia area high schools are working with buildOn (http://buildon.org/RegionsChapters/USProgramRegions/USProgramsList.aspx) and a group of students from those programs are headed to Nicaragua this summer. Horwitz’s film will document their work and the impact it will have, not just on the community building a new school, but on the lives of the American teens. Horwitz knows this impact well, as she describes her own buildOn experience in Nicaragua at age 17 as “life-changing.” Part of the money will go to fund a solar-powered battery charger to allow her to film in the remote community which lacks electricity.
There is no cover, but contributions will be joyfully received.
Madly Multi-Arts Party Backing buildOn Film
Saturday, March 14, 6-9
Saladworks on the Penn Campus, 3728 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104

Contact for more information: Hannah ‘helyx’ Horwitz, 610-539-9359, hhconnects@gmail.com

Babylon, Baldwin and Exile

2009-02-25T09:07:00.001-08:00

"[white/european americans] they come through Ellis Island, where Giorgio becomes Joe, Pappavasilu becomes Palmer, Evangelos becomes Evans, Goldsmith becomes Smith or Gold, and Avakian becomes King. So with a painless change of name in the twinkling of an eye one becomes a white American.
Later, in the midnight hour, the missing identity aches. One can neither assess nor overcome the storm of the middle passage, One is mysteriously shipwrecked forever, in the Great New World.
The slave is in another condition, as are his heirs: I told Jesus it would be all right/ If he changed my name.
If He changed my name.
The Irish middle passage, for but one example was as foul as my own, and as dishonorable on the part of those responsible for it. But the Irish became white when they got here and began rising in the world, whereas I became black and began sinking. The Irish, therefor and thereafter-- again, but for one example -- had absolutely no choice but to make certain that I coult not menace their safety or status or identity: and, if I came too close, they could, with the concent of the governed, kill me. Which means that we can be friendly with each other anywhere in the world except in Boston.
What a monumental achievement on the part of those heroes who conquered the North American wilderness!
The price the white American paid for his ticket was to become white: and in the main, nothing more than that, or as he was to insist, nothing less. This incredibly limited not to say dimwitted ambition has choked many a human being to death here: and this, I contend, is because the white American has never accepted the real reasons for his journey. I know very well that my ancestors had no desire to come to this place: but neither did the ancestors of the people who became white and require of my captivity a song. They require of me a song less to celebrate my captivity than to justify their own."

-James Baldwin, Introduction: The Price of The Ticket

This is the end to the introduction written by James Baldwin that precedes of a compilation of his work. In this passage Baldwin is contending that the privilege of european descended (white) Americans is that they are able to come to this country and change their names so that they become white, immediately. And through the ease at which they assume white privilege they forget their own history, their own exile from their home country. The last sentences reference psalm 137, originated from the Jewish exile from Judea to Babylon in 586 BCE.

Direct Psalm:
"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat, we also wept when we remembered Zion.
On willows in its midst we hung our harps.
For there our captors asked us for words of song and our tormentors [asked of us] mirth, "Sing for us of the song of Zion."
"How shall we sing the song of the Lord on foreign soil?" -Psalm 137, Judaica Press Translation

Within recent years this psalm has become a song that not only permeates both Jewish and Christian worship but has been covered by Bob Marley, Sublime, The Melodians and many others...

Song Lyrics, from which the Baldwin Quote seems to be directly derived:
"By the rivers of babylon, where we sat down,
and where we wept,as we remembered zion.
and the wicked carried us away in captivity
required of us a song.
How can we sing the lord's [king alfa] song in a strange land"

Baldwin criticizes white america for not examining themselves, and their own history, for he believes that societal change in America must not come from the black population but from a true examination of how white people constructed and forced black america into creation. In the end he says:

"I know very well that my ancestors had no desire to come to this place: but neither did the ancestors of the people who became white and require of my captivity a song."

he asks, how can the people who are also in exile forget their own history so well that they request a song from me in my exile? It is because of the way that european immigrants, and their decedents can so easily assume american whiteness that they are able to forget that they too are part of the exile, they too are separated from their lands, and they forget what it means to be separated and so they ask that the black population perform, and prove themselves, despite the fact that they, the white population never had to prove themselves, the color of their skin and their assumed white name was enough. Black people cannot assume that whiteness, they cannot change into it by assuming a white name and stepping onto american soil, it is there. White americans can forget their history. So Baldwin asks us to remember that history, and consider what we are asking of him, someone who was never given the privilege to assume that whiteness (and along with white privilege: power, access, etc)...

Baldwin asks us to examine the ways that we have created the system that has forced him into oppression...

Coincidentally the recent Hampshire Divestment from the Occupation of Palestine has forced me into an examination of my history that I was always privileged to be able to ignore before, as my blond hair and lack of strong amherst based religious connection allowed me to pass in some ways as a christian american... or at least to ignore the ways that my jewish identity impacts me

My family changed their name when they came to this country, my fathers grandfather, in the 1910s changed his name to 'horwitz' which in that time did not assume complete white privilege, although of course white skin meant white privilege and white status. However, the name was identifiable as a jewish name, which still carried with it some weight. Which continued as anti-semitism did and still does (although on a much more minor level) exist in society for a period of time. And in the era of post-holocaust fear that my father and uncle were born into they were given middle names that they could use as last names to protect themselves from having to keep that jewish identifier. And yet, had they ever had to modify their names in that way they would have picked up the white privilege that Baldwin talks about. And as time progressed, they, as do I, assumed that white privilege. The marker of the Jewish last name has no negative connotations, and can often carry benefits, I never fear using my name... and only occasionally fear outing myself as a Jew...
But I also never forget about my exile. My people, the jewish people were a people living in exile and were for almost 2000 years, and many still are. This is not to say that I as a jew intend to return to the holy land, nor do I believe that all jews should. But it is to say that I do feel my exile in the sense that I feel a yearning and pain to connect to my former land.

When I was in Israel we went to Jerusalem for the sabbath, and as I walked through the old city to the Wall (the only remnant of a time before the second and final exile) I felt at home, I felt that I was no longer in exile, I felt a place where I could belong. And a place that had been promised to me by the community I grew up in. And so I continue to struggle with how I live out my jewish identity... it becomes a balancing act between my yearn for my promised home land, a rational that says no people have more right to a land than any other people do, and an anger that boils within me for the way that my people have treated the Palestinian people. I do not know if I am still a zionist, I do not know if I will ever return to Israel, I am not a jewish nationalist, and I do not believe that all jewish people should return to the land, but I do know that "Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it". So without my homeland to sing in, I stand across the river, in babylon, in my exile and sing to my history, so that I might not forget, and so that god might not forget me. But I am sure that in my 19 years I have forgotton my history, and my exile? I ask myself not only how to realize what I already have done, but also how to avoid forgetting history and my yearning song again. How do I prevent them from becoming the weapon that Baldwin is subjected to? How do I prevent myself from asking Baldwin to sing for me in his exile?

"If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget [its skill].
May my tongue cling to my palate, if I do not remember you, if I do not bring up Jerusalem at the beginning of my joy."

Final Project Proposal - Indigenous Politics of Latin America

2009-02-25T02:23:00.000-08:00

CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE IMPACT OF WESTERN MEDIA AND AIDE TOURISM ON INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES

For my final paper I want to analyze how western media portrays indigenous culture and how that has created the “need to save mentality” on a governmental and personal level. Indigenous people of all nations and continents are brought to the US in the form of National Geographic, and other media sources, with painted faces and cultural practices that we fail to understand; we place indigenous people into the category of incompetent. US government has time and time again attempted to play the role of super heroes and save the undeveloped from themselves; this culture of US imperialism has contributed to the creation of a mindset that we must save the “other” people. This mindset has progressed to the point where it has almost become a right of passage to travel to Latin America to conduct community service. This rise in “aid tourism” has become a way by which westerners, and especially white westerners can attempt to eliminate their guilt and come away feeling good about themselves. This tourism has impacted indigenous communities in both negative and positive ways.
The project will be based on analyses of media imagery in television and magazines of indigenous Latin American Cultures, as well as examinations of various United States based government and non-government based organizations that travel to indigenous communities. I intend to investigate US government policies in Latin America and study the history of where those policies are rooted. In the end I will examine how different organizations have effectively and ineffectively operated within indigenous communities and what impact those efforts have had on the indigenous communities.

What is the impact of western aid tourism on indigenous communities?
How has the US government/media system created the savior mentality?
Who actually is helped by these organizations?
What kind of “help” do westerners bring to indigenous communities, is this actual help?
Do western organizations have a right to give aid in these communities?
How can westerners and western organizations work within communities in a way that respects and preserves them?

Thoughts? Sources for me to check out?

Israel

2009-02-21T19:24:00.001-08:00

When I was a kid I used to draw maps of israel from memory, in my binders, on my notes in classes. The land stood for me like a promise, a promise of a homeland, somewhere that I could belong.
What do I do when my homeland betrays me?
I feel like my land and my people have betrayed me, left me high and dry and defensive. How do I explain this to my friends, where do I put my reluctant loyalty. What do I do when my values and my land go from being one in the same to opposing forces???

Operations of Western Privilege in Latin America

2009-02-15T21:39:00.000-08:00

The relationship between the west, and specifically the United States and Latin America is a particularly strange one. Starting very early on the American Government mandated that European entities were not allowed to touch Latin American meanwhile the US had the right to go into and interfere in all Latin American countries. Throughout the year CIA sponsored coups have removed countless democratically elected leaders from power, assisted in the assassinations of others, and essentially reeked havoc on the continent to the south of our artificially constructed borders.

On a micro scale US citizens seem to be miniatures of their parents (the government) and now head into Latin American countries in an effort to "save" the poor people of those countries. I myself am guilty of this, in 2006 I traveled to Nicaragua to build a school, and this summer I am heading back to create a documentary about the organization Build-On. I have mixed feelings about the ways that I am involved in community service projects abroad. On the one hand I believe it is a duty of my privilege to share what I can with others, especially with manual labor when I cannot contribute funds, nor do i believe throwing money at a problem makes it go away. On the flip side, as an outsider to a culture and an area I cannot possibly be equipped to asses theirproblems, and therefore I cannot possibly meet all of their needs, nor should i feel the right to 'save' a people who do not need to be, or wish to be 'saved'. I believe that buildOn does good work, and I fundamentally agree with the mission of the organization, which is why I wanted to make this documentary. However, I have been struggling internally with these issues for a good deal of time now and a friend brought them to the forefront when they asked me the following questions.

"I think many times well intentioned westerners go into developing nations. They get to do volunteer work for a month or a year and then feel good about themselves. Have you thought about what it means to go someplace else to help "those poor people"? How can westerners help people in developing countries without the underlying prsumption that they know what the other people need? How do you make sure that people maintain contorl over how thier homelands are developed? How do white people remain respectful of the fact that this is not your home?"

I intend to go into the research segment of my documentary with these questions in mind. I have started to work out answers, and started to compile reading lists that may help me arrive at answers or may push me into further confusion. Either way as I work on this documentary I intend to bring to highlight the ways in which white people interact with Latin America (and other developing countries, but for my purposes and knowledge base, Latin America) and how or if they should interact in a way that would reap more benefits for all involved.

more entries to come as I continue to parse out that block of questions/begin work on the documentary. I am looking for feed back and insights into these questions as well, does anyone have an answer? does anyone know of good resources?

I chose to include these pictures because I feel they show two distinct ways that Americans interact with latin America in a direct basis, the first is one of my trek-mates taking a picture of one of the little boys in our villages. Not that taking pictures of the people you just spent two weeks with is bad, but often times these photos (not from my trip specifically but western photography in general) end up being exploitative and used to evoke emotions of 'o, that poor brown baby'...

The second picture is of me, my morning ritual in the village was to launch into my latest book, which at that time was "Lullaby" by Chuck Palahniuk. While this only lasted about 30 minutes in the morning it was my way of de-stressing and coping with the language immersion. However, looking in this picture I also see an American (and by American i mean US citizen because Latin America is in fact part of the American continents) oblivious to the world around them. Absorbed in a book...

Because I am a jew...

2009-02-13T10:15:00.000-08:00

Because I am a jew, I signed the petition for the divestment from the occupation of palestine.
Because I am a jew, I learned to respect my father, my mother and my history.
Because I am a jew, I feel the ghettoization of people who are "dangerous to us" sounds a little too familiar for me to support.
Because I am a jew, I learned jewish values that told me to respect the stranger.
Because I am a jew, I learned to value all life.
Because I am a jew, I learned to spill my wine in respect to the pain of others.
Because I am a jew, I learned to pray that one day ALL people will be free.

Just because I am a jew does not mean I am a zionist, and just because I am a jew does not mean that I support the actions of the Israeli government and the occupation of the NATION of Palestine. Hampshire College, the institution at which I currently attend school, recently made the decision (after months of petitioning from student groups, primarily Students for Justice in Palestine) to divest from companies who are benefiting from the occupation in Palestine.
I have been thinking a lot about my identity as a jew and the way that it is torn up. I was raised in between reconstructionist libralism, conservative movements, and liberal, activist, socialist zionism. I grew up learning that arabs were bad, wanted to blow us up and destroy my family. I grew up thinking that the arabs and muslims that I knew were simply the exception to the rule... And then I realized that they were not, and one day I saw a movie that reminded me that Palestinians were people too. Perhaps it should not have taken me till I was so old to realize this, however, the propaganda within the jewish community is deep. I grew up and my heros were the zionists that founded the state of israel... I grew up hoping that one day I would go to Israel. And I went to Israel, and they told us look- there is an arab village, and there is a jewish village. And they told us that rubber bullets can't hurt. But rubber bullets do hurt, and they neglected to mention that while Jews in Jerusalem are living a 1st world life, arabs in Gaza are living in the third world. They showed us a rocket fired into an israeli village, but neglected to mention the Palestinian children dead because the hospitals are inadequate, the water of poor quality and the living conditions terrible.
I live in a world of mixed feelings over my jewish identity, I balance a desire to re-learn my hebrew and reconnect with my people, and a deep hatred and resentment for my people who I feel have turned the other cheek while the Israeli government puts Palestinians into ghettos...
WE CAME FROM GHETTOS, from spain to germany to poland to russia, we came from ghettos, our people have been locked up and pushed out, disenfranchised for 2000 years, and yet, as soon as we get the upper hand we turn around and lock innocent people up behind big thick walls designed not to protect or help them, but to "save" us from them. We have turned our backs on members of the human race, and the words that come out of our mouths echo the sentiments of the third reich.
When we learned about the Holocaust in hebrew school we read about the Sneetches, the sneetches is a classic Dr Suess book about the division between the plain belly sneetches and the star belly sneetches. In the end, after capitalist driven exploitation they learn that it doesn't matter if you have a plain belly or a start belly, that all sneetches are the "best on the beaches". So I learned that money talks and all people are equal, and divestment (no matter the statement an administration makes) talks, and divestment matters. And because I am a jew, and because I grew up with "jewish" values, I signed the petition for Hampshire College to divest from the occupation in Israel. And because I am a jew, I am extremely proud of my institution for divesting.

Sex Bodies Shame

2009-02-02T22:51:00.001-08:00

The moment you pop out and the doctor sees a vagina you are put on this conveyor belt to femininity, and ultimately sex… because isn’t that what the patriarchy is all about, maintaining women for sex, as objects. Young girls are waiting to become objects. Everyday all children are bombarded by media. They are the primary target of the media, they move from dolls to barbies to magazines.
After all, even with the most progressive parents you learn things on the “street”. I learned what sex was when I was very young, and when I learned that sex was bad, I also learned what it was to be forced into sex. Regardless of the innocent nature of child sexual play, by the time I was 6 I had developed shame. Shame over my body, and shame over my sexuality. And then I forgot…
Then I learned that sex could produce a baby, and that when a woman was a grown up she would get married and go on her honeymoon. On her honeymoon sex would occur and then she would have a baby. I learned this in a dark basement, and I emerged that day knowing how life would be…
But then I learned shame again… I learned shame because young kids laugh when they think about private parts, because they have learned shame too. And then I learned shame when I felt cornered by the boy in the doorway at school. I learned shame from big boys teasing me, and I learned shame from feeling unsafe as men examined my body. Even with clothes I felt cornered when ever my body was looked at, if I was hit on, or hollered at.
And then one day, I learned pride. I learned about how a woman could be sexy, and all of the sudden it was like someone had lifted the chains of shame and allowed me to be free…
Young girls poor into media imagery of sex because it is nice to be relieved of the shame that comes with a female body. When boys are being taught to show more of their bodies, for example removing a shirt to reveal a bare chest, girls are taught to hide their bodies,
“put your shirt back on,
girls have to wear shirts,
your cousins are boys,
boys don’t have to wear shirts”

Girls are taught that their bodies are shameful, to cover up, cower and hide.

My own body is a mystery, and my own body is fluid… and my current body has a mix of pride and shame…
… what if all our bodies were allowed to be fluid from birth? How would it change the way that we perceive bodies, gender and sex?

Tokenization

2009-01-31T23:54:00.000-08:00

So my senior year if high school the local branch of NBC came to my school to follow around 10 seniors for their senior year...

I dont know how, but somehow I ended up being one of those seniors....

I should have turned and run, I remember talking to my girlfriend at the end of my junior year about it, she was like, your gonna be the gay one... and "I was like no one knows Im gay"... (yea riiiiight...)

For the day of the launch of the project we got to go to NBC studios and check it out, and they took video and pictures of us and it was cool, and then there was a newspaper reported, she was talking to us in like a group of 4, and she was like "SOOOO all these reality TV shows have like a token gay character"... so at this point I am holding my breath... but thinking to myself, im not really out to these people, or am I?

and all these things flash through my head in the .5 of a second it takes this woman to change her position so that she is starring me down and she says "AAAAND that must be you"... and she stairs at me, waiting for me to, i dont even know, do something dyke-y i guess?

I should have run out, and screamed, or told her to fuck off...

but i just said "Im no ones token anything" and that seemed to shut her up...

during the year we got to pick segment topics, and so I thought I would take advantage of my platform, and reach out to other gay students, we did an interview and i talked about coming out... and after that one kid did come up to me and say, i saw your segment, it helped me come out, and that one is enough for me...

but what damage did I do? show that, in the words of my ex "turn into one of those gay people who only cares about gay people"....

I won a scholarship my senior year... for media production, and the anchor that had worked with us was presenting the award, I wasn't there to receive it (I was fighting off brainwashing in Israel) and so he made a little speech about me... and he started off with "and so, the next scholarship goes to Hannah Horwitz, and well first off... SHES GAY..." he went on to say some very nice things... however, that one sentence at the beginning..."

is that all I am to you?

there are many ways in which NBC saved me my senior year... the administration would have loved to squish me, but NBC stood up for me...

Not to endorse NBC as a news source, or ally with coorporate media, but the people I knew there were on top of their shit, and they were good people...

but I still wonder, where does it leave me? Will I just always be that gay kid?

It was a mixed battle, I could hear myself bringing up gay issues in our interviews throughout the year, but as much as i didnt want to be that token, I wanted to speak for my people, and speak to my people, the kids who were in their living rooms on a friday after noon, sad, and watching the news...

so I guess its a double edged sword...

2009-01-29T16:06:00.000-08:00

So I am not exactly the biggest fan of slam type poetry, however, i really like this one/Andrea Gibson in general...

Names.

2009-01-22T18:09:00.000-08:00

So I don't know when it started, but as far back as I can remember the name Hannah never seemed to fit me,
as far back as I can remember I recall my knee-jerk reaction whenever hearing my name,
as far back as I can remember I have always felt like other names fit me better,
I have sought refuge in nicknames, some of my relatives call me magz, derived from my middle name,
My most prominent name was Mouse, given to me by a school friend in the 6th grade, and then stuck at camp,
I remember wanting to change my name everytime I changed schools... but I never found the courage.

High School:
1st day of 9th grade, study hall period:
senior: Whats your name?
me: Hannah
senior: thats such a nice name
me: you can have it...

I think his name was Ricky, I like Ricky better...
Although this happened in 9th grade I can remember feeling like that was my auto response when people complimented my name...
no matter where I went I always heard how pretty my name was, and I always talked about how much I hated it...

When one of my current best friends came out as Bi just before 10th grade I remember hearing the word, and although I probably couldn't put together a definition of the word I immediately knew what it was, and knew that I was one. I had the same reaction when I first heard about genderqueer, it was about 11th grade, and I was watching coming out stories on Logo (the gay channel) and there was a young, female bodied GQ coming out to their mother, immediately I identified with that person, on the TV and that term.

I founded my schools GSA, although we wern't technically a GSA, we were a diversity club. My senior year we were having a discussion about trans issues and immediately the tone of the room switched, I remember my then girlfriend shouting passionately at the room that you could be as butch as you could be but you should never change your gender. She then asked if anybody disagreed with her and I raised my hand, but I was the only one... in an instant I felt very alone, and I stopped talking about my gender. But I never stopped thinking about it...

By the time I entered hampshire I knew that my gender was not clear cut, for the most part I think about it as fluid, or non-identified... at this point I am using FTQ to express my gender, female to queer/questioning... im not FTM, im not female... FTQ

and so we are back to the name... I am using the name Helyx, it fits better, it makes more sense internally, and it doesnt have the same knee-jerk reaction, and so I think its worth a try...

-Helyx

DvDs of Impacting Girls Influencing Life

2009-01-15T07:56:00.000-08:00

Hey there all,
So distribution of a film is quite costly and in order to offset that cost on a personal level I am selling DvDs of Impacting Girls Imfluencing Life for a suggested 5$ donation. The DvDs will also include a wide array of other tools to further the discussion about women, media, gender, youth, and race as well as more work by the artists featured in the documentary and more of my own work. This is a great way to help support me as a video maker and get a great tool for discussing the issues sorrounding women in the media.

My Inspiration...

2009-01-06T18:28:00.000-08:00

Enhancing education and empowering youth to make a difference in thier own communities while helping people of developing countries increase thier self reliance through education.
Building With Books Mission Statement

I think that the reason it is so hard for me to separate myself from Building With Books is because BwB does the important job of emphasizing two equally important goals, accountability to local and global community. As a member of Building With Books for 4 years (high school) I never had to separate myself from these two goals. BwB does the crucial job of emphasizing education and community service not only to a global community, but also to a local one. It is easy to look at all of the priveledge embraced and often taken advantage of in the US and think that work in developing countries is more important. Likewise, it is easy to look at the vast inequality, classism, racism, ageism and homophobia and preach that to fix other places we must first fix ourselves. My work with Building With Books emphasized a more wholistic approach. All year we worked in different places in our community, some of the richest and poorest schools in the Philadelphia area came together to bake bread, unpack toy donations, rebuild community centers, repaint the peeling paint in the walls of our own schools, and dance with underpriveledged youth at a holiday party. The work we did within our own community was crucial. Also the impact and importance that BwB gave me, as a youth, growing up in the inner ring suburb of Upper Darby, was life changing. As I rose through the ranks as a leader of the club I gained the empowerment and leadership skills that carry me on to this day. As I continue to do work on a personal, local and global level I realize the importance of the tools I left BwB with.
The trek to Nicaragua also profoundly, but differently changed my life. When we went to that village tucked in the mountains close to the Nicaraguan Hondoran border we met people living in a way radically different from our own. One of the ways to measure class is through the variety of food in a persons diet. We met people who ate beans and rice (gallo pinto) and homemade corn totillas. Not to say that they had never eaten anything else, and believe me our host moms knew how to spice up the food with gourds, avocados, fried bananas and the occasional chicken (but for very special occasions). The people in this small village of maybe 30, with 100 or so living out of the center in the mountains, people lived without electricity, running water (aka showers, bathrooms...) and essentially all of the things that are considered basic nessesities in the US.
My work with them changed me forever because of my fundemental belief in education, and the importance and power of education. The education I recieved through this organization was not only how to lead an activity or plan a fundraiser but also my education lay in the experience of working along side a 10 year old as we dug the foundation to his own school. Through BwB I gained the understanding of my accountability to a global community. And through BwB I gained the understanding of my accountability to my local community.

Tras el Sueno Mexicano

2009-01-06T15:26:00.000-08:00

Chasing the Mexican Dream

So Ill keep this short because it sucks to type on this keyboard, but we were reading and article in class about how alot of Guatemalans living near the mexican border are immigrating to Mexico to work, both illegally and not, underage, alone, whole families, part of a family, a phenomenon that much regflects the wave of movement from Mexico to the US for work. We talked about how it was interesting that the Guatemalans are chasing the Mexican Dream while the Mexicans chase the American dream...
just some thoughts...

Rural Guatemala, Trek to Nicaragua, can you compare?

2009-01-04T12:50:00.000-08:00

So yesterday we went to a water park about an hour out of Xela which involved riding a chicken bus, named for the commonality of live cargo, for a little over an hour out of the high lands and into the warmer costal area of Guatemala. As we rode out of the city, and we passed coffee plantations with a distinct resemblance to the ones we lived in while in Nica, small timid coffee plants protected by the large leaves from neighboring Banana trees. My two experiences in these countries are hard to compare because, for one they are different countries and two they are experiences based on living among completely different classes. In Guate my family has running water, electricity, a wide variety of diet, TV, internet, a digital camera... etc the list resembles the one that I have living in America... The family in Nica had no electricity, or running water, ate beans, rice and totillas for every meal, lived in a three 4 room house and used corn cobs as torches to privide light at night. I know that families like these exsist in both countries, however my isolated experiences in each make it difficult to figure it out. I also know that as a nation I believe Nica is poorer then Guatemala, and there seems to be a recognition of this among the people in each. One of my only real conversations with my host father in Nica was about how Nica was very poor, and when I came to Guatemala on the first night I was talking about my other travels and my host mom said that Nica is very poor.
One thing that was hard to ignore throughout the Guatemalan countryside was the vast disparity in wealth, homes with no electrical or water lines standing 100 feet away from vast fincas (plantations, farms). Clearly more investigation needs to happen on my part, but with little guidence about the lower class in Guatemala or the upper class in Nicaragua, it is hard to figure out.

Happy New Year

2008-12-31T14:20:00.000-08:00

So classes are going well, its hard to believe ive only been here for 4 days, it feels like forever, im not sure if that is a good thing or bad... One thing that has been strange is the way that pronouns innundate the spanish language and force me to constantly refer to myself as female. I think that maybe a priveledge of the english language is that I can fairly easily avoid pronouns and labels in that way. However the constant pronoun corrections from my teacher put on a different spin. The way that I have thought about my gender while I am here is strangely different then the way that I do in the US. I dont really know how it is, but in some ways I think about it so much less and in someways a million times more. Of course my sexuality is also a completely different story, here I am living with mormon missionaries and so maybe unfairly I do not think coming out would be a good idea around them. Although of course it is always strange that they continue to ask me if I have a boyfriend... in america, most people, except children, know better than to ask that question...
So during the lunch party at the school for the new year one of the other students asked me if it was a good year (he has evidently had a very poor year) and at first I responded yea, it was good.. but then of course I have been thinking since then about the year, I think the first part of the year was good, socially, academically, work wise... all of that, but the past few months have been pretty rough socially, I think that is due to alot of things and stuff also welling up inside me that sooner or later I will have to actually deal with. but I guess that is life...

so here is to a new year, in a new place, I will be bringing it in with the national Guatemalan brand of beer, Cervazo Gallo, literally translated to Rooster Beer...

Host Family and Xela

2008-12-29T16:24:00.000-08:00

So on my second day here I had to get from Guatemala City to Quetzaltenango, which is about 5 hours away, so I got a taxi to the bus station and a bus to Quetzaltenango, which is nicknamed Xela, prounounced SHEY la. The bus was long, not much else to say about it, I listened to music on my ipod and watched alot of the scenery. I was most suprised to see developments and gated communities... We stopped once to go to the bathroom and get something to eat, but I was afraid the bus would leave without me and so I only went to the bathroom and didn´t eat, foolish move on my part because by the time I got to Xela I was starving. When we finally did get here, after a breathtaking decent into the valley (just to top all of the incredible views on the way) the bus stopped in the middle of the road and everyone got off and collected thier bags while trying not to get hit by passing (angry) drivers. I was approached by a cab driver and he helped me get my bag and then off we went to zona 1, the area where my host mom lives. When we get there we get a little bit lost as he tries to find the address and when he finally finds the right block there are police. So we go around the block and try to get in on the other side but it is way after the address I have written down, so we go back around the block and proceed on foot... he was extreamly nice for continueing to help me find her. When we get to her house no one is home and we tried calling with his cell phone but no one answers, so he goes down the street and talks to some women who are standing in the door, after he tells me that I can go there. When I get there they tell me (in spanish, which I understood, yay!) that I am welcome to leave my stuff there, and stay there or go into town, etc. I find out that they are another spanish school and they have a large room full of computers. So, I drop my stuff off with them and walk around town. While I am walking I stumble on a park where I spot some stands with food in the distance, this is perfect... I get some food, basically a meal (tacos and coke) for less then 2$ american and then sit in the park to eat. Of course this is where the fun begins, but ill write more about the park another day.

After I eat I go back to the spanish school and they call my host mom, who is home now, she comes by and we go back to her house. She has a nice house, two floors, I meet her daughter, gaby, and she indicates rooms for her son and nephew, but I have yet to see them. My host mom´s name is Ana, btw. After the introduction and tour of the house I finally get to shower, unpack and relax for a bit. Dinner is at 730, and I read until then. When I go down for dinner we sit down with Gaby and her fiance... Ana tells me that the meat is pollo (chicken) but I swear it was actually ham... good thing im not keeping kosher... After dinner I tried to sleep, but the homesickness took over for a bit and so I listened to some good old american Car Talk on my ipod and then finally went to sleep.

This morning I woke up around 7 for breakfast and then a short walk to the school, I met my teacher, he is awesome. Very funny and very expressive. We practiced different forms of past tense, which was good because I suck at tenses. After that I came back home for lunch and then walked around a bit. When I got back to the house Gaby and Ana were watching TV so I sat down to watch with them... They were watching a show that takes place in Miami but is all in spanish... it was a court room type show and I understood some... After that Gaby went to go on the computer and I watched more TV, there are alot of channels that come in in English and have spanish subtitles, so I rotted my brain with MTV... just like at home...

of course now I am starting to feel sick, like a fever, anyone know how to say accetamenaphine in spanish?

Hola, estoy en Guatemala

2008-12-28T05:04:00.000-08:00

I always forget how overwhelming it can be to be in a place surrounded by a language you only partially understand. Yesterday was my travel day, I don't know when it started because I didn't leave the night before but o well. I left my house for the Newark Airport (which was significantly cheeper then flying out of philly). We were there by 530 for my 830 flight so I had sometime to walk around the airport and overspend on some breakfast. Then I got on my plane to Panama City. For all but about 10 minutes of the flight I slept. In fact, I think I was asleep before the plane took off... Next I had what was supposed to be a 5 hour layover in Panama. I fell asleep for two more hours and then when I woke up noticed that the flight to Guatemala City had been delayed. So what else to do but walk around the duty free shop where 5 cartons of marlboro were being sold for 70$, I thought about buying some lucky strikes too, but who knows, maybe on the way back. So after watching families climb on board a flight to cancun, which was leaving from the same gate as my flight, I finally got to board my plane. This one was smaller then before but there were also over half empty seats. So I spread out and closed my eyes for the bumpy ride into Guatemala city. When I got to Guatemala I had missed my airport escort, or something like that, so I grabbed a taxi which I am sure that I overpaid for, and got to the hotel I am writing to you now from. So after all the problems and delays and planes and taxis my reward was that I got to kick back and relax while eating fresh guava off the tree thing in the courtyard under the stars.

now on to Quetzaltenango...
(where I will be staying for the rest of my two weeks)

Jealousy

2008-12-15T03:50:00.000-08:00

for the 13 year old boy:

I am so jealous of you
you turned 13 and all of the sudden you were taller than me
your muscles grew, nice and toned and big
your voice dropped.

I am so jealous of you,
because I will never be tall like you
and I have to work a million times harder to make my muscles grow like that
and my voice may never stop sounding like this...

you live to easily in your world
and I wonder if it is something I want to pass into
but at the same time, I am still jealous
........

link...

2008-12-11T19:11:00.000-08:00

http://safe2pee.org/beta/

!!!

yay for systems for locating neutral bathrooms...

Kids - Gender - Interactions

2008-12-10T11:40:00.000-08:00

9 year old female youth from a program I work with, the week before we had an extended discussion on sex, gender, and non-gender normativity.

youth: so _____ is a boy right?
me: yes
youth: so then why does she talk like a girl?
me: *no idea what to say to that* there are somethings you just can’t change

that reminded me of another half written blog entry from the summer, so I thought I would post that up too…

4 year old female, enthusiastic, has been in my class tuesday and thursday for the past 6 weeks. has been taught my name almost every week and continues to call me teacher. always wants to do everything right then. has trouble waiting her turn. would much rather run my class than be in it. wears a plain black bathing suit with bedazzled heart in the center of her chest. Hair braided with colorful barrettes at the end of the braids that fall out every other class, so I put them in my pocket for safe keeping and am constantly finding them days later.

x- “teacher? why do you wear shorts?”

x- “teacher? why don’t you have paint on your nails?”
me- “why do I have to have painted nails?”
x- “because that is what you are supposed to do”

Impacting Girls Influencing Life: an almost finished documentary

2008-12-04T16:33:00.000-08:00

SO, I am putting the final touches on the piece tonight!
It is so far screening in two places-

Tomorrow Night (Dec. 5th) and Saturday Night (Dec. 6th)-
Social Justice Art Gallery
The Tavern in Prescott (Hampshire College)
Amherst, MA

Friday Dec. 26th - Most definately after friday night Hanukka services:
Mishkan Shalom
4101 Freeland Ave
Philadelphia PA 19128

thats one in each of the places I live, and hopefully more to come... let me know if you know of, or can think of any good venues for a screening!

Where is the solution?

2008-12-03T18:13:00.001-08:00

Rest Stops and Bathrooms

2008-11-26T23:59:00.000-08:00

Public bathrooms are always hard, but I think for some reason when I am traveling it is harder. Now my family is used to finding the unisex/family bathrooms because of my brother, who is 15 and has disabilities, and therefore cannot go to the bathroom on his own. So what I know is that they are hard to find, sparse and often hidden. The one place where these bathrooms at least seems to be visible is rest stops on the highway. However, there are problems...

Going into female bathrooms makes me uncomfortable, going into male bathrooms makes me downright scared. So I attempted to find the "manager" for the key. However, the info table was shut down for the night, and the woman at the gift shop looked at me in confusement and horror when I asked for the manager/key to the unisex bathroom. She said that there was no manager, and had no idea who i could ask for more help. So, its back to the ladies bathroom, and extended confused looks from people in there.

the solution

2008-11-24T17:09:00.000-08:00

so I talked a few entries back about what I am going for here, and I would like to include a section at the end of my piece about how to deconstruct media imagery on a daily personal basis, so that you can deal with it within your own world...
so...

how do you deal with media imagery? How do you deconstruct the media on a personal level? What helps you get through every day?

leave comments! or IM/Email/call me...

...

2008-11-24T01:17:00.000-08:00

You see that girl with the long blonde hair in the picture? She’s really pretty huh? Yea, she is, that’s me? Do you believe it? I don’t.
When you look at that picture you see a pretty girl with her pretty boyfriend, a happy all American couple. But look through the smile on her face; see the heart that beats within, she is not happy. She wonders why she has to wear that dress while he gets to where the suit and tie. She goes back to the days of her 5 year old self when she dreamed of playing like the boys, and being like the boys and even of being, a boy. She wants so hard to not be that girl that girl in the picture, long blonde hair, green eyes, boyfriend, crisp suit, toned muscles, blonde hair, blue eyes. They are the perfect couple, they are beautiful, and they are what everyone wants to be, except her.
She doesn’t want the long blonde hair, she wants short hair, but if she cuts it off they will know, she is afraid of them. They cannot know, she must be that little girl because god-forbid she tells them that she is no fucking little girl. She tries so hard to be happy, boyfriend after boyfriend, hairstyles come and go but nothing fits. People look at her and they see the girl in the picture but that is not who she is. She is that girl with the short hair who you have to do a double take to tell if she’s a boy or a girl. She’s the one who says that you only need to know what’s in her pants if she is letting you in them. She finally got the courage to chop off all her hair, but she is scared, they accepted her short hair and called her a butch, but they still asked when she was going to go back to that long blonde hair. She tries to tell them that long blonde hair is not her, it makes her look good but it makes her feel like someone has taken a knife and dug it through her skin and between her ribs and pierced it through her heart. But with strong hands he pulls it out of his skin and rebuilds his broken heart. He puts the pieces back together, and tells himself that one-day it will be ok. He wonders what to do now, he’s no body’s butch, and he wants to be that dyke with the tits but who is still packing in her pants. He wonders what it would be like to have the parts he wants, to reach down there and feel that thing that he yearns for. But at the same time she loves her life, she loves her self and the breasts that feel heavy on her chest, she loves them. And then, in and instant, she wants them to go, she wants to bind them away, pull them so tight that they absolve into nothingness. But tomorrow he will wear them out, in that tank top that slides down so low, and he will love them, his breasts. He doesn’t understand why these lines get drawn why he can’t be both, why he will one day have to explain to his cousins why he is so different.
He loved that girl with the long blonde hair, she loved herself back then and yet, she wanted to tear herself out of her life and cry and scream and hope that tomorrow she would wake up and be in a different body. She wants to wake up and have every thing be ok, but the problem is she doesn’t know what ok is anymore. She doesn’t know what is up and down, all she knows is that today is a day, and she has a life, and she will go on living this life, not knowing what tomorrow will bring or how he will feel, but tomorrow, like today, will just be, another day.

Fragmentation

2008-11-20T14:12:00.000-08:00

One visual image that I think about a lot is the image of shattered mirrors, so with this post I am including 3 video elements, two made by me and one by the talented Lucas Carpenter, and I encourage you to watch them in the order I have posted them...

In the media women (and everyone for that matter, but especially women because they are so overtly sexualized) are broken down into their parts, we are focused on a woman's hands, or eyes, or mouth, all of these parts, in addition to only portraying part of a woman (which is a problem in itself), also carry a sexualized weight. Watch the clips, the first two will likely be in the doc and the song from the third will be there so let me know what you think about all of this...
comments are good for something...

What are we going for here?

2008-11-17T11:53:00.000-08:00

So the clip I am posting along with this entry brings up a really good point about what exactly we are going for with this whole documentary, mass media resistance thing. In advertisements I feel like the actual way that women are portrayed physically, specifically when we are talking about an image of a woman having sex, or being overtly sexual with a man is not as much a problem as is how much control they have over the situation. This entire concept brings up alot of classic debates about sex, exposure, children, agency. Should a woman with full power be allowed to sell her body for sex? yes, why not? The problem however with sex work becomes when it is controlled by men who exploit and traffic women. Many "advocates" for children would also argue that sex work is something to protect the children from, but how much should/can we protect children? and is that our right when they are other peoples kids? what about our own children?

So when I first cut out this clip I did so for a few reasons...

For one, I feel, and still do that this image perpetuates a heteronormative ideal on whoever sees it. Secondly, I think that this image implies that sex is necessary and imparts the message on readers that they need to have sex with their partner. Not that I think sex after a date is a bad thing, but I do think that images that imply that it is necessary are problematic.
So in the end we are left with the question of what exactly am I going for here, with this documentary... project. I don't want to go on some loony save the children rant across the country joined by christian fundamentalists who use my clips to encourage abstinence only in schools. I am a big proponent of telling the children the truth, I think that it is crucial to allow all people to access information. So I guess in a sense that is what the point of all of this is, to give people the tools to analyze and deconstruct this information, because right now not only children, but adults too are being fed these lies about the human body, and beauty...

Impacting Girls, Influencing Life; The Portrayal of Women by the Media-
There are certain images established by the media of what a woman is and should be. These images have had a profound effect at some point on all of us. This documentary attempts to examine those images, expose the effect, and deconstruct the power of the media.

Production Update

2008-11-12T09:25:00.000-08:00

So just another update on everything that is going on in the orb of my video production. So basically I am done shooting, with only one or 2 more interviews I want, and if I can find any kids to interview using them definitely. SO I am editing, a TON, as you may or may not have been able to guess from the clips I have been posting. More clips to come. In addition I am trying to incorporate work of other artists along the same lines, I am working on bringing in some art and photography, in addition I am using some of the music of Lee G (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=290001015&ref=ts) and Lucas Carpenter (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=8368545). I have also finally managed to secure some old barbie dolls to use for a cool sequence so keep your eyes open for that!...
In other aspects of my life I am also editing a short for Steven Emmanuel aka Queer Kid of Color (http://queerkidofcolor.com/), so keep your eyes out for that.

Celebration Dance

2008-11-06T05:22:00.000-08:00

I was talking to a friend about a dance, a celebration dance. It is a means of expression of joy, there is no proper way to dance this dance, but rather there is just movement. The drum beats for the dancer and the dancer dances for the drum. And that is what that night was. It was a celebration dance.
ABC news declared Obama the projected winner of the 2008 presidential election and the room exploded. People ran from all sides, champagne was opened, beers were drunk, things were smoked, and then everyone ran outside and there was a celebration. People ran from their houses to the lawn and there they danced, fireworks exploded above our heads, hugs and kisses and screams surrounded us.
We all know that Obama will not bring the radical revolutionary change we wish for, but we do celebrate. We celebrate a black man’s rise into the highest position our country has to offer, we celebrate the defeat of John McCain and Sarah Palin, we celebrate the end of the Bush regime, and we celebrate a little bit of hope, a little bit of faith, and we nod our heads and say “yes we can”.
I think that when we feel like we have won it is important to remember that blind faith is dangerous, and that as President (elect) Barack Obama said last night “This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change. This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change”. So we go into the coming months and years with caution. More hope then normal, more faith in the American people then perhaps they have always deserved, but we go into those months nonetheless.
Change will not come easy, and now it is time to dig in your heals and hold Obama to the promises he has made. It is time to take to the streets and be accountable for the actions of our country. I urge you not to just sit back and accept victory, but to see it as a challenge. Every citizen of a nation is responsible for the acts committed in their nations name. We must be mindful of this and we must fight to get the change we seek out of Obama, but I know that it is a fight we can win.
And hey, if all else fails, Michelle for 2012?

Deconstructing the Media, Bringing it all together

2008-10-24T16:22:00.000-07:00

part of the concluding section for the piece

More Clips for the Piece

2008-10-21T09:09:00.000-07:00

Here are some more clips of rough footage:

Presidential Elections

2008-10-16T14:24:00.000-07:00

In my life I have only really known 2 presidents. I was born under the first Bush, and raised under Clinton and the GWB. I don't remember much about Clinton as president. I do remember being gathered in the auditorium of my elementary school in 4th grade and listening to the principal explain to us that the president of the United States had done a bad thing, and now they might not let him be president any more.
In 6th grade we read magazine interviews with Bush and Gore and picked our candidates based on the fact that Gore liked strawberry yogurt too. I was still in elementary school (it was a k-6) and as the oldest grade we got to perform a mock debate for the entire school. I was assigned to argue GWB's economic policies. ironic, huh? We didn't find out who won the election until December, and I remember exactly where I was when I found out that he would be our president. My soon to be middle school principal told me, at 6 am, while we were on our 6th grade camping trip. I almost cried.
In 2004 I was in 10th grade and taking AP gov and politics. This time I picked my candidate for more sound reasons, as in, he was not GWB. Our class often erupted in debates about all sorts of issues surrounding the election, I wrote an essay about why the electoral college should be abolished and wrote responses to the debates. Our teacher had life-size cut outs of Bush and Kerry. On election day we had off from school and I spent the day campaigning for the Kerry campaign.
Now, in 2008 I finally get to vote. And the election is exciting, first off, there will be no Bush on the ticket, and second the dems may actually have a shot at taking the white house. Now, in 2008 I am in college, I watch the debates in my on campus apartment, while trying to get my schoolwork done and trying not to think about the failing economy and the debt me and my parents are acquiring so that I can attend the second most expensive school in the country. And I am at a loss. I watch the debates and I am excited by the prospect of Obama in the white house, but my heart is not in it. I sent in the form and my absentee ballot should arrive any day now, and then, I will have to decide, who do I vote for. I can guarantee you it will not be McCain. But I have to decide, to vote with my heart, or to vote with my head. If I follow my heart then I know that niether of the major party candidates support what I support, or care about the things that I care about. And I will cast my vote for Cynthia McKinney, because atleast when she speaks her words resonate in my head, and I find my self agreeing, not just saying, well at least its better then McCain. And yet, everything/everyone else tells me to vote with my head. Pennsylvania is a swing state, and I keep hearing not to split the democratic vote. At the same time, i remember myself when I was young, as I watched the elections, and I think, what will I tell my children when they are 11, and 15, and 19. I want to be able to be proud of my vote, the one freedom I still have. I want to say that I cast a vote for something I believed in.
I probably won't know who I am voting for until my ballot comes in the mail... but hopefully it is a choice I will be able to make....

they say that each citizen of a nation is responsible for that nations actions... how do I vote responsibly?

Straight Hair

2008-10-05T23:15:00.000-07:00

By the time I was in the 7th grade I had started to straighten my hair. I went to a Jewish Day school and despite the fact that most of us had naturally curly hair everyone showed up to school everyday with perfectly straightened hair. It started out slowly at first, only straightening it for special events (bar/bat mitzvahs) and using my curling iron to do so (I bought the curling iron to make ringlets which never worked either) and then soon I bought my first flat iron. Currently I still keep my 4th and 5th flat irons, but I have not turned them on in months. Up until last spring I straightened my hair as often as necessary to make sure that it was always straight (except for the period of time it was too short to straighten, about 6 months senior year). And then one day, just as spring was starting to come in I went to my room to straighten my hair, and I turned on my iron and I started to do it and I was sweating, and hot and didn’t think it was worth all the effort and so I grabbed my clippers and chopped off the remainder of my hair. I liked my hair when it was so short that it looked straight. It made me feel like I could be one of those boys on the side of an American Eagle bag, the ones who are topless on a beach somewhere and all black and white and muscle. He was the perfect little blonde straight white boy, the boy that all the girls swooned after growing up. I wanted to be him. And for a little while I was proud of myself for looking like him, I could put on a wife beater and if I stood the right way with my boobs out of sight I almost looked like that. But in the end… my hair grew, and it didn’t grow straight, it grew back into its curls. And I reached the point with my hair where I would straighten it, so that I would be hot, like the girls or boys from the magazines, but my straigteners sit out in a basket in my bathroom untouched. And my hair grows curly and poofs up from my head and I like it. It is comfortable, it looks like me… No more pulling at my hair every night with every straightening product available at CVS. I guess at some point we all have to embrace the people we are, learn to walk down the street without make up, with out a front and just be ourselves. That is something that I still struggle to do (not the make up, but walking without a front) but I think that my hair has always been a big symbol for me. I started to dye it because people assumed things when they looked at my blonde hair, and then I stripped it back to the blonde, so that I could be hot, and I repeated the process twice in 2 years. I chopped off my hair so that people would stop looking at me and assume things because I have long hair, things about my gender or sexuality. And I guess in some ways these things are still a front, they still hide who I really am because it is still all about the way I am perceived by others. But some would say that it is the other who constructs our sense of self. What ever it is all I know is that for right now, I’m giving the straigtener a rest and dealing with my natural hair, after all, I think it looks pretty cute…

WTF?

2008-09-29T01:10:00.000-07:00

ok, so i know that schools can get a little ridiculous when it comes to stereotyping and gender conformity and dress codes and the like... I just stumbled across this article about an 8th grader, Matt Alsup, who was told to wash the make up off his face when he decided to wear make up to school (black eyeliner and lipstick)... When the school called his mother she offered that she could buy him some pick lipstick (if that would be less "distracting") and was told that because he was a male, and that it is socially un-acceptable for males to wear make up, he would not be allowed to wear any make-up to school.
even more shocking (at least to me) was that when I voted in the online poll about whether boys should be allowed to wear make up to school (why the hell should they not be) I was in the 25% minority with 75% of those who answered the poll saying that the too believe a male wearing make up to school was inappropriate--- http://www.myfoxdfw.com/myfox/pages/pollP44Question
When i searched his name to find out more information I also found a number of problematic and downright asshole responses:
http://www.kctalk.com/forums/showthread.php?p=126406
this forum seems to blame Matt and his mother calling her absent and saying that because he doesn't "pull it off" he should not be allowed to wear make up like that to school..

Here is a link to a full article with a video:

http://www.wcpo.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=43ee2634-3f3c-402d-a3ec-26a42d0a97f8

Treatment for Impacting Girls, Influencing Life

2008-09-18T17:55:00.001-07:00

IMPACTING GIRLS, INFLUENCING LIVES; THE PORTRAYAL OF WOMEN IN THE MEDIA

Theme:
Everyday young girls and adolescents are bombarded, and targeted by almost every form of mainstream media. The media tells them how to look, act, and dress. These images have instilled American cultural norms that are impossible to reach and led girls to go to extraordinary ends to meet these impossible standards. As a society a new image of girls, teens, women and gender must be created.

Synopsis:
Impacting Girls, Influencing Lives is a 20 minute expository/reflective documentary about the way women are portrayed in the media and the effect that this portrayal has on young girls growing up. The story will be told in 3 parts, the first is a section to establish the way that women are portrayed in the media focusing on how the media creates the images of: taller, whiter, skinnier, and blonder. The evidence in this section will be provided mostly through media clips as well as the pictures that each of the interview subjects have drawn about women in the media. The second is a section, about the impact that this has on young girls, this will consist mostly of interviews supplemented by b-roll. These interviews will depict personal experiences reflecting on the influence of media in the lives of children. The third and final part will attempt to deconstruct the media images and empower people to move beyond media imagery.

Style and Structure:
The main story telling of the piece will be through interviews conducted with people of varying ages, genders, races and sexualities. The interviews will be conducted in an interactive format that will reflect elements shown throughout the piece, in the form of repetitive activities, such as images drawn during every interview.

Length and Shooting Format:
I am aiming for a length between 20 and 30 minutes and I will be shooting in digital video. This format will give me great flexibility to incorporate various forms of media, imagery and multiple layers of video in post-production. In addition, the length of the piece will allow me to go into depth with my subject without boring my audience.

Voice and Point of View:
The piece will be a mostly reflective video, but it will capture many elements of an expository piece, as I explore the way that these images effected me growing up as a girl, my presence as the video maker will be present throughout the piece however, I will not use direct voice over. My biggest goal is to utilize different forms of media throughout the process of the creation of this film, and to have these different mediums shine through in the final product. For instance, the final piece will show the drawings I have collected from every interview. These different elements will come together in the end to form a empowering and thought provoking piece.

LGBT… No Q

2008-09-16T14:54:00.000-07:00

When we talk about the movement of same sex sexuality I think it is important to distinguish between what I see as two movements. To many the vocabulary may be used interchangeably but in my mind the idea of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) is monumentally different from queer.
The LGBT movement is a movement that embraces the idea of immutability; the concept that out characteristics are either genetically ingrained or environmentally ingrained from such a young age that they are unchangeable. If our characteristics (mostly specifically sex and sexuality) are biologically inevitable then we should not be punished by discrimination. This theory sits well in a world of definite, a world of homosexuality, heterosexuality, bisexuality and transgender. These dichotomies provide comfort, either you are or you aren’t, it is easy to comprehend in one word answers to simple questions. And while these terms may not always fall on conservative ears with comfort they fall easier than others because they still abide by many familiar societal constructs. The LGBT movement to me is one of assimilation, of proving that we are no different, just as capable as parents, teachers, and look, we even reflect your heteronormative standards in our butch femme relationships.
Queer to me is a radical term, not just in the sense of reclamation, but also in the way that queer defies immutability and reaches beyond societal constructs of how we should be. Queer reflects fluidity and a world without rules to abide by. The term queer is not connected to specific acts the way that gay and lesbian tend to be, in fact many straight people I know seem to have queered sexualities. Queer is about deviance from the sexual norms, and experimentation. I am queer, my sex, my sexuality, my body, my life, and for now I get to stay that way.
I guess life is all about picking your battles and in the more conservative world it is more important for me to pick a battle for LGBT rights, no Q, because at least those battles will be seen and legitimized. But is it worth it to give up my queer culture? Why should I betray myself to make you more comfortable sitting in a room with me? Does my queerness only exist because I live in a community where I can embrace it? Will I reverse when I go back to the world of LGBT?

Update

2008-09-15T07:26:00.001-07:00

OK Kids,
So if you don't remember one of the things that I am doing with this blog is updating yall on the movie that I am creating this semester while I'm at school. SO I am back at school and getting into the swing of things with Joe, my mentor for the mentored independent study that this video is a part of. With his insights I have created a treatment, script, shot list and timeline for my project.

I will post these things bit by bit as I refine and recreate them for all yall out there.

Hannah

Interviews

2008-08-25T13:07:00.000-07:00

So today I interviewed Sophie. Sophie is a very bright 11 year old about to enter 6th grade. I sat down with her for almost an hour at her house and this is basically what we did...

What is the media?

lets watch some clips of advertisements of women from magazines

how did the women in those images look?

do you read a lot of magazines?

do you watch a lot of TV?

lets draw a picture of what the way that you think the media makes women look

what did you draw and why did you draw those things?

do you think that those images effect you?

what do you do in your spare time?

do you play any sports?

What school do you go to?

can you show me a magazine that you like?

do you think that other people have problems because of what they see in the media?

do you think that the way women are portrayed in the media is a problem?

you you think its a problem for girls who try to be and look like the people they see on television or in magazines?

what kind of clothes do you like?

where do you buy most of your clothes?

do you look in magazines for tips on what to wear?

do you think at school you or other girls care alot about what they wear?

do you wear makeup?

Lets draw a picture of what you think is beautiful

why do you think certain things are beautiful and other things arn't?

how much TV do you watch everyday?

how much time do you spend on the computer?

what is your favorite movie?

do you think they way that you feel is going to change when you get older?

do you ever try to make yourself the way you see in the media?

Here are the pictures she drew for the drawing parts:

Long Blonde Hair

2008-08-19T13:45:00.001-07:00

I hate it when you tell me that I looked so pretty with my long blonde hair
and I hate it when you double check my ID, smile and say, you changed your hair
and I hate that I keep this ID because I feel like it proves that I can fit in, in your world of long blonde hair

the long blonde hair in that picture looked good on me, but it never fit… I tried to deny my long blonde hair by dyeing it, starting at the age of 13. I have had every color hair except orange and silver…
and I never even knew my natural hair color until the past year. And then I finally went to school and thought I could get away from the assumptions made when you have long blonde hair (even though at the time my hair was short, although still blonde). And then on one of the first days of school I talk to someone and they tell me “yea, I used to have long blonde hair too…”

my long blonde hair was a symbol, a symbol of subscribing to the patriarchal structure of beauty that had been handed down to me in the form of seventeen magazine and books on beauty by bobbi brown. It was a mindset of lack of intelligence given in the form of joke books on “dumb blondes” and reinforced whenever I did something and someone called me a dumb blonde. and most of all my long blonde hair was a symbol of a mindset and an attitude that I didn’t agree with. When people looked at me with that long blonde hair they saw a White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP). They saw mainstream American teenager bumming around at malls and never stopping to think about the larger issues in the world… and they see straight, good girl…

and so one day I looked at my self in the mirror and realized that I was none of these things (except white…), and maybe I am a coward and I should have stood up and earned respect with my long blonde hair, but instead I got a pair of scissors and made my hair fit who I am…

and so when you tell me that I was so hot two years ago, what happened. and when you look at my ID and comment, while smirking on my hair cut. and when I remember that I keep that ID in my wallet as a passport into your world… it rips apart a very conscience decision that I made years ago…

The Ish with Katy Perry

2008-08-15T09:23:00.002-07:00

possible written article to come..... stay tuned, but for now i just needed to get this up there...

Jewish Community

2008-07-27T14:27:00.000-07:00

First and foremost it is necessary to understand that to a lot of people, Jews that is, who know my ancestry I would not be considered Jewish. Jewish “blood” is passed down through the mother and my mother was not born a Jew. She converted when I was 8, so when I was born I was not born a Jew. However, within the more liberal Jewish communities I am considered a Jew (reconstructionist, reform). And within more conservative sects I have a lot of legitimacy as a Jew (conservative is also a sect of Judaism). I attended Jewish day school for 5 years (4th-8th) where I received an extensive education in culture, language, tradition and history, although all from a conservative perspective. I had a Bat Mitzvah when I was 12 (traditional age for a female). And prior to my Bat Mitzvah I had a half conversion ceremony. I attended a Jewish camp. I also went to Israel in spring 2007 on an advocacy trip. So while my bloodline does not dictate so my experiences growing up give me a lot of legitimacy as a Jew and the ability to “pass” as such within Jewish a Jewish context.
Passing as a conservative Jew is a strange thing because while I can do it with ease I disagree with so many of the values that are represented within conservative Jewish contexts. I remember when I was doing a project and I interviewed an aging Jewish man. Hearing my name (Hannah, a “nice Jewish name”), put him at ease with me and he started to reveal things that when confronted with someone else he likely would have kept to himself. Jewish culture while it says that you must be nice to the stranger (other, outsider) it also makes it very clear that they are not part of our community. It is that type of inclusivity that while I think has contributed to the sustainability of the Jewish religion is also troubling to say the least. Last week I was reminded of that incident when one of the people at the Shabbat dinner I attended started talking about interfaith marriages and the “silent holocaust”. Because she was comfortable at the table of people she saw as the same as her she revealed this detail. However, sitting at that table was my mother, a non-blood jew, and me, the product of an interfaith marriage. And this is not the first time that I have encountered something like this.
On my trip to Israel in the spring of 2007 we sat down at one point to discuss some of the issues we encountered as “jews in a non jewish world”. One of the issues we discussed was interfaith marriage. So here I was in a group of youth, people who should not be limiting their romantic attachments, and/or thinking about marriage yet and all of them were vehemently opposed to interfaith marriage. As the daughter of a mixed marriage and someone who was dating a gentile at that point hearing these feeling were hard for me to deal with. What is difficult for me now is how do I negotiate my tie to Judaism? For me the religion has always been a base even though my religious affiliations have changed a lot over the years. In addition, it has a community that provides my brother (who has autism) with the support that he needs; in the form of community, open arms and even programming. So as I sit at a table with jews who are saying things that go against my values, but who are people that we need the connection to for the sake of my brother, I have to decide how to react, and in the end I usually decide to keep my mouth shut, after all it is important that my parents and brother find the community they need. However the elitist mindset of most of these people is hard to digest.

“As jews we believe that everyone in our community is just like us, as jews we believe that we are the chosen people and that we are better than everyone else. As jews we think that issues of ethnicity, sexuality, gender, race, class, spirituality, etc are problems for the gentiles, we believe that we are beyond that…”

For someone who accepts this mindset or lives in a very classic jewish community it is easy to live this lifestyle, however as someone who lives on the edge of many of the issues the jewish community ignores, it is hard to digest.

Now this is not to say that all jews/communities are like this. My synogogue (reconstructionist, the hippies of the jews) has always been a welcoming community that seems not to ignore the issues so many others ignore. However, I often feel like the more conservative influences of my childhood overpowered the welcoming atmosphere of my synagogue. And has left me with a distaste for the conservative jewish community.

Language and the Betrayal of Culture

2008-07-13T17:03:00.000-07:00

“The Black man who arrives in France changes because to him the country represents the tabernacle; he changes not only because it is from France that he received his knowledge of Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire, but also because France gave him his physicians, his department heads, his innumerable little functionaries – from the sergent-major “fifteen years in the service” to the police-man who was born in Panissieres. There is a kind of magic vault of distance, and the man who is leaving next week for France creates round himself a magic circle in which the words Paris, Marseille, Sorbonne, Pigalle become the keys to the vault. He leaves for the pier, and the amputation of his being diminishes, as the silhouette of his ship grows clearer. In the eyes of those who have come to see him off he can read the evidence of his own mutation, his power. “Good-by bandanna, good-by straw hat…”

So I started reading the book Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon. Im only on the third chapter so I’m sure more writing on this book is yet to come however I wanted to start discussing/processing what I am reading.
The first chapter of the book is about language and the cultural significance of language. Everyone has some degree of experience with this, most of us can tell a southern accent, a British accent, an Australian accent. And people have often encountered the difficulties of that language barriers present, and often discrimination that results.
In the book Fanon discusses the dialects and languages of people in France and the French colonies during the 20th century. Most specifically Fanon discusses the differences in language from the primarily black inhabited colonies to the mainland and the cities, such as Paris. Fanon speaks about an un-ending quest to be white. This quest is shown, among other ways, in those who reform the way they speak so they can avoid the stigma they would otherwise face in French society.
The short movie I have posted below is a satire on the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. For those of you who don’t know the plot of Pygmalion it is as such. A rich doctor in 19th century England finds a girl on the street that speaks a very “poor” version of English and he makes a bet with his friend that he can train her to pass in high society over the course of a number of months. The play is often thought of as a commentary on nature vs. nurture. However I want to look on this, and the movie versions that followed (My Fair Lady, Trading Places) as commentary on society. These movies put forth the idea that to succeed you must assimilate into the culture of those in power. This is apparent in Fanons writing as well as in the play. This is not a fact I am not going to attempt to ignore because I see it everywhere. The voices of those on the margins are often squashed not simply because of minority status or alternative lifestyle but also because there exists a great cultural and language divide. It is simple kids from the poor parts of the inner city do not speak the same way that kids from the rich suburbs do. I can see this divide in myself when I reflect on the way that my language changed as I moved out of private middle school in a very upscale, Philadelphia mainline suburb to public high school in the inner ring suburb right outside of west Philadelphia, Upper Darby. Upper Darby High School serves as a midpoint for a lot of things. It is within that school district that the landscape changes from the city to the suburbs and naturally the language of the students reflects that in between status.
So what Fanon seems to talk about is the constant desire on the part of black citizens to “become white” to assimilate to the culture of the ruling class in order to rid themselves of their blackness and therefore be successful. He speaks about a black physician he once knew who joined the army, as a medical officer, in order to be the boss. This man joined the army and refused to go to the colonies or serve in a colonial unit, rather he wanted to be the boss of the white men, to gain their subservience in whatever way he could. This was his way of gaining whiteness. Despite his exemplary behavior ability as a physician he felt that he could never be legitimized within the community.
One of the elements of any culture is the language. Denial of natural language is like a denial of culture and identity. Forcing someone to give up their native toungue is a form of oppression and yet so many cultures also force it on themselves. Fanon talks about more middle and upper class families and nice schools where the language of creol was banned because it was considered uncivilized and improper. Is language the tool of the oppressor? Is language just a way to keep disenfranchised youth from the ghetto? Whether it is mid 20th century France or present day America I think there is something wrong with a society in which people on the margin must conform to the methods of the power in order to succeed, however, I also feel as though this is inevitable in any society and so I struggle with that. I do not like the concept of forcing others to give up their culture in order to be accepted by mine, and yet without allyship and cross cultural understanding (on both parts) how can anything get done?

PS- I think you have to have and be signed into a vimeo account to watch the video, I am working on a solution to embeding so everyone can watch but in the mean time it would totally be worth it to get a vimeo account and watch this (plus a ton of other really sweet vids on vimeo)

Untitled from Hannah Horwitz on Vimeo.

Impacting Girls, Influencing Life: The Portrayal of Women in the Media

2008-07-06T11:56:00.000-07:00

So for my next project I am working on a documentary/potential installation about the portrayal of women in the media, this is the continuation and expansion of a topic that I have been working on all year but over the course of the next few months I am going to be going more into depth, with this topic. I have begun to shape an independent study that will reflect a desire to get into more theory based around race and gender. At this point in the process I am looking for advice, reading recommendations, interviews or any kind of discussion around this topic.

Below is my final project for Video 1:
There are still a number of rough edges that need to be smoothed out, but while I work on those, check this out!

Quick Blurbs from Old Blog

2008-07-06T11:54:00.000-07:00

when attempting to counteract the main stream do you/ should you work from within the mainstream? Or is that just feeding into a culture that will eventually hijack your message and destroy it's meaning? Example: submitting your videos to youtube, is this a good thing or is it just feeding the culture your attempting to destroy?

So I am working on a continuation documentary about women in the media and I wonder who am I, as someone who does not identify as female to work on a documentary about women in the media. On one hand growing up being molded as a female these images effected me and it hits me hard to see my younger cousins being so impacted by them, but on the other hand do I have a right to talk about these issues?

I Never Thought I Would Grow up to be a Woman

2008-07-01T22:36:00.000-07:00

I grew up with the privilege of parents who didn’t care. Not didn’t care as in neglect, but didn’t care as in they never told me how to be, or how to dress or how to think about myself. At age 4 I wanted to be the Beast for Halloween, and so my mom made me the costume, and sewed up a beauty costume for my doll and I marched in my preschools Halloween parade as the beast with beauty on my arm. And in the subsequent years I refused to wear dresses, flowers, the color pink, and my mom never cared, we avoided sections of the store, she removed the flowers from hand-me down t-shirts and sewed jumpers and outfits for me to wear to family events so that I did no have to wear a dress. And when I came home crying one day because someone asked me if I was a boy or a girl she simply said boys don’t wear flowers, and she bought me a pair of flowery pants, and I tried it, but then I gave up, or I didn’t care, I forget which.
In the search for an education my parents moved me out of 3rd grade at public school and into 4th grade at a Jewish day school. At first I loved it, but as I grew I could see the atmosphere smothering the independence that had been fostered in me as a child. I wanted to fit in, and so I started wearing dresses, and skirts and I even stole make-up from the local drug store. And I tried, but the skills and desires that are inherent in other girls to put effort in, to be comfortable in a skirt and to want to look pretty never formed in my brain, and so I was awkward, and clumsy and messed up a lot and still I never fit in. And I remember the first time they told me that I was supposed to be a woman, I think that’s when everything changed, in 5th grade when gender mattered and boys and girls started dating, and the girls asked me to be on their basketball team because I was the best girl at basketball.
Every year in elementary school each grade did something appropriate within the scheme of Jewish Education and every year they would have a ceremony to show off a new skill or ability and then each member of the grade received a book. In the younger grades they were significant Jewish texts: prayer books, the 5 books of Moses, etc. But in 5th grade we received, “Women of Valor”, I still have that book, its nametag written out in Hebrew, with pictures of the other books I had received and would receive. It was then that it hit me, I don’t know if it was just 5th grade, or if it was my best friend who started hanging out more and more with the cool girls and less and less with me, or if it was the couples in our class, constantly rotating but never including me, but it was then that I realized that I was supposed to be a woman. I guess it changed my mindset in a way because I started to try; I pored over fashion magazines, bought books on makeup and beauty and how to be perfect. And I tried, I tried SO hard, I would stay up late at night trying to make my hair perfect and practice the art of being a woman. But it never worked.
As I grew I started to acknowledge to myself that I did not fit in as a woman and I chalked it up to immaturity and inability to accept responsibility. But then I continued to grow and I started out high school on a new foot, I would be a woman! I bought the skirts and had the hair and the makeup and I tried to make the friends. And I tried and I tried and the more I tried the more it built up until I bought my first pair of man pants. They are ripped now to the point where I cannot wear them, but I remember them. They were 10$ on sale at Kohl’s, they were dark denim with a hint of green, and I wore them with my men’s “Kiss Me I’m Irish” (I’m not really Irish) sweatshirt and something clicked. It would be a while until most of my wardrobe transformed, in fact it would be until I got out of high school that I would stop feeling the need to wear skirts or dresses when I needed to dress up. It would be until midway through my first year of college that I became comfortable enough to put my breasts away, to stop using them to get the attention that I always craved and until I was comfortable enough to try to shape them around who I wanted to be, and how I wanted to be seen.
Now I don’t bind that often, but I cannot remember the last time I did not wear a sports bra. Women complain that sports bras flatten their chest, and eliminate their cleavage. Now I don’t know what their talking about because even in a sports bra they do not disappear, and if I dare to wear a tank top you’ll see just how much cleavage I still have. But when I’m in a sports bra I can feel my self start to be in that in-between place I want to be. I never thought I would grow up to be a woman, the thought didn’t even cross my mind until 5th grade. But I also never thought I would grow up to be a man. I think of myself now as a 14-year-old boy, because 14-year-old boys are so often caught in that place between adulthood and childhood. And I haven’t met a 14-year-old boy yet who didn’t have some complex built around masculinity. I never deny growing up as a girl, a confused girl but a girl nonetheless. The question is where am I now, who am I now. I know that I am growing up, but I don’t know where it will take me. I know however, where it will not take me, I am not growing up to be a woman, and I am not growing up to be a man. Perhaps I will never know where I am going or when I get there, but hopefully I will be able to find some footing in the in between space that has evaded me so long.