Snippets

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

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

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.

why ftq? ---entering 2010

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