Cycles of Uncertainty

I wake up in a soft bed to the sound of the radio. My cat is curled up next to me, miowing every time I move to hit the snooze button – resettling when I lie back and tuck the covers more closely around me. My arm is cold, curled above the covers around him, feeling his soft fur against my skin.

In the car, I fret about filling my gas tank before the day starts too far. I put five dollars in yesterday, but it needs to be completely filled – I have at least sixty miles to drive today, only half of them covered by mileage.

Sonali Kohakar is on the radio, her words not penetrating my fogged brain as I drive to the first stop, but I know her voice as she signs off for the morning. I feel vaguely guilty – I never manage to get up in the morning to listen to her show unless I have to, and I always forget to listen to the podcast in the evening.

I wake up my first client of the day, rush through reminders, chant ‘gas gas gas’ in my mind so I don’t miss my stop. The gas station, thirteen cents cheaper than the one katty corner to it, is a game of tetris with cars. I wave to the attendants I know; I’m there so often.

The radio is covering the demonstrations in Cairo, Egypt. There’s a young woman, she sounds younger than me – her voice clear and sweet and full of laughter despite her situation. “I’m staying until it’s done,” she says. “I don’t think there’s anything for me if Mubarak stays in power. They recorded me saying, ‘Down with Mubarak’.”

I wonder what it would take for me to be recorded saying, “Down with…” anyone. Would I do it if I knew I could be killed for it? My own cowardice is bitter.

Things don’t go well at my second stop, and I wonder how much of it is me, tight and guilty and stressed. What do I bring in to cause failure? How can I ultimately tell; the variables are so numerous that any sort of sensible analysis seems hopeless. I’m caught up again in a cycle of thoughts which have been increasingly bothering me – how much of my analysis of what “should” be worked on, be the focus, valid? Obviously, keeping basics like food and shelter, but there’s pressure for more, to shape people into “citizens” in some way which has an army of unspoken assumptions about what a person should be.

How can I serve my clients and be an agent for the state?

Supposed supporters of Mumbarak are now approaching the demonstrations – demonstrations which are being described as peaceful, clean, celebratory. Violence is breaking out, they say. I know elsewhere, on other radio stations, the language will be of violence “breaking out” in the “riot” in Cairo. I believe what I listen to, others believe what they listen to – and I wonder how we can determine the veracity of our sources of information. I’m biased toward the underdog, the citizens, the people who just want a peaceful world without fear; language about them will always draw my sympathy.

I stop at Starbucks, which has signs on the wall advertizing their word for a better world. To illustrate this, brown people work on coffee plantations in de-saturated photographs. What would it be like if those people were white?

Out better world, built by the labor of the brown.

My favorite discussion board has gotten into get another debate about Palestine and Israel, one without many insults. I feel ignorant, despite hearing about the issue a lot, it seems too often be talked about vaguely, idealistically, politically, with the moments of specific events standing out starkly – the image of three teenage girls dead, and one blinded in one eye. A doctor frantically trying to get help for children bombed in his very own home, calling a friend on television. This doctor preaches peace now, when he speaks, even after the death of so many dear to him. His preaching seems to fall far short of those who could bring about peace.

I wonder what would take me out on the streets.

I had once said something like the Japanese interment camps might have, but looking at the detention of undocumented people … I’m not so sure. It didn’t take me onto the streets, after all.

Would I have hidden Jews in my home in Germany?

I return to the radio with my drink, driving and listening as the radio followed the lead of the blog I read, to Palestine and Israel. In my mind the two conversations are confused, tangled up like a hairball. I’m not sure what I think anymore, except I’m tired of people getting hurt and dying. I’m tired of suffering.

How much do I contribute to that suffering, unseen to me?

Another client, trying to make peace in a smaller place – and another thread of thought intrudes; how do we deal peacefully with aggression? How can aggression be contained without either matching aggression or concession?

What role does being “weak” play into it?

I remember a conference I was at, years ago. People began to speak of their Utopias – no cars, no Starbucks, everyone wearing sandals and walking to a spiritual center. What about the people who need cars, who can’t walk down paths, who don’t want to be spiritual, I wanted to rail at them. Who are the people your Utopia excludes without you seeing?

Who are the people my Utopia excludes without me seeing?

When I wish for peace, for an end to violence and suffering, what is the cost there? Who has to pay it?

I imagine myself there, in Cairo, linking arm and arm with others to protect a library, to protect a square, from “thugs” and “pro-Mumbarak” forces.

But I’m not there. I’m here with my Starbucks and my clients.

I could leave, abandon my things and everything comfortable, use my last paycheck to fly to Cairo and link arms. Maybe.

Who would take my clients shopping? Who would listen to them?

Do I listen to them?

Black Faces, White Masks

I finished my thesis (maybe I'll upload bits of it and see if it stands up to the internet as well as it did my advisor) and am finally now, months later, getting to all of the books I picked up for it which I didn't read in time to include.

I'm reading in bits and pieces, though. I don't know if that is sensible or not. Somehow the books on racism are harder to swallow than books that are more white. Yay privilege? I find myself thinking more, reacting more, twitching more in response to books where I'm not the audience. Feature, not a bug, but a sometimes difficult feature to swallow.

Some of it's the denseness, too. I'm finding Molefi Kete Asante book on Afrocentricity as dense as Socrates (though not Aristotle, who still gives me fits - is it weird that my denseness sense is based on dead white guys?) but in a different way, which means all the skills I've developed to read Socrates helps me not at all with Asante. In contrast, Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon has much more straightforward language, but I'm struggling with the androcentric quality of it. In particular, he has one chapter on "The Black Woman and the White Man" which more read like "This is why black women suck for not wanting to marry black men" so I'm snarling quietly at the "The Black Man and the White Woman" which reads more (so far) as an apology for why wanting to be white is seeking purity and culture (the same assumption held in the prior chapter, but was cast as quite negative, while in this chapter the experience of wanting to be the superior is treated more sympathetically).

I can't tell if I'm rougher on it since there's racial things I'm struggling to reconcile my white ass with, or if the gender stuff is problematic enough to get my panties in a bunch about. Probably little of one hand, little of the other.

I'm almost completely cut off from the blog-o-sphere by now. Occasionally I'll catch up on a blog here or there, but I've not read regularly for ages. I'm hung up a bit on public radio now, but lately I've felt overwhelmed by the giganticness of "the world sucks" and the littleness of "I can do something about it". I spend a lot of time making my avatar in Second Life look pretty, and roleplaying, and occasionally snarling about white girls playing black characters who state in character that they find braids exotic.

Exotic, I tell you.

And if I hear one more person wax rhapsodic about how we're in a post racial society, I think I might lose my temper. No, ladies and gentlemen, a black president in the US does NOT make us post-bloody-racial!

On a side note, W. Kamau Bell is AWESOME (check him out, seriously, he is hysterical) and Dr. Who remains awesome despite portraying the Universe as Fsking white (oldschool Dr. Who - Dr. #4 - not the new stuff I've not been keeping up with).

Strange Fruit

Billie Holiday singing.

The phrase 'strange fruit' keeps echoing in my head. Somewhere there is a poem, about the 'strange fruit' now rotting behind bars and growing in prison yards. I can't find it, yet. It taunts me.

More and more I am beginning to understand the rage at blithe racism. At least with 'strange fruit' you wouldn't get your hopes up. Now, with prison owners feeding off the blood of thousands of young men (and an increasing crop of young women), the 'strange fruit' have moved literally and figuratively underground.

Unthinking Eurocentrism is an excellent book, but not an easy read.

I need to go through at some point and see all the movies it references. The ones not aimed at whites interest me the most, to be honest. I'd like to see a world without 'me' in it. Perhaps there I can find a new 'me'.

The Police and Trans Women of Color

Lisa, of Questioning Transphobia (an excellent site everyone should read regularly) writes about the latest expression of privilege on the "colorblind" internets: White Cis Gay Men who use threats of the police against Trans Women of Color who express anger.

Later, apparently on Twitter (now make an ass of yourself 100 times faster!) a comment was made comparing Lyssa's angry words, since appologized for, to the shootings at Virginia Tech. Understandably, this was a little (for little read A WHOLE LOT) upsetting for people who were there.

I'd say, 'check your privilege,' but I don't think they'd listen.

A Few Hours: Feminism is in Choices

Through various events, mostly my fault, I was in imminent threat of losing my electricity if I didn't pay in person at one of the many centeres which accepted those payments. Like any good, middle class, privileged white person, I googled the locations and identified one that was near my home. I didn't really know the area, so I and my map and my car drove there and parked on the street after only getting lost eight or nine times.

As I get out of the car, I'm preoccupied by wondering if I'll be able to pay the bill without actually having the bill because I forgot to grab it that morning. it's with only part of my attention that I notice the clumps of people along the street. Male people, in groups, with what I saw as cold, unfriendly eyes. Male, Latino people.

I feel my body tighten and my face take on the expressionless mask of "I'm above this all" which is my fear response. Behind he mask, my mind is moving at a thousand miles a moment. I know I'm on a street in broad daylight. I know cross-race violence is more unusual, that I'd be more at risk in a group of white men. I try to convince my liberal, leftist mind that it's not really race, it's gender, which somehow seems more justifiable. I walk diagonally across the parkinglot, not willing to let my fear force me into a longer route, and step in between the unmoving group of men. My heart is echoing in my ears.

I saw the store form the street, but I can't find it now. I walk a block down, past more clumps of Latino men, feeling my back knot up and feeling increasingly unsafe and vulnerable. I just recovered from a back injury; any sharp, physical movements are likely to render me unable to move from the pain. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch the Latino men watch me. I can't deny anymore that as much as it is gender based fear, ti is also racial, and I feel shame. I'm a disgrace to progressives everywhere, and yet I still feel fear - fear that I know is irrational and prejudiced.

I turn back, moving further toward the road to see the signs of the stores. My desination is in the back of a barber shop. A young girl, also Latina, is hanging around the door, and I feel the mask crack as she catches my eye and I smile at her. She smiles back. I walk past, into a room filled with Latino men, who watch me with what I perceive to be hostile eyes. I walk to the back, caught between not wanting ot meet eyes of anyone as a form of self-protection and knowing I need to catch somoene's eye to try to pay this damn electric bill. I'm beginning to wish I was anywhere else but here, and consider tyring to find another, whiter, area to pay my bill in.

I need to come back with the actual bill.

I begin to make my stiff-backed, hard-faced way back to my car, shame and fear both swirling inside of me.

And I'm angry, now. Angry at myself, and at the world, and at my own cowardice. My own fear which keeps me from treating these clumps of men as people, not as threats. Angry at my impulse to find another, more white, place to do something basic.

And I think about my role in the drama, the single, well dressed, white woman invading a Latin@ neighborhood with her stiff, proud face. And i try to put myself in their place, watching this obvious outsider invade out of necessity.

I drive home, thinking. I get my bill, thinking. I refuse to find another spot; cowardice and racism will not win. I drive back to the same place an dpark around the corner.

A pair of latina women are speaking to each other. I see them glance at me, see a hardness, feel my own mask and fear and shame rise, then remind myself - here I am the interloper. Here I am the outsider. I feel my face soften a little.

I walk back to the store. I feel the fear rise again, and I remind myself of the reality - I have the privilege here. I am of the dominant culture. I cannot know what they are thinking, but I should not assume the worst.

The group of Latino men are still on the corner, but somehow they look different to me now. I can't quantify it, but my fear is less. I smile again at the girl; she has two brothers with her now. They are acting as children do, all boredom and energy.

I walk through the barber shop. I pay my bill. My cashier communicates with me in gestures. I smile and try to speak clearly as well as use gestures to communicate. I pay my bill.

I leave the store, still an outsider, still privileged, now awareness of my own internalized, insidious, and horrible racism.

Humorless

One of the long time accusations toward feminists, at least white ones, were that we are humorless. Even a comedian I love a great deal, George Carlin, made a joke along this line - I believe the 'joke' was, 'Imagine Elmer Fudd Raping Porky Pig.'

Two things make that joke more funny than other rape humor, which is to say not much. One, the figures are not only fictional but cartoons. Two is that it is rape of a man by another man, which carries an additional "they deserve" it weight than even rape of a woman by a man.

"You deserved it" is the implicit threat of rape. Usually the "deserved it" is justified by a presumed poor decision on the part of the rape victim/survivor. Just about anything is a poor decision by this rubric: wearing too much clothing or too little; going out or living along; letting a male friend sleep over; being someplace in public; having male friends; touching male friends. You'll note the entire previous list presumes the victim/survivor is female, implicitly if nor explicitly. That is largely because, for all intents and purposes, only one form of male on male rape is acknowledged - prison rape - and there the "you deserved it" is being a criminal. Or, rather, being prosecuted by a court of law, which is not necessarily the same as being a criminal. Male on male rape outside of prison is barely ever mentioned, and female on male rape is considered a joke by a distressingly large number of people.

I'm not touching racial or sexual orientation issues very much; a lot of this is because I'm not sure of them, but I will note in passing that there is history of accusations of rape being used as a "you deserved it" for murdering black men, which is unacceptable, and that men of color are disproportionately sentenced to more and longer terms in prison, which opens them up for a higher likelihood of rape. I'm sure there are many more intersections, such as appearance and fat biases, and caregiver rape of their clients which is under-reported and also often used as a punch line.

Recently, someone I find quite funny and appealing and even a bit hott made reference to a longstanding joke about a "rape van" with pokemons and lolipops in the glove compartment. It stems off of a recent addiction of mine, Repo: the Genetic Opera (if you like dark, love music, and can handle a bit of gore, this movie may be for you), specifically something said by TZ, one of the two authors and an actor in the movie, about the presumed target audience and their presumed attitude toward women (I htink; I can't find anything on the original instance). I haven't yet decided, outside of this post, how I'm going to address the comment by TZ (if at all), and I didn't have the ovaries to talk to FAH (funny, appealing, hott) person who made the reference, but someone else did and he rapidly dropped it without any sign of defensiveness, which should be normal but is phenomenal.

At least some of my hesitancy was that old insult about humorless feminists. I consider myself rather funny and witty, and I had accepted wholesale that being a humorless feminist was a horrible, awful thing to be, but I've changed my mind.

I'm ok being humorless in some things.

Rape isn't funny.

Jokes about rape carry an implicit "you deserve it" which is unacceptable to anyone, male of female, because at the end of the day the "you" includes all of us.

Shades of Hopelessness

I often don’t know what to say.

Many have spoken in the past about the importance of speaking out, even when you’re unsure; sometimes I think my own fear of speaking out imperfectly – of getting something wrong – is an artifact of my white liberal consciousness, and sometimes I think it’s tiredness after a day of swimming from fractured consciousness to fractured consciousness, and sometimes I think it’s an excuse to do nothing, eat ice cream, and enjoy a life where my neighbors (or people across the planet) aren’t dropping bombs and my apartment is standing, with running water and electricity and internet.

A lot of the time, I’m just not sure.

And perhaps the desire for surety itself is an artifact of other ways of thinking which impedes what’s in my mind, and perhaps the desire for surety is one learned from the histories I’ve read of sure people who could exist with clean consciousnesses.

My consciousness these days seems shaded with smoke and blood. Obscured by suffering that isn’t mine, and often suffering that is at a distance.

There is suffering in Gaza, and Iraq, and Afghanistan, and the suffering of one place doesn’t make the suffering of the others any less, but it does make it harder to hold in hands I can wash clean at the sink, standing in a living room unmarked by ash and bombs and death.

There is a part of me which wants forgiveness for this laziness; this privilege, but another part which knows the desire for forgiveness is centering myself, centering whiteness and liberality again, in a world that needs a different center.

I am not an organizer, or a letter writer. I’m lucky if I can remember to contact the people I love regularly, or do my dishes, or take care of my cat. These days anything beyond tracking my clients and being with them seems impossibly hard, including writing papers and reading books. There are days I don’t want to get out of bed – it all seems to futile, and I won’t manage anything anyway, so just sleep, just rest, just laze in comfort and forget those who don’t have beds, whose families are torn, whose lives are so far from mine.

Selfish and horrible, right?

Some days, all I have is the hope that if I hold faith that a way out is possible, a shining thread will appear by the Minotaur to show me the way out.

But last time, Theseus left Ariadne abandoned on an island.

The underpinnings of these stories are diseased.

And then I remember shocked comments about “How can people live like that.” They have no choice. If the US were attacked tomorrow, and where I live was pinned in, and I survived, I would try to keep going, too – now because of a “how” but simply because the alternative is even worse.

The US continues to take unilateral action in Pakistan, a sovereign state, in a continuation of policies which began by attacking Afghanistan and Iraq, both also sovereign states. The rational is defense of our people.

The underpinnings of these stories are diseased.