:D

I would like to tell the world that I am happy by googling "heart love" and blogging the first image I find pretty.

Where I've Been Map

Red is lived in.
Blue is been to.
Green is want to go.
I'm still working on my cities map - you can't really expect me to name all the cities I visited!
Also, my AAA US road map is coming in the mail, I want to mark every road I've traveled, every town I've visited.

What is sex?

I've been asking this question, and variations of it, a lot lately. Ever since getting involved in everything queer, my entire concept of sex and sexuality has completely been turned upside down, and I'm not even entirely sure how to put it back in order. What is sex? What is virginity? What is intimacy? And how is all of this impacted by patriarchy, heteronormativity, cisnormativity, ableism, and various other forms of oppressive thought?

Up until recently, I considered sex to be penal-vaginal intercourse (PVI), lesbian sex to be cunnilingus, and gay sex to be penal-anal intercourse. That seems to be the standard construction of sexuality in today's society. This construction, I believe, is very problematic in many ways, and, thus, I've begun to deconstruct it and examine it deeper.

I definitely think everyone's personal definition of sex should be different. However, even if this is true, there's still going to be a concept of sex as defined by society, and the whole PVI=sex thing is highly problematic. As a society, it's time to get over the systems of oppression that impact our personal sexualities, especially as we grow up, discovering ourselves, our bodies, love, and pleasure, all within a greater social context. Perhaps the best definition of sex is none at all, and it's time that we abandon the question all together.

On the personal level, I'm still trying to figure out what sex is to me. In general, I seem to be content with the idea that sex is any sort of genital contact: genital-genital, mouth-genital, hand-genital, toy-genital, etc. However, there really is a lot more to this...

• Is orgasm and/or sexual pleasure important? What about all those times I engaged in sex and got no sexual pleasure out of it, but was satisfied in other ways? What about sex where not all the partners are receiving stimulation? What if none of the partners orgasm?
• Is physical contact an important part of sex? What about people who can reach orgasm and/or get sexual pleasure without physical stimulus?
• How about physical stimulus that does not include the genitals? What about people who can reach orgasm with their nipples or other parts of their body? What about disabled people who do not have sensation in their genitals or are incapable of using their genitals for sex?
• Is intimacy an integral part of sex? What is intimacy? Are one-night stands intimate?
  
• Is it sex if it's not consensual? Is rape really sex?
• Is masturbation sex?  I refuse to make a value judgment on masturbation, and I hate the construction of sex as greater than masturbation. Still, I am uncertain if masturbation is a type of sex or not sex at all.
• Is it sex of your partners have a different definition of sex than you? Are you having sex if the people you're with don't think it's sex?
• What's the relationship between sex and virginity? Can you have sex and still be a virgin? Can you lose your virginity without having sex? Are there multiple virginities?  (Is the concept of virginity an inherently sexist ideal?)

So tell me, dear friends. What is sex to you?

Clothes

I had a dream the other day.  I looked in the mirror, and I saw the person that I am not.  So I ran: I ran to a different place, a different city, all while taking off my clothes.  Then, I looked in a different mirror, and I saw my naked body, the body that I am not.  Once again, I ran to a different place, a different city.  I put on clothes along the way, clothes that I thought would make me beautiful, clothes that fit the person that I am.  Fully dressed, I looked in the mirror (the same mirror my dream started with). Fully dressed, I still saw my body, I saw it on my clothes.  So I ran again, taking my clothes off, hoping that once I remove them, they will no longer lie, that I will just be me.  But, when I reached that second mirror it was just my body in the reflection, and my body wasn't me.  And so I ran, and the dream continued in a loop, a cycle, a trap with no escape.

"….So dirty laundry makes me think of clothes and closets.  Clothes to cover up gendered bodies and closets to hide them in."  -- Masculine Femininities Zine, Issue 3

There's no story to this blog.  No rhyme or reason, no transitions.  What I say next has nothing to do with what I said last.  I've just been thinking about clothes lately.

There was a time in my life when I used to smoke a lot of pot.  Back then, I sometimes asked myself: of the clothes I am wearing, which have I smoked pot in?  Almost every day, without fail, I had smoked in every single item of clothing on my body, down to the undergarments.  How quickly that changed once I stopped smoking!  I still play this game every once in a while, I ask myself: which of  these clothes have I smoked pot in?  It's never every item of clothing.  Most of them are "no"s.  But, almost every time there's at least one "yes", one shoe or shirt or bra that carries the past.  So quickly it changes, so much it remains; the person we are and the person we used to be, reflected, as if on a mirror, on the clothes we wear.

Which of these clothes did I question myself in?  Which did I pause before putting on, wondering what they'll imply about myself, about my identity, about the person that I am and that I am not, the person that I want to be?

Last night, another dream about clothes.  A dream of a time and place where a boy wore a skirt, a beautiful yellow and red tie-dye skirt, and I almost didn't even notice, because it was normal.  I can haz that world?

Precious, and why it struck me as incredibly racist and classist.

Last night, with high expectations, I finally watched Precious; and, oh, was I disappointed. In fact, the film struck me as extremely racist and classist, and it made me very, very angry.

Spoilers follow, though I wouldn't be afraid. You pretty much know what to expect before getting into the film, one of those tales of a difficult life but the possibility of happiness and success.

Precious lives in Harlem with her single mother (played by Mo'Nique, who is such a good actress, that she almost made the movie worth watching). Stereotypes about poor people of color and people on welfare prevail through the entire film. Precious' mother is a monster: all day, she sits in front of her TV, watching game shows, while her daughter cooks her meals. She lives entirely on welfare, lies to the welfare officers, tells her daughter not to bother get an education, because it will never help her along the way. I have no doubt that people like that exist, that families like that are real, and they are awful, but I've heard this story plenty of times. It's the story we hear when we petition for less welfare and create programs like New York's WEP. Where's the story of my mother, who is only a successful doctor today, saving the lives of others, because the help of Washington state's generous welfare program? The story that could help other poor, single, working mothers along the way? Nope, we never hear that story. The only stories we hear are stereotypes.

Racist stereotypes are everywhere, too. Not just the obvious stuff (Precious steals an entire bucked of fried chicken), which actually might be somewhat realistic, but all of Precious' problems are blamed on the black family in which she lives. Her mother throws around insults, calling every white woman a "white bitch". On the internet, I've read several complaints by people insulted by the constant repetition of "white bitch". Not once does the film show that, perhaps, a poor black family is justified in being angry at white people in a white supremacist culture. Instead, the white people (and fair-skinned) middle-class people, in true Freedom Writers fashion, are the heroes, rescuing her from her terrifying family situation. Please, can you tell me a story I haven't heard before?

Worse even than the racist and classist stereotypes is that the movie pretends that the structure allows for success.  Precious goes to an alternative school where a loving teacher who's there because she "loves to teach" leads a class of maybe six kids in a beautiful classroom in a hotel, and gives Precious the one-on-one attention she needs to learn how to read, to dream of a brighter future. How does she get into this program? Through the help of her white principal. Clearly, children with such family circumstances as Precious require better schools than children with better family environments, but they seldom have the opportunity to receive such help. Instead, the environment of public schools in poor communities of color is significantly worse than that of middle-class suburban schools. Only the first five-or-so minutes of the movie take place in a Harlem public school, and, although somewhat rowdy and crowded, it's presented at overall normal. The building looks intact, the teacher tries to teach, it's the kids who just sit around, make noise, and don't do their homework. Those of you reading my blog recently know that I'm absolutely obsessed with Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol. Published in 1991, Kozol goes to New York City public schools during the very time that the film takes place, and gives tear-jerking descriptions of the circumstances in these schools. Precious simply didn't do the truth justice.

I'm still very frustrated. I simply don't know why it's ok for us to hear the same stories over and over again, while ignoring the real problems that are the reason why these stories even happen. Movies like this continue to discourage political and social change that might actually help poor people of color. The typical structure is entirely ignored, while the focus is on special circumstances and individual success stories. I am furious.

Now no one cares.

"Stand up for what you believe in, even if you're standing alone."

 
While stuck in midday traffic on I-25 North (Who knew lunch hour was so crowded? Maybe 1:30 is the new 5:30), my sister mentioned 7th grade. "That's my best year yet," she told me. Seventh grade. I tried to think that far back, but I can barely remember anything. All that crossed my mind was sitting in science class with a boy, joking and laughing, so that our teacher glared at us from the front of the room, telling us to be quiet. I was a lonely child, and he was the first person to ever make me laugh during class, the first lab partner I ever cared about. Three years later, when we were in 10th grade, Jack Payne committed suicide.

"One at a time suicides are revealed."

I feel like we live in a culture of suicide. I see it everywhere. Everyone knows someone who's killed themselves. A colleague of my mother's lit herself on fire in her parent's garage. Railroad tracks passed behind my high school in California. Multiple deaths per year happened on those tracks. There are signs beside them. "There is hope. Call the suicide helpline". Yet people still die. We're all dying, alone in this world, fading way. Maybe Durkheim has a point. Maybe we live in an anomie.

"One at at a time I watched them all forget."

No one cares. I used to say that all the time. I used to sit alone with a blade, dreaming of slitting my throat and bleeding until I am to weak to keep breathing. I felt sad and isolated. Everyone was too engrossed in themselves to notice anyone else; no one cared enough about their friends or acquaintances to even stop them before they kill themselves. I wanted to hug strangers, to tell them, "I love you, you changed my life, how can I help you?" I used to dream of saving the world, of stopping hate, of making the this beautiful place, a place with no more suicide. No once would care. No one stood with me, or believed in me. No one even cared enough to tell me they love me.

"So please don't wake me 'till someone cares, now no one cares."

I still feel this way. There's so much hate everywhere. Racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, sizism, -ism, -ism, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. Stop it, please. It's all I think about anymore. But no one cares. My sister snaps at me, tells me to stop talking about this serious stuff. She tells me she doesn't care. My mother tells me to stop going on about things, an aspie tendency of mine. But this is different! I should be going on and on about it, and you should, too. You think people who don't have good schools to go to have the privilege of not thinking about it, of not talking about it? Why am I standing alone? I shouldn't be. That's why I want to transfer out of CU. I want to go to place where more people care. Where more than "about 100 students" attend an on-campus event for higher education, when every student should have been there. I don't understand how anyone can stand such low diversity: don't you care?

"Will the flood behind me, put out the fire inside me."

If we never care, no one will ever care about us. If we don't save someone's life, no one will save ours. Please, don't wait until it's too late. Care. About someone. About anyone. Ideally, about everyone. Whoever you are: I care about you.

(All quotes but the first are from the song "The Missing Frame" by AFI.)