AUDIO: Independence Day, 2008

On this, the fourth day of July, in the year 2008, we find cause to celebrate our vices:

We dedicate this day to that declaration which decreed the end of our subjugation to tyranny and the beginning of our addiction to war; we revel in all 232 glorious years, and it is in commemoration that we unleash facsimiles of rockets and missiles and mushroom clouds into the air above us, to the hushed awe of the crowds huddled in the summer darkness, shivering with explosive thrill at the seductive whisper of our collective power.

We dedicate this day to our addiction to the flesh and bone and blood of our Mother; to $4 a gallon gasoline from the luxurious view afforded us from the windows of our SUVs; to the labor and sweat and crushed souls of those who toil for our convenience across oceans and earth, where, if we cannot easily see, no knowledge of modern slavery will penetrate to trouble our serene national psyche.

We dedicate this day to our Berlin border wall, to the 1,952 mile stretch of desperation and despair, to blind nationalism and xenophobia, because no one born outside these arbitrary borders, truly, can be completely human; we relish our corporate addiction to cheap labor and union busting, to salmonella-laced produce and lead-based toys and always low prices delivered with a brilliant yellow grin.

We dedicate this day to warrantless wiretapping with bipartisan immunity from prosecution, to spying on citizens in the event they should commit thought crimes and rebel; we dedicate this day to American fascism, to Big Brother government with none of the perks, to the Red Scare, to Black Lists and Do Not Fly; we dedicate this day to busting down doors, shoot first ask questions later.

We dedicate this day to the spiritual vacuum left in the wake of postmodernism, pining for the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus and Satan; we gnash our teeth and wail and cry because there is nothing left to believe in except, perhaps, that through war and waste and endless consumption, through wage slavery and sex trafficking and industrial abuse, through blind faith that all is well and a refusal to acknowledge the possibility that anything can and should be different, we will find salvation and we will not rot in Hell.

On this day we find cause to celebrate the occasion of our dependence, and we call ourselves free.

Entered my art in a scholarship contest. 50% of the judging is based on votes from the public. Let’s just say I really need to find some additional funding for school in the fall or I might have to defer, so a few 9s or 10s would mean the world to me. Please visit my profile and rate all of my pictures.

Voting ends June 15th. Thanks to everyone who has voted for me so far!

PS: If you know anyone who would be willing to do a total stranger/friend of a friend a favor, pass it on!

I received a comment on an old post that I wanted to address. Forgive me, I am going to preface this post with a personal anecdote.

When the guything boyfriend and I had our first date, almost a year ago, as we sat together in the car winding through the mountains of Boulder, the conversation turned to feminism (having already meandered through interesting personal anecdotes and basic personal information, and long deep conversation about politics and history which I think left us both impressed), and he said, casually, “You know I don’t expect you to shave your legs or armpits or anything for me.” I told him he’d better not, because any guy who gave a shit about my body hair was obviously not boyfriend material. And then he, completely unbidden and with no input or prodding from me, unleashed a tirade about women internalizing patriarchal beauty standards (oh yes, he used the word “patriarchy” and everything), his male/white privilege, and the wage gap, and that basically sealed the deal for me. Maybe not love at first sight, but definitely lust at first angry highly-controversial leftist political rant. This man was a keeper.

Do I think men can be feminists? Certainly. I wouldn’t be in a relationship with one if I didn’t think he was. This is, yes, personal prejudice, but I also don’t think we’d have been able to stand each other otherwise. I also don’t usually (ever) date guys, and this is one of the big reasons why — men can be feminists, but most aren’t.

The question at hand is, however, an issue of contention among feminists and I understand arguments to the contrary. And I am pretty fucking skeptical of a lot of liberal men who claim to be sympathetic to women’s issues who really aren’t… (An aside: I find it hilarious how consistently readers continue to miss the point of that post, summarized completely in the last sentence. Seriously, folks.) But…in my experience, the only men willing to call themselves “feminists” or “feminist allies” in the first place are usually extremely feminist, whatever political disagreements we may have — otherwise they would not want to use a label which does them no favors socially. Personal experience with some men very committed to and passionate about gender equality and women’s rights has taught me that, yes, men can indeed be feminists, rare though they might be.

There is a radical feminist viewpoint which believes that all men are active agents of a monolithic patriarchy — which, in essence, is true, but this is a gross oversimplification of the structures of oppression and I think an unforgiving understanding of the nature of privilege. I think it is unfair to act as if all men are consciously complicit in and benefit directly from the system. It is wrong to state that gender oppression is the root of all evil, and assume that oppression due to race or sexual orientation or class or physical ability are not also of equal significance and importance. It is true that all men must essentially be sexist — but only because all women have also internalized sexism, because everyone of every race has internalized racism, etc, etc. The only difference is that those with privilege suffer less from these toxic attitudes than do those to whom the hateful stereotypes and beliefs apply. I do not think the fact that not all men are malicious agents of The Patriarchy needs to be disclaimed at every turn and I hesitate to point it out, as it seems both obvious and also derailing from the real point and the big picture. The fact that oppression and privilege are significantly more complex than the radical feminist viewpoint, however, bears discussion.
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So Ampersand (subtle subliminal message: read his comic :D) directed me to Dar: A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary and I think I may be in love. I immediately had to sit down and read the whole thing. And here I thought I was the only dyke dating a guy for some reason (and straight guys be warned, for it is not as glamorous as it may sound), who keeps bothering friends and family by buzzing my hair, thinks it would be awesome to have a penis and has lots of orgasms from weird random things. (Most of those links aren’t safe for work/school/the public library, BTW.)

It’s all over the news today that the number of American soldiers dead in Iraq has reached 4,000 after five years. This is certainly tragic in the sense that any needless deaths in violent conflict are tragic.

Forgive me, however, please, for being more concerned with the 80,000 civilian deaths which have occurred thus far in the war. Funny how we don’t like to talk about that on the news.

You and I are living in the swollen heart of dead America. We are in the cold clammy hands, the blank stare fixed on every television screen and wondering which box office hit might be our new Messiah; we are every muscle, aching, stiff with rigor mortis, unwilling to relax our failing grip knowing that we are dead even if we are not consciously aware of that reality, seeing speaking hearing no evil and disregarding any indication that we are not Superman and baseball and apple pie and that this is not our world to plunder any longer. We are the hard cock yearning to subjugate and conquer because otherwise we might be the willing split between thighs spread wide, or worse, unwilling and unavoidably vulnerable. We are sweat and blood and excrement accumulated and not yet dry, layers on layers of fresh toil and pain and fear caked on with each passing year to hide the reeking evidence the past has left behind…beneath it all, America does not even wear skin on its skeleton to shield its delicate and vital machinations from exposure: this emperor, like all others to come before and after him, has no clothes, no function, no blood beating through his veins and thus no humanity, no soul.

You and I are mired, here, within this lumbering monster of a nation, denying we are staring out its eyes into the sky from the bed of an unfinished grave.

The specifics of geography and location do not exactly matter; this is a systemic condition and the same stores-in-a-box and burger joints can be found, now, in Anytown, USA., can be observed with a clinical distance and dispassion in any number of cancerous microcosms working their destruction across the face of the whole. But you and I are here, in the midst of a quiet unassuming Denver suburb whose name means Town of Thorns on an empty and desolate Sunday afternoon.

This place is slow poison; nothing can flourish here, nothing can grow, this is not like the city where there is color or the country where there is life. This is not skyscrapers miming Babel and homeless vets huddled in blankets of newspaper, and it is not rolling prairie or purple mountains’ majesty. This is not art galleries and it is not a stroll so breathtaking in altitude our mutually asthmatic selves must pause for air as we stare down at the city below. This is not pleasure in pain, it is not happiness, and it is not life.

Check out Submission and Coffee! They discuss my post I am not damaged: the intersection of queer and kinky on the latest episode, #126.

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AUDIO: A Call To Arms

This is the Great American Scream, this is the sound of one million disenchanted voices waking from their fairytale slumber to see the devastation laid before them, the havoc and destruction wrought upon us by our fathers and our mothers and their fathers and mothers and each successive preceding generation — back to ancient times when the first woman alive plucked knowledge of right and wrong from the Kabalistic concept they call the Tree of Life, shortly before Manifest Destiny was decreed and Eden was paved over to make way for a Wal*Mart Superstore and a McDonalds, so no one knew what right or wrong was anymore, ever, anyhow.

This is the agony of separation, imaginary friends behind bars like the common thought criminals they are and the real kind virtually imaginary; this is the sound of grandma’s funeral or a dead pet or unrequited love combusting in the ashes of the WTC towers like your own private Hiroshima and that of an entire generation; this is the girl crying out beneath her lover’s expert hands as he manipulates her, contorts her with pleasure and anguish in ways she did not think possible until now; this is the pulse, the breath, the heartbeat, the collective sob, the universal gasp for air underwater; this is the voice that is better seen and not heard; this is ecstasy in anarchy, order in chaos and chaos in order; this is the What Would Jesus Do and Follow the Rules collapsing beneath the colossal weight of their own bullshit; this is a rape victim sentenced to 200 lashes for speaking up about it, this is 70¢ to a man’s dollar, this is fuck-me heels and miniskirts and lipstick and upraised arms with hairy pits brandishing smoldering bras in defiance of the natural order; this is the raised middle finger, the turned back, the Fuck You mingled with ecstatic cries of Fuck Me; this is suicide bombers and Jessica Lynch and Tim McVeigh and Malcolm X; this is the vacant lot of the American Dream, and it has been condemned, boarded up, demolished; this is We Don’t Need No Education remixed by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold; this is Yeats’ dream of WWIII slouching towards Iraq to be born; this is the thousand eyes of Moloch screaming without mouths, without words, and they are our eyes; this is the children of privilege being marched down the assembly line, realizing that the guillotine gleaming red with the life of every AIDs-infected starving Ethiopian child is still sharp and polished and hungry; this is a divorced single mother whose blood could stop cold in her veins and who could not pay a doctor to keep her from dying, while Congress issues orders to keep a woman who cannot drink or chew or swallow or move with no brain activity alive just in case, while a man’s teeth rot inside his face because nobody cares what happens to you if you don’t have a perfect white Hollywood smile, you might as well crawl into a ditch if you can’t find room at the inn or the shelter, you might as well die.
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