I’m relieved to learn that Colorado has good legal protection for breastfeeding mothers. A mother here can do it anywhere “she has a right to be”, meaning not only public places, but stores, restaurants, work, etc. Good for Colorado.
If you live in the US and want to know what the laws are where you live, check this page out.
So I found a link to Reluctant Lactivist via Alas today. Again this stupid thing about breasts and people’s stupid related hang-ups. But anyway, the story is basically thus:
On April 4th I sat down on a bench at the Gateway Fred Meyer to nurse my two-month-old son. It was about five o’clock on a busy Tuesday afternoon. The last place I wanted to be nursing was in that spot as it was noisy and distracting, but at the time, I couldn’t think of better place to attend to my baby’s needs. I also had my rather flighty three-year-old daughter with me, so wandering around the store to find a quieter spot would’ve left me instead chasing a toddler while carrying a bawling baby. Anyway, I’ve always made a point of nursing in public as part of my personal breastfeeding promotion campaign. So, I sat there, struggling to get my crying son to nurse while keeping an eye on my toddler in a busy store. Like many women living in a culture that has so thoroughly sexualized them, baring my breasts in public is not something I relish. At the same time, attending to my baby’s needs is more important to me that maintaining my modesty. So, I do my best to keep myself covered and assume that people will be polite enough not to stare. It’s not easy, though, to be discreet when nursing an upset two-month-old.
After nursing for five minutes or so, my son seemed comfortable enough for us to start shopping. As I reached into my bag to get my sling, Troy Hardig, Gateway Store Director, approached me. He had a weird look on his face and as I was trying to figure out why he was apporaching me when he opens with, “Oh, good. You’re getting a blanket.” He told me there had been complaints about my nursing, not that he minded, but that some people were offended. I was so stunned I couldn’t think of what to say, except to remind him that Oregon law protects a mother’s right to nurse in public. I felt absolutely humiliated. His comments left me feeling like I’d been doing something lewd. Unbelievably, when I spoke with Todd Heinle, Fred Meyers East Portland/SW Wash Operations Supervisor, a couple days later about the incident, he supported the store manager’s claim that I should have been more “discreet” and that three people had complained. I’m outraged that Fred Meyer’s corporate policy supports legitimizing the complaints of those offended by mothers who nurse in public, rather than the legally protected right of mothers who are trying to take care of their children. How can the offended sensibilities of even a dozen customers trump the legitimate needs of a baby?
I think she’s doing well for herself, getting the story out there on the news and all. Read more of her blog if you want to know more details. Good for her. I think this woman is totally awesome.
It’s the comments ignorant people are making about this that I want to talk about. People’s attitudes on breastfeeding pretty much enrage me. I’m not a mother but I want to be at some point and when I do have babies, of course I plan to breastfeed them (barring any unforeseen circumstances, since there are the occasional babies that won’t or can’t breastfeed).
Read the rest of this entry »
President Bush, rebutting lawmakers advocating a law-and-order approach to immigration, said Monday that those who are calling for massive deportation of the estimated 11 million foreigners living illegally in the United States are not being realistic.
“Massive deportation of the people here is not going to work,” Bush said as a Congress divided over immigration returned from a two-week recess. “It’s just not going to work.”
…it is so bizarre to agree with him on something. (Although I know he’s only pandering to the corporations which benefit from cheap migrant labor, but when corporate interests happen to be the voice of logic…creepy.)
But it’s NOT realistic, and it WON’T solve the problem.
I’ll say it again: the issue most people are upset about are that Americans can’t compete with Mexicans for jobs, because the migrant workers aren’t able to organize to demand better wages and are willing to settle for basically nothing. The problem isn’t the desperate people looking for work: it’s corporate exploitation. Target the actual people responsible. Enforce the laws already on the books criminalizing the hiring of illegal workers. That’ll be much more effective in preventing people from coming than just deporting people.
I think no new legislation is even necessary. We already have all the laws we need on the books, don’t we? The problem is they aren’t being enforced because politicians will say one thing and do another (big surprise) — the people they supposedly “represent” demand stricter immigration laws, so they’ll give lip service to it…but the laws we already have aren’t being enforced because the people who fund both major parties prefer it that way.
Blogging against heteronormativity!
From Wikipedia:
Heteronormativity is a term used in the discussion of sexual behavior, gender, and society, primarily within the fields of queer theory and gender theory. It is used to describe (and frequently to criticize) the manner in which many social institutions and social policies are seen to reinforce certain beliefs.
These include the belief that human beings fall into two distinct and complementary categories, male and female; that sexual and marital relations are normal only when between two people of different genders; and that each gender has certain natural roles in life. Thus, physical sex, gender identity, and gender roles should in any given person align to either all-male or all-female norms, and heterosexuality is considered to be the only normal sexual orientation. The norms this term describes or criticizes might be overt, covert, or implied. Those who identify and criticize heteronormativity say that it distorts discourse by stigmatizing alternative concepts of both sexuality and gender and makes certain types of self-expression more difficult.
I have an anecdote to share: my ten-year-old brother, sweet, perceptive child that he is, one day remarked as we were watching commercials on TV, “Why do they only show straight couples?” (Sort of like the time he asked why human beings are called “man” and “mankind” since we’re not just made of men — yes, my siblings are pretty awesome.)
“That’s called heterocentrism,” I replied. “Being straight is all you see because it’s what everyone is assumed to be.”
“That’s stupid,” he said.
I agree.
Another anecdote: in my fiction, several of my central characters in my ongoing projects are queer. I don’t know how many times I’ve had parents/older authority figures/whoever ask me why “all my stories are gay”.
My stories aren’t all gay. Some of my stories don’t have any queer characters at all, some only have a few. The ones in which queer characters are the main ones are of course going to have a greater emphasis on and representation of queers — because we tend to like to make friends with at least some others who share our concerns and experiences. I think I overall have a 50-50 split in my representation of straight vs. gay characters. Perhaps not even that; my trans characters in my novel are technically straight girls, GLBT or not.
People ask me why I’m into slash and why I “choose to write gay love stories”.
Why do straight people choose to write about straight characters?
Everything I read is about straight people. I have been known to be subject to the occasional bout of heterosexual attraction; I think male/female couples are perfectly good writing material. (Even better than straight ones, though, are queer male/female couples. Just because you’re in a “straight” partnership doesn’t mean the individuals participating aren’t queer. Bi and pansexuals do exist. Sometimes, pretty fucking rarely unless they’re in the closet, homosexuals date people of the opposite sex, even — though I think lesbians seem to be more flexible on this point. Heteronormative assumptions strike again!)
Science fiction isn’t queer enough. It’s probably more queer than a lot of other genres barring stuff specifically aimed at a queer market. Speculative fiction that isn’t just science-based tends to be slightly more fabulous…but, still…
I write what I want to read. No one else is going to, so I should, right?
But it’s not “normal”. It’s not the “default”. Writing a book about a gay man suddenly makes me “weird”.
Why?
I am one of those people with the ability to read gay subtext into absolutely anything. (If queer media were prevalent enough, to be fair, I’d probably read straight subtext into that, too.) Half the movies I watch end up with me proclaiming how I think a character is gay or has a thing for another character of the same sex. I’ve read whole books secretly hoping a same-sex couple hooks up in the end, conveniently trying to ignore or downplay any heterosexual entanglements of which I am not fond. I played Kingdom Hearts and its sequel because of my desperate belief that Sora and Riku were meant to be with each other even though the love triangle actually involves their mutual crushes on the girl character, whom I despise (or, well, I did until the end of KH2, but that’s another story) and try to pretend doesn’t exist.
If the possibility isn’t explicitly precluded by the plot, or if I don’t like the male/female couples in a story, I’ll read gay subtext into everything I see. No one except maybe my sister and my friend Megan can really spot the covert homosexuality in just about anything the way that I can.
People think I’m nuts.
Perhaps, perhaps not, but I’ll tell you what this means, what it says about me — it’s a coping strategy. It’s my way of coping with the fact that most of the mainstream movies I watch don’t include people like me or my friends, except as a sexless footnote or a freakish joke. I do watch a lot of queer film and read a lot of queer lit, but not always, not exclusively — how could I, and why? It’s just so frustrating to know that, in most mainstream media, I’m either an abnormal anomaly or my existence isn’t even considered as a possibility. I think that has been getting better, but it’s still pretty bad.
The media’s probably the place where I feel most represented, as a matter of fact, because there are movies that at least acknowledge that gay people exist (in however clumsy or offensive a fashion). It’s the day to day experience of life that exasperates me. Unless I’m in the company of other queers, most people seem to be utterly ignorant about even the possibility of homosexuality, and if they think it exists, they just have to tell me their bizarre, totally offensive, and utterly flawed theories about it. They don’t even acknowledge people who aren’t monosexual.
And these theories on why people become gay? They are flawed because they conform to heteronormative theories of personality because, of course, most straight people can’t think outside of that box — which is understandable (hell, I don’t understand straight people, I can’t think in the heteronormative box), but annoying as all hell. For example:
Lesbians become what they are because they either have been abused by men or can’t find a man who wants them or are in some other way embittered. They just need to find the right one.
Weird oedipal shit about men being raised by women so they identify with the feminine gender role, not having proper masculine role models, or vice versa with queer women, blah blah blah, I’m sure you all know it.
Or, one that I’ve heard which is especially offensive because it acknowledges the validity of the trans and intersex experiences at the expense of the rest of us: that homosexuals are really just physically or mentally the opposite gender they think they are and once they realize that they can become perfectly happy heterosexual members of society. (The woman my dad is seeing explained this theory to him, which she believes, along with the conviction that bisexuality isn’t real; he told her never to say anything like that in my presence, ever, and then tried to explain to her why that’s totally wrong. Sigh. But at least my family members are cool.)
So I guess all I’m trying to say is, I’m not abnormal or unnatural, I’m just me, and I do exist. I kind of like to construct a world around me which reflects that, through my writing, my art, and through my interpretations or critiques of what other people have to say. Apparently, many straight people in my life can’t understand why I do this.
It’s their loss, I suppose. They’re the ones limited by that worldview, and unless I buy into it or let them upset me (too much), it doesn’t have to affect me.
But — ARGH! It’s so frustrating to be treated like a freak or have my experiences invalidated. How many guys hit on a girl even more after learning she identifies as lesbian because to them that means she’s into hot bisexual threesomes? How totally offensive is that?
And why does it matter? If I don’t allow people to safely assume I’m straight, and neither to put me in a narrow box of whatever they believe the alternative is, THEY. FLIP. OUT.
It’s terrifying to them. It’s a personal affront!
Whatever.
I’d rather be queer.
Where I live, race and immigration issues seem much more pressing than anything else at the moment. So I apologize for my lack of things strictly related to feminism, because this is more immediately important to me.
I have been talking to people at work and apparently, Colorado police are randomly checking people on the highway near Denver to make sure they have proper documentation, etc. If they aren’t citizens or legal immigrants they’re being arrested. (I can’t find a news article to verify this, since supposedly the local media doesn’t want to talk about it. But since I know several different people who witnessed this I assume it’s in some way true.) Add this to the fact that the federal government has taken an interest in holding legally accountable the companies which hire undocumented workers, and all I can do is wonder why, if this is such a pressing issue, law enforcement has waited so long to actually do anything about it. I suspect pressure from the companies who benefit from cheap labor has kept the government complacent on the issue.
What’s going to happen to these people who have been arrested in Colorado? Allegedly, they’ll be held at the expense of the federal government until the state can convince it to ship them back over the border. Their property will be seized and auctioned off. They’ll be charged for forging documents and whatever else, and subject to harsher punishments if they come back — ever. They may no longer have a legal avenue to try to immigrate, either. And that’s harsh, but it isn’t my biggest worry. What concerns me most here is that they might not be given access to lawyers, etc., because the police see the issue as: they are not US citizens and not protected by the Bill of Rights. I think this is wrong. I also think it’s important to make it easier for these people to come to the US legally, or to work with the people who are already here rather than simply send them away.
I’m ambivalent even as I’m getting flashes of fascism. While this approach to make sure people are legally in the US may seem draconian and kind of scary, I understand the point and I think, all other concerns aside, that this is a perfectly rational legal approach. (Rational does not mean humane. Rational does not mean morally justifiable. Rational does not mean right.) I don’t think it will actually do anything to solve the problem, but I certainly think enforcing the law and just sending illegal immigrants home is preferable to the “Minuteman” approach where it’s somehow acceptable to shoot random people on sight to protect the purity of our Aryan nation or something. I think any attempt to resolve this issue through law enforcement is really the way to go — and to hear about it being handled from that perspective rather than the alternative is, sadly, a relief. From a legal perspective, I understand why the government doesn’t want undocumented people just wandering around, especially with fears of terrorism. (Is this attitude justified? I don’t know; I think it’s complicated. But I understand the argument.)
The legal issues surrounding illegal immigration which really concern me are thus:
Identity theft and fraud. When people are forced to immigrate without the proper legal channels some of them end up forging IDs and stealing social security numbers in order to work. Identity theft is a huge issue right now, and this makes it even worse. Some of these people are illegally buying houses and cars using other people’s information and while, yes, they’re certainly entitled to and require these things, they can’t do so at the expense of other people. I think this needs to be treated just as it would be if the people committing the crime were US citizens. Obviously, it needs to be addressed. There are already laws for this. We should enforce those instead of making more useless xenophobic legislation that doesn’t deal with the real issues.
Then there’s the issue of tax fraud — which some companies who knowingly hire undocumented workers are committing. (I don’t know that this is the majority of cases, but it does happen. More information and some numbers at The Tax Foundation Blog.) I believe that everyone deserves the work, has the right to work, but I understand why the government would not be pleased with this. Again, if the government cares about this issue, the law should to be enforced. For some reason, all of the sudden, that’s happening. Great. Law enforcement gets around to doing its job. I hear that the executives of these companies are being taken to court, which is good. I think that’s where the responsibility lies, not with the workers, but with upper management. Corporate corruption is an issue which extends even beyond this, but this is one part of it.
I think any excuse the government gives on why it needs to be able to constantly track everyone in the US at all times is total bull — so there goes any legal argument about strict documentation. But these others are, I think, legitimate concerns from a practical standpoint. These are also concerns which are not limited to immigrants — these are legal issues which need to be dealt with anyway, but sometimes the circumstances which make people desperate to enter this country also make them desperate enough to commit related crimes. These are the only legal issues which I can think of which are actually a justifiable concern instead of simply stereotyping or being blatantly xenophobic.
Of course, it’s technically illegal for them to be here and technically illegal to hire them, those who cry, “BUT THEY BROKE THE LAW!” are quick to remind us. Sometimes laws are good. Some laws protect our safety or property. Just because something is illegal doesn’t mean by default that it’s good or bad. Laws are in themselves meaningless. So, yes, it’s breaking the law. Unless there’s other laws being broken which are more serious crimes I don’t understand why this law should be such a big deal.
The problem is that…well, the people making the legislation to deal with the issue aren’t thinking about it this way. They’re appealing instead to xenophobic nationalism. More than that, these are people who casually talk about murder and massive human rights violations as if they’re perfectly acceptable.
Entering the country illegally is a crime, but it is not a death sentence.
Should people be executed trespassing? Would anyone suggest that as an appropriate punishment for someone born in this country?
People should not be allowed to die in the desert. They should not be gunned down at the border. I can’t believe that some politicians approve of these ideas as if they’re good ones. (Well, I actually can believe it, and that’s where I despair.)
They shouldn’t be employed for below minimum wage slave labor, either.
We need to look at the real issues: why are people so desperate that they’re willing to risk death to get here, with only shitty jobs and a whole lot of resentment from the locals as their reward? This isn’t a decision anyone makes lightly. These people are desperate, and what they find here may help a little, but it doesn’t really improve that.
I think the only way to solve this, actually fix the problems at the root of the matter, is to allow more people to immigrate through the proper legal channels. How much would the US economy improve if we allowed more people to enter the country legally in order to work at safe, decently-paying jobs? What the employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers are doing is bad for everyone concerned. It’s bad for the US economy, the US government, and the Mexican workers.
But it’s so much easier to be reactionary. It’s so much easier to appeal to nationalism or racial prejudice than to actually look at these people as people and try to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing, and plan accordingly. It’s going to happen anyway, and if we make it impossible, people will still die trying. What can we do to make it safe, economically beneficial, and legal?
Blogging to raise awareness about sexual violence.
If you’re not angry you’re not paying attention.
How many of you know someone who’s been the victim of sexual violence? How many of you know someone who’s been raped?
How many of you think you don’t know anyone who’s a survivor? I’ll bet you do. I’ll bet you don’t even know it.
People always seem surprised that I can be so passionate, so angry. I’ve never been raped, right? So why should I care? The statement is baffling, the sentiment downright insulting. Why shouldn’t I care? I’m angry that people live in poverty and starve to death even though I do not. I’m angry about a lot of things I have never personally experienced and hope to keep that way. What kind of person can simply not care when others are in pain simply because it does not affect them personally? (Don’t answer that. I’m not asking because I don’t know. I’d really rather not think about it.)
If you’re not angry you probably just don’t realize why you should be.
I have friends who have been raped, you know. Too many. I know girls raped by strange men in dark alleys, by their friends, by their fathers. Some of these women are my family. I know a man who was sexually abused by his mother throughout his childhood.
Mostly the blame sits on them, not their rapists.
How does a six-year-old girl “ask for it”? What sort of sick mind says a girl systematically abused for years by her father “led him on” or “made him do it”? That may horrify any thinking compassionate person, but that’s what this girl’s family said when she told my sister and my dad called the police. They lied and said they talked to the police, who wouldn’t investigate, so that she’d drop it. When we did contact law enforcement, suddenly, she was the bad one, she’d “broken up the family” and it was all her fault.
Why would a fourteen-year-old lie about being raped at night outside her home? Oh, right, to get attention. Making it all up so that she can be the center of attention, when…it’s so very obvious there’s something wrong. Her mother wonders why she’s suicidal, self-destructive, depressed? Oh, right, that’s for attention too. There couldn’t be a real problem there, now could there?
These are only some of the stories I know, and some of them I’m merely aware of.
It’s not that people I know have been hurt that makes me angry. It’s just that gives it a face. That makes it even more important. I was angry before, but knowing what’s happened to people I care about makes it worse.
How can anyone not care about violence? How can anyone think that the only reason to care is if one is a bitter victim? Must I know someone who’s been murdered to think that killing someone is horrible?
If you’re not angry you probably don’t realize just how pervasive sexual violence is in the world, or how little is being done to prevent and punish it.
Open the paper on any given day; you’ll see a story about rape or child pornography or human trafficking or sexual slavery or something. It’s everywhere. And no one ever talks about the real problem: that sexual violence is wrong. That seems obvious, tautological — so obvious, in fact, that it’s totally ignored and obvious no longer.
Instead the discussion shifts to what people should do to avoid it, when…no one should have to go out of their way to avoid what other people shouldn’t be doing. Idealistic, perhaps, but, legally, true. That’s why we have laws. Certainly, if someone is walking alone in a dangerous part of town and gets mugged, perhaps they had a lapse in judgment — but it’s not their fault, it was the fault of the person who took advantage of that and did something that was wrong. Our hypothetical victim here is not the one who broke the law, and the person who did ought to be punished whether or not the victim put themselves into a position of weakness.
I have a confession to make: I did this too, when my ex reported that she was sexually assaulted. I thought she had put herself into a dangerous situation which she should have been smart enough to avoid, and to some extent I still feel that way, but… it’s not her fault that he committed a crime. That doesn’t excuse what he did to her. I don’t care if she was high or if she should have been smarter than to be in a room alone with some creepy older guy, or if I was a little pissed that she didn’t listen when I told her not to do stupid shit because she’d get hurt; he shouldn’t have touched her. No one can ever be held responsible for the violent acts perpetrated by others, no matter what they did or didn’t do, “should” or “should not” have done. There are circumstances under which, perhaps, sexual violence could have been prevented, but it’s not the victim’s fault if it happened. It is never less wrong if the victim’s foresight and actions weren’t perfect or didn’t fit into some flawless formula. Questioning the thought process or actions of the victim only leads to shifting responsibility from where it actually belongs: the one who committed the crime.
Why aren’t more people angry? How can people honestly not be angry about the fact that sexually violent acts happen, every minute of every day, all over the world?
Why isn’t everybody outraged?
I know the answers to these questions, of course, and a critique of rape culture and the idea of women as a sex class will have to wait for another day. But I think that most people aren’t so malicious as those answers would imply. I think most people really…don’t notice, don’t see the problem, don’t understand why rape is wrong and what it does to people. It’s a crime so horrific that people want to pretend it doesn’t happen.
I said before if you’re not angry you’re not paying attention, and sometimes…it’s not that people are willfully ignoring things. It’s that they honestly don’t know. There’s such a stigma against the victims of sex crimes that many people never engage in honest dialogue about the subject. People repeat what they’re told without ever thinking about it.
So we need to talk. We need to repeat what people still haven’t heard, again and again until victim’s voices can be heard and not judged.
Are you listening?
Are you learning?
Are you paying attention?
Are you angry yet?
(Warning: rhetorical questions ahead!)
How can one honestly and not at all disingenuously say, “color doesn’t matter; we’re all just people” in the same breath as they then proceed to make a horribly racist statement or three?
Do people honestly not think about what they’re saying…like, ever? Do these people even listen to their own blatant hypocrisy as they proceed to spew privilege everywhere?
I mean, damn, obviously you do think race matters — namely, that you’re entitled to all kinds of special benefits that other people aren’t because you’re white. Don’t pretend you feel otherwise. Racism is only bad when its side-effects or attempts to eradicate it negatively impact you, huh? Otherwise the benefits you get are clearly only because of your naturally superior personality…
Please stop being racist.
Just stop.
I know you think my skin’s just dark enough to look like I tan well, but I’m not white, and I don’t think it’s hard to figure that out. My name, for one, should be a fucking clue. Do you people honestly think that just because my skin’s not too brown for you that means I’ll happily eat up your racist bullshit? Because that’s how it seems to be. Hell knows I have no real idea what’s going on in your heads, because ya’ll seem to be stupid, even those of you who should know better.
I’m not from Mexico. I was born in Utah. I don’t speak Spanish. My grandfather was from Guatemala, that country in Central America that apparently doesn’t exist, because everything south of Texas is fucking Mexico to you.
But my name is a Spanish one. My hair and skin are brown. I have the short stature and figure of a Latin American mestizo, because that’s what I am and where I come from. I’m not tall and thin like an anglo girl; I have the short, thick bones and wide hips of the Mayan women my grandfather came from on one side, the other being the European, yes, European despite their language, conquistadores who gave me my name.
And, despite being raised in the white Mormon cultural vacuum that is Utah, I’m aware of it. You want to know why?
You are the people who can’t remember my last name, unable to spell it correctly even when I tell you how to your damn face, substituting my surname for whatever generic Spanish name comes to mind at the time.
You are the people who put me in the lowest academic classes when I transferred to school in Colorado, apparently assuming from my name that I was one of the many ESL students without even bothering to look at my fucking transcript, because if you had you would have seen that I was supposed to be in the advanced classes. And then you did it to my little sister when she went to middle school, too — making the same mistake two years in a row, which took a total of months of everyone’s life to resolve, again and again and again.
You are the people who assume I don’t speak English, or that I’m uneducated or incapable of being educated, that I’m less than human and unworthy of respect because my last name didn’t come from English or German or whatever other European languages seem more acceptable to you. And if I’m not subhuman I’m a demographic, oh, glee.
And you know what?
You may think that you’re only talking about undocumented Mexican workers when you say racist shit to my face, but you’re the same people who think that we’re all one homogenous group. Hell, you could at least pretend to be concerned about illegal immigration in general, since Mexico isn’t the only place that people come from — so when you only talk about “those people” with brown skin from further South than makes you comfortable, it’s pretty obvious you don’t actually care about the immigration issue. It’s just an excuse, because you’re fucking racist.
When you talk about those “Hispanics” taking all the jobs, it’s pretty fucking obvious this isn’t about immigration — it’s about language and culture and surnames and that which allows you to identify them without knowing anything more, skin. It’s about skin. Because you assume that an entire continent and a half is all Mexico, all immigrants, all illegal. Even those of us who are born here, even those who have lived here for generations longer than your families.
So when you say all these things, it seems pretty clear to me…that you’re talking about me, and forgive me if I find that pretty fucking offensive. Forgive me if that makes me defensive.
When you say that Mexicans are subhuman (and, literally, some of you have actually said this to my fucking face), you’re hurting me. When you talk about how “those people” are taking over and “ruining” “your” country, you’re hurting me. When you say that illegal immigrants deserve no legal rights or protections whatsoever, by extension, you include anyone Latino, you include anyone with a Spanish last name, even those of us here legally, even those of us born here, even those of us with skin pale enough to please you — because you don’t know us. You don’t know who we are, or how or why we’re here, and you all use rudimentary and, frankly, stupid measures to identify us.
So what reaction do you think you’re going to get from me? Why does it surprise you when my feelings are hurt and when it makes me angry? I’m not from Mexico and I’m a US citizen and I don’t speak Spanish — but I’m still going to be fucking personally offended when you say that shit, because people see my name and they automatically lump me into those categories. All. The. Damn. Time. I don’t care if you don’t realize it. I don’t care if you don’t think that about me, personally. I don’t care if I’m white enough that it doesn’t register in your egocentric anglo mind that my feelings as a mutt are going to be hurt. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care.
This is still who I am, and I’m acutely aware of it. It’s your privilege not to have to think. It’s your privilege to plead ignorance, or to claim that’s not what you meant, or that you’re not including me because I’m somehow special and worthy of being elevated to “human” status.
America is a nation of mutts and immigrants and their children. You white people don’t get off talking about how those immigrants are ruining “your” country, because it wasn’t “yours” until you took it, and I think the ruining thing was pretty much all your fault to begin with. (And I’ve got colonial invaders from all over the world in my past, Spanish America, British India and Africa, and who knows where else — but I kind of accept that my ancestors were responsible for that and that I benefit from it.) Your families all came here from somewhere else, and apparently that’s all fine and dandy for you because your names aren’t Spanish and you don’t have indigenous Latin American blood to darken your skin. Why is it different for us? Why don’t we get the benefit of the doubt in the land of opportunity?
I’m not a good little queer, who shuts up and doesn’t trouble you with my existence. I’m not a complacent little bitch who puts up and puts out and takes being treated as anything less than a man would be. I’m not a baby-making machine or a sex object, and I’m not a heterosexual man’s pornographic bisexual fantasy. Given that, I’m not going to be a nice little mestizo, a quiet little mutt, a properly hidden and assimilated Latina to make myself palatable to you, either.
Love, Julie
PS: And you know what else?
My grandmother on the other side was a Mexican immigrant who never became a US citizen. And. She was Anglo. She was from Utah Mormons, from English nobility and German ancestry, totally, completely, thoroughly white. You see, in order for Utah to become a state they had to outlaw polygamy, so my great-great-grandfather and his three or four wives packed up and moved to a Mormon colony in Chihuahua where it was still against the law but no one cared, and they stayed there for generations until they ran out of nice anglo boys to marry their daughters off to.
I’ll bet that blows your narrow little mind. This is what happens when you define a whole country, a whole continent, a plethora of cultures and languages and racial backgrounds, as one homogenous being.
This is what happens: things don’t fit. Reality doesn’t conform to expectation.
Do you like irony as much as I do?
All right, a serious post.
My family has never really emphasized Easter. That’s the thing with growing up Mormon: Easter is not a big thing in the Church. Mormons claim to be Christian, but they only occasionally ever talk about Jesus. The Bible is a sort of secondary document to the Book of Mormon and Jesus has almost nothing to do with anything.
So it wasn’t until I was about 16 or so that I realized Easter is a huge deal for most Christian denominations, being as how the entire symbolism of the ordeal is central to any real Christian faith. Easter could go by without me even noticing. I’d hardly even thought about the symbolic value because when we were Mormon, no one ever really emphasized it. We gave Jesus the briefest of lip-service and then went back to talking about our religious plans for world domination and our self-inflicted persecution complex and that kind of thing. (Okay, most religions, to be fair, have both those characteristics.) I think the Mormon Church is probably the only “Christian” church where you can go for weeks at a time without anybody mentioning anything about Christ.
But this isn’t about the Mormon Church.
So…Easter. Until a few years ago, I’d never even really thought about it. I had a dim atheistic awareness that it was important for some reason. It’s only been recently that I’ve actually understood who Jesus was (allegedly), what he said, and why, because, growing up, even though we supposedly followed him, there was a suspicious lack of any information about the subject.
People may sometimes think I have a problem with Christians, but that’s not entirely true. If the only thing that one had to do to call oneself a Christian was to accept and live by Jesus’ peaceful and generally unobjectionable central philosophy, I’d be proud to be one. Can I argue with the message that everyone deserves to be treated well despite real or imagined flaws, that everyone is deserving of dignity and kindness, that violence is bad, that charity is good, that compassion, even for one’s enemies, is a virtue? Obviously not. But I’ve met very, very few “Christians” who I think have any real claim to the label.
The problem is that Christianity, as it stands, brings a lot of baggage which, far as I can tell, has absolutely nothing to do with the central figure of the religion. I strongly feel that Jesus probably had very little to say about Heaven or God, embellished or altered accounts of his teachings in the New Testament aside — but to be properly Christian, in most denominations, one must adhere to a very specific and narrow definition of God, when, like Buddhism, I don’t really think that the principles of kindness and responsibility for one’s actions and basic human decency really need to be rooted in the concept of a symbolic being. Why does anyone have to have a condescending paternalistic figure to articulate what seems like a generally good idea? (Why, if I were a cynic, I’d feel that the only reason to add the concept of Yahweh into anything would be to validate the control of manipulative hierarchical organizations over society.)
But I think Easter is an important holiday. I think it is important to remember.
This message of peace and acceptance and love…it was so radical, at the time, that a man was killed for it. Simply for saying that everyone should be treated justly, that rich men are not any better than poor men, men better than women, anyone intrinsically better than anyone else. That we are not our parents, and that the sins of our parents should not reflect upon us. That we should love everyone as ourselves, even our enemies, and extend to them all basic human courtesy and recognize that it is not our place to judge. That we are always in control of our own actions, and that those actions should never hurt anyone else, even if that person has hurt us. I think it is, at its heart, a very powerful and empowering philosophy about personal responsibility and respect. And this message was so frightening to the people in power that they had to have him killed.
And yet, two thousand years later, nothing changes. Men are still killed for this very basic and, as I said, fundamentally unobjectionable message. All Martin Luther King, Jr. did was follow the basic tenants of his faith, simply adapting the messages of his prophet to modern-day America, and he died for it, too.
I think there’s something very wrong with the world that this is still the case, and I have the feeling that Christ, if he could or can see what has become of his words, would disapprove. More than disapprove, really, though I can’t think of a word that describes exactly how awful it is that his message has been twisted into one of hate, war, and oppression. Everything he spoke against, his followers have done in his name. Not all of his followers, obviously, but far, far too many.
So, Christian or not, I hope we all can recognize Easter for what it really is, and not for what it has become.
I think I’ve got most of the even remotely interesting posts back up and in the right places (yanno, every post that isn’t just me posting about how I haven’t posted anything interesting and the like), so permalinks should work again. Uh…I just lost all the comments on them since I didn’t have any backups. Sorry, since there was some interesting discussion on some of them.
I’ll post something actually interesting maybe later.
For now, I guess the only things I have to say I’ve been putting into chapter 12 of Beauty. Are you all up for a rough-draft novel excerpt that might be thought-provoking, in which non-gender-normative characters of various species discuss love and polyamory, not-so-subtle racial/cultural allegories, and the patriarchy?
Yeah, it’s a big chunk of just dialogue and setting/backstory, and it’s totally all over the place. I swear stuff actually happens in the book besides the characters all sounding pompous and intellectual, but I can’t post any of that out of context, really, without lots of explanation.
