1. Why is liking to cook a gendered behavior and why is it unfeminist to take care of my house? Because, really, these are practical life skills and something that needs to be done by someone. This isn’t abstract theory. I’d be lying if I claimed there was no pressure whatsoever to take care of my house, but when I’m the only one with the free time to do it and I don’t actually mind, and if my siblings do their chores also and the boys do as much if not more housework than the girls, what exactly is the problem? Christ. You’d think wanting to eat decent home-cooked food or not wanting the kitchen to be buried in dirty dishes was some sort of crime against feminism. (And I’m not even supportive of so-called “choice feminism”!) I mean…really, people, it’s just something that needs to be taken care of, preferably by someone who doesn’t mind taking care of it.

Now when everyone else refuses to clean the litter box, that’s what pisses me off. Which reminds me…ugh.

2. Why are there no decent candidates running for…well, anything? The gubernatorial election in Colorado is specifically what I’m talking about. So there’s the Republican candidate, terrifying in most every way, and the Democrat who, true to the party line, is less evil and doesn’t seem to actually stand for anything without scowling about how he disapproves personally first (see: stance on abortion), and then there’s the Libertarian who is great on women’s issues and gay rights but is, well, Libertarian, and thus whom I cannot vote for in good conscience as the commie I am.

Okay, that’s oversimplifying. Her stance on immigration terrifies me, as does the general Libertarian philosophy regarding social welfare programs, which she definitely supports. Which brings me to the big point: all the candidates have fairly inadequate platforms regarding immigration. This is a big deal to me. I get to hear people using “immigration” as a thinly-veiled pretense for their racism every single day. “Immigration” as an excuse to ignore the complex race and class issues that are actually at the core of the matter. “Immigration” as a front to promote hate speech against not only undocumented workers, but pretty much anyone who vaguely resembles what they imagine lurks south of the border (where everything is Mexico), which includes anyone with darker skin, a Spanish-sounding last name, and/or a funny accent — because if you’re not white you must be “illegal”. No other explanation for it.

And I’m sick to death of this. Beauprez’s the worst; his website from what I’ve seen (and I didn’t linger very long) seems to be fairly tame compared to the propaganda his campaign’s been plastering all over Denver. It’s all xenophobic, reactionary hate speech. That’s all it is. At least Ritter’s only committed to enforcing the laws we already have, punishing companies who hire undocumented workers and the like, which I can support from a legal perspective even if it isn’t particularly useful or humane. (My personal opinions and proposed solutions? Maybe another time.)

I hate feeling these split loyalties. I can’t find a candidate who seems anywhere near decent on all the issues personally important to me: gay rights, women’s rights, immigration, and a general commitment to helping people in poverty you know, not starve or die from preventable illnesses and that kind of thing. The one that’s okay on the first two is terrible on the others. The one that’s more moderate on the last two is not that great on the first two. There was recently a post on the feminist community on LiveJournal urging people to vote for Winkler because she’s unabashedly pro-choice…without realizing that, for some of us affected by other issues, that’s not enough on its own. When I hear people talking about how “Mexicans are less than human” (actual quote) and about what they want to do to “those Hispanics”, you know what? Whether I, the queer Latina girl who mostly doesn’t like guys and isn’t sexually active, can get an abortion is the lesser threat to my immediate wellbeing.

3. If you have to preface a statement with “I’m not racist…” whatever comes out of your mouth next is almost certainly racist, and if not, it’s at the least going to be ignorant, poorly thought-out, problematic, or insensitive. Ditto for “I’m not sexist”, “I’m not homophobic”, etc. I know it’s been said before but it bears repeating.

3. a) If you feel the need to include someone’s race when talking about them in a situation where you would never think of attaching a racial slur if they were white, you’re racist. Sorry. (Or not. Yeah, not sorry.)

3. b) If you don’t want to be around me because you feel “judged” because I think you’re racist, maybe you shouldn’t say racist things. No, I’m not going to feel bad for leveling judgement after you just said something horribly offensive about the ethnic group I happen to, um, belong to. Especially if by “horribly offensive” I’m just trying to be polite about the fact that you just told me you want to commit what would legally constitute a hate crime.

4. Okay, I think I feel better until something else comes to mind.

5. Oh yeah, and I’m going to see the Dalai Lama speak tomorrow and that’s going to be really, really awesome. This isn’t an annoyance…unless maybe we start talking about how I feel about Tibet. I guess that’s another discussion for another time.

Okay, I normally avoid jumping on the feminist blogosphere drama bandwagon, but seriously. It’s so “nice” to know that no matter what kind of work you’ve done, how intelligent you are, or how well-respected, if you are female, you are not allowed to be taken seriously or treated with any amount of dignity:

You know, I was psyched to be invited to this lunch and was feeling pretty honored. But then things like this remind me that no matter what I do or accomplish, because I’m a young woman all I’m good for is fodder for tacky intern jokes and comments that I don’t “represent feminist values” because of the way I posed in a picture.

Pretty much. Unfortunately, it’s worse than that. If you’re an attractive young feminist you can’t be taken seriously because you’re attractive and young. But if you aren’t attractive you also can’t be taken seriously since you’re an ugly man-hating feminist, and you must only care about women’s rights because you’re not pretty and assumed to be insecure. If you’re not pretty enough you’ll get flack for not being good eyecandy no matter how thought-provoking your ideas, and if you’re too pretty you must not have anything valuable to say since we all know intelligent women are never attractive. And so on and so on.

I think someone must really have to hate women in order to think like that. I do.

PS: Since it’s my area of concern at the moment, I think I’ll post some stuff about feminism and fiction writing soon, okay?

Yeah, I’m still alive. Bitch | Lab left me a comment yesterday and I thought maybe I ought to update and let you all know how I’m doing. What’s amazing to me is I still get new comments on old posts…well, constantly. Several a week. Cool.

First off, I adopted a new ferret from the Denver Dumb Friends League because my remaining one was so lonely after Susie died, to the point of getting sick from stress. They get along well and Heidi seems to be doing much better. So. That’s Kuma. Yeah, he’s pretty cute. He plays fetch and climbs up tall things which he then cannot get down from (also, I think he’s afraid of heights, which begs the question…WHY?), and also he is extremely snuggly. So. Yay.

I’ve been writing a lot, honestly. I finished a magical realism/fantasy/weird novella (although it still needs revision. a lot of it.), and sent off a short science fiction story to a major magazine in hopes of publication the other day. I helped teach a writing workshop for young authors. I’ve been spending a lot of my free time here, posting thought-provoking discussions of body hair on fantasy worlds. So, you know, the same topics as here, really. I’m co-co-editing (two co-editors, so…yeah, nevermind) a book of fantasy and science fiction writing by young authors, which is pretty much taking up most of my time, but I’ll be done soon. I wrote some articles on SF writing/worldbuilding and basic proofreading for Creative Writing Solutions, which might get posted eventually someday if Tony ever gets around to it. *cough* Considering that the RPG module I created to add on to their creative writing cirriculum still isn’t available after over a year, that might be awhile.
If you want to keep up with what I’ve been doing, there’s always the LiveJournal. (If I know you and you want to read my fiction rough drafts there, let me know and I’ll friend you. Feminist SF!) I’ve posted some of my poetry and such at Perpetually Untitled, having come to the conclusion once again (as I do sometimes before deciding I want to try submitting to literary journals again) that my poetry is unpublishable in the current writing market, which is a shame because I think some of it is fairly decent. I blame editors’ bad taste and the fact that most published writing has been declining in intelligence for awhile now for no damn good reason. SF is possibly, but maybe not, an exception. Anyway, I’m gonna be posting my writing articles there, too.

Oh, and, hey, if y’all want to help me out, mind enlightening me as to what you think would make a good, feminist fantasy novel aimed at teen girls? Are there certain things you notice in YA fiction that you like/hate? Something you’d like to see in more YA writing? Is there some random object/character/plot point you’d like me to somehow incoporate into my plot, just for fun?

So just an update: a week ago, I had to make the decision to have Susie put to sleep. She was getting really, really sick, and the medicine didn’t seem to be effectively treating her symptoms (and treating her symptoms, trying to keep her blood sugar under control, was the only thing we could do — she was too sick to have the tumor/s removed). This has been really difficult for me and I don’t really feel like working on this site much right now. (Which is not to say I haven’t been working on anything — I’ve been painting a lot.)

I know some people think that the death of a pet isn’t a huge deal, and would find it strange that for me it’s so devastating. I think those people are stupid. But anyway, I think you can all at least somewhat understand where I’m coming from here.

Not only am I still pretty sad about this (doing better than I was), I also have to find a way to earn some money to pay my dad back for vet bills because of all this. (In addition to website costs which I already needed to earn some money for.) I’m not terribly motivated but the motivation I can muster is definitely going towards potentially paying work. It’s not too bad; I’ve gotten a few leads and I think I can get some artwork in a couple of galleries, I think at least some of it will sell, although if I didn’t really need some money, I probably would never pursue the idea of selling art professionally. I might be house-sitting for a little extra cash and I’ve got a huge editing job that should help a little. But that’s my focus for now and all I have energy for.

It’s not that if I really felt inspired I couldn’t find the time for this blog, but…I just really can’t do it right now. I haven’t been able to for weeks now but it’s just been getting worse and worse and circumstances haven’t improved. I can’t keep up with other blogs either, so I’ve got no idea what’s been going down in most of feminist blog-land for the past month. It’s not just burnout — but that’s big part of it.

Anyway, there you have it. Keep me on your RSS feeds or whatever; I know I’ll be back around eventually. I get too pissed off about the world and too worked up over theory for it to be any other way. Keep an eye out: even if I’m not writing here I’ll post information about any other projects I work on.

So, if you don’t know, my ferret who’s been ill for the last month (causing me not to post much for my guest period on Alas–sorry, Amp!) was just diagnosed with insulinoma, which is basically a form of pancreatic cancer that affects insulin production. She’s been put on medication which seems to be helping a lot, though I’m not sure how long she’ll live. Sometimes ferrets can live for years with cancer and be perfectly happy and sometimes it can get really bad or invade other parts of the body and kill them pretty fast. It all depends. For now, she seems to be doing better and seems to be happy. I know it will probably get worse and eventually her condition will probably deteriorate, but for the moment, it’s under control.

Anyway, that’s what’s up and that’s what’s keeping me stressed out and busy right now.

Have a picture:

That’s it, baby. Tell that smiley face who’s boss!

Still dealing with a sick animal who suddenly seems to be getting sicker. Occasionally sick siblings. Avoiding water gun fights (okay, that was the highlight of last week, actually :). Store moving, leaving my job. The best laid plans of mice and men and other various mammals gone awry. Trying to find a vet that’s open on a Sunday. In other words: stressed out, worried, occasionally breaking down.

It’s not really all bad, though. I’m okay, really. I’m alive, I’ll be fine. I just really don’t feel like posting anything lately, even when I have ideas for what to write about. When I do feel like writing it’s my fiction, which is really my top priority anyway. Just dropping a line so you all know I’m still around and I plan to keep posting, I just don’t know when.

I need to upload a bunch of art onto the main site; maybe I’ll just do a post about that for lack of better content. Besides, my pictures are pretty.

On AlterNet: Hating the Hate Mail. It’s all good, so you should just go read it now. But if you want to know what it’s about, an excerpt:

The psychic impact of hate mail is something female writers don’t often talk about in fear of appearing vulnerable in the male world of opinion writing. I believe women can take the heat of opinion journalism as well as any man; the problem is that the heat we take and the reasons why are very different.

Maureen Dowd of The New York Times discussed reactions to female opinion in her column last year. “While a man writing a column taking on the powerful may be seen as authoritative, a woman doing the same thing may be seen as castrating.” She went on to say she called Alan Dundes, a renowned folklorist, to ask about it. “Women are supposed to take it, not dish it out,” Dundes told her.

Any woman who writes or blogs on political (not even necessarily feminist!) issues can tell you all about this. I doubt men are as often targeted with threats of violence just for being men. Hate mail I’ve gotten when presumed to be male has been bad too, but not nearly on the same level as I get when I make my sex clear.

I think this relates to the article on women being disproportionately harassed online. It’s the same attitude, coming from the same place. Just being a woman is enough to make you an appropriate victim (after all, how many female rape victims are presumed to be “asking for it” simply for wearing certain clothes or being friendly, things which are simultaneously promoted as somehow intrinsically”feminine”?), but if you’re a woman and you dare to have an opinion… WELL.

Sorry I haven’t been posting more this month, all. Hopefully I’m getting quality over quantity, though. A word of advice: don’t get a pet who, in the event they should feel sick, won’t eat on their own. Especially if this pet needs to eat every few of hours throughout the day in order to live. Just saying. (She’s fine now, though. Amp can post pictures of his kids, I can post pictures of my ferret. Isn’t she cute?)

I’ve talked about this before, but it bears repeating. Basically, in the past few days on the Queer Rage community on LiveJournal, someone was banned for using the word “bitch” in a post as a synonym for “complain”…but only after being asked not to use that word, refusing, AND getting into an argument insisting that using the word isn’t misogynistic. (The post is locked, BTW.) It’s clearly stated in the rules of the forum that certain language is not permitted, and that those who use it will be asked to rephrase posts or not use it in the future, as the community is designed to be a safe space. This happens all the time in the LJ *_rage communities, because apparently people don’t actually read the rules before joining and then think people are being mean to them. I don’t really understand why anyone acts so surprised about this.

Anyway, that’s just the background for my post. See, after that, then someone else had to make a “goodbye cruel forum” post which has since been deleted (so I can’t link it), basically arguing that “it’s not words that matter, but the intent.” I see this defensive reaction a lot when people are asked to please examine their use of language and perhaps not use words which others find offensive.

While I agree that, sometimes, people unintentionally use language that can be offensive, once they have been informed that others find it hurtful, they should at least apologize. So “gay” and “lame” and “crazy” are often used as derogatory terms by people who don’t realize the history behind those words. (Especially “lame”.) Fine. Then, yes, intent is more important, and sometimes the language used does not accurately reflect it — but more often, intent is demonstrated through the word choice of the individual.

No matter what people claim their intent is, that doesn’t make it so. After all, people lie. People can say they intend whatever they like, but people prove themselves through their actions. Their actions are the only thing others have to judge their intent by. Speaking is an action. Word choice is, therefore, especially in a text-based medium, the most important indicator we have to judge a person by. If someone truly cares about the rights of oppressed groups to be treated with respect, they would understand why it’s important not to use words referring to those groups in a negative sense, even if they’re not actually referring to members of those groups.

I’ll just repeat what I said in the ensuing discussion:

I guess what it comes down to, for me, is, “Okay, so you don’t think use of this word is a big deal. If it’s not such a big deal, why do you have to defend it so hard? If it’s not a big deal, why is it so hard to just…not say it?” And I think that insistence on using words one has been informed are hurtful, just because it’s slightly easier than thinking for a couple of seconds before the words come out of your mouth, really reflects exactly the attitude that any anti-oppression work is trying to fight. “Allies” who refuse to change their use of language because it’s slightly inconvenient don’t really get a lot of respect from me. If it’s the intent that matters, not the words used (as one poster said), then…uh…I’d appreciate it if the intent was a conscious effort to be respectful expressed through language.

And that’s where I really stand when it comes to this. I have to seriously question anyone who claims to be an ally who is willing to use gender-based, anti-gay, racist, ablist, etc., slurs. (Not in a reclaimatory sense, of course. Totally different discussion.) It shows to me that these people say they care about the issues, but they aren’t willing to actually change the simplest, most basic aspects of their behavior in order to subtly combat the attitudes they claim to oppose. So many protest the idea of changing their word choice on the premise that it’s such a little thing that it shouldn’t matter. Were that true, it wouldn’t be so hard to refrain from saying certain things in company you don’t wish to alienate whom you know will not appreciate it.

The other thing which usually comes up when issues some deem “trivial” come up, is that someone has to invariably try to imply that anyone who cares about it obviously doesn’t have anything better or more important to do with their time. I find that usually the opposite is true. The more you care about anti-oppression work, the easier it becomes to see all manifestations of it, even the small ones. Does anyone honestly think that just because I want to discuss word choice, or issues which may seem trivial but which do actually impact people on an everyday, practical level (like the posts about grooming and makeup), that I somehow don’t care about bigger issues, like the war? Worse, it’s argued that paying attention to small manifestations of an oppressive society somehow detract from the larger struggle — it sets up a false dichotomy, an opposition which isn’t even there.

Fighting against little things is important, too. There needs to be a balance.

One of my ferrets is sick, and since I took her in to the vet today (she crapped all over the counter. way to go, Susie.) she’s on antibiotics, but I have to keep a close eye on her to make sure she eats and doesn’t get dehydrated, so much of my free time is being spent nursing an ill ferret.

This is why I’ve been too busy to keep up with comment threads at all on Alas, and probably will be for the next few days. (Because when you have a sick ferret to deal with on top of normal housework and cooking dinner and work and everything… Oh, yes, and she has a weird sleeping schedule so I’m not sleeping enough either, but hopefully that’ll be a little better now without the added stress about worrying if she’s got some horrible disease or not. It’s just like having a long furry baby!)

I just wanted to let everyone know that I’m going to be guest-blogging at Alas, a blog throughout the month of May. Of course, I’ll be cross-posting back here too.