justice

I'm reading Job for my final tomorrow...

And i'm wondering. At the end, he gets a new house, a new family, twice the wealth, and gains back all that he lost.

Did that guy ever go to sleep ever again? Or did he spend the rest of his days wondering when the other shoe was going to drop and his life went back to hell?

And seriously...what's up with giving him "replacement" children?

I'll write something real for Blogging Against Disablism tomorrow.

-sly

ain't too proud to beg

i was going to write a whole long entry. and then i decided i should sleep instead. i'll write tomorrow or something.

in the meantime, ganked from Shake's Sis.

Dubya has come out as saying that he thinks the national anthem should be sung in English, and that people coming to this country should learn our language.

What about campaign materials? Party websites?

Ain't too proud to beg...you shameless fuck.

-sly

homesick

i don't usually blog my personal life here...or at least i don't plan on it.

but i'm going to make an exception. i just got sent the funniest video on earth, a going away memory tape for a friend. and a bunch of my gang from undergrad all talk about him for a half and hour. and it's just the greatest "you had to be there" humor of all time...in jokes, and gossipy references, and a whole lot of affection shown in a very twisted way.

and it's made me think about the sacrifices and the trade offs i'm making every day. coming here to Yale Div is getting me a good education, and i've met lots of great new friends...

but i've had to leave things, and parts of my life behind.

so i'm counting the days until i can be back for the summer.

-sly

Safe Space

Things are hella busy here...but there are some good stories to report when I get the time.

In the mean time...i wanted to give a shout out to the new thing on the block. Kevin at SlantTruth has opened a board for the lefty/radical blogger types to have safe space.

I've got great hopes for that place, and intend to spending time connecting with my fellow travellers there.

But a quick word of explanation, that might go well with my last entry. Closed community, like anonymity, does not begin as an end unto itself. It's a mirroring of the already present conditions of injustice. It takes a form of the exclusion or dehumanization of the oppression, but subverts their signification.

We don't close our ranks and whisper because we like to be alone. We do it because we're already excluded, and need time, energy and affirmation just to keep going. I don't give up my name because I'm ashamed of what i say. I do it because the way the system works, i have to choose between having a face and having a voice.

I gladly look to a day when I don't need to mark off spaces for their safety. But until then...

-sly

On Being Sly

Catch the pun?

Since I now have my first official Yale readership...I thought it wise to discuss just why I write under psuedonym.

After all, I'm not usually a fan of closets, of any kind. And one of my real beefs with academia is the way that students are encouraged to either can their criticism, or vent it out in anonymous class evaluations after its way too late. It's indirect and nameless criticism that takes the place of open dialouge, honest communication, and when called for, real confrontation.

So. Why am I a Sly Civilian?

I intend to keep this place for some time, perhaps even after I've started teaching. I'd like to have writing here that i can draw on, but not have show up just by googling my name. I'd just lock it away, but i'd much rather have a chance to participate in the larger conversation. If you know me in real life, at least more than in passing, or if you're really resourceful...i should think that one could figure me out. But i'd rather have at least one layer of insulation from the random google of a prof, or in the future...student?

The second is that it does not necessarily follow that what is said here is just left as anonymous ranting. Writing here often gives me the chance to crystalize my thinking, and go into conversations with a better idea of what i want to be said. Just looking at what i've blogged so far...i've made public statements about most of it all.

I'll have to keep thinking about such things, but for now, i remain...

Faithfully yours,

Sly Civilian

The Cock of Justice

Yale Divinity School is the latest institution to install a peace pole in the model of the one at Hiroshima, Japan.

Planting a round, metal pole deep in to the ground, pointing the tip right up to the sky, this monument is designed to remind us of the power that we have to spread the seeds of peace in the fertile ground of this place. In the middle of the concave quad, the pole will stand firmly to remind us of the commitment to peace that is literally right in the middle of school.



Okay…I can’t keep that up anymore. But seriously…we carried around a blued copper phallus around today, placing the Cock of Peace right on the altar, dedicated it as the vessel of our hopes for the future, that will bring lasting harmony. We sang to it, held it up, gathered around to touch its fountain of power, and worshipped at it’s base. And now, it’s going to get cemented in to the ground in the middle of campus, which just so happens to be shaped like a long U.

Uh…

What?

-sly

Queering My Morning

So I’m sitting in bed this morning, wishing that it wasn’t a mug of water on my night stand but something (anything?) stronger so I could actually wake up and face the day.

But this seems like a good time to be against hetero-normativity.

This is private time, behind my doors, a place in my life where few people ever interfere. That is, at least they don’t in a direct and obvious manner. The problem is that a great deal of people have decided they have a stake in who I wake up next to, who smells my morning breath (I’ve got that not so fresh feeling) and what happens in these hours.

Part of the problem is that I honestly don’t know how I want to share this time, what I want to create in the private spaces of my life. Just figuring out what I want to do for lawful employment is tough enough most days. I can say academic with a fair degree of confidence, but I’m still not sure biblical studies is the best choice in the world, and then I get to wondering about the boundaries of disciplines and my head explodes with dorkery.

Will I be with a man? A woman? Someone who doesn’t strictly identify by dualized gender? No idea. None. I like monogamy, at least as a baseline principle, so I’ve got that going. I’m looking for roughly a single person. I tend to be most attracted to people fairly close to my age, give or take a few years (more going up, fewer going down)…so I can safely restrict my musings in that way. But beyond that? It’s vast tracts of cluelessness.

And right now, that’s what makes me queer. What Gilda Radner called delicious ambiguity…

I got asked once, by a well meaning but perhaps confused and certainly drunk friend, how did I in fact know my orientation if I hadn’t had extensive sexual experience to “prove” it. My politics don’t depend on who I sleep with. I don’t become any more compatible to the system if I’m with a woman, or more loyal to the queer community if I’m with a man.

Queer is in my head and heart. It’s in the flutter of my heart when I get a hug from a cute boy. It’s in my musing about that girl who broke my heart. It’s about the pictures I can only see dimly of what my family is going to be.

And it’s in how I have decided that I’m quite alright with that.

That this ambiguity is…delicious.

-sly

and you'll never walk alone

Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart,
And you'll never walk alone.......
You'll never walk alone.

A few days ago, seventy five Methodist ministers outed themselves to congregations, leadership and to the community in writing an open letter of support for their recently defrocked colleague, Rev. Beth Stroud. After years of serving in silence, they have stepped forward and told their denominational family that they will no longer choose between vocation and honesty. They consciously risk losing their own ordinations in her support.

Next week, the Judiciary Committee of the UMC meets, and will be making crucial decisions on how to interpret the bylaws of the church. In the hope of Easter, I pray for these brave ministers, for the committee, and the whole of the Methodist church as they face the truth of a church already divided by homophobia.

And I pray for everyone who has every served the church from the closet, and I pray for a day when no one will have to make that choice. Until…

Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart,
And you'll never walk alone.......
You'll never walk alone.

-sly

patriarchy calling

One of my friends called the other day…very apologetically. She was down on main campus, and needed a ride back up to her apartment. She asked me if I could drive her, so she didn’t have to walk.

She asked me if I minded being woken up at two in the morning.

I mumbled something, and got in my car.

What I wish I’d said is as follows.

Yes. Yes, I mind it terribly. I hate it when the patriarchy calls me at such an ungodly hour and demands my attention. And it is wont to do just such things, for it is neither polite nor (despite many suggestions otherwise) godly. It’s a choice between two evils, and there’s no winning.

I’m protective, and I try to be generous with my time. But I hate the way the patriarchy twists that around and makes it a virtue that is excluded to the class of masculine men, and wants me to think about my friend as an object of protection and not as a takenoshit woman in her very own right. I hate the way it uses racialized imagery to pit us against each other. I hate the way that it makes my acknowledgement of the violence patriarchy produces into a reinforcement of the culture of fear. I hate just about everything about it.

But nobody said there was any purity in the revolution. And I’d rather work on dispelling stereotypes and cultures of fear rather than sleep in only to wake up to bad news. Freedom of movement is crucial, and there can be no compromise about that demand. But I leave it to my friends to make those calls. Whatever they decide, I’ll do my best not to be crabby about driving around at night. Because I don’t mind helping my friends. Not in the least.

But I do blame the patriarchy.

-sly

holding myself to account

I’m having the strangest conversation in my head right now, so I might as well have it here, too.

I’m writing about a pssage in Jeremiah (20:7-8) that has language that seems to evoke images to rape. The prophet says he was duped/enticed/seduced by God, and that God has overcome/overpowered/dominated him with God’s prophetic word. The translation people choose usually depends on their political valence, and I don’t know nearly enough Hebrew to make an intelligent choice of my own. And i certainly don't know if the prophet is over-romanticizing sexual violence with these words, or if he's recording a real and painful history of being assualted.

Since I can’t say anything really very productive with any authority, I’m trying to figure out how to mention this, and at least raise the issue without being insincere, overreaching, or dismissive. Did I mention that my TA tends to be more conservative? So the only two human beings who are likely to ever read this essay are me who already knows what I mean in all my wordless inarticulation…and someone who doesn’t want to see “liberal theory” anyhow.

Am I selling out if I downplay my treatment, or simplify it to something that she’s willing to read? I wonder if I’m underestimating her, or overestimating the importance of anything that I write.

I suppose if I’m going to be a student, I might as well be an overwrought, angsty one…

And I also suppose I should just write whatever makes the most sense, and hope for the best.

-sly

it's a good thing you're family...

It’s a good thing you’re family…

Or else, I’d have to be quite pissed. Managed to get cornered at the Easter dinner last night…and it was my own damn fault. If I’d been more vague about ordination plans, then I probably could have dodged it, but silly me, I went a head and tried to explain things.

“So are you gay?”

That’s usually one of those signs that one has gone too far in a queer affirming conversation. Yet it’s also a little too late to backpedal. I would have been more upset, but I trust my Aunt and I know it’s not going to be gossiped around, but I was unnerved by the timing. So nothing more to do than forge ahead and try to sort things out.

I do my best to explain, and for the sake of simplicity, I don’t bother upsetting gender binaries and just say “bisexual” since that seems to be something she’s heard of before. I wasn’t going to be taking bets on “gender indifferent attraction.” "Omnisexual" got passed over on the basis of it sounds creepy.

It’s a good thing she’s family, and I know, trust, and care about her. Because I’m sure in genuine lack of knowledge, she asked some of the classics of Unfortunate Things To Say. There was an implication that straight women wouldn’t want to marry a “gay” man, and that “could you ever be happy with one person?” and that crap. I dunno, maybe the whole time I was talking about how it was more important to me that my church recognize my marriage than what the state thought…maybe that was a clue about how I felt about monogamy? I can’t be too angry…she is family, and she really didn’t know.

So I try to explain, I try to be patient and all. I use my perennially lame example of how some people like persons of different hair color, but usually settle down with one… I’ve had it pointed out to me that that hair dye is readily available in most drug stores, but I’ve yet to come across a better “so simple it can’t get screwed up or politicized in the wrong way” exemplar. But the problem isn’t just in my poor choice of metaphors. It’s with trying to “explain” myself all in one sitting. Especially while sitting at the kitchen counter at my grandfather’s house.

At any rate, this should be interesting. Coming out and extended family were two concepts I had never thought to bring together. We’ll see how this all goes.

-sly

while the world gently weeps

It’s strange indeed for me to not be able to think of anything to write these past couple days. I’ve been spending my time in vigils, reflection, and a half dozen services…which should give me all that silent freedom to think. And while it’s been deeply rewarding time for me, I’ve got the following to show for it.

Nothing. Well, nothing bloggable.

I think I’m going to be in for a rude shock come Monday…these past few weeks have been pretty wretched as far as news goes. The Duke case, the backlash, anti-immigrant crap, Bill Napoli, sectarian violence in Iraq, more conflict in the Darfur…

Shocked, harrowed, angered and grieved by all of this, it still on some level seemed to match my already Lenten mood. Something makes me doubt all those stories are going to have happy endings by tomorrow.

Liturgically disrupted,

-Sly

Why I Screamed "Finish Him" When Crossfire Was Cancelled

This post does not imply that someone ought to kill Tucker Carlson. But this is to note that he is technically a waste of perfectly good oxygen that other people might be breathing.

Crypto-Hooker? "Take her testimony differently..."

That's right, the Duke rape case is now officially a contract dispute, and not a felonious assault.

This is holy week, people. I'm supposed to be thinking deep thoughts, and somberly reflecting on the coming death of our Lord. It's been a little difficult, what with the simmering rage and all.

Tucker didn't get away free on this, his guest did valiently attempt to nail him to the wall for it. Pricelessly, the transcript reads: "when you say things out loud like that, do you hear yourself? Do you go home and -- like, do you just bang your head on the wall or (inaudible) yourself?"

I've got a whole lot of suggestions for "inaudible."

Tucker Carlson, will you please suck it forever and a day?

Yours Truely,

Sly Civilian

Not Going Away

"My presence here means this case is not going away," Nifong said to applause from an audience of about 700 people.

From Espn...

Despite the strategic leaking (I have no idea why this isn't under gag order anyways) from the defense, Nifong's statements seem like good news.

I'll wait. I'll be patient, if I have to, if it means the persons responsible are held to account.

-sly

Stonewall, redoux

I’m starting to think about a paper I’m going to be writing for a class on Non-Violence…trying to evaluate the relationship of radical queer activism to more peaceful movements. And I keep getting the sneaking suspicion that they’re more related that we’d often like to admit. I’d like to believe in Ghandi, King, and the power of non-violence that can change the enemy, but I wonder if they have a dependence on more extreme and nationalist movements in order to give them appeal in the minds of the majoritarian community. As Negrodamus so aptly put it, the reason white people like Wayne Brady is that he makes Bryant Gumbel look like Malcom X. Do we need ACT UP to make the Human Rights Campaign look like a mainstream and appealing choice for America? Or is it that groups like the HRC are so civilized and assimilated to the “political realities” of this age that they make any real advocacy look like extremism?

The question is live. From Amnesty via Feministing…

In the early hours of 2 March 2003, police reportedly raided The Power Plant, a popular gay after-hours club in Highland Park, Michigan. They arrested the club owner and several hundred patrons. The club operator was arrested on several charges, including operating an illegal establishment, and selling alcohol without a liquor licence. The patrons were issued with misdemeanour citations for illegal trespass and more than 150 cars were impounded and towed from the scene. Reportedly, 50 to 100 officers stormed the premises dressed in black and using laser sights, causing panic. Patrons were bound with their hands behind their back and forced to lie face down on the concrete floor, in some cases for more than eight hours. Reports indicate that those arrested were not permitted to use the bathroom and several were forced to relieve themselves where they lay. Some reported being kicked in the head and back, slammed into walls, and verbally abused.

To be sure, that is far from the worst of it. The AI report is filled with brutalities, sexual assaults, and other misconduct that ought to put the hair on the back of your neck on end. But I used that story because it reminds us most of Stonewall. It also points out how much more overwhelming police power can be in this age, and how difficult and dangerous resistance can be. But at the same time, such travesties remind us of the courage found in despair and exhaustion with being victimized.

In the face of systematized violence, who gets to make the choice of how “we” respond. In the kinship of the queer communities, how do we make decisions about if the system is just responsive enough to justify working from within, and when we must strike outside the ground rules that are meant to silence our concerns?

Maybe it’s just me, but the memory of Stonewall seems to be wearing off on both sides. Homophobic power seems to be getting bolder and bolder (it is no accident that misogynist and anti-sex rhetorics are having the same “revival”) and some in the community seem stuck to the means of the “political solution.” I’ve got great hope for the future in terms of queer acceptance, the numbers for marriage get better with nearly every poll. We held them off on a amendment, and the majority will someday swing. But as we win victories in some quarters, the opposition is increasingly emboldened to find extralegal means to enforce their fear. And to our shame, the community is not responding well. To the affluent and privileged among us, it may not seem like an issue. This is not a Red State issue, this is not a rural thing, this is not a not poor thing, this is an “us” thing. Queer is a fictive community with no ontological truth. It is as real as far as we act for it, care for one another, and stand together. Reports like this one must mobilize us, radicalize us, and drive us to force the recognition our community. It is a cycle to break, for whosoever is not seen as a person can be violated, whomever can resist violence will be seen as a person. This imperial type thought is not appealing, and we may feel disgust in playing by such rules. But Stonewall was not in vain. Queer resistance bought us the ability to operate in political arenas. But the work is incomplete. What will it take to end the violence that is used against our lives, loves, and bodies?

I don’t have an answer. I don’t yet know what is necessary in “by whatever means necessary.”

But I’ll be thinking.

-sly

What is it that you say you do here?

Cued by CRT Law Mama, and the discussion of male feminism here, here, and I’m sure elsewhere...

When I come to a discussion that is centered on the experiences and struggles of people who have experienced an oppression that I have been priviledged by...what is it that i do? When I see people coming to a discussion where a community i claim is discussing our marginalization...what do i say to them?

one of the real tricky bits of this question for me is that the answer i give is split between a few equally important, and often oppositional priorities i have.

in no particular order at all, what i have in the mix:

a deep mistrust of the system and the individuals who are serving it, a profound hope for the awareness (and dare i say it redemption) for all who do so, and uncertainty about any methodology, particularly my own.

I’m troubled by essentialism, and my work has a pretty teleological focus to it...which is to say i've got a utopia already picked out, even if i'm completely sure i'll never see it. but one thing this implies is that i've got a special concern for how allies function . i've come to realize why i love reading Paul so much...frustrating as he might be, he's got some really interesting approaches on how to adopt another people. the grafting of the gentiles into to the tree of Israel, as his metaphor goes in Romans, is a project of extreme proportions... Even in his life time, before the schism that creates "Judaism" and "Christianity" as distinct entities...there are still troubles. But he honestly thinks that the experience (religious, ethnic, historic) of the worship of the God of Israel can be translated to outsiders, all under the watchful eye of the Empire.

talk about eschatological ally theology.

So what do we do? Should men be feminists? Do white allies have a role in doing critical race theory? Can hetero persons find meaning in participating in queer cultures?

My answer is yes. A hesitant and qualified yes, but a yes. It’s imperfect, but I think it beats out the alternatives. As James Perkinson points out to us, the problem with objective distance is that it has a long history of participation in the consumption of the “subject” of study. And we’ve got a culture that has a hard time finding middle ground between the poles of construction and consumption. A person plants, or a person eats. We study, or we are studied. And analyzers make poor allies. This concept of consumption is what i see operative when BrownFemiPower talks about the link and run problem of "mainstream" bloggers taking the discussion out of space that she and other women of color are speaking in. She rightly points out the assumptions about who gets to talk about what where that are going on in such re-directions.

Now what? Job’s comforters get the reputation of being the worst allies in history, the kind of friends that can make the worst torture even more of a burden to bear. They perform this consumption by centering their theological questions instead of their friend's pain. They speak with the mantle of authority to tell him what to do in his space of loss. But even they did something that might be helpful for our understanding. When the story starts, they come to visit their friend whom they have heard terrible things have happened to. And they sit. They sit in silence for seven days, aware of his pain. The book stands still for that week.

Yes, I think that we need to be talking about allies as participating in movements of liberation. Listening is active. Seeking out information and awareness is active. Sitting with (even, maybe especially in silence) is an act of solidarity. Full participation doesn’t mean the same thing, because we’re each coming to the table with different concerns an needs. Receptive action is not an oxymoron.

My anti-racist work doesn’t look like my queer advocacy. I’m at different places with each. That doesn’t trouble me. Yes, my status is in conflict with itself. I am given privilege for some things, cast down for others. But the confusion lies with the system of power, not with me. I am learning who I want to be. I am with the people who are calling me by names that find that which is truth in me. It is the hegemony that doesn’t know what to say, if I am a Good Old Boy or a fag. Let them worry.

In the meantime…there’s plenty to do.

-sly

How funny is that?

Jokes. I get jokes.

This is perhaps in a slightly different category, but nonetheless...Shake's reflection cued me to think about this experience.

Recently, in a class here, an instructor talked about a translational issue with a biblical text. The short form version is that the translators changed "my son" to read "my child" to make it gender inclusive. The trick was that it was a section on marital advice, and includes such choice statements as advising this son to pick a woman whose breasts he could enjoy for his entire life. Not that enjoying breasts is a priori wrong...but let's just say this passage was not reflective of a sex-positive, respectful mutuality. Now, YDS is many things, but extremely progressive, it ain't. This instructor considers herself pretty well left of center, and seems to have thought of her discourse as bringing awareness to some of the gender issues in the text.

This is where we cue: "Ally Discomfort." Or maybe it's advocate discomfort. You'll see what I mean here. Instead of leaving it at that, this instructor seemed to have a need to dissipate some of the tension caused by directing attention to gender issues, which she presumably as a woman would "benefit" from. The distraction provided was: "of course, this isn't a warrant for queer theology..." And she led the class in laughing.

Uh...there are many things that the systematic exclusion and invisibility of queer persons in biblical rhetorics is... Tragic, patriarchal bullshit, extremely problematic, unjustifiable...

Funny, it's not. Which makes me wonder. What is it about performing our own advocacy that increases our pressure to perform horizontal oppression?

Hrm. There's gonna be a long conversation about this on Monday. We'll see what she has to say for herself.

-sly

Sly Civility

This is the life and times of one Sly Civilian, an undercover agent in the world of academia. Devoted ruckus maker, queer activist in training, patriarchy-blamer, and devoted theory wonk, Sly is currently roaming the halls of a most unlikely location: Yale Divinity School.

Subtle victories, ruckuses caused, ignominious defeats...all shall be chronicled here in the name of preserving sanity, having a laugh at the expense of the Man, and keeping the fight going. With special attention to issues regarding mental health, gender theory, biblical rhetorics, race in academia, and hybridity...Sly hereby attempts to make sense of it all.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
-Hunter S. Thompson