Sly Civilian

You Don't Have to Go Home

2006-07-14T13:47:00.000-05:00

But really, I'd rather if you didn't stay here.

This blog is now closing. The good news is that SlyCivilian.com is now up, and i'll be posting there in the future. RSS, bookmarks, whatever, change 'em all.

I'm leaving this all up, as i can't (yet) find a good way of moving the old comments over. But i have a feeling this place might get a little dusty.

-sly

The Relativity of Wrong

2006-07-13T11:33:00.000-05:00

In which I shamefully ~~steal~~ borrow Isaac Asimov's title.

In this book, Asimov discusses the nature of knowledge and the unfortunate binary nature of our understandings. To a skeptical English student, he explains that the revision of science is not uncertainty, but the revision and improvement of knowledge. Heliocentric orbits are a better understanding than Earth centered ones, but are further improved by knowing that the orbits are ellipses, and even further improved by knowing that the sun is not the center of the universe. Revision is not the destruction of the former, because not all answers are equally wrong. His example (paraphrased here from memory) is a young girl asked to spell "Sugar" for a test.

The are several options. Sugar, sucrose, C6H12O6, shugar, and xhjkly.

Which one is correct? Spelling is almost never graded on a sliding scale, and so like many of our ideas and formulations of knowledge, they get evaluated in right/wrong and good/evil terms. Yet, surely some of these responses display more/different knowledge about sugar than others. Is chemical formula better than phonetic spelling? For whom, under what circumstances?

Thus enter, transphobia and "The Transsexual Empire."

I've been reading Sandy Stone's rejoinder, "The Empire Strikes Back," which a really super fabulous blog linked to a little while back. It was either Jay, or B|L, or Piny, or oh, I feel terrible but my memory is like a steel sieve sometimes. Sorry. Feel free to claim credit if it was you.

The point is that Sandy gets to a critical point here, when discussing the narratives of transpeople in the early days of the movement:

No wonder feminist theorists have been suspicious. Hell, I'm suspicious....Besides the obvious complicity of these accounts in a Western white male definition of performances gender, the authors also reinforce a binary, oppositional mode of gender identification. They go from being unambiguous men, albeit unhappy men, to unambiguous women. There is no territory between.

Yet this statement occurs in a work that is deeply affirmative, and explores the consequences of categorizing what the "correct" response to "gender dysphoria" is. Hint, it involves a lot of people telling shrinks the same story because it's the one that the medical establishment wants to hear. The construction of lives, especially these lives, occurs under the gaze of power. Stone examines critically, but remains committed to finding truth in trans narratives. Not as some deep artifact beneath socialization, but in the trace of the continued negotiation and contestation of gender and sex through embodiment.

Which is why I bring up the relativity of wrong. Because it's precisely what's going on in Stone's work. Without getting into the boogy-person of false consciousness, we can play attention to the cultural frameworks that surround the process of identity construction/maintenance. Given limited choices, these women chose identities that depended on extremely "femme" conventions and ideas of binaried gender. To wit:

Hedy Jo Star, who was a professional stripper, says in I Changed My Sex!: "I wanted the sensual feel of lingerie against my skin, I wanted to brighten my face with cosmetics. I wanted a strong man to protect me."

To which we can rightly express some concern in terms of this narrative confirming and conforming to sexist notions of women's identity. But Stone's project is not to debunk Star's idea of her life. It is rather to show the conditions, which are still not completely met, under which women have the actual freedom to construct identities that are liberating for themselves and others. We should not doubt that for Star, being a woman as she understood it was a better answer for her than being a man in that culture. Revision as improvement and not erasure is possible...but we have to be willing to see promise in the imperfect.

-sly

The Carnival Of Safe Spaces

2006-07-11T22:04:00.000-05:00

Last couple days, there's been a lot of discussion and reflection about separatist spaces in the wake of the Carnival of the Feminists...which while the fight is frustrating as all hell, has produced some of the best explanations of why safe spaces are necessary parts of liberation movements, and why the "reverse discrimination" canard cannot be taken seriously.

Thus, the (likely one off) Carnival of Safe Spaces, hosted by yours truely. So I'm going to be going around and asking for permission to link/excerpt, and I'm interested in new submissions as well. There's been a fair amount of academic/theoretical defense, which is awesome, but I'd love to see celebrations, personal reflections, and reflection on safe spaces as well. I'd actually tell you the date this is all going up, but the plan is that I'll be leading off my new place with this. Arbitrary deadline then of the 18th, and probably up by the 20th. Details will follow as soon as the wonderful VeganKid has my new blog up and running.

So in closing, a quote from my reaction to RPBKA's inception...

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 the 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

Doctors without...

2006-07-11T21:52:00.000-05:00

A little while ago, my insurance changed over. Again.

I shouldn't complain, I have insurance, and it's usually been pretty decent about getting me treated without too much drama.

The downside is that I'm once again in search of a primary care physician. I took several reccomendations, and nearly took them until i thought about it. How do i have any reason to believe that these people, while competent in other regards, have any knowledge, sensitivity, or experience with treating queer people?

So, with google as my trusty friend, I set out in search. Surely, in a town like Minneapolis, there has to be some queer friendly docs, right?

Unfortunatly, the Gay and Lesbian Medical Alliance's referral service isn't working at the moment...

But I kept getting results for Allina's Clinics, and so I click through. Nothing. But on a hunch, I try the Google Cache. Saved there is a record of several docs who specialize in GBLT health care.

Why is it that this was such a production? Was I looking wrong? Is GBLT health care really that hard to find, even in such a queer friendly town? Why would Allina remove that information from their listings?

I'm frustrated, but I'm also upbeat. I have an appointment early next week, and it's going to be long overdue. I need to get stuff documented for Yale in regards to my depression/anxiety stuff, and I also really ought to check my HIV status. I know that I'm negative, but c'mon...a boy can't be too careful, and it's worth it to know.

None of this would really require me to disclose my orientation...but I just don't see the need to settle for health care that at somepoint might be compromised by homophobia. Health care is a human right...

-sly

GOOOOAAAAAL!!!!

2006-07-09T14:49:00.000-05:00

Can you tell what I'm up to?

Don't have a real reason, but I'm rooting for France. Underdogs, and all, I guess...

-sly

Friday Blogging

2006-07-07T08:29:00.000-05:00

Oh, Friday. Day of days...

I haven't yet gotten into a Friday blogging pattern, but i should think of one. You have your random tens, your cat blogging, the blogwhoring, the open threads...all sorts of lighter
fare. I'll be brainstorming. Folks? Suggestions?

Anyhow, for today, it's going to be a compliation of some of the stupid corporate things that have happened recently.

Schell's Beer. Unless you're Midwest, you don't know what I'm talking about. Skip on ahead. But recently noted at the Turf Club (a place that should know better), they have a sign that crows "Proudly Not Served in Meat Markets." Yeah.

In a similar vein, Pam at Pandagon notes that Pace's ads have been miserably homophobic...

And if you haven't had enough of thinly veiled homophobia in your advertising, the Silly Little Fairy spot from Daimler/Chrystler still takes first prize for dumbest 30 second spot in recent history.

But for the most stunningly "I cannot believe someone actually did this" moment of commerce...we go to Blackademic for her commentary on the utterly dispicable Sony compaign.

What really irks me about all of this crap is that real marketing takes skill. Repackaging racism and homophobia takes none. So quit trying to pass this crap off as "high concept" and admit that your ads are explicitly racist, Sony.

-sly

quiet

2006-07-06T23:14:00.000-05:00

a few more assorted thoughts on Brokeback as I've had time to think.

I'm still conflicted about how they showed the violence of the relationship, but i'm starting to see some other issues too...

In the "making of" clip, they talked about how the women in the story played out "their own miseries." Not quite true...they played out the miseries of the men. Their characters were not much deeper than to show them as shackles...Jack's mother being the only sympathetic woman in the whole story...

And please, please, please....can we have a queer love story that doesn't end in a gay bashing? I'm all for showing and confronting violence...but i'm getting troubled that the theme of our narratives is becoming "impossibility." I know, Romeo and Juliet doesn't mean that straight love is conflicted and forbade...but i think we can see the difference here. Can't we grow old once, or even just kiss in the last scene?

-sly

Cred

2006-07-06T01:43:00.000-05:00

Oh, goodness. So behind schedule here....tomorrow is going to be a real writing day. Promise.

Anyhow, I'm working on getting back some of the points I've lost recently. Until tonight i'd been 8.7% less queer than normal due to not having seen Brokeback. Tomorrow night will be a additional 6.2% bonus for Transamerica.

What really struck me was how much violence, overt and latent, was in Jack and Ennis' relationship...which brings me to the million dollar question. Are we, queers etc, better off in the culture wars for this movie? My instinct is to say yes, that it does help humanize gay men. But by placing the setting in the 60s, the film elides the gender conditioning that frames male sex. With the "Malboro" style images, the pair and Ennis especially get portrayed as the "timeless cowboy" figure that exists as the pure and essential male. Simply put, gay separatism looks like rough sex remixed into a spaghetti Western.

It doesn't have to be that way...

-sly

Old

2006-06-30T12:05:00.000-05:00

This friend of mine...we go way back. In middle school, I was a tiny thing. Under 10th percentile height and weight. Now, my friend...let's call him Joe, wasn't all that much bigger. But he was fearless.

He saved me from a lot of bullying, and was a true and loyal friend to me. Has been ever since. He was and is a simply nice human being, one whom I'm honored to have in my life. We don't talk all that deeply...he's the kind of guy that doesn't really tip his hand very much. But we're close, as close as can be considering. And I've never doubted that he cares...he's always shown it in his way.

Why are you hearing about this?

The rampant and persistent homophobia that he expresses.

I'm really torn on what to do, but I know that I've reached my breaking point with it all. I've been trying to interrupt his use of gay as insult, and make targeted reductions in the amount that I hear this stuff from him...but I know that I've done little to actually change his thinking. And every time I don't say something, I feel a pang of guilt. For not standing up for my relationship, for hiding behind het privilege, for choosing to stay "safe" from the consequences when there are people who don't have a choice about being safe...

How does a guy with a boyfriend come out to one of his oldest and dearest friends who happens to be a homophobia?

If you know, tell me.

-sly

Hope floats. Upside down and motionless.

2006-06-27T15:30:00.000-05:00

Went in to Barnes and Noble yesterday, while on a field trip to Rochester. A political friend of mine (in that she's a professional, and i'm a hack) was down there on business and i tagged along for the ride. And, to watch for deer.

And immediately, my sense of hope for the future began to give off that slow constricting feeling.

I wandered the shelves, noting the utter frequency of the term "Bitch." Why Men Fall for Bitches, Why Bitches Get the Good Men, Why Your Woman is a Bitch, Bitchful Ways to Find Your Man.... I dearly want to place my slightly used lunch on the self-help section, but then i remembered that i hadn't eaten any.

I then skimmed through D. Horowitz's despicable academic Hit List on the 101 most dangerous profs in america. The entry on bell hooks caught my eye. He used her opening line to "killing rage." He intended it as a shocker that would convince his audience of how dangerous a woman she is.

I am writing this essay sitting beside an anonymous white male that I long to murder.

His reading isn't just bad, or faulty, or in err. It is fundamentally dishonest.

As long as black rage continues to be represented as always and only evil and destructive, we lack a vision of militancy that is necessary for transformative revolutionary action. I did not kill the white man on the plane even though I remained awed by the intesity of that desire. I did listen to my rage, and allowed it motivate me to take pen in hand and write...

I went downstairs an bought myself a copy.

David, i hate to break it to you, but bell and i are having a very interesting conversation right now.

-sly

As delivered at the House of Mercy

2006-06-26T13:38:00.000-05:00

I talk myself into actually showing up for church last night, after debating the idea of heading home for a nap. It turned out to be a good choice, as Rev. Russell asked me to fill in for Josh by doing prayers of community and serving communion. It's a deep honor, and one made all the more poignent by the fact that this may be the only Baptist church I ever serve in such a capacity.

God of Mercy, pray with us when we become afraid.

For it is not your will that we be afraid, too afraid to love or lose or risk living in the mercy. Pray with us when we cry out, “ too much, too far, too strange”

Your love for us is uncanny. Pray with us.

Amen.

God of Peace, you proclaim a wilderness. Your world is winds, sands, waves, and the drifting snow. Give us ground to stand on, even as all things change. Lead us to a life that interrupts the way things always are. God in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God of Love, you forget no one. Bring light to all of your children that have been forgotten. To the prisoner, the institutionalized, the sick, the starving, the dying. Remind us that your love refuses to be contained. Show us that this is good. God in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God of Hope, our choices seem so small. In world that has such great powers, ones do dedicated to war, greed, and hate, we live tenuously. Speak of a life in which we might be free. Forgive the compromises we make just to get by. Give us hope. Give us courage. God in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God of wonder, we thank you for your irrevocable love, promised in baptism. Teach us to love in who you made us to be, and help us to confess our sins of ingratitude for your creation of our lives. Let us rejoice in the pride you have in all your children. God in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God of Grace, we are a broken people in need of forgiveness. Show us that our hope is in you. Come in to our lives to build up and to tear down, that new life might take root. Hear our confessions in this silence.

-As you have spoken, our name from you is Forgiven. Your love is our healing. God in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God of Mercy, you are all in all. Let us come to you in this silence.

Amen.

Happy Pride, Y'all

2006-06-25T14:07:00.000-05:00

Spent most of yesterday out in the rain/sun combination that is lovely Minnesota weather...at Loring Park, home to the nation's third largest Pride festival.

Many folks have spoken critically of Pride as a concept, Savage doing so with perhaps the most visability. So here's the reply i'm going with...

You can't discuss the public implications of gay pride without understanding a historical perspective. Thirty years ago, when these celebrations were in their infancy, our community was invisible. I repeat, invisible. Mainstream news organizations did not cover our community; our civil rights struggles had no legitimacy; and if we were covered, it usually focused on negative or stereotypical images.

Indeed.

I'm lucky, and i know it. I attend a school whose offical policy is one of protection and affirmation. I live in a town that holds the 3rd largest Pride celebration in the nation (Note to other major urban areas. Try holding yours for free, and see what it does for attendance.)

But even then, Pride is a welcome relief. I'm with my people, and it's all good for a while. We forget our internal struggles for a while (a few Michigan Womyn's Space t-shirts notwithstanding). We let our hair down.

I'm lucky. I carry a very small burden indeed, especially in contrast to my queer fore-mothers, fathers, parents...who came before me and rightously declared that there would be no more silence. But i still breathe easier when i take that weight off, when i am in space that feels so free.

Excerpted from recollections of a impromtu speech given by a fitness instructor/go-go dancer from last year's parade (read with approximatly the same conviction as Mel Gibson's "Freedom Speech" from Braveheart):

And when you go back home tomorrow, when you go back to work tomorrow...you will not go back in to the closet. Do you hear me? We've gotten out. Pride, people. Pride doesn't end tomorrow. Pride three hundred sixty five days a year.

I smiled, and the church ladies of St. Paul Ref cheered.

-sly

374? Really?

2006-06-23T11:21:00.001-05:00

So, I somewhat took a break for a week there. Which was very good...the boy and I spent a lot of time together, and I've started in on my Greek for the summer.

The bad news is that i have ~~374~~ 275 RSS articles to read. A fair amount of that can be skimmed through very quickly (Queerty), but it basically means i'm woefully behind in reading all y'alls stuff. Comments might be thin, but I am determined to catch up.

Otherwise what ideas would I ~~steal~~ write about?

-sly

On Sight

2006-06-22T16:49:00.000-05:00

From the frontpages of the local paper this morning...

Have Cash, Will Bid.

The basic premise here is that people who need credit and can't get bankloans submit proposals, which are bid on by investors. The site is here...

What's the wierdest thing that's going on...and i don't mean the usurious interest rates that they can only justify as being better than a payday loan or loan shark...

They ask borrowers to post a picture. Because after all, a just and important part of the loan process is seeing what the applicant looks like.

This moment brought to you by American Racism.

-sly

No Answer

2006-06-16T13:36:00.000-05:00

As i wrote yesterday, i managed to break my two most enshrined rules of blogging recently. I posted the results of one, so here comes the other, by virtue of several key quotes.

BitchPhD responds to Puffin (in italics)

it’s also damn degrading work when you think about what cleaning toliets actually entails.

But the problem here is, what is *inherently* degrading about putting your mouth on someone’s genitals? It’s a loving act.

your own unexamined support of blow jobs

I’d be surprised if anyone here has failed to think about the feminist repercussions of oral sex.

what they’re enjoying is the act of pleasing their (male) partner,

Yeah. So? For those of us who are straight, pleasing our (male) partners is as much a part of sexuality as pleasing a (female) partner is for those of you who are lesbians. And yes, if you’re straight, this is a little more complicated inasmuch as one has to think about and work through the distinction between pleasing men as a class, and pleasing a particular man as a partner/lover. But I don’t think that the conclusion is that pleasing a man in any way is inherently anti-feminist.

Can you name a degrading and dangerous sex act men are asked to do to show “trust”?

Sure. Being fucked up the ass. Putting your dick in someone’s toothed mouth. Being tied down and beaten. Whatever. Hell, arguably giving a woman head is degrading, and potentially dangerous, since STDs do exist.

But for the record: I didn’t claim to be an “aficionado” of anal sex, though as I think I’m the only one here who said it can be enjoyable, I suspect you’re talking to me. Nor, by the way, do I think that most of the women here are talking about “how much they love sucking dick,” as Puffin insists on reading what are in fact pretty thoughtful explanations of why, despite our recognition that sucking dick is widely seen as degrading and our own dislike of some aspects of it, we nonetheless find other aspects pleasurable. I merely said that yes, I’ve had anal sex, and I’ve enjoyed it. That doesn’t mean, as you imply, that I’ve EVER conceded to a “demand” that I do it–nor that I’ve ever conceded to a demand that I do jack shit in the bedroom. I, personally, have a major hangup about sexual demands, in fact.

But that doesn’t mean that I, or anyone else who believes firmly that sex should be, as Puffin puts it, about my own “SEXUAL pleasure (i.e. what happens when you are SEXUALLY satisfied)” cannot, like any normally healthy human being, find sexual pleasure enhanced by the pleasure of my partner. I would not fuck a man who did not find my sexual pleasure important to him. I don’t think it’s super feminist to refuse to take pleasure in a (male) partner’s sexual pleasure–EVEN THOUGH I realize that there is a long and fucked-up history of convincing women that the MAJORITY of their sexual pleasure should be vicarious.

I think Dr. Bitch wins this thread so hard that it's not even funny (apologies for the pun). There were many interesting contributions there, but she took the argument being presented and responded to it. As Piny pointed out, one of the real problematics of this discussion was that Twisty kept moving the goal posts.

The bathroom stuff really has me wondering, so i'm going to get back to that. Degrading? Again, it depends on context. Like some of the commentators there, i enjoy cleaning the bathroom. Maybe not the smell of windex. But I like my space clean and orderly, and as a participant in a household, i do my part in providing for that. Scrubbing isn't terrible work in small doses, and i rather enjoy the time to think. The problem isn't cleaning a bathroom. The problem is the narrowing range of socio-economic opportunities that designate entire classes of people as bathroom cleaners and nothing more, devaluing their work at the same time as we become more dependant on it. Maybe Puffin thinks it's possible to live in a world without cleaning bathrooms. Maybe it is for her. But it's not for me.

So for the love of the Holy Thing on Top of the High Place, can we please, oh, pretty please stop turning these discussions in to something that sounds like a Phelps family reunion, and stop waxing poetic on how damn nasty anal sex is? As i've said before, anyone who has intimate relationships with men, no matter their gender, has a stake in feminism. But I for one, can't be involved in conversations that hinge on how disgusting(or impolitic) other people's sex lives are, especially when it comes to "sodomy." I know. It is not Twisty's, nor any other feminist's responsibility to create space that is safe for any man, regardless of orientation. But conversely, I've got no obligation to refrain from self-protection from any and all hate speech directed at me. So can we cease fire?

As BelleDame has reminded us, quoting Gayle Rubin: We should remember that porn is not legal; by this definition material that has no focus but to arouse is not legal. In other words, a sexual aim is not considered legitimate in this country.

This is why I get so wound up by these posts. The position of oral and anal sex in this society is of supreme importance to women working to enact their liberation from patriarchal systems. They are also a bellweather of the position and status of (male) queers. To slap on labels of Victorian prudery is a gross oversimplification. The critique of these sex practices is being made in terms of how the Patriarchy imagines women as degraded, subservient, secondary. But when we talk about these issues, the image of the effeminized gay man is never far behind.

There might be some feminist critics that can see their personal sexual expression being fufilled in a world that does not recognize these practices as normal, much less as normative. I cannot. Lawrence v. Texas is too recent a memory. So you'll pardon my overreaction, as Puffin and Twisty said, against the imaging of male oriented sexuality as nasty. Because I exist between laws. Queers are not entirely legal persons in this nation. And if we're going to be recognized, it has more to do with our ability to mimic a kind of straight culture. Nothing about the bedroom. Because in this country, a sexual aim is not considered legitimate.

-sly

PS: I'm trying this kind of post out, though i think I will try to keep them more infrequent in the future. My main issue here is that i forget where i posted comments, and will lose little pieces of writing off in to the ether. My apologies if these are repetitive for those already reading these other blogs.

I desire

2006-06-15T13:06:00.000-05:00

For some unknown reason, i woke up this morning, and realized i wanted to write about desire. Actually, i've been reading some very interesting things on this question, and so i wanted to chime in. I don't have time to do actual citations, so just realize that i've been reading Bitch Lab and AntiPrincess a lot lately.

Edit: Go read B|L here who just went on a wonderful fieldtrip with Lacan's discourse of desire. And brought back cookies.

I had this exchange over at BB's place (don't ask me why, but i broke my read/don't comment rule with her and Twisty yesterday.) Her piece opens...and i respond:

"I really DO want to have sex with a child but I know that there are consequences for that action that I may not be willing to take." [Sly: Note that this is a quote of BB writing for a constructed voice in context. Also note that i'm entirely unwilling to take on the ridiculous charge that pro-sex feminism likes teh kiddy pr0n.]

This is the statement that gets me thinking. What if one of those consequences of fantasy involving harm/etc... is "harming a living human being which I don't actually want to harm." We tie rubber bands to our ankles and jump off of bridges, but i don't think i'd take bungee jumping as suicidal intent. I really do want to feel like falling, but there are consequences i don't want to take. Namely, the part where i actually hit the ground.

You're right...people are often *terribly* uncritical about their internal life, and will cop of out responsible self-examination. At the same time, i do think its possible to have a fantasy for something that one does not actually wish to see occur in real life, precisely because the fantasy can interact with an object that has no other interior content, and is simply an empty projection.

I think your argument lies in that those projections inevitably get brought back around to the perception of real women. Is that a pervasive malady of the Patriarchy, or is it a logical inevitability?

Her response was based on the claim that it is "[im]possible to have a fantasy for something that one does not actually wish to see occur in real life...Because you WOULD like to see the fantasy occur in real life, as long as the consequences for that action were something you were able to deal with. " She follows with a discussion of acclimatization, and finishes: "The simple fact of the matter is that masturbating to violent images or even images that you are ashamed of is playing with fire. The logical conclusion of this mindset is that some people will actively engage in the behaviors that they are masturbating to and ALL of the people who are masturbating to those images are at risk of acting out if the consequences shrink to an 'acceptable' level."

Note, I would have included her entire response...i don't usually cut people's words up like that, but the kind of spacing employed there didn't really permit entire inclusion. Go read the comment thread for the full version...

My response, and the close of the discussion, afaik.

"Because you WOULD like to see the fantasy occur in real life, as long as the consequences for that action were something you were able to deal with. "

I did see that part of your argument. But we've obviously got a different evaluation here. Rejection of action based on consequences does not have, IMO, a strict moral valence.

It does not necessarily follow that one *really* wants to see it happen, becuase *really* is an empty term. For example. A man visits a professional Domme. Does he *really* want to be subordinate? Or does he enter in to a space of unreality and fiction (the contractual relationship that returns power/status) in order to explore without residing? I would think very few men who do so would really enjoy this relationship full time if they could accept the consequences, rather they enjoy the "fictiousness" in that it has no durable social reality. Now, you're absolutely right to note that many productions of fantasy, this example included, are not empty and in fact often depend on the use of an Other as object.

That's my objection to "really" as an evaluation of desire. Rejection based on consequences is still rejection. It may not be enough. But it is not necessarily an essential and immutable expression of what a person "really" wants.

Obviously, it may have been impolitic to mention the dreaded Four Letter Acronym For A Set of Sexual Practices at the Den...but the simple fact is that BSDM views desire both seriously and as fiction, and makes a rather good explanation. I'm not too vain to note here that Belledame and I appear to have gotten the same memo on this (check the comments).

Which brings me to my grand point. Desire is a place of negotiation.

It is not:

An unrejectable, totalizing experience that overrides all other expressions of the self
Unrelated to the evaluatory framework that surrounds it
A window in to the otherwise inscrutable soul

Why do i say these things? I've often heard about self-hating gay men (think Brokeback) really want to have sex with other men. I'm going to contest that. They have constructed their experience of desire, in conversation with society, that their primary sexual expression is homophobic. So who am I to say that their truest self is to be found in something that they hate? We might see faulty logic or reliance on cultural assumptions in their evaluation, but we cannot rename their desire.

We are evaluatatory animals, who make choices. Our ideas and desires are never entirely separated to how we evaluate and respond to them. Which is why I get rather disturbed by the confusion of desire with idenity. In affirming or rejecting desire, a person exhibits moral agency, a power they may not have over the content of their desires. (Think of the impulse one might have in anger or frustation.)

So how can we see desire as both reality and fiction? By taking seriously the limits and extents to which we will enact it. I don't mean to place a strict "real world" test here, as i think extended consideration and mental energy constitutes a form of enactment. But what are the preconditions and surrounding contexts that have to be in place?

I'm at the very beginning stages of a relationship right now, so this is all on my mind a great deal. I've got a million and one ideas of what needs to happen (and i don't just mean sexually), and a million more realities and complications. My desire is both reality and fiction. They have not come true, and these ideas do not leave my mind readily. They are checked by other desires, found in my developing knowledge of my partner as a full, rich, and complex human being. They are reality, and form my interior content in conversation (and even agonism) with each other. They point to a future space of relationship in which they can be fufilled, even if that space does not yet exist.

What do we really want?

It's not that simple.

-sly

management

2006-06-13T12:19:00.000-05:00

The summer. A lovely time of rest for those of us on the academic calendar, where rest is defined as hardcore work or research if you're past your Bachelors.

Or something like that. It's also been a weird little thing in that it's been my time to most directly spend in management of my mental illness. Taking time off to actually rest, working ahead on things i know will come up in the year, trying new medicines, looking for a therapist, getting in to a workout schedule...all the things great and small that make a difference in how i function day to day.

This summer is going to be a little different. I'm going to be taking more medicine, and finding a doctor.

The drug in question is my lovely and patient friend, Xanax. While i've had a script for it for some time, and used it during some particularly bad attacks...I've been quite stingy with my use. Partly because no doctor that sees me less than once a year is going to hand out a large script for it, and partly due to my fears of addiction.

The doctor in question isn't going to be doing a whole lot more (as far as i know) than writing said perscription. Ze will be most useful in writing documentation that i will be submitting to Yale as record of a disability.

So yes, a little different. My point is this. I need to reject my internalization of the idea that it's better to suffer through this, or to "be strong" about my condition. One bad night can quickly turn in to one bad week in to one bad month. It's about time that i start catching my episodes in the bud, instead of stoicly waiting for the Big One to take my pills. Yes, they can be habit forming, and i will be watching myself carefully. But i know now that i can handle subtances with addictive potential, espeically with the support and guidance of friends and family. I refuse to be scared of my medication anymore. In fact, despite being an opiate, i'm more comfortable with Xanax than any of the SSRIs or neurochemical reuptake inhibitors. It forms an adjunct to my natural coping mechanisms of relaxation and sleep.

The documentation is going to be there for me next year, and I want to be working with the knowledge that I don't just have the ability to get extensions or adjustments (based on the good will of faculty or our infamously helpful Associate Dean of Students) but on my legal right to do so under the ADA. I've heard my last self-rationalization as to why I haven't filed formal paperwork before, and have told myself that it has ceased to be professional to avoid recognition of the legitimate demands that I make for accomodation.

I realized I hadn't done a post on mental illness in a while, and I wanted to make sure I kept up with that part of my blogging. I might do a short run on this, as there have been some good prompts in the media lately. My premise is that a society that is accepting and affirming of people with disabilities will be aware of the fact that social requirements are constructed and may not reflect the goals or abilities of all members of the community. Flexible and humane revisioning of these requirements will be a value to all persons, especially those who have been marginalized by dominant discourses. This isn't just about mental health.

-sly

2006-06-11T02:22:00.000-05:00

"Suicides an act of war" Bush administration says...

The insanity of this is mindblowing. I'm going to go back to a quote i had from Bhabha the other day...

The refusal to return and restore the image of authority to the eye of power has to be reinscribed as implacable aggression...coming from without: He hates me. ...The frustrated wish 'I want him to love me.' turns into its opposite 'I hate him' and this through projection and the exclusion of the first person, 'He hates me.'

-sly

risk

2006-06-10T22:48:00.000-05:00

I've seen a couple discussions of harm reduction and idealism recently, and i wanted to try some ideas out in response.

The question I put to myself when I want to get idealisitic and take a hard line has been lately:

Who gets hurt? Who is risking the most by this stance?

If the answer isn't me, i start to get worried.

I think of the discussion of harm reduction at GenderGeek. Without getting too far into the debate of if ending sex work or reforming it to give agency to those who participate in it is the legitimate goal of feminism...my challenge to anyone making choices about how to react is to examine how much we personally have at stake in this. The culture of objectification has broad implications, but there are very specific and individual risks being taken on by sex workers. Without their consent, a hardline stance on harm reduction might look suspiciously like throwing someone under the Revolutionary Bus, a seemingly endlessly amusing pastime for the liberal crowd. Pie Fight, anyone?

Falsifying the assent of a minority party for the purposes of power is not just a shortcut, it is a betrayal of the ideal of liberation to which end these manuvers are supposedly serving. I think of BitchLab's discussion of McKinnon here, and the cynical use of a few WoC voices to overrule third wave criticisms and marginalize other feminisms..

But this defense, “Look, see, there’s black women here and Asian women here and two working class broads, too. We can’t possibly be essentialist. We can’t be engaged in ahistorical, universalizing Grand Theory. See all the different peeps of the world we got on board Dworkin’s Ark?”

Edit: B|L responds here...i've also posted it in comments, despite HaloScan being awfully goofy right now.

Consent has to be real, active, and found in mutual relationship...so that our advocacy is grounded in knowledge of the reality of the world we are trying to unmake. If you're not scared shitless of contracting AIDS from dirty needles, I'm not sure I want to hear your views on government supervised heroin rooms. If you're not risking assault and mistreatment in sex work, I'd urge you to think about how your criticisms of legalization and unionizing sex work might be expressing power.

And because the the rule of this blog is that I shall not leave my own pontification untouched by my critique...

I'm forcing myself to drag my mind back over the civil union/marriage debate, and my rhetoric with that. It's been my longstanding policy that civil unions are the barely acceptable placation of queer communities, and strongly risk the codification and solidifaction of second class status.

But when i look at stories about people being denied visitation rights, losing medical and legal battles with homophobic familiy members, no medical insurance, and all the daily dehumanizations of a system that won't recognize our families...

How urgent are my critiques of what is obviosuly an imperfect response to queer demands for equality? Are people who buy into civil union taking the rest of us backwards? Am i responsible for the backlash that pro-marriage talk might create?

There is a delicate balance here. The guideline that I am trying to adopt is that if I am going to insist on purity of position, I had better be in the front of the line of people who will be taking a risk. I'm blessed to have access to medical care, support for my education, and the ability to make choices about how to negotiate my queer idenity. But for others, civil union might be the only way to hold things together in a hostile world.

I will make it very clear, especially to my community and allies, that i beleive that civil union is a patch fix and must not be allowed to become a permanent marital segregation. But i will simotaneously be more careful in making broad critiques of the system, and be especially judicious in regards to my discussion of those who chose such compromises. It's not my place to judge the measures other queers take to survive this fucked up culture of ours. For those with national voices, leadership roles, and the privildge to make more complex chocies with out facing financial ruin, healthcare nightmares, and legal dispossesnion...

Of those voices, i will be more demanding.

It is right to be demanding, perfectionists even, in the name of ending every last bit of oppression. It is also our duty to be careful in extending our work with the full particiaption and consent of the people that are to be liberated by our work.

-sly

One Drop

2006-06-08T16:31:00.000-05:00

One Drop

A while ago, Dust Daughter featured the homophobic remarks of Phonte and the discussion of the crisis of indetermininacy around bisexuality. In the comments, I stated that the belief that bisexuality does not exist is the one drop rule of sexuality.

I wanted to come back to that, especially in light of recent post from Max Julian. (I have one reservation in linking favorably here, as what I take to be reasonable anger with Racial Realsit’s commentary on his personal life, he calls her a Jezebel. Now, the application of a racialized and sexualized insult to someone who doesn’t believe in intersectionality is ironic, but it’s still unfortunate.) Onwards...

He describes the reversals and consistancies in Black self-images in America, moving from the status granted to lighter skinned blacks to moderns concerns over being in any way white-identified:

Blackness as privilege, rather than birthright. Interpreting the requirement's these SUPERBLACK gatekeepers of racial conformity espouse in order to be accepted as black are similiar to the qualifications necessary to join 'Skull and Bones:' A Mystery, Wrapped In a Riddle!

Obviously, interracial identity and bisexuality have some clear divergences. In many cases, it’s a matter of being read as. For someone like me, my presentation is largely compatible with cultural concepts of heterosexuality and masculinity (I dress like a preppy, and talk like a grad student), This goes double if I’m in mixed company, and I don’t know if it’s safe space. I’m self-conscious enough to monitor how many gayisms come up in conversation or how my body language changes. Racial Realist notes that she is perceived as Black, and this might be part of the reasoning by which she holds race to be the Ur text of oppression, the substance by which discrimination begins its work. I don’t want to disregard that. She has less of a choice of appearing white than I do of being read as “straight.” But white-identified or straight-identified…each is a case of hybridity, the acceptance and even internalization of the domination system. Each has both a level of choice, as well as a denial of agency by the powers that be.

That’s why I keep coming back to the idea of fictive kinship. As I wrote a while ago, describing queer communities in this way, it’s a risky strategy. By de-ontologizing our view of the liberation community, we have some problems. One possibility is the rush to integration that means one sided acceptance. White/Straight/Male Idenitification, and the diffusion and loss of self-conscious culture. RR is not wrong to be concerned with problems in creating unified Black resistance to white supremacy. Ontological idenitify (think "gay" gene and we're born this way arguments) can provide one of the few recognizable sources of legitimation and idenity in the face of oppression. The word choice implies the ability to chose to conform, en masse, and disband as a subversive group, idenity, culture. This is scary stuff. But I think there are some payoffs.

Fictive does not mean false. But it does exist on a different basis than ontology. It is the tension between saying that race is a socially constructed concept while simultaneously holding that racism is real in every sense of the word. Social construction is not a false reality that is easily shattered by the application of truth. It is a complex system of gesture, language and action that legitimizes itself, erases its particularly, and claims to be natural. It demands clarity of gaze, asking such questions as the one drop rule, so that it may ascertain and assign privilege. While there may be legitimate concerns in identifying the potential group for the liberative community, such as RR expresses, I believe that ultimately such clarity comes at a cost. It can fail to adequately address the question of agency. One drop rules might have utility in addressing the anxiety of uncertainty, but they leave us with brittle categories, and ones that look suspiciously like they are defined (or agreed upon) by the people most responsible for keeping us down.

I want to be clear that I do not think that the future of progressive thought is in an “end” to race, gender, queerness, or other markers of identity. But I am openly questioning how we assign those qualities. I am arguring for a broader sense of affiliation, based on the communal recognition of the participation of the individual that in turn mirrors the individual’s choice and effort to strive with a community of liberation. Because i don't know if i was born this way. Because i don't care if i wasn't. I choose to love regardless of gender, and i don't recognize any good in anyone telling me I ought to sleep with men for the good of the revolution, or that I have to marry a woman for Truth, Freedom and the American Way. To paraphrase Luther's reaction to the Pope, "Fuck that shit."

My hope is to lessen our anxiety with self-haters, to create a deeper critique of those who speak for us but do not stand with us, and to get to a point of regnition how important and difficult it is to express resistant choice in a society such as ours.

Max Julian puts it thus:

And yes, as a black person in this culture, I have struggled with confusion, self-hate, self condemnation, shame, pride, self-love, etc. But, HELLO - I live in America; WTF do you think its gonna be like here, Nirvana? And any nigga that plays holier than thou, as if their shit don't stink, who acts like they've overcome all of that self hate stank, or never had to deal with it - is full of shit. This culture pumps HATE at us every day like a 24/7 sprinkler system - everybody's at least a little damp and most are soaking wet. And I'm not talking about keeping your "message" or "rhetoric" consistent, sucka! I'm talking about that depleted uranium potent self-hate traversing the nooks and crannies of your muthafuckin' marrow!!!!

In the American hegemony, liberation is not an all or nothing prospect. It is not the shattering application of truth. It is the careful, deliberate, and lengthy process of building an alternative social construction. It might not have “natural” borders, or a metaphysical essence. Ye, fictive can still have great reality. The US is an arbitrary chunk of land, but it’s also the most powerful nation on Earth. So as we build, we recognize the choices that bring us into community, and the agency involved in choosing to liberate ourselves.

-sly

Blargh

2006-06-08T06:41:00.000-05:00

That was a very long drive.

The midwest should really be closer to NYC.

i've got posts for y'all when i wake up.

-sly

Alone in a crowd

2006-06-06T09:03:00.000-05:00

The following is an undeveloped musing of mine, borrowing heavily from some other sources.

Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain, describes the intensity of torture by a function of reversal and destruction. Through the application of pain and fear, the torturer literally destroys the capacity of the victim to imagine or articulate resistance. Their world is unmade, physically and semantically. A bed is not a bed anymore, it is a place to be strapped down and hurt. Any imaginative link with the past is severed as everything signifies the victim's powerlessness. In this state, the victim is both completely cut off and alone, yet always under watch.

[Ze has] all of the solitude of privacy, with none of its safety, and all of the self-exposure of the utterly public with none of its possibility for camaraderie.

When I read a bitch's powerful juxtaposition of the Lord's prayer and a story of a young woman facing an unplanned pregnancy, I thought of the above.

Does responsibility have weight when the one responsible has nothing? …and she is 14 years old and choice-less.

And then i thought of BFP's words...

those careful glances that bore deep into our children, past their laughter, their missing teeth, their syrupy warm necks, their fat pink lips, remind us every time we go to the store, we pick up our kids from school, we watch our babies play at the playground, remind us even when you're not around, of our sin.

and it's that shake of the head, the one filled with such pity, such remorse, such disgust, after you pull your judging eyes out of our kids bodies, that cements the verdict--a life of punishment, generations of punishment, for our sin, a brown mother's sin.

It all seems so very connected to me. The way white America looks at poverty and race issues is not just unhelpful, it is direct substantiation of oppression. Like the torturer, the dual application of pain and gaze removes choices, isolates, and begins to unmake the world of one so watched. Baby ceases to signify child, blessing, family...and is thrown about in the semantic whirlwind, becoming sin, punishment, failure.

Scarry tells us of a prisoner who finds a piece of paper baked into bread given in a Red Cross package. It has one word. "Corragio!" There is no prescribed meaning to what courage will be...she is very explicit that specific resistance to the demands of torture is not moral or immoral. To cast it as such acedes to the frame of the torturer, and legitimizes their demands while eliding the pain that they are responsible for. It is the human act, to remind them that there is a world outside of the control of the oppressor. That there is hope.

Bfp again...

but with out being told, without being asked, mi hermanas come anyway, in emails, in phone calls, at break time, on the bus--una hermana, will offer a joke, a look, a hug, a comforting word, and for just a moment, the wieght of my breasts eases it's tight grip on my back. for just a moment, my kid is a human and i am a good mother.

Courage!

-sly

Is it homophobia?

2006-06-05T02:03:00.000-05:00

From the comments at Feministing...

My discussion with NoName...

I don't know if he fears homosexuals (I always thought homophobia was a politically loaded, inaccurate term), but he definitely seems to dislike them. Either way, Bush is an ass and people should be able to marry whoever they want (assuming they are of age).

I reply

And seriously...when can we stop debating homophobe? Since when did we actually give the oppressor the choice of names that we'd label them by? It's like the insipid "i'm white and i benifit from priviledge and systematic racism, but i'm nice to black people so i can't be a racist" claptrap. yes, fear reactions are not exhaustively explanatory of all anti-gay rhetorics, but they do form the core of this oppression, and to drop the term because people don't like being called on their shit...

would be cowardly and wrong.

The discussion proceeds from there. But the outline is in place. NoName, and others, decry the "loaded" and "inaccurate" nature of the term, and are certain that phobia has nothing to do with the anti-queer sentiment they run across.

First of all, as i said there, the liberation community is under no obligation to share, discuss, or agree upon terminology with our oppressors. The language of compromise here, as it is so often, is one of equivocation and concealment. Anti-queer violence comes from somewhere. We know this. In order to kill or harm, you must first see someone as a non-person. Homophobia, and it's ugly cousin, Transpanic, is that process of dehumanization...from person to threat. (The adjective ugly, btw, is in reference to the continued legal use as an affirmative defense.)

It isn't just that. In a large number of conversations I have been a part of, I have heard subtle to overt suggestions that being gay is a threat to children. A church I was a part of as a child made the decision not to become openly welcoming to queer persons, in large part due to the concerns of parents. As someone who has worked in childcare for many years, I have often been told that parents would feel more comfortable hiring me if I remained closeted.

This is fear. Fear of the individual. Fear of the group. Fear of the change queerness might represent.

Oh, i'll be mincing no words.

It's homophobia.

-sly

Reappropriation

2006-06-02T01:35:00.000-05:00

Bouncing off the very interesting discussion from Reappropriate, later taken up by El and others....

I wanted to think about a few things here, taking a slow circle around the question put forth by the Sasha Frere Jones/Stephen Merritt fight, and read that against Jenn's observations.

Is it racist for a white person to not like hip-hop? Is it racist for a white person to like hip-hop?

A lot of the frustration i see from the cultural appropriators in the discussion, especially at Jenn's place, focuses on this double bind. We'd be racist if we didn't read anime, drink green tea, etc... All of which elides how this cultural contact takes place, and the conditions of power that exist surrounding that encounter. What's even more frustrating is that they make such hay over the instances in which Japan copies us. I don't know that it's really such a great defense of Western orientalism to point out that a culture that we forced at gunpoint to Westernize did in fact, adapt many facets of Western culture. These latter day Adm. Perrys seem to have little awareness of the framing of their encounter. Always in the blugeoning first person, where I starts nearly every sentence, the argument goes that personal appreciation of another culture is just that.

Itunes is telling me to get to the point, as Common has come up. How do I relate to black music as a white person working to be anti-racist?

First, it's not about the music. One of the things that struck me about Jen's descriptions of her frustration is the way in which Orientalism takes a cultural resource, and removes it to a Western context. It's beyond silly to claim that extensive appreciation of black music makes a person "not a racist" or gives one any sort of credentialing. I can listen to music all day long, alone. And one thing I've noticed is that every room I'm alone in has been entirely segregated.

Anti-racism is active, and relies on community. It's not about liking the music, drinking the tea, or a cultural practice. It is about sustained and active participation in a culture through interpersonal relationship. It's about what I can't do on my own. The risk and the pitfall that so many of these cultural appropriators hit is the subtle suggestion that Whiteness can do it better. Tom Cruise is the Last Samurai...

When Hegel was trying to explain all of history as a Euro-Centric progression towards perfection, he had trouble with the Jews. He can't insult YHWH, but he has to elevate Christianity to prove his racialized hypothesis. So he states that indeed, the Jews were technically correct, but that they lacked the proper "spirit." With a quick slight of hand, Hegel introduces and elevates this geist as the sina qua non of freedom, progress, and all things good. It resides in the West, and makes the Europeans the true Sons of Israel. It's still at work today, making whiteness disappear as a canvas on to which we paint other cultures. Geist and "West does it better" mentalities make cultural appropriation the Promethean gift...where whiteness supposes that it is doing another culture the ultimate favor by paying attention, bringing the precious spirit of Whiteness to complete and perfect. The best other is the White other. Tom Cruise. Motherfucking Last Samurai.

It's a funny thing. Over this last year, I participated in Yale's Gospel Choir (I'm pretty sure it's getting easier to figure me out the longer I write...) It wasn't about teaching me to soul clap, though I did finally learn. It wasn't about teaching my ear to recognize and follow the patterns and rhythms that made familiar songs sound strange. Indeed, it would be high folly to suppose any of these things could grant magical access to the experience of blackness in America. Happy Sambo, minstrelry, and a host of racist images were built of the premise that music was the defining cultural trait. Yet, personal taste is not just personal. It is one marker (of many) of exposure and familiarity.

For me, my cultural interaction comes in part through music. I'm a church dork, and a Baptist. If i'm going to relate even with in my denomination, it would be rather difficult if I didn't have knowledge or appreciation of Gospel. Entering into this doesn't make me black. And it certainly doesn't wipe away my white privilege. It is one way in which I try to be a good visitor, one who comes to seek relationship, not entertainment. Other cultures do not exist to alleviate my boredom or alienation. The true meaning of the discontent of urban music is not fully realized in suburban angst. Tom Cruise is not the Last Samurai.

-sly

Carnival Against Sexual Violence #1

2006-06-01T13:29:00.000-05:00

is posted over at Marcella's blog.

-sly

At long last, have you no short posts left?

2006-05-31T22:14:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to get back into a regular schedule here...some personal life busy-ness, getting addicted to World of Warcraft, and general post-school year brain shut down conspired to make me quiet.

The problem is that i have about 7 different posts in my head, and all of them are essays. No snarky open letters, quick links, or pithy one liners are currently available.

Well, in lieu of an actual post tonight, i'll post my writing outline so i remember to actually come back and write these suckers.

Rape culture and the prison system, the myth and reality of "Pound Me in the Ass Prison" and the ethics of punishment.
"Here I Stand, I Can Be No Other," a piece on Protestant idenity and the theological resources available to post-moderns
Enter/racial relations, and the chaotics of "ontological realities." My mind's not quite all around it yet, but before i'm done, i want to get from entropy to loving in a racialized America, and back to the erotics of uncertainty. This one might be brilliant, or (more likely) will never see the light of day.
"Does responsibility have weight when the one responsible has nothing?" Some musings on the semantics of agency based on a bitch's quote.
Flirting, relationships, and defining comitment that rejects ownership.

See? I should be pecking away right now. I have plenty to write about. But i'm just sitting here, listening to Romantica instead.

Go figure.

-sly

The Worst Kind of Tourist

2006-05-30T02:35:00.000-05:00

I hope by now, y'all have heard the story of CBS employee Ryan Smith being gay-bashed in St. Maarten. The CBS bit being important, as in, you've heard of this incident and not others.

I shouldn't have say, it's more than a little fucked up to have someone place a tire iron into one's head because you hugged a man at a bar. But the response in queer communities here in the States...is to say the least troubling. The first concern that gets voiced, in this article and in my survey of other reactions, is....wait for it:

That other American tourist gays might be stopping there in the future, when they ought to be boycotting.

We need to insist that if the island is going to welcome visitors, they must have some sort of a police force that will answer their phone if they are called with an emergency. Attacks on gay people happen everywhere, and they will happen again. But you would like to think that if a place is being marketed as a gay-friendly destination, the police would be ready to handle these problems when they arise.

It just bugs the hell out of me to see someone point out a legitimate concern for the safety of queer persons in a homophobic society, and then completely elide the fact that queer people live there. The worst kind of tourist is the one who assumes that the place they visit exists for them. Witness the recent purchase of Nambia as a large maternity suite by Brangelina. Ryan didn't deserve to have his skull bashed in. Nobody does. But that doesn't preclude me from noting that the kind of attitude being displayed here looks pretty frankly like a racist demand for the safety of white, American queers over and against the condition of queers who, you know...can't leave the danger of homophobia when their employer airlifts them to safety.

Instead of lecturing the governments of the islands on how they need to behave in order to get our precious tourist money, maybe try thinking of ways to ally with Caribbean queers who are seeking their own liberation, and start doing the desperately necessary anti-racist work in our own communities so that anti-colonialist rhetoric doesn't find resonance with homophobia.

If I was queasy reading the article, the comments sealed it for me. A selection, without further comment.

What's equally enraging is that these Dutch controlled islands seem to be completely at odds with the rest of Dutch society. Time to send in some new provincial Governers I think.

[I]t's long been known that the Caribbean is generally quite hostile to gay people. The islands are poor, with tourism often being the main industry, which creates dependence and resentment. Combine the economic issues with the conservative cultural tenor of many of the islands, and you get hate crimes against gay tourists. Fundamentalist religion is strong on many Caribbean islands, with Jamaicans being particularly god-crazed, worshipping everything from Jesus to dead Ethiopian emperors. Many islanders see us as rich, decadent, godless, and immoral. But as dangerous as this situation can be for gay foreigners, it's far far worse for gay islanders who have to live in these backward societies.

when questions are the wrong things to ask

2006-05-28T19:00:00.000-05:00

The question is one of the most interesting semantic functions I know of. Easily used for a wide range of functions, the question can establish fact, authority, doubt, truth, narrative, and position all with out breaking a linguistic sweat. The leading question implies, the open ended question creates space, the hostile question sets tone.

But one of the things that I think needs more attention is the way that questions shape and transmit power. To wit, a short story.

The Survivor

I met her some years ago. Fewer than I'd care to admit, as you'll see shortly, I am not a sympathetic character in this tale. I knew from before I met her officially that she had been assaulted recently. I don't recall quite how the subject came up, but I tend to think that knowing myself, I had helped lead things in that direction. If nothing else, I'm a curious type. She told me the entire story, stopping very little. I had shut down in to dumb silence. I'm thinking about it now...and I've got a half-queasy feeling of anger and powerlessness. She slowed, and then stopped. Silence. "Well, say something!" Her tone was sharp. I don't blame her for that...she had put herself out there and made herself extremely vunerable, and had no idea of if i was reacting in a helpful way or if she needed to close off and protect herself. I started asking questions. Had she reported it? No. She knew who he was? Yes, a friend of a friend. If you don't, couldn't he do this to someone else? He already had. The limitations haven't run out...you can still file, you know? She backed away.

The problem wasn't that my questions were dumb, though they were. The problem is the power that asking a question can exert. Like questions that background and elide the assumption that legal means are the acceptable means of responding to an aquaintance rape. Like questions that have everything to do with the questioner's need to pattern and structure an unfamiliar experience, and nothing to do with centering and respecting the other person.

A few years after that, I was at a ministry conference. The homophobia was running high, and we had a panel on "Barriers To Ministry." One young woman asked a question about queer ordination. The "ally" who was leading asked back: "What denomination are you?" She had said nothing about being queer herself, or in any way indicated that she wanted personal advice. She wanted to bring attention to the fact that there was a major "Barrier To Ministry" at a time when the lack of trained clergy was being bemoaned.

That night, a few of us clung to each other at the healing service...a handful of queers in unsafe space. Outed in such an enviroment, this woman had been betrayed by a question. Questions create gaze. They structure who is looking, analyzying, evaluating....and who is examined, critiqued, and objectified. For those of us who have grown up with priviledge, we are trained to ask. We expect answers. We believe other people will tell us things that we need to know. We have come to assume that our questions are relevant, interesting, pertinent, and helpful. We are addicted to our gaze, our way of looking from power. The question gives shape to that demand and presumption.

The point of this isn't an indictment of curiousity. It is a cautionary tale about being in control and awareness of where that is leading. Coupled with priviledge, the question becomes interrogation, the expression of power through a demand posed as a question. I had no idea what it meant to consider and chose how to respond and protect oneself after a sexual assault. The questions I asked didn't seek that knowledge. They sought the impression of order over my unease. The panelist didn't have a clue about what it meant to seek ordination as a queer person. The question she asked didn't answer that for her. It ended the conversation.

I can't say what the magic words are, or what should be said instead of a question. Maybe the right thing is a different question. I have no idea, to this day, what I should have said. But what I have come to see is the way in which my (and many other people's) response to sexual assault is immediatly evaluatory. The whole trope of "credibility" and fitting the "pattern" of how people react to sexual violence is witness to this trend. The combination of ignorance and priviledge mixes in the questions we find ourselves asking. They undermine the personhood of the people we ask them about. We use questions to elide that we are making assumptions and judgments about how a person "ought" to respond to rape.

I hope that I am learning to change my questions. I hope that I am not learning to be silent. I hope that my questions interrogate my own power more than than the choices of others. I yearn for questions that demand a response from the institutions that have been complicit with sexual silence. More than anything, I want the question that underlies all my other questions to be:

When can I, when can we, end sexual violence?

Well, shoot

2006-05-24T19:07:00.000-05:00

I was really hoping to slide by without a real post for a while, but since my piece didn't get picked up for Carnival of the Liberals (you should still really go see the stuff that did make it...), I actually have to write.

Damn.

Last couple days have been very hectic in a brainless sort of way (i'm writing this in two minute chunks as i do stuff around the house)...but i actually had some downtime this morning, and so as is my custom in waiting rooms, i read some po-co theory.

I'm working (very slowly) through Bhabha's location of culture, as the blog title and nom de plume might suggest. And i'm trying to figure out my relationship with sly civility, especially as it relates to the culture of Yale Divinity. How much to I invest myself as a person who identifies with that school? In opposition to it?

There aren't easy answers to this, obviously. But my thoughts so far. One of the things that underlies colonial (broadly defined) discourses is a narcissistic demand for love. As BelleDame discusses here (the comments are interesting, too), one of the ways that patriarchy expresses itself is by the unconditionality of affection which it idealizes in mothers and wives. I still register complaint on the term "mama's boy" as used in the comments, as the production of the male demand for affection isn't about bad/over/under loving a son by the mother, but the entire frame of cultural discourse. But I think this is overall, very accurate. The English/European?Western demands not just an obedient subject, but a grateful one as well. It is not enough that the Dobsons of the world insist that we be straight, we must affirm their vision of America as well. Bhabha puts it thus:

The Authoritarian demand can now only be justified if it is contain in the language of paranoia. The refusal to return and restore the image of authority to the eye of power has to be reinscribed as implacable aggression...coming from without: He hates me. ...The frustrated wish 'I want him to love me.' turns into its opposite 'I hate him' and this through projection and the exclusion of the first person, 'He hates me.' (Location of Culture. 141)

What does this mean for a Yalie? The institution, like all others, relies continual assent, affirmation, and legitimization. To be opaque to the institution, to be in someway unreadable or resistant to its gaze, is to have the delusion of love go sour, as the selection describes.

Yet this is precisely what I'm planning on. YDS has a lot of institutional choices in front of it. Admissions, faculty selection, communication and decision making...all are up for grabs, and all of them have a say in how this school is structured. The problem is that I, and other students, have a different truth than the school does. The cultural momentum of YDS is the use of a certain language; of function and signification. Power is structured and expressed within that language. For instance, use of gender inclusive language is a "sign" of being in the progressive wing of the school. Using "he" and "him" marks you as participating in the conservative wing. Because gender inclusive terms are mandated, attendance of chapel services is usually self-restricted to mainline/liberal types. We had a service a while ago, blogged by the sponsoring prof here, that raised questions for me.

Using the litany of "male and female" from Genesis, the students who wrote the service affirmed sexuality as part of Creation. As is true of most Marquand services, it was reflective of (and included participation of) queer persons. But all of this is cis-gendered and binary.

So when I say to this school, that I had a problem with that worship service, and that it made me profoundly uncomfortable...they don't much know what to do with that. Opposing "gender inclusive language" is a conservative trait. Because the school is "progressive" there is no legitimate "left" left after the school makes it's stance.

I've removed the middle term of the equation, where YDS makes it's definitional authority known, and sets the terms of debate. I give my unqualified answer to the questions of this instution, but without the "syntagmatic supports, codes, connotations, and cultural supports" there is a profound gap of meaning. The disorder of my speech is risky, and the chaotic nature of cultural negotiation may mean that the school will reassert it's defintional authority over my words despite resistance, and react in ways that are harmful or counterproductive.

But I cannot just start speaking YDSese without cost. The structure of gender and orientation...not to mention, race, class, and a whole slew of other factors...is poorly concieved on an institutional level. I want to be very clear about that last part, as there are certain individuals who are exceptions and speak with great brilliance on such matters. Their alliance, example, and action are critical for me and my understanding of this situation. For instance, and restricting my commentary to senior faculty for the moment...the problem is obviously not with Emilie Townes. It's in a school that spoken or unspoken, considers the hire of a high profile Womanist scholar active in queer issues as hitting the Marginal Trifecta of race, gender, and orientation...and thus relieving the school of taking further action when it comes to faculty diversity. It is my experience that individual cases of resistance and complication do not dismantle the system that selectively empowers them as exceptions, even if they are powerful and eloquent. But the talking point of many of the old alums is that "faculty just aren't being choosen right," and that the "idenity of the school is in trouble." As a sly civilian in the face of power I say: "True!" But I have a completely different set of ideologies behind that.

When I speak my displeasure about hiring practices, gender language, and the state of the school...I seem to be confusing many people. I am not trying to decieve them, I simply do not share their assumptions and reference points. The words and conceptual vocabulary i use are oriented in a different way, turned away from the dominant discourse of Yale. It is no lie, but I am telling another truth. Am I becoming opaque and unreadable? Does resistance cloak my idenity and speech, leaving a screen on which power projects it's unmet demand of love?

It is a hard demand to resist. I am here. I am a student who choses to submit to the academic discipline of religious studies at Yale. I owe much of my ability to write, think, and produce cultural commentary like this to the education of Yale and my undergraduate institution. But when the demand for love requires that I destablize and elide my own idenity...what breaks?

-sly

Pause

2006-05-23T12:57:00.000-05:00

There's not too much to write here...I'm on pause for a little while.

I should be back in time for Abyss2Hope's carnival against sexual assault.

-sly

War's Last Battlefield

2006-05-21T10:27:00.000-05:00

A few days ago, I was reading the news and came across a headline about homeless veterans. Normally, I wouldn’t regard this as surprising. The chronic decay of veterans benefits in this country is well known. The words “Iraq War” made me read. Was this still happening now?

There’s plenty of coverage, and I’ll link to a few here, here, and here.

But the story is clear. Like before, we’re letting troops come home to nothing. No support networks, lingering injuries and post-traumatic stress. Limited job opportunities, and the sudden transition to civilian life.

The battle, on a supply delivery run, ended without casualties, and it did little to steel Gamboa for what awaited her back home in Brooklyn.

When the single mother was discharged in April, after her second tour in Iraq, she was 24 and had little money and no place to live. She slept in her son's day-care center.

Gamboa is part of a small but growing trend among U.S. veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars -- homelessness.

On any given night the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) helps 200 to 250 of them, and more go uncounted. They are among nearly 200,000 homeless veterans in America, largely from the Vietnam War.

This is tragic news, but it is also an opportunity. I still remember when Paul Wellstone first came in to office, and the whole uproar over the protest he made of Iraq War 1.0. Wellstone’s assignment to the Veteran’s Affairs committee smacks of a joke, as leadership tried to hand him over to a hostile constituency. But that’s not what happened. He and his office worked tirelessly on those issues to start winning them over one by one. Benefits for atomic veterans, mental health services for the VA, homelessness reduction programs, to individual casework. And it worked. Six years later, Vets were standing at the St. Paul capitol, demanding a retraction of a dirty attack ad that accused Paul of burning a flag. No pundit could have imagined that just a few years prior, but Paul had been working steadily to make a real impact in providing just compensation and care for these people.

Veterans benefits are right because as a country we owe them a profound debt, and this is the least we can do to thank them. They are right because they help service to our country function more as an equalizer and giver of opportunity, and not just another mechanism to keep the poor down. But they are also right because they impose the true cost of war on the powers that wish to fight. I don’t recall Paul ever putting it this way, but I think it’s fair to be honest about our goals. Genuinely keeping our promises to veterans is frankly, expensive. Not compared to the cost of the war, but benefits are expensive. It would be impossible to starve the beast in this fashion, to borrow a phrase from the other side, but it is one way in which we can help focus attention on what it really means to send Americans into combat. Refusing to let the Pentagon cut corners on personnel costs is a part of the broader social vision of the progressive movement. If we don’t want people to be disposable commodities, this is one place to start.

The affection for Paul in the Veterans communities of Minnesota was not universal, but it ran deep. I remember Vets coming in to the office, and how you could always tell who had finally gotten a medal awarded, or gotten a benefits package awarded. (Of course, it was slightly easier if you’d opened the mail that day.) Their gratitude was always unmistakable, and they’d often volunteer that they’d never support Paul otherwise…but in because they knew he treated Veterans right, he had their vote. A pension for a widow who lost her husband to leukemia brought on by exposure to nuclear testing, a commendation for an act of bravery known only to a few last survivors, a benefits package that might let a wounded solider walk again, a placement with a housing agency. These were the every day cases that we saw, and they were both common place and miraculous.

This isn’t just smart electoral politics, though it is that. And it isn’t just good tactical politics, though it’s that as well. It’s the right thing to do by the people who have paid the heaviest cost of war.

-sly

before we can begin

2006-05-20T23:47:00.000-05:00

a short little excerpt on the neccessary conditions of having a open discussion on queer issues:

1. community. there is no such thing as a positive discussion when you're in complete isolation.

2. trust. dominant group members must be ready to suspend critical analysis (though certainly not permantently forgo it). what they hear may surprise them, or be counter-intuitive. accepting at face value that this is in fact the lived experience of another human being, and placing value in it as such...is critical.

3. language. dominant group members need to be ready to recognize that their existing language and communication patterns may contain offensive content and messages. heteronormativity and privildge tends to be rather invisable to it's benificiaries.

4. form. questions, and not statements, are important. if you knew what it was like to be queer...you'd be one. you know what it's like to live your life. feel free to share about that. let us talk about our lives.

5. credibility. most queer people are used to having some pretty negative shit thrown at them. if you're not among the twits and haters of the world...live that out. it makes everything easier.

It didn't do much good when it was originally written, in the midst of a bi-phobic rant on a board i used to go to, but i thought it was worth posting here. Not terribly exhaustive, but a decent outline.

It seems to be open letter day...

2006-05-20T12:13:00.000-05:00

Dear VH1, Blender Magazine, and the Unholy Alliance of Viacom;

Kiss off.

43. Non-fake Lesbians
Don’t get us wrong — we love lesbians. Just so long as they’re not playing music. From Melissa Etheridge to the Indigo Girls, real-live sapphic rock stars are to blame for some truly awful trends: earnest coffeehouse confessionalism, the Lilith Fair, flannel. Now t.A.T.u., on the other hand …

This is not an advertisement for a show. This is a public display of stupidity.

Anyways, since Viacom itself was not the number one item on that list, we all know it's a fix.

Choke on your lies,

-Sly Civilian

Pie Fight, Version 2.0

2006-05-20T00:23:00.000-05:00

Dear John,

As a fellow user of "gay vernacular," I feel I can give you some advice. Mostly, in the form of Aretha Franklin lyrics, because frankly...what's gayer than that?

"R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Find out what it means to me..."

Please do. So you can stop pulling shit like this.

Thanks.

-Sly

What the world needs now

2006-05-19T12:54:00.000-05:00

Is love, sweet love.

That, and a heavy dose of shut the fuck up and deal. Reading at Feministe today, Piny takes on the quite a bit more famous and far less cogent athiest Sam Harris. It's really not a fair fight, but let's be honest...that's why it's fun to watch.

But as i said there, i'm troubled by this stuff. It's eliminationist. Now, i doubt if you put the question to Harris, he would support physical violence. But he is, quite clearly and consciously, talking about complete cultural destruction. I am reassured by Harris' total lack of power to accomplish any of this, but it doesn't make his rhetoric any more palatable. Yes, there are worse examples out there, but the presence of extremes isn't justification.

What irks me all the more, is that I've read this before, when it was called "The Future of an Illusion" and it was by Freud. Say what you will about that work, and I disagree with it as well, but at least it was written with some skill. The problem, however, remains the same. It is the over confidence in the project of the Enlightenment.

He writes that there is no appeal to a court above reason. This assertion is tied to his core thesis that if religion serves human needs, then it must be assumed to be a creation of ours, an adaptation to existential angst. The illusion as he calls religion, has given structure to human existance in the past, but now hampers our future.

But is reason a sufficient substitute? To use the words of Caiaphas, there are times when it is better for one to die for the many. It was certainly a rational call, as the severity of Roman rule cannot be doubted. One death ended a challenge to the authorities and the threat of bloody reprisal. But is it just? Is it right?

The problem here is that Freud sees the value of religion soley in terms of historical truth claims. I don't fault him alone, for as W.C. Smith notes of the post-Enlightnment age: "Church leaders, like their contemporaries, though historiography had to do with turth, but myth did not." Indeed, it is dubious to think that Caiaphas uttered those exact words. But their use is not in establishing a timeline of the events two millenia ago. It is in engaging the reader in experiencing a moral drama.

Just a few years after Freud wrote, Hitler rose to power. The Shoah was unleashed, fueled by nationalism and racial politics. What is often overlooked is that these ideas are not just incidental, or political circumstances of Europe at the time. They are intimatly connected with the rationalism of the Enlightenment heritage.

I'll write on this again some other time, but the crucial point here is that the entire frame work of Western Academia had underpinnings in the racialized discourse of the era. Europe was the pinnacle of humanity, and the spirit of Europe was freedom, reason, and progress. This is especially true of Hegel and Hiedegger. They both divide knowledge in to the objective and the spiritual, and use these distinctions to cast the non-Western as without history and progress. More importantly, spiritual is a national characteristic, the spirit of Enlightenment, not specific religious teaching, which is classed as objective knowledge. It is in the giest of the people, the will of the nation.

What went wrong? Nationalism, like piny points out in the ensuing discussion, has terrible potential for violence. The challenge wasn't in overcoming "ossified legalism" or "the despotism of the East" as Hegel charged Judiasm/Catholicism and the "Orient." It was in the radical otherizing being performed by these discourses. Frankly, we have to see that reason is not objective in some mythic and supercessionary way. It does not rise about the rest of our constructions of knowledge. Like anything else, reason attempts to obscurce the particular and political origins of its foundational assumptions. And so, it is capable of transmitting and legitimating such henious content as the deep notion of the objectivity of "otherness" that helped perpetuate colonialism, Western nationalism, and the idea of race.

By contrast, does this mean that there is some strict correspondence between religion and morality? Quite clearly, this is not the case. As Victoria Barnett writes in Must Christianity Be Violent?, Christian confession did not predict resistance or compliance in WWII. Christians were found on both sides of the line, and in varying degrees of participation. For those Christians who did resist, they noted the essential act of seeing Christ in others. What I am proposing here is that religion can be a powerful means of engaging in ethical imagination. Ethical imagination is the ability to percieve, read, and engage narratives and experiences from multiple vantage points. It is the beginning of the possibility to see outside not just self, but the groups and structures in which the self is defined. And critical to this process is narrative.

We relate to stories differently, and the structure of these worlds can require our active participation and engagement. Unlike pure reason, the essential element of narrative is the instability of the story. We must be in suspense, we must beleive in the conflict's openness, that it might really go either way. And if the story is told with particular skill, the narrative can break us into eyes that our not our own. It is no accident that queer theology depends so strongly on the personal story. These writers know that one of the things that breaks down homophobia is a sense of personal connection, that hearing the story of another can be an invitation in to ethical imagination.

Reason is not a lost cause. But it can never be entirely sufficient, or soley guide us. Moral imagination, be that through religion or otherwise, must compliment and correct our logics. Because it is entirely possible to calculate the economic, social, and political cost of a single human life.

We must chose. Do we wish to live in a world where it is right that one should die for the many?

On/consentual?

2006-05-18T18:47:00.000-05:00

If you can't catch it from the title...this is about sex, consent, tricky issues, and the like.

If this seems like too much information, not your cup of tea, or might be triggering...feel more than free to find other reading material.

A little while ago, I was reading Corinne's piece on sexual assault awareness

And I got caught at this quote.

Power and sex cannot be disentangled, and there is so much grey area. Consent is active, it is not silence or doubt, it is the screamed, whispered, and winked yes. It is not saying yes through gritted teeth after saying no seventeen times. ...So take back the night, the day, the walk home, the lover's embrace, and your own ability to say "yes" and "no". (emphasis added)

Consent is not doubt.

It's not? It's not! It's not...

Rewind some years. I'm talking to the then ex-to-be...and we're going over everything, in a way that only people falling for each other can do. Every detail of our attraction, our doubts, our fears, our feelings...everything is going back and forth. It hasn't always been this way. A half an hour before, I was not very talkative. I didn't know what I was supposed to be saying. I wasn't at all comfortable talking about the fact that I was seriously attracted to her, and even less so about the fact that she for some odd reason seemed to be in to me.

"What does your head say?"

I could answer that easily.

"What does your heart say?"

Little trickier.

"What does your body say?"

I almost didn't answer, so I answered very quickly, blurting my response before i could think better of it.

And we went back and forth, repeating our litany of desire to each other.

I had inherited, and then created for myself a view of sex that was predicated on self-righteousness and whole lot of fear. Babies and social diseases went hand in hand, the enforcers of nature, crashing down on unsuspecting libertines. But in the trance of that conversation, these phobias began their slow dissapation. There was no lightning bolt, no sudden awakening. Just new thoughts starting to take root. She can be extremely persuasive when she wants to be, and that kept me from even starting in on anything I might have previously said.

When we finally got time and space to ourselves...I think I knew what was going to happen.

Ready was a different matter. I said some no's. And I said yes, too. I wasn't afraid...well, actually I was. Afraid of my own insufficiency, afraid of being alone, afraid I would mess this up. I certainly wasn't afraid of her...

I doubted. About if I was going to be rejected if I said no...if I would ever get another chance. I doubted if I was ready. I doubted about a lot of things.

The details are hers and mine alone, and so I'm leaving them out. For our story, we need only note that I was left with a lot of questions. I enjoyed myself, even when I thought I wouldn't. It was awkward. I wasn't sure I was good enough to her, especially when she was more experienced than I was. Had I wanted that all to happen? Did that matter?

We read the newspaper together the next morning, like an old married couple. And somewhere in that, we kissed...trading a chocolate mint back and forth...and all of that doubt dissapeared. She was still in to me. And she was going to be patient. And I found great comfort and meaning in being in her life. To this day, this is one of my sweetest memories.

Unfortunatly, this was all very short lived. Breakups happen, messy ones take effort. And as I worked very slowly to untangle our lives that had stuck together in such a short amount of time...

The doubts started coming back. Did my consent mean anything if I didn't know what i was consenting to? How does anyone agree to something for the first time? Would she have really stopped? Hadn't I said no? And wasn't the worst of it that I agreed only because I was afraid of rejection?

Three years on...I have a different perspective. I thought what I needed to think then to pull ourselves apart. I was still in the middle of my fear of sex, even if she had broken it's total hold on me. I was still very unsure of my idenity. I hadn't yet made meaningful progress in interrupting my own participation in racism, something that haunted the edges of our time together. Simply...I had a lot of growing up to do.

Three years on, I can see more clearly all the issues that danced around me, and the ones that followed her...and I can analyze why things were tricky. But once again, I'm letting go of that doubt. I'm going back to that morning. I had taken the outcome, and used the trust i had built in that moment cover, repair, and re-signify what had happened to get me there.

And I want to do that again. I stand now, and say yes to all those memories. That night, the morning, the breakup, the good, and the bad and everything since. And I'm not just saying this because it is. I'm saying, choosing "yes" to the history we've written already. And I'm saying yes to the history we're writing now. My yes is my trust of who she is, who I am, and the who we were/are together.

This entry is dedicated to someone who knows who she is, in more ways than one...who will always be crazy, sexy, cool...

nostalgically yours,

-sly

Law and Order: Special Perpetrator's Unit

2006-05-17T10:06:00.000-05:00

L&O has, as a series, tended to rely pretty heavily on tropes of mental illness. There have been a few surprising moments, but mostly the stories are uncomplicated. Mental illness is scary, the only way to deal with it is forced medication or confinement. Good crazy people take their pills to make the people around them safe.

So...when the episode last night is the season finale, we ought to be ready for some sensationalism.

Season 7 Episode 07020
INFLUENCE - SEASON FINALE 10/9pm 5/16/06
ARE PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS NECESSARY? - In SVU's season seven finale, former rock star Derek Lord (guest star Norman Reedus) goes on a national talk show and lectures about the abuse of psychiatric drugs. Meanwhile, an unstable young woman Jamie Hoskins (guest star Brittany Snow), who loses her virginity, goes off her prescribed medication, gets behind the wheel of a car, and mows down 10 people. As these events are played out in a highly charged way, the argument about prescribed "meds" is challenged. Mariska Hargitay, Chris Meloni, Tamara Tuni, B.D. Wong, Richard Belzer, Ice-T and Dianne Neal also star. TV-14

What they don't tell you in that clip there is that to cap this all off, Ms. Lilly White Girl of Promise makes a false rape accusation.

She's shown several times as a totally "reliable" witness, but when she talks about the rape, she's in a unstable period, and goes crazy. First of all, as we all know, "reliable" witness is a hugely perspectival characteristic. See any of the recent commentary on the Duke case for details. Ever narrowing down this category of believable rape survivors down to the mythical Napoli hypothesis...this kind of portrayal serves the rape culture by maintaining the seeds of doubt that allow patriarchal types to stay in denial.

The other part that i really worry about here, and this just happens to be my interest, is the way that mental illness is seen as precluding agency, especially as it relates to sexual assault. Given that rape and abuse is not uncommon in these populations, this matters a great deal. The way it gets shown and seen is that a "real" mentally ill person will be completely helpless and totally disconnected from reality. Playing in to the "good" victim stereotypes, the catatonic cases are infantilized, and dealt with as if they aren't there. They exist as a crime scene, not a person. "Bad" crazy people refuse to take their medications, and worse still, show some signs of function or agency while unmedicated. Showing the audacity to try to make their own choices in a difficult situation, they are shown as scary and victimized. Unreliable as witnesses, they still try to talk and claim that something is wrong, and since we find it hard to understand them, we start to attack them instead.

As the ADA crossed Jamie on the stand, she dismantled her entire humanity, calling her a slut who cried rape before baiting her into saying hateful things about her parents. We see her next in a private room in what's supposed to be a ward but is clearly a regular hospital room...and she tearfully confesses to Benson and proclaims her eternal sorrow that she had ever not trusted her parents, who wanted her medicated.

Crazy people of the world, may I have your attention. If you refuse your medication, you cannot be raped. You may be a slut who asks for it, but if someone has non-consensual sex with you, it is not rape. It's punishment because you don't do what Mommy and Daddy say you should.

Law and Order SVU: Convicting the victim for your primetime viewing pleasure for seven seasons.

-sly

In/humane NYC

2006-05-16T20:23:00.000-05:00

A long day of travel, so i'm going to keep the post brief, and then go read up all the blogs i'm a week behind on.

Or sleep.

Anyhow, a few things of note as i bummed around manhattan today on my way back:

On the M60 bus, a mother let her child wander, only to be seriously cussed out by another passenger. Choice excerpts include, "you can't just fucking stop watching your kid, this is goddamn New York City! You should feel lucky motherfucking ACS isn't on your ass...welcome to motherfucking New York, bitch!" The funny thing is, the anger wasn't about the child being a bother, which she was, but rather that it's a dumbass thing to do, and endangers a kid who doesn't know any better.

White boys who have dreds should not dye them green. You can either imitate the Lucky Charms leprachaun, or Bob Marley. Not both.

Someone spray painted a birthday party annoucement on a store front, about 32nd and 6th Ave. If you're looking for a good party to attend, or simply enjoy low-fi graffiti, check it out.

Every kiosk south of 15th Street sells Tragedy. Literally, it's this little booklet thing for 9/11....and the fact that Tragedy is for sale makes a very important point about the American people. We will buy anything.

There's a "living statue" of the Statue of Liberty in Battery Park. See above.

The beer carts in Grand Central Terminal are the best idea ever. Trains can even make a Budwieser taste pretty decent at the end of a long day.

-sly

Minneapolis

2006-05-12T00:36:00.000-05:00

Back home for a few days...and it's damn good already.

Don't know when i'm posting next, so until then...the Genesis of Whiskey, as told at the Lake Street Garage:

In the beginning, God's breath went upon the living waters. And God created Whiskey. And God saw that it was very good. But Whiskey was alone, and without a partner and helpmate. And so God showed whiskey all the mixers of the Earth, and drinks of the Sea. But whiskey saw no helpmate among them. And so God caused a deep sleep to fall upon whiskey, and took a rib. God formed a partner from that rib, and called it Cigarette.

Whiskey awoke and was overjoyed, saying...at long last, this is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone, a helper and partner so that i may not be lonely evermore.

And thus to this day, whiskey leaves the bottle, and cleaves to the smoke of the cigarette, for they are partners in Creation.

Thanks be unto God.

-sly

Dark Night of the Soul?

2006-05-10T09:04:00.000-05:00

or, Racializing Mental Health...

This is from a recent dustup at Feministe, where i realized only after posting that my "conversation partner" is a diehard republican, and extremely priviledge blind. Anyhow...because it seems like something i ought to blog anyways, an expanded version of my response there.

The thread starts with Piny's take on shock aversion therapy, and the use of pain to get people to, wait for it....stop harming themselves. It's pretty well in the realm of medical torture from where i stand. I know there are tough cases, seen them myself. But if it were me, I'd rather die first. And I don't mean that in a melodramatic sense. I'd rather not live than have an existance defined by the repeated application of voltage to my skin. Being a tortured, broken, shell of a human is not my idea of a good time. And i doubt it is for any of the poor souls who are being "treated" this way.

Darleen pounces on Piny's statements, and declares the question of race "silly."

Uh? What? What?

Having spent time in the hospital when i was a kid…i can tell you exactly what kinds of children are most likely to be classified as having “severe behavioral problems.” Which kids are percieved to be dangerous or out of control....and the magic word: untreable.

And it ain’t little Johnny Go Whitely from the burbs. Mental illness, like everything else in this society, is racialized and classed by the lack of resources, cultural stress, and economic conditions imposed by persons of priviledge.

I stayed a couple days on a volentary admit, and refused medicine when i wanted to.

My friends were looking at being sent to long term facilities, had been made wards of the state, and had nobody to back them up if they felt like the side effects of their medicine were too much to handle. most of them weren’t sicker than I…or they wouldn’t have been if they had access to the care and resources i had.

i know race matters in this stuff because everytime i went to the hospital, children of color were overrepresented in the ward population, and especially in terms of the "hard cases." Who was being restrained, who was being forced to take medication, who had floor privildges, who got out, and who stayed trapped.

All of these things had race and class very, very close at hand. I'd be gone for weeks or months, and when i came back...you know who were the only people i already recognized?

Race is never a silly question in American life, and it sure as hell isn’t when it comes to health care.

-sly

Not a Sick Trade At All

2006-05-09T13:00:00.000-05:00

Gonna be sick here...

The video is a wonderful touch...this guy stands there waxing ineloquent about how some people just need to die...and he's got a gallows standing right on the background. But this story isn't about a guy who puts together a couple of pieces of wood and then ships them out to regimes with questionable or terrible human rights records...

It's about a guy who makes "Multi-hanging Execution Systems mounted on lorry trailers" and ships them out to regimes with questionable or terrible human rights records.

Export regulations will shut him down this summer, and it won't be a moment too soon.

another damn brick in the wall

2006-05-08T10:37:00.000-05:00

Zuma got cleared on some of the lamest "reasoning" i've seen in a long while.

Nothing happened, but if that happens to be proved otherwise, then it was consensual. And if it was consensual, it was because she asked for it by wearing something less covering than a potato sack. And while a man might reasonably try to have sex when a bunch of people were in earshot, he of course could not rape a woman because they might hear. Nor can a woman bring multiple accusations of rape without it being a history of false charges. Because the system never falsely aquits rapists. Ever. Especially when the sex didn't happen. Unless it did, in which case she asked for it.

What the fuck?

The Golden Age of Homosexuality

2006-05-07T13:30:00.000-05:00

Thinking about Greeks? Hopefully you won't, after reading today.

It's often claimed, with some truth, but way too much oversimplification, that Greeks didn't have homophobia, or that it was good to be queer back then.

A sizable number of people will fire back, that's only if you're the one doing the penetrating because they get peceived as men, not women. There's no such thing as ancient homosexuality.

And that's much closer.

Why? There's no separation of gender via sex. You can't have hetero vs homo because everything is between one ontological sex. Your gender is a social position, not a body type.

It's like this. It's a contiuum thing.

At one is Male Citizen Elites (think Ceasar, Senators, landowners and friends). They penetrate. Militarily, socially, sexually. They have fun going to brothels and leaving lots of grafitti about how good in bed they are, and that their rivals are cocksuckers. According to the medical anthropology of the day, they are cool, hard, rational, self-governed, and are paying attention to their pnuema (spirit, head, heart) and not their koilia (gentials, belly, desire). Terms vary slightly if your a stoic or a neo-platonist, but it's basically congruent.

Under them are pre-male, pre-citizen, pre-elites. The boys of the above group. they're almost men, but not yet. They might form into the cool, firm, self-regulated bodies of their fathers, but only if done carefully. They exersize, they learn (the right stuff, and not wussy, inferior, or emotional stuff), form their voices to sound confident and Male, and do all sorts of self-formation to turn them into men. Because they aren't, but they could be. It's hard for the modern observer to get the full ramificiations of this all, but they really aren't ontologically men yet. They are on a process of formation that will lead them to becoming men. And it's not just in their heads or about the right thoughts. Everything (physical and mental) that they do affects the form and substance of their body. For the Greeks, this meant nurturing the boy in to adulthood, often by sexual contact. Teachers would have the boys press their legs together, and have intercourse that way. Actual penetration was a bit taboo. For the Romans, this is gross. Being penetrated or even thighfucked can turn a Roman boy into a girl. And it turns the man into a woman, because he's ruled by his desire, which is of course, feminized.

Quick digression in to Pauline Christianity. Paul says that before faith, they were "imprisoned under the law." That according to the NRSV and many other translations. Not correct. The law was a "pedagogue" not a jailer. A pedagogue is a slave that teaches high status boys, and is assigned to protect them from strangers kidnapping them and fucking them and thus turning them into women. Off the topic, but it makes the point.

Under them, slaves, women. There's some weird intersectionality, and so Elite Rich woman might be over some male slaves, but under others.

They're down here precisely because they don't have control over their bodies. They are skoas. Vessels or buckets. Recepticals for desire. Males take their desire built up in their koilia, and dump it into a slave or woman, because she's already been made soft, pentratable, warm, and silly by desire anyways. Their idenity is that they're fuckable.

So slaves don't have a gender, they have a status as penetrated. Again, it's helpful to go to Paul. He warns men not to go after prostitutes and throws a hairy fit about it in 1 cor 5. But shortly thereafter, he tells slaves to stay quiet. How is this connected? Those slaves (male and female) are being used and raped all the time. If they try to stand up for the "moral life" of the community, they get killed. So Paul exempts them from this teaching on desire, so they won't get killed for refusing to get raped. Ugly, for sure. Practical, maybe.

So yes, there is some of what we would call homosexuality in the Greco-Roman worlds. And some of them (Greeks especially) think it's a pretty good idea. But it's a mistake to say they weren't homophobic, they couldn't have been like we are. We have a totally different knowledge/construction of what gender and sex are. But the constant factor is that penetrated parties have less control, status, consent, or voice. Women or softmen (a likely neologism of Paul's that describes bottoms) aren't Citizens, and they sure aren't treated like it.

i hope this has been a constructive, if depressing, walk through history.

-sly

Bringing Things In

2006-05-07T09:06:00.000-05:00

"I was saying don't mix gender (the fact of being a woman) with being a lesbian because that's going to complicate the issue as that's yet another type of discrimination in addition to the race and gender issues (worthy of another discussion ie is race more significant than sexuality? - I guess the best people to make that assessment would be black homosexuals just like the best people to say whether race or gender is more important are black women)."

This from Racial Realist's exchange with Nubian.

This was to "explain" why she said that Nubian had "brought in" orientation.

Some explanation, indeed. Maybe it's that i just woke up and i'm a little cranky (yes, it's ten in the morning) but there's something really telling about that opening line there.

I don't mix. Of course you don't. That's not your idenity. But to talk about the function of homophobia like it's a secondary item to gender/racial intersectionality...that's just missing the damn boat. Frankly, i don't know if you can have patriarchy without homophobia. Sexism operates in unique ways across the "lines" of gender, but it's sure as hell operating within those percieved and constructed boundaries. Homophobia is sexism's answer to the single gender bording school, the locker room, and the football team. It's picking up the night shifts so that this company can operate twenty four seven.

I don't think this is the best argument in the world for caring about homophobia, which ought to be first and foremost, the harm that comes to persons who are read as or idenitify as queer.

But can it at least get us started?

-sly

blech

2006-05-06T08:02:00.000-05:00

Haloscan is down, afaik. So comments are off for the moment, or at least until it doesn't take forever and a day to load. I'm so not a fan of that.

3 papers and 1 final down, 1 paper remaining.

So far, no extensions necessary. We'll see what happens with this last one here, but i'm hoping to continue the streak.

i'm going to be a little code monkey for a bit, and see if i can't make something happen with comments.

-sly

Blogging for Radical Fun Day!

2006-05-05T09:48:00.000-05:00

Y'all know what time is it is....Blogging for Radical Fun Day!

and i almost forgot.

since i'm in a hurry to finish my paper here, which most definitly not radically fun...

I'll tell a story. Boy meets girl. Or maybe it was girl met boy. I can't recall for certain. At any rate, we started spending pretty much every spare moment with each other. She's coming off a tough as nails breakup, and we've been getting to be better friends through a queer discussion goup that we're a part of. And for a while, it works. There's no set relationship, no strings, just a whole lot of worthwhile time spent.

Of course, this is doomed to be short lived. Not because it's a semi-relationship that's semi-open...i'm sure those can work just fine. It's doomed because it's my social life.

I start getting jealous...not of any one in particular, but i sense that she's looking to move on, and not to me. we head to a party, and i feel like shit. i'm torn up emotionally, and i'm nursing a headache from the night before. she tells me "don't expect to even come home with me...i really think i'll leave with somebody."

Yeah, just what i needed to hear. we get there...and something odd happens. maybe the crowd is a slightly different one that we expected, or maybe it just works out this way...but in the center of the dance floor, is almost every single member of the bisexuality discussion group. (That's not the official name, as we spent half our time trying to find a suitable name for ourselves. I'll tell that story another time). And we dance...in a low ceiling basement, next to the bedroom that's probably not up to fire code, the music blaring, the drinks never ending, the muggy heat nearly overtaking us, trying to avoid running in to the stand pipe that dominates the room.

And it was the most fun i'd ever had dancing. We were close, we touched, running hands over bodies, keeping in contact, breaking off to catch fresh air, and joining right back in. girl and i started reaching a new understanding that night. i wouldn't realize this until much later, after a whole mess that broke my heart...but such things happen. what that night was to me was a first glimpse into the joy of radical community. we had spent hours talking our idenities out, argueing over language, sharing coming out horror stories, and figuring out what it meant to be on the margins of both gay and straight.

and so in that night, we could be free to each other, without demand. former partners, never quite partners, never partners... all dancing with each other, sharing the joy of being there. There, in tipsy, hot, tired, sweating, joyful, sexy, perfectly imperfect bodies...touching, trusting, needing, wanting, taking, giving, celebrating, loving.

Perhaps this doesn't sound all that radical, but trust me...it was. It has been a long road for me to affirm myself as a whole, and it is a journey i'm still on. Reconciling my sexual self to my idealism hasn't been immediate or natural. but that night, that night was fun. Radically fun as it opened my eyes to incarnations of sex and sexuality that had forsaken possesiveness, not just in name but deed...

you might know this already, but i'm smiling as i write.

go on...build utopia, fight the Man, blame the powers, and scream your truth. but by God, have fun doing it.

-sly

Paper Update

2006-05-05T07:08:00.000-05:00

but wait you say! this isn't realy blogging, this is just sly complaining about homework!

pretty much.

i'm printing one paper this morning, all pdf'd so that i'm not tempted to make last minute changes, and then going in for the final writing on another. i'm about 6 pages away from being done, but 8 would not be a bad thing. we'll see where it all ends up.

-sly

road signs

2006-05-04T09:43:00.000-05:00

browsing around, i saw an ad for this...

which i like, but it's assuming a gender binary.

so can we get a shirt made up with a traffic circle as the sign?

maybe something about all directions?

aarrgh

2006-05-03T23:47:00.000-05:00

For some reason, i let myself be talked in to going to Gypsy, the grad student pub, tonight. it was a birthday celebration, and as an aspiring extrovert, that's something that i should be attending.

i'm now 5 pages behind on my writing schedule, with 8/20 of a paper due on Friday, and 5/20 of another due on the 10th.

a little freaked out, but all that's left to do this evening is to get my arse to bed.

i swear, something of substance will appear on this blog as soon as finals are over.

trust a try

2006-05-01T10:24:00.000-05:00

Welcome to my part of the Blog Against Disablism Carnival, hosted by Goldfish. Please read around, and hear the voices speaking today.

It's finals right now, and the crisis i've faced every semester for years is on me again.

i'm not going to get done on time. i've put things off, started late, and faield to show enough internal discipline to make my deadlines. i know i can work this fast, but i never do.

why this has anything to do with disablism is because i have a bit of a reason.

if i don't pace myself, it's more than likely that i'll have panic attacks or have a depressive episode. it's legitimate, in that i've gone to doctors so that they could tell me what i already knew. but for a variety of reasons, medication doesn't work for me. either it just doesn't cut it, or it causes one symptom to get worse as it makes the other better. i could be more depressed, or have more panic...but i can't seem to get both gone. and while the depression slowly robs me of my idenity, and causes me to withdraw into my own world...

the panic isn't as productive. i can work when i'm depressed. i've got the routine down, and i am pretty decent at meeting deadlines and such. i'm a good student, and so i get a fair amount of leeway. being personable, and having a reputation buys me the privilege and favor that i need just to keep up the impression that i'm a good student. i can work, but that's about it.

the panic attacks are scarier. they put me in the hospital more often. they're more dangerous. but i prefer them. there. i said it. i am choosing to be sick, if the double jeopardy i'm in counts as a choice.

which is why i feel so deceptive this time of year. i keep pretending that it's all out of my hand, that there's nothing i could do to fit the demands of academia.

there is.

but i'm refusing it. it costs too much. and i think in the limited options i have to deal with these circumstances...i have the right to make that call. where does my procrastination end, and the legimitate need for rest begin? am i a slacker, or a person with a disability?

i have to stop asking myself that, like it's a either or. i'm trying to be the scholar that i want to be. there's no clear cut manual that can separate out my personality from my brain, my person from my pathology. for better or worse, the depression and anxiety are a part of who i am. how i deal with them, constructively or not, is a part of who i am as well.

and i've decided i want to live in a society that gives me the trust to make the choices i can to live around it, to navigate my life with mental illness as best i can. deadlines matter. but not more than the people who care about them. it's not just a disabilty issue. it's about the projection that says "other" people fail. it's about the misrecognition that doesn't comprehend the ways in which we are all breaking ourselves to fit ideals that don't fit.

disablism is about enforcing the idea that people need the threat of starvation and ruin to get them to do anything. it's about the capitolistic fetish with the "laziness" of others. it's about the fantasy that our limitations are there just to be overcome and elided.

today, i'm going to ask for trust. trust that i can manage my life. trust that i will try, even if i refuse to tear myself apart. trust that starts with myself.

-sly

justice

2006-04-30T18:32:00.000-05:00

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

2006-04-28T22:50:00.000-05:00

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

2006-04-27T20:08:00.000-05:00

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

2006-04-27T01:45:00.000-05:00

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

2006-04-25T16:59:00.000-05:00

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

2006-04-24T12:37:00.000-05:00

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

2006-04-22T08:26:00.000-05:00

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

2006-04-21T12:49:00.000-05:00

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

2006-04-19T11:17:00.000-05:00

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

2006-04-18T16:15:00.000-05:00

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...

2006-04-17T08:39:00.000-05:00

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

2006-04-15T00:33:00.000-05:00

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

2006-04-12T20:19:00.000-05:00

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

2006-04-11T16:17:00.000-05:00

"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

2006-04-10T10:45:00.000-05:00

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?

2006-04-07T06:39:00.000-05:00

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?

2006-04-06T10:35:00.000-05:00

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

2006-04-05T15:06:00.000-05:00

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