A(n erotic) poem from the oppressor inside me

I really hate the writing advice "write what you know". I sincerely do. It stops so many people from exploring their thoughts about stuff they aren't experts in. Now I'm not saying that writing about stuff you don't know and haven't researched is going to be publishable, but it will teach you some pretty important stuff.

It will reveal all of the assumptions and bits of knowledge you already do have (but might not know that you know). Chances are that thing you're interested in learning/writing about is something
you probably have at least a few facts and assumptions about. And it's probably a good thing for any writer is to get to take stock of the knowledge base they already have (regardless of how skewed).

For instance last week I was prompted to "write a celebration of the opposite sex". I have no idea when "opposite sex" even is to me as a person who identifies as both bisexual and genderqueer. I experience a bristle of discomfort whenever I'm asked to distinguish between (two) sexes/genders.

My gender and sexual identities are in many ways inherently against that sort of defining. But some parts of are still attached to those separations. Even though they aren't the parts of me I choose to express most of the time they still exist inside of me.

So I chose to explore what I knew the least about, how my masculinity relates to the supposedly opposite feminine folks. This is what came out when I gave that space to speak:


I don't want to be just one more guy writing creepy sonnets about Women

So it's a good thing I'm awful
at sonnets, because the slow-quick,
then whiplash that any small impact
dances through breast to nipple
makes my iambs incredibly tense.

As my heart double-dactyls I
imagine our chests pressed together
the way her nipples might drag
all their implications across my storyline,
until their hard milklessness tattoos
hunger through rib to lung to liver.
The lust in me she pricked
drops sudden into hip sockets
and opens the honest horror of its being:

I love women because overwhelm is what they're used to.
I love being cast as the stimuli that she will react to.
I get off on her ceding to my protagonism,

The sashay of her ponytail's enough to
set off my engine. Her eyelids
flick faster than any lip could
transmute the notion "come and get me.
I am aching to be got."She yields
and I develop my character all over her.

The lines I wrote are both earnest and satirical. I do enjoy embodying the sort of masculinity that requires femininity to be ancillary. But I also at the very same time I recognize how very damaging, fucked up, and prevalent this dynamic is. I see how it ruins lives.

As erotic as I find these assumptions they are false. "Real women have curves" the same way real women are all reactive, submissive, and only interested in cuddling after sex. In the way that one person's experiences doesn't fit into/reflect all the stereotypes associated with their cultural group.

As damaging and confining as these roles are to people of all genders, I still enjoy them. In the same way that I cannot consciously stop my self from having a panic attack, I cannot consciously or instantly change my own desires. And I refuse to apologize for my thoughts and fantasies.

Now this whole "heart wants what is wants" bit is absolutely not an excuse/free pass to behave in ways that hurt or dehumanize others. We all experience complex and often baffling desires and we all decide how to actualize or not actualize them. I have decided to try not to dehumanize others, but that doesn't mean I'm not interested in playing out dehumanizing roles with other consenting adults.

Acknowledging that contradiction is scary. And often takes some time (and some uninhibiting substances). While writing the above poem my body and pen resisted (there's another 3 stanzas I wrote before and during drafting it that critiqued/resisted the voice I was writing from).

We like to see ourselves as Good Guys always fighting the good fight with all our thoughts and desires. But none of us really is. In this sense the revolution starts with honest self-reflection; with realizing and recognizing one's own monstrous and dehumanizing impulses.

If we let go of needing ourselves to be Good we can stop denying our problematic impulses and desires. What's revealed in this process are the deeply ingrained biases and assumptions that live in our minds.

For me, seeing this disturbing information has shown me which parts of myself I choose to share universally and which impulses I chose to be more careful about expressing/exploring. Reading the words of my more vulgar impulses is important to me on several levels.

It lets me know that my desires are participating in and benefiting from the male gaze.  It also lets me know that I am not above the tantalizing effects of a power imbalance I'm on the luckier side of. It reminds me that parts of me enjoy and pine after being the oppressor.

In defense of friendship

This morning my internet machine lit up with another bunch of articles about nice guys. At first I was excited, and eager to see what new insights were being added to to conversation. But alas, while it is still really fucking good information, none of it seemed groundbreaking or new to me. And so for all you recovering Nice Guys out there, this is something you might not have heard that I think you should know:

Dear Nice Guys,

Ok so, we've already had a nice long chat about what it so categorically sexist, limiting, and awful about what you're doing. But wait, there's more!

You know what my least favorite thing about all this friendzone/nice guy bull shit you pull: it ignores/erases how totally awesome and fulfilling friendship can be.

It operates on the pretense that women and men are incapable of having such friendships because of their desires I guess? Not only does this worldview assume everyone is super straight and indiscriminately heterosexually horny, it reduces them to nothing more than being at the whims of their sexual desires. It implies that they couldn't possibly ever have motivations more/as important as their sexual ones.

Bull fucking shit, man. Look I get that your desires are a part of you and all, but you are totally way more than just your desires. Act like it.

And while I'm at it who's to say that romantic relationships are really better or the "more than" than friendships anyway. Romance/sex is not an upgrade, it just a different kinda relationship.

Friendship is its own awesome and flexible enterprise. Stop tryna knock it and convince me romance is better just cause you're not getting everything you want. In other words: don't let your bitter tantrum of romantic/sexual entitlement yuck my yum for friendship.

Stop staying "just friends" as if it's a life sentence in Bummertown. Outside of the shitty context you've built for it, the word "friendzone" actually sounds like a pretty neat, fun, supportive place to be. Friendship can be a total party. Stop being such a pooper.

Sincerely,
A Fan of Friendship

PS I know you're depressed on account of not getting that sex and romance stuff you wanted, but it's not friendship's fault, or the fault of the girl/person you wanted to have that stuff with. It's nobody's fault. Sometimes we just don't get what we want. It sucks, but it happens. Shitting on friendship, or blaming women is stopping you from accepting your own disappointment/sadness, dealing with it, and moving on.

STEM and Sexism

I'm an poet, writer and by almost all cultural counts an artist.  But I'm also an occasional scientist. A significant portion of the people I befriend and surround myself with are have either scientific or tech related jobs or are very serious science geeks on their off hours. 3 of the last 6 people I've dated work in STEM fields. I love being surrounded by them and through them educating myself about the world around me and how I interact with it.

Suffice to say I have an vested interest in STEM fields and communities. And because I care it's important for me to say that STEM fields and communities have a gender problem.

I've been lucky enough to find people who've been warm and welcoming but more importantly are as disturbed by STEM's gender problems as I am.



Earlier this month I wrote about how dismayed I feel at the sad fact that women doing science STILL seems so novel and strange to most people. Women are active participant in the STEM communities and projects, but are being actively discouraged this participation.

The percentage of women going after degrees in tech fields has actually declined since the 70. any who leave STEM fields cite the constant sexism they face.

This is a real problem and I am grateful to those in the STEM fields who have to courage to speak up and call for the necessary changes.

The necessary unpacking of slut shaming

During the recent and highly contentious exchange between Miley Cyrus and Sinead O'Connor I had the opportunity to have lots of interesting and valuable discussions surrounding appropriation, objectification, and sexual expression. Through these discussions I was able to codify my political stance when it comes to slut shaming.

By far the most simple & frequent critique of Sinead's letter was that she was engaging in slut shaming. I understand where the need for this critique comes. It is important but I chose not to write about the slut shaming aspects of the letter in my post and instead made notes about my resistance to use the term.

Slowly I came to realize that my resistance came from a feeling of incompleteness and that it wasn't just this instance of internet people shouting "slut shaming!" that felt incomplete.

I shy away from the using the term "slut shaming" not because I don't recognize and want others to see the sexist behavior it identifies but because I believe the term itself can and has in some instances become a catch-all for very general array of the sex-related oppression women face. In radical contexts catch-alls can easily become problematic excuses to stop defining and going into the complex detail for that oppression. A catch-all runs the risk of overgeneralizing things that are complex and need complex definitions.

In the example I cite in a previous post a friend was asked by "concerned" parents to cover up her "dangerous" breasts so the group of young girls she was traveling with would be "safe" from lusty European men.

We agree that this behavior is both ridiculous and disgusting. We discussed this a potential slut shaming.

Slut shaming as defined by wikipedia is: "the act of making any person feel guilty or inferior for certain sexual behaviors or desires that deviate from traditional or orthodox gender expectations."

Based on her account and this definition I don't think it was. Or at least not just that. To me it was straight up sexual harassment and body policing at the hands of trusted authority figures. In fact they way she was dressing had little-nothing to do with her expressing her sexuality. It was the parents that assumed her clothing choices were "sexual", so how could it have been slut shaming?

When slut shaming is identified those doing the identifying run the risk of making the mistaken assumption that the subject of the bullying/harassment/shaming is indeed expressing their sexuality. Regardless of what they are wearing we can't know for certain that someone is expressing their sexuality unless they tell us explicitly.

The language of slut shaming is especially problematic in light of recent efforts of some groups to reclaim the word "slut" as an identity.

When "slut" becomes an identity (as some are struggling for it to become through its reclamation) it separates women into categories of sluts/nonsluts. This distinction divides feminists communities and does nothing beyond support individual declarations of identities (which should not be the primary/only function of feminism). 

Instead of dividing women based on sexual identities let's acknowledge that we are all humans and we all experience desire. Do we really need a label that denotes that some of us are willing to express the sexual ones?

When slut becomes an identity the harassment/shaming that is related to the expression of sexuality become about identity. The body/behavior policing, the sexual harassment and the gross slew of things referred to as slut shaming isn't about the identities of those targeted (beyond the fact that they are women). It's about their behaviors and expressions.

Slut shaming is not about "you are wrong" but are about "you are doing it wrong". And by "it" I mean womanhood. Slut shaming is about tacitly enforcing the misogynist rules of womanhood. If we want to be radical (get at the root of things) we need to dig in and figure out what specifically is being denied and why. We can't just be satisfied by just calling oppressive behavior "slut shaming" because it's not just about the (slut/nonslut) identity of the person being shamed, it's also about how that shaming fits into the broader context of oppression.

It's not enough to see the objectifying oppression of a woman and call it "slut shaming". It's a great first step, but it is just a start. In order to combat the complex nature of sexist oppression
we need to continue making space in our politics for corresponding complexity.

An Open Letter to anyone confused or enraged by the exchange between Miley Cyrus and Sinead O'Connor

I usually don't write much about pop culture, but the confusion and divisiveness surrounding the recent exchange between Miley Cyrus and Sinead O'Connor has been so intense both in what I have read and within myself that I had to write something about it.

First, I don't think it allows for much room for complexity when those of us watching and commenting on the exchange between these two women to call it a "feud". It only serves to generate further animosity to encourage divisiveness between two people. There is a conflict here but calling it a feud and taking up sides does nothing to encourage resolution.

Because I do not wish to add any fuel to the perception of their exchange as a feud I need to state immediately that I wish to take the side of neither party. Or rather I want to take both their sides because this is not a case of one musician against another. It is a case of all creators and women against the oppressive force of patriarchy and the vicious capitalist exploits of the music industry.

I have not seen and have no desire to see the Wrecking Ball video. I generally avoid Cyrus's work if I can. I find her oeuvre boring and vulgar. I don't find her work vulgar because of the sex/nudity. The amount of sexuality isn't vulgar, the way she replicates the patriarchy and appropriates black/hood culture when doing so is what disgusts me.

When she performed at the VMAs I made a few disapproving tweets and left it at that. I helped that many amazing feminist and anti-racist writers immediately identified the offensively problematic elements of that performance (literal objectification of WOC and unabashed appropriation of black culture to name a VERY few). I even thought it a strange sort of fortune that the problematic elements of that performance where were so obviously racist that even those with little exposure to anti-oppression could notice (kind of like how Seth McFarlane's Oscar hosting was SO sexist that people DID notice and were disgusted).

This week however, with Sinead's open letter and Miley's response there is less obvious stuff going on. It's unfortunately extremely public and very contentious. This is a hard knot of colliding and intersecting oppressions.

If you have not done so please read Sinead's letter to Miley now because I'm going to respond to specific components.


Before I get to the critiquing part I want to commend Sinead for trying to warn Miley about the predatory and exploitative nature of the music industry (and let's be honest the world at large). I am open to the reality that this realization might come as a "duh" to Miley (whose been around the industry her whole life), but it IS one that anyone working within that industry would benefit from remembering and strategizing against.

So yeah. I'm all for Sinead's call for Miley to be vigilant about the ways in which the music industry is trying to exploit her (we should ALL be more vigilant about the ways in which patriarchal capitalist systems are looking to exploit us), but that is where my support stops. And where Sinead begins doing some pretty subtle and serious concern trolling. I recognize the bravery and concern it takes to attempt and intervention but it needs to be done respectfully and in several ways this Sinead's open letter just wasn't.

My biggest beefs can be boiled down to two basic complaints:

1.) The use of "prostitution" as a linguistic scare tactic. It completely throws sex workers under the bus to use their profession as a means of degrading comparison. I'm harkened back to the maddening distinction Tyra banks so loved to tout when it came to shaming any contestant of ANTM who'd had any history at all of stripping/exotic dancing. Using the language of prostitution in this derogatory fashion creates a hierarchy of women who are either worthy of human decency or who aren't and clearly those who "sell themselves" as Sinead puts it are less worthy of human treatment, which means... protection apparently which bring me to my second point

2.) "You ought be protected as a precious young lady".

In this we find the most glaring example of concern trolling and victim blaming. All of my fears that were stirred up by Sinead's use of the word "prostitution" were suddenly confirmed. For Sinead "lady"=someone worth saving/protection=someone not a prostitute. In conversation about the letter yesterday a friend was brave enough to share with me that Sinead's letter had reminded her of a time when on a trip through europe with friends she had been asked by their parents to cover up her breasts more carefully because they might attract dangerous attention from men.

The problem in Sinead's call for protection & my friend's story are the same: that women are somehow inciting the violence and oppression that exists in the world. And that if they just behaved as proper ladies (and covered up) they would be "protected".

This idea is sexist and exclusionary. The idea that she should be "protected" is bunk. It denies her agency and does nothing to challenge the reality that the world is dangerous in ways beyond the control or any one person (protector or protected). Protection and preventative measures only go so far and are only available to those who can afford them (whether the cost be in $ or in compliance to "ladyship"). When we live in a culture that perpetuates it all the time there is no way sure way to protect against being harmed by the violence of predatory and patriarchal exploitation.

I have more one smallish cut of beef about all of this. Why did this letter need to be open and public? In some sense Sinead's making public her disapproval for Miley's work creates a perfect beacon of faux-rightouesness for everyone who thinks that sex and sexual express is something women need to be protected from.

I find Miley's responses to Sinead deeply disrespectful and abusive in ways that are pretty fucking obvious. Just because I have some beefs with Sinead's letter and approach doesn't mean I think she need to be bullied by Cyrus and her supporters.

I know scarce little about Sinead's mental/emotional health and relationship to the music industry. I chose not to focus on those things in this piece. Many are defending Sinead's misstep on the bases of the trauma the music industry inflicted on her. And yes. Trauma is valid. Totally and completely. But victims and survivors of trauma don't get a special pass to shame/boss/save others who have had or are having similar experiences.

I understand that seeing people make choices that might hurt them in the long run is painful. And yes, speaking up in those instances can be life saving, but interventions like this can and must be done with complete respect for the agency of the people we are trying to reach. We can't think we can save them, or that we can know their experience better than they do.

The dismantling of the patriarchy will not be accomplished by ignoring the agency of others, using sex work as a specter of shame and/or calling for protection for some women. Real prevention and harm reduction starts when we require everyone to confront and take responsibility for the violence and oppression they either directly participate in or are complicity endorsing in themselves and their communities by not speaking up. None of us are exclusively victims or perpetrators. We are all uniquely harmed by and responsible for the oppressions that exist in this world.

Sinead fails to communicate this in her letter. Her derogatory use of "prostitution", her calling for Miley's protection, highlight the uncomfortable cultural tension between the confining roles that patriarchy allows women to inhabit: the whore or the (protected) virgin/lady.

Due to Sinead's unfortunate missteps her open letter ends up echoing the privileged anti-sex work activists blindly shouting "save yourself" at sex workers. It's well meant but deeply condescending, and full of impractical solutions to the symptoms of our larger condition of patriarchal and capitalist oppression.



Postscript and preview of future post: 

I've heard the cries of "slut shaming" about Sinead's letter and intend to address "slut shaming" in an upcoming post. Please stay tuned.

I don't go by "Lady" anymore

This is a new decision, one I find myself talking about with increasing frequency and length. It first popped in a previous post as an innocuous, itchy declaration that edged on subconscious. It's since been growing.

There is a lot of cultural expectation attached to the term "lady".

I am beginning to recognize it as a coded term for compulsory femininity and consumption. The easiest and most apparent way to recognize this is to think about traditional femininity. It's easy for most people who've grown up in highly gendered western culture to conjure up a vision of a lady as someone living in a different time; a role played by Elizabeth Taylor or Marilyn Monroe. We think of lace and poise. The word dainty comes to mind. There is a level of control, artifice, and illusion (corsets and make up) with which the traditional lady presents her body. While I see nothing inherently wrong with these things, I personally don't make it a habit to treat my body the way a traditional lady would.

The manifestation of "lady" in modern times is definitely built off of these old forms and habits of ladyhood in the form of casual slut shaming & agency discouraging aphorisms: a lady always crosses her legs; a lady always waits for the third date; a lady waits to be courted etc. But these days there are many more confusing and often contradictory standards about being a lady one must appear "ladylike" (aka expressing sexuality) at all times but neither be "too forward" (AKA sexually available on her OWN explicitly specified) terms). The habits surrounding ladyhood have expanded (from corsets to shapewear & eradicating pubic hair) and been branded as "liberating" choice, but women's compulsion to participate in lady culture has remained constant.

There is a set of consumer habits a "lady" is expected to engage in. This is particularly apparent in not just beauty magazines but in places where women gather online like the r/twoXchromosome on reddit or on pintrest. Where lots of cool discussion happens and also a ton of posts about hair, crafting, design, & menstrual cycles. I don't want to discourage women from posting things they like and are proud of, but one of the most common words included in the title and content of such of posts is the word "ladies". Much of the time in this context "lady" is meant to be a call to attention for all of those folks who engage in the consumer and social habits of being of stereotypically feminine and usually heterosexual.

The one thing both that traditional and modern sense of "lady" share is their commitment to deference & to being dependent on men's expectations. The traditional "lady" is extremely direct about this. Whereas the modern "lady" brands her deference and dependence as an empowering "choice" to present in ways that are in line with cultural beauty standards defined by the male gaze.

In a pamphlet put out recently at a GOP event attended by Paul Ryan women were explicitly instructed to be modest, responsive, and gentle in spirit:

All women, whether married or single, are to model femininity in their various relationships, by exhibiting a distinctive modesty, responsiveness, and gentleness of spirit.

The term lady is least often coded as meaning these things so strictly and explicitly, but it still happens all the freaking time in mandates as simple and unspoken as "girls can't ask boys out." 

For both the traditional and contemporary lady standards for the consumer and presentation habits are inexorably tied to both class and race. On some levels fitting into the role of lady means completely masking your  racial and/or socio-economic background. The humor commonplace around a working class dinner table would be deemed "too dirty" or "lowbrow"; The way you learned to eat (with your hands, talking while eating) may be deemed gross or unladylike.  The ladylike women in our fairy tales are valued for being "fair". 

In the past I too have longed to fit this mold, to have an effortless air of "elegance". One of my previous partners used to work in politics. When we'd go to formal dinners we would comment unknowingly about how some of the women at these fancy functions just seemed "better suited" to elegance how I wanted to be a lady like them. Neither of us knew then that the coded language of lady was at work there, telling me I was too "rough" too "unsophisticated".

For me being a lady often means suffering clothes my body does not know how to wear without wrinkling or itching. It means smudging goop on my face. It means apologizing for and suppressing my burps. I means pretending I don't poop or fart. Conforming to such habits usually means being uncomfortable and pretending to like it. 

I used to feel shame about both my gender and my socioeconomic background because of the expectation that I be a lady or else be undesirable. I'm working to no longer feel this way. Crucial to this is no longer being called a lady when I am not asking to be called one. 

Dressing up and behaving like a lady feels like a costume to me on so many levels. It can be fun sometimes, I do like pretending and trying on ways of being and presenting that aren't necessarily comfortable or natural to me (it often opens my mind in awesome ways!) but I refuse to move through the world in a way that feels foreign to me and have others say that it is natural or the way I prefer to be. I can take on the role of "lady" and I can have fun with it and be proud while I am doing it but unless I have explicitly said otherwise I would prefer to no longer be called a lady.

A Familiar Fear: Why cycling is sometimes like existing as a woman* in a misogynist culture

Every time I ride my bike legally centerlane through SoDo (south Seattle) I find myself, without fail, afraid.

This fear strikes my body in a familiar way. My stomach flinches with recognition. “I know this feeling.” I think in conjunction with gripping the brakelevers a little too tightly. My wrists and elbows harvest the the all-too-familiar tension of traveling through space that was not designed for my existence. At best these roads accommodate my journey with retrofits. Often these artificial additions serve as triggers for the the rage many drivers feel toward cyclists in general and me in particular.

Don’t get me wrong, I am extremely thankful when a roadway opens up with a bike lane or announces me and my simple machine with signs or white symbols. But it is not enough.

If it isn’t apparent already, that fearful correlation I feel in my belly-- the one I am attempting to draw out here-- is a parallel between the twisted visibility & ever-apparent danger inherent in biking in spaces designed for cars, and the problems and challenges presented by navigating a misogynist culture as a female-perceived person.

Ask any cyclist you know and they will tell you story upon story of either being physically damaged, verbally harassed or having their journeys otherwise disrupted by drivers and their vehicles. Ask any female-presenting person you know (who has an awareness of what harassment/abuse looks like) and they will be just as able to tell you many stories about having their journeys disrupted by physical, verbal or other means.

You see, there is this thing about being a vehicle or gender (and gender is just a vehicle) in a system not designed for you (which at best accommodates you with retrofits): Our journeys and our bodies are constantly subject to the self-righteous scrutiny and disruptions of those for whom the systems were designed.

There is a special sort of visibility afforded to a cyclist or a female-perceived person. One which immediately appears to insight ridicule from those for whom the cultural/transportation system was designed. Cyclists and women* are expected to accept the fact that they are often gawked at and even to have their performance and appearance scrutinized and commented upon without invitation or permission. And so often the space a woman or a cyclist requests to take up is seen as merely a flashy nuisance. Most drivers/misogynists identify us as hazards within their system and not as full vehicles/people (which legally we are!).

The most prescient way in which these two types of fear connected in my belly was on the grounds of implicit but (usually) unintentional threats of harm. When a driver/misogynist does gawk, comment, honk or pass my body/vehicle too closely, there is always the implied threat of violence. Regardless of the intent.

If a car passes me and my bike too closely & the driver shouts or revs their engine, they might not mean to be saying so, but the message I always receive is very clear: “You don’t belong here and if I wanted to do something about it I could kill/physically damage you (with this machine).” This is the same sort of message I receive as a female-perceived person in spaces where violence against women and misogyny go unchallenged as the norm. I want more bike lanes and less oppressive drivers. I want better marked and maintained avenues for journeys free from gendered violence and misogyny.


*I use woman/women in shorthand here to be a placeholder for female-perceived persons. I do not believe these terms mean the same groups of people, only that these two groups are the most often subject to misogynist violence and disruption.