Reclaiming the F word: one (trans*) fag's ethics of language reclamation

So I'm a genderqueer poet and a blogger who covers activist issues. It should go with out saying that I think about language at lot. But I said it anyway. That's the kind of person I am.

Full disclosure here: my being genderqueer means that I experience a range of genders from day to day (sometimes hour to hour) and sometimes I feel I have no gender at all. I feel the need for a decent variety of terms to describe my identity.

As a trans* masculine person who is attracted to other masculine individuals I occasionally identify myself with the word fag (along with words like "sissy"). I recognize that “fag” has a history of being used violently and oppressively, and is very much so still being used that way by many. But I hope that fag can be reclaimed and used as an accurate identifier of people's gender/sexual identities.

The problem of hateful epithets is never with the words themselves (just like the physics that make them work are not responsible for the damage caused by nuclear bombs). The problem is the stigma, violence, and hate aimed at the behaviors and identities those words represent. In this case it's hate for the effeminate identities and behaviors of (purportedly)  men.

I take on fag as an effeminate guy who's attracted to men, but also because, as someone who has the privilege of not being oppressively coerced into (hetero) masculinity (like most cis men are) I can self identify with the word fag without personal consequence. If I'm mindful can use my this privilege to to change the conversation around “fag”, and hopefully to ameliorate some of its negative associations. That is exactly what I am trying to do.

I do this because I am proud of being an effeminate guy who likes other guys and I want to be recognized as such. I also think that the negative view of other effeminate masculinities needs to end. Bottom shaming needs to end. The negative use of the word fag needs to end. For me that starts with behaving as if there is nothing wrong with a word that means "effeminate gay man" and that instead there is something wrong with the people who would use "fag" with distaste, fear, and hate.

In my case, as with all language reclamation, privilege is the primary fuel. I receive support from my community when I name my identity and when I defend it. People will have my back if I decided to shout back at the haters: "You know what? I AM a queer/fag/slut/bitch and there's nothing wrong with that."

I recognize and love me. I know that my friends and family recognize and love me. Changing the meaning of words relies on the privilege of recognition, on the fact that at least some people will listen to the speaker, legitimize their words, and offer them leeway on their intentions. Community support and recognition is an essential ingredient to the reclamation of slurs.

This is exactly how words like “pervert”, “slut”, and “crip” have been reclaimed. And this community fueled privilege is exactly why language reclamation is so prone to becoming problematic when it goes viral.

Though these words have gone through a significant and largely effective reclamation, they aren't all accurate representations of everyone's identity. Unfortunately, some overzealous reclaimers attempt to ascribe their reclaimed slur to everyone wholesale. As if the oppression they faced though a particular word is the same and carries the same significance for everyone. This happened most flagrantly with the reclamation of word “slut” and was met with well worded and very warranted resistance:

What becomes an issue is those white women and liberal feminist women of color who argue that “slut” is a universal category of female experience, irrespective of race. -Crunk Feminist Collective

The messy reclamation of “slut” assumed that everyone would be able to find the same power and recognition with the new definition. There's a lesson to be learned here for those of us making efforts  to reclaim slurs.

In order to avoid erasing or minimizing other marginalized individuals we the need to keep our expectations localized to our own lexicons. We need to realize that we can't magically change people's hearts, minds, and histories with our shiny new intentions. We can't expect even some of our political allies to use or accept language in the way we envision. Because, whether we acknowledge it or not, trying to get others that others think of words in the way that we do it is an enforcement of cultural supremacy.

Some reclamation efforts have been too impatient, demanding that people immediately see a particular word differently than they have their whole lives. We need to respect the problematic nature of the words we choose to reclaim. Impatient language reclamation not only ignores both the lived cultural contexts others may have for a word, it also completely ignores the subtle nature of language itself.

Language and culture affect each other. Both are fluid and change, seemingly imperceptibly from year to year. Language and the cultural consciousness are generally slow to shift. I believe that a conscious, minimal, but consistent resistance to the problematic way in which some words are currently used can have some harm-reducing effect. But I try not to get too specific with my vision of "what this word should mean".

Language reclamation isn't about changing people's minds suddenly with a logical argument. It's not an activist effort you can "win" at. There are no significant victory points to be claimed. Your goal should never be for people to think exactly like you, only that they begin to think differently about the way a particular piece of language is used.

What we can do is ask to be recognized with the words we deem the most appropriate. Doing anything more than this runs the risk of erasing or minimizing other communities' history and current culture surrounding those words.

I don't want people who have painful histories and associations with "fag" to give those up. Those histories and associations belong to them. What I do want is to build a future where the word "fag" and the effeminate/nontraditional masculinities it represents are talked about without shame and hatred.

Humanism needs Feminism.

Recently in a conversation about oppressive masculinities a respected friend and colleague told me she is no longer a feminist. “I'm actually a  humanist, because I care about how men suffer from rigid gender roles too.” 

This puzzled me. This comment came in the last 5 minutes of our meeting so at most I managed to mumble out: “but feminists care about those things too.”

After stewing about it on the BART and letting my brain sleep on it I now know what I should have said.

It's not that humanism and feminism are in conflict. In my mind they are overlapping and perhaps even concentric movements seeking to reduce the harm caused by oppression & inequality. Much of the work done by feminists serves to support the infrastructure of humanist goals. Part of what I assume my friend has resistance to is the characterization of feminists (or any anti-oppression activists) as narrowly and exclusively interested in a specific and inflexible subset of social inequalities (in the case of feminist 'the concerns of women'). 

While this characterization does apply to a small minority of modern feminists (and a sad majority of 2nd wave feminists), feminists who refuse to acknowledge how the work on women's concerns relates to addressing the concerns of other marginalized people are being rightfully critiqued and becoming obsolete. Intersectional feminism is the feminism of the future, and it's this exact feminism that secular humanism desperately needs.

Secular humanism provides a useful perspectives on inequality and harm reduction, but it is general and I would argue often assigns too an unrealistic amount of power to an individual's conscious mind. It's not enough for us to just  individually acknowledge with our conscious minds that all humans are equal (what I see as one of the core tenants of humanism). In order to build a more humane world humanism needs the the specific and necessary work of more specifically focused lenses and rhetorical approaches to inequality. This is where movements like feminism, anti-racism, disability justice work, and consent education can be conduits to real world actions that contribute to a more humane world.

A humanizing ideology, while providing an excellent foundation, does nothing to intervene in specific or systematic instances of dehumanization.  Harm reduction does not happen at the abstract level. It starts by recognizing specific groups or individuals who are systematically marginalized and consistently dehumanized. 

This sort of work also requires that we think critically about not only the oppressive systems humans share, but also how we personally have adsorbed these systems into our thought patterns and habits. Intersectional feminists seek out, take responsibility for, and attempt to eradicate the way our personal  conscious and subconscious habits replicate and support systems of oppression. By design this is how intersectional, anti-oppression communities functions. I can think of few more humane activities than personally reducing the very real harm I cause to because of the damaging systems of culture I have internalized.

That said. I'm the first to admit that this process is difficult, scary, exhausting, and sometimes impossible. But it is worth doing (impossible or not). It gives us practice in deconstructing oppressive habits and reconstructing new less damaging ways of treating humans together. And as secular humanists we should all want to be less oppressive right?

Rarely if ever do I straight up identify myself as a humanist. The reason I don't is simple. I assume that when when I say “I'm a feminist” or that when someone sees me doing anti-oppression work they can already tell I am. Feminism for me is an articulate lens and tool for doing humanist work.

I am a humanist AND I am an intersectional feminist. My politics aren't confined to women's issues nor do my politics exclude them. My politics are flexible overlapping and have room for all different kinds of humans.

In my understanding humanism regularly contends that the universe and humans especially bend toward complexity. In order to give this principle practical real world application humanism needs to welcome highly focused movements that force us to do more than just acknowledge that complexity exists within the human experience. In order stay honest to this vision of complexity humanism needs intersectional feminism, because intersectional feminism (like many of other specific anti-oppression movements) is in the business of not just recognizing, but making space for all complex humans to exist.

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.

The long goodbye or 30 days of salt

Tomorrow I'm stepping on a plane, ready to give my former city one last, month-long goodbye kiss.

I plan to ride my bike to the beach, sit on some driftwood, stare out at the Puget Sound and
get lost in conversation until my butt is completely frozen.

I plan to visit my favorite local haunts and stuff folded poems between couch cushions and under the legs of wobbling tables.

I will drink tea.

I will collect more hugs than I can stand. And I will not feel any shame.

I will shiver off my fingers while climbing the vicious of Seattle's hills. I will not give in or give anything away. This month will be about taking it all in. I will live by desire and steep in the fruits of my greed.

I will savor the cold even as it is my reason for leaving. I will not stay inside.
I will catalogue the smells of the people I love.
I will make soup.

I want to bathe in the salty air.
I want to dip my heart into the brine,
I will keep the salt in me as something stronger than memory.

The Puget Sound is in my body and my body is an organism most at piece within its systems. I think I could find comfort and function someplace else, and I am ready for that stretch. But right now, my body is rejoicing in the anticipation of this long goodbye. Its salt will ease the difficulty of building a brand new home out there in the unknown.

Academic Roadblocks. Help me get through?

This is the kind of day where I have crawled back into bed 3 times.

This is the kind of day that I make my wardrobe decisions for very practical reasons:  I picked a warm top, with soft absorbent cuffs, perfect for wiping away wet salty regrets.

I feel lost. No that's not right I don't feel lost. I know where I am and I know where I want to go. I feel stuck. I feel stopped at every fucking turn and my chest is ready to give in

The heater is on full blast and I still feel frozen.

Applying for grad school is expensive. Each application costs a $50 or more and each school requires an official transcript be sent out from my alma mater which cost 10 bucks a pop.

That right there is close to $300, not to GO to any of these schools, just to be considered. On some level I see this as paying to be noticed by academia and it makes me sick.

Sometimes, for me, academia is a loan shark.

Yesterday I started looking into requesting official transcripts. Former students must apply to regain access to their school information. This morning, after waiting a full twenty four hours to have my student account rebooted I was excited to log on and send out my transcripts.

I couldn't order transcripts because of the holds had been placed on my account

Not only am I required to write and turn in an self-evaulation for the quarter during which I was asked to leave the graduate school program (which I can easily remedy and might give good closure), but more significantly I owe money.

Unbeknownst me, I owe the Evergreen State College $350. More than 100 of which is interest accrued during the three year period I didn't even know I owed money.

350 dollars is the exact amount of money I've saved up to apply to three grad schools. There is no room in my finances for something like this.

I don't want to be writing about this today. I want to be tucking my head under the covers and crying about the impossibility I feel right now. The frustration and shame are crushing. Distractions keep tugging at my numb, begging me to push away this reality.

I hate this because it's one more roadblock, telling me that grad school is too expensive for people like me to even apply for. And that I am not "serious" about writing because I don't have enough money. I feel like I should just give up and accept my station as clinically unhirable in my chosen field and not worth a twinkle in the eye of academia.

This is the exact kind of barrier that years ago made me think that if I was good enough at school, if I was smart enough, if I did everything just right, I'd somehow end up "better off" than my family.

I've given up on being better than or even better off. I just want to learn how to eek out some sort of subsistence by doing what I love. And I want to have a degree I can make a few bucks with. Right now I don't have and combination of the following necessities for doing so:
the right contacts or
the right professional tools and/or
the right letters at the end of my name

Getting these things is starting to seem like a complete impossibility. I know I'll feel differently tomorrow and my fighting energy will rise to take on these barriers. But I will need help.

I've never done this before, but I am starting to realize that part of planning for tomorrow, when I will be fighting for this again, is asking for help.

So here goes.
Will you help me follow my passion and become the writer I dream of being?

If you can please donate.

You can do so through my gittip account.

Or contact me through twitter and we can work something else out.

I know that those of you who read my blog care about my writing, and whether you can give or not, the fact that you care matters a whole fucking lot. So thanks. For the bottom of my bruised heart.

<3 WRM

Book Review: Dispossessed

I've had a pretty good Fall when it comes to books. Seems like I just kept tripping on mind blowing books.

So I've decided to give my review of each of them!

Starting with Ursula K Le Guin's The Dispossessed.

The premise for the novel is simple, two civilizations orbiting each other, with distinct cultures: Urras is hyper capitalist with many but unevenly distributed resources, and Anarres which was founded on Urras's moon after an anarchist rebellion two hundred years previous and has not/barely enough resources distributed equally/as needed by a computer system. These two wolds have by design, had minimal contact in the past 200 years.

The Dispossessed is the story of Shevek, an intelligently disgruntled Anarresti physicist who travels to Urras.

The story is told in non-chronological order, switching between worlds every chapter. The first two chapters are slightly disorienting in this regard, but this element is perfect because it simulates Shevek's disorientation of culture shock.

While two seemingly polar opposite societies are represented, Le Guin masterfully does not come down on the side of either and instead uses individual characters to expose the problematic elements within both societies.

The sophistication of thought and emotion in this book is sharply philosophical and is as painfully relevant now as the year it was first written (1974). The complexity of societies is portrayed seamlessly through the main character's investigation of character's motives.

I wish that I could go back in time and hand this book to my fifteen year old self. It gave me all the complexity and richness I wanted from and subsequently failed to pry out of Atlas Shrugged.

This story is an appropriately critical approach to idealized societies. Through the voice of Shevek, Le Guin managers to balance care for the individual freedoms of creation/destruction with the needs of humans as a cooperative society.

This book is absolute magic for anyone who consistently feels like an outsider because they refuse to settle for a belonging that comes at too high a cost. This book is for people who are suspicious of both luxury and austerity and know that danger lies in clinging to closely to any ideology.

I know it's premature but I would already classify this book as deeply influential for me. There was so much rich thought surrounding ownership, belonging, suffering, and oppression that I will be chewing on it for years.

The Dues Ex at the end was a little disappointing, but not at all unexpected in a book I know to be part of a series. I look forward to reading more of the Hainish Cycle (maybe this time I'll get past chapter 3 of The Left Hand of Darkness).


Next up on my review list is Whipping Girl! Stay tuned!

Reflection and resolution

Hey friends! I just blogged for 31 days in a row! And holy crap is my brain a pile of mush.

Today is that last day of my mission to blog every day in the month of November. I'm half elated and have relived. I won't lie, it's been grueling from time to time, but also quite exhilarating!

It became abundantly clear that I have no shortage of ideas. I don't think I had a "winner" every day but I was shocked at how easy it was to find a new thing to focus on everyday. Of the five drafted posts I'd accumulated as a cushion before started this project I only had to use two. And that is even with getting pretty sick for a couple days.

Because I had a daily practice I felt more and more confident about telling people "I'm a writer". I loved having a concrete project to talk about.

I loved having the daily rigor of an hours-long writing obligation. But it did get in the way of making plans and all too often had the side effect of being a great excuse to not leave the house. Most significantly my plans to apply to grad school took a significant hit. I hope to get back to them this December. So I can be absolutely done, send them out, and then never think about them again.

Also I like the outdoors and miss it (see yesterday's post!).

So I'm gonna try an experiment wherein I continue doing some of the best parts of this challenge, but in a way that still leaves room for having a life and getting sick.

I've come to a soft resolution about my daily writing practice which will hopefully help me maintain some rigor but still give me a break now an then.

I newly resolve to write at least 1,500 words every weekday (2x my usual), 750 words (morning pages) on the Saturdays and Sundays, and I will blog at least three times during each 7 day period.

Hope this works!