Shorter Amy Alkon: I didn’t get to scream in public when I was a child, so neither should anyone else.

SRSLY.

Of course, Ms Alkon is basing this on her recollection. I’m sure that, like most people, she doesn’t remember very much before the ages of 4 or 5, probably not daily events even after those ages, and I’d be fairly surprised if she didn’t do her share of screaming in public at age approximately 2. But even if she’s right and she never did, she clearly doesn’t understand the concepts of “community” and “family” and “parents having a life even when they have small children”.

All around the blogosphere, people are writing about Thanksgiving.

To me, Thanksgiving is not a historical holiday.  It’s not about “pilgrims and indians.”  It’s not about inaccurate history or revisionist history or lies my teachers may have told me.

It may sound obvious, but to me Thanksgiving is about giving thanks.  Giving thanks for everything, everyone and every “every” that I have had, have now and will have.  Most of these “haves” are intangible.  And that brings me to what I am specifically thankful for this Thanksgiving:

I am thankful that I have the ability to give thanks.

No, I’m not trying to be esoteric or existential (although I am a Gen Xer…so some would say I am prone to both!).  Allow me to explain…

The fact is, I live a life of extreme privilege.  I always have.  As a child and as an adult, I have never, ever wanted for anything.  And I mean ANYTHING with a capital A.  I could easily have turned out to be a spoiled brat (and maybe I have – a little).

For all my upper-class-upbringing faults, I do have some redeeming qualities.  Those qualities were passed down from my self-made parents, especially my mother, who introduced me to faith and hope.

Faith and hope are these amazing things.  For me, they are like breathing.  They are always around, but I don’t always think about them.  They buoy me, they nudge me forward, they open my mouth to say words I might otherwise be hesitant to say.

Not everyone has faith and hope in their life.  Not everyone “knows” everything will turn out fine.  Not everyone sees most outcomes as something they can deal with, work through and find the other side of.

So, I’m thankful.  I’m thankful for faith and hope.  I’m thankful that I’m thankful for faith and hope.  And I’m thankful that I realize not everyone has these these concepts and beliefs in their lives.

My friend Pedro used to say to me, “Qué mas?” which he told me means, “What more?”  That’s exactly how I feel about faith and hope this Thanksgiving.

What more?

'I say, Rupert. Just love the flowers. Did mumsy trim them for you?'

What’s this I read in The Daily Mail?

The toffs at Eton College are willing to share their boating lake and sports’ facilities with the common lads from the local scruffy comprehensive school?

And – according to their headmaster, Tony Little – they are quite happy to be involved with other schools, too.  As if they have been thinking about it!  And for a long while!  After all, mutual links between independent and state schools are not new – and it is 2009, after all, Mr Little!

Wow!  So what’s going on at Eton College?  Do I detect a warmer, more humane wind a-blowing through them fausty old schoolrooms?

Or is there something more sinister behind their seemingly wonderful act of benevolence?

So, is this sharing being done out of the goodness of their rich little hearts?

Or is it because the Charity Commission is after their rich little arses?

A Charity Commission who would not hesitate to remove the charitable status of any independent school who dares not to engage positively with the community around them.

So what would it mean to a school like Eton if it did lose its charitable status, you might innocently ask?

Well, the school would have to pay more tax, that’s what!  Something they don’t do as much as you think because they are all charities – you know, like Oxfam, Mencap, Mind……except without the good works for the benefit of mankind! You get the message – a charity in name only……but with all the tax benefits.                                                                                                    

So some charity these schools then, you might exclaim!  Greedy, eh?

Yes, I would cry!

And who would benefit from all of this charitable status?

Well, there’s only one answer, isn’t there?  It’s the monied, priviledged middle class of this country, the ones who send their Ruperts and Herminoes to posh schools and who want to ensure that these schools continue to thrive for centuries and generations to come.

After all, like begets like.

Until the financial cord is cut.

Previously, on more than one occasion, I’ve made it clear that my anger at the members of the London Feminist Network who organise the annual Reclaim The Night march here in London arises from their continuing refusal to make any public clarification of their position on trans women attending the event. For a transsexual woman like me, their use of the phrase “women only” is contentious because it carries with it the baggage of nearly half a century of our exclusion from cis women’s spaces.

That such blatant and toxic cissexism is applied to trans women is, frankly, unforgivable in this day and age, but reading the latest post on the Feminist Fightback blog (link here) makes me realise just how dangerous the march organisers’ attitudes are when applied to other cis women too.

As self-identified women committed to fighting gender-based violence, members of Feminist Fightback attended last Saturday’s march in solidarity with sex workers fighting for the right to self-organise against exploitation in their industry.

From the blog post, it seems that not only were they subjected to physical harassment and verbal abuse from other marchers, but were approached and interrogated by the police, apparently at the request of one of the stewards.

[...] we were extremely surprised to find that one of the basic principles of feminism (and all social justice movements) was forgotten in this instance – namely, that we never resort to using police aggression to silence and intimidate members of our own movement, no matter how much we may disagree with them.

And that is the crux of the matter. Feminism isn’t – or shouldn’t be – about a minority of privileged cis women using strongarm tactics against other, far more vulnerable women simply to prop up their distorted and outmoded worldviews. Might is most definitely not right, and the actions of those self-appointed guardians of a fictitious ‘true feminism’ have revealed the extent of the moral bankruptcy at the core of the London Feminist Network. They should be ashamed of themselves and if they had a shred of conscience, all those concerned would have stepped down by now.

It’s no surprise that the organisers of the Reclaim The Night march have made no public statement about this incident and their silence serves only to underline their desperation to hold on to their positions of power without accountability. But listen well, my sisters: the day is coming when you will be called to justify your appalling treatment of all those women against whom you have consistently used your privilege to discriminate, when the right and proper thing to do would have been to support and assist them in their struggle against a common enemy.

—————

Other, related posts:

• TDOR 2009 – Bring it on home (RTN London remix) (November 23, 2009)
• Request for comments – Claim The Night march (October 28, 2009)
• Feminism in London workshop: follow-up (October 10, 2009)
• Reclaim The Night (For Cis Women Only) and the London Cis Feminist Network (October 5, 2009)
• Cis Feminism in London 09 (October 3, 2009)
• Tonight we’re going to party like it’s 1985 (November 9, 2008)
• Stonewall was a riot (November 6, 2008)

“More than our heroes or pundits, our Draculas tell us who we were.” Nina Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves, p. 112

If our vampires indeed tell us a great deal about who we are, and I think they do, what is the current vampire craze telling us about ourselves and our culture? From Twilight to True Blood to Vampire Diaries, as well as to the forthcoming films Daybreakers and Transylmania, vampires (and the people who love them) are everywhere.

Some of our fascinations are obvious. Many date back to before Count Dracula: the vampire as symbol of immortality, otherness, power, horror, sexuality, and the forbidden.

The vampire is ultimately more like us than other monsters – more human and thus more enmeshed with our own fantasies and fears about the human condition.

Contemporary vampires reveal our enduring fascination with romance, sexuality, and desire. Yet, our feelings about these arenas have changed with certain cracks in the fissures of monogamous heteronormativity. Even Twilight, the most chaste of the works mentioned above, toys with the idea that we can (and should) love more than one person (and love sex). This suggestion seems rather radical for one written by a Mormon and even more so when we acknowledge that it is the female character who is the central desiring subject – it is her wants that shape the narrative. In a flip of real world polygamy practiced by some branches of Mormonism, Bella, the female protagonist, desires multiple partners. The imprinting strand of the narrative (as well as the chaste Edward) reverses this subversive idea though – safely re-assuring the ‘normal’ one woman/one man paradigm.

True Blood more radically toys with the idea of non-monogamous, non-heterosexual desire. Yet, it too places a female as the key desiring subject. Like Twilight, it also chips away at various gendered norms – suggesting that Buffy was not an anomaly but that women too are strong, smart, desiring heroes. Each of these vampire tales also trouble masculine norms – breaking open the macho gender box to reveal that men have feelings, fears, vulnerabilities, and insecurities.

And, while the beauty imperative forced on women’s shoulders is not deconstructed in these contemporary vampire texts, the male gaze is at least partially undercut. The female gaze is acknowledged with male vampires serving as quasi-dream men, their bodies as closely surveyed and as on display as has been the norm for female bodies for centuries. While equal opportunity objectification is not the goal, the recognition and acceptance of female visual/aesthetic pleasure makes a nice change.

Further, visual pleasure is queered to a certain extent in some modern stories of the undead. Though there are no openly gay characters in Twilight, True Blood’s inclusion of non-heteronormative characters as well as its allusions to vampires as a minority that share oppressions with homosexuals revives the queer roots of vampire lore. Carmilla and Count Dracula were not hyper-monogamous heterosexuals like the Cullens – rather, they revealed that desire is not gendered – we only make it so.

Modern vampires also tell us a great deal about our love/hate relationship with wealth, capitalism, imperialism, and religion. They thwart power at the same time as they wield and desire it. Twilight’s vampires live an opulent life complete with mansions, fast cars, and designer clothes. Most of the vampires in True Blood and The Vampire Diaries are not short on wealth either. The fantasy life where money is no object is certainly appealing during these unstable economic times. Yet, these texts ultimate explorations of the haves and have-nots, of us/them, of self/other also suggest that such hierarchical dichotomies mean there will always be an uncomfortable outside. Being working class is no fun in the vampire world, nor is the lack of white privilege. While on the one hand these narratives render privilege very desirable, on the other hand, they reveal that privileged classes (vampires) disempower and oppress other groups – literally sucking the life blood out of those who don’t have such privilege.

Another area of contemporary concern these texts tap into is pandemics and the fear that surrounds the idea of infection. While vampire stories of the 80s and 90s often more obviously referenced AIDS, our current vampire tales tread more lightly through their exploration of illness and dis-ease.  More often they explore addiction, hinting that a culture based on consumption (whether the human consumption of products or the vampire consumption of blood) leads to a life of imprisonment – a life of being beholden to what one is addicted to consuming. Though Twilight romanticizes Edward’s addiction to Bella’s blood, we can also read this addiction as harmful – not only to the characters themselves, but to the fans who become Twilight zombies, lurching towards the next Edward/Jacob fix. In True Blood, the exploration of drug dependency takes on a more complex form, revealing the links between addiction, dehumanization, dependency, and violence. The Vampire Diaries explores addiction as well. Like the other texts though, it shows being addicted to love (while dangerous) is ultimately ok. As such, all of these texts ultimately reinforce the idea that as long as you find your true (vampire) love, all will be well in the end. True Blood most radically troubles this fairy tale meme, but even it suggests that Sookie needs her Bill.

The real life spin off of this focus on the happily ever after of the white, heterosexual, monogamous couple spills into the real world via the ongoing fascination over allegations that Rob Pattinson and Kristen Stewart are really lovers. And, in a fictional spill into reality, Anna Paquin (Sookie) and Stephen Moyer (Bill) are engaged.

Thus, while our current vampire fascination reveals we are more open to non-normative notions of sexuality, desire, gender, visual pleasure and privilege, it also confirms we are still hopelessly devoted to romantic, sexual love. Is this the irreducible difference that scholars have explored so long – that all of us, at our core, really just want ‘the one’? I think not. Rather, the obsessive focus on true love as what brings us ultimate happiness constructs us as beings who are addicted to love – and, to a notion of love that is utterly impossible – one that is eternal, immortal, and sparkly.

Why love, though? Why create a world of people seeking their Edward/Bill/Eric/Jacob/Stefan or Sookie/Bella/Elena? Well, love is rather safe when you think about it – encouraging the masses to desire desire will keep the wheels running as they are – if the masses were instead encouraged to desire social change, wealth equality, racial equality, sexual equality, etc, well, the world would have to change quite a bit. Keep ‘em in love with love and you’ve got a captive audience of consumers who will buy your stories, your products, your fictions so that you can keep on keepin’ on with your global militaristic imperialism. Sorry to be a Debbie Downer at the end of this post, but methinks we need some politicized vampires to balance out all those hot, hard, muscular ones…

Brief descriptions of queerphobia, transphobia, racism, and violence follow.  Nothing too graphic.

I am queer by choice.  I am trans by choice.  I’m speaking for my experiences, and I know that some folks would like to argue with me about this.  I don’t mean to speak for anyone else.  I am interested in hearing others’ experiences, but I ask that others not speak for me.  A lot of people think of themselves as trans and queer genetically, or from birth, or socialization, or for a political statement, or that it doesn’t matter, and many other beautiful ways and reasons.  I affirm and honor others’ experiences, and I think that my experience of being queer and trans by choice are congruent and mutually affirming with others’ ways of being.

The world is built to pressure me into being a cisgendered straight woman.  As a person with white and normatively abled privilege, if I had continued to identify as a cisgendered woman and if I had identified as straight, my choices and identities would have been affirmed and upheld as natural, right, and true by my society and most of the people, cultural forms, and institutions I interacted with.  So, I do not have to be queer or trans.  If there is anything in this world I have to be, it is a cisgendered straight person.  I choose not to give in, not to concede to every pressure, every checkbox I don’t know how to fill in, every mispronoun, every street harassment.

I make the choice, against all of that violence and pressure, to be trans and to be queer.  That is sheer fighting bullheaded stubbornness.  Holy shit, that means I am really strong, to withstand a world that says I do not exist, or if I do exist, that I should not.  I am powerful, and I don’t give in.   Being queer and being trans is so beautiful and though it’s difficult, I feel blessed that I can choose to be who I am: is there anything else more wonderful?

My position as a trans and queer man is informed by my privileges, as a white, U.S.-born, normatively able-bodied person, and all of these things make it easier for me to be out, in comparison with a lot of other trans and queer people in the world.  Experiences of racism, colonialism, and ableism, among others, change the modes and probability of different kinds of queerphobic and transphobic violence, and I do not mean to say that my privileged position applies to all trans and queer peope.  I honor the needs and choices of people who are not out or who express their queerness in different ways, and I recognize their strength, as they work to survive.

Now, I know that a lot of queerphobic and transphobic rhetoric relies on queerness being a choice.  The argument goes,”Well, you choose to be queer or trans, so you should choose to be straight and cisgendered.”  A lot of counter-arguments  are based on the helplessness of queer people to control whether or not we turn out queer.  I have problems with that counter-argument, because it concedes the point: queerness is an affliction, but my goodness, we can’t help it, and so please let us continue existing.

My counterargument (and I’m plagiarizing a bit from my sister) is that yes, I choose to be queer every day.  Also, folks who think my choices should change can kindly fuck off.  I don’t go into their bedroom and attempt to convert them to the virtues of sodomy.  Now that I think of it, maybe someone should do that for them.

After almost three weeks of travel, we might have fallen into a rut. There were some patterns emerging. In Puri, a backpacker beach town, for example, this was basically what our day was like:

- wake up around 8 am
- have a really long leisurely breakfast, reading the newspaper and playing cards
- walk on the beach (but you can’t swim – no bikinis in sight)
- return to our little room for a while and read
- stroll along the backpacker road and view a few Kashmiri trinket shops
- have some lunch, also very relaxed
- go to the internet cafe for up to 4 hours
- go back to the room, hang around a bit
- go to dinner in one of the relaxed garden restaurants playing Bob Marley and catering exclusively to back packers (delicious fresh fish)
- go to bed around 10 or 11
During our three day stay in Puri, we didn’t venture a mere 500 meters from the white backpacker area.

Hmm. Sounds like a great and relaxing vacation, but what are we doing here? Why are we traveling? We both felt a little ambivalent and regretful of our own behavior. This place had basically been created for people like me: it placed no demands on me and catered to my every, particular Western need (cornflakes, toilet paper, faded baggy clothing…. Caleb has been fantasizing about creating another blog: “What backpackers like”).

I try to cut us some slack, by arguing that we have been traveling at a very fast pace and that traveling is exhausting. (So, now my great privilege is exhausting me??) I’ve started thinking about what a sustainable traveling life looks like. Is there a way to engage with our surroundings in a way that is sustainable for me, so that I don’t burn out, but continue to feel energized?

I’d edit, but I decided I wanted this separate, in a more prominent post. So there!

I really, really, really enjoy exploring my Japanese heritage. My grandma spent most of her life refusing to talk about Japan, because it hurt to think about her past. I’m not getting into that, because that’s her pain, not mine. But.

She tells me stories about when she was a child, now. Especially school stories, since I taught English while in Japan. She sometimes speaks Japanese with me (I’m really very poor at speaking, sadly). And we bond over food and pronunciation difficulties, ha.

I am so very lucky that I got to go to Japan and live there, and experience a similar experience to my grandmother’s: in a new culture, suddenly, with a bit of the language to help. I, of course, was much luckier than her in that I 1. had a job, 2. had to face considerably less harsh discrimination, 3. knew I could go back to my family, 4 5 6 7 8… I can’t name all of the privileges I had compared to my grandma’s few. Again, a lot of that is not talking her pain. But.

Some day I will be writing a post about Native Speaker of English Privilege. It’s not today.

I just want to say that I appreciate my heritage as given to me by my grandmother very, very much. And I try to make sure she knows it.

…that everybody is racist on the internets today, so I’m looking at wombats.

Wombats!

Oh, everything’s better with wombats.

(If only they would grow claws and teeth and eat Hollywood, the dumb Heroes guy, and basically all the people I’m too lazy to mention? They could also transform into giant robots, sort of like Kim Dzong Il)

I mean, wombats! Adorable!

Short summary:  Christian publisher Zondervan released a book full of Asian stereotypes.  You know, the “Asian font,” the ninjas, the bamboo, Japanese gardens, kimono, random Chinese characters, etc.  Plus the website promoting the book used an old martial arts movie in which the speech was dubbed in the white people’s racist conception of how Asians talk.

You can read more about the book here.  It’s also still available on Amazon, bonus points for those of you who can read all the characters.

Now Zondervan has agreed to pull the book.  You can read its statement on Prof. Soong-Chan Rah’s blog.  Zondervan notes that Stan Gundry has been named editor-in-chief, and “will be responsible for making the necessary changes at Zondervan to prevent editorial mistakes like this going forward.”

So that  begs two questions:

Who was responsible for making this mistake?  How many people were supposed to have editorial input and never questioned the material? Who was previously responsible for issues of race and racism?

Why is Stan Gundry (who appears to be an old white guy) now given this responsibility?

Okay, that’s more than two questions.  But Zondervan has been through this before with its “Herro, Dis is Wok’s Up Restaurant” skit.  And then there is the ongoing disgust-a-rama written by Camy Tang.

So no, I don’t give them a lot of praise for pulling the book.  Because it’s clear there must be a fundamental lack of diversity within the company.  A lack of understanding about racism and orientalism.  As well as a lack of ability to address the issue on an ongoing basis, and viewing it as a product of institutional racism.

First off, I believe I have a confession to make:

Guys, I came to your from the dark abysses of the Live Journal, originally. I’ve been there since 2003, at least. I’ve a different nickname, and you’ll never find me, and I don’t really post much anyway(1). I’m also not into fandom. I’m into meta.

And the thing is, if that sort of discussion happened in my happy LJ meta-corner? Several hundred comments worth of dogpile would follow, rightly calling out the racist fuckwads on their racism and fuckwaddery, linking to Derailing for Dummies, and The Linguistics of Colour-Blind Racism, and politely asking the OPs to die in a fucking fire. I personally would lead the Troll Legions, calling people names, being petty, and vomiting thesaurus all over the place(2).

This is what I’m used to. This is what I would like to see in a community that is not made up of disgusting loathsome and ignorant excuses for human beings.

Atheist communities, it would seem, have much lower standards. Yes, lower than LJ(3).

So, what have actually got here? It’s an innocuous link to a rather interesting interview with a black atheist feminist, Sikivu Hutchinson. She makes several interesting points, but also says some obvious stuff about racism and privilege(4).

(The interviewer, by the way, is Greta Christina from Greta Christina’s Blog. This is important, because it’s a good blog, full of sense-making and nice reads.)

Anyway, what are the impressions of the first reader?

I propose affirmative action:
We give privileged access to black people with equal qualification. Don’t let anybody tell you they found it too difficult getting into atheism because all the white people were favored.

Yay, making fun of affirmative action, and dismissing valid concerns of a black person who feels marginalised with a lame racist joke. So hilarious!

NOT.

On to the next comment:

I am not qualified

If you’re not qualified, why don’t you just shut up?

to comment on how difficult it is to come out as an unbeliever in theism within the black community, but I don’t think there are any negative pressures from an atheist community to shun anyone of any race or ethnicity.

Holy non-sequitur, Batman! Like it was about shunning. Haha.

NO.

As most of us are well informed thanks to evolutionary biologists such as Richard Dawkins, we can see any prejudice based on race as utterly ridiculous given how we are all African Apes and one species, this nullifying any idiotic objection to equal opportunity. To think for yourself does not require permission in any case.

This is the  “I’m not racist” part of the more sophisticated and sciencey version of “I’m not racist but…”

Again though, I am ignorant of this particular experience

Yes, you are ignorant, so why not shut up like now?

and of the real reasons why, there might not be quite so many non believers of other ethnicities, proclaiming aloud their non-belief. I strongly doubt the idea of prejudice coming from any well educated, free thinking atheist community though.

The education, it didn’t help you at all.

The third comment:

So where are all these “white atheist communities” then? Where do us “white folk” get together and gleefully delight at excluding others?

O WOW.

But wait! The white atheist community, it’s right there where the commenter writes.  Surprise! It’s main preoccupation at the time the comment was written seems to have been invalidating non-white people’s experiences,  and condescendingly whitesplaining stuff by the means of non sequiturs, all the while  telling stupid racist jokes. Ooops!

The fourth:

That woman has one expansive vocabulary… or one heluva thesaurus… Don’t know when I’ve seen so many big words in one place.

There are land-mines placed throughout this interview as well.

EDIT: I smiled at the “white folk” references as well : )

Because racism is so funny, dontcha know? Nudge nudge, wink wink! Also, commenter number two should maybe rectify his take on what real red-blooded atheists think about the education, right? Big words! Funneh!

Commenter 5 loudly proclaims himself to believe in the universality of the atheist experience:

I guess I’ll read the articles later this weekend but just how banal is the premise?

Let’s rephrase it;

What is it like to be a Chinese non-stamp collector?
What is it like to be a white non-basketball player?
What is it like to be an African non-chess player?

He will mansplain it all! As a real human being to a non-white person, totes!

Commenter 6 is really commenter 4 again, as s/h/it seems to have got really verbose. Let’s not allow him to steal commenter 7’s thunder though:

That’s what we need, more divisiveness in the atheist community.

Yes! Non-white people shouldn’t be such haters! Dontcha know about the importance of always being a team player?

Commenter 8:

“Hence, the European- American atheist community can’t be truly inclusive unless there is some recognition of how privilege and positionality undergird the very articulation of atheism as an ideological space that empowers white folk to deconstruct the cultural tethers of organized religion, without having their authorial right to do so be questioned.”

Is she channeling ‘1984′ here or not? I can’t tell…

Well, what I can tell is that s/h/it fails at reading comprehension. Also:  she’s just oversensitive, all right? Oversensitive! I mean, commenter 8 might even have some black friends, so there!

Commenter 9 mostly copies commenters 2 and 5, but also, you know, everybody, s/h/it’s got a Token Person of Colour Atheist! Look!

In addition, the black female author of Infidel has been welcomed and specifically mentioned in debates and other places by the “white atheist” leaders. Not so because she is black and female but because she is making a worthwhile contribution to the discourse of the role of religion in our society.

A worthwhile contribution, unlike all those black females who don’t. Like, you know. The majority of them. ‘Cause they’re busy. Certainly. With something.

Commenter 9 doesn’t really know, but it must be something black and female. Just so you know.

Commenter 10 is  sane if brief. Impossible! Fortunately, commenter 11 swiftly arrives to set the record straight and make his worthwhile contribution to the  fight against the oppression of political correctness. His special attack is unguided sarcasm. Let’s hope s/h/it doesn’t hurt themselves.

Too much, anyway:

Yeah right. You priveleged white atheist bullshitters. Stop writing books questioning dogs existence until I’ve authorised your diploma in ideological racial right on-ness. WHAT are you thinking off! Tch.

The thing is, no one’s got nothing against the atheist authors, who are cool, and don’t leave racist comments on the internet. This is however irrelevant; non sequiturs are a racist fuckwad’s best friends.

Commenter 12 is a disgrace to all Europeans ever. If s/h/it is really European, that is.

Wow, talk about cultural differences! Just what is this American ‘thing’ with race?
I, and probably 99% of Europeans, don’t give a fig as to who is ‘black’ or ‘red’ or ‘pink’ or whatever, I just listen/read what they have to say. I might disagree with them, but that is not predicated on any personal attribute they may have. Can you imagine an article bemoaning the ‘…ideological space that empowers TALL folk’? or ‘…ideological space that empowers brown-haired folk’?
What (almost racist) nonsense this article is!
Let’s have no more of it….

This would get me several bingos on the racist bingo card. Reverse racism? Check! Concern troll is concerned? Check! Colour-blind racism? Check! Ridiculous  comparing of actual living people to made-up colourful humanoids? Check! No racism in Europe? Check and check! Bravo!

Commenter 13 points out that blond people, much like rich people, are America’s most oppressed minority:

Rather than allow white atheists to control the terms of debate…’

I’m sick of brown-haired atheists controlling the terms of the debate. Where are the prominent spokespeople representing the unique interests of blonde atheists?

This is as  sick as SS is tall, blond and blood-thirsty, and I would call Poe, only I don’t believe in unfounded optimism.

And so on, and so forth. The owner of the first comment that is longer than one sentence and doesn’t make you want to join VHEMT is commenter 16, but then comes commenter 18, who is offended by the ubiquitous presence of sensitivity trainers. Darwin forbid we learn how to treat fellow human beings like they’re fellow human beings or something! I mean, I’m absolutely appalled. The sheer gall of sensitivity trainers! I only hope commenter 16 will be as politically incorrect and unwavering in his controversial convictions as heretofore. The world needs moar douchebags!

As others have suggested (and they got the quotes just right!), Sikivu Hutchinson is a pretentious windbag. Her big claim: “I’m offended”.. not unlike what we hear from some other familiar quarters.

What is she actually asking for? Between the lines: expand the Cultural Studies & Gender Studies and Black Studies curricula to include courses on black atheists and feminist atheists, courses for which she and “experts” like her get to dominate the hiring committees.

The pomo radical feminists and sensitivity trainers have too much influence in the schools and universities, and have contributed (without claiming they are the most important cause) to the lowering of intellectual standards.

She just likes being offended! And wants to leech grant moniez! ZOMD STOP HER BEFORE IT’S TOO LAAAAAAAA-

All I can say is, yeah, I can totally see how the intellectual standards got indeed totally low.

But wait! The most faily of them all, commenter 20 weighs in:

At one time, when I was younger and more insecure, I could be made to feel guilty about being a white male, but not anymore.

OMD! It must have been so hard for him! What with everyone and everything pandering to his white male entitlement, and the one lone non-white feminist harshing his squee, it must have been so terribly haaaard! And yet! It took enormous guts, several enemas, it took courage, and it took unwavering moral principles and intellectual honesty, but here we are!  Commenter 20 was, still is and always will be a complete douchebag. Proud, whiny entitled douchbag. Obviously, atheism needs more people like commenter 20!

Ladies, gentlemen, and poo-flinging monkey, a well-deserved applause for commenter 20, a true rational atheist!

(Via Pharyngula. PZ  is predictably awesome. Still afraid to look at the comments)

(1) More like nothing, really.

(2) This is of course a blatant lie. I troll somewhere else. You will never catch meeee!

(3) In case you’re not internet-savvy, I would like to clarify that you’ve just been terribly insulted.

(4) That it’s obvious doesn’t mean it’s not worth repeating. Many times. If possible, accompanied by beating with the clue bus.

This is some real shit…

One of my favorite Bollybloggers, Filmi Girl, wrote a fantastic post addressing the criticism she receives for being a white Bollywood fan. I highly suggest you read it; it has some thoughtful points about what it means to love Hindi film as an outsider.

And now, because I am a real blogger now, I shall elaborate on her lovely points!

Sometimes people assume things about my appreciation for Bollywood without, you know, actually talking to me. I’ve had people indirectly and directly accuse me of “exoticizing” and “othering” India. One particularly disquieting incident occurred over the summer when I interjected my knowledge of the India/Pakistan conflict in a debate my housemates were having; the topic came out of nowhere (it was originally a debate about race) and my roommates clearly knew nothing about it. As I tried to contribute my limited but informed knowledge, one of my housemates interrupted me, claiming that I exoticize South Asia and therefore couldn’t honestly contribute the information. In a separate incident, one of my acquaintances assumed I wanted to “be Indian,” and wouldn’t shut up about it.

I don’t feel comfortable elaborating on how offensive these comments were, because I am a privileged white American and not at liberty to feel persecuted. However, it’s inappropriate to throw out assumptions about my interest in Hindi film and culture while ignoring my real motivation and beliefs. When people refuse to listen, I naturally get super defensive. It usually runs like this, only with a more pissy tone:

“My privilege sometimes hinders me, but I will not keep it from letting me enjoy what other cultures have to offer. I love Bollywood for what it is. I’m not an expert on Indian culture, but I know Indian film (and some of the Hindi language), and I try to look at India with as respectful and balanced an eye as possible. I know I can occasionally exoticize, other, and unintentionally disrespect because of my incomplete knowledge of Indian culture, but I try to check my privilege as often as I can.”

Like Filmi Girl explains, some of the criticisms I’ve received aren’t exactly culturally sensitive themselves. Here is the comment I left on Filmi Girl’s post:

Word, on all accounts. I’ve been grumbling about the cultural appropriation stuff recently, so that section made me want to applaud. I have acquaintances who can get condescending about my Hindi film-watching, implying I “want to be Indian.” But, you know, Hollywood’s popularity abroad makes perfect sense, because we’re Americans. Americans! Everyone wants to be like us!

It’s an odd stance to take, since the same kind of people are typically taken aback by “Western” sounds and English in filmi music, claiming it sounds “stupid”, while expressing either neutrality or positivity towards appropriation of foreign languages/sounds into American music.

If you apply the you-want-to-be-the-culture-you’re-consuming model to the world, I don’t think it pans out logically. It’s also generally disrespectful, to everyone. I don’t want to be Indian because my favorite movies all somehow involve Amitabh Bachchan; Germans who watch Gossip Girls don’t have an unconscious need to be Americans. Simple!

Respect for international media and an interest in understanding others isn’t necessarily tinged with ulterior motives. Yes, I know the desire to understand “others” can imply distancing and dehumanizing, but that’s obscuring the point of exposure, isn’t it? I thought “American” stuff in filmi music was embarrassing when I started listening. Still, I quickly realized how stupid that double standard was, because, shockingly, the more I watch Hindi film, the more aware I become of the ridiculous things I was taught to assume about non-Western cultures.

I think it’s important to notice this privilege, without becoming so over-concerned that my awareness obscures my reasons for watching Hindi film in the first place. That reason is: I like it. It’s fun.

From Koraput, hilltop seat of our brief visit to stardom, we descend to Balugaon, a fishing village that is on our map (definitely not in our book) because it is a stop on the express train to the state capital.

Lake Chilika in early morning.

On arrival, the town is a strange place for us. We get off the train at 6:30 am to find that the tea served at the roadside stalls, our lifeline and default activity when in need of regrouping, tastes funny. It is hard to express the sense of betrayal when this discovery comes to light, but eliminating the main outlet for caffeine and comfort has a distinct effect on morale. The main road seems to be on a major trucking route; noisy and dangerous traffic constantly terrorizes our humble passage on foot.

The town is an interesting study, particularly in rural poverty. The tea is watered down, cows wander the streets everywhere. As we wait for the monsoon showers to quiet down under a crowded awning, two men smoke hashish and gaze about with glassy eyes. Many men young and old seem to have terrible teeth from constant chewing of paan.

People in general seem less baldly friendly and more confused by our presence; it is clear that the eco-tourism inspired by Lake Chilika does not often reach this town. As with other places we’ve been, the residents still ask us with interest where we are going, but they also ask why we are here.

Talking to a young man, a stranger on a bicycle, I tell him the lake is beautiful. He responds by saying the lake is ugly and full of trash. He says that the two of us see things differently, and he is right.

Cooking in fishing boats on shore in Balugaon.

If I look at what lies at my feet, the lake IS ugly. Dead fish bob en masse at the edge of the pier, surely contributing to the powerful odour of the fishing town. Instead of seagulls, the pernicious India crows crowd the waterside, despite the fame of this lake as a destination for migrating birds from thousands of miles away.

View of the lake from our hotel in Balugaon.

But I have the luxury to lift my eyes to the level of the horizon, gazing at the beautiful mountain islands and the water rippling beyond the fields out my fourth story hotel window. I will soon be travelling over the horizon, so I have the privilege to see the lake as more of an abstraction.

Leaving Balugaon by boat.

Many people we have spoken with so far in the state of Orissa seem to feel a great sense of urgency that their home be recognized by us foreigners. This enthusiasm in some speakers blends into incoherence as English fails, but an apparent sincerity comes across.

From my journal two weeks ago:

I find it amazing that even though I have only just set out on this journey, I have already left a place behind. I want to carry Chennai with me; I will haul the authentic feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness of that place as I recognize my tendency of reaching for abstractions and generalizations to make this experience more packageable, more portable, and more impartable. I have to decolonize the part of my brain that sees it all as a mess, restrain and admonish the lobe that identifies problems and dreams up solutions.

I am not sure how to do this yet beyond acknowledging these motivations as things I carry, for better or for worse, that I pack and unpack when I leave and return to the haven of my room and reflections; they are things that take up room in my luggage like anything else, and like anything else they take up space that could otherwise be filled with other essential tools and toys of a travelling mind or body.

After sleeping in nine different towns and two trains in the 13 nights since that entry, I am used to the refrain from rickshaw drivers as they see us carrying packs near the train or bus station: “Coming or going, coming or going?” And I am still haunted by the problem of fishing authenticity out of constant migration. What am I trying to accomplish as I live for a short time in these places?

In Pondicherry, I buy Indian rubber monsoon sandals and a longi, but it would be laughable for me to harbour illusions that I can fit in. Am I trying to elevate myself above the status of interloper? Is it possible to overcome my reductive mind and cultivate a type of temporary belonging that does not hinge on pretending, but rather on me acting as my imperfect self? This probably is not possible, since my thoughts and actions inherently exist firmly in the greater narratives of labels such as white, Western, tourist, etc.

Money for photos at Tiruvannamalai

I recall, on our second day in India, we took a bus from Chennai to <a href="”>Mamallapuram. For me, it was a painful ride; the dust and pollution were corralled into my open window and burned my face, clogging my eyes and ears.

Mamallapuram from the beach.

When we arrived in the touristy beach-and-ruins town, the invisible constraints were particularly palpable. Here was a place where whiteness carried a meaning that was engraved in every interaction. By visiting the town and bringing my dollars, I implicitly agreed to play my role in the dance with craft hawkers and aggressively soliciting rickshaw drivers.

At our morning tea, Michele and I overheard a late-50s German man tell a woman that he had been in that town for 2 years. It was believable: his paper-reading and continuous sipping of chai, in what seemed like a familiar seat — it all had the ease of habitual lifestyle.

Could this white man truly have built belonging in a space so richly imbued with social power dynamics? Could he have created, through time and human interactions, a real life in that prescribed place, transcending the strictures imposed by culture, class, history? He couldn’t have made these elements cease to matter (clearly this is impossible), but could he have managed to create meaning despite their presence as a leering audience to his actions?

Leaving Mamallapuram after one night, we embarked on our second bus trip. This time, I knew where to put our bags, to pay in exact change, to care for my face and eyes as they were whipped with wind and exhaust. Applying these tiny lessons gave me pleasure, as if by learning the little bits of how-things-are-done, I could build a patchwork belonging with tiny scraps of material.

This post contains pretty detailed accounts about my sexuality, so if you don’t want to read about that, this post isn’t for you.

I’ve recently been watching Angels in America, and the cruising culture depicted there is just so sexy and wonderful.  Louis picks up Joe in the park, and they go to Louis’ place and make sweet sweet love despite their totally adverse politics and styles of being in the world.  I know that those spaces still exist, because I have cismen friends who talk about them.  There are places they can just go, see someone who’s cute, gesture at them, and then have passionate sex soon thereafter.

Not depicted in the series is the oppression and violence that also play into cruising culture.  Many sex workers, for example, do not get to choose when and how they engage in cruising culture as they work to survive.  I’ll try to be clear that here, I am referring to  consensual aspects of grown strangers choosing to get consensually sexy.  I don’t know if the forms of cruising can be separated, but I want to specific about the cruising culture that I’m lusting after.

I am so envious of gay cismen’s cruising culture.  I want to be a part of it, goddammit!  I mean, I’m a big faggot, and I would love to have access to having sex with other queers every night of the weekend.  The problem is that a lot of cruising culture is cisgender-specific, and I feel that a non-passing trans guy like myself would not be welcome.  In addition, even if I was the particular kind of man expected in cruising culture, going walking alone in dark parks is a lot safer for cismen than it is for gender variant people.  Some of the earliest participants in cruising culture were definitely people who presented in gender variant ways,  but they had and have less power in the context of cruising than cismen.  Real or imagined, the threat of violence constrains me from being in those spaces.

I used to cruise, in my own way.  There was a time when I cared less about whether people in general and sexual partners specifically were respectful about my gender, and that made picking people up a lot easier.  I would just go to bars, have a good time dancing, and try to get with the person who looked like they were having the most fun.  Back then, I had no trouble finding several people a week who were fully willing to make out with me or fuck me.  Most of those people probably did not know they were getting sexy with a man, as opposed to whatever gender they assumed about me.

Now that I have a lot stronger boundaries about having my gender respected, I don’t really have stranger sex.  Because of the rampant transphobia even within queer communities, I have to make sure that prospective hook-up partners don’t hate me because I’m trans or wish me ill to begin with.  The people I have sex with also have to understand my gender and call me by appropriate pronouns and gender signifiers, because I can no longer tolerate being mis-assigned in my own bed.    All of this talk would require a safe, semi-quiet space for conversation where I could leave if needed, and no one has more power.   A dark bar is not a space where these conversations and assurances can be had.

Also, based on people’s professed sexual orientations, I’m not sure who to hit on.  A lot of the people I meet identify within binaries (man/woman and gay/straight).  So, when I go about picking people up, I have to be aware of and interact with the binary. If I hit on gay (cis and trans) men and straight (cis and trans) women, I often find that I don’t have the kind of body they find attractive.  I feel weird hitting on straight (cis and trans) men and gay (cis and trans) women, because my gender identity could conflict with their self-idenitity.  People’s identities are their own, and not determined by their sexual partners, but at the same time, it doesn’t help me to hit on people who categorically are not attracted to my sort of human being.  Recently, I’ve given up worrying about it, and just been hitting on people regardless of expressed sexual orientation.  That’s been a little easier than trying to figure it out based on their identities.

Gay cismen’s cruising culture culture was the product of a lot of oppression, including employment discrimination, physical violence, getting kicked out of homes as kids, and social ostracism.  Because cismen could not show affection towards each other in public, they developed elaborate ways to pick each other up.  Certain gestures, phrases, and spaces became parts of codes that were visible to gay cismen, but imperceptible to regulating forces.  Part of what makes cruising culture so beautiful to me is that it was and is a form of resistance.  In the past, it was resistance to anti-homo policing and legislation.  Now, I think it’s resistance to heteropatriarchal assimilation.  You can’t build a picket fence around cruising culture, and you can’t use marriage referenda to protect it.  Cruising culture means we queers are not just like straight people: we do not want the same things.  Also, a lot of us enjoy glorious butt fucking, so deal with it.

I think we trannies could take a cue from our shared fag past.  I would really like it if we could develop a tranny cruising culture, where we would know each other (in the biblical sense) without the fear of being known.  As long as being trans in public is dangerous, something like that coul be really helpful.

I usually avoid the word ‘homeless’ when I’m talking about this project. I use words like ‘nomadic’ instead because I want to convey my excitement about it, and the fact that it’s a choice, not a necessity. And when I talk to people they get it, but I can almost always sense a little bit of concern as well: that word ‘homeless’ is lurking around the corner. So I want to reassure everyone.

For the last 11 years I’ve been working with an organization that provides a range of housing options to people who have a history of homelessness, so I’m very aware of the vast differences between my kind of homelessness and the real thing: I have the power to make this end if or when I want to; people won’t be able to tell from looking at me that I’m homeless and treat me poorly because of it; the shelter that I do have is very comfortable  and safe compared to, say, a piece of cardboard under a viaduct; my life is not going to be a daily fight for survival; my childhood will never contain the kind of horrors that most people who are homeless have survived. So it’s not just that I want to avoid the stigma of the word homeless; it’s also that I have no right to claim it.

The project is about home, definitely. It takes away the traditional walls of home and asks me where the new walls will be. Is my home shrinking to the size of a van, or is it growing to the size of a city? Can it be a network of invisible lines connecting the couches of all my friends? This city feels full of people who love and support me, but what will it feel like if I leave the city? Could home really be everywhere?

In short, don’t worry, folks! My guess is that what I’ll feel at the end of all this is a deep sense of homefullness.

for those who dont know, cis- (meaning “on the same side as”) has been used by transactivists to describe people who “arent trans.” according to them, people who arent trans possess special powers, called “privileges,” parallel to the unearned privileges possessed by whites and men, who socially, politically and relationally oppress women, and people of color.

but when transfolk and transactivists use “privilege” in this context, i do not think it means what they think it means.  specifically, their concept of “privilege” does not match up with my definition, or with any accepted definition of the word.

when a transwoman laments to a born woman, for example:

I wish I could understand where you are coming from, but I don’t think I ever will. I never had the privilege of growing up as a girl, with people automatically calling me she, her, girl, woman, etc. without having to think about it. I never had the privilege of being 5 years old and not having your mother beat the living shit out of you because you were trying on her makeup. I say this will [sic] all respect that is due to you: from where I sit, you are the one with the privilege.

what she has revealed is that her idea of anyones particular social or political privilege is “i have something you want.” in the case of born-men thinking that girls and women had it easy or preferable in that they grew up being recognized as female, it would be more accurate to say their idea of privilege is further diluted to mean “i have something you *think* you want” because theres no way a born-male could really know if he wanted to grow up like a girl, because as a boy/man, he doesnt, and indeed *couldnt* know what it was like.

to take a little tangent here, but to illustrate and underscore that point, i was assaulted by 4 neighborhood boys when i was 5, because i was a girl, and they wanted to look into my underpants. so, they trapped me in a camping tent that was set up in the backyard and wouldnt let me leave, and they said i could either give each one of them a kiss, or they were going to look inside my underwear. does this sound like fun to you, transwomen? frankly i would take a beating from my mother on any day of the week, rather than ever be trapped inside a closed space by a bunch of sexually predatory boys who gave me such a disgusting “choice.” i kissed them all and they let me leave. luckily.

but heres the problem with “i have something you want” = “i have privilege”. if i had a candy bar, and you wanted it, i would not have “candy-bar privilege”. if i had a nice dog and you wanted a nice dog like mine, i would not have “dog privilege.” you cant just say that any old goddamn thing i have that you want is a privilege. privilege means that there is *power* there, and girls and women dont possess any kind of gender-based power. exactly the opposite.

like race-based power, gender-based power operates in one direction only:  male-oppresses-female.  just as with the uni-directional operation of race-based privilege, in which whites oppress non-whites, girls and women will never oppress either men or women through a manifestation of gender-based privilege.  thats not the way gender-based privilege works.  distressingly, there is another trans-identified group on the scene of late, that wants us to believe that the disabled are privileged, because although they are perfectly healthy able-bodied themselves, the trans-abled “see themselves” as disabled and they want to be disabled, too.  but again, privilege based on physical ability operates in one direction, and one direction only: able-bodied-oppress-disabled.

heres a shweet little diagram crafted by miska, very accurately describing the logical fallacy of the concept of cis-privilege, whereby born-women *allegedly* possess a gender-based power to oppress men, and other women, because we have something that transfolk want or think they want: its the same problem as calling someone “privileged” if they have a nice dog, and you want/think you want one too:

the fallacy of cis-privilege: a graphic by miska

you could replace “dog” with literally anything unable to raise its possessor into a position of social and political power, but that someone has and you want (or *think* you want).  dustbunny-privilege.  slightly-less-boxy-car-privilege.  glod-privilege.  (nope, theres no such thing as a “glod”.  but it works just as well to give me increased social standing as does a candy bar, a dustbunny, or a slightly-less-boxy car).

i call bullshit on that.  and as i have added to my FAQ, no, i am not cis-privileged.  and i refuse to give a shout-out to trans-politics every time i introduce myself, as too many feminists have lately decided to do (hi!  i am a straight, white, cis-female etc).  to require it (and oh yes, its become a requirement) is an utter manipulation and extortion on the part of trans-activists, and i am not falling for it.

h/t to miska of fab-matters.

Whittle feminism down to its core and you are left with a basic framework, which includes the idea that -

Female people are oppressed because we are recognized and treated AS WOMEN instead of HUMAN BEINGS.

Pretty simple. Except trans-activists believe the opposite.

They think this is a privilege!

Straight from the horse’s mouth:

Rebecca Crouter, commenting on a post at femonade

I wish I could understand where you are coming from, but I don’t think I ever will. I never had the privilege of growing up as a girl, with people automatically calling me she, her, girl, woman, etc. without having to think about it … I say this will [sic] all respect that is due to you: from where I sit, you are the one with the privilege.

This is a standard example of the way trans-activists apply their own fanciful definitions to concepts like privilege, as Factcheckme explains in her response:

… i think your desription here of what you are interpreting as “privilege” is telling. so thank you for that, for real. it helps me understand what you mean when you say “privilege” and i dont think it matches up with my definition, or with any accepted definition of it frankly. because i think what you are essentially saying here is that “i have something you want.” it would be more accurate to say “i have something you *think* you want” because theres no way you could really know if you wanted to grow up like a girl, because as a boy/man, you dont know what it was like
…
but heres the problem with “i have something you want” = “i have privilege”. if i had a candy bar, and you wanted it, i would not have “candy-bar privilege”. if i had a nice dog and you wanted a nice dog like mine, i would not have “dog privilege.” you cant just say that any old goddamn thing i have that you want is a privlege. privilege means that there is POWER there, and girls and women dont possess any kind of gender-based power. exactly the opposite.

Clear as day. But no matter how many times this is explained, the trans activists keep insisting that we are privileged. Which is fine. People can believe whatever they like.

But if you believe that females are privileged for being recognized and treated AS WOMEN, then you are not a feminist.

You are the same as MRAs who insist that women are privileged over men because we win most custody disputes. You are the same as college boys who insist that women are privileged over men because we can “get sex whenever we want”. You are the same as men who insist that we are privileged over them because they feel like they have to open doors for us and pay for dinner.

And you do not even have a grasp of feminism 101.

.

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Factcheckme has further expounded on her analogy here.