Being Amber Rhea

So by now you’ve probably heard about seemingly everyone in the freakin’ world getting canned (or voluntarily leaving due to “circumstances”).

Dacia wrote about it the other day and included a master list of sorts. Let us also not forget Regina Lynn leaving Wired, and Playboy Radio putting the kibosh on her Sex in the News segment. And you could really say it all started nearly two years ago, when the Village Voice killed Rachel Kramer Bussel’s “Lusty Lady” column.

In particular, it was really bizarre to hear about Melissa being laid off from Valleywag, because just a day or two before that, I’d heard about Tristan’s Village Voice column being axed, and as Rusty and I were walking from the MARTA station to work, I said something like, “It seems like the only one who still has a job is Melissa, at Valleywag.” Then Rusty said something about all of us starting a site together and how awesome that would be.

Ahem.

Dacia isn’t so worked up about the idea of starting a new site - and neither am I, honestly. Admittedly, after hearing about all the latest news, I did say this on Twitter (tweets listed in reverse chronological order, for those not on the bandwagon):
Read the full post »

This is so perfect I can hardly stand it:

I’m tangling hard with this notion of public persona. That for whatever reason, writing about sex gives some people the idea that you are available sexually to them (this is not new, this is something I’ve noticed a long time ago). But this being commonly understood as a consumable girl is hitting a breaking point for me. Does it mean I can’t flirt-for-real in public spaces without being perceived as buying into a role, without agreeing with that being pegged as The Sex Girl?

I was never that girl. I never played against my own intelligence to make men comfortable around me. I come on strong by being open, not teasing. I don’t look for strength in men’s eyes that way. As temporarily delightful as cocktail conversation may be — until our cabs come — I get my real and lasting courage from my own vulnerability. I can only trust my sense of worth to be safe with those unafraid to love me, not someone who finds me amusing five minutes at a time.

It kind of gives me déjà vu because it’s everything I’ve been thinking but, as usual, Melissa puts it into words so much better than I could hope to. (That sounds kind of assholish, doesn’t it? Argh…)

On Twitter I said: “This is what I would’ve talked about at BlogHer ATL” and “I’ll mention this at @blogorlando, too; I won’t have a prepared presentation but it’ll be a ‘talking point.’ We’ll see where *that* goes.”

I HATE it. I hate this stupid, asinine, absurd, insipid idea that if a woman writes about sex then she is The Sex Girl (as Melissa puts it). This pigeon-holing, it’s… well, there just aren’t enough adjectives for “ridiculous” to convey it!

I was never That Girl either - I wouldn’t even know how to be - and this is why, for instance, it makes me absolutely livid to see sex-positivity so COMPLETELY misrepresented by people who obviously have NO FUCKING CLUE what they are talking about. I’m staying out of blog wars with “radfems” for good - it’s just a waste of time - but occasionally I see them quoted on Ren’s blog or Caroline’s blog, prattling on about how “sex-pozzies” (yes, they really say that; can you believe it?) are all about pleasing men and the men love us because we do what they want and blah blah blah and I’m like, okay, this is the part where it is GLARINGLY obvious that you have absolutely NO GRASP of my life, my experience, my reality, and holy hell could your head possibly be FURTHER up your ass? I mean it’s kind of funny in a way, but it still just infuriates me. I cannot even convey to you how totally absurd it is.

Oh, and as for people assuming that because you write about sex, you obviously want to have sex WITH THEM - well, that’s nothing new, either. It’s as old as the hills and it, too, is a jaw-droppingly ridiculous depth of stupidity.

And, too, let’s revisit this.

melissa:

rkb:

You lose a lot by not being anonymous, and maybe the only thing you gain is the freedom from worrying about being outed. I’m with Melissa in that I’m not sure what Emily wrote is something I necessarily want to avoid. I’m still figuring all this out, and probably always will be. I don’t know that you can ever fully manage your online persona (or offline), because at the end of the day, whether you say everything or nothing or opt for somewhere in between, there will always be haters, there will always be misinterpretations, there will always be someone who’s uncomfortable with what you’ve said.

Also with Rachel here: I want to talk less about “oversharing” and more about the gutter. “Oversharing” has jumped the theoretical shark. In academia, we’d say the term and the way its deployed is overdetermined, but this is the Internet, and so, sharks it is. Chomp. We need better tools to take this thing apart. Using “oversharing” as our analytic lens is like using Gawker commenters to issue a Human Rights Declaration. And what I mean by the “gutter” is what Scott McCloud nailed in Understanding Comics — that we have been trained as readers to fill in the gaps between images (read also: blog posts, Twitter updates, News Feed items). This is where we as readers/users engage a text as authors (little “a,” Barthes bear with me). This is where the people formerly known as the audience get a front seat in our own lives, as writers, producers, creatives, insert overplayed word you’re too scared to apply to yourself and your work here. Plus all the connotations of the gutter are perfect for what we’re really pointing at here: body/bawdy talk, cum and tears, love and loss. Look at the examples Susan and Viviane pulled for their talk: girl, sex, blog.

As I said on Twitter, all day I’ve been feeling like I should write something, but I don’t know what.

I could post the letter I wrote to CBS urging them not to cancel Swingtown; I could write any number of screeds on any number of topics I’m passionate about; but it just feels a little fake at this point. As if doing so would deny - or at the very least, fail to acknowledge - everything that’s been going on behind the scenes, behind my eyes (not to get too emo-poetic about it).

In my last post, I said: “And all of this has made me feel like I can do it, must do it, write for my life…” But I’m not sure I know what that means, “write for my life.” Maybe it just means stream of consciousness babble and pretending no one is reading.

They (yes, they!) say that the death of a friend or family member naturally makes the surviving friends/relatives consider their own mortality. The truth is, I was terrified of death already. I know that on some level, sure, most people are “scared of death,” but I don’t think most people feel the terror and panic of it the way I often do. I’m hoping that’ll go away, or at least mellow, as I get older. But I guess it’s really just a fear of the unknown or the unexpected. Something can happen at any moment, you never know when. That is what scares me. That I could lose my whole world in just an instant. Plus, I’m bothered by the concept of history and permanence and record-keeping anyway, and when I even begin to think along those lines, it’s really down the rabbit hole.

I’ve been lucky, in some ways. I’ve made it to 28 and this is the first death I’ve experienced of someone who was really close to me, in one way or another. Both my paternal grandparents died several years ago, but I’d only met them once in my life (when I was three), so while it was sad, it was more of that detached sadness you feel when learning that anyone died.

I don’t know if I can write about all of this without sounding emo-poetic-angsty.

Crap, that reminds me (don’t know why)… I still need to contact my dad’s other children. I need to write them a letter, and weirdly, now that he’s gone, I don’t feel so conflicted about including the stuff about how even though I completely understand if they feel resentful toward me, things weren’t always peachy for me growing up. Here’s hoping they’ll get it… the only address I have is from about four years ago, no idea if it’s still current. Google wasn’t much help.

A lot of people were very nice last week, and I want to write about that. Some other people were inappropriate, and I want to write about that, too; but the niceness, in a way that tripped me up a little, is what I want to focus on first. If I can sort out my thoughts, of course.

My great-aunt Faye (whom I hadn’t seen in nearly ten years) hugged me tightly after the funeral service, and she even used the word “selfish,” but for some reason when she said it, it was comforting, just as she’d intended; even though Jenny was quick to assure me I’m not selfish. ;) But that’s another story.

Another thought I’ve had: what will happen when bloggers start dying? I know some already have, obviously; but I mean on a larger scale, like 40-50 years from now? I guess the larger question is what will blogs - or even the Internet as a whole - even look like at that point, and there’s no way to know; but I always find it sad and and a little unsettling when I come across a blog that hasn’t been updated in months or years, with no explanation - even if the truth is just that the blogger got tired of updating. It feels like there’s a missing chapter, no closure.

But I know, real life doesn’t have nice neat chapters and endings and such. Still, an abrupt cut-off just leaves me feeling unsettled.

I realize I haven’t put up a real blog post in a week. In a way that feels like ages ago, in another way it feels like mere minutes ago. Same as always; I won’t go off on the tired old babbling about the subjective, convoluted nature of time.

So much to say but I don’t even know where to start. I’ve had trouble falling asleep all week, and many nights I’ve written ridiculously long blog posts in my head as I lay awake in the dark. I’ve also been drinking too much sweet tea over the past few days, left over from Tuesday’s delicious catering from Wife Saver; but I know my fitful sleep is attributable to far more than just extra caffeine.

If I’d had any forethought (but how could I have?) I would’ve brought my old-school paper journal with me to Chicago, meaning I’d have it here with me now, and I could be scribbling in it whenever the spirit moves. I know I’ll be doing a fair amount of that when I get home. And I also know I need to do more writing here, and it needs to come from the gut, without a filter; I guess death always makes you reassess things and realize, starkly, how short and fleeting life can be. So I need to write here for the reason I started this blog: for ME. I need to write in MY style, which admittedly others won’t always grok. But that’s okay. Because it’s not about them. And all of this has made me feel like I can do it, must do it, write for my life, without worrying about who I might piss off or what some nebulous “they” might think.

It feels weird to know that I’m going home tomorrow. It’s been over a week since I’ve been home, slept in my own bed, seen my finches, watched my Tivo, sat at my desk… it’s been over two weeks since I’ve been to work. I know getting back into the swing of things will feel good. But like I said, it also just feels weird. Everything has felt so surreal this week. I feel like things are in a state of suspended animation and I’m moving in slow motion… that’s the best way I can describe it, and even that is not totally accurate. I don’t know when I’ll come out of this state. I do know that the old truism about never knowing how a traumatic event will affect you until you’re actually dealing with it is right on.

I’ve had nightmares almost every night I’ve been here (when I’ve been able to remember my dreams at all, that is). And yet I’ve stayed in bed until late morning whenever possible, until my back hurts and my shoulders are screaming for a massage, because the lethargy is just too great to overcome. Really the only thing that forces me out of bed is having to pee.

One weird thing that’s happened while I was here: my mom’s AC literally froze. As in, the AC repair guy came out to look at it and said it had turned into a block of ice. We ran the fan for a full day in order to thaw it out (it’s back to normal now). I’d never heard of anything like that!

—

Chicago, Tuesday, July 17th, around 9:00 p.m.: phone call from my mom. I had been waiting for a call and I knew it wouldn’t be good. And I guess maybe part of me knew exactly how not good (or good, depending on how you look at it; he was suffering a lot, after all) it would be. Dacia and I were walking down Belmont looking for food. I stepped into an alleyway so I could hear my mom better. She sounded quiet and deflated, like she had been crying but wasn’t crying at that moment.

“Hi Amber. Well… Dad died.”

What could I say but, after a big gulp of air, “Okay. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

We talked for a few more minutes. I don’t remember what all she said. I do remember he passed away at 8:20 p.m., and about six people were in the room with him at the time.

I told Dacia. We hugged. We stood there. She asked me what I wanted to do. I said, “I know it sounds bad, but I want to eat dinner.”

She rubbed my back and said, “That’s what you do when you’re alive. You eat.”

—

Thanks, Dorie, for looking after our finches.

More posting to come, either really soon or not.

Haven’t we heard this before?

Rob Peters, a reporter from Vancouver, says:

Some difficult truths have been brought to light by the personal blogging blitz of the last few years. One such revelation is that most of us aren’t as interesting as we think. Waking up every day and jotting down some deep thoughts about breakfast is a difficult way to sustain any kind of readership.

I could not disagree more. What blogging brings to light for me - and I know I’m not alone in this - is that people are infinitely interesting.

Not every single person is going to be interesting to every single other person. But that’s not news; that’s a fact of human existence, and why would we hold blogging to ridiculous, unrealistic standards that we don’t apply to other aspects of life?

And anyway, why is anyone still publishing this recycled tripe? Every 6 months or so, some know-it-all writes a piece on the “death” of blogging, or how it’s causing Very Bad Things to happen, or how it’s lost its innocence, or whatever other cliché they’ve dredged up for the moment. I guess maybe it’s a guaranteed will-publish if you’re having a dry spell?

On a personal note, I’m not having the best day - in fact, someone on a blog just saw fit to inform me that they “don’t appreciate anything about [me].” Do I blame blogging, though? Give me a break. I think you know the answer to that one.

That reminds me - a post on civil communication is in the works, too.

At WAM!, in the book proposals session, Courtney E. Martin said, “Write the book that scares you. Write the book that you needed to read.” When I heard that, my heart leapt to my throat. Her words have been resonating in my head ever since.

My comments at the time, in my liveblog, were:

Eeeek… that’s why I started the SOTS Forum site… but of course, I recently shut it down (though I plan to restart it as a Google group; a lot of that was because I broke it and couldn’t figure out how to fix it). But also, it just started feeling too detrimental to be hanging out in that place that I had passed. Maybe that sounds selfish… but that is how I felt.

Maybe one day I will feel like writing that book. I don’t know.

One of the other panelists in that session (don’t remember who, and apparently I didn’t liveblog it) said she firmly believed that everyone in the session has a great book in them. I don’t doubt that I do. It’s the getting it out part that’s terrifying. And not just because of this part (another quote from my liveblog), though that’s certainly part of it - and a passable excuse, if nothing else:

A lot of people talk a lot about writing a book, but actually doing it is a huge sacrifice of a lot of other activities. You have to spend a lot of time just sitting in a chair, writing.

And, last relevant liveblog quote for now:

Courtney: “The book that’s inside of you may be the book you don’t want to write.” It may be the thing that feels too painful, or pisses you off, or is too real or too personal.

She wrote a book about body image. She says she never wanted to write it, because dealing w/ body image issues had been so painful for her.

I can relate… more than a few people have said I should write a book about significant others of transgender people. And I don’t disagree… I mean, I *could* write a good book about it, and from a perspective that hasn’t been done thus far. But I just don’t know if I want to. That stuff, even though I’m “over it” in some ways, in other ways I just want to leave in the past and not think about.

Okay, now I think I’ve sufficiently set this thing up.

As mentioned above, I started the SOTS Forum site in December 2003, and ran the support forum there until earlier this year. Part of the reason for shutting down the forum was that I did something stupid one night while mucking around with FTP, shell access, and god knows what else, and basically deleted the entire database (or at least the message board front-end interface; I still don’t really know). But partly, just like the line about sitting in a chair and writing, that was a convenient excuse. Don’t get me wrong - it’s very true, I don’t have the time, necessary technical prowess in this particular area, nor the disposable income to pay someone what they would deserve in order to fix my fuck-up. But I’ll be honest: I had been thinking of shutting down the board for a while.

I didn’t really want to shut it down, wholesale. I wanted to pass it onto someone else who would take over as admin, webmistress, etc. Except nobody was stepping up. And I had been distancing myself from the board for a long time: posting only occasionally, and mainly just taking care of behind-the-scenes issues like combating spam. The reason - and even though I know, logically, it’s not “selfish,” it still feels that way and I feel guilty - was, to use a phrase previously used by a cisgendered* partner of a FTM in California who was a lifesaver of support for me in the first few days following my discovery: “It was getting too detrimental to wallow in other people’s pain.”

I was glad the board was there - hell, I created it specifically because of the glaring lack of support resources for SOs at the time when I needed it - but every time a new member would join and describe her (it was, 99% of the time, her) pain and agony, it was like I was reliving all of that misery, yet again.

I created the board because nothing like it existed. I created it to be the support forum I needed. And now, should I “write the book that [I] needed to read”?

Let’s face it, that book still does not exist. First of all, there are only a handful of books out there by SOs of trans people at all (some are mentioned here, and even with that list, I was reaching); and the ones that do exist are mainly of the “my partner transitioned but I stayed with them and it was tough and here’s how we did it” variety.

Which is great, and those books serve a purpose, and speak to the people who need it. But what I always got from those books’ existence, and more significantly the lack of books by the partners who didn’t stay?

Well, it was the same thing I got from the online support forums “for transsexuals and their partners” (the “and their partners” glommed on as a superficially-inclusive afterthought):

“If you really loved her**, you’d stay with her.”

In so many words, and not. I got it both ways.

And, too:

“Think about how she must be feeling! It’s so much worse for her!”

This is when I truly learned the importance of safe spaces.

The board - especially the “SOs only” area, visible only to those to whom I granted access - was sacrosanct. There was no accusatory language, no projecting, no trying to turn someone’s life falling apart into a teachable moment. There was no judgment. If you decided not to stay with your transitioning partner, it wasn’t because you didn’t love them enough, or you were transphobic (that was the accusation that always galled me the most), or you weren’t willing to stick it out through hard times (Religious Right anti-divorce rhetoric, anyone?) - it was because you were doing what was right for you. What a concept.

I wish the board existed, now, in book form. I want the details spelled out - the process of going through the five stages of grief (because in many ways, it is like mourning a death), trying to keep up external appearances while your world crumbles from the inside, the self-doubt and self-loathing and self-hatred and second-guessing and all the rest of it. I want the affirmation spelled out in all caps, underlined, italicized, bold:

You are not a bad person for not staying in a relationship with your trans partner!!!

I want that book to exist. I know the ability to write it is in me. Part of me wants to, but part of me feels resentful that someone else hasn’t already done it.

And, anyway: I think I’m still too scared.

—

* We never used that term on the board; I guess because no one knew it?
** A big no-no: using female pronouns when I’M NOT READY TO HEAR THEM. Hello, my life crisis is NOT political; do NOT make it about YOU.

I feel like a fucking flake. But it just wasn’t happening. Sorry, Jill. :( Anyhow, this is as far as I got… might as well post it here:

—

What makes a feminist choice? Too often, that question is construed in such a way that it becomes meaningless. Because it’s not about the act itself; it’s about the meaning behind the act. And it’s extremely important to remember who defines that meaning. It’s not defined by outsiders looking in. It’s defined by the woman herself, the one doing the action.

Take for example, a woman posting nude photos of herself online. The act itself is not the important part. The question of whether posting nude photos is a feminist choice is a question that doesn’t make sense if we don’t consider the woman’s motivations. That’s what makes or breaks whether it is a feminist choice or not. Just going on the act alone, we don’t have any information that can tell us if it’s a feminist choice.

And yet (sticking with this example), people feel free to make all kinds of assumptions about women who post nude photos. Similar assumptions are made by society at large and, distressingly, by some feminists. She must be craving male approval; she must have low self-esteem; she must be superficial; she must need validation… on and on and on. But the fact that people make such assumptions based on a particular act is far more revealing of their own biases and the stereotypes they’ve bought into, than anything about this woman’s psychological state.

Sure, she might be doing it out of any of those stereotypical motivations assigned to her without question. But she might be doing it for a variety of other reasons that are all about her and not about what other people say she should or shouldn’t do. She might be giving the finger to the dichotomy we draw between “smart” women and “sexy” women. Perhaps she’s challenging your assumptions, asking you to examine why you make them in the first place. Maybe she’s saying, “I’m not ashamed of my body, and I reject patriarchal norms that tell me that I’m ‘demeaning myself’ if I show it, or that I can only show it to certain people in certain contexts.” She might be stating, “Refusing to keep my sexuality neatly compartmentalized does not disempower me; the patriarchy disempowers me by dictating such compartmentalization.” Maybe she’s doing it because she wants to, and she doesn’t owe you any explanation.

That would be all too radical, wouldn’t it? Because it would mean centering her, the woman, instead of centering men. And even as feminists call out countless examples of male privilege, many of them continue to place a lot of importance on what men think and how men interpret things - even if their interpretations are dead wrong. Somehow those interpretations are granted more importance than what the actor (the woman) states as her intent.

Nothing new there.

And I get it, we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in a world which is, unfortunately, still very much controlled by sexism. So I can understand being concerned about how things may appear to and be interpreted by men. They are the ones making the rules more often then not, and therefore their interpretations are going to be given more credence by society at large. But do we, as feminists, have to replicate this structure?

Surely there’s got to be a middle ground. We won’t shake up the status quo by not doing the things we want to do, out of fear of how some men might take it. If we take that route, we’re still letting ourselves be controlled by men - only they’re forcing us not to do something, rather than forcing us to do something. Either way it’s the same thing - we are passive, reactionary. Instead of being true to ourselves, we base our decisions around what men might think. And that’s not radical at all.

So we have to push. We have to keep on pushing back against the stereotypes, dichotomies, double standards, prescriptive norms. Because if we push long enough and hard enough, people will notice. I won’t go the predictable, clichéd route of invoking the Civil Rights Movement; but the truth is, with any major societal change in our nation’s history, things changed because people had the courage to act instead of just react, to push back instead of just being moved around like a pawn.

—

Maybe next time. Or, maybe writing for somewhere else isn’t for me? Who knows.

I’m supposed to be working on my as-yet-nonexistent AlterNet piece, but instead I’m sitting here typing this. I know I’m making it out to be a way bigger deal than it is. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if I’m all like, “Ooh, AlterNet, big-time internet publication, wowee, zowee, I’d be famous and stuff!” I don’t know if I was ever that particular brand of naive. But for some reason I got a bug up my ass and decided I wanted to try and write something about feminist choices, and how to define them, for a broader audience (insert questionable joke here: “…not just an audience of broads - ha ha ha!!1!”) So I emailed Jill, who is awesome and who also happens to be an AlterNet editor, and asked if they’d be interested; and she said yes, and I said I’d send her something in a few days.

But I’m stressed out about it the way that having a column in my high school newspaper stressed me out. It seemed like a good idea in theory, but when I had to actually get down to it and write something, it was like pulling teeth with myself. I think I ended up only writing two actual columns senior year, and they were both pretty contrived.

And yet I could go home and write ’til my wrist was cramped (and it took at lot more to do that back in the late 90s!) in my journal, scrawl poetry of various levels of emo-ness in my notebooks, type long rambling paragraphs of Opinion in a SimpleText file I kept on my Mac desktop; when I was younger than that, in elementary school, I could fill notebook upon notebook with stories and even what could arguably be called novels (at my parents’ house there are stacks of boxes labeled “Amber’s books she wrote”); and before I could actually write, I was dictating stories to my grandmother at age four.

I guess it’s that I don’t like feeling like I have to follow rules imposed by others? (And yet I’m a stickler for grammar! Ah, I am nothing if not self-contradictory. [I mean, just look at my fondness for parentheses!])

Hence the “I speak my own language” tag you see employed here frequently.

When I was in 4th grade, I won a creative writing contest and they wrote a little blurb about it in the local newspaper. I was quoted as saying, “When I grow up, I want to be a famous author.” It was cute at the time, because I was nine.

…

I don’t want to have to recant on Jill but I think I might. I think maybe this just isn’t the write right (ha, typo!) time for me to try to write something for somewhere other than my blog. I’m sure I’ll try again one day and it’ll come a lot more naturally.

For example, it came pretty naturally with the (never published) op-ed I wrote for the AJC - although I won’t lie, I spent an entire afternoon agonizing about every word and phrase, wanting to get everything right. But the result was, I think I did a bang-up job! Too bad the AJC, apparently, did not agree, but my feelings weren’t hurt; I wasn’t surprised, after all.

…

Tonight I read this post by Melissa, and it brought tears to my eyes. Silly, right? Well, I’ve always been highly emotional and sensitive, so that’s how it goes with me. No making fun.

I’m not sure what, exactly, about the post struck such a deep chord with me - but something obviously did.

I don’t care (that’s a lie; I do care, in spite of the other half of my brain telling me not to - I just try to pretend I don’t [fake it 'til you make it, right?]) what anybody else says; I think there is value in “life-blogging,” living your life online, whatever you want to call it. I might not be able to articulate exactly what that value is, but maybe that’s simply because there aren’t words for some things. But I feel it intuitively, which is how I experience a lot of things… it’s not popular and won’t get people to really believe you, and it sounds like a lot of hippie shit (note the tag), and yet that’s another characteristic I’ve always had: there are things I “just know,” even if I can’t say why.

This kind of writing - and thus blogging - comes naturally to me. The introspection is a huge part, definitely; introspection is kind of a thing of mine, and I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to. I am an INFJ to the core. As a side note - this is why it bothers me SO MUCH when, on threads like the latest pushing-200-comments installation at Feministe, people are so free w/ their assumptions that if you haven’t come to the same conclusions as them, then you must not have examined properly. So go, forthwith, and examine your desires! Because obviously you haven’t, otherwise you would realize how bad and wrong they are, and you would sublimate, sublimate dammit! because it’s the right thing to do, otherwise you’re just pleasing the Patriarchy, because that’s all it can ever be about, really; it can’t be about you.

But back to Melissa’s post. -Well, hmm, what do I want to say about Melissa’s post? Actually, I don’t know; but it got me started typing all this.

More to come, perhaps. I think I need to send Jill an email now and apologize for wasting her time.

Hitting “Publish” now.

Inspired by this post, I decided that I wanted to try writing for a larger audience. Eek! I’ve always felt very stressed out writing under any kind of pressure, even self-imposed pressure, but I want to challenge myself and see what happens. So last night I did a bunch of free-writing/brain-dumping. The result of that exercise has now graduated to rough draft numero uno, which means I had to cut a bunch of stuff so I could stick w/ a central theme. Here’s all the stuff I took out - I think it’s all important stuff and highly relevant, but I just couldn’t make it “fit.” Solution? Blog it!

—

You often hear feminists saying that just using “choice” as an excuse or justification or way of avoiding dealing w/ complex issues is BS. And it is. They will often say, “The context in which that choice is made matters.” And it does!! So why does that concept fly out the window when the issue is sex, and in particular sex that squicks some people out?

Look, if you’ve got a woman telling you, “This is what I like, I’ve examined it and yes this is really what I want to do, and doing it makes me happy, and trying to force myself NOT to do it made me feel awful, and will people just get off my back about it already?” - what the fuck is so hard to understand about that?? A core tenet of feminism is the importance of listening to women, providing women with space to speak the truths of their lives, to speak honestly and openly without the restraints put in place by a society that tries to dictate what is acceptable and what is not. We often say when it comes to issues of rape: “Listen to the woman. Take her at her word. Believe her.” We often say when it comes to issues of abortion: “Trust women. They are capable of making their own decisions.”

Why do these sentiments not apply when a woman says she likes a certain kind of sex?

Recent editions of Our Bodies, Ourselves have removed some of the sex fantasies that were in the original 1972 version, because they were deemed too controversial or uncomfortable. Wait a minute. Wasn’t the point that women need space to talk about these things openly, even if (especially if!) they are “controversial” or “out of the norm” or make other people squirm a little?

Do you think I haven’t been told that, as a woman, actively wanting and pursuing sex, enjoying it for its own sake and not as a way to “get” something or as a reward, not necessarily tying it up with love or a relationship, etc., is bad and that there’s something wrong with me? You think the social script of sluts vs. good girls doesn’t play on an endless loop in the back of my mind, even now? You think I haven’t been hearing this shit since before I was old enough to really understand what “sexuality” even meant?

You think that’s not patriarchy??

The patriarchy is SEX-NEGATIVE. I am personally not a fan of the term “The Patriarchy” (capital P!) but I often refer to the sex-negative society in which we live. Guess what, folks? Same thing, different name.

I am tired of my arguments being reduced to black-and-white, simplistic, non-nuanced cartoons of themselves. And the funny thing is, often the people who are doing this reducing are, nearly in the same breath, complaining about arguments about sex being so black-and-white and over-simplified! It would be laughable if it weren’t so crazy-making. Uh, well maybe part of that is that you’re the one simplifying things. You are not hearing what people are saying. There’s a filter in place, filtering out the nuance.

Don’t tell me it’s not worth pushing back against the status quo. To do anything else feels like death to me, and yeah that might sound melodramatic, but I don’t know how else to convey it.

—

Other responses to the Feministe thread:

• Bookworm: Feminist-positive sex: some initial thoughts
• let them eat pro-sm feminist safe spaces: Getting off on power exchange is BadWrong, let me tell you it.
• Letters from Gehenna: Examining Desire
• Renegade Evolution: You know, I think the feminist thing to do would be to stop telling people how to fuck…. and Patient Zero, it’s time for your Examination…
• season of the bitch: Female Desire Week (plus): Sex and Art

From Violet Blue’s post that I’ve had pinned in Bloglines for a couple weeks. I don’t like the use of “fame whore” (as we’ve seen!) but she didn’t write that part; and the overall sentiment remains.

For every fame whore blogger — and there are those out there, we both know them — there are so many whose blogs and writing are quiet demonstrations of confidence. By being “out there” the way you are, fiercely without apologies, I’m hopeful that the generation of women after you, me, and Emily, won’t ever fall victim to that self-doubt, and will tell any guy who gets shitty with her for “oversharing” to go fuck themselves.

Now when will I be able to make the self-effacing voices in my head shut up?

As usual, inimitable Susie nails it:

For her, it’s like Iggy Pop spotting a CBGB T-shirt for sale at the mall. What “Sex and the City” did was co-opt a very real, very important movement at the time that was dedicated to female sexuality and was in no small part spearheaded by Bright. Unfortunately, “in some cases, like with ‘Sex and the City,’ the fantasy became bigger than the reality of women speaking about their sexuality.” As “Sex and the City” returns, “everyone knows who Sarah Jessica Parker is, but Sarah Jessica Parker is not a pioneer in sex-positive feminism.”

The women of “Sex and the City,” asserts Bright, aren’t political. “They’re desperate to get married. They obsess about their marital status.” And they turned the sexual revolution for women of the new millennium into a business. To make her point, Bright references a recent New Yorker essay, “The Fall of Conservatism” by George Packer, in which Pat Buchanan paraphrased social theorist Eric Hoffer: “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” Comments Bright: “‘Sex and the City’ is the racket part of what once was recognizable as the sexual self-emancipation of the feminist movement.” For her, the commodification of the 21st century female sexual revolution hits too close to home. “I can’t watch these women, you know, make asses of themselves and be so petty and small-minded about sexual possibility. I take it too personally.”

Says Bright, “I feel like someone drove over me with a truck. I feel invisible. I feel — you know what I feel like? I feel like Trotsky when Stalin airbrushed him out of all the pictures of the Russian Revolution. I feel like the revisionist version of the sexual liberation movement is so stupid and shallow. If the original idea was about self-knowledge, and being orgasmically aware, and large and in charge, and independent, and not pathetically hung up on a man’s approval, then the show is a failure.” But, she adds, “I take it very seriously. I’m sure the people who make the show would say, ‘Lighten up. Susie Bright — what a pain.’”

This is what bothers me so much about Sex and the City.

And the money quote:

You have to laugh sometimes, how these things finally enter the mainstream vocabulary, what becomes exploitable, and what becomes lost.

And once again I find myself feeling like I did when I first read Full Exposure ten years ago: wishing that I could be like Susie when I grow up.

Via Melissa (I would never read Gawker Media blogs if it weren’t for her!), powerful words from someone called Slut Machine, on Jezebel:

I’m pissed. It’s an anger that’s been on a slow boil that’s beginning to bubble over, and at this point, there’s no putting a lid on it. I’ve been writing about sex on a pretty public platform for some time now, at first anonymously, and then under my real name. I’ve had to endure ignorant assumptions and cheap shots made about my looks, my weight, my vagina, my tits, my sexual health, my mental health, my morality, my character — and all for what? Being honest? For liking sex? I’ve poured my guts out all over my keyboard, and I’m well aware that that invites criticism, particularly on the internet, where people think they can say whatever the fuck they please — in the most offensive manner possible that they would never employ in real life — with impunity because they’re protected behind a shroud of anonymity. It’s frustrating. And lemme tell you, I am so sick of people telling me, “You write about sex and personal issues. You have to accept that people will sling insults.” Fuck. That. Shit. I don’t have to accept it. I refuse to accept it. Mostly because I know that this wouldn’t happen if I were a man.

Rock on, lady! I can relate. (Today’s understatement.)

And yeah, this is related to the last post because it’s yet another manifestation of the sexual double standard and bullshit sexism in our society. (I kind of hate whenever I type “in our society,” because it reminds me of freshman year of college when my friend Kira and I used to hang out in Washington Square Park between classes with this very disaffected emo guy who was in a punk band, and one time Kira and I went to see them play and their music was all screaming commentary, and one song was just repeating “society” and “brutality” over and over, and Kira said, “I can’t listen to songs with the word ’society’ in them.” But really, there’s no other way to put it that I can think of.)

Re: citing one’s sources, and related recent blogosphere drama (of which I’ve only been on the periphery, I admit; I haven’t had the time or interest, quite frankly, to follow it closely)…

I’m no fan of ‘X’ (not by a longshot!) but I think people are getting a tad carried away with this “she stole it!” thing. There are a lot of assumptions going on and they’re not fair ones. ‘X’ herself said she wrote the piece before she saw BFP’s speech… now I know we might not have reason to believe her wholesale, but why would she outright lie, either? I think she’s an asshole, but I can’t see her concocting this elaborate lie. I don’t think assuming malfeasance on her part is fair or productive. You know, zeitgeist and synchronicity do happen. And when dealing with more traditional media operations where there’s an editorial cycle, a pub schedule, etc., things get published weeks or months after they were written.

Is that so hard to believe?

Obviously, you should cite your sources; I would think everyone can agree on that. But I don’t think it’s reasonable to automatically assume that an instance of “wow, we both wrote about the same topic” is a case of copying without crediting.

Ten days from now, my blog will celebrate its 4th birthday. This impending anniversary has me contemplating (again) the nature of blogging - or more specifically, the nature of my blogging, and where I want to go with it.

I feel a drive to be more open in what I write; to write about things I might never have considered “making public” a few years ago. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating… I have immense respect for bloggers that take the risk of putting themselves out there and showing the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between. What they’re doing is showing real life. This is something that’s unique to blogging; it gives you the chance to show a more complete picture of yourself than people would get through other interactions, in blow-by-blow form. Not all blogs do this, of course; but I cannot convey the admiration I have for the ones that do.

Two posts spurred this line of thinking today - one from Always Aroused Girl and another from Miss Syl. These are some seriously strong women. I love that their blogs also feature, on occasion, raunchy sex talk, romance, musing about life in general, sarcastic asides, and posts about countless other topics large and small. Blogs such as theirs may not have a single focus (although plenty of people call them “sex blogs” simply because they write about sex at all), but I think these kinds of blogs are actually some of the most important, because they show that people are complex in their humanity - a point that seems so basic, but one that very few people truly comprehend. Cheese alert: These blogs provide a way for people to relate, connect, and share.

Shorter version of the previous graf: These blogs help people.

So! I’d like to write about more, put more of myself out there. But part of me is still reluctant. Not out of embarassment or anything like that; but mainly because I blog using my real name. While I wouldn’t have been happy with a purely pseudonymous blog all these years, I recognize that writing about some things is easier when you’re writing with a pseudonynm. On the other hand, there’s that always-defiant side of me that wants to just go ahead and post whatever the hell I feel like (except for stuff about work; that’s a non-issue) and dare someone to judge me or fire me because of it.

Oh, and time is an issue, too. I’d love to be able to just write all day long. But until I find someone who will pay me to sit around and blog about this, that, and the other thing, I’ll have to sneak in posts when I find the time.

I guess we’ll just see what happens.

Yes, it actually happened - I finished the essay this weekend! Am v. excited, and nervous. I’m about to send it off; then begins The Waiting.

Why did it take me over a month to write a 2,500-word essay? Well, that’s where having a life and a job will getcha. But the finished product is pretty damn good, if I do say so myself (and so say some of my personal editors, as well). Now let’s just hope the people who matter agree. I’ll update you in February!

My essay, in its current state, has 2,607 words. The call for papers stated a desired length of 3,000-6,000 words, but I’m not comfortable rambling much further. So I say, let the editing begin. I’ll probably produce a few hundred more words in the process, anyway.

I’m very antsy in the pantsy about this.

[This post is a slightly-edited outtake from my Big Bad Essay. It's actually been sitting around on its ass for a couple of weeks, and I finally decided to kick it out of my Word doc and onto the internets.]

I kind of hated breaking my “Blogs Not of Georgia” links into categories (screen shot, in case you’re reading this sometime in the future after another layout change), but I had to do it, because there were just so many that it was getting difficult to look at without some separation. I made a “Geeky” category and a “Sexy” category, but it gnawed at me so much that I added this disclaimer: “No implication meant that ‘geeky’ and ’sexy’ are mutually exclusive.”

The blogs that I placed in each category were placed there based on the primary or most frequent topic of their blogs. But not all blogs are so easily categorized - hence the catch-all “Just a damn good read” category.

Trying to define and group the non-Georgia* blogs to which I link got me thinking about my blog, and how it would be categorized - and I had a tough time coming up with an answer.

• Is it a web development blog? While I write about web dev stuff from time to time, my blog certainly is no 456 Berea St. or molly.com.
• Is it a feminist blog? Maybe, if only because I’m a feminist and this is my blog - but I don’t spend all day chronicling the inequities of the patriarchy.
• Is it a political blog? Please. One or two “Here’s why Republicans suck” posts per month do not a political blog make. There’s a reason I wasn’t approved for the Georgia BlogWire.
• Is it an Atlanta blog? Again, perhaps by default since I live in Atlanta. I also have an online photo album filled with Atlanta pictures, and write about local issues from time to time - but I’m no decaturguy.
• Is it a sex blog? Not by a longshot; although, some might say it is, simply because I write about sex more often than other bloggers they read - which is to say, the other bloggers never mention it.

That last one in particular got me thinking. I get interesting reactions when I post about sex - and I don’t even do it that often. Perhaps that’s part of the reason for the type of response I get. But, what are some other possible explanations? My theory is, there are several factors at work here. Shall we enumerate them? We shall.

• I write about lots of different topics. People may be caught off-guard when they encounter a sex post immediately after a CSS post.
• Like it or not, the fact is that even in the 21st century, it’s still a lot less acceptable (and hence less common) for a girl to speak bluntly about sex than it is for a guy to do so. Which brings us to…
• I write unashamedly about my love for and appreciation of The Good Fucking. Hell, I use the word “fuck.”
• I love me some cock but there are people who think I’m a lesbian because I have short hair and don’t wear make-up. Add to that the fact that (commence own-horn-tooting) I’m smart and nerdy and have two college degrees under my belt and fancy myself as a bit of a wordsmith… In short, I don’t fit the stereotypes (which are stupid anyway, but I digress).

Several sex blogs are part of my ever-increasing collection of almost-daily reads. There’s a reason these blogs are labeled “sex blogs” and mine isn’t. But then again, is it fair to pigeonhole them either? I know Dacia got some flak from some of her readers when her writing started to shift away from recaps of sexual encounters and more toward ruminations about sex as a social and cultural phenomenon. I think both types of writing are worthwhile, and I don’t think Dacia (or anyone) should feel constrained to write about only one or the other. The argument could even be made that the body of work she produces is more valuable because it incorporates both approaches (and everything else along the spectrum). The diversity results in a more well-rounded, and hence more realistic, picture.

I’m not saying that it’s always bad to categorize one’s writing. Plenty of bloggers - some of the most successful ones, in fact - made the decision to write about a specific topic or subject area, and their writing certainly hasn’t suffered for it. Sometimes, having a specific “category” or “type” can be a good thing - it keeps your writing on track, spurs you to think more deeply about specific subjects, and may result in more insightful writing than if you were “free” to write about anything. On the other hand, it can also be restrictive; case in point, the GDBF saying, “I can’t write about [whatever] because this is supposed to be a political blog.” It’s never good to feel constrained by something that was intended as a means of expressing your ideas and creativity.

Most of my favorite blogs to read are ones where the person writes about whatever they want, whether it be what they did that day or some sort of political commentary. That’s not a hard-and-fast rule, though, because some of my favorite blogs fit easily into a pre-defined category. But even those blogs don’t feel so impersonal, because the person occasionally writes about other, semi-related topics, or injects a personal note from time to time. I like this because it gives me an idea of the person behind the writing - and however inaccurate that idea may be, it’s better than reading something written by someone you know nothing about.

Getting back to sex - why, then, would readers be especially shocked or displeased when a “non-sex” blogger writes about sex, or a “sex blogger” writes about - gasp! - some other topic? I would word my answer differently for each question, but either way it’s really the same answer. In the first case: “Sex is a part of life - but a part that many people don’t want to deal with in an upfront manner.” And in the second case: “There’s more to life than sex - believe it or not, bloggers who write mostly about sex are regular people who actually do other things in their day-to-day lives.” These are just two different ways of saying that many people mistakenly impose a non-existant duality on others (and themselves) when it comes to issues of sex. Sexuality is viewed as something separate from the rest of who you are - which means that when you spend most of your time writing about the aspects of your life that encompass “the rest,” it can throw people off balance to see a post about sex, casually thrown in with no warning. Likewise, if you write mostly about sex, people unfairly detach this from the rest of who you are and see you (through your writing) only as a function of your sexuality, rather than a whole person of whom sexuality is but one part.

Dismantling this imposed duality is no easy task, and a lot of people (understandably) don’t want to put up with all the hubbub from ignorant readers, so they stick to writing one way or the other. Blogs that seamlessly incorporate both are few and far between. Obviously I think this is a good thing and should happen more often, and I say hats off to the bloggers who are moving forward with it. (Joseph accomplishes it particularly well.) But still, we need more.

It is important that people not feel prohibited from writing about sex on a personal level, and that there be bloggers who combine normal, everyday minutiae with stories of The Good Fucking, because sex is something that, as I already mentioned, is typically seen as separate from the rest of who you are. And so many people have an attitude of shame or guilt about sex, that it’s important to get it out in the open as something that’s natural, normal, awesome, and most definitely not something to be ashamed of.

So, uh, back to the original point, inasmuch as I had one… how would you categorize my blog?

* Ed. note: You might ask why I categorized blogs based on location in the first place. Why, because it’s easy, of course!

Things that are getting in the way of me hunkering down for the hardcore, unadulterated (and hopefully awesome) writing that is just waiting to pour out of my mind, through my fingertips, and onto the computer screen:

• Unintentionally falling asleep on my couch for two hours last night. Oops.
• Trivia. Oh, those interfering social outings! *waves fist melodramatically at sky*
• Possibly instigating a second noise complaint and inching the GDBF one step closer to eviction after less three weeks in his new apartment.
• My day job. Having to pay rent, utility bills, insurance, credit cards, and student loans is a real inconvenience.

Well, since it’s all over the internets now, I might as well tell you. What I’ve been obsessing over for the past few weeks is an essay for an anthology about female geeks. (Thanks to Dacia for telling me about it before it got all over creation.)

I wasn’t going to mention anything about it here, to avoid public embarrassment if my essay doesn’t get selected for publication. But, fuck it. I want to write, and I want recognition for it. There, I said it; I’ve put my journey of personal discovery or whatever the fuck you call it out there for all to see. But then, what’s the point of total jihad if no one is there to see it?

It’s funny, I had been passively thinking about getting back into writing more seriously, and then along comes an email from Dacia to make me get off my ass. So for the past few weeks, I’ve been a writin’ fool. Some of it has found its way to the blog; most of it hasn’t. Think quantity, not quality. Mainly I see it as practice.

I’m excited and nervous. If I could find a way to do something with my life that combines my love for programming/web development and my love for writing, I would be a happy camper indeed. I’ve been a writer since before I could actually write - at 4 years old I was dictating stories to my grandmother - but in the past several years my interest had become sort of dormant. Sure, I started this blog in 2002, but I didn’t view it as some kind of outlet for writing - more like a brain dump. For the first few years, I didn’t give much thought to what I posted. And I think that’s a good thing, actually; it let the blog evolve naturally. Too many blogs feel forced when the person starts off with the intention of producing “some really amazing writing” or whatever.

That being said - there has definitely been a change in the type of writing on the blog since its inception. I think my posts have improved greatly over the past year, and yes I’m going to pat myself on the back about it.

Anyway, I’ve finally decided on a topic for my essay. It came to me last night in a very “eureka!” moment. No, I won’t tell you what it is.

Okay, this is rapidly degenerating. I’m tired, so please forgive any unintentional pompousness, as well as any non-sequiturs. Time for bed.