I haven’t written any blogposts in awhile, and probably won’t write any more anytime soon, because I started graduate school about a month ago. My need to write and analyze has been subsumed into that work, with other priorities piled up on top of this blog.
In other words, I haven’t quit but I won’t be around much.
A sacred Native American mound is being destroyed in Alabama and it makes me sick in so many ways. (Deep Fried Kudzu has more information.) As a future archaeologist and a human being, this is so offensive. I wish there was something I could do… The best I can think of is to tell as many people as I can about it and possibly start an online petition. There is also contact information for some influential people in Alabama at the end of Deep Fried Kudzu’s article. I feel like that is just not enough, though.
Update: I started a petition. Please sign it!
Update: Apparently Walmart has decided not to use the dirt but now Target wants to. There are groups on Facebook and MySpace that are working to try to stop this; here is a video that one person posted on MySpace about the whole thing.
Any other ideas?
I’ve been growing my hair out for awhile. As a kid, I usually had short hair and as an adult, that has rarely been different. Short hair was easy and comfortable, and every time I tried to grow my hair long before, I started hating it at a certain point and ended up cutting it off. This time is different, though; for the first time I can ever remember, I’m actually enjoying things like how my hair feels against my face and wet on the nape of my neck – the two things that always changed my mind about it before.
Recently, I was walking down the hallway at work and spotted two of my co-workers. Read more »
It must have been 1st or 2nd grade when my classmates first started calling me “weird”. It was definitely 2nd grade when someone called me “weird” and I decided to respond with, “Thank you,” rather than feel hurt about it. And I really didn’t care anymore, once I realized that they would leave me alone if I just accepted myself.
That was, obviously, many years ago. Read more »
In response to my confessional post, several people on Feministing expressed a desire to see further posts about the subject. The easiest way to do this, for those so inclined, is to click on the “privilege” tag on the right, but it also reminded me that a number of my blogposts have been orphaned at Daily Kos, where I started my blogging several years ago before finally deciding last year to start my own. So in the interest of continuity and gathering all of my work in one place, I will be posting some of my old blogposts here, as well as providing a link to my (now-abandoned) page there.
Originally posted at Daily Kos on August 6th, 2008.
One of the things that’s been popping up a lot in my life recently is trying to convince others that feminism, or certain aspects of feminism, are important and necessary. Just trying to get someone to take feminism seriously is a huge task, since sexism often goes unrecognized or is considered unimportant in the grand scheme of things. How do you convince someone who thinks that being fat is shameful that that attitude can be harmful even to those who aren’t fat? How do you convince a man who has rarely or never been harassed on the street that it can be incessant and usually very very threatening for a woman? etc. Read more »
For the sake of showing how women are not necessarily delicate and for the fact that I am incredibly impressed with her tenacity and strength (because I would be whining and writhing in pain), I give you Natasha Kai, one of my favorite soccer players. She has been playing in spite of the fact that she has had problems with her right arm dislocating regularly, and then last night we watched this game; the relevant segment starts at 1:18 (I would embed it here but can’t figure out how).
Query for myself: Does the fact that she is a woman of color make it easier for me to see and acknowledge her strength?
A friend of mine died today. Her husband said he woke up this morning to discover that she wasn’t breathing. Her official cause of death was cardiac arrest.
I didn’t know her for very long or very well, so I can’t say much. But she was the kind of person who could make even a reserved girl like me happily confess a few of my darkest secrets within the first five minutes of ever talking to her. I was looking forward to getting to know her so much, and now I can’t.
I handed 20 dollars to the pale Creek
Traded Jackson for Chinese sparklers
To burn, the smoke drawing infinity
Above the paved trail.
On each of my shoulders stood
My pale ancestors, pleading
Their case for the spider webs
Laid across each creek of this nation.
I handed 20 dollars to the Creek
Under the revival tent, striped
With red and the recent slashes of rain,
Traded Jefferson for 99 cent sprinklers
That spit their sparks on the ground
Of the creek. The lightning
Joins, blood to blood, and still
The 20 makes its way through, tax-free, away
From the dark-skinned.
—
This is the first draft. Feel free to suggest edits.
In response to my confessional post, several people on Feministing expressed a desire to see further posts about the subject. The easiest way to do this, for those so inclined, is to click on the “privilege” tag on the right, but it also reminded me that a number of my blogposts have been orphaned at Daily Kos, where I started my blogging several years ago before finally deciding last year to start my own. So in the interest of continuity and gathering all of my work in one place, I will be posting some of my old blogposts here, as well as providing a link to my (now-abandoned) page there.
Originally posted at Daily Kos on April 30th, 2008.
I’ve been thinking about privilege lately. The impetus was my own privilege. I (and several others) had inadvertently supported a racist statement because I didn’t recognize the racism in it. Read more »
