Even if you don't buy my services, please check out every one else's; it's a vital cause and there are some really outstanding people offering themselves up.
Or, really, my body is. My body is criminalized.
In Canada, I'm coded non-white. That's as specific as it gets. I get squinted at: is she First Nations (Native. Indian. Trash.)? Middle Eastern? Mexican or Latin? Is she asian? Could she be Greek?
I get Persian a lot. When people ask me my ethnicity, they ask what I am. Because I am the sum of my ethnicity, and that is the first, defining trait. I get First Nations a lot. Followed around in stores in my hometown while the clerks wait for me to shoplift, tracked from row to row in the pharmacy where my dad works as pharmacist - and it becomes a type of game to walk straight up to him as he dispenses with his meticulous, trained, white hands this dose into that container, greet him and have him greet me, warmly, and sense that suspicious gaze heavy on my back turn to shock.
I'm a half-breed. When my mom (non-white) married my dad (white) her mom (non-white) disowned her. For the first decade of my life I lived in Vancouver with my two big brothers (non-white) and my mom and my dad. I've never been white. I could never pass. Some of multi-racial background can. A few of my childhood friends (non-white) were forbidden to associate with me when they learned what my mother was. What, her ethnicity inscribed more intrinsic within her than genetic code. My other childhood friends (white) didn't understand this type of racism, because they saw it in terms of white, non-white.
In terms of white, non-white, my body is a criminalized body. It carries always the implication of an elsewhere, not here, un-Canadian. (Never mind that my white heritage is also, and must be, an immigrant heritage, an elsewhere not-here belonging.) Un-Canadian is a crime, a threat to the creation of nation-hood.
In terms of non-white, non-white, it's enmity generations deep that divides some friends from me, herds me to acquaintances and forces a deeper connection. Where white doesn't enter in but race and racism remain key and dynamic components, systems of relation are heavily implicated by historical and socio-cultural events. The racism I experience in the sphere devoid of white is markedly different from the racism I experience in the sphere of non-white/white: but they remain, both, instances of racism. At times it's safer for me to smile and nod when my ethnicity is assumed, because to dispute this assumption is to invite an attack.
My criminalized ethnicized non-white body is a target of violence, both physical and ideological, because it is visible because it is marked as different.
In white, non-white cases of racism, when speaking with those who would be allies and working toward being an ally, myself (because just being, as I am, non-white, doesn't mean that I am an ally to all who are subject to racism), the recurring refrain is that of guilt. 'White liberal guilt'; 'colonial guilt'; 'why should I be made to sustain this guilt when I have done nothing to initiate it and am not in place to halt its propagation".
The question isn't whether or not you should feel guilty. That's entirely subjective. My mom feels no guilt for her parents' actions; I do. We're separate people - the definition of that separation is in how we approach situations, people, ideas. The fact is that there is privilege embedded in Canada, a deep network of privilege, and the benefit of that privilege lies on white rather than non-white persons. If you're paranoid at the thought that someone will take your privilege away from you - then you have the right to be paranoid. It's true. People want what you have. That's why it's called privilege. I dearly desire to no longer be assumed guilty for a crime I haven't committed. I would like the privilege of innocence. I want what you have, but what you have isn't a material thing. It's more precious than any material thing.
Racism isn't just a binary of white, non-white. The weight of racism on me is that assumption of criminality. On others, its the abjectification, the objectification, the sexualization. It's the insistence on visibility, the process of being made visible, the creation of self as site of potential violence. Fighting racism isn't about being guilty. It's about being privileged, and recognizing privilege, and recognizing that privilege isn't lessened because everyone has it. Privilege isn't a chocolate bar that can only be divided so many times: it's a song you can teach so that everyone can sing, a chorus from many throats that with each new added voice builds deeper resonance and beauty.
This has been a somewhat confused blog post. I'm tired. I don't wish to be negative. I'm tired of the insistence that the only demarcation is white, non-white. I'm tired of being a criminal in constant apprehensive weight for my sentencing. I'm tired of other people's guilt, and of other people's anger for feeling guilty, and of other people saying they've had enough, they're walking away. Walk away, that's your privilege. I wish it were mine.
First three commenters! And if I'm still stress knitting once those are done, maybe more, who knows. If you don't use dreamwidth account or Open ID, then leave your email, too plz, kthnxbai.
Edited to add: I totally broke and bought the Elijah elephant pattern, so that is also added to the list of requestable things.
You're contextualizing texts in classrooms while decontextualizing yourself from the world.
This is really what bothers me most about being an academic of the kind my school is training me to be - there's a sort of willfull blindness that infuriates me and makes me feel disconnected from the communities I claim as sites of occupation and study. I feel useless, and I hate the sensation of it.
It's called the ivory tower, immaculate and apart, the seat of higher (literally, elevated, 'tower') learning - but I want the mud, I want the dirt and blood, I want to be small in the face of suffering rather than removed from the presence of it, commenting on it with the calm distance affords.
I'm tired of being a pretentious academic. I don't want this as my identity. I need to change.
As children they were often mistaken for brothers, Donis and Avner. Time and maturity did not yet divide their frames into sturdy and slight: Donis was not yet powerfully muscled, nor was Avner so strangely lithe. They shared the same white-blond hair, the same pale grey eyes. With age all colour would darken in Donis, leach him silver to golden, bronzed where the sun kissed his skin; while Avner would remain, always, a distillation of light.
As children, too, this strange heat would not come between them as they lay side to side under the stars at night. Can you feel how the world is turning, Avner would whisper, and Donis would find his hand in the moonlit dark. They didn't tangle fingers, just laid palm against palm. I can feel your heart beating next to mine, Donis would reply.
Puberty stole that peace; and war. Donis couldn't name when he looked at Avner and no longer saw the boy he loved but the man he desired. It could have happened slowly over the span of months, or overnight. Avner meanwhile had been drafted into the Corps, Intelligence Division, fast-tracked into the doctorate program. He was not yet sixteen. Each time he broke from his studies to meet with Donis he seemed stranger, colder, than before.
What are they doing to you? Donis would ask, and trace his fingers across Avner's thinning face.
Perhaps it was just the passing years that sloughed the youth from Avner, but he was old before his time, and seemed no longer to eat. Bird thin, his bones became outlined beneath his skin: parodic wings reaching for flight. They are preparing me to serve our country, Avner replied, cool and distant as the stars at which they had once spent nights gazing.
Despite their growing distance, when Donis reached for Avner - as he had when a boy, palm to palm - Avner reached back, and in the silence that had consumed their boyhood conversations their bodies spoke.
Even this time of increasing separation was sweet, in retrospect. This beginning full of an infinity of possibilities, so rich, when compared to the facts of what each would become: Donis, liberator and patriot, beloved of all; and Avner, the butcher of over three hundred innocent lives.
_________________
Alter-Earth, after-War, not-quite epic. If you want to be on the filter for me gradually developing it, lemme know.
I'm kind of picky about icons. I don't usually like the ones with text; I'm by nature highly textual, so words on top of my pictures distracts me and makes the icon less about image (which I think it should be) and more about word, and overall I feel the impact/message has been lessened or even lost. I also prefer icons with colour. Most of my icons are fandom-based, but my default one was chosen for personal reasons. I tend to like icons that convey a very specific tone; I have an icon I use pretty much exclusively for things that are depressing, from world news to angsty fic posts. I have a stalker icon for when I want to comment on someone's post and let them know I like them/their writing possibly too much to be healthy.
What (if any) icon preferences do you have?
My own thoughts, casual as they may be:
1) flashbacks to RaceFail what with all the survivor-blaming and "privilege? what privilege?" discussion
2) I really, really like the idea one commenter had, of including a "Warnings: to the best of my knowledge there are no warnings needed for this fic" to fics so that any reader who is wary can be assured she/he isn't taking a chance in reading an unmarked fic. I think I'm going to start doing that.
3) Given that a lot of the discussion seems to hinge not just on warnings in general but also warnings for misogyny related crimes, such as rape, consent issues, assault, and abuse in its myriad forms (with the derailing tactics of attempting to move away from dubcon warnings to "do I need to warn for allergies now, too?"), there is something that just boggles me. These works of (fan)fiction, depicting - I'm assuming sympathetically, empathetically - events of graphic violence are works where the author tends to occupy, or see through the perspective of, the one assaulted. The second most common viewpoint is that of the rescuer-figure who has come to help the survivor of assault. In both fictive instances, the author tends to (not always, not in every case, but for the majority in my sampling of this genre) present an empathetic portrayal. The level of irony is astounding when this empathy given to fictional characters in fictional settings is not extended to real survivors of assault, real supporters of those who have survived assault, in the real setting that is the social networks of our journaling sites. If a dubcon fic made you cry and ache for the characters, why can't you cry and ache for fellow members of our community? Why is it permissible to allow fictive voices be heard, but silence the real ones?
4) There is no 4. The 4 is a lie.
5) I do have a trigger. It's not related to any consent or assault issues. It is a somewhat common trope in fanfic, but I navigate around it just fine, and heed warnings when authors are considerate and compassionate enough to post them. I was recently triggered by a non-fanfic source and spent a few days randomly breaking into tears and trying desperately to regain my equilibrium. It's hard. It hurts. I don't know anyone with enough malice to deliberately want to hurt me in that way - but it didn't stop me from being hurt. It didn't stop me from flashing back and contemplating self-harm. Triggers are different from squicks, which you can walk away from. Triggers are embedded in you, and the impact they have is enormously damaging.
6) Regarding the notion of warnings = spoilers, why not post warnings separately under a cut with the addendum that if the reader has triggers, they may want to check out the warnings; if the reader has no triggers and would like to avoid spoilers, to ignore the warnings; if the reader has no triggers but likes spoilers, read the warnings; etc. It's a little extra work, but it seems like a middle ground between avoiding harm to readers and preserving authorial control over spoilers, etc.
1) got both Black Skin White Masks AND Wretched of the Earth for under $20 (Zoinks bookstore on Bloor; technically used books, but both in new condition)
2) ate gloriously cheap, wonderfully delicious Thai food (@ Urban Thai, ironically in Little Italy)
3) got a truly awesome cappucino
4) spent time with friends
5) wrote porn at the Star Trek kink meme (over here) (warning: somnophilia)
Downsides:
1) blisters. Blisters. Ow.
2) still freaking out a little over my mom acting weird.
3) still hate grad school; am clawing at the metaphorical bars of this academic cage.
I guess we'll call it a win?
Edit: forgot to add, have invite codes. Leave comment and will give; first come, first etc.
If you are reading this right now, you have more luxury than someone in Iran could ever hope for right now. If you are watching TV or a video on youtube, updating your status on Facebook, Tweeting, or even texting your friend, you are lucky. If you are safe in your home, and were able to sleep last night without the sounds of screaming from the rooftops, you need to know and understand what is happening to people just like you in Iran right now.
This = my desktop foto. It kind of betrays where it is that I live. I took it with my camera phone.
( Click this way, the voyeurs among you: )
Five times Chekov almost lost his virginity and one time he did (originally posted here):
Warning: to the best of my knowledge, this fic needs no warnings.
( a mild dose of crack )
Warning: depiction of starvation and PTSD symptoms.
( 6 times Jim didn't talk about Tarsus IV )
( and the 2 times he had to )
![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
harpers_child , Dollhouse is renewed for a second season. I am not sure how to feel about this, but for now I will be happy(ish). Well, well, I'll attempt to kickstart the creativity again in the hopes of beating down my slothful ways.
/whining
I'm kind of baffled at myself. (And also shamefully seeking fic. Not so much for iCarly - though maybe? - but for the O. C., I know there is quality stuff floating out there, I'm kind of in search of it now - trolling pit of voles, aka fanfiction dot net - and delicous recs. Gah, the shame, it burns. Like venereal disease or the fires of hell.)
Some people
ascend out of our life, some people
enter our life,
uninvited and sit down,
some people
calmly walk by, some people
give you a rose,
or buy you a new car,
some people
stand so close to you, some people
you've entirely forgotten,
some people, some people
are actually you,
some people
you've never seen at all, some people
eat asparagus, some people
are chlidren,
some people climb on the roof,
sit down at table
lie around in hammocks, take walks with their red umbrella,
some people look at you,
some people have never noticed you at all, some people
want to take your hand, some people
die during the night,
some people are other people, some people are you, some people
don't exist
some people do.
In other news, new Chuck tonight! \o/
I've got to say, show does a really good shop of taking ideas that make me cringe at in theory, grin at in practice.
