Busy couple of weeks and radscum check-in

Won’t have as much time in the next few weeks to blog or comment or read much.  So please pardon the short version (as opposed to pages-long deconstructing of foolishness) of offensiveness to follow:

ETA: Why do I even TRY to post in response to misogynist idiots before noon?

If your white, middle class, non-lesbian-separatist ass is you’re, whoever the fuck you are, not getting enough male approval already by the online dick-sucking you’re engaged in with all your finger-wagging and attempts to self-elevate through demonizing people who aren’t even fucking TALKING to you, dare to even THEORIZE about what steps might lead to the end of male supremacy or who dare to talk about privileges under male supremacy that make you uncomfortable, may I suggest it’s your fellatio technique, not “radscum’s” conversations amongst ourselves, that could use some work.

I hear swallowing’s in again, if that helps.

Edits reflect the fact that even though it’s true that you cocksucking zombies go around trying to stamp out the discussions of any woman/women who concern themselves with female interests ONLY, and in that sense you’re butting the fuck in to try and control conversations such women have among ourselves, it’s also true that a) I stand by every word of my linked comment at that clusterfuck of a bullshit thread at ND’s and b) whether or not you personally find the facts at two of the linked posts at AROOO to be sad or distasteful, there is nothing untrue about what’s written in either post and hence c) I don’t care if it IS women talking among ourselves or broadcasting a commecial during the fucking Superbowl, you still have zero right to try and pressure any of us or anyone who even so much as talks or blogrolls any of us, to not talk about things just because you don’t want to talk about those things.

STOP TRYING TO DRAG US INTO YOUR BLOW JOBS

Synonyms are fun

Another word for “the gender binary system” is…

Male supremacy.  The “binary” system of gender is an enforced hierarchy, not a horizontal system with two equivalent poles.  The gender role for males is constructed as superior to the gender role enforced upon females.  Maleness is therefore at the top of this hierarchy, and femaleness is on the bottom.  When/if you obscure that, intentionally or out of ignorance, via language (gender binary systems for everyone!) or actions, you are being misogynist.

We’re trying to figure out which one of us accidentally pocketed a tiki

I think I’m getting my memory of this Brady Bunch episode all wrong – the only clear things I can remember are that Greg wiped out in a surf contest and a tarantula helped him or herself along for the ride when the Bradies were vacation in Hawaii and/or elsewhere?  Point being, I don’t recall if Bobby or a different Brady “found” some tiki type of thing and didn’t know it would bring a supposed curse on them, or if he stole it.  We’re talking about white people, after all.

In either case, bad things kept seeming to happen to the Brady family until they gave it back or someone took it back, I think a cave was involved.

I was joking with my mom about checking my niece’s and nephew’s little pockets to see if either of them was sporting a cursed tiki thing unbeknownst to the rest of us, because we all keep getting sick and/or staying sick and/or other shit. 

I’m still not well yet, though I’m much better than I was even a week ago.  My brother’s having dental unpleasantness, my sister-in-law has had fever off and on for days, the niece and nephew got ear infections on top of whatever colds/flus they keep recycling, through no fault of their own. 

Then my twin sister took an acquaintance to dinner as a thank-you for helping her get the job she has now, and the woman inexplicably decided (inexplicable because my sister had said clearly “hey can I buy you dinner for helping me?”) that my sister was trying to get into her pants (also inexplicable because my sister is neither a lesbian nor an assertive pants-entry-try-er with anyone), and then hurt my sister’s feelings by acting like if she HAD been gay and hitting on the lady, the lady would have been super revolted.  By my sister, not necessarily gayness itself.  If I had the money and enough vacation time, I would have had a hard time restraining myself from flying to Texas and yelling at that lady.  Because really, it’s so hard to say a simple “I’m flattered but no thank you?”  Setting aside the fact that there was no need in the first place, you know?  People aren’t evil for being mistaken about thinking you’re a lesbian if you’re not (or thinking you’re not if you are), but there’s no need to be shitty to someone whilst you’re misunderstanding the thing they’re not doing in the first place. 

I called my mom two nights ago to say hi and joke some more about whatever, and my dad answered and said – after insisting I not panic - that she’d been taken by the paramedics to the hospital that afternoon, and was staying there for probably at least a few days.

I haven’t been able to go see her yet, but hopefully will this weekend.  I believe her when she says she’s okay and will keep being okay, but it still scared me at first.  She has a chronic but (I don’t know if this is the right word) managed illness, one that almost killed her when I was in 5th grade, and this whole episode, she and the doctors think, is a flare up of that.  I don’t know if that’s good news or no news or bad news, relative to how things will go from here on out.  And I don’t know why I keep thinking of my grandmother, my mom’s mother, passing away in a nursing home with – to my knowledge – no one with her.  Died in her sleep.  But it’s what made me feel as sad as I did, that first night, after I got off the phone with my dad.

My mom is not in a nursing home, and 2/3 of her kids live near her, and my dad is alive and she wouldn’t be alone is my point, even if all of a sudden she needed to be some place where she was receiving care in ways that none of us could give her.  My uncle, my mom’s brother, is either a moderate-to-high functioning schizophrenic, or a person who is easily mistaken for one by doctors when he’s drinking all the time.  He couldn’t take care of my grandmother, even though he lived at home with her until she moved to the nursing home.  And my grandmother wouldn’t leave Texas and come live with us or near us in Los Angeles.  I know my mom loved her mom, but I do understand why it was not an option for her to move back to Texas to try and be her mother’s full time live-in nurse.

It still is something that I can’t stand, though.  My grandmother, my mom’s mother, was one of the tiny amount of adults who I felt loved by growing up.  I used to write her letters all the time, up until maybe a year or something before she died, when I was 19.  I wish that I had not gotten self-absorbed with all the things that were stupid and negative anyway and that I spent my time on instead of writing her letters anymore towards the end.  I wish I had been someone who she felt loved by the whole time, like she did for me when I needed it.

My mom, since the time I went into the hospital for drug addiction, has been a different parent to me than what things were like growing up.  Both my parents have, and I’ve of course been – thank god – a different daughter to them as well.  My mother really did become like the cliche of the fiercely protective lion towards her cubs.  And so recently, when I’ve been sick and sick and then sick some more, a couple of times she’s done things that made me cry from just the relief of not actually being alone, when I hadn’t even realized that I was needing to not feel alone in the first place. 

The night I woke up and had to run to the bathroom because I didn’t know if I was going to vomit, and then passed out on the bathroom floor, and then had a melodramatic breakdown that this shit was never going to end, the next day when I felt a little more stabilized but too weak to drive to the urgent care and didn’t figure they could help me anyway since there’s no cure for a flu, she had my dad driving up to my apartment before I even had time to finish getting dressed after showering (she stayed with the grandkids and was making dinner for my sister).  Part of it was your-mom-wanting-you-to-go-to-the-doctor-no-matter-what-you-say and part of it was her just not wanting me to be alone.

The reason I know it’s also the latter and not just me being sentimental for this post or to cheese-up some mother/daughter Hallmark-y slant  is because of (obviously on top of *knowing her*) when she called a couple of weeks ago.

Like I said, and have been saying to anyone who’ll listen for forgoddamnever now, I’ve been sick almost continuously since right after Christmas.  I was taking a fitful nap two Saturday afternoons ago and my mom called to see if I was up for going to their place for dinner the next day.  My voice was scratchy and I sounded sleepy too, naturally, but I wasn’t too miserable.  Didn’t think I’d be going anywhere the next day, though.  I thought, actually, that I’d sounded peppier than the last few days – I was happy to be at home with the cats, and have the heat on, and I love daytime naps with all my heart.

About two minutes after we hung up, she called me right back.  “We could come up there tonight to see you, or tomorrow for lunch if you want?  I was just talking to Dad and said that you sounded a little puny to me, so he said ’sure’ when I mentioned driving up to see you.”

I seriously felt all over for a second like I was cured, from how it felt to get that phone call.  And just the sound of her voice – I don’t want to alarm you with my alarm and I’m not panicked but just in case I’d like to see for myself that you’re okay.  Unexpected and in a way non-sensical to me, like the $20 she still sends me in a card for Valentine’s Day.  I don’t mean as in ”nonsense,” just…

That’s how I want her to get to feel right now.  I don’t want her to think I’m worried, because then she would worry about that, and I know my being next to her is not an actual medical treatment, but I still…I just know that I would not be alone in a hospital as long as she’s around. 

It wasn’t always true that my mother and I trusted each other to be there if either one of us got hurt; in fact we actually had reason to believe, at various points, more in the likelihood that one of us would be the source of hurt rather than the person who cared about it if it happened. 

I didn’t actually need her and/or my dad to come down that night or the next day for lunch, two weekends ago when she called and thought I sounded a little puny.  I believe her that she didn’t need me to come down Wednesday night or yesterday or even today.  (It’s raining now and she said “but hazardous conditions,” and I said “but I got my new glasses which I love and I can see perfectly at night now,” she said “well…maybe.”)  I’m glad she believes I would though, if she did need me.  I don’t have any sick days or enough vacation days to skip out of work at present if it’s not an emergency, but I do have really lax bosses if it ever IS an emergency.  Anyway, we’re all glad it’s not.

The Brady Bunch have nothing to do with any of this of course.  Look, if you’re not used to my start-one-way-and-go-the-other-and-lazily-refuse-to-think-of-a-way-to-wrap-it-up-with-a-tie-in-to-the-beginning posts yet, I don’t know what to tell you.   Except, hope you have a good weekend and stuff.  I’m looking forward to having something else to say soon besides “GRRR what the fuck!” or “boo hoo I’m sick!”

Looting in Haiti

From hearing about children being smuggled out for god knows what actual purposes (which even if it really was “just” to help them find homes or whatever would still be illegal and horrible, since some of the children HAVE homes/families in Haiti), to hearing on the radio this morning about food that was intended as aid to people after the earthquake, is now being SOLD instead…

…it *does* seem like some looting is going on. 

Not holding my breath for the looter-story-loving folks to give any of it a write up.

Wherein a middle school girl’s gang rape gets involuntarily entered into the oppression olympics. And loses!

Dear whoever the fuck wrote this,

Yes, yes I did, now that you mention it, think it was “bad” that a bunch of male people raped a girl child while lots of people apparently knew about it and did not a fucking thing.  Oh wait, oh my bad, I didn’t realize that was a rhetorical device you were using so as to point to an even WORSE bad thing!

Thanks for bringing up the gang rape even though you actually could have expressed disgust at the other rape-involving story without pulling the “thought that was bad? get a load of THIS much more horrible thing!” bullshit.

Fucking fuckers and their fuckery.

Smoothie recipe

I wouldn’t say I invented this so much as I adapted it from another recipe, to suit my tastes and the ingredients my picky ass can tolerate.  Yogurt and/or powdered protein supplements do not make the cut.  I’ve been looking for something I could have as my breakfast instead of 16 ounces of whole milk.  I love milk and I am not in the mood for actual food in the mornings, so it’s been hard to switch from so much dairy intake.  Wait the boring pre-amble isn’t over yet!

I just wanted to see if it would feel any different, health-and-energy-and-whatever-wise, to take in less animal hormones, regardless of how “clean” the milk I buy is.  I’ve been sick off and on for most of the last month and desperation is making me unusually open minded.  This is what I had as a late lunch today (food [versus liquids] is still not something I’m much in the mood for yet):

In a blender (thanks, Mom, for the xmas present!), combine -

Four ice cubes

1 cup frozen strawberries

1 cup frozen raspberries

3/4 cup orange juice

1 vial of “Body Fortress” Super Whey Protein Shot, 26g protein, Fruit Punch flavor (naturally flavored + a little sucralose, no sugar)

I know whey protein is actually animal protein, and soy protein is supposedly better, but hell so is a bunch of other shit I won’t be ingesting either.  It’s my completely-made-up contention that a shot of whey protein still has less hormones than 16 ounces of whole milk.  I’m probably right – there’s no fat and no sugars in isolated whey protein as opposed to milk.

Anyhoo, the above recipe made more than my large glass would hold, and tastes fucking delicious, and I may follow up some time later with a report on whether it gave me energy and left me feeling as full as a regular good meal would.

I may post something even less relevant to anyone besides myself, too.  Hard to predict at this point.

Okay wait while trying to proof read this post I already have come to the realization that this shit may not work for me either, this smoothie I mean.  The glass is not even half fucking empty yet and I feel like I will need more energy to drink the fucking thing than any energy I could possibly get out of it.  Maybe that’s just the lethargy of still being under the weather?  Fucking fuckity fuck.

Look does anybody have a recipe for time travel to five years ago when I know I was hardier than this present bullshit I’m dealing with?  Guh.

New cancer-causing substance identified

…in clinical studies it was found that calling “horseshit” on actual horseshit does actually promote the growth of cancerous cells.

Luckily a cure was found also – the insufferable posturing of people who pretend to give a damn just to score imaginary points of good-person-ness.

Yay for problem solved!

I’m sorry for the morbidity but I feel compelled

No matter how many times it’s pointed out to me, by outcomes themselves or by other people, that what feels like a psychic vision to me about dying in every plane ride I take, could not possibly have been a psychic vision since I always have so far lived through them without planes crashing with me on board…it never stops feeling like a psychic vision.

I’m flying on a plane towards the end of February and for some reason the usual terrifying certainty that the plane’s going to go down is being accompanied by another terrifying certainty that I’m going to be killed by someone breaking into my apartment as well.  Despite the illogic of that – it’d have to be one or the other, I can’t possibly be killed by an intruder AND a plane ride separately – both still feel inevitable.  Both feelings come up for me when I’m in bed falling asleep, which has caused me to try not to fall asleep for the last couple of nights. 

Here’s what I think is going on with the intruder fear:

I used to feel this same thing when I was on heroin – like someone was coming for me whenever I was falling asleep.  I think it’s possible that it was sort of a metaphorical thing my subconscious was doing to me – the condition of being addicted to heroin and being at least half-aware that I was in the process of dying, in a sense death itself is what was “coming for me.”  Ugh please forgive the melodrama inherent in this whole conversation so far.

So since Friday I’ve been using as little as possible but still using it, cough syrup that has vicodin in it (which is stronger than the RX cough syrup with codeine in it, naturally).  And in addition to finally being something that actually helps me not cough incessantly, it also feels, for about an hour or two after it takes effect, very similar to how heroin used to feel, for me. 

Which, for those of you who are not opiate afficionados, it’s not actually the case for any/all opiates to feel like each other.  I mean they all are kind of easy to tell – hey this is a related substance to that.  But for instance, codeine does not feel like darvocet does not feel like demorral does not feel like vicodin, etc.  It seems like it might be related to the form that this vicodin is in, as a liquid in cough syrup, because other times that I’ve taken vicodin (when I got all my wisdom teeth out, for example), it hasn’t reminded me so viscerally of heroin.

So, rationally I understand that it’s unlikely anyone is going to break into my apartment and get me (I live in a pretty secure unit in a pretty secure complex), and it’s unlikely the plane’s going to go down next month.  Soon I will be healthy again and not on cough syrup, and soon enough my trip next month will have come and gone.  Nonetheless, vanity compels me to request of you that if either thing should unexpectedly come to pass, could you please make sure that I at LEAST get credit for being psychic after I’m gone?  Thank you.

The four women in New Jersey

They keep popping into my head lately especially, I don’t know why.  I went to check out the “Support the New Jersey 4” website in the hopes that maybe good news had gone unreported the way all the bad news mostly had (outside of some bloggers, which is how I heard about it, though I know the original story actually *was* reported on, but it was from a lesbian-hating angle).

I found this post on the discussion board, from almost a year ago, giving updates on the women’s cases.  There’s a letter at the bottom of the post that’s given as a possible template to send to the D.A. in support of the young women.  I felt uncomfortable reading that letter.  It’s written by someone who clearly cares about these women.  And I can’t tell if something I felt from the wording – close to an admission of wrongdoing on the womens’ parts – was something I projected onto the words or something that’s really in there.

Because I also clicked on whatever link it was for reading about the original incident.  Because in the back of my mind I felt like, “I definitely don’t think they should have gone to jail either way but I don’t want to be wishing ill on that man if it wasn’t a ‘clear-cut’ case of self-defense, like if maybe the young women had reacted physically while he was still acting solely verbally abusive.”

In all the other parts of my mind, I want to know why the fuck it actually matters, and especially why I would assign possible guilt to any of these women when the very act of going outside as lesbians, as black female people who are lesbians, is in itself a necessarily self-defensive move.  Existing at all, as who they are, is a defense of self.

And I think it both does and doesn’t matter that they were all aware of and may have known personally the young black lesbian woman Sakia Gunn, who’d been murdered not long before by men who hated her for existing.  It does matter in that it is a terrifying reminder and a grievous loss that Ms. Gunn was executed.  It doesn’t matter solely in the sense that it is guaranteed that every one of these young women would already have known years of proof that simply existing put them in danger on a number of fronts.  If Ms. Gunn had not been murdered, it still would have been understandable for these young women to respond the way they did, to lesbian-hating racist misogyny, as if their lives depended on it.

So what could “guilt” in this incident even mean?  What if “all” he’d done, this hateful man, was verbally sexually harass one or more of these women as they were minding their own business walking by?  What if the whole lot of them had responded to “just” that, by, I don’t know, slapping the fucker, pushing him, intentionally trying to physically intimidate him?

This is where I part ways with people whose reaction to these questions would be “violence is never okay” and/or “that makes [them/us] just as bad as the perpetrator.”  Because I don’t actually believe either of those premises.

Being just as bad as that man would have meant those women accosting and threatening someone who had less power than they did and who was already always under threat of death for existing.  And who was minding their own business.

And I’m not willing to pretend that these particular women and any women like them have any reason to believe that “walking away” or “peaceful resistance”  will save their lives when threatened.

I hate that even with me feeling this way, even I felt like there needed to be some “evidence” that their response wasn’t disproportionate to this predator’s theat level.

But that is the core of what I have to confront in myself on a not infrequent basis.  That feeling of rage ignited, of not being able to tell in the moment whether a person means to physically harm me or just fuck up my day, and of knowing that there is a wrong answer, and the penalty is irreversible.

That I can know the latter, and still question myself, and question these young women, is a problem.

That I believe there are a myriad of ways one or many could resist racist misogynist lesbian-hating violence besides stabbing each individual predator who attacks, while at the same time knowing that none of those possibilities will get in the way of such a predator in the moment when he appears, is a problem.

Why is it when a species of animal has developed a trait that functions to immediately harm any other animal who attacks them – things like porcupine quills, poisonous skin – it is considered a marvel of evolution, meanwhile even saying out loud “well it doesn’t seem like male people are going to stop attacking female people so long as they can count on hardly ever being hurt back in the process,” is considered a threat to the future of humankind itself?

In case you missed it, here is what that means: half the population being in a position to harm and destroy the other half with mostly impunity, and a huge fucking number of that half exercising that power, means survival of humankind.  The other half of the population even *talking* about the undeniable truth that male people attack us because they can, and if we posed a real threat back to them it might tamp things down at least a little, means we’re all going to die.

Of course it is true that part of why these young women did not see protest marches on their behalf or “civil rights leaders” on Larry King decrying their unjust treatment is because by and large, black lesbians are considered disposable, as black people, as female people, and as lesbian people.

But it is also because there is nothing “civil” about black female lesbian people taking care of themselves and each other.  And all male people are right to see a threat in female people acting the way these female people did in that situation.  And that is why even letters of support must acknowledge that threat, and pretend it is illegitimate, lest they hurt the women’s cases more than helping them.  And it is why that is not a template I can use.

Prof Susurro and Mai’a and I don’t know if I have it in me

I saw this post by Mai’a after clicking on her site from a link at a blog from which much accurate (in my view) bullshit-calling emanates and towards which much wrath flows.

I read the post Mai’a linked to by Prof Susurro after reading Mai’a’s piece.

I’ve been meaning for days to reply to a blogger I used to be snarky towards.  The delay is because I’ve been using more time on commenting and/or emailing my irritation about a number of issues on the net.  The former snark was because it made me feel more powerful to try and hurt her when/if she wrote something that I felt frustrated by.   Also to try and impress other girls I have crushes on, that is the truth.  The fact that we’re not fuck-you’ers to each other anymore is something I maybe am annoying-at-this-point still delighted by, in that I keep talking about it like the revelation it is for me should somehow dazzle anyone else as well.  Or as if I’ve never come to like and love anyone who I at first had an adversarial relationship to/with and so can’t stop marveling over it when in fact I could just move it along.

Mai’a mostly quoted Prof Susurro’s post but two sentences at the end (of Mai’a’s) :

we conflate saying our subjective experience/truth is valuable with it is infallible.

we spend more time calling folks out than we do understanding their lives.

were succintly relevant to me (the first) and difficult for me to make up my mind about (the latter).

Pro Susurro’s post felt like that to me too, where a lot of it described things I related to very much and some of it I didn’t know where to locate myself in relation to it.  She talks about radical love.  I am soothed by the hope for and practice of radical love when there are times I think I see it or feel it, and I am also not ever sure which things would qualify as that and which things never would.

Hopefully you will read both posts before the rest of this one, otherwise my rambling may not make sense as a response.

Here’s a quote I felt a strong response to as a I read it:

“I promised myself in 2010 that I would engage from a place of radical love, rather than anger (at being lied about or to, or the same old isms) or fear (of losing the power to speak my truth through the denial of its truth value). I also promised, that when that love fails, instead of digging in and defending myself (which is so easily manipulated thru pomo) I would simply send love to those places and hope that seeds planted today grow tomorrow or that words spoken resonate when someone else’s seeds grow there.”

I don’t understand in concrete terms what is the difference between choosing not to challenge something that feels either not-right or just something you see differently, and that choice not to challenge is based on “I like this person and don’t want to fight with them so fuck it, I’m not bringing it up,” versus what is community-building by way of respecting that just because someone sees it differently doesn’t mean they’re wrong.  And that even if it were possible to “know” that someone is wrong, that doesn’t mean you have to fuck each other off if they won’t change to come to what is “right.”

I say I don’t understand the difference(s) because I feel like both might be things I do, or might not.  Is it radical love when my friend stays my friend even though some of who I am and what I do is horrifying to her?  Or is it a temporary oversight that will eventually disintegrate what’s between us?  Or a willful exception she makes because I am in fact irresistible?

Is it radical love if I keep things to myself because I don’t know how to talk to someone I love about it, or is that a fundamentally disrespectful thing to do?  It feels like the latter to me.  It feels like radical love is supposed to include by definition the willingness to try instead of deciding it’s too hard and I’m too scared it would hurt her or her response would hurt me and so I’ll tell myself I’m just “accepting it as a difference” but in reality it causes me to feel alienated from her.

So then is radical love when I’ve talked to someone and listened to someone and we don’t see it the same way and we keep liking or loving each other instead of the different perspectives causing us to lose all feeling for each other entirely?

Or is radical love when I actually *don’t* feel pricked by views or actions by friends that are fundamentally opposed to all that is important to me?  When I’m just like, “well, if someone I didn’t already like said this I’d be irritated but I already love this woman and the bonds we have around other stuff that matters to me make it a no-brainer for me to not even really notice these other points of difference.”

I’m pretty sure it’s NOT radical love when I enthusiastically disagree, in sometimes intentionally insulting ways for my own amusement, with someone I didn’t like ANYway.  And that there is something dishonest in me telling myself “I am reacting *here* with anger because they are very wrong and it’s not okay,” when in fact such a person may hold really similar views to someone I love and would never confront about it.

For an example, my relationship offline with women who practice BDSM personally and/or professionally.  Versus my exasperation with some online kink proponents and their tactics.  Sometimes I feel like since there is room, with my offline friends, for me to be how *I* am without them deciding I need convincing otherwise, then that doesn’t feel to me like keeping quiet to keep the peace.  It just feels like – yeah we know we are different, and in fact with others we may even fight on the basis of those differences, but we don’t and won’t with each other.

But on the fighting front, and Mai’a’s point about calling out versus understanding lives, I don’t know.  That’s what I mean in the title, about not knowing if I have it in me.  If I feel like what I am understanding is that someone is a passive-aggressive, deliberately misconstruing, manipulative, woman-hating jackass, I seriously don’t know how the hell to come to another understanding.

And, it will surprise no one who’s ever read here to know, I have a problem with woman-hating.  A lot of displays of it make me dislike a person.  The fact that so much of it goes unremarked makes me feel inclined to remark.  Part of that is that as a female person, I feel affected by it and in a sense threatened, on the allowed-to-live-without-harm front, from it.  Part of it is that I am bothered by the possibility that even one other female person somewhere could see what I’m seeing and feel alone in her feelings of hurt and anger about it.  That whole planting seeds thing that Susurro alludes to.  I want whoever she may be out there to know – yeah, I see that most people don’t care, but that doesn’t mean you don’t matter, just for the record.  And I don’t know if that’s radical love to feel that way towards her, whoever she is, or over-inflated self-importance.

I ask myself about these things because I find taht I am adept at fuck you’ing and terrible at enjoying the aftermath half the time.  And that despite evidence to the contrary, I would actually be most at peace and most excited by getting to love everybody.  By spending all my free time writing the emails I am interested in writing with people I am interested in talking to and planning coffee or meals together where we can do more of it in person.  By never setting myself up to regret saying anything in the first place because I knew I was just trying to be a c-word in return, to someone whose c-word-ness pissed me off, and what the fuck is with me wasting my time like that?  I get it, we hate each other, move on.

Maybe in all this, I just want to feel like *that’s*okay.  hate you, move on.  not wishing you harm, but really can’t fucking stand you myself.

Maybe I don’t know where to locate myself in the beautiful things that Mai’a and Prof Susurro write because I don’t actually exist, there.  It’s possible that the only ways I will know how to do that thing where you love anyway and accept regardless and respect differences is when I love that person for other reasons, and so have self-servingly committed to non-combative honesty or sometimes outright dishonesty between us.  Maybe the small amount of people who get on my nerves while simultaneously practicing or preaching things that alarm me – maybe we simply are forever lost to each other.  Maybe I will always pull a way a little from friends or loved ones when they say or do something that feels like part of the woman-hating problem to me rather than part of the solution.  Maybe I will have it in me in the future to talk to them about it, and maybe not.  Maybe it will bring us closer if I do, and maybe not.

Meanwhile I can’t say that I always “do my best” or ever will.  I’m neither proud nor ashamed of that, it just feels like something I know about myself, like the fact that I’m short.  Obviously not as immutable as my height but a fact nonetheless at present.

I like Susurro’s and Mai’a’s posts that I link here, and I like the sense of their hearts and intellect that I get from reading their writing in general.  The rest of it, your guess is as good as mine.