Thoughts on crying in public

A week and a half ago, Ferris and I lost his battle with whatever was wrong with him. I tried everything reasonable, and in the end I had to say goodbye. This is the second time I've had to make that decision for a beloved pet, and it probably won't be the last. I cried almost from the minute I walked in the vet for our last visit all the way out the door, and home. And I remembered the day of my Grandma's funeral, when I did the same thing. I've noticed that public crying makes other people uncomfortable, and I used to try to control my crying, rein it in, in order to NOT make others uncomfortable. Somewhere along the way I said to myself: fuck it. I am sad, I am crying, and other people's fee-fees are really not my problem. So I let 'em flow. I never cry at work if I can possibly help it, but otherwise, I refuse to keep a lid on it for the sake of polite conformity. A cousin looked at me at Grandma's funeral and said, "We're going to have to get you alright." And I thought: why? What does it mean to you if I'm sitting here crying? Let me be. Just let me be.

I've been thinking about why I felt for so long that crying in public was shameful, embarrassing, to be avoided at all costs. I know that it's considered a sign of weakness in our culture - *girls* are crybabies, and "boys don't cry." Crying is a sign, particularly, of feminine weakness, and boys the world over are punished for crying. [Example: a guy I used to date who was beaten regularly by his dad from about age 8 to age 14 stopped getting beatings when he stopped crying and started getting angry. No lie. The guy is almost totally incapable of expressing his emotions or even knowing what they are or really feeling empathy. His dad beat it out of him. Literally.]

I then remembered my personal grammar school bully, let's call him Donny Anderson, because that was his name. He sat right behind me in the third grade. I was the new kid, I'd just skipped a grade, and I was nearly 2 years younger than everybody in class. I was 6, they were 7 and 8 years old. Donny was way bigger and taller than me. I don't remember why he made me cry the first time, but as soon as he realized he could bully me into crying, he did it as often as possible. He'd sit behind me and whisper mean things to me, and I'd tear up. Or he'd pull my hair so hard that I would involuntarily get tears in my eyes. Then he'd make fun of me for crying. He'd start making submarine sounds: "Whoop, whoop, it's gonna flood, get in the submarine!" Eventually I learned to not cry when he was being an asshole, and if I gave him a dirty look, he'd start with the 'whoop, whoop' submarine noises and talking about how I was crying, and then I'd get mad at him because I fucking well WASN'T crying, but he was pretending like I was. It was just infuriating. Truly, if I saw that guy right now, I'd punch him in the face. He tormented me for three long years. I spent an entire year with skinned knees because every time I walked past the kickball game, where he was usually pitching, he'd throw the fucking ball at me and knock me down. I had to walk past it to get to the water fountain, and eventually found a different route, but he found new and shitty ways to torment me. Seriously. I would walk up to him right now and punch him in the face if I could.

But wait. Let me get to the point: it was Donny Fucking Anderson that made fun of me crying, after he'd MADE me cry by being an asshole. It was right there, age 6, that I learned from a boy that girls were big crybabies, and weak, and that was a bad thing. I was tagged as a crybaby the whole three years I was at that school because of that asshole. And where did he learn it? At home, no doubt. One hopes he grew out of it, but what are the odds? We live in a culture where crying is shameful.

I'm not sure when or why or how I decided that I would fucking well cry in public if I need to, maybe it was when my Grandma died and there was no holding back the flow, or maybe before that, but now I cry when I need to. I don't let other people determine my behavior. I will cry at the vet, I will cry at funerals, and I will cry driving down the road. I will not hide my "weakness" - by which, I think, people mean my "emotions" - for the convenience of others. I hate this idea that having emotions, and showing them, is weak and feminine.

I also hate it when someone says or does something that makes me cry, and then blames ME for being "hypersensitive." Suddenly it's MY fault that I'm crying, not theirs. It's also infuriating. You want to see me turn into a howler monkey? Call crying "emotional blackmail," implying that the crying is just fakery, designed to manipulate. Or laugh at me when I'm crying. The emotionally abusive ex used to do both of those things. I honestly have never been so angry in my life as I was when he'd hurt my feelings so much I cried, and then he'd laugh because he thought I was "over-reacting." No, I was REACTING. Accusing me of dishonesty - of crying to manipulate - is the meanest thing someone can accuse me of. I have a lot of faults, but I am not a liar, and I am not a hypocrite. My mother used to accuse me of being hypersensitive, too. I think this is a way for people who have done hurtful things to disavow their responsibility for their meanness. They shift the blame to the victim. Hm, that sounds familiar: I get hurt, I cry, it's MY fault for responding to it. No bully has ever been really stopped by the stupid advice to "just ignore him" and "don't respond." They just raise their game, get meaner and meaner, in my experience. I left two schools in six years because of bullying. In junior high, it was girls. Kelly Revercomb and Julie Roseman, I hope you are googling yourselves and find this post. I hope Donny does too. All three of them were hateful little shitheads, bullies, and I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire. Truly.

So I learned as a kid to try to hide my emotions, to not express them, but now, as an adult, I say to hell with that. If my emotions make you uncomfortable, that's YOUR problem, not mine. Bottling up emotions makes you sick. Makes ME sick. And I won't do it, not for anybody. So if you see somebody crying in public, don't think of them as weak. Think that they have finally decided they do not give a shit what you think about their emotions, because, really, it's none of your business. It's my business. I'm reclaiming crying in public. I HAVE reclaimed it.

male voice/female voice

I just witnessed a remarkable, yet everyday, example of male privilege, that I thought was pertinent to the ongoing radfem arguments about the ways in which trans*women may or may not retain male privilege.

To paraphrase, a young (21-year-old) transwoman who recently came out as trans said she goes to a discussion group once a week, where she noticed that the boys dominated the discourse, and women were ignored. So, what was her solution? Switch back to what she called her "boy voice, the one [she] used before [she] came out as trans". Here, in a nutshell, is where the male privilege still resides with the transwoman: at this point in her life, she has the option to switch her gender presentation up and have her voice heard in a way that a born-woman does not. There is no milieu in which my voice will be heard as anything but a woman's voice. Eventually, if this young woman transitions fully, and moves into a community where no-one knew her as male, she'll lose that option, but for now, she just easily picked up the mantle of male privilege as it suited her.

And this is where the sticky wicket is for me and so many other radfems when it comes to residual male privilege. I don't wish to ignore the many, many ways in which trans*folk are discriminated against, and I suppose I can concede to the ways in which my born-female-ness comes with a degree of privilege over that of trans*women. Yet that little act of switching up in order to be heard is at the heart of the issue for me. Trans*women, for a time, and for as long as they choose, can opt to present as male and use that male privilege they were given at birth.

That for me is the very core of what makes born-women different from trans-women. Not better, not worse, but surely not the same. I am okay with a broad definition of gender and a broad definition of biological sex, but I'm simply not comfortable with or able to pretend that the life experiences of transwomen are the same as those of women born into femaleness.

To me, one of the primary goals of radical feminism is to do away with the gender binary altogether. Meaning all activities, all attires, all personality traits, all body shapes are simply *human*. Not female, not male; not masculine, not feminine. They just ARE, the way brown eyes are un-gendered. The way knees are un-gendered. And this is why I resist the idea that a person who wishes to have long hair and wear dresses should have to feel like they must be female if they have those desires. I, a born woman, am not that fired up about high heels and cosmetics and poufy hair. Does this make me less of a "woman"? Sadly, to some people, it does. To the Pentecostals around here, my pants-wearing and short hair make me pretty much the whore of babylon. My ongoing and futile resistance to the performance of femininity makes it very, very difficult for me to understand why anyone would fight for the right to perform femininity. To me, it's artificial, constructed, oppressive, patriarchal. I resent being judged as "less" because I don't pouf up my hair and wear makeup and pantyhose. Why on earth would ANYONE fight for that right? I honestly don't get it.

I don't have to, fortunately. I am totally down with people looking, dressing, acting however they want, as long as they're not assholes and they don't tell me what to do or how to dress, and if a person says "Hey, I'm not a boy any more, I'm a girl," then alright, that's fine. Name yourself, and I will respect that. Because we live with the gender binary and people, unfortunately, have to pick one or suffer negative consequences for their genderfuckery. I just wonder, without the gender binary, how many people would opt for hormones and cosmetic surgery and all of the intense body-modification that goes on in order to transition. I know a few transgendered folks who haven't opted for medical intervention. I wish it was easy for them to make that choice. I am not entirely convinced that body modification can turn a male body into a female body. It can make a body more comfortable for a person who feels "female" on the inside, but in the end, am I nothing more than a man with extra estrogen, boobs, and a hole instead of a pole?

The contradiction between desiring the end of gender and having grown up as a woman within the gender binary is kind of disorienting. I want to resist the idea that I am nothing more than a man with slightly different parts. I don't think it works the other way 'round, either: a female body doesn't become male through body modification. I guess what it comes down to is that I do believe you can change your gender identity, but I don't believe you can change your biological sex, and I don't believe you can entirely rid yourself of the gender identity you were given at birth.

summer reading

I have mentioned before that I'm only reading women authors this year. Actually, my Year of Women Authors was supposed to start in January 09 (it was a rare New Years' Resolution), but at the time I was in the middle of a half-dozen books by dude authors. So I finished those up and commenced in June of last year. Just yesterday I was looking around the house for something to read, and found I was fresh out of new stuff by women, so I picked up one of my abandoned books by male authors. "The Art Thief" by Mansplainy Mansplainerson is what I picked up, and it's like reading an Art History 101 lecture, only without pictures. Criminy. Have I mentioned that I've been teaching Art History 101 since the mid-90s? Yeah, I don't need a lecture on van Eyck's Arnolfini portrait, which by the way is no longer called the Marriage Contract. Just, FYI. 30 pages in and I'm already skipping entire pages. Coincidentally, The Rejectionist, over at Tiger Beatdown, just posted about ManFiction and how tedious it is. For example:

"What’s a manfiction book, exactly? It is indeed, almost but not entirely exclusively, a book by a man; but it is a particular kind of book by a particular kind of man, a Real Man, a virile, manly man, who gallops around on horses in between penning great works."

Go, read the whole thing.

Now, just as I finished THAT, what appears in my google reader but this little gem:

Hot Summer Reads from 12 Literary Stars

Let's do a Guerrilla Girls style breakdown:

all 12 literary stars appear to be white, though one has a Hispanic name**
4 of them are female
10 recommended books by men
1 of the books by women was about getting your baby to sleep through the night
so! only ONE of the books recommended was a narrative work by a woman about something besides traditional lady-business*

In conclusion, well, you know: it's all about the white people. I note with interest that Mother Jones is supposed to be a progressive publication.



*I kind of want to give the one narrative book by a woman bonus points for being about teen Latinas, but then again it's a book by a nice white lady sociologist about teen Latinas, so, you know, that could go either way, right?

**Vendela Vida, whose wikipedia entry mentions her husband, a pretentious author whose name rhymes with Wave Weggers (whose first big deal famous bestseller book was so loathesomely self-absorbed I couldn't finish it) almost immediately, and then constantly, throughout her bio.

moment of clarity

So I've been trying to sort out what the fuck it is with Ann Coulter: why do the right-wingers love her so much? I mean, sure, she's a racist, homophobic, right-wing hate-monger, and they like THAT, obviously. But, she is also tall, leggy, blonde, miniskirted tanned, thin, polished, painted, buffed, and waxed. Normally this sexbot look adds up, for dudes, to someone they want to just shut up and look good. But they seem to like it when she says stuff. A lot. But then Mearl, a commenter over at IBTP said, “There is almost no way to be Dude-Approved hawt and be taken seriously." And she is absolutely right.

I had a light-bulb moment. I haven’t been able to parse it before, but I think I’ve got it now: they really *don’t* take her seriously. She is popular to the right-wing dudes the way a monkey singing opera might be popular: it’s not what she’s saying, but the fact that she is *saying it at all*. It’s like, “Look! Barbie TALKS!!” They surely, to a man, don’t think she actually writes her own books or thinks her own thoughts.

I feel so much better now.

Stupidest thing ever

Y'all, there's a lot of stupid shit on the internet. Sport corsets. Fetish shoes. BDSM fans. But I swear, this shit is the stupidest ever: makeup. for your boobs. The "My Beautiful Breasts Kit" includes seven shades of powdery stuff, "primer", "setting spray", two brushes, and, get this: semi-permanent "bust stain". So you can have makeup on your boobs even when you're sweaty. For fuck's sake. I'm sure someone rad-femmier than me could produce a highly nuanced review of this fucking ridiculous product, but I am clearly reduced to swearing and sputtering.



How might a cranky old ranty-pants run across something so pink, so artificial, so patriarchally endorsed, so stupid? Well you might ask. I found a review of said product on a website called "Vital Juice", which purports to be a website about health and wellness. What the fuckity fuck does boob make-up have to do with health and wellness, I ask you?

not feeling cromulent

Nor like embiggening the discourse. Instead, I feel ranty. Very, very ranty.
Why? Because I'm pissed off at patriarchy, at rape culture, pop culture, agritheomedicorporatocracy, workplace bullies, fake organic milk, ludicrous pollen levels caused by mass plantings of cloned male trees, animal cruelty, arrogant rude omnivores, whiny dudes, homophobes, beauty pageants, dude-centric "science", evo-psych pseudo-science, people who won't vaccinate their children, religion (ALL OF IT!), the sky, the earth, and everything in between. You name it, it's on my shit list today. I don't think men are fit for leaving the house without a chaperone, a muzzle, and a leash. I'm sick of their shit. I'm sick of the violence, the rape, the entitlement, the whining, the incessant fucking bloviating, and the owning and running every goddamn thing. They need a time-out, and a long one, and when they've carefully mulled over the reasons for their time-out, they might, maybe, POSSIBLY, be allowed to go open their mouths again. Asses.

cheesus fucking christ on a popsicle stick

I am sick and tired of people - feminist people, even - calling Nadya Suleman "Octomom". She's got a fucking name, and she is a human being. Common courtesy, is it too much to ask?

That is all.

new favorite swear word

I have a bad habit of saying "son of a bitch" for various sweary reasons. Family legend has it that it was, in fact, my very first swear word (awwww!). At the age of two or three, I was in the car with my dad, he hit the brakes pretty hard, and I piped up with a toddler-sized "son of a bitch!". Dad came home feeling rather sweary with Mom, who hadn't realized I was listening and learning that one says "son of a bitch" when one has to slam on the breaks.

Having decided to try to eliminate anti-female gendered slurs from my swearing vocabulary, I've replaced "bitch" with "asshole", for example. I never did use the four-letter c-word, in case anyone is wondering. I finally - finally - after cogitating and wondering for some time - came up with my New Favorite Swear Word. Are you ready? Because it's awesome.

SON OF A COCK!

Say it loud, say it proud: SON. OF. A. COCK.

So satisfying. So pointy. So leaving-other-women-out-of-it. There's really been quite enough mother-blaming in the world. I'm quite happy, however, to blame somebody's behavior on his father. Son of a COCK!

I'm just gonna say it.

Drag is the new blackface.

I used to kind of love drag performances with their over-the-top-ness and wacky fashion and shiny glittery stuff, but now it just looks like a perverse mockery of the practice of femininity that is forced down women's throats every single day in every single way. And I can't consider it fun, or funny, or anything but misogynistic. Every single stereotype of femininity is ramped up, overdone, and made to look ridiculous. THEY can step out of it, just try it on for size, but women? No. We are supposed to be painted, plucked, shaved, high-heeled, push-up-braed & corseted, pantyhosed, dyed, buffed, and dipped in wax EVERY SINGLE DAY. Which is expensive, time-consuming, painful, toxic, and, well, just go read The Beauty Myth if you want the full breakdown.

Booo! Socialism is Scary!

From the Feminist Finance Blog:

I am terrified--terrified!--of the extent to which socialism has permeated American culture. For all the air time Republican talking points about socialist creep have gotten in the past few weeks, I have the scary duty of reporting that the problem is far more dire than even they realize. Forget about the esoteric threat of government taking part of your paycheck to pay for common goods like roads, schools, and defense. No, the horrors of Communism are much closer at hand, and so insidious we can't see the threat as it lurks outside our own front doors. Even our children, our babies who do not yet bring home a paycheck, are being indoctrinated in this eeevil plot to deprive good, law-abiding Americans of the hard-earned spoils of their own labor, to steal from the rich and give to the undeserving poor.

Clicky to see the rest. Today. Don't wait. Srsly. Now. GO! DO!

I am the thirteenth wave.

Revolutionary feminism isn't that new, y'all. Just a little reminder.

If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.

--Abigail Adams, 1776

I sat on this for a while.

Partly because I was digesting it, partly because I figured it's a story that would disappear after a minute or ten of outrage. So, just as a reminder, in case anyone forgot:

Five women were buried alive in Pakistan this summer. Stop reading. Now.

Buried. Alive.

Got it?

What was their crime?

Expressing a desire to marry a man of their choosing, rather than be subject to an arranged marriage.

Imagine if you will, facing a lifetime of being raped by, bearing the children of, and being the property and domestic servant of a man chosen by your family. Your family which, by the way, will kill you if you express an opinion or desire a smidgeon of free will.

So, go to this link: Buried alive and think: a lifetime of sexual and domestic servitude, or death?

I note with interest the tone of the article, which seems far more interested in pointing out that such "tribal customs" are not in fact approved by Islam. Okay, got it. Murder = Not Islamic. Is that even the point here? The Senator - Balochistan Senator Sardar Israrullah Zehri - defended this murder as "tribal custom," not Islamic custom. It's all beside the point, for fucks' sake: five women were murdered and a bunch of dudes in Islamabad are squabbling about whether it was an Islamic custom or a tribal custom? Cheesus.

Men I know wonder why I'm so passionate about feminism, why I can't have a "friendly little debate", for funsies. And this is why: because feminism is a LIFE AND DEATH MATTER. Until women are acknowledged as humans the world over, women will die at the hands of our oppressors.

People who think gender is "irrelevant," that feminism is "done" (Sarah Palin, I'm looking at you!) - those people are blind and ignorant and selfish. When women can't see how much work there is to do, I am stunned, grieved, shocked.

Sarah Haskins, I love you.

Seriously, if you ever come to Mississippi, I will buy you dinner. And drinks. Coffee? Cigarettes? Yogurt? Really, whatever it is that you want, I love you and I'll see that you get it.

My obstreperal lobe is tired today

So y'all are going to have to figure out for yourselves why this story is outrageous and un-fucking-believable and just, gah, So Wrong.

Woman wearing veil told to leave Italian museum

Which reminds me of this:

Woman in lesbian.com t-shirt told to leave Social Security building

So, basically, two ass-hat dudes with a modicum of authority believe that women who are unfuckable (to them, anyway) should not be seen in public. "Hi! I has a badge! Look hawtt and fuckable or get out of my sight! How can I tell if you're hawtt if you're wearing a veil? And you, lesbian, I obviously don't have a chance with you, so Get. Out.!"

Cheesus. When are we going to put men on world-wide fucking house arrest until they can prove themselves capable of acting like human beings when they walk out the door?

Why I love Randy Cohen, the Ethicist

The persistence of murder does not compel us to ignore burglary.

I can't tell you how often feminists get trolled, dismissed, and generally harassed for being concerned with matters deemed "minor" by dudes the world over. "Street harassment? Sexist advertising? Fake pregnancy clinics? Why are you so upset! THERE ARE PEOPLE DYING IN DARFUR!". Substitute any manner of women's issues short of a world war, and some ass-hat is going to tell us we are petty, shallow, hysterical women who should be focusing on Important Things. Things that matter to *men*. Not housework, or reproductive rights, or sexual harassment in the workplace. So, now, thanks to Randy Cohen, I have my new favorite pithy response to that kind of bullshit: The persistence of murder does not compel us to ignore burglary. Nicely done, Ethicist Guy.

Jessica Valenti: pay attention, people.

It's not just feminists and feministing writers who get this treatment. It's all girls and women on the internet, no matter what we do or say, getting verbally assaulted by internet misogyny.

I'm loving her shirt, btw.

anti-feminist bingo

For noting on the Apartment Therapy comment section that the aforementioned BigA$$Pinata was offensive, I got piled on by a bunch of design snobs, who were defending, let us be clear, a tacky piece of crap.

It was anti-feminist bingo in in time at all:

'It's funny. You have no sense of humor. Lighten up.'
'Why are you upset over something so trivial?'
'I'm a feminist and I think it's funny.'
'Fretting about little stuff does a disservice to *real* women's issues' (thanks for the backup, sister!)
I got called a slut in a sideways sort of way (non sequitur mention of a "walk of shame"?), spoken to with condescension, and of course told to "get over it."
Oh, and the same dude suggested that it had been too long since I'd seen a naked ass - I would call that the slightly subtle equivalent of telling me I need to get laid.
Ah, also, several people explained to me, as though I were five, that beating a pinata is NOT the same thing as beating a woman. Because I obviously am not smart enough to tell the difference between a real woman and a disembodied female body part product.


Over, LET US BE CLEAR: a tacky piece of kitschy crap.

Man, the d00dz, they sure don't like having their love of disembodied female body parts criticized. And the d00dz, what they don't get is that I tossed off a snarky comment and only entered a so-called flame war after being piled on by a bunch of assholes. Oh, yeah, I was told that name-calling wasn't a good rhetorical move. Thanks, man. Appreciate that. By the time I called one dude an idiot and another one an ass-hat, it was clear that adult conversation with either would be impossible, so why not just let it rip, I say? Asshats. Idiots.

Lesson learned: Let no one be fooled by a slick modern apartment full of tasteful decor: a dude with Eames chairs is just as likely to be an ass as a dude with a plaid recliner and a painting of dogs playing poker.

misogyny in design today

Inspired by Shakesville's "Today in Disembodied Things" series, I bring you two new objects to heap your scorn upon.

First up, the "Big Ass Pinata," brought to my attention by Apartment Therapy for some reason.

I mean, not only is it offensive and sexist, it's just not an interesting or original product. I am loathe to link to the company in question, so find it yourself with your google-fu if you're interested. After several commenters noted that it was sexist and offensive, the "what about teh menz" contingent appeared with the "How do you know it's not a man's ass?! (because of the exaggerated hip-to-waist ratio, idiot!), and "why are you assuming they don't sell a male version?" (because I checked the website, dipshit!).



Point being: violence against women is neither fun nor funny. Neither is beating the crap out of a disembodied female ass.


Next up, Pharrell Williams' "Perspective Chair".


Huh huh huh, said Beavis, it looks like they're DOING IT. Yeah, that's fucking hilarious. Or is it sexy? Or stupid? It's such a fine line.

Allen Jones did it what, forty years ago? Please. It was offensive when it was done with some measure of aesthetic quality. Here it's offensive AND ugly.

Hey! Link-a-riffic!

I ran across this recently:

An archive of Biting Beaver's posts.

A project of the AntiPorn Activist Network.

Check it out, yo.

[shout out to Izzy at Damage Control for the link]

trying

As anyone who's paid attention knows, this blog veers back and forth from total fluff to political commentary esp. re: feminism. Lately it's been fluff because I think I do some of my best patriarchy-blaming over on the IBTP Forum (follow the link to IBTP blog if you're interested). I'm more of a reactive writer than a pro-active one. Give me something to argue with, I'm on it. But if I try to come up with a blog post on something new, I'll get stuck. Why? There's too much out there to be righteously indignant about. Too much to be angry about. Misogyny, racism, age-ism, able-ism, and what do you call it when someone's anti-everyone-else's-religion? Religionism isn't right, is it? Anyway, that. So much fear and hatred that I wouldn't even begin to know where to start. So I guess I post happy-making videos of kitty-cats because a dose of teh cute provides a brief mental & emotional respite from the world.

I just finished a huge project at work, that almost went completely kablooey on me (as in, almost missed publication deadline for catalog of an exhibition). The day was saved by a cash infusion (amazing what money can buy) but it's been a stressful six or eight months. Now that the project is done, it's like the dam is broken and I am able to sit still and get small things done. Sure, I can spend fifteen minutes labeling and filing at work. I can finally, FINALLY, order those cute CD binders from West Elm and transfer my CDs from jewel cases to binders, thus freeing up space (both literal and visual) in my house. I can do them because I don't have Guilt - the guilt that I *should* be doing this Huge Project, so I can't even make myself embark on a Small Project.

The dam has broken & I'm using the Apartment Therapy eight-step home cure, but on my own schedule. It's supposed to be an eight-week process, but I skipped a week (too busy at work) and then Week Three tasks took two weeks, and now Week Four tasks are taking two weeks. Which is fine. I don't have a deadline, I just need to de-clutter and spring-clean my space. I've been in my house almost 7 years now and it needs attention. Having a tidy & serene & aesthetically pleasing home environment is SO essential to my sanity, I can't tell you.

And then I re-read those paragraphs and think: holy crap I am a bourgeois honky ASSHOLE. I should be sending my every extra penny to relief efforts or Planned Parenthood or my internet friend in Canada who's about to be homeless. GOD, I'm a privileged spoiled middle-class American white girl, and what the fuck do I do about it? How can I possibly justify spending $75 on cute CD binders to house my CD collection? How fucking ABSURD is that?

But wait, do I really even have extra money? Shouldn't I have spent that $75 on paying down my consumer credit? (Let us pass over in silence my six-figure student loans). Where are my priorities:

1. social justice/aid
2. financial solvency (getting out of debt)
3. self-care

What comes first? Where should that $75 go? I spin around and around these axes and no matter which one I choose, I feel that I have failed in my efforts with regard to the other two.

And then back to it: I'm SO privileged to be able to sit here in air conditioning in front of a computer having White Lady Angst about what to do with $75, which constitutes a week's salary for many, a month's salary for others.

And the privilege of money is only the beginning of it, isn't it? This is the problem I have when I talk to people about privilege: They think it means money, money ONLY. If I say "white people have privilege" they might say, "Well, plenty of black people are richer than me." Or, say, I point out male privilege by mentioning the daily indignities of sexism, both large & small. Mr. Male Privilege then denounces each of the daily indignities as minor at best, or pronounces me paranoid, or too sensitive. Mr. Male Privilege usually thinks he's NOT privileged because, say, he grew up poor. Or short. Or in an abusive family. But he's still got that Male Privilege, but he doesn't see it, because he does not speak my language. He does not understand how privilege DOES NOT EQUAL money. It's so much more than that. SO much more.

And I fear that my White Lady Privilege is blinding me all the time. It's like I have this inkling that it's there - I know it rationally - but do I *see* it, each and every day? I don't know how to see it. I don't know exactly which daily indignities I am spared. I almost said, "I should be thankful that I'm spared these things," but that's the Patriarchy talking. That's the P saying "Be glad you're at least doing better than those poor sods over there. You think YOU have it bad? Better be grateful that your crumbs are tastier than hers!" So, no: I will not be grateful. I will try to be aware, to look, to listen. I don't know what else I can do.