Microaggressions are killing us

It happens…another not fat persyn witnesses me doing dance or yoga stretches (which is my common practice if I am standing around at bus stops or wherever) and disbelievingly comments about how flexible I am. Then it is often followed by a series of passive aggressive comments to belittle my “supposed health”, “worrying” about risk of injury if I do what I am already doing at my weight,  or “encouraging” me to keep it up cause I will be sure to lose weight.

Hey Y’all,

I am a fat dancer… I move my big ass around on a dance floor with some grace and flexibility and for hours at a go. In response, my body has developed sexy rippling thigh and calf muscles that help support me in such endeavors. If anything I have gained weight by exercising on a consistent basis. My body is amazing and my hips are a swiveling marvel. Sure I could hurt myself (many dancers of all sizes do at one point or another), but that is not going to hold me back. So yeah, I might be at your bus stop listening to music doing things with my feet you have never dreamed of  trying, but I dreamed and now I am doing.

Back the frack off with the concern trolling!

Today I stared at the “moon cup” contemplating if I could handle the discomfort again…Yesterday I had a conversation with a persyn who was sharing something she read that stated “discomfort and emotional reactions to periods are only something that exists in the States because it is culturally forced so that women believed they were weak” I told her that sounded like a “radical feminist” argument, and that it is disingenuous to extrapolate the culture and emotions of folks who bleed to the universal level. After all there are tons of cultures where women and trans folks are kept out of the public eye, and thus we are unlikely to know what someone’s experience is.

Regardless of all that, I have a very personal experience with pain and  menstruation motivated low iron count. I spend each cycle trying to get my iron back up. After all the process of expelling an entire organ through ones cervix can be unpleasant.

Honestly, the whole conversation was reminiscent to a real live troll that I received from a primitivist manarchist where he stated that “I was killing the planet though my consumptive femininity, that my period products and toilet paper usage were contributing to so much waste, and that femininity is wasteful and performative”. I proceeded to blister him on his raging misogyny and assumptions…

Y’all some people menstruate, bleeding for most folks range from never-always painful, people choose various methods that work for their bodies to deal with bleeding, sometimes bleeding is dysphoric even for people who do not identify as trans…

So keep violently verbal reactions to period blood, your menstrual products are not environmentally friendly, and your antidotes about how my swelling lower back and intense cramping are a product of American social attempts to make me feel weak for being a “woman” (also stop assuming I identify as a woman) to your fucking self. Check your internalized misogyny!

This week in house news there was a instance of crossing boundaries…what could have been a simple conversation where one party accepted that they had crossed the other party’s boundaries has turned into a week long nightmare of gaslighting and crying and now we can’t live together anymore.

Let’s get real folks…WE ALL CROSS EACH OTHERS BOUNDARIES FROM TIME TO TIME! If we are singularly unable to accept that our behavior made someone uncomfortable or unsafe then we are not committed to being anti-oppression. Most callouts can be simple conversations between the crosser and the crossed, and resolution can be met (the crosser gets an opportunity to work through their shit). All communication ceases when the crosser attempts to make it about them and their hangups and when they are unable to amend the previous oppressive behavior. Seriously even if you are a somewhat polite person someone saying “hey that thing you did made me uncomfortable” should result in sincere apology and attempts TO NOT DO THAT THING AGAIN.

Does this mean that we should walk on glass shards around each other or that folks should make every disagreement into a formal process…NO. Sometimes folks who could otherwise be great friends to each other step all over each others buttons when living together simply by being themselves. Some people cannot get along. Sometimes we need to admit that we are not all capable of being besties even for the sake of a mutually held ethical stance.It is ok!

I would like to come back to this conversation some time in the future but for now I leave you with some things I would like to see in radical anti-oppression communities:

No excuses for perpetrators.

Stop making life miserable for each other through endless trolling, vicious gossip, and scapegoating (not to be confused with legitimately telling perps to GTFO).

Take safe space seriously (and actually know that safe space is imperfect and occasionally we still need to have tough conversations).

Be willing to tell someone to GTFO if they are toxic, perps, unwilling to be held accountable.

Being kind but certainly not permissive (this does not mean that anyone has to non-consensually “teach” oppressive folks)to those who are newer and encourage growth of anti-oppressive ideas.

Take personal responsibility for our actions.(Neuro diversity, disability, triggers, etc does not excuse shitty behavior).

Ask don’t demand support and respect that folks might not have enough spoons to help (and that doesn’t mean they don’t care).

Admit that language is a powerful tool to liberate or oppress…modify socialized ways of talking to foster inclusion and bring the end to oppressive speech, jokes, or memes (be open to further modification when folks highlight behavior you didn’t previously recognize as oppressive).

Apologize sincerely…make amends sincerely…stop replicating the power games that are played in society because that shit is divisive and oppressive…be fucking real in your interactions

Back in Philly for International AIDS Conference and the nature of the game changes. Here I am not viewed as trans* as often as I am viewed as a “woman with a big ass”. Now instead of being cornered by randos on transit for homo/trans phobic slurs and aggression I get propositioned by rigorous commentary on my “fine attributes”. Fucking hell what does it take to walk down a street wearing what I want to wear without hearing someones opinion on that shit. Rapey cis-men are making it so I don’t trust cis-men. Almost 95% of shitty interactions in the last year have been from fucking cis-men who think they have a right to invade my space (lets not even dredge up the abuse from the sperm donor [a heterosexual cis-man]). So, from here on out cis-men need to prove to me that they are worthy of any confidences or trust. Shitty yeah…but hell I need to be safe, and in my unscientific study of my interactions cis-men have done me a great deal of damage for not a lot of gain.

Also, Fuck this SHIT!

I have been told by a co-worker that I seek out attention and comments so that I can teach people. I am really not into teaching randos to be decent humans to me. Do I do it when confronted with some dangerous nonsense? You bet! But fuck all if I don’t want to spend the time I could be writing, crafting , hanging out, or reading educating some douche on the “fuckyouforneedingtoknowwhatisinmyunderpantszonetohaveainteractionwithme”. Fuck that shit…I would rather wax my underpants zone than have these daily bullshit come on/downs (and I sure as hell am not waxing my underpants zone).

To the persyn (whom I used to live with): Stop showing up last minute and cutting in the food line by ducking in to the church and pretending that you have a “complicated” relationship with christianity (by which you mean you are pagan). People, including myself, wait in the rain for hours for that food bag, and resentment is growing (several folks who get there early have noticed) that you dive in last minute and get ahead of us in line insuring that you get the pick of the extras like peanut butter, oil, cereal, and special dietary foods like gluten free and vegan stuff (which you don’t need since you eat bread and meat all the time). Show up early or stay in the back of the line. Trampling on others is not anarchist. It is shitty!

So I have been seeing this set of heels connected to a sign that said “snatchers” (which was disturbing because I thought it was a “joke” about raping ladies [or certain kinds of genitalia]). I was wondering how to get it down…(flash forward to today) I was sitting in a coffee shop across the street and the sign was twisting in the wind. I could also see the colors since it was daylight this time. It is the colors of the trans flag and the other side of the sign said “tranny”. So a sign that said “tranny snatchers”, painted the colors of the trans flag, and attached to heels (so aimed at trans women) was flying in the wind not but two blocks from the Qcenter (portland LGBT resource center. Which triggered the shit out of me. Yay triggered day…also fucked up beyond all words.

Come to find out that it a local “indie slash” movie…unfuck portland’s boundary pushing hipster culture full of douches (even if they are queer).

P.S. I plan on taking it down asap!

P.S.S. Some rad friends of mine helped me take it down with a tree delimber…

To the group of cis dudes who circled up and asked me if I was “selling it” while I was waiting for a friend…Stop assuming that I am a trans woman! Stop assuming all trans woman are sex workers! Stop assuming all sex workers want to have sex with you! Stop asking me if I am taking “Ho Moans” (and then laughing at your pathetic pun)! Stop assuming that I need you advice to shave better (how about not at all, like ever, thanks) BACK AWAY! Calling me a bitch (for telling you where you can shove it) can result in a bloody nose!

THIS IS SATIRE BASED ON TRUTH AND MY LIVED EXPERIENCES

Sure it happens…you meet a stranger (or just see them at the bus stop) and you are not sure what gender this person is (there is only two right)…this causes your entire ability to interact to collapse because you need to have a relatively good idea what the genitalia of the persyn standing there looks like before you can have a polite conversation (or ask what is the time). After all a dubiously gendered persyn is probably a production of the devil/tricksters/homosexuality and some pernicious agenda to seize power from the rich/cis people/ whiteys . Must immediately insult/bash/comment/ask prying questions(medical and otherwise)/snicker/pull children closer/ask if they are selling “it”… just so those fucking tr*****s get the point that they are worthless/deserved fucked up behavior/are evil/are liars. And it they tell you to fuck off/refuse to answer prying questions/ talk to your kids and ignore you/BASH BACK!/and tell you how much of a waste of air your bigoted ass is no worries…The POLICE will believe you and not them!

Privileged white cis dude @work #2: “Yeah, I dated her when I was like 15 and she is real fat now after having a few kids…yeah I don’t think she eats well [even though I haven’t seen her in over a year except for her facebook], I mean I used to date her and she really let herself go. It can’t be healthy to be that fat.”

One of the few times that I have just let fucked up shit from this crew at work slide was this gem from PWCD@wk#2. I had very low spoons thanks to wrangling PWCD@wk #1-2 and PWCWoman @wk #1 for the greater part of a week (more to come on that).

What the fuck! Does he think he could give birth to a few kids and not see his body change? Does he really think that all fat people are gross? Does he also think that the situation is grosser because he slept with her over a decade ago, and he almost slept with a fattie? That she owes him to remain looking like she did before they broke up because he forever owns claim to her body?

I think the answers to those questions are yes he does believe that. Everything he had to say about her conveyed his disgust. It sounds to me like she is happy. Married with a few children and posting pictures of herself and her family with pride. It is people like him who remind her and people like her that they should be ashamed for not looking a certain way and that shit needs to end.

The Internet trolling that started me on this blog was indeed a doozie…so without further ado “the story”:

I posted on an internet dating site asking for input in how to better word my ad so that I would get better responses. The result was one user questioning if I was lying about being both fat and vegan (the Penn and Teller argument about being able to identify someone’s diet by their size). After affirming that I am indeed fat and vegan others chimed in (some including photo shopped pictures of herbivore animals) and saying various things like “chocolate doesn’t have a face”, or “this is proof that a vegetarian diet is bad for you”. At which point I linked them to a few blogs done by amazing HAES activists and told them where to shove their fatphobia.

Small story coming from a big place…I have noticed that it is not the queer hating bigot on the corner that shouts at me and my friends that wears me out as much as these microaggressions that come from everyone including supposed allies. The person that yells or threatens is a force that I feel I can fight or at least get sympathetic outrage from friends. But these daily jokes, suggestions, passive-aggressive comments, and passing remarks are really where I want to claim my battleground. Neither I nor anyone who experiences oppression should feel silenced and these “small” things are where the bigger arenas of hate and violence stem from.

In the Chesapeake Bay there is a ever growing threat of algae bloom.The bloom is covering more and more of the bay each year. Sounds benign, maybe even pretty, until you envision the devastation blocking the sun from reaching below a blanket of algae can wreak on endangered marine life. Most marine life exists in the top layers of the ocean and certainly animals like crabs and turtles are dramatically effected. Most marine life in the bay has shown dramatic decline in population. So this is a big problem…

What is causing the algae to grow at such a accelerated rate?

Research suggests that it the extensive factory farming of chickens and fertilizer from corn producers close to the bay. These industries use a fair amount of fertilizer and other nutrients that are running down the watershed into the bay every time it rains. Businesses are denying that they are contributing to the growing bloom, and that like most form of corporate denial should be taken with a grain of salt. After all climate change doesn’t exist either right.

A LA local collective of cyclists called Wolfpack Hustle that say they can kick Jet Blue in the buns by making it from Burbank to Long Beach before someone can get from the same house through airport security fly to Long Beach and get to the destination.

I know that it is a Jet Blue marketing scheme, but really why are we encouraging folks to burn a ton of jet fuel just because they have to not take the 405 for one weekend. Heck why not encourage them to take public transit or stay home and garden rather then whipping them into a frenzy and advocating more licentious fuel usage. I really hope that the cyclists beat the pants off of the airplane riders.

For more on this and Rachel Maddow’s report http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43776135/ns/us_news-life/

Please add Wolfpack Hustle on Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/wolfpackhustle