On CNN this morning, a member of the Southern Baptist Convention (possibly its leader Frank Page, but I’m not sure), argued that voting to allow gays into the Boy Scouts - a vote that was supposed to be happening today, and has just been postponed until May - is a mater of discriminating against those who hold firm to a faith.

I don’t think something so silly has frustrated me so much, and I am not even American.

The Boy Scouts of America not only want it to seriously be a matter of popular vote wither or not one young boy should have the opportunity to experience the same kind of formative-years character-building as another young boy simply because of who he likes.

Which I would imagine is not the business of the BSA in the first place.

And to Richard Land, whose big appeal to fear is that the BSA will suddenly become dens of pederasty if they don’t tighten the reins: really? Because if that’s what you’re worried about, then it means the BSA has all sorts of other problems, and still none of them are gay Scouts. Also, you have problems. Also, gay Scouts still aren’t one.

It’s hard, if you can remember your childhood in particular, to be given a chance to be a part of a community of peers learning subtly to be better young people - and therefore even better adults. I mean, what is the Boy Scouts about if not character building? And gays have character too.

What young LGBT persons want and need is not only the same chances to be powerful young people, but chances to be reminded that nothing is wrong with them and that they don’t deserve to be treated like shit from society. The BSA could very well be that space, and should be.

I would hate to think, after all, that the solution is to create competition for the BSA - people who actually stand up for their mission statement - all of it, not just the God part; or are the irreligious cast out as well? - instead of bowing to religious pressure.

In fact, what if we were to imagine competition for the BSA - I don’t really care what we call it, but give them something powerful, something that inspires its members to stand up for themselves and others, like The Young Guards or something, I’m terrible at naming. Let it take anyone and everyone. Let it be open to LGBT persons - and let us definitely not forget the T, please. Let it be not pinned down by one religion or another, be accepting of kids of all faiths - and none - and make concessions for them all. Let their Law also say “A Guard is Accepting. A Guard is Respectful. A Guard is Considerate.”

Because if the BSA won’t be, maybe it’s not the place you want to send your son to learn life lessons anyway.

Maybe we can just make this happen instead?

So I know that one does not create himself out of the fear of failure. One simply creates out of the lack of creation. You can, of course, just create things you don’t care about, or things for people you don’t care about, like Hank Green postulates, but he also postulates that those are terrible ways to live.

I want to make the things that in my heart make me feel alive, and I want to make it for people who will love it once it’s made. But there will always be someone who hates it, and they will hate it first and loudly; and so far I haven’t made a lot of things that a lot of people see at all to begin. Sometimes they don’t see it.

Vonnegut says to write only for one person. And I reckon he’s right. At their core, those things I want to make are for me - they’re the things I would love if I could have them, that I would reserve space on a bookshelf for.

But I’d also want to share them with others, because whether I wrote it or read it it would be something I would be immensely proud of being a part of.

And my fear is always that no one else will care at all.

So for a few days now I have felt like writing a blog post about friends and why we consider romantic relationships so much higher on a hierarchical scale of people that we are fond of that there is not a Friends Day that is as big as Valentine’s Day where you buy chocolate for your friend and share it and be the same colourful and weird amalgam of uniquity that you were the day before, but I can’t think of anything but rambling - as you can see, I’m rambling now.

So let’s ramble.

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Thoughts about sinning within the heart:

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I won’t lie:

sometimes the mere attempt to be empathetic to other people’s thoughts and feelings leaves me riddled with emotions I do not like, essentially pulling me out of whatever action I am trying to perform and leaving me frustrated by feels,

and I wonder for a moment if this could have been remedied by being a total asshole and pushing away people I have conflicting feelings about.

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I’ve spent a good portion of my time lately thinking about YA lit and what people want and get out of it, and the hangups some readers have with stories that seem like a rehash of not only the same themes (vampires, dystopias, etc.) but the same ineffectual conflicts (romantic conflicts being the main issue).

I still don’t think that these things are particularly problematic for the genre, even if there are some elements I dislike more than others. But I do think that there’s a matter of perspective to be had.

First, we know that the media as is dictated by capitalism says that if something ain’t broke, keep selling it. Of course, it is broken, but the sales don’t show that, so fixing it won’t happen until they get the idea that it isn’t the thing that audiences want (which is why I like what vividlyvisceral is doing so very much) but may have the undesired effect of just making YA more saturated with some other thing that they think everyone wants to read.

Secondly, I think in terms of what I (and, I’m sure, a lot of budding writers on Tumblr) are trying to do with their writing, they want a responsible line, a sense of greater reality regarding how to deal with both the stories they want to tell and the elements of those stories singly. I know at least I had thought for a while that no matter what I write I will make me an offender of the kinds of sins YA readers are rising up against.

And then I thought of it like this:
The industry has begun to advertise birthday parties as everything but the cake.

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I feel like Peter Pan, because this ‘real world’ that people talk about bothers me.

It seems like whenever adults speak of ‘the real world’, what they’re really saying is “financial responsibility is more important than doing something you love”. Is this true?

This is what people mean when they tell their kids being a lawyer or an accountant is more important than being a dancer or a teacher (I have actually seen parents tell their kids this). That is what they mean when they say “this is the real world”. They mean to say that what we wish is fairy dust, and they do not believe in fairies.

Which is why I get really confused sometimes when someone tells me both to get a job and to keep writing. Because it takes a really long while for me to stop thinking that the world around me typically considers them both two different endeavours, and considers one a genuine failure.

I feel like there’s a terrible gap between doing something for love and doing it for money, and I’m afraid of it.

Of course, this gap probably only exists when you’re working for someone else, because the more people in a team, the less likely people are doing it for the self-actualization and more for the financial independence. That’s all well and good - whatever motivates you is good, or even ideal.

But I don’t want to get caught in the trap of suddenly losing sight of who I am because I kept my eye on the Almighty Dollar. Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to make some money, but not at the expense of things I want to get done this year for me.

There are projects I promise myself I absolutely must do. They are essential to feeling like my personal goals are being met. If they’re not, I will stop and try to meet them, because they are the things that are important to me. If they can be monetized right away, better yet; if I can do something to get an income while still managing to have the time for everything else, okay, fine; but the moment someone tells me to give up doing the things I love for something else, anything else - yea, even money - I will freak out and have a mini panic attack.

I will feel like I have been swindled out of my own skin, and I will cry out in pain til I can find it.

I just wanted to think all this out loud. I want something to feed myself with - hell, I want something that will take me out of my mother’s house - but I signed up months in advance for things that I feel great passion about, and I do not ever want to give them up.

Here’s a thought about young adult literature:

I love it, and I want very much to be someone who at some point writes specifically for it (although I’m absolutely sure that teenagers are fully capable of reading very powerful literature that is “not for their age”, which is why I had to be corrected that one time that I thought Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy was YA).

But I don’t really want to write any of the things that come to mind anymore.

Because essentially, their main conceits notwithstanding, they’re mostly shit. Not shit as in bad, but shit as in everyone’s done it, surely people’s bored - or even offended - by the prevalence of some of the ideas that keep cropping up in YA, like obligatory romance or the ever-vague and underdeveloped ‘search for one’s self’. Take these two posts here - most of the things the OP wants to patently avoid in her writing are things that seem to come weirdly automatic to me. (Plus a lot of race and ethnicity stuff I keep pressing myself to work out, but that’s another story.) Surely the OP is talking mad sense.

Which means I’m not talking a lot of it, right?

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I have been at a loss for words. Hell, even The Onion has been at a loss for words.

For creatures so granted with empathy that they can be struck dumb by tragedy that is far off from their lived experience, some of us still find it so easy to be wicked, to be broken.

You get mad, you get hurt, you feel despondent, you feel like there is this hope-sized hole in the earth and people who don’t deserve it are falling into it.

You feel like everyone is giving into despair and dying around you.

You may even feel your own body cracking under the weight of despair.

It takes a lot of effort to remember that, while some people do wrong, most of us are guided by the sense or even just the small desire to do and be good.

We live for those goods. We live for the experience not only of being decent empathetic people, but of being surrounded by others. We generally feel the drive to be powerful forces for positive change in our environments.

I am not going to have the psychological or sociological arguments here. It’s not even my tragedy - I’m in Trinidad. But I am going to say my heart is with them all. And that I wish so very strongly for a day to come where we all collectively decide never to let another innocent suffer again.

Dear Man,

I am writing you this letter to let you know, in case that you didn’t, that slut-shaming makes you a fucking monster, and doing it to the point of someone’s suicide only to verbally erase its importance makes you lower than dogshit.

Yes, I’m that fucking angry.

Consider the probability of this happening:

A fifteen year old American boy committed suicide last night after being verbally abused by classmates for having sex.

Never happenin’, right?

Oh, wait… before you argue that it does - please, tell me, what is the derogatory term for a man who has sex?

I’l wait.

…

…

…

Oh! Before you use the obvious one, ask yourself why the word ‘whore’ has to be in it.

So, give up? Word.

In less than a month two girls have committed suicide because of their sexual or sexualized history.

One, Amanda Todd, was blackmailed after showing her breasts to someone she trusted, and that person betrayed her trust and showed her off for everyone to see.

The other, Felicia Garcia, had sex with four footballers one night and the very men she trusted her very body with called her a slut days afterward.

And in both of these instances, almost every man on earth seemed to receive this simultaneous transmission, from the penis right up to the brain, that it was cool to add insult to injury by arguing what is and what is not bullying, and arguing what constitutes a newsworthy suicide.

If you received that transmission, this makes you cruel and disgusting. I really want you to know that.

Let’s get suicide out of the way first. I won’t lie, back at the Amanda Todd case, I understood where you guys came from. It’s another blonde white girl with scars on the newspaper - what happens to ‘the rest of us’, the ones who have racism or classism or all sorts of ‘serious’ issues to deal with and commit suicide? Where’s their headline?

I get that. There are POC out there who deal with the same, for example, and never get press. That’s a serious issue, and it needs to be dealt with.

But - and let me make sure you don’t miss this part - NOT AT THE EXPENSE OF AN ENTIRE NARRATIVE. Where the fuck were you when these people were dealing with these things in the first fucking place?

So I am here to say I see right through that shite. You don’t speak on behalf of anyone who suffers. You are not anyone’s white knight riding in to save the day. You are the dragons they come to slay.

Now, to the really simple part - sex.

People have sex.

That’s supposed to be the fucking end of it, guys.

People have sex.

I’m sure you’ve had sex. I’m sure no one has written on your facebook page that you’re a disgusting person for having or enjoying sex. In fact, you’re more likely to have your boys congratulate you for your sexual debut.

You could quite literally have a girl bent over in the middle of the street in front of your house, and when people say ‘how disgusting!’ they’re not talking about you.

They’re thinking, ‘how dare this girl have sex doggystyle in the middle of the street at this hour at all? Doesn’t she know better?’

You have been gifted with the magical forcefield of never experiencing slut-shaming. You will never be called a bad person for having sex. This is called ‘privilege’ - as in, if it were a right, women would have it too, but it isn’t. I repeat, men having sex will never be derogatory. 

Now, women having sex? If she doesn’t, she’s a prude, and if she does, she’s a slut. A woman’s sexuality is constantly being under critique by people who will never have to experience such critique. By the very nature of your manhood, you will never have to deal with being bullied on the basis of having sex, not having sex, being desirable enough to be considered a sexual object, not being desirable enough to be considered a sexual object, or any of the sexual habits or lack thereof that you possess. No one ever points a telescope at your penis and demands it to meet their expectations.

Think about it. A young man had (what we presume was consensual) sex with a young woman, and then called her a slut for doing so. She was badgered literally to death by a boy because she gave him exactly what he wanted.

A girl premeditated to and actually did jump in front of a fucking train because patriarchy makes nasty creatures of men.

That’s how fucked up patriarchy is. And I’m kinda fed up of telling men ‘cut it out’ at this point. There is no ‘too privileged to know better’. This is FUBAR, and I have no problem telling you that you’re FUBAR if you think that was fucking okay.

I mean it. Send me a self-addressed stamped envelope and I’ll make a plastic canvas artwork saying ‘[Insert Name Here] is FUBAR’.

If that offends you, I’m not sorry. Every single girl you know has to deal with being sexualized by the male gaze. Your sister, your mother, and your girlfriend if you have one - they have all been desired by men you don’t even fucking know. All the jokes you’ve told, ‘I’d hit dat’, ‘she wants the D’, ‘the things I would do to her…’ - someone has made those or others to every woman you have ever met or did not meet. Things you will never be called have been said to every woman on earth.

You will never be scorned for being a sexual creature.

Sip on that. Let it marinate. Let your cells soak it in - you will never go to school fearing the next thing someone will say about what you did behind closed doors with a woman you trusted.

But the moment you open your mouth, you have doomed a girl to a lifetime of torment. In fact, you haven’t - someone else did that before you, you’re just a lump of coal in the hellfire.

So I’m not gonna tell you ‘cut it out’.
I’m gonna tell you ‘shut the fuck up’. I’m gonna tell you that you’re a disgusting creature and if I have to ask you twice to keep your hurtful, nasty mouth shut, I’ll just hit you so hard your lips swell too large to speak. People will send search parties for your jaw.

Because one girl taking her life because every man on earth is despicable is a girl too many. And we managed to outdo ourselves in that regard even still.

So seriously, Man. Whatever you wanted to say about the girl sitting in front of you in class, or your Spanish teacher, or that girl you saw in the club twerkin’ like it ain’t no thang - whatever it is, don’t say it. Really. I don’t care what you think, you thought wrong.

Regards.

On the thought of hate and critique of others, and double-standards, and emotional investment, and how there is no clear context for anything, and all sorts of other things:

I’ll start like this:
there is no unbiased I eye¹.

I am standing on the Bus Route in a crowd of people thinking this, randomly. There is no unbiased I eye. Every I eye possesses an agenda, a code, a law, a policy; or else preferences, loves, dislikes, an aesthetic; or else an education, things his/her/their/it has been taught, things his/her/their/it has yet to learn.

When the I eye sees something, finds something, observes, his/her/their/it always observes with his/her/their/its preconceptions in tow.

Even if the I eye sees something his/her/their/it doesn’t know or actively emotionally care about, he/she/they/it is still plagued with the bias.

But unfortunately, the I eye cannot see himself/herself/themselves/itself.

Now, I have been also struck with the idea that I have not encountered a new notion that hasn’t been somehow providential since leaving home. So this idea of the I eye is valid somehow (if at least because the idea of one experiencing providence is shaped by that bias, that it is shaped by the experience of words like ‘providence’ and their meanings, hence struggling with my own personal experience of my own I eye, and noting its slant).

Observe:
if one hears a story, particularly emotive in some measure, of being hurt by someone, of feeling abandoned or unloved, of feeling uncared for, of some sense of heartache brought on by a genuine abuse, that one will react based on the bias of the I eye. The I eye will, perhaps, feel really connected to that pain, and will connect to the person that notes the pain, almost immediately; their context of the other person’s story will be shaped by experiential factors, like with whom was the one friends with first, whom the one trusts more intimately, what gender they consider more likely to lie, and so on.

But that I eye cannot possibly say for sure that he/she/they/it knows anything, save for itself (with exceptions, as I will soon explain). He/She/They/It was not present when the ordeal occurred, and even then, that event could still be viewed through a curtain of bias.

Now this one has a whole perspective on this other person, a shape in which they live in re: that person’s life and worth. Let’s say the one’s eyes see some sort of wickedness in the other person’s actions - that they’ve heard their friend’s story and trust it completely, thinking this other person cruel and reckless with other’s feelings; now they can never see that person as anything other than an antagonist.

Now, let’s take the story of that selfsame one being the antagonist in their own story - that someone can recall, accurately, with no emotive language, things that this one has done to them. Maybe for a time the one can say that it has happened - that, matter-of-factly, the things occurred. But the I eye will never see that this is a thing that may shape how people relate to him/her/them/it. When he/she/they/it sees these reactions from others, he/she/they/it will lash out. How dare the world treat me so harshly?! He/She/They/It will not see themselves deserving of it. Even if he/she/they/it knows of the transgressions committed, he/she/they/it will want another chance.

The I eye will want to defend his/her/their/its friends when they are hurt; the I eye will stand up against people that are presumed to not have his/her/their/its loved ones’ best interests at heart.
But the I eye will take offense to being told that people must be defended against him/her/them/it; it will raise his/her/their/its hackles to be told that he/she/they/it is a cruel thing. Whether he/she/they/it did something truly terrible or is simply another character in a genuinely complex life story like most people’s own, he/she/they/it will feel affronted just the same.

But he/she/they/it will never consider other’s affront. It would be considered obnoxious for another to be upset - for the other has done something wrong, and the I eye has not, from the perspective only of the I eye.

That is the treachery of the bias of the I eye - it will see something as greater and more threatening, or greater and more worthy, than other things, regardless of a factual basis, relying only on the emotional investment inherent in the experiential nature of the I eye².

Compounding the complexity of such an argument is how discussion of the I eye will always meet with its own opposition upon its very utterance:
for the one discussing the point, always and forever, will be someone in possession of two of them. I must always be aware of my slant.

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_{¹The spiritual concept of the I eye, or the ‘ego’ is it is typically considered in psychoanalysis as well as the ‘self’ in Eastern religious ideologies, can be further explored in What Is the Self: The Buddhist Teachings of Self and No-Self, Barbara O’Brien, about.com (http://buddhism.about.com/od/whatistheself/a/skandhasnoself.htm); or Ego and Desire, Anonymous, maithri.com (http://www.maithri.com/articles_new/ego_desire.htm).}

_{²While it is reminiscent of John Green’s famous quote, ‘What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person” (Green, Looking for Alaska, Dutton Books, 2005), worth noting is that such treachery is not only inherent in overestimating a person’s worth but, as most would already know, in underestimation as well - it would be just as much a sin, therefore, to believe that a person is less than a person. Of course, which person is being inaccurately estimated - the self, or another - bears no relevance; the only salient point is that an inaccurate estimation is present.}

The Social Justice tag on tumblr is broken.

I’m inches away from saying ‘fuck Tumblr’, but really, I don’t know anyone who associates with the kind of things they do.

I don’t even know why I’m incensed. Maybe because it serves as an indicator that conversations about kyriarchy are so difficult to have that people who want to have it don’t have it well. Maybe because there are divisive elements in every well-meaning group who undermine good work, and that you can’t tell who’s who til they open their mouth and by that point everyone who is ignorant about your stance is now confident that this other ignorant fellow is the spokesperson for your cause, and you very well don’t want people to associate your work with that madness, do you?

It does no good to the work.

The Social Justice tag is broken how?
The Social Justice tag is loaded with posts about how badly broken the Social Justice tag is.

If we can’t get it right, no one is going to think we will. And if we don’t, then perpetually we will have to deal with the messes we currently face.

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