So... I just had an interesting encounter with one of the Tulane maintenance workers (I feel like I say that a lot..). Basically someone sent in a request to have lights changed somewhere in the building and as a student worker, they never tell me so I'm always confused when they come to the front desk and ask. So I told him "I have no idea which lights need to be changed, no one mentioned anything to me about it."
In which he responded, "Oh, must be the other one who sits there who requested it."
The other one who sits there...
The other what? Woman? Person? Secretary??
It made me recall a prior experience I had with a maintenance worker who was coming to fix something else (they fix a lot of shit here because there's a million events for white alum who will complain if they see the money they shell out isn't being use, whatever). As per usual I'm sitting at the front desk and he and this other worker asked me where the location of whatever was being fixed was. I was like I don't know, I just answer the phone. This man walked behind my GINORMOUS desk to show me this small slip of paper that said what he had just said.
It took all the goddesses and strength from my ancestors for me to not flip out on this man...
SIR, WHY ARE YOU BEHIND MY DESK?!
It made me think about my thesis I just wrote for my last gender studies course. I talked about the construction and socialization of space as it relates to identity. Basically who has what space, what goes on in that space and how that dictates to who has voice which seems to be the most important thing people aim for in life.
I used a lot of information for my thesis from Daphne Spain's book "Gendered spaces" where she looks at the construction of space from a social and architectural perspective describing how we come to understand gender roles and peoples "places" in society. One thing she talked about is, which is relevant to my interests as this is my job, is how secretarial positions tend to be occupied by people who identify as woman in desks in open spaces for patrons to question and observe while the decision making happens behind closed doors in spaces unseen to the public and usually occupied by individuals who identify as men. When you walk into my job it's divided as such. I'm at a desk in the front of the building in an open room. The man over the entire building is in a office upstairs where you couldn't call him is you yelled his name.
It immediately made me question: would he have walked back here if I were more masculine presenting? Or if my boss was sitting her instead? Would the other man know the other woman's name if she were a man? A white woman? There's people who sit in the back in cubicles who are known by name and not my boss who sits here everyday. I've encountered another maintenance worker coming in and asking for a person that sits in the far back but couldn't name the woman who sits here regularly and they've all been working here the same amount of time. Some people even know the names of the men who work upstairs in their private sectors.
This man totally violated my personal space. Maybe I'm over exaggarating but allow me to emphasize the size of the desk this dude had to walk around in oder to get to me when he could've presented the paper to my face... Considering how he already SAID IT TO ME I don't inderstand why he even thought to step behind my desk in the first place. I understood what he said, I heard him and I answered. Just not with the answer he was expecting. Either way, I took that to mean he felt he had some sort of dminion over that space and that I should sutomatically be ok with him stepping across the personal bounds of what I consider to be personal and professional space.
Think about it, secretaries out in the open spaces to be questioned and observed. Visible open to recieve critque on anything. I can't name all the times I was sitting at work and someone came in to ask a question and while I was calling people to come collect their folk, they sit up front watching me answer calls and genderally work. But boss man gets to conduct business privately where no one can judge or question his authourity. I don't have a clear cut answer as to how to change the dynamics of these job titles because even if there was a swap in me being the VP of operations and a man sitting at the front desk, there will still be apparent sexism. I just think it's interesting how sexism and gender norms are so ingrained that they effect everyday life.
And by interesting I mean frustrting... I want to exist in a world where a woman who works at my job isn't referred as "the other one who sits there' or where I can feel secure sitting behind my desk knowing that soneone isn't going to step in my fucking bubble.
But I'm a wishful thinker.
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Coming out: The white hetero-normative gay rite of passage narrative
So I'm sitting here with my sorority sister talking abut new member stuff (that's about as descriptive I can be) and we come across things about LGBTQIA history. That's fine and all and well or whatever but... underneath that one of the topics was "coming out as an ally".
Pause -_-
Coming out is problematic in itself. So why are allies involved? Is this another way white feminism wants to write the narratives of marginalized groups? Allow me to elaborate.
Coming out has always been seen as the pivotal moment in a queer persons life. It's defined as the "psychological process" or "journey" in which a queer person goes through and decides to disclose their life with others. It's more complex than that but, that's the basis of it.
I'll admit, I was one of those people. Just say it was my mantra. Tell them, it'll be a relief once it's out in the universe. That's possibly the worst advice I'd ever given anyone... There's plenty of people who haven't come out to themselves yet or they have and just won't accept it. "Coming out" or whatever that experience may be is such a personal experience, no one on the outside looking in can put a label on it or even box it into just one experience that is "coming out". And this can happen in any amount of time, so to say that there is a moment in every queer person's life where they decided to come out or have a "story" or "epiphany" of their queer experience is trivializing their narrative.
And not only are we placing it on a time frame but we're ignoring the fact that coming out is privilege of the LGBTQIA narrative. I'm not one to advocate the "Homophobia of the black community" myth but, homophobia among people of color is a very real thing and coming out is not the fix-it tool that people think it is.
My most recent thing has been calling in instead of calling out because not all mistakes among social justice warriors is deserving of reprimanding. It's a fairly violent thing us SJW's do to make ourselves look knowledgeable and more versed about something and can further hinder the production of a movement. And yeah as a QWOC that seems awfully docile of me but TRUST! There's a time and place for me to get shady and snatch edges. And BELIEVE when I do, you won't even know it. You'll just feel the burn of your barren sensitive scalp of where your edges used to be. Don't get a thing twisted boo boo (insert claps).
So allow me to call in and tell you the issue with coming out.
Society likes to define it's majority population in relation so the marginalized. So we have labels like gay, lesbian, cis, trans, queer and etc. to set "us" a part from "them" in a constant attempt to isolate who's important and who's "disposable". It's rhetoric. If "us" can't see "them", then "they" aren't associated with "us" and "we" can continue to ignore "their" issues and experiences and never have to help "them" because "they" don't affect us.
Got it so far?
So I, society, need you to come out and tell me who you're sleeping with, who you're attracted to and what's between your legs so I can know this about myself as it regards to whether or not I'm "normal". I need to know whether to keep giving you benefits I receive because you and I are not the same. Should I find out you're different from me in regards to your gender/sexuality, then I know who I am not and I can know my importance in society. Sounds ridiculous, I know, but what other reason are people so obsessed with knowing this very intimate and personal information? It's surely not to accommodate, so what for?
An example of that would be my experience as a student at a hetero-normative university. My sophomore year I spent some time "in the closet" for lack of a better term. I understand as a gender studies major it's kind of strange to separate my experience from my studies but in order to let the dialogue continue, I had to realize the song wasn't always about me. But more and more I was pushed into a corner as I listened painfully as my classmates spoke about shit they knew nothing about. So I was faced with a hard decision: coming out and calling out or sit quiet and perpetuate ignorance. For the most part I was able to debunk their statements with factual evidence that came from our textbooks all written by queer identified folks but this one class where this upper class cis straight white dude INSISTED on speaking about the lives of queer women, I had to make a decision quick and come out. The conversation was fine until my professor stepped in with general confusion about the topic. "I identify as queer and I have to say, that's just not true" I said. They all looked at me as if I wore neckties and converse as a unique fashion choice... Sure my gender identity has nothing to do with my sexuality but I thought they got the point.
Initially the rest of the conversation went smoothly and it was fine. It just sucks that I had to compromise my privacy in order to to have a productive conversation. But as the remainder of it went well, the rest of the semester was something I wasn't prepared for. I became the spokes person for all queer women everywhere in that one classroom and the pressure was impeccable. Bad enough there were only three black people in the class and they all gave us side eyes when we discussed race, from then on every time we came across the topic of sexuality they all looked at me anticipating my words. Even on the days I felt exhausted with participating, they still waited for my truth about the queer community.
Now this wasn't explicitly a situation where I was pressured to come out, I made that decision on my own. But immediately upon gaining this knowledge, their prior respect of my silence went out of the window. I was expected to speak up for all queers everywhere whether I wanted to or not. It was fucking stressful. Even when it came to my final presentation, I was expected to write about my queer identity or something fairly related to it. That pressure and constant scrutiny molded my experience for the rest of the semester. The guys in the class had different conversations with me, the girls approached me with caution because we live in a society where a woman loving woman is still seen as the big bad sexual wolf who will fuck and get fucked by any woman in creation (problematic as F U C K) and generally I was just stressed from shifting from a student to a gay student in the matter of one class. It literally only took an hour for that to happen. And it continued to happen in other classes and even at a campus job where co-workers would consistently have heterosexist conversations while spewing slurs about queer people. I didn't feel safe and coming out didn't solve any of the problems I occurred.
With that, queer people have to consonantly come out. And with coming out of the closet, you're essentially stepping into a bigger one. My peers hear me talk about this all the time, allow me to explain this. This isn't a new concept. It's origins come from Judith Butler who's famous for her perfomativity theories. She writes in "Imitation and Gender insubordination" that sexuality is not something you come into or learn, it's something that you are. You can't come out as something you already are. From children we're conditioned into gender and sexuality from the pink and blue baby showers to Barbie's gender roles. You can't figure out you're gay or trans because you've been that way, however you learned of it in relation to yourself. The only reason we "come out" is because we've been all filed under cisgender and heterosexual. So we're in a state of normalizing our own identities even though they've been around before we have. Normative society is just now catching up to it and putting a name on it. Then there's the meaning. Hidden in darkness and shame where all the dirty things happen. There's plenty of dirty things straight people do and no one ever pressures them to "come out" and tell everyone. Even the way it sounds is violent. When I here the phrase, the only thing I can think about is "Come out with your hands up". A surrender or arrest, decriminalization which is certainly what this society has deemed queer people: deviants that need to be stopped/apprehended. It's a fucking witch hunt still after all the liberation and whatnot. I will not surrender my sexuality so that you may formulate what you feel is necessary of my existence. I'm here, that's all you need to know.
Beyond the general idea of 'being vs. becoming', Butler also talks about what we know about performativity in the larger sense of socializing. Essentially when we "come out" we're stepping into a larger closet because we now have to perform in a way that let's those around us understand the box we now exist in. For example if I were to come out as lesbian, whoever I just came out to is to now assume that I'm a cisgender women who only dates and has romantic feelings/relationships with other cisgender women. That doesn't work that way. It erases the identity of trans lesbians and folks who are gender non-conforming who also identify on the sapphic spectrum. Sexuality is fluid. Some people can't even explain the attraction they feel for others yet we have people telling them they should "come out" and be who they are. Why when the categories are so limited? Or when it's generally not convenient/safe/probable for them? It's nationalist bullshit society inherited from European gate keeping. "I need to define you to keep you in your place". Fuck that.
And another thing, "coming out as an ally" is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. I don't know of an ally experiencing housing or job discrimination because of their association with queer people... I get that ally-ship is super important but once again, this song ain't about you. But I digress...
Coming out is definitely a privilege the white feminist movement continuously rally's behind. There was that whole "Born this way" foolishness that Lady Gaga spewed at gay whites for them to completely take and run with. And as per usual, they're always at the forefront of LGBTQIA movements. It's easy for them to come out, they're men and want to be productive in the world, continuing to make culture and create a better future for the children (full sarcasm locked and loaded in all of that). And that's all fine well and dandy if you have the privilege to think about futurity, but I won't get into that here. Non-threatening, harmless cisgender white men who just want what the straights want and docile, sensitive, fragile white women who just wanna love other women in peace.
That's not the case for trans and queer people of color.
A part from having being of color, the racism, misogyny and transmisogyny that runs freely in society literally makes it unsafe for trans people and qpoc to come out on the scale that white cis people do. I'm not saying that it isn't the same for white cis people and it's not equally as dangerous... But it surely has it's differences in that aspect. So much so where there's data to back up the disproportionate death rates of queer youth of color.. But if you can honestly see nothing wrong with someone coming out and you think t's totally fine, maybe you need to step back and check your privilege.
But take what I've given as an antidote to be a real ally. Don't tell people to come out. Hell, let's do away with that phrase completely. Coming out is such a personal experience I cannot emphasize that enough. Focus on what's important and ask yourself these questions: Is this person a fuck? No? Cool. Be their friend. You don't be a fuck. Does their sexuality/gender/gender identity/gender performance effect their work with you? Your friendship? Anything?? No? THEN MIND YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS. Unless they explicitly ask you for help or come to you and tell you, don't go trying to be a hero of some sort. You'll only do more harm than good.
Pause -_-
Coming out is problematic in itself. So why are allies involved? Is this another way white feminism wants to write the narratives of marginalized groups? Allow me to elaborate.
Coming out has always been seen as the pivotal moment in a queer persons life. It's defined as the "psychological process" or "journey" in which a queer person goes through and decides to disclose their life with others. It's more complex than that but, that's the basis of it.
I'll admit, I was one of those people. Just say it was my mantra. Tell them, it'll be a relief once it's out in the universe. That's possibly the worst advice I'd ever given anyone... There's plenty of people who haven't come out to themselves yet or they have and just won't accept it. "Coming out" or whatever that experience may be is such a personal experience, no one on the outside looking in can put a label on it or even box it into just one experience that is "coming out". And this can happen in any amount of time, so to say that there is a moment in every queer person's life where they decided to come out or have a "story" or "epiphany" of their queer experience is trivializing their narrative.
And not only are we placing it on a time frame but we're ignoring the fact that coming out is privilege of the LGBTQIA narrative. I'm not one to advocate the "Homophobia of the black community" myth but, homophobia among people of color is a very real thing and coming out is not the fix-it tool that people think it is.
My most recent thing has been calling in instead of calling out because not all mistakes among social justice warriors is deserving of reprimanding. It's a fairly violent thing us SJW's do to make ourselves look knowledgeable and more versed about something and can further hinder the production of a movement. And yeah as a QWOC that seems awfully docile of me but TRUST! There's a time and place for me to get shady and snatch edges. And BELIEVE when I do, you won't even know it. You'll just feel the burn of your barren sensitive scalp of where your edges used to be. Don't get a thing twisted boo boo (insert claps).
So allow me to call in and tell you the issue with coming out.
Society likes to define it's majority population in relation so the marginalized. So we have labels like gay, lesbian, cis, trans, queer and etc. to set "us" a part from "them" in a constant attempt to isolate who's important and who's "disposable". It's rhetoric. If "us" can't see "them", then "they" aren't associated with "us" and "we" can continue to ignore "their" issues and experiences and never have to help "them" because "they" don't affect us.
Got it so far?
So I, society, need you to come out and tell me who you're sleeping with, who you're attracted to and what's between your legs so I can know this about myself as it regards to whether or not I'm "normal". I need to know whether to keep giving you benefits I receive because you and I are not the same. Should I find out you're different from me in regards to your gender/sexuality, then I know who I am not and I can know my importance in society. Sounds ridiculous, I know, but what other reason are people so obsessed with knowing this very intimate and personal information? It's surely not to accommodate, so what for?
An example of that would be my experience as a student at a hetero-normative university. My sophomore year I spent some time "in the closet" for lack of a better term. I understand as a gender studies major it's kind of strange to separate my experience from my studies but in order to let the dialogue continue, I had to realize the song wasn't always about me. But more and more I was pushed into a corner as I listened painfully as my classmates spoke about shit they knew nothing about. So I was faced with a hard decision: coming out and calling out or sit quiet and perpetuate ignorance. For the most part I was able to debunk their statements with factual evidence that came from our textbooks all written by queer identified folks but this one class where this upper class cis straight white dude INSISTED on speaking about the lives of queer women, I had to make a decision quick and come out. The conversation was fine until my professor stepped in with general confusion about the topic. "I identify as queer and I have to say, that's just not true" I said. They all looked at me as if I wore neckties and converse as a unique fashion choice... Sure my gender identity has nothing to do with my sexuality but I thought they got the point.
Initially the rest of the conversation went smoothly and it was fine. It just sucks that I had to compromise my privacy in order to to have a productive conversation. But as the remainder of it went well, the rest of the semester was something I wasn't prepared for. I became the spokes person for all queer women everywhere in that one classroom and the pressure was impeccable. Bad enough there were only three black people in the class and they all gave us side eyes when we discussed race, from then on every time we came across the topic of sexuality they all looked at me anticipating my words. Even on the days I felt exhausted with participating, they still waited for my truth about the queer community.
Now this wasn't explicitly a situation where I was pressured to come out, I made that decision on my own. But immediately upon gaining this knowledge, their prior respect of my silence went out of the window. I was expected to speak up for all queers everywhere whether I wanted to or not. It was fucking stressful. Even when it came to my final presentation, I was expected to write about my queer identity or something fairly related to it. That pressure and constant scrutiny molded my experience for the rest of the semester. The guys in the class had different conversations with me, the girls approached me with caution because we live in a society where a woman loving woman is still seen as the big bad sexual wolf who will fuck and get fucked by any woman in creation (problematic as F U C K) and generally I was just stressed from shifting from a student to a gay student in the matter of one class. It literally only took an hour for that to happen. And it continued to happen in other classes and even at a campus job where co-workers would consistently have heterosexist conversations while spewing slurs about queer people. I didn't feel safe and coming out didn't solve any of the problems I occurred.
With that, queer people have to consonantly come out. And with coming out of the closet, you're essentially stepping into a bigger one. My peers hear me talk about this all the time, allow me to explain this. This isn't a new concept. It's origins come from Judith Butler who's famous for her perfomativity theories. She writes in "Imitation and Gender insubordination" that sexuality is not something you come into or learn, it's something that you are. You can't come out as something you already are. From children we're conditioned into gender and sexuality from the pink and blue baby showers to Barbie's gender roles. You can't figure out you're gay or trans because you've been that way, however you learned of it in relation to yourself. The only reason we "come out" is because we've been all filed under cisgender and heterosexual. So we're in a state of normalizing our own identities even though they've been around before we have. Normative society is just now catching up to it and putting a name on it. Then there's the meaning. Hidden in darkness and shame where all the dirty things happen. There's plenty of dirty things straight people do and no one ever pressures them to "come out" and tell everyone. Even the way it sounds is violent. When I here the phrase, the only thing I can think about is "Come out with your hands up". A surrender or arrest, decriminalization which is certainly what this society has deemed queer people: deviants that need to be stopped/apprehended. It's a fucking witch hunt still after all the liberation and whatnot. I will not surrender my sexuality so that you may formulate what you feel is necessary of my existence. I'm here, that's all you need to know.
Beyond the general idea of 'being vs. becoming', Butler also talks about what we know about performativity in the larger sense of socializing. Essentially when we "come out" we're stepping into a larger closet because we now have to perform in a way that let's those around us understand the box we now exist in. For example if I were to come out as lesbian, whoever I just came out to is to now assume that I'm a cisgender women who only dates and has romantic feelings/relationships with other cisgender women. That doesn't work that way. It erases the identity of trans lesbians and folks who are gender non-conforming who also identify on the sapphic spectrum. Sexuality is fluid. Some people can't even explain the attraction they feel for others yet we have people telling them they should "come out" and be who they are. Why when the categories are so limited? Or when it's generally not convenient/safe/probable for them? It's nationalist bullshit society inherited from European gate keeping. "I need to define you to keep you in your place". Fuck that.
And another thing, "coming out as an ally" is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. I don't know of an ally experiencing housing or job discrimination because of their association with queer people... I get that ally-ship is super important but once again, this song ain't about you. But I digress...
Coming out is definitely a privilege the white feminist movement continuously rally's behind. There was that whole "Born this way" foolishness that Lady Gaga spewed at gay whites for them to completely take and run with. And as per usual, they're always at the forefront of LGBTQIA movements. It's easy for them to come out, they're men and want to be productive in the world, continuing to make culture and create a better future for the children (full sarcasm locked and loaded in all of that). And that's all fine well and dandy if you have the privilege to think about futurity, but I won't get into that here. Non-threatening, harmless cisgender white men who just want what the straights want and docile, sensitive, fragile white women who just wanna love other women in peace.
That's not the case for trans and queer people of color.
A part from having being of color, the racism, misogyny and transmisogyny that runs freely in society literally makes it unsafe for trans people and qpoc to come out on the scale that white cis people do. I'm not saying that it isn't the same for white cis people and it's not equally as dangerous... But it surely has it's differences in that aspect. So much so where there's data to back up the disproportionate death rates of queer youth of color.. But if you can honestly see nothing wrong with someone coming out and you think t's totally fine, maybe you need to step back and check your privilege.
But take what I've given as an antidote to be a real ally. Don't tell people to come out. Hell, let's do away with that phrase completely. Coming out is such a personal experience I cannot emphasize that enough. Focus on what's important and ask yourself these questions: Is this person a fuck? No? Cool. Be their friend. You don't be a fuck. Does their sexuality/gender/gender identity/gender performance effect their work with you? Your friendship? Anything?? No? THEN MIND YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS. Unless they explicitly ask you for help or come to you and tell you, don't go trying to be a hero of some sort. You'll only do more harm than good.
Summer jamz: "Send if on" - Mara Hruby
Music is a huge part of how I view the world. It's a life form, way of expression and escapism for me. To gage how I'm feeling I'm going to share this very intimate part of me with little blurbs about it and such. Here's the first one:
"Send it on" has a soulful vibe that puts me in a chill mood. When I hear this, I picture myself in my apartment smoking a bowl while it's raining midday in spring. My cat is curled up by the back door that's open, watching the rain drops descend from the laundry wire setup in the backyard. I first heard this song from being too lazy to stop my soundcloud play related artist. I fell in love with it immediately, check it out here and fall in love with the sultry voice of Mara. You'll be glad you did.
"Send it on" has a soulful vibe that puts me in a chill mood. When I hear this, I picture myself in my apartment smoking a bowl while it's raining midday in spring. My cat is curled up by the back door that's open, watching the rain drops descend from the laundry wire setup in the backyard. I first heard this song from being too lazy to stop my soundcloud play related artist. I fell in love with it immediately, check it out here and fall in love with the sultry voice of Mara. You'll be glad you did.
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