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Mar. 20th, 2005 11:33 amLots of things on my mind lately; let's see if I can get them out directly, or if my desire to ignore and evade wins out.
Spring is here, though I feel like I've been anticipating it impatiently and anxiously for weeks now. I have an annual love affair with the world this time of year, and this year certainly seems to be no different. It's as though I can feel the groundswell of energy and vitality, and it excites me. Most years, it seems like it's only me picking up on what's going on around me, but just maybe this year there's some sympathetic action going on inside of me. I'm not sure what it is, and I could still either piss it away or run from it, but... better this year than most.
Fear: this has been on my mind a lot lately, both in regards to myself, and in regards to groups and individuals I know or have come into contact with. It's hard not to see it everywhere, almost like it's designed that way. I don't believe in some vast conspiracy theory of hidden masters that keep everyone afraid of everything as a means of control, nor do I believe that we are ontologically constructed for it, but damned if it isn't ubiquitous. The fears that irritate me most in others are those that turn into enforcement, as though if by policing others, one's own fears can be assuaged and placated. It seems like this is where most of the -isms in the world come from, but knowing that doesn't get me any closer to working out solutions, or even clunky work arounds. It kind of aches, seeing that kind of fear in others, because it resonates with fear in me, in part.
My own fears are much more mundane: rejection (both individual and categorical), being overwritten or overruled, and embarassingly enough, fear of what I want and what I like (based, I suspect, on what I think it all might say about me, or say about me to others, whether true or not). Social constuctivism cripples me a lot, I think, as does being immersed in a painfully sexist, white penis loving, psuedo-Victorian culture. I think I've taken xenophilia to stupid new heights, carrying a strong inclination to discount or devalue the endogenous. I think the only useful thing I've taken from the new Butler thus far has to do with social constructivism: nothing can exist independently of culture, so all that exists must be culturally possible, but may still be culturally silenced. What to do with that, I don't have a clue, but it looks like it might, just might, be an out of the torturous puzzle box I've tended to feel trapped in (without having to result to overly convenient ontological construcations). All this ties in with the rejection and the being overwritten, of course; the power of normalization seems to be very much an instrument in the service of a reflexive fear, but I think in a way that makes it harder to deal with, since the externalization of the fear in the first place is done in an attempt to not have to confront it internally. But enough theory: now the messy parts.
I'm a member of a community here on lj that lately has been really taxing me, and I'm not sure it's fair or logical on my part. In terms of mission statement, it pretty much rocks, but don't take my word for it: go look here. I've been really cranky about who speaks there lately; it seems like a queer sort of Seven Sisters alumni group or something, comprised of people who all started out as innies, and all have a very similar degree of education and perspectives on just about everything. What bugs me about this is that it's seemingly at odds with the overt statement of inclusion, but more than that, personally, it's that it seems of little use to me, even to the point of being implicitly exclusionary. I know lots of this is tied in to my envy of what looks to be the more inclusive, elastic sort of community that queer innies have access to (though my pespective is very much from the outside looking in), and tied in to the irritation and frustration bordering on anger and disgust that I feel from the culture of fear and assimilation amongst those starting as outies. A lot of it, too, is the angry laziness inside of me; I don't want to have to "do it all" myself; I want someone else to have blazed a trail that doesn't suck behind which I can follow, and perhaps expand upon. (This also ties in with the seemingly hypocritical, from my perspective, situation of ex-outies talking about radical gender from the position of societally endorsed body/genital-identity congruence.) I'm probably just being extra whiny in theoretical drag, but it's not going away on its own.
I'm afraid of what I want for myself, too. A lot of what I want, what I'm working towards, will look like I want to be a "woman" (whatever the fuck that is) to others. That, unfortunately, ties in with the physical realities of my situation, and the social realities of passing privilege. I'm not a small person, and while I very, very much hate the idea of trying to be "invisible" by aiming to the conservative side of mainstream, gathering enough overt signs as to more than counterbalance the signs that don't "fit", I also hate the idea of always being visible as a target, being read as a "man" who wants to be a "woman"; that carries cultural meaning to which I am adamantly, violently opposed, but it feels like that resistance and opposition is useless, silent in the face of cultural overwriting. I don't want to fucking consent to being a body inscribed against my will, but it doesn't seem like I get a choice in the matter. Because everyone else in the world believes in linear gender, I will be graspable as a "man" until such time as my personalization and customization tips the scale and my so-called transgressions can't be contained by the concept of someone who probably has a dick, in which case I'll get another meaning stamped on me.
I'm losing this to anger and hopelessness. More later, maybe.
Spring is here, though I feel like I've been anticipating it impatiently and anxiously for weeks now. I have an annual love affair with the world this time of year, and this year certainly seems to be no different. It's as though I can feel the groundswell of energy and vitality, and it excites me. Most years, it seems like it's only me picking up on what's going on around me, but just maybe this year there's some sympathetic action going on inside of me. I'm not sure what it is, and I could still either piss it away or run from it, but... better this year than most.
Fear: this has been on my mind a lot lately, both in regards to myself, and in regards to groups and individuals I know or have come into contact with. It's hard not to see it everywhere, almost like it's designed that way. I don't believe in some vast conspiracy theory of hidden masters that keep everyone afraid of everything as a means of control, nor do I believe that we are ontologically constructed for it, but damned if it isn't ubiquitous. The fears that irritate me most in others are those that turn into enforcement, as though if by policing others, one's own fears can be assuaged and placated. It seems like this is where most of the -isms in the world come from, but knowing that doesn't get me any closer to working out solutions, or even clunky work arounds. It kind of aches, seeing that kind of fear in others, because it resonates with fear in me, in part.
My own fears are much more mundane: rejection (both individual and categorical), being overwritten or overruled, and embarassingly enough, fear of what I want and what I like (based, I suspect, on what I think it all might say about me, or say about me to others, whether true or not). Social constuctivism cripples me a lot, I think, as does being immersed in a painfully sexist, white penis loving, psuedo-Victorian culture. I think I've taken xenophilia to stupid new heights, carrying a strong inclination to discount or devalue the endogenous. I think the only useful thing I've taken from the new Butler thus far has to do with social constructivism: nothing can exist independently of culture, so all that exists must be culturally possible, but may still be culturally silenced. What to do with that, I don't have a clue, but it looks like it might, just might, be an out of the torturous puzzle box I've tended to feel trapped in (without having to result to overly convenient ontological construcations). All this ties in with the rejection and the being overwritten, of course; the power of normalization seems to be very much an instrument in the service of a reflexive fear, but I think in a way that makes it harder to deal with, since the externalization of the fear in the first place is done in an attempt to not have to confront it internally. But enough theory: now the messy parts.
I'm a member of a community here on lj that lately has been really taxing me, and I'm not sure it's fair or logical on my part. In terms of mission statement, it pretty much rocks, but don't take my word for it: go look here. I've been really cranky about who speaks there lately; it seems like a queer sort of Seven Sisters alumni group or something, comprised of people who all started out as innies, and all have a very similar degree of education and perspectives on just about everything. What bugs me about this is that it's seemingly at odds with the overt statement of inclusion, but more than that, personally, it's that it seems of little use to me, even to the point of being implicitly exclusionary. I know lots of this is tied in to my envy of what looks to be the more inclusive, elastic sort of community that queer innies have access to (though my pespective is very much from the outside looking in), and tied in to the irritation and frustration bordering on anger and disgust that I feel from the culture of fear and assimilation amongst those starting as outies. A lot of it, too, is the angry laziness inside of me; I don't want to have to "do it all" myself; I want someone else to have blazed a trail that doesn't suck behind which I can follow, and perhaps expand upon. (This also ties in with the seemingly hypocritical, from my perspective, situation of ex-outies talking about radical gender from the position of societally endorsed body/genital-identity congruence.) I'm probably just being extra whiny in theoretical drag, but it's not going away on its own.
I'm afraid of what I want for myself, too. A lot of what I want, what I'm working towards, will look like I want to be a "woman" (whatever the fuck that is) to others. That, unfortunately, ties in with the physical realities of my situation, and the social realities of passing privilege. I'm not a small person, and while I very, very much hate the idea of trying to be "invisible" by aiming to the conservative side of mainstream, gathering enough overt signs as to more than counterbalance the signs that don't "fit", I also hate the idea of always being visible as a target, being read as a "man" who wants to be a "woman"; that carries cultural meaning to which I am adamantly, violently opposed, but it feels like that resistance and opposition is useless, silent in the face of cultural overwriting. I don't want to fucking consent to being a body inscribed against my will, but it doesn't seem like I get a choice in the matter. Because everyone else in the world believes in linear gender, I will be graspable as a "man" until such time as my personalization and customization tips the scale and my so-called transgressions can't be contained by the concept of someone who probably has a dick, in which case I'll get another meaning stamped on me.
I'm losing this to anger and hopelessness. More later, maybe.
