too much thought before coffee

I made the mistake of paying attention to NPR this morning, in which some sports commentator went on at great length about why the ovary-enabled teen golfer who has been competing successfully in the men's leagues should stop (in short: women will never be as good as men; women are special, beautiful magical creatures that should be seperate; it's unfair to women's sports to draw attention away by a superstar competing with men; it's a fool's errand to try to compete where a woman is bound to fail). For a bigwig at Sports Illustrated, this sexist idiot seemed painfully uneducated about developmental research and the narrowing gap between 'male' and 'female' high performance athletes over the years (a trend that's accelerating, btw). That this pissed me off should come as no surprise.

It got me to thinking. Lately, I've been diving deeply into liberal blogland, and a big chunk of that are feminist blogs. I experience some disjunct there sometimes, as well. I'll be reading along, agreeing with much that is being said, and get suddenly jolted out of the groove, confused and frustrated by the 'us' vs 'them' mentality.

I think both above situations are linked. In both cases, I think what's going is line drawing and border policing, and in each case, there is an implicit attempt to erase or overwrite me, and anyone else who does not wholly and unquestioningly endorse the binary-only paradigm. Speaking personally, it hurts me more when feminists do it, because one, they should know better, having been on the receiving end of sexist oppression, and two, every time they talk about 'men' and 'women', I know they're assigning me to the 'man' side, and have no interest in hearing otherwise.

This takes me to the point I woke up thinking about this morning; how can I live and exist as myself in a sociocultural world that refuses to believe I can exist? How can I interact with a system that I believe is unethical and unfair, but which allows no alternatives?

Like most days, I still don't have answers to these questions.

(no subject)

For the first time in over three weeks, I walked in the woods today.

It seems silly, now. The last time I was there, I was wide open to it all, enjoying myself, and then... I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I glanced over, and even before it registered on the conscious part of my mind, I froze: my muscles locked in super stillness, my heart beat faster, my breathing came in fast, shallow breaths, and my eyes dilated, taking in the smallest details around me. There, coiling in the grass, minding it's own business (quite likely retreating from the sunwarmed walkway), was a black and yellow snake, maybe all of a yard long.

It's confusing, and a bit embarassing, but snakes freak me the fuck out. I think it's something about the way they move; photos of them don't bother me like, say, close up photos of spiders do. I wanted to talk, to write about it, but I couldn't. It was all I could do to haltingly mention it to my beloved, who was very kind and understanding of my lack of rationality.

I've felt the pull to go back, a slight tug every now and again, but I kept inventing excuses; I had to get back early; I needed something from my car; it would rain, etc. Today, for whatever reason, I found myself on the absolute center of the path, walking slowly, scanning left and right like mad, determined. It clouded up and got still as I walked in, and thundered gently in the distance as I sat at the end of the path, cooling in the shade of the trees by the creek; it felt like a distant welcome, but a welcome none the less.

(no subject)

Certain images and metaphors stick in my head, to the point that they'll likely be there for as long as I'm aware of anything. One that has been around for years, and has been popping up more lately, is the idea that it's possible to tell people who've experienced... something inexpressible, incommunicable. Witches marks, mystic bones or organs: it all seems to come down to some look, some sense about a person who has "been to the mountain". I wonder if I would recognize that, were I to encounter it, and if I did, if it would matter. There are days I wonder if I have that look, and I'm torn between hoping/suspecting that I do, and hoping that I never do.