BANE OF MY EXISTENCE

Subversion

Fall, 2008; I get signed into a class that will change the course of my life.

Spring, 2009; Things fall apart. Hard.

Fall, 2009; I find my voice. Things come together.

Spring, 2010; I learn the hard way that you can't run away from your problems, not even thousands of miles away.

Fall, 2010; I hit instuitutional brick wall after brick wall after brick wall, becoming increasingly disillusioned with higher education's ability to effect real change in the world.

Everything here is interrelated; I don't believe in God and I don't believe in fate, but it's funny how the universe aligns in ways to bring you to places of extreme clairvoyance as well as disillusionment. Subversion is a topic much discussed in my English classes, especially regarding women; it was not until recently that I realized that subversion as an intellectual construct means nothing if it can't be applied to real life. A newfound friend presented to me an opportunity to enact subversion rather than discuss it--what follows is an excerpt from a senior comprehensive project in English:

It’s a question I get asked often, by family members, friends, coworkers, acquaintances—just what exactly do I plan on doing with English if not teaching high school? (Women’s Studies? Women’s…Studies? What do you need to go studying women for, you are one.) Sometimes I simply respond with law or grad school, but more often than not, I extol the virtues of an English education—critical thinking! analytical writing! the ability to historically contextualize! mad research skills!—and yet, as I look back on my experience as an English major, I feel an incredible and inescapable sense of disillusionment. And it’s not to say I don’t see the value in critical thinking, analytical writing, and all things particularly English; it is in these skills that I was able to find my voice as a thinker and writer.
I believe it was in my junior year that the culmination of my life experience converged with my academic training and I found my true voice; a voice, it just so happens, of an irreverent smart-ass. Being an irreverent smart-ass is integral to my identity as a feminist, a thinker, and a writer—it is the way that I cope with a world that is increasingly inhospitable to the egalitarian values I try to live by.
Because it was my life experience that sparked an interest in learning from and engaging with other feminists and academics before me, I feel—I know, rather—that my social location informs every facet of my being—the way I speak, think, and write—how I resist and exist. Through the difficult times in my life, I have turned to memoirs because I sincerely believe in the ability of personal narratives to transform and change lives; it seemed only fitting that I culminate my college experience with the memoirs women who had, in many ways, saved my life. Yet in talking to other Women’s Studies and English students, I realized that what I envisioned my project being did not fit into the categories of "poised and learned"—rather, it would be visceral and experiential. Because of this, and despite the better judgment of those two-comp compers before me, I decided to comp separately in Women’s Studies and English. This separation between “high art” and personal narrative is, at best, superficial and at worst, dangerous; I believe this is the crux of my critique of the English comp requirements. We need to begin living our lives in a place beyond intellect and into new ways of thinking about the world and our place within it, because theory will only carry us so far; we must learn to embrace experience—real, messy, complicated experience—if English majors are truly going to transform the world.

It Could Be the Copious Amounts of Mountain Dew I've Ingested,

but I am freaking out. The recent gains (or losses, depending on how you look at it) of Republicans in the Senate & House have made me realize how tenuous my rights as a woman and human being are. Economic realities coupled with the fact that grad school wants me to have three years' relevant work experience suggest the very real possibility that I will be underemployed and uninsured in one year's time--an alarming prospect considering I already struggle with medical bills even though I'm "adequately" insured.

I think I might die, sometimes, and that frightens me.

I am heartened, though, that my response is fright and not passive acquiescence.

It means I still have a will to live, a will to fight.

Get ready, privileged bastards, because hell hath no fury like a woman denied healthcare because of a preexisting vagina.

A Disheartening

Sigh. Is what I feel like.

Tired.
Drained.
Listless.

I want so badly for things to change--for myself, for my friends, for the world. I imagine a world with freedom to and freedom from and it's so beautiful it almost hurts. Does. It does hurt, because I see all that is wrong and I see that there are structures in places, insurances and assurances that it will never change.

And I don't know how to live in that world. This world.

I don't know how to navigate between my privileges and oppressions, I don't know how to end structural violences, and I don't believe that changing myself will change the world.

Not anymore.

It was naive of me to think I would change the world--it is naive of me to think I can change the American healthcare system and attitudes towards it.

What hurts the most, I think, isn't the outside opposition--nameless, faceless conservative values voters. It's the people I love and respect, the ones I regard so highly and try to model myself after, that are complicit within a system not conducive to feminist and egalitarian values.

Radical in theory, liberal in practice--this is the mantra I have to live by if I'm to survive.

I wish, I wish, I wish it wasn't this way.

Planned Parenthood Choice Essay Contest--An Excerpt

It was a Sunday that I was forwarded an email detailing this contest, and it wasn’t until today, Wednesday, that I really stopped to consider the question of why I’m pro choice. Question? Not a question so much as a reason. A journey, even—like most things intersectional, my presuppositions have constantly been challenged and I have to allow for fluidity while still holding onto my core values. I suppose it’s taken me this long to formulate my answer because I see choice as a given; it’s been an inherent right for the women of my generation, and I quite honestly take this right for granted most days, even in the face of those rights being slowly chipped away by the anti-abortion movement and its proponents. It is my own experience within academic feminism (granted, at an undergraduate level), there is a tendency to get so caught up in the overly theoretical that the real lived experiences of women, men, and gender queers fall by the wayside. I distinctly remember that upon claiming a feminist identity, a pro choice ideology was attached to it—not as an afterthought, but as a granted that I never gave much thought or consideration to. It actually wasn’t until my junior year that I took a seminar on Transnational Feminisms that challenged both the pro choice label as a granted as well as the limitedness of the choice/life binary.

I look back almost ashamedly on my reaction to having my junior seminar on Transnational Feminisms (there had been a faculty change, and I was under the impression we’d be learning about LGBTQQ studies). I had not the faintest interest in the texts as I poured over them in the college bookstore—nor had I the faintest idea of how much the texts and the class itself would transform, challenge and reinforce my feminist ideals and my views on abortion. We began the class with Andrea Smith’s Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. Within her text, she deconstructs the life/choice binary; from interviews she conducted with American Indian women, she gleaned that although the sample of women overwhelmingly supported the right for women to have an abortion, they identified as “pro life.” This completely challenged my presuppositions about choice and life, but even then, I still had much difficulty in trying to define and put into words my philosophy about abortion. I began to read up on pro life feminism, and to my astonishment, I found Feminists for Life, a group whose philosophy is that “women deserve better,” and that as feminists, women should “refuse to choose.” Rhetorically, their philosophies are powerful, and to their credit, they do provide women with prenatal resources. However, there is much that is problematic: taking quotes from first-wave feminist thinkers like Mary Wollstonecraft and Susan B. Anthony out of context; ignoring the realities of class, race, ability, sexual orientation and identity; not respecting the rights of women to choose what happens to their bodies. I found that I was not satisfied with this organization’s brand of feminism; it too closely resembled the rhetoric of anti-feminists and the well-oiled anti-abortion machine.

Disillusioned with Feminists for Life, I turned to Jennifer Baumgardner’s Abortion and Life, a book based on her “I Had an Abortion” project. Baumgardner argues that it’s possible to be genuinely and actively pro life and still be a feminist, but not at the expense of denying other women agency over their own bodies and destinies. It is with this particular definition, I feel, that I identify; I am pro choice because I am pro life. I am pro people who are already alive who desire to have autonomy over their bodies; I am pro social programs that support women who do desire to have children, who otherwise would have an abortion out of economic necessity; I am pro healthcare as a human right; I am pro educating young people about the natural processes of their bodies; I am pro masturbation and sexual autonomy; I am pro adoption, gay or otherwise; I am pro birth control pill, condoms, rhythm method; ultimately, I am pro sexual freedom and bodily integrity (antirape). In essence, I am pro choice because I am pro women’s bodies, journeys, and freedoms.

Life in Ten

Assignment: Write furiously, for ten minutes only, about your life.


When I was born, I had been two weeks late—I was induced because I’m a jackass and I am on time for nothing. My mother was nineteen, on the edge of twenty, and my father was 30-something. 34? I don’t remember. I was loved when I was born, there’s a real advantage in that. My mother tells me that when I was being walked down the hall to get my weight or whatever it is they do with newborns, my father giggled the whole way down. Like all things, that was impermanent. He was a product of a shitty home life, which he was so generous as to bestow upon me in my early development. His father, in his sophomore year (I believe…) of high school, was sent overseas to fight in World War II. He was in some secret ops that was behind the storming of Normandy, and it is clear from the way he speaks about and in the things he doesn’t say that he was deeply affected—his entire class went, and maybe three returned. That does things to people. It did things to his children—my grandfather was not a good guy for the longest time. Abusive, mean, an alcoholic—this is my legacy. My father’s legacy. When she was five, my mother’s mom died of breast cancer at the tender age of 32 (I think…); growing up without that figure has affected my mother deeply, especially since my grandfather failed at a great many things. I was brought into a world that in so many ways was broken—though I suppose my birth was a band-aid of sorts; I have brought much joy into the world, probably the same amount of sorrow I’ve carried into it as well. So, yay balance? A childhood marked in insecurities, anxiety and pain—father’s suicide at the age of five, trips to rape crisis centers, holes in the wall before that, screaming, crying, attempted murder. All-around fuckupedness. Lot of repression. I carry this. I carry this every day; I’m not normal. I try. I try so hard. A long way I’ve come—at fifteen I tried to die, it got so bad. Everything was bad and no one was helping, no one was listening. It was a desperate time. I’m less desperate now, but it seems I surround myself with the unwell—I think I am trying to fix them. I am trying to fix all that I can’t or won’t fix in myself. It really kills me sometimes. But there is joy, too. Much happiness. Much learning. Allegheny saved me, I think. In a lot of ways. Time, too. Time heals most things, in my experience. Is heal the right word? Manageable. Time makes things manageable. If the personal is political, much of my personal is painful—the painful is political. Pain and politics. I think that’s what keeps me going when I want to give up again; I cling to anger and I cling to hate, and this is what keeps me fighting. Always fighting. A ceasefire would be dangerous to my health. It’s fortunate that I’m so stubborn sometimes; I realize that my experience is the result of so many intersecting forms of oppression, and if I give up, IT wins. Whatever IT is—I think it might be everything and it might be nothing. IT just IS. And here I am, I am not going anywhere. My life is a battlefield. I. Will. Fight. IT.

Fuck the Buddha, My Pain is Political (!)

That is offensive to an entire religion but I don't even care. How am I expected to take seriously a man of privilege who one day up and leaves his family, especially when, in the style of the Bible, he names his child Fetter because he weighs the Buddha down as an earthly burden? What in the flying FUCK?

Collectively, I have had only four class periods of Buddhism and Mindfulness, but I find myself resenting its teachings and fighting its philosophies every step of the way. Through the use of useless metaphors like onions and arrow removals, I am learning that we are nothing. Zip, nada. We're constantly changing and impermanent, la dee da I like to abandon my family because as a male I'm privileged enough to do so la dee da. I spent the entirety of middle school and high school thinking I was nothing, sir, and I am never going back to that, thankyouverylittle.


Another useless metaphor is used to explain that we have no identity. Oh but wait, our identity is fluid, like a river or other moving body of water! Cause we are impermanent, hurr derr. Naturally, however, we have our own personalities (?).

Ack. My emphatic disagreement on this front stems from the feminist philosophy on identity politics--that is, our personal identity, experiences and beliefs inform how we engage (or don't engage) socially and politically. And you know, I think it is all well and good to be personally enlightened or whatnot--you big slut, good for you!--but how in the HELL is personal enlightment going to help the socically, politically and economically disenfranchised? Compassion stems from personal well-being and inner peace, but if you're not working on an instituional level to bring about social change, that compassion is doing jack shit for the whole of humanity. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I am all over the place here because I am tired, in pain, and extremely frustrated. And wouldn't you know, all my pain is stemming from my social location as female, lower middle class and young? Yet my pain (or suffering, as Buddhists call it) is entirely political--it gives me fire, the will to fight. Inner peace, I fear, would lead to complacency, and that is something that the rest of the world cannot afford. I may well die of stress-related diseases if whatever-the-fuck's-wrong-with-me doesn't kill me first, but goddamnit, I will go down fighting.