Placed ad on Craiglist for friendship (I know ;)), received several messages. This was my response to one (will be posting others). I don't expect to hear back from any of them...I usually don't. :)

"E -

Sorry for the delay in response.  I've been busy and received several messages and often have a hard time responding to just one (autistic and have anxiety/organization problems).

Where to begin.

I've received more than one solicitation over the years to be 'that friend'.  That one friend that complements an already existing friend constellations/best friendship/lovership.  And in a very, very secondary way...one might even say a covertway.

Which is all well and good and filling-of-a-need for those making the request, but not so productive for me (not to mention dehumanizing/heartbreaking).

I was married once.  It took up 95% percent of my time and energy.  I had little room for anything but maintaining it, working and resting (or just the first and last two).  This has also been the dominant theme in just about every marriage-type relationship to which I've been exposed (which is one of the reasons I'll likely never be married again...not that my primary friendship at the moment doesn't take up a huge amount of space of it's own accord...).  The one 'friendship' I had then occupied an exceedingly tiny niche in my world, and I preferred it that way, as anything else would've taken too much effort to manage at the time (several other factors played a key role in keeping my distance from this person, but the point stands as I would've allocated the same amount of time/energy to anybody else at that stage in my development...I simply wasn't ready/didn't know how to have a meaningful friendship with anyone).

If you ask yourself honestly, how much space do you have in your life for a viable, mutually-beneficial-but-productively-challenging, long-term, emotionally present/supportive friendship?  Because I have lots of space in mine for that, and exactly and only that.  Good-time friends, 'hanging out', dry discussions are of little use to me.  I don't need or want those things.

I'm seeking kindred, comrades, platonic life-partners.  Are you?  If so, do you think you could make that kind of commitment to me in particular (I know we don't know each other yet, but people can usually sense fairly quickly whether or not potential for this sort of thing is possible between themselves and others)?

Or are you seeking primarily an activity buddy, someone you don't have to invest a lot of time/emotional attachment in?  If so, that won't work for me.  At all.

Also, whenever I hear/read the words "I think we might disagree on a lot of political things" (I'm paraphrasing), a red flag is raised in my mind.  I've tried and failed (rather spectacularly) to build/maintain friendships with people who were more conservative in the past, and it's never turned out well (to put it mildly), because I won't be silenced, and the conservative people I've known tend to not know how to not try to silence dissent/disagreement, tend not to handle discomfort maturely and also tend not to be terribly emotionally intelligent, sensitive to others' experiences and perspective or very genuine in general.

As I just said in a response to someone else who replied to my ad, I'm very stringent in my politic.  I don't tolerate a lot of things considered 'normal' and 'no big deal' in conversation and relationship of any kind, and I will call out any oppressive language or sentiments I encounter, expect respectful re-evaluation and accountability going forward, or voice my dissent with my feet.  

This means that if you have unexamined race, class, ability, gender or social-justice related views, they will either be addressed openly and rigorously or, if I don't feel doing so is safe, productive or likely to result in less of dealing with that for me, I will end our association immediately.

(I cannot stress enough how hardcore I am about this.  I will not spend my time around people who don't care to challenge hierarchy and power imbalances, who are not sensitive or compassionate and who do not seek to change the world in whatever way for the betterment of everyone, not just people that sufficiently resemble themselves)

This means no rape jokes.  This means that if you make fun of people who are mentally ill or homeless I will scream.  This means that if you make one racist crack about what people wear or say or their families and communities you can lose my contact information and never find it again (and if you have a problem with 'illegal immigration', you have a problem with my family, as my son's father is undocumented...and even if he wasn't, nobody is 'illegal' and gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah white supremacy/imperialism/colonialism/xenophobia/*head explodes*).  This means that if you gossip and make fun of others out of your own insecurities/fears and fucked up idiocy, you are no friend/ally of mine (I have been ruthlessly and mercilessly tormented/gossiped about/otherwise socially shunned for being 'different' all my life.  Zero.  Tolerance).

Sigh.  This is difficult.  I'm a hard-liner.  I don't do 'agree to disagree'.  It's wrong to oppress, it's wrong to marginalize, it's wrong to hoard power and resources and access and to deny personhood and autonomy to others based on hierarchal assimilationist criteria.  Period. I believe that change is hard, and that we must choose inconvenience and less safety as often as possible to push forward.  I don't make exceptions or excuses for anyone, not even people I like and call friends, and I have no compunction about leaving those who refuse to grow/evolve behind, and fast.

I've been a part of several social groupings over the years, large and small, and dealing with the enormity of bullshit required to maintain my place in them proved to be way, way too fucking crazy-making and costly for me.  My principles matter, and I will choose them over relationships with people that compromise, seek to compromise, or ridicule/ignore/disappear them.  

I also try to remember that everybody fucks up, including me, and that personal change can often be slow...it's just that for so many people, especially upper-class/middle-class white people who are able-bodied, have money and privileges that most of the rest of the world can't even dream about, attempts at patience and understanding are often taken advantage of and used as an excuse to stagnate/remain ignorant/otherwise be shitty.  I've been on both sides of that equation.

I'm not doing well with words today, and I'm tired, so I'm going to stop here.  Write back if you'd like, and thanks for messaging me.

Take care." 

Via Spectra Speaks. Beautiful, and incredibly restrained. So, so many black women fought and suffered through long, hard years and broken trust and outright betrayal...only to be catapulted back to square one over and over and over and over and over by those (white women) who only desired parity with their white male counterparts, not actual freedom for all women.

There will be no revolution, specifically no *feminist* revolution, until middle-to-upper class white American women step the fuck down, back the fuck off and listen, learn, and probably mostly go away.

To the sidelines, where they can watch as those they've continuously marginalized/disregarded/invisibilized succeed in doing what they've been half-heartedly half-talking about doing for decades.

White (middle-to-upper class, able-bodied, heterosexual, academic, neurotypical, mainstream, consumerist) sistren, we have failed.  Completely.  Our feminist 'movement' was co-opted and neutralized long ago...by men, and by our own greed, short-sightedness, bigotry and complacency.

Not that it was ever constructed to benefit anybody but us, but it only partially accomplished even that much.

It's long past time to find something more productive to do...like get the fuck out of the way so that women of color, disabled women, transgendered women, immigrant women, working-class women and queer women can get on with the business of real change.

Because we're far too invested in the system-that-needs-to-be-destroyed to ever meaningfully challenge it.

(Please note that though I do currently identify as a lesbian, disabled, a non-academic and have been broke for much of my adult life, in addition to being white, I carry a great deal of privilege based on prior classification as heterosexual, middle-class, somewhat college-educated and able-bodied.  Hence the 'we')

Via come correct. You know where this is going?

In my fucking sidebar, because it is absolutely overflowing with truth, goodness, beauty and love. :)

And I could stand to start doing way more of these things myself, so a constant reminder would be helpful. ;)

Also, I am going to organize my blogroll. Somehow. Some day.

It's a mess, I know.  I cringe every time I add another link to it. :)

I don't want to categorize it according to 'Type of Blog/Social Category of Blogger', though, as bloggers are people, not products, and the categorizing of people just gives way to prejudice/marginalization/exclusion/oppression, so I'm kind of stuck.

I WANT YOU TO READ THE BLOGGERS OF COLOR/A-NUEROTYPICAL/DISABLED/TRANS/QUEER/OTHERWISE MARGINALIZED I'VE LINKED TO HERE, BECAUSE I'M GUESSING MOST OF MY AUDIENCE IS WHITE/WHITE-IDENTIFIED, MIDDLE-CLASSED, ABLE-BODIED, HETEROSEXUAL, NEUROTYPICAL, CISGENDERED, ETC.

I'm worried that if I categorize the blogs in my blogroll according to recognized social clusters, you'll skip straight to your comfort zones and not challenge yourselves.

'Cause we all do it, but I don't want my blog to turn into an excuse or an invitation for you to keep doing it.

So...I have to figure this out.  Soon.

Until then, just read the blogs you're not familiar with.  That's a good start.

Via new wave feminism. This is good, elemental stuff.

No forgetting that it's a white, academic, male, likely hetero and able-bodied Euro-centric hugely privileged DUDE talking here (and a white, cisgendered, lower middle-classed, somewhat 'educated', heterosexually-privileged and somewhat able-bodied woman talking here), but systemic issues are systemic, and hemorrhaging, and band-aids don't fix them, even if they do help some who are hurting/us feel better about ourselves for helping and 'helping' (which white people of all types/stripes, classes and castes are so fucking good at/wont to do).

Charity is better than nothing, but it doesn't fix the problems that cause the need for it in the first place.

And fuck yes, it IS immoral to use private property/wealth to attempt to alleviate the suffering caused by private property/wealth.  Immoral, and illogical.  

Abso-fucking-lutely right on, and something I've been trying to get straight in my own mind and life/functionally articulate for a while.

The system must be dismantled.  The. system. must. be. dismantled.  We must dismantle it and replace it with something that is designed to work for everyone...because the one we have in place now was never, ever, ever, ever, EVER designed for that purpose.

The system we have in place now was designed to oppress, and can therefore only ever cause harm/oppress.

The system we have now does not need to be fixed.  It's working perfectly.  It's doing exactly what it was designed to do (as I read elsewhere this week, brilliantly written by someone who's name/blog name I can't remember).

The system we have now, if we want to live in a different and better world for everyone, not just those currently positioning themselves at the top, must. be. replaced.

Via...someone. Can't remember. There's just no argument here. The man raped a child. He should be held accountable.

However.

The now-woman he raped has every right to request that everybody leave her the fuck alone, and him, if that's what serves her best and helps her to move forward.

She's human.  Her wishes and needs are to be respected.  Period.

Do I want this man to go to prison/face consequences?

Yes.

Does she?

Probably, maybe, who knows.  The important point here is that she has requested that this nonsense stop so that she can move on with her life.  Roman Polanski raped her, not you, not me.

We can't be bothered, as a society, to treat rape like the fucking detestable hate crime/human rights violation that it is and punish/deal with those who rape appropriately, which is to say immediately and unequivocally, and since our 'system of law' refuses to do so generally, and refused to do so with respect to this specific instance of Roman Polanski drugging and raping a 13 year old child who is now an adult who, for reasons that are her own and perfectly valid, precisely because they are her own feelings concerning something that was done to her and not anybody else, would prefer that continuous public discussion of the case/attempts to prosecute cease and desist for her own well-being.

THE LEAST WE CAN FUCKING DO IS TO STOP PUSHING WHAT HAPPENED TO HER, AND THE SUBSEQUENT TERRIFYING LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY FOR IT, IN HER FACE, ESPECIALLY AFTER SHE'S REPEATEDLY ASKED US TO STOP.

Talk about re-victimizing.

That this request, her request, concerning something that happened only to her and no one else in the context of a society, culture and 'system of law' that treats rape at best like an unfortunate decontextualized 'incident' that occurs in a vacuum and is only perpetuated by mysterious 'bad apples' who apparently come from nowhere and are influenced by nothing, and at worst like a hilarious, 'edgy' joke or conflated with sex/intimacy/'normal' human sexual behavior, has not been respected, and will not be respected, is just another violation of her autonomy, dignity and personhood...and an awful, unfathomably damaging one on a massive scale...and yet another egregiously horrible example of how men/their enablers use women's pain for their own sermonizing/benefit/gain, and utterly disregard our humanity.


I'm sure she was not the first girl/woman he raped.

I'm also sure she was not the last.

Via The Bad Dominicana. I love the #twerkforliberation movement. It's powerful.

It's powerful because few things are as threatening to our suicide-system of patriarchy, racism, classism, colonialism, ableism, shadeism, lookism, heterocentrism, neurotypicalism, rape culture and victim-blaming than women, women of color in particular, black women in particular, moving and using their bodies in whatever way suits them best, unapologetically, in full view of those who gleefully, maliciously and violently seek to erase them (and often succeed, with the explicit and implied consent of those around them who benefit from their filthy power-mongering), and everything and everyone they care about, off the face of the earth at every conceivable opportunity.

Twerk on. :)

Via The Bad Dominicana. PLEASE...

If you know something, say something!

Thoughts and support to her family and friends.  I hope she is safe and well.

Via The Anarcho-Feminist. Quirky and fun, but must we always play to the cheesiest, most mainstream-fueled commercialized smarm with respect to everything, including public service announcements regarding a worldwide health epidemic?

Be forewarned: very much not safe for work!

*Shakes head*

Again, fun, but it feels like those who engineer these visual campaigns see the world as an endless sea of white, heterosexual, middle-class, American, sexually backwards/repressed pre-teenage boys...

Newsflash (to them, anyway): the world is full of people who do not fit that description in the least.  Matter of fact, we far outnumber the horny, immature, ignorant little white boys.

We are the majority, and you're treating us like we don't even freakin' exist.

We'd like to see ourselves, our interests and our concerns represented in a way that WE can relate to.  For once.

Thanks.

Via mehreenkasana. How many reading this blog have ever even *touched* a gun of any kind, or had need to? Let alone an AK-fucken-47?!

Meek, submissive and oh-so-oppressed MY ASS.

Again, white people...white feminists in particular, women of color don't need our fucken infantilizing, moralizing 'help'.

Indeed, our 'help' is largely what put (some of) them in the conditions we 'worry' so much about 'helping' them out of.

Look at them.  LISTEN TO THEM.

They can handle themselves.

We need to stop creating and perpetuating oppressions, and to get the fuck out of the way.