I keep avoiding this—the blog, writing Internet things, self-expression. Partially it’s because my writing energy has gone toward other projects. The book I am working…
Giving it 60%
This has not been an easy month. Not the worst month ever, and nothing I need to share publicly, but my body went through some…
The Resentment of Finally Getting What You Needed
“If you’ve been around activists for a long time, you might have noticed an oddity when they start getting success. When people finally are ready to hear their message, or show up newly awakened to problems and ready for direction and guidance.
Sometimes, that activist who’s been at it so long doesn’t respond in kind with gratitude or enthusiasm. Sometimes, they respond with resentment, bitterness, and a kind of collapse. Sometimes, they’re pissed at the newer people for taking so long to see the issues. Sometimes, they’re utterly unwilling to continue the work of educating.
This sucks for the folks new to the work, who could use the mentorship and wisdom of the ones who have been on the journey for a while. It sucks when we blast our new would-be allies and co-collaborators with more hostility than we’d direct at our adversaries. It feels unfair, and disillusioning, and may alienate new folks or lead them to marginalize the cranky elder.”
Only Connect
A recent opportunity to see the contemporary play Nonsense and Beauty, about Edwardian British author E.M. Forster, inspired me to return to my English major…
Self-Care is Important, and It’s Not Enough, and You Don’t Need to Apologize for That
“The backlash to Self-care originates, as is often the case, in its over-popularization and watering down. Important practices become touted as cure-alls, and any threat they posed to the political or economic order quickly becomes neutralized once absorbed into it.
So the transformative practices of simply sitting and doing nothing but breathing and observing one’s self, or of taking a break from hustling and consumption to relax in a warm bath, feed back into the atomizing culture of making each individual responsible for their own stress and the management of it.”
Coming Out is Courageous
For Pride I want to say what has been on my heart for years. There has been a thread in Queer Discourse that seems to…
Why Talk to Adversaries?
The contemporary atmosphere of paranoia and conspiracism has frequently reminded me of my childhood in the 1990s when the Satanic Panic was vibrant and mainstream,…
Self-Sacrificing Allies Do Not Serve
The first time I heard about “being an ally” was during my undergraduate years in the early 2000s. “An ally” generally meant a person who…
Quarterly Newsletters
As Facebook is no longer a useful tool for reaching my audience, I am establishing a New Year’s intention to begin using my e-mail newsletters…
Collective Guilt and False Innocence
Recently there was a commercial for a local news report on the legacy of the residential schools to which Native children were compelled to go,…