Thoughts before storytelling workshop

A few days ago we had a storytelling workshop at TEACH. Here's a piece I wrote a couple of weeks beforehand.

***

We have a storytelling workshop booked for later this month. I've been telling the same story, with just a handful of adjustments, for six years now. It's become engrained. I talk about positives: a loving family; finding community as a young adult; the freedom of finally finishing high school.

I hardly mention bullying, much less homophobic bullying. The kids excluded me, and I excluded myself, to varying degrees, for as long as I can remember. It's part of being an imaginative, intellectual kid. And the more excluded you are, the more awkward you become. And the circle continues.

I remember a kid calling my t-shirt "gay" when I was nine, at day camp. I told him that people could be gay, but shirts couldn't - was he stupid? - but that just made the other (bigger, cooler, sportier, more confident, prettier, smarter?) kids laugh. It hurt most when girls laughed at me, when I just wanted to impress them and join them.

So when the kids at my new school that fall called my outdated children's clothing "gay," I didn't speak up. I changed my clothes to something tighter and less childish, hated myself for giving in, and compromised that I'd wear only purple for the rest of the school year, just to keep some control.

The kids still teased me.

It was almost two years before someone next called me "gay." I was eleven years old, at camp - an all-girls overnight camp, this time - and one of my richer, prettier, more confident, and better-dressed cabin-mates called me a lesbian. I forget how it came up, other than that it was somehow part of the card game we were playing and "lesbian" basically was intended to be synonymous with "loser." I said that lesbians were cool and that I didn't want to play anymore. And that was it for any hope of friendship, or even peaceful cohabitation, with my cabin-mates. They didn't know what "lesbian" was other than an insult, when to me it was a word that I knew described some of my childhood role models. Unfortunately, I didn't know how to fight back.

That was really just the tip of the bullying iceberg...

What's this? Another post in less than a month?

I think I've revived all my old posts, minus a few that I felt were inappropriate to keep now that I've made my blog visible. Just as an aside, anything that appears on this blog has the potential to be upsetting, minus the few-month period where I made some posts public on the illusion that this was a travel blog.

At any rate, I recently finished reading Alice Sebold's memoir, Lucky, and one quotation really resonated with me and reminded me of a poem I wrote years and years ago that I never posted here (I wrote a lot more poetry than is in the archives of this blog - most of it wasn't worth posting, even based on the somewhat grandiose self-serving criteria of the teenager that I was).

She wrote, "I live in a world where the two truths coexist; where hell and hope lie in the palm of my hand" (p. 243). I think that's the answer I was looking for in 2004.

Fractured Truths

April 7^th, 2004

I have two strong hands,

And they’re stronger than you think.

Strong enough to take the truth

And pull it into two pieces,

One to hold in each hand.

It’s still the truth,

And nothing but the truth.

The whole truth? Perhaps not,

But it’s not as if anybody

Really knows the difference.

I’m not a liar. There’s no wrong

In splitting my past into two parcels

And sharing it around how I like.

And if I use my mouth

And take a bite to keep,

Is there anything wrong with that?

I have two hands, one mouth, and one truth.

Why can’t I split it?

Some timetravelling tonight...

I haven't updated here in over three years.Welcome back.

I wrote this essay/speech seven years ago. Seventeen-year-old me is in a sense worlds different from how I am today, but simultaneously exactly the same. Then, I wrote it as a response to a class debate on feminism, not realizing the reaction it would cause from my classmates, teacher, principal, and even the school superintendent. Now, I am less concerned about a reaction than about having a place, years on, to share once again. Several years later, I might phrase things somewhat differently, and it would likely be more academic in tone. The sentiment, however, is exactly the same.

To share with whom? I frankly have no idea. Perhaps the blogosphere, but likely not. If anybody is out there, reading, then say hello.

Here goes...

**trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault**

Let Each Girl Grow To Become a Phenomenal Woman: Why I Am A Feminist

April 16^th, 2005

“I should never be able…to hand you after an hour’s discours a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantle-piece forever” ~ Virginia Woolf.

I will, however, try very hard to convince you of my plight as a feminist, as Virginia Woolf did for me in A Room of One’s Own.

***

I am a feminist. I was raised and educated as a feminist, but that is certainly not the sole basis for my feminism. I consider becoming a feminist to be a personal decision; it can be influenced by outside factors, but the final piece of the puzzle rests in a person’s heart. I know what I want, and I am working toward it. My feminism is not based on my feminist education, my female role models, or even my realization that I am not entirely safe in the world. It is the convergence of all of my social values, my present reality, the story of my past, and my views of the world that make me a feminist. I am proud to be a feminist.

Some people like to point out that I was raised without a male role model, but that is neither true, nor would it mean that I hate men. I absolutely do not hate men. I did grow up without a father, but there were still enough men in my life for me not to develop the idea that men were violent. I was never suspicious of men; on the contrary, I frequently wondered what would happen if a man I met was my father, and I usually decided that while it would be quite agreeable, I liked my life enough as it was. My male role models were gentle and kind to me and to other girls and women. Men can be feminists too. A feminist can be any person of any race, sex, or sexual orientation.

I have often heard remarks that I do not “dress like a feminist”. What, might I ask, does a feminist dress like? Is a feminist supposed to fade into the woodwork and hide her whole body under clothing so that men cannot mistake her as a sex object? Or is she supposed to dress in clothes that are as revealing as possible to prove that she is proud of her sexuality? Or should she dress as eclectically as possible, so she can let the world know that she is not afraid of being different? I think a feminist can fit any combination of these descriptions; she should dress however she likes, and not try to live up to standards that she does not support. My clothes match if I can be bothered to match them, and are as modest or immodest as I wish, depending on how self-conscious I feel on a particular day. I disagree with any idea that only women who wear certain types of clothing are “real” feminists.

I also do not fit the stereotype of the butch woman who plays hockey. I have never, ever, simultaneously worn skates and held a hockey stick, and I have no intention to. I do not see any reason to play traditionally male sports just to prove that I am as tough as a man. I also do not see any reason to fight, to push people around, or to attempt to claw my way to the top of any sort of a chain. I can be a successful woman and be good at what I do without living on the top of the world and hurting other people to get there. A strong woman should not need to hurt other people to get where she needs; she can get there without sacrificing the dignity of other people. A feminist does not necessarily have to be richer or louder than a man; she just needs to know what she wants and know how to get there, wherever it may be.

I have read the newspaper ever since I could read. Every so often, I would see an article that talked about how a woman was raped or injured by a man. It upset me. I did not want to be a part of the so-called weaker sex, but I wanted to be a woman. At school I learned about the media, and how much it degraded society. I hated the stereotypes presented in the magazines that my classmates read. I hated hearing about women in the sex trade who had to sell their bodies to survive, and were killed because there was no safe place for them. I hated the music that talked about sex, because it was usually shallow and it all sounded the same. I was sick of hearing stories about a beautiful woman lured into bed, told through toneless music designed to appeal to a man’s sexual desires rather than his musical ear. That is not what music is supposed to be about. Most of all, I hated the music, movies, and magazines that glorified violence, especially sexual violence. I did not think it was fair that the music and pop culture industry supported the hell that some people had to live through, every day of their lives.

One story in particular bothered me. A girl who was introduced to my grade seven class as Sally was assaulted because she had supposedly “implied consent” by wearing a low-cut top to a job interview. The court ruled against her, saying that it was her own fault, and that she had chosen for the assault to happen by dressing the way she had. As far as I had learned, assault is an involuntary action, and a survivor could not have simply “implied consent” with her choice of dress. It disgusted me that a woman could be hurt in the way that Sally had, and that the law would not even support her by punishing her assaulter. I have since learned that it is nearly impossible to convict a rapist; the survivor’s “character” is shredded by the defense, the people she is allowed to use as witnesses are screened, and the case is usually dropped due to lack of evidence. Ninety percent of rape trials end without a guilty verdict for the rapist. This does not mean that ninety percent of alleged rapes did not really occur; instead, it shows the gross faults in the justice system’s ability to deal with sex crimes.

My campaign to crush violence against women began two years before this violence became a suffocating part of my own life. I started writing articles for a school zine, On Target. I wrote empowering poetry and drew cartoons. I doubt that my work ever had any impact on my community, but it felt fulfilling and gave me a sense of the reality I would experience when sexual violence shattered my life on April 16^th, 2003. I do not like to delve into details, but I will admit that I no longer feel safe at school, where the attack occurred. I think that is where my feminist ideas took hold of my life more and more. I deserve to feel safe at school. As I slowly recovered and accepted that the memories I have from that terrible afternoon will always be a part of my life, I realized more and more how little my peers realized that events like this actually happen. Many people think that rape is something that happens in the movies, to people who they do not know. That is undeniably false. It had never occurred to me that these things could happen to me until I experienced them first-hand.

One person who I commend for her courage in bringing the issue of sexual violence to light is a young woman named Hanne, who posted the following empowering story on her online journal, provoking a large group of women in an online community to acknowledge that they deserve better, and creating a huge response:

After a dear friend of mine was raped a few weeks ago, I've been thinking a lot about sexual violence and how you're not supposed to talk about it.

This friend of mine who was raped recently isn't the only person I know who has endured being raped and lived through the aftermath, just the most recent. She isn't the only person I know who has had to try to figure out how to glue the broken bowl of her life back together after having it shattered by sexual violence, praying that it'll still hold water when she's done.

As I have altogether too many times in the past when other friends have become victims of rape or other sex crimes, I have wondered what I can possibly do to make it better. But I also know I can't take it back or prevent it or even really make it easier. The best thing I can do is come out and let her know that she's not alone, that there are others of us out here, that she can make it through, because I'm a rape survivor, and we do make it through.

I was thinking in the shower this morning about how many people I know -- women, men, transfolks, others -- have some sort of sexual violence somewhere in their pasts, wondering how many more people I know have some sort of sexual violence lurking in their future.

I wondered for a moment what it would look like if just for one day, everyone who had survived sexual violence were visible as a survivor, if we could actually see the extent of it, if we could all know just how very not-alone we are. I wondered how angry and sad it would make me to know. I wondered how much power there might be in the truth.

I'm not sure what to do with this, yet. But I do feel like outing myself, and encouraging other people to out themselves if they feel okay about doing so. This isn't about telling the story of what happened -- just for the record, I don't generally like to talk about it much and I get uncomfortable with other people's voyeuristic curiosity about what happened to me, although other people feel differently about telling their stories or being asked questions, and I think people should be free to place their own limits on how and with whom they want to talk about details.

This is about being public in regard to something that is normally kept a very big, very dark secret, thus ensuring that we can [not] all pretend that This Sort Of Thing Doesn't Happen To People Like You And Me.

It does happen to people like you and me. Trust me, I know.

I'm Hanne. I'm a survivor of sexual violence.

No Pity. No Shame. No Silence.

Like Hanne, I want to raise awareness and bring the issue to light without highlighting my own story, which I still find very painful to tell. However, I am stepping up and giving my point of view after realizing how many of my female classmates think that women have had equal rights to men since the 1970s. These girls are far too wrong; women still pay more money for the same services, such as the identical dry-cleaning job or haircut, than a man would pay. At last, some government officials want to fix this problem, but they are scorned by other officials who feel that the government has better things to do than protect women’s rights.

Women living in Toronto are very fortunate; we get much easier access to abortion, health care, and other social services than women in rural areas, let alone those in less progressive parts of the world. It scares me. I do not feel safe at my own high school, and yet I am considered fortunate compared to many of the world’s women. I am appalled by the political situation in the United States. I dread the day when abortions are again made illegal. Many countries are embarking on a path that will eventually take away the rights that feminists have strived for over many generations. I fear that one day, women will have no rights at all. Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale presents a terrifying depiction of a woman’s life in a future republic in what is now the United States of America. This woman’s life as a handmaid, having no rights, sexually degraded, and forbidden from anything that gives her real pleasure, is eerily close to the future that I fear the world may be approaching.

To me, a feminist has many essential roles. She must protect women’s rights from descending into a dark hole, until they are eventually forgotten and women are dismissed as no longer legally being “persons”. She must advocate for women’s rights in countries where women are still not legally recognized as citizens, and where they do not have the freedom to choose their own path in life. She must demand justice for women who are hurt in sex crimes, and have no fair justice system to turn to. Being a feminist is not about standing up and saying “I am woman, hear me roar!” It is about proving to the world through actions that women can do more than roar. We can also make change.

I am a feminist because I believe that I deserve more rights and freedoms than I currently have. One in four women experience sexual violence that is inflicted by men in their lifetimes, but hardly any men experience the same violence from women. I am one of those one in four women, and I want to change this statistic, as well as many others. I will not stop fighting for my cause until that statistic is evened out, or until violence is removed from our society altogether. I will not stop until women feel safe, and do not have to endure degrading whistles as they walk down the street. I will not stop until women and men are financially equal. I have no wish for women to be better than men, only equal. I am a feminist not to fulfill somebody else’s dream for me, not to get revenge for my past, or to make men feel as degraded and unvalued as many women have felt. I am a feminist to build a better future myself and for the girls and women who I care about.

Resources

Print Sources:

Angelou, Maya. Phenomenal Woman.

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. Toronto: McClelland and Steward-Bantam Limited, 1985.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Frogmore: Triad/Panther Books, 1977.

Canadian Women Studies Journal/ The Linden School. On Target: Taking Aim At Violence.

Online Sources:

Australian Women’s Intra Network. International Women’s Day: A World to Win. 16 Apr. 2005.

B, Hanne. No Pity. No Shame. No Silence. 8 Mar. 2004. 16 Apr. 2005.

Tiana. Rape: It’s not your fault. 11 Oct. 2001. 16 Apr. 2005.

Self-injury, and TEACH

*TW for mentions of self-injury and sexual assault - but nothing graphic*

Why is self-injury such a closed topic at TEACH? I know full well that many of us do it, or have done it - yet there are people who are too self-conscious to wear short sleeves at meetings. Even people who tell most of their friends, who don't give a damn when rude strangers stare at their scars, and who are upfront about other parts of their lives.

Most of us have been through a lot. But yet, we don't share the aftermaths of our experiences. A few other volunteers know that I was raped in high school, but only some of those know that I struggled with PTSD and depression for years afterwards. Even fewer know that now, much later, I still have my bad days, my sleepless nights.

In our stories, we bravely bare the truth about our parents' reactions, bullying, and the violence that we experienced; sex; masturbation; first kisses; broken hearts. TEACH volunteers have stood in front of countless high school classes to discuss issues of race, sexism, media, politics, and sex changes - including some rather graphic details. But I have yet to hear someone discuss mental illness, although it is prevalent in the queer community. We vaguely touch on suicide and the social circumstances leading up to it, but usually leave out that this internal emotional turmoil has a name: depression, anxiety, personality disorders, PTSD, eating disorders...and the list goes on.

We have discussed occasionally how queer people are stigmatized by psychiatry, as diseased due to our sexuality. It is time for those of us who have experienced mental illness to name it. I would describe my experiences of mental illness and my sexual orientation as two people running from a zombie: they are separate, but sometimes they trip each other up while trying to save me from themselves.

I wonder, for how long she can eat nothing
why there's nothing she will eat except herself
or, except pills, one by one
two by two
one by one

I know only how to go
two by two
not
one by one

Toenails

Another old piece of prose from camp. This one's kinda gross, really. 

*triggers for gross mentions of feet, and other stuff*

I am a piece of toenail. If I swallowed myself, I would feel myself scratch against my esophagus, and my tongue would scream the taste of toe. I am a piece of sharp shell that once was alive and a part of me. When the sun comes out, toenails dance and separate themselves, leaving behind deserted homes: the empty, bloody sockets. But toenails are dead, perpetually death. They are a piece of life that failed and grew into a protective death-shell. Nothing tastes good on fifteen-year-old toenails; not mayonnaise, not guacamole, not whipped cream.

I am broken and ragged and sharp, a fragment of my shattered toe. I will visit reality, piece by piece. Life will mean more than broken nails. The world must accept this and refuse to put up with toe stubbing. Nails can hold the world together. Caked blood seals the crack between the fifteen-year-old toenail and the world.

Sticky situations.

I've been working through this story-telling sort of thing. This is about as far as I've gotten thus far. I wrote it about 3 years ago, probably some point in the summer of 2004, although I unfortunately didn't put the date on it.

TW for sexual assault

Feedback? (ok, so on an invisible blog I won't get any. But perchance?)

They always teach you at school how to be street-smart. What to do in a “sticky situation”. Everybody gets back their test papers at the end of the safety unit in health class; everybody’s passed, and even done really well. They’ve all filled in the blanks correctly: they know how to act, what to do, what to say. The teacher heaves  a sigh of relief. Another group of students headed off into the big scary world, and none of them would get into trouble, right? No, of course they won’t, the teacher assures herself; they all got an A on their test papers.

If only real life was about filling in the blanks.

Funny. I got an A in health class, and look where it’s landed me. No less lost than if I hadn’t taken the class at all. Maybe more lost. As I lie here and write this, I wonder how I’ll make it through the week; the weekend gave me just enough time alone to realize how scared I am. And everything I’m feeling right now goes against everything I’ve learned.

Let’s jump back to last September. I was your typical grade nine student; a little overwhelmed at the reality of being in high school, knowing that it was time to get a boyfriend, get into trouble, and that sort of thing. That was what everybody else did, right?

I met him at lunch, my third week at that school. All of my friend were off at a club that I hadn’t joined, and I was all alone. He came up to my table; he thought I was my twin sister, who he had met a couple of days earlier, and we started talking. He was a really sweet, great, funny guy, and pretty good-looking too. In fact, he was a model. He showed me some of his pictures. Without that spattering of acne he wore that day, this guy was gorgeous. Just for laughs, he showed me his driver’s license photo, which was very different from his modeling headshots. I knew, after seeing these photos, that I’d found a goldmine of a guy. Not only was he a model, but he was eighteen, and could drive!

From then on, he always joined me and my friends at our lunch table. One of my friends seemed just as infatuated with him as I was; she was always flirting with him. She had a better sense of humour than I did, and my sister was prettier. Still, even though he always joked around and flirted with them more, I was the one he always liked to talk to. Oddly, one of my other friends never spoke around him. Back then, I was really confused by this, but now I know that she knew something we never noticed; he wanted more than your average guy.

As the semester went on, we began to talk less and less about real stuff, and he started telling me more and more dirty jokes. We had used to talk about philosophy, and that sort of stuff, a lot; having just had a mental breakdown, I was really interested in the meaning of life. But philosophy was all over with him; that just wasn’t what he was interested in anymore.

By November, all he ever wanted to talk about was his sex fantasies, particularly one where he’d use strawberries and whipped cream as a sex toy with a helpless virgin. He seemed to like the whole ‘damsel in distress’ sort of idea. I found these fantasies to be rather disturbing, so I stopped hanging out with him. I started to spend my lunch hours in a corner of the library doing homework with my friends. I ate my lunch as quickly as I could in the bathroom, just before class started. I gave him the cold shoulder in the halls between classes. I didn’t want to tell him that I didn’t like the way he talked; he’d think I was being a baby.

In February, I turned fifteen. I guess he thought that this made a real difference to how I would feel and act, because he started following me around again. I found this to be a little weird, but I really couldn’t care less. He was just another boy who liked me; creepier than some, sure, but after all, he did go to my school. I wouldn’t tell him where I lived or anything; I wasn’t that stupid. But he couldn’t do anything to me while we were at school, so I considered myself to be safe.

Safe from what, I don’t know. It never even bothered me that much that he persistently followed me, not even when, every so often, he would sneak up and grab me from behind. He’d just sort of pounce on me, then laugh. I never really expected it, and I’d generally shriek or squeal a little. He thought that this meant that I liked it, although I really really didn’t.

It was only when he started to try to grab my chest or reach down my pants that I realized that things were really wrong.

Bodies

One of the key equity notions this year was giving agency, countering hegemonic oppression, thingification, and the erasure of history. When, then, do we keep referring to people with the term “bodies?” Yes, we are discussing oppression as it relates to how one’s body is treated and perceived, and this term recognizes the power of oppression that is perpetrated based on simple physical characteristics.

I feel, however, that this term works against a lot of what we strive for. It is a form of synecdoche, reducing people to their bodies. Without recognizing the individual who lives in a body, what is the point of doing this work? If people talked about my body, rather than about me as a whole person, I would feel medicalized and stripped of my identity.

Talking about people in relation to their bodies removes their histories, which are only complete when the human details – perceptions, thoughts, emotions – are included. If violence is committed against a body, regardless of its characteristics, it is a benign event. “Body” is just an object. As a word, it does not imply humanity. Bodies do not resist, because they are objects, not subjects. We talk about bodies passively, as though they do not belong to people who feel fear, pain, and anger. The body may be a physical manifestation of humanity, but it is not humanity itself.

An old monologue

I wrote this at camp a couple years ago. Didn't post it online because it seemed...threatening, or something. It's totally fiction, don't worry. It was part of our stage combat scene. I was a character called Melissa, who was being bullied by her friends. Even though real-life-me sometimes wished I could be this bold...don't worry. I'm too sensible for that :)

******

I can’t stand them anymore. Get a boyfriend. Do my homework. Your clothes are ugly. Get a life. Yeah right. I like my clothes, I don’t want a boyfriend, why in God’s name would I do their homework? And I have a life. It’s just not like their lives. I’m myself. Sometimes I dream of just charging them with a big, huge stick. That would do it, right?

But the thing is, I’m not like that. When have I ever stood up for myself before? I never stand up for myself. I’ve lived here all my life in this house, and I don’t remember even begging to repaint my room. Yeah, I’m that boring. My room’s white and smooth – like a bathroom. I’m more green. They say I should be more pink, or baby blue. They say, they say, they say. I don’t care what they say anymore. People always said that I’d never learn to read and write, just because when I was little I was more interested in drawing pictures. But I learned. And now I do homework for my classmates. Go figure.

Yeah, I did it. I’m not going to say that I didn’t. I killed them, and honestly, I don’t fucking care. But you can call the police, they’ll come and arrest me, and I won’t tell them a thing.

Oh, you’re afraid of seeing your daughter’s face all smashed when you go upstairs? Well, at least you care. If you were a grown-up clone of her, you wouldn’t care about her face, you’d care about her fingernails. They were pink before. Silvery pink. For prom. Now they’re red with the blood that came from her eyes when I strangled her.

I hope you don’t care about your daughter. No, screw that, I hope you DO care. Then you can feel bad about raising such a psychotic monster. Fuck, now she’s not even a girl anymore. Just a mass of skin and hair and blood, with the devil’s eyes bugging out from between bits of blue skin. Go look. I dare you.

Bandaid solutions...

I wrote this in 2005, and just found it now. Kinda sad, now. And less real now.

I can feel it here. On my arms and shoulders, not in my head where the memories hurt, or the rest of my body, or anywhere else. Just here.

It’s easier like this – bandaids, blood, long sleeves. You can’t put a bandaid on your memories to make them go away; they haven’t invented that kind of brain surgery yet. You can’t bandage up my mouth to make the bad taste leave it. But you can clean up your arms, take care of yourself. Weird, just attacking myself more, but it’s the only real way to live my life; let it leak out with my blood, then smother it in a bandaid until it isn’t even real anymore; it’s not emotion, it’s matter. It’s blood. And it’s leaking out of me this way. I can talk like this for hours, because it isn’t really me. It’s a haunted voice in a bleeding broken body without a future. The real me went down the toilet with the bloody towel that I didn’t want anybody to see. The real me isn’t here anymore, this voice isn’t mine. The real me went somewhere, one day, into another world where it can enjoy things, and it left this flat and fractured soul in this bleeding, broken body on the earth to suffer but refuse to feel. Maybe the real me will come back to that body once the scars have faded away and the stars come out to replace them.