International Women's Day!

I posted on this a couple of years ago. But hey, it never gets old...at least, it won't until we have equal rights.  Happy IWD, friends and non-existent readers!

International women’s day is an important symbol of women’s rights. It is a validation of our existence and growing power – yet, at the same time, it is a recognition of the power we do not have but desperately need to have. It is also, increasingly, an expression of international solidarity, where women demonstrate the international connections in feminism and women’s issues, rather than just rallies and events held in enough countries to merit the label “international”

IWD is important for girls as well. Girls need to recognize their voices, and refuse to be subsumed into silence and the hypocritical realm of popular culture. As a student at a feminist school, IWD was recognized and celebrated, and the biggest event of the year. It took this celebration for granted. During my first year attending public high school, a male student repeatedly harassed me but I assumed that this was normal. The harassment had progressed into minor forms of sexual assault by International Women’s Day. My school didn’t recognize the day at all. I was one of few students who knew it existed. It felt like nobody cared, and that violence against girls at my school was assumed to be normal. I never told about the harassment and assault, because I thought that nobody would listen or care.

Thirty-six days later he brutally attacked me at school, and still it felt like nobody was listening. We need to recognize IWD so that we show girls that women matter. Feminism is normal. Violence is not.

Queerness, gender, grammar

Grammatical structures really influence how language is perceived as derogatory, offensive, etc. For example, calling me “queer” as an adjective doesn’t bug me, but yet “a queer” seems offensive – it is as though it is using “queer” as a noun, turning me into a different species, or an “other.”

Using it as a noun makes it seem like this is the only thing about m – that this specific characteristic is the sole defining factor in my identity. Using it as an adjective makes it more open to inserting other identities, and recognizes that I am more than just queer.

I guess this is why I don’t like the word “lesbian.” Interesting, though, that nouns like “man” and “woman” don’t hold the same power, to me.

http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20070116/high_school_attack_070116/20070116/?hub=TorontoHome

I wish I could hug her and tell her that she's not the only one who isn't going to sleep tonight; it's events like this that bring back the past.

But still, the fact that the past is flooding back means that it's something that can disappear for a while, months, even. I wish I could tell her that; yes, it always follows you, and some nights it's crushing you, but eventually you can put it in a back pocket and live your life.

I don't know her, but can you all keep her in your thoughts tonight?

I sometimes wonder what they knew, and how they felt

For the 25 Girls

September 18, 2006

This is for the 25 girls in my grade 9 gym class.

For the girls who knew what went wrong

And the ones who never noticed.

For the ones who cared,

And the ones who were scared and ashamed.

For the girls who spoke like a well of tears

And the ones who were silent.

For the ones who blamed themselves.

For the girls who never questioned the blood stains the next class.

And those who never came back.

For the girls I finally told,

And the ones I loved too much to tell.

For the girls who begged me to cheer on their teams

And the ones who realized that I’d never go back.

For the girl who discovered my torn clothing the next day;

If she wondered where it came from, or never asked.

If she knew inside.

If she told.

My name was written in sharpie on the tags.

This is for the girls who left the school

And never found out.

And the ones who knew who did it.

This is for my friends

Who were never the same

And the girl whose face

Was the last thing I saw before his.

I still think her face is beautiful.

This is for the 25 girls who were with me

The day I was raped

After grade 9 gym class.

Take Back the Night

http://www.trccmwar.ca/events/index.html

You all should come to this. It's an anti-violence women's march. Last year I missed it because I didn't know it was this early in the year, so I'm determined to make it this year (even though it's 2 hours away from me by bus!).

COME!!! This is something that's very important.

Thoughts from Annie Dillard

"Every inchworm I have seen was stuck in long grasses. The wretched inchworm hangs from the side of a grassblade and throws its head around from side to side, seeming to wail. What! No further? Its back pair of nubby feet clasps the grass stem; its front three pairs of nubs reach back and flail in the air, apparently in search of a footing. What! No further? What? It searches everywhere in the wide world for the rest of the grass, which is right under its nose. By dumb luck it touches the grass. Its front legs hang on; it lifts and buckles its green inch, and places its hind legs just behind its front legs. Its body makes a loop, a bight. All it has to do now is slide its front legs up the grass stem. Instead it gets lost. It throws up its head and front legs, flings its upper body out into the void, and panics again. What! No further? End of world? And so forth, until it actually reaches the grasshead's tip. By then its wee weight may be bending the grass toward some other grass plant. Its davening, apocalyptic prayers sway the grasshead and bump it into something. I have seen it many times. The blind and frantic numbskull makes it off one grassblade and onto another one, which it will climb in virtual hysteria for several hours. Every step brings it to the universe's rim. And now - What! No further? End of world? Ah, here's ground. What! No further? Yike!" ~ Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

Wrote this a couple weeks ago. I named my latest poetry volume after it.

Monster on an Elastic Leash

January 7^th, 2006

Soft fingers tickling, touching, grabbing,

Creeping where they never should be.

Peeling away the soft and the vulnerable,

Tightening the knot that’s inside me.

Tether me, naked, into this damp world.

The darkness strips me, breeding with fright.

A monster on an elastic leash

Is snarling from inside the hell of the night.

I think I complain too much. I ask for too much. I expect too much. I live so well and then feel unfortunate and sorry for myself when there's nothing wrong today. I feel like a rich kid. ToK made me feel like all the stuff I've ever done to help people is out of self-interest and I've never felt so cruel and heartless before.

I feel like a total identity-less bitch who lives in between worlds and in between lives and wants to be something else. I don't know.

I think this is going to be part of a play, or something. I wrote it at camp. What do (hypothetically plural) you think?

"I want to stop seeing this, more and more and more. People who look fine on the outside, but then something slips and you can see everything that’s wrong clearly carved into them. Carved into me, too. I wonder if I always looked as bubbly as they do. A bleeding bubble. Fine now, but with reminders to hide and sleeves to wear just in case what I see is the same as what they see, just in case it somehow is visible to them, even though everybody says it isn’t.

I try not to keep secrets, but as I drink up more and more of what I see around me, the long-sleeved shirts in the closet become less and less a symbol and more and more a reality.

I want to forget that these beings surrounding by skin are people, and that they feel things too. Maybe then I could forget that this is their reality, forget that what I saw when they move is really there, and not something figmented by my own sick imagination. I want to pretend that maybe, just maybe, none of this is true.

I want filtered vision, so I could see what’s there, but not the meaning lurking behind it. I want my ignorance back. I want to numb my “hey, that used to be me” nerve."

I don’t remember dreams, only nightmares. I don’t remember the nightmares that are invented by my mind, only the ones that are real.

In the morning, I can talk about my dreams. But then the coffee flushes the night away from my mind, and all I know is that my dream was confusing. A couple of years ago I dreamed that the Pope turned into a teddy bear. I forgot to have coffee that day, and I wrote the dream down.

It’s a shame that my coffee replaces my dreams.