"You are the reason they hate gay people."

No, this is not "why they hate" us.

They hate us because we exist.  They will hate us no matter how much we try to placate them by reifying their gender binary, no matter how polite we are or how monogamous and middle class we are.  We can deepen our voices and not move our hands while we speak and have the goddamn white picket fence and save Cambodian babies from being Cambodian, and the moment we slip up and hold someone's hand or not coerce our child's gender or move into the neighborhood or have our own spaces, our bashing will be justified.

We cannot save ourselves by being like them.  We aren't wrong: that is exactly what they're trying to say!  That we have to fit in.  Why the hell are you buying into it?  Fuck that noise.  They are the wrong ones. Why should giants deign to sit in caves, when they can stride the earth?

The problem isn't straight girls making out with other straight girls.  It's that straight girls can't make out with each other without being reinterpreted as (they are sluts and that is disgusting / they are sluts and they must be sexually available to me / they must be lesbians / they must be bisexual / they are fake bitches) because wow does misogyny and homophobia come in all sorts of delightful flavors.

And we don't care that maybe in a liberated world, we can make out with whomever just because we are alive.  That maybe there can be a world where there won't be environments where men have learned to use alcohol as a weapon and to browbeat women into performing for them and enjoy it, or that the only way a woman can make a living is to appeal to the male gaze in a music video.  That, you know what?, maybe two women can make out to turn on a guy without it being part of a pattern of the coercive commodification of women.

Because it is easier to be mad at two individual women who don't matter than it is to be mad at a system you don't care to take on.

It's easier to be mad at a guy who gets to wear a leather harness and dance down a street once a year, than to stop buying into our coercive political process.  It's easier to say the problem is with our kids, that they just have to wait for it to get better.  It's easier, and in ways, more profitable to buy into the heterosexism and cissexism.  To buy into their misogyny that men acting like women is degrading.  Maybe, if you play along well enough, you'll get to become one of them.  That is the power of the kyriarchy, to make you want to be an oppressor.  To internalize their homophobia, to make you want to fit into this fucked up world.

So, who gives a fuck if some gay dude sleeps around?  You're saying it reinforces stereotypes, when we've been characterized as sodomites and deviants before it was even legal for us to have sex.  You're willing to slap that HRC sticker on a binder, but you're not willing to strip off the hateful narratives they've told about us?  The man's doing it in a world that says a single kiss is too much, and the problem here is him?  Between people mired in their own hateful bitterness, backed up by institutional privileges and structural supports, and some guy having fun, you want to side with the former?

Look around you, look at the choice you have made.

I won't sit here anymore and listen to you parrot our oppressors.  I refuse.

You do not have to run naked with a rainbow flag cloak if that's not you.  Or you totally can if that's how you do.  But the point is to radically, audaciously, genuinely love each other.  I am not struggling for a world where we can resent each other equally.  I want for a world where we can embody James Baldwin's words, "Love him and let him love you.  Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?"  Be brave enough to want that.

I am pretty sure that "Teenage Dream" video has moved to the top second spot on the front page of Hulu solely because of me.  You are welcome, Darren Criss.  You may thank me with many kisses; I shall supply the footstool that is necessitated by how I would tower over you with my 5'8" self.

I just spent five minutes analyzing this picture to determine what makes her smilies cuter than others.  I made lots of samples on a Post-It note.  I think it is the largeness of the eyes, the wide set distance between them, and their nearness to the ends of the smile, creating the impression of a baby's wide, circular face.

Also, I figured out the difference between a chrysalis and a cocoon is more than that the former is made by butterflies and the latter by moths.  Cocoons are not the actual pupae, which is the hard exoskeleton, but rather, the silk case which holds the pupa.  I think this confirms my preference for moths over butterflies.

The lack of obvious perspective in this picture (OF A CATERPILLAR, DO NOT CLICK, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE) makes the little bugger look the size of a koala, aka about half the size of Darren Criss.

I've also been analyzing this picture to figure out whether this was taken in a UMBC dorm room; the wall, bed, and desk fit, but those are also probably common.  I always doubt the judgement of men who are interested in me; there must be something terribly wrong.  Oh, God, they messaged the wrong person with a very similar username.  There must be a pneumaticfleshlight out there or something.

When I was in a French airport, this guy made eye contact with me and wouldn't look away and I worried over whether this was the Mediterranean eye contact as flirting or the Glaswegian eye contact as prepping for a fight.  What if my face is bleeding.  And if it is, which is worse: That my bleeding face horrified this cute guy, or that it's turning him on?

This is what I have been doing instead of this paper.  What looks like slacking off is actually very rapid processing and synthesis of information.  I promise.

No fucking words.

So, there is a short hallway in the Commons that leads into the Student Org Space, which is where we have the SGA Office and the Student Events Board Office.  The hallway walls were painted into chalkboards this year and this week, SEB finally chalked it to advertise upcoming events.

And guess what's there in one corner?

Tell ya wife
Tell ya children
Tell ya husband
They playing everybody

Are you for real?

So, we have a story about how a black woman was sexually assaulted in her own home, which becomes a story about how a black gay man said something in a funny way.  Where two white men take his words to turn it into a song.  How this became memetic is gross in itself.  The disproportionate sexual violence experienced by black women is erased enough, but to take it to the point where you're literally erasing "raping" and inserting another word to advertise campus events?

I am sitting in the Commons getting increasingly pissed off.

ETA: Here is a blog piece that goes deeper into how the appropriation and erasure occurs here.

This is my life.

1. Text Annie to see if Feminista Death Squad Night was happening.
2. Internet
3. Remember was waiting for response an hour later.
4. Text friend. Uncertain response, decided to just stay in and try to work.
5. Decide to make dinner instead of just eating more raisin bran.
6. Move stuff to room first.
7. Walk back and forth between bedroom and living room trying to remember where I put my iPod.
8. See it next to my computer, plug it in to recharge.
9. Internet
10. Remember dinner, go to kitchen, wonder what to make.
11. Come back to internet to ask Kyle whether to make pasta or eggs.
12. Internet
13. Remember was making dinner, ask Kyle again.
14. Go back to kitchen.
15. See eggs are out, put them back in fridge.
16. Remember mother called last night, promised to call next day.
17. Return to room to get phone, stopped to tell Kyle what I was doing
18. Internet
19. Blog about this.

This all started at 7.

I hate journalism.

So, by now, you've heard about the Rutgers student who killed himself after his roommate (and co) publicized him being with a guy?

The NYT piece originally had this sentence:

It wasn't immediately clear what Clementi's sexual orientation was, and a call asking the family's lawyer about it was not immediately returned Wednesday.

This is copy-pasted because I had an old version up that I copied to a friend's facebook.  I know it's not there now; it's been edited to this:

The lawyer has not responded to requests for comment on whether Clementi was open about his sexual orientation.

So, either New York Times actually thought it was appropriate to call the family's lawyer up to ask if he was actually the gay, or they thought it was appropriate to call to ask if he was open to his family about it and worded the sentence terribly at first.

Either way: What the actual fuck.

I also just noticed that they edited this sentence: "Coincidentally, the university on Wednesday was launching a new two-year Project Civility, designed to get students thinking about how they treat others."  You know what it used to say?  I don't have the actual sentence, but it used to indicate how Rutgers is in a state notable for being run by mob bosses and Jersey Shore (the latter in veiled terms), but it's been working on an unnamed two-year program to improve students' behavior.  Oh.

stir-fry

In this, I am like many ethnic stereotypes of mothers: When I hear people are unhappy, I want to make them food.

My kitchen became smoky as I made fried rice tonight, and I recalled this article about college students or college-educated kids moving into cheap apartments in Chinatown and complaining about feeling alienated by their neighbors who weren't the Model Minority chinks or the (half-white) Asian girlfriends of white hipsters.  They complained about the pervasive smells of fish and 'ethnic' cooking.

I was born in Maryland, right outside of 'the nation's capital', which is a phrase I would hear a lot in slogans on television and radio.  The marble memorials became a place I was more often just forced to visit as we showed visiting cousins around.  I resented the Air and Space Museum.

Though American from birth (though I spent much of my first year in Hong Kong), I was the son of immigrants and a shy boy, so I never really picked up a lot of things other kids took for granted.  I didn't get a lot of American traditions, but I also could not read Chinese characters or really follow the arcane Hong Kong movies or serials and I hated the taste of lotus paste in the moon cakes that came out around the autumn moon festival.

Part of the strangeness of neo-paganism for me was this reclamatory celebration of equinoxes and solstices, when these were already events to have big family dinners on.  I navigated a space between American and Chinese, which were separated identities.

It is hard to explain this: It is not that I vividly experienced and recognized this dissonance as a child.  My life was seamless in moving between school and my parents' home and my grandmother's.  But my life was also a strange mix of peering at the inscrutable lifestyles of my classmates with American families and playing by myself in the long hours at Maa Maa's house as my parents worked.

I found my own way to fill the time there and, later, at my own house where my maternal grandparents watched me.  I carried around massive books of dinosaurs and marine animals and filled notebooks with Pokémon of my own creation.  I played Sailor Moon or Power Rangers.  I did not really know about parties or sleepovers, but I knew all 151 Pokémon and I knew about sea anemones and I knew there was no such thing as brontosauruses because I knew someone got confused when they found an apatosaurus fossil.

And I never knew what a meatloaf really was or what it involved or why it was consumed until a few years ago.  Meatloafs are still strange to me.  Meanwhile, rice was an excruciatingly boring part of every dinner and I didn't understand how my classmates ate dinner or why rice was something that could be unusual or a 'favorite food'.  Maa Maa pursued me to eat the eyes of the fish on those weekends as my parents worked weddings, and my sister was always the one more willing to eat new things.

It never occurred to me that this guy who harassed me was racist.  He would talk about having called my home and my mother picked up to say,  "Flied lice!  Flied lice!"  It was annoying and I ignored him, but it didn't occur to me to categorize these actions as 'racist'.  They just were.  And my mother worked in an office; if anyone was picking up at home, it would be my father.

In time, I would become bitter at the dissonance. As I became tired of the Lincoln Memorial, I became tired of being unable to be American without the 'Asian dash'. And this anger turned inwards in something I only now recognize as 'internalized racism' and I wanted to be Not Chinese. I never recognized or thought about what I would be without my Chinese ethnicity, except a blank ethnicity means whiteness in our white supremacist society, and I think I understood that on a base level.

And it was also more than that.  "I hate being Chinese," I said to my mother once on one of my family's forced walks through the neighborhood to save us children from our fatness.  Her response was quiet and denying and ultimately irrelevant.  It was the summation of my fourteen-year-oldness.

It was me responding to the overwhelming nature of the world, of so many intersecting ways of being and living.  Solving being me.  It was responding to a home I was quietly, desperately needing to escape and to hating my body and to a society where it was so much easier being white and to being simultaneously in and out of the closet.

And in more time, I would come to settle in being a gay/queer Chinese American, with Hong Konger parents and villager grandparents. I would learn to excise my racialization as 'Asian' or this 'Chinese' that subsumed multiple East Asian identities into one ignorant term, my orientalization, my treatment in a racist society, all that from my cultural heritage. I would learn to use a wok and reconnect with a language that is clumsy from me.  How I began to get to this point is a different story, one that involves cemeteries and butterflies.

As the soy sauce quickly bubbled away in my wok, I relished it all.  I felt a wild desire to be living with good friends who will let me buy groceries for the household and cook for them all every night.  I wanted to feed people.  I have a brownie in the fridge that I plan to microwave, but tonight, I really desire a honey bun from my new favorite Chinese bakery hidden in Rockville.  Or a Portuguese egg tart.  Or one of their chocolate croissants.  I think I have to go put that brownie in the microwave now.

It is not about being proud of my heritage, though that is part of it, nor about 'balancing' separate identities.  It's about not having separate identities.  It's about taking all these social forces and identities and assumptions and hierarchies and oppressions and deconstructing them for myself, shedding them like a moth who has pupated for far too long.

I am not free of intersectionality, of course, or kyriarchy or privilege or oppression.  That is not what I mean.  More accurately, I can see it all more clearly, because I can begin to emerge from double consciousness.  What was dissonance becomes integration.  What was resentment becomes recognition.  I can see myself more clearly now, oppressor and oppressed and how neither excuses the other.

I should try to not make fried rice while in my pajamas.  The smell clings to my shirt, my skin.  Though I will launder this smell off, I viciously savor being that guy who fills the apartment and the hall with scary, foreign-smelling smoke.  And I am still that guy when I make IKEA meatballs and pasta in alfredo sauce tomorrow night.

Wiping Off the Whipped Cream: Unveiling the sexual power dynamics of Cazwell's "Ice Cream Truck"

The artist Cazwell is clearly forty years old but he's performing with a bunch of super sexualized twenty year olds, trying to pass himself off as such.  He also talks about the 'school yard' as though he were still in high school (or even younger?) when he is obviously far too old.  Cazwell indicates that he is available on the sidewalk "May to July", the months during which school is out, again implying that he is still a school boy.

The images of a child's xylophone, 'rainbow sprinkles', the iconic ice cream truck are also all part of the process of self-juvenilization.  The performers do not consume ice cream that is more typically considered for adults, but rather, those associated with ice cream trucks and children: red popsicles, ice cream pies, Drumsticks, watermelon Icees.  I am surprised there was not a red rocket popsicle.  There is a transparent veil of innocence over the abundant sexuality, from the obvious metaphors to the sexualization of the simple act of consuming ice cream.

Meanwhile, the song has an extended metaphor of ice cream = sex, using phallic popsicle imagery.  Cazwell persistently offers to buy the object of his affection 'ice cream', implying an imbalance within this sexual relationship.  Although he engages the object ("you") with a semblance of equal standing, in reality, he is the one in charge.  He insists, "Meet me at the ice cream truck [emphasis mine]."  He tells "you" to finish the ice cream before "it melts on the floor."  But in another verse, he talks about the object of his affections as a third party.  "You", 'he", it is all ultimately interchangeable as anonymous sexual objects.

The exploitative aspect of this pursuit is made more apparent through the examination of racialized dynamics.  Cazwell is a white man while many of the young men around him appear to be Latino, perhaps implying sex tourism where the image of the school yard is a metaphor for a sexual wonderland of young, nubile, tan flesh such as some ambiguous Latin American stop for the moneyed white man.  Cazwell's insistence on using his limited Spanish ("Uno, dos, tres, cuatro") indicates his shallow appreciation of the Latino sexual object.  And all the dancers are light-skinned, reflecting that, even as the Latino lover is fetishized, fair-skinned beauty is what is valorized among gay male culture.

The final image is whipped cream being wiped off a brown chest to reveal Cazwell's name tattooed over a nipple.  But examination of the video reveals that this tattoo does not appear on the artist's own chest, but rather, the flesh at the end is one of the brown dancers.  He has branded this silent dancer for himself.

This music video demonstrates the gay male pursuit of youth (conflated with perfection and desirability) through the commodified trading of sex.  If the aging gay man can obtain sex from a beautiful young man, he is essentially obtaining youth from the man, through validation of his own desirability.  And far from an equal exchange in this sexual relationship, the aging gay man predates on the object like a vampire, exerting dominance through his masked but undeniable age, his comparative wealth, his white privilege.

You have nice abs, but I don't love you.

That's Gay is super cis gay male-centric and has problems, but I thought this video, which is only seven million months late, illustrates my feelings about the recent trend of masculinity as portrayed in advertising.  And I know everyone is past this bullshit, but watching this yesterday just made me think about its reception again and how everything annoyed me.  So I am going to whine about it now.

I understand that these Old Spice commercials are supposed to be less misogynistic than, say, Axe ads where hypermasculinity goes hand in hand with driving women into a sexual frenzy through your olfactory presence unlike the insufficiently masculine you before applying the potent essence of a thousand middle school guy locker rooms.   By which I mean 'sexually potent', of course.

I mean, the original ad with Isaiah Moustafa actually addresses women, who all want manly men like Isaiah Moustafa, because he's black and well-built and has a deep voice and we all know black men are smooth, hypermasculine sexual dynamites who are never gay and have God-like voices.  They also probably dance really well, unlike white people who dance the Charleston.

Wait, what do you mean, this is a stereotype common to ads and also everything?   He's funny!   That can't be racist!

Anyway, the original ad addresses women who can now turn their men into ridiculously sexy black men too by buying products!  That is way better than being horny maenads!  Your new Old Spice Man can also ride gleaming horse-motorcycles and do you beneficent favors like get you tickets to that thing you love (who gives a fuck what it is) and I guess defend your honor.  Chivalry is totally pro-woman.

But what does this mean for lesbian women?  Do they want Isaiah Moustafa as well?  Possibly, considering woman-woman action in advertising always has an invisible '-man' appended to the end.

Also, women shouldn't use Old Spice because it'll make them grow mustaches and stuff.  lol, gross, women with muscles!

And people should be taken seriously because they're men.

Wait, weren't we talking about The Man Your Man Could Be being less sexist than Axe?

The defense of the Old Spice commercials is that it becomes ridiculous and thus parodies or satires advertisements that play on Real Men Buy This Product!  Why?  Because Old Spice Guy claims to boil pasta by sticking his head in the oven.   LOL WHO DOES THAT.  Hypermasculine men do.  How is this more ridiculous than shooting Snicker bars at fast walkers in yellow short-shorts?  Or killing helicopters?   Or split atoms with roundhouse kicks?   These are not parodies of hypermasculinity.  They are celebrations and the implicit wish that lesser men could perform mythical acts of manliness like Gilgamesh who is one-third god as manliness triumphs even more mathematically sensical hereditary lineages.

And who are these lesser men?  Sissies who wear skirts to bars who deserve to have giant beer cans dropped on them!  Worse of all, they're mocked by women.  That is some fear of Medusa's grin psychosexual bullshit right there.

So, what is ultimately the message?  It's not just Buy Old Spice Because We're Funny, it's Buy Old Spice Because We're Manly to the Point of Ridiculously Mythic Standards.  Manliness becomes gender-conforming heterosexual maleness, which is under attack for some reason.  Because of 'metrosexuality', because of modern day constraints of PC sensitivity, because of women, because of fags.

But putting on deodorant and drinking light beer (lol) will save the day and also your manhood, because when you put on a dress, it falls off.  It literally falls off and the closest woman will swoop in like a harpy to devour it before it even hits the ground and then you too shall be a gay.

So, products are sold by exploiting this feeling of threatened masculinity.  This masculinity which must be protected from the women and the queer men and the trans folk and you know what? other straight men who aren't enough or themselves who aren't enough, through beating and removal from our communities (either by violent force or the attrition of discrimination) and repression and murder.

The feelings are made all the more explicit in the South Park episode, "South Park is Gay!", which concludes that the Queer Eye guys are lobsters who want to render the Earth defenseless by making all the men fags.  I mean, 'men who have appropriated gay...ness'.  And who will protect us from the lobsters when all we have left are women and gay men (and also the millions upon millions of brown people who cannot afford highlights and totally sweet shoes.)

For people who want to defend South Park as satire that's better than Family Guy—talk about low standards—well, 'satire' is not a general term that can be applied to something and suddenly its message is whichever is the best, most progressive, and most incisive one.  You know.  FYI.  It's a satire on 'metrosexuality' and the point is how it's bad for straight men and also the world.

How can something be satire when it hits all the right notes in our societal song?   "A Modest Proposal" would not be ironic if the English were already considering trying Irish baby stew.  The point is, when I'm not mansplaining feminism, I too find the original ad amusing.  But it's not any different from all the other insulting, homophobic, misogynistic ads, and I don't know why anybody seems to think it could be.

I also think If you really want humor where the punchline is machismo, I suggest looking elsewhere.

It's almost like it's possible for people who aren't straight male advertising executives to skewer hypermasculinity without reitering all its points, feeding this Viking fantasy.  Somehow, we are to believe that we live in a world where being this misogynistic, homophobic fool is somehow functional.  And the sad thing is, we kinda do.

I plan on blogspotting regularly now.

I made cookies today just so I could make a cookie ice cream sundae.  Success!

I'm amazing.

Let's Get Nerdy: Or, Why Jon Law would make amazing films you would pay full price and sneak in cheap snacks from the Chinese supermarket to see

So, they're making a Warcraft film.  The first thing is that they told Uwe Boll that he wasn't making it, which is kinda amazing.  I do not know why people allow him to touch their video game franchises; it's like looking at that kid who just finished wiping his hands on his feces-fouled shirt and thinking, "Hey, I can trust him to hold onto my sandwich."

You cannot.

The other thing about this film is that they are setting it between WarCraft III and World of Warcraft and they are telling it from the Alliance's point of view.  The former makes sense because WoW's story is already being told in the game and has been well-traveled by the game's nations' worth of players and I don't feel like it needs to be transposed to the screen.  It's a rich world and other stories can be told!  The latter irks me because I have a strong urge to cheer on the underdogs, the Horde, and would like a fantasy film that really tells the story from the side of the monstrous folk that are easily marginalized by the self-righteous Alliance.  (Not that portraying the Alliance as the stereotypical straw racists would be preferable either.)  But it makes sense because telling the story from the Alliance's side allows them to use mainly human characters, i.e., not spend as much time and money on heavy makeup and CGI.

To get to my main point: This Warcraft film is telling a previously untold story that takes place on Azeroth featuring new characters.  The characters are completely open.  The story itself is relatively open.  So what does this mean?  We are probably going to get another film about white dudes with beards and swords spouting clichés in English accents and maybe there will be a dwarf with a Scottish accent.  Women will be significant in relation to the main characters and expose a lot of skin.  I will probably go to see it and I will probably come back to complain a lot.

So, instead, here is the Warcraft film I want to see: I only played WoW on and off for about a year, but play it I did and my first main character is Fariath, a black woman paladin.  So, I don't want her specifically in the film, seeing as I don't roleplay so she has no personality.  But imagine a film where the protagonist was a black woman who kicked ass.

I'm imagining Gina Torres plays her.

In platemail, wielding a giant warhammer.

There is a method beneath all this besides thinking Gina Torres is hot and amazing as all get out and she needs to be cast in more things now.

The Bechdel Test posits a very simple standard for films: It portrays 1. two women who 2. have a conversation with each other 3. about something besides men.

Seems simple and obvious: I am sure any woman reading this can give an example of how she had one—just one!—conversation with another woman and talked about something besides men.  But if you think about it, so few films and television shows pass this test.  Because women appear in media almost exclusively for the male gaze, meaning they exist for the purposes of straight men, meaning they are sexualized in ways male characters are not and they have no real interests outside of men.

Which is why so many women characters in romantic comedies could have their job be replaced by any other job and the film would not be impacted much at all.  Because a woman's life outside of her romantic relationships is no more significant than the choice of frame for the picture on her desk.

I suspect that this is why so many women in romantic comedies are writers (seriously, think about it), because being a "writer" in the collective imagination of audiences is such a nebulous occupation that it presents almost no pressure and represents no force in a woman's life, freeing up all her time to pursue her lead, or rather, the lead man.  At best, a woman's career that actually means something is also an obstacle to the woman's love life and she needs to discover love.

(One reason why The Devil Wears Prada is amazing is that Anne Hathaway SPOILERS chooses to leave her job not for love but because she realized she wasn't who she wanted to be or where she wanted to be anymore.  When she meets up with her ex-boyfriend, she does not expect or demand him back.  She changed (back) for herself and her ex recognizing that and loving her is a side bonus.)

So, Gina Torres' character would have a woman best friend who was also a Knight of the Silver Hand.  Maybe the best friend would be focused on the healing arts in contrast to the combat-focused Gina Torres (holy paladin versus ret/prot paladin for WoW players).  And most importantly, they never talk about men.  They don't have to dish about the men in their life.  They can talk about slaying the Undead Scourge and debate the founding of Orgrimmar.

They will fight in boots with no height to the heel, at all.

I just really want a fantasy film that does not involve white dudes who get more realistic armor and women only get to cast spells or fire arrows in midriff-baring armor.  I want a film where women can be something not auxiliary to men.

The problem is that it is not just that nobody is writing stories that pass the Bechdel Test; it's that the film industry does not want to pass the Bechdel Test.  And it does not even make sense because action and speculative fiction films that star strong woman characters that are not there for men do well.

And men in the industry persist in dismissing the truth, labeling solid films that profit with strong women as "exceptions" and continue to produce shit films with more of the same actors that look like the people with the most money and power in the industry (i.e., white and male).  All to deny that flat-out sexism (and racism) that motivates the decision-making process here.

Silent Hill, which has mixed and mostly poor reviews, is a horror film based on a video game, which was surprisingly well done in my opinion.  It captures the spirit of the games and, interestingly, passes the Bechdel Test.  Because the main characters are two women and a girl, and both of these women are badass.  The father-husband character was even only included because of corporate pressure to include a male character.

When I showed my casting choices (including Ruth Negga, the Ethiopian-Irish woman actor in Breakfast on Pluto, and Zhang Ziyi, a Chinese actress probably best known in the US for Memoirs of a Geisha, and Vin Diesel because what is a WoW film without the man) for this Warcraft film to someone online, they answered that this would not be a WoW film anymore.  Which is sad and true.  What is WoW without its night elf women in bikini armor?  Without its extremely exaggerated musculature for male characters?  What is a WoW film without the male gaze, basically?

In my mind, something amazing.

But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.

"Well, I don't know what will happen now.  We've got some difficult days ahead.  But it doesn't matter with me now.  Because I've been to the mountaintop.  And I don't mind."

Martin Luther King, Jr. said these words the day before he was assassinated.  I had read his last speech for the first time a couple weeks ago, and this quote continues to haunt me to this night.  It feels like a sturdy hand on a shoulder, a last smile before a fade to white, a last promise to us, a last request we must keep.

Sometimes, it feels like all great people become prescient of their deaths a little.  Maybe it is simply mundane movements that, through hindsight, transforms into strange prophecies.

I think these simple sentences, with simple meaning but also depth of meaning.  It's Neruda's "Eso es todo," or Danticat's "Dye mon, gen mon."  It is final and sad and beautiful and sorta hurtful, in a kind way.

I read a heartbreaking poem not long after I read that speech, John Updike's "Dog's Death.  I suggest never reading it because you will die and I do not need that drama, but take my word when I say that the words "Good dog" are the saddest things you will ever read.

I think these are my favorite works, and it is why I prefer vignettes, short stories, poems to novels.  There is an intimacy.  There is something weirdly honest and true.  Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day is a, perhaps surprisingly, amazing film.  In a shallow glance, it is a period romantic comedy, but there is depth in this simple film.  Right outside of a party of the London's youth, on the edge of the Second World War, an older man tells an older woman, "I don't think I can bear it again."

One of my favorite scenes in The History Boys is a quiet one: Hector, the English teacher of "General Studies", and Posner, the student who remembered all the songs, sit and talk about Thomas Hardy's "Drummer Hodge".  Hector explains to Posner,

The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.

For me, I think it is something different.  There is that moment, in those unadorned words, these characters, these personae, these voices flare up in fierce softness and they are more alive than me.

Think of it as personality dialysis!

So, while I was reading Kristin Chenoweth's response to Ramin Setoodeh's idiotic piece, I was completely imagining that Kristin Chenoweth was complaining to me, personally, as I nod along and snap at the appropriate moments.

"Mm-hm, Kristin Chenoweth, that is so spot-on.  Come, let this heterosexist news magazine filth clutter our minds no more.  While we wait for our delicious fruit pies to finish cooling, we shall ride our bikes to the park while singing!"

And at the park, there would be birds and frogs and boys, and I don't even care because I'll be hanging out and singing with my BFF.

And yes, the entire time, I call Kristin Chenoweth by Kristin Chenoweth's full name.

For the Horde!: The Various Ineptitudes of Allies

Yes, it's a stupid WoW joke, shut up.

Months ago, I was standing in a kitchen and watching as one friend, R., was surprised by another, H., declaring that she was not a feminist and hated feminists.  R. and H. continued talking about it, and A., standing next to me, turned to me and grinned, "Well, we're not feminists, are we, Jonathan?"

I still do not know what that means or how to respond.  My instinct, beyond feeling awkward and not saying anything, is to say, "Actually, yes, I am."  If I felt like A. was making that assertion on the basis that he felt that he, as a man, could not be a feminist because he had no capacity to understand what sexism fully means and thus felt that he should not represent himself in a way that would co-opt the movement(s) from women's experiences.  If I felt like this was the angle he was coming from, I would have had no problem agreeing and then entering a discussing with A. about the topic.

But no, it was pretty clear that, somehow, feminism was laughable or at least male participation in feminism.  I have, customarily, identified as a "feminist" to indicate my dedication to anti-sexism efforts.  Less so recently, due to reading about the issue mentioned above, and I am fine if some people hold that I cannot be a feminist as a male-identified, male-assigned person.  I am not invested in wearing the term "feminist" like a badge; it is a shortcut for me to say that I believe that there is a patriarchy, that there is continuous and varied sexism in the world that acts to oppress women, that I am willing to and have participated in anti-sexism activism, but it is not not a vital identification.  I do not need to be able to call myself a "feminist" to believe or do those things, and it is never my prerogative to preempt someone else's definition of feminism and what a feminist is.

But I feel like if I simply replied, "Maybe not, but I am against sexism," it would be meaningless.  Not many people would say they are for sexism and most would say that they are against it, but there is an unspoken second part of that sentence.  I could be saying, "I am against sexism, which is something that persists to this day that we all participate in and, as men, benefit from in any number of ways," while he agrees, "Yeah, I am against sexism too, and good thing it doesn't exist anymore."

It is the same in any other conversation.  "I am against racism, which is a persistent and complex system in our world that continues to affect and effect everything we do and say and all the outcomes of various processes, regardless of intention," versus "I am against racism, which was totally eliminated by white people working with Santa Luther, who knew his place and how to be nice and appeasing and non-confrontational enough."

It is possible for one to just straight-out say the former, but not everybody (read: me) has that in-person articulation.  It is easier for me to just say, "Yes, I am a feminist," but does that ease in a passing conversation override the problematic aspects of me making that statement?

In a related topic, I had also been reading about the problematic aspect of the word "ally".  Like the idea of "male feminists", as I understand it, there are two issues:

1. People who take on these labels use them as shields to defend and excuse their privilege.*
2. People who take on these labels use them as permission to co-opt the movement from actual women/POC/queer people/etc.

Honestly, I am not ready to personally disavow the term "ally", like I am not ready to personally reject "feminism" as inadequate due to its history of transphobia, of racism, of classism.  (Though I would also feel appropriative taking to womanism or anything like that, as I have never and can never find that feminism does not represent or fight for me as a woman.  Because I'm not a woman.  For me, I find it better to understand people in those two categories as Doing It Wrong.  I can recognize that the idea of "allies" can build coalitions and empower persons who may feel it would be otherwise appropriative for them to participate in anti-oppression causes due to their privilege, while remaining aware of the possibility of and critical of unexamined privilege.

As before, I am not going to assert that people have to accept my understanding or to accept my identification as an "ally" if I were to ever adopt it.

I'm not sure what I am trying to say here.  I think I am just trying to put together how I feel about something I've been reading and thinking about.  I think I am more optimistic because I feel like I have seen that there are anti-racist queer activists and Marxist feminist activists and queer disability rights activists and people able to navigate all these issues.  I know people who could easily be the stereotypically clueless feminists but instead are constantly willing to read and listen and learn.  I have seen my own transformations, slowly absorbing anti-oppression works around me and learning to be aware enough to see all this around me.  I have friends who listened to me stumble my way through explaining what I feel are problematic aspects of things and they were able to appreciate my attempts without demanding I kowtow to their own sense of pride and progressivism.

I just feel good about it, even when I am pissed about it.  Maybe I'm just still young.

*This is an article focused on the first in feminism, but I dislike how it attempts to negate someone's sexual identity, even if that person is a complete ass.

How Lady Gaga Ruined My Life

Monday night, I slept for twelve hours.  Rather, I slept from ten at night to about five in the morning and then from seven to two in the afternoon Tuesday.  This was after several days of almost no sleep.  And then I slept for just four hours Wednesday morning. This is unusually little sleep even for me.  And what have I been doing instead of sleeping?

Rah rah ah-ah-ah!  Roma-romamah!  Ga-ga ooh-la-la!

Want your bad romance!

Yes.  I lay in bed, staring into the dark and sing to myself, 'I want your horror, I want your design. 'Cause you're a criminal as long as you're mine.'  I realize I am the second-to-last gay man to fall in line, and I think I am being punished for it.  I've been stricken with Lady Gaga.  I've been mauled by the Fame Monster.  My fingers unconsciously curling into the Claw.  I wake up in the morning to find my hair has tied itself into a bow.  Diamonds cascade around me spontaneously and suspend in midair.

(Also really good is Dangerous Muse's remix.)

Though I was watching that crazy-hot vampire 'Teeth' video weeks ago, the affliction really began this past Friday, when I went out with some people who were meeting with Queen Margaret University students visiting for the night.  At the first bar, FHQ, I found myself singing along and moving in my seat to 'Bad Romance' while I downed a rum and coke (the manliest drink I had all night; it was followed by a Woo Woo).  Hours later, I was in the middle of a crowd, dancing badly to 'Bad Romance'.  And the song has stayed in my head ever since.

I listened to it (and 'Womanizer' and 'Maneater' and 'Crazy in Love') as I braved the fluffy snow (a 'blizzard' to the Scots and laughable to me) today to get to the saddest Chinese supermarket I have ever seen.  I danced in place as I soaked rice noodles in water and watched my cheap pan pop out of shape as the soy sauce sizzled.

My iPod is going at it as I rush through the kitchen door, down the stairs, and out the building's back door to the Adam Smith building for my classes.  I am mouthing it to myself as I wait for my e-tickets to Nice to finish printing in the library (and miss my overloud printer-scanner at home).  I am embarrassingly admitting to it to my flatmates as we eat dinner around the table (and me with my scrambled egg sandwich dinner on a lazy Sunday).  I am stepping to the beat as I walk through the chilly streets of the West End to my friends' place to make fajitas.  I am imagining everyone suddenly breaking into choreographed dancing on the subway as I near the Buchanan Street stop.

The other day, as I walked to 'Walk walk fashion baby,' I watched this car make a turn and start up Great George's, the short road from the stores up the hill to my flat.  I briefly thought, 'That car is really close to the right,' before I caught myself, 'No, they drive on the other side here.'  And then a second car started coming down, and the first shifted left back into its own lane.  I realized that I had adjusted to the roads here without realizing and even actually tried to correct myself.

Increasingly, I do not know where I am.  I do not feel like returning to school.  Not in that I want to stay in Glasgow forever, but rather, I am questioning this path I had made out for myself which has since been thrown off.  I was trying to adjust the path to only detour and then go back to the previously decided destination, but now I am thinking about how I don't need to.  I've never been an ends person; I've always done things because I wanted to do them not because they'll lead me to somewhere else.  And I am not sure I want to be getting a double degree in sociology and social work anymore; I do not know if I want a university degree anymore.

I do not know where my life really is now, and I blame Lady Gaga.  It's easier that way.  See, she made me stay up to 2 AM writing about 'Bad Romance'.

I want your love and I want your revenge.  You and me could write a bad romance.

And then they go on to tell these stories to you

"Between the Pool and the Gardenias" was unlike the other stories we were taught in tenth grade. Marie, half-mad from the grief of multiple miscarriages, had run away to Port-au-Prince to escape a resentful and faithless husband and an unsympathetic village. She finds the body of an abandoned infant in the street and adopts it; she tells "Rose" the stories of her life as she tries to wash away the growing stink of rot with stolen perfume.

This short story was written by Edwidge Danticat, a Haitian-American writer born in Port-au-Prince who had emigrated to Brooklyn at twelve. I fell in love with her mythic language. Like the poetry of Pablo Neruda, her words read like pure earth to me, elemental in their ache of loss and desire. I felt the prose down to my bones. I ended up writing my International Baccalaureate Extended Essay on the use of myths and superstitions in the short stories. I wrote about black butterflies and sleep talking and deye mon gen mon and mermaids singing in Latin at a Catholic Mass in an underwater heaven, watched over by the sea lwa Agwé.

Marie's story is from the collection Krik? Krak! The title refers to a call and response style of Haitian storytelling. "Krik?" "Krak!" "I have many stories I could tell you."

There were many nights when I saw some old women leaning over my bed.

"That there is Marie," my mother would say. "She is now the last one of us left."

Mama had to introduce me to them, because they had all died before I was born. There was my great grandmother Eveline who was killed by Dominican soldiers at the Massacre River. My grandmother Défile who died with a bald head in a prison, because God had given her wings. My godmother Lili who killed herself in old age because her husband had jumped out of a flying balloon and her grown son left her to go to Miami.

In rereading "Between the Pool and the Gardenias" within this collection, this simple section takes on greater intensity. These women, these passing references, are characters in the collection's other short stories. These short stories all intertwine, a technique more explicitly done in her other collection, The Dew-Breaker. Sometimes, the connections are a little more subtle, but my interpretation is simple: There is more to the story.

There is more behind it all. There is a greater context. By excising this story out, our English teachers decontextualized the story in this instance, but one of the greatest things I took away from IB English was learning about the writer. It is so easily missed but I feel like it is too often that a creative work is divorced from its creator. Place a work of literature in the context of not just the entire body of work, but in the context of the writer, of the writer's experiences, of the writer's time and place. How the writer's identities, gender, sexuality, skin color, how it all comes to intersect with each other and with greater contexts, histories, cultures, systems. It is utterly enriching to see the veins of history pulsing through what was a simple story.

In fact, it is too often that we divorce stories in all their forms from their contexts and histories. We see it often in the discussion of the nations of people of color. How often have we heard people advocate simply dismissing the Middle East or Africa (reduced from vast regions of different cultures and nations to singular geopolitical identities) as doomed? Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie in the TEDTalks "The danger of a single story" explains, "Start the story of with the failure of the African state, and not with the colonial creation of the African state, and you have an entirely different story" (10:40, but watch the whole thing).

We see the single story again in discussions about Haiti as it becomes worthy of humanitarian aid again due to the 12 January earthquake (and its subsequent fifty-two aftershocks). It is a failed nation. It is a nation of corrupt governments. It is a nation of unbelievable poverty, and it is a nation of tragedy. And we do love connecting it to HIV. We see this story used in pleas for help for this pitiful nation ("No possibility of feelings more complex than pity.") and in callous dismissals and calls to simply abandon Haiti.

But: Why does this matter? Yes, it is incorrect to believe these single stories, and we are taught—to some extent—that it is not "politically correct" to repeat these stereotypes. Why don't we focus on real problems? Real racism? Or how Haitians need help now, regardless of history or politics?

Because our actions are informed by the stories we have been told and have told ourselves. This is the very essence of socialization and cultural learning. When we have thoroughly mired ourselves in these mythic narratives, we know no better than to live and form judgements and make decisions and act by these narratives. Por eso, educations are so fundamental for any government, whether it is wholesale prohibition of literacy for black slaves, the revisionist calenders of the French and Bolshevik Revolutions, the deletion of the Taino people from our American history books when we celebrate Christopher Columbus Day?

How did Ronald Reagan transform American attitudes towards public assistance programs? By making shit up. He told absolute lies about welfare queens. And so, we have this narrative where there are these (black) persons who are really able to work are sucking on the government teat and draining taxpayer money, and this narrative is more powerful than facts. Despite the studies demonstrating otherwise, we can still hear people giving anecdata about the outrageous welfare abuse. By this narrative, we told ourselves we had to "reform" the welfare system into the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act under Clinton. (Look at that name, could you throw in anymore Reagan buzzwords?) We told ourselves that it makes sense to submit welfare recipients to drug tests, that, somehow, we have the right to the lives of these people receiving one particular kind of public assistance—as opposed to, say, public assistance to students (scholarships) or to the wealthy (work expense tax breaks and business stimuli). It is clear how narratives inform policy.

Consider the stories about the dangerous riots everywhere in Haiti immediately following the disasters. Because of these conditions, this chaos, this violence, we had to delay aid and move in military personnel. As ABC News have reported, we block up airports with soldiers, obstructing planes with medical equipment and supplies. We make these vital decisions of balancing security and aid based on this story of violence. And this story is untrue. This is not just sensationalist news and hype; this is a narrative used to justify moving soldiers instead of medicine.

And look at how abduction is transformed into adoption in the narrative. Americans trafficking children under the delusion of being saviors. There is much hullabaloo about this particular case, but leading up to it, the common narrative was we as foreigners need to save those Haitian babies. From the earthquake, from poverty, from suffering, from those riots that don't exist, from death, from lack of families, from their families, from being Haitian. We have Catholic leaders in Miami who want airlifts for children who "appear to be orphaned [emphasis mine]". And this narrative is backed up by prologues long as novels, where we feel that we not only have a moral imperative but a right to another nation's children. Is it any surprise these missionaries believed they were doing God's work? Is anyone really shocked at these missionaries' audacity?

Krik? Krak! was one of the books I had brought along to Glasgow with me. I recently reread it before slowly working on this blog entry (and then losing half of it to a stupid copy-paste error), and, as always, it made me cry. Not just for the characters' pains and tragedies, but in exultation of their hopes. I shared in their common humanity, their blazing dignity, their impossible faith, their love as endless as the sea. Their arguments with mothers about choice of partners. Deye mon gen mon: Behind the mountains are more mountains.

I don't know what I was trying to gain from reading Danticat again. I just knew I wanted to do so much, but it is even illegal for me to volunteer in this country. I knew I was frustrated with the lack of respect for this nation, born of the third successful republic revolution. Ever. This nation whose freedom afforded the United States the Louisiana Purchase because the Haitian Revolution taught Napoleon that the Americans were just too much trouble, only for the U.S. to completely ignore it (because they don't their own slaves getting any ideas) and deem it doomed (because they had to tell themselves it will collapse).

I was sick of people talking about the corrupt governments of Haiti without mentioning the American participation in and manipulation of the government. I was sickened by how Bill Clinton was given any capacity to "help" Haiti, and I was outraged that he foresaw the commodification of yet another Caribbean nation for foreign consumption and foreign profit as a "fix" to the Haitian economy.

This is a poor substitute for tangible help, but that is all I can give for now: A request that you listen. Adichie defines power as "the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person." We have held onto that ability for far too long. And it is not that we must empower Haitians to tell their own stories. We cannot prop ourselves as the heroic enablers of the Haitians, because that is still our story. But rather, we must simply learn to listen better. Because people, they have always been telling their own stories.

A Scottish-English Dictionary

I wish I was better at keeping an updated blog, and I have so many post ideas!, but for now, I give you a Scottish-English Dictionary:

A4: Scottish paper is longer for some reason

alfredo sauce: does not exist in the UK; the "creamy lasagna" sauce is a poor replacement, but now I know where the UMBC dining hall gets their slightly off-putting cream-based sauce

Argos (AR-GOSS): catalog store, where I write down the catalog numbers of insanely cheap items, hand the sheet over to the cashier with a mad grin, pay obscenely few pounds, and then pick up my beautiful new pots and pans or dining set at a second counter

Asian: South Asian, aka, Indian, aka, delicious curries everywhere yessss

aubergine: eggplant

caesar salad dressing: also does not exist

céilidh (CAY-lee): a social event with Scottish country dancing, involving called step instructions, gender binary-conforming partner dancing, and individuals who are really too pissed to be dancing at all so they should stop trying before they hurt someone, aka, me; also, insanely fun

chippy: a restaurant that serves fish and chips

Clockwork Orange: Glasgow subway system, one of the first in the world; it has only two rails in a circle through the city, one going clockwise and the other counterclockwise

coins: worth more than in the States, so don't fucking dismiss it when you drop them; surprisingly easy to figure out the system

courgette: zucchini

Cranachan: traditional Scottish dessert, made with raspberries, whipped cream, whiskey, and honey, topped with toasted oats, as in, "Does anybody else want another Cranachan? Oh, we've still got some alcoholic ones, do you—" "Give me one with whiskey."

deep-fried Mars bars : aka, "Oh God, oh God, my heart"; also a traditional Scottish dessert, tastes like a doughnut at first, then despair

Dreucher's: the better-tasting beer that I have had

Edinburgh (EH-din-brah): an old city with a castle overlooking everything; more conservative and tourist-ridden than Glasgow

Glasgow (GLAHS-go): an industrial blight transformed into a city of culture; more bohème and student-ridden than Edinburgh

gin and tonic: "No, guys, I am so good to walk right now."

haggis: traditional Scottish meal, like shepherd's pie except it uses the sheep parts left over after making shepherd's pie, aka, love it

Hillhead Street: one of the streets GU student apartments are on; it is half a minute from the library and the Hub, one minute from classrooms, and two minutes from the Hillhead subway station, supermarkets, and pubs

Hub, The: aka, the Fraser Building; commons building with student services, food services, and a bookstore named after Adam Smith

Irn Bru: Scottish water; mix between cream soda and bubble gum soda; grows on you strangely quickly

"Is that your way?": "Are you going now?"

Jaffa Cake (jahf-fa kayk): chocolatey, orangey cakes; supposedly addictive

ned: see chav

nips and tatters: turnips and potatoes, served with haggis

"Oh, no": a phrase that still utterly charms me when said in a Scottish accent

Oriental: aka, Far East; something I still have to get used to or it will be a long semester

Rocky Road: a candy bar, as in "Oh, and I got Rocky Road." "Oh, nice, a pint?" "What? No, a bar." "What?" "What?"

Shap: an English village in Cumbria where IFSA-Butler students visited to see what a real Scottish family is like—wait

snow: shuts down Scotland with relative ease, as the Scots are unused to heavy ice or snow and has invested no money into sanding or salting the ground

Strongbow: delicious cider

Thursday: shopping day, where stores stay open late, as in they close at 7:30 19.30 instead of six o' clock

University of Glasgow (GLAHS-go YU-nee): see Hogwarts; also very proud of Adam Smith and Lord Kelvin, among others

working class: fucking poor people (as opposed to the US use of the term, which is nobler, more Real America^TM)

vodka and white: "We're still trying to figure out what white is." "Probably roofies."

2009: A Harsh Teacher

It has been a really long, really short year and pretty iffy in terms of quality. I do not know how else to talk about it, so, in 2009, I learned or realized:

• you can traffic cocaine by hiding it in a toolbox, mixed with coffee grounds, with nails layered over it.
• how to get over someone.
• Oprah has a house in Mantoloking, New Jersey.
• shamans rock.
• that I definitely want to do social work or community work and not sociological research.
• my body is a bastard and likes playing tricks on me.
• people can disappoint you so hard.
• how not to get out of a traffic ticket (i.e., telling the officer I "don't know what happened...").
• I am a "card" (according to Delana Gregg).
• every guy I know is gay.
• not every kid grew up reading books about animals and knows how snakes taste the air because they cannot smell.
• I can do things I never thought I would, even if I felt incredibly uncomfortable the entire time.
• even more about gender and race and queerness and oppression and power without ever having to take a class and I love the internet.
• Natalie Tran is love.
• there was a guy during the Harlem Renaissance whose party trick was inserting a tall candle up his ass.
• there is no depths to which crazy conservatives will sink.
• how to alienate friends and make enemies.
• how much possibility there is for change and there is so much opportunity to make the change you want. (I already knew how far people will go to stop you.)
• I have ideas for change, and I can make them happen if I really want to.
• it is hilarious when people talk about queer rights when they clearly know nothing.
• how eating meat just seems increasingly unjustifiable and veganism looks to be the right path.
• how to get into a car accident.
• that politicians, despite everything, really are more about making the other guy look bad than helping people.
• that I neck-snap and finger shake like a stereotypical angry black woman. I, I don't know.
• that when you apologize, you just apologize. Put aside all your bitterness and resentment and all the other valid points you have: The point is that you did wrong. Apologize, and step back. Don't mitigate, edit, amend. Just. apologize. That is all.
• that I probably am dealing with clinical depression. ("Probably" in the sense that I would have gone in for psychiatric counseling about pharmaceutical treatment if I were not leaving so soon.)
• the depths of my dad's assholishness is far lower than I thought.
• "Just Dance" is not a song that has been around forever and is, in fact, a relatively recent song by Lady Gaga.
• what Lady Gaga probably looks like.
• that I am not kidding when I say: Every guy I know is gay.
• how to accidentally and permanently delete the first entry of my blog, where I explain some things.
• it is possible to be in love with a duffel bag.

ETA: Added a few points over the past half hour. (Not at the bottom, because I put the items in somewhat chronological order.) I promise I am done.