If you are looking for something to do tonight, head on over to The Comedy Underground for a Yoga Behind Bars Fundraiser. It will be a great way to meet folks who make Yoga Behind Bars happen and spend a Tuesday night.
The show starts at 8:30 pm
The Comedy Underground
So, I haven’t written in a long time. Not because I haven’t really wanted to write. In fact quite the opposite is true. I just haven’t found the time or the energy to put into blogging. I think this will get a lot better soon. I quit my job in retail and am looking for other ways to live my life. I was contemplating recapping all the issues i thought about writing but the moment has passed.
I am looking to plug in more the radical community in Denver. I am also looking to make sure I enjoy the way I spend my time. Time is so much more important than money.
Anyway. I am going to start vlogging soon…at the very least a few more posts and a lot more twitter.
So, with the DNC so quickly approaching I have been thinking a lot about the role of protest. Many people don’t understand why one would protest the Democrats. I personally feel it is essential to protest both the Republicans and the Democrats because these conventions illuminate the farcical democracy we have as our political system. The democrats maintain the illusion that they are for the people, while in reality still pandering to the same capitalist agenda as the Republicans. I am frustrated with those who buy into the lesser of two evils bullshit. I am not interested in mediocre leadership or hope. I am interested in a participatory democracy, not one of passive spectatorship. If we want change in our country, more importantly our communities we must work together to make it happen. Casting a vote alone will never result in the progressive change we need to fix inequality and fight oppression.
People create and comply with our social structure. Realizing that the way things are is not inevitable is empowering. This allows for endless creativity to restructure our world. While this is a global revisioning, we must begin here and now. We can work now to skill share and start community gardens. We need to stop being afraid of each other and start talking and take back our communities. We need to set up free stores and start food co-ops. We need to take care of each other now. This isn’t about wistful dreaming, but direct action. And that leads me to protesting…so direct action often takes form in protesting. Protests offer visibility to often marginalized political beliefs. There is power in visibility. The critique of the democrats can radicalize others who are exposed to new ways of thinking and inspire actions.
I want people to see the beauty and freedom of our dreams. The protests of the DNC can’t just be angry ranting and brick throwing, they must demonstrate the totality of our politics.
The only thing about protests is that it can’t just end at the protest. We must take this opportunity to come together as activists and work to create a better community. It is in that action that we start to actualize our vision.
The funny thing is I intended this blog to be about cyberfeminism and I have not really ever posted on that. So, tonight seems to be the perfect time. I have a complicated relationship with technology and thankfully, so do many cyberfeminists. The first cyberfeminist writing was full of Utopian notions of virtual spaces. Writers saw virtual reality as new territory ripe for redefinition and liberation. Donna Harraway writes about how the complex mixing of flesh and machine challenges the traditional gender binary.
But see, pan-capitalism and the commoditization of virtual reality hindered this utopia from development (this is not to exclude resistance). In the practical applications of virtual technology real life structures were imposed on the virtual structures. To signify virtual spaces as feminine the typical pink, babies, shoes and cosmopolitan bullshit was implemented. While the technology can be somewhat democratizing (depending on what country you live in, your wealth and level of access) many virtual spaces are used to make us better consumers. Hey look now you can buy shit 24/7 and it will just show up to your door!
Cyberfeminists critique the industrial side of the Information Communication and Technology industry. Faith Wilding articulates a need to analyze the invisible maintenance labor of our highly technocratic culture. Think about the people who are manufacturing technology and performing data entry positions. Think about the impact on the environment. Think about how the speed of technology forces us to be more efficient, but at what cost to our well being?
While technologies like the internet can be very useful for organizing, informing and creating, such technologies also come with a hidden cost that the privileged refuse to see.
For more information I highly recommend
These last few months have been insane. I really wish I had bloged it out a little more. I protested John Ashcroft and got to meet Derrick Jensen (a fantastic writer and overall badass). I got in a fight with the President of my college. Tried to make some shit better at Knox before I left, but I just had to let it all go.
So, now I am Denver. Here to cause a ruckus at the DNC and try to do something useful. I am interning at Denver Open Media and NARAL Pro-Choice doing some awesome organizing. I need find a job that pays, cause anarchy won’t pay those college loans back.
Anyway, my goal is to write more. A lot more. I should have time now that I am not writing papers for classes.
Where I am from bowling is a pretty typical teen activity. In fact bowling was my gym credit in high school. Anyway, Wednesdays meant dollar bowling nights at a local bowling alley. It was about all there was to do, especially during long summers. So, we bowled out our over-privileged teen angst for three bucks a week.
Fast forward three years, a few of us headed to dollar bowling to reminisce a little but mostly get drunk and bowl. Only now instead of being owned by locals the alley is corporate. The coporate atmosphere changed everything. With out all the smoke and overall feeling of grimy-ness the place lost a lot of its charm. The swivel seats allowed for a quick and efficent games and the electronic score keepers don’t allow you to cheat. Forgive me if I am mistaken, but isn’t the point of bowling to linger and sip on your pitcher of cheap beer, bowling in between shared stories? (God I really want to watch the Big Lebowski) And isn’t it supposed to be fun if you suck balls at it because you are just goofing around? The games seemed sped up and all I heard was the constant sound of balls and pins. I feel bowling should be slower, dirtier and well, less douchy.
Returning to my suburban home town always causes a weird sense of disorientation. Sure, I know these places and these were some kids I went to high school with but how the fuck did I come from here? I looked at the people surrounding me and I just felt awkward. I was petrified that I would run into some dude who I went to high school with and found really obnoxious. Low and behold, just when I thought I was in the clear, some guy called my name as I was about to head to the ladies room. Fuck. I was found out. I was supposed to have escaped this place by now. I should at least be hanging in some tropical destination or big city, but no I am here at dollar bowling night surrounded by kids wearing too much eyeliner, hollister hoodies and sideways hats. I just feel like this should not be my life. Perhaps I have out-grown dollar night at Brunswick lanes. I think I need to head to the local places with character and charm. Sure it costs more than a dollar but perhaps the extra $4 is worth my sanity.
My body is my medium. Here is the word vomit equivalent to my literal vomit that now stains the snow in front of my college cafeteria. My body is shaken, my throat and stomach are burning. I have chills. I just lived in public, a private reality that many people put themselves through daily. A ritual of binging and purging. My vomit was deliberate. I was not isolated though. With six other students I stood wearing a painter’s suit, vinyl gloves and a paper plate mask. Moments before the lunch rush hour, we stood in a semi-circle and purged ourselves of colored milk and white bread dyed all the beautiful colors of the rainbow on the new fallen snow.
Puke, cough, switch. Puke, cough, switch. Puke, cough, bow. Walk off.
A week before the performance I was talking to one of my friends about the project. I told her I couldn’t do it alone. I was too scared, but since I had others there to support me, to stand in solidarity with me, I could do it. She noted that sounds like one of those fucked up pro-mia groups that supports bulimia as a lifestyle rather than a disorder. I was terrified. What did that mean for me and my body? I have never officially had an eating disorder, but there have been points in my life where I had disordered eating. I stressed over calories and lied to my parents about what I ate for lunch to explain why I wasn’t hungry ever at dinner. Luckily feminism swept me away from any tendency towards anorexia or bulimia. I am supported by healthy, cooking vegetarian friends. I do yoga and dance. I feel balance and appreciation for my body. So then why am I making myself vomit? Why was I considering it? Why the fuck did I ever say yes to this creepy fucking project? I guess it was some sort of challenge. It made me think about our societies relationship to food. The fucked up blue raspberry slushies made of all sugar and those orange cheeze it crackers, so synthetic and gross. I started to think about how toxic it all felt. The images of beauty airbrushed to remove all traces of humanity. The disgusting food we produce. The constant consumption of all the world’s resources. I was disgusted by the way we live.
Think about it. The milk we drank came from some poor cow trapped in a stall, forced hormones to stimulate milk production and hooked up to some machine for all of her life. Then it is packaged in plastic jugs made from petroleum then shipped and delivered from a big truck that uses more gasoline. Then think of the bread made in some factory with all of its preservatives, mass produced, wrapped in plastic and sent out. Finally throw in tons of food coloring. Sure its not toxic, but what the fuck is it? Each color wrapped in plastic bottles, put in cardboard and shipped to the store where we buy it. Something just seems wrong.
This isn’t the first time that vomit has been found on this campus. Many Saturday or Sunday mornings piles of slightly solidified vomit can be found on or around trash cans and pathways waiting to be cleaned up. The traces of parties from the night before.
Then again, I was just called out about the fact that we left a mess for someone else to clean up. This is our unchecked privilege. Yes we left a mark that could disappear in time.
I realize most people who saw it happen and heard about it will think it is gross and stupid. I realize that it probably won’t make people look or critique the fucked up relationship with food we have. Perhaps the best I can hope for is that it jolted people out of the daily routine and challenged them in some way as it has challenged me. Perhaps maybe a few more people will wake up do something to challenge our status-quo. Perhaps if we all just keep pushing each other to think harder and to do more we will really start something beautiful. There is no distinct end or vision here, just possibility. Its time to explore our playground kids.
“Performance implicates the real through the presence of living bodies. In performance art, spectatorship there is an element of consumption there are no left-overs, the gazing spectator must try to take everything in. Without a copy, live performance plunges into visibility–in a manically charged present–and disappears into memory. into the realm of the invisibility and the unconscious where it eludes to regulation and control. ” Peggy Phalen
So while working on an environmental zine I stumbled upon Global Issues and found the numbers pretty interesting. The numbers are a little outdated, but I don’t think things are getting better. I am particularly interested to see what happend to the spending on women’s reproductive health, since the global gag rule probs put a huge dent in funding.
I found a new fun blog to read. Yay
EC is a lifesaver not life destroyer. WTF Missouri?
Need some online revolutionary motivation?
Pie. American Classic. The ultimate nostalgia. I like to make mine from scratch. Thus far I have only made one pie, but it was a damn good pie. It was the Black bottom peanut butter pie with a cookie crumble crust from the Vegan with a Vengeance cookbook. I wish I had realized my obsession for pie six months ago, then I could have made fresh peach pie or chocolate berry pie. Part of this is because I also love the movie Waitress. There is something genuine and bittersweet about the whole thing.
Anyway. Pie is this icon for American domesticity and patriotism, which makes me wonder why I like it so much. It just seems so fucking absurd that a pastry can be so meaningful and associated with a country. People always say that so and so “is as American as apple pie,” or at least in old movies and slightly corny sitcoms. Tell me any good recipes.
About five days before I found cyberfeminism I was on the verge of becoming a Luddite. Technology frustrated me. It seemed bogged down by corporate agendas, cluttered with advertisements that seeped across my screen. I felt spied on thanks to mild paranoia and too much Foucault’s “Panopticon Theory.” I thought about how my identity was crafted out of favorite lists and party photos. Cyberspace disoriented me. I liked my spiral bound planner with its sticky-note “to do” lists and notebook filled with doodles and flow charts. On the page I was vulnerable, but at least embodied. I love the grassroots aesthetic of construction paper and sharpies. I like the cut and paste zines with black edges from copy machine shadows. Those details make it all so real, so intimate. I was ready to throw away my electronics in protest of this digital age.
But blogs began to change all that for me. As an active feminist on my college campus, I found myself isolated in the suburbs when I was home. Feminist blogs offered some semblance of a community for me to stay slightly connected with other feminists. The discovery of cyberfeminism (thanks to my senior research) shook my entire conception of cyberspace. It changed my relationship with technology allowing me to see its beauty and potential. I appreciate it because it also remains critical of the ICT industry, but no doubt I will write more on this… Since then I have become obsessed with cyberfeminism and its relation to art, theory and my daily life.
So, Emma Goldman is one of the many feminist thinkers that rocks my world. She was radical, articulate and full of love. I find her an inspiring activist full of the courage to do what she felt was right. I only hope that I too can find such courage. She doesn’t have anything to do really with cyberfeminism being that she died in 1940, but her words remain relevant. My blog is dedicated to all of the womyn before me who have fought for justice. My blog is for all of the artists who create beauty in times of ugliness.
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