#change my mind and realize i’m wrong about the necessity of the liberal struggle. the struggle for fucking what? to return to 2005?

[aheeheemwhimper]

i can feel like i’m breaking through to my mom and then she’ll say some shit like “i just want a news outlet between msnbc and fox news.” hello?????

#humanity may never recover from the horseshoe theory or ‘centrism’ in general #not to mention she thinks msnbc is far left and fox news is far right #like ideally i /get/ it you want a rationalized discussion and analysis of both sides so you can come to your own conclusions #but it is impossible to find news that is not biased or propagandized bc we’re fkn human beings and we all have inherent biases #so you gotta go with people who’s biases are agreeable to your worldview or god forbid the same as yours #but admitting that will have the libs taking me out back and putting me down. do you really think republicans care about biased news?????? #except when it’s convenient to attack your news source?? #dont even get me started on how she reacts when i insult liberals. she thinks it’s the same as my antifeminist phase in highschool bc like.. #yeah it kind of is for the exact same reasons bc what i hated back then was radlibs and what i hate now are radlibs but she thinks i’ll #change my mind and realize i’m wrong about the necessity of the liberal struggle. the struggle for fucking what? to return to 2005? #when racism was defeated and only acceptable queers were in the public eye. and everyone still had faith in neoliberal economics

[theliterateape]

Red Brick Door - A Fiction

by Dana Jerman

“These were my people, but I was not theirs. Their clammed unhappy world was my world, and it terrified me.” – Dale Gunthorp (from Gypsophilia)

Her face was constantly consumed in a grin that lent her an emotionally invincibility. Somehow, no one could piss her off. In high school, a time when the rest of us were doing nothing but being pubescent and grumpy and frowning, embracing its toughness, its indifference- she was busy being engaged in a teeth-flash fest all day long. Even in class when concentrating her closed lips were upturned at the corners. She endured taunts with laughs that only brightened her face, because she was beautiful, although it was easy to make fun of her. Those who would blow off steam on others knew they could go to her because she wasn’t going to get all huffy and turn their friends on them later. I only saw her get mad once and it was all in her eyes and brows.  Her mouth remained open and perky. Tall, brown eyes. A high voice that danced around you with singsong qualities. Never had a boyfriend and walked with a tall briskness that defined direction. Ashley.

I was graduating a class ahead, so during my sophomore year, she showed up for her first at the same city university. I suppose it wasn’t a day, as in a defined 24 hours, that the temper in her smile changed, dissolved. It was a pretty subtle process dragging for weeks, insidious. I still feel as if I should have guessed that something like it would happen. That her mouth would get tired.

I’d run into her on campus at a random juncture and was startled into an indignant curiosity not to find that brazen show of oral cavity on display. Upon trying to engage her in that familiar shining smile her bottom lip would barely twitch in a gesture akin to a muscle spasm and she would breeze past like the embodiment of the cold shoulder. All that wattage was burning right out.

I spied her in a study carol at the library one day, her head buried in a few open texts at a time and writing diligently. I’d never had the opportunity to study her physically before beyond the smile and for a minute I thought she was someone else. Older. With her hair up in a bun on her head, it was plain to see the words “Red Brick Door” tattooed simply on the pale flesh of her neck. Struck by a bewildering force, I stood in amazement. Once glee-filled oozing endorphins this girl was now shrouded in an enigmatic cloud that rebuilt her. I recalled the furiousness of her pen as it moved across a near full sheet of notebook paper. It was probably at this time that I felt I could have changed things, like everyone believes in their individual power to affect a situation and pivot history.

//

Much later amongst old friends at a house party with drinks in hand, I observed an old comrade feed her new significant other hummus for the first time as they sat around a long table. Watching, smirking, until my ears burned as a few seated around the television in the next room began to call the name Ashley White in casual speaking. I moved in to eavesdrop.

“You heard about all this, right? Do you remember the tall blonde from the 1991 class?  She acted kind of scatterbrained?” The question.

“Yeah, somebody mentioned something to me a few days ago. Isn’t she, like, dead now, er something?” The remark.

“No, no, she’s been incarcerated for murdering members of an all-girl gang. Like, thirteen of them are dead. Amazing. She has yet to go to trial, but I guess she was part of the gang, the “brick house” or something.”

They nodded in understanding and went back to drinking and watching the news, full of superficially covered street crime and commercials. I felt flush with anger for hearing this report second hand and of all places at a party. It made me consider the largeness of the city, the impersonality. Ashley’s smile was like a beacon of pure light, accompanied by those wild brown eyes. In my memory again this time like a force changed- a sense of history and balance now altogether flawed, astray. Who could have guessed how much she really needed from a community that continually denied her?

I left the party. Seized with a sensation ineffable, existential. Before realizing it I was seated at home with a pen in one hand, writing a letter to Ashley. I asked questions and made statements.  She returned my post after a few months with this:

"Look, it’s hard for me to write in here. I’m not comfortable with how mail is handled and scrutinized. My general ability to be mobile in this ward is continually limited. To be blunt, I’m getting used to things. Deep thanks for writing to me. Explanations will follow if you wish to communicate further by making your presence known on an allotted visitation date. Until then, with hope and liberation – Ashley."

And so I went. There is a belief that places only really exist between when you come and when you leave.  Everyday for the rest of my life that penitentiary and things said there will blaze on in the back of my brain like an ache impervious to aspirin.

//

Max security. The walls gray and pea green and orange, reminding me of middle school– stale, injected with a numbing agent, a tranquilizing drug that made my insides feel like mildew. The rhythm of thick doors slamming around me gave a claustrophobic feel to each room I was escorted through. The plexiglas window had a stainless steel circular screen in its middle. We would be speaking through a bathtub drain. Two women down on the end were engaged with inmates I couldn’t see. The feeling of encouraged separation, isolation, of total warranted domination by a system sat on my shoulders like puttied guilt. Then the door buzzed and a blue light came on across from me, through the glass.

Her hair was cut very short. Her eyes only sunken a little, she smiled when she spied me with her mouth and nothing more. She wore loose fitting grey scrub-type pants and black moccasin slipper sandals that made her feet look too small. A yellowish shirt. Her hands, the deft fingers lithe with clean, short nails, cuffed in front- a death-row Christ. As she sat, I smiled to return her grin but no words would come out.

“I’ve been excited at the thought of your coming.”  In the opening confession her voice was a warm rasp like high grain sandpaper. I thought about her sitting at her typewriter (it was a typewritten note she had sent to me not so long ago), not speaking for days on end as she wrote, her diligent pain pouring out onto sheet after thin sheet – easily ripped and discarded, the dry ink smeared on the edges from the tips of tongued-wet curious fingers. I knew I was crouching in my seat and felt like a tree stump that never got any sun from its place on the back of a hillside. I sat up. I wanted to be candid and open, but asking again the questions I’d posed in my letter seemed trite. I almost forgot the woman was a murderer. It made me sick for a split second to feel safe behind the glass. I didn’t want safety.

“Ashley, I owe you an apology.” I cleared my throat, “I’m here for selfish reasons- I only want to listen.” I couldn’t move a muscle under her wily eyes that might have wanted my voice more than her own. Her smile, like glimpsing her naked, stayed as her eyes dropped away.

“Hmm. You’re probably interested in all the minor bullshit my lawyer would advise me against sharing. But hey, you’re the first to visit me, you know? People are too busy worrying about what I have become and what I’ll look like if they do finally get around to visiting me. Anyway, it won’t matter for much longer, someone’s pulling my number. Women survived my injustice and I don’t want to be a part of that world. If there is a need to say it, life with them became more about hard-line assertion. Vengeance.” She seemed eager to launch into philosophy, regardless of my understanding. A guard moved over to light the cigarette that appeared between her lips.

“Life with the affiliated clan, you know success became less about presenting situations and initiating challenges to one another. Less about liberation and embracing the “necessity to freedom” that for so long we nailed ourselves to in credo. RBD to us represents the entrance to our minds. We have the power to bulwark our consciousness and keep ourselves and what we need in, while the rest stays out. Reducing our wants through sisterhood. That’s why when you come in, you don’t leave.”

The look on her face suddenly weakened.  She reached back with both cuffed hands in a motion to loosen her neck muscles. I thought again of the tattoo there. A reminder and announcement, an enunciation.

“There were two women- partners, central to the group. Had just adopted a baby girl. Before too long one of them was being neglectful. Turns out she was abusing her position by seducing a woman from another organization. One night the other woman came and tried to take their child. The innocent lover discovered that the guilty one had encouraged this woman to kidnap their baby, and she went off.  She used those within and solicited other alliances to start a war. It’s always easy to find an enemy if you want one.

For me, it’s a case of  “right time, wrong revolution.” My attempts at destroying what I believed was a stagnant, poorly executed terrorist movement landed me here, because even if I wasn’t the punisher first, someone has to be punished. I was devoted to a localized uprising that had to die before it fell into the oppressive trap of mainstream power by associating with the wrong ideas, the wrong classes. But my struggle isn’t new.

I think about the women I chose to assassinate and admitted to slaying in court not but two weeks ago – in front of mothers and fathers and husbands and children and friends. I have three months to live because I called these women to my apartment one afternoon- just picked up the phone like it should be done. I’m not insane. I feel pain when I think of them. I think of what we did as a family. Little moments of peace.” She dropped the cigarette under her slipper and leaned back.

“A handful of us worked at the sugar plant near the east side. The sunset at the horizon point there reflected on this huge set of sheet glass windows on the rooftop– it made everything warm. I felt a balance when I went there, like I was standing on the equator. Like South America. Have you ever been there? We were beginning to plan a trip to Argentina before things…”

She paused with a sigh under closed eyes.

 “I fought for a freedom and that’s exactly what it cost me. Hard to face that I was a part of them, yes, but more a part of this… future that ironically I no longer have?”

Taciturn, I waited for her to answer her own question. Then her smile, that shining light, possessed of a kind of sheer magnetic power, returned briefly at the buzzer before she rose and left. She melted back into the cell of my memory now reconstructed from conflicting histories and righteous agendas. Of course I never saw her alive again, so she remains very much trapped there, in-between but whole, smiling.

#death row #murderer #freedom #future #Argentina #inmate #gang #behind bars #max #clans

[hippyspacewitch]

This has been building up for a while and this recent “bible” argument really bothers me. I can’t and won’t stay quiet about this. This is pungent with Fox News and the extreme Republican views. How can you not feel for people. It is genuinely upsetting and heart breaking. Those who stand on the side of coldness and disregard for life. You’re beyond despicable. There just aren’t words powerful enough to describe how much. Hypocritical. Sickening. These are words we could rightfully use to set the tone for an administration that strongly advocates putting children into concentration camps, separating families, while at the same time declaring it always necessary to follow through with every pregnancy. How cruel and lacking self awareness can you be? No, this is done in order to keep people down, and maintain control. Willful ignorance evolves into ultimate evil again.

I am not a sadness seeking person. I’m not the misery chick. Coming off a good high, actually. I’m living my life, feeling good. Aren’t I a lucky duck. Sweat is smelly, but it feels so good to get out of my skin for a bit. Looking more fit, take a pic, feeling happy. Whelp, let’s take a little trip to yon’ internet, gonna post another selfie of my cute face, look at those dimples! Wait, I’m not looking at my dimples anymore.

Looking at what’s going on in the world instead, so I continue reading NEWS, which is based on FACTS. I know. REALLY crazy to hear. Hopefully that catches on one day. Regardless, I am incredibly saddened. Only wish to repost the unpleasant articles I read, hoping it helps create awareness. It doesn’t feel like an appropriate time for sharing pleasantries or my happiness, because I’m truly very upset with the direction this current regime is leading our nation.

We weren’t too far from that standard already, but snowflakes are pushing back hard, trying to double down on ending crucial necessities needed to maintain a semi-capable, albeit heavily flawed, semi-civilized society. So many people have died to protect the right just to exist with dignity, relative to that previously stated fact alone, as it pertains mainly to the elongated fight for basic human rights. People of all races and cultural backgrounds have died for that much. I’m wholeheartedly dissatisfied and sickened by the actions of not just the notorious current administration, but the White House too, along with those who see the overall standard of humanity that so many people hold, as anything short of unacceptable. If you accept this, you should feel ashamed. I can’t say that enough, if you don’t hear your momma’s voice. If you continue to follow me, I’ll make sure you hear my voice enough.

I’ll make you feel something, whether you just stop reading because you can’t handle the truth, or if you’re feeling froggy, ready to speak against me, (I’ll weed y’all out.) or hey, you evolve at least far enough to want to see the world be better someday. (Work toward the latter.)

Therefore I am strongly urging and pleading with COGNITIVELY DISSONANT WHITE PEOPLE out there. It is long past time you MAKE A CHANGE, concerning the way you think about racism and race. SPECIFICALLY ADDRESSING people of PRIVILEGE here, anyone born into the Christian faith, not specific enough, here - WHITE PEOPLE! Yes, I am one, and I even fit all that above criteria. Well look at that. I can speak for myself and therefore others like me. Coming from a place where I was misdiagnosed AMAB (that’s assigned male at birth) I can absolutely say it is EASY for me to recognize the first 27 years of my life I was living with the highest standard of privilege in the United States. I still live with privilege as a white person, even as a transgender woman.

Anyone who knows me well enough, might say, “Well, Eris you’ve described what it’s like to live in an impoverished area, with high levels of crime, gang violence, and from what you tell me, you had reason to be afraid. That doesn’t sound like privilege” To which I would respond to myself as someone else, for the purposes of making a point in this hypothetical scenario that fits my point in the end, “Self that isn’t myself, because I’m not an idiot. We see comment sections for days, with white people fired up, wanting so bad to let the world know from their brand new iPhone, they experienced some semblance of living within poverty. White people essentially bragging about having a cup of coffee in the ghetto. It’s either that, or meth head white people living in a meth head white people neighborhood. Fox News’ most loyal demographic. White people who take unemployment, have tons of babies, vote Republican, damn liberals out there who are fighting to keep them off the street, with extremely limited resources given. Some viewers don’t know the definition of ironic, but isn’t it ironic? Ignorance isn’t at all self aware, until you spell it out for them slowly, and then there’s a chance they briefly acknowledge it before turning away, and forgetting it happened entirely. That said we must strive to look further than our individual experience for lessons.”

I heard that hot garbage living in Washington. Surrounded by meth heads. Working at the gas station, you here people talk. False arguments straight from hypocritical, entitled white people who are just looking to close the gap and get even more. So many of them are far too shameless, they’ll just admit it themselves. Who else are they going to tell? I can’t make this up. People who think like this are naturally afraid, as you should be. Fear clouds our minds far too often, but white people like this are next level.

Pissed off they have to share, like an overgrown petulant brat, ready to lick whatever unseen, promised hints of scum off a criminal inheritors shitty ass boot, as long as they feel like that boot isn’t treading on them. I’m not at all going to even get into my experience living in a bad neighborhood, here. I won’t even get into how long either. I can tell you, it was bad enough for me to want to know why. Now, I know why, and it’s more important to know. Privilege white politicians redistricting people based on race.

If you’re at all uncomfortable hearing white people, think how other people must be feeling about the whole sociology of race and everyday human relations. Oh I’m sorry, you can’t know, and neither can I. White people contribute to poverty maintaining class and privilege, institutionalizing racism through laws they create with that specific intention. Now they want to shut immigrants out entirely. The rich are a head of the curve in terms of closing the gap. Not out of strictly self preservation, the real goal is to maintain constant control and domination, basically keep people of color down.

This is barely getting close to just scratching the surface about race. A subject, I actually don’t like speaking a whole lot about. I don’t feel like I’m appropriate representation, for one thing. Personally, more of a reader on the subject. I will explain my experience learning about racism. It was fairly early on. I didn’t learn it, because of the area I lived in. The area I lived in was small, bad areas are small or larger depending on the states race issues and redistricting. I learned it before I moved there actually. There’s no way to put this without causing discomfort, so I apologize.

My biological donor called my former step dad the n word constantly. I actually asked him about it. I was very young, so I only remember my stepdad at the time, explaining certain things in a very delicate way, mostly to not harm my innocence. Saying he doesn’t actually feel like he’s a racist, that he’s just mad. It was hard on my mom and step dad to struggle with not wanting to shatter the image of my biological father, versus him basically doing it to himself. Being an empath, I recognized it was difficult, eventually I was calling them out on it. That doesn’t really have much to do with where I’m going, it’s just a bit of background to my mind altering experience as it pertains to learning about race.

Once I was older, around fifth or sixth grade, a few people would target me at school, because I’m white. It wasn’t until we got older, for the last couple years before I moved. I used to just be frustrated that we couldn’t keep seeing past it. I had yet to discover why that thought is selfish, but I was a good hearted kid. I thought it wasn’t fair, remembering how I felt, as it pertains to expecting people to learn English. How many extra languages are you fluent in, again. It isn’t easy for most people to casually pick up another language.

It’s important to realize, I’d been taught discrimination is wrong. I was taught not to blame other people for my problem. Once again, more learned behavior. My whole point is coming into fruition soon. Yes, I was discriminated against for being a white person. There it is, did you catch it? You might only be able to imagine why people of color would discriminate against white people; if you watch bullshit news and drink hot garbage for tea, wake up and smell the coffee!

If you are not lacking in awareness, you don’t have to look very far to see racism for what it is, and know the difference between perceived racism (discrimination) and racism as a contributing factor in our society. A real problem that effects people of color in so many complex ways, I truly can’t comprehend. It’s hard enough being trans and dealing with people hating you, before they know you at all. That’s one instance I can peel back in a big old nasty onion with many layers. Another privilege for white people, along with ignoring it, as far I am concerned it’s absolutely willful ignorance.

Deflate this desperate flotation mechanism and aesthetics. I hope this at least brings people the shame and guilt too many people are tired of feeling and want to just move past. Check yourself white people, you have no idea what it’s like to struggle daily as a disenfranchised person of color. You might have problems, but your privilege confines your experience.

#race #racisim #redistricting #discrimination #profiling #politics #white privlege #privledge #white people #wokeuplikethis #stay woke #people of color #inequality #immigration #willfully ignorant #fear #freedom #right to choose #human rights #basic human rights #basic human decency