blogging

so, i just read a couple blog entries from some of the thing that says “most read posts” or something. they were both stupid. not in a sense of the writer wasn’t intelligent, but in the sense of being redunant and full of conspiracy theories.

do people really have nothing better to do than read blogs and blog all day and attak policans they don’t really know with accusations that would be true of any/all politicans? i mean, i’m sure they could have at least washed their fucking dishes, instead!!! (oh, i forgot, that’s a women’s job anyway). more than that, are people really that angry? white men with money and access to the internet and obviously a lot of free time? they’re THAT angry?

i’m not posting any links because this garbage doesn’t deserve to be read, i’m sure if you’ve read random blogs you’ve run into the same problem: annoying, reactionary, chatterboxes who talk through their asses. and people who read it. FUCKING SHIT.

so, how do we make sure this isn’t us? well, i think being happy is one way! hahahaha. when you spend all your time being angry and yelling about shit people stop listening and you stop caring. you end up being miserable and, frankly, you catch more flies with honey. also, if your blogs/zines/articles are annoying and reactionary people who have intelligent criticism won’t think you’re worth talking to, you’ll only hear from assholes who think you’re onto something and use your comment box to say some other racist, fucked up stupid shit.

getting off the internet is another way. stand on a real soap box, not a virtual one! or just read, shop local, make dinner with your friends, go on walks, masterbate, go to workshops, accept that you have things to work on, do art, talk to kids, plant a garden, talk to your neighbors, vote for who you actaully want to be president, volunteer, call people out on their shit, call yourself out on your shit, pick up trash, have a party, start a band, go to a protest, organize your own protest, write on bathroom walls, loan people books, share your knowledge, listen to others, interview people at the bus stop with you, &tc.

i find that people who do these things are much happier than people who blog about policains and drugs all day and how angry they are about it. don’t be that angry white man who no one listens to!!! we don’t need another Lyndon LaRouche, we need people who act on their convictions!

having said this, i’m going to get off the internet to clean and make myslef healthy food! (and read more about lyndon larouche).

MONSTERS OF THE ID

what?

A Message to “Anarchist” Men by Molly Tov

this really hit home for me: “The men who vocalize their aggression against rapists, but when THEIR lovers say no, coercion is simplke, and its not rape, because he’s ANTI-SEXIST. There are men who use anti-sexist talk to pick up wimmin. The men who challenge others to call them on their shit and when someone does, on goes the defense mode and he’s appalled that someone could say HE was fucking up, instead of actually thinking about the situation and to start working on it.“

broader than just the issue of sexism in “radical” men, is the issue of isms in all of us and our inibility to confront it or handle criticism. this is understandable: it sucks to feel like you’re being called out for behaivor it seems like everyone’s displaying, it sucks to be judged, it sucks to have a friend tell you that you’re fucked up and it’s super scary to look inside ourselves at the ugliest forms of sexism/racism/aggression/&tcism.

we have this idea “the racist” is some monster KKK member who is less than human, so if we ourselves are racist we must be the same. just like we have this idea that “the rapist” is a monster who hides in the bushes waiting to attack the most vulnerable, so Jonny Nextdoor who gets girls tootoo drunk can’t be a rapist because he’s no monster, he’s just looking to have fun.

these ideas keep up from confronting ourselves. instead we talk about others as “inhuman” “scum” “disgusting” and we distance ourselves from them to make it clear that THEY are sexist/mysogonistic/racist/greedy/evil and WE aren’t. so when someone says “i think what you said is really racist” we hear that we are the same as that KKK member (who we’ve decided is less than human), we know we’re not that monster so we deny and become defensive instead of wondering why that person felt we were being racist. this means the inner racist inside us goes on, as does the racism in the world around us.

the “common sense” thought pattern many of us have is that a select group of less than human people comitt all rapes and murders, say all the sexist things, go to KKK meetings and torture people. 90% of the world is incapable of doing these things, and is “human”. i’d like to point out there is little to no DNA evidence that murders are any less human than marketing reps or students or the people they murder. but, in thinking this way, they prove to themselves that they are not the monster. and people tell them that we all have to change our attitudes in order to prevent these things from happening or that rape is a product of society, they preach the “common sense” that’s it’s the “bad seeds” and not a problem that will be fixed by anything. none of us can be the monster, we can’t be that. never mind that this world doesn’t actually use common sense. because that isn’t one of us! ———–>

several years ago my best friend was raped while i slept in the next bed. the perp in this situation was another friend of mine, and the man in our friend group who everyone trusted the most. when i sat in his living room telling him what he did wrong there was no monster before me, there was a fucked up kid. he didn’t hide in the bushes, he didn’t plan on raping someone, he didn’t do any other form of violence. he wasn’t a less than human monster, he was our best friend (very past tense). when we asked him why he did it he said he didn’t know. when we asked him if he thought it had something to do with power he said no, then he told us of 2 sexual situations where he had felt powerless and of a shit load of situations other situations where he felt powerless over his life. he used the word “powerless”. this kid was so fucked up but he couldn’t confront himself, he couldn’t challenge his mysogony his homophobia or the abuse he had suffered. he was so fucked up he choose to empower himself by fucking up someone else.

this doesn’t make him a monster, this makes him the same as the 8 year old who lived next door to me when i was 6, and the boyfriend i had when i was 14 and many many others who couldn’t hear the word “NO”, thought silence was “YES” or felt like it was ok because it happened to them. a product of a society where they felt marginalized so they marginalized others and got away with it. similar to thousands and thousands of others who when called on their shit become defensive and make up excuses for themselves.

instead of giving up our privilege or using it for good use, we see people challenging society as a threat to it. because (as cliche as it sounds), the inherintly racist/classist/sexist/homophobic society still favors the white, able bodied young man and he(we) doesn’t want to admitt it. and being confronted, having to purge it out for real, means we have to admitt it benefits us in at least some small way. and if change the whole social construct of it, we’ll lose that privilege. and then we have to sit andwonder if we are any different from the rapist clansmen we made so much fun of?

my answer? if you read this whole thing and thought “fuck, i did really violate someone’s boundaries and it’s my responsibility to apoligize and fight sexual assault in my community” or “wow, maybe i did say and do things that were racist and it insulted one of my friends, i should accept my white privilege and learn to fight racism”, then yes, you are different from him.

and until we all think that way, until we accept that EVER LAST ONE OF US has issues with sexism, racism, able-bodism, classism, speciesm, agism, culturism &tc, until we confront those issues head on and look at how they play out in our lives, until we accept that if there is monster in our community it is because there is a monster in all of us, then we’ll never fucking get anywhere as a society/movement/community/revolution.