Remember, remember, the 8th of November.

This morning I was thinking about the role the media currently plays in our lives.  The election of misogynist, racist, rapist, and most importantly, fascist Donald Trump is unprecedented.  As a true fascist, he hates the media and has on a regular basis discredited them as a whole to his followers, but those of us who are progressive already distrusted the mainstream media because it wasn't progressive enough and catered to an increasingly right leaning power structure. This is not what Donald dislikes. He dislikes their disagreeing with his lies (read: fact checking). Yet, in a “post-fact” world, what are we to do with a fascist who is discrediting a media that we already don't trust?

The 24 hour news cycle has been pretty absurd for a while now. It's not that they purposefully report incorrectly, it's more that the structure of a 24 hour news cycle requires 24 hour news coverage. This has lead to outlets attempting to break news stories before other outlets, before there are known facts, and when this happens no matter how many retractions are put out, most people have only tuned in for the breaking coverage and therefore believe something totally false. Another problem is that the mainstream media wants to remain unbiased. There's nothing wrong with this in itself, but this means covering the conservative right, a group of people who actively promote lies in order to continue their hold of power, and the conservative left, a group of people who cater to the lies of the conservative right that allows both parties to remain powerful while pretending to be the party of the people. This is not balanced. Sure, these two groups can outwardly disagree, but at the end of the day they're both in power because of the conservative right. Further, when the topic is something like climate change, the only balanced coverage is to cover that it is real and that humans caused it. Balanced would not include promoting lies that it isn't real by the mere airtime of the other side not believing it exists.

Unfortunately, this is not why Donald does not like the media. Donald doesn't like the media because they sometimes point out how he's a liar. Or make fun of his hair. Or he just doesn't like them because he's getting the people ready to distrust the media so that he can get ready to do and say whatever he wants once President and call it Truth. According to Robert Reich, Donald has already employed the seven tactics tyrants use to control the media. Democracy Now! covered it this morning, so, do watch.

Listen, comedy shows are comedy shows, not news shows, and sometimes these comedy shows talk about the news. That doesn't mean they're news shows... right? Well, if the majority of the public doesn't trust mainstream media and gets their news from these comedy shows, perhaps these news comedy shows have a greater responsibility to the public than they would prefer to have in a perfect world.

As an active consumer of independent media, I know where to get my news. Not everyone knows or has the time to consume media the way I do. Further, not everyone has the mental health to take in the media they do consume without it being lighthearted in some way. There is, of course, Citizen Radio, but the majority of people use these comedy/news shows as their primary source of news. Therefore, comedy/news has a greater responsibility to the public. In fact, Citizen Radio talks about this in their book!

Remember how everyone got pissed at Jimmy Fallon for not just having Donald on his show, but for not taking seriously the awfulness of the person sitting in front of him? This implies that the public agrees - screw that you're a comedy show. Take the responsibility your position in the public provides you and treat this threat seriously!

I think this is what everyone was hoping for:

This was always one of or the best parts of V for Vendetta in my opinion. Basically, if you have a platform, say something important. Be brave.

The scary thing about this is that it may be coming true. Alec Baldwin may seriously have the watch his back after January 20th. In fact, unless we are very careful and act quickly, aggressively, and loudly, there may be a chance much of V for Vendetta reminds us of our current world.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst, right? We live in unprecedented times and we shouldn't be blind the the worst happening for fear of looking like a catastrophist.

Bumper Sticky Situation

This post is a rant about veganism and abortion, so, hold on to your butts...

Today, thanks to my bumper stickers, I had a guy stand outside in the rain waiting for me to come out of the post office to talk to me about how I'm wrong to both support reproductive rights and animal rights. The two can, obviously, not be mutually exclusive. This is due to three bumper stickers I have: two about animal rights (one about climate change and one that says "Kindness is magic") and one that says "Reproductive Rights are Human Rights." As I was driving away after telling him that I did not want to discuss my bumper stickers with a stranger, I heard him yelling some nonsense about human babies.

I've known that there's a group of people who yell "But what about abortion?!??!?!!" when you're leafleting about animal rights, but I didn't realize that they're so hard core as to wait outside in the rain to talk to a stranger about a few pieces of plastic. The issue, I suppose, is that if you care so much about animal lives then it's hypocritical to not care about human baby lives. I think that makes total sense. I have never, not once in my entire life, eaten, tortured, abused, or mercilessly slaughtered a human baby.

I guess the difference between me and this man is that I don't consider a fetus to be a baby but also that I believe strongly that a woman, a fully formed human being, has the right to decide what happens to her body. I am pro-life in that way, I suppose. I am pro-women's lives; I'm pro-women not dying for the sake of fostering a growing fetus in her womb. But I'm also pro-fetuses no growing up in a home with a mother that is unsuited to care for the child, either physically or emotionally. I'm pro-keeping the number of kids in the foster system down. I'm pro-happy and healthy children who have parents that truly love and want them.

But there's also the larger issue of animal rights versus human rights that I think needs to be addressed here. When discussing animal rights with my non-vegan friend, he said, "I guess I'm just more on the human rights side of things." This is a serious problem that non-vegans don't understand - there is no disconnect between human rights and animal rights, and in fact, on the contrary, animal rights ARE human rights.

Animal rights, while a movement that fights for the safety and positive treatment of animals, also fights for labor and workers rights. It;s a movement that fights for better health for every human. It's a movement that fights for nonviolence in every sense of the word. In fact, (shameless plug) my new nonprofit, Para los Animales de Honduras, Inc. (PAH), is being formed for the purposes of nonviolence. Yes, when I was in Honduras I saw a lot of animal cruelty that changed my life, but it is impossible to separate the violence against animals with the human violence, especially in a place as violent as Honduras.

Studies have found that humane education efforts, that teach children how to treat animals in a nonviolent way, actually decreased overall violent behavior of the children who participated in humane education.

The goal of PAH, then, isn't only to make the lives of the animals in Honduras better, though that is one of our main goals. The reason why our mission is "to create a compassionate Honduras by advocating for animal rights through education and promoting compassionate policies" is because it isn't just about animal rights.  It's about human rights as well.

When someone says they're a human right person rather than an animal rights person, you can bet your bottom dollar that that person doesn't know much about either.

The Punk Scene Is Not For Everyone

"When it came down to it, it was just a lot of white dudes and they weren't for me but I had to be for them." - Amy Lamb

                                                                            

The punk scene is not for everyone.

Punk is promoted, in a sense, as a scene that is all-inclusive.  The losers, nerds, artists, freaks, geeks, and weirdos are all welcome.  This is a space that is expectantly for those of us who feel that we have no space; a space for those who are denied an outlet for expressing who they truly are.

That is, unless you are not a white, cis, straight man.

I, for as long as I can remember, have been "alternative."  I never quite fit in to the normal, preppy, mainstream culture.  I did try for quite a while, but I never did fit in.  I always fantasized about participating in a punk scene and I always saw it as my refuge.  The rebellion and the physical expression of who you are, not only in the tattoos, but also in the release of the mosh pits, the violence, the anger, the freedom appealed to me.  Coming from a small town and engorged with social anxiety made traveling to the closest punk scene unheard of for me.

In college, I first started hanging out with the "punk kids" during my sophomore year.  At first I thought that I was simply being too shy, so to compensate for being an Outsider, I began drinking.  I kept up with the guys.  I smoked cigarettes.  I went to the shows and moshed and sang and danced and partied with the rest of them.

But no matter what I did, however I participated, I never became one of them.

I came to find that there was an under current with the men and women separately, but equally toxic, in this environment.

With the women, it was straight competition for the attention and subsequent affection of the men.  Back then, I was much more of a militant feminist than I am now, and while I'm still fairly progressive especially in that sense, then I had this ideal of sisterhood and disbelieved strongly the stereotypes in the media that women are backstabbing or out to get one another for the attention of men.  That these women in this scene acted thus was difficult for me to swallow.

With the men, there was a feeling of me only being worth anyone's time if they wanted to have sex with me.  Outside of this, I was essentially non-existent.  My worth here, like many other times in my life was relegated to my body as a sexual object, but here it was more blatant than anywhere else.

This counter-cultural expression of self that is so elevated by these people was only an excuse to be an asshole.  The negative aspects of our society that I thought the punk scene was fighting against were in fact heightened.  The only benefit I can see to this is that this scene did not hide the disgusting and abhorrent aspects of our society but rather embraced them.  In this way only, these people are not hypocrites and I suppose this is their guiding light.  But in every other way this is despicable.  Instead of being counter-cultural, punk is the mainstream highly contrasted; one looking at punk simply sees the same picture of the mainstream but where all the ugly parts stand out.

The misogynist whiteness was hidden behind a desire to be both shocking and politically correct at the same time.  Men of color were teased for being men of color; the "Token Black Guy" was cool, but he was Black and all digs at him where expected to be believed to be from a place of love.  This love did not exist for the women in the community, for even in the extremes of the women who were able to become Insiders, the digs and the teasing was more blatantly from a place of malice.  Those at the butt of the joke had no outlet but to laugh or to be seen as a bitch, or worse, not chill.

This scene was not for me as I am not a man.  Even worse, I'm not straight.  I thought about with whom and when I wanted to have sex, and frequently it was not with these people.  I didn't always get crazy when I got drunk.  Worst of all, perhaps, is that I cared about things.  I was passionate about those things that I cared about and this is incredibly uncool of me.

It is never cool to be a passionate person with self respect if you are a woman in most social situations, but especially within punk.  A woman is meant to be the prize of the man - look, talk, act the way the man wants you to look, talk, act.  I never did this.  I have always been my own person.

I am not the first to say this.  The Bitch Media podcast, Popaganda, recently had an episode entitled, "Insider/Outsider" in which the poet Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib discusses being an outsider in the punk scene because he is a person of color.  He discusses how people react negatively to his description of punk as violent rather than a kind of sanctuary.  Amy Lamb, also a person of color and a women, interviews him and agrees; "I think you brought up a really great point about who gets the privilege or the ability to romanticize punk rock without problems."  That is, White Men.

I no longer exist within a punk scene, or any kind of scene for that matter.  I grew up and no longer want to waste my time trying to perform in a way that will make the prominent members of a social scene like me.  I still enjoy going to shows, but less now.  Honestly, the last show I went to was, of course, packed with white guys who thought the space belonged to them despite it being a rap show.  I don't care to put myself in situations where hordes of white guys are going to take up more space than they need, disrespecting others' space, because they feel entitled to it.

I'm glad I'm not alone in this, but I think it's time that the white guys in this community stop pretending it's a sanctuary for anyone but them.  They keep people as Outsiders.  Maybe they're proud, though, that they have made it that punk is not for everyone.

                                                                            

"I don't know if there's time to care about being an outsider when the entire structure of what I'm operating in was built to keep me outside in the first place." - Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib

Why I'm Shaving My Head for Mental Health Month

I'm shaving my head for Britney Spears.

Well, that's partially true, anyway.

When Britney's public melt down and subsequent head-shaving occurred in 2008, that is one of the first times I saw mental health issues in a real person in a real way in a real public sphere.  It wasn't hushed up, it wasn't only talked about in whispers.  Yes tabloids were bastards and no she wasn't acting in her right mind, but I respect what she did.  It has never been said publicly what ailment Britney has, but a melt down she had nonetheless and some sort of mental illness, for sure.

So, when I say I'm shaving my head for Britney Spears I mean I'm shaving my head in solidarity of her and for each of us that suffers with a mental illness and doesn't hide it.  She undoubtedly was not making some kind of grand statement about mental illness, nor was she trying to bring attention to the issues, but she was trying to bring attention to her suffering.

When we use hashtags like #StigmaFree, that is what we are trying to do, too.  We are trying to bring attention to the suffering.

But we are also trying to normalize mental illness.

Since coming to terms with my mental illnesses, I have not been shy to discuss them.  I am not shy about the medications I take or the past I have.  This includes posting on social media.

Someone once told me to stop posting sad things on Facebook because people go to Facebook to "get their giggles."  I found this exceedingly offensive and am no longer friends with her on social media.  Do people go to Facebook for laughs?  Yes.  But social media is also an excellent way to share information and issues.  It's how I became vegetarian and then vegan.  There is a lot of power there.

This will also include my physical IRL life.

The hashtags we use and the suffering we experience are all a part of who we are and I don't think we should ignore any of it, nor should we ignore it in others.

Britney's breakdown in 2008 was so public and so painful.  I never made fun of her and my opinion silently changed of those who did.  It's the year I decided to see a therapist.  Even though I wouldn't go consistently for another few years, but it saved my life.  I don't remember if Britney's breakdown was a catalyst to that or a contributor in any way but looking back I can say that it definitely effected me.

So, when I say I'm shaving my head for Britney Spears I mean I'm shaving my head for me.

Please donate to this cause here.

A Letter to My Mother

My  body is not your temple.

I understand it is hard for you to see me this way.  I no longer look like your little girl.  I dye my hair, shave my head, and get tattoos.  I'm no longer pure.  But was I ever pure?  You have told stories from some of the first years of my life that indicate how I have always been different.  I have always been other in your eyes.

My body is my temple.

I can decorate it how I see fit.  If that means having blue hair or shaving my head to raise awareness for a cause or just because I think it's beautiful or get art permanently etched onto my skin I have that right.  My standards and expression of beauty do not agree with yours.

My self expression is not a rebellion, and it is not a reflection of you.

When you heard that I had blue hair, you asked if it would wash out.  When I said, "Yes," you said, "Good."  I don't think you understand that that exchange is an example of a microaggression that I have dealt with from you my entire life.  No, you have never stopped me from expressing myself and you have always supported me financially, but this is how you've attempted to police my body for a long time.

I understand that you are afraid.

I know what you are afraid of, and I'm afraid of it, too.  I'm afraid that people will not take me as seriously in a professional sense based on the way I look, but that is my cross to bare, not yours.  On a particularly grungy day, I was followed at a Walgreen's by an employee.  I have been treated differently.

But I am not afraid of what your friends will think.  I do not care what the woman at Target will think as she checks me out.  I have no concern over whether the person in the car next to me stares.  I have a confidence in my appearance that I don't know if you will ever fully understand.

I feel no shame over my body.

I know you feel shame over your's.  As long as I can remember, I have not heard you say anything positive about your body.  You have always called yourself ugly or fat.  This taught me to hate my body, too.  I hope you know that.  Your self hatred taught me that my body is wrong and bad.  When you rolled your eyes and reacted with disgust when I can to you with issues of my body, you taught me to hate my body.  When you resented doing my hair so much that you cause me pain, you taught me to hate my body.  But you also taught me that you hated me because of my body.

It has taken me a long time to love my body as it is, and my decoration of it is an expression of that love not an expression of hatred for it.  Anorexia, bulimia, binging, purging, diet pills, restricting, excessive exorcise, vomiting, calorie counting from the age of 12 to 19.

One day, when I was under 100 pounds and particularly hating my body, I had a realization.  I realized that I love myself.  Stopping restricting was not easy but I did it.  I gained weight.  And in a celebration of self love, I shaved my head.

Your support of that meant a lot, but would you have supported me if I had not raised money for a cause first?  Had I simply said, "I'm shaving my head because it's beautiful and I love myself," would that have been enough for you?

I'm afraid not.

I'm afraid not because I don't think that is something you could have understood because you don't understand not hating you body.  There is a lot of positive and even some feminist attributes to Catholicism, and this is something I struggle with myself, but it is taught that women's bodies are evil.  Original sin came from a woman and all women are therefore punished through painful childbirth.  With this as a message, something that you so deeply and truly believe in, how could you not hate your body?  How could you not hate mine and expect me to feel the same?

You see, this is part of the reason I rebelled against the church at a young age.  When I came to understand that teachings and that I am meant by God to hate my body, I could not longer support it.  When I leaned on you during mass and you pushed me away, I could no longer support it.  At a time in my life when I was just learning how to be myself, when my body was changing from a child's into a woman's, I realized the church hated my body.

I knew this partly because so did you.

You have always been an extension of the church in my eyes in in our family.  Your actions are part of the reason I struggle with the church so much, both the love I have for it and the hate I have for it.

The church, like you, will always be a part of who I am.  I have come a long way in learning to accept that.  I am not proud, maybe some day I will be, but I am much more at peace with it than ever before.

Our relationship within the last 6 months has been better than it has ever been.  I mourn for all that time and fear and pain and hatred.  I mourn for the decades of resentment.  I mourn for the missed opportunities.  I mourn for the time I spent trying to find a mother figure to love me.  I mourn for the time I tried to make you love me.

I hope that our future relationship will not look like the past.  I hope that you will learn to love me for who I am.  For my soul as well as my body.

And I hope that you learn to love yourself, too.

Anger and Politics

I highly recommend everyone listen to Dan Carlin's most recent episode about political delegates, as it's the inspiration for this post:

Speed Dating for Delegates

Anger is an active emotion.

Recently, a friend of mine got divorced and her ex-wife, who was eventually going to move out to live with her parents, refused to pack and move until my friend ended up moving out to move to another state.  This puzzled me.  Why would she not be motivated to move out as soon as my friend had asked for the divorce?

I realized: she wasn't angry.

Sadness is a passive emotion.

Had my friend's ex-wife been more angry instead of sad, or rather, expressed her sadness with anger, perhaps she would have moved out much more quickly.  But she didn't.  She stayed were she was, sad, taking days off work to be sad, and she stewed in the life she was about to no longer have with the woman she loved but who no longer want to be with her.  Sadness is immobilizing.

This story is an allegory for our greater political process in our country.  I'm afraid that we are all sad; we're immobilized with this grief for the system we have when instead we should be angry.

Historically, nothing political has ever been done without anger.  The Civil Rights movement is a perfect example, but here I will discuss the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, or ACT UP.

The AIDS epidemic in the 1980s was getting little to no political support or funding.  When it was discussed in the political sphere, the tragedy of the lives lost was made to be a joke.  The Reagan administration regularly teases reporters for being gay when the issue of the "gay plague" came up in press conferences.

Larry Kramer, playwright and activist, is one of the key members of ACT UP and one of the only surviving members.  He was interviewed for the HBO documentary The Out List and in that interview he briefly describes ACT UP.

Everything changed in July 1981 with the announcement of what would be called AIDS.  I helped to start two major organizations; Gay Men's Health Crisis and ACT UP.  On the one hand, so many of our friends were dying and on the other hand we slowly had a small army of people that were working so very hard to save the rest of us.  It was during that time that I realized, number one, how truly proud I am that I am a gay man and how truly wonderful I think gay people are.  

I found that with AIDS the Times wasn't writing about us, nobody was writing about us, the Mayor wasn't answering phone calls, it was awful.  People would rush up to me and say, "Have you heard of anything, is anything coming along, I don't think I'll be able to last much longer?" For many years there wasn't anything and you'd have to say to them, somehow, "Hold on, hold on."  And give each other hugs.  

And ACT UP made itself.  We began every meeting with announcing who had died since the last meeting, and, boy, if that wasn't enough to keep you going then I don't know what.  The first meeting had two hundred the next meeting had three.  We had a demonstration that following week on Wall Street, several thousand showed up, and we were born.  

It got more radical as we went on and we decided to have a protest at St. Patrick's.  We had all been trained in civil disobedience and it was very carefully choreographed, what we were going to do.  Like all good actors, these guys and gals really got into their parts.  They faced the alter and yelled at 'em, "Stop murdering us!"  Cardinal Connor was having a fit.  We were crucified ourselves the next day and on.  Every major network, every major newspaper said the most awful things about ACT UP.  How terrible we were, destroying peoples' right to worship.  And people were scared.  "What are we going to do, they hate us!"  And I said, "No they don't, they're afraid of us.  This is the best thing we've ever done.  We're no longer just limp-wristed fairies.  We're guys in jeans and Levis and boots.  We're here, we have voices, and we're gonna fight back."  It made us, that action at St. Patrick's.  

Every treatment for HIV that is out there is out there because of us.  Not from the government, not from any politician, not from any drug company.  We forced all of those things into being by our anger and our fear.  And that's what anger can get you.  You do not get more with honey than with vinegar.  Anger is a wonderful emotion.  Very creative, if you know how to do it.  I really truly felt that for some reason I'd been spared to tell this story.  Everybody I know is dead, all my friends.  I shouldn't say everyone, but almost.  I'm still here.  Ok, thank you God, I don't believe in you, but thank you anyway.  This is what I'm going to do to pay back.

Anger made ACT UP.  It saved people's lives.  And people right now are dying in the streets, sometimes left there, and where is the anger?

I am angry.  I am pissed off.  I want change.

No matter what side of the aisle you are currently are on, we need to recognize that those sides and the aisle is bullshit.  The elite political forces to clearly are not on the side of the citizens that it is unfathomable at this point that all people aren't also pissed off.

We do not live in a democracy, and this election is showing everyone that.  That is bullshit.  I want my voice to be heard equally to everyone else's and the only people who don't want that right now are the delegates and powerful within the Republican and Democratic parties.

I think it's time we do something.  Bu first we have to get angry.