Tag: women

Great Mystery we honour

My grandmother had always referred to the universe as the Great Mystery.

Richard Wagamese, Indian Horse, page 65.

“We need mystery. Creator in her wisdom knew this. Mystery fills us with awe and wonder. They are the foundations of humility, and humility, grandson, is the foundation of all learning. So we do not seek to unravel this. We honour it by letting it be that way forever.”

Ibid.

The transformation that comes from practice and doing the same tasks over and over for many days. The chores build strength and speed and competency. The isolation fosters individuation and delight at the ability to accomplish and notice the changes that come with being able to simply do and with time master at what was once impossible.

Is it this, is it feelings

Is it shame? The shame of being a man with a penis and having had sex with women recently or decade earlier? The shame of being a U.S. citizen/an American who has tolerated the two party politics and dynamic between Democrats and Republicans for so long that they’ve squashed other political party alternatives?

Is it the horror of living in a misogynist nation state that does not guarantee maternity leave and therefore does not invest in parental leave nor provide a safety net for family leave. These notions are placed on the shoulders of the individual, not to be determined by policies to guarantee for all.

Is this inaction complacency to these domineering forces and stifling systems? Or a delusion that this greatest democracy in the world is not collapsing and convulsing.

Or is this some symptom or definition of stupidity. Socialized into apathy and subjugation.

Peeling to the core

But, why is it so? she asked me.

Mortality. Their own. And the fears of things that they do not understand.

But that wasn’t right.

Later, I said, They are regretting having sold this land that they didn’t agree on. That she wanted to but he did not. Now they have sold it, we live here, and they wish that they had not.

Nor was that accurate. This was so much bigger than us with so many forces at play. We were moving through challenging obstacles in our lives in the midst of phenomena defining others’ lives that were insignificant to our own yet also featured minor ways that we would imprint on one another’s paths.

It’s that they are crackers. Yes, that was it.

Little more to it. Some false sense of entitlement, a delusional importance and some ill and mistaken notions of how you interact with others, not simply that we are a separate family but even what is appropriate and inappropriate for an adult when speaking with or reprimanding a child. They have repeatedly thought that they could have wishes for what would transpire in our lives, which they have amplified by giving voice to some of their opinions. Unwelcome and asinine opinions. Now that they’ve been rebuffed, they bristle and bicker and stir the pot of shit that they want to spread around.

And in the face of such shit spreading conduct, I could cower or attempt to manipulate my body to not get hit by their shit, as a number of other cowardly neighbors have done around the bullies, because the cowards cower in the face of their aggression. And this white woman uses her white woman fragility to push the buttons of men who spring into some misguided actions of attempting to protect. From what, they’re not too clear as they don’t recognize the very whiteness of their ways. They pretend to adhere to being colorblind not knowing that their social circles are heavily white and colorblindness has been unfashionable since 1998.

Picking on the youngest ones

That mark, David Shor, has the audacity to chide the 20-something volunteers, temporary workers, part time workers, interns and entry level employees for the Democrat Party.

Shor picks on the young adults, when there’s layer upon layer of the Old Boys Network in campaign consultants, lobbyists and other industries that orbit around partisan political.

Shor picks on the young adults when there are the incumbents and first time candidates that come from the traditional places resulting in the likelihood that they will get their blessings and backing of the bloated Establishment of the Democratic Party.

Shor picks on the young adults when there are the donor class who invest in disappointing mediocrity that enshrines modest tweaks to the status quo rather than robust interventions and interruptions oc systems that are broken for most families, adults and children, but systems that serve the plutocrats.

And this wunderkind wunderkid is heralded for concluding that 18-29 year olds are more progressive and more liberal and more radical than the typical Democratic voter. Note: there’s an aspect of confirmation bias considering the swaths of adults eligible to vote who are to disgusted by Democrats and Republicans to identify with either of the two main political parties.

But this Obama campaign acolyte is being repurposed and repackaged because the Democratic Party knows that it faces multiple existential crises. First among them, that the older voters who preferred HRC in the 2015-2016 primary are dying while tge teenagers coming into voting age are much more likely to vote for Bernie Sanders abd AOC types of candidates.

And, the Old Boys Network can’t stand it.

In part because the white guys in power, who benefit the most from nepotism and it’s-who-you-know patronage, don’t want to share power and have to adhere to equity. The white guys don’t want to have to give up half of all the seats at the table and half of all the positions to women. The white guys don’t want to have to give up 20% more of the seats at the table to men of color. The white guys don’t want to have to give up another 5% of the seats to gender nonconforming and non-binary people. The white guys do not think that their slice is only 35% of the whole.

That said, the white guys in power do not believe in equity, fairness, or representation. The white guys in power do not believe in this basic form of democracy.

Too many white men in power who put the letter D after their name will collude and conspire with Republicans to defeat or thwart changes coming from the reluctant Ds, those of us who pick that affiliation as the lesser of two evils and a compromised, hollowed political audacity.

Shor looks to the history of the likes of Bill Clinton, John Corzine, Chuck Schumer, Terry McAuliffe, John Hickenlooper, and Steny Hoyer. He trusts that there will be plenty more doors and floors for him to rise to, as the Democratic Party has plenty of seats for just his type.

Questioning patriarchy with Morgan Parker

I wanted to quote these two sentences from Morgan Parker:

When I wake up, I have fantasies about doing whatever. I’m not lazy, I just understand the relationship between time and money.

http://weird-sister.com/2015/03/09/my-dreams-of-being-a-feminist-housewife/

But, it is actually this one that stirs some things within:

Can I at once work to break down a heteronormative capitalist system while reaping its benefits: money, time, freedom, leisure, and peace of mind?

http://weird-sister.com/2015/03/09/my-dreams-of-being-a-feminist-housewife/

All we can do is utilize this current system and operation to foment the next system even when that new era may be decades or hundreds of years away. Even when finding alternatives to the dominant cultural ways, I participate in this current system while still being an example of something different than the current.

I believe that we can use privilege and powers bestowed by an unjust and imbalanced system to contribute to its destruction. That is a timeless inquiry for men and boys, for citizens, for owning class people to see that the position that they/we are in is untenable and rather than continue to benefit from it, we can confront it and aim to transform if NOC destroy it.

What we talkin about when we talk about

messages lie in words …. But it’s metamessages that have clout, because they stir emotions, and emotions are the currency of relationships.

So said Deborah Tannen on page 10 of I only say this because I love you (2001).

Tannen wrote “those closest to us have front-row seats to view our faults” yet they also have the proximity to our attributes, gifts but we perpetuate a culture that does not appreciate as much as it deprecates.

A decade ago, I remember how bringing an assets based approach was a welcome salve in the nonprofit/civic sector rather than the continued fixation with being motivated by what was missing or lacking in a place and wanting to be the problem solvers by confronting those things that were missing. But a few workshops in a year full of meetings results in a low concentration. And that short lived attempt to embrace what a place had was challenging to sustain when being critical is easy and familiar and a way that we have been told to treat one another in school, at work, in public spaces, and at home.

Now, I have made it a fixture of naming appreciations for the people i am with on a daily basis, at the end of most of the webinars that I design. And still it is difficult for people to begin with what they like.

Tannen elaborated no messages and metamessages by saying:

  • message: the meaning of the words and sentences spoken, what anyone with a dictionary and a grammar book could figure out.
  • metamessage: “the meaning that is not said, what we glean from every aspect of context: the way something is said, who is saying it, or that fact that it is said at all.

Or using another metaphor that “message is the word meaning while metamessage is the heart meaning.” Tanner elaborated by saying how metamessages are implicit and difficult to pinpoint as they are about relationships. Her early suggestion is to distinguish metamessage from message and one way of doing so is metacommunicating or talking about communication, which I suppose is using words to describe the implicit heart emotions.

Wanted: roommate

As I lay down for a second round of snuggles before bedtime, the five year old said:

“Poppa, I have always wanted you to be my roommate.”

I replied by smiling in the dark. I basked in the glow of this sentence as I looked out the window at the silhouette of the trees in the twilight. Then I said:

“I will always have your back. I will always love you even when I’m frustrated, sad, or angry. I will never leave you. You will live with Momma and me until your an adult and you decide where you want to live.”

It was a dignifying for me. I’m moved by the always of five years because these five years have been so enormous and consequential and so quick. And that some facets from a few months ago have been long forgotten. So always is so long.

And, it was a statement of right now. At times, she has the ability to recall some detail or moment or specific from months ago that has not been named and she can bring it up and remember some thing that I forgot. And throughout the day, a five year old can offer immediate feedback about how things are in any exact moment. And that’s what being told that I’m a roommate who has been wanted forever feels like some special love as a father finding my way in these unknowns.

12 definitions of decolonization from Yvette Mutumba

Pablo Larios interviews Yvette Mutumba about decolonization and she rattled off a list of twelve with the most fabulous prelude that I’ve ever read:

What follows only begins to touch on a matter of decades of thinking, working, experiencing, talking and growing.

As for the 12 definitions of decolonization:

> that I will not do the job of those sitting inside institutions and organizations that are predominantly white

> conversations which create serious exchange, but also discomfort, maybe even pain, on the other side of the table.

> having to sit with that discomfort.

> understanding that decolonization is not a matter of ‘us’ and ‘them’, but concerns all of us.

> acknowledging that this is not a current moment or trend.

> not necessarily being political, but no choice to not be political.

> admitting that having grown up in a racist structure is no excuse.

> transparency from the institutional side.

> re-centering

> stepping back and making space.

> creating safe spaces.

> changing structures as much as building new structures

Baboon Patriarchy

In 1975, Ursula K. Le Guin named the pitiful norms and dominance of othering, blind cultural superiority of men writing science fiction books in an essay called American SF and The Other (pages 93-96 in The Language of the Night).

It’s amazing how pervasive and entrenched this white male complex is:

In general, American SF has asssunmee a permanent hierarchy of superiors and inferiors, with rich, ambitious, aggressive males at the top, then a great gap, and then at the bottom the poor, the uneducated, the faceless masses, and all the women.

Such notions of self and character development enable rape, belittling, disgust, and false senses of supremacy.

If you deny any affinity with another person or kind of person, if you declare it to be wholly different from yourself—as men have done to women, and class has done to class, and nation has done to nation—you may hate or deity it; but in either case you have denied it’s spiritual equality and its human reality. You have made it into a thing, to which the only possible relationship is a power relationship. And this you have fatally impoverished your own reality. You have, in fact, alienated yourself.

These last two sentences are intriguing because they distill what happens when men orient by wanting or having power over. It is a position to prohibits us from getting reciprocity or being able to benefit from learning, and prohibits us from being able to benefit from the experience, wisdom or wealth of others since the experiences and knowledge and resources of others are not seen or seen as only serving some pre-conceived idea of how others will be KF service.

Separating seeing and speaking

Paulo Coelho writes on page 93 of The Spy that:

“For millions of years, [humans] spoke only to what [they] could see. Suddenly, in one decade, ‘seeing’ and ‘speaking’ have been separated. We think we’re used to it, yet we don’t realize the immense impact it’s had on our reflexes. Our bodies are simply not used to it.

“Frankly, the result is that, when we talk on the phone, we enter a state that is similar to certain magical trances; we can discover other things about ourselves.”

This in a story set in Paris in the 1914 — after the Exposition Universelle (nee World’s Fair) of 1889 and before World War One.

A few, notable passages from previous pages include:

“A nice cup of coffee will salvage the rest of your day.”

And

“Maybe you’re looking for things you haven’t yet found…. And suddenly life turns into utter boredom.”