Be the change you want to see.

wow. Busy fuckin' month, actually.

i started September with Burning Man and ended September with a flight home after a week in new york.

in between all that personal stuff (packing and unpacking, making memories and food and friends) the USA exploded again

these hearings for rage flailing alcoholic brett kavanaugh have got me and a lot of other people triggered AF.

the ONLY good thing about it is how everyone is actually talking about sexual assault, microaggressions, and shit like the gendered language and gendered biases a lot of us have never examined thoroughly before now.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/catherine-hardwicke-broke-records-with-‘twilight’-then-hollywood-labeled-her-‘difficult’

^^^ one article i just read where gender bias and gendered language ... shit i don't even really have the words for THIS. Prevented a qualified director from other jobs she was PRETTY DAMN FUCKING QUALIFIED FOR. So that the jobs could all get given to men.

so women (& other non-men) are finally looking at and expressing their rage. over a lifetime of bullshit that's been dumped on them. and the good men are listening.

But a lot of men are being dicks about everything and trying to sweep this tidal wave of uncovered feeling, back into the sea.

*smirk* Good luck with that boys! hah

I did not have the language to talk about my own sexual assault when i was 21. I didn't even realize it WAS a sexual assault, a violation of my no, an intentional boundary breach, for almost a year afterwards.

my college had a Take Back The Night rally. this was fall of 1991.

I remember some fuckin dudebros. Our chant as we marched was "whatever we wear, where ever we go, yes means yes and no means no!"

the fuckin dudebros yell back from the shadows, "no means yes, yes means anal!"
*fuming, 27 years later*

Our basic assumptions are DIFFERENT AS FUCK. Because "Patriarchy? you're SOAKING IN IT!"

i have a lot, a LOT of feelings about all of this shit. Kavanaugh is being brought face to face with his own privilege and is being called OUT on the damage his thoughtless actions caused... but the same kind of calling out didn't prevent 45 from being inaugurated (I'm NOT going to say ELECTED because he WASN'T).

So much to do! Thank fuck for therapy. I'm going to make concrete plans to hang out more often with women and other folks who are also enraged and ready to take action.

***I'll try to come back and write in more detail about all the amazing things I got to do and see in September, part of why the braindump is needed here is to acknowledge recent fucked-upness and to revisit it when I have more of a plan.

We Remember Them

In the rising of the sun and in its going down,
We remember them.
In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter
We remember them.
In the opening of the buds and in the rebirth of spring,
We remember them.
In the blueness of the sky and in the warmth of lsummer,
We remember them.
In the rustling of the leaves and in the beauty of autumn,
We remember them.
In the beginning of the year and when it ends,
We remember them.
When we are weary and in need of strength,
We remember them.
When we are lost and sick at heart,
We remember them.
When we have joys we yearn to share,
We remember them.
So long as we live, they too shall live,
For they are now a part of us,
As we remember them.

Text by Rabbis Sylvan Kamens and Jack Riemer from Gates of Prayer, R.B. Gittelsohn