Holiday: A Week in Review

             So, I went back home. That’s why my writing’s been sparse. Pleasant Hill kind of drains my motivation what with all the rousing games of “Count the Confederate Flag” that I end up playing. It’s like living in a white trash version of http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/ . The break was lovely and all. My mom was her usual adorable self. Went to the typical movie and a meal with Dad. I’m lucky to have parents that are reasonable people. Actual Thanksgiving was awkward. As per usual I was stuck in a house full of screaming children and their tired, grumpy parents who are all my adult 2nd cousins. I had to tread lightly around one of my uncles. My mother and I had recently helped his wife move out after years of verbal abuse. It was scary, they had to take all the guns out of the house while my uncle was away. He spent the day parked next the family matriarch, my 87-year-old great grandmother. 

          I attended my first ever Luft Thanksgiving. Besides the fact that my best friend was forced to act like she wasn’t really dating her girlfriend, it was a pretty great night. Mexican food, trivia, making jokes about oral sex, puppies, and I succeeded in giving a G-rated answer during the “What You’re Thankful For” part of the evening. “A private room and my vibrator” would not have been appropriate. I attempted flirting and failed as usual. Is there a course I can take to learn how? Because I must have missed it in middle school. An evening of green apple hookah and the last 1/8th of a gin martini (which was essentially just a glass o’gin) makes me a little angsty.

           I kinda took a break from social justice this week, hence why I don’t really have anything substantive to say. The most I could come up with is how there’s not a war on Christmas, but more like a war on Thanksgiving. You know, people who’ve already put their lights up and the radio stations that play Christmas music 24/7 starting November 1st. Maybe the conservatives are waging war against the more secular holiday? I wouldn’t put it past them…However, I bought a carton of egg nog the second I got a chance on friday. It had the consistency of motor oil and tasted like Jesus. The church should baptizing babies in egg nog. 

         I have three whole weeks to keep my shit together. Home stretch and what not. I have every season of Xena: Warrior Princess to cushion the blow of finals. I’ve been living in my head for the last week and it hasn’t helped much. Sorry to turn this into a diary entry, but that’s where I am. Once I get back to fucking shit up, I’ll be sure to report my progress.

– Lauren Mae

Focusing My Feminist Lens

        This girl is tired. Being a badass woman is hard work when you’re just starting out. You’d think in this day in age there wouldn’t be too many hurdles to jump. Women are in the workforce, we have been graciously allowed to vote, they let us drive cars and get divorces and decide when we want to grow new people in our own bodies (sometimes.) So what is a third/fourth waver supposed to do? Apparently commenting about media and entertainment is out of the question. Yes, because we feminists are mean, humorless, harpies that never have anything nice to say and lack the capacity have fun. You see, I grow quite weary of being told to “lighten up” or “stop taking things so seriously”. Believe it or not, sometimes I do watch and enjoy things that aren’t exactly politically correct. It’s all about the both/and. Glee is both a scrumptious hour of musical delight and slightly tokenizing. Sex and the City is both an entertaining depiction of  the strength female friendship and highly problematic for many reasons, one being that it is one of THE WHITEST SHOWS EVER. See what I mean? You take the good and keep the bad in mind. 

      Instead of setting aside my feminist lens or looking past it completely, I try to keep it in focus and at the ready. This is especially true when it comes to media marketed heavily to women, let’s say daytime talkshows or romantic comedies. Not to mention the minefield of advertisements we encounter everyday. When the commercials get me down and I start getting frustrated, I turn to Sara Haskins and her Target Women segment on Current TV’s Infomania. To me, she’s the best example of feminist criticism with sense of humor fully intact. Have a look below.

That said, I should confess. I have some weak spots, namely Say Yes to the Dress and fart jokes.

Target Women

Stupak and Swine Flu and Sex. Oh Fucking My.

           I’ve been feeling rather icky lately, and unfortunately have quarantined myself in my room. Feminists shouldn’t be allowed to have H1N1. It keeps us from fucking up the patriarchy to the best of our ability. It also keeps us out of Poli Sci 2700 and I’m getting anxious about my class work. While I’ve been on my ass, there’s been news happening.

          First and foremost, one of the biggest both/and moments ever occurred this last weekend. All summer, we’ve been working towards getting real, true healthcare reform passed in the House of Representatives. This has caused turmoil all over the country and has sparked some of the most heated debates I’ve ever witnessed. Progressives fought for a public option and managed to pull it off in the end. Last saturday, the healthcare reform passed in the lower house. I was so ready to be thrilled and fired up about this, but Bart Stupak  and anti-choice representatives decided to shit all the fuck over my happiness. This “blue-dog” democrat stuck his name on the biggest restriction on women’s reproduction healthcare since the Hyde Amendment in 1977.  This bullshit implies I should start saving up just in case I have an unplanned pregnancy, because I sure as hell am not getting any help from anyone else. I am almost still too angry to have coherent thoughts about this. Its like we couldn’t manage to pass any big legislation without making sure it cheats women out of something. I want to be excited about this landmark, but I can’t. I even had a dream that I was in an elevator talking with other campus dems about how I would never support the bill unless the senate took out the offending amendment. This shit is working it’s way into my dreams, this can’t be healthy. Read this nonsense here: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/15284081/Stupak-Amendment-to-HR-3962-Rev-108

        Speaking of unhealthy, I am one lonely, rom-com filled, LOFNOTC laiden weekend away from chucking my shoes at couples that hold hands in public. I’ve been trapped in my room alone since sunday night and it’s given me an unhealthy amount of time to reflect on my singleness. It’s nice to have time to get to know yourself and what not, but for fuck’s sake I’m a lonely girl. I can’t watch Love Actually without fanning myself. I can’t say the word “orgasm” without wanting to take an hour long shower. All I can say is that I’m so glad I invested in this single room or my life would be a lot more inconvenient. I see my friends in all these lovely, committed relationships and I like seeing them happy, only it reminds me that I’m not. They have people that want to know everything about their lives. I just want someone that will let me eat takeout with them in bed around three times a week. Time to go consult The Boss and buy some more triple A batteries.

Seriously.

Here’s a piece I wrote today on the fly for the campus LGBTQ magazine

          Fellow Progressives, I am most displeased. Current events are looking grim from New England to here in Mid-Missouri.  With quality health care for all of us in jeopardy and an economy scrambling to get itself in order, I guess it could be easy to overlook local news and a tiny little ballot measure happening on the east coast during off-year elections. However, it’s when people miss these details that we get blindsided as much as we have in recent weeks.

          As a Center for Social Justice staff member, I get quite comfortable in my queer, feminist, safe space/stronghold. It’s a warm little bubble where people are respectful and inclusive. Sometimes I forget that not all of the people in Columbia hold to these values. On Thursday, October 29^th two brothers, James and Michael Pezold, originally from O’Fallon, MO were arrested at Wal-Mart for committing what was clearly a hate crime. The brothers had been circling the parking lot pelting families with racial slurs.  This eventually led to James Pezold knocking a 2-year-old child down with his vehicle and driving away. Fortunately, the child sustained minor injuries and no one else was physically harmed. Honestly. A two-year-old. Here in the Columbia that I have grown to naively consider a friendlier place for minorities than the town I grew up in. I have been sincerely disappointed. One moral (among many) found from that story: avoid Wal-Mart at all costs.

           In not-so-local news, marriage equality has taken yet another upsetting blow. The feelings I have about Maine’s Proposition One debacle can be summed up pretty easily: Seriously?! Seriously, Maine, I thought you had yourself together. However, 53% of voters said, “Yes” to this ballot measure and repealed the right for same-sex couples to marry in the state. I am genuinely surprised and upset, but should I be?  It is the 31^st time that marriage equality has failed as public referendum. You would have thought that after the massive, powerful backlash from the Prop 8 mess in California that progressives would have been on the offensive to make sure it didn’t happen again. Where did we go wrong in Maine? All the coverage of the  “No On 1” campaign showed them as organized and optimistic. I’ve been an intern on grassroots campaigns before and this shakes my faith in the work that organizers are doing. There are people on the far right saying that what happened in Maine shows that the fight is over, that Americans truly aren’t interested in marriage equality. Their implication that there is no fight left in the queer community might be what pains me the most to hear, because I know that is far from the truth.

           At this moment, I find myself wondering where have all the safe spaces gone?  If the coasts are not bulletproof from hypocrisy and hate crimes are happening in our backyard, where do we go? Equality seems scarce and fleeting, so I say we keep our eyes open to the events that don’t always make the headlines. I say we stay here and hold our ground in our corner of the world. Let’s make our warm and happy bubble of social justice just a little bit bigger.

 

Hi. Let’s be friends.

But  on one condition:

You must set aside all douchebaggery. That said…

       I come from/still live in a part of the world that people like to ignore. It’s called the Midwest and I’m starting to own it as a big part of my identity. No mountains, no oceans, no problem, right? Actually, lots of problems. Missouri is the most commonly forgotten state on basic US geography tests. Why? I’m grappling with this question because sometimes even I would like to forget that I grew up here. But some things (float trips, sunday school, and the smell that sticks to you when you eat Sonic) just don’t was off that easily. 

       Here in my home state you can get this incredibly diverse microcosm of American existence. Extreme poverty and affluence, racial tensions, and intense division between rural and urban areas. Shit happens here, folks. Real, scary, relevant shit. A little girl disappears in a Florida suburb and the news media is all over it, but the same things are happening in the tiny little towns around me and I never see any cameras. Every day at my university I’m exposed to some of the most progressive and intellectual people I’ve ever met. However, I know that just a single 2-hour trip to the town I grew up in, Pleasant Hill, will bring me back to how upsetting and backwards life can be here.

      Many of my friends are on the verge of graduation. I hear them talk wistfully of their potential graduate studies in Chicago, Boulder, Austin, San Francisco, Seattle, and *insert anywhere but Missouri here*. They speak of how their imminent flight from the Show Me state will make them more free to fuck shit up. They’ll live in the corners of this country where it’s easier for my comrades in arms to be who they are. But where does that leave the rest of us? What happens when all the radical people leave just so they can be more comfortable? Who’s going to do the dirty work and make this forgotten state a better place to live? Well, I think I might be one of them that stays. Not because I want to, not because I don’t want to see what else the world offers me, but because shit needs fucking up in the heartland.

     So, that’s what I want this blog to be about. I’m slowly but surely coming with some…erm… interesting features. I plan on using every women’s restroom on the Mizzou campus during my time here. I will provide a weekly spotlight on the best and worst that I have discovered. I want to better illustrate the social landscape here. I want to talk about the characters I meet in my life. And stuff.

And remember kiddos, with feminism everyone wins.