Rambling Block

i went to bed thinking about something [a friend] wrote about not wanting to be angry for the rest of her life or spend it smashing the kyriarchy & how she just wants to make art but i can’t find it now (read: i’m too lazy to look) but ANYWAY i went to sleep listening to frank [ocean] and thinking about that

a long time ago on [a] blog i said something about how maya really inspires me as a musician because her music is not complex but powerful? and that she literally started from a drum machine. she saw peaches at a show and got a drum machine and turned into m.i.a. that’s still really inspiring to me

but the more i listen to frank the more i realize he’s kind of in that same vein. nostalgia, ultra had some moments where he was just taking music from other people and making it better. he didn’t sample hotel california, he made a new song out of it! and it was good! sometimes i think about how i really wanted to be make music as a child and didn’t know how and gave myself so much grief for not being a virtuoso or anything decent

when music is actually something that works from the ground up. and it doesn’t have to be amazing or important but you have to be okay with it. not even in love with it. just okay with it.

anyway just listening to frank and feeling really inspired txt it

A Reaction

Okay, I found my feelings kind of.

This is why I am crying: because Frank Ocean is a fantastic writer, because a black male artist with a huge fanbase came out, because he did it on his own time, because I am not out, because he managed to find love and I haven’t, because he is sure of himself. My tears are happy tears though, I assure you.

When Anderson Cooper came out, I rolled my eyes. 

Look, reading about the trust that someone has in someone else is hard for me. I’m not a very trusting person. I can be “out” to some people but not fully. There are not many places where I feel safe. I am constantly looking for faces and voices like mine unconsciously. Unconsciously. I could’ve been Frank Ocean with a beautiful letter about falling in love and the terror in the aftermath, but I’m not. But I really, really could have been. And that’s really what matters to me.

Anderson Cooper came out and that same night completed his show without a flaw. No one felt any different. No stirring in the soul. No overwhelming excitement or debilitating terror for his future. When I go to bed tonight, I’m not gonna worry about Anderson Cooper’s career. I’m not gonna worry if people will wipe out his voice. I’m definitely not going to worry about him finding work. Chances are, he didn’t worry about any of these things either.

I really, really need Frank Ocean. We really, really need Frank Ocean. I don’t need him to speak for me or write for me or tell any of my stories. I’m a writer and a big talker; I can do that myself. I need him to exist. I need him to keep tying knots in my stomach and pushing me towards my comfort. I felt good reading about him. I want him to keep creating stories I can read about.

On Sharon Needles & the "One Drop Rule"

One day I'll stop catching all my feelings from Tumblr--but today is not that day.

Does anyone remember Sharon Needles? I do. I remember watching Season 4 of RuPaul's Drag Race and being infatuated with her scary-cool stylings and her warm, evading personality. Between her and fellow competitor Latrice Royale, I felt as if I'd literally wandered into the mecca of drag queens. What made liking her even better was Needles' open, caring message of being yourself and embracing your creepy-crawly demeanor inside and out; obviously a message we can all identify with and take to heart (like all good messages of the world!) It's all such a sharp contrast of where I am today, which is perpetually side-eyeing Needles until my eyes fucking hurt.

You see, Needles is a racist, and sometimes her racism gets caught up in her cissexism, and then it just turns into a big, gooey ball of white gay male privilege. It's not hard to believe that someone who's down with embracing your true self would have no trouble embracing the uglier parts of themselves, but I'm sure that's just a part we can all forgive, right? After all, Needles has done so much for (white, male) gay kids out there. She's a role model; cut her some slack!

The thing is, I can't. Also: I don't want to.

A few years of being an activist and a lifetime of being a black female queer has provided me with some beneficial talents, one of them being the art of protesting bullshit. I don't have a lot of slack to give; when I do so consciously, it is given out carefully, excruciatingly. "Giving slack" to a person who offends or oppress me actively is an all-body experience: each part of me--the physical, the mental, the emotional--has to work double time to accept the atrocities that I face. I recognize that those calling for slack do not often realize that queer/trans* people of color are accustomed to giving slack; that sometimes the decision to is not their own, that the process is sometimes forced. As a black female queer, "giving slack" is often how I stay alive.

I give more slack than people realize. Sometimes I give slack without thinking about it. Sometimes I change my mind about giving slack but realize I can't go back. That natural inclination of society when describing me or people who look/operate like me is to paint me as angry, as a bitch with a grudge--someone who can't let shit go. I let everything go! My anger is arbitrary and dependent--on my day, on my energy levels, on whether I'm hungry, on where I am. My anger is not always apparent or efficient. But it is legitimate and is always focused, so when I tell you that Sharon Needles is the scum of the fucking queer community--you know I really mean that shit.

Because I cannot afford to rile up my blood about everything, I use the "one-drop" rule. It's an effective technique at best, a survival method at worse. It goes like this: the minute I learn of [relevant person]'s racism (or sexism or classism or ableism) I cut them out. It's pretty simple, let's try it:

Michael Fassbender? Physical, violent abuse. Cut.

Sean Penn? Wife beater. Cut.

Martin Freeman? Racist and homophobic. Also likes to the say the n-word! Cut!

The popular rebuttal against the "one drop" rule is that it ignores the more positive parts of a person; that it makes a random judgement of a person as a whole because of one bad thing they did. The problem with that rebuttal is that this is literally the entire goddamn point--the larger intricacies of a person's personality are no longer as important as the bad thing they just did. It's why I call it the one drop rule: that "one drop" of bigotry will be worth a hundred charities, a thousand great performances, a million "roles" of that role model. Those things are no longer representative of your character because they are not truthful as your bigotry. Nothing is more truthful than a person's bigotry to me; what they say when they are in the warm comfort of friends, well into their cups, or when they are "30, rich and famous" (What a zinger from Needles!)--all of these things are more real than your name on the check for the orphanage.

They matter more to because they have to. Media is never no strings attached--nothing is just what it is. Sharon Needles is not just a drag queen. With the one drop rule, she is another brutal reminder of the racism and anti-trans bigotry in the mainstream gay community; she is a reminder that I do not and will not accept all of the bullshit handed to me daily. 

I'm not about that slack giving life consciously. That shit can save your life, but I still reserve the right to extend my love and patronage on my rules and especially at my discretion. Had it been another day or had I been in another state emotionally, I would've let Needles' offensiveness slide right on by my dash, but it wasn't and I wasn't--and that's just how it is. Deal. 

On Families of Color and "Effective Punishment"

A few weeks ago, I had it in my mind to write a few words on the Creflo Dollar affair. Luckily, the Crunk Feminist Collective had already picked up the extremely large and triggering tab for me, so I'm here piggybacking on something I've been nursing for a while.

After reading Something to Cry About, I began to think about the abuse I could never really call abuse.

Even now, I have a hard time putting my finger on my feelings. I am the daughter of two Nigerian immigrants, the product of a "nontraditional" (read: non-American) household mixed with heavy American socialization. To this day I still have a difficult time merging both sides of "me" into one body, to allow what I know as a Nigerian (daughter) and what as I feel as an American (teen) into one space. As I was growing up, I was intensely confused. I would watch television shows with families that connected and interacted with each other with little yelling or screaming, and virtually no instances of physical punishment. I watched sitcom daughters sneak out of their homes to meet boyfriends and receive a long, vocal warning as punishment. I watched sitcom sons use fights and other forms of violence to "speak out" to their parents, only to have the parent get to the root of the problem with a "heart-to-heart."

In my house, things were vastly different. There were certain ways to show respect, but there were endless methods to be "disrespectful"--and most of those ways ended in physical reprimands. There were no time outs. There was no groundings. My parents' punishments were quick, easy and to the point--regardless of how I felt emotionally, the lesson was to be learned physically; if my mind was quick to forget, my face would always remember. Eventually, I stopped paying attention to the life lessons in sitcoms. I learned that there couldn't be a heart-to-heart with my parents, that my actions would never receive the benefit of the doubt or the murky cover of "she's just a teenager; she's still growing." I continued to fuck up in the many ways only a teenager can (and much like the children I watched on my favorite shows), but the outcome was never the same: I wasn't supposed to be learning along the way, I was expected to know.

Whenever I think about my parents' behavior, I am hesitant to call it abuse. What my parents did (in some cases) was not different from what their parents did; it just tends to run in the family. It was all parents of their background and upbringing did. Physical punishment is not a big deal where my parents come from, and I am wary of measuring up their ideas and understanding of the world to white standards of child-rearing. I feel guilty calling it "abuse"--abuse sounds harsher than "reprimanding out of fear" or "reprimanding for your own good"--which is what I believe my parents were (mostly) doing. I am panicked to ever describe my father as emotionally abusive or manipulative, my mother as indifferent or abandoning, because that's the way things go; that's just how it is.

I believe a lot of things about parents of color. I believe that their standards of child-rearing are always on blast for its supposed violence; I believe white society doesn't understand that their methods have to be different. I understand a lot of them don't have the luxury of "groundings" or "heart-to-hearts." I believe a lot of them don't have time to explain why you can't play in the street after dark, or that fear sometimes comes easier to them than words do. I believe that sometimes a simple "I don't want you hanging around with the older kids" and a whooping if you disobey is enough for them, or all they are capable of. I believe that sometimes the tenderness of the punishment is not as much of as a concern as effectiveness is--what will it take to for you to learn this once and only once? I believe, above all things, that parents of color are working against the tide of a world that can easily tear their children to shreds. I believe that parents of color only give what they have taken--and hey, they turned out fine.

I don't fault parents of color for doing what they can, but in communities where abuse in all its forms is rarely discussed, where mental disorders and diseases are brushed aside, where it is hard for children of color to sometimes receive the mental and emotional support they need--I have to wonder how truly effective their methods are. I will still defend their right to teach and love their kids how ever they can, but I still have to sit down with children of color just like me, who had to pick their pieces off the floor when the "tough love" was over. I have to question we learned the lesson or avoided the next blow; I have to know if we only learned to survive by dodging our mother's belt.

There is an efficiency in the way parents of color reprimand, in how they teach. But efficiency never really considers what happens when the job is over.

Is Self Care Oppressive? (Or, How to be a Good Activist by Taking a Bubble Bath)

I had an interesting conversation with a friend yesterday that opened up a lot to me. Parts of it dealt with self care, and other parts of it was just me screaming about how the majority of the activist community just aren't shit.

The wonderful, caring, amazing sweet friend of mine (Wonderful Friend for short!) had me thinking a lot about self-care and the way it relates to activism. Wonderful Friend is a long time activist, but is not in a place right now where they can actively engage in activism in the way that they want to. Which is totally understandable of course, and a good sign that a nice self-care day (or week or month!) is in order--but although that seemed to be the next logical step, Wonderful Friend felt concerned. Were they being oppressive by proxy in stepping back from the community to take care of themselves? Was self-caring the same as being apathetic or indifferent to the many issues out there in the world?

I angrily replied to Wonderful Friend that hell no it wasn't.

(My anger wasn't and isn't directed at Wonderful Friend and their concerns, but at the idea behind them. I've considered myself a part of the activist community for a few years now, and there seems to be a budding trend of "slacktivist" bullshit running around, which tends to get really annoying and racist/classist/ableist pretty quick. Slacktivism is the bullshit idea that there are only certain parts or things in activism that are true and real. It creates an "ideal activist," usually someone white, able-bodied/minded and in good financial standing who is able to picket line and protest and create rallies and do all these wonderful things that only "real" activists can do. Wonderful Friend's concerns seemed to stem from this thinking, which upset me in ways I did not realize. How could such a great person feel for a second that they were not true or real because they were not (supposedly) "active?")

The gist of it is this: activism is not a zero sum game, and self-care is a radical act. Anyone who questions this is an asshole.

Self-care is always something people should do, as activists or as people. Self-caring is important! But because there seems to be a prevailing idea that activism is a thing that requires 24/7, constant giving. You must always be on, or you are immediately cut off. Solidarity must always be shown or you are lazy/oppressive/inauthentic. Time and time again, I've seen these ideals thrown around with little disregard for those who are not able to live up to these "standards" for varied reasons. I explained to Wonderful Friend that I was and would never be the "perfect activist" because I was black, broke and not in stable mental health. My black ass has no business being at rallies with police officers, my broke ass can't afford to make signs or organize rallies or buy pins or whatever and my depression sucks my energy and focus dry. Why should I pander to the idea of the perfect activist when I know it will never happen?

Activism is not all or nothing. It is as complex as people, can be affected in many different ways, demands intersectionality and often doesn't receive even that. There are plenty of reasons why you will never seen an assortment of people on the sidelines. That shit just doesn't work for us. Instead, we might create art, or write books, make music, dress loud, speak soft or fuck hard. Activism comes in so many flavors and colors that the idea of restricting it to a couple of picket lines and tree-chainings is so fucking ridiculous that it almost hurts.

Self care, for me, makes for good activism in that it shows the world that 1) you're willing to take care of yourself in a society that does not call for it or make it easy to do so and 2) it's not over, bitches. I explained to Wonderful Friend that self-care becomes activism by allowing to do your fucking job as an activist. What's better than sitting down a few minutes to heal, train and come back harder, fists swinging? Self care takes us out of the game so that we can rest, learn, enjoy, and feel so that we may work even harder, stronger, tougher and more amazing. I don't know about anyone else, but I like upgrades. I like being better and faster. And even if you don't feel like any of these things when the self-care is over, you have still done enough by just tending to yourself.

If anyone has any shit to say to that, fuck 'em. The day self-care becomes oppressive is the I day will march my ass down to the nearest police station and have myself arrested.

Let no one judge the way you fight, less they be masters themselves. And trust me, there is no one true "activism master." This isn't fucking Highlander. You do what you can in the spaces that you can do it, and that will always, always be enough.

I Will Never Do Darius Simmons Justice

...and I need to accept that.

I think one of the hardest things to realize as a writer is that your voice is not always needed. There is always going to be someone more articulate, more passionate, more skilled than you--and sometimes, their voice is exactly what's needed. I am not a person to underplay my own skills, but I can always tell--before I pick up the pen or open the document--if I am going to write something worthwhile to me. Sometimes I surprise myself, but often times I don't. Sometimes I know I'm going write straight bullshit before I even type a single word.

Whenever I think about Darius Simmons, my fingers ache to write. There is so much I want to say and they would all be justified. But the more the news circulate, and the more reactions I read from others who are mourning in some way just like I am, I realize that there is nothing that I can do, and there is nothing that I could say that would bring this boy to life again, or that would respect him in his death. What do you say to those who are mourning? I'm am too well acquainted with my own pain to tune into anyone else's sometimes. I have never been good on writing for the emotions of anyone else but my own. I find that I can heal through my own sensibilities, but never as much as I want to. Writing out my pain and having people connect to it is more catharsis for me than healing for others.

What could I possibly say about Darius Simmons that would not be lost in my own anger?

What could I say to him other than I'm sorry? I read the news and I feel like I have failed. I only want to write about my anger, my fear--but nothing I will ever say will be about this boy. I will not write testaments to Darius Simmons, because I am only good at writing about me.

I will never do Darius Simmons justice, and it will never his fault. I am learning that right now, my pain is meant to be inside. I do not need to express it. I need to analyze it, to feel it, and to turn it into something useful, something powerful than me. I need to learn how to cultivate my fear into a celebration of someone else; I want to learn how to turn my anger into a community to surround others. I need to give more than my hurt.

An Ode (and a Promise) to Creating

I miss creating. I miss being consumed by a million large, ridiculous projects; I miss waking up in the morning with some kind of drive. It's been a long year since I've truly felt anything about my work (or that I even had something to call "work.") I like to think of myself as a creator of some sort, but even I have to admit that the love has definitely been lost here.

I think what scares me more than anything right now is that I'll never be able to get back into the mindset of creating, of being so engrossed in something regardless of it was going to "be" something or not. For the sake of my mental health and capacity, I've spent this last year focusing my energy on things that would ensure success or didn't require a lot of my thought or creative process, which has helped in some areas and harmed in many others. I think I've forgotten that I have always, above anything else, been a dreamer. I like starting projects, I even like it when I don't or can't finish them. I like thinking of how cool something would be if I could just get it done.

In short, I'm going to dedicate this summer to creating again, and maintaining that drive that has kept me going. I don't want to be here again next year.