crg goes places and does things!

to shave or not to shave?

crustyriotgrrl — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 02:30:29 +0000

i try to understand the reasons for being female-bodied/passing and shaving – i did it for countless years myself! i don’t cut people down for doing so, and i don’t think they’re any less committed to the feminist cause than i am. but i also know that there are many more road blocks and hardships for those of us that are hairy, simply in terms of aesthetics within society. i regularly get called “disgusting”, “filthy”, and “gross” by my own fucking family members simply because i have body hair. i’ve had potential partners find out i have hairy legs and it become a “deal breaker” for them. i’ve had parents give me nervous yet unapologetic glances after their little children tug on their shirts asking, “why does that girl have hair on her legs?” i’ve gotten looks of horror and disbelief from my fellow classmates at my self-proclaimed progressive private liberal arts colleges when i raise my arms above my head or prop my bare legs upon a chair in front of me. some of my friends have commented that they’ve been “surprised” that i “smell kind-of good” since they think that hairy pits automatically equals dank (but not on cismen). i’ve even withstood comments from shaving feminists that say it is “so awesome” that i’m hairy, despite their opinion that my body hair is “disturbing”.

i think its safe to say that this type of shit doesn’t happen to female-bodied/passing feminists who shave. do i hate that they aren’t hairy like me? no. am i biased in favor of not shaving? yes. do i think its nice to take a little bit of extra time and proverbially high-five my fellow feminists who don’t shave? fuck yes i do. but what needs to be realized by smooth-legged feminists is that my pro-hair stance is not an anti-shaving stance. i simply intend to give extra and much-needed support my fellow non-shavers by having hairy solidarity. where else are they going to get it?

okay, just so you know about my zines.

crustyriotgrrl — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 18:48:12 +0000

the little wordpress search thing keeps saying people are searching for my “well (g)rounded” zine. it never got published. it was 84 cut n paste pages done over my last winter break and i don’t like a lot of the things i wrote in it. i am, however, copying some of the pages to go in the 4th issue of my perzine, you’ve got a friend in pennsylvania. here’s a list of what i’ve got out so far:

hoax. #1: feminism & relationships
hoax. #2: feminism & relationships redux
hoax. #3: feminism & health
you’ve got a friend in pennsylvania #1
you’ve got a friend in pennsylvania #2
spicy delight mini-zine
doing that zine thing: how to make your very own zine

in progress:

hoax. #4: feminism & hirstories
you’ve got a friend in pennsylvania #3
you’ve got a friend in pennsylvania #4
untitled mini-zine about doing hoax as a way to live out radical politics
untitled true stories zine with my friend j.: #1 is about murderers
untitled zine about vegan cooking for the broke ass college student

organizing my thoughts: on a legacy of suicide.

crustyriotgrrl — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 00:01:26 +0000

so right now i’m about to finish up with #3 of my perzine. i need it to be done by next weekend for a zinefest in brooklyn. for #4, i want to write about the history of mental illnesses in my family. below i’ll be writing a whole jumbled mess of ideas for it. if you are sensitive to topics relating to suicide, mental health, or self harm, please read with caution.

a lot of the time people don’t believe it when i’m upset by something. at school, when classmates approach me in the library to ask if i’ve gotten started on a paper due the next week, i almost always give a nonchalant answer similar to, “no, but it’ll get done”. in return, they almost always give a frantic response similar to, “what? i’ve been freaking out about this for weeks!” it really seems to bother people that i’m so…unbothered by what they think i should be stressing out about. i have always been able to separate myself from chaotic situations, and it frustrates the people around me. if i would fight with a partner in private then be with a group of mutual friends, i would always be pleasant and interested in conversation. meanwhile, my partner would be festering with unrest over our disagreement and be a huge asshole to our friends – and therefore, would be even more upset with me that i seemed so calm and collected. i create a disconnect between my inner and outer monologues in stressful situations because i don’t think its an appropriate place to air out my dirty laundry or impose such negativity on those who don’t deserve it.

my 27-year-old cousin recently committed suicide. i wasn’t very close to him and only met him a handful of times in my life. i learned the most about him through secondhand tales told my my grandmother, who described him as “a troubled young man”. he was an alcoholic, had crashed cars in the double digits, and probably had to be bailed out of jail more times than you could count on two hands. one of my fondest memories of such stories included his brother describing the time they got into a fight with racist skinheads who gave them shit for the colors of the boot laces they had in. i was 17 at the time, and thought that their handling of the situation was a pretty good way to treat such boneheads. i looked past the way that alcohol fueled these, and many other, fights that he had, a lot of which landed him in jail. despite his bad behavior, he had very supportive parents who bailed him out and encouraged him in his endeavors to get back onto his feet. i’m sure there were conflicts and issues that i never heard about, but i do know that he had a pretty good support system with his immediate family.

i also know that in the last weeks of his life, he was struggling with the looming issue of being taken back to jail and visited several doctors for various ailments. unbeknownst to me and the rest of my family, he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic a little over a week before he killed himself. he didn’t want his extended family to be informed, for fear that they would treat him poorly or be judgmental of his illness.

reflecting upon his death and the complications he suffered from has lead me to take a more critical look at the veins of depression, alcoholism, bipolar disorder, and the legacy of suicide that run in my family. when my maternal grandmother was 15, her mother committed suicide. she drank a fifth of vodka every day to cope with her depression and eventually grew tired of living. my whole life i’ve been told that i’m so much like her – in looks and attitude and mannerisms – and my maternal grandmother always gave a sour look at the suggestion. while i thought i was being given a compliment, my grandmother thought i was being given a death sentence.

there are various other instances of abuse and mental illnesses that have popped up in my extended family that are too intense and lengthy to mention. my family has never been one to talk very openly about such issues but have always been advised to come forward with thoughts of self-harm if i had them. when my maternal grandmother told me about my cousin’s death, she looked me squarely in the eye, saying, “you better not do the same, you hear me? i can’t stand to lose any more members of this family like this!” as she grasped my hands and choked back tears. i was slightly offended at the notion and initially wanted to retort that to do so would be ridiculous, but i have to admit that it has become a legitimate and very real concern in this family. shortly afterwards, my grandmother looked to the ceiling, crying in anger, “aren’t there pills you could have taken?!”

suicide is seen as dualistic. its the ultimate cry for help yet a serious expression of self-control. what happens if you’re tired of asking for help? if you feel you’ve taken enough already? if you feel like you’ll never be able to make it on your own? if you feel that you can’t be a productive member of society like you’re expected to because you work at a different pace than everyone else? i’ve heard arguments for the legalization of euthanasia for those who are suffering, that you have the right to take your own life if you so desire.

pen pals, cooking & internet activism

crustyriotgrrl — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 18:58:42 +0000

so i’ve been on the website tumblr for a year now and have garnered some attention & respect, which i’m thankful for. but i also don’t want to be typecast as an internet personality or someone that just lives vicariously through the medium. to combat the issue, i put a call out for pen pals and have gotten a great number of responses! i’m very excited to be able to connect with people i am somewhat familiar with but still have that thin screen of anonymity between us. its nice to be able to get to know someone for more than just how they come across on the internet as well as have more control over which information to give out about yerself. people, including myself, get freaked out when a friend mentions something along the lines of, “hey, i read on yer facebook that (insert conversation topic here)”, but why? if we put out shit on the internet, we have to understand that its common among lots of people. i even started this blog in particular to be utilized as an outlet to track where i’ve traveled, and its evolved into a personal ramblings/thoughts/journal type of thing.

anyway, been going to bmore quite often. earlier this week me & h. made nachos, samosa quesadillas with mango-lime dressing, macaroni & cheeze, and chocolate chip cookies! it was awesome to give my omnivore friends some bomb-ass vegan food while showing them some simple dishes to make when they need to feed themselves (its a house full of cismen – and they came to me for help!).

so the rest of my day will be spent cooking some weird stuff, hanging out with my mom since she took the day off, and writing to more pen pals! if you are reading this and we’re unfamiliar with each other, i would love to be your pen pal, too! youvegotafriendinpa(at)gmail(dot)com! seriously!

summer?

crustyriotgrrl — Wed, 26 May 2010 04:48:47 +0000

i guess its officially summer for me now. did finals, had a very sad senior week, and have moved all of my things back to pennsylvania with my folks. i don’t plan on being here for very long, though. like always, i’m looking for excuses to leave wherever i am.

being at home has really made me realize how isolated my college atmosphere is, moreso than i had already known. at school, i’m comfortable with my body and feel like i can talk freely. at “home”, i’m scrutinized for having leg hair & consistently told how “disgusting” and “dirty” my armpit hair is. now i’m hyper-aware of what i’m wearing and how i’m going to be perceived.

my mom looked at me the first night i was home and said, “are you angry because you’re a girl?” i said, “i’m angry because everyone assumes i’m a girl.” then we launched into a discussion in which i tried to explain to her that i identify as androgynous, and she was pretty receptive to it. then we talked about the me being queer thing, and she’s still pretty confused about it. its hard to explain to someone what queer means if they’re still fuzzy on the sex/gender split, too.

my sister babysits a family that just got back from the dominican republic. while they were there, the two female children got their hair beaded. all i could think about was how western tourism to the caribbean is a form of exploitation in many senses, especially when white people go there & do shit to make them feel “exotic” or “local” by doing it in offensive ways, and how those little girls & their parents & my sister are so painfully oblivious to all of it. and i couldn’t get any of it out. i wouldn’t be understood. my sister would just wonder why i was nitpicking or giving a shit about something that seemingly didn’t concern me.

i’m currently reading a book called “middlesex” that i found in my school’s free store and i really fucking like it. its about a person who is born, assumed female, then found to be male later on in life thanks to the discovery of undescended testicles. right now its focusing a lot on the main character’s grandparents’ lives with some “current” information thrown in there. i like how it takes a comprehensive look at a persons life instead of a static one.

made vegan nachos last night that my mom loved. tonight i made vegan southwestern skillet supper & vegan double chocolate chip cookies that my dad & sister enjoyed.

converting the masses one dish at a time.

thoughts

crustyriotgrrl — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 05:57:17 +0000

yesterday i went to the supermarket and saw a parking space reserved for “expecting mothers or those with small infants”. i got to thinking – is this a function of treating females like we’re tender, helpless creatures? or is this intending to make things easier for pregnant females? i’m too wiped to think about it.

my big projects for the semester, humans vs zombies and the vagina monologues, are officially over! i thought i would be relieved but i’m not. there’s still way too much to do, like the coming out monologues, a potluck, some other club stuff, and zine stuff! i’m now working on #3 of hoax and feel really behind on it, even though i’m not really. r. got her shit all planned out before me and now i’m feeling like i’m a slacker since i was waiting on her to let me know when we were going to start this issue. i’m working on pieces about pms & menstruation, going vegan and the physical & mental health i’ve experienced with it, home remedies, family rememdies passed on to me and possibly something to compliment r.’s piece about animal health. i’m also working on issue #2.5 of my perzine – i don’t have enough time for a long, 1/2 size one so i picked 3 topics and am making a 1/4 size one!

trying to get back on track with trades, map out a fun summer, and get some fucking sleep. stories to come later.

threats to male power

crustyriotgrrl — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 06:49:42 +0000

a lot of the readings i’ve been doing in my domestic violence class have been discussing the classification of abusers into those who committed wrongdoings because of individual or character flaws and those who did so out of a kind of socialization technique. many times the two are not taken into consideration as a unit.

most men who are domestic violence perpetrators abuse their spouses/girlfriends do so when they feel a loss of power; i.e. “she didn’t have my shirt ironed like i wanted so i had to make sure she knew what she did wrong”. the prospect of losing privilege is a large motivator to violence or negative responses for many affluent white men (oklahoma city bombing, columbine, claims that women who choose careers are destroying the sanctity of family). the rates of domestic violence has increased substantially in the united states since the recession has hit, even as there was a 15-year decline immediately beforehand. there needs to be more of a focus on violence as a function of power and a means to gain it back instead of just express it.

there have been considerations that the increase in domestic violence can at least in part be attributed to the social mobility of women and strides for equality made since the women’s movement; meaning, men are trying to keep women in what they see as their rightful place by using violent tactics to make up for the threat to their superiority.

ideas for feminist comp zine’s health issue

crustyriotgrrl — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 04:55:15 +0000

cognitive changes in taking on role of victim/survivor of sexual assault
projecting images of happiness & acquiescence on the job
heath tips learned from women in my family
congenial heart condition
vegan cooking
unsung feminist hero : home remedies!

on seeing people of color as “white”.

crustyriotgrrl — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:16:01 +0000

my friend m., who is of mixed race and is lightskinned, told me a story about hir life. ze was with a white friend and the topic of race came up. m.’s friend said, “you know, its weird, i see you as white at this point.” m. was flustered by this, and rightly so, even though ze is partially what the average american would deem “white”.as another mixed person who passes for white, ze asked me for my opinion.

many white people have the privilege to see themselves as raceless. many white parents teach their white children that race and color doesn’t matter, because they are just human. this line of thinking passes on intergenerationally and between peers, making white people pretty damn uncomfortable with talking about race.

in the case of m.’s friend, i didn’t want to defend them, but give m. some context to what they may have been trying to say. to white people, “white” equals human by a slew of operational definitions, as stated above. m.’s friend was essentially giving hir a backhanded compliement. the compliment: “i see you as a person and my friend, and even though we may have some differences we can still get along”. the backhanded part: “you aren’t like other people of similar ethnic backgrounds to yours that i have experienced, so i am projecting my ideas of both people of color and white people onto you and have decided that you are actually white”. this is in line with the practice of defining another’s race in contrast to yours: it puts them into a box while simultaneously defining your own race as whatever isn’t in the box.

another thing m. mentioned was the struggle and issues ze faces as being a lightskinned person. m. feels like ze is strattling the worlds of both people of color and white people and never feels completely right in either. i commented that our society is still obsessed with the concept of boxes and how people can fit into them. people like myself, who pass as white, are regarded as such without any kind of examination as to what we might “be” exactly. i never get people coming up to me on the street looking fascinated, harassing me with a barrage of questions like, “what are you?” or “are you like spanish or something?” like m. and many lightskinned mixed/biracial/multiracial people are. while my white background is hyped, m.’s nonwhite background is hyped – because we attempt to put people into one or the other.we still don’t have a largely circulated idea of what it means to be bi/multiracial here. m. also faces the opinions and judgments of nonwhite people because of hir color. it is assumed that ze has had a better, easier life by virtue of having one white parent and that ze will be better liked and received in society. while the latter is statisicially more likely to be true, it can still be damaging to someone who doesn’t actually experience this.

* i would also like to add that we still don’t really have an operational definition of what “white” exactly is, and this complicates the whole thing further. what country of origin must one claim to therefore be white? are italians white? or the irish? we don’t have strictly defined beginning and ending points for the concept of white, which can lead many people to use the label as white without questioning it, or reject it for themselves while others project it onto them. overall, we need to start talking about this shit – or else we’ll all just keep putting each other into homemade boxes and creating mental distinctions between ourselves.

anxiety attack.

crustyriotgrrl — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 20:10:46 +0000

so we never ended up going to ohio. when we got an hour away, i heard a. say something about drinking at a party, and all of a sudden i got a flash of a bunch of shit i’ve been reading in my domestic violence seminar and i fucking snapped. i just started sobbing in the backseat, saying that i couldn’t handle constantly reading this depressive-as-hell material and it affected me more than i thought. thinking about going to a metal fest with predominantly men scared the shit out of me, for the first time in my life. i didn’t want to be surrounded by drunk pieces of shit that debased me for being female-bodied and run the risk of being fucking assualted then not believed by my male friends because, you know, they mean well, and they would never do such a thing, so why would i just go on and make such scathing generalizations about all men in the metal scene? and sleeping in a punk house of some dudes that a. met on the internet? what the fuck. like i said, i’m not usually weird about that shit and do not give into the female socialization towards fear of all men, but something in me just broke.

yesterday i had a great conversation with a trans person named m. and it was so great to connect with someone to that degree. then i had to do readings for my dv class and i got so fucking frustrated i couldn’t stand it. mackinnon was pretty much saying that all pornography degrades women and is violent and men who consume it can’t be distinguised from convicted rapists and erotica is defined as “not [pornography]” which isn’t very fucking helpful. all i got out of it was that she meant to say that all men are bastards and women can’t be in hetero sexual relationships because if they have sex a certain way they’re only reinforcing their own submission to dominant men and this is eroticised by the mainstream media and you might as well become totally gay ( like her helpful friend andrea dworkin) or just never. fuck. again.

then i get online and see h. post a fucking horrific album cover that has mutilated bodies of metallic women and the ass of a robot woman being penetrated by a phallic metal tentacle. i commented about it, pointing out its lack of consent or even agency on her part and all he could say was that he “wished it look different”. its like, then why the fuck did you post it? why the fuck do i have to point this shit out for you to then say something about it? why is it okay for people who somewhat resemble me to be literally torn apart, debased, objectified and raped and i’m supposed to feel overly sensitive for fucking pointing it out? why the fuck do i have to convince you that this shit matters?

FUCK. i am so fucking sick of the good things being fucking trampled on by people who have the privilege to not face an assault on their consciousness like that.