We Don’t Talk About That Here

I am standing atop a small hill. Rain drizzles from an impassive gray sky, forming brown pools around my feet that spill down the hill, carving tracks in the loose soil. I survey the field below me – a grassy expanse ringed by A-frame cabins – gripping the glow stick in my hand proudly. It was a surprise my mom had left in my suitcase, and we had just used it in our nightly class meeting as a “talking stick.”  For a moment I am alone, and everything seems calm, muted by the rain and the dark. And then the stillness explodes in a cacophony of eleven-year-old squeals. My entire class streaks past me like water over rock, half-tumbling down the muddy rivulets to the field below. Everywhere there is laughter and screaming, and I feel light, lighter than I thought possible. Without thinking, I raise the glow stick and fling it into the sky above the mass of students. With a collective yell, they swarm toward it, jostling in the half-lit muck, until it is finally captured and triumphantly raised, and for a moment, I belong.

intermission

so i’ve been off the blog for a bit now after posting rather obsessively following its launch. i’ve been out of town visiting friends and sweethearts (as well as the wonderful world of food poisoning, yummm) and so have been somewhat severed from the interwebz (which in all honesty was probably a good thing). though after noticing i had already broken my once-a-week minimum post quota (apparently i don’t really write w/o external motivation or deadlines so now i’m forcing myself into them), today i decided to throw up another short memoir piece from my senior project and also talk about how glad i am that i keep forgetting its christmas time.

seriously. i’m really glad.

i haven’t been in a mall, seen relatively few santa hats (let alone fully costumed santas) around, and have managed to avoid most of the xmas jingles that incessantly permeate every commercial space and typically make me wanna rip off rudolph’s nose and use it as a bike light. but i digress…

what it is about this year that has so generously allowed me to forget all this force-fed merriment? maybe it’s the long-standing under- and unemployment of myself and immediate family (and our subsequent inability to participate in the annual capitalist frenzy). or maybe it’s all the distraction of the GOP nomination circus (i’m looking at you, newt), or the obama admin’s heinous backsliding on plan b (umm WTF?), the funny/frightening “until abortion ends” campaign, or maybe it’s just an ironic xmas miracle.

in any case, i’m glad i haven’t been dwelling on it, ’cause as i was recently reminded by jay smooth, “happy holidays” aren’t fucking mandatory.

so instead of discussing this good, bad, or totally mediocre time of year much more, i’ll mark my return to the interwebz with this apt cartoon (click to go to the source and enlarge):

queerswithcats.wordpress.com

Make Yourself at Home

…But sometimes, home means silence. Home means hiding. Home means constantly being on edge. And so we’re careful.

 

It is nearly dark by the time we arrive. Through the fading winter light I can see the white, New England style house silhouetted against the trees. There are two SUVs parked on the lawn which doubles as a driveway – necessary vehicles to make it up the crumbling dirt road to the house. Claire stops her car next to them, and as the engine dies we simultaneously exhale. “Anything else I should know before we go in?” I ask. Claire has been prefacing each new round of introductions with brief sketches of the people I am about to meet – longtime friends-turned-family; fixtures in her life. Sometimes these sketches come off more as disclaimers.

She smiles. “Hmmmm… No. No, they’re great, you’ll be fine.” She kisses me on the cheek.

As we clunk up the wooden steps, a dog starts to bark, and I can see a blur of white and black fur as he paces in front of the glass door. “Just do the signal when you’re ready to leave,” she adds, scratching behind her right ear to demonstrate before opening the door without knocking. It leads into a small kitchen, where the family sits around a table playing cards. Their eyes, first falling on Claire, soon rest on me. Some of them stand up. I give a nervous smile and wait for the introduction.

“Everyone, this is my partner, Elliot.” I nod, giving a meek wave of my hand. Claire goes around the table, stating everyone’s name, but I have shaken too many hands over the past few days to remember many of them. The parents are called Glen and Karen. Their son, daughter, and her boyfriend are there too. Hugs are exchanged, and soon two extra chairs are produced and we all sit back around the table.

Hugo: pretty to look at, painful to examine

 

hugo is a martin scorsese directed children’s movie (yes, really) about an orphaned boy living in a paris train station in 1931 who is really good at fixing shit, especially clocks and other intricate mechanical items. hugo covertly works turning the clocks in the station, stealing food and supplies from local shops, and generally spends way too much time being chased around by the child-hating station inspector played by sacha baron cohen. soon, he and new friend isabelle are on an adventure to try and solve a mystery which intertwines their two families.

just to get it out of the way: hugo was visually amazing  — between the cinematography, CG effects, and the imaginative and immersive environment, the film was a pleasure to look at. it was even one of those rare films in which the 3D format actually worked. the acting was pretty solid all around, and we even got to see saruman play a kind yet somehow still ominous sounding librarian.

the power of isengard commands you to pay your late fees

the thing is, from the very get-go we’re treated to a particular brand of ableism that never really stops. the film opens with a chase between hugo and the station inspector, who wears a full leg brace on his left leg and moves with a pronounced limp. of course, as his primary function in the film is to chase hugo, his leg brace and limp are consistently portrayed as ironic comic relief as we see scene after scene of his brace getting in the way of his goal. he is shown staggering along, slamming into people and objects, and at one point even manages to lodge his braced leg in a cello.

in this way, i couldn’t help thinking of jimmy on south park, another “laughable” or “comedic cripple” trope whose supposed hilarity is based on the apparent contradictions between his disability and job or passion — in this case, being a stand-up comic with a pronounced stutter. in the show, the stutter typically prevents jimmy from commanding regular comedic timing or reaching his punchlines, which for south park is the fucking punchline.

Boy Legs

He is wearing a white lab coat. It’s funny, I think, that doctors really wear those. His name is Doctor Tancretti and he smells like Florida. Or maybe like old people. I can’t tell. Ever since we visited my family in Tampa the two kinda run together. He has short dark hair, and very tan skin like my grandpa, which also makes me think Florida and old people. His eyes seem permanently squinty. His nurse is a tall woman called Vicki who sneaks me extra stickers when the other nurses aren’t looking. She comes in now and gives a folder to the Doctor and then smiles at me. She will remember me every time I come back for the next fifteen years.

Vicki comes over to the exam table and says she is going to do a simple check up while Doctor Tancretti talks with my mom. She takes my temperature and blood pressure, and pokes at my stomach for a while. “I’m going to check your reflexes now, okay?” she tells me, holding up a small metal rod with a rubber tip shaped like a triangle. “You’re going to have to roll up your pants so I can get to your knees.” When I have done so, Vicki swings the rod into my kneecap. I smile as my leg jerks forward and slams back into the side of the exam table with a satisfying “thud.” She does the same thing to my other knee, and then begins to roll my pants back down. “Oh my!” She stops, examining my shins. You’re so bruised!” she asks if I play outside a lot, and tells me to be careful. Mom overhears.

“You’ve notice his legs?” she laughs. “I call them boy legs. Elliot’s very active. He’s always running around and bangin into stuff. They’re constantly like that.” She sighs. “Boy legs.” We all have a good laugh at my habit of getting hurt, a habit that will soon put me on crutches six different times in as many years.

goddamnit.

one more example of trans-misogyny, the violence disproportionately directed at trans women of color, and a “justice” system hell bent on denying them anything of the sort.

http://supportcece.wordpress.com/

children’s media, transphobia, and dr. seuss

 

uhg. i just watched the latest trailer for the newest incarnation of the lorax and it left me feeling confused, hurt, and saddened – basically the opposite of everything the book attempts to evoke. for those unfamiliar with dr. seuss’ the lorax, its a beautiful story about a harmonious ecosystem destroyed by materialism and unchecked capitalism, one greedy entrepreneur’s attempt to repent for his wrongs, and a little boy who realizes nothing short of systemic change beginning with him can restore the wasteland his people have created.

the trailer was bookended by two things that really got to me. within the first minute of the preview, the changes screenplay author ken daurio has made become obvious. for me, the first and most obnoxious alteration was the revision of the protagonist’s motivation for halting the destruction of the natural world. in the book, the boy was motivated by his own curiosity and a true valuation of social and environmental justice. in the movie, the trailer implies he is initially motivated by a desire to impress taylor swift’s character. yeah. not environmentalism. not accountability. but fucking impressing a girl. they traded genuine compassion and critical consciousness for some cheap hetero trope. seriously?

a masochistic saturday

i was gonna do a post about the last GOP debate, but this one over at feministing will probably be better. also, apparently ron paul is both horribly racist and the only one up there on saturday who seemed to actually believe what he was saying. oh, and newt “won.”

in sum, we’re screwed.

Something Between Us

“And of course I am afraid, because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger.”

– Audre Lorde

            A picture of Mount Hood hung in the dining room overlooking the table. It was three pictures, really – a panorama of a snow covered peak swathed in the soft orange of sunset, fragmented across three frames. You could see the mountain, start to finish; the foothills, awkward bulges dense with trees rising into the base, a uniform mass of lush green reaching for the summit in uneven tendrils until the tree line, where the impenetrable hue was suddenly replaced by gray crags abruptly rising from the white-orange snow. The three photos cut the mountain into perfect thirds, the peak poised between two gentle, tree-lined slopes – mirror images of each other but for the streaks of color across the right hand frame. “What’s the point of this? Why are there three?” I asked my mother. She slumped the bag of groceries onto the kitchen counter and glanced at the photos. She shrugged, and through a puzzled smirk said, “Art?”

We shared a look before she turned walked out the front door, calling back as soon as she was out of sight, “Elliot, come out here and help Adam with the rest of the groceries!” I pulled my gaze from the mountain and took in the rest of the place. The Sun River brochure had modestly referred to it as a “cabin” but it was about as far from the rustic connotations of that word as you could get. A row of soundless fans hung from the high ceilings, presiding over a crimson, L-shaped sofa in the living room. Dark, polished wood lined the floors and trimmed the stucco walls, and the kitchen’s center island (an entirely novel concept to me) contained a built in gas stove. The vastness of the space allowed the living room, dining room, and kitchen to open into one another, sharing an eastern wall made almost entirely of glass, offering a constant view of that picturesque line of pines and the glimmering water beyond. It was by far, the most modern, opulent looking structure my ten-year-old eyes had ever seen, and even then, I knew my family could not afford a vacation like this. It had been explained to me that the place was what was called a “time-share,” though what that meant I was never quite sure. The important thing was that it belonged to my mothers’ boss, who had given us a discount since he couldn’t use it himself.

“Elliot!” my mother’s voice was less congenial now. I temporarily suspended my awe and stepped out the front door into the fading July light. As on most family trips, I had been allowed to bring a friend along. This year’s lucky candidate was Adam Krakauer. I’d gone to school with him since kindergarten, but we had only really started hanging out in the last year or so. He was a stout boy, chubby but strong, with a perpetually scrunched face and round glasses that made him look like far more of a nerd than he really was. I found him standing beside our maroon ’88 voyager, my mother handing him a brown bag of groceries through the sliding door of the minivan. My father was rummaging around somewhere in the trunk, grumbling to no one in particular about how we had forgotten this Very Important Item.

Conquistadores

Whiteness teaches white people that whiteness doesn’t exist. Among all the rules, codes, and products of whiteness, its greatest trick is to remain invisible to those privileged enough to reside inside it. It is always centered, always operating, woven through nearly every aspect of our contemporary social fabric. Educational institutions are no exception.

I wipe the flecks of silver onto my jeans, and tuck my nose and mouth into my shirt to avoid the fumes. Usually, I desperately avoid spray paint and its noxious odors, but this is important. Holding the helmet at arms length, I douse the helmet in a final shower of silver and lay it down beside the others. I am surprised when I find it looks good. We have been working on them for weeks, first coating balloons in several layers of papier-mâché, and then painstakingly bending cardboard around the bottom edge for the brim, and another piece on top to create the fin, a feature of the helmets I never quite understood. For the final realistic touch, we took dry peas that had been cut in half and glued them in lines along the brim and fin. I had been skeptical then, but after the paint the peas really do look like tiny screws. I pull my nose from beneath my shirt and admire our crafts; twenty-six glistening Spanish Conquistador helmets in a line on the blacktop, their excess paint trickling into tiny pools around their brims. Our unit on the discovery of the Americas is nearly over.

The Doll

He never told me outright, but I knew my father was uncomfortable with the doll. I had picked her as a reward for something – I’m not sure what at this point – but my mom had taken me to the store to pick out a toy. I was five years old, and she was one of the few African-American Barbies in the store, with long dark hair and a deep purple dress made of something like velvet. Maybe that was why I picked her; she stood out from the uniform mass of white plastic lining the shelves. She was different.

Even then, at five years old, I knew the doll was an unusual pick. Certainly, my male friends would not have made the same selection. But I was bored with my Star Wars action figures and Hot Wheels cars. I wanted something new.

My mother didn’t remark on the doll directly. “Are you sure?” was all she asked as I brought the box to the checkout counter.

When I got home, I spent hours playing with her alongside my other toys. She had a handbag to match her dress, both of that same deep purple that looked as soft as it felt. The dress was fastened at the back with a strip of Velcro which would peel off with a satisfying “C-h-h-r-r-i-i-i-i-i-p” if I ever wanted to change her clothes.

Neither of my parents spoke to me about it, but I was aware of the stir I had caused. The first night I had the doll, the floorboards of my second floor bedroom trembled with raised voices. Though I couldn’t make out most of it, the phrase “For Christ’s sake Jim, it’s a doll!” was unmistakable.

so i finally started a blog.

so i finally started a blog. i’m not exactly sure what its going to look like yet, but after years of trolling the feminist, queer, and anti-racist blogosphere and consistent encouragement from family and friends, i’ve overcome my otherworldly skills of procrastination and done the unthinkable. the major impetus for this launching now is my re-entry in to the world of k-8 education and a need to unpack all the wonderful complexities of being a visibly genderqueer educator.

the last time i was consistently in a classroom was in the spring of 2010, where i undertook a senior project aimed at getting sixth graders to think and write about socially constructed identity and systemic oppression. during the course of the project, i did a series of autobiographical pieces reflecting on my own identity – my whiteness and qeerness in particular – in addition to developing and implementing a curricular unit on identity with sixth graders. as a writer who rarely writes, i thought that starting the blog with some excerpts from that project would help get me back into the swing of things, as well as offer readers some idea of what to expect in this space.

in addition to being a space to examine identity, privilege, and oppression, i also hope this site can prove useful for other educators striving for social justice, in and outside their classrooms.

(the first time writing to the internet is quite strange! and as i’m now feeling increasingly self-conscious, i think i’ll leave my intro at that and post some stuff i’ve already written…)