now is the time to invent

Well ladies and freedom fighters, here I am! And finally, I'm at your full disposal.

It kinda tickles me that my tenth post on the first blog I've ever started that I actually intend on continuing with for a great long while is one of the most important I'll ever write, I guess in terms of personal meaning.

I graduated from high school on time in June 2006 and went from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to York University in Toronto, Ontario, in August. I was already a feminist and I've always been a pretty clear-headed lady; I am one of a select few who escaped sexual abuse before age 17 and still have never been a victim two weeks before my 19th birthday. I have a small, tight-knit little family made up of ladies who were well-adjusted to men walking out. My mom had kind of a rough go of it when my dad moved out, but considering what he'd done to her I don't blame her now. Frankly, my fam runs smoothly and normally with little male influence, that of my stepfather and barely my maternal grandfater. Up until a week ago I also had my father to call on the other end of the line, but I no longer have a father and that's the end of that fucking story.

To put a long story that I've been repeating all summer to people who asked me "AHDURR WHY AREN'T YOU GOING BACK" short, I fell in love with the fucking awesome community of Toronto and the gorg country of Canada, but I spent all my fucking money there gallavanting around with my rich foreigner friends. I started to adopt their kind of carefree and individualistic attitude (very American, y'all, to be individualistic) and joined York's Sexual Assault Survivors' Support Line to regain my sense of self and servitude. The actual three-day training had a bigger impact on me than the organization did - due to a fucked-up depression I stopped leaving my dorm and quit the volunteership, although there was a lot of internal haterade among its participants that was kind of disheartening - but I started thinking back on my original point of view towards my home country, which reeked of white privilege, that I would go and live in Canada and become a citizen there, and live out a good life with some hockey player who wasn't a douchebag (doesn't exist - other than Sid) and leave America to clean up its own shit.

I decided I didn't want to save money by going to my county's community college and am now at Seton Hill University, about an hour away from my home in Pittsburgh, where my aunt and role model attained her master's in art therapy. I, naively, did not realize that as a small Catholic "liberal arts" college, it was a hotbed for Caucasian conservatism and, thereby, doucheism. Everywhere I turn there's a smartassed white boy, which, in Canada, I could always counter with a crowd of brown folks. Not that I constantly prefer people of colour to my own race - I'm equal opportunity y'all - but I pretty much flatly refuse to be in any environment if there's no colour in it. I can't do shit with a singularly white education. I need, we all need, the point of view of people of colour, and the fact that I'm writing that like a fucking invitation makes me sick. It should be the standard. I already know the white race, okay? I know it better than I'll ever know anyfuckingthing else. I'm damn ashamed of our track record, to infantilize the issue. I already know my socioeconomic status. I want the opinion of the rich (although I can pretty much guess it) and those living below the poverty line, and of the homeless, and the imprisoned, and the addicted. Thankfully, my Seton Hill education - which will hopefully last, count it, one university year - doesn't seem too awful. I'm shooting for all As, which have never been obtained by this gal, ever.

I've been increasingly anxious about living my life the way I have. I'm not heavy into partying, I don't steal or do anything fucking awful, but I don't do anything in a world where tons, and tons, and tons, of shit is going down every day. In a country where my gender is ogled, objectified, molested, abused, raped and basically treated as trash, a commodity, in the year two thousand and fucking seven, I mean I'm sorry but even now as I'm writing this I cannot stand and let that shit go by. I'm not the traditionally beautiful girl - I hardly ever dress up in normal life to boot - who's had to ward off whistles and degrading and shitty comments, but I am a good looking young lady and I have been sexually harassed. I know few girls who HAVEN'T been. I don't think I know any! I'm sorry but I have fabulous bone structure. Coming from a little lady who only about three years ago thought she was an ugly piece of shit because she didn't look like a goddamn movie star, I mean that's saying a lot.

I think I'm pretty goddamn lucky that I've got such a sense of worth and self, thanks to my upbringing and what I've found in feminism and the concept (I mean, REALITY) of female/femail/femaal empowerment (I can barely stand to spell 'woman' because of the 'man' and 'female' because of the 'male,' such is my contempt for the weaker gender, as they so often prove themselves to be). This is probably going to sound selfish, but how can I go about living my fucking life without being a feminist activist? I escaped most of the consequences of being a teenage girl in the United States. It's practically a modern miracle. It's not just about feminism, although that is closest to my heart - it's about gay rights and human rights, not just social rights. It's about whatever fucking form of activism I want to take on!

Today in the Seton Hill library I read "Two Ways A Woman Can Get Hurt: Advertising And Violence" by Jean Kilbourne. Mz Kilbourne didn't tell me anything I didn't already know - I studied communications at York and, in line with Canada's smooth style of being kick-ass, was taught a non-bigoted unit on Women in Media by a male prof, what are the fucking odds (plus, the first place girls learn that they're sex objects is the telly, y'all, stop kidding yourself) - but her wording, professional with hints of "I'm fucking sick of this shit", almost had me crying my balls off in the middle of the place. I can't imagine a life of doing anything but helping people the fuck out. Sometimes I want to turn to some lady next to me and spill my guts out to her about this shit. I want her to feel good about herself. I want her to have a full personality, huge ideals about her life and the future of the world, not to look like she's afraid to take up her space on this damn planet. I used to think that I was selfish by feeling this way, and I don't know why I felt like that. If none of my sisters are going to step up, I sure as fuck am. I'm in it for you. I want you to feel great. I want my gay brothers and sisters to get their fucking due. I want to tell this shithole country that if it doesn't accept, as a society, that we will never again return to a time before the 1960s, we're all gonna die. Soon.

I am now majoring in social work at Seton Hill and honestly I feel like I'm wasting my time, but I'm looking forward to learning how to better speak and present myself. God knows you can't debate a man on a feminist issue (nevermind - ANY ISSUE) without a snarky level head or he won't take you seriously. I have a cause, I have found the reason that I was born. I truly believe that, although it sounds kinda batshit, and I'm fucking geeked out to start what's destined to be a life of heartbreak and turmoil and great, great happiness working in community and widespread activism to empower women and any other oppressed minority group (what minority group isn't oppressed, I ask you) that comes my way. Here I fucking come, you assholes. I'm gonna beat you at your own fucking game!

Me, 29 August 07

"Will there always be concerts where women are raped?
Watch me make up my mind instead of my face
The number one must-have is that we are safe" - Sleater-Kinney, "#1 Must Have"

"I'm still not there but do feel something
I'm tired of sitting pretty I'm tired of sitting tight
I'm willing and I'm ready now to push with all my might
Why don't you help why don't you help
Why don't you help me and build it?" - Mr Something Something, "The Prize"