all i wanna do is....

(Title from the wicked "Paper Planes" off MIA's newest, Kala. Listen to it!)



I'm now at this Catholic university and today, at the opening liturgy, I realized the air I was breathing wasn't air after all - it was hypocrisy! It seeps out of the cracks and it gets pushed through the ventilation and to some it's oxygen, but um, it's actually carbon dioxide. And you'll die from it. Sucks, I know!



I did not know what a liturgy was until today. I've been to church like five times in my entire life, with friends because I happened to sleep over on a Saturday or whatev, and there was a time when as a young woman I wanted to get into relig, but it's never been my scene. I'm really into studying Islam right now, though. Anywaysies, they were standing up and sitting down and singing and these two kids sang with these hilarious operatic voices and people took Communion and I was like whatevvy, let's just do this. We had to read Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, in which she, a journalist, works minimum wage jobs and tries to survive. She barely does, probably because she knows she has the upper-class to return to. Her coworkers probably survive because they have a ridiculous amount of inner strength (or they were trained by America's charming racist capitalist patriarchy to be a silent little worker bee, or both).



I don't have the energy right now to get into the whole thing, my communicating abilities are on the downslide for some reez but we had a discussion about it, myself and two other students (a freshman, a gay Republican from what I could gather, and a freshwoman) and two white male professors.



Did anyone else know that in the welfare reform bill Clinton signed in 1996 was included abstinence training for impoverished women? Boy, that's not racist. Why don't they just go ahead and sterilize those assholes making under $30,000 (the projected amount a family needs to make a year to live okay, it's no doubt gone up since 2001 or whenevvies) a year? Fuck them.



One of the professors made sure we knew he was a Christian, GOD FORBID IT ESCAPE US, and said he was unable to warm up to Ehrenreich because of a passing joke she made about abortion and that he felt she was self-absorbed to a point, which I'm pretty sure ALL OF US ARE, but he seemed like a nice guy and said he appreciated the work that she did.



I don't even want to repeat the whole fucking story, I've done it twice already. Here's my point:



I don't know the entire history of women's activism. I'm about to turn 19, give me a fucking break. But as a politically and socially aware young woman, I have a few ideas for how shit can shape up. They're undeveloped and so far they're unpolluted by any substantial university education. But I'm not the kind of person who'll ever be an "educated" type. I'll be able to speak clearly and intelligently (that's my goal), but my personality's too weird, and different, to fit into the mold of talking head academic douche.

My entire argument rests on this theory that I've got: None of the problems that are keeping women of all colours and creeds from reaching success - or achieving full control over themselves, or receiving a sexual education free of inaccuracies (lies, basically, to both sexes), etc etc etc - or people of many genders and sexual orientations from facing verbal and physical assault whenever they act and look the way they want to, or the African-Americans (and West Indian- and etc Americans), black folks, from reaching an equal success - white women already have it much, much better than they - or any, any of these problems, none of them will be solved with a fucking bill or a law. These are structural damages within the American government. Yes it's the patriarchy, the old fallback of white feminism, it's the racism that we can recognize and the racism we don't even know we're being taught. It's the way every fucking thing in this country is run like a goddamn business. It's the money, it's that green baby.

My school adapted Nickle and Dimed into a play (that looks like it paints Ehrenreich as a troublemaking bitch from the scene we saw today) but before they put that on, this prissy fucker, the president of the campus Republicans, gets up there and has to have her say. Why, if we raise minimum wage the bosses will have to cut back on expenses. They'll have to fire you - and it'll be you, the struggling college student! Aren't you mad?

Hey bitch! Why don't the bosses stop paying themselves all the fucking money, pay their employees something they can LIVE ON in this country and we'd all be a lot happier? That was preceded by some shit DRIPPING with hypocrisy about how she (or "we" as a society) can't sleep well knowing kids are going hungry and people are actually homeless.

White privilege has never been shoved so fucking far into my orifices, I swear to God. I hope that prissy little coot gets punched for having the goddamn audacity for standing up there and actually saying that shit. You. Sleep. FINE. And so do I, but now that I'm in school again - in my class yesterday I heard some shit I didn't like - I'm wondering how much I'll have to pay at the end of the day, and I'm studying social work and I'm wondering if I'll ever get to the fucking point where I can have a conversation without wanting to kick the shit out of somebody and crying. I'm a big crier. I have a shitload of anxiety. I don't sleep that well. I feel like I should walk the fuck out of here and start the activism.

If there were a revolution, even if it began slowly, with lots of strikes and protests, I'd be one of the first bitches out on the street. I'd probably pack a bag and I'd be off. I don't have a lot of other interests right now. I know activism and community support is where people are needed so I'm going there. Apparently, I need to be trained to be a community leader, so I'm willing to take out loans every fucking year to get to that place.

And it seems to me that that prissy coot, the Christian White Man in my discussion group, and everyone else - they want things to stay the same so they take small steps. When that dood asked us what the solution to the poverty problem is, he wasn't looking for "mass capitalist and financial reform". He wants his life to be very calm, very ideal, very American, very comfortable, he wants to retire and die in his sleep, and this is impossible. There is no way we can stop the piles, and piles, and piles, of issues, with these baby steps. I want this solved, I want everyone to have it fair, I want to dispell the myth of the hardworking American regardless of colour or gender, but I want to live my happy life. I can only come to the conclusion that if people actually felt genuinely about making shit better for the people who are born black or poor into a society who values white and wealthy above all - these are structural and theological, sociological racisms in our society, we need a HUGE revolt against that shit - they'd be a lot more pro-active. I'm going to have to fake learning these tiny bitty changes for four years, I fucking guess. Hopefully next year I can get into the University of Pittsburgh, who has no fucked-up religious affiliation, and women's groups coming out of their "vag-es," as a friend put it. But I'm going to do as much shit as I can here, I'm not giving up.

Little changes don't mean shit if you don't mean it, you fucking tards. And I know you don't.