Stay in Your Lane?!%

Date: February 2013

I am a Yankee. I am a feminist. I am a feminist Yankee, so it is no surprise that my 18-month tour of duty (if you will) in the South has been “interesting” to say the least. The people are super friendly, at least the ones in the city limits, given my background I don’t venture too far out of the city since a friend of mine who went to college here recommended that I “stay on the highway”. All in all, barring one time that I did not stay the course and saw a back roads bar with an “Obamaque” banner out front during the election, all in all things have been normal. You may omit the time that my husband and I went camping and hit the local convenient store for supplies and were greeted kindly by the attendant, but had to literally close our mouth shut and withhold a snicker when a native fellow walked in behind us and was greeted by said attendant with a very loud and sonorous “Hello Booger!” That was a good time, but not the only time that I have been compelled to keep quiet. During that same camping trip (again, leaving the “stay on the highway” advise aside just that once) a camper stopped over to chat with us by our campfire. Roughly about ten minutes in he had shared his views on homosexuality and also how “black people are, ya know, different” and just before my feminist, Yankee mouth went off on said camper, my husband ever so astutely and may I say just damn well-timed asked what kind of holster the gentlemen was wearing. When asked, the camper raised his sweatshirt to reveal a handgun. Que? Yes, remember how my big ole feminist Yankee mouth was about to go off and rail and educate and put some small-minded country folk in his place? Yeah, I pretty much just changed the subject.

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Kim Kardashian: Mother of the Year!

Date: January 2013

I am not from Los Angeles nor am I wrapped up in that Hollywood hullabaloo. I do not idolize anyone other than my accountant and maybe some dead jazz artists and also Lena Horne, beyond those people I do not care nor do I spend money or time following their trips or trends or sex tapes. At the apex of this bizarro universe is Kim Kardashian. I do not know Kim, all that I have observed from her photographs is that she has pretty looking hair, a big ass and knows how to pose really well. Kim is after all, second only to J. Lo as the woman who legitimized (within the mainstream) gigantic asses. I may have seen a snippet of her sex tape and perhaps by so doing I have also surmised that she likes sex. Good for her I say! I perhaps wouldn’t have filmed myself and sold the rights of this footage to anyone, but hey it’s America right? I am not sure how she’s going to hide the tape from her child but maybe Kanye can figure that out, he’s a genius right?

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I’ve Got Binders Full of Women and My Momma Ain’t Home!

Date: October 2012

But I love my family and my God. And I’m too important to go to Vietnam, my dad told me. And he was right. I worked hard. I did. Got two degrees, didn’t really even need the one with his connections but I knew better. It would be easier to disregard me without them. And I had her at my side; the strong jaw, the immigrant’s daughter, the origin of their tongue long gone, washed away with the tide of the American tongue and obscured with time, American now. Soon there were sons, then more bounty.

But I had a secret. If they nick me they will see it, the void. My father fills it most days. Long gone as he is, he is still in my memory bay, plain as day, and stern as ever. I love him. I want to be him. I know the steps. I practiced his stance, his smile, his carriage in the mirror as a boy. As a man now I remember. But at times, when I forget, when the system overloads the other appears, the one who forgets names and boundaries and that his station is a station occupied by the few and not the many. My beach house must grow. I don’t care about the neighbor’s view. They have no power for they have not sought it out, not rooted it out of the Earth like a dog in search of truffles; that rare pleasure, power. But I have.

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Ain't I A Feminist

Date: September 2012

As Sojourner Truth so pointedly asked in her famous speech in Ohio, “Ain’t I a woman” to a crowd of white suffragists who tried to hiss her off the stage. I think now to ask myself a similar question: Ain’t I a Feminist?

Growing up the term feminist was an abstraction which brought to mind images of women with unshaven legs and armpits, perhaps a face piercing and most certainly holding hands with girls and guys. I know that image sounds off the wall, but it’s the stereotype that I, a child born in the mid 70’s, had emblazoned in my mind. Not right, not fair, but honest.

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Have women perpetuated the Glass Ceiling?

Date: August 2012

Did you know that you can break glass with amplified sound? The pitch has to be just so, but it can be done. A Sonic Youth record, for that matter any Sonic Youth record could probably get the job done.

If it’s so simple to break glass then why is the glass ceiling still prevalent?

How many of you have ever marched into your boss’s office and in a very professional manner, requested more money or a promotion. What’s interesting when I ask this question of people is that that the majority of you who say yes are typically men, not women. Could this in some small way be one of the reasons why women in the year 2012 continue to earn .78 for every 1.00 a man does?

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Bring back the Blacklist! Outing Religious Zealotry in Politics

Date: August 2012

In the same way the McCarthy era bred finger pointing and accusations that forever labeled people “commie bastards!” the present political climate here in America should be yielding a similar response; only instead of calling someone a commie bastard (and for generally no good reason) we should be outing people as the “religious zealots” that they have proven themselves to be.

Not unlike the Puritans voyage to the New World which was really more an exodus due to their extremist views, religious zealots should be removed from the ranks of political office to make room for more reasonable representatives with ideas anchored in reality and not religious idolatry.

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