Feminism

Important Truths We Must Face

Posted by Aibird on August 14, 2017
Posted in: Author, Blogging, Feminism, Race, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

I am a pacifist at heart. However, not all ideologies and opinions are equal and okay to freely express, and sometimes one must take a stand even if it means risking it all to fight against hateful ideologies such as neo-Nazism and white supremacy. I’d like to hope we can defeat such destructive ideologies, bills/laws, and actions with peaceful means, but I understand and respect where others, based on historical evidence, state that hateful ideology can only be stomped out with violence. I don’t have an answer to the question of violence, but I will talk today about where I stand and the roots of the problem we face today.

In our current climate, there is a growing number of people trying to make hate speech  mainstream and okay to share and embody under the guise of “free speech.” But this is abhorrent and not okay as that hateful  ideology results in violence and deaths. People’s lives are at stake here. I must fight on the side of love, so I have decided to speak up against those that seek to destroy others.

The following points should clarify what I mean before I dig into the concept of white supremacy and how it fuels the hateful ideology of neo-Nazism and alt-right white supremacists such as the Klu Klux Klan.

  1. Saying that Nazi and white supremacist ideology is hateful and should be stopped at any way possible is not me saying I wish all Nazis dead and that I hate all Nazis. These are not equivalent at all. I am saying that Nazi Ideology is dangerous and is hate speech.
    • (Neo-) Nazi ideology (and its white supremacist roots) embodies the idea that there’s a “pure race” and “others should be killed or erased or oppressed into serving the pure.” There are many ways they may try to twist words to diguise it as palatable, but no matter the doublespeak, we cannot forget the root of Nazi and white supremacist ideology is based in ethnic/racial cleansing and genocide. Ethnic cleansing and genocide is a crime and requires justice not a free forum for folks to recruit others to join their cause. We must not normalize this ideology as this ideology is a crime against humanity.
  2. I will fight against Nazi and white supremacist ideology because it is the right thing to do. Such ideology is the anti-thesis of love. I live a life of love, thus I cannot sit idly by and not say something against destructive ideology that others are pushing to normalize and turn into law. Neutrality aids the oppressor. One cannot be neutral in situations like these.
  3. When I say “fight” I, personally, mean with words as I cannot physically fight anyone due to my health and how much violence triggers me. But I can write and speak, and use my words in ways to fight harmful and hateful ideology. I can provide emotionally support for those on the front lines of this fight.

I will stress this point in particular: fighting hateful ideology doesn’t mean I hate those who espouse this ideology.  I am disgusted and horrified by their words and actions, but I do not hate people. Neo-Nazis and white supremacists are infected with a dangerous ideology that has lied to them. It has stripped them from seeing the joy and love that is inherent in the beauty of our diversity, the beauty of our shared humanity, and the need for a more just and loving world, where all share rights and resources equitably and equally.

Neo-Nazis and white supremacists are trapped in thinking that if others gain rights then they lose their rights and power, that if others share resources then they lose access to resources, and that those who are not ethnically “pure” like them are not true human beings. That abhorrent ideology destroys others and it destroys them because it is based in hate and lies.

I don’t think I can cure them of it, but I can try to stop this ideology from spreading and  stop this ideology from carrying out destruction by enshrining their hatred into laws and horrifying violence. How does one fight such ideology?

To begin, we got to start at our roots.

In bell hooks’ “Writing Beyond Race,” the second chapter discusses how white supremacy has been built into America from its inception and socialized into all of us from birth, thus all of us must contend with its devastating effects.  She writes:

 

“If everyone in our society could face that white supremacist thinking is the underlying belief system informing nearly every aspect of this nation’s culture and habits of daily life, then all our discussions of race and racism would be based on a foundation of concrete reality. Everyone could move away from the us/them dichotomies which promote blame and prevent us all from assuming accountability for challenging and changing white supremacy. Unless we make a conscious effort to change thought and action by honestly naming all the myriad ways white supremacy impinges on daily life then we cannot shift from a politics of hate and create a new foundation based on a revolution of love.

A primary reason this nation refuses to offer an adequate political language to define racial politics lies with the insistence that this is the most democratic nation in the world, a place where freedom and justice for all is possible. Citizens of the United States had no difficulty naming the politics of white supremacy in South Africa because the extreme racial segregation and the concomitant violence deployed to protect the system of apartheid was overt and consciously supported by government and law makers. Here in the United States most folks want to believe the United States has never and does not currently have a politics of race based on the support and maintenance of racial apartheid.

Yet all children in this nation are inundated from birth on into adulthood with white supremacist thinking and practice. And it is a more insidious because it is often hidden socialization. The most powerful covert teacher of white supremacy is mass media.”

Due to Trump’s Administration and the events in Charlottesville, white supremacy has become more overt than covert, but is it enough for us to finally acknowledge we are all in this system? Acknowledgement isn’t enough. All of us must work to dismantle white supremacy in our thinking, our daily lives, our work, our government, our economic system, our mass media, and all other systems in which affect our lives.

Our nation has always been a harbor for white supremacy as it was built into our constitution, and although we’ve amended that constitution dozens of times, it cannot erase the roots — our Nation was not free for all where justice is possible for all — despite the best intentions of the “founding fathers.” Remember, the constitution originally allowed various rights to be granted only to white men, though as for who was allowed to be seen as white is rooted in white supremacy ideology. (Note further explanation would involve discussion that I will hand off to Angela Davis, bell hooks, and others far more qualified than myself. Seek out their essays to dig deeper into how white supremacy is codified and enforced.)

Thus, America never was free for all, and it certainly isn’t today. Folks of color have been declaring this truth for ages, but many white folk have refused to listen, and now Neo-Nazis are emboldened with Trump as their leader. This is not a surprise to anyone who understood the roots of this country and what we are up against.

But we can fix this. Angela Davis, bell hooks, and numerous other people of color have written about these topics and discussed in-depth solutions and theories on how to dismantle white supremacy within us, within our culture, and within our society’s systems and government. Read their words, listen to what they have to say, and recognize their leadership.

How can we implement what we learn?

By incorporating what we learn into our daily lives and adjusting our language and actions as needed.

This article gives some great tips on how to respond to the growing rise of hateful ideology as white supremacist becomes more overt: How White People Must Respond to the Disgusting Pathetic UnitetheRight rally in Charlottesville and Time for White Parents of White Kids to Bring the Resistance Home.

One of the tips involves calling-in (versus calling-out) people in your life whenever they say or do or support racist, sexist, homophobic, and/or transphobic actions and laws.

These conversations can be hard, yes, as most people tend toward the defensive, but there are ways to hold discussion in a way to break down those defensive walls. Again the leaders in this movement, especially bell hooks, has some great ideas on how to do this and I included the call-in and the tip article above to assist with this.

Another way is to show visually the ways white supremacy permeates our culture. Someone made a great graphic that focuses on racism in particular (if anyone knows who made it so I can give attribution, let me know!)

No automatic alt text available.

There is also the Racism scale to help people identify where they fall in the spectrum of racist/anti-racist behaviors — the far right side is terrorism and the far left side is abolitionist, and there are many categories between them based on words we say and behaviors we do and what we support. You can read about it here: Racism Scale.

To be transparent, I have a lot of unlearning to do myself from the socialization our culture has done to all of us from birth. I am still dismantling that socialization and conditioning. This is part of my fight against white supremacy in our culture, our government, our daily lives, and within myself.

The words I write here today will hopefully make it clear where I stand and illuminate the roots of Neo-Nazism in America.  May folks read, dig deeper, and fight not only those that espouse the hateful ideology but also the conditioning society has done to us that allowed this ideology to fester.

Edited to include More resources for reading and understanding: Syllabus for White People to Educate Themselves and SURJ Talking White Supremacy Flyer (a pdf with tips on how to have discussions).

Remember: We can fight this, and we can dismantle this and create a more loving, more equitable, more just, more sustainable, and more equal society for all, but we got to — especially white folks — recognize the role of white supremacy ideology within our daily lives, our words, and our ways of thinking. No one is immune, and we all got to detoxify ourselves and work toward liberation together. It will be hard, but nothing worth doing was ever easy.

Approaches to Discussion

Posted by Aibird on July 29, 2017
Posted in: Author, Blogging, Feminism, History, Philosophy. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Discussion with my cat

This idea for a post has been haunting me for some time, but it’s taken me quite awhile to bring it together coherently enough to compose my ideas on paper. So, after all this thinking, researching, and meditating, I’m going to complete this and release it into the wilds of the Internet. I hope it helps folks as much as it’s helping me recognize ways to be a better person.

To begin, it often feels that when people engage in discussion, there’s hidden rules and approaches that must be held true by both for the discussion to not end in hurting another. In America, where I live, this seems more true than ever before as our country becomes more polarized.

What are these basic approaches?

  1. Approach 1 focuses on verbalizing any opinion regardless of what they are. As long as it is said without emotion, done rationally, and is on the discussion topic, then it is rational and valid and must be respected. The focus is that all opinions are on an equal playing field, and discussions are a game of intelligence and debate skills. In this approach, there are winners and losers.
  2. Approach 2 focuses on respect and basic human dignity and how that comes first before opinions. This approach recognizes that not all opinions are equal or healthy, that some people hold more risk and stakes than another. Respect and acceptance of a person’s humanity, their stakes and risk, and the differences in privilege must be acknowledged first before opinions can be shared and treated with validity. In this approach, discussion is not a game of debate, but a shared experience in which to grow. For this approach, there are no winners or losers.

These two approaches are the predominant ones in American culture today. They are not all the approaches to a discussion, yes, but for brevity and relevancy, I’ll focus on these two approaches. Of the two, I believe the first is often deadly and toxic.

Why?

Approach 1 makes several false assumptions:

  1. Emotion is invalid, and showing emotions means the argument that person made is not rational or to be respected.
  2. Rationality with no emotion is the only way to have intelligent discussions, thus cementing the idea of rationality and emotion being at war with one another, and rationality being equated with intelligence.
  3. That all opinions are on an equal playing field, and people’s opinions stay valid as long as they are rational and emotionless.
  4. That discussions are a debate game to be won.

Let’s tackle these one at a time.

Emotion does not render an argument invalid. It simply does not. We are human beings, where emotions are a huge indicator that tells us important things about ourselves, our environment, and our safety and well-being. They play a role in determining when to disengage, when to engage, and can fuel a passion that can make discussions more interesting or instructive (or could also make them destructive too). Emotional intelligence is just as important as any other facets of human intelligence.

Emotions have their pros and cons, but rendering any argument invalid because emotion is present? That is a silencing tactic. It is also a logical fallacy, where the other is outright avoiding the issue present by using the person’s emotions as a way to silence and distract.

Rationality is not at war with emotion. Rationality does not equal intelligence either. Being rational does not make the person’s argument superior to someone who had emotion slip into their words. This assumption in of itself contradicts the idea of an “equal playing field.” Secondly, it assumes that one cannot be both rational and hold emotions, which is a false premise. It is possible to do both. Third, it puts those who have no risk in the discussion on a deadly pedestal, where they can use words in a destructive manner but escape consequences by hiding behind the idea of rationality = intelligence = validity, and thus should always be respected.

What do I mean by risk? Risk generally incorporates the amount of energy — emotional and physical and mental — a person puts into an activity and balances it against outcomes that may negatively harm their health — mental, physical, or emotional – or their functionality and existence within the world.

I am a transgender person. In discussions about gender, my risk is at a high level as I may have to discuss topics related to my very identity, where I may have to defend my existence and such a defense? Is always exhausting. If a person’s opinion outright invalidates my humanity — such as claiming trans people need to accept their birth gender as that’s just biology — this is an attack on my identity and humanity. Verbal attacks bring on a panic attack for me, and it limits my functionality to exist, hurts my health and violates safety.

To ignore such risks and stakes, is to ignore the humanity of that person and to ignore that their needs are just as valid as the other person. Respecting one another’s needs also means respecting what boundaries they may put into place to keep themselves safe and to keep their health stable. Respecting someone’s needs and boundaries is often hard to do, and any of us may fail at it, even when doing the second approach.

(Side note: How to respect one another is a post I may have a different day, but I will say that it involves taking responsibility of one’s words and actions regardless of one’s intent and be willing to apologize and listen (for all involved). I admit, this is something I work on just as much as everyone else — no one is perfect at this.)

To continue, people who have no risk in the discussion do not exist on an even or equal playing field with those who have a lot of risk. Thus, approach 1 by those with no risk, makes any opinion fair game as long as it is done rationally, emotionless, and to further the ‘game.’ If the other person’s needs, boundaries, and stakes in the discussion is not respected, then words are not carefully chosen. Instead, to those who hold no risk in the discussion, the focus is the game, an “intelligent discussion where all opinions are valid,” where words are just words.

They ignore the reality that words are not “just words.” Words can be violent weapons that destroy just as much as they can be powerful sources of healing. Words matter. Words and gestures and emotions are how we communicate with one another. There is simply no such thing as a discussion that holds no risk for all involved.

Failing to recognize the risk others may hold? Failing to recognize what is at stake? Failing to respect those who have much at stake? This is a dismissal of a person’s experiences and identity, and how those influence and shape discussion as much as the facts and opinions shared. It can easily break boundaries and cause harm, and a discussion that causes harm? That is not a healthy discussion.

No person can ever completely erase themselves from a discussion. We all hold biases that unconsciously affect us. Often times, in Approach 1, the idea of rationality is to rise above biases, where those speaking rationally with no emotion hold no biases. This assumption that biases are negligible or nonexistent in ‘rational discussions?’ And/or rational discussions with no emotion is more valid? And/or there is no risk in a discussion because it is all ‘just a game?’

That’s not rational or healthy assumptions. Instead, they are smokescreens and distractions meant to avoid the issue at stake in the discussion. And that’s dangerous, destructive, and not at all instructive. One cannot have a discussion if the these approaches are at odds with one another.

In my view, the only way a discussion can be valuable and instructive for all involved is if everyone approaches it with respect of a person’s humanity, the stakes they have in the conversation, and the power of words themselves. But to do so, we must recognize that not all opinions are equal in power or validity.

Let me repeat: opinions are not all equal in power or validity. Let us look at history to remind ourselves of the power of words. Some opinions have led to the deaths of millions. Until people can recognize these two different discussion approaches and the dangers inherent in the first approach, then discussions about hard subjects will tend toward those who hold the most risk, the most stakes, being harmed or worse.

A good example of this is the idea that a group of beings is worth less than another. This is an opinion, but it is rooted in the oppression and violation of a fellow human being. There is no even playing field as the opinion starts out violating the basic rules of trust and respect when engaging in conversations. And these opinions, that view others as less than, has influenced powerful legislation and movements that have resulted in oppression, destruction of liberties and lives, and outright genocide. There’s many examples of this throughout history. I’ll list a few:

  1. Nazi Germany and the concentration camps.
  2. Scapegoating communities, leading to higher violence against them.
  3. The genocide against various indigenous tribes around the world.
  4. The government-based racist oppression, where black people were not allowed to exist in majority of public spaces.
  5. Homophobic and Transphobic legislation that makes it hard if not impossible for LGBQTIA people to receive healthcare or exist in public.
  6. Slavery of any sort.
  7.  Wage entrapment, where a person doesn’t earn enough to speak up against abuse by their employer without fear of homelessness or starvation and/or mass incarceration for petty crimes to get free or low paid labor.

As much as people try to claim remembering history is a fallacy, it truly is not. It is important to remember our history, and how words, the approach to discussion, and premises on which those words stand hold power. People may say that one person doesn’t do much, but it’s never just one person.

There are people in the US who still do not believe Climate Change is real. Some may claim their opinions are equally as valid as those who believe in Climate Change, but that is numerous logical fallacies: it ignores the facts, it suppresses evidence that counters one’s opinion, and it causes harm as it makes it harder to move forward with for legislation and technologies to stop Climate Change. Facts about climate change — the science behind it — is firm. Thus, opinions on whether to “believe it or not” are avoiding the issue, a fallacy.

Folks may say, “Well, discussions between friends aren’t like this.” But are they? Any time these two approaches clash, people end up hurt. Different groups in society value one approach over another, and if one of these groups who value the first approach are in power, this can lead to dehumanizing legislation. Attempts at protesting or other forms of discussion about that dehumanizing legislation, often ends up twisted up in the fallacy that emotion = invalid, where protestors are dehumanized, and thus violent and/or callous actions toward protestors is often argued as valid and good in order to bring order.

Discussions between two people isn’t separate from the discussions had by society as a whole. Society is made up of people. Each of those people have their needs, boundaries, identities, and opinions. Sometimes they intersect in healthy ways, and sometimes in detrimental ways.  There are many components that make up society, but to name a few: it is our discussions; how we work together or against each other; our apathy or action; our ability to respect or not respect others; ways we honor or don’t honor boundaries; the ways we vote those in power that align with our opinions in power — these all make up society and is the basis of society.

So the questions I must ask:

  1. Is the discussion truly more important than people’s humanity and their risks they must deal with on a daily basis?
  2. Is it more important to stay neutral no matter what, regardless of the stakes and humanity of those involved?
  3. For those that do intervene, who are they protecting?
    • Do they protect those that “spoke rationally” and were “just having a discussion”
    • Or do they protect those that feel attacked, silenced, harmed?

It’s not possible to protect both factions. To demand silence of all sides doesn’t end the hurt caused and does not erase what happened. It may stop the discussion, but it protects no one.

For those that say what about censorship? Remember, free speech is only about not allowing government and similar entities to restrict you as a person and your ability to communicate freely. But it does not erase the consequences of those words. There is always consequences to everything we do. The depth and nature of those consequences may differ, but they do exist.

Thus, in these discussions, there is no such thing as a neutral stance. You either agree with the first approach or you agree with the second approach. You can’t agree with both as the first approach often fails to recognize the validity of a person’s humanity, or the validity that not all opinions are equal or healthy,  or the risks inherent, or the way words can kill as much as they heal.

These approaches as they currently stand in our society are not able to coexist peacefully. They just can’t. The second approach recognizes and respects the differences in stakes, the differences in risk, the humanity of those involved. And the first one? Doesn’t.

Because not all opinions are created equal. I think, by recognizing these approaches, maybe we can find a better way to communicate, to be more respectful, more empathetic, and better able to cause the least harm when sharing opinions. For a person’s humanity should be worth more than an opinion.

In regards to character descriptions

Posted by Aibird on July 9, 2017
Posted in: Characters, Feminism, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

A question asked in the Legendfire Writing Critique Forum I help moderate focused on clothing aspects of character descriptions. My reply on the thread expanded that to the wider viewpoint of how clothing and the overall outward presentation of a character can differ based on culture and ethnicity and/or race and influence how the character is perceived and treated. I thought I’d post this discussion here as well. (Caveat: I live in America, so this mostly discusses readers within America or Europe.)

There is a lot of diversity in outward appearance (including clothing, make-up, tattoos, and other outward presentations). How people choose to present themselves outwardly is based on their personality, their upbringing, their culture and/or religion, and their racial or ethnicity identity. When writing a protagonist who interacts with folks from varied cultures and ethnicities, the descriptions of outward appearance and/or how the protagonist reacts to other people’s outward appearances is a huge indicator of how biased or accepting the protagonist is toward that person or the person’s particular culture or religion.

As a caveat, I personally love the details for such things because it broadens the world-building, diversifies the characters, and makes them distinct. Without these details, characters tend to feel generic, like a blank slate, and the attempts at diversity falls short. These generic “let the reader imagine the character!” types of approaches fails to show the diversity with outward appearance and how this may affect the person’s movement (or freely or oppressed) within various cultures. Outward appearance also gives insight into the mental likes and dislikes, socioeconomic status, cultural norms, and even the person’s thought patterns and actions.

For example, the socioeconomic status of a person often differs in clothing — a rich business man can afford expense suits and may hold himself with a confidence that makes him stand out in the crowd. So, when writing about one, having a few details about the expensive suit and posture in context to others is more than enough to make it clear this dude is rich. On the other end, a poor person cannot afford such a suit, so they may have an outfit that is put together to look as nice as possible, but none of different components of the outfit are the same brand and some parts may be older and more worn. The poor person may not feel as confident and their posture or other gestures may give that away — that description reveals they are poorer than the businessman and gives insight into their internal sense of self.

This is just me being generic with social class alone. Think of all the other identities a person has outside of their socioeconomic class: gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, cultural heritage — all of these affect what people wear and how they present themselves and how they navigate society within the character’s plot and character arc.

Also, there is the problem that if you don’t describe an individual who isn’t a white person, then readers will default to imagining a white person. It’s a fairly well documented phenomenon.

Here’s a few links where folks discuss this frustration and provides evidence for this:

Neil Gaiman in particular brings up a great point. He described in Anasazi Boys a dinner characters had that was what Black people in the Caribbean would have eaten, and he did indeed describe race — as these were folks whose ethnicity was from the Caribbean. But he still got angry emails from folks angry that he got his research wrong and white southern folks actually eat this other food. The problem? These readers had imagined the characters as white and ignored their ethnicity entirely, and thus what the characters ate differed from what they imagined white people would eat in that same situation.

Yes, even if the writer did their research, folks still have a tendency to white-wash the characters despite details in the text proving otherwise. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ever describe such details. We can’t change this socialized aspect of society unless we make it more prevalent in our fiction. The more these descriptors make diversified people distinct, the more we challenge the white as default notion, the more likely we can alter how folks are socialized to see characters in literature.

In all honesty, if there are diverse characters in your stories, and you don’t describe a few details in a sentence or two to make the who they are clear — then often folks default to what is socialized as the default setting for humanity: white and white people traditions (traditions dependent on region). Sure, this is often unconscious judgement calls on the part of readers, but without slipping in these details in a seamless fashion, this unconscious bias never gets challenged, and a part of the story is lost.

Details about a character isn’t just outward appearance or personality clues either.

Culture is made up of lots of different elements that hugely influence folks lives: food, dialects, ways of greeting others, what behaviors are allowed to be seen in public without arising ire and retaliation (often called ‘norms’), rules of friendship (as in how intimate friendships can be without being considered a romantic relationship), specific restrictions on the gender or racial roles in a society, and other cultural/religious norms that influence how we act, often without our realizing it.

A lot of these cultural and/or religious norms/roles are socialized into us from a very young age, and we may not be fully aware of the bias these norms may create. It can take a lot of self-reflection and growth to undo these biases. As much as it affects all of us, it will definitely affect the character and how the character navigates through situations and various societies.

Common opposition to character descriptions is that too much description of a character’s outward appearance or cultural/religious heritage bogs down the story, and this is also simply not true. This isn’t an either/or conundrum. There are some books that do overdescribe, but there are other books that do it seamlessly, where the reader takes in the description and visualizes that character and doesn’t recognize it as “character description.”

It is essential for writers to understand that there are ways to slip in description seamlessly without it burdening down the story. Without these seamless descriptions of characters (as I have described above), the characters can run the danger of feeling barebones or just a placeholder. The world may not feel as vivid or as intimate. It can be a difficult balance when it comes to character descriptions, but it is possible to learn and practice this technique in a writer’s toolkit.

To see examples of how description of characters is woven seamlessly into stories, I highly, highly suggest reading anything by:

  • Nnedi Okorafor,
  • Neil Gaiman,
  • Julie Czerneda,
  • N.K. Jemisim,
  • Tamora Pierce,
  • Frank Herbert
  • Gabriel García Márquez
  • J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Nalo Hopkinsin

This is just to get you started as there are plenty more great writers out there that do seamless descriptions of characters. The one on the above list are writers who write either science fiction and/or fantasy. I suggested them because their use of character descriptions — outward and inward — are seamless and paints the character, scene movement, and character’s place in the world vividly.

Read with the eyes of a writer and take in how other writers handle these issues. See how it can be applied to your own writing, and be willing to read beyond your comfort zone and comfort your own possible biases. I provided a list of authors from a wide variety of backgrounds on purpose to assist in this process. And to be honest, this is something I do often when I read, because it is through this process I can learn more techniques for my writer’s toolkit and better hone my own unique style.

What are other writer’s thoughts?

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Posted by Aibird on May 18, 2016
Posted in: Author, Characters, Feminism, movies, Reviews. Tagged: , , , , . 4 Comments

I loved Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It’s everything I always wanted from Star Wars, where they had complex, nuanced women protagonists and people of color. This diversity made the film’s great acting, dialogue, and story even more engrossing. It also hearkened back to some of the best moments of the original trilogy of IV, V, and VI. So this review will also include my examination of the characters and how I interpreted their journey.

What really struck me about The Force Awakens is that although it feels very much like Star Wars, it has a different approach than the other two trilogies. This Star Wars was about the connections between people, and it was emotion heavy. There are a lot of shots that focus on the eyes of people, where we see their reaction to the events before they act. You get to know their personalities, and you can see the struggles they have as they learn and grow. The prequels was mostly just dialogue — not even good dialogue — and the characters felt like cardboard stock to me. The original Luke, Leia, and Han movies were action-based, where you had glimpses into who these characters were, but the movies were so focused on them getting to places, them doing things. Which is fun in its own right, but sometimes it’s also fun to dig a little deeper. (This is why I like the Empire Strikes Back more than four and six. We had a more intimate experience with the characters.)

Star Wars: The Force Awakens uses about the same amount of dialogue as IV, V, or VI, but what stood out to me, is how well they utilized gestures, expressions, emotions, and specific actions to provide a vivid and intimate experience into who these characters are and why they do what they do. I love this approach, and I love how well they used these details to paint a character-focused and emotionally-laden story. I can’t wait to see where these characters go from here.

Below is my examination of some of the characters, but be warned, there be spoilers.

 

 

Rey

When we first see Rey, she is a scavenger in a hostile environment. Highly skilled in traversing the sand dunes, in fighting, and knowledge of ships, she makes her living finding useful salvage. She’s hardy, determined, and confident in her abilities. Her spark of confidence is not diminished by her circumstances because she knows what her limitations are as those limitations were tested again and again in the hostile desert world of Jakku. Her will to survive is strong, mostly because of her undying hope that her family will honor their promise to return.

When adventures comes her way, her quick thinking and confidence serves her well, but it also causes her to make glaring mistakes.  She learns quickly, but then she has to as a survivor and scavenger. That’s all she knows to do — learn quickly if she’s able to do it, because life is survival. So once she realizes she is force sensitive, the first thing she does is try to learn how to wield it, so she can escape, because life taught her to never rely on people to be there for her.  This is why Finn’s presence in her life changes her for the better. He teaches her that people can be reliable, they can care, and they will try to be there for her in their own ways. He complements her in that regard.

What caught my breath about Rey’s journey is her resilience. What makes her so resilient? She has a tolerance for discomfort due to her extreme survival skills, learned on Jakku. She must survive in a harsh desert with little water, where her only source of food is reliant on how well she scavenges parts in dangerous locales and how well she mitigates conflict from those seeking to steal the parts from her. No wonder she built up a tolerance for discomfort. Her emotional intelligence developed because she had to read others body language and intentions in order to avoid fights, find safe escape routes, determine who could be an ally or foe — so it’s not surprising to me that she adapts well to changing circumstances, no wonder how mind-blowing they seem to others.

Brene Brown explains what tolerance for discomfort  means:

Brene Brown, the resident expert on vulnerability and resilience, said in an interview with Tech Insider: “What I’m talking about is an acceptance that our drive, this insatiable appetite for comfort and happiness, does not reconcile with who we are as people. Sometimes we have to do tough things and feel our way through tough situations, and we have to feel tough emotions.”

Rey understands her emotions and the tough situations she’s had to survive. She dealt with her emotions and got through the situation, so she could survive another day. This resiliency keeps her going, despite all evidence that she’s been abandoned on this harsh world. Even so, her one of her greatest faults is her obstinate attitude and her reluctance to accept help from others. She’s so used to being alone, unable to rely on anyone, that when Finn and Han Solo and Chewie appear to aid her on her journey, she struggles to allow them to assist. Her stubborn confidence in her abilities nearly gets Finn, Han, and Chewie killed when she accidentally unleashes the Rancors rather than sealing off the pirates in Han’s ship. She makes mistakes that put her and sometimes those around her in extreme danger, but she learns from them and accepts responsibility for her actions.

Her second biggest fault is holding onto the myth that her family will return for her, as if the tighter she holds this myth the more likely it will happen. But this causes her to reject Han’s offer of co-pilot, despite the fact part of her really wanted it.  They myth of her family’s return and the fear of the lightsaber’s power causes her to reject Maz’s words and the lightsaber. She runs from her friends and returns to what she knows best — being alone, because she cannot accept that her hope for her family was in vain or that her destiny could be tied to something other than Jakku. There in the forest she is overwhelmed by Kylo Ren’s attacks, and she fails to escape the encounter.

We all wish to feel wanted and loved, to have a family that is loyal to us, and Rey wanted that more than anything. Except she never found it on Jakku and never will. It’s when she finally lets go of Jakku that she’s able to realize she found a new family — one in Chewie, Finn, Han, and Leia.

Rey throughout the movie learns from her mistakes, learns new abilities, and most of all never stops growing. Because that’s one thing she can do extremely well — learn and learn fast, because in the game of survival, that’s the only way you will live to see another day. Rey has trained hard, has learned to quickly adapt, and has done her research, and even in her darkest moments, these skills she’s honed her whole life helps her overcome her mistakes, rally from defeat, learn new skills to overcome a stronger foe, and grow as a person. She was extremely well-written for a character with a backstory that made sense in relation to the skills she had.

Finn

Finn’s story follows a similar path to Rey’s but approaches growth in a slightly different manner, where his growth lies in becoming more confident in who he is.  He was stolen from his parents as a child, given a number, and raised to fight for the New Order. His first job was sanitation, but he worked hard and finally had the chance to go on his first raid with Kylo Ren himself. But what does this teach Finn? He was taught to fight, but when put in a situation where the orders involve killing innocent families, Finn can’t stomach it. But what else does he have? He has empathy for others and a big heart, which simply cannot survive in the New Order. His faith in who he is is shaken, and he struggles to understand his place in the world.

What Finn learns in the first ten or so minutes of the movie is that the one thing he was brought up and trained to do, no longer fits. Who is he really? He knows he’s not the killing machine the New Order wants, because he cares too much and his empathy for others puts him in danger if he stays with the New Order.

Poe’s capture provides him with a chance to escape and start over. Saving Poe’s life was brave, possibly stupid, and terrifying for Finn, but he understood that this decision meant there could be no return. He either throws his lot with Rey, Poe, and the others, or seek death. The New Order terrifies him because of his past, and his desire to run from its tyranny makes sense. But the truth is, even when given the chance to leave for the outer rim, he can’t because he cares too much for his newly found friends.

Finn’s heart is his driving motivation and makes him who he is. He’s not the best fighter in the world, nor is his survival skills all that great, but he never had to survive in hostile conditions like Rey, so he never had to perfect these skills. He has a different skill set from Rey, and although he grew up around other stormtroopers in training, Finn remarks on how alone he was. Both of them were alone, but in very different ways. Both had to be resilient in the face of uncomfortable circumstances, and both had to learn to accept help from others. Both realize that they don’t have to do it all alone, and there are others out there like them who will stand by their side.

A lot of people may wish to be like Rey — the survivor who can quickly learn and adapt. A Lara Croft of sorts really, but there’s only a certain amount of people who adapt well and learn quickly. They’re the people that the average schmo would love to hate if they weren’t so dang nice. Most folks are more like Finn — more mundane, more average, and more likely to fail than succeed. Both types of people exist in our world and both have their roles in the great journey of life. Learning how to work together and support one another can be difficult, but as Rey and Finn teach us, it’s not only possible but an imperative for survival. We don’t have to do it all alone.

 

There is an unspoken epidemic

Posted by Aibird on July 26, 2015
Posted in: Author, Feminism, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

There is an unspoken epidemic in our country.

Since January 1, 2015, there has been sixteen trans people, fifteen of them trans women, murdered in the US and one in Canada. Majority were trans women of color. Both race and gender play a factor in the deaths.

The media often presents them as a novelty — using the wrong name and pronouns, describing them in ways that dehumanizes them. The media will often go so far as to paint them as sex workers, despite it being a false claim for most of the cases. Rarely will other publications comment on it.  Often only trans people seem to speak up for them. We cry out in anger and pain at the losses, and yet our cisgender so-called allies are often quiet. Sometimes our cisgender queer allies will demean the dead further by arguing over whether they were even women, and if trans women in general are even allowed to be called women. This is just more violence done to them after their deaths and further violence done to the living. By arguing against our identities, people are engaging in verbal violence that causes direct harm. Couple this with how discriminatory our culture is toward trans people, staying alive becomes incredibly difficult. It’s why the life expectancy of trans women of color is 30 to 35 years old. Those within our country often don’t allow them to exist, and many of us face violence whether it is physical, psychological, or verbal.

To honor our dead, I will repeat their names so they are never forgotten:

Papi Edwards, January 9th, Kentucky
Lamia Beard, January 17th, Virginia
Ty Underwood, January 26, Texas
Yazmin Vash Payne, January 31, California
Taja DeJesus, February 3, California
Penny Proud, February 10, Lousiana
Bri Golec, February 13, Ohio
Kristina Gomez Reinwald, February 15, Florida
Sumaya Ysl, February 22, Canada
Keyshia Blige, March 7, Illinois
Vanessa Santillan, March 28, Florida
Mya Hall, March 30, Maryland.
London Chanel, May 18, Pennsylvania
Mercedes Williamson, June 2, Mississippi
India Clarke, July 21, Florida
K.C. Haggard, July 23, California

They never should have died, and the outrage and grief over their deaths haunt me still. May they rest in peace.

There is an unspoken epidemic in our country. Since December 26, 2014 to today, there has been over a dozen suicides by trans people, possibly more as not all get coverage. These are sometimes younger trans folks and sometimes older. They are all over the country. And their suicide notes, if they have any, are always the same — lamenting the fact that our country is too hostile, the discrimination too great, and the lack of hope of it ever being better the final straw. The media, if it even acknowledges their deaths, often fails to gender them correctly, often using the wrong name and putting their chosen name in quotes. Studies have shown that over 41% of trans people attempted suicide, and that study and similar ones show that it is due to a tremendous amount of discrimination at nearly all levels of our lives. 1 in 2 transgender people have been sexually abused at some point in our lives. These numbers are significantly higher for trans people of color than for white trans people — as the intersection of race and gender identity makes life exceptionally harder.

For many of the trans people who have died, their families may decide to not honor who they were in life and will bury them with the wrong name. Even in death they are misgendered and forgotten, their true selves lost by an uncaring world. Can people not see that misgendering a trans person is in itself a form of violence? It is a denial of a trans person’s identity – of their true self — and to misgender us is to violently deny our existence as well as placing us in danger.

There is an unspoken epidemic in this country. Trans people like me and many of my friends are the victims of a war against us, a war we never started nor wished for. We wish only to live out our lives as ourselves, but society will not have this. We are not allowed in public spaces without others questioning our right to exist. We face the threat of violence from people we know and from strangers. We face people misgendering us, and others treating us like we are monsters to be reviled. Police often will treat transgender people badly, often claiming suspicion of prostitution when there is no evidence. Still others try to (and sometimes do) enact laws to make it harder for us to access healthcare or even to use the restroom.

There is an unspoken epidemic in this country, and until justice is served and equality given, I will not be silent.

The Bullets We’ve Taken

Posted by Aibird on February 17, 2015
Posted in: Author, Blogging, Feminism. Tagged: , , , , , . 3 Comments

When I was a child, I used to walk along the cracks in the pavement at recess. Carefully walking as if on a tightrope. Each step I took a vivid reminder of the fine line I walked at home and at school, where one false move and I might garner attention. Whether it was good or bad attention, I could never guess, and there were times when being invisible seemed the best option. I often dreamed of flying in space, of going to Mars, and it didn’t bother me that such an endeavor could take months if not years. I’d read those words and think, “I could be myself up there. And it’d be safe.” I may not have understood some of the more dangerous aspects of space, but I did understand it’s isolation. There in space I could be by myself, away from the scary and dangerous aspects of life on Earth, and look back on the beauty of the planet without fear.

It was sometime in second or third grade I decided I would seek out good attention by being everyone’s friend. I’d become Samwise Gamgee, who was loyal to a fault. When my friends started to falter, I’d channel my inner Samwise, pick them up, and carry them until they could walk again. I adored the verse in the New Testament that read, “No greater love has one than this, than to lay down one’s life for a friend.” I imagined the many ways I could die, saving the life of another. There in the streets of a large city, a gunman would start shooting at my friend, and I’d leap heroically into the line of fire. My friend would run to safety, and I’d kick the gun out of the attacker’s hands and somehow win the fight despite the multiple gunshot wounds.

If I was anything, I was ambitious. Heck, as a young child, I wanted to not only be the first person on Mars but also the first person to write a novel in space on the way to Mars. I always had lofty goals, even when it came to defending my friends against the terrors of the world.

But there are some terrors in which you cannot defend. How do I fight an oppressive system that views people of color as less than human? That strives to strip them of their humanity and often their lives, without warning? I have no defense against a system that de-values the lives of transgender people like myself, where it misgenders us, violently attacks us, and tries to strip away our humanity. No matter how hard I try, I can’t demolish a system that tries to rape, demolish, and exploit anyone who identifies as female. How do I stop a culture that treats rape as a joke, vilifying survivors, and sympathizing with rapists? How can I defend those I love against toxic forms of religion that seek to strip away our rights, steal our humanity, and leave us for dead on the side of the road?

I’m just one person, and a flawed one at that. I’ve been an outcast in every group I’ve tried to join. I have been that friendly person that people admit is nice but never stop to truly see me as me. I am just a wall decoration, a friendly atmosphere, a hopeful sentence or two that uplifts their spirits. I am nebulous and undefined, and when they turn to look at me, they force labels on me, often against my will, where I am confined to their version of me, their version of reality. There is no room to breathe, and if I speak up?

Speaking up is out of the question, for now, as I struggle with my gender and seek transition, I’ve lost that right. I am the one that fell between the cracks. The survivor that never really had a support system, not even when I presented as a woman. I am not a woman, but I’m not a man. How can I walk into these women-only spaces seeking safety and healing from the horrors of our rape culture? I can’t for I don’t belong. How can I enter into feminist discussions about sexism in society? I lost that right the moment I injected testosterone into my system. I had no voice to begin with, and now that I finally decided to be myself, I find that I still have no voice. Many demand I stay silent, but hasn’t my entire life been silent? Written in bits and pieces and scattered through a thousand journal pages, many of which will never see the light of day.  Instead, I try hard to amplify the voice of others, but in the end, it is never enough.

I am not a woman, but I’m not a man. I lie somewhere inbetween, lurking in that grey area that lacks definition. My body is my own, and the alterations I seek aligns it more with my brain and my own self-image. But society and parts of my family would not see it that way. To them, people like me are the problem, the reason for the war.

People want black and white depictions of the world, where everything is neatly ordered and fits into simply defined categories. That’s not how reality is. Nothing is ever neatly defined, and there is a whole spectrum of color beyond these narrow two-sided definitions. Our culture scorns diversity, and those that dare to fight against its tyranny, hostility, and discriminatory transgressions — they are met with a war that seeks to destroy them through a mountain of misinformation, death threats, and loss of life. For people like me, we are the casualties in a fight society wages against anyone who doesn’t fit the narrow cisgender, white, straight ideal. We ask for equal rights with those who already have them, and we are shot down and painted as monsters and freaks.

When I stand up in those dreams and take those bullets, the bullets are the transphobic remarks, racist diatribes, homophobic slurs, sexist actions, harmful words that society hurls at us by the minute.

I stand here shattered into a million pieces. For years I kept trying to piece myself back together, to try to see the whole again, but now I stand here amongst this shattered glass, amongst the streams of blood, and raise my hands toward heaven. I can’t fight an oppressive, sick system that seeks to destroy the marginalized and anyone it deems ‘not good enough’ to live. I keep trying, and in the end, I have realized my own deception.

My death will not save anyone. No matter how much I love, how much I try, my death is not the greatest love of all. And what about my life? Will it mean anything in the end? Will my words, my actions, my dreams ever matter to anyone? Will the bullets I’ve taken, help others in their journey? Will the trauma I’ve experienced ever truly heal? Will I ever be able to feel safe in this world? Will those I love ever feel safe? Will they ever be heard and respected as they are? Will I?

I don’t know. I walk along the cracks, balancing precariously between hope and despair.

Martin Luther King Day

Posted by Aibird on January 19, 2015
Posted in: Author, Blogging, Feminism, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , . 1 Comment

Today is Martin Luther King Day, where service events abound. I chose to volunteer at a Poverty Simulation, where I was given the job of being the SuperFood Clerk. Those involved in the simulation had to buy their food, clothing, miscellaneous supplies, and prescriptions through me. Fifteen minutes represents a week, so an hour is a month in the life of the impoverished. There is three goals:

  1. Keep your family secure with housing.
  2. Keep your family fed.
  3. Pay all your bills on time.

To do this, you needed income — the primary way to achieve that was through a job such as full time or part time work, which took up half the fifteen minutes. In the other half, your bills had to be paid, food had to be bought, kids taken care of, and other necessary tasks. However, to go anywhere in the room, you needed a transportation pass. This represented the amount of time it takes to walk there or the amount of gas or the amount of bus fare. If you don’t have transportation passes? Then you are out of luck and could not go anywhere.

Those play-acting the impoverished families were randomly given people to play– one could be the mother, one the father (if the family had one), a few were kids, or an elderly person. Some families had children, and a few were just a single person (often an elderly person).  There was a lot of diversity in the simulated families. How each person managed their time was one of the biggest obstacles in the simulation, as many realized too late that time is a precious resource, possibly more so than money, as many families didn’t have enough time in the allotted “week” to do all the tasks necessary to accomplish their three goals. By the end of the simulation, those representing the families were stressed, frustrated, and frazzled. Many of them ran around trying to finish the goals, but unable to figure out how to do it. It was startlingly close to how it truly is in real life. After the simulation ending, we all had a discussion about what we learned. A common thread amongst those involved was they had no idea how much time it took to do things, and how hard they had to work to even do simple tasks such as getting food or paying bills.

One thing I realized is that I’m not the only person who tends to buy food last when it comes to paying all the bills. There was a good thirty people there, who played around sixteen families. Only three of the families bought food consistently each week. A few chose to buy clothing rather than food one week, and still others didn’t come to buy food hardly at all. They decided that rent and the other bills had to come first, and sadly enough, this is far more common than I initially realized.

I know when I had bills to pay and I was on the verge of homelessness, food wasn’t a priority even though it should have been. If it had been, I might have avoided some hospital visits. Worse, if you have food allergies or intolerances, obtaining food becomes ten times as hard. Often going to a food bank resulted in maybe a can of corn, but nothing else was edible for me. The poor and homeless are not immune to having their own food allergies or intolerances and this can affect what they are able to afford to buy.

When you’re impoverished, the decision becomes: “Do I pay rent? Or do I pay for food?” No one should ever have to ask those questions or make that decision, and yet millions of Americans are forced to make that decision on a regular basis.

How are we fighting poverty in our communities? By scaling back resources, by trying to de-fund EBT and other poverty assistance efforts, by banning (in some cities) giving food to the homeless, by putting up homeless spikes, by vilifying the poor and homeless, by calling the poor leaches on society, by giving the poor impossible standards — “pull yourself up by your bootstraps!” — by dehumanizing them.

Anyone can fall into poverty — a sudden illness or an accident or loss of job or a natural disaster or any sort of bad event could cause someone to fall into poverty. And those that have been in poverty for generations? It doesn’t matter how hard they work or fight as minimum wage isn’t enough to live on anymore. Going to college is often a dream that can’t be realized due to its rising costs. It’s hard to find the funds to stay in college, but for those that try anyway, they end up in huge amounts of debt that they struggle to pay off.

My own story mirrors the above, where I have never had a job that paid more than ten dollars an hour, much of my jobs paying much less. It took me years to get through my degree, where I often had to take breaks to work and save up again. In the end, I still had to take out a huge amount of loans, and my degree didn’t land me a living wage at all. I ended up almost homeless, struggling to survive. My story isn’t an outlier, and there’s thousands if not millions of people in similar situations. College degrees often are not the ticket out of poverty that many hope for.

A lot of people in our society try to avoid these terrible and painful truths. How do they avoid them? Doublespeak. Turn those in need into monsters, and then it’s okay to not care about them. It’s okay to destroy their safety net, to ignore their suffering, to cast them under the bus to die. Take away their humanity and then society can look away and breath a sigh of relief. It no longer has to look at the awfulness or acknowledge its truth; society can now pretend it doesn’t exist and get on with life. If those suffering protest, then they are made into comedic relief, painted as ungrateful for the scraps left for them.

Ironically, this same tactic is used on the majority of minority groups: people of color, LGBTQ people, and anyone who doesn’t fit into the privileged group within that society. If you turn those who don’t look like you into monsters, it’s easier to ignore the injustice they face, the horrors that mark their days, the discrimination they endure. It’s easier to view their lives as lesser. As not worth as much as your own.

Our society values some lives more than others. And that’s an evil truth many refuse to acknowledge, but until we do, poverty, discrimination, injustice — all of these problems will never go away.