Subversion

Tonight is Take Back the Night at Plattsburgh and I am ashamed, as a Smithie, to say that this is the first time I will have ever gone to a TBTN. The Breadwinner asked me a few days ago to make us shirts or stencil something for it. I've been thinking about editing the feminist uprising stencil that I've been putting on all sorts of subversive things (pink aprons and onezies). Maybe I could put knitting needles or a duster in the hand. And then I realized how many people would be offended, how many people I'd have to explain it to. I spend so much of my life explaining and justifying myself to other people because I fall between the cracks of every group of which I find myself a part.

A) Smithies: In reading an alum blog about cutting the Ada Comstock program, I noted an alum writing about having more impact than she would have if she had taken the wife/mother path that was generally open to her in the '60's. Right. I get it. Wife/mother should not be the only option for a woman. But am I wasting my Smith education by wanting to become a wife/mother? Am I not having a greater impact? I want to raise my children using all of the knowledge I gained at Smith. I want my daughters in a rainbow of colors not just pink; I want my sons to learn how to change a diaper on their own baby dolls. They will not watch a Disney movie without me by their side to pause and explain how it negatively portrays women. And because I will inevitably be raising my children with another woman, they will see women taking care of all aspects of life from setting the table to fixing the leaky faucet. They will not see any difference between men's work and women's work in our home. What better way is there to ensure that feminism is alive and well than raising children in a feminist household?

I guess I am using Smithie and feminist in the same way, so I might consider both in this category. Additionally, if being a wife/mother makes me happy, isn't that what life is all about? Why is my happiness so offensive to some women? The feeling I get when I finish knitting a stuffed animal for a baby cannot begin to compete with any satisfaction I would get in "the workforce." Yes, I am financially dependent upon someone else. But that person is also dependent upon me for many aspects of life like food and happiness. Why is it that people think having money to offer makes someone dominant in a relationship? If you care about someone and work with them at making a life, you will make it equal, no matter what the distribution of wealth. Wealth does not equal power.

B) Queers: While sixty years ago I would have been a model queer, I'm definitely less of one now. I am coming to terms with how I fit into queer society. I do not believe in two genders. I am offended for all the people close to my heart who can't whenever I need to check M or F. Nevertheless, I'm a pretty content femme. I myself don't tend to subvert gender norms but I am known to describe people as: "Oh, he's one of my closest friends! He was my exgirlfriend." I don't get tongue-tied when I say genderqueer pronouns. So why is it that when I talk about liking butches I am so full of shame? Plus, the whole aforementioned thing about wanting to be a wife/mother tends to rub a lot of the queermos in my life the wrong way.

C) Femmes: While I'm at odds with being queer because I consider myself a femme/housedyke, I don't quite fit in there either. I don't shave my legs. This is a big thing to a lot of people on both sides. Some people think it's gross and that it makes me look manly (bad femme). Some people are offended that if I could, I would do so and thus perpetuate the unrealistic standards of beauty that The Man sets for us (bad queer/feminist/Smithie). I would because I prefer not to be stared at, that simple. I don't like to stand out; I don't want to always have to explain myself. Sometimes, I even want to "pass" for straight just to feel comfortable and safe in a hostile world. Ideally, no one would stare at my hairy legs and this would not be an issue, but the bottom line is that I can't shave my legs because I have a skin condition and I get infected sores when I do anything to remove my leg hair. Additionally, I am in a relationship with a non-butch. If we're sticking to butch/femme of the 1940's persuasion, I fail at being a femme. This is all so funny to me because I remember how offended I was when I heard someone refer to her sexual orientation as being a "femme lesbian." I thought how ridiculous, how outdated, how offensive. But here I am, trying to fit in and frustrated that I can't be a total femme or a total fuck-it-all queer.

D) Atheists: I don't believe in God, gods, or any variation thereof. This makes me an atheist. This makes me part of one of the most hated groups in society. In my own life, I've had a much harder time being accepted into society as an atheist than I have as a homo. Religion is a choice and sexual orientation is not, it seems. I don't really understand this argument entirely since I certainly did not decide one day that I was never going to believe in God. The whole idea was just up there with the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus to me since I was a young child. So how can I be an atheist who regularly attends a gathering that is considered "organized religion"? Because friends meeting isn't about God or baby Jesus and it makes me feel good. It's about people and living a peaceful, healthy, positive life. That's it. But try explaining that to my die-hard atheist family members or friends who think that I'm somehow leaving them.

E) Friends: I have so much crap. I want to have less, I really do, but I get emotionally attached to so many things and I just end up owning so much more than I need. "Everything you own that you don't need is stealing" plays in my head every day. But I should be able to forgive myself for this because that's what life is all about, forgiving and seeing the good. I have trouble with that in the people closest to me (including myself) and total strangers. I have trouble remembering that the people at the gym who get me all enraged are people too.

This is where I write a paragraph summarizing how I just feel out of place in every aspect of life but now that I've written this whole rant, I feel like I can think of so many friends who fall between the cracks of every subculture they are a part of. No one fits in a box and the world is not made of simple dichotomies. M&F, Gay&Straight, Butch&Femme, Feminist&Mysoginist, Atheist&Jesus Freak, Red Sox&Yankees. It just ain't like that. So when you're thinking someone is a "bad feminist" think of all the ways you are a bad Red Sox fan before passing judgement.

Do These Shoes Make Me Look Canadian?

While I was couch-surfing at Smith, Miranda introduced me to the Smith climbing wall. A few years back, I had gone with KT and Nicole to the climbing wall at SUNY Cortland where I could not get up the wall and destroyed my arm muscles. For some reason, I still thought it was amazing. I decided that I would start going to the climbing wall at Smith. And then I decided I should eat some snacks instead. Two years later, I found myself addicted to the climbing wall. I think it's because I'm generally a lot more fit and spry than I used to be, so it's actually easier now. I love the Smith wall and the way that they have so many vertical paths, with a user-friendly Taco Bell rating system.

I remember reading a short story in English class sophomore year of high school just after my grandmother had died that was about the first experience of death. When you first experience death, when your grandma dies and you go to your first wake and funeral, you always remember it. It becomes your basis for judging death. It's what it should be like. And that's how I feel about the Smith climbing wall. It is my basis. I judge every other climbing wall in comparison to Smith. I don't care if the wall I'm at is three or four times as large, if it doesn't have a ton of rated vertical climbs, I'm so disappointed by it.

This is the Smith wall with my friend Kristina climbing and I believe a girl bouldering on the left. The red and white lines are the bouldering lines. Bouldering is climbing horizontally without being attached to the ropes. It is by no means my favorite way to climb.

When I went to visit Lauren in New Paltz, we went to the climbing gym in town. It was pretty huge, but still not Smith. They also gave surprisingly few instructions--especially on how to belay, which is why it's a good thing they had me as the belayer clipped into the floor.

Another thing that gets me is when I cannot tell the difference between a bouldering traverse and a vertical climb by the tape. When you climb the wall, you don't just use any holds, you try to climb only the holds in a particular path which is marked by colored tape. At Smith, at the bottom of a rope there is a guide to all of the paths--what color the tape is, what the name is, and what its rating is. I have not really experienced this anywhere else.

But now it's time that I get used to my new climbing wall at the Plattsburgh gym. Generally, I'm an optimist and a pretty cheerful person, but the Plattsburgh gym can beat that out of you. This is primarily a bouldering wall so there aren't too many vertical climbs and a lot of the time, it is difficult to sort them out from the bouldering routes. Also, it's populated by a lot of boys. Blegh. Getting into the climbing wall is no picnic either. When you go to the sign-in desk at the gym, you are bombarded with stimulation. The desk faces just the wrong way so that you cannot hear anything they are saying through the din of gym machines. Because they thought it was a good idea to put the pool on top of the gym, the gym is always a cool 85 degrees as well. The desk has up to seven people behind it, all of whom are folding towels except for the one person pointedly ignoring you. When I first got shoes for the wall, they asked me what size I needed. Knowing that climbing shoes almost always come/are labelled in European sizes I asked for a 37. "We only go up to fourteen" he replied.
"Well, uh, what kind of sizes are they? That's not the way climbing shoes are normally sized."
"It is here in the States, Ma'am."

Places My Stuff Has Been

I've lost count of how many places I've slept in the past two months and this is a very, very small sample of all the places my stuff has been. I'm thinking I should name my suitcases so I can say "Here's Julio in Lauren's apartment." I just can't think of good names for them.


So, only Mama Pajama is really visible in this picture, but I needed to record being at the 4-H Center in Chevy Chase, Maryland for the first time in five years--making me feel very much like a scholar. This was where I stayed January 14th and 15th.

This was all of my stuff a while later hanging out in Erika's room in Duckett at Smith in Northampton, Massachusetts on February 10th. Between the first picture and this picture I stayed in Tyson's Corner, Virginia then downtown DC then with Harris near West Falls Church, Virginia. I then hopped a plane and stayed in Enfield, Connecticut for a while, followed by some time in Tyler House and Chapin House at Smith, back down to Connecticut, then to Erika's room.

Next, I moved over to stay in Tyler between Katie and Kristina's rooms so my stuff lived in the second floor hallway. I then went with Kristina to Burlington, Vermont, then back down to Smith to spend one more night at Tyler.

Then I took my bad-self over to stay with Caitlin in Jamaica Plain.

From JP, I went down to Philly to visit with the Spellers and Rachel Brown, then up to Plattsburgh to stay with Cassie. Though this is not really a photo of my luggage, you can still see her in the background.


From Plattsburgh, I went down to New Paltz to stay with Lauren and leave my stuff in a messy pile in the corner of her yoga room. And now I am at my mom's house on Long Island until Monday when I head back up to Plattsburgh! Ooof! That was a lot of moving about. But now I have to figure out how to pack all of my stuff that I want to live with into two suitcases to bring on the train.