Three Weeks and Counting...


Today officially marks the 3 week countdown that officially ends my days of living in Scotland. I'll still have to come back to finish certain aspects of the doctorate - like defending it to the death in a Braveheart-style caber-toss and then jousting event, topped off by a ceilhi dance-off of doom. At least that's my understanding of the process here. In the States, I'd just be subjected to orally defending it before a committee of experts in my field. Sometimes it really does surprise me how different they do things over here...

At any rate, it's strange to think of this all coming to an end. In a way, I'm really ready for it. I've been here for nearly three years; long enough in my Wonky universe. It's about time to pick up and move onto the next locale. Or back to a previous one, in this case. Saint Louis. I have to say, not overly thrilled about moving back to those sweltering summers...although after the meek heat that they try to pass off as "summer" in Scotland, Missouri temperatures are almost a welcome change.

When you move around your whole life, you get used to endings. Sort of. Part of you needs them; I've moved so often that at this point I'm not sure how to even go about putting down roots, and the prospect of doing so fairly makes me cringe with claustrophobia. On the other hand, endings get old. The prospect of starting fresh and new is always exciting, but the corresponding prospect of leaving friends and places you love...it never gets easier.

As my life catapults toward yet another ending, I'm left with more mixed feelings than usual. When my time ended in Kirksville, it wasn't exactly traumatic, not least of all because it was Kirksville, and also because, since I stayed on for my Master's, I was one of the last of my circle of friends to leave. Here, I am the first. Compounded by the fact that only one of my friends here is actually from Scotland - the rest are from all over: Ireland, Germany, Spain, Vietnam, Canada, even Wisconsin. We've all congregated here, away from our real homes. In essence, we've become each other's family in the absence of our real families. So it's with a different and unexpected sort of sadness that I'm leaving now.

But also with gladness to start fresh (ish) in St. Louis with my boy and hopefully meet back up with some long lost friends. And not just a little stress as I try to finish up this bloody dissertation in the next 21 days. ACK!

Wonky Halloween Madness!!!

It was a night of thrills, chills, and spills. As, I suppose, any good Halloween should be. My flatmate Clare and I hosted a huge gala "fancy dress" (or, in American, "costume") party extravaganza in honour of the unholy holiday. The invitations declared a strict refusal of party access to anyone not in full costume (but, of course, there were about five or six who came sans fancy dress, and, given that the other 40 or so people in attendance were in fact costumed to the 9s, I can imagine that they felt much sillier uncostumed than they would have done had they taken the effort to throw a sheet over their heads and moan "boo!").

As you can see, I was a man - and quite a dashing one, might I add. Not entirely spooky in the traditional Halloween fashion, but scary enough. My costume was completed by a sock in the crotch and the glueing of tiny, stubble-like snippets of my own hair to my face to form a goatee and sideburns. I have to say, while I think I pulled off the performance of masculinity with reasonable success, though more in a androgynous drag queen sense than in an encapsulation of true maleness.

Re: it was an odd sensation. My flatmate is convinced that my behaviour did in fact change when I put on my mantle of masculinity - really as soon as I wrapped and flattened my substantial chest of femininity, I felt different. It's silly, of course, cos it's just a Halloween costume and nothing truly significant or lifechanging, but I did feel different. Last year, I dressed as a Stepford wife, blonde wig, 50s style dress, apron. Not characteristically my uniform of choice, but nonetheless, I didn't feel that different than my normal self. Somehow, the wrapped chest, sock in the crotch, and facial hair did make me feel different, possibly because it wasn't as make-believe as making myself up as, say, a zombie, and it wasn't as close to my actual social identity as a gendered, feminine subject as playing a Stepford wife.

Mostly I find it somewhat disturbing to look at myself in drag, as I seem to just blur the lines of gender identity rather than actually becoming the other. Although I'm obviously a dead sexy honey of a dude when dragged out, I still do not look quite like an actual guy. I've never really thought of myself as overly feminine, but certainly my features at best appear androgynous rather than wholly masculine. I just couldn't make it all the way to masculinity.

Return to Saint Louie

So it's come to this: After all my travels and trials and tribulations, all my grandios "worldly" adventures, sights that have been seen, experiences that have been, erm, experienced, I now find myself having unexpectedly, inexplicably, against all odds and likeliness, fallen in love (yes, I did say the word) with someone from ST. LOUIS! And not the sort of short-term, irrational, rollercoaster rock star kind of "love" I seem to have been prone to practicing over the past, erm, 27 years, but the sort of love that makes me - yeah, me - actually consider the whole settling down with one person for the duration sort of love. (erm, we're not talking weddings or anything - let's not be silly, kids :) white dresses and chicken dances aren't for me. period. but still. I will be signing a lease with him, whereas in my past cases of cohabitation, only one name was ever officially signed to the lease, as I was never willing to put in that much commitment...understandably, considering the cohabitants...)

But don't worry. This is not about to become some sap-filled epistle of a love story. The point of even mentioning the "L" word is to emphasise the hand of emotional irony the universe has once again dealt me. It is, as those of you who know me can imagine, not the smallest surprise for yours truly that I've actually agreed to return wittingly to the land of my angst-filled teenage years. After three years in Scotland, two in and out of Minnesota, a month or so in Japan, almost as long in France, and here I am going back to my high school world. Of all the places for me to be ending up at this stage in my life - perhaps not permanently, but at least for the duration of a lease - St. Louis has got to be at the top of the list of "unlikelies" and "overwhelmingly improbables". I whole-heartedly believed that, once I left Missouri, it would be safely relegated into the "places once lived" category.

Not so, it now officially seems. And yet, I'm not...okay, I can't even write that sentence. I AM disappointed on some level with this fact. As someone who has moved around for her entire life, I've never really lived anywhere longer than 5 or 6 years in a row. Which is just about the right time to pick up and get the hell out before the roots are in too deep. And of all the places that I have lived, save Kirksville, St. Louis probably, okay, no, DOES, rank at the top of the list of "Never again"s. I'm not much of a roots person. I like to try new places, meet new people, experience new things. I totally understand the appeal of roots, though, and I always thought that if I were to ever want any, I would probably want to put them down somewhere north, near family and the majority of my friends.

And yet, nevertheless, in two months' time I will once again call the Show Me State my home. Back to the land of Budweiser and the Cards, the "new" (yet same named) Busch Stadium, Schlafley beer and people who are so fat they actually have their own personal motorized scooters to cart their fat asses around Schnucks, back to summer humidity that defies description - one might say even transcends the very definition and understanding of the word "humidity," back to snowless winters and cheap gas and gun racks in pickup truck rear windows, SLU and SCCCC and Wash U and Webster, The Loop and the Tivoli and the Rams and the Blues.

Actually, some of it's not so bad. And it just goes to show the unpredictability of life. And the ironic and sick sense of humour of Mother Nature and the Goddess of Fate. Bitches, both of them. And obviously if the guy didn't balance it all out, it wouldn't even be an option. But he does. Completely. So I'm willing to give the place a second chance. After all, I do seem to recall some fine folks living in the area. I just hope there are still some people I know, and who remember me, left in the area!!

Gratuitous Language Use

I do have a problem with that. Swearing. I always have done, but it seems to have gotten worse since I've lived in the UK. Scottish, Irish, and British folk tend to take cursing to a whole new level. It's almost an art form over there, and much less puritanically frowned upon than it is here. There, the word "cunt" is almost as common and as versatile as our usage of "fuck" - it's used as a noun, an adverb, an adjective...some of the more creative cursers in the UK can even transform it into a verb.

Words have power, and this is true everywhere. Language is the means by which we, as subjects, enter into the community, into culture itself. Seemingly in the post-politically correct world of the US, words have a great deal of power to either harm or offend, and people are mysteriously picky about which does what and why. In some sense, of course it's true that these are only words, and in some sense, they therefore only have the power to hurt if you let them. Politically correct speech and censorship in many instances does more harm than good, and focusing on the harmful nature of swear words in particular seems to have become a ridiculous and scapegoated preoccupation in our culture.

On television, sensoring out the word "fuck" while showing visual scenes of rape and murder is incredibly common and incredibly absurd. Allowing your five year old to hear a curse word - and one which he or she would have no understanding of anyway - seems much less damaging than allowing them to view a vivid scene of violence, the imagery of which will stick with them much more than a curse word.

That said, in many instances words do have as much potential - if not more - to do harm.

Since my arrival in St. Louis at the beginning of August, I have heard the word "nigger" more times than I can count, and not from the mouths of the black residents of the city. There is a racism that pervades the Gateway to the West, and it's a racism that exists on all sides and from all races. People who would hesitate to use the word "cunt" for fear of offending, let the word "nigger" drip from their lips without a second thought.

Beyond racism, there is simply a pervasive language of hatred here that I have seldom experienced in other parts of the world. Yes, of course, you can find nationalism, racism, prejudice practically wherever you may travel within human civilisation. But the vehemence and frequency and thoughtlessness with which words like "nigger" and "queer" and "faggot" and "slut" are thrown around here...it's alarming. And there is a bitterness toward the idea of NOT using those words, of not being ABLE or PERMITTED to use those words, that is quite striking. If black people can call each other "nigger," why can't white people use the word? If gays can call each other "queer" and "dyke" and "fag," why is it not so acceptable for heterosexual folks to do the same? It is the same with gendered words like "bitch" and "cunt" - why is it okay for some women to call each other these words, but not okay for other women to use them? Or for men? And why should words like "slut" and "bimbo" be completely off limits for EVERYONE? It's just not fair. They're all just WORDS, after all. What's the big fucking deal?

But of course, they're not just words. Language defines our culture; words have power and words contain an infinite history of implied meanings and inuendos. The history of violence implicit in words like "nigger" and "cunt" and "fag" make the uttering of them much more complicated than words like "black," "woman," and "gay" (although these words, of course, have their own impacted history). When a white person uses the term "nigger," the violent history of the word is immediately brought to the fore. Cannot help but be brought to the fore. The violence is cited, reiterated, and in a small echoing way, repeated.

When a black person says the word "nigger," that same history of violence is summoned, but in a newly contextualised way, as it is being uttered by one against whom the word had previously performed that historicised violence. The power of the word is being reappropriated and redefined by the object of its original attack; by reclaiming the word, by redefining it and embracing it and turning it into a positive form of address or identification within the once attacked community, the word loses some of its power for violence and potential to do harm.

Words like "slut" and "bimbo," "skank" and "ho" should never be used. By anyone.

Reappropriated words, like "nigger" and "bitch" and "fag," aim to embrace the traits of the words that are supposedly negative. The most defining so-called negative trait behind the violence of "nigger" is simply racial - the object is black, he or she is a "nigger." As being black is not a negative thing, why should black people not embrace such a term? Similarly the term "fag" describes a homosexual male; as being a gay male is not actually a negative thing, the word can therefore be embraced by the gay male community as nothing negative at all.

Words like "bitch" and "cunt" are somewhat more complex, but they too are being reappropriated by a more enlightened, progressive female community. The character traits associated with the term "bitch" extend beyond the gendered identity of female; a "bitch" is a strong, opinionated, sometimes pushy, never-takes-shit-from-anyone sort of gal. These traits are seen as negative by the haters in the misogynist community, but for women, being called a "bitch" should be considered a compliment.

"Cunt" is even more interesting. For centuries women have essentially been defined by and as their vaginas. Additionally, the vagina was no good thing. It was a scary, indefinable mystery. In medieval times and earlier, "science" understood female genitalia as simply the inverse of the male's; her body simply could not generate enough heat to push the sexual organs out of the body. Aristotle believed a woman was simply a malformed man, a deformed creation of whom Nature herself was ashamed. All she was really good for was sex and reproduction. Her mysterious vagina defined her and ruled her, and the word "cunt" as a synonym for female sexual organs can be traced back to at least the fourteenth century, although it was not used in a singularly negative sense until much later, and the implication behind being called a "cunt" is that the vagina should be associated with shame. Some in the progressive world of female enlightenment don't think the vagina is anything to be ashamed of (imagine that) and are trying to reclaim the word as a term of pride, or at the very least, not a term we should be afraid to say.

And how does this fit in with my Irish friend describing his attempts at "trying to finish writing this cunting dissertation chapter" and my problems drinking my "big bitch coffee before it gets cold"? Are these words directly inflamatory toward women? Or have them been overused to the point that they have become generic?

Some words, like "nigger" and "fag" lose their power when they are reclaimed by the community against whom they originally did violence. Other words are more ambiguous. Do they get their power because of who uses them and in what manner, or do they get their power because we draw attention to them? Should women reclaim words like "bitch" and "cunt" and keep them wholly within the female community? As in only we can say or use them? Or is it more useful to keep them as versatile swear words until they essentially lose the original violence of their meaning and become generic (but, again, useful) profanities?

I don't know. It's a blurry and finely drawn, easily crossed and confused line.

Gossip, Gender, and Solidarity:
Why We Need to STOP Talking Shit About Each Other

The stereotype of the "gossiping woman" has existed in literature since before the Middle Ages. The folkloric animal imagery of the barnyard full of chatty, cackling hens is commonly understood as analogous to a group of congregating, gossiping women. But my past few testosterone-drenched weeks have taught me something that I have suspected for quite some time - namely, that the love of gossip is not only a feminine trait, and I can now say with absolute confidence that guys gossip just as much, if not moreso and certainly much, much worse, than women.

Traditionally gossip has been seen not only as largely women's territory, but as the fairer sex's primary arsenal of assault. Men fight with their fists, women fight with their words...behind the backs of the people (usually other women) with whom they're actually fighting. I think this is the difference when it comes down to gender and gossip - men do gossip, all the bloody time, but they don't use it as a method of combat, and, as I'll come back to in a moment, they're really shit at it anyway. They don't really give a shit what someone says about them personally, and on the rare occasions that they do, they settle it in a physical manner anyway. The only time men seem to participate in any serious way in gossip is if it involves the women in their lives - and then it's either in defense of those women, or an exercise in gross misinterpretations, misrepresentations, and miscommunications.

Gossip is most damaging to women anyway. Gossip about men does not really seem to aversely affect a man's reputation, at least not as much as his actions do. If his reputation or name are to be called into question, it is generally about something he has done, rather than something someone said he did. In contrast, a woman's reputation is still largely affected by what others say and think of her. And usually this in some way involves her success or failure at (or rejection of) gender norms - is she a good mother? A good lover? A virgin? A whore? Which is fucking archaic. I find it absurd to believe that a woman's sexuality can still so negatively affect the way she is seen in the world - if she enjoys sex, she is still seen as a "slut" - and that this negativity is generally perpetuated by other women.

SO WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH WOMEN???

The whole concept of gossip generally fails to impress or entertain me. As a means of bonding and communication, it seems a rather shallow and mean-spirited mode of verbal interaction. While gossip would seem to be about others and not about the person actually speaking, I would say that it actually reveals more about the speaker than whoever the subject (or I suppose object) of the moment's gossip may be. If you have nothing better to communicate to the world than some nebulously conceived, ill-received, ill-spirited second-hand information about another person, I'd guess that you really have nothing much to say or contribute to society at all. Is there truly anything more ridiculously shallow and uninteresting than listening to someone gossip about someone else?

As someone who generally tries not to gossip, I have very seldom found myself the victim of it. However, as someone in possession of a vagina, I have not been able to avoid it at all times. Recently, such an assault has come from my so-called "best friend." The word "slut" (among others) was used, not to my face, but to describe me in my absence to the guy I'm currently dating. A guy with whom my "best friend" set me up.

Now, my guy and her guy are very good, old friends and went out together for pizza and frisbee golf the other day. When my man returned home, he informed me that he told his friend that I "hated" my "friend" (this dude's girlfriend). Now, the word "hate" has never crossed my lips in connection to my "friend." The words "lying" and "cunt," yes, indubitably and frequently, but never "hate" and never anything untrue.

If he had relayed the words "lying" and "cunt" to the boyfriend, I would have no real problem with it. I have in fact used those words, so him repeating them would not have been completely out of line (although breaking a line of trust, perhaps) particularly in that I have said nothing untrue with these words, owing to the fact that she is indeed a lying cunt.

His freedom of paraphrase, however, by interpreting "lying cunt" to necessarily follow into "hate" leads me to wonder what else has been miscommunicated between the four of us, and just how much my and my "friend's" words have been misinterpreted at libery by the two gossiping men in our lives. "Lying cunt" from my lips has been interpreted by the male lens as "I hate her," and it therefore occurs to me that what they might translate as "slutty" might simply have originally been "She really likes sex."

If people would just talk to each other and communicate openly, many idiotic problems could probably be avoided. It's more than possible that my "friend," who does indeed live to gossip, actually did use the erroneous word "slut" and others to describe me. Or maybe she didn't. The point is, because the lying cunt said whatever she said behind my back, I'll probably never know the truth of her actual turn of phrase, and just how much she does or does not deserve the label I've given her; and because she's too much a coward to talk to me to my face, she's only going to hear that I "hate" her, rather than the truth of me believing her to be a "lying cunt" due to her slanderous tongue.

The point is, gossip is bullshit and it's way better to be a bitch to someone's face, openly and honestly, than to stab someone passive aggressively in the back. I have tried to confront my "friend" on these issues, and the lying cunt won't even answer her phone because she's afraid to face me. And quite rightly!

If what you're gossiping about is true, if the slander with which you're attempting to judge someone has any veracity whatsoever, you shouldn't be afraid to say it to her face. Because if it's true, there's no denying it; there can only be admittal and perhaps explanation. But if you're too afraid to confront somebody, it probably means you're not very comfortable with the information you've got and either the target can justify her behaviour or disprove your bullshit gossip altogether.

So what I'm saying is, shut the fuck up with the gossip. It's a stereotype that's persisted about women for far too long, and with far-reaching detriments, and it's something that men can't do right at all. By talking shit about one another, our gender has successfully held ourselves back for centuries, particularly because the gossip spread usually has very specific gender implications. If a woman does not perform her femininity properly, or up to standard, or not at all, then she is subject to all manner of slanderous accusations, just for not behaving in a manner "proper" to her gender.

Until we have solidarity and stop the gossip and shit talking, we're just going to continue to backslide until Roe v. Wade is reversed and we're stuck back in the Middle Ages.

European Adventures...or Wonky Whirlwind on the Continent

It all started in June, when, depressed by the 60-degree weather Edinburgh tries to pass off as "summer heat," my friend Steffi and I decided we needed to get the hell out of Scotland and find ourselves some sunshine. And thanks to ridiculously affordable airlines like Ryanair and Easyjet, getting to the continent (and therefore to someplace with summer sunshine potential) proved to be relatively cheap and easy - and a ticket to Berlin to start the journey and meet up with Steffi (whose family lives in Berlin) and my flatmate Clare (who was studying in Berlin for the summer) cost me, with tax, about $80.

So we started with roughly two days in Berlin, most of which was spent drinking and wandering and drinking while wandering. You can tell from the above picture that I had been in Edinburgh for most of the summer, while Steffi and Clare had both spent some time in Berlin - a place where summer actually exists by normal definitions, because I am bloody PALE in comparison to both. This changes by the end of our adventures, but I am practically glowing in the sun at the beginning. Obviously.

Steffi and I left Clare in Berlin and began our quest for non-urban sunshine with a 12-hour bus ride (!!!!) from Berlin to Paris. Now, I'm not sure which one of us came up with this brilliant plan of starting our trip with essentially an extended torture session, but in the beginning the money saved appealed, as did the chance to see the countryside between Berlin and Paris. The countryside, of course, was largely obscured by the fact that it was a sleeper bus and thus mainly took place at night, but that didn't seem important at first. Not until the children started screaming uncontrollably for hours on end. And for absolutely NO REASON. It's not like these little urchins were hurt. It's not like anything at all was wrong with them except for the fact that their imbecile parents had decided it would be a good idea to take a litter of 4 year olds on a 12-hour overnight bus trip. Good thinking, guys.

Anyway, so here we both are before we got on the bus - you can tell it's before and not during or after because we look relatively relaxed, rested, excited, and generally not frazzled to the point of homocidal fantasies as yet. By the time we would arrive in Paris, 12 hours later at 9 in the morning after being surrounded by screaming, whining children and parents who generally did not so much as attempt to shut them up, we would look somewhat less than refreshed. And, since we would be doing A LOT of mountain hiking with 40-lb packs on our backs for the remainder of the trip, we really wouldn't look this refreshed again for a very long time. Generally, from this point on, my look was largely accessorised by a continuous sheen of sweat, often punctuated by trailing drips and an annoyed/exhasperated/exhausted expression. Mainly the sentiment relayed by these expressions, I've been told, seems to have been "You have got to be fucking kidding me." As I do recall thinking this very grouping of words on more than one occassion (or even continuously for many days straight), I can't really argue.

Stay tuned to find out WHY this phrase was running through me head for about a week straight when this post continues...sometime in the future when I'm online again and have the energy to write some bloggy thing.

X

"Yeah, But Why Am I Wearing White??"

As a sort of addendum to an earlier post, I woke up this morning after a very strange and vivid dream involving babies and weddings. This is not the first baby dream I've had this month, and I partly blame Kates for this. As my first really close friend to have a baby that I have actually met, I've become strangely fascinated by the little creatures - the fascination is very removed still, but the fact that it's there at all is a very recent development.

Suddenly, seeing one of my best friends with a baby has changed my perspective on having babies. When I was in high school, one of my closest friends had a baby, but at that stage I was still of the age where babies were things to be babysat, and nothing I could even picture as having myself within the next, say, decade and a half. But now, seeing Kates with little Zoe, and seeing pictures of other friends with their children, I can see that babies are not entirely unfathomable for myself. ...Sometime in the next decade, at any rate.

So last night was my second baby dream in a month. In neither dream was the baby in question actually mine - I only had a pregnancy and "my baby" dream once, and it was right at the end of Kates' pregnancy, so I can only attribute it to pangs of empathy rather than subconsciously ticking clocks. In the first dream, I was walking around a mall of horrors - funhouse mirrors, an escalator that kept rolling over and eating passengers, all while flashing the plastic at various chain stores near you - and I was carrying some miscellaneous kid. The kid was a little boy, around 6 months of age. He was teething, and I remember having a very adult and inquisitive conversation with the lad in regards to this and other things. So he could talk like a grown up, and was very chatty as I navigated the mall of horrors while carrying this weird kid. And in this wonky funhouse of capitalism, I was trying to chase down Jacques Derrida - an arrogant but preeminent literary theorist and philosopher.

From a psychoanalytical perspective, I think there are many obvious factors at work here, not least of which is some latent fear in me of having to choose between baby (family?) and profession.

Last night, then, the baby part of the dream was very brief - and equally easy to analyse. Again, it was someone else's kid - another little boy - but probably closer to 3 months. Certainly too young to have any real or meaningful sort of conversation. But the thing with this kid was, it had freakishly big - and correspondingly freakishly strong - forearms. Pop-eye style really. And it was really fucking heavy - startlingly and unnaturally heavy, like a bowling ball. To the point where I dropped it, and then when I picked it up, it pushed me in the chest with its freak arms and I dropped it again. One last try, and again, a push of the freak arm and this time the thing slipped up out of my arms like a greased pig. All to an audience of worried and judgmental "You're not mother material" sort of faces.

After which I promptly found myself in an incredibly elaborate white dress in the midst of pre-wedding chaos. Even in the dream, I was confused. I kept asking everyone "What am I doing here?" or "How did I get talked into this?" I was in full-on panic mode. I have no idea who I was marrying; what truly bothered me in the dream was the fact that I seemed to be fully enmeshed in a very traditional, very Christian, very ridiculous wedding. This seriously horrified my dream self (and quite rightly!) - and I have to admit that I'm rather proud (and relieved!) to observe that even my unconscious psyche sticks to my guns about the wedding thing.

I had a whole flock of bridesmaids, wearing crimson red satin of all things, and everyone kept hiding me from the groom, who I disliked more and more as the dream progressed and I learned that the traditional wedding was his and his family's doing. And, in true cliched fashion, I started to react runaway bride style. Throughout the dream, my dream self was filled with mounting tension, ever more ready to bolt.

And the entire time, no matter what anyone said to me, or what I had asked them, I would always respond by looking down at the ridiculously white princess dress on my person and ask, "Yeah, but why am I wearing white??" As if this was truly the most mystifying part of the event. Which, in some ways, it may have been - simply in that I do in "real life" get phantom hives just at the thought of wearing the white dress, the symbol of the pure virgin bride and many, many other things that aren't representative of me or my beliefs.

The other day, in real life, a friend and I were talking about weddings. Neither of us is interested in a traditional affair, but in the middle of our conversation, she actually started laughing just at the thought of me in a white dress in a church. Or anywhere. Through no stretch of her imagination could she picture me in such a scenario. I'm not sure anyone who really knows me could. Married, maybe; having kids, perhaps. But doing the whole big bash white wedding thang? Yeah, that's just not me.

Not even subconsciously.