Sunday, October 30, 2011

some thoughts about political engagement

1. You must expect complicity as your baseline. Instead of looking at the ways in which a person fails to be the perfect, superhuman activist, one should observe the ways they rise above complicity. It isn't wrong that people should look first to their own survival, even to their own thriving.

2. When it comes to issues that aren't your primary focus, the goal is to find a compromise that isn't particularly reactionary that works for you. Maximizing your functionality as an activist and a human being matters. You are not a perfect superhuman activist either.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

trouble contemplation

I don't think I've written much that was good since I came here.


Which is alright; it's not like I haven't been getting plenty else done. The breakneck speed isn't always good for me, though. I am living in a flood, and so far my best writing comes from long percolation.




In my nonexistent free time I'm reading Delusions of Gender. It convinces me of what I already knew but constantly doubted; this world really is stacked against women.

And poor people, and brown people. And neurologically divergent people, and disabled people. And fat people. And people with unsupportive families. And, god knows, adult survivors of child abuse.

The question is how to live gracefully in a world that's stacked against you--not in a moment when the column of tanks is about to mow you down, but all the years and months and days and moments before that. How do you stay hardworking and reasonable and uncompromisingly kind, and not take it laying down?

How do you live?

Saturday, October 22, 2011