Author: chantale

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The End of Roe

When I saw the leaked draft opinion from Justice Samuel Alito, concerning the overturning of Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey, on 2 May 2022, I was stunned, but not surprised. After all, my last post on this blog, just 2 weeks before was on the topic of Bodily Autonomy. Readers here know that I have always been pro-choice and I am consistently grappling with those who are not. Pro-choice seems like a pretty obvious way to be as it accounts for the life of the pregnant person first and foremost.

I am greatly disheartened by the trigger laws in individual states across the country, including my current (Tennessee) and former (Alabama) states of residence. In Let’s Talk About Tennessee’s Trigger Law, the Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood blog does a great job discussing these trigger laws in general, as well as what could happen in Tennessee specifically if Roe and Casey are officially overturned. The Human Life Protection Act will set the state of reproductive justice in Tennessee, along with 12 other states that have similar laws lined up, back 50, but what feels more like 150, years.

As a person having lived the better part of 40 years in Western New York, I have resources that will allow me to visit the state if I ever need access to abortion care. But, unfortunately, I am among the few with this privilege. Many people who will need this healthcare do not have a direct resource in a state with legalized abortion. With the passage of the Reproductive Health Act (RHA), in January 2019, the NYS legislature “legalized all abortions up to 24 weeks of gestation.” (wikipedia.org) This also decriminalized abortions in the state as prior to the act’s passage, abortion was “included as part of the penal law under homicide, and could be charged as a criminal offense.” (wikipedia.org)

The Tennessee trigger law will do the opposite of what the NYS RHA did, by making “abortion not only illegal but also a felony.” (plannedparenthoodaction.org) This, as I stated above, will set the United States back in our struggle for reproductive justice, but we cannot give up. The people who fought for the initial right to choose and who won this right with Roe had to sacrifice a lot for the cause. We cannot let them nor the future of reproductive justice down by being complacent. We must stay informed and keep up the fight!

So, after my initial shock over the leak wore off, my next step was to get more information. My first love, after all, is research. It helps me to work through all of the emotions and channel them into action. This led me over to SCOTUSblog (an excellent source for all things US Supreme Court) for more information. In the weeks since the leaked opinion, SCOTUSblog has been tracking all the news on the leak, along with movement on the case itself, here: Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization and I strongly suggest perusing that archive. Knowledge leads to action, action leads to movement, and movements can change the world!

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Bodies, Autonomy, and Perceived Selfishness

Is it real or is it brainwashing?

I used to think it was wrong to disparage people socialized as women who chose to stay at home with children and not pursue any outside employment, schooling, or general interaction with adults aside from their neighbors, family members, and spouses. After all, anytime someone like me – childfree by choice – made a comment about not wanting to be a mother I would hear about how rude it was to imply that women who made the choice to be ‘stay-at-home moms’ were somehow inferior. As if that had anything to do with my personal choice to be childfree. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t believe any choice a person makes is inferior, but hear me out for a moment. I don’t believe that people socialized as women actually CHOOSE to be stay-at-home moms. I’ve come to this conclusion after much observation and a long conversation with my own mother who floated the idea that perhaps they are not choosing it so much as being coerced into believing that it is required of them.

This goes for those in cultures that prize motherhood in a way that is imposed upon them through rhetoric and religious beliefs. Complementarianism mixed with bullshit ideas about gender roles has created a toxic stew of beliefs that force some people into situations that they may not have chosen if they had other options. This is not about being a mother or a parent, in general, this is about the role of staying home with the children and forcing yourself to believe that you don’t want anything more for your adult life. That you are unable to do anything other than stay home with your children because others have made you believe you cannot do anything else. This, my dear friends, is brainwashing, plain and simple.

Now, I know -this seems like the ramblings of a childfree by choice feminist killjoy, but truly – I do not believe that these women who say they only want to be stay-at-home-moms are being truthful. I think they believe this because they have been made to by their upbringing, their partners, or the heads of their churches. To put mothers on a pedestal and make them believe that their ultimate goal in life should be to only raise children and take care of a home is doing these mothers a disservice. Every human has the capacity to do multiple things throughout their lifetime and motherhood is no different from any other profession. Of course – in the beginning, someone has to stay home with the baby humans, to keep them alive, but egalitarian parents seem to accomplish this just as well as complementarians, with the added bonus of all parents remaining equal. With a little help and support, parents can raise their children and have lives outside of the home. It is happening every day and it isn’t strange or different.

The glorification of motherhood and the backlash people socialized as women feel if they vocalize the fact that they do not want to be a stay-at-home-mother is damaging to society as a whole. We have cultivated a traditional sense of motherhood that has been detrimental to all people, parents or not. This sense of what people socialized as women should want is toxic and feeds into the self-loathing they feel regardless of the route they decide to take.

Of course – people socialized as men don’t get this same treatment when they say they don’t want to have kids. It is always and only people socialized as women that bear the brunt of vitriol from others. That vitriol, of course, is outwardly facing internal pain, but that is a whole other avenue of psychology that I’m not going to try and tackle here.

Critical thinking skills are essential

The conversation with my mother actually got me thinking a lot more critically on this topic. I have always believed that being a parent is a choice that each of us makes, independently of any other forces in the world, but I also realize that there are many people who make their life choices based on their surroundings. They listen to the people in their family, friend groups, community, and/or church elders to determine their choice. They may not listen to the voice in their own head that tells them what they truly want because the messages that they receive from the outside are too loud. They also might not have the critical thinking skills to determine exactly what they want versus what the world wants for them. At worst, they might not know that they have other choices.

The points above, coupled with the fact that stay-at-home-motherhood is put on a pedestal in our culture, makes for a conversation that is almost impossible to have. Or, at the very least, it is impossible for someone like me to have. Someone who has chosen NOT to have children. Someone who has listened to the internal voice that told me I didn’t want to be a parent. Someone who did a wealth of critical thinking, questioned my gut reaction, and still came to the conclusion that I did not want to be a parent. I did not arrive at this conclusion quickly, easily, or without thought. I did the work to get here. I do not believe that those in the complementarian style of life do this critical thinking. They just move forward with what they have been taught to believe and they never question it. At least not in the beginning.

A wedge emerges

The day after the conversation where my mother asked the question; ‘but do they really WANT to be stay-at-home moms or are they merely socialized to believe that is what they want?’ I woke up with my brain buzzing. Do they truly, deep down, want to be ONLY stay-at-home moms or are they just saying that because it is what they believe they have to say? Why don’t we ever give people socialized as men grief for having a job and children? Why are only people socialized as women in the hot seat when it comes to child-rearing? Why are people socialized as women put in a position to have to ‘make a choice’ or try to ‘have it all’ or ‘go childfree for a career’ when people socialized as men can just do all the things and there are no conversations about it. There are no think pieces (a quick search returns SO MANY for ‘women’) written in major publications on why people socialized as men can or can’t have it all.

And here is the crux – people socialized as women are pitted against each other in this conversation because if one person says “I don’t want to have children” another will ask “why? children are gifts from G-d and we should be happy to be mothers”, therefore continuing the lie of motherhood as an imperative.

There are people who want to raise children. There are people who want to have careers. There are people who want to raise children while having careers. But there are not people who want to only raise children and never have any other work. The idea that there are people socialized as women who are ‘born to be mothers’ or only and forever want to stay at home raising children because they don’t have any other interests is a bullshit myth that has been instilled in people socialized as girls and women for centuries in order to make the white supremacist patriarchy function.

Throughout history, when people socialized as women show ambition for anything beyond raising children, it is tamped down by the forces in society that maintain the status quo. If people socialized as women collectively agreed that we can be parents and have careers, just like people socialized as men can, then perhaps we would be able to crush the stay-at-home mom expectation that harms people socialized as women who think they have to be doing that job in order to be good.

In an excellent piece by Jill Filipovic (jill.substack.com), the myth of stay-at-home motherhood is shown in all its toxic glory through MLM schemes. The piece focuses on the new documentary about LuLaRoe, which connects directly to what I have stated above. No person socialized as a woman is born wanting to be only and always a mom with no other outlets in her life. This is why MLMs are so easily ingrained in traditionalist communities. They promise an outlet for stay-at-home moms to interact with other moms, without leaving home to do so, and in the process, they take these people socialized as women (and sometimes people socialized as men) for a ride financially. Something framed as empowering is really a scam that ends up becoming an extremely expensive hobby.

There is also something to be said for the infantilization of people socialized as women in society. Traditionalist people socialized as men see their wives as inferior to them by design and although they are tasked with the huge responsibility of keeping small humans alive, the moms are often seen as children themselves who cannot make decisions. So, when one of them is scammed by an MLM scheme like LuLaRoe it confirms the narrative of childlike behavior, further pushing them into the realm of the home and not allowing them to seek out other career opportunities or even have hobbies that take them away from the home and their children. And when a mom decides to go out and get a job to fulfill the need to be a participating member of society or contribute monetarily to the home (not to diminish the fact that domestic labour is already contributing GREATLY to the home, but as unpaid work is devalued) her jobs are often devalued by these traditionalist communities as hobbies. They are seen as ‘little jobs’ that are not really contributing anything to the bottom line, even if they have the potential to contribute a great deal to that home budget.

Double standards

Social media allows toxic positivity and traditional motherhood tropes to thrive virtually unchecked. I have witnessed comment threads in which people suggest stay-at-home moms who attempt to go out in the world to work or have a social life are being selfish. Giving pointers on how to have a job and still ‘keep house’ is a common occurrence, but only on the comment threads of people socialized as women. Those parents who were socialized as men never get pointers on housework or raising kids, even when their threads are full of leisure activities, let alone when they talk about work opportunities. The double standards abound and it creates an environment where mothers are held to a more stringent standard than fathers. This is a toxic loop that we are still having a hard time getting out of, even in 2022. The political climate of holding back on or, worse, rolling back legislation that provides equal rights adds to the issue. If paid family leave is not available then mothers end up having to leave the workforce for long periods of time, setting their careers back and lowering the standard of living for their families.

Add to this, the mothers who think they know best what other mothers should be doing. The ones who talk about how to work, take care of the kids, clean the house, do the laundry, and get dinner on the table, without ever thinking that perhaps the father in this scenario could help out as well. And that also completely leaves out single parents who have to do all of these things on their own and don’t have the option to just stay at home with the kids. If you have a partner, you should be sharing in all of the home duties as well as bringing an income into the family. Adults should work in and out of the home, no matter what gender they were socialized into.

Honestly – my partner and I share the household chores and we do them on Sundays. It takes about 2-3 hours of our time to clean our home from top to bottom. Every season we do a larger cleaning, also on a weekend. During the week we share the responsibility of cleanup after dinner. One cooks, one washes dishes. And we, together, keep our home and clothes clean. These responsibilities add up to maybe 8 hours per week total. So, if there was one person doing this type of work, why would they need to stay home and not have a job? The answer, obviously, is that they wouldn’t. The framing of ‘stay-at-home-mom’ as necessary is a myth. Yes – someone has to stay with the children as they grow, but once they are in school and on their way to adulthood, the person who stayed home to raise them should be able to re-enter the workforce or education system or any other outside of the home outlet they wish to pursue. They should not be relegated, forever and always, to the role of housewife. This role was created simply to control people socialized as women and nothing else.

Why does any of this matter?

On the individual level, people socialized as women are being made to feel like garbage when they want to raise children and have a career. At the think piece level, people socialized as women who stay at home with their children are interviewed to glorify the traditional stay-at-home mom role while lashing out at people socialized as women who are raising children and cultivating careers. But these are merely tools for the patriarchy to continue control. Wedges that are placed between people socialized as women so that we will continue the infighting, rather than looking outward as a collective at the harm that these myths have caused over time.

There are so many people who have set aside their ambitions because they didn’t think they could raise children and pursue a career and they were, frankly, duped. They can do it. With help. And that is the point. Raising children does not require some special skill that only people socialized as women have. It merely requires adulthood and knowledge. It requires assistance from others and the support of a community that cares for it’s young.

It also requires universal daycare and pre-K, universal healthcare, paid family leave for 6 months after the arrival of a child, a $20 minimum wage, and universal healthcare. It requires community care. You know – the basic things to live. The stability to live life with dignity. Needs met. We put tax dollars toward so many other things in the United States that do not benefit the whole of society, and yet we don’t see the need to fund these basic services for all. It is truly disgusting.

Because people socialized as women are made to believe, over our lifetimes, that we are not able to do all the things, we fall into the patterns that society has laid out for us. Some of us have children and stay at home. Some of us don’t have children at all. Some of us have children and careers but struggle to make ends meet. If we dropped the myth of motherhood and came together as a collective of people fighting for a common goal of equality, we would see a better world.

As a collective, we can lobby the government to get the things we need so that we can have it all, no matter what having it all looks like. We can stop resting on the myth that people socialized as women are ‘meant to be’ mothers and if they choose something else they are going outside the norm and smash that myth into a million pieces through our organizing for the rights of all people to have support in our ongoing efforts, parenting or not.

This past week

The above conversation about raising the young is all fine and good, but there is another force at play that reared it’s ugly head again last week and that is the right for people with uteruses to have the ability to choose what they want to do with said uterus. Yes, I am being very specific here because there are all kinds of people who can create, grow, and bear children and all of us are at risk of losing our rights.

First Texas, then Oklahoma, and just yesterday, Kentucky, have basically made abortion illegal in their states. At present, we still have Roe v. Wade to uphold the bodily autonomy of those with a uterus, but if the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization moves forward, it could send the decision of viability back to the states. The issue in the case is “whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional” (scotusblog.com) and if found to be true would essentially overturn Roe. With near total abortion bans setup in many states across the country, to be triggered with an overturn of Roe, we are truly on a path backwards. Women are people. All women are people. All people with uteruses are people. And at the end of all of this, if we overturn one of the most crucial Supreme Court decisions we have seen in recent memory, we are telling all people with uteruses that we are, in fact, not human.

How can we retain our rights?

The good news is that many pro-choice groups and organizations, across the country, wrote amicus briefs, in September 2021, in support of the defendant, showing a great deal of pushback to the draconian reversal of human rights that the petitioners seek. Contacting legislators through phone calls, text messages, emails, and marching to capital buildings with our message of equality will continue to pressure these officials. Holding them accountable through our votes is another avenue of resistance. We need to stay aware and remain vigilant in the protection of equal rights for ALL, not just for those in power.

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Becoming an Antiracist

Introduction

Since last summer, we have heard a lot about being antiracist. The 1619 project, which was released in 2019, was given new life in classrooms and workplaces across the nation as a way to correct the historical record. I am happy to see these moves to remove the whitewashing of history in our public schools and I am hopeful that the States with pending bills against the teaching of the 1619 project will be voted down or removed altogether, but being antiracist is not something that kids will learn from just one history lesson. Being truly antiracist comes from a bigger understanding of the world around us and, for white people, an understanding of how our ancestors in America brought terror to Indigenous and Black populations through settler colonialist and chattel slavery practices.

On an individual level, white people need to have a moment in which things click in order to understand why it is important to be an antiracist. For me, that moment came when I was in college in the 1990s. At the time, we didn’t have the terminology of antiracism to use for the practice, but a visit by a professor in one of my classes started me on the path to becoming an antiracist. It would take many more years of reading, listening, and learning in order to continue the process of becoming an antiracist but what follows is the story of my ‘aha’ moment. I truly believe two things – becoming an antiracist is a continuing process and as white people, we need to STOP asking Black people to hold our hands to get there. We have the capacity to learn others’ stories without burdening them with a retelling. Reading books and taking classes where these stories are offered willingly will give context for the personal work that it takes to decenter whiteness and move forward into abolition.

Inculcation

As a kid growing up in a predominantly white part of Niagara Falls, I thought that everyone’s lives were the same. I went to school with Black classmates whom I considered friends, but we never hung out at each other’s homes. I assumed that because we all went to school together that we all had the same experiences in life. That we all lived the same way and had the same stress and worry of any teenager. What I didn’t understand was that as a white girl, I was able to walk freely in the world without much fear.

Any fear that I did experience was rooted in the fear that is passed down from white person to white person. The myth of Black bodies being dangerous. The coded language that equated the city with danger. The idea that white women were to be protected from the forces external to our bodies. These fears are all rooted in white supremacist mythology re-instilled in white women as we go out into the world, to keep us in line and to be sure that our fear continues. Fear of walking across a college campus at night and fear of the other. In this sense, the fear that I experienced was crafted in myth. Of course, there are dangers in the world and there are bad actors, but most of the dangers that white women are taught to fear are rooted in white solidarity and upholding the goals of the white supremacist patriarchy. The danger myth is rooted in power. If we were not afraid, white men might lose their power. This is where the intersection of race and gender meet.

What I did not learn in high school was that my Black schoolmates were already having to stay vigilant each and every day that they attended school or went to the mall or a dance or the grocery store or walked down the street in a predominantly white neighborhood. Anytime they were riding in a car, they could potentially be pulled over and questioned, or worse, and I had no understanding of this. I was in a space that I see many white people in today – that space of being a ‘good white person’. I never used the ‘n’ word and I was nice to my classmates, which made me think that I was not racist. I did not yet realize that being truly not racist was an active thing. The only way to be NOT racist is to be antiracist.

Realization

As I mentioned, when I was in college I had a professor who opened my mind to the way Black people moved through the world. He told us a story about getting pulled over by the police several times, calling this phenomenon ‘driving while Black’. This had never dawned on me until I heard a personal story from someone who lived it. Suddenly I started to understand that people who are not white have very different lived experiences. Just because we are all Americans, does not mean we all get treated in the same manner. This was just the tip of the iceberg for my understanding. I would go on to graduate and start work with an open mind, but my true antiracist self would not emerge until many years later.

After my first career job ended, when the bank I had spent 7 years working for closed, I went back to school for a second BA in Sociology. During this second time at Buffalo State I was reacquainted with the professor who told the story of ‘driving while Black’. This time I took classes from him that were full semesters long. Had I not had the interaction with him my first time in college, I probably would have felt strange taking classes from him in 2009-2011. Having been exposed to new concepts in my first college experience, I was ready to keep my mind open in this second round of study.

For 2.5 years, I worked with this professor, as well as several other wonderful professors in the department, on projects and classwork and general research. I honed my qualitative and quantitative research methods and I learned all kinds of new concepts I would have never been exposed to in the workplace. My second bachelors experience, although half as long as my first, was so much more rewarding because my mind was truly open to new ideas and concepts. This time around I was able to unlearn some of the ideas I had held throughout my life and relearn the actual facts. This was the start of my true antiracist training.

Continuation

So, from 2011 to the present, what have I done to continue learning and how can others do the same without going back to college to acquire additional degrees?

  1. Continue listening, reading, and researching.
  2. Ask questions in a constructive manner.
  3. If you disagree with someone on the merits, do research before responding.
  4. Make space for voices different from your own.
  5. Always be questioning the structures of society.
  6. Keep an open mind.
  7. Practice empathy (not sympathy) for others.

Keeping an open mind is often the missing piece. Many people shut off from learning and they will only believe the ideas that fit into their narrow world view. When new ideas are presented, they tend to shut down, but it does not have to be that way. Everyone has the capacity to learn. Critical thinking is not a skill that only college educated folks have. We all use critical thinking skills to make decisions daily, we just need to apply these same skills to bigger concepts like race and sexual orientation and gender. When we ask questions and TRULY listen to the answers, we will grow from the experience.

Becoming an antiracist is about giving up the myth of white supremacy that has been perpetuated in America throughout history.

Becoming an antiracist is about actively seeking out the true history of our country and learning the ways that the structures we currently base our society on are corrupt and discriminatory.

Becoming an antiracist is about listening to the stories of people different from yourself and truly absorbing the information.

Becoming an antiracist is about working to release everyone from the past and moving toward a future that is truly equitable.

When Black people are free, we are all free. And until Black people are truly free, none of us are free. Black Lives Matter. Today, tomorrow, and forever. Ultimately, saying that phrase, believing it, and not feeling like it diminishes your own worth means you are becoming antiracist. As white people, we can either be racist or antiracist and each of us have a vested interest in becoming antiracist. Being racist does not serve the greater good. Antiracism is the active approach that we will allow us to do and be better.

Becoming an antiracist is not the end, but the beginning of the journey. Once we have come to better understandings around race, we can move forward into the work of abolition to tear down the oppression of our structures and build them back up with equity. If we all work together, we can make change happen. Drawing on the history of civil rights and abolition, we can make a better tomorrow for all.

Action

Talking about becoming an antiracist is good, but what are the actions that we can take to continue learning and growing in the abolitionist tradition. Here are a few books, shows, and podcasts to get you started.

Readings

Watch

Listen

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Anger Is Not Apathy

This morning, before beginning my work day, I logged on to Twitter to check the feed. I know – I know – I probably shouldn’t log on in the morning for it could ruin my whole day, but I am just addicted to information and I needed my fix. As I scrolled through my feed, I noticed a few people I follow retweeting a video with a woman calling 911 because an employee at a boutique pet shoppe was not allowing her entry without a mask. She told the 911 operator that “yeah – as per the 1964 Civil Rights Act – I cannot be discriminated against – I have a right to breathe O2, not CO2, and I’m being discriminated against right now”.

Okay – so let’s deconstruct this.

First – this woman called 911 – the emergency line – for people who have actual emergencies. She took up the time of this operator while another person who is suffering from a life threatening medical condition or a fire or any number of other issues was waiting for assistance with an actual emergency.

Second – White people are not the demographic for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The rights of White people have never been restricted in America and citing this Act as your reason for calling 911 is bullshit.

Third – “I have a right to breathe O2, not CO2” gives her away as a conspiracy theorist. Why do people believe this garbage?

Fourth and MOST IMPORTANTLY the worker at the store, along with everyone else who needs to buy groceries or pick up medicine at the pharmacy actually DO have the right to be protected from a communicable disease that is highly contagious. If we wear masks, we won’t spread it. FULL STOP. So why do some people think they are better than the rest of us? Why do they think that their rights are more important than the rights of the rest of the humans on the planet who just want to get through a day without getting sick.

It is my right to not contract a preventable disease. It is my right to not die from a cause that could have been resolved by a simple face covering on the part of ALL humans. It is my right to not have long term effects from a virus that I didn’t need to contract in the first place, but if I survive I will be dealing with for months and years to come. It is my right to walk freely in America without having conspiracy theorists decide that their rights override the rest of humanity. These are the real rights of humans in America.

So – if you are someone that believes that wearing a mask forces you to breathe in CO2, please, just stay home. If you refuse to wear a mask in public, ask someone else to pick up your groceries or medications or, in the case of this lady above, dog food. Please – at least have the decency to stay away from others as you practice your maskless existence. Stop putting frontline workers and other shoppers at risk. Take risks for yourself, but don’t impose those risks on me. Being safe in public spaces is actually the real right that is at risk and maskless shoppers are restricting the rights of the rest of us to exist in public.

And for those readers that get to the end of this piece and think – “wow – she is an angry bitch” – that’s cool. I’m fine with that moniker. I used to read tweets or watch the news and then go ‘calm down’ by playing a video game or listening to music or watching a youtube video, but those days are over. And for this I must give a shout out to Rebecca Traister. I started reading “Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger” over the weekend and I am not going to hide my agitation any longer.

I have been angry for the better part of my life. Not for myself, as a White woman with privilege, but for the injustice of this country and this world. The anger continues to bubble up in me, making me see the world through a lens of agitation. But I’m good with it. Anger fuels movements. So I will continue to be angry and I won’t sugar coat my feelings. Not here and not IRL.

Having said that – let’s get angry together, starting with the voting booth and continuing on, after the elections are decided. We need to use the anger we feel over injustice to fuel the movement that will hold our leaders accountable and make real, lasting change for the majority. Let’s put this anger to good use by showing the minority (yes – those White, cis-het, affluent, dudes) that the rest of us give a shit about this world and we don’t want to continue to see injustice be the norm. We can channel the energy of anger into something good. Female leaders have been doing this for decades – let’s support them and ourselves by fighting for the greater good. Anger without action turns to apathy. It is time to RAGE on!

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Last Night

Exhaustion. I know that you feel it and I certainly feel it too, but we cannot let it stop us from moving forward. We cannot stop fighting for what is right and fair and equal.

After the despicable performance of the man who calls himself President last night, as he metaphorically stomped around the stage, threw temper tantrums, cut off and talked over both the Democratic candidate and the moderator, and tellingly put the White Supremacists on standby for election day, he showed himself to be unfit. We already knew that he was. His performance as President, so far, has been just that – theatre. He has no demonstrable qualities that would make him a good leader and his lack of decorum and distaste for rules of order seal the fact that he is not someone we can afford to keep in that office going forward. 

He should have never been elected. After the tapes came out proving he is a misogynistic piece of shit, he should have lost votes. But as we all know there are forces at work that prefer to ignore the White Supremacist and Misogynistic aspects of Trumps personality and go all in for the Patriarchal stuff. Holding on to the consolidation of White, cishet, affluent, dude power is all that mattered in 2016 and the display that we saw last night was the natural outcome of that rhetoric. You wanted a bully? You got a bully.

He should have been removed from office after being impeached. But the Republican Senate majority is also a collection of White, cishet, affluent, dudes, who are grasping at the last straws of that power structure. 

He should not be re-elected. But this is where YOU come in. You who are exhausted and turned off by the display of machismo and general lack of respect for rules that came across last night. You who are angry that the person who calls himself President of the United States, rather than denouncing White Supremacy in our country, put the White Supremacists on standby for election day and beyond. I mean, this is not a surprise to any of us who have been paying attention to the history of the American Republic, but it should be a wake up call for everyone else. So, you who know that keeping this horrible, disgusting, human in power for another four years will not be good for the country and, in fact, will be the demise of democracy as we know it (no hyperbole there, only truth) need to vote.

Now I realize that some of you are too tired to even THINK about this stuff, but you have to keep engaging and moving forward. Last night’s display of disgusting behaviour behooves each and every one of us to stand up and say “WE AREN’T GOING TO TAKE THIS SHIT ANYMORE – THIS GUY HAS GOT TO GO”. And yes, I realize we are trading one White, cishet, affluent, dude for another White, cishet, affluent, dude, to be put in power, but we need to get rid of the first one and then we can move forward with the plans.

And what, you might ask, are these plans? Well – I’m glad you are inquiring of that. The plan is to unseat the tyrant and then move forward with the actual agenda of ALL the people in our society. Move forward with police reform. Move forward with immigration reform that gives all people the chance to become citizens and removes the cages and walls from the border. Move forward with healthcare for all. Move forward with the eradication of a virus that is killing 750-1000 people per day. Move forward with social justice intervention that makes change at a structural level. Move forward with the reinstatement of laws to protect the climate and make a future where we actually still have a planet to live on. Move forward with the restructuring of America into a nation that is truly meant for all of us, not just the White, cishet, affluent, dudes. Move forward.

It will take all of us, after the election, to continue working to hold Biden and Harris accountable to our needs as a nation. It will take us working toward social justice and equality on a daily basis and never stopping because this is the long game. We need to hold our Senators and Representatives accountable. Hold our local officials accountable. Hold their feet to the fire on issues that are important to us and make this system work in the way it should. For the people, by the people. 

So, although that debate was a despicable display of greed, power, and White Supremacist Patriarchal values on the part of the sitting President, let it be a fire under you to do what you can to make this place better. Don’t let it determine your inaction. We don’t want to see a repeat of 2016. Trumps strategy is to exhaust the American people so much that they just don’t vote. Don’t let him get in your head. Bullies can’t bully if we don’t play into their games. We are stronger than his rhetoric. We can make this country a place we are all welcome and all equal. It just takes work. Are you ready to do the work? I hope so. Let’s go!

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Choices

You have two choices. Would you rather live in a Christian nation or a free country?

In a free country, you are free to be Christian, but in a Christian nation, only Christians are free. Let me rephrase — In a free country, everyone is free to be Christian or not, but in a Christian nation, only White, Protestant, cis, straight, affluent, men are free. Everyone else lives as beholden to that minority.

So let us rewind, for a moment, and talk about how we have always lived in a Christian nation, despite the founders supposed belief in freedom. White Protestant dudes have been running the show and oppressing everyone else, since they landed here, while they claim to be persecuted in America. The claims of persecution are merely a way in which to maintain their power over everyone else.

Whenever a man from this group is sad, we rush to make sure he feels okay. A good example of this was the #metoo movement and the backlash that followed. It mattered, for a moment, that women were calling out powerful men, but eventually the callouts turned back on the women. How dare they call out men. How dare they try to be equal. How dare they tell their stories of horror and make men uncomfortable.

When women stand up for themselves and call out men, a rush to check on the men is inevitable. Think pieces flow like rivers assessing the state of men in the workplace or men after harassment laws or the future of men. After all, checking in on the oppressors is SUPER important to maintain the order and we have been brainwashed to believe that even when they are fully and completely responsible for terror (slave masters, rapists, lynch mobs, supreme court justices, affluent movie execs with unlimited power) we still need to make sure that they are okay. We need to check in and check up on them. We need to coddle them. We need to feed their egos and let them know that we don’t believe ‘all men’ are bad. We need to make sure they are not feeling oppressed or persecuted. This is the beauty of minority rule. The White, Protestant, cis, straight, affluent, dudes have duped us all into believing that they should be prioritized. Even when they do the most heinous things. In the end, we all suffer in order to maintain the continuity of the freedom myth.

So, then, what can we do? How can we ensure the freedom of all moving forward? How can we turn the tide so that people will stop voting against their best interests? How can we make sure that everyone has an equal chance to succeed and that everyone is setup for success, regardless of their identity?

Step one is to stop believing the persecution myth of the White, Protestant, straight, cis, affluent, male minority. In a free country, individuals are able to practice their religion or not practice religion at all, without fear. In a free country, White supremacy is not a driving force and class solidarity can make change. In a free country, we can live our lives without fear of oppression from Christians who believe they are on a mission from g-d. In a free country, we each have autonomy and we can make decisions about our bodies without the opinions of religion destroying that freedom. In a free country, BIPOC people can live without daily fear of violence, terror, and potential death.

America should be a free country. Not a Christian nation. Christians are welcome to practice freely, in their churches, without persecution, but so are Muslims and Jews and Hindus and Atheists and all other forms of spiritual practice or abstention from those practices. All religions are welcome and no one practice takes precedence over any other. This is true freedom.

But when have we actually been free? From the moment the pilgrims landed here and began annexing land by slaughtering aboriginal people, this land was not free. From the moment the ships started arriving with enslaved people to work the land and be treated as less than human, this land was not free. From the creation of a document that was supposed to give equality and justice for all and left out people of color and women, this land was not free. Even in the midst of eight years with a Black President, this land was not free. As long as this land is run by the minority, who seek to deny rights to everyone else in favor of their own freedom and supremacy, this land will not be free.

We can only make this land free by voting and marching and demanding that we are all equal. That the majority of us want to see a future that is better for everyone, not the small few who hold power. I mean, that future will also benefit the minority, but not at the expense of the rest of us.

We cannot be free as long as we have an autocrat in office.

If you sit out the election or you vote for Trump, you are allowing the persistence of a Christian nation where the smallest minority of people will ever be truly free. And, most likely, you are not one of those people. So why would you vote against your own interests?

Don’t believe the lies and fake promises of a wannabe dictator. Vote for Biden/Harris. Vote for Democrats down the ballot. Vote to save our lives because another four years of Trump in the White House is not just an inconvenience. It is a nightmare. It will be the end of democracy as we know it. And not for the better. We do need to upend the system in real ways, but not through a dictatorship. We need to make the promise of the people real. That we control our futures. That this land truly is OUR land. And that with our votes, our voices, and our dollars, we can make it equal and just for all.

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Safe Spaces

Let me start off this post by saying Black Lives Matter. I have stated this fact in many previous posts on this site, but I am not certain that I have said those three words in that order and I feel that it is important that I do so here and now. Saying Black Lives Matter is only the beginning, but if I don’t start there, I am doing the whole movement a disservice and I wish to honor the past and help to build a better future in the present.

As a White person, I am actively learning and growing in my anti-racist practice each day. I am interrupting racism in White spaces and attempting to surface and destroy my internalized racism. I make mistakes, but I do not let those mistakes hinder my progress. I admit when I am wrong or uninformed and I keep working on it. This past month has been yet another learning experience for so many White people, that I fear will fade with time. I am hopeful that we can continue to self reflect and grow and I hope to engage more here, in addition to my social media presence with a specifically intersectional, anti-racist message.

Having said that – let us now discuss safe spaces and how White people can learn to be better co-conspirators in the overall struggle for racial and social justice.

At the beginning of June, there was an increase in the follower counts for Black creators online. This, on the surface, seems like a positive outcome. During this moment (after millions of preceding moments that came and went after Black people were killed for no reason) White people are saying we want to learn, but wanting to learn is the only first step. Follow through is also extremely important.

The hope is that White folks will follow these Black creators and take in the information presented to self reflect and become better individuals. White people should be working on interruption of racism in their personal lives, with other White people. If you are a White person trying to learn about systemic racism for the first time, in this moment, my question is ‘where the fuck have you been?’ and my advice in the search for information is to continuously check yourself.

I am glad that so many White people are finally opening up to the possibility that our privilege is the problem, but I am disheartened by the stumbles I see in online spaces. When a Black creator puts up a boundary, White people need to recognize the boundary and adhere to it. You know, the whole, do unto others thing. Yeah – that wasn’t just meant for White people comfort.

Last night, I saw an interaction online that made me question my own presence in a Black creators space and after self-reflection I understood that my feelings on that matter were moot. Not all spaces are for White people, contrary to what White people seem to think. Let me say that again for the people who weren’t quite listening: NOT ALL SPACES ARE FOR WHITE PEOPLE.

When a Black creator puts up a message on their social media account that specifically asks White people not to interact with them, White people need to BACK OFF. When a Black creator voices a boundary that they would like their space to be for Black women only, White people need to step away. But please – don’t use that boundary as a ‘reason’ to stop self-reflecting. Don’t go back into the comfort of Whiteness and stop paying attention to the information that is presented to you from other Black creators. Don’t use it as a way to be lazy, yet again.

Safe spaces are important and when a Black person creates a safe space online, we, as White people, need to honor that space. If we are invited in, we can quietly listen, but we should not engage in discourse in a space that is not meant for us. Safe spaces are sacred and White people cause harm to Black people just by our presence in space. I know that sounds like a lot, but if more White people would really do the work of learning history and engaging with materials on our own, we would come to see why our presence is damaging. We all carry a history with us, whether we like it or not, and that history can bring up psychic trauma for Black people that, although we may not intend it to be the case, can be painful.

Again – we need to honor the spaces that Black people deem as safe and only interact when asked to. When asked to be quiet and reflect, BE QUIET AND REFLECT. And when asked to leave or not come into the space in the first place, honor that request and leave. Don’t come back with a ‘why I’m leaving response’ either. Just. Leave.

We can still do the work of interrupting racism in our everyday lives. We can still do the work of surfacing all the internalized racism that we carry with us from centuries of conditioning to shine a light on it and destroy it. We can still continue to protest and donate and sign petitions and share content that is meaningful for racial justice. But we should tread lightly in spaces meant for discourse between Black people (or Indigenous people or People of color) and White people. We should honor the safe spaces of those who are putting boundaries in place.

After all – they wouldn’t need to put up boundaries if we weren’t still living in a world of White Supremacist Patriarchy. Have a little awareness of your surroundings and proceed with knowledge. Check your privilege, squash your fragility, and stay informed. Don’t just tag out of the game because you feel like you cannot win. Winning isn’t the point. Or – rather – winning for White people isn’t the goal. The goal is to dismantle a system of oppression that has ravaged the lives of Black, Indigenous, and people of color for decades. So keep fighting. We all deserve to live in a world where we are equal.

Black safety matters. Black excellence matters. Black contributions matter. Black Lives Matter.

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Earth Day During a Pandemic

Today is the day. The 50th anniversary of Earth Day. The day that we celebrate the earth.

Unfortunately, we are not following through on our Earth Day promises. Climate change is no longer just a looming threat, but an eventual cause of demise for the earth. And the current pandemic we are dealing with is fully tied to the climate and the way we, as humans, have treated the earth.

If you recycle, that’s great. If you reuse, that’s better. If you reduce, that is fantastic. But what else are you doing on the individual and family level to make a REAL difference for the environment? Here are some things that you can do, and that we NEED to do, in order to heal the earth and save the human race. Yes – it is THAT serious – this is not hyperbole – this is real.

Eat less (and eventually zero) meat

I realize that this is a difficult thing for people to even consider, let alone put into practice, but changing to a more plant based diet and eventually to a full vegan way of life is one of the things that can seriously help heal the earth and support our species survival. Eating more greens and less fatty meat is also better for humans, in general, but it helps the earth heal as well. Click here for more information on this from Greenpeace.

Shop local instead of online

I totally get that right now it may seem impossible to buy local, because we are in the middle of a pandemic and need to stay inside except for essential work and shopping. The thing is – there are still local merchants that are trying to adjust to this current state of the world by offering delivery or curbside pickup for customers. Need a book? Buy from a local bookseller. Need groceries? Try curbside pickup or delivery from a local grocer. Need takeout? Try curbside pickup from a local restaurant that could use your business. Need toiletries? Put in an order at your local pharmacy and pickup curbside.

If possible, shop in person through touchless pickup and stop ordering goods and services online. This helps local businesses AND allows the earth to not be bogged down by all of the travel necessary to order online and receive at your door. Yes – there are things may have to order online, but in general, if there is a local alternative for it, please try to purchase from those vendors.

100 mile diet

This is an old concept that seems to have fallen out of fashion a bit. Searching online for the 100-mile diet, brings up very few recent articles or resources. In the past, there was a 100-mile diet map online that you could use to determine your circumference of eating, but it has disappeared from the internet. The most useful resource I found online was here.

The basic gist of this diet is to only eat foods that you can acquire from within a 100 mile radius of your home. My suggestion would be to try and grow some of your food in a garden or pots, if possible. You can grow many herbs and veggies in windowsill gardens, so you don’t even need a large garden plot to grow a few items. You can also join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm or food co-op to buy directly from farmers in your area. Farmers markets can also be good sources for local food, without the cost of joining a CSA.

Learning to can will also help to sustain your 100 mile diet goods through the seasons when you cannot grow specific fruits and vegetables. Some folks decide to eat seasonally, which means you would only eat the foods that are actually in season.

Overall, this technique helps to lessen the strain on the environment because you are not buying foods from other parts of the country and contributing to the pollution that is caused by shipping foods around the world.

Stop buying fast fashion

Fast fashion is horrible for the planet and for the people who produce it. Buying clothing that is basically disposable puts a huge strain on the environment and contributes to the poor working conditions of those making the pieces. One of the best people to follow, if you want to learn more about changing your fast fashion habits, is Aja Barber. Check her out and start rethinking your buying behaviors. The earth will thank you for it.

Heed scientific warnings

There are, of course, many other things you can do to help the planet heal and perhaps change the course of climate change, but the most important thing that we ALL need to do is listen to the scientists. Believe them. Heed their warnings. Start following their suggestions to change course before it is too late.

As we can see from this current pandemic, there are reasons for us to do better. The earth is giving us a signal that we need to listen to the experts. Science is real. Climate change is real. Humans are killing the earth and unless we change course now we will have to live through many environmental crisis situations in the future. So – c’mon people! Let’s get our shit together and take care of mother earth. This is, after all, the only home we have!

Go forth and make some big changes for the earth!

Peace and Happy Earth Day.

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The Case For Primary Day

Last night was a lot. Super Tuesday is always a crazy day for the candidates in primary races, and for the voters who support them, but the addition of social media (specifically Twitter) and the media commentary with stations calling winners as soon as polls close made it even more frenzied. And although there are clearly two candidates pulling ahead at this point, it could still be anyone’s game.

On Twitter last night, there was a rash of Bernie supporters (or bots – it is hard to tell the difference between them and bros at this point) attacking Warren supporters. The conversation went basically like this:

Warren supporter: I am so disappointed that Biden is winning.
Bernie supporter: Your candidate needs to drop out.
Warren supporter: There are still 2/3 of the delegates remaining after tonight so, no, my candidate can continue on in the race just like everyone else.
Bernie supporter: Your candidate needs to drop out. She is ruining the race. She is going to be the reason Bernie loses.
Warren supporter: Bernie is the reason Bernie will lose, if he loses. Why aren’t you telling Biden or Bloomberg supporters that their candidate should drop out.
Bernie supporter: …
Warren supporter: I figured. Misogyny. Blocked.
Bernie supporter: One vagina down – 169 million to go

So yes, the above is an over emphasized version of real twitter conversations, but you can see what is happening here, right? Even if these are bots that are interfering with twitter feeds, they are acting as trolls for Bernie. And they are energizing real Bernie supporters to continue the toxic rhetoric.

We saw a surge for Biden last night because many people are not on Twitter (lucky for them) and they are not seeing all the vitriol that gets spewed during online disagreement. But many of the people that are not on Twitter are certainly still on Facebook and that platform can be just as rough when it comes to political discourse.

The solution? Primary Day! Instead of dragging this process out over many months, why not have a few debates, early on, with the full candidate field present and then, in late winter, have ONE DAY where everyone goes to the polls and chooses their candidate based on the information each voter has gleaned from the campaigns, up to that point. This would close the door on Twitter discourse as it is now because the opportunity to smear each other between primary days would be removed.

Voters would have to be informed in the voting booth and truly vote their personal preference, rather than being swayed by earlier primary outcomes.

Yes – this might ruin the strategies of candidates like Biden, who got a huge boost from South Carolina and the suspension of the Buttigieg and Klobuchar campaigns on Monday night, but it would make it more fair across the board. This would also remove all the media commentary that happens between primary days and unite us behind the one candidate that prevails. Candidates are talking a big game about uniting behind the front runner, but pushing people out prior to even 50% of the delegates being assigned proves that they are not willing to stand behind their claims. Again – this would be alleviated by assigning all the delegates on one day. Primary day!

Also – sidenote – I truly believe that if everyone who likes Elizabeth Warren as a candidate, voted for her in the primary and the general we would have a President Warren. But, unfortunately, people still don’t think that a woman can win. The thing is if we all voted for her, she could, but if we keep believing a woman CANNOT win, she will never win because everyone is too scared to just vote for the MOST QUALIFIED CANDIDATE. You know? Seriously. Disappointing.

I would also like to say THANK YOU to Rachel Maddow for attempting to bring some levity to the discussion on MSNBC last night. When she saw that Biden and Sanders were the only two faces that kept coming up for the visuals during the calls for each State she pushed the producers to show the full field so as not to box out Warren, which is what generally would happen in that case. This also showed the full field, which is important for the country to see. We can’t keep showing two dudes over and over and over on the screen and expect people to ever envision a woman as a feasible candidate. As you know, representation matters.

Primary Day is a feasible plan and fairest for all candidates. It would prioritize party unity over trolling for one candidate. Twitter will always be twitter and the trolling will continue, but at least it wouldn’t effect the one day primary in the way that it has during these staggered events. Also – candidates like Bloomberg wouldn’t be able to jump it at the last minute in order to be on the ballot. Everyone would have the same deadline and have to make the case for themselves in real time, at the same time as every other candidate.

I think this would solve a lot of the speculation and infighting that is caused by the current system and help us all have less blood pressure spikes throughout the election season. What do you think? Let me know in the comments. I look forward to a lively discourse on this. We can’t solve all the issues now, but we can start coming up with plans to fix things and then follow through with the plans. Hmm – plans – what a NOVEL concept, right?

Peace, Chantale

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Christianity’s History of Oppression aka Hypocrites of the High Seas – a series

Hello lovely readers! I hope you are having a wonderful evening and are ready for some meaty material. I have been studying Christian Patriarchy, MRAs, and other misogynistic practices for a little while now and decided to write a multi-part series detailing some of the information that I have come across in my travels. So, without further ado, here is the first segment in the series. I hope you enjoy it and, as always, please share this piece with friends and enemies alike!

You might not think that Evangelical viewpoints have anything to do with you. If you come from another religious tradition or no religious tradition, you may feel comfortable living in America, because it is known as the home of the free. We take for granted the separation of Church and State and we couldn’t possibly be like other countries that have national religions and oppress their people based on religious doctrine.

If this is what you think, I will give you a moment to Google and mull that thought over.

Unfortunately, the separation of Church and State that we have always assumed was our earthly right is being eroded in our country. It has been for many years, but with this POTUS* we see the agenda much more clearly. Not only did he promise to dismantle women’s, gay, and civil rights, but he has shown himself to be a white nationalist and a misogynist. He was the one candidate on the Republican side of the aisle that was willing to do whatever it took to win and what it took was promising the Evangelicals that he would be their guy.

“Still”, you ask, “does this really affect me? I mean – I feel pretty safe here in America because I was born here and I pay my taxes. I think I can overlook the craziness of this administration because in a year we will be rid of this POTUS*.” And my answer to you is, YES. It affects you. It affects every single one of us. It even affects the Christians that think they are doing what is right. We are moving toward a nation that is not free and that will hurt EVERYONE.

How do we fix it? First, we need to understand the people who are lobbying for changes in our society. Evangelicals have a specific belief system that prioritizes the power of men over women. The most obvious example of this is something called ‘Biblical Patriarchy’ or ‘Christian Patriarchy’. This form of patriarchy is not very different from the definition of patriarchy that exists in modern society, and it could be said to be the basis for this modern understanding. Christian Patriarchy touts the idea that men are the head of the household inasmuch as they oversee their wives and children and direct their lives. Women are, in this scenario, considered helpers and their domain is merely the home. According to a literal reading of the Bible, women are responsible for raising the children in the way that their husband has set forth. Here is an example of this structure that I have seen shared in many online forums to describe this movement, with verse references:

Original creator unknown – The Biblical Model for Godly Homes

That last line is chilling. They have, 100%, worked in that direction and with the current administration they are getting many of the things that they have been striving toward. But why are they so powerful? How did they get someone elected who would move America away from the separation of Church and State and toward a ‘Christian’ nation? The better question is how can we turn this ship around? If we don’t understand the Christian Patriarchy Movement, we are defenseless against what it could do to hurt our Egalitarian society. We have issues with Patriarchy, on the daily, in our secular lives, but adding Christian Patriarchy to the mix takes the struggle for equality to another level.

Again you may wonder: What exactly does this have to do with me? Christian Patriarchy spreads across all denominations of Christianity. It is not just centered on Evangelicals, although we often see them as the largest faction within this movement. Evangelicals have successfully lobbied all levels of government to put their agenda front and center.

Consider this movement as a cruise ship. The Evangelicals and other Christian Patriarchy movement folks are all on the cruise ship and they offer everyone a ticket to their cruise but in order to board you have to leave behind some of the pieces of your identity that you may or may not be able to shed. In essence, you are either on the cruise ship, willing to get on the cruise ship, lost at sea on a raft or small craft, or simply treading water, for eternity.

  1. First you have to believe in their God and only their God.  Being born-again is essential, so if you are anything other than a Christian before you set foot on the ship, you need to change your religion.
    Several States have passed bills to display “In God We Trust” and/or the 10 Commandments in front of or on government buildings and on public property. This is in opposition to the Separation of Church and State, but the Evangelical folks don’t believe that it applies to them. To them, the separation isn’t protecting them, it is restricting them. Bonkers.
  2. If you are a woman, you need to put men in charge of your body (preferably White men, but we’ll get to that in a moment).  If you are a feminist, you can’t get on the ship.
    The current POTUS* has installed two judges that are anti-choice and successfully won a majority of conservative judges on the SCOTUS. This is a move toward dismantling a basic right for women to control our bodies. Christian Patriarchy folks also believe that birth control kills babies (because of course people who don’t believe in science wouldn’t understand how medicine actually works – clue – birth control pills DON’T actually kill babies, they prevent ovulation) so the next step in the legislation of this kind is to outlaw birth control pills. This is a thing that could happen in the near future if we don’t fight against it with actual scientific facts, legislation to retain the rights of women to have basic healthcare, including contraceptives, and elect more progressive people to overturn the conservative seats in the US Senate. Basically, feminists have won many rights for women that allow us to control our bodies and futures, and the Christian Patriarchy peeps do not appreciate that. So – no cruising for the feminists.
  3. If you are anything other than CIS and heterosexual, you are unable to board. All the LGBTQPIA2S+ folks are out of luck.
    Legislation in this area started with the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), bathroom bills that require individuals to present ID to prove their gender identity matches the sex that was assigned to them at birth, and bills that give cover to adoption agencies that favor straight couples to gay couples going as far as allowing these agencies to use religion as a means to discriminate against couples if they do not meet the criteria of sexual orientation. And we all know about the ‘Hobby Lobby’ case and what I like to call ‘it’s just fucking cake’ legislation. So I guess there will be no LGBTQPIA2S+ folks on the ship either. My goodness how boring it will be.
  4. Can I get on this cruise ship if I’m not White or is there a segregation clause as well?
    Well – there isn’t a segregation clause, per se, but you would need to denounce affiliation with any group striving for Civil Rights in the United States or that the cruise directors generally deem unnecessary or unworthy. This would include Black Lives Matter, the Black Panther Party, the Poor People’s Campaign, the NAACP, Affirmative Action, and any other group that is striving to help people of colour gain equality in the United States. This also extends to anti-fascist (and therefore anti-nazi and anti-white supremacist) groups, anti-hate groups such as the Human Rights Campaign, the Southern Poverty Law Center, or the ACLU, and any other group that seeks to make things fair across all of humanity. If you are or have ever been a member (or ever shown an affinity even for any of these groups) you will not be permitted to board.

So after all of that I say – keep your damn cruise ship, conservatives! Travel the high seas with your posse of bigots and leave the land to the rest of us.

If only it were that easy. Since we cannot exile the zealots to a ship, we have to continue fighting for our own rights here in America. We have to make this land free for EVERYONE, not just the conservative, White, religious folks. To do that, we have to join organizations, fund causes, and march. Our lives truly depend on us all partaking in the experiment that is America and getting active is the only way to ensure a better future for all. Rise up and stay standing for human rights!

Peace and keep up the fight!

Chantale – aka hippiegrrl

A few appropriate links:
Southern Poverty Law Center Hate Map – You would think that the deep south would have the most hate groups, but check out New York and California!
ACLU
Planned Parenthood Action Fund
Human Rights Campaign
Black Lives Matter
NAACP
Poor Peoples Campaign
Southern Coalition for Social Justice
Homophobic Tumblr post transformed into a LGBTI dystopian YA novel

Next up in this series: Twitter, Trolls, and Trumpsters. How are these movements connected to organized religion? Get ready for some interesting information to aid in your fight for good. DWP!

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Who is the Brad?

On September 27, 2018 (wow – it has been over a year already) I watched the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, followed by the angry rebuttal of Brett Kavanaugh. Dr. Ford was clear and concise and MORE than believable, while Kavanaugh demonstrated the entitlement and confusion that straight, white, men of privilege have always been afforded in our patriarchal society. His authority was being questioned by a credible witness and he saw this as an affront to his very nature. And guess what? It was! His morality was being questioned and he, along with the other straight, white, affluent, males on the confirmation committee, was stunned into further levels of anger. When straight, white, affluent dudes are held accountable for past bad behavior, their response is always “how dare you question me!”. The outcome to this was, of course, in favour of the straight, white, affluent dude and he is now a Supreme Court Justice, sexual assault claims be damned!

During the hearings, Dr. Ford referenced a party where her attack happened. Kavanaugh adamantly denied having attended any parties like the one that Dr. Ford spoke of and, in fact, made it clear that he wasn’t the type of person that would attend these types of parties.  He showed his calendars as proof that he wouldn’t have been at a party of this kind, but listed on the calendar was a party that was EXACTLY like the one that Dr. Ford referenced. That party was listed on 1 July 1982 – “Go to Timmy’s for Ski’s with Judge, Tom, PJ, Bernie, Squi”. This is the type of party she referenced. A small gathering of guys, having beers, that she attended. She did not reference a big party, but a small gathering at a house she had never been to before. 1 July 1982 was a Thursday, which Kavanaugh would deny as a ‘party’ night, but if he wants to use this calendar for proof of anything, then everything on it must be considered.

But let’s think about this from a popular media perspective. This type of party has been enshrined in teen movies since the 70s. In fact, during the time that is referenced for the Kavanaugh assault of Dr. Ford, there were many instances, in popular media, of privileged ‘kids’ and their behavior. 1982 was the year of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”, a movie that became increasingly popular due to the earlier success of “Porky’s” (1981) and “Meatballs” (1979). Movies such as “Risky Business” (1983) and “Screwballs” (1983) eventually spawned the John Hughes canon of teen movies; “Sixteen Candles” (1984), “The Breakfast Club” (1985), and “Weird Science” (1985). The 80s were a golden era of teen movies, as you can see by this extensive list on IMDB. But what did every movie of the time show us? These movies were a mirror for the behaviour of real-life teens. Or at least a mirror for the behaviours of real-life white, affluent, teens. There would be a person of color in the mix, sometimes, but usually, they were used as a trope for jokes while the white, affluent, characters got to do whatever, say whatever, and be whatever they wanted without consequence.

The biggest issue in these movies, which reflected the real lived experiences of affluent teens, was the shocking lack of consent in the scenes that dealt with sex. For example, in “Sixteen Candles” there is a whole storyline centered around the fact that the main character is so privileged that he feels like he can ‘give away’ his girlfriend to the geek because he has fallen for the 15-year-old lead female character and wishes to pursue her. Check out this  VOX article, for a more detailed conversation about rape culture in the 80s and how this particular movie reinforced the mores of the time.

“Sixteen Candles” wasn’t the only movie to depict these experiences and the 80s weren’t the only decade that movies were made in this manner. Movies have reflected life (and sometimes inflated life for effect) since the silver screen was invented. Giving people an escape is part of the process, but it is certainly not the only thing that Hollywood should be focused on.

Now that we are finally becoming more mindful of the tropes in movies and the scenarios that are normalized through this medium, things are changing. One of the changes is that there is much more diversity in writing and directing than there was in the 1980s, but even without the diverse voices, we are seeing more nuanced portrayals of human beings. The teen movies of the 80s often generalized the experiences of a few humans out to the world and made people believe that these behaviours were the norm.

At this point, you might be wondering, “what does this have to do with the Kavanaugh hearings?” Well, gee, I thought that was clear, but if not – we are going to go on a little journey together to find “the Brad”. What is “the Brad”? “The Brad” is the guy who participates in bad behaviours, continues on with his life rising to greater levels due to his privilege, and when he is questioned as an adult for his past he denies any involvement with the people and events that occurred. He ends up continuing on his privileged path because that’s what “the Brad” does, but people see him. It may not affect “the Brad” in the short term, but hopefully, over time, he will be held to account for his disgusting treatment of others. And if you are wondering why I call this guy “the Brad”, it harkens back to the hearings as well. Kavanaugh denied that he was a character in a book written by his high school pal Mark Judge. The character’s name was Brad O’Kavanaugh and the book detailed the bad behaviours of Judge and his friends in high school. The book is about Judge’s struggles with drinking and drugs, but even an addict could come up with a better cover name than that. He obviously didn’t care about making the character seem like someone else other than Kavanaugh. So – here we go – let’s find “the Brad” in these 80s teen movies.

Sixteen Candles

You might think that the character Anthony Michael Hall (simply referenced in the credits as ‘the geek’) is “the Brad” in this movie. Throughout the movie he is attempting to achieve a level of ‘manliness’ that comes from showing his buddies that he is the eighties version of a player. Although this aspiration is the focus for the character, and in the end he allows the girl he wakes up next to (Caroline, played by Haviland Morris) believe that they ‘did it’ that doesn’t make him “the Brad”. No – “the Brad” in this movie is most definitely Jake (played by Michael Schoeffling.)

Jake is the love interest of the main character (Samantha, played by an actual 16-year old Molly Ringwald.) He is affluent and although he doesn’t do anything directly wrong, he enables all the other characters to do bad things to one another. He doesn’t try to stop any potential rape that might be occurring with his girlfriend, the aforementioned Caroline, and he plays into the insecurities of the much younger Samantha as she navigates her day. One could also make the case that Jake’s relationship with Samantha is the early signs of grooming. In the future, his character most likely would continue to date women much younger than him or with a lot less agency based on their age or level of power.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

In this movie, we have an actual Brad who is “the Brad”. Judge Reinhold plays the older brother of one of the main characters (Stacy, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) and, although you might think him to be a ‘good guy’ that is merely his cover. He is a creeper that again, a lot like Jake in sixteen candles, enables the younger people around him to continue to behave badly. He is older and wiser and should be directing them to be better people, but instead, he sits idly by and allows things to happen in his presence that he could actually be arrested for. You might think that Mike (played by Robert Romanus) is “the Brad”, but although he is smarmy he does not force himself on any of the female characters.

Another possible ‘Brad’ in this movie is the 26-year-old stereo salesman who Stacy has a sexual relationship with at the beginning of the film. Since her character is only 15 she is not legally able to consent. Fast Times is RIFE with bad depictions of sexual relationships between teens and adults and generally a dated depiction of teen life. And with two (or more) Brads, this isn’t a movie that anyone should want to look back fondly upon.

Pretty in Pink

In Pretty in Pink, John Hughes presented us with a reinvigorated set of tropes. The girl from the other side of the tracks (Molly Ringwald as Andie) falls for the rich guy (Andrew McCarthy as Blane) that happens to be ‘nice’. Jon Cryer, as Duckie, plays the childhood friend with a crush on Andie and James Spader, as Steff, plays Blane’s friend and jerk-du-jour. You would think that Steff would be the Brad, in this movie, but he is actually super non-chalant when it comes to the women around him. He does corner Andie at her car one morning, she turns him down, and he steps away. He then proceeds to bad mouth her to Blane and at the end of the movie he is found out when Blane states: “You couldn’t buy her, though, that’s what’s killing you, isn’t it? Steff? That’s it, Steff. She thinks you’re shit. And deep down you know she’s right.” To this, Steff simply walks away from Blane in his laissez faire manner. If Steff had forced himself on Andie at the car, I would put him in the Brad category, but he is entirely too inactive to be ‘that guy’.

The party scene in this movie shows every individual having a semblance of autonomy. There are no forced situations. There are drunk teens, but they all seem to be coherent. There are no group sex scenes or drugged women. In this regard – I have to say thank you to Mr. Hughes (RIP) as he got it right, for once. Not to say that he got it real, but he presented a world of teen partying that shows people with individual control over their sexual choices. Nobody is being coerced.

So, then, in Pretty in Pink, who is the Brad? Well – it isn’t any of the teen characters, but since Andrew Dice Clay makes an appearance, I’ll have to give the award to him. He tries to ‘teach’ Duckie how to treat a woman and this shows that he is most likely a Brad in his downtime when he isn’t bouncing at the club.

There are so many other instances of Brad’s throughout pop culture and we unfortunately will now have a Brad on the Supreme Court for many years to come, but take heart – 2020 is here – and this year we will win back the Senate and White House for the Dems. In the meantime – why not watch a few old flicks and take your guess at ‘Who is the Brad?’ and let me know your picks in the comments!

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Dudes and Women’s Rights

Why do dudes think they have any claim to women’s rights in the United States?

I am in a cafe in Alabama and The Dudes Sitting Across From Me are two White, straight, cis dudes of means in their late 20s. They are discussing choice. Yes, choice. Women’s choice. I was hoping that they would be pro-choice because the cafe I am sitting in is pretty hip and progressive, but no – they are talking about how happy they are about the Alabama laws that have recently been passed to restrict abortion to 6 weeks. They want it to go farther and hope that abortion will be eradicated eventually. They look like two young dudes would, sitting at a table in a cafe, talking about the future of what women have the right to do with THEIR bodies. But they have thoughts on choice – something that has NOTHING to do with their own bodies. This surreal to me. How can their opinion mean anything at all?

Now don’t get me wrong – this is not a conversation you will solely hear in Alabama. I have been sitting in cafes in Buffalo, NY where I have heard dudes having similar conversations. The movement to take rights away from women is national – international even. Women have been consistently and constantly fighting for a little more power in the world while dudes are working to take those rights away.

The people that I take issue with, as much as the dudes, are the women who have stood, and will continue to stand, by these dudes even at their own detriment. The women who voted for Trump. The women who don’t believe other women should work outside the home. The women who think that women without children are horrible people. The women who see those of us who would choose to end a pregnancy as murderers, rather than women taking care of our bodies based on decisions we should be allowed to make for ourselves without state or federal intervention.

But let’s get back to the dudes. You may ask why The Dudes Sitting Across From Me believe they can STILL oppress us, even after 100 years of women having the right to vote. You may wonder why they think women of colour should have even fewer rights than white women. You may be confused about why dudes think that we as a civilization should continue on this patriarchal path. The answer is simple: fear. They are afraid because they can see that straight white dudes of means are quickly becoming a minority. So they gather and make their MRAesque plans for the future and devise schemes to keep the women down. A matriarchal society scares the shit out of them and they are doing everything they can to keep us from rising up as one.

And here is the key – women from all parts of this country need to stick together no matter our backgrounds or political affiliations. We need to vote as a bloc in this next election to oust the misogynist-in-chief from office so he can’t do 4 more years of damage to our FREE nation. We still haven’t seen full freedom for women and, most especially, freedom for women of colour and lgbtq+ women. If we don’t work to change the trajectory of the political system we will never see these freedoms. We will lose more and more freedoms steadily each day – eventually leading to that future dystopia people love to read and write about and watch on television, but don’t truly believe could happen.

If we are not careful it can happen. As evidenced by The Dudes Sitting Across From Me in this cafe, and sitting in cafes all across this nation, plotting the end of women’s rights. They may not frame it that way but that is EXACTLY what they are working on. They think it is for the best, but it is only the best for them. Straight, white, cis, dudes of means. That’s it. The rest of us can basically go scratch in their estimation. They want the world to serve them.

If the rest of us stick together and do our civic duty in 2020 by voting for the Democratic candidate, we can show them that we are not here to serve, but to live in peace and harmony with one another and, in the end, to lead. What The Dudes Sitting Across From Me don’t want you to know is that they are quickly becoming a minority and that scares them more than anything. They don’t understand that we won’t treat them the way they have treated us for 300+ years. We will be fair when we are in power. That is the difference between us and them.

So who are The Dudes Sitting Across From You? Do you want to show them that the world is made for all of us? Then join us! Make this country a better place. VOTE for the Dem in 2020 and take the country back. We can repair the damage done, but only if we rescue the nation from the brink of another 4 years of disastrous leadership. Together we can make things better and move forward in a positive and hopeful direction.

Peace and happy organizing!

Chantale aka hippiegrrl

Links to visit:
Kamala Harris for the People
Elizabeth Warren
Julian Castro
Pete Buttigieg
Cory Booker

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Intersectionality

While I was visiting my family and friends in Western New York, I had a great deal of time to sit and think about my life and the ways in which I move through the world. I had a few interesting conversations while I was up there that helped me work out a few concepts to move forward with.

During my visit, the Governor of Alabama, the State in which I currently reside, decided that it would be a good idea to pass a bill that basically eradicates abortion in the state. This drew feelings of anger in me that then dissipated into a need to take action. As I stewed in my emotions up north, I realized that when I returned to the south I was going to need to find ways to get out in the streets and show my support for the cause. I knew that I needed to find a candidate that would challenge the Governor in her next bid for the seat, but more importantly, start backing women of colour for positions of power within the state senate and house of Alabama. The stats are dismal for women in general, but even more so for women of color in the state and that needs to change.

Before I can do this work though, I need to work out my own understandings around my feminism and how it has led me to be engaged in this particular struggle. During my trip and upon my return, I have also been reading a book by another white feminist, Amber Tamblyn, that has helped me to really suss out the ways in which my feminism has not been fully intersectional in the past and figure out how to make it so going forward.

First and foremost – amplify the voices of women of colour that exist around me. Do not paraphrase those voices, but move aside so that those voices can be heard. Do this online and in person. Work for the cause of uniting all women together, but help the white feminists understand that the voices of women of colour have for far too long been silenced, or whitesplained, by well-meaning (and often not well-meaning) white folks. In our need to push forward with the cause of equality for women, we have lost sight of how we have limited the voices of those that are doubly oppressed by both sex and race. This has got to end and the only way to end it is to step aside and let the voices of those women of colour speak their own truth.

Having said that – I will now point you toward women of colour that need to be heard. We all have to put in the work to be inclusive and intersectional. We need to be silent allies, amplifying the voices of those that matter.

People to Follow
Brittney Cooper
Morgan Jerkins
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas
Kimberly Nicole Foster
Tiffany Cross
Maya Wiley
Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom
Roxane Gay
Aja Barber

Sites
Writing on Glass – The Essential Audre Lorde
bell hooks institute
Autostraddle
Bitch Media
BGD
Adios Barbie
Anniways

Books
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
Eloquent Rage by Brittney Cooper
Sister Citizen by Melissa Harris-Perry
Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center by bell hooks
Women, Race, & Class by Angela Y. Davis

Pieces
The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House
15 Indigenous Feminists to Know, Read, and Listen To
“Homecoming” Homework: 7 Books to Read After Watching Beyonce’s Epic Documentary
15 Latina Activists Who Inspire Me

This is by no means a full list, but it is good to get you started. Now go read, follow, and get acquainted!

Peace and happy learning,

Chantale aka hippiegrrl

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Book Lists

Today, I received a text from my local library to let me know that the book I currently have checked out is about to be overdue (in 2 days). This prompted me to log in to the library website and renew the title. While at the site, I decided to take a look around to see what features are offered, other than renewing titles and looking up books in the catalog. One of the features is to build a book list, which immediately grabbed my attention because I love love LOVE reading lists. In fact, I love making lists in general, so I decided to give it a go.

I chose my topic (Sociological Reads), created the list, and then started my search to add titles. My first choice, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex came up and I added it to the list. Next, I searched for Durkheim. This search should have brought back all the titles by Emile Durkheim but it returned ZERO results. Okay – maybe I spelled the name wrong. I walked over to my bookshelf and looked at my title of Suicide and found that I was, indeed, spelling his name correctly. Next, I decided to do an Advanced search to see if, perhaps, there was something not working on the standard search. Again, I chose “Author” as my search term and typed in Durkheim. Still, nothing. What the hell? How does a library system not have ONE title by Emile Durkheim?!?!

Deep breaths.

I took a moment to relax and thought “okay – maybe that was too much to expect”. So, instead, I typed in Freud. Three titles appeared in the list. The Interpretation of Dreams, Civilizations and their discontents, and Dreams. Okay – I guess that is a bit better, but where the hell is Dora?! Ugh.

Next, I decided to search for Marx – which I did pause at for a moment remembering that it is 2018 and our library search records are probably being monitored by Big Brother, but I decided not to worry about that crap and search on! This time, I decided to type in the name and then click on the full name in the sidebar – Marx, Karl. In order to get to his name, I had to open up another row since the “most searched names” were Groucho, Harpo, and Chico. Again, ugh. After clicking on Marx, Karl – three results. I guess three really is the magic number here. The letters of Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundation of the critique of political economy, and Manifesto of the Communist Party came up. Um – okay – that isn’t horrible, but where the hell is Capital?

This was not working. How could I create a Sociological Reads list without the foundational works in the field?! What kind of library system doesn’t have a copy of Capital? My next search was for The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism by Max Weber. This title, I searched for by name and again, ZERO results. Wow. This is super depressing. Just to see, I typed in Weber, Max and chose “Author”, and NOTHING.

Next I searched for Frederick Douglass (by Author name) and a list of 24 results came up. Okay – this is promising! However, when I scanned the list, the titles were different editions of his Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass and My Bondage, My Freedom was nowhere to be found. I suppose that is asking a lot and I should be content with the 24 copies of the former title.  As a counter-point – Booker T. Washington (in an Author search) yielded 10 copies of Up from slavery, which I will count as a win. 

Sticking with the Rochester human rights category, I searched for Susan B. Anthony (by Author name) and received only one title back – a reader called The Elizabeth Cady Stanton-Susan B. Anthony reader: correspondence, writings, speeches. I suppose that women’s suffrage isn’t a big topic of research down here either. Once more for those in the back: UGH.

A search for W.E.B. Du Bois returned zero results when I clicked the link for the Author name on the sidebar, but when I typed in Du Bois, W.E.B. it yielded 16 results, including The Souls of Black Folk and The Philadelphia Negro. Okay – so maybe we are getting somewhere now. Maybe typing in the full name, last name first, in the search bar will yield more results for the above searches. I went back and tried that and came up the same. I’m happy that at least they have Du Bois work on the shelf, even if they only have 16 copies across 9 of the branches in the system.

This last thought, in my searches, led me to another level of understanding. Which branches carry these titles? Does the branch that I frequent, the newest of all the branches that is located in the suburbs, have the titles I found above. And the answer is a resounding NO. None of the titles above are at the branch that I frequent. All of the titles are, however, at the main branch downtown, so I suppose, just like I did in Buffalo, I will be going downtown for my checkouts going forward. 

And yeah, I guess that list isn’t going to happen. I guess the library system down here will be for quiet contemplation and new non-fiction. I’m not really into fiction, as a daily reading genre (unless it is dystopian YA) so my reading options are greatly diminished. Luckily, I still have access to the digital collections at NYPL and BECPL. Otherwise, I’m not sure what I would do. And I’m sure that, eventually, those will be revoked as well, but in the meantime, I will continue to use Overdrive in my quest for sociological titles.

One bright spot I found was when I searched for Angela Y. Davis. Although they don’t have Women, Race, and Class, they do have a new work by her. So at least they are bringing in new works by established writers in the field. We will just have a loss of those works that were generated prior to 2000? I would love to see their collection development plan, but, alas, I have not been called for an interview. 

When I first moved to Huntsville, I was so excited to obtain my library card because, for me, that is an immediate need. Now that I see the full collection, online, I am disheartened by the lack of good sociological titles to be had by the general public. I am hopeful that, eventually, the collections at the various branches will improve, but for now I will rely on my own collection and the ability to circulate books from New York.

Peace and happy reading,

Chantale (aka hippiegrrl)

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Three Months

We are three months into the Alabama experience and there are a few things that I have learned since I have been living in Huntsville.

Beer is a serious thing down here

I always thought that Buffalo was a big drinking town, and it certainly is as the last call is still at 4 am, but if you are looking for really excellent craft beers, Northern Alabama is a great place to be. Here in Huntsville, an old school was converted into a complex for several breweries to hone their crafts. Campus no. 805 houses multiple breweries, bars, restaurants, and other businesses on its 13-acre plot of land. Beer aficionados can purchase their beer in the local grocery store and, if they are in the mood for something other than beer, they can also buy wine in the same grocery store. This, again, is a difference from NYS where wine can only be purchased in the liquor store.

Speed limits are merely suggestions and tailgating is an art

A misconception that many Northerners have about the South is that the people are slow moving. Now, I have noticed some people walking slowly and they certainly take their time with the customer service, but once they get behind the wheel of a car holy crap are they ever in a hurry! It’s like they have to rush to get everywhere so that they can then take their time talking. I have never been tailgated as much as I have in the past 3 months of my life. At first, I thought it could be due to my bumper stickers. Perhaps they were mad at my liberal views and so they decided to make me feel uncomfortable, but I quickly realized that had nothing to do with it. They just like to drive fast. If the speed limit is 45 you can be sure that everyone around you will be driving a minimum of 60, if not faster. And nobody uses signals down here either, so you just have to guess if the person behind or in front of you is suddenly going to change lanes. Driving in Alabama is, to say the least, an experience.

Huntsville is a lot like Buffalo

My friends and family in Western New York will certainly think I am lying when I say this, but Buffalo and Huntsville are very similar. The people here LOVE football just as much as WNYers love watching the Bills. Saturdays are game days and you can see people wearing either Roll Tide or Tigers gear, EVERYWHERE. The funny thing about them rooting for the University of Alabama or Auburn is that both of these schools are a day trip away from Huntsville. UofA has a campus in Huntsville, but the campus where they play the games (the main campus) is in Tuscaloosa – 2 hours and 31 minutes away. Auburn is even farther at 3 hours and 44 minutes away, but anywhere you can buy clothes you can buy gear for both of these schools. Alabama A&M, which has a football team and is in Huntsville, only has one off-campus location where their gear is sold and people are not super into rooting for them.

Another way that Huntsville and Buffalo are similar is population-wise. Buffalo has a population of 258,612 (as of 2017), while Huntsville is at 194,585 and growing. Huntsville is laid out similar to Buffalo in that there is a downtown core with housing, the cultural district, the historic district, and an entertainment district and is surrounded by suburbs and rural areas further out. Sound familiar? Huntsville is also becoming more gentrified by the hipsters, which also falls in line with the Buffalo scene.

Huntsville has central industries that revolve around NASA, software, and missile defense. This means that there are many people who work in Huntsville that are not originally from the area. These people generally do not live in the city. In Buffalo, there is a similar theme, but the industries are different in that they revolve more around banking, start-ups, and the medical campus. A cool outcome of living in a city where NASA has a large presence is that our local television company provides the NASA channel for 24-hour viewing. The late-night broadcasting is especially soothing as they show images of earth from the space station with calming background music, providing a great way to relax and unwind before bed.

Severe weather exists in Huntsville, just as it does in Buffalo, but in the form of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. We are actually under a severe weather threat for this evening and I am super excited and scared for it. I know exactly what to do when a blizzard is coming, but preparing for a tornado is very different. Especially when it is forecasted to hit the area between 1 and 3 am. If we have to take shelter, we will be up all night. At least with a snowstorm, you can generally sleep through it and the morning is super annoying if there was not enough accumulation to warrant closed roads, forcing workers to clean off cars and drive to work in a few feet of snow. But at least snow melts. More updates on the severe weather in the Tennessee Valley to come…

Northern Alabama is not at all how I thought it would be

The biggest thing I have learned in the past 3 months is that Northern Alabama is not the stereotypical South that we think about being from the North. When I told people that I was moving to Alabama they had many reactions, but mostly they were fearful for my safety. They were nervous because I am a highly liberal, feminist, opinionated, woman and they assumed that was not going to be okay for the majority of my new neighbours. So far, that has not been my experience. I have been pleasantly surprised by the fact that the people of Huntsville are very much not the old Southerners that we expected them to be. They are a lot like us. They might not be as liberal and they are certainly a lot more into church (there is a church on every corner, for real, and some blocks have a church next to a church next to a church – to say the people are into church is actually an understatement) than Northerners, but they are also into science and art and having a good time. Bars and restaurants and cafes close early, but that is not a big deal to me anymore because I am WAY past the age of staying out until 4 am.

There are occasions when I am driving down University Drive (the main thoroughfare between where I live and downtown) and for a moment I forget that I am in Alabama. Last week I was driving through the country, trying to get the lay of the land near my apartment, and I suddenly came upon a field of cotton. That threw me for a loop. I was expecting to see corn and it was cotton. That was a reminder of where I am and of the history of this place. It made me want to start doing research into the history of Huntsville and Alabama as a whole. I have also learned that there are many mounds in Alabama that were built by my ancestors in the Muscogee (Creek) tribe and I am excited to look further into that. I am very happy that I made an effort to get my library card the first week I was here. My life would not be complete if I could not use the library for research.

Of course, there is a history of the Civil War down here that is quite opposite of what we discussed in Northern schools and this is something that I would also like to explore. There are old homes that were built before the war that are still standing in the old town area of Huntsville and I would like to know more about their history. I am highly interested in race, gender, class, and socioeconomic structures and living in the South will provide me with many ways in which I can further my research in these areas. Huntsville is home to 1 of the 21 HBCUs that is also a land-grant university in Alabama A&M. Alabama is the only State that has 2 HBCU/land-grant universities, Tuskeegee being the other. This is a great opportunity to do research on the history of these types of schools in America and how they contributed to the empowerment of people of color and helped those who had few skills expand their knowledge in order to improve their futures.

Although I had relatives from Alabama, I never truly knew what it was like to live down here. I still don’t. I am still looking for a job and this means that I spend my days working from home for the same company that I worked for in Buffalo and I only interact with locals through customer service. Once I start working with the people here I am certain that my opinions will change and my understanding of the South will broaden. For now, I feel like I have had some good experiences and I hope to have more. Only time will tell if Alabama is truly the place for us and I will be updating you on all the interesting things that happen along the way.

Thanks for reading and DON’T FORGET TO VOTE TOMORROW!!

Peace,

Chantale

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How To Make Things Better

What Happened?

We could have had it all. We could have had a leader that would understand our place in the world and act accordingly. A President that would have led us to a better place as a society. A President that understands America’s place in the world and would have governed accordingly. We could have had a President that cares about social justice and human rights for ALL. Instead – we got the opposite of all that. We got a dud. The Electoral College math was in favour of the worst human possible for the job and he slimed his way into the highest office in the land. Now, we are slowly moving toward demise as a ‘great nation’. Our status in the world has been diminished by someone that has no clue how to be a successful businessman, let alone President of the United States. A President that would rather tweet about the media and how he feels they attack him. A President that just says whatever comes to mind, no matter how detrimental it might be for the citizens of this country. A President that only cares about being liked, which, in turn, has led us down a path of horrible outcomes. A President that has tarnished the highest court in the land by adding a second accused sex offender to it’s ranks.

Hillary

What Do We Do Now?

Vote! Vote like your life depends on it (because it does). Vote like the lives of your family members and friends depend on it (because they do). Vote for peace and justice. Vote to remove the disgusting old, white, dudes that are clogging up the system with their misogynistic views of the world. Vote to turn the House blue. We need it. The only way to right the ship that is America is to vote out these horrible people who have been killing our country with their rhetoric. Vote to remove those that do not believe in freedom for all. And then, after you have done your civic duty and voted, take to the streets and raise your voices! Find a protest and MARCH! Civil disobedience shows the world that we are on the side of right and that we do not agree with the people who are currently in power.

Find Your Polling Place

If you have not already, please check here to see if and where you are registered to vote. The deadlines are mostly passed, but hopefully, you are registered in your area. Take a look at the requirements and be prepared at the polls. There may be voter suppression at your polling place, so take special care to be prepared (both mentally and with proof of residency).

See You On The Other Side

If we all band together and raise our voices – both in the voting booth and on the streets – we can bring our country back to where it needs to be. We can move forward in a positive direction. We can find peace and justice for all. This experiment in democracy is not at the end, but the beginning. We can make this a better country and, by extension, a better world.

Additional Resources

Rock The Vote
The 2018 Midterm Elections
24 Acts of Self Care Perfect for Concerned Americans

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Leaving Senseless Fear Behind

Each one of us, as an individual, is a product of the environment that we were raised in. We carry with us the information that we received as children and we take that data and use it to navigate our lives. Some of us receive messages of hope and love, while others receive messages of fear and danger. For some of us, the messages can get jumbled up and we have to decrypt them in order to move forward. I received many competing messages as a child and this required my critical thinking skills to be honed at an early age. I needed to take in everything and move forward with the information that seemed the most rational.

I was lucky to have open-minded parents who did not judge people based on their race, religion, gender, etc. but with my extended family, I was not so lucky. My Aunts and Uncles and Grandparents on both sides of my family each had their own understandings of other humans and they were extremely biased toward white people. Some of them were outright racist, while others were passively racist, but not one among them was open to the possibility that people of color could be good humans. After all, you can spend your whole life never saying a bad word about another person, but if you let others degrade a group of people in front of you without speaking up, you are just as complicit as the outwardly racist individuals among us.

I learned early in life that I was to fear certain people – specifically black men. I would say that I do not know where this fear came from since we lived in a segregated city, but now that I am older I know exactly what it was about. It was drawn from the myths that surround black men in America. Myths fueled by the fact that my Nana grew up in Andalusia, Alabama, where Jim Crow was the norm. Myths fueled by my grandfathers and uncles feeling slighted by Affirmative Action and supposedly losing their jobs to the [word I refuse to use here]. Myths instilled in me so that I would not bring home any black friends to watch television or swim in the pool at my grandparent’s house. Myths that would make me afraid to walk alone at night on campus for fear of being jumped by a random person of color. Myths that would frame my views on white men and make me let go of any damage they may have done because they were seen as the protectors. Myths that continue to fuel the racist actions of Americans that see a danger in faces of color when, at the end of it all, white people are really the danger.

White people have been oppressing all other races of humans since the beginning of time. Myths of people of color being dangerous were touted in order to protect the power that white people have always held. If black and brown people are deemed dangerous, then white people can continue to hold on to the structures that keep these people enslaved. If the myths surrounding people of color continue to be upheld by racist whites in America, then men of color (and women of color and children of color) will be tagged as dangerous and, therefore, considered dispensable. If this is a thought that has never crossed your mind, you are not paying attention.

Here are some of the names of victims of this power struggle that you might want to look further into if you have no reference for them: Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Jordan Edwards, Alton Sterling, Walter Scott, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland. And these are just the people that were reported on the national news. For an even wider view, take a look at this page on the Mapping Police Violence page that lists all the unarmed people of color killed in 2015. There were over 100 people. If this is not an epidemic, I do not know what is. White privilege has caused the horrible disease of racism to fester in this country for far too long.

When I was a child, I had a few friends at school that were people of color. Although I lived in an area of town that was almost fully inhabited by white folks, I went to an integrated school. It may seem odd, since I lived in Niagara Falls, NY, but the city had to bus kids from one end of town to the other in order to integrate the schools. This meant that although we went to school together, we rarely interacted outside of that space. The entire time I was growing up I never attended a birthday party for one of my friends of color and they never attended mine. There was a black family that lived on my grandparents street and I would go over to their house to play with the girl that was my age, but when I invited her over to swim in my grandparent’s pool, my grandparents told me they didn’t want her to swim at their house. It was sad and demeaning for my friend and it made me see clearly that my grandparents were not the wonderful humans I had always thought them to be.

Up until that point in my life, I had seen them as perfect rather than human beings who are fallible. I was shielded by my mother from their racist attitudes and as a child I was not observant. Until that day, I never noticed their racism, but after that, I saw it everywhere. After that day I started questioning them at every turn. When my uncles would make racist comments I would yell at them. When my grandparents would complain about people on television that were not white, I would question them. I became the annoying little kid that was always making a fuss over what they perceived as nothing.

As I grew into a teenager, my questioning went from being precocious to annoying. They hated that I was always telling them how to ‘behave’. They continued to instill fear of black bodies in me, but I began rejecting that fear. In high school, I started hanging out with a more diverse crowd of friends. I stopped bringing my friends over to my grandparent’s house, no matter their race because I no longer wanted to incorporate my friends into my family. I started to compartmentalize my friend groups and stopped overlapping in order to appease everyone.

By the time I went to college, I had successfully separated my family from my friends. I had one friend, in college, that I brought home for events, but other than that I kept my friends at arm’s length from my relatives. This, I believed, was the only way to have a diverse set of friendships without the torture of having them be around my family members. Of course, this was also a way for me to be comfortable in the situation and, I admit, it was a cop-out. I was trying so hard to make everyone happy that I was ignoring the fact that my family was not improving their understandings around people of color. They were remaining in that space of fear and myth that they had always been in while I was evolving away from them. I pretended that everything was fine when I was around them, but inside I was tearing myself apart to make everyone happy.

Now, as an adult, many of my racist relatives have passed away or I have drifted from them. My younger cousins have turned out to be more open-minded than the older members of my family, so I continue to interact with them. I have one uncle, in particular, who was one of my closest relatives growing up that I have almost completely cut ties with. I text him on his birthday and on major holidays, but that is where our interactions end. I do not see him in person anymore because I cannot handle his views on life in general, and more specifically his views on people that are not white.

That is my personal origin story of fear. How I have come to understand the ways in which I was inundated with misinformation at a young age and how I slowly came away from that bad intel. But I am only one white girl. What about the rest of us? What are we doing? Why are there black men being killed in the streets, for no reason, while white men who inflict terror are safely captured? Why are black bodies feared? Why are criminals who are people of color branded as terrorists, while white criminals are framed as disturbed? There are many answers to the questions above, but there is one thing that can connect it all. The struggle for power. Gaining and holding on to power. Grabbing the power that many white people feel is their God-given right and never letting go. If this means that everyone else must suffer, well, they just do not care about that. Power is all engrossing and can flood the world with misinformation that allows horrible events to take place on a grand scale. Power is what has led to us having the worst possible person as POTUS and power is what will continue to keep unqualified, sexist, bigots running the world.

Power is what caused white men to purchase black people and bring them across the ocean to work the fields. Power is what caused white men to rape black women and then turn their own offspring into slaves. Power is what caused white men to lynch black men for acts that were almost never criminal offenses. Power has been the catalyst for every bad thing that has happened in this world and power continues to drive all the decisions that are made in this country by white men.

The struggle for power has created myths around the powerless. Myths like the ones I mentioned above that made me believe in theories about other people that were beyond incorrect. Power has caused white people, and straight white men, in particular, to strive to be number one at all costs. And that cost has created a caste system in America that is predicated on the rich maintaining the power and continuing to oppress everyone else.

So how do we fix this system of abuse, terror, misinformation, and fear? I do not have an immediate answer to this question, but what I do know is that we must bond together as humans. We must use collective action to drive the forces of power that oppress those with less power into the darkest recesses of human history. We need to protest and vote. We need to listen to each other’s stories and take action directed by the oppressed. As white people (and white women, in particular) we need to be mindful of each person’s story and not just work in our own self-interest. We need to learn from others how to move forward. We need to be silent and allow a space for women of color to lead, but we also must speak up when it is clear that we can move the narrative of life in America to a better place.

We need to STOP being complicit in the oppression that is inflicted by the straight, white, men in our life. We gain nothing from being on their side. Because, in the end, those that seek to retain power will see us as a hindrance to their agenda, even if we are their sisters, mothers, aunts, cousins, daughters, wives, or friends. We must speak up when necessary, listen and defend when needed, and use our vote to move policy to a more progressive place. Conservatism and capitalism are the siblings of oppression and the only way to make the Constitution of America a true reality is to dismantle the patriarchy that has oppressed us for eons and move toward an equal and open society. With liberty and justice for ALL.

 

Peace and resistance,

Chantale aka hippiegrrl

 

Appropriate links:

Mapping Police Violence

Black Lives Matter

Refuse Fascism

ACLU

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Welcome to the South

The move south is complete. Well – we are physically in Huntsville and tomorrow the movers will be dropping off our things, so I guess it is really only almost complete. Still – we have an apartment and most of the addresses have been changed. Speaking of that, holy shit there are a lot of things that need to be changed, address-wise when one moves. Unfortunately, because we moved from New York to Alabama, we also have to visit the DMV and get new plates. NYS doesn’t play with out of state drivers staying insured in NYS, so within 30 days of moving those plates have to show up, via certified mail, at the headquarters of the NYS DMV in Albany. And of course, the letters that release the title of each car are packed with my forms in my files, with the movers. Cutting it close is sort of my middle name though, so I guess this is par for the course.

All of this is to say that we are getting settled. Today is day 2 of week 2 here in Huntsville and I have had some interesting interactions so far. As you all know, I am a feminist. This means that I have many independent thoughts and I like to take care of myself. I pump the gas in my car and I lug heavy items up the stairs to my apartment. If I cannot do something, I ask for help, but for the things that I can do, I don’t like to have help. Coming from Buffalo, NY means that I was able to move pretty freely through the world without people asking to help me with things. I am a (relatively) young woman, so older people never saw me as needy. And men, in the North, are able to be men without having to help ‘ladies’ with things. Men do offer to help, at times, in the North, but nothing like down here. Holy shit, seriously.

So – yeah – I know there are people reading this thinking “okay Chantale, why can’t you just let people help you without complaining?” Um – do you even know me? This is not something that I have EVER been able to do. This includes people in my own family. I do not ask for help unless it is a dire emergency. That’s just how I do things. It actually has very little to do with my feminism and more to do with my sense of independence. I don’t need help. Thanks.

Since I have been in Huntsville, I have learned a couple of interesting things. I used to think that Southern hospitality was something that was nice. My Nana was from Andalusia, Alabama, but when she moved to Niagara Falls in her late 20s, she quickly dispensed with as many things about the South as she could. She modified her speech so that she wouldn’t sound Southern. She learned how to move through the world without expecting everyone to take care of her. She learned slang of the North and stopped taking offense when people made jokes that were dry and seemed rude. I learned from her, that the South was a specific way, but the way that she saw it was not exactly the way I see it now. Southern hospitality comes with a bit of an icy exteriour. People are cordial, but not genuinely nice.

My experiences thus far have only been with customer service facing people, so I don’t have a huge repertoire to draw on, but here are a few things that have happened in the past week that lead me to believe “southern hospitality” is a ruse.

On my first day out of the apartment, I went to Panera for lunch. The woman who waited on me was nice enough, but because she couldn’t understand me when I asked for a “blueberry muffin” and had to ask me 3 times to repeat myself, she got frazzled rather quickly and the rest of the interaction was sour. Later that day, I went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to look for a few things and when I asked the Customer Service desk woman for help, she gave me the worst look I have ever received from a customer service person. I am sure that both of these interactions were related to the fact that I have a very distinctively Western New York accent and they both probably saw me as a tourist, but still, what the hell happened to customer service?

On an outing to Publix, for groceries, with Chaz, as we were leaving the store one of the men that works there asked to roll my cart out to the car. I politely said no thank you and started rolling the cart myself. He asked me again and I again declined. On the third ask, I looked at Chaz and looked back at him and said: “no, really, thank you but I’m good”. He then told me to “have a blessed evening”. Um – okay. I later found out that it is Publix policy to offer to roll carts out to cars for customers. It isn’t gendered as I did see a woman presenting employee rolling a cart for a male presenting customer. However, at the time that it happened, it felt very much like a situation of “you are in need because you have a vagina”. Maybe that is over the top, but I am dealing with these interactions on a daily basis as I try to acclimate to my new surroundings.

The kicker, so far (I’m sure there will be others that I will let you all know about shortly) was when Chaz and I decided to go to Target to get a few things. While standing at an end cap looking at lights, we were trying to figure out how a light worked, and a man (just a customer, not a worker) came by and looked at Chaz and said: “whatever she wants, she gets”. Um – seriously – what the fuck? I’m not even going to WTF that one. I am tired and it hasn’t even been 2 weeks yet. What will next week hold?

Final thoughts: I have been at the same coffeehouse, in downtown Huntsville, 4 times since I came here. It is the only place I have found, so far, where I feel comfortable. I have googled “fun things to do in Huntsville” and “Buffalo people in Huntsville” and “Sabres fans in Huntsville” and “Bills fans in Huntsville” (that one is crazy because you know how much I do not like football) and none of these searches come back with any real information. Fun things to do in Huntsville pretty much revolve around Space Camp and local art. These are not things I particularly enjoy. I’m sure I will find something. At least I hope I will. Otherwise, these people at Honest Coffee Roasters are going to be seeing me several times per week. Huntsville feels like the place that you grow up and then flee from, not somewhere that you run to, but as I said earlier, it has only been 1.5 weeks, so we shall see what is to come. At least I found somewhere to get a good pour over with reliable wifi. So – you will be hearing from me more often, which, if nothing else, is a great thing for you, my dear readers.

Peace,

Chantale

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Pride 2018

It’s June again in America and you know what that means! Pride month! June is the month where we celebrate the strides and remember the struggles (and the folks who have sacrificed their lives) to gain equality for the LGBTQ+ community. The first weekend of the month was Pride in Buffalo and we didn’t get to attend any of the events this year, so when we visit Toronto next month we will be making a special effort to attend at least one event during Pride Toronto.

In the meantime, I wanted to share a couple cool pride inspired things that I have come across online while searching today. Enjoy!

Google sheets celebrates pride:
If you are in the mood for a rainbow flag on your spreadsheet, simply type p r i d e in the first 5 fields of your spreadsheet and wham! bam! rainbow heaven!

Google searches:
When searching for Pride in Toronto, the most awesome header appeared in the search results. Love.

The Free Library of Philadelphia celebrates Pride:
If you are looking for some good LGBTQ+ reads, the free library has you covered!

The Library of Congress 2018 Pride Events page

Pride hashtag on Twitter

I hope you have a wonderful Pride! And if you see any cool online things in your internet travels this month, please share in the comments!

Peace, Chantale (aka hippiegrrl)

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Blogging Community

Hello dear readers –

I have recently joined Bloglovin and wanted to give you the opportunity to follow me over there. My content will not change, but being affiliated with a larger community of bloggers is always good for the circulation stats. As you may know, Hippiegrrl Explains It All got its start on Backwash.com and the community we cultivated on that site was excellent. We were on the forefront of suggestion based blogging (our motto, “The Internet Organized by Personality”, says it all) and now that model is used everywhere. I am hopeful that I will find another community online like Backwash, someday, but until then please Follow my blog with Bloglovin.

As always – thank you for your readership and I’ll see you in the next entry.

Peace, Chantale

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Be Better

We are all human beings. We live our lives the way we see fit and we move through life with different goals in mind. Some of us judge others and some of us do not. Recently, I have had several interactions with a certain dude on Facebook that is not exactly cordial, to put it very mildly. The topic of discussion is always Christianity and it always ends with me questioning how he can have hatred toward specific groups of people (and see that hatred as an integral part of his religious belief system) and he tells me I am not a true believer.

This does not bother me as much as it might bother others because he is right about one thing: I do not believe in the same God that he does. I am not a true believer in the ways of Christianity that the Evangelical movement would have people believe are right and true. I believe in the beatitudes. I believe in a loving Jesus, that was open to all people and did not judge them even when he saw their sins. I am not an every Sunday Christian, but I am also not an atheist. None of this really matters because it is not his or anyone else’s business what I believe, but he often takes it upon himself to tell me that I am different because I do not believe what he does.

My main issue, during these conversations/debates, is that he does not believe in Transgender people. He does not believe they exist. Here is the thing though – it does not matter if he does not believe in them because Transgender people DO actually exist. His belief system does not make things that actually exist in the world disappear. It simply makes him an asshole for treating people with disrespect because he does not ‘believe’ in them. Just because he thinks that being a homosexual is wrong, does not mean that people in the LGBTQ community will wake up one morning and start being straight, cis, and binary. Just because he does not believe that a woman should be POTUS because she should only be a helpmeet for her husband (because, you know, all women should be married to men and making babies – not working and certainly not being bosses) does NOT mean that a woman will not be President someday. Times change and we should change with them. New information comes to light that changes the way people think and feel and we should adjust for that. Science finds variations in the reality of humanity and we all learn new things about the world. Some of us trust new information and some reject it.

If you are one of those people that truly believe that people you consider different should stop being who they are, on a fundamental level, then perhaps you should also stop enjoying the fruits of their labour. Here is a list of all the things that you cannot enjoy if you are going to denounce other humans because they are different from you in ways that you deem ‘wrong’ as an Evangelical:

  • Musical theatre – The theatre is a place for creativity and openness. Musicals are written by and for people that have open minds. Even if the musical has a religious theme (Jesus Christ Superstar, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Godspell, Children of Eden, etc.) that does not mean that all the performers, directors, writers, and tech folks are straight and/or cis. The musical theatre community is known for being an open place for ALL people to practice their talents and feel safe. So – musicals are, for lack of a better word, OUT!
  • Pop music – If it is meant to be played on the radio and for the consumption of the general public, then there is most likely at least one LGBTQ member of society involved in the creation of said music. And hey, you never know, so better safe than sorry, right? I guess you have to remove that radio from your car and give up that Spotify account now, eh?
  • Literature – There are books in the canon written by and for LGBTQ people. There are books that have stories that revolve around LGBTQ lives and allow for people in the LGBTQ community to see themselves in these stories. This is a positive step for the literary world as literature should continue to tell the stories of people from all walks of life. I suppose you should stop reading anything but the bible, then – but wait! Even the bible has LGBTQ themes within it. I guess you have to put that book up on the shelf as well. Unfortunately, that will mean that your learning will be stunted, but, then again, it seems like learning is not really something you find important anyway, so start discarding those books! And I suppose you need to stop going places where books exist so that means that libraries, bookstores, and Amazon are now all off limits.
  • Television – This one is probably going to be hugely difficult, but did you know that many writers, producers, actors, and showrunners are actually from the LGBTQ community? There are new shows coming out every season that tell the stories of this community – again a positive step, just like in literature – but for you not so much. So you better shut off that television – maybe sell the television to some sinner to get it out of your life altogether.
  • Movies – see Theatre and Television above. Are you getting the picture?
  • Food – This is a funny one, but did you know that a lot of LGBTQ people actually work in the restaurant industry? When you go out to eat there could be an LGBTQ person making your dinner – or serving your dinner – or making money off the restaurant chain you are eating at – or sitting at the table next to you. Perhaps you should stop leaving the house altogether? You could always order one of those online food service things, but then there could be LGBTQ people putting the boxes together or delivering your mail.
  • All things Disney – This will be especially hard to hear for some Evangelicals out there that are Disney fanatics, but did you know that Disney is a gay-friendly organization? In fact, there are many Disney characters that are actually gay. Disney is also an inclusive company. Oh, the horror. How will you enjoy your heteronormative views around the Disney princesses if you know that a few of those princesses might actually be lesbians or feminists or powerful on their own? Modern day Disney princesses don’t even need the prince to save them because they are no longer damsels in distress. It is pretty awesome, but I guess if you are an Evangelical this disqualifies Disney as well. Better unpack your bags and stay home – no Disney vacation this year!

I think you get the point. LGBTQ people exist in the world. Lesbians exist. Gay men exist. Bi-sexuals exist. Transgender people exist. Queer people exist. Genderfluid people exist. Intersex people exist. Polyamorous people exist. Pansexual people exist. These people are everywhere and they are all a part of the wonderful fabric that makes up humanity. We are never going to go back to a time where people have to hide because of who they are as humans. Those of us who are allies to people in the LGBTQ community will forever stand beside them and fight for their right to be who they are and not have to live in fear. Religious fanatics who think LGBTQ people do not deserve to exist need to change their minds or become hermits. There is really no other option. Sorry, dude, but I’m not going to stop advocating for my friends and if you don’t like it, I guess we won’t be talking much anymore either.

Peace,

Chantale aka hippiegrrl

footnote: Since this post was started (14 December 2017) I hid the aforementioned dude’s feed on Facebook. I also hid his wife’s feed. This means that I will be somewhat out of touch with the goings on in their lives, but it is just easier this way. Eventually, I will unfriend them, but I’ve been lackadaisical when it comes to cleaning up my feeds. I am far overdue for a purge though, so, maybe April or May? Oh, but don’t worry, dear readers, I am still keeping receipts of these interactions which I will be archiving over on my latest tumblr.

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The Teens Are Alright

Yesterday was a wonderful day for the future of the United States of America. Teenagers across the country walked out of their classrooms to protest the gun violence that has become all too common in American schools. They also walked out to honor the 17 people that were killed last month at Stoneham Douglass High School in Parkland, Florida. The walkouts showed that collective action is alive and well with Generation Z and it made me seriously optimistic, for the first time in a while, about the future. Before I go on, though, I would like to say that the Black Lives Matter movement has had teens involved from the beginning. Yesterday showed the collective will of teens across a diverse spectrum of humans across this country, which was heartening, but we have to give it up for the teens in the BLM movement that have been showing up for many years now to protest violence against communities of color by the police. If you are looking for inclusiveness and action, look no further than this movement (https://blacklivesmatter.com/about.)

When I was a teenager, I was not civically engaged. In fact, I did not get politically motivated until I was well into college and had experiences that changed me. The first rally I attended was in undergrad and the reason I decided to go was that I thought Ani Difranco was going to perform. Yes, I realize that makes me sound selfish, but that’s how I was as a teenager. I guess it was good that Ani was listed as a performer, though, because that first rally really changed my perspective about what can be done when people get together to make change happen through collective action and civic engagement. Although Ani didn’t play, and in fact, she didn’t even attend, that ‘Take Back the Night’ rally opened my eyes to the struggles that women on my college campus were facing. It was one of the first ‘me too’ moments that I encountered and I was already 19 years old. I guess that I should feel lucky to say that, but it also makes me kind of sad.

In my senior year, when I was 16, there was a tragedy that occurred at my high school. A teenager who had recently transferred from Niagara Falls High School to Lasalle Senior (LSHS) was crossing the street to meet her mother after school. The front of LSHS faced a very busy road (Military) and there were no crosswalks. As she was walking across the street, one of the students came barreling out of the student parking lot and hit her. She was killed on contact and there were several student witnesses. It was a horrific accident that sparked a student movement. A week later there was a walk out and the students walked from Military Road to Main Street (5.5 miles) to assemble for action in front of City Hall. The students demanded a stoplight and crosswalk in front of the school and shortly thereafter a light was installed. This was protest in action and I was not involved. I was sad about the death of a classmate, but I wasn’t engaged enough in politics to actually participate in this action.

Looking back on it now I can’t quite fathom why I decided not to walk out. After all, I was raised by a family of union workers. My Papa and my mother both worked for the New York Power Authority My Nana had worked in the steel factory during WWII. My dad worked at Carborundum and then later for the Carpenter’s union, where his father had also worked. My uncle worked at Nabisco. Having so many union members in my family, you would think that I would have been on top of any peaceful protest and collective action that came my way, but I just wasn’t. My teenage apathy overrode my desire to assemble and I regret that each time I think about it.

Having lived through that time and saying quite certainly that most of my peers in the 90’s were also apathetic, I’m happy to see that teenagers today are not. They are engaged and enlightened. They understand how to keep the light shining on a topic of concern and to feed the flames of social media to continue to overcome the daily news cycle churn effect. They are adept at working with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to get their message out and they have resilience. They will continue to fight for themselves and future generations because they know it is important. Guns are a scourge on our nation and with an activated young citizenship, we might just be able to move away from the violence that has come from complacency. A shift in the conversation around guns has started, again, and if these teens can keep the heat on, they might just make a real and lasting change. We, as adults, need to let them do their thing and be there to support them. We need to stand by them and move forward together as a nation to a better day.

Yesterday was a wonderful day for the United States of America and, with enough protest and pressure, all our tomorrows can be great as well. We just have to continue the civil disobedience and make a better nation for ALL.

Peace and happy marching!

Chantale

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Patriarchy, MRAs, and Dismantling the Current System of Oppression

Over the years, whenever straight, white, men feel threatened, they band together in groups to discuss the situation and ‘right’ the ship. See – when dudes feel like they are losing grip on the control that they have ALWAYS had over women, they freak the fuck out. This is evidenced by the backlash against moves toward gender equity in the tech workplace. Women, in Silicon Valley specifically as well as other areas of the country with a heavy concentration of tech jobs, started speaking out last year about the harassment inflicted upon them within the male-dominated field. At my own place of business, I have witnessed dudes that have gotten away with low levels of harassment with a slap on the wrist and a ‘just try to be better’ or ‘avoid that girl from now on’. This amounts to a wink and a nod between dudes and we, as women, continue to suffer under this horrible system of misogyny.

In 2010 there was a similar backlash within women’s studies departments on college campuses. The MRAs (Men’s Rights Activists) got all twisted up about women’s studies being biased toward women. They felt the need to have male studies as well (this was in contradiction to the formal men’s studies wing of sociology that had already been incorporated into what is now called gender studies). As if all the other things that are studied in college weren’t already MALE studies. Good grief. The HIStory of the world has always been taught from the perspective of men. Women’s studies departments were created to bring some equity to the world of education and suddenly some men were getting nervous. This is what happens when people get scared. They start a backlash against the thing that scares them. And when men (specifically white, straight, cis and mostly wealthy men) get scared, the rest of us better ‘get in line’ because they have to get things back to the status quo. The patriarchy must survive and if it looks like it is being dismantled in any way, that’s when the MRAs appear to prop it back up again.

The best question we can ask ourselves, at this point in human history, is what would the world look like if the system of patriarchy that we have lived under, for all of eternity, was dismantled?

If we had a true and lasting system that was not skewed toward one sex (in this case the male sex), we would ALL be better off. Feminism works toward making EVERYONE EQUAL, not making women more powerful than men. That was never the cause of feminism. Women need more power in order to be equal to men, yes, and this is where those who are afraid of losing their grip on the full scope of power get nervous. Men who speak up against feminism are afraid of losing their power over women. They do not want to be equal because they want to continue to hold ALL the power. They want to be able to make all the decisions for the women in their lives and not allow those women to gain any traction in the movement.

This isn’t about losing equality, it is about losing the top spot in all areas of life. It is about losing the boy’s club and the ways in which the patriarchy support their policies of subjugation. If the patriarchy was dismantled, we would all be free to be ourselves and live our best lives. Women and men would both have the same opportunities and have to compete with their brains on an even playing field. Men would not be given preference, as they have for all of HIStory, in business. We are a long way from dismantling the patriarchy, but we chip away at it a little each day.

Patriarchy is not an American invention. You would not know this if you read the comment sections of any article pertaining to dismantling it though, as most Americans think that 1) our system of patriarchy has only been around for 100 years or so and 2) it’s all quite fine and dandy here in America and the misandrists (a bullshit term that denotes people who hate men and boys) need to stop trying to change things. See, when feminists (or anyone that wants to make things better for any group of people) try to make changes in society, those that benefit the most from the status quo start screaming as loud as they possibly can. Often, they find ways to back up their claims with arguments that look, on the surface, to be valid, but with a little bit of research, these arguments can be quickly dispelled.

The difficulty with research though is that many people do not want to hear facts unless they align with the position they already hold. So they listen to non-experts that spew garbage on the internet and regurgitate this crap for their ‘friends’ on social media. We used to live in a society where research and reason ruled the day, but it feels like those times are quickly diminishing. I am hopeful that we can turn the tide and stop the stupid among us from claiming expertise, but hope is not enough to make lasting change. Voting for progressive candidates that understand how to assess information is super important. If we don’t get smart people in office in 2018, we will continue down this path of stupidity that has been cultivated by the current POTUS.

So – what can we do to move toward a world where patriarchy is a thing of the past?

VOTE! Get to the polls and choose the smartest and most informed candidates, regardless of their place on the spectrum of gender.

MARCH! Attend marches in your local, regional, and national community to show support for the issues that affect you and yours the most. March with women when they gather to demand equal rights. March with people of color when they gather to demand equal rights. March with LGBTQQIA folks when they gather to demand equal rights. March with immigrants when they gather to demand a path to citizenship and equal rights. March with people of conscience when they gather to demand equal rights for all, regardless of the distinctions above.

WRITE! Go online and send a letter to your representative on issues that you find important. Hold these leaders accountable. You can even do this through text messaging with Resistbot! To setup, simply text RESIST to 50409 to get started. It is simple and awesome!

STAY INFORMED! Continue to read up on the issues that are important to you and research articles before posting/reposting on social media. The ALA has a comprehensive set of rules for evaluating sources listed here: Evaluating Primary Sources. Assessing the Authority, Audience, and Accuracy of the source will allow you to determine it’s credibility and worthiness. Let’s work together to improve the nature of what is shared on social media and on the internet, in general. Improving the reliability of sources will help EVERYONE.

So – are you ready to join me in dismantling the patriarchy to improve the world for everyone? It’s time to get to work! Leave comments below to tell me how you will work toward a world of equality for ALL humans!

Peace and Down With Patriarchy!

Chantale (hippiegrrl)

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2018 Reading Habits

It’s a new year and this year I am determined to read more books than I did in 2017.

My totals from last year were actually pretty good compared to previous years, but they still felt bleak. I had hoped to read 24 books and only ended up reading 11. This year I am setting my reading challenge total at 12, but I am also going to try to be more mindful of my reading habits in general.

First, I am going to try to keep up with the Read Harder Challenge, through Book Riot (details here!) and set a goal of reading one social science book per month. These lists may overlap at times, but if I keep up with both of them it will mean that I can meet (and even exceed) my goal of 12 books.

Second, I am going to try and be more active on Goodreads this year, not just through my book updates, but through groups and lists and commenting on my friend’s reviews. This will allow me to become more in tune with the various book releases of 2018 and be aware of the good things that people I trust are reading. You should join me there! It is great fun to share your reading habits with fellow bibliophiles.

Next, my youtube habits have been focused on booktubers for quite a while, but I have decided to streamline my viewing in 2018 and try to focus more on specific booktubers that I enjoy. And who knows – if I can really get back into the reading kick, perhaps I will try my hand at my own booktube channel.

Last, but certainly not least, I am going to look into volunteering in a library. Since I obtained my MLS (in May of 2016) I have been pretty much out of the world of library science and I need to get my foot in the door. The local library branches are always looking for volunteers and it would be a great opportunity for me to see what it is really like, from day to day, working in a library setting. This will greatly inform my path in the future. Do I want to continue into a library career or go another direction in academia? Do I want to go into public librarianship or try for a career in a university library? Will volunteering show me a side of libraries that makes me want to run screaming in another direction or will it make me love the library even more? All of these questions can only be answered with experience.

So, what are your reading goals for 2018? Do you want to expand your horizons or stay in the same genre that you have been reading for years? Do you have an aversion to reading that you hope to overcome in 2018? Tell me more about it in the comments!

 

Peace and happy reading!

Chantale (aka hippiegrrl)

 

Booktubers to look out for:

Books and LaLa
Francina Simone
Big Haired Bookworm
Bookish Realm
Katytastic
Little Book Owl
Brandi Janee’s Bookshelf
Kales Korner
aj & books

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New Year, New World

We all thought that 2016 was the worst year on record (and I would definitely venture to say that music-wise, it was a pretty bad year considering how many great artists we lost – Pop star deaths in 2016), but 2017 saw that disaster and raised it to extreme levels. Seriously. Is it safe to say that 2018 will be better? If nothing else, the wounds that have been festering for all of eternity when it comes to women’s place in the world have been peeled wide open. The sadness that comes along with the realization that women are still trying to conquer workplace harassment and violence, across industries, coupled with the anger that has been re-directed at the perpetrators will be the catalyst for change throughout the working world. These changes are LONG overdue and hopefully, we can continue the trend of calling out horrible people and holding them accountable moving forward. Never shall we go back to the days of just ‘letting shit go’. We said no more and we meant it.

But for real, can 2018 be better? Can we move forward with positivity, leaving behind the hopelessness that has been present for most of eternity? Can we build upon the good things that happened in this particularly horrible year and bring about a change like the world has never seen? Can we finally and for all time, dismantle the patriarchy?

I usually do a year-end/year beginning post that is positive and uplifting. A post that charts out the things that I would like to do during the new year to make things better. But, I think for 2018, I’m just going to say let’s keep the momentum up! Let’s continue on this great path of change that has been sparked by so many women (and a few men as well) coming forward to name their predators and keep pushing for the removal and downfall of men who, for too long, have felt it okay to do and say whatever they wanted, without repercussions. This includes the current POTUS. He needs to go and 2018 is the year to do it. He should be the first president to be impeached AND removed from office. Let’s make history in that way and make this country great for EVERYONE again.

2018 should be the year that we see the white supremacists pay for what they have done throughout history. Their leader needs to fall from grace and they should also be outed in ways that hurt them. People that believe any one race is better than all the other races should be called out for their bullshit. If they march with tiki torches (as they did in 2017) they should be given a special place on the internet to be seen so that their employers can take action by letting them go. If they are hurt financially by their stance, so be it. That is the punishment you receive for being a racist asshole.

2018 should be the year that we see the demise of right-wing Christian organizations that lobby against all citizens having the right to marry. Hard fought rights should not be torn down for one group’s religious belief system. This is America. We ALL have rights, no matter our religion and Evangelicals need to learn that lesson in a way that shuts them up. You don’t have to change your mind about the world, but you certainly need to mind your own business. Lobbying for laws that restrict the rights of others is not Christian, but if you belong to a sect of Christianity that believes it is, you should simply continue your worship in private. Changing the world for your morals is not cool. The rest of us want to be able to live freely without you making laws to restrict our rights that are based on your archaic view of the world. Stop trying to shove your traditional values down our throats. Concentrate on your own houses and leave the rest of us alone.

2018 should be the year that we rebuild the world in a better image than the one that has been persistent for the whole history of time. Gain a new understanding of each other as humans and the ability to give each other credit for our strengths. We should move forward with positive force and allow humans to compete on an even playing field with one another. This should be the year that we learn, indeed, women are capable of leading our country. Even though we still haven’t had a woman president, it is possible. The only requirement for POTUS should be a sharp mind. There shouldn’t be any kind of restriction based on sex organs. And, I suppose, judging from our current leader, a highly intelligent mind is not even a requirement, but it would be a useful thing to have. We prefer smart presidents, as we should. After all, they do hold a bit of the future of our country in their hands. 2018 should be the year that we, in earnest, work toward a better set of presidential candidates. Regardless of their sex organs, or skin colour, or religion – we should be searching for the best and the brightest from all cultures and backgrounds. Our future depends on it.

So – will you join me on a positive path? Or are you still committed to the old ways of the world? Do you still feel like women should be merely mothers and wives? That they should stay in the kitchen and out of politics? If this is the case, I don’t want to know you anymore. I realize that to be open-minded means that you should retain friends and acquaintances that think differently from you, but I’m over it. I cannot be in close contact with people that are so backward in their thinking anymore. If you don’t believe that every human is equal, I cannot relate to you anymore. So, I suppose what I’m saying is, 2018 will be the year that I move forward without the baggage of the past. If you are hateful toward others, due to the fact that those other people are different in any way from you, I’m done interacting with you. Have a great life – good luck to you – I hope that your way of living serves you well. I have my doubts, but hey, it’s your life to live. If instead, you want to join me on the right side of history, I’m here for you. Welcome to a new year and a new way of being.

Love and peace always,

Chantale (aka hippiegrrl)

relevant links:

7 Ways 2018 Will Be Better Than 2017

How To Do Things Better in 2018

Positivity

Priorities

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Topple the Patriarchy

Last week felt like a tipping point. I realize that, over the years, there have been many moments that felt this way, but last week really (REALLY) did.

So, can we finally talk about sexism and the ways to combat it and change the course of our future in an open, honest, and realistic way? Is it finally time for those of us that have been shouting about feminism and the need for the fall of the patriarchy to finally have our voices heard? Is it time for feminism to embrace intersectionality and come together as one voice to stand up for what is right? Finally? After years and years of struggle can we finally see a light for all those who are marginalized?

If you think that Hollywood is the only industry where sexual predators exist you would be wrong. Sexism exists in every industry in the world. That’s right – it isn’t just an American problem, but we certainly take it to new levels of disgusting. The only way we can ever fix the problems that we have across industries is to dismantle the system that is holding women back from true equality. We need to topple the patriarchy!

Patriarchy
noun
1. a form of social organization in which the father is the supreme authority in the family, clan, or tribe and descent is reckoned in the male line, with the children belonging to the father’s clan or tribe.
2. a society, community, or country based on this social organization.
3. a social system in which power is held by men, through cultural norms and customs that favor men and withhold opportunity from women:
The corporate glass ceiling is one consequence of patriarchy in education and business.
4. (often initial capital letter) the men in power in a society (usually preceded by the):
The Patriarchy is vested in maintenance of the status quo.
source: Dictionary.com definition of patriarchy

The patriarchy is not an inanimate, nebulous thing that is casting a shadow over our world, but a strategic set of systems, put in place thousands of years ago, to continue the oppression of humans that identify as female. Feminism seeks to right the wrongs of the past by bringing equality to all humans. Feminism, as a concept, is relatively new in human history, but the fundamental understanding of fighting for equality has been around since the beginning of time. Women have always struggled to be equal to men. Women have circumvented the system in order to bring about more equitable circumstances, but that has never been enough.

Feminism
noun
1. the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.
2. (sometimes initial capital letter) an organized movement for the attainment of such rights for women.
3. Older Use. feminine character.
source: Dictionary.com definition of feminism

In the waves (are we up to 4th wave now?) of modern day feminism, the concept of intersectionalism has been de-emphasized. Giving space and voice to WOC, Lesbians, Trans women, and disabled women is an important, and necessary, step toward full social justice. If we do not include the voices of all women, we will continue to bear the burden that comes with our separate struggles. WOC, Lesbians, Trans women, and disabled women have to deal with additional levels of marginalization that white women don’t even think about. The privilege that is afforded to white women in the movement needs to be examined and broken down. White women need to listen to marginalized women. The act of listening requires silence from white women. It requires all women to create a dialogue in an atmosphere where all voices are magnified and all women feel trusted and heard.

Intersectionality
noun
1. the theory that the overlap of various social identities, as race, gender, sexuality, and class, contributes to the specific type of systemic oppression and discrimination experienced by an individual (often used attributively):
Her paper uses a queer intersectionality approach.
2. the oppression and discrimination resulting from the overlap of an individual’s various social identities:
the intersectionality of oppression experienced by black women.
source: Dictionary.com definition of intersectionality

In the 1960’s feminists took up the act of gathering in groups and sharing stories, which began the act of consciousness raising within the movement. Although the concept was not new, as there had been a long history of talking circles in India and Native populations of the Americas, feminists found that sharing stories allowed them to be enlightened by each other, sometimes seeing something of themselves in other women’s remembrances. Unfortunately, these consciousness raising sessions were usually homogenous and therefore did not benefit from the gains that could have been made in a truly intersectional gathering of feminists. The 1960s also saw anti-feminist factions drive wedges between groups of women that had previously been united, festering resentment across the movement. This tactic was successful in splitting apart a struggle that had been united in the fight toward equality for all women. In our current day feminist struggle, we need to find a way to dispense with the wedges that have kept us apart and work together toward equality. Women are a force to be reckoned with, but only when we are united toward a common goal, keeping in mind our differences and additional burdens, and working in an intersectional manner toward justice.

“It was the first time I witnessed the ancient and modern magic of groups in which anyone may speak in turn, everyone must listen, and consensus is more important than time. I had no idea that such talking circles had been a common form of governance for most of human history, from the Kwei and San in southern Africa, the ancestors of us all, to the First Nations on my own continent, where layers of such circles turned into the Iroquois Confederacy, the oldest continuous democracy in the world. Talking circles once existed in Europe, too, before floods, famines, and patriarchal rule replaced them with hierarchy, priests, and kings. I didn’t even know, as we sat in Ramnad, that a wave of talking circles and “testifying” was going on in black churches of my own country and igniting the civil rights movement. I certainly didn’t guess that, a decade later, I would see consciousness-raising groups, women’s talking circles, giving birth to the feminist movement. All I knew was that some deep part of me was being nourished and transformed right along with the villagers.”

Steinem, G. (2015). My life on the road. p 36.

After raising our consciousness as a united group of women, the next step is to deconstruct the structures in our society that have been keeping women down for so long. In order to truly dismantle the patriarchy and break down the barriers to success for all, we have to start taking a long look at all of the industries and organizational structures in our world. This is not just a problem of Hollywood or Silicon Valley or the Media. The problem exists in offices large and small, where women still make up a small percentage of senior staff and an even smaller percentage of C-level positions. The problem exists in the home where women are still expected to work a “second shift” (Hochschild, 1989) to keep the household running or to simply work in the home as an unpaid labour force. The problem exists in organized religion, where women have been made subordinate, for centuries, by dogma and male interpretations of sacred text.

Until women can hold places of power in all industries and institutions, we will not be equal. Until the work that women do in the home is valued in the same way that work outside the home is valued, we will not be equal. Until power is evenly distributed across sex and race, we will not be equal. Until we are able to open the doors of opportunity to every citizen of the world, we will not be equal. And until we are equal, the acts of abuse, harrassment, assault, and rape that are committed by so many men in power, will persist.

One other thing though – until women who gain power can stand up for other women, we have gained nothing. There are still women who believe that it is better to stand behind a man than to help their fellow sisters. There are still women that are willing to be shills for the patriarchy. There are women that voted for the current predator-in-chief, knowing that he is unworthy of the White House. There are women who will cover for abusers and harrassers. There are women who are apologists for men that cheat. Perhaps some of these women are afraid, and to them I say that there is help out there. There is someone that is willing to help you come away from the person that is dragging you down and move forward with your life. There are people that can assist you in deprogramming from the crap that you have been fed your whole life about being inferiour. There are resources available to move away from the hatred that is the patriarchy and to move forward, surrounding yourself with people that care about equality.

And there are men that care about equality as well. You don’t have to stay with an abuser or continue to be an apologist for the men in your life that abuse others. You don’t have to stay with a cheater and continue to be lied to and deceived in the service of someone else’s inability to be faithful. You don’t have to vote the way the men in your life vote and you don’t have to take their shit. There is a network of people that believe in justice for all and that network is made up of feminists. Feminists are the only people that will ever, in the end, fulfill the real promise of the United States and bring about liberty and justice for all. Join the movement and together we can topple the patriarchy!

 

Peace,

Chantale (aka hippiegrrl)

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Standing Up To Racism part 1

Last month I decided to jump back into Facebook friendships with a few people that I had lost touch with (aka unfriended). Most of these people consider themselves to be conservative. They are also white and middle class. They have all lived in what they consider to be safe spaces and have not had to struggle to survive. Basically, they are living the American Dream as it has been sold to us. So why would any of them be opposed to helping other people reach their full potential? Why would they dislike people who do not look like them? Why would they argue the opposite opinion on Facebook, even if it looks like they are siding with racists, simply to provoke an argument or, what they perceive as, raise awareness? Why would people who consider themselves Christians agree with arguments made by racists?

Here is what I think – There is a core of racism that has festered in this country since Columbus arrived and white people that make arguments that are counter to the struggle to move forward out of this racism are also racist. The core of this national racism is with the white supremacist groups, of course, and they make no bones about being straight up racists. They are honest and do not care if people perceive them as such because their agenda is to make America fully and completely white. So – they are horrible people, but they are honest in their views and how they present them. They fly confederate flags in order to let you know that they are a part of a group of people that hate everyone that does not look like them. They do not hide this hatred.

The second ring of racism that exists, around these core racists are the apologists. People that argue against liberation and for the same policies that racists want to see continued or enacted. This second ring of people are more subtle and, until something happens in the country to trigger them, they stay relatively quiet in the face of racism and hatred. They do not advocate for oppressed people, but they also do not speak up for racist whites, until they either feel the pull of an argument or they are potentially in the crossfire of the march toward true equality.

Here are a few comments that fall into the category that I am speaking of above. Comments that will alert you to the existence of a subtle, second ring racist:

  • “Affirmative action is not necessary. Everyone needs to work hard and pull themselves up by their bootstraps.”
    • This is subtle racism because it does not take into account the systemic oppression of POC within the history of our country. It does not look at the systems that have been set up within education and industry that work against people of color and continue policies of oppression within institutions.
  • “There is nobody left in this country that was alive during the Civil War, therefore the Civil War is no longer a problem. Everything was solved by the South losing.”
    • This statement does not consider the fact that, as humans, we are all descended from other humans. If you had ancestors who were slaves or slave-owners, you would still have a connection to the atrocities that were done to or by your ancestors. White people that have ancestors who were slave-owners have an even greater responsibility to make the wrongs of their ancestors right. They should be standing up and denouncing the people in their family history that committed these atrocities, calling out everyone in their presence that is racist, and fighting for equality for all.
  • “We don’t need to tear down statues of Confederate generals because sometimes we honor things that people don’t like and they just need to deal with it.”
    • I have no words. This is just. Wrong.
  • “The Confederate Flag is a symbol of Southern pride and people should not equate that with slavery.”
    • The confederate flag is a symbol of the South’s contribution to the Civil War, which was to fight to retain slavery. Due to this fact, the confederate flag is a symbol of hatred and racism. If you fly this flag either in front of your house or in your front window or on your basement wall you are a racist, full stop.

These are just a few of the comments that I have noticed on my travels through these new Facebook friendships that I entered into last month. One of these friendships ended abruptly when the ‘friend’ used the n word on one of my comment threads. I asked her to remove it and rather than doing that she tried to explain it away. She said she was ‘trying to make a point’ and she was, but not the point she thought she was making. The point was that she is a racist. So, I removed the comment and I unfriended her the next morning. When she wrote back to me in a private message I ‘broke up’ with her, which is to say that a friend I have known since I was 5 years old is someone I will no longer be speaking to. Some people change, some people don’t. But we don’t have to connect ourselves to racists anymore. We never should have in the first place.

Another thread (which I luckily took screenshots of before it got removed – more to come on this later) involved a comment made by a friend of an FB friend that was blatantly racist. When I called him out on it, he asked me if I was calling him a racist. I said yes, because he is and he asked me again. I assume that if the thread was not removed that it would have devolved into him attacking me for calling him what he actually is. It is disheartening that these types of exchanges are getting removed in order to ‘keep the peace’ when a way to make the world a lot more peaceful would actually be to call them out. And those that hide or side with these racists are culpable. Enablers are also part of the problem. People have this idea that if they remain bystanders they are safe, but they are not. Bystanders need to stand up and speak out. Racists deserve to be shamed. Perhaps that will change their minds. Or it won’t and at least we know who they are. Shine the light.

I will continue to chronicle the racism that I see in my Facebook feeds and stand up to these assholes. I will call them out for their racism and I will not back down from my convictions. We have to make this world better and that means shaming racists until they either change or go away. I’m not clear, yet, on what ‘going away’ looks like, but I am happy to know that the racists are actually not the majority of America. They might think they are, but they are not. And we will show them this fact by pushing them back into their dark corners.

Peace,
Chantale (aka hippiegrrl)

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A New Way Forward

Since 1997, I have been working in the customer service industry. Twenty years of working in banking, retail, tech support, middle management, and project management have taught me a few things about the dynamics of workers and leaders in the workplace. There have been a few bright spots in my career, but overall I have witnessed a great deal of difficulty when it comes to the daily relations of humans when they are stressed and stifled. Unfortunately, the norm in business still seems to be to let workers know that their worth for the company is merely contingent on their ability to perform. The performance workers are expected to give is rarely clear and often involves pretending to be happy. After all, work performance is just that, right? A performance – an act – a character that one puts on for 8-9 hours per day. Company leaders have a difficult time keeping expectations clear and developing workers in a manner that would help everyone be happier and more productive.

It is difficult to thrive when one is working for an organization led by people that do not value the day to day contributions of individual workers. Workers have many things to contribute to a companies policies, procedures, day to day focus, and bottom line. They are not robots that can only do one task over and over again. They are individuals with varied abilities and creativeness that is rarely, if ever, tapped into. They have intellectual lives that are never stimulated. They have many ideas to contribute to the greater good of the company, but their voices are muted.

The company leaders expect each of the workers to tow the line and never complain. To be happy even when the world might be crumbling around them. To continue to pretend that things are wonderful when they are actually rubbish. And all the while, the company leaders wonder why survey results are low and morale is even lower. They assume that morale is something that comes from within the individual workers and that grumpy people will always be grumpy. But the leaders are wrong. Boosting morale has to come from above.

A little bit of empathy toward the individual that is trying to make ends meet financially and still be happy on a day to day basis can go a long way. Validating the feelings of the workforce by noticing when things are not good and trying to make real, lasting change, if even in small increments, would also be a plus. These things do not cost money, but they certainly cost time. And time, unfortunately, is in short supply when leaders are too busy counting beans to care about the humans bringing the beans to the table on a daily basis.

But complaining is not enough. The only way to make change is to suggest, to those with the power, things that could be improved and how improvements can happen. So here are a few ideas that have been bouncing around in my brain for the past fifteen or so years. Ways that leaders of any organization could and should bear in mind when thinking about improving the day to day life of their employees. In honor of labour day, here are my suggestions to make the workplace a better place for everyone:

 

  1. Listen
    It seems like a pretty easy concept and yet it never seems to happen. When workers tell you, as a company leader, that they are ‘drowning’ or they are ‘stressed out’ or that they ‘need more help’, listen to them. This does not mean that you need to take action, immediately, on every complaint, but you should at least show the worker that you are listening to their concerns and that you are willing to do something about the issues that are causing this level of stress in the workplace.
  2. Do Something
    Take in the critical assessments that you receive from the people ‘on the ground’ in your organization and find solutions. Heck, ask the workers for solutions! Have a referendum and allow the workers to give you ideas of how to fix the most common issues that are popping up in the workplace. The workers know what they need to be happy on a daily basis and if you allow them to tell you what that might be and then take action to make changes, they will see that you are trying to make things better. A little bit of effort can go a long way. This does not mean that you should stop with just the effort, as I said above, do something. So what is the something that you could do today to improve the daily work lives of your workers tomorrow and for years to come?
  3. Value happiness
    Many times, company leaders make it clear to workers (even if they do not intend to) that the happiness of the workforce is not important. That happiness is not something workers should be concerned with. That when they come to work they should work and that it is not the company’s job to make the workers happy. This – my friendly neighbourhood CEO – is NOT THE CASE. Workers are giving you 45+ hours of their week, every week. This amounts to 2,340 hours per year. Over a lifetime of working for one organization, a worker could give anywhere from 70,200 to
    93,600 hours of their lives to the company. If the workers know that the company leaders value the happiness of the workforce, it makes the 45 hours per week investment of time a lot easier. Here are a few very simple things that you can do, that cost little to no money, to keep the workforce happy.

    • Improve the workflow process to lower stress on individual workers
    • Encourage workers when they do well
    • Develop workers so they can move up if they wish to do so
    • Set workers up for success
    • Institute workplace health initiatives that give workers a sense of well being
    • Say thank you to your workers
    • Show an interest in your workers lives outside of work
    • Make the workplace inviting by adding plants and sunlight wherever possible
    • Get people moving – allow workers time during the day to take breaks (other than the standard lunch hour) without guilt
  4. Make policies equal across divisions
    In the event your company has a policy that allows workers the freedom to do something such as work from a remote location or shift time to get out early or come in late, be sure that the policy is written in a manner that is fair for ALL workers in the organization. Do not single out one division within your organization to have the ability to partake in the policy while others are not able to do so. A policy that is instituted for only a portion of the worker population is bound to cause issues within the workplace. If there are reasons why some workers cannot partake in these policies, make changes so that all workers are eligible for the policy prior to releasing it to the general worker population. Releasing a policy before all workers are eligible is a sure way to create low morale in a portion of your worker population. It is better, for everyone concerned, to either have policies that every worker is eligible for or not have those policies at all. In this case, all or nothing is the best motto.
  5. Be sure that expectations are always clear
    There is nothing worse than working for a boss that cannot clearly set expectations for the staff. Workers should be given a certain amount of latitude within their day to day functions, as you would never hire someone that is completely green to do a highly technical task, but they should also be given clear guidelines for what the position entails. If priorities shift, throughout the course of a workers time, be clear about the shifts and why they are occurring. Keep the job description for each worker updated and go over these expectations as they change. Basically, keep your workers in the loop, not in the dark, about changes to the structure and overall direction of the company and their individual contribution expectations.
  6. Institute an employee recognition program
    There has been a lot of improvement, in the past few years, in employee recognition programs and one of the new ways to do this is peer2peer recognition. This article explains the benefits that these types of programs can and do have in the workplace. This is not your grandparents company recognition program!

There are many other ways that company leaders can improve the workplace, but I think this is a good starting point. Now, leaders, please go out and find creative ways to empower your workers and help them be the best versions of themselves. It will pay you back many times over and the humans that are toiling to put those beans on your table daily will thank you for it with even more beans. Seriously – happy workers = productive workers.

Peace,
Chantale (aka hippiegrrl)