Topic: Posts

I just got back from hearing a presentation by AIDS Activist Bob Bowers, which was interesting. He was an engaging speaker and he had a good point and I liked his approach. He’s one of the few survivors from the early eighties, and he reports being in good shape (undetectable viral load, and a t-cell count that was low a bit low, but still present). He was very candid and honest, and seemed to put a real face on the disease. I think it was a good counter to the sort of healthy but undetectably sick image that we’ve see far too much of. Nevertheless the one thing I wanted him to talk about that he didn’t (which was what it’s like to be a straight man infected with a “gay” disease), because even if infection rates are down among gay men and up among heterosexuals (which I don’t buy 100%) HIV is still identified with the gay community. Part of me wants to own that and make it my struggle, and part of me likes that it’s part of a broader struggle. It’s all good. But going to this talk, allowed me to think about a few other issues.

I just sent out my request for submissions, for the Affinity Story Project, to seven of my awesome-ist friends, so I should be able to get eight stories (there’s another guy whose email I can’t find) (I hope) to use as examples, or as a sample for publishers. I’ve decided to call it Where We Ought to Be: The Experience of Young Gay Men, for now. (Yes it’s a reference to “Simple Gifts,” the shaker hymn.) That’s still a rough title, so it may shift a little, depending on how post-structural I’m feeling. This is a really cool thing, and I think it may just work, which makes it an even cooler thing.

But it strikes me, what I’m really looking for in WWOTB is the pure essence of what it means to be gay and young in today’s world. What draws us together, what differences make us diverse and unique, how do we relate to the “gay struggle” of years past. What’s it like to wake up every morning?

I started writing this entry days ago, and I remember being so excited about it, and now, I haven’t a clue as to where I was going. Sorry for being so distant late. But I have been getting things done. Cheers. --sam.

Ha! Thought I couldn’t use “fraught” in an entry title. Well I can! Anyway, this entry is yet another brainstorming (ie. I want to think about the paper, and I want to feel productive without actually writing the paper yet, so I’m going to write about something that actually interests me) for a paper, sprinkled with a little gender theory thrown in for good measure.

So I’m writing this psych paper, and I’m really dreading it. Not because I think I’m ill-equipped to write it, or that I think I’m incapable, or even that I think she’ll grade harshly (because everything else I’ve written for her has a mean grade of 99%). Rather, I think I’m worried because I feel like I have to do amazingly well on this cause I want to major in psych. A.W. talks about a similar sort of pressure about needing to do perfectly on certain classes relating to his major. So I’m not that weird, ok, maybe I am, just don’t pick on me.

Psychology is really interesting, and I like it, but I do have some problems with how psychologists deal with gender issues. This doesn’t surprise me, but I think I should voice it. I think it’s particularly problematic now, when I don’t really have the knowledge base, or the authority to make the kinds of objections that I want to. In time.

On the most basic level, I feel psychology doesn’t make room for gender variance, and in general is to biologically bassed. But then my prof is a neuroscience, brain chemistry type, and I suppose I’d be worried if she wasn’t grounded in biology. Any “acceptance” of gender variance is quickly shuffled away towards transexualism, which despite its “unconventionality” reinforces the binary, and doesn’t really solve anything. The way that “The Book” (dr. george H___, that one, you know, the book) pathologizes gender varience isn’t helpful, and psychologists generally follow this general approach.

Moving on.

The other main objection that I have is that it seems to me that our ways of conceptualizing of human psychology (especially the neuroscience/cognative bits, but other things as well) are viewed in binary terms. Let me preface my example by saying that, I’m working on the understanding that any conceptualizing of difference as dualism is inherently gendered. Whenever we think of different ideas as being either/or, it reflects upon our understanding of gender as limited to two option based upon our understanding of gender. For instance I have this interesting diagram, which describes long-term memory and it shows one binary after another. Now I’m not saying that this is implicitly wrong, just that binary is pervasive (hence the title.)

So that’s where I am at the moment.

Enjoy, and I’ll try not to be such a stranger.

(Ok, So I wrote this entry a few days ago, and just got around to posting it now. That’s fine. Enjoy!)

This has been one of those weeks. Not bad, really, just hectic.

See, my request for a new room in a different hall finally came up. See I was living in the armpit of the campus, and some guy moved into TKE (the pretty boy frat) and left an open room, which while bearing a remarkable similarity to my old room, is on a much better floor in a better building. The new building is virtually identical to the old one, but it’s not as grody.

The end result of that is that I packed up all of my earthly belongings and moved them down. It felt good to see that I really don’t have that much stuff. If I worked at it, I could get rid of a box or two. I got everything in the new room and started to unpack which took a lot of energy. It was a struggle to find, and then put, the sheets on the bed before I fell asleep. It took a couple of tried. I woke up once, having wrapped myself in the mattress cover and fitted sheet.

Eventually though I got all the kinks worked out, and somehow managed to get the sheets on the bed. I even managed to wake up in enough time to get to class, which is itself a miracle because I didn’t set the clock. I even got up in time to eat a proper breakfast, which is better than I did on Monday.

On the other hand, I was in such a rush this morning that I put my underwear on backwards and it took me all day to notice.

Oy.

The main intention of this post as I embark on it, is to write about some of the knitting process that I’ve made of late, but there’ll be other related bits of news. I’m feeling kind of guilty about the fact that I more or less completely forgot about TealArt last week.

I’ve gotten a lot of knitting in of late, and believe it or not it has become a balanced part of my life. There were times in high school where I knitted while being avoidant of my work (both school related, but more often personal related), so I’d end up going through phases where I’d knit compulsively for a few days or a week, and then I’d put everything down for a while, while I got actual work done.

Since I’ve gotten here, my knitting progress has been steady, and I haven’t used it to avoid my school work (as you might have noticed, TealArt and Another Round have suffered, but alas.) I knit a little in class. All my teachers are quite alright with this, and I think it helps my absorption a little. This isn’t to say that my absorption rate is perfect, but taking compulsive notes (as opposed to the more limited kinds of notes I take now) is a lot worse than knitting during class. In addition to that, I knit during a couple of club meetings, and then I sneak in a little knitting time during movies, and other laid back sort of times.

I know what you’re saying at this point: That’s real nice Sam, but what cool things have you been knitting?

Well, I thought you’d never ask.

I finished the sweater I was making before school during convocation (I’d been in Beloit for a week at this point). While I suppose a technical re-evaluation of my previous statement will show that I said I wanted to finish the sweater before I got to Beloit, I don’t think it’ll be unreasonable to say that I really meant that I’d finish the sweater before classes start which I did. It fits really well, but the bottom band flares a little. I think it might block out, and if it doesn’t I’ll figure something cleaver out to do with elastic and ribbon. I still have to dye it, but I found a friend who said she’d help with the dying, so depending on our respective work loads, I’ll get that done soon and start wearing it soon.

I finished the funky shawl thing, and I might wear it once I get it dyed, which will happen at the same time.

I also made two and a half hats (which took about a week each): two and a half because, one is a double thick hat and while there are two hats, that I had to make, it’s only one hat in the end. Both of those hats are made out of the same yarn as the same wool as the sweater. So that’s cool.

When I finished the second hat, I was itching to start some sort of real project, something sort of biggish. So I cast on for a world famous circular shawl, using some mercerized cotton cone yarn that my mom going (in a huge quantity), and I’m going to use a third of it or a bit more on this shawl. I started it the Monday before last (tomorrow will be the third Monday that I’ve been working on it.) I’ll probably finish it on Tuesday or Wednesday. The last time I made something this size, it took me a month of serious knitting. The lace pattern makes it go faster. On the outer most section I’ve inserted 7 repeats of Snowdrop lace, a traditional Shetland pattern, which I really like, and I like how I memorized the pattern perfectly after the second repeat, and I know how to fix and fudge it, and I don’t even need markers to separate the repeat. I’ll probably make another shawl with lacey patterns soon again (possibly with the same yarn, but I need a break for my continued knitting health).

I am currently in ownership of a sweaters worth of very nice locally produced (or at least locally milled and dyed), wool/mohair (but it’s so soft!) in a wonderful red color. I’ll probably make a fun plain raglan pull over with it. The dye job isn’t perfectly even (an error) but I’m going to maximize it by showing off the yarn with the pattern.

I also got a 14 oz cone of fairly fine yarn (dk-fingering?) on eBay that I should get sometime soon. I’ll probably make a drop shouldered sweater out of it. (The alternative is to make a shawl.) Oh, and my mom I think might have found the perfect yarn to make the Turkish patterned sweater (and I can’t decide weather to make a pullover or a cardigan like it says.) But that’s down the road a bit.

There’s other news, but I think I’ll leave you all in suspense for a while.

Love! Cheers!

I have this paper to write, that basically asks me to address how an emphasis on the difference between the sexes, (and the concentration on the gender binary etc.) maintains systems of oppression. While this is a subject I’m interested in, I’ve found it hard to write about it in the past because I’m ambivalent about a couple of key issues.

Mostly the fact that to blur the lines between genders too intensely is to stray too close to the “I don’t see color” or “I don’t care if people are gay or straight” which I think is a position that should be avoided. At the same time, I completely agree with the idea that the gender binary is tool used to oppressive means. In fact, I could argue that the gender binary is perhaps the oppressive tool, but I don’t think I will at this juncture.

I don’t think that difference alone can create oppression, and even if it can, I don’t think that’s a particularly strong position to argue for social change from. See, people are different from each other. Entire groups of people are different from other groups of people. This doesn’t in and of itself create advantage and disadvantage or oppression. The other side of this “difference coin” is that despite all of the differences that people have with each other (on any social level), we ultimately have much more in common.

But difference, or at least perceived difference, remains the primary cause for a system of advantage.

Additionally, I think I have to examine the function of the binary form itself, separately from the issue of difference. Even though binaries claim to be supported by difference, and in a historical sense are caused by differences, after a period of time, the difference dissolves and blurs. This leaves a “superficial” kind of difference, and a very strong binary system/logic that creates and maintains patriarchy (and other systems of oppression).

For better or for worse we’re limited to a handful of sources which we read in class, and I think that the sources I have either agree with what I’m trying to argue, or can be interpreted to agree with what I’m saying.

Now all I have to do is pull all of it together in some sort of logical, coherent, and reasoned sort of way.

sigh

Cheers…

I have a couple bits of news/theories for the “Beyond John Wayne” category but I’ll keep them brief in favor of other forthcoming TealArt posts.

First off this Beyond John Wayne category is more than a year old now. I’m looking back at this last year plus and thinking, “my god, I’ve learned and changed a lot.” This gender studies/masculinity project thing that I’m forever enthralled with has gone from being a “what does it mean to be gay in the world today, to a what does it mean to be a man in the world today, to a combination of the two: this is the whole “Beyond John Wayne” idea, that it’s possible to be a man outside of “the man box” to some sort of weird where I am now place. I think more reflection on this transition is defiantly required, but that’s fairly low on my list right now.

Having given it a suitable breathing period, I’m going to go back and edit/rewrite/revise my proposal for the Affinity Story Project (I really need a better name, don’t I?) and see what I can come up with. It’s something concrete and something real, and it feels good to finally be working on something like this.

The third, and probably most important reason why I made this post is to express the following theoretical statement (which in typical form is a question) that I scribbled on the back of a paper in class today:

Is the claim that the differences between men and women arenatural, oppressive because “nature” is used as a tool for justifying the non-egalitarian distribution of opportunity and resources, or because of the nature/nurture dichotomy/opposition is inherently gendered.

Actually I wrote “is nature oppressive because it’s a (tool for) justifying “different but equal” or because of the nature/nurture dichotomy/opposition.” With the parenthetical written in the super-text. You be the judge of what makes more sense and is more coherent.

I’d explain more, but I’m not really in the mood for answers now.

I had a conversation last night, wherein I discovered perhaps the best name for a narrative of life at Beloit College, but I can’t remember now. Whatever. Today is Sunday, my day for updating the world about my status. Phone calls will occur later this afternoon (after my cell phone charges) and of course the requisite TealArt entry.

My classes are going well: nothing difficult yet. I have my first paper (feminisms) due in a couple of weeks, and I don’t think I’ll get the assignment for that until Thursday (maybe,) and it promises to be dead simple. In a fun and exciting sort of way. I have an “assessment” (psych) on Monday, which looks to be simple enough to complete in my sleep, which is really convenient given the time slot of that class. There’s another test-like thing in the Sociology class at the end of the week or the beginning of the next, which is the only thing I have to do actual work to prepare for, (other than general reading and stuff like that). So the school-work progresses much as I expected it, which is a very good thing indeed.

I have four friends who speak Russian in some degree. One is an exchange student, another immigrated as a child: so speaks it with her parents, and her (flawless) English is occasionally peppered with Russian. The last guy, did an intensive summer emersion program, and has taken a number of classes. The surprising thing is that I understand a surprising amount of what gets said. I have the vocabulary of an 18 month old, but I can kind of translate the important parts. It’s interesting, because I don’t think I’ve ever been in situations where my language skills have been semi-useful. Which when you consider the last time I had a Russian class was six years ago, is kind of good. On another linguistic level, my Spanish is also a lot better than I think it is, and I could probably Tutor people in first year Spanish. For all the faults of the last four years of my Spanish experience, my teacher did know the language really well, and her explanations have stuck. Maybe it wasn’t all for nothing.

I’ve become a little discouraged about the gay boy situation here. Fiveish in my class at last count: that works out to somewhere between a percent and a percent and a half of the class. I don’t think Kinsey was that far off. From what I can tell the percentages for the other classes aren’t appreciably higher, at this point. Now either there are people that I don’t see/can’t find (a distinct possibility), this place isn’t nearly as hippie/“liberal”/open as people claim it is (a certain truth, but I don’t think that’s it either,) or Kinsey misplaced a decimal. The perhaps more interesting observation is somewhere near half of them are “very-much attached” which strikes me as really uncommon and strange. Anyway.

Not to babble too much about this kind of thing but here goes another line of observation. I’ve been in the situation where I’ve had to kind of “come out” again. It’s really just a part of that continual coming out process, but it feels like “again” sometimes. I’ve not had problems or anything, but it’s weird. The “exciting” sigh of relief that I used to love so much, has mostly been replaced by anxiety and annoyance. I really want the gay thing to be a complete non-issue, but it doesn’t feel like a non-issue to me, and sometimes I feel like a one song-singer because I think about it a lot. There’s a lot more to be than this gay thing, but it’s still fairly important, and my position with myself is that heterosexuality is a bigger deal for straight folks than they/we think it is, but perhaps that’s part of the benefit of normativization (if that isn’t a word, it should be/is now.) It means walking a lot of fine lines, but there’s not much I can do really. In other news, I think I’m going to join the Breakdance club. It’s a pretty big time commitment. No, it’s a huge time commitment. But it’s not too much, there’s a very slight possibility of getting some credit for it, but I would do it anyway. It looks so fun, it’ll be good exercise, and just like Morris and International, I have a great desire to know how to do it. I haven’t given up on the idea of a Morris team, but I’m fairly convinced that I’ll need at least one other person whose familiar with the ways of Morris before I jump into that.

The other really exciting thing that’s happened of late is that I wrote up a proposal for the Affinity Story Project, I have to do some revisions, which I’ll probably get to sometime this week. I have the time it’s more about getting distance from the work so that I can make better revisions. Then I just have to get an example of a story or two (probably one from Chris and whatever I put in to it,) write a cover letter, and send it out to publishers. I’ll start looking for stories after that. This is quickly becoming real, and I think it’s really exciting.

On that note, I’ll leave you for now. See you later in the week!

I have a knitting post, and a few other ones that I’m thinking about writing, and they’ll probably appear later in the week, but for now I hope this little ditty keeps you happy. Cheers!

I was minding my own business and checking my mail today, when I saw a poster. It was an advertisement for the Beloit Christian Fellowship. Gag me with a spoon, but they’re doing a pretty good job of advertising and there is chalk and posters all over. Whatever, it’s cool.

Anyway, the poster in question had a picture of a pile of hay and a sheep, with the words “hey + ewe” written under the pictures. Very clever I guess, if you’re into that kind of thing.

My first thought was, “but Jesus was a carpenter.” And then I remembered the good Shepard metaphor, which clashes with the carpenter idea, but no one asked me.

They never do.

There are a hundred jokes about how the best men are either taken or gay, and I tend to agree with this. Availability, or more properly unavailability is very attractive and it shows prospective suitors that a person is mature enough for adult relationships, and able to commit. There’s some truth to this, and I want to try and distance myself from this in the rest of the post, but at the same time it’s worth mentioning.

In my opinion, the best ones are taken and gay.

Before I dig myself into a really deep hole, I’m going back up and address the real issue: long distance relationships, and my reactions to them.

Ok, so here on the second week of classes at glorious Beloit College, I’ve noticed that there are a hell of a lot of people, regardless of orientation who are in some sort of committed long distance relationship. I remember reading something on the accepted student boards (people who were going to be attending Beloit in the fall had the option of opening a dialogue on a message board. Anyway, someone said, lots of people come to Beloit and try to have long distance relationships with boy and girlfriends back home, and that college often changes people a lot often bringing about the end of these people’s relationships.

Well I haven’t seen a relationship end yet, but I would completely agree with all of these statements. There are tons of people who are in long distance relationships, and I suspect that the majority of them won’t last. This is kind of frustrating to me, both on one level, as I’ve been on both ends of the leaving stick, on anther level as there are tons of people that I view are taken: and unnecessarily at that.

Let’s start off with my view of the problems with distance relationships.

I have a very strong opinion that, one shouldn’t try to sacrifice the present for a hope in the future. Who knows what’s going to happen between now and then? People can die, fall in and out of love at the drop of a hat, people turn into assholes, become drug addicts, and develop emotional instabilities without any notice.

I’m also of the opinion that if people are meant to be together, that they will end up together in the end. I trust fate like that, which probably stupid on so many levels, but I’ll take that risk.

Given these things, I absolutely refuse to engage in anything that could be considered a long distance relationship. I won’t date people who I can’t reasonably see on a fairly regular basis.

At the same time there are people, like AW, who lives at least a thousand miles away. To deny that we have some sort of meaningful connection would be foolish and untrue. At the same time, we’re individuals, we’re living our own lives in the present (more or less) but we’re not just friends. Long distance relationship? You tell me. At the same I’d wager that all of my peers here who are have significant others back home are getting no more than I get out of such relationships, and I almost guarantee you that they’re putting the same amount of energy and likely into it.

My relationship with sexuality has also changed a little recently. I used to think that exclusivity was not only desirable but also requisite for any kind of relationship, and I suppose I don’t feel the same way anymore. This isn’t to say that in a stable relationship where two people live with or near each other couldn’t be exclusive and I do think that monogamy is desirable. But I also know that it’s possible to love more than one person, to be interested in more than one person, and even theoretically to sleep with more than one person, without it being a critique of anyone. That is, one can have a committed relationship with Person A, and still love (or etc) Person B without it being a criticism or a degradation of Person A. I think there’s room in a singular human experience to love more than one person, perhaps even at the same time.

How people act out the implications of this, is another issue completely, and one everyone should fully discuss with their partners and blah blah blah, I’m not terribly interested in dispensing advice at the present, just outlining what I believe to be true and possible at the moment.

So why am I writing this? In part to kind of stick my nose in the air, and say, I’ve reached the perfect compromise for myself at the moment. In part because there’s at least one fellow who I’d be all over, if he didn’t have a gentleman caller halfway across the country, and also in part because I’m tired of listing to people moan about the (usually) boyfriend that’s back home.

Interesting gender point here: I can’t think of a guy whose in a distance relationship with a girl at the moment. Ponder away.

But I can be patient, and ultimately I think things will settle down and people will come to their senses, in the mean time I’ll just have to make do with what I have. For now. Despite a little frustration, I think I’m pretty happy. So there!

Ok, I know my TealArt break was only supposed to last a week, but to be honest with you folks, I’m kind of surprised that it didn’t last a whole month. I’ve started college, for real. It’s everything that I expected, basically. I like the classes I’m taking; I like the classes that I’m planning to take next year. I like how my high school experience has prepared me for this shift, I also like how so many of the classes I took in high school are going to be transferring here. Once St. Louis University gets it’s act together, and I figure out how to request AP transcripts, I’ll have 7.75 units, or 31 hours of credit. The whole notion of getting done in three years is very much a reality, and I love it.

Thus far my experience with my classes as also been generally positive, and as I expected it; this is to say that, I enjoy the subjects I expected myself to enjoy, and am a bit ambivalent about the classes I expected myself to be ambivalent about. I like the fact that things are working out. There certainly is the possibility for change in the future, but for the moment things are peacefully staying as they are.

I’m not really happy about my room assignment and the smoking status of the dorm I’m in. The smokers aren’t happy because they can’t smoke in the lounges, and the asmatics/allergic/non-smokers aren’t happy because the building reeks and people can smoke in their rooms. So it’s about. The consensus is that res life is using people with a non-smoking preference to change the culture in this dorm (which reaches far beyond the smoking of tobacco products). Frankly, it isn’t fair to either group. In anycase, I have a draft of a very polite and friendly email to the dean of students and the director of residential life that I’ll probably send out pretty soon depending on how I feel. In the mean time, I’m looking for a roommate so I can move into a special interest house next semester. I’ll probably post more on this in the future.

In other news, for one of my classes, we have to do a feminist activism project, and I’m kind of at a loss of what to do. The prof, said “take something you’re angry about, and something your good with, combine them, send a number of hours on that and you’ll be fine.” I’m not worried about the anger, and I’m good at computer stuff, knitting, writing, and traditional Anglo-Celtic ethnomusicology. I could knit some sort of avant garde, binary coded message into some sort of lace shawl. But that wouldn’t reach enough people, and the truth is I don’t want to do that, it was just a funny idea. Computer stuff and writing are easily combined, and I might end up doing something with a TealArt sub site, which I’ve wanted to do for a while, but that would require perfecting that code, which I’m stuck on. In any case, I’ll be writing more about this soon.

I’ll shift back to the total college experience for a moment. I have an awesome schedule. I’m only taking four classes, which no matter how hard the classes are it’s not that bad. The thing is that I’ve got this huge block of time in the middle of the day that I can use to nap if I need to and I can do my work. Without particularly trying to be an over achiever, I’ve been really good about getting my homework done at least 12 hours before it’s due. Getting up hasn’t been a problem either, though I suspect that this will change a little bit as it starts getting light later.

I must complain about the Internet situation though. Apparently the network is riddled with viruses because of people bringing their computers back from the summer. This means the wireless network is inoperable, which is more annoying than anything mostly because it makes it more difficult to avoid being in my room, which I’m trying to do as much as possible. On that note, I’ll leave you all for now, stay tuned for more updates and developments.