I still believe that I am a writer, after this somewhat miserable break, after somewhat miserable comprehensive/qualifying exams. The worst part: after you are done, you kind of forget what it looks like to live life among the normal. It's like that move about the war in either Afghanistan or Iraq (I didn't watch the film, except the end-so I don't really remember the details)and at the end after all of the horrible things have happened that this man, this soldier caused, he cannot even pick out cereal. He just walks to the cereal isle and stands there because he cannot do anything. It's as though all the things that normal people just do, without even thinking, escape him. And he just stands there, not even really looking, just lost, just waiting. I still feel like I am not finished because really, in the end, I am not finished (This whole dissertation thing is just beginning); but, my body still isn't sure about whether or not I will be starting another question in a couple of days. Although we have discussed it, chatted about trying to reintegrate back into my life, my body has a hard time respecting that. Taking one books back to the library helped a little, playing copies amounts of virtual Scrabble, and real-life virtual video games, An entire eight season Office marathon, sexy time, dates with ma' boo and with friend, movies, all of it...my body is still unsure of what to do. Yesterday, I broke down because I was so tired and I just needed to lay in bed, not doing anything, not even watching T.V. I just had to be done. I wanted to go to yoga today and I could not force myself to get out of my chair. I will go, but not today. I want to do a cleanse, but not yet, not until I get some semblance of normalcy bad in my life. I know it is graduate school, I know this is what is supposed to happen. I know taking these exams doesn't make me a smarter/better person, but it does make me think in theory, and thinking in theory does not always equate to the thinking about the body. And that is the most challenging thing, what does the body do after you have trained it to sit and type for hours on end. How do you train your mind to stop thinking "that" way, that pretentious academic way. What now? The performance anxiety should be calmed, but it isn't, because my body isn't sure what to do now, so there is anxiety about that? I am not sure how to reinvigorate the relationships that are invariably changed because of my six-month hiatus from their lives. And how do I think about myself, as a femme, a queer scholar, an intersectional feminist, and anti-racist? Does completing this project change how I think of myself? How could it not? I am excited and nervous to proceed, not just with my project, but with my life. But I am gonna keep going, keep pushing towards reclamation of queer femme-ininity, and try to reforge new pathways through old relationships. I only hope they are as forgiving of myself, as I am trying to be.

Frustrating

The sheer amount of clothing stores/companies that appropriate Indigenous culture, customs, and values. While everything is a sort of cultural appropriation of something else, and nothing is really original, I think we can do better. Forever 21 and Urban Outfitters seem to be most guilty of this. This is almost worse (if ranking what is better or worse in this situation was useful) than turning Indigenous folks into mascots or costumes, because this is becoming engrained into the cultural imagination as o.k. Of course mascots and costumes are entwined in the perpetuation of stereotypes as normative and appropriate, but everyday-wares? It is not a tribute or honoring, it is identity/culture tourism and not everyone has the same freedom and mobility to move about these cultural identities and locations, as some more privileged folks do. Everything has embedded ideologies and messages, and we have to be self-reflexive shoppers. What does it mean to buy a knock-off of someone’s religious and spiritual garb and wear it to the bar. Seems disrespectful and tasteless to me; But hey, who am I?

TUMBLR

Make sure to check out my new TUMBLR: http://femmeinfinity.tumblr.com/ It is some of my originals, but a lot of reflags with comments. I will continue to post here, post my qualifying exams/dissertation proposal in a couple of days. Until then, see the very short things I am doing on my TUMBLR.

Policing femininity

I am getting really sick of all the "gate-keepery-ness" surrounding femme and femininity and even queer for that matter. This stems from a couple of things: 1.) The sort of butch-o-phobia that CAN come with claiming a femme identity, and 2.) People saying that femme is sort of ridiculous circa 2011. These are not compartmentalized, but are woven together, to sort of allow me fodder of frustration. This is also a rant. A RANT! An unorganized rant! As I once wrote (Not that I am a mystical genius, just someone who cares about the interconnection of academic and public activist projects.): If we are to express a desire for queer politics, should there be gate-keepers, who maintain a boundary of the queer canon, whilst others, should not have access to either identifying or being a part of the larger queer political movement? In doing this, who do we metaphorically put up a, “NO (insert marginalized groups) Allowed” sign for? And more importantly who experiences, the materialized e/affects of not being allowed to participate when bodies are dismissed? I am just saying, and this came from Tumblr today, that there was all this discussion around being radical, about being queer, and then someone had the audacity to ask, "What's femme about pajamas?" Fuck that, what isn't femme about pajamas? Just like the haters who say femmes don't need there own conference, because, hey, "What would we talk about?" I'm just saying if you would post that, you probably don't identify as femme (and all of the vast expressions emanating from that space) and should maybe ask it in a way that is indeed, asking a question; not with the underlying assumption that just because you don't know what we would talk about, doesn't mean we don't got some shit to throw down! But again, back to pajamas. My hetero friend asked me once, after writing a paper, if she could identify as a hetero-femme. At first, I was like yeah, definitely. Gender is fluid, sexuality is shifting. I took too many gender studies courses and now I am open to anything...o.k. no, but seriously, it didn't bother me. Then I kind of got annoyed, I was like NO! Femme is my thing and a thing that femme lesbians do. It is rooted in a specific historical and history/cultural context, and it's mine. All mine. So then I thought about that, because that is what I do. Think about shit. All day long. And then I type about shit. And I read two books, one that had an outro by Judith Butler that may have changed my life and the other by these two fabulous sassy femmes who talk about femme as, "A sustained gender identity...a contestatory lesbian identity, a radical feminist position, and a subversive queer model"(Harris and Crocker 1-10). Damn. I wish I had written this book. As for the JB, I do not worship the ground she walks on, but I do think she is effing smart, and despite people thinking she's a white supremacist, with no desire to talk about race, or class-I think she is the opposite. And she's a philosopher, all philosophers are dense, complex, and theoretical. But what I like about this outro essay she wrote are the questions she poses, "If sexuality always threatens to dissolve identity, then what is the final status of those categories by which we seek to understand our sexuality? Are the conceptual means by which we guard against the very sexuality that we seek to affirm? When we seek to judge what will be lesbian, and what will not, do we purport to know precisely what we cannot know? The rush to judgment forecloses the anxiety over the unknown. And yet, was it not the unknown, the not yet, and not ever fully known that drew us here, drew us together, and still, auspiciously, holds us apart?"(Butler in Munt 230). So is holding tightly to our identities, holding us apart? Of course we cannot give up our identities, that isn't even what JB would be saying, but she is asking if they hold us apart and if there are ways to be both invested in material identities and work to disrupt the gate-keeperyness around them. This is not a neo-liberal project, this is a very real concern. So I want to push back on people who say femme IS this, or it ISN'T that because really who knows? So, should my friend be able to identify as hetero-femme, in a post-structuralist utopian society-definitly; in the here and now, I guess if she is reflexive about what that identity means to me and people in my community, I am cool with it? I am looking for allies, in a world that renders me invisible (except for virtually.) To me, it insinuates that she is questioning heterosexual norms and recognizing that gender is performative and performance, and in the end that makes me feel like she is at least trying to negotiate femininity through a heterosexual lens that isn't heterosexist. And there is something to that, to opening up political spaces, for joining together. I don't expect this looks like some happy ending of a fairytale, alliances through and across differences are a lot of friggin work. Work that is very well worth it, work that should not be bound solely in visual identity characteristics; although always aware of the way the material is bound with the ideal/symbolic; but also bound up in the idea of not giving up on each other and being willing to say I am queer, no matter who ya do, in your bedroom, in the street, or for a camera. So in the end, basically, I am saying wear your damn pajamas and revel in femme. Because femme is not an identity bound up only with the visual, but like any other identity, it is something we process over, write about, dress up as, and do. I will never think that, "Femme is who I am." I will think, "Femme fits most comfortably for me at this moment, at this space in time, but it may change (although I hope it doesn't too drastically, because I love my bad-ass boots and skirts.)" And most of all, I don't think we need gender identity police telling me that pajamas aren't as sexy as what a femme should wear, cause' I do femme, and I am wearing long underwear and leg warmers and I feel pretty sexy. And to just talk briefly, I am sick of seeing all of the "Down with the butch-femme dichotomy" bullshit. To me that is just a perpetuation of mostly butch and trans phobia, because I feel like often accompanying these types of propaganda, are women, who claim femme identities, and say they aren't into butches. DO NOT GET ME WRONG! I do NOT think gender and sexuality have to be bound up in the same ways for every person; desire is so complex that it cannot be the same for everyone. But why does it have to be said in such a derogatory way? Like, oh, and that woman over there who prefers short little masculine bois, must be living in some archaic notion of heterosexual fantasy, because she is doing a take on butch-femme. Excuse me, let me bow down and kiss the feet of some folks OBVIOUSLY more enlightened. As I said, desire is complicated, but promoting yourself, while marginalizing another group, who obviously faces some serious friggin dangers everyday, is kind of annoying. Femmes face violence too, I am not tying to exhaust all of the options for ways of being and experiencing the world, but lets not put down a group for the sake of another. (I am probably perpetuating what I am saying not to perpetuate right now, but I am tired and it is getting late, and ma lady is almost home after being gone for a week, so excuse the fact that my brain is, uh, elsewheres.) I will support femmes who desire femmes, as long as they don't do that at the expense of butches, transguys, and genderfuckingqueers. Because like identity, our desires shift and grow over time and with experience and exposure, so you never know who you are going to meet, love, and let's face it, sleep with. Goddess bless. (P.S. I am annoyed at the autocorrect, and apologize for any of its stupidity.)

What the hell am I doing?

So I started this thing here: http://femmeinfinity.tumblr.com/

May migrate there eventually. The layout looks to be much more dynamic.

I have been prepping to take my comprehensive exams, which is a pretty hellacious process, when in PhD school. Of course, much of the reading and prep work was done during coursework, right? Right. Right? Well, the thing is, I have been at my University for FIVE years now, so things start to run together; while this is positive, it also means I just can't remember absolutely everything I need to know. I just can't. Perfection is unrealistic; and at this point I just want to pass. I will even revise if need be.

I have been prepping for this nasty one-month pits-o-hell to culminate, and the thing is, I keep having to do two things:

1.) Remember why I am doing this
2.) That I am excited to do my project, eventually.

I have had two nervous breakdowns, where I really thought I should quit graduate school, while I am ahead. I am not going to do this, but I think, as my lovely baldressed friend has said, "There are unreal expectations for people in academia," or something of that nature. And I have to remind myself, I will never have read everything. It just isn't possible. I also have to remind myself, to quit trying to out-queers A.) Other queers; and B.) Straight folks. It is too exhausting, and I am not that good at it. I realized the other night, while thinking about queer-femme identity, that I really shouldn't even be allowed to do the research based on my current appearance and attitude. Basically, I am exhausted...when people asked me what I was dressing up as for Halloween, I said, "I am putting on clothes that are not my pajamas." And I meant it. If I don't have to, I prefer to wear my sweatpants all day long. Not very femme of me. In fact, I put on bronzer today, and thought to myself, "Maybe this will make me look undead." Like I look dead, and thought makeup was somehow going to fix that.

But femme identity is so much more than visual presentation, or, "looking like what you are." But I feel like femme is rapped up in camp, in a performance of queering femininity. So what does it mean when I really can't imagine myself even leaving my apartment for a day (or three), let alone trying to femme it up when I leave! It's like, I just can't do it: putting on eyeliner seems like both a necessity; and an incredible burden; where if I don't wear it then another femme lesbian is going to notice and pull my funding...wait...I mean, take my femme card away.

But then, that is exactly what I want my project to focus on, that femme-ininity doesn't have to be a competitive thing, femme women shouldn't buy into the same ideologies that govern heterosexual female relations. It is more complex than this, I promise. But coming from a dead person, this is pretty good so far. Maybe my idea needs some bronzer too?

Kenneth Burke: Blog Two, aka: You should probably stop reading now

Burke 2: “But speech in its essence is not neutral. Far from aiming at suspended judgment, the spontaneous speech of a people is loaded with judgments. It is intensely moral — its names for objects contain the emotional overtones which give us the cues as to how we should act towards theses objects…to call a [wo]man a friend or an enemy is per se to suggest a program of action with regard to [her]/him”(177).


Since last class I have been trying to decide if I am a materialist or an idealist (or something else entirely?) To me, these two aforementioned terms are too polarizing, but because I didn’t even really know what they meant, I figured I would spend some time with them during this week’s reading. This is also in light of Foust’s asking me to think of what to do with multiple and competing perspectives, which these different lineages of philosophy have.

The reason I bring this up, in the context of this quotation, is that to name or claim a certain identification with one of these terms is not a morally neutral act; meaning, claiming a materialist identity means something beyond the saying of it. From a critical cultural and performance aspect, it makes a lot of sense to think that speech and the signs that compose speech making, would be situated in larger contexts. Judgments seem to arise from our orientations, which are facilitated and maintained through our various contexts. To Burke, it seems the greatest context is that of piety, not only religious, but the devotion to what is right and wrong. To Burke, it seems this orientation guides the majority of our speech patterns.

But it isn’t that words, signs, symbols, speech are only contextual—but they are laden with emotion and affects (or the pre-linguistic impulse.) Maybe these too are based on context as well, and apt to change. But naming something evokes certain emotional currents in and through the body, so that a name has a visceral response. I am sure that my dog does not know what a name is, or even what “her” name is. However, when I say the sign, “Indigo,” she looks up. Her ears perk up and she often comes over to me. She does not know I-N-D-I-G-O is her name, but she knows the feelings/responses she gets to certain stimuli (my words/touch etc.) Is my dog’s name moral? In some ways yes, because I was the one who renamed her, when the name “Pepper” seemed too banal, and almost platitudinous for her black and white spotted coat. While she is a dog, there is still an amount of power that I am able to wield over her. Something similar can happen for the names we give people, the names we categorize them as— brown, black, white, gay, straight, friend or enemy. We have visceral responses to names, they can evoke a myriad of thoughts and feelings, and by labeling something as different or other, we are able to separate it, orient ourselves away from it, or towards it, or left wondering what to do when orienting oneself one way works in one situation and not another.

So am I a materialist? No. Nor am I an idealist. Materialism seems too intertwined with Marxism, and idealism is too tied up with well, ideals and not enough with material realities. But material realities are only understood through the ideas that make them what they are. So what’s left? Post-structuralism, with an intervention by queer/feminist scholars of color? Seems fitting to me. As for competing ideas and having to make sense of them—I think most ideas work well in tandem with other ideas, so that we can combine materialism and idealism, and post-structuralism, and feminism to allow ourselves an even deeper understanding of something. I think this has to be the case with naming something and with language more generally. Having multiple approaches to understanding language is useful, and it isn’t as though there are completely infinite options, but enough to really dig through the depth that is language making/using. Would Burke agree? I don’t know, but he’s taking on a huge project, so I can’t imagine he would be totally closed off to the idea of multiple interpretations, orientations, and motives.

Kenneth Burke Blog One

Blog One: Permanence and Change, “Orientations.”

Orientation is thus a bundle of judgments as to how things were, how they are, and how they may be. The act of response, as implicated in the character, which an event has for us, shows clearly the integral relationship between our metaphysics and our conduct. For in a statement as to how the world is, we have implicit judgments not only as to how the world may become but also as to what means we should employ to make it so. 14


Immediately, upon reading this portion of the text, I was drawn to Burke’s notion of, “Orientations.” After reading Sara Ahmed’s work on, “queer phenomenology and orientations,”(145) I see both Burke and Ahmed’s explanations of orientations as connected in intimate and important ways. Our orientations situate us in the world, and if we are oriented towards one thing, we are often oriented away from something else. Ahmed explains this through the metaphor of a compass; if we are turned north, we turned way from facing south (Ahmed 145.) Not to diverge too much from the topic, but Ahmed extends this metaphor to the concept of sexuality, saying we turn towards some love/sexual partners, while simultaneously turning our back to other possibilities. She claims that it is this process that reproduces heteronormativity.
While in a different context, I think Burke is making a similar claim: We make judgments about the world; these judgments are distinct and pull us in certain directions, while pulling us away from others ways of thinking and being in the world. Thus, our orientations are interpretive responses to certain events, or patterns. Our orientations are socially mandated, although not necessarily prescriptive. We find people, thoughts, and “machines,” to identify with, often based on our previous experiences. He explains this through the “chicken” metaphor. My yoga teacher described it this evening as the circular way we move through the world. She explained that when we come to our yoga mats, we disrupt the circular momentum in which we live. I think yoga has the power to reorient us to the world in different ways every time we come to the mat, experience that moment; we may be able to reenter the circular pattern differently. We may be able to approach a negative situation more positively, confront marginalization and injustice, and actually work towards liberation.
As Burke says, “Whenever there is an unsatisfactory situation, men will naturally desire to avoid it”(9). But how do we classify an “unsatisfactory situation?” Orientations, to Burke, often seem to be grounded in a religious, specifically, Christian context and moralistic structure. Gravitating towards a moral structure/conduct that emphasizes values such as, the Ten Commandments, guides experience, expectations, and choices. An orientation towards this sort of moral structure can collapse the possibility for other worldviews to exist/coexist with it. So often we hear that we fear the unknown, so we turn away from it and cast judgment. But in many ways, even this phrase is an orientation that in its utterance allows for an orientation of divisiveness.
However, according to Burke orientations are not fixed entities, however we do often become enmeshed in them so deeply that they are naturalized. Sometimes these orientations are harmful to one and to others who do not fit the order. But we are not simply doomed. We learn from experience, we make sense of the world through what we identify with; we orient ourselves to the world and others in specific ways. Like Ahmed, I wonder how orientations, especially in terms of sexual orientations, can draw us together or separate us. How do our identifications with one individual or group suddenly define us, and if we do not identify that way we become exiled from that group. For example, if my orientation is towards someone of the opposite sex, there is an assumption that it has always been that way and will always be that way. This reasoning propels heteronormativity, because it just seems natural to be oriented towards one thing (an opposite sexed individual) and away from another (same-sexed individual.) If we thought of orientations as fluid, what possibilities could be opened to us for disrupting the status quo, involving sexuality or any other marginalized identification?

Ahmed, Sara. "Queer Feelings." The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York:
Routledge, 2004. 144-67. Print