i worry so often - is the goodness in me a veneer. a rough white spackling of champagne toasts and friday evenings and too-quick jokes. i feel i am always building myself back up again, always trying to stack boxes on top of a rotted foundation. i mutate myself, hoop-jumping to some semblance of normalcy by journaling and eating right and “trying harder”. try as i might: i know the form i began with, and that always feels more permanent. i was born as an anvil. i could never be the weightless sword.

the happiness and the joy is malleable, fragmented. but the despair? the despair remains. every time i drag my fingers down the tide of my soul, like black sand, i watch the sapphire grief glitter in the moonlight - somehow always-there, in despite.

having taught preschool for a long time one of the (many) things that always bothered me about conservative values is the rallying cry of “protecting the children”. in my experience in the classroom, these parents often present with a strange dichotomy of “fear-of-the-hypothetical-sexual” versus their casual and comfortable acceptance of real violence.

you will listen to a parent merrily tell you: oh i think spanking is the way to go. sometimes they will even suggest you, the teacher, spank the kid if this infant misbehaves - it makes the hair on your neck stand up. you, meanwhile, have never needed to injure a child to control a classroom of 30 of them.

this is very often the same parent who is mortified about the body. they can handle their child’s mortification, but not their own. simple, basic-use plain language for genitals is abhorrent to them. “that dog has a penis” - a neutral statement, just a child making an observation like any other - is usually punished or treated as a swear word. the child (particularly a girl child) is taught to refer to their own body in objectification: “my cookie” “my button” “my ding-dong” or other obfuscations.

this is, according to many conservatives, an effort to “protect the innocence” of children. the implication here is that even an acknowledgement of body parts is tantamount to pornographic depictions of sex. (it additionally implies, of course, that sex or any age-appropriate acknowledgement of sex cannot be innocent or without sin - but we will leave that discussion for a different post). teachers, however, on our ever-dissolving islands of sanity, want you to know that plain language can protect children, as it gives them the ability to discuss their own bodies (and potentially any abuse).

it will not surprise you these fearful parents are very often the same parents who are wild-eyed about the acknowledgement of gay or trans individuals. not even in an in-depth discussion - we aren’t allowed to mention that nonbinary people exist.

the parent often wails at me. they cannot conceptualize having that conversation with the child. how will they tell their kid about gay people! any discussion on this matter will encourage their child to be depraved, lose their innocence, “turn gay” or somehow otherwise perverted.

any teacher here will roll their eyes. kids don’t actually care, unless you make them care. i wish we could make them care - that there was some magic switch to flip where i could force them to have the same passion for math as they have for pokemon. children do not have the same shame parents have until you teach them to.

the conversations these parents fear so much are incredibly, painfully easy. you say, “yeah, some people have two dads, or a stepdad and another dad. some people have two moms. some people have a mom only. families can look very different, but what’s important is that you’re loved and safe.”
you say, “yes, that is a vagina. yes, that is a penis. yes, a penis like on your dog. let’s leave our clothes on during school, please, we’ve talked about this.”
you say, “thank you for telling us your daddy used to be a girl. that’s very special. however, we’re talking about math right now.”

(i’ve spoken about this before, but i do believe a large portion of the “protect the children” fear stems from the fact many conservatives see queerness as being solely about sex. while sex is an inherent, important part of our lives; we should be able to talk about our partners with the same neutrality as straight people do. it is so normalized for straight couples to say that they’re trying for a baby - to actively admit to raw sex - but a gay person admitting to even having a partner can be very politically or professionally dangerous. and all of us have, at some point, probably met the stranger who says how does that even work about our bodies or sex, as if we owe them a dictionary on our experiences).

we have people in powerful positions in the government defending a parent’s right to actively strike an (innocent) child, but horrified by their child being exposed to gay people. in certain states, parents are given almost complete free reign to abuse their child at home. often these are the same states with some of the strictest rules against sex education or queer expression. (we don’t have time for the gun conversation, but you can fill in the blanks).

one phrase always ends up haunting me - when a parent defends their right to hurt their child with i lived through it and i’m just fine. isn’t the point of being a parent to protect our kids from what we experienced? isn’t the point to do better than the generation before us? why even have a child if you’re not going to show them a better life than the one you lived?

i don’t know. i was hit quite a lot. i was raised in a very strict catholic house. i don’t think the hitting ever taught me anything except to lie and hide and sneak around. i was raised thinking gay was a bad word.

i still turned out like this - a person who wants to actually protect the innocent.

** If you have had an unexplainable experience please put it in the tags I love finding out someone else also just has a Real Ghost Story

people have to make their own choices and make their own mistakes and you know that but you’re on your third gin cocktail.

she’s almost-angry while she talks. “he took the train with me. all the way home. it’s an hour in the wrong direction.” she’s got a bright yellow raincoat and round glasses. she looks cute and thoughtful and like she reads books a lot. she’s his type and you know that.

the bartender rolls her eyes and points to you. “he drove this one to her grandma’s house. six hours both ways.”

you were younger then, hadn’t ever kissed a girl yet. were still saying “bicurious” because of your irish catholic family. it was so long ago skinny jeans were still socially acceptable.

and you’d met him, and he’d been perfect. his narrow face and dark hair and his wry self-deprecation. and - okay, yes, the fact he was a singer/songwriter was also hot. you liked the feeling of sundays with him, the two of you noodling through his new songs together while you slowly learned to play bass guitar. you liked writing his name on your converse. you liked his ironic “mom” tattoo and his fancy coffee obsession and his scrappy handwriting.

you didn’t know, then, what kind of man he was. maybe he didn’t either; he was young too. you say it into your earl-grey-gin-something. “he has… a playbook, i guess. the things he does… he does it with everyone.”

she looks at you with wide, beautiful eyes. jesus christ, she’s young. “we stood outside in the rain, just talking,” she says. “i know that can’t be fake. i have a ton of, like. examples here. he’s a good guy. you should have seen him. i’m not, like, a complete idiot.”

did you play defense attorney with him like this? did you bristle when others warned you about how quickly he leaves women?

you gnaw the thin black straw and stare at the other side of the building, where his band is setting up to play. you have no true rage against him, but it’s not fun to watch him ruin other women. “did he get you a little stuffed animal yet?” yours had been a panda.

she stares at you and then nods, just once, stiffly.

you hold out your hand and start listing things, weighing them on your fingers. “did he tell you that he’d never seen someone like you, that you move like a dancer or something?” at her nod, you continue. “buys you ice cream and then drives up to the river to watch the stars? shows up at your place just because he missed your voice? takes you to the pet store to look at the fish?”

the bartender points at you. “don’t forget he does that little dog game he does.”

you close your eyes. you remember him in his stupid leather jacket, bouncing on his toes. he’d gotten the petstore clerk to allow him to handle a ferret. you had vibrated with joy, wrestling the noodle bodies from hand to hand. and then he’d said we’re going to live together. we’re going to get a big dog and a big lawn and -

“you get into a fake fight about what you’ll name the dog,” you monotone.

“chili,” she says. she sets her jaw a little higher, and you catch a flash of muscle clenching. “we settled on chili. it’s gonna be an irish setter.”

the bartender snorts while she maneuvers deftly through making a batch of espresso martinis. “sounds about right. now i’ve got two rotties, but when that shit happened to me? we chose Portland. and we were gonna get a samoyed.” she snorts again. “as if he could afford that grooming bill.”

you had actually started that conversation in the pet store. you wanted a big, slobbery dog. a mutt, but a big mutt. something mastiff-like. something that you could walk alone at night with. your family has a tradition of “letting the dog name itself,” where you’d write all the potential names on a piece of paper and then throw them. whatever the dog went to, it’d be the dog’s name.

but he had said name it something girly since it’s so big. he suggested Lavender or Pansy. at the time you’d thought it was funny and cut and sort of sweet. he wanted to pick up a dog from the ASPCA that weekend, he said. i’m gonna go get us Lavender. you hadn’t learned yet that he would promise you a river but never even deliver a raindrop.

“it’s like this every time, babe,” the bartender says, not unkindly. “i’m sorry. i’ve seen too many like this, and you seem like a sweet kid.”

the other woman bristles. “i’m not a kid. thanks for your advice. but.” she stands up, slaps a ten down, stalks away.

the bartender looks at you and holds her hands up and shrugs. you shake your head and look down into the drink, stirring it idly.

“do you think he’s written her the four lines yet?” the bartender asks, pushing a drink to someone.

you almost flinch, but don’t. you’d been in the back shed, practicing together. he said he had a present for you - the beginnings of a new song. really just a couplet more than anything, barely more than 30 seconds. it should have made you feel glorious, feral, glowing.

but you had stood there, realizing you had books of songs about him, none of which he ever agreed to play. the song he’d written you had floated through the room and you felt strange and disconnected and insane all at once - it was such a vapid, stupid stanza he’d made. and then he said that terrible phrase - i love you babe.

and you had been suddenly both very out of your body and also very present, thinking: oh my god this guy is a buffoon and i’m wasting my time. the spiralbound notebook with pages of poems and lyrics and stories you’d written for him is now stashed in some rubbermaid. you’d wanted to burn it at first, but the effort had exhausted you.

the four lines of song are usually pretty banal - something about her eyes, something about her smile, something about how she’s special. but they work. they always work, because people want to believe in the magical commodity of love - that it cannot be manufactured.

later in the night you watch that man get on stage and sing punk rock to a thinning crowd. he takes the time out of the setlist to try out a “new song” that goes out to his girl in the crowd, all of 30 seconds of music. he says he likes her eyes and her smile and she’s special.

you think about stopping her physically. you think about showing her the group chat of exes in your phone. you think of how young she is - maybe 22? - and how you, at 22, would have told your current self fuck right off. you had believed it too, after all. people need to make their own choices. besides. maybe you’re wrong. maybe this time it actually is that precious, starry, once-in-a-lifetime love.

you see her kiss him afterwards, her cheeks pink. it looks like a puppy being swallowed by a wolf. you have to check the floor to make sure no blood was spilled.

i miss when “don’t normalize this” actually meant something. i miss when we would point out toxic thought patterns and note “you’re romanticizing something tragic”. i miss when you could actually call something antifeminist and you’d be taken seriously. what actually happened.

no, it isn’t fucking normal we have teen girls saying “tee hee girl math girl dinner i’m just a girl.” no it’s not fucking romantic that your man lured you away from your hobbies and your career so you could raise his children and rely on his financial support. yes it’s fucking antifeminist for you to say “i’ll explain this mathematical concept so the girls can understand it”. just because you put it in pink and make it wear a bow doesn’t mean it’s a safe little doll. it’s still the same wolf.

you are being taught to casually accept gender essentialism and bigotry as the natural rule of order! you are being taught to self-admonish and self-control! you are not just being boiled! the water has practically evaporated! this is no longer a thought experiment, my love. this is a genuine problem.

1. lately i’ve been a feminist killjoy.

2.
i pirate all my media, and therefore am not familiar with most tv commercials. i went to a superbowl party. around me were appetizers and bean dip and wine and the rolling movement of people talking - and meanwhile i was sitting there, stonefaced and bonechilled. the extraordinary, willful, in-your-face sexism and racism of advertising. what an odd whiplash: the warm and smiling hosts handing me nachos - in the background, some casual repetition of conservative gender roles. more than once i had to turn to my girlfriend - are you seeing this?

3.
often i think of how rainbow capitalism is a canary in a coal mine. i think of what one google employee said when they took down their “don’t be evil sign” - he mentioned that while it hadn’t really done anything, the removal of it was… eerie. it isn’t that i needed pride-themed fast fashion items from target. it’s that the pushback to said items has now resulted in the company’s looming silence. it’s that the pushback worked. target is now among the list of companies aiming to “roll back” DEI initiatives. a false friend, i guess - but a bellwether nonetheless.

4.
i remember five, ten years ago rolling my eyes at the faux-feminist faux-activist stuff advertisements would put out. i mean, who can forget that pepsi ad, oh my god. i remember girlboss anthems and lukewarm representation. but it did seem like someone was, you know, trying to be thoughtful. but if we follow the money, i think it’s fair to say it used to be a good idea to at least appear “politically correct.” now though - who cares? look at the man we chose for politics.

5.
i am working my girlfriend through her first watch of FMA: Brotherhood. it should be a sweet deal, and instead, i oscillate from peaceful to pacing. the ads drive me insane. i’ve been counting - at least three involve a man silencing a woman in some way. two involve a white man silencing a woman of color. in my least favorite, she’s sitting at her desk, trying to say the same thing he’s saying. but he keeps fucking interrupting her. ha ha. don’t even ask me what the ad is even for. i don’t understand the plot of the thing. i think the whole idea is just “man talks over a woman. buy our product” but with like, somehow worse pacing.

6.
on national tv, in front of millions of viewers, kanye posts an ad for his website that is selling a single white T shirt, a product titled HH. a swastika is emblazoned on it. people can’t even talk about how fucking terrible that is - their videos get flagged as soon as they actually say what’s happening. i am sitting at home staring at my stupid phone, just quietly stunned. we can make a rapist president, but we cannot say the word rape on most social media platforms. elon can nazi salute on television without consequence, but you can’t use the word “female” in your research grant request without being flagged. the enormity of it all is impossible to grasp.

7.
there’s a company called “his”, which sells things for erectile dysfunction. the ads are trucks and masculinity and very gender affirming. the same company has a “hers” line, which is a barely-tested weight-loss injection developed and sold by recently-rebranded absolutely evil company Eli Lilly. in the ad, women who are “overweight” grapple with their barely-visible stomach and smile, beautifully at peace while delivering their own “treatment.”

8.
i read a lot, though. i spend a lot of time online. someone recently said i write almost exclusively from a place of panic, which they didn’t like. it made me laugh though - can any artist say differently right now? still. still! i sat on that couch and watched how casually bigotry is repeated, with no real audience reaction. am i just radicalized and unfortunately very easily annoyed? am i the problem here? can’t i just like, relax and let it happen?

9.
we stand in line at the movie theatre. i make some snide remark about how the poster we’re looking at is basically “sexy trophy smiles knowingly at our hero, nerdy boy”. from behind me, some guy snorts down his nose. feminist killjoy.

10.
the thing is. i don’t want to be like this. it’s just like. in my fucking home.

idaho is already moving to repeal same-sex marriage. they say it’s an overreach of the governmental power, and that the law should be determined by “state’s rights”.

trump is expected to sign an executive order banning trans women in women’s sports. in the article i’ve linked there, he notes that the “biggest hand” (most applause) he gets is when he attacks trans women. isn’t that interesting.

i know my own father voted for him. my own father, radicalized by podcasts and bad youtube, voted for this; felt smug about it. he genuinely believes the dems want to “put christians in camps.” as if the dems could ever get off their silken asscheeks and actually do anything. i wish they had strong enough messaging to be misattributed like this.

my girlfriend and i worked the polls on election day, counting ballots. my father was eating noisily beside us. “see? you’re freaked out about nothing.” after all, i live in massachusetts: beautiful, expensive, no-working-transportation MA. the only state to go all-blue.

“if it’s state’s rights, you’ll be fine,” he said. i’d been sworn at a few days before this. a year ago almost to the day, i got hit in the head with an empty beer bottle. he said i was being dramatic. after all, first-adopter “the gay state” Massachusetts would rather explode than get rid of same-sex marriage. so what should i care, after all.

this man is a deacon. i guess he expects me not to get out of the car in any red state. i guess he thinks my relationship dissolves across certain borders. he doesn’t see why it’s concerning that i can’t leave, because why would i want to. who wants to go to idaho? who cares about the real, living, breathing people in idaho.

(but then again: who cares about the real, living, breathing humans on deportation planes. they’re not us. after all, my father came here legally. i am an american citizen because of birthright citizenship. i am even debating this because he immigrated.)

i texted my mom about it. i feel sick. no matter how much activism and research and outreach i do: it’s always shocking to see a room full of people who hate you so much that they take legal action against you. on my small ex-work-laptop, i watch the shaking hands of people in idaho begging their representatives to reconsider. the fear in their voice is palpable. no person should have their relationship threatened this way. the motion still passes, 46-24.

it’s all just happening so fast. i feel i am pushing my hands through glass pieces, watching the cuts before i feel them.

people often reference “first they came for…” when stuff like this happens, and while that’s fair - there’s a very quiet part of me that always says they’re already at your door, you complete idiot. the same force that governs trans women’s bodies will also be used against cis women. the censorship about supposed “DEI terms” will also be used to stifle science in general.

it won’t just be idaho.

i’m going to listen to the album of the artist you like even though he’s not really my vibe. i’m going to read the book you suggested even though it’s not a genre i usually enjoy. i’ll watch the show. i will try the recipe. i will play the video game, or at least watch a deep-dive youtube explaining the really-long lore so i have some idea of what’s happening. the movie you suggested is too scary for me, but - i mean, the wikipedia page is kind of interesting - look at the length of the section Controversy.

this is not a burden. i think maybe “burden” and “love” might be oppositional, the way sometimes “love” and “hate” are not opposites. a burden is a dragging. i love you because you brought me to the water, and it is the horizon of your heart. i love you because of your nervous pacing around the edges of the rabbit hole.

often you are right. some songs on that album remind me of the spark in your eyes. the book was really thought-provoking.

more i just want to understand enough that you can talk to me. that you can explain, in depth, why it matters that wheat has shallow roots. i love you, even platonically - your love of this thing leaks into me. i watch you, cautious and dancing, the shy desire for you to smear the colors of this thing into my life, too.

they are your colors, though. of course i want them here, in the marginalia of my life. you matter to me. i want them to crowd the little moments of my day. i want your fingerprints scattered throughout the rooms of my heart.

one time i spent about six months reading and researching a particular author, just so i could talk to one of my friends about him. i never got the chance. she betrayed me, broke my trust, and sided with her abusive ex-boyfriend. standing in the sodden floodplain of what she left over, some bitter part of me asked - isn’t that tragic? you have all this knowledge and nothing to do with it.

but i did have all that knowledge, though. when i reach for it, i still feel it glow.

i hate to say it because i’m neurodivergent and a chronic-pain-haver but like… sometimes stuff is going to be hard and that’s okay.

it’s okay if you don’t understand something the first few times it’s explained to you. it’s okay if you have to google every word in a sentence. it’s okay if you need to spend a few hours learning the context behind a complicated situation. it’s okay if you need to read something, think about it, and then come back to re-read it.

i get it. giving up is easier, and we are all broken down and also broke as hell. nobody has the time, nobody has the fucking energy. that is how they win, though. that is why you feel this way. it is so much easier, and that is why you must resist the impetus to shut down. fight through the desire you’ve been taught to “tl;dr”.

embrace when a book is confusing for you. accept not all media will be transparent and glittery and in the genre you love. question why you need everything to be lily-white and soft. i get it. i also sometimes choose the escapism, the fantasy-romance. there’s no shame in that. but every day i still try to make myself think about something, to actually process and challenge myself. it is hard, often, because of my neurodivergence. but i fight that urge, because i think it’s fucking important.

especially right now. the more they convince you not to think, the easier it will be to feed you misinformation. the more we accept a message without criticism, the more power they will have over that message. the more you choose convenience, the more they will make propaganda convenient to you.

they made rotting a real human emotion, by the way. you too can experience an extant form of decay. just tell the truth and have nobody believe you. look a loved one in the eye and see the little flicker of doubt in there, the sad turn of the mouth. watch them weigh the significance of love, of trust. listen while they say i know you think that’s true, but…