Without Borders

A Powerful Lesson in Not Taking it Personal

2011-09-09T11:11:00.000-07:00

Re-post from my other blog, in reflection of the initial responses to my last blog post on not shaving my legs. What can be possible if we don't immediately react in personal hurt from criticism, from other's upset? What activism can be possible if I can see that it's all working, and that upset is a sign of it working?
This post comes from a post I did on my blog at work with Cafe Gratitude.

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WOW! Over the past few weeks I’ve been getting my PhD in Not Taking it Personally. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a powerful declaration of what I’m up to in the world and how I am using my physical body to portray it and be the change I wish to see in the world. I am proud and empowered by literally taking Gandhi’s words into my life and make my life be dedicated to rupturing the oppressions that I feel and see in the world. How this shows up, is that I don’t shave my legs and I’ve recently tried stopping plucking the hairs from my chin. It has taken me several steps to get to this place of first noticing where I’m feeling disempowered, then making a difference, and now- speaking out about it. I thought that I had it all figured out, that I was on top of any feeling of unworthiness and truly in my power as a woman fully in choice and freedom around my body. Well, rarely are we ever done and finished with learning lessons. As I’ve heard time and time again- as soon as you declare something, everything else shows up.

Immediately after posting I found comments on my blog that were hateful and degrading to me and my commitment. I found that a link to my blog was mentioned on another website with dozens of responses and reactions to my commitment with disgust and hatred. I felt attacked, alone, diminished, defensive, angry… and then I recognized what work there is to do from my seat. My emotional reaction to the circumstances of their comments is my work to push through. It’s human to feel sadness with criticism and defensive with aggressive words… and it’s my job to stay in my commitments and weather the storm. As Kindred Spirit reminds me, upsets are not personal:

When my emotional experience is not pleasant, I often place the responsibility outside myself, leaving me a victim of some external circumstance. Upsets are wake-up calls and direction-markers, pointing out where I am being something other than oneness. Upsets are not personal. Freedom lies within. If I can realize that when someone else is upset it’s not about their circumstances or the actions of others or myself, I will be well on the way to mastery…. I hold upsets or unwanted emotional experiences like I hold the weather. There is nothing to resist because it is just passing through. (p. 19)

It’s a hard thing to take on… but not taking hateful words personally is incredibly freeing. If I can stay in my seat through the harshest of criticism, then I’m able to truly get through resistance and into transformation (both for myself, and be open to seeing it in others). I’m considering that their reactions to me are like the detoxification process. Being the change I wish to see in the world takes on another level of responsibility: not getting defensive or taking it personality when that change meets resistance. By being strong, keeping my seat, trusting that it’s all working… I see that this is my training for leadership in uncharted territories. This is my work in causing transformation in the world- I need to be ready for whatever storm comes back at me. Surely, if I am making a stand for something powerful, powerful resistance comes back to balance that out. “Breakdown as breakthrough” has a whole new meaning. I am inspired by my impact being so potent and recognize that this is the life that I’ve signed up for. It’s all working.

What criticism can you let go of? What are you taking personally? I encourage you to practice keeping your seat, holding your commitments through the storm of upset. Only there can you keep your power, and center unconditional love.

Why I don't shave my legs

2011-08-05T13:43:00.000-07:00

I'd like to speak to those who wonder why I don't shave my legs and how I have a beard. I'd like to say, for three reasons:

First, I chose to stop shaving my legs when I awakened to how much pain, anxiety, time and effort I spent on keeping them hairless. In my first Women's Studies course, we were given an assignment to take note of what products we use to beautify ourselves for the day. I suddenly had my attention on what I was doing for the last 10 years subconsciously and realized what pain it brought me, no matter what type of hair removal I tried. I realized the absurdity of the obsession that I had with such a miniscuel aspect of my existence, and realized that it was something seriously obstructing my potential to impact the planet. I found that my half hour a day shaving my legs (which is necessary to maintain against the strong, fast-growing fur that my body produces) added to almost 4 hours a week that I could instead be writing with, attending rallies with, being in service with. This is what first had me stop shaving my legs, which ended up becoming a powerful realization that I was trapped by my obsession with trying to look normal. All in all, I don't shave my legs because I realized that I was trapped by doing it in the first place. I'm limited when I try to be like others, and I was consumed by ensuring that no one found out my natural state. What I like to ask instead (which is not a simple question): Why DO women shave their legs? If you identify as being feminine- why do YOU shave YOUR legs? The question of why I don't do something is confusing when the rest of the world IS doing something. Typically we ask why the chicken crossed the road, not about the one who stayed behind. Get my drift? I'll address this more later when I talk about facial hair.

Second, I want diversity/difference between people to be truly recognized as and expressed as being beautiful and necessary. Only if I stand up for my own diverse qualities can I further us all recognizing difference as something to be celebrated. My hiding of my unique traits or my aim to blend in confirms the socially created perspective that it needs to be hidden, that it is wrong and that that "normalcy" I aim to be like IS natural and right.
I grew up learning that I needed to strike a special kind of balance of being unique and fitting in to be loved by others. While being taught that diversity is beautiful, I saw nothing but one body type and beauty norm named as truly beautiful. Those whom I identified with most were tossed aside, ridiculed, or assured that there must be something else that they are good at (examples: "well, at least you are funny" or "it's what's inside that counts"). Having body hair was and is considered to be freakish, or manish, with an association of perversity, of grossness, or that there's something fundamentally wrong. No child should feel like they are fundamentally wrong. No child should grow up trying to hide themselves. I am most proud of my decision and what I look like when I am in the presence of children. Every child or young adult who sees me and notices my body hair has evidence in their lives that women are not all hairless (which I believed when I was little and had me feel alone). The more I love my body as it is, the more I can hope to rupture the assumed agreed upon limits of beauty.

Third, I want people to recognize that gender is an illusion (specifically) and that we are often making expectations of others based on our standards for a socially constructed and unavailable "normalcy" (in general). To break that down: we're all making it up. Not only are we all making it (reality) up (as we only experience life through a limited scope, view and language), but we are making ourselves and others right or wrong on how we fit this view of reality. So here I am, a hairy child, believing that I am gross, wrong, alone... using all of my energy to cover up my natural self, frantically trying to shave fast enough so that no one knows that I grow hair, that no one knows that my body hair is so thick. I would spend over an hour before a date, trying to reach every last inch on my body with my razor only to feel utter shame when my boyfriend at the time pointed out a missed spot and grimaced. Perfected femininity was always beyond my reach, no matter the layers of make-up I wore, the hours I spent plucking and shaving my body and no matter the pounds of body-weight I lost through Jenny-Craig in high school or the specialty bras I wore to make my body shape just right as I lost body weight through that program. Perfected femininity is actually beyond all of our reaches, it's what keeps women forever running and forever hiding behind a mist of products. I was (and I see so many other women currently are) obsessed with the need to stay feminine and look female, which is defined by it's separateness from masculinity and maleness. As I've studied gender, sexuality and identity performance over the past 9 years, I've recognized what power these ghostly standards of the never truly defined "gender" have over all of us. I am frustrated with the hold that gender has in all of our lives, where it's continued perfected performance and our social agreements on it, has created the assumption of what is natural and unnatural, normal or an abomination, and right or wrong. To be honest, when I was growing up, I truly felt like there was something wrong with me... and I learned quickly that others felt the same way about themselves. Why are we all partaking in this system that doesn't serve us? Why are we fertilizing the soil of this invasive poisonous tree?

So to go back to my previous question: Why DO feminine people shave their legs? I'd love to know. I know that my excuse used to be "I think it looks better"... but then I recognized the socially created and agreed upon standards of beauty that held that thought together. Do I truly find it more beautiful, or did I grow up completely emerced in that it is beautiful? This is something that I am caught in every day, and it's the reason why I continued to (after 8 years of not removing body hair) pluck my chin of facial hair. I didn't realize how asleep I was to the connection between it all.
Then I met Amelia. I first saw Amelia in a performance by her burlesque troop. Amelia is of course, unforgettable. She is one of the most intelligent people I know, one of the most thoughtful and generous sweethearts in my community, and one of the most fierce and direct no-nonsense women I know. She is courageous and kind, daring and transparent. I adore her, and I learn from her. Amelia is a sparkle queen. Amelia plays a femme gender role while having a pronounced beard. In her strip shows, Amelia wears pure sparkle red lipstick and fills her hair with flowers. Her beard glows red in the stage spotlight.
One day Amelia asked me the question that I asked you above: Why DO you pluck your beard? I was stumped. I so subconsciously removed the hairs from my chin, that I didn't realize that it was something to not do. Meeting Amelia for the first time had me realize my inconsistency, but I felt justified in my somehow continued belief that I just don't find it beautiful.
When I heard myself say that, I realized that I was playing into the same game that kept me trapped in shaving my legs. I realized that I plucked every day, as a means to keep others from knowing that I even naturally grew hair there. I realized that it had become a trap, where I was unable to go without plucking in fear. I was scared of being rejected by others, scared of not being loved. I realized that I plucked out of fear, and that I was perpetuating future fear by maintaining the illusion of normalcy.

I stopped plucking the hairs from my chin three months ago, and I've developed a family of long brown hairs in a goatee like fashion. I'm seeing what it's like, sort of like a new hairstyle on my head. If I can truly step out of being afraid of it, then I am truly free. I feel that if I have the ability to walk both lines (hairy chin or not) without fear of judgement or wanting to look normal to some other degree... then I have the real freedom of choice in how my body looks, and if I like the beauty of this look or that look.

I am committed to getting us all to recognize the power that we have in our lives, and the impact of our continued choosing to go with the current flow. I am committed to us recognizing that WE'VE built these walls of separation and that we are calling the shots on what is right or wrong. My life is for being the change I wish to see in the world, and I know that change is often hard to be with. I invite you to look into what you've been perpetuating, what is hindering your fullest potential, what fear keeps you from exploring.

Rethinking "The Man"

2011-03-13T17:12:00.000-07:00

I've continuously heard and caught myself referring to "the man" as the problem in the world. Of course, "The Man" is a vague anonymous reference to a body-less entity created by my subconscious through gathering evidence from every bad decision every rich white guy in a suit has ever made.
I'm beginning to see that I've been making an assumption, which has really caused suffering in me. I've always seen "The Man" being the problem, that there is literally some type of person who is innately wrong, deep down evil, and out to blow up the world. I've associated the personhood of "The Man" being the problem... that if we could just get those people out of power, that we could put some so called opposite person in there and that we'd have a shift. I agree that we'd have a shift, but I'm starting to see that my obsession of "The Man" as the problem and not "the perspective" being the problem is having me suffer as I write off people as being evil or good. In my head I'm in the middle of a battle and so I'm always in defense, always looking for better footing.

Poorly scanned image comes from my book of diagrams.

When I approach the world always in defense, you bet I'll find evidence that there's a war going on. I've turned internally and have even been in defense of myself, not being certain of my own standing. Over the last 3 years I've actually deactivated myself on numerous occasions in fear of myself, in thinking that deep down that I'm an evil person. I fit the bill for "The Man" with my privileged status in many areas.
This view of the world isn't working for me; I know that for sure.
As I approach the world in defense, I enroll people around me to approach the world with caution. My fear and defensiveness might even look like aggression, as much of the fear in the world looks. I've created a battle in my head, which perpetuates battles going on in the world!
What were to happen if I could step back from my defensiveness and trust? What if I could get off of my fear and acknowledge that there are no evil people, only others being defensive just like me? Fighting war with war isn't working. Me being scared of my own shadow isn't working. For the sake of peace, for the sake of a peaceful mind... I'm lowering my gun before "The Man" does.

Thinking of now

2010-08-13T14:34:00.000-07:00

I just got present to something (and in the most literal way). This moment, right now as you are reading this, is the only moment of it's kind. Your perspective, your emotional response, the way the air moves, the slow degrade of the objects around you, this snapshot in your life and in mine will never be the same. We will never experience what we are experiencing right now. We will never see (no one will ever see) what we see now. I think of my grandmothers, who will turn 100 this September, and all that she's seen. I ask her what it was like to see suffragettes out on the streets, how she felt about vehicles, or the civil rights movement. She didn't care much for any of it, and didn't have much to say about it. "What a loss!" I think, that someone lived through all of these incredible developments and didn't look for it or didn't care about it! I think of all of these milestones in history (whether we think of them as good or bad) and then wonder how many of us are asleep to them. What can be happening right now that we are asleep to? I'm not saying that we should seek out all of the big changes and try to be there when it happens to say "I was there when...", but rather I'm saying that we need to be more fully aware of the gift that the present really is! Think about it- you are the ONLY one with the experience and perspective that you have, and this is the only moment like this that you will ever have! Whether you are soaking in a bathtub, walking to the store, chanting at a rally or reading a blog online... this moment is precious so try staying right here and don't wander off.

I had a friend in high school who had the most beautiful smile. I can picture her right now, daydreaming about her amazing dimples and the way her face lit up. She tried her hardest to stop herself from smiling, often times physically holding her lips down if she started to laugh. She told me that she didn't want wrinkles, so she tried to hold down her face to keep from making creases. I don't know how serious she was about it, but what I do know is that she was so thinking of the future- that she stopped herself from fully enjoying the present. As much as I am amazed at this, I acknowledge that I do it to myself every day in that I am always planning a meal for later while while listening to someone in a conversation. I dream of a big road trip I want to take across the country as I eat that meal I planned. Then while I'm traveling I'm thinking about the changes I want to enact when I'm back home. We are always living into the future, which is a function of human nature. As a practice, I encourage you to try out for one day fully enjoying and relishing every moment.

Right now there are molecules buzzing, life is shifting, materials are breaking down and layers of dust are landing on your shoulders. As simple and as mundane as every moment might feel, I am grateful for this moment sharing with you.

Crafty Thinking: the power of handmade

2010-04-18T17:18:00.000-07:00

Check out Radical Cross Stitch for more incredibly gutsy feminist threads!

I've been thinking recently about the power of "crafting". Ever since the industrial revolution, the world has moved towards a mass-manufacturing model, taking the skill out of many careers and causing heavy dependence from workers on corporations. Individuals around the world are stuck within the conveyor belt system, often not even aware of what is really being built, or for what purpose.
There is something incredibly powerful about creating something by hand. Although most often the person who knits does not house the sheep it comes from, or the person who sews did not invent the sewing machine- the management of the entire project using one's own hands fosters skill, independence and personal investment in the item.

While crafting has been dismissed by capitalism as a hobby not gaining capital, I see handmade as being a revolutionary tool. Making things by hand not only creates incredible variety and diversity, but it fosters community exchange and cultural appreciation and knowledge sharing. On master crafting site www.etsy.com sellers often talk about their process and mission behind their goods, describing the process and often even sharing the blueprints for others to make their own item along with their goods in their virtual store. (see radicalrags.etsy.com for examples like the image above) Teams on Etsy cultivate the community experience along with how-to workshops and forums and in-person meet ups. Crafters here work as a collective together sharing the etsy forum and most of them work off the grid, earning independently from each sale with a small portion going towards the maintenance of the site. Teams work together to give and gain exposure to like-minded artists without an exchange of money but added support on all ends. Crafting communities I believe are at the forefront of a new type of production that is both founded in the feminine and requires community. Keep your eyes open on etsy, I think I just convinced myself to create a feminist etsy team. ;)

What's complicated about the independent versus the mass, is that for people who do not have enough start up access or capital in order to create a career out of skilled crafts, most rely on large corporate production. This creates a dependency on multi-national industry and takes agency away from both the worker (who has no access to goods or training) and the buyer (who depends on affordable and easier to access goods to sustain themselves). Marginalized immigrants are only able to semi-escape the mass-made industry through selling to fetishism for the "native". These handi-crafts are often important icons of personal heritage and culture and are sold to tourists or those looking for "authentic ethnic" gear. This too puts those in a strangle-hold out of selling one's culture (or the buyer's perception of the culture).

With this in mind I've become weary of buying items from sidewalk vendors who sell "ethnic" bags, jewelry or scarves but drawn to support their strive to sustain themselves. (image to the left is taken by a tourist of Yakan) Everything that we own is cultural, it's just that White American cultures have become normalized and thus an "ethnic heritage" of Whiteness cannot be seen. Cross stitching is as much as a good representing culture as African wax print fabric. Each is representing cultural heritage and each is being sold as product, both as an item and as a symbol of authenticity and culture. Whether we enjoy these products based on the quality and interest in the item or consuming representations of the exotic... what I have come to recognize is that cutting out "ethnic" products from my diet cuts EVERY-SINGLE-THING out and that there is no clear border between fetishized consumption and honest enjoyment/need of goods.

Binary logic in technology~ enter www

2009-09-01T23:04:00.000-07:00

Online networks lend a unique new landscape for communities to flourish. I say that the world wide web is unique because it both closes off as well as makes limitless discussion, expression and interpretation.
Technology and online forums are both by their very making binary and rigid and yet forever expanding. Programs and websites, servers, forums and chatrooms all function within a coding system based within binaries of "yes" and "no", "correct" and "incorrect". Like computers, I imagine how everything that we experience online is through 1's and 0's, making up a grand metrix that looks like endless possibility and flexibility. In programming, this might look like: "If user presses the # key, flash the screen". Then the computer checks: "Is the # key pressed (Yes or no). Yes: Flash screen". Why is this interesting? Well, I find this interesting because it reminds me sort of how simplistic forms of technology (like moving pictures/movies) started with this similar binary sort of method of splashing up either white light or darkness on a screen with millions of pixels to create an image and make it move. If you look up close you can see that the entire complex film that you just watched was entirely shown with just a series of white flashing dots.
Although we have found color in our modern day moving pictures, I find it interesting to see how limited this method really is. Technology to me still feels like it is stuck in a binary approach, which does not allign itself well with non technological events like sickness and disease, species variation, cycles of the weather or evolution. So many aspects of the world live outside of a binary approach and yet technology has yet to really move past this.

Getting back to the internet. Although the foundations of the world wide web are still harnassed by binary laws of yes and no, I wonder if the internet is stretching those boundaries and helping in the creation of something new, something to finally get our imaginations to stretch further beyond binaries and even spectrums.
The difference between servers and clients are stressed as online games test the capacities for real-time online battles where users move too fast for the server to handle and users have different perspectives of the online reality. It is no longer a simple "yes" or "no", and is instead a series of varying realities. Profiles are created and then years later snippets of information linger on websites that pulled information from one page from another page. Websites are fragmented and disassembled and yet shared and re-produced to create Frankenstein-like discussions.
It is as if the speed of the www's growth has stressed the capacities of the "yes" "no" language. After so many decades of change in technological advances, I am intrigued with the potential shift from our binary foundations.

When Feminism Broke the Window of Cultural Studies

2009-02-12T15:42:00.000-08:00

I'm taking one official sit-in-class course this final semester of my Masters, and it is one that I avoided and dropped out of my first semester in the program: Transnational Feminist Cultural Studies. It's a good marker to have since I (the first time around) came to the class for two weeks and royally freaked out by how over my head the whole course was, and now it's very manageable.

I wanted to share an incredible narrative by Stuart Hall (one of the keystone theorists in the opening and founding of Cultural Studies) on their first true encounter with Feminism. This comes from his addition to the Cultural Studies reader in 1992: Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies.

"We know it was, but it's not known generally how and where feminism first broke in. I use the metaphor deliberately: As the thief in the night, it broke in; interrupted, made an unseemly noise, seized the time, crapped on the table of cultural studies. The title of the volume in which this dawn-raid was first accomplished-Women Take Issue- is instructive: for they "took issue" in both sense--took over that year's book and initiated a quarrel. But I want to tell you something else about it. Because of the growing importance of feminist work and the early beginnings of the feminist movement outside in the very early 1970's, many of us in the Centre-- mainly, of course, men-- thought it was time there was good feminist work in cultural studies. And we indeed tried to buy it in, to import it, to attract good feminist scholars. As you might expect, many of the women in cultrual studies weren't terribly interested in this benign project. We were opening the door to feminist studies, being good, transformed men. And yet, when it broke in through the window, every single unsuspected resistance rose to the surface- fully installed patriarchal power, which believed it had disavowed itself. There are no leaders here, we used to say; we are all graduate students and members of staff together, learning how to practice cultural studies. You can decide whatever you want to decide, etc. And yet, when it came to the question of the reading list... Now that's where I really discovered about the gendereed nature of power. Long, long after I was able to pronounce the words, I encountered the reality of Foucault's profound insight into the individual reciprocity of knowledge and power. Talking about giving up power is a radically different experience from being silenced."

First, I just love how he painted the scene, but second... I wanted to stop to think about how one would typically address such an encounter with critical engagement. In this description, Hall is checking his power, and awakening to the need to surrender space to truly allow another perspective to be of any real effect to the foundations of the former belief system.

Why do we insist on relying on the condition of the body to understand identity?

2009-02-05T15:23:00.000-08:00

Why is it that identity must match the body, or that the body is tied to identity at all? Who says what the body is and what identity it is attached to? Some of the biggest mainstream jokes on race plays on the White teen boy who thinks he is Black. Yes, there are ways that one is seen and treated- racism, sexism, homophobia & violence runs the show and keeps us all scared. Material effects keep us from being able to see that Blackness, womaness… that they are all inventions we can’t even properly define with certainty. By a transgendered person’s supposed transition from their correct gender to their desired gender, we give no value or truth to how they experience their identity. We are instead looking through an assumed truth of an origin, feeding evidence into the gender-body matching machine. Is it too far to question transexuality and the need to make the body be truly woman (as if it wasn’t already)? Why is manhood and womanhood tied to genitals as the truth? By correcting the body aren’t transexuals recognizing an inconsistancy of their body pre-op and their identity, giving evidence for their bodies being broken beforehand?

Who is to say that they aren’t men (and are instead transmen) or that they weren’t men? Who says what manhood is? Be defaulting to only being complete with surgeries, we are feeding the assumed truth of sex, and limiting who can access a complete self. Historically, before surgeries were performed, were “transgendered” folk incomplete? I don’t think so. Are today’s transexuals incomplete in comparison to chromosome-therapy-using-transexuals of the future? By letting in, we prove that science knows identity; that science knows truth. How do we shatter that? How far do we go to keep this charade running?

Who is this? Why should I care? Do we have anything in common?

2009-02-05T14:29:00.000-08:00

Hello, I don’t think that we’ve been formally introduced.

My name is Chy and I am in the Women & Gender Studies masters program at San Francisco State (which sounds a bit more prestigious than “SFSU” in my opinion, but it’s all the same!). I am also enrolled in a fantastic school of transformation disguised as a restaurant business. It’s called Cafe Gratitude and I work as their Admin Assistant (www.cafegratitude.com). I am completely in love with the company for obvious reasons that I will further express.
I am also a crafty crafter. I have my own shop at www.radicalroles.etsy.com where I have uploaded various special creations for sale. I love hodge podge collage patchwork meaningful useful things and I hope that that gets across to those who view my shop.

I’m finishing my thesis this semester on intersexuality and Crip and Queer embodiments through online expressions and community (with a transnational feminist framework). If you know a little about any of this, you can see my obsession with borders, boundaries, definitions and identifying through definitions. If you don’t understand any of that, know that I am intrigued with borders and I’ll work to speak English as much as I can. DOWN ego DOWN!

I’m a large White hairy woman (last I checked) who loves all sorts of genders, sexes, races, ages, (dis)abilities, nations, classes and religions. So that might make me queer. I’m living with the love of my life (Brian) for 5 years now and he understands himself as a male born man (last he checked) and so most people see me as heterosexual, which I understand.

Topics (in near order) of value to me: vibrators, Social Change, Feminisms, Queer Theory, sexuality, desire, gender, (dis)ability, transformation, activism, working at Cafe Gratitude, critical race theory, transnational feminist theory, anti-capitalism, homemade art, winterguard, colorguard, Twin Peaks, Arrested Development, Raw organic deliscious food from Cafe Gratitude, Dexter, raw Mexican clams, I <3>