bang
it’s hit.
i was at the sly fox the other night. it wasn’t like those nights i remember from when i was new around the place; i had people to talk to, those i came with and a few others i was delighted to catch up with. but it wasn’t like before i moved out, either. these days i know half the room, i expect, but that just meant a lot more people to remind me that i don’t really know them.
at the time i thought it was my fault, as i tend to for a while. i assumed it was about certain incidents i’d been involved in, where i’d had to stand up for things which made some of these people uncomfortable. being scapegoated isn’t exactly unfamiliar to me, but i still do what i feel i have to.
but now i see that, while my status in the community was likely affected by the outcomes of such incidents, those very outcomes were conversely affected by the perception of my status.
but what is this status that i am so vulnerable to? it seems to have to do with the fact that i’m no longer a spiky haired nunnery inhabitant who gets seen around everywhere because half the suburb lives in my lounge room. shaking up a tafe student association would probably be a respectable activity if anyone knew about it, but it just doesn’t have the same ‘cool’ factor as running rubber and latex workshops.
because of this, i am listened to less, supported less and am more vulnerable to scapegoating when convenient for others who still have such status to fall back on, and indeed to stockpile.
it seems though, that it’s not even all about whether what i do is respected. how i present myself seems to have a huge effect. these days i don’t have the privelege of ducking home to dress for an evening out, i turn up to the sly in my day clothes. as i’ve noticed before, one gets treated rather differently in a big bright dress than one does in a nice tailcoat, or frankly anything involving a tie. as nice as it is that i get lots of compliments from the boys on the dresses that i happen to enjoy, it’s quite sad that the majority of girls can’t manage to look in my face if i’m wearing colour. surely it isn’t about the meat market? i know i don’t usually register its existance, but really. these are people i know, who surely remember that i’m the same person that i was when i last stepped out in black. it feels more like they’re afraid that saying hi will make me rub off on them, somehow compromise their own attempts to stay in uniform. whatever it is, people seem awfully insecure. it’s quite sad, some of these people i considered friends, and even worth a bit of effort. but if so much more effort is now required, it’s time to sit back and see if any of them are worth all that.
i do need a sense of community in my life, but if all i get is quiet awkward greetings with eyes sliding away, down and to the side, maybe i’ll pass. if i end up positioned right and people get friendly again, i’m sure i’ll forgive, accept, enjoy, appreciate their good sides, be grateful for how much easier it is to carry out my projects. there are certainly reasons to let myself get seduced into it all. but remind me not to forget the fragility of the position, the consequences, or myself.
again.
my strategy isn’t working.
for a while now, i’ve been trying to counter the irresponsibility of my friends and community by organizing more effectively. since the interest shown in my workshops and events was not being translated into support or even attendance, i tried to pin a few people down, to ensure beforehand that, if nothing else, the culmination of my hard work would not be me, bored and frustrated, sitting alone in a room. again. it’s happened so many times, and every one eats that little bit more out of my organizing capacity, my self confidence and my faith in humanity. is all of humanity this enthusiastic but fickle? i don’t know, but i’m finding little around me to suggest anything else.
so after six in a row of these highly anticipated workshops a while ago – some my girlfriend of the time showed up for, which helped with the boredom but not the more serious frustration – i decided to only run things when someone else has decided the date. that way, at least that person could be relied on. but no. i ran my generally very popular rubber and latex workshop at a particular time for my housemate, and she forgot about it. she expected me to remind her. my recent tap workshop got four rsvps but only one showed up to dance, and it wasn’t the friend who had asked me to run it. she had warned me a couple of hours early that she was stuck at work and didn’t know when she’d make it, but that’s the last i’ve heard from her. now the sewing day i organized to catch up with an old friend will hopefully go ahead with at least a few people, but she will be absent, and has sent me several eight am text messages working up to this fact. after a month or two of planning but the date being set less than a week ago. some solutions include postering king st, sending out reminders and charging fees – beforehand. these would possibly all help, but they raise the workload considerably, and they’re all unpalatable tasks for me. i could do it all if i had someone to help, but finding that, while single, is even harder. i need something else.
couple all this with careful management of a friendship with someone i know is only coming to grips with the concept of reliability, and random issues like coffee with a friend cancelled due to migraine – though with a day’s notice no less! – and it’s all a bit much. these problems are natural and absolutely understandable – in isolation. but when the trend nears a hundred percent, there’s something seriously wrong.
i was talking about this with someone recently. we talked of travelers and demanders. i am a traveler – i go to other people, they don’t come to me. i make allowances, i try to organise. i tell people that there will always be another time. i’m afraid that if i don’t, i won’t see the people i want to see, who i consider to be my friends, and i’ll be lonely again. it might be extreme but it’s not entirely untrue, i have been very lonely in my life.
i have always resisted wanting to be a demander. the term i found reflects how i feel about the role, but i can’t see a middle ground, and i’m sick of doing that much traveling. i need to look after myself, i want to be valued for what i myself value.
winter
spring is officially here.
maybe it really was the weather that prevented everyone from keeping their commitments all winter. i realise that this is the first winter i’ve stuck around for in a while – the last three saw me over on the other side of the world, in summer again. funny, when i don’t mind the cold, or at least not as much as the heat..
that may make things understandable, and maybe i should give in and hibernate myself a little, but it still doesn’t keep the rent coming in for that sustainable queer space. it’s not very sustainable if it can’t last the winter.
today was sewing day. one person turned up. and i was the only person to turn up to her website workshop on monday. she was the only person to turn up to my last rubber workshop too. one person turned up to my last tap workshop. this fortnightly resurgence meeting was the first one in three that anyone but me turned up to, except for the meeting before the dinner. that was supposed to lure people in – but only peter showed up at the meeting time, so we talked personally and nat cooked. if it’s just me and nat, we don’t have to advertise a meeting time.
but everyone is always so enthusiastic and pesters me to put things on. why don’t they show up? ever?
ouch
a friend of friends killed herself recently. i wasn’t sure if i’d met her, but it turns out i had, just the week before. she’d been talking to a friend of mine, i can remember the interaction but not what we’d said. when i’d left, she told my friend she was interested in icarus, but my friend couldn’t find my email so she never found us.
atheism: just not ‘cool’ enough today?
i was listening to a panel of speakers the other day at camp betty. it was called Barbarism Begins at Home, and whilst many interesting things were mentioned, and important issues raised, i found myself increasingly irritated by so many people’s lack of ability to talk about racism without making more generalisations. i think this is not a minor consideration, but a fundamental problem in how we deal with such issues.
unfortunately, due to the necessity of warmer clothing and my reliance on others in finding my way around, i couldn’t stay for the questions. on the way home, however, i thought more about another issue that had upset me. like the generalisations, i had sat there feeling irritated, but also feeling that i didn’t have the right to be. when i talked to others though, it came out as something important.
the second issue was with the very final statement of (i believe) Hegemony, Homonormativity and the ‘War on Terror’, which my memory has paraphrased as ‘maybe religious belief is the most radical thing left’.
i’ve heard this before. i’ve muttered about its obvious flaws of logic before. i’ve been scared that people actually seem to believe it before. there are some religious people you just can’t argue with, but when lefties and nonbelievers start saying things like this and expecting it to aid anti racism or religious tolerance, i start to get very uncomfortable.
i have two serious problems with this argument, as i have heard it previously. i wouldn’t want to make too many assumptions about this particular speaker, when i didn’t get to discuss it with him personally. the first problem is the smug belief of many people living within the bubble, that if something is not common within our little radical community, that actually makes it extra radical. i had trouble being accepted in the queer community when i had long hair. that is a serious problem, but it does not make my hair radical, even though hair does have the potential to be a radical issue. i felt marginalised when i lived in epping and nobody would come and visit, or help our campaigns at macquare because they said they needed a passport to get there, though i made the journey several times a week. maybe perservering with the losing battle at club mac could have been seen as radical; suburban living was just depressing. unusual does not mean radical, and we really don’t have enough hegemony to make something radical just because of its position within the bubble, when it is actually boringly common in the outside world.
i can understand that someone with a serious religious belief may also have difficulty fitting into the queer radical bubble of which i have become so fond since moving to newtown and achieving hair that gives out fewer wrong signals to this particular community. i sympathise, especially when that religion is one like islam, which is marginalised most places around here, not just in the queer community. though i’d like to think we’re better than some as we keep ourselves aware of the issues, there are certainly still many problems around inclusiveness which we need to keep dealing with. a difference, or a person, doesn’t need to be radical to deserve respect.
on to the second objection: i don’t want to rehash arguments against religion – there are many places you can read them, especially now we’re in a nice little nonbelief publishing boom. yes, religion tends to be heirarchical, patriarchal, warmongering, unprovable, incredible. what i want to know is why, when everyone knows these things, does noone stand up for atheism?
any left wing person, nonbelievers and religious people alike, can criticise the church. hillsong, opus dei, the mormons, jehovah’s witnesses, scientologists, catholics, anglicans, whichever form of orthodoxy they’ve even heard of. christian union, evangelical union, student life, css. the one one their neighbour adheres to, the one they were brought up with, the one they attend every week. the pope, pell, jensen, the archbishop of nigeria, fred nile, catholic labor parliamentarians, the liberals’ prayer group. conservatism, evangelicalism, evangelism, views on women, reproductive rights, discrimination loopholes, tax breaks. islam is a little tricky with all those issues relating to racism and imperialism, but we’re getting there now that spokespeople have been saying unfortunate things. in australia, judaism is fair game in some contexts, though in europe thoughtful people treat it just as carefully as islam.
why, then, don’t we stand up about our own fundamental beliefs about the world? there are stacks of atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, freethinkers, skeptics, rationalists, dissenters, deists, unitarians, pastafarians who profess to believe in the flying spaghetti monster, devotees of the invisible pink unicorn, adherents to jedi, even pagans, wiccans and satanists. almost anyone who identifies as any of these is a nonbeliever, or at least friendly.
phew! the rest of the argument needs more composition – not an easy question. watch out for the rest of the post!
