A eulogy for my brother

His memory is bittersweet. I recall the first time I behold his large forehead and open blue eyes as he looked up into my four-year old face from his perch in my lap by the bedside of my postpartum mother. I remember the days when I would throw a tantrum because I hated school and my little brother was always there to play with me, no matter how awkward I was. I was his sun, his older sister, and he fell into my orbit with his wide grin and habit of throwing peas into old ladies' hair at the local cafeteria.

I loved my brother with all my heart and then some. I missed him dearly when we were separated, me eleven and he seven. I wondered if he missed me, in the city with my mom, while I lived under the thumb of my draconian father and aloof stepmother. The weekends were cacophonous and ironically peaceful. The monotony of my schoolwork was broken only by the weekend interludes of the time with my brother. For two days we were together again, and the pull of our sibling love for the other was palpable in its normalcy. I look back at the times my jealousy overcame my young heart with such nostalgia. My rage for his luck of my mother's leniency, and his yearning for my natural book smarts. We were complements, he and I. I was the approval seeker, disappointed when my brother, who could not read, received more attention than I, She Who Devoured Books. My best friend, my partner in crime. He would pick up sticks in the alley behind my father's house at my dare, and stick them between the slats of our neighbor's fence to tease their anxious dog. When the animal bit and snapped and rattled the fence, we would laugh at our cleverness at overcoming such a foul beast and narrowly escape down the alleyway with our lives intact.

He flourished, one day, my brother. He moved out of my orbit and into his own. The height of the diving board became no match for his will and his drive. The things he would not do without the teasing of his older sister became the things he did to impress someone other than me. Perhaps it was himself he was trying to please. His slowness receded, and my best friend became someone other than my reflection and my twin. He read things I had no wish to. The games I played held no interest for him anymore. The weekends we spent, glued to each other's side, became two days in which we saw each other sporadically in the breaks between our own interests.

And I loved this person, this brother of mine. No longer my shadow, but someone new. I loved him not in the childish way that one loves their arm as a part of themselves, but in the way a sibling loves her younger brother, who succeeded where she failed, failed where she succeeded, and sometimes never attempted either success or failure in those things which she once did. We fought with the viciousness of cats at play, confident that there would be a time, usually the hour after, in which we loved one another again. Our arguments were petty: dishes and garbage cans and hair in the sink. But we loved each other still, and the time we spend apart made the times we compromised together sweeter.

But there came a time when my brother fell ill. His guileless blue eyes turned cold, and his head lolled towards the ground instead of towards the sky. His silly games became taunts, a madness, a game, in which there was no object or reason other than the expression of his agony. He did not care anymore for anything at all. Nothing but that which reflected his illness back at him. There was a fire that burned, not of passion, but of pestilence. And that fire was both literal and figurative.

That day was the day I knew that my brother was dying. He stood on the pavement, a mask over his face, his arm wrapped in gauze, and the firetrucks' flashing red amongst the facades of cookie-cutter suburban adobe. The air stunk of smoke and of water. All I smelled was fear, fear and a crushing agony that never abated. As they shoved his wrists in cuffs and I held my weeping mother close, I persisted in holding on to the false hope that this sickness was not terminal. That there would be a day again where my brother's eyes sparkled with glee and my mother laughed at our antics.

For a time, my delusion held. There were no more cuffs, and no more uniforms knocking at our door. We still fought over trash cans, hair in the sink, and drums during homework. But his jacket was still black, and his time was still spent looking into mirrors that echoed his madness, and the fights were of rabid beasts, not of cats. I ignored these moments that broke my lie. I would curl in on myself even as I held my head high as his words of pestilence and famine and death crashed round my ears. I blamed myself for this illness. I blamed my mother for her surrender, unwillingly given by necessity. I blamed by father for his absence and the passing of this malady.

And then there was the day my brother was dead. The laughing boy I loved like myself was gone. There is no anniversary of his death to mark by time. It was only recently that I realized that the foulness of rot was only gone with his physical absence. How do you morn a love greater than yourself? How do you see that which is dead in the face of a monster? And so I bury my brother today. My partner in crime, my love, and my hope.

This memory of love makes my reality of hate so much more unbearable. The monster that inhabits my home in his place says things that hurt, says things that make my own madness laugh and grin and beat a tempo of futility amongst the demons of reality traipsing through my head. I cannot bear to look upon this monster and see my own illness reflected back at me. This illness of hate and violence and twisted love. But we are one and the same, still, this new monster and I. We both hate that which has no name, she who wears my face and my sex. She that taunts and laughs at me for the things I wish and wish not to be, and he for the things he wishes he had or hates that he wishes or and hates that he does not have.

So I buried my brother. I dug a deep grave beside one I unwillingly dug, teaspoon by teaspoon, a long time ago. Here I buried that which was once was my brother, and will never be again, beside the shed skin of someone who was once me. There are no gravestones to mark this hallowed place; no mausoleum at which to mourn for the possibilities now lost.

My only reminder of this death is the emptiness of the monster's eyes as they gaze deep into the emptiness of mine.

False Consciousness or the Funeral of I

This post was inspired by Twisty's eloquent explanation of the rape culture, which I posted in her comment thread and preserved here in all of its agony.

For the thousand ways I resist the patriarchy every day, there are another ten thousand ways in which I give in, lie back, and let the flow of oppression take me away. I have never consented. Not once. Every single sexual encounter I have ever had with a man exists on the same spectrum of rape from the most obvious to the most insidious. Every time I do so much as shave my legs, simply because I have been conditioned to hate their natural state, my body is not my own. It is always a tool of the patriarchy, valued for its ability to titillate. I stand in front of the mirror plucking my eyebrows weekly, pleased with their socially acceptable shape, but horrified by the realization that I have no idea what I would like my eyebrows to look like if I was a truly free of this horrid cycle of self-hatred and mental illness. I love myself for looking pretty, I hate myself for looking pretty. I love myself for resisting looking pretty, I hate myself for resisting looking pretty. This horror is specifically constructed to take away our consent in almost every detail of our lives.

Every single one of us is sick. The society which has given us our life has taken away our identity and agency. Who am I outside of the short brunette with purposely tousled sexy hair? I have no idea. Simply the mental energy required to resist the smallest details of the patriarchy is beyond my grasp. I can float on top of this vast ocean of madness, but I am still a part of it and my toes will never be dry.

And I hate myself, almost as much as I hate the men who would use me and discard me as a temporary sheath for their penis. When I take the time to really think about who I am, and how I know who I am, its very clear that everything about me is manufactured for the profit or pleasure of someone other than myself. This sickness is like a cancer, a parasite, that encompasses my entire existence and being. Like Twisty said, it is Stockholm Syndrome. I am happy for being oppressed. I “consent” to oppression to be happy. All I can do is condemn the patriarchy while hypocritically adhering to it in ways unknown and known to me.

This violence will not cease in so long as we remain complacent that our choices are good and just because they must be our own. The entire structure of society is based on a convenient lie of consent. I did not manufacture this atrocity, I did not set the gears in motion. Sometimes I oil them, and sometimes I throw small pebbles into the clockwork out of futile spite. In my lifetime I will never be free of the patriarchy, no matter how far I run, and neither will anyone else.

My only consolation is that I am self-aware enough to admit my madness, to morn for a world that is terminally sick, and that my purpose is this vast mechanism is to be oppressed rather than to enforce and perpetuate the oppression. Why I live is not that because of the knowledge that my choices are my own, because that delusion is not available to a critical mind. No, I live with the assurance that in so long as I live, I will never consent to bring another into this existence of internalized agony, nor will I ever pretend that this is what I would want, if I was ever, even for a moment, given the free choice.

It's EVOLUTION because we're ALL ABOUT THE BABIES

So I was walking down the street today. I came across a dog. The dog was ugly, and it smelled a bit. I decided that I wanted to kick that motherfucking dog. I was going to kick the shit out of it. It hadn't done anything to me, but I still wanted to see it cry.

So I drew back my foot and kicked that damn dog. It yelped, and then made to run away. Someone else had already had my bright idea, because the dog's leg was broken, and by the festering look of it, had been for some time. So I shifted by weight and prepared for another kick, pleased that my prey could not escape.

Before my Converse could connect with the matted side of the mongrel, a police officer came out of nowhere. He whipped out his pad of ticket paper and prepared to levy me a heavy fine for animal abuse. As he asked my name and other vital statistics such as the middle name of the brother of the person I lost my virginity to, I could see the hate in his eyes. He shook his head every so often, as if my mere existence necessitated a random negation when his questioning would pause.

"Wait, officer!" I exclaimed.

His pen paused, his mustache twitched (all men of the law should have commanding facial hair), and his eyes, squinted in the glare of the relentless Arizona sun, met mine. 'Make my day, motherfucker,' they said to me. I intended to deliver.

"I have a biological impetuous to kick dogs! It's an evolutionary tactic, you see."

Steely gaze narrowed further until his craggy face was bisected by the squint of his skeptical eyes.

"Really, uh, sir, it is!" I shifted, paused, and regained my composure as my posture shifted and my hands animated to punctuate my relentless intelligence. "You see, when we were all cave men, dogs used to carry off babies. I know this because I read it in a fancy university study. Or perhaps I didn't, or the study was flawed, but you and I know that dogs could, at one point, eaten babies. So it's hardwired into humanity, officer, this need to kick dogs. We know that they could turn feral on us in their hunger at any moment. Even though dogs today don't carry off babies or go feral in hunger, they used to. So men naturally have the urge to kick dogs. It's there right beside the genetic code that makes hair grow on my balls. I couldn't help myself, officer. I did it all for the evolutionary success of my species!"

Gasping, panting, my hands and pedantic cadence paused. Surely my oppressor knew of my futile struggle with evolution. I had to kick that dog. How could I be punished for the continuation of the species?

And then the officer shifted his stance, dropped his notepad to his side, drew back his foot, swept his gaze up my shocked face as his mouth twisted into a gleeful grin, and he kicked the dog.

Americanism and Thought-Crime

Stop saying bad things about the world! Seriously. I mean, nothing's more American than being happy and loving everyone. Which means that me and the CEO of the company dumping toxic waste into the town lake are totally on the same page, man. We love each other, we're good neighbors. We both want some good old harmony.

Let's play the analogy game! Force is to Authoritarianism as what is to Democracy? If you guessed Propaganda you win the grand prize! It's called thinking. Sometimes it sucks. May cause feelings of intense hopelessness and pessimism. Use with caution.

Unhappiness, dude, that's not American. If the state of the world sucks, then don't think about it! In fact, ignore and alienate agitators. Like the government told you to. Or your boss, he's pro-American just like you. You ever hear of the Mohawk Valley Formula? No? That's good. Ignorance and bliss is the American way.

My slogan man, it's totally vacuous. Nobody's against it, because not supporting X, Y, and Z is bad news. Nobody really knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. All it does is keep me from asking, "do I support this policy?". But I'm not allowed to talk about it. Keep moving guys, there's no racism, sexism, classism, starvation, and disenfranchised here. It's a post-Feminist, post-Racist, post-classist society. Somebody told me so, and they must be right. I'm happier if I agree with them anyway.

So, do you support our troops? Well, you say, it's not like I don't support them. I've won. It's all Americanism and Harmony. We're all together, empty slogans, blank faces, corporate uniforms, daily grind. Join me, and together we can make sure that nobody ever talks about that nasty class struggle, racist, homophobic, sexist, exploitive, corrupt "issues" ever again.

Don't Call it War

Stop calling the Iraqi Conflict "war". If you have to call it anything, it's a Military Occupation. The war was over when the Iraqi military surrendered years ago. It might sound like I'm harping on a stupid and pointless question of semantics that does nothing to alter the framework of the debate. However, the use of the word "war" is very important if you happen to be a Republican.

"War" implies a grave threat. When the American public thinks of the usual war, we think of a conflict between two nations, or many nations, in which the losing party's surrender will result in the massive loss of human life and the potential shifting of borders. Even as recent as the Cold War, the consequences of war have moved borders and made the inhabitants of one nation suddenly citizens of another. The term "war" as it applies to Iraq is therefore, inappropriate. "Failure" would result in the rise of a new dictator--a powerless dictator, given that the infrastructure of Iraq is still in shambles and its population is impoverished and unlikely to support continued warfare. The price of "failure" in Iraq, for the Western world, is nothing compared to the price that Iraqis have paid, and will continue to pay for generations. Between a dismantled infrastructure, the leveling and loss of historic monuments, massive loss of life, and the poison of depleted uranium missiles, the occupation of Iraq has taken a very hefty toll from the innocent civilians of an already poor country. No such horrible fate would befall Americans if the occupation "failed". The use of the word war implies a somewhat equitable consequence resulting from the struggle of two or more equally powerful entities. Thus, the use of "war" is inappropriate to describe a situation in which a wealthy Western nation occupies a Middle Eastern country suffering from poverty and persistent civil violence.

Furthermore, "war" is a romantic term, attracting patriots and idealistic high school graduates who want to serve their country, and the political leaders that cloak their stock gains in nationalistic pride. Republican supporters call President Bush the "war president", would this title be as romantic if Bush was a "military occupation president"?

In a "war", we can justify autocratic leadership. We can sit idly by while liberties are sacrificed and foreigners are brutally tortured in our military prisons. We can excuse economic woes at home because of the "war" which "must be fought". Our "war" justifies airplanes loaded with hundreds of coffins of the Americans who never will make it out of their twenties. Can anyone say that a military occupation merits the same sacrifices?

"War" fashions heroic tales of valor. "War" creates glorious myths of an underdog fighting to protect itself and its freedom. A "war" illustrates nefarious villains would would stop at nothing to see the the destruction of our homes, and who have the means to accomplish this diabolical scheme if it was not for the brave actions of our military. In a military occupation, our heroes are overstressed youths raping each other, throwing puppies over cliffs, and committing suicide en masse. In a military occupation, the underdog is a nation run by oil barons, mercenaries, religious nuts, and construction contractors. In a military occupation, nefarious villains are farmers selling their daughters into marriage at younger and younger ages to support their families after their opium fields were burned, urban youths allying themselves with others sick of the war and prepared to fight back, and many other nobodies with no hope of posing a real threat to those on American soil.

In sum, "war" is what the neo-cons want every American to call the situation in Iraq, because just a single word justifies atrocities that the true situation cannot.

Stop calling it a "war", and start calling it what it is: the military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. This isn't just semantics, this is a matter of global importance.

Dear Conservatives, I'm Pro-Abortion! And You Know What That Makes You?

Anti-American!

I really tire of the abortion debate. Even so-called liberals that I have contact with through various political groups always claim to understand the motivations behind the Anti-American clusterfuck that is the conservative party and their holy quest to deprive women of fundamental freedoms.

I'm talking, specifically, about reproductive freedom.

You dudes: us women, well, we don't rape people in the same numbers you do. We can also chalk our violence up to mental deficiencies, rather than the self-perpetuating prophecy of masculinity. If you weren't content with the free pass the justice system has given men to rape women that I detailed exhaustively in my last post, your penis-buddies on Capitol Hill also would like us women to know that they value the "life" of a clump of cells, a fetus, or whatever you want to call it, more than freedom.

Because in case you haven't gotten the message: America's "freedoms" only apply to white men. Also, because I'm having a bad day, I tire of talking points and meaningless posturing.

So here it is, for everyone who cares to know: I'm Pro-Abortion. I don't dress my opinions up with fancy terms like "pro-choice" to distance my stance from the fact that I am supporting the systematic termination of a pregnancy that will result in the "death" of a fetus, embryo, fertilized egg, or a sack of cells that might be a human depending on your political agenda.

So, I admit that I am Pro-Abortion. Which means that if we wish to dispose of loaded phrases and cut to the heart of the issue, we're going to redefine "Pro-Life".

Note: graphic shamelessly lifted from Andy Singer's No Exit

First, you are not pro-life. Most conservatives support the death penalty, and holding enemy combatants in Guantanamo Bay until presumably the Apocalypse or nuclear winter. Killing people and torturing them isn't pro-life. Conservatives also shoot down any efforts to expand affordable health care, even to children. That's not pro-life either.

To liberal dudes who sympathize with conservatives: you might be pro-life. Sure, you might oppose the death penalty. You probably think water-boarding sucks. Your trendy liberal sentiments might also require you to admit that reducing the cost of health care is instrumentally important to the thousands of children who go without. However, you do share something fundamental with anti-abortion conservatives:

You're Anti-American.

Nothing is more intrinsic to the idea of Americanism than freedom. Not the hijacked definition of freedom which is used to mount submachine guns on a suburban Hummer, but the kind of freedom to go where I want and do what I please, provided I am not impeding anyone's rights. Probably the best and most basic exercise of freedom is that over your own body. Someone that does not even have the right to control their own body would, obviously, be a slave.

Now we've arrived at a point where sound bites are irrelevant. If I wish to be honest, then I must say that I am firmly and completely Pro-Abortion. If you wish to be "pro-life", you must oppose the unnatural and purposeful death of all of humanity. Your policies, instead encourage or allow war, torture, grueling child poverty, or a complete dismissal of the rulings of the Supreme Court. Anti-abortion activists and sympathizers are firmly and completely Pro-Slavery (of the reproductive variety) and Anti-American.

So let's just cut the bullshit, okay? I admit that I love abortion. Now you admit that you love reproductive slavery, and that you hate freedom. Fair is fair, after all.

(Cross-posted)

A Note to Self: Airlines Suck

So as I wrote in my last post, my university sucks. The only entity I current associate with, besides the U.S. Government, that now sucks more is Continental Airlines.

Although, I'm not quite sure that's entirely fair. I presume that all airlines are just as money-grubbing and price-gouging as Continental.

So here for posterity: Airlines Suck!

Also: if you have any doubt, even a small paranoid one, that you might not make your flight, book it right before you leave at the higher price.

Wait, what?

Yes, I know this is entirely contrary to everything that travel agents and people with shiny degrees and fat wallets will tell you. However, I'm college educated as well, and not in cahoots with any corporation or scheme to pad my pockets.

I'm just a fellow working-class citizen who got royally fucked.

I booked my flight from Phoenix to Quebec City back in May. With all the fees, my final total was just shy of $900. I felt triumphant, confident that I got the best price.

What I should have done is book a flight with Air Canada, who would have charged me upwards of $2400 for the same flight.

Why?

Well, because Air Canada is refundable. Those low, low prices fares you see advertised on the boob tube and shiny websites are low because if you cancel, they slap a huge fee on top of it and then apply a credit towards any flight taken in the next year with that airline, and only if you cancel at least three weeks before your flight. Otherwise, fuck you.

So if you canceled the flight because of financial difficulties, those difficulties aren't going to see an end any time soon. If you don't have any plans to take a trip to the tune of $900 in the next year, say bye-bye to your money.

Note to self: when booking flights, book it right before I leave. Not months in advance. A week before I leave. Paying an extra $100 or so is worth it for the security of knowing that if the unthinkable happens, if my university decides to be an ass and not offer my poor ass the means to educate myself or the person I'm going to see dies or I just simply can't make it, I'm going to be okay.

Besides, a week before I leave somewhere is generally not enough time for life to intervene and cock things up. As I learned today, three months is certainly enough time for the shit to hit the fan, especially if I dare to assume that my pubic university holds itself to the promises it made to me.

In conclusion, I'm having a very bad day.

Financial Aid Fail

So I have about a couple thousand in income a year. Blame being a full-time Philosophy student and an activist. Note to those who are interested: being a good person and learning about Shit That Matters does not pay the bills well. Thus, I live off financial aid, the contributions of my father to my tuition necessitated in my parents' divorce agreement, my scholarship, and my paltry savings from my last stint in the work force. I must also claim my mother's income on my FAFSA. Even when combined with mine, and the contributions of my father, our income is still significantly lower than the average American household, but not low enough that I qualify for anything. Namely, if it wasn't for my academic achievements, I would be completely and utterly fucked.

This summer, I had the bright idea that I should study abroad. Like all "middle-class" white students (I lied, I'm actually working class according to this diagram), I assumed that "seeing the world" was an intrinsic part of the college experience. Also, I'm desperately, and futilely, trying to learn French. The largest party of my heritage is completely (and inbred-ly) French and French-Canadian. My father never bothered to learn French from his fluent mother, or she never bothered to teach him. Learning French was a bit like reclaiming my roots. My entire motivation is hardly that pure, however. I am achingly jealous of my more linguistically talented friends who are fluent in Spanish, Chinese, or Portuguese, German, or Japanese.

Immersing myself in Quebec would be the fastest, and most enjoyable, way to learn French. I would also knock out most of the remaining credits standing between me and my French minor in the process. So, with promises from the International Studies Office that there was a lot of aid available, I made the $350 deposit and started shopping for airfare and applying for aid.

Here I am, about three weeks out from leaving, and I find myself at an impasse. My university, in a remarkable display of intelligence, misappropriated funds the previous year that it now has to pay back to the federal government. Instead of reducing the bloated and overpaid administrative costs, the university decided to hand down the charges to the students by increasing fees and decreasing grants and loans. Marvelous! How disgusting it is that I go to the second largest public university in America, and it still hasn't grasped the fact that it's purpose is to educate my poor ass instead of building second homes in the Foothills for the dean?

So this rad fem will have to cancel her trip. With a combined income of less than $30,000, no scholarships for the summer, and a bill of over $5000, the university "generously" offered me a grand total of $1000 in federal loans for the summer. They obviously expect me to fly to Canada, but live out of a cardboard box, beg for food, and learn magic to make the tuition and program fees disappear. This is the state of our education system!God forbid I enjoy my college years with a little excursion to somewhere besides the hell hole known as Arizona. It's times like these I wish my ancestors had stayed in Europe or Canada where I could actually get some funding for my poor ass.

Now, I won't even get my initial deposit back for some bullshit "administrative" costs. Although, I have found that some offices are remarkably willing to forgive "administrative costs" if you come into their office and make a big stink about the research you did for the university, your impressive academic record, your family's history with the university, name drop, and vaguely hint that you might have a lawyer than you can't afford in reality.

If it wasn't for the fact that I help my mother pay the mortgage, this kind of shit would make me transfer universities, professional ties at mine be damned. If there's one thing I have little patience for it is public institutions swindling me out of money because they misled me about the extent of the costs and failed to mention that they are more interested in paying their own bloated salaries than educating their paying students.