wake up

There's a couple arguing in the courtyard of my apartment building. I can hear them shouting at each other. Well, mostly I can hear the guy shouting.

"Why are you hitting people?" he asked her.
"Shut the fuck up, I'm not even talking to you right now." She is audibly very, very drunk.
"I'm just trying to figure out what's going on. Why are you upset?"
"I fucking hate...*unintelligible*" A door slams. Twice. More yelling. Words vs. slurred gibberish. A glass breaks.

Trying to have an argument or worse, a logical, rational conversation with a wasted person is one of the most infuriating things of all time. It often leads to the other party drinking more to compensate. Because sometimes it is easier to just get on their level than to deal with them.

This argument goes on for about a half hour. I never could discern exactly what they were arguing about, but I don't really have to. Chances are, it's an argument over nothing that happens to people who care about each other, but who wreck themselves with booze. I haven't talked much about that lately, because frankly, I just got bored of rehashing all the same shit I was going through over and over.  I had some really, really terrible things happen to me last summer that I will probably talk about here at some point, but not now. It finally occurred to me after going through the events of the last year that almost every negative thing that has ever happened to me or someone I love was at least indirectly, if not absolutely, caused by alcohol or drugs.

2 1/2 years.  That's how long it took me to fully wake up.  During this time, I had long periods of quitting drinking where I worked on making a new life for myself without alcohol.  I started by quitting drinking for days, then weeks, then months at a time, getting really comfortable and rational and healthy, and learning that not only do you not need to drink to have fun, EVERYTHING is better when you don't drink.  And then inevitably convincing myself that alcohol wasn't the problem.   I would always start to feel overwhelmed with the emotions that had long been buried by my drinking.  The self-hatred, the shame, guilt, loneliness and pain would paralyze me.  I would experience pain I had drugged out of myself years before. And I would ache and hurt for my father and for what might happen to him.  And I would feel these things all at once.  I would enter into the deep isolation that comes with relearning how to be sober, and my addictive voice would convince me that allowing alcohol back into my body and my life for a night or a week or a few weeks would be manageable this time. That I had starting working out and eating well and taking care of myself, so it wouldn't hurt anymore.   So I would drink. And it would hurt.  And again I would stop.  And each time I learned once more that alcohol is like suicide for me.

I write this now because of the fight going on outside. And because of a person I don't even know dying recently of an overdose. And because I have friends who I see struggling with alcohol and food and self-esteem and anger and I don't know how else to help them. And because I can write it from the other side. Where the grass is so much greener.

The truth is, if I had known on the first day I started my journey to wake up that I would have to go through the amount of shit that I have, that it would take me four tries to get sober, that I would have to learn everything the hard way, that nothing would ever be easy, that I would have to learn this and go through the worst periods of my life in the middle of it, I would probably still be dead asleep. Or maybe just dead.

Anyone can have the life that they deserve.  A life free of the prison of depression and pain caused by addiction.  A life full of fun and joy and health and friendship and love. A life where you wake up in the morning and you are so glad to be alive.  Anyone can have that.  I am not in AA.  I don't believe that there is only one way to stop drinking or using if that's what you want to do. I don't go to meetings or have any rules or steps or dogma that I cling to, or judgements about alcohol for other people. I go to happy hours and bars and dinners and hang out with lots of people who drink.  But I don't ever drink.  I don't believe that there is a stigma you have to carry if you choose to live sober.  For some people blacking out and drunk driving and destroying their health one drink at a time is still permissible behavior.  I get that. It was for me for a really long time.  I don't feel like I am preachy about my not drinking, but I am very willing to share with people who want to know. You have to figure out for yourself what kind of life you want to have. What you will accept from yourself.  What you deserve.  A lot of times, you don't know how bad you really felt until you start to feel really good.

I only know what is true for me, and what works for me. I know that I am better than getting hammered and spending all my money on booze and crap food.  I know I am better than smoking cigarettes.  I know I am worth being fit and sexy and attractive and creative. I see a therapist about once a week or so.  I am totally honest with him about everything.  I workout five or six times a week. I eat quality food and sleep well and surround myself with positive people who care about me and who are also interested in being kind to themselves. I am not ever going to "get there," or be done with this. I will work on myself everyday for the rest of my life. And that is what makes me able to keep going. There will never be another Day One for me. The hard part is over, the rest is just gravy. I will be the perpetual tortoise. Slow and steady wins the race.  Just Keep Going.

I rarely even think about drinking, and when I do, it is mostly in situations like this, where I see someone in a state of pain and it makes me feel both sadness for them, but also regret for all the time I wasted in that state.  And then, in the context of gratitude.  I am so thankful I got out alive and still young and healthy and vibrant. I am so thankful that I am not the girl screaming at her boyfriend in the alcove outside. I am so grateful for my sober mornings and lucid evenings.  I'm so grateful for every task I do and word I speak with a deliberate, sober, present mind. Above all, I treat myself with compassion. And in that frame of mind, it is impossible for me to ever want to get drunk or hurt myself with alcohol ever again. I was not ever very sure of that part all the times before, but now, I fully believe that I am done with drinking forever. I love my life. I believe in myself, because I have seen my astounding ability to change my mind and body and heart for the better.  And I want to let anyone know who struggles with these demons, that you are not alone. I am here to talk, anytime. No judgement, no matter what.  Anyone can wake up if they want to. Anyone. Even you.

thirty-three

Thirty-Three, you were a sadistic motherfucker. You taught me a shitload of life lessons that I didn't know if I had the strength to learn.  You tried to break me, but I just wouldn't break. Finally, finally, I listened. I learned.  I figured it out... who I really am, what is truly important, that I can choose and build my own family and that I deserve nothing less than pure compassion, for myself and for others. I learned how it feels to be successful and healthy and well. I felt profound loss. I endured the feelings and returned to center.

On the eve of my 34th birthday, I look back and know that the only way out was through. I'm so in love with my life, so thankful to be... just exactly where I want to be. So thanks Thirty-Three.  Here's looking at Thirty-Four.

holocene

When I was in eighth grade, I went to see a play at the local community theater in my hometown. It was a production of Big River, which is a musical version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  We went there to see the play on a field trip for school and it was the first time I had ever been to a real play. I was absolutely mesmerized by everything in the theater. The music, the stage, the lights, the costumes, the rows of soft red velvet seats in the aisles. I snuggled down into my chair and knew I would be coming back again and again. But what I was most in love with was the boy who played Huckleberry Finn. Andy Meador. He was definitely in high school, and I remember reading about him later in the paper. He was really outstanding, even as I look back on it now. That guy was way too talented to be doing plays in the Little Theater for long.

I was beyond smitten.  I was fixated. After the play was over, we all got back on the bus and Mr. Finn, still fully costumed in his tattered brown overalls and dirty straw hat, bounded onto the bus and sat down right next to me. My little eighth grade adolescent heart was pounding against my chest.

"Hi. Did you like the play?"

"Ummmm..." I blushed and smiled awkwardly, trying to breathe normally.  I looked at the line of stage makeup across his jaw, and the blush and eyeliner and faint trace of lip gloss and felt hot, all over. I could feel my hands and feet and face filling with blood. He grinned at me and hopped up thanking us for coming. I sat there, stunned, overwhelmed with teenage lust and pure true love at first sight. There's a reason I still love a fabulous performing man in a little eyeliner and silver blush.

I went back to the theater at least three more times during the run of the show. I even went so far as to sneak in a tiny cassette tape recorder so I could tape the songs. Yes, I bootlegged Big River. Then I went home, transcribed the lyrics and learned every word before the next performance. By the last show, I knew the entire play, word for word, by heart.

Not much has given me that sense of total joy, the joy of discovering an art, of being a part of something magical, that the theater gave me that month when I was 13. Nothing has ever made me feel like that since, save for seeing Radiohead play live and this summer when I saw David Tennant in real life on stage in Much Ado About Nothing in London. I feel a hint of it sometimes when I see a band I love or a really amazing film, but nothing is as visceral, as real live, up close as the theater.  For most of high school, I wanted desperately to be part of that world, to run away to New York and become an actress, but instead, after one failed audition, I gave up and went the route of playing sports and being popular and having a boyfriend.  I stopped dancing. I stopped acting. I stopped making art. I just sat around in cars with boys and played the fixture.

I think about that story now, today, because it reminds me of two things. One, that I spent a lot of my life up until I was about 30 obsessing about boys and making decisions based on how it would affect the ones in my life, rather than based on what I wanted for myself. And two, because of this inability to put myself first in my own life and choose what was best for me outside those obsessions, I gave up so much of myself.  I think of the play in the theater and remember that I had a dream made of fire once, a wish so big for my life, and instead of making that dream happen, I went into the dark night of the soul and stayed there for a long, long time.

It's the new year, and there are a lot of people who make New Year's resolutions to be better. We plan to stop eating badly and start exercising and quit smoking and drink less and be better employees and friends and lovers and parents and people. This year, for once, I don't have to make those promises to myself. This year, I have my shit together. I'm healthy and getting healthier every day. I work out like gangbusters and eat well and sleep enough and don't smoke or drink at all anymore. I feel like an adult, and amazingly that in itself has allowed me the luxury of indulging all those adolescent quirks and feelings that I had traded in for booze and boys.  The person I am without drugs and alcohol is the person I always wanted to be, that I always was, but was too scared to show anyone.

Because when everything falls into place, and you can really see yourself without hiding, without drugging yourself into oblivion, you see everything. You are ancient and recent together. You are holocene. And when you get comfortable and feel safe in a life that isn't wrecked around you, and you find that you like what you are about and who you are, your only obligation is to just keep going. You have no excuses anymore. You have to find the fire dreams of your youth and follow them. You can take nothing for granted, especially not time. You must do the things you think you cannot do. Because the only person left in your way is you. Just. Keep. Going.

the great escape

Hiya.  I've had a few days off to "celebrate" these lovely American holidays we call Thanksgiving, and I have been doing a lot of thinking about what I want for the next year of my life, of what I want to be thankful for the next time November rolls back around. I don't really think I do well at New Year's Resolutions, but I think this time of year it is natural to reflect on what we might like to change, how we should like to see ourselves grow and blossom in the coming year. I am doing that now, I like to get a head start.

I've thought about the things I am thankful for now.  Of how far I have come from where I was. Of all that I have been through that has not defeated me. I'm thankful for my strength, my resilience, and my ability to have finally learned that down does not mean out, and the only way to truly fail is to stop trying. I am thankful for finally learning how to appreciate and care for my body, mind, and spirit. I am thankful for sober mornings and restful sleep-filled evenings.  I am thankful for solitude and friendship. I am thankful for youth and for motivation and for time. I am thankful for not giving up, not ever, for not quitting, for trying to learn patience and compassion for myself.  I am thankful for all of the pain and progress that has made me who I am.

I've spent a lot of time with myself this year learning how to live a different life that replaced bars and booze and being worn out with bikes and barbells and early nights. I tried to find out who this me really is. What do I like to do? Who am I? What do I want to be doing with my life?  And today I realized something that might seem like no big thing, but I think will make a huge difference in how I spend my time from now on. Having all these days off and not being a drinker who sleeps until noon and goes back out at 5 or 7 to do it all over again leaves you with a lot of free time. Free time. Something most people say they don't have. The "I'm too busy" excuse being one of the favorites for procrastinating away hours that could be spent starting an exercise program, learning a foreign language, or how to play an instrument or writing that novel.  I kind of woke up today to the fact that I think the major cause of my inability to focus on creating art, reading and writing when I am at home is none other than Netflix streaming.  Seriously.

I got rid of my cable when I moved into my own apartment in March, and have spent many if not most of my adult life without it. However, Netflix streaming has become the insidious cable replacement that has no constraints. Want to watch four seasons of Buffy in one week?  NO ONE WILL STOP YOU. Have to finish that last episode of Breaking Bad before bed?  OMG HOW IS IT 2AM ALREADY?  There's no limits on how much unnecessary and unfulfilling TV you can watch with Netflix, all the while telling yourself that you don't really watch TV because you don't have cable. Nice try, asshole.  Now granted, Netflix will appear to stop you from watching reruns of Jersey Shore or some other ridiculous thing just because its on, but not really.  Herein lies the problem...THE ENTIRE AVAILABLE LIBRARY IS ALWAYS ON.  If you have found yourself watching yet another documentary on the impending water crisis or every single movie that Daniel Day Lewis has ever made or the entire Roseanne series, then you might be suffering from Netflix Streaming induced sloth like me.

So, don't get me wrong, I like TV and think there are some shows that are worth watching. I think light TV watching is fine, an hour or two a day, tops. But, my friends, I have been known to watch upwards of twice that during the week and heroic amounts on weekends and holidays.  TV has become much more than entertainment. It's become my friend, my roommate, my Saturday night date. And once I really admitted this, I of course had to pull the plug.  Today, I cancelled my Netflix Streaming subscription.  My inner sloth is horrified by this action. "Won't you be BORED? What will you possibly do with all that TIME?"  Here's what I've done so far today, in just one morning and afternoon without Netflix:

went for a run with two friends
had a nice cup of french press (2x)
cooked a healthy breakfast
read a bit of the Austin Chronicle
listened to the Gogol Bordello station on Pandora
mended six garments with my sewing machine
stretched fabric over seven screens for screen printing
created a T-shirt design in Photoshop
cooked a healthy lunch
cancelled Netflix
bought a Groupon
wrote a lengthy blog

And it's only 3:30pm.

One of the things I really struggle with, and I think one thing that I tried to escape from when I drank a lot, is procrastination. Or not even just procrastination, but inaction. There are few things I think about more than writing and making art. Yet those two things, in spite of the time I spend thinking about them, are things I actually spend little time really doing.  If I spent all the time DOING instead of just THINKING ABOUT DOING, I would be a prolific writer and artist.  I have always yearned to create, but have lacked the self confidence to push myself into action. Excessive TV watching is just another one of those things that has allowed me to hide from my true self.  I don't want to waste anymore time watching other people's lives unfold on TV. I want to make my own life.

fuck this place

Seriously. All my photo links have mysteriously stopped working. I am taking this as a sign from the Internet Overlords that it is time to start moving this blog to Wordpress. So rather than meticulously try to fix them, I will just figure that out. In the meantime, you will have to be satisfied with my pictureless and feeble written descriptions.  It will be ok.

This song appeared in my inbox today in an email from Frightened Rabbit with a link to download their "wee EP." Scott Hutchinson sounds exceptionally Scottish on this track, which is especially lovely and happy making.  Which makes me feel like telling my "how I discovered and fell in love with Frightened Rabbit" story.

Well, the discovery part was pretty average... I found them on eMusic in like 2008.  I bought the Midnight Organ Fight and ended up listening to it on repeat while I painted the interior of my first office bright red (the office in which i remain... if you want to keep an office you probably shouldn't have, the one with the big window, always go with red) over Memorial Day weekend.  I was still in the brokenhearted despair phase of my most recently ended relationship, still in the random crying for no reason phase. Still in the empty inside, veins scraped out with sad phase. Still in the paint it black phase. This actually went on for a really long time, this phase.  I got to know this record really, really well.   I remember thinking that Scott Hutchinson sounded like Adam Duritz a bit, but that was only with the first listen. And I mean August and Everything After/Anna Begins/Perfect Blue Buildings Adam Duritz, not Shrek soundtrack Adam Duritz.  He totally doesn't at all. But there were a lot of paint fumes.

I listened to nothing but Midnight Organ Fight and Trouble by Ray Lamontagne for at least six months.

In 2008/2009, Frightened Rabbit started getting noticed. I had been putting them on mix CDs for like a year before I ever heard someone else mention them.  I finally got to see them live in September of 2009 at the Mohawk in Austin. I had just returned from my first trip to Scotland/London/Pairs/Spain, and the bill was The Twilight Sad, FR and We Were Promised Jetpacks. I was carrying around my Avalanche Records bag feeling so elated and in love with Scotland. I vividly remember them playing "Poke" and every person in that place was singing along together. It's one of my favorite gig memories of all time.  I absolutely cried.

FR came back to Austin for SXSW in 2010 and I got to see them three or four more times. They played the Artist Day Stage at the Convention Center right before Capsula, my lovely friends from Spain who stay with me every year, so I was of course like dying to meet Scott Hutchinson, but I was too scared to go up and talk to him.  Earlier in the week, I had stood right next to him for a good 20 minutes while we watched Hudson Mohawke play at the Showcasing Scotland gig at the Parish.  Again, too fangirled out so say hello.  They played Stubb's outside last October, and I was in the very front of the stage.  Now, they are playing arenas and opening for Death Cab for Cutie (who I saw at Emo's outside a million years ago.)  Everyone I love gets famous and starts playing massive venues. CRY. I should at least be in charge of picking bands to sign and getting them lots of money and sweet deals or something. Seriously.  The Boxer Rebellion.  Totally called that.

I will say this... the sober, confident, sexy pants me that I am now would never not say hi to Scott Hutchinson during SXSW. Just saying.  Thanks yoga/working out/not drinking for making me brave, even if it is only in theory.  And thank you Frightened Rabbit, for being amazingly Scottish and making beautiful music that crashes through sadness and holds my hand so I'm not alone.

give up the ghost

Whoa. I think I nearly forgot you completely this time. Sorry then. It's been a rough summer.

I've been making lots of lists lately. Writing down story ideas and concepts and ideas for blogs and paintings so I can actually write them up later. Digging up old notebooks and lining them up. I started a new journal. I've become rather fascinated by the ideas of paradox and chaos and the inner voices we war with. The prisons we build ourselves. The loss of freedom. I've gone back to yoga and into meditation. I've been alone a lot. I've traveled. I've gone inside myself again. I've been sad and far away. I've waited. I'm still waiting.

It's fall now, for certain. I can tell when I go outside in the mornings and it's cool and calm. There's no one around but the birds. Alone with the birds in the morning is life. It's hard to notice sometimes with all the routine we find ourselves in. Awake. Alone with the birds.

Also, as the internets have informed us, Radiohead is finally going on tour in a few months time. Sigh. I have so much to tell you about. It's only the beginning of autumn. Don't hurt me. Don't haunt me.

Écailles De Lune

Prolonged expressed sadness and deep, lasting grief really freaks people out. Most people are generally uncomfortable with tragedy, intensity of feeling, loss and raw emotion. When one no longer chooses to dull the pain, or kill it with alcohol or drugs or razorblades or sportfucking,  there's nothing left to do but sit in it. Feel it.  Immerse the soul inside its ravenous blackness, every minute, while the broken, twisted heart keeps its beats, one note at a time, and you wait. You wait, minute by minute, to feel something else.  Something less...bad. 

Our culture is so afraid of death and feeling "bad" or of feeling anything really, that we are taught to desensitize, detach, delete, dissolve any real connection to our true human feelings of anguish.  Feeling is weakness. We take pills to avoid depression and melancholy, we drink to forget our long, boring, repetitive days, we take drugs to forget, to sleep, to die a little while.  We are not really here. Until the pain comes, and we are.

And sleep is tiny death. I've had insomnia and night terrors since I was about six, when I woke up in the middle of the night once and realized that not only were my parents going to die, but everyone I know would eventually die. Everyone I know, including me. That I would someday be dead, in the ground, all alone.  And the world will keep on turning.  I understood that just a very short time ago, I never existed at all.  My mother and father had lives and dreams and cried before I was ever even born. I felt truly that the world is old and ancient and wise and I am certainly not long for it.  That space is infinite and god is dead. That nothing is forever. That space and time will tear us apart. And now, all these years later, each time I bolt upright in bed at night, in a cold sweat, trembling, hallucinating, terrified, unable to breathe, it's because I know that I was right then, and am now.

People hate the messiness of sadness and loss because it reminds them of their own inevitable demise. We cry not only for the tragedy of our loved ones and ourselves, but for all the dreams that have died, the magic we once knew as children, that we spend our entire lives trying to find as adults. We reach our arms up to the sky and try to hold on to time.  We want to go back. We ignore the present and wish for the future by longing for the past.  But it never stops.  People want you to go back to normal. Be ok. Be happy, they say. Be like you were. Be happy.  Everything will be ok.  But we all know, deep down, that everything is not ok.  We are not ok.  The kids are not alright. This world is not long for us anymore.

Be ok again.  Silence.  Be ok again.  Instead, I linger. Because I feel something real, and that means I am still alive. Right now,  I rage and cry and fight and destroy and scream.  And want it to be louder, harder, meaner, sharper....because, come on, is that all you've got???  IS THAT ALL YOU'VE FUCKING GOT?  BECAUSE I AM STILL FUCKING HERE.  You'll have to try harder than that, because I am still. fucking. here. Still fucking young. Still fucking beautiful and bruised  and strong and electric.  Inside of me exists an unending and deep, black sea of emotion. My capacity to endure this pain has not made me hard, mean, careless, cynical.   I am cobalt blue and broken and sewed back up and seared with scars.  I am unbreakable.  It's going fast, but I am still here. Right now. The only way out is through.

alone and unaware, the landscape was transformed in front of our eyes

The Living Death
by Oscar Wilde

Out into God's sweet air we went,
But not in wonted way,
For this man's face was white with fear,
And that man's face was grey,
And I never saw sad men who looked so wistfully at the day.

I never saw sad men who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
We prisoners call the sky,
And at each careless cloud that passed
In happy freedom by...

Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb
With crooked arrows starred, Silently we went round and round
The slippery asphalt yard;
Silently we went round and round,
And no man spoke a word.

Silently we went round and round,
And through each hollow mind
The memory of dreadful things
Rushed like a dreadful wind,
And Horror stalked before each man
And terror crept behind.

The wardens strutted up and down,
And kept their herd of brutes,
Their uniforms were spick and span,
And they wore their Sunday suits,
But we knew the work they had been at
By the quicklime on their boots.

slutwalk austin - a review

It took me some time to sit with this event before I could write about it.  I was so moved by the SlutWalk in so many ways, psychologically, emotionally, and intellectually.  I've been to rallies before, but the SlutWalk was my first march.  

It was very powerful for me to see so many different types of people speaking out against sexual assault.  It made me really happy to see so many men there as well.  I think it is a big misconception or fallacy that men either don't care about women's rights or issues like rape or assault or abortion or that those issues are strictly issues for women.  When something affects women, it affects men too, and vice-versa.  Most sexual assaults (not ALL) happen to women, which means it's usually men who are doing the assaulting. In fact, a lot of times men are assaulting other men. Sexual assault is absolutely a men's issue. What we need in our society is for men to stand up in their own communities and say that they respect women, that they trust women and that sexual assault is NOT OK, EVER.

Here's the SLUTWALK AUSTIN MISSION STATEMENT:

SLUTWALK AUSTIN exists to condemn a victim-blaming culture, to empower victims and survivors of sexual violence and to promote the involvement of the community to keep its members safe and bring and end to sexual violence. Sexual violence is NEVER justified and victims are NEVER at fault.  The use of the word "SLUT" in our name is intentional. It is not a celebration of "SLUT" but rather a challenge to the use of the word as a weapon against women and as a justification for their victimization. We are here to publicly reject the victim blaming mentality in the media and in popular culture and demand change. 

We recognize that sexual violence impacts every fact of our community across lines of race, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, ability and spirituality. EVERYONE has the right to be safe. This is a come-as-you-are, whoever-you-are event. It is open to men and women, survivors and allies.  We do not advocate for a particular style of dress, but encourage all to wear what feels comfortable.  We encourage and invite individuals, institutions and businesses to join us in taking responsibility for the well-being, safety and respect of Austin and all of its residents.

The thing I keep coming back to is that sexual assault is absolutely and inextricably linked to feminism, reproductive health rights and the treatment of women as second class citizens in a worldwide patriarchy.  As long as men see women as property or "less than" in any way, they will continue to use sex as a weapon against us. Men who support the rights of women are vital to  help stamp out sexual assault.  The first thing you can do:  Don't rape. Treat women with respect. 

Although in most Western countries women have many of the same freedoms as men, the continued assault on our reproductive rights, in the US particularly, is a very visible sign that women are still second class citizens.  Imagine if the government forced you to become a parent against your will, if you were raped and became pregnant, or even if your life would be at stake if you had the child?  None of this matters to lawmakers and religious zealots.  Women of childbearing age are all in danger as long as laws restricting abortion and limiting birth control are being passed across this country. Groups of cells have more rights than living, breathing, human women.  

Women are not sluts. We are people. We like sex, but only when it is consensual. We should have the right to choose who we sleep with and when and if we choose to have children. Women may dress provocatively and get drunk.  This does not mean they deserve to be assaulted. Women are everything. They are nurturers, mothers, and bringers of life. Why does this country hate women? Why are our men taught that it is ok to hurt and abuse us? Why are so many women raising children alone? Why do men think having sex with a drunk or incapacitated woman is ok?  Why does the media tell us that women are nothing more than sex objects?  Why do we believe them and hate our bodies and shame ourselves?

I know that there are so many great men in this world.  And yet, I really don't understand how in the year 2011 that some men can hate women so much.  That right wing religious conservatives are so afraid and ashamed of sex that they would prefer poor women have as many babies as possible, or die having illegal abortions, rather than teaching them about their bodies and how to prevent pregnancy in the first place.  No access to birth control creates the need for abortion.  It really terrifies me what this world will become if women are pushed back into the dark ages.  I guess I will be one of the ones burned at the stake. 

slutwalk austin

 You get the idea of the emerging pattern: Women who have had sex, appear like they are "up for sex," drink, dress "provocatively" (a subjective concept if there ever was one), are not religious, are not virgins, were not injured, were not beaten within an inch of their life, whatever, cannot really be raped.

         - Cassandra A. Gaddo in Today's Chicago Woman


SlutWalk is coming to Austin this Saturday as local activists join the international movement that puts the blame for sexual assault back where it belongs:  on the assailants.  Participants in other cities have marched proudly through their city streets, some in short skirts and bras with the word SLUT scrawled across their bodies, some in jeans and T-shirts, but all acting in defiance; many holding signs with slogans including "My Skirt is Not About You", “Don’t tell us how to dress, Tell men not to rape” and "Consent is Sexy." The SlutWalk movement is controversial on purpose and has empowered thousands of victims of sexual assault, feminists and their supporters to fight back against a rape blaming and slut shaming culture that demonizes those who have been sexually assaulted as having somehow deserved it.

SlutWalk began in January after a Toronto Police Service Officer, speaking to a group of law students at Osgoode Hall Law School, claimed that if women want to avoid getting raped they should stop dressing like "sluts."  SlutWalk is about reclaiming the idea that when a woman is a victim of sexual assault, it is somehow her fault because of the way she dresses, how she promotes her sexuality and the idea that if she is a female and is a "slut," she must have been asking for it. 

Their purpose is simple, according to the SlutWalk Austin website,  "We are here to publicly reject the victim-blaming mentality in the media and in popular culture and demand change."  All are welcome - men, women, survivors and allies, as the group recognizes that victim blaming is a societal issue crossing lines of race, gender, sexual orientation and socioeconomic class. Organizers encourage participants to dress in a way that makes them feel most comfortable because the point is that regardless of what women wear, what they drink, how they dance or where they hang out,  they have a right not to be raped. No means no.  And when someone does sexually assault a woman, she has a right not to be blamed for it.

SlutWalk Austin is this Saturday, June 11th at 12pm at the State of Texas Capitol Building, 1100 Congress Avenue.