Posts tagged ‘gsa’

June 7, 2015

I’m Not Lost, Just Blind Sometimes

by lisa st john

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Just when I start seeing the world as one full of hatred and violence and judgmental anti-feminist, anti-human rights, degenerate idiots and my menopause insists that this is, in fact, true, and it’s not going to get any better, a day like today comes along to help me readjust my perception.

It starts at 4AM (doesn’t everything?) when Missy the Gran-dog licks my face and I realize I do not have nearly enough blankets. And it is Sunday. And I could be sleeping. But she talks the sweet talk of a German Shepherd and I let her out while I find more blankets. We cuddle up together and I drift off. Then I hear her click click clicking around the kitchen and I see it’s only 7AM and I’m still tired. What teacher is not tired in June? Everyone I know is tired. But magically the clicking stops and the next thing I know it’s 9AM. NINE! My friends took Missy for a walk so I could sleep in because…because they’re my friends.

I love them.

My sister takes a break from making jewelry to make fresh fruit salad.

I love her.

It’s the day of the annual Pride Parade but I am still dragging my semi-grumpy hormones by the hair to get out the door with a heavy oh-woe-is-me sigh. Then I see my students in their rainbow regalia smiling and laughing and not at all afraid.

I love them.

I remember being afraid at Gay Rights marches, or at least nervous and on the lookout for protesters with something more lethal than signs. But this is New Paltz, New York and Councilman Dan Torres is organizing the line-up with the stunning Shawangunk Mountains as a backdrop. The people watching us march are cheering us on, not throwing things at us.

I love it.

At the end of the march there are musicians and vendors and advocates and many different kinds of…kind. Hudson Valley Community Services has a booth; they are making sure that over 290,000 kids will have a healthy meal this summer at no cost. The local Planned Parenthood is giving out condoms and information on their free youth training program. There is a petition to pass the SAFE Parole Act put out by the End the Jim Crow Action Network. Lambda Peer Support Services is promoting their mission to “foster a sense of community … and address the effects of homophobia, discrimination and prejudice.” The Hudson Valley LGBTQ Center has made this one-time parade into a weeklong celebration. And where would we be without the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN)? People are here volunteering their time and energy to reach out.

On the way home I start to cry because I remembered kindness and because as I drive home in the beauty of a 78 degree day in the Catskills I know that a Hospice volunteer is out there making the world a better place; and I cry because my husband has been gone for exactly 927 days and because my fabulous son is in love and getting married. Then Amanda Palmer comes over the Rhapsody bluetooth iPhone widget gadget thing (such first world problems) and she reminds me that “no one’s ever lost forever.”

I love her. I love you all.

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from Lost by Amanda Palmer

No one’s ever lost forever
When they die they go away
But they will visit you occasionally
Do not be afraid
No one’s ever lost forever
They are caught inside your heart
If you garden them and water them
They make you what you are                                                              

 

Missy thinks she is in the wilds but she is really just in Grandma’s backyard. Shhhhh…

My first chapbook, Ponderings, is available at Finishing Line Press.

March 30, 2015

“Words, words, words” (Hamlet IIii)

by lisa st john

It was born
in blood, the word
grew in the dark body, beating
and flew through the lips and the mouth. (Pablo Neruda “The Word”)

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality. (Edgar Allan Poe)

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I love words, yet I hate the way they can be used. I love their power even when destructive. I have loved watching and hearing them change over time. It’s exciting when new ones pop up or nouns get verbed. “I will Google this.”

But when did feminism become a negative thing? When did the belief of, and actions for, equal rights between the sexes get a bad rap? I was raised by older sisters—hippies who burned their bras and broke the rules and believed that we had to work twice as hard as men to get the same results. How did this change? I had to look, and I found this:

“The Waves of Feminism” by Martha Rampton, professor of history and director of the Center for Gender Equity at Pacific University.

1st Wave late 19th early 20th centuries: The goal of this wave was to open up opportunities for women, with a focus on suffrage. The wave formally began at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, when 300 men and women rallied to the cause of equality for women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (d.1902) drafted the Seneca Falls Declaration outlining the new movement’s ideology and political strategies.

In its early stages, feminism was interrelated with the temperance and abolitionist movements and gave voice to now-famous activists like the African-American Sojourner Truth (d.1883), who demanded, “Ain’t I a woman?” Victorian America saw women acting in very “un-ladylike” ways (public speaking, demonstrating, stints in jail), which challenged the “cult of domesticity.”

2nd Wave 1960s-1990s : “The second wave was increasingly theoretical, based on a fusion of neo-Marxism and psycho-analytic theory and began to associate the subjugation of women with broader critiques of patriarchy, capitalism, normative heterosexuality, and the woman’s role as wife and mother. Sex and gender were differentiated — the former being biological, and the later a social construct that varies culture-to-culture and over time.”

3rd Wave mid 1990s – now: “The ‘grrls’ of the third wave have stepped onto the stage as strong and empowered, eschewing victimization and defining feminine beauty for themselves as subjects, not as objects of a sexist patriarchy. They have developed a rhetoric of mimicry, which reappropriates derogatory terms like ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ in order to subvert sexist culture and deprive it of verbal weapons. Reality is conceived not so much in terms of fixed structures and power relations, but in terms of performance within contingencies. Third wave feminism breaks boundaries.

Where feminism will go from here is unclear, but the point is that feminism, by whatever name, is alive and well both in academia and outside of it. Some older feminists feel discouraged by the younger generation’s seeming ignorance of or disregard for the struggles and achievements of the early movement. They see little progress (the pay gap has not significantly narrowed in 60 years), and are fearful that the new high-heeled, red-lipped college grrls are letting us backslide.”

What saddens me are comments by young women today such as, “I am not a feminist because I don’t hate men.” I want to educate them. I want them to learn the history of the movement. I am going to take students on a field trip to see She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry in Rosendale next month. But that seems like such a limp effort. I am in the process of wrapping my head around how to raise awareness (even the phrase “raise awareness” sounds lame).

Did we raise awareness when “Healing the Hurt” conference changed its name to PrideWorks? Do young activists even know that the now famous NYC Pride Parade was first called “Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day” after the Stonewall Riots ?

I had to fight bureaucrats and bible-thumpers to get a Gay-Straight Alliance Club formed in a high school once upon a time. It was passed as long as we called it The “Rainbow” Club. It was a start.

Does knowing the history matter to the language?

“There is no more sexism,” a student told me once. “My mom is a lawyer, my dad is a doctor, and I am going to __________ for pre-med in September.”

“Excellent,” I replied. “When you are done with your undergraduate degree (or maybe it will take until grad school) I want you to come back and tell me how wrong I was; how you were treated just like your male colleagues.” She snorted and rolled her eyes, but she hasn’t come back. I wish she had. I wish I was wrong.

You can buy my first chapbook of poetry HERE at Finishing Line Press. It’s called Ponderings.

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