BECAUSE WE'RE NOT READY FOR ONE.
Friendly-Americans,
Remember how ready most of us were for a half-black President? We were really stoked about it & not only because he promised hope & change, he WAS hope & change! He was young & eloquent & historical & confident & the fact that he was half-white didn't seem to make him any less black to us. In 2008, we were ready for him!!!!
I'm not sure why, or how, or exactly when it happened but we have entered an era of severe backlash. The racial divide is a deadly chasm filled with bodies and spent shell casings. I can't help but think this backlash is somehow tied to having a blackish President who stands as the figurehead of all American power.
There are more people than I realized in America who are not comfortable with this. I've seen it more with each passing year of Obama's office. I'm pretty depressed about how our Congress and our citizens have responded to having a blackish President, but I can't say I didn't see it on the horizon even in '08.
So racial tension is taut as a slingshot aimed at a beehive.
And there is also, in the last year, an increased rancor between genders. Even as gay and transgender rights have their day in the courts & minds of America, the perceptions & definitions of male & female have been reduced to their crass anatomical parts.
Even as rainbow flags fly and transwomen grace magazine covers, I've seen so many old gender stereotypes reborn & promoted & celebrated in all realms of media. [And of course this means pro-male/anti-female.]
That's right. The Man is back. White is in. Girl Power is out. People-of-color are fucked (at least for now) Dicks are symbols of supremacy; vag's are once again objects of scorn.
I knew we would be back here one day, but I didn't expect it to be so ugly. There are more people in the world than ever before. And we are connected by the festering filaments of social media like a big syphilitic worm. (yum) So things happen faster…trends, ideas, jokes, memes bubble to the surface and lead the collective conversation, and the collective conversation becomes The Word and then it metastasizes quickly into the Next Big Thing. And on & on….
In my riotous drunk youth, I feel I did my part to create a progressive path for humanity in general ( and females in particular, because as a biological female, I was told lots of horrible things about myself and asked to behave in really self-debasing ways that were called "normal" in our society).
I fought as a child against valuing prettiness over intelligence. I fought as a teenager against hundreds & thousands of "girls don't do this" or "girls aren't good artists" or "girls can't rock" or "you will probably fail this Chemistry class." It blew my mind that seemingly well-meaning people (teachers, parents, boyfriends) would discourage me from even trying to reach my full potential. So I fought.
In my 20s, when I realized that all the misogyny in the world was based in anatomical fear, I fought against that too. Against being an inorganic, disingenuous object who didn't burp, fart, speak, or masturbate. In the '90s, before vaginas were mentionable and every party I vaguely attended devolved into a chorus of dick jokes & pissing contests, I was the girl who would respond with anecdotes about my lady parts and I had no qualms about pissing anywhere (with or without foliage nearby).
[Oh, those were fun days & drunken nights…Guys who were accustomed to silencing ladies with their dick jokes looking at each other & asking 'Did she just say 'vagina'??? Sometimes it made them angry and more dickish, but a lot of times it made them shut up and move along.
And honestly, I don't mind a good dick joke if it's just that. But most dick jokes aren't about penises--they are about keeping women subordinate. Period.]
Period. I mentioned that a lot too. There was too much silencing & shame & taboo around it. A lot of people were not happy about me bringing menstruation out of the closet. Too bad. It needed to be a much less shameful subject. And there came a point when it wasn't such a big deal. [Now it is again. And we need to Get. The Fuck. Over it. Period.]
Anyway…around the time I was fighting my good fight against anatomical misogyny there emerged a slew of female comics who were doing the same. They were much more adept than I at bringing female anatomy out of the repressive cave and letting the world know that being a vagina-ed human was not erroneous, shameful or restrictive. It was just an alternative to being male. And that was just fucking great. [Y2K would've been a great time for a female President!]
Somewhere between Riot Grrl & the Vagina Monologues I felt that we had all come to terms with there being separate but equal genders which could complement each other or exist independently. End of issue.
Or was it? I am beyond thrilled that gender has moved away from the binary in our collective conversation, but I noticed that the feminist movement that made it all possible has disappeared.
While there is a spectrum of genders visible all around us, FEMALE has devolved again to mean something inorganic, objectifiable and looks-based. Girl Power has been replaced by Overbearing Materialistic Diva.
That is not something I would ever want to align myself with. But it is the new Femme.
Just as I am disgusted by the racial divide magnified by having a blackish man in power, I am jaggedly, adamantly against women who take their hard-won power to mean entitlement to be a Diva. That is not what I was fighting for.
The Riot Grrl in me is old & tired. I am ready to embark on the latter part of my life and it will be quite a journey. I really want it to be a lot more about BEING than FIGHTING. But I want to know that someone somewhere has picked up where I left off, because we aren't done yet.
I think more people are perceiving themselves as genderqueer or trans or agender because the binary scales are still swaying. Women gained much foothold in the world between 1990 -- 2010, but many proved they would abuse their power in insidious ways. Different ways than men abuse power, but still dangerous & contemptible ways. We need that balance to quit its vertiginous lurch.
So, that is why I don't want a woman President right now. It would be a disaster. Even if---especially if---there were any good, sincere, capable female candidates to choose from, I think they'd all be quite ineffectual at this moment in time.
We are not ready. PERIOD.
So…what I really want to say is 'Go Trump!' You are just the Donkeynine Sub-chimpanzeerific candidate America is hard for right now!
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I've started on a 60-day art project, but it's unraveling slowly. When something shareworthy arises, well…I'll share it!
In the meantime, enjoy all this vintage art I scrounged up for you ^^^^
