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The best gaming convention is right here in Washington.

Brendan and I attended what turned out to be the best gaming con we’ve ever been to a couple of weeks ago in Bellevue, Washington. If you’ve never been to Orcacon, I can’t recommend it enough.

Here are some of the highlights:

  • The Con opened with the showrunners thanking the native tribe of Bellevue, the Duwamish People, for letting us use their land, and asked Con-goers to honor them (see orcacon.org/2021/honornativeland for more info).
  • There was a great gaming space for Play-and-Wins and other games staffed by very friendly, helpful people that you could tell really wanted to be there.
  • OrcaCon made sure there was space for people using wheelchairs and other conveyance equipment to move around the con and have places to play games and attend panels. They actually walked around during the entire weekend with rulers and moved chairs around as needed.
  • The OrcaCon board made it very clear that they are dedicated to making the Con a safe, welcoming space for EVERYONE. They go beyond words and actually seek out ways to make marginalized communities feel safe and welcome. They take their code of conduct very seriously; they have it printed out on display at the Con.
  • There was a quiet gaming space and a super quiet room—perfect for people that needed to remove themselves from auditory stimulus for a while.
  • There was an all-genders restroom. There were also pads and tampons in ALL of the restrooms.
  • A Community Row was set up on the main floor. It was populated with various nonprofits that are doing all sorts of awesome stuff for gamers (and everybody else). They had info about their projects and swag to give Con-goers.
  • The vendors were all thoughtfully chosen. There was a wide variety of items to purchase, and the vendors themselves were a diverse bunch.
  • The quality of panels at the Con was astounding. One that I attended was a panel of lawyers and advocates with different specialities all working together to inform us of the rights and protections we can seek if someone is stalking or abusing us. It was incredibly informative.
  • The food and drink was on point! OrcaCon even had a few beers made especially for the Con by local brewers! There were also food trucks in the parking lot, so there were a ton of options. The food in the hotel was good, too… just a little on the spendy side.

One of the things I appreciated the most about OrcaCon was how respectful everyone was of each other. I mentioned above that the Con staff walked around with rulers; this may sound like they were strict with attendees, but if anything, the opposite was true. Everyone I interacted with was incredibly kind, patient, and helpful (even with things they weren’t necessarily “in charge” of). The whole atmosphere was chill. Chill and respectful.

Badges are already on sale for next year at orcacon.org. Hope to see you there!

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When Sarah killed herself

*Content Warning—This post contains content about suicide and depression.*

When Sarah’s sister Jessie called me and told me Sarah had killed herself, the floor dropped out from under me. I remember that the color drained from the living room where I was home alone, and everything got kind of hazy. I had always thought that the idea of color draining was just poetic license, but it’s a real thing that really happens.

I don’t remember my conversation with Jessie, but I remember that after it was over I howled. I mean… I hoooooowwwwwwled like some kind of wounded animal. I couldn’t stop.

At some point, I got in the bathtub and took pictures of my swollen face. I don’t know why, exactly… I think I wanted to somehow record what was happening. I didn’t want to minimize or sweep under the rug how absolutely devastating that day was.

I never showed those pictures to anyone. I didn’t want people to think I was looking for attention, or wanting something from them. I was afraid to talk about it at all… I didn’t know how. At the time, I was an Argentine tango dancer, and I tried to go to one of our regular dances. I made it through maybe an hour before I just couldn’t handle being around people anymore. Everyone kept asking how I was, just casually, like, “Hey! How are you?” and I couldn’t tell them. (This was before I discovered the amazing podcast “Terrible, Thanks for Asking“).

Being at work was difficult. It was like all these people I was around everyday were so distant. They were so far away from what was happening with me, and I realized that I didn’t have any really close friends I could talk to about Sarah. I felt empty. Everything I looked at just got sucked into my empty vacuum eyes. None of it meant a damn thing.

Over time, I processed it somehow. I did weird stuff. Once I wrote her a really long letter at a bar I frequented. I kept that letter in my pocket like a talisman. I listened to Cat Power in my car and drove around a lot. Later, I called up an old friend (and Sarah’s ex-boyfriend) and we got together to reminisce about her. That helped, I think.

Sarah had been one of my closest friends. She is the one who introduced me to the local show scene at places like the Hoedown in Richland. She taught me to look at the world through a critical lens, and she showed me that being subversive could be powerful.

I loved her very, very much. She was funny, and beautiful, and brave, and creative, and loving. Sarah was wonderful.

And now she’s gone forever. And it fucking sucks.

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Accidental bigotry

I was originally going to call this post “Whoops, you’re a bigot!” but I think a gentler approach would be more effective. The people I’m talking about here don’t seem to have bad intentions; they’re just ignorant, and ignorance can be cured. It’s really okay to not know something.

I’m not discounting the argument that intentions matter less than the results of people’s actions; I totally get that. What I want to do with this post, though, is reach the well-intentioned accidental bigots. If you want to read about why it isn’t the job of the people being affected by bigotry to educate people about these issues, read Annalee’s amazing Tweet thread on this topic. I am 100% in agreement with them. This, however, is a case in which I am choosing to educate.

Accidental bigotry #1: “Love the sinner, hate the sin”

I recently wrote for the June Pride issue of Tumbleweird:

You can’t love someone despite who they are; you love them because of who they are!

A well-meaning woman I know told me that she still loves her cousin (who came out recently) even though she doesn’t “agree with her lifestyle choices.” I’m here to tell you that denying someone’s truth is not love. Calling someone’s reality a “lifestyle choice” horribly diminishes their struggles and experiences.

If you have a loved one that comes out to you, please just tell them you love them… and don’t add the word “anyway.”

 

When you take a “love the sinner hate the sin” approach to someone’s queerness, you automatically set yourself in opposition to them. Think about it this way: a friend of yours comes up to you and says, “I’m gay. I’ve always felt this way, and now I’m finally coming to terms with it and letting people know.” If your reaction is anything besides love and acceptance, not only are you letting that person know that they were wrong to trust you, you are also delegitimizing their entire life.

When you treat someone’s entire reality as if it is a “choice” they are making, you are, in essence, calling them a liar. You are calling their reality a lie. You are somehow stuck on the notion that you know more about their life than they do.

Accidental bigotry #2: Misgendering

When it comes to misgendering, there are plenty of people who do it purposely. For the purposes of this post, I’m only talking about those who misgender with no malicious intent.

If you are a cis man and you want to understand what it’s like to be trans, don’t imagine what it would feel like to be a woman. Imagine instead that you are yourself. You are a man. And your entire life, everyone you meet tells you that you are a woman, calls you “she” and “her,” and tells you that your assertions that you are a man are wrong, or sick, or imaginary.

Think of how relieved you would feel when someone finally recognized you as a man—called you “sir,” called you “mister.”

Now, try to understand why people should be called by the names and pronouns they choose, not the ones assigned to them by doctors or parents. If you don’t know the proper pronouns to use, look at their social media profiles or ask them. Be respectful. Be courteous.

Accidental bigotry #3: Microaggressions

Kay Bolden wrote a wonderful essay on microaggressions and micro-assaults called “I Love Your Complexion! And other micro-assaults on Black women” in which she outlines several pitfalls that (somewhat) well-meaning white people can fall into.

Reading this essay, the term “back-handed compliment” came to mind for me. There are many ways in which we (I mean white people) subtly and not so subtly insult people of color without seeming to notice. Kay says that a microaggression is “an insult that sounds like a compliment on the surface, but has as its baseline premise the idea that ‘whiteness’ is not only the norm, but the standard to strive for.”

A couple of examples Kay gives are telling a black person they are articulate (thus signaling your surprise and showing that you don’t think they are as intelligent as white people), and a white person saying they “don’t see color” (thereby rejecting the legitimacy of the racial experiences of people of color).

I strongly suggest that you read Kay Bolden’s essay if you are a white person. I’ll quote from the final paragraphs:

For many white people, being accused of racism is an affront to their view of themselves as fair, liberal, and spiritual individuals. It’s shocking to be told they have biases, and that their biases have harmed people of color. Sometimes engaging with them morphs into yet another defense of white fragility.

The beneficiaries of racism spend more time centering how they feel and how uncomfortable the conversation makes them — instead how much damage has been done to people of color, and how to stop it.

 

To wrap up, there are obviously more than three ways to be an accidental bigot, but these are the three I see every day. As a white, cis woman, I have made mistakes and will definitely make more in the future.

I was recently at a show with a group of people and I wrongly assumed the gender of one of the folks I only knew tangentially. I kept calling him “her” until someone kindly corrected me. All I could do was apologize and try to be more mindful moving forward. I have also made the mistake of asking friends of mine to do emotional labor for me; I have asked them to educate me about things I should have worked harder to figure out for myself.

As I get older (I’m almost 40, y’all), I find that many of the terms and manners of speech that I was taught were acceptable no longer are (like person-first language, for example). There is no “woke!” I have to continuously learn and change myself, and I’m still going to screw up no matter how hard I try to do the right things.

But I’m learning. You be, too! Google stuff. Seriously. Do it often, and read everything. Read stuff from people that aren’t like you.

PFLAG has a ton of resources on LGBTQIA+ issues. Medium has a lot of great articles about race. The National Center for Transgender Equality has a lot of info about trans and non-binary people.

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Love Alongside Pain, Not Despite It

 

When your body hurts all the time, it’s remarkably difficult to love yourself.

You want to push back against the pain… fight it. Reject it.

I recently read a short story by Stephen King called “The Little Green God of Agony.” The story was converted into a web comic in 24 installments by Dennis Calero, if you want to read it. It is very well done, in my opinion.

In this story, a man’s chronic pain is caused by a demon that has infested his body. For years, I thought of my pain this way… not in so many words, but in essence. I treated my pain like a foreign thing that had infested my body. I fought it, and in fighting it, I distanced myself more and more from my own physical self. My body was essentially my enemy—causing me pain that I had to cope with constantly.

I treated my pain like a foreign thing that had infested my body.

 

When I was preparing for my first brain surgery over a year ago, I knew I needed to do something different. I had tried meditating a few times and never found it very helpful, but I decided to give it another shot. I downloaded an app called Headspace and went through the “pain pack.”

Using the app, I learned to stop fighting my pain. Instead, I settled down with it. I sat with my pain and let it be. It reminded me of holding onto my frantic puppy, Lila, when she’s scared… usually due to fireworks or thunder. I needed to be calm and supportive of myself the way I am for Lila when she gets scared; I needed to love myself unconditionally.

Just being there, calmly sitting with myself through the pain, taught me to start loving my body again. My depression and anxiety—which I had learned were closely associated with physical pain—lessened as a result of this change in tactics. I became an advocate of myself instead of treating my body like an enemy.

I’m still working on this issue. At times, I find myself fighting the pain, or treating myself or my body with scorn. It hurts! But love is stronger than hate, and pain, and scorn.

I will love myself better. I will love myself.

I will keep loving myself.

 

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I am a cyborg

*Content Warning—This post contains medical stuff that might gross you out*

After three brain surgeries, I think I’m finally all sorted out.

The first one, over a year ago, was to remove an epidermoid brain tumor. I’ve talked about that plenty on my blog, so I won’t repeat it here.

The second surgery was on September 13th, 2018. I had developed hydrocephalus from the first surgery and was leaking cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), so they had to perform an open craniotomy to repair the leak from the other side. Unfortunately, because my CSF pressure was so high (about twice what it should have been), the leaking continued.

I woke up with the biggest black eye I had ever seen. It looked like a purple/black baseball stuck to my face. The whole right side of my head was HUGE. I also couldn’t chew, and could barely open my mouth, since they had had to peel off my temporalis muscle from the bone for the surgery. As painful as it was, I was happy to have my mental faculties in a good place. The only thing that was really difficult with the recovery was how easily I tired out; I couldn’t even do simple, quiet activities like reading or watching TV for very long at all without feeling worn out.

When Brendan and I went back to UW Medical Center two weeks later to get my craniotomy staples removed, the doctors saw that the leak wasn’t fixed and admitted me back into the hospital right away. That was… shocking, to say the least. Brendan and I hadn’t even brought a change of clothes, since we thought we’d be driving home that afternoon.

What happened that evening broke me in a way I had never been broken before. They did a lumbar puncture with very little pain medicine (since I wasn’t in the ICU, there were limits to what they could administer) and with me fully awake and alert. I can’t really talk about it. I’ll just say that it’s something I will never do again without heavy sedation.

Anyway, the doctors had my sign papers agreeing to a sinus patch surgery. Then, sometime in the wee hours of the morning—like, 3:00 or 4:00, I can’t remember exactly—one of the surgeons woke me up and told me there was a change of plans. They had decided that since my CSF pressure was so high, no patch would hold. Therefore, they had decided to put in a shunt.

All I knew was that I would have a permanent device on my skull, and tubing that went from my brain’s ventricles to my abdomen to drain the excess CSF fluid. I signed the consent papers for the surgery.

The next morning, they performed the surgery, placing the shunt on the left side of my head since the right side was still healing from the craniotomy. They had to attach the shunt itself to my skull in one place, then they drilled a hole behind my left ear to place the catheter tube, which goes from my brain ventricles (where the CSF wasn’t being absorbed properly) all the way down to my abdomen, where the CSF could be absorbed back into my body.

There were a few incisions down my torso that they used to guide the tubing. The big incision was in my abdomen itself. They had to feed the tube through my muscle wall and peritoneum. That incision is still healing, and periodically, it causes shooting pains through my belly. My head is pretty lumpy now, but the incisions are almost fully healed.

When I first got the shunt, I had to go back to the hospital and have it adjusted twice, since it was draining too much fluid. Low-pressure headaches occur when you don’t have enough CSF, and they feel like migraines that medicine can’t relieve.  It means your brain isn’t protected like it should be, and sitting up and standing are excruciating.

Eventually, we found that having it adjusted twice was too much, and the leaking had started again. So we went back to have the shunt adjusted one last time, and now it seems like my levels are just right.

Third time’s the charm, right?? I’m so pleased that we finally figured everything out. Thanks for sticking with me, everybody!

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2nd (and last, please!!!) brain surgery tomorrow

 

I’ll make this short. I’m exhausted, and my checkin time for surgery tomorrow is 5am.

This surgery will fix the leak in my head. It will be an open craniotomy. It will hopefully be the last brain surgery I need.

I am scared, but also feeling pretty brave and “let’s get this done”-ish.

The dripping must stop.

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I’m the new editor of Tumbleweird!!!

Here is the editorial that you’ll see in the new September issue of Tumbleweird:

Dear Tumbleweirdos,

When Henry and Ted asked to meet with me about becoming the editor of Tumbleweird, my first reaction was excitement and joy, followed quickly by doubt. I had never edited a newspaper or zine before. I didn’t know if my experience with book layout and editing (or content writing for the internet, a job that requires a decidedly different skill set) would prepare me for the world of periodicals.

Fortunately, Henry and Ted have been more than willing to answer the dozens of questions I have had about everything from submissions, to layout, to distribution. My amazing husband Brendan has also joined the staff of Tumbleweird as the managing editor. His organizational skills have been invaluable to producing this issue of the zine.

So, what is the future of Tumbleweird?

My primary goal as the new editor of Tumbleweird is to stay true to its mission. Tumbleweird is “a local zine focused on bettering the community through art, culture, and positivity,” and I don’t want that to ever change.

The main reason I took on this role is that I believe Tumbleweird is important. We need it. The Tri-Cities needs it. You (I assume, dear reader) and I are weirdos living in a predominantly red area. We need this liberal, progressive, inclusive, queer-friendly zine!

What does this staff change mean for you, Tumbleweirdos? Hopefully, nothing at all. We’ll keep publishing art, reviews, columns, puzzles, poetry, and anything else that fits the mission of Tumbleweird. I love this zine and I don’t want it to change.

<3 Sara Quinn

To support Tumbleweird, become a patron on Patreon! You can also send submissions to editor@tumbleweird.org (that’s me!). You can find our submission guide on our website: https://www.tumbleweird.org/p/submission-guide.html

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Guest post: Wake Up

This post was written by my husband, Brendan Quinn, after the June 30th event “An Evening with Ijeoma Oluo.”

Saturday night, I attended “An Evening with Ijeoma Oluo.” It was a remarkable event filled with the words, music, and poetry of Gretchen Yanover, Reagan Jackson and Ijeoma Oluo. The topic of the evening: a primer on how to discuss race and how to recognize, acknowledge and dismantle social systems that use race to isolate and oppress people of color.

In the afterglow of the event, my friend Ramiro was walking through the crowd speaking with attendees while recording or live-streaming, and he asked me what the most impactful moment was. I answered as best I could at the time, that the topic of White Privilege or White Fragility had been the most impactful. This wasn’t the case; perhaps for my former self it would have been a revelation, but not that night. To understand what had been the most impactful part of the evening required time apart to process.

I figured it out early the next day. There was a part of Ms. Oluo’s discourse where she said something to the effect of, “Slaves weren’t taken from their homes and sold into servitude because white Europeans were mad at them.” I’ve been pondering it for days now; a truth sitting right there in front of me, so simple and profound and previously ignored.

(From here on out, when I’m talking about white Americans I’m talking about the ones who see slavery as a bad thing. Yes, there’s a distinction to be made, and I really couldn’t care less about white folks who disagree with that. Their opinion is of no value to me; it is entirely meritless to any conversation worth having.)

Retrospectively, white Americans look back at slavery as an evil, abhorrent thing—and it was, of course—but what’s rarely acknowledged is that our modern view of slavery, in and of itself, is an evolved thought. Africans weren’t slaves because they were hated; they were slaves because they were objects to be used by their owners. Purchasing a slave was of no greater ethical concern for a colonial American than buying a shovel at Home Depot is for me now.

The life of an African in the colonies was seen as a commodity; incomparable to the indelible quality and permanence of a white European. In 1640, John Punch, an African indentured servant, had his servitude converted into permanent enslavement for running away while the two white indentured servants he ran away with simply had the length of their indenture extended. What later became the United States had just created its first slave. (1)

Yes, there were African land owners in colonial America, and yes there were African slave owners in colonial America, but in a system where only an African could become permanently and generationally enslaved and had no ability to vote or hold political office (with very few exceptions), power clearly and entirely rested in the hands of white landowners.

This disparity was exemplified and exacerbated in 1787 when America’s white founders determined how state populations would create proportional representation in Congress. Members of the convention who represented states without slave populations argued that a slave was not a person and as such their population should not be considered in matters of representation. Representatives from slave-holding states argued that slaves should be considered people with respect to representation, but as they had no ability to vote, slaves were nothing more than a means of leveraging more political power for white slave owners. Essentially, a white slave owner’s vote had the full weight of however many slaves they owned as if they were voting themselves.

The important takeaway isn’t the Three-Fifths compromise that came out of this debate; it’s that all leaders contributing to the debate considered slaves objects, chattel, inhuman, and undeserving of the basest level of empathy. It’s that these leaders of young America weren’t mad at black slaves; they just didn’t care beyond how slaves could be used to advance their own agenda.

 

Move forward to Dred Scott in 1857 where the Supreme Court decided in a 7-2 decision that no black American, free or slave, had the ability to sue another party in a court of law. Free black men and women were not citizens.

To support his position, Chief Justice Taney wrote the following:

[Black Africans imported as slaves] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it. This opinion was at that time fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race. It was regarded as an axiom in morals as well as in politics, which no one thought of disputing, or supposed to be open to dispute; and men in every grade and position in society daily and habitually acted upon it in their private pursuits, as well as in matters of public concern, without doubting for a moment the correctness of this opinion.

White Americans were not mad at black slaves. To white Americans, black slaves were simply inferior as a matter of fact.

Move forward to 1866 and the 13th Amendment which states:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

In modern America, black Americans are imprisoned 5 times more often than white Americans (in 5 states, 10 times as often (2)); where black males receive 20% longer penalties than white males for similar crimes committed (3); where 64.5% of all prisoners serving life without parole sentences for non-violent crimes are black (3); where federally, 71.3% of prisoners serving life without parole sentences are black. The phrase “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted” introduces a constitutionally protected route for a system designed to oppress black Americans to create a modern generation of slaves.

 

Move back a little bit: the Three-Fifths compromise. Here’s a map of the US showing prisoner population by state (4):

 

And here’s one that represents US overall population by state (5):

 

Prison populations are disproportionately higher in south and south-eastern states. Here’s a map of slave population by state in 1860 (6):

 

The system as it is now has converted slaves into prisoners. In 48 states, prisoners are not allowed to vote while incarcerated (Maine and Vermont permit inmate voting). In 21 states, released prisoners are not permitted to vote while on parole, and in some cases are required to pay fines, fees, or restitution before having their rights reinstated. In 13 states, prisoners never have their voting rights reinstated without a governor’s pardon or some arbitrary additional length of time after probation/parole. (7)

The Census bureau counts prisoners as residing in their place of incarceration. This census determines the number of state and local representatives and disproportionately increases power toward regions that hold prisons. Sound familiar?

Currently, 2.3 million black Americans are incarcerated (of a total 6.8 million people incarcerated). (8)

 

White America consistently and continually benefits from a system where black Americans are “regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they [have] no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

And we aren’t mad at black Americans. We watch as generation after generation of black Americans live without the necessities that we’ve guaranteed ourselves because we simply don’t care.

 

Wake the fuck up and start caring.

 

 

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Punch_(slave)

2) https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/color-of-justice-racial-and-ethnic-disparity-in-state-prisons/

3) https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/141027_iachr_racial_disparities_aclu_submission_0.pdf

4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate

5) http://www.newgeography.com/content/002705-is-the-united-states-population-heading-long-term-deceleration

6) https://people.uwec.edu/ivogeler/w188/south/slavery.htm

7) http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-voting-rights.aspx

8) https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/

 

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White People Must Talk About Race

We don’t need another white woman talking about race so that she can prove to people that she’s not racist. That’s not what this post is about. If you’re reading this so that YOU can feel secure about your lack of racism, this post is not for you.

So why am I talking about race?

Ijeoma Oluo, someone I will mention more than a few times below, says:

We have a real problem of racial inequity and injustice in our society, and we cannot wish it away. We have to tackle this problem with real action, and we will not know what needs to be done if we are not willing to talk about it.

… The alternative is your complacency in the continued oppression of people of color. … And if you are white, and you don’t want to feel any of that pain by having these conversations, then you are asking people of color to continue to bear the entire burden of racism alone.

So let’s talk about it.

Hi. I’m a white woman.

While I’m much more in the cis female part of the spectrum, I’m gender nonconforming, but I have never had to worry about the kinds of things my trans friends have had to worry about, so I’m counting my gender identity as a privilege.

Although I am queer, I am also married to a straight, cis, white male, so most people assume I am straight also. That’s another privilege box checked.

Like I said, my husband is white, straight, and cis, so I’ve never had to deal with assholes who treat us badly because of their hateful bigotry around race, sexual or gender prejudices. Check, check, and check.

Privileged AF

Here are the things that have never happened to me. No… more than that. Not only have they never happened to me, I have never thought about the possibility of them happening to me.

I have never:

  • had the cops called on me because I was waiting to meet someone in a coffee shop (or sitting anywhere, minding my own business).
  • been made to feel unwelcome because of my appearance or accent.
  • had someone mistake me for “armed” because I was holding a phone or other non-weapony object.
  • been asked to step out of the car for no reason when I get pulled over.
  • been asked not to attend an activity because I am of mixed race.
  • had people assume I am aggressive or dangerous because of the color of my skin.
  • been asked by an employer to straighten my hair so that it looks more “professional.”

There are so many more things that I’ve been automatically opted out of because of my privilege. Too many to list.

But here’s the important takeaway: These are all things that happen to people of color ALL THE TIME. And while I’m horrified by the stories I hear about the racist shit people say and do, my friends of color never seem surprised. They have lived with prejudice all of their lives.

They know racism. As much as I read/hear about it, I can never understand what it’s like to live as a person of color in the United States.

My very limited experience

I lived in the Dominican Republic for roughly two and a half years in the Peace Corps.  Aside from the initial training, and the last six months in which I lived in the capital, all of my time was spent living in Jima Abajo, a very small inland pueblo.

No one there spoke English, and most of the people living in Jima Abajo had never seen a white person face-to-face.

(To be clear, I am not suggesting that being white in the Dominican Republic is like being Black in America.  I wasn’t stuck in a racist system that took away my opportunities and rights. When I say that my experience is very limited, I mean it. I was still privileged as fuck, even when I felt like an outsider.)

There were a lot of preconceived beliefs about white people that I worked to overcome, with very little success. For instance, a single woman living alone was considered to be a prostitute. A woman with tattoos was thought to be “wild” or at least not a good person. Because of things they had seen in movies, many Dominicans thought that white women were very “loose” in general. These are only examples, but they helped inform the greater trend toward my dehumanization, which had some pretty devastating effects on me.

I’m talking about the Peace Corps because it was one of the few times in my life when I stuck out in a crowd. Attention was constantly being given to me based on the color of my skin, eyes, and hair. It felt embarrassing, and sometimes dangerous, to walk down the street looking like me. I was so conspicuous.

But here’s where the similarity ends: Most of the attention I got was positive, or at least well-intentioned. Kind of. I mean, most Dominicans consider light skin, light-colored eyes, and straight hair to be pretty. That’s a whole other thing to unpack—how the beauty ideals of Spanish colonialists are still at work in the Dominican population—so even though I was a minority as a white person, I embodied an aesthetic considered “beautiful,” which differentiated my experience from what people of color experience here in the United States.

The attention my friends of color tend to get in the United States is rarely positive. And like I said, even if it’s well-intentioned, it’s uncomfortable to be the center of attention for something immutable about your appearance. Non-white ethnicities are sometimes even fetishized for their appearance, which can go beyond making them feel uncomfortable, and put them in danger.

I was talking with a friend recently about how isolating it feels for them to be the only person of color in a group of white people. They said it’s probably akin to how it feels for me to be the only woman in a group of men. I appreciated that comparison, and I have definitely felt discomfort in that situation in the past, but I’m sure there are differences that I’ll never fully understand or experience.

I know that women have been the targets of terrible injustices over the centuries, and I’m not minimizing that. But white women have never, as a whole people, been kidnapped from our homes and brought overseas like cargo to be sold into slavery. We have never had strangers from afar push us out of our homes and relocate us to reservations. We have never been the victims of genocide.

So, yeah… not exactly the same.

What now?

I don’t know.

What I do know is that white people won’t have the answers on what to do about racism.

I’ve read Ijeoma Oluo’s book, So You Want to Talk About Race.

It’s been challenging, in all the right ways. The more I learn about race, the more I realize my own ignorance about the topic. That is a good thing. We privileged folk are unaware of a lot of systemic racism because it is so ingrained in our culture that it’s invisible to us. We need to gain awareness! And I mean that we need to gain it constantly. There will always be more to learn.

It’s not enough to “be woke” and “stay woke”… we need to keep waking up every fucking day.

One last thing. How can we be allies?

I don’t have the answer. That’s a question with no single answer, but I’ll list a few things I’ve learned, and link some resources. I hope they’re a little bit helpful.

  • Listen to people of color, listen to women, and listen to people in the LGBTQIA+ community when they talk about their experiences. Believe what they say. Understand that when race intersects with gender, ability/disability, and other factors, people have to contend with different (or more complex) bigotries.
  • Stop trying to prove you’re not racist/sexist/other-ist. It’s not about you. Being defensive is no way to be an ally.
  • When you see bigotry happening around you, pay attention. If it is  dangerous or inappropriate to step in, record the incident on your phone. Sometimes simply standing near the person being targeted is helpful.

Here are some resources that may also be helpful:

This is a video that was created for the post-Brexit UK:

5 Ways to Disrupt Racism

Racist attacks are on the rise. This short film from VideoRev offers five practical ways you can help combat racism and be an ally in times when people are under attack.

Posted by Films For Action on Thursday, October 20, 2016

The Nod is a great podcast that “tells the stories of Black life that don’t get told anywhere else”:

 

There are a ton of articles out there on the subject of being an ally, but here are a few of Ijeoma Oluo’s:

So You Want to Fight White Supremacy

White People: I Don’t Want You To Understand Me Better, I Want You To Understand Yourselves

What have you learned? Do you have any resources to share?

Posted on

Unpretty

When do young girls learn that they have to be pretty? Do we learn it from television, movies, and magazines? Do we learn it from well-meaning relatives that tell us how cute we are?

In a study published by GirlGuiding, it was revealed that half of girls feel stifled by gender stereotyping, with children as young as seven believing they are valued more for their appearance than for their achievements or character.

In an article on Everyday Feminism,  points out that even in cartoons meant for young children, we are taught that it is preferable to be pretty than it is to be smart. In Scooby Doo, for instance, Velma is made fun of and is unappreciated (even when she solves mysteries), while Daphne is treated much better by the other characters.

While filming “Annie,” Cameron Diaz told reporters how worried she was “that girls are conditioned to value themselves and judge each other by how they look. Every time we address our daughters or our nieces by saying, ‘You look lovely today,’ we are reinforcing the idea that the most important thing for a woman is to look good.”

In her article “Pretty Pressure,” Hannah Betts says that girls still tend to describe each other based on appearance before any other trait. As Belinda Parmar puts it:

My six-year-old daughter is always “cute”, “pretty”, and “sweet”; while my seven-year-old son gets “smart”, “resourceful”, and “determined”. No matter how many parenting fads we pass through from year to year, the “sugar and spice” adage just won’t die – and it’s setting our girls up for failure.

I know things are changing… somewhat. There are girls who are figuring out that things aren’t fair, and as a nation, we are beginning to participate in a dialogue about gender identity. However, children still feel the effects of the “gendering” that the adults around them perpetrate.  It is a mantle the children are forced to wear, and many of them will feel the limitations of that mantle all throughout their lives.

To see examples of children around the world talking about what it means to be a boy or a girl, watch this video:

What about you? How did you learn that being pretty was important to your self-worth? How does it still affect you to this day? What have to done to overcome it?