OK. Its Time To Get This Done.

OK. It’s time to get this done.

Hi everyone. It’s been a while. 

I started this blog in September of 2017. I stopped posting in March 2018. Now i’m back, after 9-odd months of figuring stuff out. 

I guess I needed to get myself together, to eliminate some pressure from my life. I’ll say it, last spring was a really rough time for me, and I just couldn’t keep this blog up anymore. I took the summer to recollect myself, and the autumn to enjoy my new life. And it is pretty new - new school, new friends, new schedule. I’m glad to say I’m doing much, much better. 

And during this time, I didn’t think much about this blog and its purpose at all. I was still writing all the time. I was still thinking about the same things I’ve written about here. But last year, the pressure was getting to me - to be clear, pressure I was putting on myself. I wanted to put my all into this blog - and I genuinely enjoyed doing so - but I guess it just became too much.   

This is a long post. It’s written by someone you don’t know and have never met, so you probably won’t spend 10 minutes of your time reading it. I don’t really mind. But I’m writing this for three reasons: to explain myself, to advise you, and to make a super rough draft of a mission statement for this blog. That sounds a little dramatic. But I think it fits the goal here, actually: To explain, to advise, and make some super rough drafts of crap.

If you are reading this, you’re probably one of my much beloved followers. Thank you so much for all your support and (dare I say it) interest. I didn’t forget about you these past nine months, but I also learned not to forget about myself. It takes guts to put yourself out there on the Scary InternetTM, and I’ve learned that if I wanna do it right, I’ve gotta be thinking about my own well-being. I only have to do this if I want to, not for the sake of strangers. No shade - it’s just me being honest. 

And I guess that’s where the advice come in: if you want to put yourself and your work out there, whether that’s here or anywhere else, it shouldn’t be just for others. It has to be for you, too.   

And now for the mission statement part, or a very rough draft of it: the purpose of this blog is to share with you my opinions, ideas, values, and writing. That’s why I do it for me. What I do for you (hopefully) is inform and teach, about issues I care about and that I hope you care about too. Social justice, environmentalism, history, sociocultural issues; sometimes just poems or stories. 

Someone, upon hearing about my blog, told me I was a social critic. I prefer the term ’social observer’. I think that, in a way, that is my responsibility as a writer. It’s also my responsibility as an activist. Your craft, gift, passion, whatever you want to call it should be shared. It deserves to be shared. So have at it. 

There will be more posts coming up in the next few weeks. But for now, thank you, everybody. Happy (almost) New Year!

The Industrial Revolution of the 1800s saw a boom in manufacturing and technological achievement. Products as diverse as car parts to cleaning supplies were being assembled, built, woven, or otherwise created on a scale never before seen. But this renaissance required workers - lots of them. In capitalist countries in the West, business tycoons made profit off of the cheap labor of thousands of men, women and children. Most of them worked up to 16 hours a day, in insanely dangerous conditions. But where there is oppression there is resistance, and in the 1880s, worker’s unions across the United States began to fight for their rights.   

Many members of the movement at this time were communists and anarchists, who believed that the capitalist system exploited members of the working class. They demonstrated for an 8-hour day, as well as better wages and working conditions. 

In 1886, in the first days of May, thousands of Chicago’s working class went on strike.  In Haymarket Square, a meeting of up to 3,000 radicals gathered to protest the conditions they worked in. When the Chicago police came to disperse the demonstrators, someone threw a bomb. At least 8 people died, and more than a hundred were wounded. 

Three years later, in commemoration of what was called the Haymarket affair, the International Socialist Conference declared May first an international holiday for the world’s workers. The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (now know as the American Federation of Labor) declared that “eight hours shall now constitute a legal day’s labor.” 

But the US no longer celebrates Labor Day on May first, or May Day. During the Cold War, May first became associated with the socialist and communist movements that it had been born from. President Eisenhower signed a resolution renaming May Day as ‘Loyalty Day’, a holiday dedicated to American patriotism. We now celebrate Labor Day on September second.   

But hey, in recognition of global celebrations and the industrious working class, here’s a shout out to May Day. Equality and vacation days for all! 

Women belong to every minority; raise women up, and you raise up those minorities.

Today is the 3rd annual Women’s March, an international movement advocating for gender equality and human rights. The quote above is what my poster said at the first one two years ago. 

And it’s true: women are members of every community on the planet (unless you count fraternities, which I don’t). Religious, ethnic, racial, sexual -  you name it, women are a part of it. Unfortunately, lots of these groups often face discrimination and prejudice in any number of ways, for any number of reasons. Anywhere in the world, someone is always getting crap for being who they are. And regardless of their cultural identity, women often have it much worse.   

So let’s stop the hate against hijabis. Let’s stop underestimating women of color. Let’s stop the neglect of transgender woman, and the objectification of girls who like girls. 

Raise up the women, and you raise up the world. 

The queer community is it’s own worst enemy.   

It’s gay men and lesbians against bisexual people, who “just need to choose.” Angry spitfires who say asexual people aren’t really part of the community, aren’t really human. Cisgendered queers who degrade and dehumanize trans and non binary people.   

We put each other in boxes. We tell one another that there’s something false about that person’s LGBTQ+ identity. We say “you don’t belong, you have to fit into this cookie cutter. You can’t be that one, or none at all.” There’s always something wrong with you, but if you were to be something else, then you’ll be part of the community. We’ll finally get equal rights, if only you change. 

Get married, adopt kids. Don’t be poor, don’t be disabled, don’t be a person of color. You can be queer, but not too much, because then they won’t help us. You’ll scare them away. You can come under the umbrella, but if you’re this-or-that, we’ll push you out into the rain. 

This is what assimilation does to people. It pits them against each other, because everyone is holding themselves to a standard of a people that is not their own. And it isn’t just the LGBTQ+ community that does it. 

 ~ “You’re dark skinned - you’re not as good, not as clean, as people with light skin.”   ~ “You’re light skinned - you’re not black enough. Who do you think you are?” 

 ~ “You speak Spanish, so you’re living in the past; you aren’t ‘American’ enough.”  ~ “You don’t speak Spanish, so you aren’t in touch with you’re Latinx roots.” 

And round and round in circles. No one is safe, no one is free. There are too many eyes, too many boxes, and so an identity is scattered like loose change. A people forgets that they are all the same blood, in an effort to dilute it. This is what assimilation does to a people. Society hurts the community, which hurts the individual. All people, vs. your people, vs. you. 

To be queer is to be gifted with an eye-opening experience that never truly ends. It’s a life-long journey of discovery, about who you are and how you want to express that. It’s a description, not a definition. The LGBTQ+ community is vibrant, diverse, and all-encompassing. To be a part of it is to belong, to learn, and to gain friendship. It spans the globe, it brings out the best in people. Your never really stop seeing it’s beauty.   

But it’s made to be something else. It’s told it must be a set of easily identified categories. Queer people are told that they must fit one of these categories, and stick to it. Their identity must be a tight package to fit into. It must be easily understood and easily explained, because God forbid we confuse anyone! And so the queer individual suffers. 

And when the person suffers, so does the community.

Here’s the thing fam-

You have to decide if you want to be one of the best, or the best. 

The fact is, there’s gonna be a lot of people in you’re life who will get the same grades and credit and praise and points, but who aren’t the best people. They can be rude, vapid, inconsiderate, myopic, or just not very nice; plenty of people like that will get the credit you deserve. But they’re not the best - you are. You are a person with a big, beautiful heart. You’re hardworking, talented, conscientious, and kind; it’s people like you who should get the best in life. But you’re the only one who can make that happen. You, for the sake of everyone, need to commit to being one tough cookie: don’t let them get the best of you, get the best of yourself. Be the best version of yourself that you can be. Make sure that you get everything other people get, that you do everything other people do, and more. Don’t cheat yourself.  

And the people I mentioned above? The one’s who don’t hold a candle to you? The goal isn’t to stop them; it’s to not let them stop you.

I often forget that there ARE ace/aro celebs out there - that’s how isolated I feel most of the time. We stan Moses Sumney for calling out capitalism as making money on amatonormativity.

Being this way is rlly hard but this post is a blessing. Shout out to all my ace and/or aro peeps living their best lives. That’s the best and most original form of resistance

Since it’s aro awareness week and black history month this seems like a fitting time to shout out and express my appreciation to the black aros making history. 

Moses Sumney

Moses Sumney is perhaps the most public and well known aro person out there. He create a whole album (yes! a whole album) titled Aromanticism that was released in 2017. Not only is the album stunningly gorgeous it features very aro lines such as “Am I vital/ If my heart is idle/ Am I doomed?“ and “If lovelessness is godlessness/ Will you cast me to the wayside?”

He has a deeply anti-opression and anti-capitalist perspective that informs and is informed by his aromanticism. 

“I think that romance is very obviously a political tool, and a capitalist device. I’ve even thought recently, it’s quite good for the economy: the amount people spend on weddings and gifts. Also, [romance] just can’t be separated from a patriarchal structure — like the idea that in a homosexual couple, one person is the masculine, and the other is the feminine. Ultimately we keep going back to those two figures on the wedding cake as the archetype, even for alternative relationships.“ (https://www.thefader.com/2017/09/04/moses-sumney-aromanticism-interview)

Michaela Coel

Michaela Coel is a writer, actor, poet and director. She wrote and stars in Chewing Gum, acted in an episode of Black Mirror and plays the lead character in Black Earth Rising. 

She came out as aro on twitter in 2017. She hasn’t talked about it much since then but it looks like she learned about aromanticism through Moses Sumney. 

Here’s a quote of her talking about seeing his concert. 

“He’s a beautiful artist and I’ve read some interviews of his about romanticism and capitalism, and it was really refreshing to see views that I share but are also very taboo. Just about what exactly is romance, aside from lust and love, what is this other thing and do I really have that? It’s nice that there’s this guy out there who makes those albums.“(https://www.wmagazine.com/story/michaela-coel-black-mirror-season-4-star-trek-space-episode-netflix)

There’s not much aro history out there, but these black aros are paving a path for the future.