I’m going to try to write entire entries in one sitting, so they don’t loose coherence after the fourth paragraph. Wish me luck.
With WWOTB out of my court for a week or more, I’m starting to think of other “independent” (of school work) projects that I can do. Everyone I’ve talked to about WWOTB has been really excited and energetic about it, which I think, is pretty darn cool. A year ago I might have said, “now I just hope people follow through,” but after so many years of working for Free-ePress, CollectiveArts, and even to a more limited extent TealArt, I think I’ve learned a few things about collaborative projects and how to organize myself to inspire (if that’s the right word, perhaps encourage) the response that I seek.
But I was thinking, of people I should ask here at Beloit, to contribute to this project. I sent the initial email out to one guy, and there are more than that, but I realized that there isn’t really any group or way for the gay men on this campus to connect and or relate with/to each other. The Alliance (GSA) type organization is mostly female. This is great, really, but it also doesn’t serve me terribly well (not that I’m going to stop going, I’m just saying). I think this feeling is similar to the one than Iris felt when she decided to write her book, rather than just rely on the original Ophelia Speaks collection.
Now of course the logical conclusion to draw from this is that I need to start some sort of affinity group for gay men on this campus. Now I really don’t want to go through student activities cause that’s a pain in the ass, using The Alliance is probably a good idea, but I think that carries a lot of bad connotations on campus, and funding something myself isn’t really an option. Ok so having said that, my current thought it to have some sort of brunch group, but I kind of feel if I did anything to formal, all I’d get is a bunch of girls. Excluding people isn’t a good idea, but at the same time, if you include straight guys and girls of any persuasion, then you don’t really have an affinity group now do you?
I think there are at least two major forces pulling on feminist and/or social justice movements. The first is clearly forming alliances between affected (or not affected) groups, under the idea that oppression is shared and that many hands make light work. Then there’s the idea that the affected group (women, lesbians, male homosexuals, people of color, people from the non-western world, immigrants, emigrants, transgender people, transsexual people, teenagers, teenage girls, workers, queer people, etc.) need to work together to empower themselves and build a nurturing community. Affinity builds the foundation for coalition work, and both are dependent on each other.
So this brings up another interesting theoretical concept for me. The struggle for change in order to be productive and successful needs to incorporate movement in at least two disparate aspects. These aspects are often contradictory, and by focusing on one the activist/theorist tends to forget the other one, which makes movements hard to manage. History is rife with examples of this.
In the example above, they are affinity and coalition. At Anytown, they are conscious and subconscious manifestations of oppression. In feminism/women’s studies programs, they are activism and theory. These elements need to move together, and that’s a huge problem not easily overcome.
I just got back from hearing a presentation by AIDS Activist Bob Bowers, which was interesting. He was an engaging speaker and he had a good point and I liked his approach. He’s one of the few survivors from the early eighties, and he reports being in good shape (undetectable viral load, and a t-cell count that was low a bit low, but still present). He was very candid and honest, and seemed to put a real face on the disease. I think it was a good counter to the sort of healthy but undetectably sick image that we’ve see far too much of. Nevertheless the one thing I wanted him to talk about that he didn’t (which was what it’s like to be a straight man infected with a “gay” disease), because even if infection rates are down among gay men and up among heterosexuals (which I don’t buy 100%) HIV is still identified with the gay community. Part of me wants to own that and make it my struggle, and part of me likes that it’s part of a broader struggle. It’s all good. But going to this talk, allowed me to think about a few other issues.
I just sent out my request for submissions, for the Affinity Story Project, to seven of my awesome-ist friends, so I should be able to get eight stories (there’s another guy whose email I can’t find) (I hope) to use as examples, or as a sample for publishers. I’ve decided to call it Where We Ought to Be: The Experience of Young Gay Men, for now. (Yes it’s a reference to “Simple Gifts,” the shaker hymn.) That’s still a rough title, so it may shift a little, depending on how post-structural I’m feeling. This is a really cool thing, and I think it may just work, which makes it an even cooler thing.
But it strikes me, what I’m really looking for in WWOTB is the pure essence of what it means to be gay and young in today’s world. What draws us together, what differences make us diverse and unique, how do we relate to the “gay struggle” of years past. What’s it like to wake up every morning?
I started writing this entry days ago, and I remember being so excited about it, and now, I haven’t a clue as to where I was going. Sorry for being so distant late. But I have been getting things done. Cheers. — sam.
Ha! Thought I couldn’t use “fraught” in an entry title. Well I can! Anyway, this entry is yet another brainstorming (ie. I want to think about the paper, and I want to feel productive without actually writing the paper yet, so I’m going to write about something that actually interests me) for a paper, sprinkled with a little gender theory thrown in for good measure.
So I’m writing this psych paper, and I’m really dreading it. Not because I think I’m ill-equipped to write it, or that I think I’m incapable, or even that I think she’ll grade harshly (because everything else I’ve written for her has a mean grade of 99%). Rather, I think I’m worried because I feel like I have to do amazingly well on this cause I want to major in psych. A.W. talks about a similar sort of pressure about needing to do perfectly on certain classes relating to his major. So I’m not *that* weird, ok, maybe I am, just don’t pick on me.
Psychology is really interesting, and I like it, but I do have some problems with how psychologists deal with gender issues. This doesn’t surprise me, but I think I should voice it. I think it’s particularly problematic now, when I don’t really have the knowledge base, or the authority to make the kinds of objections that I want to. In time.
On the most basic level, I feel psychology doesn’t make room for gender variance, and in general is to biologically bassed. But then my prof is a neuroscience, brain chemistry type, and I suppose I’d be worried if she wasn’t grounded in biology. Any “acceptance” of gender variance is quickly shuffled away towards transexualism, which despite its “unconventionality” reinforces the binary, and doesn’t really solve anything. The way that “The Book” (dr. george H___, that one, you know, the book) pathologizes gender varience isn’t helpful, and psychologists generally follow this general approach.
Moving on.
The other main objection that I have is that it seems to me that our ways of conceptualizing of human psychology (especially the neuroscience/cognative bits, but other things as well) are viewed in binary terms. Let me preface my example by saying that, I’m working on the understanding that any conceptualizing of difference as dualism is inherently gendered. Whenever we think of different ideas as being either/or, it reflects upon our understanding of gender as limited to two option based upon our understanding of gender. For instance I have this interesting diagram, which describes long-term memory and it shows one binary after another. Now I’m not saying that this is implicitly wrong, just that binary is pervasive (hence the title.)
[Ok, So I wrote this entry a few days ago, and just got around to posting it now. That’s fine. Enjoy]
This has been one of those weeks. Not bad, really, just hectic.
See, my request for a new room in a different hall finally came up. See I was living in the armpit of the campus, and some guy moved into TKE (the pretty boy frat) and left an open room, which while bearing a remarkable similarity to my old room, is on a much better floor in a better building. The new building is virtually identical to the old one, but it’s not as grody.
The end result of that is that I packed up all of my earthly belongings and moved them down. It felt good to see that I really don’t have that much stuff. If I worked at it, I could get rid of a box or two. I got everything in the new room and started to unpack which took a lot of energy. It was a struggle to find, and then put, the sheets on the bed before I fell asleep. It took a couple of tried. I woke up once, having wrapped myself in the mattress cover and fitted sheet.
Eventually though I got all the kinks worked out, and somehow managed to get the sheets on the bed. I even managed to wake up in enough time to get to class, which is itself a miracle because I didn’t set the clock. I even got up in time to eat a proper breakfast, which is better than I did on Monday.
On the other hand, I was in such a rush this morning that I put my underwear on backwards and it took me all day to notice.
The main intention of this post as I embark on it, is to write about some of the knitting process that I’ve made of late, but there’ll be other related bits of news. I’m feeling kind of guilty about the fact that I more or less completely forgot about TealArt last week.
I’ve gotten a lot of knitting in of late, and believe it or not it has become a balanced part of my life. There were times in high school where I knitted while being avoidant of my work (both school related, but more often personal related), so I’d end up going through phases where I’d knit compulsively for a few days or a week, and then I’d put everything down for a while, while I got actual work done.
Since I’ve gotten here, my knitting progress has been steady, and I haven’t used it to avoid my school work (as you might have noticed, TealArt and Another Round have suffered, but alas.) I knit a little in class. All my teachers are quite alright with this, and I think it helps my absorption a little. This isn’t to say that my absorption rate is perfect, but taking compulsive notes (as opposed to the more limited kinds of notes I take now) is a lot worse than knitting during class. In addition to that, I knit during a couple of club meetings, and then I sneak in a little knitting time during movies, and other laid back sort of times.
I know what you’re saying at this point: That’s real nice Sam, but what cool things have you been knitting?
Well, I thought you’d never ask.
I finished the sweater I was making before school during convocation (I’d been in Beloit for a week at this point). While I suppose a technical re-evaluation of my previous statement will show that I said I wanted to finish the sweater before I got to Beloit, I don’t think it’ll be unreasonable to say that I really meant that I’d finish the sweater before classes start which I did. It fits really well, but the bottom band flares a little. I think it might block out, and if it doesn’t I’ll figure something cleaver out to do with elastic and ribbon. I still have to dye it, but I found a friend who said she’d help with the dying, so depending on our respective work loads, I’ll get that done soon and start wearing it soon.
I finished the funky shawl thing, and I might wear it once I get it dyed, which will happen at the same time.
I also made two and a half hats (which took about a week each): two and a half because, one is a double thick hat and while there are two hats, that I had to make, it’s only one hat in the end. Both of those hats are made out of the same yarn as the same wool as the sweater. So that’s cool.
When I finished the second hat, I was itching to start some sort of real project, something sort of biggish. So I cast on for a world famous circular shawl, using some mercerized cotton cone yarn that my mom going (in a huge quantity), and I’m going to use a third of it or a bit more on this shawl. I started it the Monday before last (tomorrow will be the third Monday that I’ve been working on it.) I’ll probably finish it on Tuesday or Wednesday. The last time I made something this size, it took me a month of serious knitting. The lace pattern makes it go faster. On the outer most section I’ve inserted 7 repeats of Snowdrop lace, a traditional Shetland pattern, which I really like, and I like how I memorized the pattern perfectly after the second repeat, and I know how to fix and fudge it, and I don’t even need markers to separate the repeat. I’ll probably make another shawl with lacey patterns soon again (possibly with the same yarn, but I need a break for my continued knitting health).
I am currently in ownership of a sweaters worth of very nice locally produced (or at least locally milled and dyed), wool/mohair (but it’s so soft!) in a wonderful red color. I’ll probably make a fun plain raglan pull over with it. The dye job isn’t perfectly even (an error) but I’m going to maximize it by showing off the yarn with the pattern.
I also got a 14 oz cone of fairly fine yarn (dk-fingering?) on eBay that I should get sometime soon. I’ll probably make a drop shouldered sweater out of it. (The alternative is to make a shawl.) Oh, and my mom I think might have found the perfect yarn to make the Turkish patterned sweater (and I can’t decide weather to make a pullover or a cardigan like it says.) But that’s down the road a bit.
There’s other news, but I think I’ll leave you all in suspense for a while.