you tacky thing

In nineteen hundred and ninety two, I was a fifth grader in Columbus, Ohio. (It doesn’t rhyme; sorry.) My city was bubbling over with enthusiasm because that year marked the quincentenary of our eponymous hero’s voyage to the Western hemisphere. Or, as everyone liked to say, his “discovery of America.”

I didn’t like to say that. That year, I’d done a school project on the Arawaks, the people Christopher Columbus encountered when he landed in the Caribbean. I’d learned that Columbus enslaved and murdered tens of thousands of these people, forcing them to search out gold for him and chopping off their hands if they failed to find enough. He also inaugurated the transatlantic slave trade, packing 500 island natives into a ship bound for Europe; almost half of the captives died en route, foreshadowing the horrors of the middle passage that would follow. Columbus, I decided, may have been clever and may have been brave, but he had not been good. I had no interest in celebrating his voyage. By the age of 10, I had my first stripe of radical race consciousness.

What have I done with that? Not much. Every year when Columbus Day rolls around, I mutter about how we might as well have Pol Pot Day or Vlad the Impaler Day, or maybe a Yay Trail of Tears! Day to keep things local. But I haven’t protested. I haven’t written to my congressperson to ask that she draft legislation changing Columbus Day to Native American Remembrance Day or something similar. In short, I’ve been your typical all-talk-and-no-action white antiracist.

I suck.

When I get home, I’m going to spend some time learning more about indigenous people’s struggles and then sit down to write a letter to an elected official. I encourage you to do the same. Alternately, tell me why you think Columbus Day is a right and proper U.S. holiday. Dialogue isn’t everything, but it’s something.

Also: Ew, I didn’t know that Columbus was a slave trader between West Africa and Portugal. Happy Racist Fuckhead Day, everyone.

I really enjoyed the polyamory community’s recent discussion of how to respond to “Why aren’t I enough for you?” I feel fortunate never to have been asked this question, but I encounter similar attitudes from people who are not my lovers but know that I have two boyfriends. “Weren’t satisfied with one, eh?” “Having your cake and eating it, too!” And so on and so on. All I can do is smile and say, “It doesn’t work that way.” Because, for me, it doesn’t.

I grew up believing that people are supposed to find one person and commit to that person and never want to be with anyone else ever again. You get into a relationship and then you only have eyes for him, dear, and that’s how you know you’re really in love.

Only it never worked that way for me. (more…)

That charming new-job smell has worn off when by the end of the day, for two days in a row, you feel like crying.

Fuck.

This pissed me off enough to break my blog-intertia:

“Howl” too hot to hear: 50 years after poem ruled not obscene, radio fears to air it

Fifty years ago today, a San Francisco Municipal Court judge ruled that Allen Ginsberg’s Beat-era poem “Howl” was not obscene. Yet today, a New York public broadcasting station decided not to air the poem, fearing that the Federal Communications Commission will find it indecent and crush the network with crippling fines.

…

WBAI program director Bernard White fears that the FCC will fine the station $325,000 for every one of Ginsberg’s dirty-word bombs. If each Pacifica station that aired the poem - and possibly repeated it - were to be fined for airing “Howl,” it could mean millions of dollars in fines.

The potential impact of such penalties is daunting to a commercial-free station with a $4 million annual budget whose financial state White described as “in the black, but we’re surrounded by a lot of red ink. A fine like that might crush us.”

This is the society we live in: Our government stifles art out of “concern” for the tender ears of children. (more…)