I am not a fucking mascot

It's football season and you know what that means: Dan Snyder's shitty sports team and its racist mascot are in everyone's face again. Even though The Washington Post and even  NFL commentators have decided to stop referring to the team by its offensive name, the organization refuses to budge. Let's deconstruct the arguments against changing his offensive team name!

Before we start, if your first question is going to be "Well how much Indian are you?" let me stop you right there. I'm not going to defend myself against your blood quantum requirements; I get plenty of that from the federal government. I will just say: enough. I am enough.

Argument 1: But it's about honoring their strength/spirit etc...

The historical context of the slur is debatable. The fact that it is a slur is not. One theory is that the term originated from scalping. Baxter Holmes writes about the call for the brutal scalping of Penobscot Indians, in a chilling piece for Esquire:

     "Spencer Phips, a British politician and then Lieutenant Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Province, issued the call ... for, 'His Majesty’s subjects to Embrace all opportunities of pursuing, captivating, killing and Destroying all and every of the aforesaid Indians.' They paid well – 50 pounds for adult male scalps; 25 for adult female scalps; and 20 for scalps of boys and girls under age 12.

These bloody scalps were known as 'redskins.'

The mascot of the Washington Redskins, if the team desired accuracy, would be a gory, bloodied crown from the head of a butchered Native American."

Fucking terrible, right? This is not about the strength and power of a native person, this is about the strength and power of the white person who killed them.

Another theory is that the term refers to the reddish (I guess?) tone of native peoples' skin, or the red paint some tribes used on their faces. Native people may have coined the term to differentiate themselves from their white murderers or their white murderers may have started calling native people redskins first. Regardless, the imagery of Indians with red skin made it's way into popular culture and never in a positive way (Peter Pan, anyone?) You are not talking about the accuracy of a native warrior's arrow or the strength of an elder's spirit; you are talking about skin tone, as in, "not white."

         Why is the red man red? Because Walt Disney was at his racist best.
                                 

Any way you slice it, the racial slur "redskin" was meant to be derogatory and Redskins or Redmen or any other incarnation of the term used by white people is paying homage to the white men who called them that and nothing else. Even if you did have the purest of intentions in wanting to honor native tribes, it's not working. So stop.

Argument 2: But there are Native schools that call their team "Redskins" ...

This argument is as old as the reappropriation of slurs itself. Oh, are you the type of white person who thinks that because black people can use the n-word you should be able to as well? The type of straight person who thinks that gay men calling each other the f-word gives you license to?  If you think marginalized groups taking back negative terms, stripping them of their power to hurt, and incorporating those terms into their own culture's vernacular should give you free reign on those terms yourself, fuck off please reevaluate your philosophies and get back to me.

Oh also maybe watch this:

Argument 3: Why haven't native people cared about the team name before?

Because it's really difficult for the poor and disenfranchised to find the time for "luxury causes" such as this one, that's why. Reservations are dealing with a poverty rate six times the national average. The land is crap. Tribes that were disbanded by the government are fighting for recognition. Tribes have been dealing with high suicide rates and a predisposition to alcoholism. This shouldn't be news to you, but things have been pretty shitty for Native Americans. Matt Calkins breaks this down further here.

Recently, things have been looking up for tribes. With casino money, reservations are slowly digging themselves out from below the poverty line. Native American scholarships are providing better access to education for young Indians. Native people are finally at a point where they can do more than just try to survive. It's not that they never cared before, it's that they didn't have the luxury to care before.

Argument 4: Why haven't YOU cared before, Marcia, hmmmm?

To be honest, I didn't really care about football at all. It was easy to ignore. It was always sort of an abstract thing: sports teams were sometimes racist. Now that I actually take an interest in my local sportball team, all of those racist mascots and logos are staring me in the face. And it pisses me off. Also I've been thinking a lot about my cultural identity (or lack thereof) since my dad died. Also, the world has been falling apart, I don't know if you noticed. I was busy dealing with that--

--oh wait, are you trying to attack me personally to distract from the validity of the cause?  Yeah, I thought so. Moving on.

Argument 5: Well then we'd have to change the Braves, the Indians, the Chiefs ...

YES. We would. Change them all. Fucking change all of them.*

The Washington Racists are just the most prominent and offensive in a long line of offensive team names.

Fucking change them all and stop holding onto your bullshit white privilege, the same white privilege that allowed rich white men to caricaturize several hundred races of people, AFTER other white men murdered them and stole their land. Oh poor sports fans, you'll to buy new overpriced officially licensed sportball gear and you wont be able to wear that feathered headdress anymore. I don't fucking care. Stop being a racist asshole.

*I'm also tired of running into "sexy Pocahontas" and "Chief Sits-on-Dicks" at Halloween parties, but that's a subject for another blog.

I want to be a catch, not a catch and release

Hello again, dear imaginary readers. I'm not exactly sure that what I want to talk about has a concrete introduction, or even body and conclusion, so I think I'm just going to blather on for awhile. A shocking development, I know.

I want to go home. Problem: I don't know where that is. I don't think it's in Monroe, or Bothell, although I'm pretty sure that neither of those places are inherently bad, just too full of terrible memories.

I've been running for so long. I started to realize, as I was staring thirty in the face, that I was exhausted. And now that I've officially kissed my twenties goodbye, I'm antsy. I'm terrified, I'm lonely, and I feel exactly as lost as I did at seventeen when I thought all I wanted was to disappear to California. This city feels at once warm and loving but cold and dreadfully standoffish. There are so many wonderful people who love me everywhere I look, but none of them can help me.

 My thirty-first birthday is tomorrow, and I'm officially upset about it. Hurray, I've reached that age where impending birthdays result in a depression spiral during which I contemplate my own mortality and palpable lack of suitors. Thanks, societal conditioning.

I am afraid that I will be alone for the rest of my life.

So many of my friends tell me that "Of course you wont be alone forever, you're so pretty and smart and awesome!" These sorts of statements, while probably true, are basically worthless. Because yes, if there were a bell curve grading people on how much other people like to look at them,  I'd probably fall somewhere right of the middle. Yes, I am intelligent. Yes, other people seem to enjoy my company.

None of this matters.

Finding that "special someone" is basically a combination of proximity and dumb luck.

It's one hundred percent about finding someone you connect with before someone else, who they can establish a similar connection with, stumbles upon them first.

I'm being characteristically hyperbolic of course. My being attractive/intelligent/enjoyable company may make the pool of people who will desire me slightly larger that say, an orc, but really when you factor in all the people I meet in a day who rule me out because they would rather be with someone with different qualities it all comes out in the wash. Peter Bakus, while an economics grad student at Warwick University, used the Drake equation to calculate his odds of finding a girlfriend. For those of you who don't know, the Drake equation was used to estimate the number of "us" like civilizations that might exist in this galaxy, using variables like rate of formation of stars capable of supporting life, fraction of Earth-like planets, etc.  Bakus tweaked this equation for things like the number of women in the UK  and the fraction of those who might find him attractive.

 His odds of finding a potential mate on a given night in London were 0.00034%. That is a 1 in 285,000 chance.

Peter Bakus is an attractive, intelligent and (I imagine if he's writing papers like this one) awesome. And alone.

"What about dating sites?"

I'm not talking about dating sites, because I hate dating sites. Nevertheless, since you brought it up: yes. Same rules of firstsies applies here, only more aggressively, and with greater success. You are choosing specifically from a pool of individuals who are available but you still have to navigate to the person you click with before someone else does.

Here is a list of Things I Want:

1) Someone to love, and to be loved by, who believes that they can love only me until I'm dead and reincarnated/rotting/in hell/whatever.

2) A cabin in the forest, near the forest, or at least in some podunk little neighborhood close to a forest, where I can grow vegetables and where a big floppy golden retriever and a smushy-faced english bulldog can run around together. The kind of place where teenagers (like me, circa 1998) dream of breaking out of, except for different reasons than I had. I was (am?) running from my small town because it was full of ghosts that I wanted to be rid of. This place will be full of love and beauty and simplicity, and those teenagers will be like the amish on rumspringa.

3) To keep experiencing things.

A good friend of mine told me that I am "hyper-monogamous." Because I don't date around, I don't play the field. If I have one date, I don't want another one with someone else. I fall fast and hard. I give everything to one person, and then I find out if they deserve it. This has gotten me into trouble because, well, usually they don't deserve it.

I don't have a clever way to end this blog.

Another fun blog about the patriarchy!

I was having a chat with someone the other day and he informed me that we don't live in a patriarchal society. That patriarchy is a choice, not a systemic social problem. I say he informed me because I quickly became aware that what we were engaging in was not a spirited debate or even a conversation but rather him telling me what was right (his opinion) and what was wrong (mine). I was told I was getting angry and emotional, which is a classic debate tactic (and is also arguably patriarchal: the poor woman is too emotional to think correctly). I did not want to engage in that situation, but it definitely got me thinking.

Feminism defines patriarchy as an unjust social system that is oppressive to women. There are blog posts on blog posts about blog posts on whether or not we, as a society, are past patriarchy. This might be my favorite. Even though I have nothing new to bring to the conversation, I find the conversation is still necessary.

The aforementioned male's main argument is this:

"[a female close to him] will routinely state how she thinks men should be chivalrous and pay for things and also will routinely state how she deserves to be treated equally"

This is one of the very consequences of living in a patriarchal society that is embroiled in a debate about whether or not it is a patriarchal society. Women today (most straight women in middle class America), grow up with the notion that they can be anything they want to be and that they are equal to any man. They are also told repeatedly that a real man will pay for dinner, hold her door open, and take care of her. Society is telling women this at every turn. We are given a disharmonious set of values from a very young age: Be a strong, independent woman. You are just as good as any man at whatever it is you want to pursue. But make sure to let your man feel like the man. When young women are told that they are and should be equal to men, but are then given a set of rules to govern their interactions with those men, these women are going to be understandably confused. I know I am.

Nora Caplan-Bricker at the New Republic writes: 

        "Patriarchy isn't just the ratio of men to women in Congress or on Fortune 500 lists. It’s also a set of societal norms, invented by men but internalized and imparted by everyone, that says women shouldn't be too big or too loud or with hair in the wrong places—that determines women should be one way and not any other."

Yes, some men choose to be stay-at-home dads. Yes, there are women in powerful positions across the corporate ladder. Yes, there is a really good chance that our next president will be female. But one woman president does not mean we are past feminism. One woman successfully navigating male-dominated systems does not erase the fact that they are male-dominated systems.

I asked this man to check his privilege before making sweeping claims about the end of oppression in our society. This was met with a lot of anger at how a) I had no idea where he came from and b) how just because he is a straight white American male does not mean his opinion is invalid. The former is an honest misunderstanding of the concept of privilege, and I did not feel like getting that far into the weeds about sociological terms so his continued confusion on that point is understandable. To the latter: Sorry but yes, as a straight white male in America you are NOT the best person to judge whether or not we live in a patriarchal society. I'm sorry, I know it's not fair and you feel like you have the right for your opinion to ring louder and truer than all of the rest but that is not how voices on oppression work. You may not be oppressing anyone currently (not all men!) but you are a part of the oppressing party and you just don't get to make the call on this one. I know you will be angry at me and at how wrong you think I am; tough fucking shit. Oh btw, you were oppressing me when you belittled my opinion, told me to go away and come back when I was less emotional and could back up my indignation with facts. Not "grassroots campaigns," mind you. I tried to direct this man to the Yes All Women movement but he would have none of those types of facts.

I'm now going to tell you a story:
(trigger warning: unwanted sexual advances)

A few months ago, I was very intoxicated at the end of a long night out at a neighborhood bar. My phone was dying and I was worried about my ability to walk home safely in the state I was in so I called an uber. Since my phone was nearly dead, when the car was arriving I left the bar and hopped in the first uber I saw. We were halfway to my apartment before the driver realized that I was not his intended fare. Someone else had apparently called a car to the same bar at the same time, and I had gotten in the wrong one. After a lot of confusion, driving back to the bar, and dealing with the other customer, the driver offered to take me home for free since I was already in his car and my phone was about to die. It was a short ride. When we pulled up to my apartment, this man did not want me to get out of the car. He stated repeatedly that we should "go somewhere and have fun," tried to kiss me multiple times, and tried to put my hand on his body.

I gave this man my phone number because he asked for it and I could not think of a fake one. I told him we could "go somewhere and have fun" later because I just wanted out of his car and thought that this was the easiest way to make that happen. I was frightened. I was an unregistered passenger, I was drunk, and I was afraid that "no" was not enough to get me out of the situation.

Men who look at a drunk woman alone and see an opportunity are assholes; they are also a product of patriarchy.

Street harassment is patriarchy.

The men's rights movement is patriarchy.

When someone tells you to "be a man about it," that is patriarchy.

When someone says "don't be a pussy," that is patriarchy.

When a woman is told to "smile, sweetheart," that is patriarchy.

When "I have a boyfriend" is the only way to get someone to stop hitting on you (not "I'm just out with my friends, "I'm really not looking for anyone right now" or any other perfectly legitimate reason you wish to be left alone, but only that you "belong" to another man), that is patriarchy.

The people saying these things are not making a choice to participate in the patriarchy; they are probably not even thinking about re-enforcing patriarchal social norms, and that is exactly what makes them patriarchal social norms. 

If you don't see the patriarchy in our society, take a look at yourself. You'll probably find it there.