1 year after Katrina
We will not forget.
August 29, 2006
June 13, 2006
What would you do if you didn't care what people thought?
I saw this question the other day, and started thinking about what it meant for me, especially in terms of fighting for spocial justice.
If I didn't care what people thought, I would:
- shower less frequently, to save resources
- worry less about my weight
- buy fewer new clothes
- use fewer (or no) beauty products
- dance in public
- roll down grassy hills in public
- wear only comfy shoes
- push gender appearance norms more
- have the tattoo that I've wanted for 15 years
- wear a more noticeable nosering, and fairy wings
- giggle more
- speak my mind more often, and more loudly
- more consistently confront people who say racist, sexist, classist, etc. things
- more consistently confront people who don't think their personal choices (driving, buying sweatshop-made products, choosing to live in neighborhoods that have no poor people and don't have sidewalks) have a global impact
You may be noticing a trend: This blogger, were I to become ...unfiltered by caring what people think...would spend a lot of time outside of social mores. And specifically, around issues of changing the world, well...would have few friends and might even generally be an unpleasant & judgmental person to be around.
In fact, the more I thought about it the more I realized that the person that I would be without paying attention to other people's opinions is very similar to the rude, pushy, fiery, ungroomed, principled, judgemental, out and proud, passionate, focused, free, secure, confident, obnoxious, powerful person that I was in college.
Now that made me think...what has changed since then? Why do I pay attention to my looks now? Why do I moderate my opinions, cover them when necessary, not call out every injustice that I see? Why do I worry what people think now, when I didn't before?
And am I happy with the results?
Well...Y'all who know me already know that I toned down my rhetoric because it wasn't working. Surprise: people don't seem to like communications without social niceties - or to put it another way, paying attention to what people think of my communications style is the tool that I have learned to hopefully have my message actually heard. And to not get fired from jobs.
In fact, this is the PhD thesis that I want to write: when people feel attacked, they will defend themselves and not be open to new ideas.
Humility is a huge part of this. What makes me think I have the right to tell other people what to do at all? It's a slippery slope. My convictions tell me to stay on that slope, and continually push the people I love to reconsider their driving, shopping, eating, etc. habits, but...to push gently, and with open ears, and accept it when people tell me they can't be pushed any farther right now. As much as I want to make the world a more progressive and secure and unpolluted place, I can't tell anyone else what to do. We all find our own paths.
I've learned how to pay attention to what people think, in order to gauge how best to reach them, and share my values, in hopes of perpetuating those values. I think that's a good thing, even if it does come at a price.
But some of these changes I feel more mixed about.
I've adopted many of the grooming rituals of "normal" people because the way I look affects how powerful I am in this society. (There's a fabulous and nasty cognitive dissonance when the grooming rituals I use to get power feel demeaning to me, such as shaving my legs!) This power is, of course, limited: I only have access to the powers that are granted to conventionally dressed white women in our society. It's not really the kind of power I want. But it's the kind I am currently choosing, at least sometimes. I'm showing by my grooming habits that I prefer to have the meager power I can get as a conventionally groomed female then the even more tenuous power I would have as a female who dresses outside gender and class boundaries.
I personally would rather not be dressing only in women's clothes, for example, or using so many gallons of water every day, but the alternative is to feel that other people will judge me for being grungy or "ugly" or having bed hair, instead of listening to what I have to say.
Some days I feel resilient enough to put my water use, my nosering size, my gender identity, my fairy wing attire before my social comfort. Other days I don't.
I wish I could completely stop caring what people think. It's a tremendous amount of work for me to conform to social norms I don't value or which hurt me, and to keep my mouth shut when I want to speak out. It's scary when I realize how much I've internalized that I don't want.
Is some degree of conforming the best path for me to keep my job, keep my friends, and effect social change? It's an interesting question.
I do think that paying attention to how people want to receive messages of reform is crucial to actually communicating those messages effectively. It takes lots of patience and skill (which I don't necessarily claim to have!) but perhaps this is the most effective way for me to influence this world. Not many people like to be yelled at.
But have I gone too far in the direction of conforming? Is it time for me to give up some of my perceived social power and recreate the inner power of trusting in myself and caring a little less what other people think?
hmmm...
In the end - when I no longer need to keep social power - I hope to be as hairy and smelly and in-your-face as I ever was. And maybe that will be a good thing.
But this not rolling down a grassy hill thing? This I plan to change, effective immediately.
June 12, 2006
Please see this movie.
Al Gore's "An Inconvenient truth" is very moving and motivating.
We CAN stop climate change. I have to believe that because the alternative is despair.
See you there...Let me know what you are doing to reduce your emissions!
May 16, 2006
Update on air quality
Hmmm... In checking with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (both their website and a representative) I have been assured that the air over the SF bay is currently pretty clean. Here is the five-day forecast that is updated every day.
The representative I spoke with (should have gotten his name!) even claimed that our air is currently "the cleanest it's been for 25 years."
Well, the cynic in me is trying to find a second opinion from a non-governmental agency, but until then, perhaps, indeed, it is not a new crisis in Bay Area air quality.
Meanwhile, here are ten tips on how best to spare our air with your personal choices.
Two that I'd like to highlight:
- 7. Refuse to use aerosol. I thought that the ozone depleting aerosols were banned - but apparently either I was in error, or they still emit VOCs even after being re-designed to not harm the ozone in whatever other way they harmed it. @#$%^. I need to do more research, but I am very frustrated to find out that a product I thought had been made environmentally safe, still isn't.
- 10. Do your garden chores gasoline-free. This one is a change I'd love to see - whether we do our own gardening or pay someone else to do it, I'd like to propose that it's just not worth the pollution to use a gasoline-powered leaf blower.
In my little utopian vision of the world, a little clutter/dirt/germs/stray leaves are a welcome tradeoff for cleaner air and a safer environment.
Thoughts?
photo from http://www.bigfoto.com/
May 12, 2006
A strange new brown haze...
Has anybody else noticed that over the past few weeks, since the rain stopped, the air over the SF bay seems much more hazy than I expect it to be? It hasn't been scorching hot, but there are days when our cities can barely see each other across the bay.
I'm wondering if some new polluter has found a way to get around regulations, or if they've been gutted...I'll see what I can find out. Let me know if you have any info.
photo from http://enrin.grida.no/
May 10, 2006
I finally made the switch...
...from NPR to 94.1 KPFA, an independent radio station here in Berkeley.
I've been an NPR junkie for years. Raised on Karl Cassell. And I don't think I'll swear off entirely.
But over the past few years I was spending more and more time annoyed or frustrated with the coverage I was hearing. Most of the voices I was hearing seemed to be American, white, and male. The business stories seemed to lean towards supporting the companies described...who were also sponsors. There was so little coverage of protests and liberal activities...and never, in my experience, an interview with a true left-winger, like Noam Chomsky or Dolores Huerta. And I'm always wondering what stories are not being told due to Republican pressure or corporate funding...
Even Car Talk, my beloved Car Talk...I'm just tired of hearing them quote tired stereotypes of women.
(BTW, FAIR.org has catalogued these phenomena, and more, in their studies of several center-to-right biases on NPR.)
So I'm taking a break and giving my ears, and my pledge money this year, to KPFA. I can get my center-to-right news from so many places, and I get enough of it, by golly! Let's hear what else is going on!
And if you're interested...KPFA's mission statement.