Reaction to whether men can write about feminism or not

I haven't read any Hugo Schwyzer (although now I certainly intend to), but Noah Burlatsky's article in response to Schwyzer's recent New York magazine interview did touch on some issues that I fret over way too much with my own work.

Schwyzer says, "If you look at the men who are writing about feminism, they toe the line very carefully. It’s almost like they take their cues from the women around them. Men are afraid of women’s anger. It’s very hard for men to stand up to women’s anger."

Although, I don't think I'm toeing the line at all with what I make, I am afraid of how it will be received by a feminist audience. That's precisely because I'm not toeing the line, and I'm worried that by portraying certain images or actions in my comics, writing, and art I'll unintentionally contribute to the very issues I'm trying to critique. An example of this would be my performative comics reading of Peeled & Deveined at Brain Frame 3 (follow link for video, photos, and an explanation of the piece).

Also, though, I just don't feel comfortable yet being a male feminist. I don't feel like I've "earned" my place or the right to exercise a strong, opinionated, even possibly unpopular voice...although I still do it, despite my self-doubt.

For a long time I resisted referring to myself as a feminist, and still cringe, because it sounds self-congradulatory and pretentious in my mouth. It seems to undermine everything I believe in and want to say. It makes me feel like a phony.

I don't want to wear it as a badge. And so I tend not to use the word at all when referring to myself. If that's what I am, fine, but I don't need the label. At least not for now.

I intend to keep moving forward and keep making the kind of work that feels right to me. I don't know if I'll ever feel fully comfortable or confident about being the person who's making it, but at least I'll know that I'm not toeing the line.

Like Eno-Fripp said: No Pussyfooting.

Reaction to "How to Be an Atheist Without Being a Dick About It"

True, I only skimmed Jezebel's recent (and lengthy) article How to Be an Atheist Without Being a Dick About It, but still, fuck that noise.

I recognize that religion is probably the greatest invention of all time, because it instills social order and creates the illusion of some greater purpose to our lives, thereby giving people a reason to keep trying, to keep living, even in the face of adversity or the absence of positive change. And I have a very clear understanding that our world can often be one of unrelenting, unspeakable cruelty, and that we as people are often very terrible to one another.

As a result, there are many victims in our world, and perhaps for many they need faith in a higher power to provide them with hope and strength. That's fine -- whatever it takes -- because I don't know what that's like.

But it still doesn't change the fact that religion is an invention. And I'm not going to give it any more credence than its function, because I also recognize that as a tool it's used to oppress and manipulate the very people it promises to save. It hurts just as much, if not more, than it helps.

I'm not going to live in a lie, and I'm certainly not going to play a part in the charade. I view religion, in general, as aggressive, invasive, and dangerous. It's just as bad as the advertising media which inundates us. Both are parasitic and forever in need of more people in order to survive and grow.

But I also have another reason why I won't play the polite little atheist. Because religion distracts us from the real world, where we need to make some real changes.

There's a reason why they say "God helps those who help themselves." It's because praying doesn't change anything. It's just throwing pennies in a well. But when people take it upon themselves to make a change, that's when things gets done. God has nothing to do with it.

People are the ones that have the power to make our world a better place. There is no perfect afterlife or redemption.

If it sounds like I'm being defensive or that I'm angry, that's because I am. If this sounds like I have a chip on my shoulder, it's because I do.

This is all we have. It's time we took some responsibility for it. No one else is going to save us.

PS: I know that I'm making generalizations about all religions here, and that there may be some exceptions (those which are less "aggressive, invasive, and dangerous," as well as less "oppressive and manipulative."). However, given the actions of the world's religious majority I think I this generalization is justified.

2AM

Near the end of my bike ride home from the bar tonight I came across a guy passed out cold on someone's lawn a few doors down from where I live. His bike was laid on the grass beside him. I parked my own bike and knelt down beside him, trying to wake him up. It took awhile, and I tried several different tactics, even shaking him and slapping his arms and legs.

Finally I just resorted to shouting into his ear, "Hey! What's your name?!" and he bolted upright. "Nick!" he said, rolling around in front of me, unable to sustain purchase. His eyes were unfocused and bewildered as he tried hard to see through the drunken dream state.

"You need to go home," I said. "I'm afraid someone will take advantage of you while you're passed out here."

He nodded his head furiously, sending his balance off kilter.

"You gonna be okay?" I asked, in no state to babysit some drunk dude, but still concerned (what if he'd had alcohol poisoning?). "Do you want me to call an ambulance?"

He shook his head no, still tottering.

"Okay," I said. "I'm gonna go." Then I added, "Get home safe."

I got on my bike and rode it down a block and got my keys out. In the distance I could still see him still sitting there, legs wide open, head down.

Godspeed, Nick. Tomorrow's prolly gonna hurt.

m o t h

            Unsure at first of what had caught his attention, or whether it was only an involuntary sweep of the room, simply taking inventory of his domain, that had spawned a predatory reflex, the man’s brow furrowed and he leaned in closer to inspect the grey smudge on the wall. His feet were bare and in his hands he held a magazine that he had been flipping through the moment before. Instinctively they rolled the glossy pages tightly into a batting instrument, and he raised the weapon, targeting his prey. 

The Hair Here

My hair got long
from negligence

Now

When I wake up
in the morning
the light from
the window
is black
with the day
raked through

Now

I'm wearing my
mask of hair

Who am I now
with my mask?

Where will I
wear it?

The hair here
is different

Heresy
to those
who inherit

The hairy
stone gathers
no moss

It's stone 
business
of mine

Now, mine

Heir to the
throng

Hairy bush
thong

The hair here
is long

And in kind

The Specter Ayn Rand Shivers

The specter Ayn Rand shivers

Over her pendulous pulpit

With haunted, shuddering eyes

In a mouth agape with her Word

Rows of teeth, like pews or headstones,

Swim forward, scrabbling over

Each other as they surface

Through her gum and maw

Each a greyed and decaying seeker

Independent and detached of her jawbone

These are her seeds that she sprays

In a hypnotic pollination that preys

Upon the wet-minded and dissolute

She is her own foretold apocalypse:

Ayn the coiled, ticking dial

Ayn the lunacy with its twin macabre genius

Which we wish only to jail and deny

Ayn the useless rogue demon

Fraught with the failure of her own

Glacial alienation

Oh, some will inevitably circle her trap

Like fruit flies ‘round a sweet compost heap

Attracted because they smell themselves

But her philosophy erodes itself in its own fantasy

Like an ant, which can hold up to fifty times

Its own weight, then made big and crushed

Under its own frame

For its seeming strength

Is in actuality

Its own most

Debilitating vulnerability

Ayn the isolated tower

Ayn the disfigured wraith

Babbling fishhooks for the worms

Ayn the Ouroboros

Eater of her own feces

The specter Ayn Rand shivers

Behind the mirror

The specter Ayn Rand shivers

Long and on and on

(note: this poem was a reaction to an old 60 minutes interview with mike wallace and our subject. i wasn't planning on writing an indictment of her or her philosophy, it just sort of happened. in all fairness, i haven't even read her work, nor am i all that familiar with the details therein. i'm only aware of what's generally known about her books, and what she told us in this interview. this was a reaction to her presence in that particular interview.)

I Heard It Through the Grapevine - Bill Frisell

Back in 2009, during possibly my most serious longterm bout with depression, I used to listen to this song on repeat for, like, an hour or two at a time. I had it on my iPod, and I would go for these long aimless walks.

I had a secret place that I would go to, where I would just sit and listen to this song. It was this empty lot with gravel and trash and overgrown weeds. There were these two big metal pipes lying on their side next to each other, and I would sit on one and put my feet up on the other one.

It was in the middle of summer and the sun beat down on my back. I would wear these ridiculous mirrored sunglasses that I had found on the sidewalk and just listen to this song over and over and over again.

It was one of the ways I'd developed of removing myself from myself.

One of the lyrics (even though they'd been omitted from this instrumental version of the song) spun around and around in my head. It made so much sense to me.

I'm just about to lose my mind, honey, honey, yeah...

That line became the title of a comic I was working on. I put everything I had inside me into that comic. And when I look at it now I can see how absolutely lost I felt then. I fell into that comic and got lost in it, too. It was another way for me to remove myself from myself.

Tonight I put that song on again. I hadn't heard it in a very long time. And then I remembered that vacant lot with its pipes. The last time I'd walked past there someone had erected some condos over it. My secret place was gone. But it was okay because I didn't need it anymore.

"I turn the engine but the engine doesn't turn"

I think this is such a great line. I'm convinced that if it had appeared in someone's novel (like, say, something by Raymond Chandler), rather than a Wallflowers' song, writing majors in Iowa City would be quoting it after hours between drinks at The Fox Head. 

It's like the Universe fucked up and sent that particular string of words down the wrong pneumatic tube, so it never got to where it was supposed to go. And now it's just a fucking joke.

It's a Damn shame...if you really think about it.

S P R I N G B R E A K E R S

I originally posted this movie review to my Facebook wall on March 25, 2013. ***SPOILER ALERT***

Some might expect this movie to be extremely misogynistic, and that I would naturally despise it for being so (especially in the wake of Steubenville and conversations about college binge drinking), but this couldn't be further from the truth. Instead, Harmony Korine channels Terrence Malick (Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, Tree of Life) in this extremely meditative comment on prevalent pop culture such as Girls Gone Wild, hip hop, slasher films (Turistas, The Ruins, Piranha 3D), guy party movies (The Hangover, Project X), and gun culture.

It is subversive in every way, and seeing it in the theater illustrated this in the best way possible: it was a packed house, and during the scene where James Franco deep throats two gun barrels at the same time, each being wielded as a cock by two ex-Disney Channel girls, you could hear a pin drop. In fact, what I did hear were sighs of discomfort and much shifting in seats.

Effectively, what most people thought they were coming to see (and what most feminists will expect to react to) is not what Korine actually delivers. It is extremely intelligent and razor sharp. The danger here isn't in a blatant celebration of misogyny, but that it might be misinterpreted as glamorizing the very thing it critiques. Although, given my own experience seeing it in the theater, this also seems pretty unlikely, for the audience as a whole gave off an air of discomfort, as though they were unsure how to react.

Much of this is because we aren't used to seeing women portrayed in roles such as these. It's all too often we see movies about four dudes having wild adventures that involve random wild sex (partying, strippers), crime, and eventual camaraderie. And women only play secondary roles (slutty random hookup, stripper, etc) in those movies. But in Spring Breakers the roles are not only reversed, the woman actually have an understanding of what they want and how to get it (versus past films where men are haphazardly flailing through each drunken mishap). They appropriate the phallus and use it directly against the men who make advances of power or sex against them. They cannot be owned (no matter if they choose to bail on the party or forge on), and ultimately, in the spirit of Thelma and Louise, these girls each decide what is right for them, act on it, and Korine abstains from judgement.

I also applaud Korine for finally making a mainstream movie. After Mister Lonely, which had a higher budget than any of his previous ventures, he reacted to his lack of complete creative control on the project with the juvenile and safe (in art school terms) Trash Humpers. It was a step way, way back, and it was clear (at least to me) that he was licking his wounds. It's nice to see that he was able to finally come to terms with the Hollywood machine, but also understand how to use it to make his films stronger.

One of the many differences between Gummo and Spring Breakers is that the latter understands how to reach a wider audience and tear the rug out from beneath them. Korine is no longer shocking the choir. He's poking the nerves of the mainstream.

C O U G H S

Recently the Chicago Reader included a blurb in their Best Of issue about my friends' old band Coughs. It brought back a lot of memories, and I ended up writing this little thing about being at their shows. It was originally posted on my Facebook wall on June 20, 2013.

I'm still surprised I never got injured at a Coughs show. Just imagine a room (no matter the size) packed wall-to-wall with a convulsing mass of headbanging misfit kids. It's no exaggeration. At every show we would all be smashed flat into each other (if you wanted to leave too bad, cause you didn't have a choice), so that each row was literally being supported by the row in front of it. Meanwhile, the entire writhing shit show would undulate forward in violent spasms. Forget it if you were in the front row and trying to stay upright, because you would inevitably be knocked into the drum sets over and over again, relentlessly demolishing them. And then the band would get pissed and stop the show and curse you all out. Then they'd start up again, and it would all repeat. It was great! I always worried that I would get my teeth knocked out by the person headbanging in front of me, cause my eyes would shut involuntarily and my own head would be banging. The day after a Coughs show I always felt like I'd gotten whiplash from a car accident. But miraculously that was the only injury I ever incurred.

My favorite moments were those when the band winded down to a tick-tocking reprieve. It was like the eye of a storm. Jail's sax would wail and Anya's voice would be in a steady, anticipation-building mantra, and the band would suddenly jolt you and then sink back into that steady building anticipation, and we'd all be waiting for the next jolt to knock us over. It was during that eye of the storm, that momentary reprieve, that everyone, squished and spent, would give up and lean onto the person in from of them. We were all so exhausted and sodden with collective sweat that we simply couldn't hold ourselves upright. It was strangely intimate. You could feel people's chests rising and falling, heaving, their heart knocking. That was my favorite moment in any Coughs show.

And then the punishment would start again.

Stop Killing Love One Another

I had the day off from work today, and it was nice out, so I decided to go for a long walk. As I was making my way up North Avenue I saw this long, white car (a real old beater) with blocky hand-painted words written in red along its sides: "Thou shalt not kill" Stop Killing Love One Another

Minus the Bible quote, it was certainly a sentiment that I could get behind. Especially given Chicago's current climbing crime rate, which had taken a few months off earlier this year, only to spike again Father's Day weekend with 41 reported shootings that left seven dead.

Stop Killing

The hand-painted message, which smacked of desperation, got me to thinking about what would cause a person to do something like that, to scrawl a message out on their own car and then drive around. I came to the conclusion that what they really wanted was for their voice to be heard, and for their message to make a difference in a world where they felt otherwise powerless to change anything.

In a city whose priorities are all out of whack it's easy to sympathize with a person like that. After all, Chicago is a place where everyone goes into a complete frenzy over a hockey game, meanwhile retaining a collective passive apathy as its mayor dismantles the public school system and misallocates funding to its neighborhoods. No one wants to listen to a concerned citizen. They only want to escape, to lose themselves and their problems in a city-wide spectacle.

But that's also what this person's car had become, a spectacle of another kind, one they hoped to beget change.

And it had worked, at least on some level, because it had caught my attention. As I looked around I saw that others were pointing and staring at the car as it drove by.

And then someone shouted from the bus stop behind me, "You stop killing! Those damn fumes!"

And here it was, the counter statement, a complete non sequitur, which had entirely missed the point.

Later, further down North Avenue, I saw a man wearing an umbrella hat. He was pushing a collapsable shopping cart with three mannequin heads attached to it on metal rods. Each of the heads also wore an umbrella hat. It was an indelible image, but I had to wonder what this man's message was.

Later still, there was a deaf (or mute?) man sitting on a park bench signing to his dog. I took a moment to observe the situation, as I'd never before considered how someone who couldn't speak would communicate to his pet. And it was clear as day that the man was shaming the dog for it's bad behavior. With a quick sweep of his hands the man bumped his fists on top of each other and then pointed deliberated downward. The dog, its ears pinned and tail between its legs, sank to the earth, where it rolled its sad doggy eyes back up to its owner. After a minute the owner carefully touched the dog's rear to get its attention, and then patted both his open hands on his thighs. The dog bounded up, tail wagging, and set its head in the man's lap, where it was given one heck of a good scratch behind the ears.

Love One Another

*Note: I wasn't able to take a picture of any of these events. I was luckily able to find the image of the car online.

Miley Cyrus - We Can't Stop - Reaction to Vice interview

As far as I'm concerned, it's a song and a music video, both carefully engineered in conjunction with her image in order to make money. Period. I don't think you can say that Miley is being racist, because the 'black culture' (which isn't actually black culture any more than Billy Ray Cyrus' image is an authentic representation of 'white culture') she's appropriating is itself perpetuating racist stereotypes. It's a gross simplification to claim otherwise. 

And on another note, how is it possible for one pop entity (Miley, who has been engineered by a corporation, remember) to bite the 'authentic' style of another pop icon (Rihanna, who this song was apparently written for)? There is no ownership, cultural or personal, within the context of corporate America. It's like claiming one TV dinner has appropriated the 'authentic ethnic recipe' of another brand of TV dinner.

I always remember the title of Challenger's first album in cases like this: Give People What They Want In Lethal Doses

Instead of throwing blame on pop entities like Miley Cyrus or Gucci Mane and Three Six Mafia, perhaps we should be asking ourselves why these media commodities continue their longevity and prevalence in our mainstream culture. The products wouldn't exist without enough people who wanted to buy them. But why do we want to buy them?

Like the song says: We Can't Stop.


Excerpts from Vice interview:


Q: When you see the black characters in this video, do they come off as accessories or fully realized people? Is it important to make the distinction? And what does it say about Miley's intentions?

A: Miley and the black actors in the video are all props on the stage of visual pleasure. I think it's important to consider that these images function within the sphere of multinational corporate control so both the lead (Miley) and the accessories do not maintain a high level of autonomy in terms of imaging.


Q: Is there a blame that should be placed on artists who work in hip-hop, such a Gucci Mane and Three Six Mafia, for helping mold the stereotypes that Miley presents in the video, even if their work is balanced by other elements that are conspicuously left out of her interpretation?

A: Absolutely. However our critiques of them need to be contextualized. Who makes these artists possible, why are their songs in heavy rotation, what labels and corporations are supporting these images and messages? Artists like Wise Intelligent, Public Enemy, One Be Lo, Bahamadia, and others have been putting out relevant images and messages that are not homophobic, sexist, and generally problematic for years. Yet they do not have the airplay or access as some of the groups you mentioned. It's not enough to be critical of the artists, though we should be—it must extend to the corporation that makes it possible.

Sweet Talk - poems

I put together this little zine of poetry around Christmas 2012. Since it's unlikely that I'll actually keep up with reprinting it, or that there will be a need to do so, I decided to post it here on my new writing blog. I did make a few changes (most notably with Quiver, which was originally called Moon Stone and had two additional extraneous and embarrassing stanzas).

Follow the jump break to read Sweet Talk:

Us vs Them

Earlier this week, in response to the recent events in Boston, comedian and actor Patton Oswalt posted a thoughtful and heartfelt response on Facebook, which was shared by approximately 253,000 people.

Since then I've been thinking about Patton's words of reassurance regarding Boston and the overall nature of humanity. It's a beautiful, rousing sentiment, and I wish that I could just be like, yes, you're right, "the good outnumber [the bad], and we always will," but I can't. I don't think it's as simple as a minority of broken, bad people lashing out against the overall good. 

Personally, and I'm sure this isn't something that's going to be a very popular opinion, I've always felt that as a species we don't really like ourselves, or one another, all that much. Instances like the one in Boston are at the extreme end of the spectrum, but there seem to always be degrees of "Us vs Them" in everything we do and say. 

Now, that term "Us vs Them" is so malleable, I find that it can be used to describe anything from interpersonal relationships to family dynamics, from cliques and social patterns to hierarchies in schools and jobs, from conflicting religious beliefs to rival political parties, from pitted countries to...well, you get the point. It's even in Patton's statement, the good...and the bad. 

It's very animalistic, Us vs Them. It's also very opportunistic, which is a survival trait that all animals carry. And we are basically animals that have developed our technologies quicker than our own abilities to use them responsibly. 

I think as higher functioning mammals we give ourselves way too much credit. I'm not saying all hope is lost, or that we should just embrace our inner beast and run amuck. I just think that we need to reconcile this inner conflict that we all feel by recognizing that we aren't the Good, with a few Baddies ruining it for everyone else. We all fall somewhere on that spectrum that I mentioned. We all see the world, to some degree, as Us vs Them. If we can reconcile this inner conflict, then and only then can we possibly hope to reconcile the outer, surface differances that we let stand between us.

To read Patton Oswalt's original post please follow the page break...