The Is Beautiful: Spinning Fire

 In person activities have more or less ceased around here, but right before we went into the next phase of the lockdown I managed to get Photonix together to spin fire. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I'd look it up on YouTube because any attempt for me to describe it here would not do it justice. 

Spinning fire is one of the most empowering things I have ever done. You feel like a fire bender out on the field with these flames whipping around you. It is definitely terrifying the first couple of times, but after a while you get used to it and gain confidence from what you are able to do.

I have missed spinning fire so much recently. I was spoiled in undergrad where I could spin fire every Friday, now I'm lucky to spin fire once a semester. I love and miss it so much.

“Sister Outsider” by Audre Lorde

I’m a little embarrassed to say that this is the first book at I have read by Lorde. I know her poetry from coming across various pieces over the years, but I only recently finally got my hands on one of her books. She is such an amazing writer, whether it is poetry or prose. What I love about this collection is how well it embodies the title. “Sister” as in writing from one women to another, and “Outsider” as in writing as a Black women to a mostly white audience.

I am amazed how much of her writing is still relevant to today. Her “Open Letter to Mary Daly” could have been written today to any white feminist ignoring the voices of people of color. And of course her essay “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” is always timely and important. I had read it before, separately, and posted it online during the BLM riots this summer. The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. People have to riot for change now! The bulk of the essay is about how we have internalized the master’s tools, and that is actually the most difficult one to dismantle though. This aspect also gets forgotten a lot by people who haven’t read the whole thing, and it is important. We need to constantly be examining ourselves and analyzing whether we are speaking from an oppressed state or a liberated one.

Other notable chapters include “Poetry is Not a Luxury” which makes a really good case for how poetry is primarily from the working class. Therefore looking down on poetry rather than prose is a form of classism. I had never thought of it that way, but yeah, having the time to write during a break on scraps of paper means that by necessity it will be poetry rather than prose.

I also quite appreciated the chapter on the erotic as power. Having just finished Ace, which makes a similar point, seeing that parallels here is interesting. The origins of the term “erotic” refer not to sexual content but to anything with intense emotion behind it. That means that there is inherent power in the erotic that has been suppressed by labelling it as sexual and therefore inappropriate. Women in particular tend to be oppressed in this way and restricted by limiting their use of the erotic. I found it fascinating that these two writers took the same term and made very similar points about it, even though it was directed at two separate communities.

Lorde is an incredible writer who can speak to so many different experiences. Black, lesbian, female, she is more than the sum of all these parts in her life and her writing. Now more than ever we need to listen to people at these intersections and understand how their identities connect.

This Is Beautiful: My Ace Journey

The main point of this post is to announce that I finally put together an asexuality tag for this blog. I don't know why it took me this long since I've been posting about it for over 5 years now. I suspect that I initially didn't want to make a big deal of it, but here we are and I'm still making a big deal out of it. 

It's really interesting going back and reading my early posts. My original post about coming out is from March 1st, 2015. The writing isn't super so I'm not linking to it, but it's very easy to search for it. And it's strange to see how my priorities haven't changed so much. I talked a lot about awareness, and not understanding crushes. Both things that I am still working on. I also have a couple posts lamenting that asexuals are rarely included in popular discourse about the LGBTQ+ community, which still sometimes happens. 

I don't think I would love going back to my previous self, I have a feeling that I'd think that she's an idiot, but it's interesting to take a glimpse every once in a while. Just to see how much I've grown. I would never have guessed back then just how invested in the community that I would become. Or maybe I actually would have seen this coming, I knew that those were my people almost instantly. It's hard to tell now, since hindsight is 20/20.

Regardless, this identity has been a large part of my life for over 5 years now, and it's safe to say that it will stay a part of it for a while longer.

“Bad Feminist” by Roxane Gay

This was my first time reading a whole book by Roxane Gay. I already suspected that I would like it since I’ve read her articles and essays before, but I really appreciated being able to take a deep dive into her mind this this.

While the essays in this book range from her life to pop culture, the main topic is about the title, Bad Feminist. To Gay, a feminist in this day and age has turned into a certain sort of person and a certain sort of woman. Feminists are supposed to be militant, angry, and strictly independent. You are either someone who falls into this category and is a feminist, or you are not.

Gay is not this kind of feminist, and she acknowledges this. In fact she wholeheartedly embraces it. She knows that the fact that she wants a family and kids seems “un-feminist” and that a number of her ideas outlined in these essays are “not feminist.” But she’s discussing them and explaining her opinions anyways. I think that this acknowledgment makes her work all the more engaging because, honestly, who is a “good feminist” these days? And more importantly, if you are a “good feminist” are you a good person? Not to say that you can’t be both, but in my experience the people I meet who are stereotypical feminists are usually following this image because they think that’s what they’re supposed to do, not because that’s who they really are. Which is fine, and sometimes is necessary in order to discover who you are, but a lot of these people seem to lose touch with their own opinions along the way.

Most valuable, to me, were her thoughts on race. She discusses numerous times how media portrays Black people primarily as slaves or servants, when really all she wants is a movie about happy Black people. And this dearth of material then leads to them accepting anything that comes their way, even if it isn’t good. Which can be said of many marginalized communities, but it is most striking for the Black community. Also I know I do not see reviews of movies featuring Black actors that are written by a Black author very often, so I quite appreciated those essays.

In short, I thought this was an excellent book. Gay is welcoming and approachable and explains all of her ideas so well. You can’t help but agree with her nearly every step of the way, and relate to her experiences of trying to make it as a Black, female author in a white male world. White people need to step it up as allies in order to make this world a more welcoming place to people of other races.

This Is Beautiful: Voting

 I sure hope any Americans reading this voted this past Tuesday. This election sucked a LOT, the least of which being the wait for votes to be counted now. And one of the things that this has made so clear is that a lot of red states are red because of voter suppression. Georgia and Pennsylvania only flipped to blue because of black voters. Maybe the rest would be blue too if everyone could easily vote without getting harassed. 

Anyways, we have a ways to go I know, but it's nice that there is a slightly more positive change on the horizon. Biden has a lot of issues, and the US has a lot of issues as a country, but this administration will be so much better for everyone than the alternative.

“Upside Down” by N.R. Walker

To celebrate Ace Week I read a book featuring not just one but TWO asexual characters! Upside Down is the story of Jordan, an Australian man who is just coming to terms with the fact that he might be asexual. When he realizes that the cute guy he has been admiring on the bus runs the Ace/Aro Support Group in his neighborhood, he starts to befriend him. The two start dating not long after that as they start to realize that they have been looking for someone like them.

So to start off with, this book is super cute. Jordan and Hennessey (bus boy) are adorable together. And seeing a depiction of two ace men is wonderful. Jordan in general is a wonderful character as a nerdy bookworm who has a tendency to nervously talk when he gets anxious, which is usually when he’s around Hennessey. Additionally the two guys have a colorful cast of friends including Jordan’s best friend Merry and his roommate Angus. Both friends serve as foils for Jordan at points in the book.

Another great part of the book is that Angus has an ongoing relationship with a couple throughout the book. By the end it is practically a marriage between three people, and seeing a poly relationship so positively is wonderful.

One thing I did not love though is that by the end of the book every single character is in a relationship. I figured that since it is a book about asexuality, one of the characters had to end up single and happy. Merry even goes on a rant about it at some point. But in the end she is paired up with a character we never meet, and everyone else is already in a relationship. I get that it is a romance novel, but could we not pair characters together without a reason?

Similarly, it just felt like the book revolved around Jordan and Hennessey’s relationship a little too much. They have multiple Ace/Aro Support Meetings revolve around their relationship problems which just seems like a waste of everyone else’s time to me. Plus there is a bus crew who start to eavesdrop on their conversations everyday which screams CREEPY to me. But it’s a romance book. So I should relax.

Finally only other thing I want to say is that with the chapters flipping between Jordan and Hennessey’s narration, I found it really hard to tell the two apart at points. Especially when they’re talking about their previous relationship troubles and things like that. Could not tell you who was who.

But I can see how this book does great things for asexual visibility. Jordan’s journey is very clearly portrayed and explained through these Support Meetings, and it shows that you can be in a happy, healthy relationship even if you’re asexual. I bet a lot of readers gain hope from this story. So my issues are most likely more with romance as a genre rather than specifically this book. It is definitely worth the read.

This Is Beautiful: ASHG

 So this past week was not only Ace Week but also my first American Society for Human Genetics (ASHG) meeting. ASHG is a week-long conference of genetics researchers from all over the world. Since there's a whole pandemic going on, the meeting was virtual. So it was a week of being able to stream talks and panels while participating in the chat and discussing cool genetics topics. 

It definitely wasn't the same as being in person, that's for sure, but it was nice. I still feel as though I learned a lot (may have found the saturation point even). And it made for a nice change of pace. One of my lab mates gave a 15-minute presentation on her work, I sure hope that I can contribute like that sometime soon! Hopefully in person too.