Now
Capitalism, patriarchy, and other reasons I’m fat: revisiting fatness as choice
Neoliberal capitalism is obsessed with choice: the illusion of it, anyway. Same with patriarchy, white supremacy, imperialism, settler colonialism---they all sustain themselves in part by making our oppression our job. We internalize the rules so we can flog ourselves...
Towards reclaiming my birthright, part 1: awakening
[CW: suicide, r*pe, internalized fatmisia] I come to this page with absolutely no idea how to say what I want to say. But I'm here, and I'm gonna try. First: let me stop assuming that everyone who comes across my work is familiar with my backstory. I've realized of...
Flowchart to explain my recent existential depression
primary conflict: i know i’m insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but i need to believe i'm talented (aka special) in some way to motivate myself to try. why (is this a problem)? 1. the odds are stacked against me due to my: i. non-traditional (read:...
Together, we are the future: Going from here in N.K. Jemisin’s Walking Awake
The clarity of hindsight often lures us to become mired in blame and guilt. As we wake up and become aware that the world is the way it is because certain humans have shaped it in their interest, people who are oppressed are tempted to demonize and cast out those...
Their past is not our future: Afrofuturism and the colonizer’s gaze
When I interact with people in my day-to-day life, I try my best to consider them as whole human beings with a lifetime of distinctive experiences up to and including the moment before I began my interaction with them. I balance their mannerisms and reactions against...
Your future is not your past: embodied nostalgia in Tananarive Due’s Like Daughter
When I was eight years old, I was raped by an older classmate. When I was eighteen, I was raped by the brother of my friend's boyfriend while we were on a double date. Sprinkled in between those traumas are numerous microtraumas*: racism, bullying, sexual harassment,...