Elizabeth

I've been getting really into spoken word lately, So heres one of my new pieces. And I hope you enjoy it.

YR Gender Binary Roles:

YR gender binary roles, they control me like no other, just because I have a vagina doesn’t mean I should be a mother. It’s like the moment I stand up, and I shout my beliefs from the rooftops. YR first response isn’t listening to what I have to say. It’s putting me down, Figuring out some reason for you not to listen, for YR ears not to hear me, for YR heart not to feel me. But that isn’t going to happen anymore….Nah….. .Its time to open up, for YR heart to really feel me…Cause I know who I am. And as bell hooks said “Aint I a woman?!” and my response is for sure I am a WOMYN, That is with a Y instead of a E to the N....and I am my own beautiful human being. And this womyn is proud to be a womyn. But not proud to be put in a place where YR gender roles say I should stay. You say I should stay in the kitchen; I should cook, clean and take care of the kids. Well all I can say is fuck YR ways. I will choose to do what I want, and be who I want. Don’t stereotype me and throw me in the kitchen because I am a womyn. Let me be who I am and choose where I stay….Let my soul and creative being be whatever the energy wants me to be. YR ways, And YR thoughts need to be changed. Change YR mind and frame, and listen to me. Believe for once that it doesn’t matter that I have a vagina or breast…Believe…What matters is what I am saying, what you are saying, what this world is saying. The gender of one, the orientation or the race of one, has no matter in any thing we say, our speech or our words should be allowed to flow…. Flow through the pen as I write this down, free from hate or judgment that is just based on the author’s sex. Lets let everyone be free to be, who they choose to be…

So I’ve been 100% and completely out with who I am for the past year. By that I mean, I’m not scared to dress the way I want to dress, to have hair that isn’t normal for a woman (I have a Mohawk at the moment) and to just not be scared to hold a girls hand in public.

That being said, I’ve never honestly faced any scrutiny or harassment for any of that.

Sometimes I get some stares for the way my hair is, most the time I just get people who want to take photos of me to which I oblige, because hey its giving some tourist a story to tell about their trip to Seattle.

Recently however, I’ve noticed a change in where I live. We have a gay part of town, more of it’s just a place where anyone can go and not worry about being harassed. It’s a great place. It’s the place I hang out the most. But recently things have been changing. We’ve had multiple gay bashings. One where the guy was literally dragged from a car down the street and just other beatings for no reason other then someone’s sexual orientation.

So here I am sitting on the ferry,
I'm super tired and I just got off from work from NARAL (which has my feminist blood pumping and fully pissed off at how little rights we have) and some guy sits behind me and then his friends join him. I tend to listen in to peoples conversations, I see nothing wrong with this. But this guys conversation just made me mad.

It went like this "Oh you know *name withheld* just got out of jail again" says Jerk #1....His buddy responds "For what?"...Jerk #1 responds with "domestic violence....But she deserved it she was a bitch..." Says the jerk # 1....They both laugh....Cause obviously a woman getting beat is nothing but shits and giggles for them. Then the buddy says "wasn't she black anyway?" and Jerk #1 says "yeah" and they laugh more.

As I sit here and think of what really made me say “damn it feels good to be a woman and a feminist” the thing that comes to mind is a recent issue in an organization I work with.

We were/are having issues with the men in the org being sexist, so we confronted them and they said that they were not sexist and flat out denied it. They refused to listen to us so we all decided to have a “All-Grrrls” meeting for our organization where we ended up having about 8 women who I had never seen in our meeting come and tell us one of the reasons they stopped coming to our organizations meeting was due to the sexism they were feeling from the men in the org.

Seeing Joey post her poetry here encouraged me to go ahead and post some of mine. These are the two newest pieces I just finished this week. Lately I've been in an non-stop poetry writing mood but normally its all about love and nothing feminist-y. So these are both my first feminist type poem since I was about 14 years old.

Dream lady, My Visionary:

You’re a dream lady,
My Visionary
Visionary heart
Visionary love
Visionary soul
Oh lady, Your amazing
Standing up for what you believe
Raising that fist in the air
And fighting for what is right
Right from wrong
You know the truth
The truth I seek
The truth we seek
Human rights
And equality for all
What is right
We shall fight
Tell we fall
We will stand together
And raise that fist in the air
Until we get equality
The equality we need
The equality we deserve
We are all the same
So what’s the big deal
If we are of a different race
Or sex
Or we like the same sex
All that should matter
Is that we all have a heart
A heart that can break
From the pain
That can be caused
From the hate that one has
Because someone is different
But if we just tolerate
Then no acceptance can happen
For tolerance is just a form of the hate
That is already going on
So lets accept everyone as a person
A heart and soul
And learn to love
And live
And let equality be true

I went to this protest on May 1st as many of you know that was the day their was protest nation wide for immigration rights. So I of course attended the local protest where I saw one of those guys with a sign in big letters saying “Abortionist, murderers, church gossipers and HOMOSEXUALS will go to hell, repent for your sins now” I laughed at first, I mean people like that are just ignorant and the fact that homosexuals had to be in huge letters just made me more amused.
I decided to sit near this man so I could listen to the people debate him and just hear what he was saying to them, Well sitting didn’t last long and finally my debating side got the best of me and a buddy and I joined in on the debate. It was going well for the first 30 minutes, I told him to mind his own uterus and then I laughed and said oh wait you don’t have one so I guess that means you just need to keep your mouth shut. (I was being very nice cant you tell?)

A lot of people have been asking me to to write up why I decided to get my tattoo, The meaning behind it, The questions I’ve gotten from it, Why I chose the location I did for it and such. So I decided I’d go ahead and write up a photo essay about my choice.

First off this is my tattoo (Click here) I’m assuming all of you shall know what it is but for those few who read this and don’t It is the symbol for being a feminist.

I knew I wanted a tattoo, I’ve wanted one since I was a child even before I really knew what a tattoo was, I knew that having stuff drawn on my skin intrigued me and I always saw it as having a work of art on you forever. So I basically started counting down the days tell I would turn 18 and finally the day came.

(This is part of a conversation I was having with another feminist friend of mine, and it turned out very interesting and I thought I would share it with you and see what you think about the questions I brought up in it)

I think since I could talk I've been a vocal child. I guess my astrology sign helps that. Being an Aries, It’s a very vocal sign and my planet Mars is known for fighting. So that all helped into making me a feminist, making me vocal….

But anyway, I learned from a young age that if you don’t speak up than nothing will happen and what you dislike will continue to happen because no one is saying that it shouldn’t be happening.

Imagine not knowing the year you were born...She thought she was born in 1825, While her death certificate said she was born in 1815 and her gravestone listed her birth in 1820.
Who am I talking about? Araminta Ross, or by the name you know her Harriet Tubman.

She was born near Bucktown, Maryland to Harriet Green and Benjamin Ross a slave couple that was lucky enough to spend most of their life in close proximity to one another. Harriet was one of around a dozen children. It is assumed she was a middle child. Though no records were found that listed her sisters or brothers, she had indicated that she did have older and younger siblings.

So last night as I was sitting in front of my TV, Eating some popcorn and watching the red carpet pre-show before the Oscars started; I realized how much everyone who talks about the Oscars judge people. I’m not talking about the dresses, hair styles or that weird bow that Nicole Kidman wore on her dress.

I’m talking about how everyone talked about people by the color of their skin or their orientation. Instead of everyone talking about how Ellen was as a comedian and judging her before the show by her skills as a comedian…. It was all about her being a lesbian. Come on now! Who cares! I don’t care if she is an alien as long as she’s a funny comedian that’s all that matters to me cause I’m not judging her by her orientation I'm judging her by her work.

As I was thinking of what to write here I saw this roll call and just had to write this to myself. I ended up printing this exact letter out and putting it in a wood box of mine that i keep all my treatures.
I plan on opening it up in 10 years and remembering what I had to say.

Dear future self,

The date should be Feb 15th, 2017. Amazing to think you’ve made it this far in your life. You are now 27 years old about to be 28; do you have that family you always dreamed of yet? Did you get married by 24 and have kids by 26? If not are you at least happy in your life right now? What’s the world like now? I hope that gay marriage is legalized, I hope by then equality for all is actually not a dream but a reality. I hope that we don’t have a republican president…and hopefully by then we’ve had an African American or a woman as the president. I have all these hopes for the future but normally my hopes and wishes don’t happen so I guess I can only dream for now and dream that my future self continues the fight for equality and doesn’t give up doing whatever she believes is right and whatever she believes is the future….

The other night, I was talking to Irmelin about custody/ divorce issues and It made me want to go ahead and post a blog here about what my thoughts are and some of the issues that have affected me in this topic personally.

I saw this statistic the other day “In the USA 63% - 84% of men who attempt to win custody succeed – Even when there is a history of domestic violence.” (1993 study: National Center Protective Parents)

That seriously just makes me so mad. Yes it was in 1993 but if I remember correctly that was even true as of 2000 as said in the book “Manifesta”.
What gets me, Is that you hear men as Irmelin says say “Men are discriminated against and almost never given custody of their children simply because they're men!” Yet there it is an actual statistic showing that women are the ones being discriminated even in a custody dispute where the men was a known abuser. It’s just sad.

This is my first blog here and i'm really excited for the opportunity to be apart of AGA.

When I found out I was going to be a blogger here I started contemplating what I should write about first, so I figured the best thing is for me to dig into who I am right now and when I realized I was feminist. I’m warning you right now this is a long post because honestly it’s hard to describe who I am in a short sentence, mainly because I’m a rambler. So my apologies right now for how long it is and I promise the next blog wont be like this. Anyway were going to commute around my life growing up to where my life is now and what issues are affecting me now and what type of activism I do. So buckle up, and close your eyes cause here comes my life story. (Don’t really close your eyes, because then you couldn’t read this unless you had some insane power that allowed you to read with your eyes closed or could read brail on the keyboard and if so that’s insanely rad.)