WHaQ!

I loved this post from La Chola. Not the least because it brought back memories of sitting in high school Geography, watching Aerosmith's Crying and obtaining a giant girl crush on Alicia Silverstone.

Alicia in Aerosmith's Cryin'

So a LOT of friends had a real hard time reconciling the fact that I really dug the epitome of sexist nastiness: Hard rock/heavy metal bands. I mean, what could possibly get more misogynistic than “She’s my Cherry Pie” or “Girls Girls Girls”?

[...] the only place I could ever see women expressing sexuality at all was in the videos I was not supposed to be watching–the only place where even *imagining* making love to a woman was possible was at concerts where women “explored” their sexuality by showing their tits (because that’s what rock girls did.) more

I started thinking about all those spaces in the world that are not meant to empower women, but do so anyway. In high school, I never went around calling myself a feminist. I don't think I even spent a whole lot of time pondering gender at all. That came much later, and it caught fire like wild brush. But in high school, I was too busy finding space for my brown self in all that aggressive white. I was too busy answering questions like, "Why do women in your country get sold when they are married?" (They don't) or "Should I call you Native American?" (I am not Native American). "Isn't Indian offensive?" (Not when you are an actual Indian.)

And then this struck my heart.

Do I really care about “the movement” or do I care about the lonely and depressed queer girls out in the middle of Religious Town U.S.A? Lonely and depressed queer girls, forget the above paragraphs and pay special attention to the paragraph below. There are alternatives out there. There are spaces where your presence is not only honored but desperately needed.

Do I care about "the movement"? These past two years, I have tripped over "the movement" and gotten trampled on by its need, its voracious self-destruction. I find myself listening to those "lonely and depressed queer girls in the middle of..", wide-eyed, my palms tingling painfully. How did I get here? Being part of their stories, their lives, their movement. It's easy to want out. I have no answers to give. I only have questions. I have meaningless suppositions that make little difference to anyone's lived realities. When I do wrong, I wreck the world. When I do good, I move a pebble out of the way.

Something in my heart clenches every time I find these connections in the most random, most unexpected places. Despite all the many differences, there are threads that bind that we cannot see. It is gratifying to know.