Smile like you're in control.

What a strange week this has been, full of friends and antagonists, both old and relatively new; shifted time; internal evolution and emotional revolution; the deeply ingrained dissonance of a lifetime of staccato tempo, always out of step with the body electric; lost opportunities, chaotic potential, and paper cut insults.

I got in a town car this morning at 3:30am. I hadn't slept in almost 20 hours, after a week of moderate sleep-deprivation (less than five hours a night on average) and more than its share of drinking. Soft jazz played on the radio. The streets were dark and empty. I stared out the window, mutely watching the reflection of colored lights slip over the windows.

After about fifteen minutes, the sound dropped to silence unexpectedly, and the bent and elderly man behind the wheel spoke for the first time.

"Last night I was watching a movie with John Denver and George Burns. I'd never seen it. Burns plays God, and Denver is a man who has lost his faith. Burns comes to him and tells him he has to go around and share the word with others."

"At first Burns is just a voice, then later he appears bodily to Denver. God tells Denver he can look or sound like anybody. God says he appears as the person Denver was most likely to listen to, but if Denver wanted, God could look like anything."

"Denver starts going around and telling people that God is speaking to him, that he has found faith. His wife and family think he's crazy. He doesn't care. He does it anyway." FN1.

Then he adjusted the rear view mirror to met my befuddled gaze in the backseat. "I didn't tell you before. My name is Joe."

While I tend to use this space occasionally for fiction writing, I swear that in this particular case, this is exactly what happened to me. And this town car driver intervention of David Lynchian proportions is a pretty solid analogy for the weirdness of the last ten days of my life.

In some ways, it has been a terrible and disappointing week, both personally and for the collective us. In some ways, it has been a surprisingly wonderful week, far exceeding even my best expectations. Overall, though, it's felt overwhelming full of conflicted potential.

Once, a few years ago, a road trip with my very own the Kate, we were driving across Indiana in winter in the early morning, and she hit a patch of black ice. The car began to spin, and she overcorrected, then overcorrected again. FN2. We glided across the road, the car turning in circles, then continued to spin across the grassy strip separating us from traffic traveling in the opposite direction.

As we crossed the center divide, I honestly wasn't sure we were going to stop. I was pretty sure we were about to spin uncontrollably into oncoming traffic, with my side facing their ominous headlights. I remember clearly thinking, "Wow. If this keeps going, there's a pretty good chance I'm going to die."

A very long moment or two later, we ground out a little over halfway across the esplanade. There was a deep trench in it, and the car's wheels finally lost contact with the frozen ground, wedging us perpendicular to the highway. We were stuck and needed a tow to get the car unwedged, but the car were otherwise fine. Eventually we got pulled out and continued down the highway, passing an eight vehicle pile-up including a tanker truck where several people had been severely injured less than a half mile ahead of us. Had we not slipped into our own vortex, we might have been caught up in it.

I was trying to figure out how to explain the emotional impact of this week, the personal joys and sorrows, the steps forward and back, pressed up against the public horrors heaped on women and people of color by what we laughingly refer to as justice and democracy. I've been trying to figure out to describe the shock and pain I feel personally, how it has strangely rubbed like sandpaper against the contours of an already out-of-context week where the past, present, and future seemed extremely loud and incredibly close.

That moment on the black ice is as close as I can come. This week feels like the moment that unmoored us in the darkness that night, the one we never saw coming until it was too late. The split second out of step, just before everything slips back into place, for better or worse. It is out of sync with the rest of my life, and when the momentum of movement grinds to a halt, I wonder which direction I will be facing: forward, backward, parallel to my regularly scheduled life? Will I find myself miraculously only a little worse for the wear, and continue down the road I was headed as if nothing significant has happened? Will this all fade into a strange memory that seems more like a dream than something that actually happened? Or has the entire thing -- the pain, the disappointment, the surprising happiness -- changed my destination?

I don't know.

And yes, I know this entire piece has been an incredibly non-specific, self-indulgent piece of navel gazing, but the details of my personal frictions, proverbial black ice, barely avoided disasters, and moments of feeling strangely alive? They really aren't significant in and of themselves. Nothing that happened to me directly in the last ten days is all that remarkable or even noteworthy. In a vacuum, they would make for terribly boring stories, really.

The way a very public trial in Florida, a routine trial in D.C., a bill in Texas, a trip to the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, and a conversation with a drunk Eastern European man who lives in France about justice, social activism, and my past makes me question my career choices isn't all that interesting in and of itself. Just like reliving some of the best and worst parts of high school while stuck in a dorm in Boston at a week-long company retreat, full of the kind of giddy highs and lows one only really has at sleep away camp when you're twelve and your real life is so far away it is easy to envision mountains where there are only mole hills, doesn't make for an epicly told tale at the end of the day. Neither does the way receiving bad news in a particular moment lessen the sting, only to find the poison of the forgotten embedded stinger slushing around inside bring on the full necrotic blow the next day.

But, in the moment of unknowing, that feeling? The feeling I had crossing the black ice, or when the driver seemed to be strangely trying to tell me, with the borrowed voice of God, to wake up and pay attention because this was one of those moments that if I didn't stop and look around, I might be missing my life speeding by me? That is worth telling. It is worth noting those moments that unhinge you a little, driving you to question things about how others perceive you, how you see yourself, and what you should be doing with your life. It's easy, in the day to day, to forget the miracle of having a life at all can be. It's easy to coast along in your routine and never question the assumptions of your values, the correctness of your choices.

"Keep your distance; I haven't got a thing to say.
Where's the exit? What time is it, anyway?
You said I would like it here, but I don't feel a thing.
Where's this happening -- in your head?
But my mother said
Smile like they want you.
Smile like you're in control.
Smile like you mean it.
Smile, baby, you're on a roll.
Smile, smile, smile…."
"Smile," Cristina    FN3.

________________
FN1. The movie, it turns out, is Oh, God!, released in 1977.

FN2. I feel compelled to mention here that Kate is a very good driver who has never had an accident. This incident was the closest she has ever come to being in one. It was a fluke thing.

FN3. A playlist for this week, so I remember:

1. Smile - Cristina
2. You Better You Bet - The Who
3. Nervous Lonely Night - Jessica Lea Mayfield
4. What Was It You Wanted - Bob Dylan
5. Hold On, Hold On - Neko Case
6. You Are What You Love - Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins
7.  For K, Part 2 - Lana Del Rey
8. They Never Taught Us That In School - Gayle Harris
9. A Chicken With Its Head Cut Off - The Magnetic Fields
10. Throw It All Away - Brandi Carlile
11. In Between Days - The Cure
12. Use Me - Bill Withers
13. He Was Really Sayin' Somethin' - The Velvelettes
14. Wild Ones - Flo-rida feat. Sia
15. Girls Like You - The Young and Famous
16. Never Let Me Go - Florence + The Machine
17. Hide & Seek - Imogene Heap
18. Hang with Me (Acoustic) - Robyn
19. Someday? - Concrete Blonde

My traveling companions are ghosts and empty sockets: My Top Eleven Scents for Summer

Well, dear reader, it's quite warm up here in Puddletown, which means I can once again break out some of my warmer weather scents and make some recommendations to those of you who live in other places. And apparently, by other places, I mean the places that are so hot the ground is buckling and cities are entirely encircled in flame. Some people would call what I've just described as an actual living hell; others just call it summer in Southern California.

Me? I'm psyched because I am off to Tennessee to visit my very own the Kate this week for the Fourth! I have wanted to see Nashville and Memphis for basically my entire life, so I really excited. And since I am headed into the warm weather and packing for my trip, I've had some time to contemplate my 2013 Top Eleven Summer Scents list.

1. DSH Perfumes Lush Honey. This perfume is sadly discontinued. I bought two ten ml rollers when it was on its way out and I am so glad I did! Sticky sweet and warm, it is a delightful, rich experience. You wouldn't think something so full-bodied would work in warm weather, but that's when I think I like it best. It's very sweet, almost achingly so, but somehow that works when things get warm and sweaty. If Dawn ever brings this back, don't think, buy some.

2. Providence Perfume Co. Jessamine. Now here's a lovely and light floral for warm weather! Jasmine is not only pretty but seasonally appropriate, as it tends to bloom throughout spring and summer in most regions. After enjoying this delightfully dry floral of late, I'm thinking about potting some real jasmine of my own for the deck. I've been trying my hand at flower planting and herb gardening this season, and so far, so good. I'm crossing my fingers that my plants will hang in there as it warms up, but so far, I haven't killed anything this year. If you knew me well, you'd realize this is a huge accomplishment.

3. Robert Piguet Bandit. I owe Bandit a real review, so allow let me include this bit of history here:

The first chypre fragrance for women to incorporate smoky and leathery tones, Bandit, ambiguous and slightly androgynous, is beloved by women of mischief and daring, exotic and sultry. It is the fragrance of provocateurs. Piguet worked with perfumer Germaine Cellier to launch the Bandit spirit and scent of the couture runway in 1944 with models sporting villain masks, brandishing toy revolvers and knives. He sought to evoke the aura of the “bad boy,” the outlaw.

This scent is certainly an outlaw, and as I am going to Nashville and listening to more than my fair share of outlaw country in preparation, this is a timely, complex, challenge. It practically defies description by modern perfume terms. On me, it runs into a lovely, mossy, green mixed with fresh leather, oil, and a bit of rubber. I don't get a lot of animalic notes, but that doesn't lessen its delightful strangeness. It is a wonderful experience, one made more exquisite by summer's warmth. I'm excited to try it under the slightly muggier climes of Tennessee to see how it changes.

4. Annick Goutal Songes. Thus summer and every summer since I first fell in love with it, Songes has been at the top of the summer list for me. It is one of my most favorite beach-y scents. Sun, sweat, frangipani, vanilla and jasmine all come together in a tropical concoction I can't every get enough of. It always reminds me of home, and the beaches of the Gulf, with their warm weather and heavy floral and fetid fragrance, are one of the things I miss most.

5. Demeter Fragrance Library Salt Air. The most realistic salt air scent I've ever found. No flowers. No trees. No seafood cooking smells or warm pressed flesh, just the air, the magical glorious air, that no matter how civilized and removed we become, says to something deep inside the body, "Welcome home."

6. Jo Malone Wild Bluebell. I really love Wild Bluebell, despite it being a rather accessible polite scent from the staid Jo Malone. I looked back at my original review, and I will reiterate what I said then: the word whimsical is a good word -- strong, flirty, floral. Sweet in the floral way, if you want to smell like a pretty flower that could withstand a little hothouse attention, this would be good.

7. Red Flower Organics Guaiac. Rediscovered hiding in the back of my perfume cabinet, this lightweight, straightforward mix of roses and oranges is a warm and realistic interpretation with a strong base that reminds me of the smell of cotton dried on a line. An underrated scent available at a reasonable price, I think it is a great summer scent.

8. smell bent She Wolf. My very own the Kate bought me a smell bent sampler set that I tried and enjoyed, and then failed to review due to distraction and business. More to come from smell bent, but I wanted to comment on She Wolf right here and now. She Wolf is a standout in the Northwest sampler set. It is a strange cross between cotton candy, peaty greenery, and hot dirt, like something straight out of a roll in the hay at a carnival. Sound gross to many of you, I'm sure, but in hot weather it reminds me a bit of dating an FFA boy during summer rodeo season. I give it two sexy thumbs up.

9. Hermes Un Jardin Sur Le Nil. Have you ever wished someone would make a straight citrus without all that floral and foodie mess getting in the way? One that didn't smell like cleaner, but smelled like real fruit? Supposedly inspired by hanging, unripened mangos, I get a lot of lemons, limes mixed in, along with a heady does of vetiver during the opening. As it settles on me, it remains light and airy. I don't know that I get a sense of being on the Nile, per se, but I do get a refreshing scent that comes alive and buoys one up even on the hottest of days. For my money, you can't go wrong with a scent like that come summer time.

10. Olympic Orchids Carolina. Hot, medicinal, comforting, and sweetly biting in the way that good bread made from really ripe bananas tastes right out of the oven, Carolina is a scent that I always turn to in warmer weather. It's deeply comforting, but all that tobacco spice and butter-melty pastry makes me think of heat and hearth and home. To me, that's the long hot days of summer.

11. slumberhouse Mur. Dry hay and clean beeswax with hints of leather, nothing says playing outside in the southern summer time like Mur. Easily worn by a man or a woman, slumber house seems to excel both at the unconventional and at the un-gendered. Mur, like so many slumberous scents, is complex and hard to categorize, but I love this one for summer time. It wear lightly on the skin, which can be a blessing when the hot air is bearing down.

There you have it! Eleven scents for summer. I'll be traveling a bit over the next few weeks, but I'm hoping to bring you some travel love along the way, dear readers, as well as some long awaited giveaways and travel trinkets when I return. And until then, if you've got travel recommendations, perfumey or otherwise, please give them over in the comments section.

For reasons I cannot explain
there's some part of me wants to see
Graceland.
And I may be advised to defend
every love, every ending
or maybe there's no obligations now.
Maybe I've a reason to believe
we all will be received
in Graceland...
"Graceland," Paul Simon

Hold her down with soggy clothes and breezeblocks...

A Review of Caron Tubéreuse Parfum

Apparently I was on a tuberose kick when I raided my scent stash last week for things to try, because the next thing I grabbed was Caron Tubéreuse parfum. I actually have quite a few of the Caron scents since I grabbed the house sampler last year from Luckyscent, but I haven't really reviewed many of them, have I? Today seems like a good day to rectify that.

Or....not.

Caron describes Tubéreuse as follows:

Caron's latest "fountain" creation, TUBEREUSE was conceived of in 2003 by in-house perfumer Richard FRAYSSE.

A hint of Fressia [sic] and jasmine accentuated by a touch of acidity lend Tubéreuse a rich and opulent fragrance, aimed in particular at CARON's glamour-seeking clientele.

Accords: Tuberose….

A little moldy open grave smell....

Caron Tubéreuse has it fans. Noses in the know have used words such as “bombshell,” “audaciously beautiful rich,” and “a hidden gem” to refer to the scent. Sadly reader, I am not going to be one of them. Nope. For when I put it on my skin, all I could think was: Oh Caron... Why did you do this to a tuberose?

The opening was a mix of vinegar and black tar, that fell straight down into an open grave filled with grape Kool-Aid and the bloated corpses of a hundred earth worms that overdosed from the flavored drink sugar high. Then even the interesting “Death comes a'knocking” aspects drifted off, leaving me with a powdery, dry scratch and sniff version of a white flower.

When it was weird, I was sort of distracted, disoriented, and even intrigued. Could I possibly wear this? Who would wear this? Did the perfumer take their inspiration from a terrible nineteenth century pickle factory fire where women and children were trapped in a terrific blaze that ultimately lead to some sort of Safer Work Conditions for Picklers Labor Reform Act?

But the dry powdery scent it settled into is somehow worse for the comparison. And for something I might describe as quiet and unassuming, good golly Miss Molly, the sillage! I had it on the back of my hands and felt like I had giant boxing gloves of scent around them, like sci-fi created orbs. I would be able to use this combat enhancement to knock people down without actually touching them for days!

While I am loathed to ever give such a bad review, I just have to. You know why, dear reader?

This was a scrubber.

...a little faux grape
 flavoring...

Yeah, I'm not kidding. I couldn't take it! After an hour, which I had to force myself through, I had to get it off my skin, even if steel wool was required. And I felt kind of terrible about it, because lots of people with noses I really respect like Caron Tubéreuse.

I was somewhat comforted to find I am not alone in having Caron Tubéreuse go sideways on me. Abigail at I Smell Therefore I Am described her experience as smelling “like dill pickles.” Chantal-Hélène Wagner of The Scented Salamander more charitably describes it as taking "the dark side of Lady Caron's tuberose and plays Lady Macbeth to the first, minus the signs of madness as it seems on the contrary to have an exceptional measure of self-control.” Of course, she goes on to describe it as being “slightly putrid, like stale water and vase.”

Lady MacBeth, indeed. I really enjoy Lady Caron, so I'll try to get a review on that one in for comparison soon. For me, though, I have to say that if you're out to shop tuberoses, be careful with this one. Maybe you're get an overly devoted wife; maybe you'll get a crazy lady who can't stop seeing blood on her hands.

Luckyscent has Caron Tubéreuse for 7.5ml for $100. Yep, you read that right. One hundred smackers for a mere 7.5 milliliters. Given the above, I can only endorse you trying a sample, which is $5. Perhaps you will love it. If not, better to find that out with the very small dab of a wand.

“Muscle to muscle and toe to toe
The fear has gripped me but here I go
My heart sinks as I jump up
Your hand grips hand as my eyes shut...
Please don't go, I'll eat you whole
I love you so, I love you so, I love you so.”
~ “Breezeblocks,” Alt-J

Want a more positive spin on Caron Tubéreuse than I am able to muster? Try...
~ A review from Pink Manhattan
~ A review from Bois de Jasmin
~ A review from aperfumeblog
~ A review from The Black Narcissus
~ A review from Robin at Now Smell This!
~ A review from Eiderdown Press


Photo of open grave: Some rights reserved by A QUIVERFUL OF FOTOS
Photo of grape soda: Some rights reserved by D Sharon Pruitt of Pink Sherbet Photography

Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful?

Review of Frédéric Malle Carnal Flower

Wow, have I had a full weekend, my lovely readers! My best friend, Kate, was here for work this week, and we hung out this weekend when she wasn't trying to squeeze in visits to all the other people who love her like I, and it was great. Drinks and more drinks and fabulous company and food, oh my!

I also managed to make it out to the coast very briefly, which was so sunny and beautiful, and something I have been wanting to do for three weeks. It was a little crowded so I didn't stay long, but sometimes just long drives along winding tree-lined highways with lots of good music and room to think out loud can be deeply restorative.

The weather here has gone warm and the flowers are a'blooming. Oh, May flowers, your heady blooms are worthy of the stories told in your name. Speaking of flowers, you know what I recently discovered? Contrary to popular belief, it is not illegal to pick bluebonnets in Texas, though apparently lots of people, including some state troopers, will tell you otherwise. Take that, you unknown state trooper who once made me cry when you yelled at my parents because I had picked some at a rest stop. Take your made up laws and...stuff them in a decorative vase.

Which brings me to a question: anyone know where I can get a bluebonnet perfume? After reading this piece on the smell of bluebonnets, and seeing it described as “[f]resh air, rain, dirt, and the country[, …] like when you pull towels out of the dryer and stick your face in them,” I now really want to try one. I couldn't find anything but oils online. Anyone have any ideas?

While I wait for your bluebonnet suggestions, let's talk about a floral perfume I did give some wear this week, Frédéric Malle Carnal Flower. One of the most widely reviewed and much lauded of your tuberose options, Carnal Flower is described as follows by the Frédéric Malle's site:

With tuberose, nature offers her own take on dramatic olfactive clashes. These pretty flowers exude a mixture of flower shop freshness and carnal opulence. This natural contradiction has fascinated generations of perfumers including Dominique Ropion. He started to compose his interpretation of the mysterious flower from the latest high-tech analysis of its evaporation. To remain as close to nature as possible, he decided to use a mix of the best natural extractions and high-tech ingredients. Finally, to generate a link between this flower’s scent and the wearer's skin he exaggerated some aspects already existing in the scent of natural tuberose, such as coconut and salycilates, and added a trace of musk. 18 months were necessary to find the perfect balance.

The base encompasses: tuberose absolute, orange blossom absolute, coconut and musk.

There are a lot of reviews of Carnal Flower in part, I think, because it was released at the moment perfume blogging hit its first big wave back around 2005. Another piece of its frequent online inclusion on “must try" lists is attributable to it's unique approach to tuberose. Carnal Flower is a terrific scent, so the quality of the juice combined with the timing makes it a big hit with modern fumies. I suppose I'll add my opinion to the general pro-CF din. Is it good? Yes. But the more interesting question, I think is how does it stand up among the other tuberose scents available, particularly give Carnal Flower's hefty price tag.

The opening of Carnal Flower is greener and more evocative of stem sap than the bright heady florals of Robert Piguet Fracas. There is little of the medicinal note often associated with Serge Lutens Tubéreuse Criminelle, and the vaguely hairspray aspects of musk and dryness you find with By Kilian Beyond Love are entirely absent. Instead, Carnal Flower has a barely there coconut undertone that moves the overall effect slightly, and simultaneously, toward both warm tropical beach and tropical foodie for me. I get next to no musk or orange blossom out of the experience, to the point that I would not have thought to include them in the note list.

I agree with Robin at Now Smell This!, who described Carnal Flower as quiet as tuberose scents go. In a wrist by wrist comparison, it is quieter than both Fracas and Beyond Love. That shouldn't take anything away from Carnal Flower. In fact, making a quiet tuberose is something of a feat in itself. It's nice to wear a tuberose that isn't going to knock someone down fifty feet away from me. Carnal Flower may be the tuberose that many people who don't usually go for big white flowers will truly love.

I think for me one of the stumbling blocks is the name. Flower? Yes. Carnal? Well...not in my mind, but hey—who am I to say what might turn you on? To me it's too quiet and pretty to be sexy. I find Fracas and Beyond Love more overtly sexual. This carnal reads more to me like the shock of a Victorian woman confronted by an uncovered piano leg! The horror!

Then there's the price. A 50ml spray of Carnal Flower is a whooping $240, so make sure to try before you buy. If this is your tuberose holy grail, more power to you. I'll sit here with my pure parfum Fracas, which I bought for considerably less, and watch the world go by.

Want more? Try...
~ a review from The Non-Blonde
~ a review from Perfume Shrine
~ a review from Bois de Jasmin
~ a review from Robin at Now Smell This!
~ a review from Olfactoria's Travels
~ a review from Eiderdown Press
~ a review from Katie Puckrik Smells
~ a review from For the Love of Perfume
~ a review from Muse in Wooden Shoes
~ a review from Sweet Diva
~ a review from The Scented Salamander
~ a review from Scentsate
~ a review from SmellyThoughts
~ a review from PereDePierre
~ a review from Muse in Wooden Shoes

Will you still love me when I got nothing
but my aching soul?
I know you will, I know you will...
I know that you will.
~ “Young and Beautiful,” Lana Del Rey


Photo of bluebonnet - some rights reserved by longhorndave

'Cause she knows that it's demanding to defeat those evil machines...

Thoughts on Rape Culture, Advertising, Feminist Aesthetics, and Warrior Fatigue

The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself. ~ Virginia Woolf

I haven't blogged about advertising and feminist aesthetics in a long while. It happened for a handful of reasons: lack of time, lack of energy, distracted by shiny objects. But also? Sometimes, I get warrior fatigue. Sometimes I feel lost and alone, orphaned by my own movement, and generally defeated. It is hard to always be fighting.

Oh yes, this completely
nude woman totally makes
me want to buy Shalimar...
no wait: I meant puke.

I also sometimes wonder, dear reader, if you aren't a little tired of hearing it. I feel like I am writing to the choir. If you already know this stuff, what is one more post going to do?

“There is nothing revolutionary whatsoever about the control of women's bodies by men. The woman's body is the terrain on which patriarchy is erected.” ~ Adrienne Rich

I was always a feminist. I don't know why. I think probably because being an abuse little kid raised by crazy people who kept insisting they were normal forced me to make a choice. Either they were right, and I was awful and deserved awfulness, or they were wrong, and the world was a weirdly biased and inherently unjust place.

I did what any child desperate to survive would do under those conditions.

I chose myself.

I chose not to accept that I was awful, not to let their poison change my mind. I made that decision one terrible day in a hospital, though I didn't know it at the time. But I do remember thinking, very clearly, that it wouldn't always be this way, and it wasn't worth my life. I stopped taking out the awfulness on myself that day, on my own body, and I started living, just out of spite. If I was going to die, it wouldn't be by my own hand. I would no longer be complicit in my own defeat.

Nearly twenty years later, I've seen enough of the ugliness in the world to wonder: how many women have had to make such a choice...

Dear Tom Ford, thanks for making it easy
to despise your entire product line.

All oppression creates a state of war. ~ Simone de Beauvoir

That my father had a position of public power that made normal channels of relief unavailable to us underscored the power of status and privilege. That I am naturally highly empathetic meant that when I got older, my sense of personal injustice seemed easy to extend to others when I came to see the world in all its horrible inequity.

These things made me, like fire tempers a blade.

Call it coincidence or the juxtaposition of fate and genetics, a little nature/nurture combo, but whatever it is, I am who I am: a feminist from first breath to last. But when I am tired and weary of a world where people genuinely seem to hate women, and especially hate those who attempt to fight against that hatred, even I have to take a break.

Sometimes I just can't do it anymore. When I see students protesting rape culture at a top tier college being told they deserve to be raped and at another university, a Take Back the Night week is protested by a crazy man who says the students marching for safety are sluts who should be raped, sometimes I just feel like nothing I do matters.

“Patriarchy has no gender.” ~ bell hooks

If we could see patriarchy,
I feel like it would look
a lot like this...

Patriarchy is so big; it is so everywhere and every time and every culture. It is like The Silence in Doctor Who. It's influence is always there, just outside your field of vision, pervasive and persistently changing the world for the better. And as soon as you look away, even for a moment—you forget. You can't remember where that sick feeling in your stomach came from because you're too busy just trying to live your life. You forget that the silence, and here I mean the silencing influence of patriarchy, is standing behind you, influencing your thoughts, your decisions, even your actions.

The most stunning, terrible, mind-melting eleven words I have ever read was a short line in Catharine A. MacKinnon's “Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory.” They were these:

Feminism does not begin with the premise that it is unpremised.

The piece—a thick diatribe against our broken understanding of rape and our failed ability to properly prosecute it, as well as a whole lot more—drops this nugget of wisdom in two paragraphs out of maybe a hundred containing just as many ideas. And yet, it scrambled my brain all around. She goes on.

That is, the equality of women to men will not be scientifically provable until it is no longer necessary to do so. Women's situation offers no outside to stand on or gaze at, no inside to escape to, too much urgency to wait, no place else to go, and nothing to use but the twisted tools that have been shoved down our throats. If feminism is revolutionary, this is why.

Who needs a woman
then they can have an
object and woman in one!

Even if we are revolutionary, even if what I do is a fight worth fighting, it is only because I continue to exist in the face of this vast awful thing that premises me. This is both a literal and philosophical truth in my case. The abuse of a developing child premises the adult they become; the oppression of women underlies my understanding of the world, the entire world's understanding of itself.

It affects men and women. It premises our understandings of ourselves and each other. Patriarchy is terrible for everyone, and we all cannot escape it. We literally cannot imagine a world without patriarchy. The driving animus of my life, feminism, exists because of patriarchy. Patriarchy and an inborn sense of wrongness, of injustice.

That realization, that moment when I see the horrible thing I always feel standing behind me, raising the hair along the back of my neck and I know it's real and true and awful, the moment just before I forget again, it is terrible and sad and it takes all the fight out of me.

“How else to make a dent in an object as immovable as patriarchy itself...?” ~ Dalma Heyn

Yes, my dear, sweet, lovely, and perhaps saddened reader, I get tired. I believe we all do, from time to time.

But then I see something like the video below, and I remember. I remember what it is like to feel the rage of first knowing, or of realizing the truly awful depth of the problem, and to think, “I can change it. Maybe only a little. Maybe only for one person. Maybe that person will just be me.” And with humor and angry and sadness and creativity, they begin to struggle against the wrongness without and the rage within.


And I think, that is why I write these. Because if one of you is new, or has just found this piece, or is reading any of these words and considering these ideas for the first time, let me say:

Yes, it is a terrible thing. Yes, it is okay to feel sad and frustrated and angry. But know this: you are not alone. And every single one of us, to the best we can, are fighting with you.

Until that unpremised day, viva la revolution.

Or, to put it another, particularly Whovian way:

Sooner or later, Silence will fall.


"...'Cause she knows that it'd be tragic
if those evil robots win.
I know she can beat them.

Oh Yoshimi, they don't believe me,
but you won't let those robots defeat me."
~ Flaming Lips, "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots"