Unfinished business

The #metoo movement has me revisiting unfinished business.

The "let go of your anger so you don't destroy the vessel" advice that got me through tough times did enable me to survive them, but now that I'm out of danger (for now) I'm revisiting the anger.

Sexual assault. Sexual harassment.

I was telling someone the broader story of my career and he said "why aren't you furious?"

Oh god.  Being furious is paralyzing when the fury does nothing but destroy the vessel.

So furious. And also, yoga and herbal tea and writing and organizing and building the world I want.  Investing my energies where it is most productive.  Walking in beauty.  Greeting the day with joy.

And also, I no longer care to think charitably on ambiguous behavior by men.  Years ago a male faculty colleague of mine told me about one of his students having an abortion.  I thought, wow, he must have a really good classroom dynamic and rapport with his students that they feel so comfortable talking with him about their personal lives!  And now, thinking back, I'm not sure he wasn't the cause of that pregnancy.  I'm bracing myself to learn every man I know, my father, my brother, close friends, my exes, my boyfriend--all of them may have a story which will come to light.

Baseball metaphor of "getting to first base" treats women as the playing field.  I suggest men compare their RBI stats as well--assisting a partner to an orgasm.

Branding, Inherited privilege

I wrote a dissertation about inherited privilege,consent and branding.  It was supposed to be about curriculum.  It was a feminist paper, so I was deep in thinking about power structures based on difference, such as based on a daddy claiming you.

Brand as a marketing shorthand.  Brand as a patronymic last name.  Brand as a literal scar burned into flesh. Self-branding, enhancing one's brand, monetizing one's brand.

It was inspired by many things which were around me:

1) Game of Thrones structures of battles for houses based on legitimate and illegetimate male heirs.

2) The #metoo movement and recognition of how far organizations will go to protect the brand's value, including silencing victims' complaints, gaslighting, celebrating the perpetrator's successes.

How could anybody have you and lose you and not lose their mind, too?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9TlaYxoOO8

Feelings about entangling and detangling, the beginnings and endings of relationships.

Choices about staying in relationship versus letting go

Forgiveness versus Reconciliation

Remembering what I already forgot, in the no longer and not yet.

Having the queasy sense of looking at an alternative timeline--what would have happened if...?

And deciding it would have been awful.  Yes, decidedly, it would have had to have been awful.

Relationships and Storytelling

Our work is based on relationships and storytelling. 

Community-building. 

Storytelling builds the relationships, empathy, compassion, identification, solidarity.

Relationships generate the stories.  Retelling the stories reinforces the relationship.

Concilience, Reconciliation

In my dissertation methodology and conclusion, I wrote about the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation.

I'm aware that re-conciliation, looks like it has a root with concilience,

My work with regenerative ag/Quivira coalition led me to the word concilience in relation to resilience--knowledge systems working together.

In my work with researching feminist epistemologies, where was concilience?  How might I reconcile ontologies?

Blogging as first drafting...

June allows for some time to structure my adoption story, so here I pre-write some ideas (pre-writing is writing).

Part of the story is about human trafficking, abortion

inherited privilege

relationship to my dissertation research, writing with, writing against

naming structures

military and paternalist structures

thinking with Handmaid's Tale