Insolent NDN

A friend linked me to this tacky piece of erotica this other day and I swear I had to read the dialogue verbatim to convince myself that hero really did say: “Fucking her ass. Saving her life.” Because, really, what the fuck is that?! This book takes the place of Marry A Man Who Will Dance, which opens with these immortal words:

The Harley roared and bucked and writhed under his muscular thighs as wildly as a fresh border whore. And since he was half-Mexican and half-Anglo, and oversexed to boot, Roque Mayo was just the man to know.

You know I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried. Worst Book Ever Award, this book haz it.

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Due to the flat-out stealing because I have no soul Margaret Seltzer’s memoir fakeoir, I am getting pretty steamed at the we-sha-sha Pretendian crowd. Oh, and we cannot forget Mrs. Cassie Edwards and her Cheyenne grandmother whom she cites as inspiration for her “Indian Romances” like Savage Honor [review forthcoming].

But, okay we got some white women playing at being Indian, ain’t nothing new there, that shit’s as old as the work day is long; I’ve done wrote parody on that shit. It’s a fab combination of the new White Man’s Burden (all the Indians are dead so we need to take up the knowledge and safekeep it for our white children), guilt over living on stolen land and the need to make a legitimate claim on said land (my granddad was 1/24th Chickasaw so we’ve been here a LONG time), and the noble savages being somehow different or better than other People of Color (their governments and schools were so good/they’re so spiritual/they’re so polite/clean/articulate/almost white). And since most white folks think all Indians are dead or if they do know one of us we’re not “real” because we’re light skinned, Black, Hawaiian, Rican, wear blue jeans, have short hair, use pronouns and do not speak in the third person; we’re written off right quick in order to save their fantasy that real Indians are stoic, hard-bodied warriors or demure maidens - think Dances with Wolves, everyone else seems to, right?

So what’s the big deal, it’s irritating but no real harm done, right? WRONG. Here’s my reasoning on why Pretendians are dangerous as all hell and need to be called out, revealed, drug out from behind the curtain and all that shit.

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I’ve decided I am a firefighter today. I don’t know much about being a firefighter, no firefighters in my family but I heard that my great-great grandfather may have worked as a volunteer firefighter in Jackson County back in the day. But, really, I just like the idea of being a firefighter - it’s exciting, well, it *sounds* exciting, and the red truck gets bonus points.

I am a firefighter. I said so. I even Googled “firefighting” to find out a little bit more about what being a firefighter entails (aside from the snazzy uniform and the aforementioned hella cool red truck!) but there was a LOT of information, some of it seemed too academic or too angry (the NYFD seems to be really upset still) so I clicked out of the sites and went to eBay instead to see if I could get a firefighting uniform on the cheap, maybe get it tailored to be a bit more fitted too…

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The context of this post is layered in this, this, this, this, and especially this.

I was up all night, or rather dreaming all night about these conversations, because this is exactly the issue and almost an exact replica of what took me off the internet almost five years ago. I wanted to become less fat because after five years of undergrad the extra 30 pounds I put off from my stable, comfortable weight of 230-235 had me pretty damn uncomfortable. How had I gained the weight? Lots of soda and Nerds candy. Literally. All day, every day. How did I get that much weight off before going on my first diet - walking and stopping the soda and the Nerds candy. Was that health at every size or was that dieting? I don’t know - I went in with the notion of just stopping what I knew was causing the problem but also of becoming reduced fat.

The thing with dieting (and I think of lots of things in this arena like elective plastics, etc.) is that it’s a body autonomy issue but also a larger social issue. We can’t solve fat oppression by losing weight because fat oppression is just that - oppression - so me losing 30 pounds doesn’t do much, it definitely does not make me an activist one way or the other because I don’t think you can solve larger social problems by changing your body - but you can make yourself whatever, and I struggle with an adjective because who knows how one will feel. I applaud Kate Harding when she writes here that she is not gonna put up with dieting talk on her blog. Fucking ace, thank god someone is making a decision, as I’ve been too overwhelmed with the wishy-washiness of Fatshionista to even think anyone would dare make such a declaration. Maybe she read Delux Viven’s IBARW post? Spaces with boundaries are hella more productive than some of this “open-minded, winner-take-all” shit.

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Flawnology = flawed analogy; the majority if not all analogies when it comes to comparing oppressions are flawed and rarely do anything to advance understanding of the issue in any meaningful way. Flawnologies do not build up empathy but they do further marginalize people living at the intersections and into the overlap; flawnologies do rank oppression but in a postmodern speak that focus on individuality of experience at the expense of the community. How many times have I seen that “homophobia is the new racism” or that “being fat now is just like how it used be for Black folks under Jim Crow”? These are blatantly reprehensible and really only deserve a flashing “racism is the new racism stupid” icon.

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I bought me the new Hip Mama as a cheer-me-up gift; it was a lovely surprise, as I let my subscription lapse and have not been keeping up with the zine. Hell, it was news to me that AG is pregnant again. *lol*

Like all of the other issues I am familiar with, this one has a theme - open adoption. Interesting. I found myself entranced by the stories of birthmama’s who birthed in “mother houses” in the deep South in the early 1970s (”My Secret Son” by Lani Jo Leigh) and then had their babies scurried away to an awesome story (”Wide Open Adoptions” by Zoe Francesca) by a second mama who talked about her deep friendships with both of her kids’ first mamas and how the mamas are in their lives on almost a daily basis*. There were other great stories as well, and then there was the article that pissed me off and I am prolly going to write a letter to the editor, or a letter to Ariel, challenging the stereotypical “oh it’s my experience” subtle but it can’t be racism! all up in it.

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My people view at the world in what English language refers to as dualism or binaries. We look for the balance in two opposites and seek to keep that balance. We believe in roles, we believe in callings. We believe that our creators gave us each a song and we are to live in a way that brings harmony to the community. Pre-Columbian historians have written that the Cherokee were more dualistic, more rigid in our roles than other nations surrounding us. Perhaps. Depending on the lens utilized to analyze our traditions, we may appear inflexible, or we may look secure in our lives, roles and callings.

I share the above because I believe it is crucial to understand the a bit of the lens I use to view the world – the template I use to organize my personal narrative so that the following is not set within European terms that may appear similar, but, in fact, are in opposition to my peoples’ traditions because our traditions were not conceived in greed and birthed in colonialism. Cherokee separation of roles is based in mutual respect for the other person’s power – not in fear. The following assertions are based in the same mutual respect; I honor a person’s right to identify as one chooses but I do have thoughts on the process of light-skinned people of color and mixed identity where one may identify as white and ___________ or white with some color down the pike.

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A few weeks ago, I was chatting with a friend about geographical identity. I assert that my primary cultural language is that of a woman of color from the Southeast. I feel most comfortable among that group, and that tends to be my homeplace speak, and everything else is variables of code shifting. Although, I have lived in both the Southeast and the Midwest for most of my life, I know where home is, and I know the bias and misconceptions that most people without color north of Kentucky seems to have about “Southerners.” I want to address this a bit because I think that using the Southeast as the proverbial redheaded stepchild of the country is disconcerting and is based upon stereotypes that allow any person without color not affiliated with the area to puff up in pride that they are somehow supah spechual unique individuals who don’t have a racist bone in their body because they live in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Yes, there is racism in the Southeast.

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