Navigating Solutions and Darkness

I wanted to write yesterday, but I was too tired and too drunk. Slept for ages. Before that, we talked for hours about how we feel re-traumatized when just reading about accounts of sexual harassment and assault. About the feeling of helplessness as we realize over and over that even the men in our lives who could be considered understanding are separated from us by such a vast ocean of disparity. They've never experienced any such thing, and they probably never will. And these are the ones who do not wilfully follow a pattern of harassment towards every woman they meet. Those guys are farther away, beyond any hope of redemption. As I see a lot of what we term victim blaming in comments and opinions (from dudes, mainly, but also women) I think about how these people do not, in fact, understand how consent works, or what sex feels like for women. They can never even imagine the subtle shift from control to lack of control that may occur - a crucial, very interesting point in tim...

Blogtober 2018 is turning into Feminist Blogtober 2018. Lol @ *Nudes Give Me A High* Comic Guy,* and thanks to all the women who brought the truth of his actions to light. *Attributed to Twitter user @Alp_enliebe. There's a guy I really want to like. I say really want to like because sometimes I like him, and sometimes the alarm bells in my head blare too loud to be drowned out. When I talk about his latest exploits, people inevitably ask me that cringe inducing question: "Why do you still talk to him?" Some of them, they know why. They know whom he reminds me of, albeit in a diluted fashion. "He gives me insight into the average kind of guy," I tell them. "The kind of guy who isn't bad, bad, but not good, good either." The enablers, y'know? The ones who profit from male privilege without actively hurting people and without doing anything to dismantle the sources of their privilege. "It's rare that I am attracted to anyone," ...

#MeToo is making a comeback on my Twitter, thanks to KavaNope in the US, and a comedian named Utsav Chakraborty in India. All the chatter about Utsav points to a consistently misogynistic personality - one that doesn't come through in the videos he acts in, or in his public persona. Since then, person after person has been coming out with their stories. Of young men, of older men. Of colleagues and bosses. And yeah, none of this is surprising but it's still surprising and exhausting. Yesterday a friend said something about how I'm really into 'the whole #MeToo thing,' and today somebody else said it and they still don't seem to understand how much these things affect us and everything we do. How much they take for granted. How I sort of don't have a choice about "being into the whole #MeToo thing." My college roommate and I encountered this dude who also briefly attended the same college, and there were some professors and stuff we all knew...

It's been a long day without you, my friend And I'll tell you all about it when I see you again We've come a long way from where we began Oh, I'll tell you all about it when I see you again When I see you again Damn, who knew? All the planes we flew Good things we've been through That I'll be standing right here talking to you 'Bout another path I know we loved to hit the road and laugh But something told me that it wouldn't last Had to switch up Look at things different, see the bigger picture Those were the days Hard work forever pays Now I see you in a better place (see you in a better place) Uh How can we not talk about family when family's all that we got? Everything I went through you were standing there by my side And now you gon' be with me for the last ride It's been a long day without you, my friend And I'll tell you all about it when I see you again (I see you again) We've come a long way (yeah, we came a long way) f...

Social media doesn't determine my worth. It doesn't determine yours either. It's literally the most superficial, shallow thing to ever exist. Even so, I've always loved social media, from back before Facebook and even Orkut. All the way back to a little something called Hi5.  It all started when I overheard a bunch of kids I definitely didn't think were cool discussing Hi5. It was a social networking site, and if even they were on it, then I was definitely missing something.  To my great chagrin, the government of UAE banned Hi5 a couple of days after I first heard of it. In fact, when I tried to search for the website and found the prohibitory banner, I rather wondered if I'd somehow precipitated this by wanting to be cooler.  Then came Orkut, where the girl I'd been steadily crushing on since I was 9 wrote me a glowing "recommendation." To be honest, booking it out of Orkut as soon as Facebook became widely available was something...

It's Blogtober and I'm 4 days late to the party already. Time for some intense backdating. I was 5 when I watched  Titanic, although I've remembered myself as being 3 for some reason. I can't say I understood everything that happened in the movie - whatever happened with the place that had all the vintage car stuff was a complete mystery, and I'm pretty sure Dubai censorship rules are the reason I never realized Jack's painting was a nude painting. But there's a reason why the movie was hailed the way it was - and still is. And that is the sense of something so vast and inescapable. The sense of watching a tragedy unfold in real time, and being made to feel helpless by it. Something like that is incredibly tragic. Watching men self-destruct in real time, on the other hand, is tragicomic. My friend watched me laugh as I compared a couple of people I've dated - their patterns of self-destructive behaviours, their detachment, the utter hopelessnes...