Current location:	Not Ohio
Current mood:	pissed off
Current music:	"Ola Sto Fos" - Eleftheria Arvanitaki
Entry tags:	alienation, bitch, feminism, femme, mutant

Into the light
I am constantly accused of being a sexist man-hater every time I try to discuss my difficulties with masculinity. I swear I am not out to bash men, and my ability to relate to men has improved a lot since I've been working on this. But if I can't find a way to discuss my problems with masculinity openly and respectfully, how am I supposed to work through the problems? Are we supposed to pretend that relations between the genders are problem free? Or there would be no problems if it weren't for those damn "feminazis"?

It has taken 33 years before I could deal with the fact that I was raped repeatedly when I was 13, immediately went into denial about it, and did not even realize I was in denial about it for over 30 years. This must have influenced how I relate with males, I don't like to imagine what resentment must have festered in the darkness for all that time, and now I want to be free of whatever negative effects this had. I have to bring it to the light to detox it, sorry it ain't pretty.

I was always bullied and beaten up for being gender-nonconformist from childhood in a cultural environment that heavily enforced stereotypical gender roles (Catholic Ohio 40 years ago). If today I'm a defiantly liberated lipstick feminist getting up people's noses, well pardon my issues.

I'm always caught between the Scylla of strong women who speak out against injustice and the Charybdis of a discourse that doesn't want uppity women to have a voice. Let alone mutant freaks like me.



om krim Kaliye namah