The Concept of "Work"

Anytime I talk about "work" (work being defined as a series of assigned tasks for which you are regularly paid), I'm always met with misunderstanding. Work, clearly, is one of those deep and layered topics that convey class and privilege. I know that.

I know that the things I am about to write clash in a country beset with a recession, with terrible stories of loss and hardship.

That's not the context of work I am talking about today. I'm not talking about work as a means of survival, a means of providing life and nutrition and basic needs. I'm talking about work as an avenue of creative force; a garden of possibility to grow and till our ideas and tender seeds of maybe.

Work, the way the US has exposed it to me, sucks.

That's all. That's pretty much my point.

Across sectors - academic, corporate, private, public, government - and across disciplines - mental health, social justice, physical therapy, spiritual and religious, legal, blue collar and white collar...

Work tends to suck all the energy and creative forces from me. The paid, 40-hr work week frankly depresses any bank of creativity I had. Even jobs that boast the ability to be creative don't really want new ideas, they want new ways of being successful, but not necessarily new or philosophies.

By no means a research study, but I often ask my friends and acquaintences how they feel about their life in terms of their job. A lot of them say, "it's ok," and divide what they do professionally with their personal life. That's understandable. Not everyone has the privilege of fusing the two in a pleasing relationship.

So, what's wrong with me? Is anyone else out there that feels like an office is an eerily similar shape and size to a cell?

Or when you look at children, your joy fades when you envision them growing up to sit in front of a computer screen?

As I continue on an aggressive path of carving out a career, I am consistently coming back to these questions of division. Why do I have to do this? Why have I not yet learned to just suck it up when everyone else has?

In the pit of my stomach, I feel a pretense when I say what I do for a living. An ideal life to me is brimming with work that brings me joy...a life where I met with challenges and daunting prospects that bring me closer to community, the world, and myself.

"That's what everyone wants," is what I'm told.

Than what do we need to do to make that happen?

Forget funding the revolution, how about funding our own existence, starting with being happy with our jobs, our lives!

Are you happy in your work? Do you separate work and Work?

Since I can't ask when, I'll ask this: HOW do you find what you love to do?

Written in My Plain Gendered Language

Since my induction to the feminist blogosphere, I've put much time into narrowing my focus. Widespread blogging seems too general, unfocused, and leaves me with little direction. Mostly, I don't feel I learn as much as I want when I blog across the spectrum.

About a year ago, I decided to move forward in specific issues relating to feminism - defining "radical," exploring sexual violence, faith, media, and womyn of color.

Every once in a while though, I wonder if focusing on "feminism" somehow limits my exploration of "gender."

How does that focus change me, my writing, when and if I write: I want to explore feminism vs. I want to explore gender.

Is it the same thing?

Before I would have emphatically stated yes.

Now, I would emphatically distinguish that mainstream feminism and academic courses absolutely ignore the entirety of gender as an issue. Often times, feminism is conflated with the upward political, class, and elitist advancement of White women. Somehow, in some contorted, quiet way, I've often thought that gender has gotten lost in feminism. Sure, it's pointed out when women, particularly women of privilege are abused, oppressed, or violated, but, for the most part, feminism and gender, ironically, are often not paired together in headliners.

I'm thinking, specifically, of the transgendered lives and experiences that I, admittedly, know very little about.

I am not and do not identify transgender and have often felt like my understanding is extremely limited by my slow understanding and deconstruction of socialization when it comes to gender roles. For as much as I analyze the experience of womyn of color, I often fail at pushing myself to explore the experience of transgendered womyn of color. Semantically, it's easy to ask, "What about the transgender folks?" But to truly be an individual open to learning the struggles and causes of the transgendered population, the questions must conquer the fear and confusion.

And so, as someone suggested to write about feminism as it relate[s] to transgender, here's my honest reply:

I don't know. You tell me.

And I write that with as much respect and honesty as a womyn of color who once asked how feminism relates to US-born Filipinas with immigrant parents. I write that as someone who asks how feminism relates to a late-birthed sexual awakening and an even delayed political consciousness. How does feminism relate to transgender lives?

If I do not live a transgendered life, do not know the full extent of the pain and violence and discrimination suffered by transgendered womyn, I will not know how feminism relates to them, or even IF it relates to them.

Despite what is being written in the history of mainstream feminists in the westernized, classist world of iconic femmies with self-serving agendas, the truth is that feminism has the power to transform consciousness and spirit. It has the ability to challenge our very definitions of humanity and rights. I believe, however, that it must arrive in the grain of relationship and a shitload of humility.

Feminism, the study of women's lives, excludes no one...in theory. Yet, we don't live theoretically, do we?

We live individually, often to own detriment. We live so individualistically that we fail to even understand gender within feminsm and we fail ourselves. We fail as writers, activists, listeners...we fail as people, I think, when we forego others. Feminism has long bypassed transgendered womyn. I write that as someone who only sees transgender issues written about when someone has been slain. I write that as someone whose blog only mentions transgender issues a handful of times.

Truthfully, my goal as a writer is to point out the holes. Most people mistake that for seeing the negative, or constantly bitching about what's wrong. But there are enough fans of mainstream feminism and not enough compassionate critics who long to see it do better than what it is currently doing. And the "doing" isn't by feminism itself, but by the students and practitioners who claim to be activists within a "Movement." And if the students and practitioners are happy with feminism, we are in big trouble.

It isn't just about transgendered folks being ignored or how the issues are only mentioned in the blogosphere by way of violence and brutality, it's the complete disregard for any gritty issue of gender when it involves unfamiliar territory. This is true for feminism as it relates to the disability movement, transnational or international womyn, immigration, faith, Katrina...the list goes on.

Feminism does not make itself relevant to folks like you and me. We must make it so.

In other words, your voice, my voice is needed to explain why.

Classifieds: WOC Seeking Debater

Womyn of Color seeks sharp and stimulating Debater. Are you trying to cleanse yourself about your place in the feMovement? Are you hoping to share your rage, joy, findings with a curious stranger needing to debate the angles and finagling of feminism? Are you convinced in your position that the feMovement should be abandoned? Are you convinced that the feMovement is exactly where we ALL need to be? Do you have a self-def for your womyn-centered activism? Are you looking to convince someone of your stance and reasoning? If so, contact Sudy, an unusually deep sleeper who woke up, literally, screaming in the middle of the night, wondering, wandering, afraid she was lost. And upon further reflection this morning, decided that she is and therefore needs to find her home in or away from Feminism. Contact for further details.

The Desire for ReFraming

With a psychology background, it is a privileged ability to "reframe" a situation. Reframing is simply the dismantling of one context and rebuilding another. Reframing is often used in counseling. You reframe a sentence and say it back to a client to put it in a different, hopefully more positive or uplifting tone.

For example, a client may say, "All I want and need is to be with my son who is starting first grade. He's getting bullied and comes home everyday, silent and moody. And there's nothing, nothing I can do about it. I just want to be with him, but my jobs make it impossible for me."

Reframing is cleaning up the verbiage, getting to the heart of the message, and offering it back for clarity. So, reframing would be, "I can understand that it's very frustrating to want to be there and support your son while the demands of your jobs complicate that for you."

I often reframe. It helps keep me grounded and keeps my mind sharp. On days like Independance Day, it can be helpful to reframe such major concepts.

Normally, when I think of America's birthday, I think of a patriarchal and oppressive government, dominated by white men and the stealing of this land from Native Americans. That is the history of this country and I cannot ignore it.

I think of the conversation I had with an Indian man I met in NYC six years ago outside a Thai restaurant. He charged at his pad thai with a force comparable to his politics of the wastefulness of fireworks, "All I can think of is the million of dollars that go into planning such a display when that money could easily go toward a project that truly celebrates freedom, of independence. Like, I don't know, actually helping the poor instead of celebrating the freedom of a few people to exploit a capitalistic society that forces poverty on millions."

What to do on the 4th of July. What to do. What decisions to make.

How DO you celebrate our "independence?" And at what costs come at such independence? My independence has been lifted upon the blood shed of millions, the oppressed. My 4th of July comes at a price that I know most people on this planet cannot afford. Do I have a Corona with a lime to mark this day? Do I grill up some burgers and call it a holiday?

How do I reframe this 'holiday?'

CAN I reframe this 'holiday?'

The only way I can reframe it, honestly, is to go forth like it's any other day in America, a country. A day where I realize my freedom to blog about the 4th of July has come at the expense of other human lives and the American flag will continue to wave itself under artificial winds, boasting a supernation's chest. Do we, North Americans, realize we are one more firework's boom away from implosion? That our policies are cracked, our pride is circus, and our politicians are filthy magicians?
Our independence is introuble and IN-dependence of inhuman practices of modern day slavery and a war that was flawed in its infancy.

I spin my wheels on this one. How do I make sense of this when I can hear the firecrackers going off next door with periodical whoops of drunken celebration?

My wheels continue to spin. I don't feel anger, only shame.

To my ancestors, to my foremothers and forefathers, to all who came before me on trails of tyranny and blood, to all who fought and lost, and whose glory of freedom was never realized, to all who have paid a dear price - far larger than my burdened heart - the only reframing I have for this 4th of July is an apology.

I'm sorry that we, as a country, are still learning social and global responsibility. I'm sorry that I am not capable of more on a daily basis and this screen is the only tool in which I express my rage for this country's reign of terror. I have never paid for nor have never lived outside my citizenship. I'm sorry that the resonating explosion in the hearts of North Americans tonight will not be a jolt to action, but a mundane appreciation for pretty fires in the sky that we claim as ours. There will be no thundering realization that the world is not right and that we, North Americans, are responsible for much of that. And yet still, we will light canons to glorify our constitution, our practices of self-centeredness, and misguided patriotism. All we know are stars and stripes, in English, and we believe that is more than enough.

I offer my own reframing of this holiday as a wrecked gift, a hasty and embarrassed attempt to reform what is most grotesque: a night of loud celebration when so many exist in the wailing darkness that we have cast in our ignorance and complacency.

Beliefs in Power

I believe in power. I believe in the human capacity to evoke change in the world and self. What in this world has been so devastated that we cannot come to offer it healing, a promise to rebuild? Nothing, not even history, is so devastated it cannot be healed.

I believe in power. I believe in the human capacity to refuse change in the world and self. The truth of humans is that most are silently owned and overcome by ignorance and indifference. The idea that we are never stagnant, we are always changing, is foreign. We are never full or done. We are paintings that can always stand for further work - enhanced color, polishing, a new gloss, different placement, more brushing...I am never done.

I believe that power exists between us and it grossly interpreted in materialistic and godless ways, where we let - yes, we LET - arrogance, agenda, and self-righteousness stroke and tender our hearts. We allow, instead of fighting.

I believe in a power that cannot be explained, the invisible cracks of emotional violence that can fill a room between two persons. I believe in the possibility of harming another person without saying a word. I believe that the histories that changed us need to be constantly forgiven, even when you don't know how. I believe I can forgive, even when I don't know how.

I believe that I am right, for myself. And today, that is what I need.