I proposed: the Supreme Court made me do it

Tonight I asked him to marry me.

The news I was expecting to hear (but hoped for a miracle anyway) materialized.

No, I'm not talking about the election in Massachusetts.

I'm talking about the Supreme Court decision today to include Corporations under the umbrella of the First Amendment. The possible repercussions, the inevitability of them, swamped my emotional boat.

When he told me about the decision, I asked my lover to promise to take me with him when he moves back to Canada. He laughed and said "Sure!"

"How do I become Canadian?" I asked him a little later, after the full weight of the situation settled on me. He chuckled, barely turning his eyes away from the work he was engrossed in.

I gripped his hair with my fingers and pulled his head back. I looked him in the eye and said, "Will you marry me?"

More laughter from both of us. I am so not the marrying kind. I noticed that he didn't say yes. But he didn't say no, either.

"I'm at least 51% serious," I said, "We've got 4 to 6 years and then its Snow Crash." The book by Neal Stephenson, written about 20 years ago.

"I was just thinking that, too." He replied.

And then he held me.  I nearly asked my employer for a transfer to Canada when Bush was re-elected, and instead, did my best to participate in my local communities while the National political nightmare unfolded. But this Supreme Court decision, well, it has the potential to be insidious, to invade and usurp local and community politics, pervading even the ability of people to govern commercial zoning, exert control over the products being used and sold in schools, etc etc.

Normally a very positive person, willing and able to create a positive future for myself and others, today, all I forsee is... a descent into an even more corporatized government. Even dictators die. Corporations don't. They file for bankruptcy protection and get the government to bail them out, and then they keep going, generation after generation. I feel sick.

I've a feeling that one day I'll be writing from British Columbia, not as a vacationer, but as a resident -- and possibly as a married one. Heh. That makes me laugh. Finally.

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Fearing women

It is my assessment that men fear women. They fear women because they do not understand us. Feminine logic escapes them and so they cannot predict us. They fear us because no matter how often they join their bodies with ours, seeking to know and be known -- no matter how often they experience the shuddering release of their essence into our bodies -- they know, even in that moment of ultimate sharing -- of orgasmic bliss-- they know they've never really penetrated the mystery of our otherness. And never will. And for the male of our species, the systematizers, the catalogers, the knowledge-seekers -- what cannot be dismantled, discovered, or known is feared. Sure, there are other emotions mixed in there -- respect, for some, and for others, dread, and a need to conquer or destroy -- but for the most part, consciously or not, most male interaction with the feminine is characterized by fear.

I usually manage to over-ride the feelings of exasperation, irritation, indulgence, and superiority with which most women greet the male fear-response to our impenetrable otherness. Usually. Occasionally, though, I cannot help it.

For all that I am very female, I have a rather masculine mind. I am highly intuitive, but I am also very logical. The combination of the two can be very formidable. I have excellent reasoning / critical thinking skills and am in the top 1 percentile for intelligence. Science, math, economics, programming, trouble-shooting / complex problem-solving -- these come easier to me than to most women. And quite a lot of men. I've been called a polymath by people I respect, though I think of myself as a dilettante. Its not that I'm lacking a polymath's abilities. I'm just lacking the ambition. Winning stopped mattering to me when I realized that other people felt hurt by losing. A rather feminine characteristic.

So, because I am a warm, loving, non-competitive woman, some men underestimate me. They fear me for what I consider the wrong reasons. And this peeves me. And not just me. It peeves quite a few of my peers, women who are feared because they are female but also unrespected because they are female. Because we know that women are capable of terrible things. It just so happens that we rarely tap into the place where that capacity lies dormant because it takes special circumstances to awaken it. For millennia women have made the terrible choice of life or death -- history is full of stories about children exposed to the elements for coming at the wrong time, for example. We've gone to war and when we fight, there are no rules and there is no mercy -- just blood and gore (Go Boudicca). We've pitted man against man, country against country. We've brought down empires as matters of personal vendettas, to right wrongs perpetuated against ourselves, or more often, against those we love.

But men think that women's history of needing to manipulate them to achieve our ends still stands today. They seem to think we cannot fight our own battles and thus they disregard us as martial threats. They forget that we can do battle on the field of the intellect, and that this new Information Age is a great equalizer -- superior physical strength does not matter here. We, too, can fight wars with keystrokes.

Something happened recently in which someone I care for was wrongly accused of something, to the point that evidence was manifactured, and that falsified proof used as a reason to act against him -- and incidentally me. It is nothing illegal, merely a matter of inter-personal politics (ie grudge), but I am enraged nonetheless. The one who accused him has spread fear and paranoia that he will exact revenge.

The irony is that they fear the wrong person. What lies dormant in this woman is awakened when those I care for are threatened. I have the skillset and connections to make Cooper's life in his little world hell should I wish it. If he is not careful, I just might choose to live my life in such a way that when my feet hit the floor in the morning, both he and Satan shudder and say 'Oh shit....she's awake!'

I am woman. Fear me, oh man. Fear me now while I'm still rumbling. Because you do not want to hear me roar.

The sexual is political

I am standing up to be counted, and I'm telling the world: "This is my voice. There are many like it. But this one is mine." (Inspired by "This Is My Voice"--Shane Koyczan's performance poem on politics.)

Humanity is a political body. And we seem to politicize everything that touches our lives, because every aspect of our lives that involves social interaction/relations also involves the acquisition and/or application of power via social/societal influence. In understanding this, I understand that politics is innate and thus deeply personal. Each person wants to be Right, and wants others to recognize that Rightness, and thus begins the application of influence in order to attain acknowledgment of that Rightness, which translates directly into power via the "mandate from heaven" archetype. Proof of this is easily observed in any schoolyard.

Sexual relations and all that it touches is deeply political because it is deeply personal. While two or a handful of people may arrive at an agreement regarding matters of sexuality, it is truly impossible for a large social body to achieve a consensus regarding issues of gender and sexuality, because it is impossible to establish a transparent, democratic dialogue. Dialogue itself is the primary battlefield for power relations, a venue for attempting to influence others (to control/modify their perceptions) in order to gain access to their power and thus wield power over them. The current Campaign 2008 here in the States is an illustrative example of this in action.

In general, I avoid discussing politics of the interpersonal and cultural types, for a variety of reasons. But the politics of gender and sexuality, seeing as they directly affect my personal life, often cause the Libertarian in me to rise up during elections, saying "keep your laws off my person." So here I am, looking into the eye of the hurricane-in-a-teacup that Campaign 2008 is, and wishing I could read tea leaves. But augury is not my talent. There is no guarantee that any person elected will have the ability or intention to follow through with the things they've promised. Thus, I rarely vote for a person, but rather, against specific ideologies. Every person in politics thinks his/her ideology is Right and is looking for the majority mandate that will empower them to act upon that ideology "for the greater good."

Ours is an imperfect world. And mine is an imperfect country. Don't get me wrong, I love my country. But mine is an imperfect country. Mine is a country in which worker productivity has increased dramatically in the past two decades and yet the profits of that productivity have been passed on to corporate executives in the form of $100 million compensation packages while their employees earn less in today's dollars than they did two decades ago. Mine is a country in which women comprise the majority of the workforce and heads of households and yet they still earn considerably less than their male counterparts. Mine is a country in which most women exchanging sex for money are criminals, but women marrying a man for economic security (hah!) are not. Mine is a country in which you have the right to starve and be jailed for panhandling if you beg for food or money. Mine is a country in which most of the Christians seem to have forgotten Christ's mandates to love one another and to give aid to the less fortunate. Mine is a country in which we have the right to bear arms and yet few who are terminally ill have the right to die with dignity and ease unless they want to use a gun to blow their brains out. Mine is a country in which corporations have all the rights of individuals, even to the point of buying votes, and none of the responsibilities. Mine is a country in which some would have us guarantee fetus' right to life without thought to guaranteeing the quality of that life.

People come to me. They say, "Kay, you are a smart woman. I respect your clarity of thinking. I'd like to know how you will vote, and why?"

To them, I say:
Anyone who upholds or favors the implementation of laws that interfere with my ability to do what I want with my body, or with my partner behind closed doors, or who would interfere with other's rights to live free and happy lives, will be voted against, no matter how good their rhetoric is, no matter how kind or fiercely protective they seem. The sexual is political, and this unchaste unmarried woman will never spread her legs to a man or woman who promises to deposit a little godliness in her womb in exchange for her power and amenability. Never. Never fucking ever.

(podcast: listen here)