Gun Culture and Privilege

(This is kind of rambling. I apologize. I am swimming through a mess of fog and phlegm with suspected strep throat. Read or disregard at your leisure.)

Wow, gun culture is some taking some swats lately. Some deserved, some not. I do want to say that I do not know a single gun owner that is an NRA member or has two nice words to say about that organization. I know they are out there, let me tell you about my last gun show. I do not really feel bugged by these swats, because I know I am not their target. I only worry that others will think that it is me.

I carry because I am a crippled lady that simply is not able to physically defend against even the average foe. I carried when able bodied because I was a woman driving on highways and country roads at night alone. I have carried because my personal defense is my personal responsibility. My self defense is my own civic responsibility.

And you know what? At the range, practicing to end a life if necessary, I can honestly tell you that 100% of the time I am imagining a white person at the other end of my barrel. Usually a man, but there have been a couple of women in my life that have altered that for brief periods of time.

I mentioned because it keeps sticking in my head. One of the reasons that people fight the idea of privilege is that if you are a woman, or poor, or disabled, or LGBTQIA - it is hard to feel it like the people telling you about privilege want you to feel it. They will point up the hierarchy and say that's who you want to talk to if you want privilege.

This is because there is a funny thing about whiteness: it seems that it must have something to destroy. The days of open colonialism are rapidly closing in favor of "nation building" and "fighting them over there." But our dirty little secret is that in the absence of non-white folk to destroy, in any single or combination of physically, economically, spiritually, mentally; we destroy ourselves. There is no greater cannibal in history than whiteness.

Without a state of non-whiteness to unite against, whiteness turns in and eats itself: the disabled, the non-straight, the poor, the non-Christian, the non-Western, even the non-male get consumed and suppressed. And so, it becomes difficult to explain to a poor, USian, disabled, Wiccan, trans* lesbian that she has white privilege. Because Whiteness, as an entity, only includes her among it's ranks against some Other.

She does have privilege, and it does matter; all of her other states matter too.

I think we need a new vocabulary, one that that can talk about privilege without stigma. One that can acknowledge oppression without pity. A new language, or a new attitude about language needs to be born. Soon. I thought #Occupy would birth it, but it seems not. But maybe something will come after #Occupy, or inspired by - I do not know. But I think it will play it's part. I think we are still building those bridges, and it feels like we are approaching some sort of apex.

Opiate Crackdown... Again.

So the New York Times has written about the newest opiate prescription crackdown. This will come as no surprise, but a deep burden, to pain patients everywhere. Like life with the kind of pain that gets opiate attention is not already hard enough.


I know that my life is not indicative of all lives, and that my experience is not universal. But it is already hard enough, dammit. I already have to schedule, attend, and pay for doc visits I do not need (as opposed to the many I do need) in order to "check in" on my pain script. I have already mentioned several times that it is no longer cutting it, and we are going to have to find something better that still leaves some upward mobility in this area for the rest of my life.


That is part of what I mean when I say it is already more difficult than it should be. I have to plan to be in pain for the rest of my life. Imagine that, if it is not your life:  you can never, ever have a pain free day. Not once can you ever go to sleep thinking that tomorrow will be better. That maybe, one day, you will find a way to not actively suffer throughout your day.


Just think about that for a minute.


So, your pain is incurable, but "manageable" through drugs. Opiates. And at every turn, it feels like someone is trying to remove the one thing that makes your daily activities possible. That allows you to not spend your day curled up in a ball, in tears, on the bed you rarely leave now.


Also: no one believes you. No one truly has a hint of a clue as to what life is like in your chronic pain body. And they simply cannot fathom the amount of pain one human being can feel and still be here, still be trying to function, still be trying to make some thing of their life. And they cannot imagine that one may need an evil, addictive opiate to manage. They do not understand the difference between addiction and dependence. Hell, a lot of detox programs do not understand that difference.


So sure, they may catch some people abusing the system. And some doctors may, from what was in the article, find some other, maybe even more effective treatments for a few. But what this really means is that a lot of law abiding patients are going to be in a lot more pain in the name of... Hell, I am not even sure. It will not matter to those patients. It does not matter to me. I just want someone to have an idea of the hell that some people are going go through in the name of it.

Incoming!

So, I decided, Gentle Reader, that I have kept you in the dark too long. And the truth of the matter is sad, indeed: I keep hitting fibro/lupus fogs that have been eating away at my ability to think things through. Instead of waiting for my brain to come back, which I have been doing off and on for months, I am going to say "fuck it" and forge ahead.


But this diminishment has kept me from writing my review of the terrific How To Be Black. It has delayed my playing and review of Leela. Never mind what it has done to my personal life. Arg! I have drafts going about gun culture, about Civil Rights (TM) & civil rights. And I did actually tally up your answers to my question earlier, about what you are interesting in reading - and have started working on some of those subjects! Most of these are actual drafts that I just need to be satisfied with and publish - not pipe dream promises.


Thank you for your understanding and for sticking with me. I am sorry that the mess I am dealing with has the ability to mess up pretty much everything I am involved with or am trying to do.

Brain Fog and Me

I have been wrestling with brain fog lately. Lupus/SLE and Fibro can both cause it. Brain fog is a state of depressed cognitive function. Focus is greatly reduced. Brain functions involving numbers suffer from increased difficulty, even something as simple as figuring a tip. Emotional consistency is a struggle.


For me, it means being much more easily confused, I lose numbers entirely (from doing even simple math to remember things like ZIP Codes), multitasking is right out of the question, my ability to juggle emotional stressors is greatly reduced. Please remember, brain fog is not an illness of it's own, it is "merely" an added problem, usually springing up during sickness or flairs, but once in a while it will strike all by itself. 


Brain fog makes focusing difficult, so I have been flitting around while I write this, knowing that I want it done yet unable to really sit down with it and work consistently.


I have a good example. I have been reading How to Be Black by Baratunde Thurston. It is a great book, and I will review it here. But brain fog keeps getting in the way. Sometimes I look at the text and it just swims. Sometimes it looks fine but the words do not translate into ideas as I read them. Every once in a while, when the fog clears, I can read sections and write down what I think of them - I have several of those, but no where near enough to write an actual review. I feel awful because my review is late already, but brain fog will not negotiate. The book deserves better than me, to be sure. Note: I was given a copy to help spread the word - and you should know that. But that actually predisposes me to be harder on a book or product rather than easier! And yet, HTBB is still awesome. 


I will write more later, probably have a post out tomorrow. My current goal is two posts a week, and I am more or less doing just that.