Sam Kriss and How I Got Banned From Jacobin Online

Sam Kriss, for those who don’t know, is (perhaps, was at this point) a contributing writer for Jacobin Magazine’s online presence. Jacobin Magazine is a socialist magazine covering a variety of global and American affairs from the socialist perspective. The thing is, Sam Kriss is the kind of intellectual that a lot of people both in and outside of academia make fun of. The first article I read of his, Smash the Force, was a typical leftist piece trying to expose the real meaning of Star Wars. The criticisms were harsh, to the point of being absurd, but it was making the rounds among my friends and so I mistakenly took it seriously. I should make a disclaimer that criticisms of pop culture are not wholly bad, but Sam Kriss is like a dementor, sucking the joy out of pop culture. It’s not even the criticisms themselves that are always bad, but the fact that his heavy-handed leftist intellectual approach combined with a deadpan seriousness and self-righteousness that should make critical readers scoff and feel even a little embarrassed for Kriss.

For a while I had a crisis, since I love Star Wars and my own Small Religion borrows a lot of the same concepts as Star Wars. Was I really rooting for right-wing junta death squads by cheering on the Rebel Alliance? It wasn’t until I saw Kriss’s article on Pokemon GO that I realized just how ridiculous his writing was. I felt a bit silly for being duped earlier in the year by his article on Star Wars. But it did beg a question, if Kriss is so awful, why does the Jacobin let him write for them? Surely they can see how absurd his ideas are and don’t want to be confused as being that kind of socialist. I started adding comments on Jacobin’s Facebook page about it. Most of it was good-natured jokes like, “Has anyone checked on Sam Kriss? I’m worried he’s sitting in the [movie] theater crying because he can’t enjoy pop culture.” I also shared some more serious thoughts about how his articles come across. Apparently other readers regard him as satire, but the Jacobin doesn’t list him as a satire writer or even make a disclaimer of any kind about their opinion of his writing. I thought this was a bit irresponsible of the Jacobin considering the high(er) caliber of writing usually populating their online magazine. It would be as though someone from the Onion (a satirical, often absurd news outlet) wrote the same kind satirical articles for the New York Times and the editors did nothing to indicate it was satire. How should readers respond?

One morning I woke up and discovered I wasn’t seeing Jacobin posts on my Facebook feed. I was a bit puzzled. Had I accidentally unliked or unfollowed them? I typed Jacobin in the search bar and found them easily enough. When I looked at their Facebook page it was different. There were no buttons for liking or following. It took me a long moment to realize what happened. I had been banned. Not only could I no longer offer criticisms and jokes about Sam Kriss, but rather I was now unable to get updates from their Facebook page which meant essentially that if I wanted to read it that I’d have to go to their page and check to see if they had published a new article. This may seem like a minor thing, but I would compare it to missing a section of a newspaper. Imagine if you were sent your local newspaper to your doorstep and it was always missing one section, perhaps even your favorite section. That’s what this was like for me. Being banned, I suddenly had to rethink whether the Jacobin was really all they were cracked up to be. They couldn’t take criticism and jokes about one of their authors? Did I hurt Kriss’s feelings? Did I hurt his editor’s feelings by pointing out how completely bollocks Kriss’s writing is? I’d like to think I don’t have that much power. I’m not a socialist scholar nor do I have the long list of published articles that Kriss does. Surely they can indulge a disgruntled reader a bit of griping, can’t they? I guess not. I guess the Jacobin is just as reactionary and suppressionist as their namesake. No dissent. No joking. No criticism. I guess I should grateful they don’t kill people who speak badly of their magazine (something the historical Jacobins did even after they had seized power).

I suppose that if people took what I wrote seriously they might think twice about being a paying subscriber. People might read my criticism and ask, “Why am I paying to read a self-important academic write ridiculous diatribes against pop culture?” That may be closer to reality. They most likely don’t have an intellectual disagreement with me, but they can’t have someone making them look bad and possibly risk losing subscribers. It’s a pragmatic, albeit troublesome position to take. If they have this harsh of a response to dissent, is their ideology really that strong? Are they committed to protecting their contributors to such an extent that they can’t say, “Sam Kriss has written many well-respected pieces for The Atlantic and while we don’t always agree with Kriss’s analysis of pop culture, we support a diversity of thought.” They aren’t going to do that. Instead, anyone who threatens their precious money sources (i.e. subscription base) is considered too dangerous to let have a laugh or to say anything calling into question the validity of one of their writers and thereby challenging the integrity of their magazine.

Who am I kidding? It’s always about money. Socialist, communist, capitalist, fascist; money is the one thing that will corrupt them all and reduce their ideals to rubble. Living in a capitalist society means money will always be factor, but I question whether the Jacobin was really all that great if they feel so threatened by little old me.

I Don’t Hate Christianity*

*Or at the very least, I do my damnedest to recognize when negative experiences with Christianity have led me to have reflexive emotional responses as opposed to rational feelings about the religion.

Many people have some really awful experiences with Christianity and I am no exception. Granted, I am somewhere in the median of experiences for people of my demographic (by my own estimate from stories related to me by other ex-Christians). There are definitely people who have experiences that make mine look like a walk in the park and others who haven’t really had bad experiences but were able to gracefully walk away from Christianity as they would an awkward first date. From what I gather, it depends on a lot of things: denominational affiliation, political affiliation, cultural and social pressures, etc. To be clear, just because one person seems to not have much of a struggle and another seems to have the worst experience doesn’t negate the suffering of one or other. It’s not a competition to see who has suffered the most as a metric for what counts as legitimate suffering under Christianity.

There are lots of things that make people want to leave Christianity. For me, it was the anti-LGBT and sex shaming attitudes pervasive throughout Christianity that made me really feel like this wasn’t a religion I could get behind. Other things came up after the fact that diversified my reasons for not wanting to be Christian anymore, but I basically couldn’t sit in any more services or Bible studies talking about how Christ wants followers to reconcile and make restitution for racism while completely ignoring LGBT people. I couldn’t stomach the thought that people were praising InterVarsity Fellowship for its progressive stance on racism and immigration while LGBT people in the organization had to meet in secret.

Last night I was listening to a podcast, Heathen Talk as I continue to learn about the reconstructionist religion Ásatrú, and I heard them talk about an important step for new heathens is overcoming their christohate (hatred for Christianity). Listening to the hosts of the show talk about christohate and explain the importance of moving on from it made me ask myself about my own hatred for Christianity. Hatred has no place in my own religion. No matter how justified that hatred may seem, that justification is exactly that, an illusion. I have maintained for some time now that I don’t hate Christianity but that I am still healing from the damage Christianity did to me. This episode of the podcast made me reflect on my feelings about Christianity especially in light of my most recent experience in grad school.

For those not in the know, I attend Abilene Christian University (ACU) and I’m studying for my Masters of Education in Higher Education with a specialization College Student Affairs. Last week I finished a course called Introduction to Spiritual Development in College Students. The course really tested my patience and asked me to reflect on my own spiritual development. As you might imagine, ACU tailors their courses to Christians including Biblical teachings and the like. In my previous two classes I didn’t find it particularly obstructive in doing well, but this course was asking me to reflect on my relationship with God and Jesus Christ, two figures whom I pay no reverence to nor do I believe to be beings that I should have a relationship with (although if Zombie Jesus wants to join me for a beer, I’m game).

Friends on Facebook might have heard me talk about how I felt like the course left me “spiritually dead inside.” It’s true. The course kept asking me to give, give, give; improvise, improvise, improvise; compromise, compromise, compromise; it all left me feeling like I was putting everything into the course and getting nothing out of it. I learned a few nifty things about spiritual development and spiritual formation, but I spent the majority of the time learning about how Christians think of spiritual development and spiritual formation and often had to try to answer questions of spiritual development that were intended for Christians from a non-Christian perspective. It was especially nerve wracking because there was one assignment I felt I just could not do and so I sat it out. Unfortunately that meant getting a zero on an assignment that was the second highest point-value assignment in the course. It meant that I had to get perfect or near-perfect scores on all subsequent assignments to pass the class.

There is no shortage of reasons for me to dislike Christianity and my experience with this course was yet another reason, but it’s not another notch in my belt. It’s not my proverbial 96th Thesis to be nailed to the door of the church. I suspect there are and always will be asshats and abusers in Christianity, but I don’t think Christianity has the monopoly on it. I think it’s most apparent in Christianity because it’s the dominant religion in the Western world. Some might argue that if Wicca or Quaker were the dominant religion that we wouldn’t have the problems we have with evangelical Christianity. I disagree. I think anyone with the will to use religion as a tool to manipulate and harm people for their own benefit will do so regardless of what religion it is. There are asshats in my religion; people who manipulate and abuse others for their own benefit exist proportional to the total number of people who claim to follow the same religion.

I will say that for me, Christianity can get a bit annoying. It’s like an ex-partner who just shows up everywhere, calls you randomly, and basically can’t be avoided even though what you want most is to have a nice break from them. There are times when I really just wish I could live in a world where Christianity didn’t exist. Not in a destructive way, but a place where I could go where people didn’t talk about Christianity and it was nowhere to be found. There are times when this desire becomes fairly intense, a bit like gasping for air in a stale room. Despite my occasional jokes about abolishing Christianity, I really just want to have more room to discuss things other than Christianity. I also want a religiously neutral environment where Christianity is not assumed as normal. I don’t want to walk into an all-purpose prayer room and see a cross/crucifix. I don’t want to walk into the faith section of a bookstore and see several dozen offerings on the topic of Christianity while only have one or two selections for Islam and Buddhism. It’s really alarming when the biggest bookstore chain in my hometown doesn’t have anything on the Talmud or the Tao Te Ching.

Do I hate Christianity? No, but I don’t think there’s a clear moment when I stopped hating Christianity. I think there will always be a temptation to hate Christianity, but I also know that that hate is self-destructive and I know plenty of people who really set a new standard for Christians of tomorrow.

X-Men vs. Captain America

This is a review of X-Men: Apocalypse and Captain America: Civil War. It is relatively spoiler free.

Let’s pretend for a moment that you can only see one of the two major comic book-to-film adaptations and you want to know which one is worth your money. Each film has characters many of us know and love: be it from your knowledge of comic books or following the cinematic phenomena or some combination of both. I can’t tell you objectively which is better, but I will tell you that my opinion is Captain America: Civil War is far superior.

While both films feature an incredible cast of talented actors, the writing behind X-Men: Apocalypse was sloppy. There was so little engagement with the end of the world that, frankly, I didn’t give a damn one way or another. What they did to Oscar Isaac as Apocalypse basically rendered him a flat character with hardly any facial expression. He is meant to be the most threatening character in the X-Men universe and yet his power was greatly underrepresented. To put it in perspective, the X-Men: Evolution cartoon show spent almost an entire season building up to the arrival of Apocalypse and then only spent four episodes (23 minutes each) actually present. Apocalypse was the mutant that all other mutants aware of his existence feared. It also took nearly every metahuman Xavier had connections to plus SHIELD to take him down.

X-Men: Apocalypse was a hollow shell of the immense storytelling feat that was the Apocalypse story line. The majority of the time was spent establishing a bit of character development for our heroes and supporting foes, but even these weren’t done well. The foes were too easily swayed in what should have been a lot of inner turmoil and skepticism, but instead they joined Apocalypse because of what amounts to parlor tricks and a few new toys. It was all too little, too late for me to care about the characters or what they were going through.

Like many other reviewers across the interwebs, I felt the only character I actually gave a damn about was Quicksilver and his scenes were truly enjoyable.

In contrast, Captain America: Civil War felt like a carefully crafted story composing a masterpiece from the various Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) materials. They even incorporated elements from Agents of SHIELD and yet they managed to keep it relatively self-contained so that you could still follow along if you hadn’t seen every episode (or any). Although each of the Iron Man, Avengers, Thor, and Captain America films that led up to this one have had their strong points as well as flaws, Civil War pulls together the disparate elements of those films into a cohesive narrative.

Furthermore, it managed to tell a story similar to the comic book story it was based on without having to invent new characters and try to hurriedly bring them in. I won’t tell you the details of the comic book differences because it might inadvertently ruin some of the film, but I think fans who are familiar with the Civil War story from the comics will be happy with film even if it is different. It still deals with the central issues brought up in the comic and although the X-Men don’t show up (because Fox still owns the rights to the X-Men cinematic universe), there are plenty of favorites who throw down in this epic conflict.

One character I have some issue with is Vision. In the comics, Vision is more of a machine, much like Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation and he has a fairly dispassionate view of humanity. Vision in the cinematic universe is more just like an alien, more like Martian Manhunter from the DC comics. It may not bother other people as much as it did me, plus Paul Bettany is great in the role so it’s hard to complain. Amazingly, Bettany’s make-up and costuming for Vision is relatively on the same scale as Isaac’s Apocalypse yet they didn’t push Isaac for more from his performance. We already know Isaac is great from The Force Awakens and Ex Machina so I can only assume his performance was largely influenced by the writing and direction.

tl;dr – Go see Captain America: Civil War in theaters and wait for X-Men: Apocalypse to come out on Redbox DVD and Blu-ray or some pay-per-view service.

The Gay Feels in Once Upon a Time

This was originally written as a part of a review of the ABC television series Once Upon a Time for a pipe smoking forum I’m a member of. 

Spoilers will be present in this review for all seasons including Season 5’s most recent episodes. I have tried to minimize the number of spoilers in this review.

Once Upon a Time is a series about fairytale characters being thrown into Our Modern World and given new, mundane names and lives. The characters, with exception of two villains, are unaware of their previous fairytale lives. It isn’t until Emma Swan is brought to the small of Storybrooke by a young boy named Henry that things begin to turn weird. The Mayor, Henry’s mother, turns out to be the Evil Queen hellbent on revenge against Snow White (who is known as Mary Margaret) and her husband Prince Charming (known as David Nolan). The show utilizes development in the present as well as flashbacks to life in the Enchanted Forest. Emma’s backstory and why she never had real parents is revealed. We also discover that Henry’s birthmother has been in Storybrooke for almost the entire first season.

With each season comes a new threat, new secrets, and more interweaving of all our favorite fairytale characters into one big and oftentimes messy storyline. The use of flashbacks can sometimes throw the viewer for a loop as to what is happening when. The disjointed timeline of each episode eventually rounds itself out and the writers were pretty careful to only show enough in the flashbacks to allow for new revealing information in later episodes. At times, the story develops in the present day both in Storybrooke and the Enchanted Forest which can complicate one’s understanding of the plot even further.

Once Upon a Time explores the complications Our Modern World would place on the Perfect Happy Endings of our fairytale heroes. They are weak, frail, afraid, greedy, jealous, bitter, resentful, and angry. They fail to communicate, which I’ve found is probably one of the biggest vehicles for increasing the dramatic tension, and it creates a lot of problems. What’s more is that people who have been relegated to the category of villains in the folklore aren’t always villains. Some of the people we’ve grown up knowing as heroes turn out to be awful little shites.

This show is easier to hate than it is to love. With all the tropes and campy fairytale elements, it can be easy to dismiss. Technically speaking the camera work isn’t anything to write home about utilizing fairly standard techniques and the CGI reflects the budgetary restraints of television. Often times mansions and monsters are rendered through CGI, this sometimes helps the story along and other times it can be a real distraction from the story. I will never get over how awful the flying monkeys look in this show (honestly, the 1939 Wizard of Oz’s flying monkey looked better). One thing that is true of many quality television shows and applies to Once Upon a Time is their use of practical effects. Many times the use of real props, sets, and costumes help keep the focus on what matters in the story while the CGI fills out the background to give us the illusion that we’re in the Enchanted Forest, Oz, Arendelle, DunBroch, or Wonderland.

This show, like every other damn media thing, is not without its problematic elements. All the heroes in the first season are white and people of color are almost exclusively villains or minor characters. This trend is largely true throughout the entire series thus far. The show features strong women and non-nuclear family structure, but up until Season 3 we have no gay characters and even then that character ends up not with the person she loves. It isn’t until Season 5 that gay character is shown to have a happy ending.

For me personally there are two major things that keep me coming back for more:

• Strong women and their women friends. This show has a number of strong women characters who play important roles and decide their own destiny. They also bond with each other, encourage one another, and make each other stronger because of their friendship. This alone makes the show a rare gem found in very few shows most notably from the 90s like Xena Warrior Princess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Charmed.
• Gay is normal. In a show all about fairytales, happy endings, and True Love; it’s turning a new leaf to have gay characters who are not sensationalized (hyped up for the sex appeal or shock factor) or stigmatized (OMG a gay character). There are at least three known gay characters on the show and by the tail end of Season 5 we see two of them finally embrace their love for each other. The most rewarding aspect of this was that it was treated just as magical and beautiful as every other fairytale happy ending including Snow White standing in the audience with tears in her eyes, overjoyed that her friend Red Riding Hood found True Love. In some sense the fact that it was treated as normal is a fairytale in and of itself because our real world, for all its progress and understanding, still has large segments of the population who don’t see LGBT people and their relationships as normal.

 

Here we see Red Riding Hood and Dorothy Gale (from the Wizard of Oz) exchanging a passionate kiss after Red Riding Hood wakens Dorothy from a Sleeping Curse; the very same curse that threatened Aurora in Sleeping Beauty and Snow White in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. The Sleeping Curse can only be broken by “True Love’s Kiss” and it wasn’t until Red Riding Hood accepted how she felt about Dorothy, risking the fact that it might not work if Dorothy doesn’t feel the same for her, that she was able to wake Dorothy. From Season 5, Episode 18 “Ruby Slippers”

 

 

 

 

 

Back to Square One… Again

If it seems like every two or three months I’m publishing a blog entry about how I’m seeing things in a new light and shifting directions for myself and my spiritual journey, it’s probably because I am. It’s awful. In fact, I feel like a lifeboat adrift at sea without hope of finding shore. These past eight months or so have felt like a tumultuous unraveling of everything I was holding on to.

As a few might have noticed, my ministry Facebook page is gone. I deleted it because I felt like I was spending more time fetching likes and shares than I was actually doing anything worthwhile. It felt like the most vain of contests to try to gain popularity and that’s not what I’m really wanting to do. So what am I trying to do? The more I ask myself that question the more I find myself tongue-tied.

After leaving Temple of the Jedi Order, I felt like I was still supposed to do some type of ministry and so I got one of those terrible pay-to-be-ordained type of deals and was instantly an ordained minister. It’s funny how a service which originally intended to be liberating for people who were previously unable to get a minister for their weddings has become something that feels neither liberating nor good. I started advertising myself on community boards: posting my business card, talking to people, and writing content to be posted on my ministry Facebook page. It yielded nothing. Strangely, I wasn’t discouraged by that. I was frustrated by my own inability to articulate my purpose.

A few months ago I rejoined the Temple of the Jedi Order, perhaps because I felt like at least there I had some semblance of a purpose. As my political ideology had recently been called into question, I realized what an ass I had made of myself in parting ways with the Temple and wanted to reconcile with people there. Unfortunately, I have no idea if reconciliation is possible. I was so angry, so hurt, and unable to see what was happening that I burned every bridge and took the river beneath when I left. We shall see. I came at a time when a lot of things were falling apart for me: returning to Minnesota to live in isolation due to a lack of employment, friends moved away to start their careers (or at the least, jobs), and the renewed and ever-horrible habit of smoking had come back.

Since returning I have completed the Initiate Programme, despite no one requiring me to do so, I did it in part because I wanted to get back to some kind of roots. Somewhere along the way I had lost sight of what I was doing. I thought perhaps I would find meaning again in the Jedi path. Instead, I found myself frustrated, disillusioned, and stifled by the culture of the Temple. It’s not really a fault of the Temple. It’s come about because of a realization about what I need from a spiritual practice: community, participatory ritual, sacred space, etc. I think the Temple tries to offer those things in its own way, but I don’t feel connected to it.

Then I read an article published on Jacobin called, Smash the Force which articulates why Star Wars, Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, and the concept of the Force itself is a charlatan’s masquerade. I wrote a nervous entry in my journal for people from the Temple to comment on, but most didn’t understand why the article bothered me so much. I think perhaps because I’m facing a culmination of things bothering and this article was not really a deathblow but a straw that broke the camel’s back.

If it were merely a criticism of the story of Star Wars, it would probably not have rocked me to the core as it did. Most, if not all, of my favorite television and movies are imperfect and reflect the systemic injustices existing in the world today. I try to watch that stuff with eyes wide open and so a criticism of Star Wars would be more welcome than feared. The article was much more than that and in fact parts out the assumptions most people make about Star Wars (including me) and shatters those illusions. It’s particularly the deconstruction of the Force, which is arguably the only thing from the Star Wars stories that the Temple utilizes as necessary-to-borrow that really struck me.

I won’t bore you with the internal mechanisms of the Temple nor do I want to point fingers at anyone, even unintentionally in a forum where those people do not have a fair opportunity to defend themselves. Suffice to say that for me personally, I have long worried that Jediism is not a syncretic faith, but a few pages ripped from the sacred books of various religions and hastily pasted together with a few introductory notes from long-discredited philosophers and thinkers. The article demonstrates why it is much worse than that. Others will not see it that way, and that’s okay, I cannot nor am I trying to convince anyone to see it this way. This is my personal conviction that the Jedi path may not be right for me. I haven’t decided what to do with that. Part of me doesn’t want to leave it because it means throwing myself into the open emptiness of spiritual uncertainty but another part of me feels as though I’ll just be miserable and unable to do much of anything meaningful if my heart isn’t in it.

Islamophobia Will Not Save Us

As President Obama and President Hollande speak out in response to the attacks in Paris about strength and unity, freedom and liberty; I can’t help but wonder whose idea about those lofty concepts are they appealing to? President Obama made a throwback to the Founding of America in his speech referring to the French as one of America’s oldest allies, but the Jefferson (a deist) felt quite strongly that no great majority of the Founders who helped forge those revered documents were willing to make America a Christian nation (see Jefferson’s autobiography, 1821). We can see how, despite the deists and closet-secular humanists attempts, there was too much social and political influence from Christianity that they overestimated their own ability shape the nation they had just created. I believe I’m digressing from my main point.

I have already seen a few things from the conservative side scoff at the idea that terrorism has no religion, meanwhile the left is littering social media with French flags and “Prayers for Paris” hashtags. It is an act of cowardice and intellectual dishonesty, perhaps through crocodile tears to cry for Paris or shake your fists at so-called Islamists with empty words promising retribution. We created this monster. Prior to US involvement in the 70s, the very groups we’re fighting now were nothing but radicalists without the means to accomplish more than mentally dry-hump themselves with their own ideology. In a twist of irony, or perhaps self-fulfilling prophecy, America is doing it again 30+ years later and against the same rival: Russia.

To stand up to terrorism means we have to stand up to the American government and demand immediate dismantlement of the corrupted system which continually empowers guerrilla groups to fight proxy wars. Every American president from Reagan to Obama and all the politicians in Congress during those regimes should be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity (perhaps even further back than Reagan). America has demonstrated time and again that it has no regard for human life or the damage it can inflict when involving itself in the affairs of others. We cannot even stop terrorism within our own borders as universities across the country stand in solidarity with Mizzou and Yale over the flagrant and violent racially motivated terrorism. It was not an isolated incident and before anyone tries to say that the incidents at Mizzou and Yale didn’t result in loss of life like Paris, we need only look at Charleston or the number or relatively recent church burnings across America.

I’m tired of this dichotomy of either Islam is a terrorist religion or all religions have terrorists. I suspect religion has very little to do with it. Islam is not a violent religion, though they are not a religion of lambs like Christianity, and Christianity is not the peace-loving righteous religion everyone makes it out to be. Yes, any religion can be utilized to radicalized terrorist groups, just take a look at the Buddhist nationalists in Burma. They spout the same flippantly trite remarks conservatives in America do, except instead of appealing to a sovereign Christian nation, they appeal to a sovereign Buddhist nation. Perhaps the biggest failure of both the left and the right in America is to see that the problem is not “out there” in some foreign desert, but right here in Washington D.C.

The Umph to do Nothing

I work a soul-less service job as a gas station clerk. It’s quite mind-numbing while physically taxing in the most obnoxious ways possible (sore feet, messed up sleep-schedules). It’s a paying job and with the possibility of loan repayments starting up soon, I can’t really afford to be picky. I’ve already spent nearly five months looking for a more permanent job that would keep me afloat, but unfortunately none of those panned out. It’s not quite a minimum-wage job because they pay a dollar or two above that, but it’s certainly not a job I’d ever want to work for the rest of my life.

Most days I come back to the place* and just want to curl into a ball and cry. The job is painful because it is one of the only places where I’m not out. Day in and day out I’m referred to by the wrong pronouns and the way people talk to me is different because they read and assume me to be one thing. It’s odd because the jokes and tone is so much different between people who know my gender and those who don’t. I try not to let it get to me, but after days of this it really begins to wear me down to the point where I can spend the rest of the day question who I am and what the point of life is. I usually come back to the place and play video games, eat, and then try to get some writing done. Depending on the day, I may be able to get started on my writing right away, but other days I have to wait until the people who own this house have finished watching their awful crime dramas.

I haven’t updated this blog primarily because I think a lot of it would be redundantly whiny and the last thing I want is for you all to feel like I’m constantly whining. At the same time, I also want to be vulnerably transparent about who I am and what is going on in my life. There will always be things that I don’t broadcast publicly and that’s my right. I may be a minister, but I didn’t throw away my right to the privacy. I choose to be open and honest about my life because that’s the kind of thing that I think gives authenticity to my ministry, but I also think there are times when it’s necessary to scale back and let the silence speak for itself. It also helps that I maintain a semblance of a presence on my public Facebook page.

Things have not been great for me these past couple of months, but I was recently accepted into grad school and I’m applying for a staff writing job with Autostraddle. I hope to return home to Chicago someday and resume the bulk of my ministry work with face-to-face interactions. Keep your eyes peeled for an update on something I haven’t really talked about much regarding my spiritual direction. I hinted at it on my private Facebook, but so far I haven’t made any public comments indicating this change happened. I’m not hiding it, I’ve just been carefully considering how to talk about it.

Unclaimed Baggage

Unclaimed Baggage

by Jamie Saoirse Eastling

Haeli Ephesus was in a frantic rush. Her Personal Information Pad (PIP) was beeping to notify her that someone was calling, but she couldn’t answer it. She had two dozen things left to do before her trip and stopping all that to answer that call would put her further behind than she already was. She ripped a few garments from their neatly folded place in her dresser and unceremoniously threw them into her luggage case. Haeli let out a frustrated groan as her PIP continued to beep, “Answer!” she yelled in the direction of the PIP.

“Hey there, Hael-storm. What’s—you’re leaving again?”

“I need it, Yamara.” Haeli didn’t look over at the holographic image of her best friend, “I need time to think. I can’t think if I’m always crying about Sara.”

There was a moment of silence until Haeli sighed. The fractal pattern tattooed across her bald head itched slightly. New tattoos were always a combination of pain and pleasure. She clenched her fists tightly to avoid scratching at it. She walked across the room to her desk and started sifting through a set of PIP data chips. The tiny chips made a distinct clack when Haeli dropped them on her desk. She walked over to her nightstand and pulled out the little drawer which squealed as it sluggishly opened. She grabbed the data chip she had been looking for and stuffed it in a tiny pocket of her luggage case

“Haeli…”

“Look, I know you were right about Sara and the relationship. I know I wasn’t ready and Sara… was Sara, but I had to figure that out for myself.”

“No, I get that… I wanted to let you know I’m leaving. I would have told you sooner if I had known you were going on holiday, but I only found out last Thursday… I’ve accepted a lecture position at the university on the Station 13. It’s just beyond Jupiter so I won’t be—”

“I know,” Haeli said as she stood up straight. She stood perfectly still and continued, “You’ll be out of touch for some time. I get it. It’s whatever…”

“No, not whatever,” Yamara persisted. “Don’t dissemble, we’ve been friends too long for you to pull that kind of shit on me.”

Haeli began sealing the luggage case. The latches made a soft thud as they locked into place. “What do you want me to say, Yams? You’ve wanted a position like this for some time. I’m just not in the right mindset to balance the happiness of your success with my own grief and frustration.”

After a moment Yamara responded, “Maybe it is a good idea to get away. Sara enervated you to point where you haven’t been able to enjoy life much. Just remember that your friends are here and we care about you. Kyla and Sphere just got back from their deep space exploration assignment. Will you be able to contact them wherever you’re going?”

“I’m going to be staying with Sphere’s progenitor for a couple nights, so I suspect I’ll see Sphere. I doubt there was anything on the Newton that it could eat.” Haeli looked at the clock on her nightstand and realized she only had three hours before the transport left. “Yams, I’ve gotta get going. When you get to 13 I’ll be on the Ibn Sina so please send me a message on Fleet channels, otherwise it’ll be an extra month before I get it.”

“I will!” Yamara affirmed with resolve, “Tell Sphere’s progenitor I said hello.”

The room went almost completely dark as her PIP screen shut off. Haeli hadn’t realized she had been packing without enough light. She wished she had paid closer attention because now she worried she had picked outfits that didn’t match.

We’re talking about beings made of energy who can change color and form at will. Nothing I wear will match by their standards.

“Dras!”

There was a whirring and the sound of something powering up coming from the hallway. The spindly mechanoid being stood in the doorway, “Yes, Haeli?”

“Dras, I’m leaving for New Rainbow for about a week. I’m switching power in my studio to holiday mode. Can you do security?”

In a synthetic deep bass voice the mechanoid asked, “What mode of security?”

“Passive-defensive, please. No intervention, just call the Fleet Security and let them deal with it. There was a lot of paperwork last time you arrested a burglar and I’d rather have Fleet reimburse me for something that was stolen than go through that again.”

“Understood. Safe travels, Haeli.”

“Thanks”

Dras was still standing in the doorway after Haeli had grabbed her luggage case, “If you think of it, could you bring me back a teal sprite? It’s about a week passed their duplication season, so it shouldn’t be a problem finding one. I’ve got a permit of care all lined up and I even took the liberty of getting a liaison capture permit since I figured I wouldn’t be able to make the trip myself. The Angela Davis doesn’t leave for another month and Fleet has already approved my non-sentient companion.”

“Sure, I can’t say I’m very good at capturing sprites, but I’ve got a friend on New Rainbow who practically domesticates them whenever it comes near a sprite swarm. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

Dras nodded, “Gratitude.” He handed her a data chip summoned from a port behind his cranial box. He extended his hand and dropped the data chip into hers.

“See you later, Dras. Say hello to B for me.”

Dras tilted his head, “B-11 is a retired mechanical service droid. Not a sentient being…” His head turned away and then returned to face Haeli, “Ah, human attachment to non-sentient creatures escapes me sometimes, but I suppose my own affection for B-11 has a semblance to sentimental connection. It was my most loyal assistant aboard the Du Châtelet.”

Haeli’s attention was piqued, “Dras, the Du Châtelet hasn’t been in service for over 24 years. You mean to say you’ve kept that droid working 24 plus years past its service retirement?”

The mechanoid waved a hand in a dismissive gesture, “Oh no! B-11 was in storage while the paperwork was being passed around to decide whether it was to be scrapped and recycled or given a new assignment. I only acquired B-11 a few years before you moved into Fleet housing. That machine required meticulous work to restore to its former condition. Restoring it has been a hobby of mine. Unfortunately, as standard protocol with retired droids, the memory was wiped and it did not remember who I was or any of the work we had done together.”

Haeli smiled at Dras, “Now look who is anthropomorphizing a non-sentient machine.”

With a grunt, Haeli dragged her luggage out into the hallway and down the steps. She frowned as she mumbled to herself, “No, it’s fine. The stairs are quaint. I’ll be fine.” Haeli guessed she had repeated those exact words a dozen times when looking over the apartment. The Fleet crewmember called out from some storage room where the operations personnel are hidden away had given Haeli the distinct impression the Fleet didn’t want her there. Old apartments were usually given to mechanoid Fleet personnel because aesthetics and convenience were two things they didn’t need. She remembered now why stairs were considered cumbersome and inefficient.

---

When Haeli arrived on New Rainbow, she immediately approached the structure inaccurately called The Traveler’s Junction, a place where humans and mechanoids could ask a concierge to contact their friends on New Rainbow. It was more aptly called The Oasis by the humans and mechanoids who lived there. Despite how very different life was for the species of New Rainbow, Haeli was always impressed by the painstaking detail put into the building. It had everything a human or mechanoid could possibly want: food, water, mechanic stations, spas, chassis buffering, and more. It almost made up for the lack of anything else on the planet.

“We remind our human guests that crystal structures in the deserts are whole or parts of our species and should never be touched, moved, or buried with sand. This is the only warning given. Offenders will be forcibly removed from New Rainbow. Repeat offenders may be eternally banned. Caution: New Rainbow permits lethal self-defense—”

Haeli closed the door to her hotel room. The 34th floor room was not bad for the price she had paid for it. Prices were always higher the closer to the ground the room was because they offered better protection from the sun. Even with environmental controls set to a breezy 10 degrees Celsius, Haeli had to remove her sweater. She could feel the sweat droplets forming across her bald head and remembered that she had to put a special lotion on or her tattoos could be ruined. She dug into her luggage and quickly pour the lotion into her hand. Haeli shuddered as the cool sensation of the formula began seeping into her skin.

“May I come in?”

Sphere!

“Sooner rather than later. I’m afraid us meatsacks have an expiration date and mine is coming quicker for every second you wait outside.” Haeli replied.

With a flash of light, which Haeli knew better than to look directly at, Sphere appeared in the room. At 183 centimeters, Sphere was quite a striking figure. It had changed into a humanoid form, but whenever it moved Haeli could see iridescent colors glimmering at the minuscule seams. Sphere and Haeli embraced. Its warmth was almost overwhelming, as if touching a stone which had been sitting in the hottest summer sun. Sphere smiled revealing pale ivory-like teeth and bright pink gums. “Are you hungry? There’s a pasta place on level 20.”

>Haeli let out of sigh of relief, “Yes, please. I can’t remember the last time I’ve eaten.”

Sphere nodded, “I know the feeling.”

For a moment Haeli bit her lip as she remembered that Sphere probably hadn’t been able to eat for the entirety of her mission. Sphere, like all the beings of New Rainbow, could not consume human food. More accurately, Sphere could not consume human food for any nutritional value. To say that the beings of New Rainbow eat is more of an anthropomorphism than an actual description. Haeli thought of all the crystal formations just outside absorbing the massive amounts of energy given off by the binary stars of New Rainbow’s system. Sphere was one of a small fraction of beings from New Rainbow who left its planet for any length of time.

As the elevator doors opened on the 20th floor, Haeli and Sphere casually made their way to the Italian diner Alfredo The Suns. A mechanoid with polished a brass-like finish greeted them and escorted them to a table.

“I am Tald, I will be your waitress today. My pronouns are they, them, theirs. Can I get you anything to drink?”

Haeli frowned, “Just water, I think.”

The mechanoid turned to face Sphere who politely declined. Tald handed Haeli a menu but she didn’t open it, instead setting it down with disinterest while watching Tald disappear into a backroom.

“You don’t see that much anymore,” Haeli commented.

Sphere smirked, “I think you haven’t been here much. All mechanoids who work on New Rainbow get full maintenance and power benefits. Tald probably wanted something other than a position in the Fleet. Serving food is probably one of the easiest jobs for a mechanoid.”

Haeli was still staring at the door Tald had gone through. Her face was expressionless though her eyes seemed to be swelling.

“Haeli?” Sphere asked as it leaned over to grasp Haeli’s hand.

“Sphere, I think you and Yamara knew Sara the best… Right?”

“Better, Sara and I were in Fleet training together. We were even in the same team for cold weather survival training.”

Haeli continued to stare into the distance, “Let’s go for a walk.” With that, Haeli stood and hurried out of the diner and made her way to the elevator. Sphere was quick to catch up and remained silent even though Haeli knew it was upset with her for leaving.  Haeli pressed the level one button and waited as the elevator made its way down, taking on new passengers as it stopped every few floors. By the time the doors opened on the first floor, Haeli and Sphere were accompanied by nearly two dozen people. The majority of those people were heading towards the tunnel leading to the transport dock, but Haeli was headed in the direction of the large double doors leading into the vast desert wasteland.

Sphere worriedly tugged at Haeli’s shoulder, “What are you doing?”

Heali swiped her card which unlocked a locker storing a light cloak, face mask with a sun visor, and a small pack of water. “I’m going for a walk. Are you coming?” Haeli hooked the hose of the water pack to her face mask and latched the facemask into a secure position. “Sound check” she said as her voice was projected with a mechanical distortion. Haeli lifted the cream-colored cloak hood over her head and lowered the sun visor.

A prerecorded voice came over the intercom, “We would like to remind our human visitors that prolonged exposure to our binary stars can cause severe secondary burns. Please use sun protective gear and water pack or comparable gear when traveling outside The Traveler’s Junction. Mechanoid visitors are encouraged to use the oil and coolant circulatory aid system or comparable system when traveling outside The Traveler’s Junction.”

Haeli slid the brown gloves on and then glided her way over to a hatch barely larger than she was. The small screen was quite bright to account for the fact that most beings reading the screen would be wearing sun protection over their eyes. The screen displayed a standard warning and required acknowledgment before the door could be opened. Haeli hastily threw open the door and walked gingerly on the path. Sphere followed behind silently.  Haeli and Sphere continued the wordless argument with nothing but the sound of sand and the occasional sniffle or cough projected through the voice box of Haeli’s face mask.

“Haeli,” Sphere buzzed, “Haeli, you only have a few mouthfuls of water left. We need to turn back now!”

Haeli’s pace did not slow nor did she turn to look at Sphere as it called out to her. Sphere did not hesitate the second time, taking leaping steps to overtake its friend, and then stood like a guard against an immense siege.

“How far?” Haeli asked so quietly that the microphone in her mask barely registered she was speaking.

“Excuse me?”

“How far do I have to go before I can get a break from these thoughts and feelings that keep me up at night? I’m in another fucking dimension walking on sand made up of your ancestors’ disintegrated crystal remains, how much farther do I have to go? Where can I get away from this? I can’t eat, think, or sleep now that Sara’s gone. Where can I go where the pain doesn’t hurt as much?”

Sphere’s shoulders dropped, hands unclenched, “Oh dear, my dear Haeli. That place is within you. Only you can find the peace with yourself to accept Sara’s death.”

“Sphere, I haven’t even been able to acknowledge she’s… How can I find peace within myself?”

Sphere took Haeli by the hand and led her back towards The Oasis. Though Haeli regretted the length she had gone before having a moment of honest discussion, Sphere continued to assure her that everything was going to be fine. “Part of why you suffer so much is that you refuse to accept it for what it is. Your girlfriend, whom you had dedicated the last two years of your life to, has died. That’s a painful thing for anyone to process, but working through the various feelings you’re experiencing will only help you heal. And you know what?”

Haeli realized they had made it back and grabbed the release handle, “What?”

“You don’t have to do it alone.”

Unclaimed Baggage by Jamie Saoirse Eastling is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

A New Direction

As I continue to come to terms with the fact that I have indeed done what seemed to me like impossible–I graduated from college, I am faced with a new set of responsibilities. Not least of these means choosing for myself how I want to go about my life as a trans person. While in college I felt a certain pressure to fall in line with a certain dogma and I took comfort in that dogma as a safety net and foundation for my lifestyle. I don’t regret the time I’ve spent doing what I’ve done because I was able to accomplish some meaningful work, but my approach has been a bit of blunt knife when I need to have the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. Now I am alumna and the rug has been swept out from under me and I must find my footing or fall prey to lions of ideology. I’ve been contemplating this for some time, even prior to graduating, but I feel like today I reached a turning point.

After reading this article, I had a bit of an revelation about the direction I need to go with my work as minister for queer people. In order to minister to others, it means I need to lay aside my personal comforts and needs for the sake of larger communities of queer people. I cannot afford to burn bridges in the name of pride and intellectual integrity (even though I would not previously admit that that’s what it was). I’ve seen this in effect in my work with Trans Lifeline, but I only got a sense of it then whereas now I’m feeling like a whole new world has been opened up for me to explore. That doesn’t mean there won’t be times I’m hurt, times that I’m angry, but those are the times where I need to practice my own advice about self-care. It also doesn’t mean I don’t have a lot of learning, in fact this is only the beginning of my journey to crafting the kind of person and the kind of minister I want to be.

About an hour ago, I read this article which solidified everything I was thinking and feeling after reading the previously linked article. There is a lot of work to be done towards trans liberation and if that is to be accomplished it can’t be done “every person for themselves!” This is a time for cooperation, reconciliation, education, and humility. This has to start with me. It’s counter to everything that I’ve seen in the online communities I’ve frequented, but I suspect that it is the way to a better and more wholesome life syncing up my personal, professional, and spiritual beliefs.

Heroes

The conservatives have been going wild over the Ben Shapiro vs. Zoey Tur debate in which Ms. Tur explained that if Mr. Shapiro didn’t stop being a rude and dehumanizing turd-muscle, she would put him in the hospital. The conservatives have basically degender and misgender Tur by saying her violent actions make her no longer legitimately a woman. I’m going to throw out a little helpful hint to conservatives, though I doubt any conservative will actually engage this… If you have degender and misgender a trans person in order to make your point, your point is not likely valid and all you have left is hate. You hate what you don’t understand, you hate what you don’t like, you hate what you can’t control.

More upsetting than the idea that people are saying Caitlyn Jenner didn’t deserve the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage is the way people shut down Segun Oduolowu’s criticism that Jenner is rich white woman who had the financial resources to get the surgeries she did and hide away in her mansion. I didn’t follow the connection to the 70’s and 80’s Gay Power movement, but still he was echoing criticisms that have raised time and again from trans people of color. I don’t really know anything about Oduolowu, but I think to call Jenner the hero of transgender rights is to erase the hundreds of people who came before her and made it possible for her to stand on a stage without being killed. Those people were trans women of color, like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson. I think it ignores Janet Mock and Laverne Cox in favor a more “family-friendly” (aka white-friendly) face of a Republican transgender woman.

Now, on the subject I was going at before, Shapiro is characterized as being civil yet he actively misgenders Jenner and Tur to point of calling Tur, “Sir.” The definition of civil is clearly different from the last time I checked. At the end of the interview he articulates his view that transgender people are suffering mental illness and delusion. When Tur said, “if you don’t cut that out, you’re going home in an ambulance” I wasn’t shocked or disturbed, I was proud. No, I’m not a fan of violence. To me, I think it put Shapiro in his place and the other guests on the show immediately sympathized with Tur even if they felt her response was a bit too aggressive. Frankly, I think Shapiro should be glad Tur didn’t snap his neck on live television. Shapiro is the kind of person who may not realize it, but his ideology is a violent one. Around such a hostile person, I don’t expect any trans women to be civil. I’m also aware that a trans woman of color would have been scrutinized, demonized, and socially outcast if she had done what Tur did on television. Tur exemplified the privilege that white trans women have (if you do a search on Tur, you’ll find she’s not exactly the nicest person herself and that’s beside the point).