#one hundred percent worth it for twelve years of birth control

[radfem-raccoon]

The IUD cramping feels like death by a thousand cuts. Like, it's low level pain but it never ends. Ugh.

[wordslikewax]

Thanksgiving

I’ve been watching this show called “How To with John Wilson,” where, in each episode, he investigates a social phenomenon and illustrates it along the way with video footage. The concepts that he discusses can become very abstractly and poetically linked, heartbreaking and hilarious. I highly recommend checking it out. Anyway, the aspect of the show that is most inspiring to me is how the narrative pushes Wilson to interact with the world, actively seeking out strange people, black sheep, entering their private spaces and talking to them. In order to do this, he must have to remove the armor that many Americans subconsciously wear as a way of keeping ourselves, our individual worlds, our personal routines and agendas, fully preserved. We have been conditioned over the course of many generations, to believe that anyone too different from us is a threat and that we ought to avert our stride. 

 This is reminiscent of what ensued when the European colonizers first stamped their boots on what they thought was Asian sand. Columbus wrote of the Arawak Indians who swam to greet his ship as it sailed ashore, “They would make fine servants...With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”  When Columbus promised “as much gold as they need and as many slaves as they ask,” the second voyage to the New World was provided with seventeen ships and more than twelve hundred men. Two hundred of the five hundred natives they attempted to transport back to Spain, died en route. In Haiti, all natives fourteen years or older were ordered to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months, which was impossible as there was not that much gold, and when they failed to do so, they were killed. “In two years, through murder, mutilation or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.” 

This genocide continued for the next four centuries. In 1790, most of the 3.9 million Americans lived within 50 miles of the Atlantic Ocean. By 1830, the population had more than tripled and huge swaths were crossing the Appalachian Mountains in search of land that wasn’t hoarded and controlled by the wealthy minority, the same group of men that devised the constitution as a plot to consolidate and reinforce their power. Battles were fought with many casualties on both sides but the Indians were ultimately outnumbered. Treaty after treaty was signed that promised the Indians land if they moved further west only to have this land taken from them again and again. On their voyages they suffered enormous losses from sickness and starvation, from heat and from cold. Andrew Jackson, said to be the greatest enemy of the Native Americans, designed a treaty in 1814 which “granted Creek Indians individual ownership of land, thus splitting Indian from Indian, breaking up communal landholding, bribing some with land, leaving others out--introducing the competition and conniving that marked the spirit of Western Capitalism.” Today, Native Americans make up only 2 percent of the nation's total population. 

How, you ask, does this have anything to do with “How To with John Wilson” on HBO? Is there any purpose in dwelling on the horror that is this nation’s birth, other than so that you might lose your appetite? Yes. The purpose is to remind us just how historically American it is for each of us to consider our own selves as so distinctly valuable, worth protecting at all costs, while viewing our engagements with other human beings as predominantly transactional; what can this person do for me? What might this person be trying to take away from me? How will this person impact my life? 

Recently, I was sitting on a park bench in Bay Ridge when I began to hear a man whistling loudly. He was also pacing around, waving his arms above his head and shaking a small container of something. Twenty or thirty feet away was a monument crowded with pigeons, and he seemed to be trying to get their attention. At first I was annoyed by the sporadic loud whistling, but then I thought of John Wilson. By now he would be filming a conversation with the man, with seven minutes of great footage already in his video camera. So I decided to go talk to him, and as we spoke, the tension I was holding began to evaporate. As we said goodbye, I felt nothing but an easygoing kinship towards Gregory, the Pigeon Meister. It occurred to me that I would like to talk to as many people as I possibly can, to observe the funny idiosyncrasies, to exchange something with a stranger, even if it is just a word, because it feels like an electrical current, charging my heart with energy. 

In a country whose leadership still prioritizes the wealthiest and most capitalistic individuals, and attempts to divide the rest of us against one another as a way of remaining in power, the refusal to be divided is an act of radical resistance. Although it is much harder now to connect through masks, through distance, through wifi, perhaps moving forward, we can deem Thanksgiving a day upon which we hold ourselves accountable; Have we been complicit in systematic division? Have we been pitting ourselves against some “other”? Do we assume we can’t relate to this person or that one? Why? Because they are too young? Too old? Because they don’t speak English very well? Because they are too religious? Because they’ve been to jail? Because they are Trans? Because they are...too different? Have we been looking people in the eyes? Have we been stopping to ask the man at the Deli how he’s doing? Have we been curious? Compassionate? Open-minded? Generous?

(All of the information about colonization comes from “A People’s History of the Unites States” by Howard Zinn)