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learningnewways · 2 years ago

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Israel - Day 4

It’s day 4 of our Israel tour and I’m so glad I’ve been keeping a blog every day, because so much happens it’s easy to forget what happened even this morning! Our days are jam-packed from 7:30am until 6pm, then add breakfast and dinner outside of those hours, and it leaves little time for anything else! I’ve been staying up late writing these blog posts each night, sacrificing much needed sleep, however in the long run I know it’ll be worth it to capture everything that’s happened here.

We always start with Scripture reading, prayer and a song on the bus which is always a great start to the day. It’s been so hectic that I haven’t managed to have any private devotional myself which is unfortunate. But it’s great to have Scripture read at most sites, as well as prayer and reflection time at some sites. This morning John read from Matthew 5-7 and talked about how the reign of God in our lives should extend to every area of our life. I’m trying! But it is very scary.

Today was spent in Samaria, also known as the West Bank, which used to be part of Jordan until 1967. Before we crossed into the West Bank, we visited a large site called Beth Shean which has only been excavated in the past 20-30 years. It’s remarkable that they are still discovering new sites even today! I guess it is partially because Israel’s land has changed hands so many times, so a lot has been left undiscovered until recent years. The land Israel has currently was only defined in 1967 after the 6 day war, although parts like the Gaza Strip are still disputed.

We were actually the first group to visit Beth Shean this morning, arriving at 8:15am, meaning that John got to unlock the gates! How cool! This city dates back to at least 2,500BC and remained in different forms and under different rulers, including the Egyptians, until an earthquake in 749AD destroyed it. The city was very important as it is strategically located on a hill that guards the entry to the Jezerel Valley in the East, the Sea of Galilee in the North, and Jericho and the Dead Sea in the South.

The old city was impressive to walk around and you could imagine how amazing it would have looked in it’s prime. It’s what I imagine walking around Athens would be like. We got to see what an old school public toilet would have been like, the photo is for my dad... There was a theatre that was similar to the one we saw in Caesarea on day 1, except it was more intact in its original form and was smaller. One of the girls from our group, Emily, stood at the bottom and sung, which was amazing to hear echoed all the way to the top of the back seats! Some of us walked up the little hill for a better view, which was definitely worth it.

Beth Shean existed in the time of the judges and Joshua would have been here too. It is here that the Philistine’s took King Saul’s body after he killed himself on nearby Mt Gilboa. Saul had been hiding in caves around the area, which is easy to understand after seeing the scenery nearby. It was stunning! Lots of caves to choose from! Reminded me again of Banks Peninsular in Christchurch, just with lots of caves!

We then entered the West Bank and headed to Jericho. Yes, Jericho where Joshua and his army marched around the walls seven times and the walls came tumbling down! Wow! The city was actually very small, much much smaller than I had imagined. John said it would only take around 1.5hrs to walk around it seven times, so only like 12 minutes each time. It was incredibly hot, unbearable almost, so I could see how walking around it seven times could be difficult! Elisha did come to Jericho and purify the water, so maybe they had nearby water to drink from, although I’d imagine they would’ve kept the water source within the city walls...

Jericho is the oldest city in Israel, with the oldest level of excavation dating back to 3,500BC... Woah... Joshua would’ve been there around 1500-1200BC. It’s pretty cool to think that this is where the Israelites went after 40yrs wandering the desert. The fact that they blew their trumpets and shouted and everything inside Jericho was completely destroyed is awesome. I mean, there would have been sooooo many Israelites at this point, so maybe the noise alone would’ve done it! But obviously God had something to do with it too... We even saw the archeology of the burn site where Joshua and the people burned the city... Crazy stuff! We only really got to see the walls and not much else, but that was still pretty cool.

We quickly visited a Hebron Glass shop where they sell hand blown glass that is mixed with rocks and materials found nearby. The pieces were beautiful but too pricey for me. I was looking at a cute camel ornament when I accidentally dropped it on the floor! Ooooops! Luckily nothing broke but after that I stayed away!

Then we went to one of the most spectacular sites ever, Qumran, where they found the Dead Sea Scrolls. This was absolutely stunning, beautiful, awe-inspiring, breathtaking, unbelievable... All the words! The only thing that comes slightly close is the Clay Cliffs in the South Island and the Grand Canyon in the USA... I’ve been to both and this outshined both by far! Photos cannot do it justice! Beautiful orange cliffs with massive drop offs underneath, and caves everywhere. Wow! Good hiding spot for the scrolls for sure!

We hiked briefly to the bottom of one of the caves, which they first started discovering had fragments of Scripture hidden in them in 1947, which was a massive discovery. It meant huge progress for the accuracy and preservation of God’s word, as some of the texts are from the 3rd century BC and pre-date the Hebrew Bible. They even found some additional Psalms in the Dead Sea Scrolls, just in case 150 wasn’t enough!

It was in the 40’s temperature-wise when we were on our walk and I drank my whole 750ml water bottle in the maybe 30mins we were there. It was the hottest our trip has been so far and everyone was feeling it! Luckily John is great at finding us shady spots to sit under. I can’t reiterate enough just how stunning this scenery was. It was incomprehensible even while I was sitting right in front of it! Wow! Top view so far on the trip! Mt Arbel yesterday was incredible too, but I’m a different way. Hard to compare the two really... Israel is pretty stunning.

Our final spot for the day was the Dead Sea, where we got to swim, or should I say, float! It’s called the Dead Sea because it’s 426 metres below sea level, the lowest land point in the world, and it is 33% minerals and salt, meaning no living organism can survive in it. You have to be super careful not to get your face in the water, as it is dangerous! The ocean is 7% minerals and salt, so picture that but almost 5x as salty! It was crazy how easily we floated! The water was very warm, too warm to stay in for too long. Plus it was 41 degrees on the lake shore... Quite different from New Zealand where roads are being shut because of slips and snow! Apparently the Dead Sea is actually shrinking about 1 metre per year as it gets evaporated but not refilled... I didn’t know that...

We arrived at our accomodation with the stunning backdrop of Masada, which we will check out tomorrow. We are truly in the desert with this scenery! There’s an optional sunrise hike to the top of Masada tomorrow morning which I will not be taking... Haha. I’m just so tired! I think I’m also missing the normal routine of life. I miss listening to my music. I used to listen to probably 5hrs of music every day back in New Zealand, but there’s just no time here. Even on the bus, there’s never enough time and if there is, then John or Shlomo are always talking about something relevant to our next site or the scenery over the microphone! Overall it was a great day and it seemed to be our most relaxed so far, which was nice.

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easyhairstylesbest · 4 years ago

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When She Says Woman, She Doesn't Mean Me

When I was 19, I paid my way to San Francisco with pornography. I answered an ad for the cheapest room I could find, and when the girl who lived there asked me, I lied and said I was straight. I didn’t know anyone. Men or boys asked me to go places, and I went. At a party in the fall, I wore tight red pants and no bra. I drank what was handed to me. I fell asleep on a bed and woke up and this boy was fucking me. His smell and skin and my teeth grinding and I was drunk or high, I don’t know which, and I couldn’t move. I could not make him stop. I passed out again and woke up and his body was there on the bed and I inched away and it was so gray, San Francisco was always so gray, always so predawn, and I did not want to jostle anything, gathered my limbs, my fragile center, slipped out to the gray street and the shivering bus and stepped gently on the stairs up into my rented room and washed myself with hot water and drank hot coffee to burn the inside of me and began the work of pretending it had not happened.

That same year, my boss at the coffee shop left me five messages in three days:

“Hey, just wanted to see if you want to go to that show on Friday at Great American Music Hall.”

“Hey you haven’t called me back so just checking in again to see if you want to go, or maybe get a drink.”

“Hey you know it’s pretty rude of you to just smile at me like that and then not even call me back.”

“You can’t just be nice to people and then act like it doesn’t mean anything.”

“You think you’re so special but you’re not. You should be more careful.”

At work, he did not mention the phone calls. He watched me. He started scheduling me so that I only worked alone. As I wiped down counters, he stood close to me, holding a clipboard, not looking at me, just keeping his big body next to mine.

In Old Town and in Ocean Beach the cops were always watching us. Were always stopping us in the street. Were always making us empty our pockets and backpacks. We felt them coming and we stiffened, tried to duck around corners, tried to avert our faces. At night, they shone their flashlights into our eyes. Some nights they made us stand in a row. They held photos of missing children up beside our faces. We were not missing.

The boy who raped me had paid to see my naked pictures on the internet. He’d done this with his friends, the group of them together at the computer with someone’s brother’s credit card. I knew this because one of them told me. They told me he wanted to fuck me. This was intended as a compliment. I have tried to imagine what they said to each other in that room, hovered over the screen. I can’t hear them. I come up with nothing.

Sex workers, says Catharine MacKinnon, are “the property of men who buy and sell and rent them.” She says that to rape a sex worker means simply to not pay her.

When men ejaculated on me it did not feel like trauma, it felt like money. Like rent. It was not painful. It was not confusing. I did not hate them. I felt nothing about them. I knew what I was agreeing to. I knew what I would have when I walked away. I knew that I owned myself. That owning myself meant having a way to make my money and walk away. That the walking away, more than anything, was the thing that made this work different.

Sex work, tweeted Ashley Judd, is “body invasion.” It commodifies “girls and women’s orifices.” “Cash,” she says, “is the proof of coercion.”

On March 11, 2019, the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW-NYC) held a protest on the steps of City Hall, demanding the continued criminalization of sex work. Speakers at NOW’s protest called the decriminalization bill that a group of New York sex workers had been organizing toward the “Pimp Protection Act.”

NOW-NYC’s president said, “Yes, you’ve heard it right, the sex trade could be coming to a neighborhood near you.” New York City, she said, could become the “Las Vegas of the Northeast.” As though sex work were not also illegal in Las Vegas.

Owning myself meant having a way to make my money and walk away.

A small group of sex workers came to counterprotest. They held signs that said, “Sex Workers Against Sex Trafficking.”

The anti-decriminalization protestors stepped in front of them to cover their signs. Speakers said that the sex workers were “ignorant of their own oppression.”

I did not tell anyone that I had been raped. I did not tell anyone and still they said, “What is wrong with you that you allow men to pay to touch you.”

They said, “What happened to you that made you like this?”

I heard these things again and again.

I heard them so often that I feared that they were right, that I had only tricked myself into believing that there was a difference between the things I’d chosen and the things I hadn’t.

In my bed, not sleeping, Adam’s heavy arm over me, my body between him and the wall, I thought: I am broken.

I did not know what I was, and I did not know how to be anything else.

I knew that to become a person that men like Adam could love would mean making myself visibly weak. Would mean performing the kind of weakness that other people could find lovable. Would mean claiming ignorance so they could see me as worthy of being remade.

I knew that the weakness they wanted was nothing like the real weakness inside of me. The real weakness inside of me could only be healed if I trusted my own rules. If I did not give my pain away for other people’s stories.

It was in a porn studio that I first began to feel as though my body was a thing I could love. I did not take the job in order to feel this. I did not even understand it as it was happening. It happened slowly and also all at once. I showed up to shoot and the man that I would be working with asked me, “What are your limits?”

I had no idea what he was talking about.

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“What do you not want to do?” he asked. And on that day, I could not tell him. No one had ever asked me that question before.

“We’ll try some things,” he said, “and you just say ‘red’ if you want to stop.”

So I tried things. Some of them I liked and some of them I didn’t and some of them I didn’t care about one way or another. Every day when I came to shoot, they asked me the same question: “What do you want to do today? What don’t you want to do?”

Eventually, I could answer. I could make a list. This is what I want. This is what I don’t want.

There was a day when I was tied up, suspended in rope in the middle of a warehouse in downtown San Francisco, and a man was hitting me all over my body with a deerskin flogger. I was in midair, ropes pressed into my hips and thighs and chest with measured tension, leather thudding rhythmically against my back and breasts and I felt a kind of elation, a swelling in my center. I felt strong. I felt myself getting stronger. The scene ended, and they lowered me to the ground and they untied the ropes and blood rushed back into my knees and elbows and I felt suddenly clean. I felt whole. More than whole, I felt unbreakable.

They handed me a check, and it did not feel like coercion, it felt like safety. It felt like I had taken something from them.

“It is impossible,” says Andrea Dworkin, “to use a human body in the way women’s bodies are used in prostitution and to have a whole human being at the end of it, or in the middle of it, or close to the beginning of it. . . . And no woman gets whole again later, after.”

In Los Angeles, the days were all the same but also they were all different. I worked. All of us worked. We lived to work. We called it the “porn dorm” and we called it “porno boot camp” and we got up at 5 a.m. and worked until two the following morning. We worked two-a-days and we worked seven days a week and there was not a single day of the year when someone, somewhere, was not making pornography.

The good days and the bad days were overwhelmed by days when everything went as expected. Days when I showed up and laid out my clothes and we chose something and I put my makeup on and took the stills and waited for male talent or waited for the light or waited for the dialogue and did six positions and a pop and took my check and went home. I felt bored more often than I felt anything else. I felt bored and I felt as though the thing I was inside of was invisible to everyone who was not inside of it.

They handed me a check, and it did not feel like coercion, it felt like safety. It felt like I had taken something from them.

When I was not working, I was exhausted. I was more exhausted than I had ever been. Some mornings, when it was time to get up to go to work, I cried.

“You cry now, but you’ll cry when you have no money,” my agent said.

I cried and then I went to work.

The day would be good or it would be bad or it would be neither and I would collect my check and my agent would come and pick us up and take us to Jerry’s Deli and we would eat chicken soup and black and white cookies, and I loved him. I loved these women around me, each of them with their bodies like weapons. I felt as though I did not belong anywhere but there.

I’ve rarely talked about my rape and I’ve rarely talked about violence I’ve experienced while doing sex work. I have not talked about these things because I am afraid. Because I know how stories like mine get told. Because I know exactly how good anti–sex work “feminists” are at carving out the pieces of our stories to make them mean something else, something less complicated and more easily sold. I know how good they are at flattening us, at excavating our experiences to make stories that are only an imitation of the things we’ve lived. I know how good they are at making us no longer human but symbols of this thing they call womanhood. This thing they’ve made that I do not see myself in.

I’m afraid, but also I’m angry. I’m angry that I could not talk about violence without fueling descriptions of me as an object, written by women claiming to be my allies. I have survived violence in sex work and also I have chosen again and again to do this work. I have performed sex and femininity and also I am not a symbol of anyone else’s womanhood. I have been poor enough that sex work seemed like a gift, poor enough that sex work changed my power in the world by giving me the safety that money gives. To say that I needed the money is not the same as saying I could not choose, and to say that I chose is not the same as saying it was always good. I have been harmed in sex work and I have been healed in sex work and I should not have to explain either of those experiences in order to talk about my work as work.

“Women must be heard,” says Ashley Judd. And I know that when she says women, she does not mean me.

Excerpted from the book We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival, edited by Natalie West, with Tina Horn. The essay “When She Says Woman, She Does Not Mean Me” Copyright © 2021 by Lorelei Lee. The collection, published by the Feminist Press, is out now.

Lorelei Lee Lorelei Lee (they/she) is a writer, sex worker activist, organizer, juris doctor, Justice Catalyst Fellow, co-founder of the Disabled Sex Workers Coalition, researcher with Hacking//Hustling, and founding member of the Upstate New York Sex Worker Coalition.

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When She Says Woman, She Doesn't Mean Me

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chaletnz · 7 years ago

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Italy Day Six: Pompeii

I’d checked in to my hostel late last night, and in hindsight it was a terrible idea to arrive at Naples central station after dark. It’s a very dark and dodgy area of the city and although I don’t really have anything of value with me I still felt like an easy target walking alone with a big blue backpack that just screams TOURIST. Luckily I arrived at the hostel and was buzzed up inside quickly. I took one look at the old rickety cage that some would call an “elevator” and I decided it reminded me too much of the terrible hostel from Cairo so I took the stairs. The old man who checked me in had definitely been sinking a few beers on his shift but I was happy to get his drunken directions to my room for the night. Unfortunately I didn’t sleep too well because one of the occupants of my room was a hoodrat and left loudly at about 3am to go prowling (then came back and slept all day). It reminded me of the guy in our room in Warsaw who had a strange box under his bed that Olga said definitely contained stolen wallets. Still, I rose early and enjoyed my first free hostel breakfast of Italy which was actually very good! The filter coffee was impressively tasty, and there were lots of jams and spreads for toast and an assortment of cereals and yoghurts too. I sat with an American lady called Martha who told me all about the fight in their room over a bed last night and then she shared her tips for Pompeii with me as it was on my agenda for today! I planned to take the second train of the day, very early to beat the crowds but alas when I showed up the platform was full, the train was delayed and Italians were yelling like mad trying to figure out which direction the train was going because no signs were working. I boarded alongside a lot of tourist type people hoping they were also all headed to Pompeii but after a few stops the train was worryingly empty after the chaos at the platform. I opened Google maps on my phone and watched the route that the blue dot seemed to be taking which was not going to end up with me arriving at the main entrance to the Scavi de Pompeii like I had hoped. Eventually a conductor passed through the entire train and told everyone to get off at the next stop and take the next train so we would be back on track to Pompeii. On the next train, feeling relaxed now, I could finally enjoy the views of Mount Vesuvius out the window! Upon arrival I was bombarded by touts selling skip the line tickets but it didn’t seem busy at all, I followed some of the other tourists upstairs to a small office where I picked up a free map. Free? Yes really. You think you’d be given it with your ticket but no they make you find it on your own. Luckily there was hardly any line at the entrance so I only waited a few minutes to buy my ticket and get inside. I followed the main path to the ultimate view that would prove hard to beat! I headed through a gallery where I got lost for the first time in the excavation site. However, I was the only person inside at the time and I could see all the casts at my leisure! I must’ve completed a loop because when I emerged from the exhibit I was back at the beginning, just metres from the ticket office. I dawdled a little behind an English tour group and learned that the majority of the ruins are the foundations of shops, some with a second level where the family would live above it. Families that were a little more wealthy could have mosaic tiles on the floor. I spotted a few remnants of staircases encased in the ruins, as well as perfectly preserved pottery. I followed my map to reach a large temple at the top of a hill. When I stood under the arches to look down over Pompeii I saw the large amphitheater and a field. There were tour guides having their moment and clapping in the centre to prove the circular design of the seating will amplify the sound. Continuing my self tour, after visiting the large amphitheater and field I found my way to another smaller amphitheater that was becoming overgrown with weeds in between every surface crack. Nearby I noticed some other visitors rubber necking over a window so I waited around and once they left I was free to see the casts there, and a collection of bones. I passed through the next district which was mostly shops too. These ones had large holes in the counters (which were now each growing their own garden of weeds inside) which were apparently originally used to store coins for payment. A large structure on the map caught my eye so I headed in that direction, following a girl who seemed to be taking photos from the same angles as me… it was a steep climb inside - I guess I did use the horses entrance after all! Inside was a shingle covered ground and stadium seating (in brick format!). It was also sprouting weeds from every crevice, and it was caught between light and dark which made it a little tricky to get photos. Outside was a vineyard that was built as a replica to the original Pompeii vineyard, even in the same location, and produces a local wine in present day. I took a new route through another district where I discovered some painted walls that had been salvaged as well as miscellaneous old possessions strewn across floors. I passed a sign directing to the bathroom and I thought I might not get another opportunity for a while so I climbed up several flights of stairs to get to it. It was a men’s bathroom that was now unisex, with bagged up urinals but the male sign on the door was confusing all the women! I found a nice bench at a lookout spot so I had a little snack here then headed back down to explore the courtyards in what appeared to be the “posh district” of the city. There were some dogs hanging around and in between all the babble in languages I didn’t understand I heard this gem; “Are dogs allowed inside!?” “They’re stray dogs James!” Next I found myself a new landmark for direction - the Termini. Unfortunately access was prohibited and a large gate kept me out but I snapped a few photos before moving on to another huge temple with a small roped off statue in the entranceway. Surprisingly there was also a souvenir stand selling some painted bricks inside. I managed to get some photos inside this temple area but as soon as I was outside my phone kept reminding me that it was out of storage and couldn’t take any more photos. I was also growing tired so I decided to call it a day at Pompeii and started heading towards the exit. However, I took a wrong turn somewhere and got lost between all the water faucets that I was using to navigate and because I could never pinpoint exactly where I was, it became impossible to route a way out! I felt like I was trapped so I rode the coattails of a large tour group that had loudly announced that they’d be making one more stop at the souvenir shop and then the bus would pick them up. I successfully found my way to the farthest exit from the train station but it did offer me the last impression of walking through the Villa of Mysteries, and seeing some views of Mount Vesuvius in the distance before I boarded my train back to Naples.

#Italy #Pompeii

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