Category: sexuality

Finding hope in the moderate male.

Laura WildLeave a comment

Over the past few days I’ve been at a complete loss for words. In a state of shock, I went to bed on Tuesday night feeling alone, but knowing that I was far from it. I was completely shaken by the knowledge that America had elected such an ignorant and inane POTUS as Donald Trump, and I struggled to find any kind of silver-lining. Hillary Clinton’s concession speech helped to relight a fire in my soul, and I realized that this disappointment and setback was merely a taste of what women and minorities before me have felt since the dawn of time. As I watched my friends and family dust themselves off and begin to rally, I realized that wallowing in my fear was not going to make me any safer. My voice as a queer female has already been suppressed by that fear for too long, not to mention by the very demographic who have enabled this disastrous outcome.

What I found as the initial shock of the election faded was that these results are not as unbelievable as they first seemed. We live in an incredibly backwards country, one that has systematically oppressed racial minorities, immigrants, women and members of the LGBTQ community for too long, indeed. While we have made significant strides of progress, we are still embarrassingly behind many of our Western counterparts. This is the same rhetoric that has been flooding social media all week, I know, but there is good reason to keep the discussion going. If we (liberals, activists, decent human beings, etc.) intend on turning the tides once and for all, we have to convince the other half. I urge those who are privileged enough to threaten to pack up and move to another country and those who have gone on an unfriending-rampage against all Trump supporters to please think twice. There are people in this country who are desperate to stay here, terrified of being deported, and who need the support of their allies now more than ever. In order to turn this country around again in 2020 we can’t give up on each other, and we especially have to find a way to reach those who were so blinded by party loyalty that they couldn’t even vote against a poorly spoken nutcase.

In all honesty, the moderates have been more than a bit of a frustration for me during this election. There are some situations where it is great to stand in the middle of the road but I don’t think there is ever a time that it is morally valiant. That said, I know the two-party system is a huge problem and I wish our democracy worked better, but I’m not even going to go into how maddening it is that some democrats voted for a third party in this vital election; we already know what a mistake that was. Instead I am going to address the non-voters; what were you thinking? If you are young and uninformed or too lazy I can at least understand your excuses for being idle in the face of adversity, but to those who didn’t vote because “both of the candidates were so bad”, you seem to be hindered by sexism. There is no other explanation for even equating an intelligent and qualified albeit shady women to the highly under-qualified travesty that is Donald Trump, besides an intrinsic prejudice against women. You may try to hide it, you may not even be fully aware of it, but it’s there, and it’s just as toxic as outright male chauvinism if not worse. I’ll tell you why:

  1. The sexist in denial is the same person that enables male chauvinism by not condemning their peers, often defending them with a certain brotherly support that is as petty and juvenile as peer pressure.
  2. Female misogeny is a word that is becoming more popular than ever, stemming of course from the privileged white women who is in denial of the oppression that non-straight or non-white women face. Not to be confused with misandry, the female misogynist is a women that is hyper-feminized and condones the polarization of the sexes. The outdated belief that men and women are drastically different from one another is hugely detrimental to both genders, and once again enables intrinsic sexism. These are the type of women that voted directly against Hilary Clinton.
  3. Lastly, the ambivalent majority will continue to oppress minorities as long as their beliefs are backed up by conservative religious ideologies. It’s like a socially acceptable excuse to treat women poorly. Unfortunately, religion is at the root of many people’s prejudice toward women and is also to blame for demonizing the word “feminism”. It’s hard to combat this, because holy hell if people aren’t sensitive when you attack their religion! Sorry, I’ll attack any institution that threatens to limit women’s access to health care. *cracks knuckles*

I may sound like I am attacking only a specific group of people, and that’s the last thing I want to do. In fact, the straight white male demographic may itself be facing prejudice for the first time ever, and I know it’s not a good feeling. I already see a lot of my male friends on social media feeling obligated to prefix their entries with things like, “I know I am privileged and may not be able to relate to systemic oppression, but here’s why I’m saddened by this election.” I would hate for my anger to add to a new stereotype that labels a whole group of people as ignorant. Of course, social psychology tells us that all stereotypes are rooted in some kind of truth, and that truth is stemming from the fact that straight white males are largely responsible for the election of Donald Trump. Even so, we know that not all men find him acceptable. In fact many straight white men are appalled by all of the same things that I am, and it is those men that I urge to speak up! We want you on our side, we will not lose faith in you, and we need your support. Please don’t let defensiveness get in the way of activism, we feminists certainly don’t.

Last week I returned from my journey across the deep South expecting to find a much more enlightened pre-election atmosphere up here, but I was wrong. As I drove home I passed by one of the most disgusting displays that I have seen all year. A scarecrow tied to a cross with yellow caution tape had a picture of Hillary Clinton’s face stapled to it, had slurs written across the body and had its feet bound to a tire. A cardboard cutout of Trump has since been stolen from a makeshift podium that stood nearby, and several of the many campaign signs from the yard have been taken down. Still, the display remains in broad daylight, where children walk home from school every day and can often be seen pointing to it and laughing. The disservice many Americans have done to our country’s children is perhaps the saddest part of this election. I can only hope, as many generations before me have, that things are different for my own children one day. This is one story that I never wanted to be able to tell to my grandchildren, but now all I can do is join the fight to make something good come out of it. I hope we can all fight together, so that one day our Muslim, Hispanic, African American and LGBTQ brothers and sisters no longer have to live in fear.

 

 

Rejection: The unsurprising reality of being a teenage writer

Laura WildLeave a comment

When I was 13 I decided I wanted to write a novel, and over the course of a few years I did just that. At the time I was sure that the mere ambition I had to do such a thing made me extraordinary, and I expected my book would be made into a movie someday. I guess you could say I was an idealist… Needless to say, I was not nearly as special as I thought I was, and my ambitions were far from unique. As like any creative adolescent with a wild imagination, I just wanted my art to get the credit that I thought it deserved. Disappointment was almost inevitable.

Four years later I finished my first book, tried unsuccessfully to publish it, and subsequently began to let go of the dream that had consumed me for most of my youth. Countless rejections to brief queries and pieces of my manuscript left me feeling embarrassed and inadequate. When I was able to accept that my book wasn’t going to be the next best seller, I realized I was further from my dreams than I had ever imagined.

At a time in our lives when optimism and high aspirations seem to be at their peak, why is it that so many of us feel pressed for time? I don’t know about everyone else, but ever since I turned eighteen I have felt as though time has begun to pass faster than ever, and being told that I am in the prime of my life stresses me out more than anything. I am compelled to do as much as I can, as fast as I can. I don’t know if this makes me wise or naive… either way, the feeling certainly doesn’t seem to be fading.

At the same time, life has also never felt more ironic. Now, at nineteen, I have officially entered the realm of adulthood that prevents me from using my youthfulness to my advantage. Instead, it seems to be only a sign of my lack of experience. Any chance that I might have had to use my age as an asset is gone, and I have found myself without a platform or an edge. For writers, and especially writers who don’t know what the hell they’re doing, this is the worst possible position to be in. And yet here I am, just as devoted to my current project as I was my last. I have been working on Into the Wind, a memoir about my struggle with depression before and after my bike trip, since I returned home last November.

While my adventures in querying agents this time around have been much more encouraging, I still haven’t gotten close enough to finding representation to converse with any actual people on the phone. The little interest that I have gotten has kept me on the edge of my seat, and I have even prioritized prospective agents over people in my own life at times. The truth is that I have become, as much as I hate to admit it, madly and undeniably desperate for success. And I don’t think I am alone.

While not all young people want the same things that I do, I know that many of my peers feel a similar pressure to not only be successful, but to be young and successful. Most of us want to change the world, too, which I think is a really good thing for society, but sometimes a frustratingly difficult thing for us to achieve. At times my entire career as a writer can seem to hang on small bits of encouragement that I receive, even though those words are dwarfed by the numerous rejections that I find in my inbox every week. Being so restless by nature and eternally undecided I count on the advice from others to give me direction. When that advice is to follow my dreams and never give up, I can make myself feel powerful and unstoppable. However, when that advice is to be sensible and major in something that will undoubtedly make me financially independent, changing courses can seem tempting, too.

Could my real weakness be the fact that I am so impressionable?

In my plight to scavenge for anything in my repertoire that can make me stand out from the crowd, I have taken the words of one of my favorite writers very seriously. Lena Dunham is the perfect example of a writer who knows how to find beauty in her imperfections, and that is truly what makes her writing so appealing. By being slightly unpolished and painstakingly truthful I have told myself that I shouldn’t force beauty out of my writing, but try to let it come out on its own. This has to be my philosophy, because if I believed that all of my writing had to be literary gold as soon as it hit the paper, I would be totally screwed.

Right now I don’t feel like I could let myself give up if I wanted to, but that doesn’t mean I’m not scared of the repercussions. Opening up has been such a freeing thing for me in so many ways, and equally binding. I can only hope that I become a better writer as I grow older, but I know that when that happens I will have to be careful not to pick apart old writing that I have shared. After all, if there’s anything I know for sure it’s that you have to start somewhere, and I have never been one to wait for the perfect timing.

Sharing things like this reduces so many insecurities that I have about the choices I make. I have used writing to dwell on my insufficiencies and ruminate over my regrets, but I have also used it to dilute my sadness and anxiety by opening up the area in which I keep it. Sometimes being publicly honest is the best remedy for pain and dissonance, and I have even felt relief in just reading other people’s version of the truth. I suppose my ultimate dream in publishing a memoir would be to affect people in a similar way; to free them of the pressure to conform parts of themselves that have yet seemed unjustified.

The article I should have posted a week ago.

Laura Wild1 Comment

The fear of being labeled, judged, misunderstood or receiving any kind of unwanted attention has kept me quiet for a really, really long time. But I’m a big girl now, and it seems like the rest of the country is moving on without me, and I don’t want to be left behind. So I’m going to digress from the chronological account of my bike trip just to say a little something about what happened a week ago today… when marriage became an all-inclusive word and everyone I knew was really happy about it. None of my friends went off on a rampage of hate, in fact nobody really said anything to me at all.

I first saw the news while scrolling through Facebook last Friday, and my initial reaction was just short of an eye roll. I was one of those people who was kind of bitter about the whole thing, to the point that no date would be soon enough for the country to abide by it’s own law of the separation of church and state. It took a while to sink in, but soon enough it hit me that history was happening around me and I could almost feel a collective sigh of relief coming from all the people I knew that it affected. Including my girlfriend, and I didn’t know how to express how happy I was that I felt like we were whole humans all of a sudden. I felt like we were finally on the road to being normal.

I had never posted about her before, even though we’ve been together for over a year, so I didn’t really know what to do apart from changing my profile picture. That felt so lame to me, so I changed it back after only a couple of days. I didn’t celebrate at all, I just kind of told myself to stay true to my relationship philosophy- that my private life is nobody else’s business, and being in love with another woman only concerned me and her. Only now can I finally admit that this philosophy was rooted in bitterness as well- opposite sex couples didn’t have to come out so why should we? That was a selfish thing to tell myself, because it meant that for a long time I was asking my girlfriend to stay quiet for me, which wasn’t fair. Thank you Jenny for being so patient with me, if we ever did have to stay quiet, we certainly don’t any more.

I was so weird about my sexuality for such a long time, let me tell you. At first I was obsessed with asserting the fact that I was indeed still attracted to boys too, that I just didn’t want to limit myself, and that I thought everybody was innately bisexual and it was society’s fault that we conformed to binary gender roles. I didn’t really know what I was talking about. Even at the time of my bike trip I was still calling Jenny my friend, which I am completely ashamed of. One of the few people I did tell was my friend Ariela, who is the next person I want to thank and the person who told me that people fall in love with souls, not bodies. Thank you for listening to me when most of what I was telling people was outright lies and and thank you for helping me get my shit together.

I also can’t thank my best friend Ellie enough, for still bearing with me even after all of this self-created drama. And I want to thank my family for being cool about everything and everyone else who has put up with me. This post is a long time coming, I know. Besides the fact that I was raised christian and live in a conservative state I don’t have any real excuses for hiding my relationship, I guess I was just too afraid of what people would think of me. Thank you, Lena Dunham, for writing a book that inspired me to be honest about my own human nature. Thank you, Hozier, for writing music that perfectly captures just how tragic daily oppression can be. And thank you America, for, as Jenny would put it, coming over to the correct side of history. I think I would like to join you.

It’s so hard to fully grasp the idea that someday I could be telling my children about this, and I can only hope that it will seem unfathomable to them that marriage was once an exclusive right. For now, though, I’m pretty happy with the way things have turned out. I have a feeling that tomorrow is going to be a fourth of July unlike any other.