Baby, you’re starlight

I'm scheduled to appear in Prof. Marta Vicente's class WGSS/HIST 324 "History of Women and the Body" this December. She asked me to speak to the class about attitudes toward women's bodies in bellydancing and then to give a short demo. We'll talk beforehand about what she's expecting as far as performance (I'm not changing into full makeup and bedlah for a volunteer five-minute gig) and what sort of things she'd like me to address (so I can be prepared for questions).

My preparations to resume home yoga practice were given a boost by this timely article on the Whole30 blog. Breaking Muscle had a well-timed and no-nonsense article on injury and healing, too. I need to get back in the game, even if it's a different game than I was playing a couple months ago.

Today's Tumblr collection is Tuesday, August 19: Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Profiled

Please note! This is not my post. I am posting it from ceanncait who very generously made it public so I could share it. She relates experiences and motivations very similar to my own. I want to write up my own thoughts on this, but in the meantime please check out her good words.

Originally posted by ceanncait at Profiled

Something that I think a lot of people don't know about me is *why* I'm so deeply committed to civil rights and why I will always believe that institutional racism and prejudice is a thing (despite privileged white people insisting it's not).

It's because I have *been* profiled. I have been pulled over numerous times for no better reason than the stickers on my car, or what I was wearing, or where I was going. I have seen people thrown to the ground, kicked, and beaten by police officers wearing no identification. I have been personally threatened by those officers when I demanded their identification. I have been searched and had my car searched based on an officer "smelling something funny" when I never carried pot on my person or in my vehicle in my entire life.

I will not pretend that my experiences as a hippie/Deadhead even come close to what Black and Hispanic Americans experience every day. I always had the option of removing the stickers from my car, changing my clothes, or not going to Dead or Phish shows. They don't have that option.

But to sit on your high horse and claim that these things don't happen? Or that when they do happen they're deserved because they were provoked? Or to claim that the people being harassed must have been breaking the law in the first place? Or that the media is blowing it out of proportion when they're actually not covering the truth at all? Yeah, you can fuck right off.

It. Happens. All. The. Time.

It's a fact of life for millions of Americans. Black, Hispanic, hippies, potheads, the homeless, the mentally ill, punks, goths, skaters, or anyone else who lives outside the mainstream. And I am sick and tired of people claiming that it doesn't. Or that there are "two sides." Or that I should somehow remain complacent and unbothered when journalists are being arrested and peaceful protesters are not allowed to congregate. (People whine all the time about the First Amendment, but when the chips are down and brown people are involved it's crickets...)

I'm angry about this. Flaming, red-hot angry. Angry enough that rationality has temporarily fled and I can't talk about it with friends for fear of pissing someone off to the point of no return. This is my lived experience, and the experience of millions. If it's not your lived experience you have NO RIGHT to deny that it happened, or that it is happening. None.