The second wave of feral has begun. My perfect lunch was too sour. I may have bitten off a tad more than I can chew even on just Day 3 of my "see what you can do about the arts & culture funding landscape in the UK" self-care challenge. I'm already intimidated by the complexity. But fuck it, I'll keep going.
If I have stuff to say, I'll probably write it on my other blog, the Good, Form & Spectacle work diary. I may or may not link from here. It's really such an energetic moment in history, and we're in it. Maybe it felt like this in 1968. This double-whammy is like some kind of planetary alignment. If it was only a pandemic, we would have tried to refill the container the same way we've always done it, probably. But now, with Black Lives Matter in our air, lots and lots and lots of us are considering what's possible in a different way.
I'm sure all the best philosophers/bullshitters have had their feral moments. I mean, look at the 70s.
This is a trailer for a 1970 movie called L'Enfant sauvage made by François Truffaut, who studied the idea of feral-ness and outcasts in his work.
This entry is wild. I'm sitting by the back door, I've been watching the new series called Mrs America about how the Equal Rights Act was resisted all the way by a conservative woman and her team as the entire country rallied around Friedan, Steinem, Chisholm and others who were leading the charge. I wonder who those people will be in these new opportunities for new visions and reconstructions of how society can be if it is able to identify and dismantle the systems we know are there and are now looking at and studying. Apparently, yesterday it was US Supreme Fucking Court that voted to allow employers who oppose birth control for religious reasons to deny employees health insurance to cover those costs. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT? THAT'S NOT A THING. I can't imagine controlling my employee's life like that. IT'S NOT A THING. And then today they say that actually, no, Trump has to hand over his finances (after Trump sued for the right to "enjoy" his privilege not to). But apparently that still isn't enough. Not even the Supreme Court can make this happen, and especially not before the election. It's like he's got something to hide.
One of the things I found confusing when studying feminist scholarship at Uni was how many different factions there were and are, and how I think that made it difficult to attach to, because no one stance was without fault. That will be a challenge, I think, but I love how younger people are so much more calm and generous about intersectionality than I've ever been (although now aspire to be!). It's the way forward.
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| WHY BE RACIST, SEXIST, HOMOPHOBIC, OR TRANSPHOBIC WHEN YOU COULD BE QUIET? |
There are so many parallels for me about what happened with feminism in the 70s and what I hope can happen now. Perhaps it will be even deeper affect if enough of us are staring at the status quo and building answers to the questions we know are there, and being able to make the space and time to go wide on what's possible as we redesign it.
It took about six years to get to this, for example:
I've said it before, but this is the time of day I get most bored. I wonder if I'll ever edit these entries. I sometimes do quickly at time of posting, but don't after that. I suspect I'll look back on some of them and say WHAT?