Dan Savage on Stephen Colbert

So i was recently watching this clip of the incredible Dan Savage on The Colbert Report. It's so fascinating because he talks about the institution of marriage and how monogamy isn't always necessary. Not that you cant be monogamous but that it's ok to have more open relationships. I think that he makes some really valid arguments, people are so hung up on this idea of monogamy that they forget that "till death do us part" is a long time. For some (not all) they might wanna experience different things that their partners may not. So without further adieu may I introduce Dan Savage...well and Stephen Colbert.

Check out the video HERE

Close Enough To Start a War, All That I have is On The Floor

Who am i?
Isnt that a loaded question? Who am I? Well…what can I say I am…for some reason my first thought was “lost.” Which leads to the sharing of my recent self discoveries. I know who i am, in fact i know myself better now than i have in the past. However, I believe that road to self discovery is till quite long and winding. I used to be someone who hated who I was and what I thought I represented. Insecurities plagued my mind, and left me searching for external means of validation. Now I feel as though I have a goal, I have a purpose and somehow I feel as though I’m closer to attaining my life's purpose.

Have you ever felt like something is so close within your grasp and somehow it's just too far to touch? That's how i currently feel, the problem is i have only the faintest idea what it is i'm reaching for. Maybe self acceptance? I was taking a walk the other night and looking up at the stars. It was so interesting to look and only see a select few. I began to wonder what it was about those stars that seemed strong enough penetrate through the atmosphere of our world? Even in a city cast so full of lights, these individual balls of candescence shine so strongly that a person can see them from any street, any rooftop, anywhere on earth. People look to them for guidance, people wish on them, when lost just look for the North Star and you'll find your way home.

Sometimes i look up and wonder what it takes to be that star. What do i need to do shine that brightly? How can I ensure my place in life? So many thoughts on my mind I find it difficult to focus on just one. I feel lost as of late. I feel as though my instincts are deceiving me, playing tricks on me and I'm so unsure as to what I should believe. On one hand i feel as though this soliloquy that ruminates daily through my mind is the only truth i should listen to, but are my personal thoughts truly that accurate? I feel like i know myself, i feel like i love myself and yet somehow a cloud of doubt still lingers within me.

I recently the target of this huge fight with several of my friends. All of which had incredibly negative things to say about me. They attacked me mercilessly and as each one shot a bullet of words i felt a piece of myself break into shards on the floor. Then they left me, and all i had were those tiny little morsels of my soul scattered around me like broken glass. For days i held on to those pieces, hoping somehow I could place them back together. I think that's when the greatest realization came. I don't have to. Maybe this was a sign that it's time to rebuild and weld new pieces, but i'm not a patient person however and i'm in a hurry to get on with life. It seems like those fragments of myself were so quick to shatter and fall and i just don't understand why it has to take so damn long to heal and grow and just move the hell on. I just wanna yell at these people. YOU broke me YOU attacked me, YOU made me feel like i had lost control over everything. Now I'M left to start over? How is that fair? Do you know how difficult it was for me to FINALLY love myself and in one fell swoop, you destroyed what was already so fragile. Even the most solid thoughts in my mind, even what i felt most confident about, they left cracks in. I hate them for it.....I hate myself for it. Sometimes i wonder why i'm so quick to move to self deprecating thoughts.

As a member of a collective that runs a sexual assault support line i was so solid, so sure in my beliefs that i was a good Support Worker and now...now i'm not so sure at all. One person was all it took...one person to tell me i'm not, for various reasons of her own and i soaked it all up. Such an integral part of my heart and i just watched as that crack seeped it's way through my heart and broke it.

Maybe i needed this. Maybe i needed to break so i could truly be whole. Maybe next time someone tries to break me i'll be able to stand up against the poison arrows. As Adele said: "Next time i'll be braver i'll be my own saviour, standing on my own two feet" How that song seems to ring so true to how I feel lately. Tomorrow is another day and as i place these new pieces where the old ones fell out i'll be sure to make them stronger, more durable. So one day i'll be able to believe that i'm someone special, that i'm worth fighting for. Even if i'm not all that sure right now. I know i will be. In the mean time there are people who love me as I am. Even as this crazy, insecure, unsure individual. But i'm ready to grow and though it'll take time, the foundation i build this time will be stronger

Cause there's a side to you that I never knew All the things you'd say, they were never true, And the games you's play, you would always win

So just for some perspective this letter is to someone i was involved with. I initially thought that we would end up in a relationship only to realize that they chose to go back to their previous partner.

I feel as though I have a ball in the pit of my stomach; one that seems to tighten at the thought of you. As it tightens it seems to spread, and never fails to reach my heart, this heart of mine so vulnerable and ready for the taking. Why do I do this to myself? Why must I leave this precious part of me so open to pain? While I use all my energy to heal others, who’s left to heal me? I pour my soul into the healing of another human being and yet when I looked to you for a little affection a little indication that maybe you can give me a piece of what I so long for, you leave me disappointed.

You who walks like you own those around you, as though you have something superior to them all, when in reality you are just as lost as I am. You think you can hide it behind those shadowed blue eyes that you excel at making look strong and empty. You think that it will keep you from experiencing pain? I think you hide behind a mask of anger to keep people from knowing just how alone you are. You express yourself through cryptic messages almost as though you’re begging people to see you, the real you. The thing is, they don’t and they never will. Not through these one lined messages you post on a social network people use to escape reality. Though for you that message is a small indication of what your reality looks like and yet not enough for people to really truly understand what lies beneath your façade.

Isn’t that interesting? I let people in too much and you don’t let them in at all. You don’t allow them to touch your soul for fear of pain and I allow everyone a piece of myself, which chips away each time someone comes in a little too deeply. Neither are any better than the other but both keep us from the happiness we deserve. Why do you allow yourself to remain so unhappy? Almost as though if you keep yourself in this state, so you can remain in control of yourself and your emotions. The thing is I know you’re attracted to me. I know that we have something good, but somehow you’re missing the big picture when you communicate your lack of desire for a relationship. I could rid you of that anger, I could rid you of that wall you build to protect yourself. But you chose to look the other way, you chose to move towards a what was already a once failed relationship all the while silently turning your back to me.

I hold no ill feelings towards you….or at least I try not to. I get it, it’s much easier to pick what ‘s been so familiar. It’s easier to look at a person who’s eyes you’ve stared into many times before. But what I cant get rid of is the feeling of “why not me” why could you not choose something new, something different? As I look deeper into those thoughts as I analyse the very origin of those thoughts, I begin to realize my heart feels empty, hollow, void of the affection I so long to feel


The difference is while you turn your back on what would be a leap of faith, while you continue to claim you have no faith, again a means of protecting yourself, mine grows by the moment. I know that along side my footprints in life are His, what do you have? That mask. I hope that mask keeps you warm at night, I hope that protective layer you put up in front of yourself protects you from whatever it I you fear.

Letter from a 40 something to a 20 something

I found this article...well more like an advice column the other day on a friend's facebook page.I've been struggling alot lately with myself and trying to find peace and tranquility in this soul of mine.Interestingly enough it feels as though i stumbled upon this at the right time. Sugar is an advice columnist and someone wrote in asking what advice she would give, now at approximately 40, to herself in her 20s. What came out of it was insightful and beautiful and uplifting. I felt like she was talking to me. All these doubts that have recently clouded my mind, it was like she heard them and answered every one of those little demons in my head. Without further adieu i introduce to you, Sugar.


Dear Sugar,

I read your column religiously. I’m 22. From what I can tell by your writing, you’re in your early 40s. My question is short and sweet: what would you tell your 20-something self if you could talk to her now?


Dear [Writer]
Stop worrying about whether you’re fat. You’re not fat. Or rather, you’re sometimes a little bit fat, but who gives a shit? There is nothing more boring and fruitless than a woman lamenting the fact that her stomach is round. Feed yourself. Literally. The sort of people worthy of your love will love you more for this, sweet pea.

In the middle of the night in the middle of your twenties when your best woman friend crawls naked into your bed, straddles you, and says, You should run away from me before I devour you, believe her.

You are not a terrible person for wanting to break up with someone you love. You don’t need a reason to leave. Wanting to leave is enough. Leaving doesn’t mean you’re incapable of real love or that you’ll never love anyone else again. It doesn’t mean you’re morally bankrupt or psychologically demented or a nymphomaniac. It means you wish to change the terms of one particular relationship. That’s all. Be brave enough to break your own heart.


Click here to purchase a Sugar Shirt.
When that really sweet but fucked up gay couple invites you over to their cool apartment to do ecstasy with them, say no.

There are some things you can’t understand yet. Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding. It’s good you’ve worked hard to resolve childhood issues while in your twenties, but understand that what you resolve will need to be resolved again. And again. You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness.

One evening you will be rolling around on the wooden floor of your apartment with a man who will tell you he doesn’t have a condom. You will smile in this spunky way that you think is hot and tell him to fuck you anyway. This will be a mistake for which you alone will pay.

Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don’t know what it is yet.

You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.

Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you’ll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you’ll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.

One hot afternoon during the era in which you’ve gotten yourself ridiculously tangled up with heroin you will be riding the bus and thinking what a worthless piece of crap you are when a little girl will get on the bus holding the strings of two purple balloons. She’ll offer you one of the balloons, but you won’t take it because you believe you no longer have a right to such tiny beautiful things. You’re wrong. You do.

Your assumptions about the lives of others are in direct relation to your naïve pomposity. Many people you believe to be rich are not rich. Many people you think have it easy worked hard for what they got. Many people who seem to be gliding right along have suffered and are suffering. Many people who appear to you to be old and stupidly saddled down with kids and cars and houses were once every bit as hip and pompous as you.

When you meet a man in the doorway of a Mexican restaurant who later kisses you while explaining that this kiss doesn’t “mean anything” because, much as he likes you, he is not interested in having a relationship with you or anyone right now, just laugh and kiss him back. Your daughter will have his sense of humor. Your son will have his eyes.

The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.

One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that she saved for months to buy, don’t look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you. Don’t hold it up and say it’s longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly even too warm. Your mother will be dead by spring. That coat will be the last gift she gave you. You will regret the small thing you didn’t say for the rest of your life.

Say thank you.

Yours,
Sugar

http://therumpus.net/2011/02/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-64/

Canada goes postal

A great piece from a friend of mine

Canadian politics piqued the interest again of the international community and gripped the nation by their mailbox. The debate in parliament that fixed time and set a new record for debate was over the issue of the mail.

It all began on the 2nd of June when the Postal Workers Union went on strike (CUPW) over negotiations over their contract and concerns regarding the health of their workers surrounding new machinery that has been introduced for sorting the mail. The Union launched a rotating strike that went around the country freezing paper communications in one city and then the next. This action lasted for twelve days to no avail.

Canada Post then took the step on the 14th of June to ‘Lock Out’ their workers once the strike hit its Toronto Office, the reason they claimed was that it was costing them millions of dollars. They were planning in a move that has been echoed across numerous public bodies in Canada and the West in an attempt to bring down costs, they suggested new employs begin at a lower pay grade than before but are able to work up to the same pay point as their colleagues. This claims the Union would have lead to a clear ‘two tiered’ system where two people doing the same job would get different pay.

Other mail companies such as Puralator were counting their lucky starts as soon as negotiations broke down between the two sides as neither one were willing to budge on principles. With increases in their deliveries reaching the triple digits as people desperate to pass on messages and packages had to turn to the private sector. The government however and its vast bureaucracy was left caught in the hell fire caused over the lock out.

On Monday the 20th six days later a Bill was introduced to Parliament, the get Canada Post back to work bill was immediately deplored by the new Opposition the New Democrat Party as draconian and an attack on the principles of fair bargaining with clauses covering final offer binding arbitration. They also opposed the fact that the Bill specifically outlined the wages for the workers, which was set to lower to than what Canada had offered the Union at the last negotiations. The Conservative government however retaliated claiming that the debacle was costing the economy between 9 million and 35 million a week and was particularly troublesome for those depending on government assistance.

What happened between the 23rd and now is monumental. As debate opened on Thursday the 23rd the parliamentary calendar was set to that work day, the NDP however were determined to call the Conservatives to account for perceived anti-labour overtures. The ensuing filibuster lasted over 3 days and two nights. The epic 56 hour debating session broke the previous record set in the 80’s and the true hero of it all must truly have been Elizabeth May, the only and also the leader of the Green Party she represented a caucus of one and remained at the debate for at least 30 hours only leaving for brief breaks. The two entrenched oppositions parties battled it out, at one point with the NDP tabling a ‘hoist’ motioned which would have pushed the issue back six months. The Liberals and Conservatives however shot it down. Eventually the Conservative majority steam rolled the Bill through and at 8pm on Saturday it was passed through the lower house. It will be going to Senate on Sunday morning and is expected to face no real opposition there. It looks set that the now unedited Bill will be ordering the 46 thousand postal workers back to work by the middle of next week.

A real record has been set this week, as the Parliament calendar passes onto the next work day confused to discover its now Sunday, the crunch on postal workers to clear the back log by Canada Day will be a gruelling task and probably highly opposed to the now further disgruntled Union. The Conservatives have flexed their muscles to get this Bill through, but there has been little doubt at all that the 56 hour filibuster is just the beginning of the fight that going to be put up by the novice Official Opposition Party.

I am what i am, and what i am needs no excuses! Life's not worth a damn till you can shout out I AM WHAT I AM! :)

Admittedly i wont take credit where credit should not be taken but i would like to take some time to discuss the dichotomy in gender. My friend Luke, recently posted something on facebook in relation to this topic and it inspired me to do the same. Have you ever had to fill out a form for maybe a passport, or even a credit card application. Several times in all of our lives we'll be placed in a position where we must check off one of those boxes. What do you check off when you dont feel like those two are not enough? What if neither of those choices fit within the space you've defined as "you"? Is there such thing as an inbetween when it comes to gender?

I've been doing alot of work lately with the GLBTQ community and i guess i wanted to take a moment to share what i've learned to be one of the most facinating topics i've ever had the pleasure of being introduced to me. Can you imagine looking at yourself in the mirror and knowing that God...or science or ...whatever...somehow placed you in the wrong body? Can you imagine looking at breasts and a vagina, or seeing a penis and knowing that through some fluke of faith you ended up with the wrong body parts?

Let's break this down into perspectives. First of all, you are born as one of two things...maybe three. Boy, Girl, Inter sex (aka hermaphrodite.) My blog in itself describes a world in shades of grey recognizing that we live in a world where things are rarely dichotimous, yet how do describe gender? in two boxes "Male" and "Female" yet there are such a vast number of individual who absolutely do not fit into the conforimities of those two choices. There are several people who choose to ID as androgynous, meaning they have no preference one way or the other and choose not to conform to one side of the coin.

But why are we as a society so ultimately obsessed with prescribing to these gender binaries? From childhood girls are given a set of toys to play with. Usually they're pink or purple or any other colour we assume to be considered "feminine". When a child is born the very first thing they announce is the sex of the child. But have you ever encountered someone who doesn't feel as though they fit within the body given to them? How do you act then? What do you say?

For me the answer seems fairly obvious. You accept that person as they are. You can definitely find alot of pride associated wit the Trans community. One of the people i respect the most is a Trans womyn, and she's absolutely beautiful. She's a huge activist in the community and has alot to say. She's so full of light and education and I have learned so much from her. But it hurts that every time i introduce her to someone new, as soon as we turn around they ask me...."Was that a man?". Who the hell cares? She was born a male, but to me she has always been a womyn. No more no less than someone born that way.

I think one of the ways i live my life every day is to be more accepting of people. I think that's part of what makes me who i am. I have this great ability to love and find the beauty in everyone. Even if they cant find it in themselves. I guess the one thing i'm trying to get at in this post. I t doesn't matter what you look like, it doesn't matter what norms society has taught you. Live your life exactly as you please and the inner happiness you find within yourself will be contagious to those around you.

close your eyes make a wish...

So i've started about 5 or 6 blog postings and have never bothered posting them. I'm never satisfied with y quality of writing. But i figure there's no point in having a blog if i'm not going to use it. Just to give a brief update of my life currently. I am involved in several on campus activities and loving every minute of it. So my expectations of what this blog may develop into are talks about what is currently on my mind. For example, i've been involved with the Coalition for a Carleton Sexual Assault Centre this past year and have struggled and rejoiced as we have fought for a centre. I advocate every day to end gender-based violence and i think i would like to make this blog something that surrounds those activities. I'm also very involved in the GLBTQ community and watch friends of mine enjoy every minute of being gay. I myself dont identify as GLBT maybe Q Queer is a nice encompassing word and as someone who doesnt quite feel like i'm "straight" i think the Q would fit nicely within the spectrum of my identity.

I feel like my life is changing. While certain parts of my myself have remained stagnant while there are other parts just itching to come forward, so i'm itching to share that with the world. So stay tuned and hopefully you can watch as i develop the blog, and myself along with it.