Mind you, I realize that I spent a good portion of the class sick as a dog and that has colored my perception, but I doubt it would to this extent. I think I just don’t like it. It feels like sacrilege to say that but it seems that, no matter how much I love to read and how much I want to write, and write well, I have little interest in studying what others have done. This is sad – yet, it’s also good to know. It just means that I need to readjust my planning a bit, I think. All in all, it’s better I found this out now before I committed myself to a course of study that would have made me miserable.

I’ve had other surprises in these courses. For instance, I loved environmental science, when I didn’t think I had any interest in that at all. Nine weeks was just enough to skim along the surface, though, and if I want to have a grounding of any depth in the topic I’ll have to do it on my own. Which is what I am going to have to do for all my classes anyway, as I’ve decided that once this is over and I get my associates degree, I am done with formal education. Mostly because of debt. I am in more debt now than I’ve ever been in my life; before, I was too poor to accrue all that much debt. If I was younger it wouldn’t matter so much, but I am over 50 and people my age with far more qualifications are having trouble getting good paying work. And I don’t want to work, work, work at something I really don’t want to do just to pay off student loans. So, time for Plan B (which really should have been Plan A, and would have been had I more trust in my instincts and capabilities) – Internet U.

I believe MIT started it, with their OpenCourseware project, but many other universities are following in their footsteps and putting full classes, lecture notes (and the lectures themselves) online, open and free to anyone. Getting all the books might be a bit of a problem but I am hoping the library can help out there. If not, one can usually find cheap, used textbooks online, so there is that.

In addition to the more static method of learning, though, for just about every topic and discipline under the sun, there is are bloggers who are passionate about the subject and who expand the horizons, so to speak. So I can get the regular instruction from the courses, and then the addition of various views and perspectives from bloggers and such. Reading the various feminist sites has made me aware of the need for that, considering how many white feminists who have been through apparently some of the best Woman Studies programs, but whose education was very much incomplete.

Anyway, this means I have a need to entirely refocus my life – or, at least a want to – and take myself seriously and stop dithering around.

The ‘womyn born womyn’ policy has been a contentious issue for decades between some elements the trans community and the feminists who created and sponsor the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival.

The 35th anniversary edition of Michfest will be taking place August 3-8 in Hart, MI.

This is an open letter by Annie Danger to her feminist friends who claim they support transwomen but then surreptitiously bounce to the 650 wooded site.

The letter is very long and I’m not going to reproduce it here – definitely read the whole thing at TransGriot’s place. Here are parts, though:

To note: I do not want to start a fight. I am making a request for greater engagement with the curious politics of coalition building and alliance. I understand this is a complex-feeling issue with a lot of history. This may be a call out, but it is with a revolutionary ethic of love that I send it. In this ethic, I do my best to drive my activism and my life with a difficult and powerful combination of respect, recognition, honest and open communication, affection, commitment, and trust for all people in this world. Especially my allies.

This letter comes from trying to put my years of resent through this filter of loving: I feel hurt and I am writing because want to trust that you have my back as a transwoman. I am having a hard time separating your attendance of MWMF and your silence with me about this issue from your level of respect for me; for my body. I don’t want to feel this way and I am willing to do the work to let go of a decade of resent, but I need your help. Will you help me?

I’d heard of MichFest - in a casual, something-something-somewhere type of way and never really paid attention to it because it didn’t seem like something I’d be interested in.  So, unlike many (I guess), I have – or had - no emotional attachment or investment in it, no feelings one way or the other about it, though I understood those who did. It is unfortunate that knowledge of the festival – and its relationship with transwomen - entered my full consciousness at the same time as I became aware of the violent anti-trans rhetoric directed towards transwomen by some radical feminists, some of whom also promoted this festival and its policy of exclusion.

I’ll tell you, I was shocked. Not that transfolk were discriminated against, or were victims of physical and rhetorical violence. But that there were feminists who participated in this (the rhetoric if not the physical attacks, at least.)  My ignorance of this particular source of bigotry was a function of my cis privilege – it was not a necessity for me to know all the dangers and threats surrounding transfolk, so I was okay with just knowing a few of them and thinking myself an ally. And when I did become aware, I was so shocked and unprepared with any sort of immediate defense that my mind-files initially just sort of slotted transfolk under the “poc” label – because much of the discriminatory language sounded so, so familiar, same words and everything. And *that* I knew how to deal with.

This, too, is familiar:

So I disengaged. I became silent. There are a lot more pressing issues, in general or specifically about trans-inlcusion and the safety of transwomen, than trying to get a bunch of terrified separatists to let me pay them to camp in their woods and attend their party. And when more and more friends kept going, and when you proceeded for years to forget that it is an issue for me—to chat all about it like it was just someplace I didn’t happen to go; to tell me you wished you could get me there and never go much further than that; to discuss my absence while at the festival but not much of why—I proceeded to turn my back in small ways on you, too. Just the tiniest, most pernicious ways: silent distrusts, people held so close, but at arm’s length when it comes to recognizing and caring for my life, my struggle as a transwoman, or my body.

I think, from something else Ms. Danger says, that things are changing incrementally with MichFest and that, perhaps, barriers are being broken down. I would not attend, even if I was into stuff like this, because I’m more of a “none of us without all of us” type person – but for those who do, and who are attempting to break down walls of discrimination from within, I think Annie Danger’s last paragraph says it well:

Please do things while you’re there that show me that you really respect my body. My life. My womanhood. Please let me know about them. Please be willing to push harder. Please show me I can trust you to have my back. Please, if you’re willing: stand up, step it up, and be a louder ally. I do not want more antagonism: I am not asking you to hate MWMF. I am asking you to love me as much as you love this festival. I am asking you to love us both. Loudly.

This morning, though, while I was concentrating on work – any work – to avoid major irritants in my life, ideas began to stroll through my mind, so far politely refraining from the mad, tumbled rush that is their normal behavior. Nothing earth shattering – thank the gods or geniuses or whatever – but at least something I can – just maybe – build on.

By writing about it here I thought I’d just go ahead and embrace the jinx – because “no, no, you’ll jinx it!” is the thought that ran through my head at the thought of saying/writing anything out loud about it. Not writing about it hasn’t helped much, and besides – if I can have stranger black cats – different ones -  hanging out on my patio no matter where I live, and think of Friday the 13th as my lucky day, I might as well embrace the jinx, too. 

No writing genius/muse has made an appearance, though, so actually crafting posts about the idea that make sense, instead of just galuph along like this one does, will have to wait till another time – though I will say that the first thing I know I need to do is change the name of the site from Human Beams.

[Image: By  Energie in Motion via BLDG BLOG].

I’m not sure that worked out too well, because I have little to show for it but a pile of disconnected thoughts and no finished product. I’m thinking this breeze doesn’t always swoop down and bestow great illuminations that flow effortlessly from your fingers as we act as stenographers to the dawn.

But could that maybe be a good thing?

I like to just dash off stuff as it comes to me because little I write seems important enough to labor over, formulating my thoughts and figuring out where to place each word and all that. Also, I tend not to finish things that I start, if I don’t finish them right away. The bane of my writing life, that.

I think now, though, that that may have more to do with that same lack of belief in the importance (to anyone but me) of what I am saying than lack of discipline (though there is that) or anything else. So, I started asking myself questions. Like…

How we as writers decide that some topic that just drops into our minds is worth following up on, spending time on, perfecting? It’s just possible, is it not, that most everything could be made relevant or at least worth the time, if time is spent on it to make it so? Perhaps no earth shattering revelations (I’m fairly sure those  are few and far between) but maybe slipping a dollop of unique perspective into the deluge of information and other unique perspectives that rush by daily. Who knows who will find value in it, but if we don’t ourselves value it – enough to take the time, to scrutinize each word and attempt to pull out what meaning we can from the tendril of thought – how will we ever find out?

If I think of it that way, I might just be able to go back and finish – slowly and carefully, maybe. or maybe not – some of the things I have waiting in the queue. Sure, a lot of it may be pretty crappy at first, even the final product, even with attention paid. But without that, without at least the attempt, there is nothing at all, which does not seem to me to be better (though it may seem so to others, ha). Still, it’s worth doing, even if only for the experience of doing it, of learning how to jettison the junk and keep the rest. 

I guess when you think about it, one of the primary differences between mediocre writers and good or great ones, beyond talent and study and lots of practice and work, is that the good(+) writers are also much better de-crapifiers.

[photo by Ibarionex Perello, via here]

I have, right now, a 4.0 average and I don’t see that changing much as time goes on. Well, until I hit algebra, that is, maybe.

The work is pretty easy as this is the first block of classes and because many of the students have been out of a classroom environment for a lot of years, they seem to try and ease everyone in at first. I have been assured that the classes get progressively more challenging as time goes on. That’s good, as I like to stretch a bit and compete against myself to obtain the grades.

One immediate advantage, though, is that there is quite a bit of writing. In fact, as it’s an online university, it’s ALL writing. That’s what I wanted and that’s what I got.

I’m actually in University of Phoenix’s junior college, Axia, and I think once I get my associates degree, there I will end with them, as they don’t do english degrees. Not surprising as the school is mainly geared toward business and such. I will either transfer to somewhere else or, as the paper itself does not mean all that much to me, will go through some of the many open course writing/english courses online.

In fact, I plan on starting on those as soon as I get a computer. Even if I do decide to go on I don’t have the patience to wait two years to get to the stuff I really want to do.

Anyway, overall I am pleased. They have a few tools that are helpful in cleaning up your writing (one of which has previously told me that unless I am fitting someone for farm clothing, it’s better to use a different word than “overall”, but, oh well). And an excellent research library, which former students have free access to for life, so that’s a plus.

I’m pretty happy with things an am glad I did sign up. Even if it doesn’t all turn out like I want, even taking that step and changing the course of my life a little, opening up new vistas and sort of being a renewing force has already made it worthwhile.

Even so, I believe I have come to a point where one path calls me above all others (at least at this time) and that is the one I will follow with a spring in my step.

I will think on it more for the next few days, till I can fully communicate – then I think it will be time to move forward and not look back. Much.