The Taryntory

You Can’t Go Back

This is an old essay I wrote on my old blog from seven years ago, with a few small changes. I feel like there’s a need for me to repost this here today, so here we go. I’ve done a little editing to make it fit the Taryntory. America has a thing about placing children apart as a separate population. Disney epitomizes this parallel…

Nothing terribly profound to say here. I was talking with a friend and we were just wondering why there is so much inaccessible theory that we discuss, when the central theory is shared and we can get to work on that immediately. It’s easy to stay in our world of theoretical jargon, when it doesn’t address the social concerns of the people directly. We need to maintain focus on the present, and…

Imperialist holidays are always tiring. I’ve been mostly holed up today, trying to pickle beets, but there have been a parade of white people on the left desperate to keep white rights against us, the people of color. And then that divisive energy goes right through us, and we fall straight into the trap. I’ve been really proud of the organizing work that I’ve been doing, but there’s a lot of…

A day after the capitalists resumed gaslighting the world on the shitstorm they continue to exacerbate at Standing Rock, I’m here. I’m really tired. In a week, I’ll turn 37. I’ve already been worn out from the first 13 days of the Trump regime, and they’ve only just begun to organize the demise of people like me. I spend my time worrying and being scared that the large amount that I already…

I’ll keep this one short. They’re spraying water, firing concussion grenades and rubber bullets, and tear gassing protestors stuck on a bridge in below-freezing weather. Before you say “they deserve it,” it would actually be less cruel to fire live rounds. They shouldn’t, though, obviously. Standing Rock is where it’s starting, and it’s starting, endorsed by the Obama administration. But let’s…

I am doing five things in this regime. I am participating in a super-corporate day job, I am on the board of a social justice & arts nonprofit, I am figuring out how to turn my pickle-making hobby into a business, I am somehow maintaining this blog (wtf), and I am beginning a radical organization, which is mostly secret right now. It is an overwhelmingly taxing life I live, though the…

We talk about how the election has emboldened bigots. It’s true, white nationalists and homophobes are out in greater numbers and are doing crueler things, especially to our young people. But with the presage of macroaggressions comes also the parade of microaggressions. I’ve seen white activists be condescending to other activists because POC and queer views are contrary to the white libertarian…

The honeymoon’s over; got my first reverse racism accusation since Trump’s election today. Got something that felt like a heterophobia accusation yesterday. It’s like the election has heightened the white women around me to really clamp up and keep us dirty POC out of their business, when we’re not even in their business in the first place. To be a successful comrade to me, you’re gonna have to…

Could we talk about white women again a little more? I made a remark to a friend that single white women become much more close-minded as a whole after age 30. That they are much more willing to perform racist acts and restrict fellow women (especially queer women of color) from living their lives without white supremacist interference. There was a recent article I came across that women’s value…

Yesterday, I hung out with another API person and we hashed out a lot of the differences between Europeans, API culture, Africans, and Natives. It is hard to organize when everyone tells you what to do and no one wants to listen to you because you don’t (and won’t) have enough cred for the radical scene. Aside from the organization which was borne to counter this premise, this isolation inspired…

I swore to God I would stop being an activist. I’m tired of answering to ignorant white people and trying to get them to understand that my perspective is more relevant. I’m tired of getting white people to understand that Asian privilege is a goddamned myth. I’m tired of being told by brown and black people that we’re white, as if it’s only color and white and we’re somehow white. I’m tired of…

I’m not going to share my comrades’ wonderful calls to organizing, because complicated emotions. HOWEVER. Get your asses organized. Every. Single. One. Of. You. The racists, the misogynists, the xenophobes, the transphobes, the homophobes, the cissexists, the binary sexists, the hatemongers, the fascists–they all won cuz they organized better than we did.

53% of white women – Check out my blog for more information, but basically the endgame of White Feminism is assimilation and acceptance into the capitalist regime. What this tells me isn’t that white feminism lost–it tells me that white feminism won. Won big. It won the right to decide an election. Sure, we can and should get pissed at rape culture, at misogyny, at the wage gap, at patriarchy, at…

A slightly embellished version of a conversation I had with a coworker yesterday: Her: How was today? Me: Uggggghhh Her: Well, tomorrow is another day. Me: Yeah, one of, what, 1533? Her: Oh. Yeah.

I’m gonna start a new series of posts, one for every day that we live under the foot of a specific regime. Currently it’s Trump’s; maybe tomorrow it’s Pence’s; and the day after that it could be Michelle Obama’s (hint: she’s probably not your savior). I am going to make today’s post about a conversation I had yesterday. I was asked why I wanted to take my lessons from the Toronto Queer Scene…

So, last night I bonded with one of the fellow queers at my day job, her partner, and a fellow leftist from work. We talked a lot about how crushing the heteronormative patriarchy is pressed down upon us, but it was really powerful how sharing our stories and feeling safe with each other made us feel more connected and less alone. My day job has an effect of isolating people because of the…

I started this series on Facebook and I’ll port the first few over onto this site when I’m less lazy. The countdown series is a daily blog series–of normal blog size, which is unheard of for me–detailing life in a particular regime. There are 1,529 (single term) or 2,990 (two terms) days remaining in the Trump Regime, assuming a lack of resignation, ouster, or revolution. The next regime might be…