We're Gonna Need More Tequila

I'm shaking. I'm actually shaking.

This feels like a bad dream.

Listen. We all know (or you should know by now) that I am a crazy liberal feminist. Of course HRC had my vote. I had a feeling of dread all day yesterday that maybe, somehow, fear would win.

What do I mean by that?

Well, Trump ran on a platform of fear: fear of what would happen if Hillary won the presidency; fear of immigrants coming into our country and taking our jobs; fear of a loss of religious (read: Christian) freedom; fear that somehow our country has stopped being "great." And it worked.

People are afraid. I was not. But I am now.

I don't think people fully understand WHY we 'liberals' are so upset. This is not whining. This is not "boo hoo our candidate didn't win." This is actual, abject terror that we are experiencing for ourselves and our loved ones.

I'm terrified for the rights of my LGBT+ friends, and myself in that category. I'm a queer woman; what happens if, three years from now, I fall in love with and want to marry a woman? Not happening. It's also not exactly in my plan and I'm very happy with my boyfriend, but still, just thinking this made me burst into tears and fall on my kitchen floor crying this evening. I cried for my queer and gay friends who are married or in serious relationships, who now may have their marriages repealed or won't be able to marry while Trump is in office. I cried for my Trans friends who will have their genitals watched and regulated and told where they can go to the bathroom based on part of their anatomy.

I'm terrified for my friends who can possibly get pregnant. Birth control access is going to be severely restricted, and I can guarantee they will at least attempt (probably successfully) to outlaw abortion entirely. The right to reproductive choice and freedom is damn important to me, and they want to get rid of it. One of my lesbian friends even said today she's going to buy some Plan B in case she is raped because who knows if they'll still have Plan B on the shelves in a few months? That whole idea is fucked up on many levels, but I totally don't blame her and might buy some myself, just in case.

And they're definitely going to defund Planned Parenthood, which is a medical necessity for so many women and men and children in this country. I went to Planned Parenthood all throughout college. They helped refer me when I found a lump in my breast; they tested me after I was sexually assaulted; they were my regular gynecological provider for a good eight years. I've never had an abortion, in large part due to the fact that I could freely access birth control and could get in to a doctor who would answer all my questions honestly. You can kiss that goodbye.

I'm terrified at the likely repealing of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, leaving millions without health insurance. Those women who go to Planned Parenthood and now can't go there and also can't afford insurance? Their lives will literally be in jeopardy because of this. In fact, tons of women now are deciding to just make a gigantic decision to get IUDs while they can, because they're that afraid of what might happen in a few short months.

What happens to my Trans friends if they can't get the medicine or surgery they require just to be alive and living their authentic selves? What about their basic need to just survive as themselves? How the fuck can we take that away?

I was sexually assaulted shortly before I moved to California, and not by a stranger. Because of volunteering and acting in The Vagina Monologues so many times, I know that most of my friends have also been assaulted or raped. To have a President Elect who has not only bragged about grabbing women by the pussy because he can, but who has had multiple rape and sexual abuse allegations launched against him makes me physically ill. We are legitimately protecting and keeping rape culture alive by saying it's okay to elect this man as president. Imagine if Obama or Bush had had that many claims launched against them; would they still have won? No fucking way.

I have non-Caucasian, non-American-citizen friends. I have non-Christian friends. Trump and his supporters have made it abundantly clear how they feel about immigrants (both legal and illegal), and non-Christians, specifically Muslims, and having them all deported because...they're afraid. Build a wall because every Mexican is bad and came here illegally, right?

There is so much more to unpack here. The Republicans now control the House, the Senate, and the White House. Hillary won the popular vote, and I don't believe that half the country is actually as xenophobic, sexist, racist, etc. as Trump and his platform. But the fact remains that, in spite of all those shortcomings and the fact he was endorsed by the fucking KKK, half the country DID elect him. That is terrifying.

We are not whining. We are not bitter. We are angry and afraid. We are afraid that the rights of us and our loved ones, basic human rights (to marry, whether or not to have children, access to medical care, just not being shot for the color of their skin) will be repealed in the next six months, because that's what Trump promised.

I sincerely do not believe that half the country agrees with all these things, but I know a lot do, even partially. I know a lot just wanted to shake up the system, and on a basic level, I understand that. I'm not coming (entirely) from a place of anger, even though I am actually angry that we as a country have sunk to this level, and I know a lot of people on both sides of the aisle who share this anger.

I'm disappointed. I'm heartbroken. I'm worried. I'm livid. But mostly, I am seriously terrified.

I'm lucky because I now have a big girl job and health insurance, but I didn't when I first moved out here, and a lot of people still don't, or only have insurance because of the ACA. We are dooming millions of people because of this.

Yesterday the DOW was lower than it was on 9/11, because the entire world freaked out at the possibility of a Trump presidency, which could spell an epic economic collapse in the next few months, and that alone should make you afraid. (It has since recovered, but that still does not bode well for the future.)

I've never been afraid of people just because they're different than me, so I don't understand the fear that Trump promoted. To me, it just never made sense. Why fear the differences; why not celebrate and accept and be equal? We're all human beings. But that's not the path we have been on for a while, and the divisions in our country have been apparent and growing for years now. Yet this still hurts. It's still horrifying for us who never believed this could actually happen, not now when we have progressed so far.

Because I am white and pass for heterosexual to the average person, I am incredibly privileged, and I know that. I am lucky as fuck, but I am scared for all the people I know who are not this lucky. I have very few straight white male friends, so most of the people I know fall into these 'Other' categories that Trump has deemed "bad hombres" or "nasty women." And this is just the tip of the Trump iceberg we, the American Titanic, have struck upon.

So what do we do? I know a lot of people right now are grieving and processing and trying to just understand what the fuck happened. Take a day or two, let this sink in. It is a lot to absorb and understand; it's more than just "Hooray Trump won!" or "Fuck, Trump won!" We obviously need an overhaul of our political systems and voting processes because they failed us all, on multiple levels, many times in the past year and a half.

And after we have processed, we rise. We get queerer, louder, more obnoxious. We continue to educate ourselves and others as much as humanly possible. We let people know we aren't going to just let Trump and Pence and the rest of the Republicans strip away our rights. We fight, not with violence, but with love. It's like Voldemort and the Death Eaters vs. The Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore's Army: we have to use what we are good at and what we have on our side, which isn't fear. You can't fight a fire with fire. We have to rise and continue to rise above it, as fucking hard as that is, to show our love and our strength and keep on that high road. Even if we lose, we can say we didn't just accept it. We got weirder, we became more loving, we protested and tried like hell. We can't hide or sit placidly by. We need a revolution AND a revelation. We need action.

But if, after all this, you still think Trump was the right decision, please talk to me in a year. If, at that point, you STILL STILL think Trump was the right decision, you can fuck a duck and die. (I told you I am angry.)


Sidenote:

For all my nerdy David Foster Wallace fans: we are officially living in Infinite Jest. President Johnny Gentle, Famous Crooner = President Donald Trump, Famous Asshole. Pretty soon time will be subsidized (Year of the Trump Steak; Year of Trump College That Uses The Best Words, Only The Best Words; Year of the Trump Hotel Greatest Happy Hour), and the Great Concavity/Convexity is pretty much already full of human waste so we can just pack it in with real garbage too, and ONAN will form and we can continue our quest for Entertainment w/o/r/t actual facts or knowledge. Who wants to form a wheelchair gang; or, more likely, wants to join my pack of roving Militant Grammarians?

On Tinder, Feminism, & Female Sexual Agency

Warning: if you are a friend or family member who doesn't want to know specific details of my life and beliefs, mostly of a sexual nature (even though I'm a grown-ass 27 year-old woman), you don't want to read this post. There. I warned you.


I've threatened to write a feminist rant multiple times on this here ol' blog, and the time has finally arrived. I knew it was the right time when I attempted to take a nap today and my brain wouldn't shut up. Yes, that's right, I couldn't nap. I had a perfect opportunity to do so, and it didn't happen. That was my sign.

Quick note: the man mentioned in my previous post didn't last much longer. At first I was upset; but I've learned that much better things were in store for me. I'm now part of a much more fulfilling "thingy," if you will, that's also more complex but not to be discussed today. My apologies. (I'm actually not sorry.)

Now, since I joined Tinder, I've had many people tell me that the subsequent bad dates I've experienced and encountered on the blog are somehow my own fault. "Well, you ARE using TINDER, what do you EXPECT?" First of all, the people saying this to me are not single, and have not been in some time. They're also all older than me by 5+ years, generally speaking. To you I say: you have no idea how to date in the modern world. No offense. But in the past few years, dating has turned from meeting through friends or meeting at a bar to meeting online or on an app (see: Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, Grindr, Match.com, OKCupid, Farmers Only, Jewish Mingle, Christian Mingle, to name the ones off the top of my head). Yes, of course people still meet via their friends/relatives/bumping into each other in a coffee shop, spilling scalding coffee on their genitals, then glancing up and falling deeply in lust with the person who caused them to have third-degree burns on their junk. Happens all the time, I'm sure. It's just incredibly hard to meet people when you move across the country and know only your aunt, uncle, and young cousin. In the past year plus, certainly, I've met and made friends without the use of Tinder or OKCupid. But I have made friends using Tinder. 

Secondly, as shown in multiple examples on this blog, Tinder is not the cause of these bad dates. My early blog posts on this site are all about NON-Tinder dates! Like the man who told me I remind him of his dead ex-girlfriend. That was just a guy at a bar. It's not the medium, it's the people who use it. Any form of dating is going to contain a lot of creeps; that's half of what Sex and the City was about! And Carrie Bradshaw & co. sure as fuck weren't using Tinder, and they had a lot of horrible dates/boyfriends/one-night-stands. BUT. Not every man on Tinder is a creep. Not every woman on Tinder is a whore; we'll talk more about this in a minute.

Thirdly, and related to SATC, people lament the demise of dating and the rise of hook-up culture (you can look up countless articles on Google) because of apps like Tinder, which I call bullshit on. Hook-up culture has been a thing forever; it has just evolved with technology, just like every other facet of our lives. And hook-up culture and the demise of dating is related, in a lot of ways, to a fear of female sexual agency. One of my friends recently said I'm going through a "Samantha Jones" period, aka the super slutty character on SATC. And she might be right about that, and I don't view that as a bad thing. Neither did she; she admitted Samantha is her favorite character from TV ever.

Samantha was lauded and also dismissed, even by her friends, for her give-no-fucks attitude towards sex. Our society as a whole, though, is totally terrified by a woman having her own sexual agency. This morning I read a piece on Vice about a woman who stopped giving blowjobs and having penetrative sex after her experiences with casual sex stopped being fulfilling. (Her sentence about her casual sex period starting in San Francisco is just spot-on.) The comments, though, are the horrifying parts to me. The fact that she mentions how many men have told her she's a "dumb cunt" for having an opinion about it/refusing to do something in her own casual sex life which none of them will EVER experience just proves how many men are afraid of a woman claiming her sexual power. And there's way too many examples for me to list on this here ol' blog about women treating women poorly for owning their sexualities. Basically, a woman engaging in casual sex of her own choosing is a whore/slut/floozy/ho; a man engaging in casual sex of his own choosing is a man. And that's some serious bullshit. A woman's value is NOT, repeat, NOT based on the number of sexual partners she has had. A woman who has had one partner in her life is no better or worse than a woman who has had 1,000 partners. Seriously. Why the fuck does this still need to be said? Oh right, because of patriarchy ruling our lives and telling us what to do and how to do it (double entendre intended).

(That moment in Closer when Natalie Portman calls herself a floozy for saying "Hello stranger" to Jude Law aka one of my favorite things that has ever happened.)

Which brings me back to Tinder, my own feminism, and sexual identity. Look. I get it. Tinder is not a place to necessarily meet the person I want to spend the rest of my life with. Yet there are people who have met and are now seriously dating, because of Tinder. And who gets to say why I'm on Tinder except for me? Why the fuck should the reason I'm on the site even matter? I'm on it. I'm meeting people. That's it. You are free to judge me and think I'm a floozy; I'm allowed to think you're a judgmental asshat in turn. Am I meeting people just to fuck? No. But if I were, it shouldn't matter. I am allowed to engage in safe, healthy sexual activity of my choosing because I am, again, 27, single, and relatively attractive. I am trying to build a life for myself out here in California. I have a day job in the tech industry that's going well; I have a side job at a winery that I love; and I'm freelance proofreading. I'm looking to move up to San Francisco area because I've fallen in love with the city. Hard. I'm more interested in working on myself than starting a serious relationship. Besides, if I were to try that right now, I know in my heart it would fail miserably. But does that mean I shouldn't casually date a person/few people/however many people I fucking want to? Don't forget, I was in two back-to-back serious relationships for nearly 8 consecutive years; those "promiscuous discover yourself" days of college never happened for me. And for some people, they never happen. That's totally alright! But for myself, personally, this is what feels right, for right now. I can only go with my gut. My feelings are kind of summed up accurately in this Ani DiFranco song:

This post has turned rambling, and isn't quite the perfect, polished piece I was hoping for. But I'm fine with that. Maybe I'll write a follow-up if these points aren't clear. For now, though, what I have to say to people who judge me for my life choices:

UPDATED TO ADD: How did I forget to put in this video from my new favorite person, Matt Bellassai, ranting about online dating? Pure gold.