No, I’m not really sure why they just gave up all our rights so callously. But I’m angry enough about it that I’m willing to join an an organized protest. So I’m staying off of Twitter for one day as part of #Twitterblackout. It won’t change anything, and I’m sure Twitter is seeing no appreciable dip in the flow of scheduled tweets from people hucking their wares, as well as the assortment of people who didn’t get the memo that Twitter has embraced censorship on the grounds that “We have to follow the rules.”

Twitter did this right after a protest was organized to blackout web sites all over the world in protest of SOPA and PIPA. (You may recall, my sites were all blacked out that day.) The folks at Twitter think that in spite of all these protests for free speech, what’s in their best corporate interests is to comply with any take down order from ANY government authority. Trial? No, not needed. Twitter will voluntarily silence dissidents as a fucking courtesy to the evil dictators. Hey, just a side effect of doing business in a global society. Sure, it means embracing censorship wherever a government justifies it, but hey, it’s not like Twitter is a global news source of human right violations or anything.

This isn’t what pisses me off, because big businesses are always capable of pointing at a rulebook to justify cruel and inhumane policies. No, what pissed me off was watching another blogger comment that she didn’t see a reason to be upset, because this isn’t about America. It’s about other countries. This right after the Occupy protests and your press being forced into “press pens” so they couldn’t wander around and actually report on the abuses the police were making on civilians practicing their constitutional rights to protest and practice free speech. And now the company who helped Americans report on all those police abuses when the media did not, JUST VOLUNTEERED TO WITHHOLD TWEETS FOR ANY GOVERNMENT.

Yet, this other blogger is able to practice cognizant disassociation to keep up her deluded views that this isn’t something that will affect her in America. It’s only foreign countries with dictatorships that will abuse this request system. And besides, this isn’t about people being abused by governments. This is about Twitter needing to grow as a corporation. And they can’t flourish if they don’t agree to help certain governments with voluntary censorship. Therefore, even if she’s agreed that censorship is very bad, here it only makes sense for Twitter to make a policy that no one had yet asked for, nor had the right to ask for yet. Because removing any possibility of due process for Twitter’s clients is good for business…somehow. Anywho, censorship of this sort could never happen in her country, in her opinion, so there’s no reason to feel outrage. Why? BECAUSE IT DOESN’T AFFECT HER.

And this is why I keep losing my shit and asking “What’s wrong with you people?” Even when a threat is presented to you in very clear terms, it’s not a really real threat unless I can make it about you. So I can tell you how anti-gay countries will request Twitter to shut down the accounts of gay activists a few weeks before they’re arrested and killed quietly, their voices voluntarily stripped by a corporation who promises “transparency” in explaining their reasons for censoring. I could tell you about dictators who will shut down political activists and send them to prison for life, simply for asking for the same human rights that Americans piss away day after day with no sense of concern.

But unless I can tell you “This is how Twitter’s policy could bite you in the ass,” you don’t care. I just pointed out how it could still happen in America, probably to shut down the next version of the Occupy movement before it can properly organize on Twitter. But that will not affect you, only a few “malcontents.” To make you concerned enough to get off your lazy asses, I have to come up with a reason for you to be worried about yourself. Every problem has to be boiled down to your personal narrative, or it’s not worthy of time on the ol’ attention radar. “Can’t hurt me? Hell, that’s not even a blip.”

And that’s how your governments on both sides of the aisle have been flying under the radar for years, stripping your rights while you were watching TV or surfing on Facebook. Because even as they’ve taken rights away from people, you can’t see how removing these rights from a few folks means we’ve all lost them. Until it happens to you, it doesn’t count as a real travesty. Which means the vast majority of people ignoring these problems are sociopaths who still won’t stop calling themselves the good guys.

So turn your head away from the minor protest over nothing, again. Ignore the people who aren’t on Twitter today, and just keep pretending that these policies won’t be used in your country to silence critics of your abusive class-based society. But of course, those people will be minorities anyway, not real people either. So if they go away, they weren’t in your followers, and it doesn’t affect you.

It’s just another day in paradise, right?

Then you’re either naive or in denial. Because what really happened is, people started sending threats to a teenage girl because she’s an Atheist and had a prayer taken down out of her school. Separation of church and state? Whatever, hippie chick, there are traditions to be respected! (Traditions made by organized religions after that pesky idea about separation of church and state, and traditions that romanticize conformity and oppression as actually being nurturing and educating.)

(EDIT: The more I think about this, the more this real life event SCREAMS for a YA author to spin it into a courageous tale of a non-believer standing strong against Christian persecution. A 16-year-old protagonist, clearly in the right, being brave in the face of tradition and righteous indignation. You don’t even need no romantic angle to make this into a solid book with a great heroine. Come on, writers. I know one of you is bold enough to cover this story and give Atheist teens a book to rave about. Please, make this happen.)

And you say, “Well but that’s a few religious fanatics.” Nuh-uh, this girl has to be escorted to class by cops because EVERYONE hates her. Forget a “few rotten apples,” because this whole place is full of rotten sentiments posing as religious devotion. I find it sad how many people demonstrate their love of God by making threats against other people. It’s even worse coming from people who supposedly believe in turning the other cheek. But being honest, the day I see morally incensed Christians actually practice what they preach about turning the other cheek, I’ll be flabbergasted and speechless.

But let’s move on to story two, where a blogger is attacked as “the worst person in the world.” Pretty freaking harsh, so what did they do? Did he advocate genocide or make a case for eating baby seals in front of their sobbing mothers? No, he didn’t provide links to the HELLO KITTY items he was blogging about, and the fans of the merchandise are flaming him with comments like: “I don’t know how your wife can put up with you. I think it’s utterly disgusting and you’re not fit to live on earth the way you treat us.” (emphasis mine)

REALLY? For not linking to a mass-produced item that you can fucking Google in 3.6 fucking seconds from the search window of your browser? And what the fuck is wrong with people that every day they take first world shit and turn it into a reason to be rancid inhumane shitheads? The first story shows how religious dogma can turn ugly even as people preach about wanting to earn God’s love. But the second story is more disturbing because the “religion” that this man ran afoul of is the Hello Kitty fandom. And they’re wishing death on him with just as much venom as the people threatening the teenage Atheist. Neither group has a valid excuse, but looking at the second story, how can any fan not cringe and say “Okay, that’s taking our fandom too far?” So how come this poor guy is getting comments like this regularly? In short, what the hell is wrong with you people? Why is it that you can turn your first world problems into the worst travesty that ever happened, ever, but you can’t recognize when real travesties have occurred?

And really, I don’t care if you have a defense. I shut off comments so I don’t have to deal with “You don’t understand the power of Sanrio, heathen! We are legion, and you will respect our authoritai!”

What I understand is, some of you nerds have taken getting incensed to a whole new level of crazy. I rant and rage all the time, but I never go to any blogger’s site and wish death on them. I never tell someone stupid shit like “you’re the worst person ever!” Because there’s Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, and quite a few other competitors who come in my mind before Joe Blow, Hello Kitty blogger who doesn’t link items.

And since we’re covering threats, an Atheist teenager who doesn’t want religion shoved in her face is also not the worst person ever. In fact, that chica ought to be getting the key to the city for her bravery in the face of religious intolerance. (Yeah, you read right. Intolerance to a lack of faith is still religious intolerance just as surely as Christians locking Muslims or Jews out of a community is.)

People, you have got to stop getting pissy with everyone over little shit. And no, don’t come to me that my rants are little shit. I speak for a group with depressingly high suicide rates who suffer from physical assault and rapes. In addition to this group, I also speak about racial and gender inequality, and about child abuse. All of these topics are real problems with deep long-term side effects for the victims. People are left emotionally scarred by real discrimination and abuse. You want examples? Well, I can think of one teen girl who may now need therapy, off the top of my head. (Or at the top of this post, for those of you with short term memory loss.)

Before you fly off the handle about someone not respecting you or your cult, stop and ask what the harm of their infraction against you is. Religious people, you REALLY need to adopt this policy, because there is no excuse for your intolerance to disbelief. I believe in God, and I promise you, God has never suffered a broken bone from an Atheist saying “I don’t believe.” I believe this so much, I married an Atheist, and I never try to convert him or his sister. I can respect their beliefs without making a big deal out of mine. Can you? You may say you can, but the actions of a lot of you make your vows of tolerance hollow, at best.

Some of you may claim that society will fail if we don’t respect your views. I disagree. I think you want to exclude everyone from society who does not share your views, and I think your excluding and shunning are much more harmful to the fabric of society than the Atheists who just want to be left alone. They aren’t the ones trying to pull away from the weave of society because no one else is good enough to live by your standards. (Standards established by racist and sexist men who thought women were property and people were cattle who needed to be corralled into behaving.)

And as for you Hello Kitty fans…seriously, how can people who love an emblem of fluffy cuteness and sharing and friendship still be as thoroughly toxic and vile as a member of the CCC? If you can find reasons to call other Hello Kitty fans “the worst person ever,” then you should seek therapy. Probably look into anger management too.

There’s nothing wrong with being angry for a good reason, but some of you sheltered people need a reality check in the worst way.

“Every woman artist has to kill her own grandmother. She perches on our shoulder whispering, ‘Don’t embarrass the family’.”
~Erica Jong

You regular readers know I hate writing advice and writing rules lists. I think of them as make work for writers who’ve run out of interesting things to say and are instead trying to find something to offer out to cover their awkward silences. So you wouldn’t expect me to come up with a list of guidelines for writerly success. But today, I have some advice for women writers: do not be ashamed of your voice, and do not be afraid to say things in public that would offend your mother.

This runs counter to the advice of about a billion social media gurus, most of whom only have one book, and that’s a writing advice self-help book. All of these people have a non-fiction book, and they advise fiction authors about how to succeed, as if the methods of marketing in the neurotic world of self-help will work exactly the same in the world of fiction writing. They won’t, and if you’re a fiction writer, most of their advice will hamper your efforts, not help. But of all their lousy advice, their comments to women may be the most damaging and useless.

Lots of women social gurus will tell you “Don’t say anything on social media that you wouldn’t want your mother to read.” But let me pose a question to you: if you’re a romance or erotica writer, and your writing persona is a milquetoast presentation that would make mother so proud, what kind of image are you sending to your readers? “I baked cookies with dear hubby and read to my two dear sweet children, Nathaniel and Thadeus. Please, buy my book Whipping Princes Leia’s Cooter!”

Now if you’re selling Christian fiction and want to be seen as the female equivalent of Ned Flanders by readers, then okily-didyum-dokily, you go on and be a mealy mouthed good girl and make your momma proud. But if you’re a horror author whose last book contained gruesome and gory acts that made your mother queasy, then why would you want your writing persona to be so out of phase with your writing voice?

More to the point, do you think the men in your field are practicing self-censorship like this? No freaking way are they letting momma control their mouths, and neither should you. In fact, if you want to compete with the men, then you’ve got to get that polite bit out of your mouth and unleash your inner bitch to come close to the audacity and bravado of male authors. If you come to their literary forums talking meek and polite, these guys won’t even hear you over the sound of their own gladhanding. You have to speak up to break into the old boys’ network. Firmly, and maybe even using some words that would make your mother gasp.

I’m not saying drain a bottle of rum and drunk post a list of things that piss you off. That’s my shtick, so you need something to help you stand out. But seriously, this self-censorship isn’t helping your creativity, and it isn’t helping you to differentiate yourself from all the other women in your field with near identical presentations.

And if you don’t think it’s a problem to have a voice close to someone else’s, just look at what happened with me and that other Zoe. We talked so much alike about all the same topics that when I wrote a bad review on a romance book, the writer’s fans attacked the other Zoe, thinking we were the same people. Even when we were BOTH saying publicly “We’re not the same people,” some folks were still insisting “But look at how similar you are!” And, that’s a problem.

We’ve sorted that out since then, I think. But it’s because we no longer talk about the same things, and only the most unobservant reader would mistake my blog for the blog of the other Zoe. And that’s what I’m telling you to think about. What makes your author personality different from all the other women writers? Do you try to stand out and be different at all? Or do you follow the social media guidelines and try to fit in? Because if you’re fitting in, you’re also blending in, and readers are losing you in the crowd. Politeness, then, is not a mask to help you sell more copies, but a camouflage that makes readers lose your unique message. You’re just another polite tree in the forest of indies, and instead of looking for new “trees,” readers will look for familiar names and voices that stand out.

Which is why you need to do something besides follow the advice of some lady whose only literary success came from exploiting the uncertainty of other authors. That lady is selling to an entirely different market than you are, and her advice probably won’t apply to your field. Which is not to say you can’t pick up a few of their ideas, but the kind of ideas you want to avoid are any which will stifle your voice in the name of social politeness.

And ladies, there’s another facet to this. Look at the writing world, and look at how many fields are dominated by men. Look at how many men make comments that they can’t find any women in the field who “really stand out.” Part of that is most assuredly gender bias making them deaf to women’s voices, but women authors don’t need to help that perception by never speaking up or saying anything that risks causing offense. Talking like that will lead you into obscurity as surely as writing a lousy book will.

One more thing. If your mother is on your friends feed and she’s commenting that some of your updates are making her feel uncomfortable, tell her to back off. Do it politely if you’re on good terms and want to stay that way. But be your own person and ask for your own creative space. If your mother truly respects you, she’ll understand and leave you be.

If you’re an adult and you still let your mother tell you what to think, then the field of writing is not for you. This is an art field where the whole point is stepping out on your own to find your voice. If your writer voice is always dictated by your mother’s wishes, then you’re a failure as an artist, no matter how much sales success you find. Just as every man has to step out of the shadow of his father, you women need to let go of your mothers and be your own women. And please, don’t worry. You’re modern women, so you’re plenty strong enough for the task.

Have faith in yourself, and don’t be afraid to step on a few toes on your way to greatness. That’s my advice to you new women writers, and I think it’s a lot more valuable than “Don’t embarrass your family.”

But I’m assessing my previous pace and goals, and I don’t want to go back to that. Hell, when I have the revved up days of blogging or typing, it hurts my wrists when I’m only going for 2-4 hours instead of my old 8-14 hour schedule.

I really don’t know what projects I’m going to work on after completing the current crop of titles, but just what I have on my plate makes contemplating the rest too hard. I can only mentally juggle so much and still have time for casual reading and gaming.

But it seems nothing can kill certain stories in me. Some characters aren’t willing to give up, even if I was. They want to tell their stories, and they pick at me worse than my nicotine addiction ever did. I have to write them, even if no one wants to read my crap. But….but, some people do want to read my crap. Some people even open their wallets and pay for that crap. I have no idea how to handle promotion to you folks, and so I still won’t. I know this is harder on readers waiting for random releases when there’s no hint from me that this or that book dropped. But this is still just my hobby, and with all due respect to my regular buyers, once my previous promotions stirred you to get a copy, everyone else still ignored me. And man, if you six or so regular buyers ever abandon me, I am so, so fucked.

For the record, I have a lot, lot more readers than those six. Sales could always be better, but I’m still getting orders at both Smashwords and Amazon. (Nothing from Lulu, but that’s almost always true.) Every quarter, Smashwords sends me some money via PayPal. Not great money, but certainly not bad for a complete nobody. If anything, the continued sales even without my pushing shows that some titles can carry their own weight.

I wish I had more confidence, so I could make some grand proclamation about how my future releases will validate me as a real artist. It isn’t that I don’t view my stories as art, but I expect around the same level of success for all my future projects. Which I suppose is why I came around to the idea of sometimes writing bad books on purpose, like I did with my NaNoWriMo efforts. (Two of which got favorable reviews. The third is unmarketable, apparently.)

But I’m no good at the whole “I’m the greatest writer ever” spiel. I don’t write in any one field, so I can’t claim dominance or proficiency in any of them either. I’ll never be “the queen of ____,” and nothing I’ve published seems worthy of blockbuster status. I’ll tell you a secret: nothing in my head or my trunk is worthy of a mainstream bestseller either. I got no spy novels, no noir mysteries, no timeless romances; there’s no mainstream story I’m sitting on that’s going to make me a hundred million dollars. Don’t think that doesn’t frustrate me. And don’t think I didn’t try over and over to do stuff that was more mainstream. I did, and man, did that shit suck ass. Like Dan Brown, but less interesting.

But maybe writing mainstream is asking for too much from me. There’s so many writers covering the tropes that matter to the mainstream. So maybe asking me to also write the same kind of characters to please the market is missing the point of my protest. I want to write the stories that mainstream publishers won’t touch. I want stories about people like me, and about other people who feel shut out of the mainstream.

I won’t be popular because of what I want to write. Sometimes that will be because people don’t want to put up with my trans main characters. Other times it will be because I skip the romantic triangle and go for advanced romantic geometry. I’m planning more gay characters, and that’s an instant no for a large percentage of straight readers. Finally, there will be times when I’ll be unpopular because I do things with fictional minors that make readers uncomfortable.

But then that’s my point all along, to push you out of your comfort zone. If you don’t like being challenged and you can only read books that validate your opinions, then I am totally not the artist for you. But if you really mean all of that “rah rah support the little guy” cheering you do, then is there any harm at looking through my less offensive titles? Sure, I probably wrote one or two books that you’ll hate, but not everything I wrote has the same tone or message. I’ve done sci-fi, comedies, fantasy, horror, and even the occasional bit of literary fiction with no genre influences.

And if you still can’t find anything in my collection worth reading, well, better luck next year. But if you’re turning down EVERYTHING from my collection, odds really aren’t good that you’ll like my future releases. Cause I’m not going to start covering more palatable characters or topics. In fact, as my writing progresses, I’ve started poking around in some ugly places that few people want to explore. But somebody has to, because way too much writing is dedicated to the pleasant and banal reinforcement of mainstream beliefs. Even if nobody buys my shit, I believe there is still a need for indie-alternative writing. Someone has to write from the other side of the tracks, even if so few people cross the tracks to visit my rickety digital bookshop. (Right next door to Alice’s Internet Café.)

I just…sometimes, I wish someone with mainstream literary clout would say, “I think Zoe is right!” Sure, it wouldn’t do much for my sales, or even for my self-esteem. But then I could say, “Well, at least ____ _____ knows where I’m coming from.”

And also? I hope they can get my last name right. Cause it would suck if they name dropped the other Zoe, and they were talking about me.

If what I had in my mouth was small and mostly liquid, then it wasn’t so gross to swallow because it’s like having a mouthful of thick saltwater. Really not that bad. But some mornings I’d suck back a huge patch of leather booger PLUS a huge wad of viscous snot with an irony taste of blood and pus. This is going in a toilet, cause no fucking way is that crap going into me for digestion. I don’t care if it’s mostly protein, I still don’t want it. I feel confident that most people would agree with me if said nasty clot was in their mouths. Semen is actually nicer, and I spit that out too. (Sorry guys, I’m no swallower. That shit is nasty.)

So, back about two years ago, when cold season hit, I started taking Vicks. I’d done it before, leading to a one year addiction, and quitting wasn’t easy. That’s because without Vicks, breathing through my nose requires constant playing with my nose to clear it. So I can sit there and pick stuff out or snort water and let the water loosen stuff before I blow it out. Either way, I’m still sticking my fingers up my nose. So lady-like, right? But with Vicks, I spray, wait, and sploosh, one minty booger to play Spit or Swallow? with. And as an added bonus, for the next six hours, no boogers at all. How could I not want to be addicted to breathing free without picking my nose all the time?

All this talk of snot and boogers is actually a segue into my real topic, making people uncomfortable. I’ve had some reviews, both public and personal lately, where people said they wouldn’t read my stuff because it made them feel awkward, and they don’t read anything that pushes them out of their comfort zones. More recently, though, I was talking to a sci-fi writer who was complaining about fantasy books showing up in his precious sci-fi category at Amazon. I reminded him that some writers were fusing fantasy and sci-fi, and his reply was he knew, and all of those books were “unreadable crap.”

This isn’t true. What’s true is, this writer has a personal comfort level for his genre, and nothing outside his market is worth his time. I would question the quality of a writer who can only draw experience from one writing field, and who as a reader refuses to acknowledge the talent of writers in other fields.

I do not consider myself a writer of any one field, but when it comes to my reading, I’ve always been evenly split between fantasy and horror. I’ll also read romance, teen romance, YA of many flavors, and yes, sci-fi. A lot of great white hype tropes in all of these fields are dull to me, so I look for books at the fringes of these genres, the fusion stuff that other people go, “Oh, that? That wasn’t a real fantasy/horror because of ____.”

Which is how I found Anne Rice, because lots of people said her vampires weren’t horror. They aren’t. It’s totally a dark fantasy, and people calling it horror were judging the series by the wrong standards. It isn’t written to scare the shit out of you. It’s written to keep history buffs turning pages. And it’s really great history until you realize that it’s ALL history lessons told by whiny privileged white men. (Even Pandora was a man. Yes, he was. Go back and reread his book. He says he was a man in a woman’s body. So there were NO female narrators in the series…from a series written by a woman. Is Anne trying to say something without admitting it to…himself? I KID, really! Or, DO I?)

Um…anywho, the thing is, I’m not saying read stuff that bores you. If you’re reading a book and it puts you to sleep, then the problem isn’t with the writing’s challenge level so much as its level of engagement. I’ve put down books unfinished many times due to boredom with the story or the characters, so if Anne Rice isn’t your thing cause you think the stories are dull, I can accept that. Some of Anne’s later books bored me cross-eyed, even though I enjoyed most of her series and standalone novels.

No, what I’m talking about is if you stopped reading Lasher because Mona Mayfair seduces Michael easily, without him trying to say much to resist a little girl. Then it isn’t that the story is boring, but that it’s saying something ugly about people during an intimate moment between two people that the reader doesn’t want to see together.

I’ll give another example from Piers Anthony’s Firefly. There’s a woman in that story who details her introduction to sex at the hands of a molester when she was five. The story jarred me hard when she started talking graphically about the experience, and it triggered a lot of uncomfortable memories for me. Each time the book talked about sexuality in this way, it hit me hard, and it made me seriously consider putting the book down. But I didn’t, and I made it all the way to the bleak ending. Ever since then, I’ve wondered how other people took that book, and whenever I’ve brought it up, reactions have been pretty much against it. All of those scenes were “unnecessary” according to most readers. Even though most of the story revolved around this character and her past.

Sex and reproduction were also major themes in the story, so why the scenes were really deemed unnecessary is because they make the reader extremely uncomfortable. And this is the case whether you’ve experienced abuse or not. Seeing abuse happen, no matter how mild, should be a discomforting moment in a book. So part of the reasons the scenes are there is to jar the reader and make them feel ill. As far as I was concerned as a reader, Mission Accomplished. It’s the same for most readers who dared try Firefly, but a lot of those readers then deny that that was the point. Instead, they insist that the writer is evil, and that the book and even the topic are “unnecessary” in fiction.

In another horror story, The Hollower by Mary Sangiovanni, there is a character who is sexually abused as a child, but the story only shows that a man with a bear came to her in the park. Nothing else is shown, so when the evil monster shows her a bear and she breaks down, there’s nothing to really emotionally connect me as a reader to her reaction. The same is true of all the abuse in the book. Another character was abused by his father, beaten for every little thing. But again, the abuse is only implied. It was alluded to, but actually showing abuse in a horror novel, a book meant to discomfort and horrify, is taboo. Why? Because you don’t abuse kids. Ever. Not even fictional kids, and not even if your whole point is to talk about abuse.

Compare that to It, in which Stephen King details the abuse of every main character, even touching on racism through Mike and explaining Henry’s behavior through narration about his abusive father. At the end of the book, King has the kids reconnect psychically by having sex. This is for most readers an “ick moment,” but I read the book at 12, and as a victim of bullying AND a sexually active child, that was the most honest writing I’d ever seen in my whole life. It was the book that made me want to write. And the thing is, the consensual nature of the minor gangbang made it less discomforting than the scene of abuse in Firefly, which I read at 16.

The tone of the writing makes the scene less vulgar and more about the redemptive qualities of intimate contact. Where as in Firefly, the act is one of molest, an exploitation of a young child even if she thinks she’s the one in control. Her willingness to go along with her abuser’s desires makes me want to skip pages and get as far away from that moment as possible. The same is true when she tries to defend her molester and ends up getting him sent away anyway. Both stories cover the same topics of sex and abuse, but King’s version shows how the victims support each other, and the sex in their story is transformative. But while the same can be said of the sex in Firefly, that it is transformative, the resulting adult is so flawed that she openly contemplates showing her son how to masturbate. It’s a difficult scene, but there is a point, to show the side effects of sexual abuse in spite of early intervention. Everything in the book was needed, but that doesn’t mean it’s something you’re supposed to agree with or feel validated by. Quite the opposite, you should be going “My God, this is awful.” Because it is. BUT, there is a point to it, even if you don’t want to see it.

Let me switch gears and talk about Lolita. For years, I went to bookstores and went to find this book, only to stare at it and wonder what mystical power it had, that everyone knew the book, but no one would actually read or discuss it.

Years later, while writing Little Monsters, I decided to look the book up in Project Gutenberg, allowing me to get the book without admitting to anyone that I had done so. And…I was severely disappointed. I mean, I get why Humbert was talking so obliquely about his chosen topic, because he’s on trial, and he’s testifying and downplaying what he did. But his crime with his young lover pales in comparison to what Humbert does to her mother. He has her locked away as hysterical so he can go seduce a little girl. Meanwhile, his romantic interest has already been deflowered by a boy near her own age, and what Humbert has to offer doesn’t look so hot with experience for comparison.

But the thing is, for all the power Lolita has in talking about pedophilia, NOTHING HAPPENS. The sex scene you’re all avoiding is “And that was that.” That’s the whole sex scene. Really, you can uncover your eyes now. Before that, the only other thing that happened in the book is Delores and Humbert dry hump while reading a magazine together. And I had to read that passage twice to confirm that something illicit had just happened. Again, I understand why Humbert is erring on the side of discretion, but I don’t understand how a book with nothing in it can have so much power over so many people.

I see a lot of people who call themselves avid readers who still only read from one field, and who only read stuff that confirms their views. Part of me is tempted to blame this on the Internet and our ability to filter out what we don’t want to know about. But then I think about Lolita, and about how people know the book exists, but no one has the guts to read it and find out what a snoozer it is. So, how did it sell so many copies if no one has ever read it? Obviously, lots of people must have, and must still do, because there’s always a print copy in any store I go to. So why is it that no one talks about it? Because no one talks about child abuse. Ever. It’s like you honestly still believe in the fantasy “maybe the problem will just go away if we ignore it long enough.”

You can’t make problems better by avoiding the topic, and if you avoid it in your fiction just because it makes you squirm, then you’re being willfully ignorant in every facet of your life. Which may allow you to remain a qualified armchair therapist, but it still leaves you woefully equipped to deal with reality when it’s someone in your family or you who is the victim.

Please, push your boundaries and your comfort zones in your fiction reading selections. Read about something that makes you anxious or upset. These are genuine emotions, and if the author is making you feel anxious for a fake character, then they are doing their job right by making you feel something. You can’t always feel validated and happy while reading. Choosing to only read for escapism is embracing ignorance and calling it truth. It’s intellectually dishonest, and it’s depriving you of the chance to grow as a person by experiencing discomfort and, possibly, enlightenment.

Black women have been defining ourselves since before Sojourner Truth made her infamous 1851 “Ain’t I a Woman” speech. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, black women tell, no scream, about our humanity, complexity, legacy, pride, sisterhood, spirituality, money problems, romantic desires, bone-deep sadness, moral conflicts, sexuality and joy. Some of us are dying for a “Sunday Kind of Love.” Some of us think we’re cute and “Cleva.” Some of us aren’t that damn deep. The problem isn’t that black women haven’t defined ourselves for ourselves. It’s that mainstream media DON’T LISTEN.

And that’s the problem for all minority groups. It isn’t that people aren’t talking about how oppression works. It’s that the people who still actively oppress others don’t listen to anyone. The real problem with black women isn’t a white male-dominated media marginalizing black women’s voices into a stereotyped view of a whole race. NO! The real problem is, black women just aren’t talking enough to define themselves.

This same type of dismissive technique is used on women in general, on blacks in general, and on any fringe group that the established white media doesn’t want to acknowledge. To give you an idea of how easy it is to marginalize someone in the media, even someone supposedly empowered, during the 2008 elective cycle, Yahoo put any and all references to Hilary Clinton in Queer News. It didn’t matter if she was talking to gays or talking about jobs to unions, Hilary was a de facto queer to Yahoo. Obama was more hit or miss, but half of his articles also got flagged as queer, this despite his stated religious intolerance of gay civil rights. Meanwhile, anything said by the GOP, no matter how trivial or petty, was put in Headline news. A white man says it? Damn, must be front page news! A woman said it? Back to the back page with the homos and blacks.

The excuse that minorities aren’t writing enough of their own stories doesn’t fly either. There’s lots of writing online about these issues, but the mainstream media still chooses to present a white-centric view of the world. Any article that attacks or merely questions the white male status quo is not published. And if it isn’t vetted by a “real news source” it’s even easier for other whites to marginalize the impact of their continued racism. How can there be a racism problem, if it’s never mentioned once on the evening news?

The fact is, ANY PRIVILEGED PERSON WHO WANTED TO EDUCATE THEMSELVES COULD, simply by going online to look at the blogs of minority writers. But you don’t want to hear how you’re still bad people, so you lock out any and all voices of dissent that don’t fit in with your personal narrative. You stick with white news sources to make sure everything you read fits in with your view of the world. But you’re not really racist, just interested in “maintaining personal harmony,” or something.

I could turn this around and talk about all the times I’ve tried to talk to people about being trans, or about the times I addressed the cyclical nature of child abuse without success. But examples specific to me aren’t needed to illustrate the scope of this denial problem. The problem is, white people are GREAT at shifting blame from themselves for the commission of a crime (because discrimination is a crime, you know) to their victims for letting it happen. Then you say “Well those people should be more aware. And why aren’t they speaking out on this if they really think it’s such a problem?” Only, they are speaking out, RIGHT NOW, and you’re marginalizing their complaint, at the same time erasing all the similar complaints that came before it. You never personally heard a complaint before now, so using only your anecdotal evidence, there must never have been a problem until the uppity minority decided to make a big deal out of it.

Bam, racism erased. Never happened at all, and it was just the black “misunderstanding.” (A backhand slap that implies that blacks are too stupid to know whether they’ve been prejudiced against or not, and they NEED a white to explain why something is or is not racist.) It’s that easy for white people to ignore every minority problem, even if a problem is widespread. Just look at Arizona, being blatantly racist in making law enforcement and education policies, and yet the white people in Arizona seem almost mute about the issues. Why? Because…they’re racists. If they weren’t, the governor would have been recalled. If they weren’t, none of these bills banning books and idea would fly. These policies fly because the white voters of Arizona WANT THIS. To suggest anything else is to make excuses for racism while at the same time continuing to marginalize and erase people.

Black women have been speaking to their problems for a long, long time. Problem is, their articles are dismissed or ignored, while the white writer gets away with making statements like “The problem with black women is, they haven’t defined themselves yet.” Yes, they have, and so has every minority present on the civil rights battlefield. The only people who don’t recognize that are our common enemy, the white privileged people who remain willfully ignorant of how they help perpetuate oppression.

Black women have defined themselves, but it’s up to white people to actually read what black women have to say and stop pretending there’s no discussion on this topic. There’s plenty of discussion. You’re just tuning it out because you don’t like the message they’re sending. But whose fault is that? Theirs, for spitting truths in your face, or yours for being incapable of listening to the truth?

One such example came last night on Twitter, a tweet made by @profsusurro (sic):

Oppression makes me rage & that rage is an engine but radical love has to be it’s fuel

And this, I think, sums up just about everything about me. I’m not just committed to freeing my people from oppression, but in freeing all people everywhere from this tired system of control. I get angry because we as a people are not making progress. In fact, looking at the current governments and their schemes to disassemble free speech using copyright laws, I think we’re losing ground to our rich oppressors.

But despite the amount of hate that goes into oppression, I don’t want to turn the tables or make anyone into my servants as revenge. I’m not motivated to act based on a need to return the favors done to me in the past. I’m motivated by the hope that a new generation of kids like me will grow up never knowing the hatred I suffered daily at the hands of “good people.”

My enemies will always try to flip this around, claiming that I am trying to destroy society and everyone’s way of life. And this has the partial ring of truth to it, which is why the message sticks and works with so many fearful privileged peoples. I do want to destroy your oppressive society, and if I could succeed, the world would never be the same as you previously understood it. But it would not be an evil world. It would be a world full of love and acceptance instead of grudging tolerance. (Which some of you claim is the best you can offer to anyone who doesn’t share your exact same views.)

But in that new world, there would not be prisons full of white people serving time for their racism. There would not be a court of homophobia leading witch hunts to find out which straights were still intolerant of sexual diversity. There would be none of the CCTV cameras mounted on every pole like there is now. There would not be police harassment of anyone, not like we see with the cops when dealing with POC today. The world I want to see without oppression has no punishment cooked up for the people who willfully helped enable oppressors to keep working unchecked for centuries.

I don’t really believe I’ll see a world without oppression in my time. Far too many people are busy using false victim cards to claim that they deserve the right to oppress others. They’re just “returning the favor,” and the fact that the oppressed have done nothing at all to the person using this logic is irrelevant. It can’t be your fault that opression is still going on, so it must be the fault of minorities, for making a big deal out of “little things.” If us uppity minorities would just learn our places, you claim, then the world would be perfect. But I can’t help but notice how your perfect world still includes rampant slavery, fear mongering, and a steady supply of wars to keep the world populations in check.

You people who practice willful oppression of minorities rage about the unfairness of losing even a little privilege, and the fuel for your engine is unreasoning hate. You have no reason to hate other people, but you do anyway.

I have reasons to hate. I’ve had bones broken, had my will crushed and oppressed in the name of gender conformity. I’ve had people who claimed to love me tell me that they would prefer it if I remained unhappy, because they were happier with my false gender than they were with me being myself. To them, they saw no big deal in attacking my choices and pushing me to conform, even if it would make me miserable. Their happiness and need to oppress comes before my right to pursue happiness.

I have very, very good reasons to hate, but I don’t. I am angry, a lot. I get outraged by watching “good people” attack others who are beneath them, simply because they can. I get angry that these same people feign innocence or ignorance of their crimes when called on it, and then turn around and use being called out as a further sign that they’re “the real victim here.”

People like this actively oppress, and then deny that this is what they’re doing. So I have very good reasons to be angry at these inhumane, lazy, stupid people. They could educate themselves to stop being stupid. They could work to overcome their laziness and inhumanity. But their conditions are willful, and anyone like me attempting to point this out will be attacked. Why? Because none of you wants to admit that you’re the problem. Oppression isn’t your problem. It’s for some elected officials to fix, someday, perhaps after the budget is balanced and all white people have good jobs. But it has nothing to do with you people, even if you are actively oppressing someone and living in denial about it.

But I don’t hate you. I don’t want to turn the tables and make you as miserable as you’ve made me over the years. I just want you to stop hurting others. I want you to accept that you are harming others, and I want you to strive to be as humanitarian as you claim to be when pressed about your privilege. And if loving you and expecting better from you is wrong, then people, I don’t ever want to be “right” with you.

All we need is love. It’s already my fuel of choice, so maybe you should think about changing from your current fuel over to something that can really change our world for the better. Hate and fear have always shaped patriarchal societies, so perhaps when we convince the men to share the role of leadership, we can also convince them to drop their favorite weapon of FUD.

This isn’t true. There’s no logic twist of verbal Kung Fu that can make this statement logical, and it requires leverage coming from privilege to make this tortured dog hobble a few steps. Yet, I’ve seen folks in the comments use it multiple times for multiple topics. And I ought to know, because I’ve just spent the other night stripping the ability to comment out of both my blogs. Every time there’s been a round of personal attacks against me, it’s because I’ve highlighted some news article that didn’t sit well with others.

Most of the people who responded tried to shoot the messenger and tell me that the real problem in the world was me. Not the people who committed the crimes, or the people who do nothing and don’t talk about the problems. No, the real problem is me, for always trying to ruin your day with “bad news.” So I don’t care about you, or that you’re suffering from your first world problems too.

Well, maybe you’re right. Maybe after watching hour after hour of your Facebook stream, I got tired of trying to care about you. Maybe after the 23rd status update where you complained about the teenagers in Starbucks making goo-goo eyes, I stopped caring about your opinions of other people. Maybe after your complaints about how others look or dress has left me with a lower impression of you. Maybe after your most recent “high-larious” Twilight jab, I wandered away from your sparkling wit. Maybe after your passive-aggressive complaints about your co-workers, I’ve come to expect nothing from you but more complaints about little shit that doesn’t mean anything at the end of the day.

You can’t stand Justin Bieber? Boo hoo, that’s not a real problem. It’s a first world white person’s problem, and has the shallowness of a standing puddle in a pothole. There are people with real problems in the world, and if you would shut up and tune into the world instead of finding petty reasons to ignore it, you would find problems that you could help resolve. You could care more and do more, even with just a few dollars a month and a little commitment of time. You could care more and have a direct impact on the lives of people around you.

Or you can tell me that you’re really a good person, and I’m the mean one who doesn’t help anyone. I just complain and complain and never do anything direct. Right, because if I don’t tell you specifically on the blog, “Today I donated grocery money to Billy Martin,” it didn’t really happen. That means it’s perfectly okay for you to say “You abandoned your people,” because you’ve never personally seen me hand cash over to other trans people. I think this is bullshit, that every time I make a cash donation to any person, I have to publicly report it, or else it opens up the possibility of folks later saying that I didn’t help out, or that I don’t care enough about others.

It’s denial, really. It’s putting on blinders and filters so that your behavior is seen as good to you, even if you’re an abusive douchebag. And because I know there’s that one guy saying “What about you?” I always say I’m a bad person. In fact, I get into arguments with people because they cannot stand the idea of someone being “negative.” It never dawns on them that I’m being honest. I wish more of you evil bastards could be honest enough to admit that you were evil, because then it would spare everyone you know a lot of grief. Instead, you’ll tell them you’re good, always getting folks to believe it, right up until they need your help with something and you use verbal Kung Fu to get out of helping. Then it’s their fault for expecting too much from a friend who probably told them repeatedly, “If you need anything, just ask.” And these are the people claiming that I don’t care enough.

I care plenty, people. I give what I can, and if I had more money, energy, and time, I’d give more. But for some of you folks, there’s nothing I can do that shows I care enough. I’ve said something that offended you, and now you have to take umbrage, even if you don’t have anything valid to be mad about. I said you’re privileged. You are. I said you ignored pressing civil rights and social problems in favor of petty complaints about your neighbors. You have. So when you come here complaining that I don’t care enough, and that’s the real problem, it isn’t that I don’t care enough. You’re in denial and looking for a way to justify your self-centered world view.

I’m not. In the scheme of things, I’m one person out of seven billion. I don’t even have the skills to make the Z list of athletes, artists, or other celebrities, and I’m way past my prime to be dropping a porn and letting a publicist sweet talk my way into reality TV. So all I can do is open up my own blog, and shout from my corner of the world, “There’s more important stuff to worry about than what the couple next to you in Starbucks is doing!”

And for this, I get called a bitch, among other things. Well, I’m sorry, but I am a bitch. I was raised by an alcoholic redhead who never went an hour without finding a way to say something mean. When I wasn’t with her, I lived with an almost alcoholic dad who thought parenting was lectures and spankings. I had a schizophrenic little brother who alternated between claiming to love me and trying to kill me. At every turn that I’d reached out to find a best friend and ally, some adult told me to go away. I had a shit life, so I’d turn it around that after decades of abuse, it’s amazing how much an evil person like me still can give a shit about others, when after all I’ve given, people can still turn around and say, “Bitch, I don’t owe you nothin’.”

And here’s my pickle. I was abused every day, for years. I didn’t just live in a figurative closet. For two years, after coming home from school, I would shut myself in my closet and cry and pray for God to just take me now. You probably don’t have a past anywhere near as dark as mine, but you can’t spare thought for others. So, my excuse for being wary of trusting others is because I was sexually assaulted by my best friend. What’s your reason for ignoring the world and pretending that your problems are so bad that you can’t spare any give a shit for anyone else? I mean, really, I’ve been trying to give some of my spare shit so you can at least give that much. But instead of thanking me for bringing these problems to your attention, you’re attacking me, for not caring enough about “real problems.”

One of us is wrong for our views. Mine involves self-assessment and recognition of my flaws. Yours involves assessment of my life and finding fault with my presentation. If you could just admit that and begin real self-assessment, we’d be halfway to you giving a shit without my help.

So the record is straight, cunt, hubby and I have given Marina money whenever we could for as long as we could, and she REFUSED to take any more well over two years ago because it would put her disability benefits at risk. She felt so guilty about all the money we gave her that she sent me $800 to go to Amsterdam on. Since then, I’ve offered to send more, and she keeps turning me down.

I still write to Marina all the time, and she’s doing well despite still being in Texas. Could things be better for her? Yes, if Texas wasn’t such a fucked up and hateful place. Would I like to keep sending money to my sister? Yes, but she WON’T LET US. Furthermore, I can still want to help Marina, AND want to talk about racial disparity. You have revealed that you also believe in zero-sum sympathy, where if I’m talking about this one topic, obviously, I can’t also be thinking of Marina. Well fuck you, you self-centered cunt. I still think of Marina, and I still talk to her. I want to move Marina over here, but we can’t afford it. So now that I’ve explained myself, I’ll throw this in your face: what have YOU done for Marina lately? Or did you just bring her up in an attempt to be morally superior? Because if that was your game, it didn’t fly.

And finally, bitch, I have a set of holes in my frontal lobe, plaque scars which you were told about before. I have MRI slides showing the damage, but even before then, I was suffering from mild dyslexia. I have to read slow because the letters jumble, and despite this, I’m slowly picking up Italian bit by bit, along with Japanese and German. But how dare you decide to throw in my face that I have a learning disability, as if my inability to learn languages faster is indicative of my mental capacity. You are the cunt who said “Blacks are poor because they can’t control their emotions.” So you are a fucking racist, no matter how enlightened or smart you may think you are.

Fuck you two ways, cunt. Fuck you for being a racist, and fuck you, for trying to use Marina as an emotional weapon to foster your self-serving views.

I swear to God, this is why I want to turn off ALL comments, but WordPress can’t get that one simple fucking setting right.

With no due respect, fuck you.

But really, you want an insight into why I’m crazy? Okay. From childhood through my early teens, I was physically abused by other kids. Yet all throughout this torture, I had therapists and shrinks tell me “children aren’t capable of evil.” I’ve been told to tell the truth by adults, only to be ridiculed for it, so pretty much every lie you tell to children, I knew was a lie right from the start. Because the pretty lies only apply to privileged children.

I grew up and finally broke free of other people by pushing everyone away. I was an asshole in doing it, but I cut every connection and found the strength to change myself. After a blazing fast two year transition and gender surgery, society told me “Congratulations! We’re ready to accept you now!” Why? Because I’m pretty, short, and speak with a whiny voice. So long as I smile and don’t act like an angry tranny, people want to pull me along, to show how tolerant and open minded they are. They’ll still criticize my uglier sisters for not passing, and they’ll still let their evil bully children rape and torture the next generation of queers. But so long as I smile and keep my mouth shut, I can ride with the cool kids.

Obviously, I chose to walk away from the cool kids to keep talking about the problems in our world, and since then, I’ve been asked questions like “Which gender were you when you were raped?” I’ve had women take me aside and say “This isn’t how you get man friends,” like I should want to buddy up with the same males who want to “spend five minutes alone” with me. I’ve had visits to my blog from people telling me that they live in reality, unlike me, and then they proceed to say the most awful things about how they can accept murdering half the planet as collateral damage, or how they can’t worry about racism because white people are totally suffering too. Yet, they “live in reality,” and I’m the deluded one.

So I finally pop from all of the assholes baiting me, and I start to really write some shit meant ot provoke people and get them talking. Only thing is, the only people talking are morons. The rest of polite society is still pretty much the same pearl-clutching bunch of pansies that I recall from my childhood. If the oppressed underclasses are willing to smile and play nice, you’ll invite them to your parties. But if they act up or remind you that your party runs on oppression, then they gotta go.

I really can’t win by joining any group. I don’t even fit in with other transsexuals, and I got banned from a support group the day after I joined because “some of the members were concerned for their children.”

I don’t have any real world friends anymore, and because of the actions of my online friends, I no longer view any online acquaintances as true friends because there’s just too much risk that they’ll turn around and treat me like shit.

My mother is sending me an email once a month, at least, loaded with enough venom to piss me off twice over. In theory, I may have stopped those emails this year, but I thought that after I emailed her and said “I neither want nor need your approval” a week after my surgery. But this time I was more direct in making my opinion of her clear, so maybe she will stay away.

My little brother still hates me and thinks I’m the whore of Satan. He has seduced two girls from out of school, and he’s got an arrest record as long as his arm. But he can still be morally superior to me and say that he doesn’t want me around his kids. Adding insult to injury, we both thought we were sterile. No, he’s got two kids, and I’m the person planning animal adoptions. Why? Because as a result of all the abuse I suffered at the hands of my little brother, I’m now mentally incapable of child rearing. Even if I were more stable, MS makes me physically incapable of the task. So I can’t even contemplate adoption.

I rarely get to talk to the family members who I actually do want to hear from. They’ve all got jobs and kids and real lives going on, and anyway, it’s hard sorting out when the right time to chat is. The fault for us not connecting is as much mine as it is theirs, but that’s life, and what can you do?

Oh, and hubby still can’t have sex, so I’m extremely horny and can’t do anything except fap or play with toys. This wouldn’t be quite so bad, but during the summer, I had dudes stopping me, young guys from the college up the road, asking, “Do you have the time?” or “Can we take a coffee?” And every time, I held up my hand, pointed to my ring and said, “I’m sorry, but I’m married.”

And for all this good behavior, I STILL had someone call me a sexual predator. Not for anything I did, but for some fictional event I wrote.

So, if you’ve read all of this and STILL need to ask me, “Zoe, why are you always so upset?” you’re going to set me off in another explosion. And no, I won’t feel bad about being upset. I have my coping mechanisms, and I try to find creative outlets so I can be happy too. But I’m not going to show up on my journal and put on a happy face for you just because you need validation that the world is okay. You won’t get that from me anyway. I think the world sucks and that we all need to work to change it. But most folks think someone else should do it for them, and they don’t believe they owe each other anything.

I owe you my honesty. I was dishonest enough through my childhood because other people conditioned me to lie and hide to avoid physical and verbal attacks. Society made me, and when I rejected society to become something better than what I was, society still rejected me for saying things they don’t want to know about. I’ve been shouted down over and over, put in my place, and told I’m full of shit so many times, I’ve lost count.

Do I have reasons to be happy? Sure, I’ve got a few. I eat well, and I have a good husband who makes me laugh. I’ve got my video games, and when my hands aren’t too sore, I’ve got a guitar to play with. Sometimes, I even get back into a few moments of writing bliss before I’m reminded that nobody reads my crap.

But I don’t have my health because I have multiple sclerosis. I don’t have lots of friends to visit and party with. I don’t have lots of people to chat online with, family or friends. The only thing I had that perked me up was my writing, and yet I feel consistently misunderstood. It’s like even if we all know the same language, the words don’t mean the same things to everyone else.

So if we weren’t clear before, this is why I’m in a lousy mood so often these days, why I end up being rubbed the wrong way with just one trigger word in Twitter, why I have to avoid everyone for days at a time. I’m actually sparing you from much worst ranting episodes. And my reward for thinking of you is you asking me, “Why can’t you be happy?”

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF—! (*>_<) \,|,/