the cosmopolitan class.

被性別壓迫廣告分析轟炸後的課後，連續和學生討論女性主義的跨性歧視、俄國的後蘇盟性別政策、女同志色情片的陽具中心，面談完後上海來的學生問我要不要順道載我去火車站，我坐在她的兩門白色全新Audi跑車上聽到九〇年代的台灣流行金曲，談論著紐約的房價，和她寒假英國戲劇節的計畫。這是我這週感到最大階級衝擊的時刻，她在我幾乎全是白人的課堂上從來都不發一言，英文也不是特別流暢，卻非常有自信她將會繼續升學考上全美前五名的律師學校並取得執照，就像是她在中國的律師父母。有時候我感覺階級的優勢就是這種安靜的自覺，在任何環境下都明白自己享有的特權，無須自我懷疑或second guessing。這種上流階級國際學生的優越感，是我身邊所認同的global south移民學生中所感受不到的。我跳上回紐約市的火車後，突然意識到自己正在教育所謂全球化下的上流階級年輕人，而感到極度地荒謬，比較起去年在公立大學多半是移民家庭學生的中產美國夢，他們的夢在加州santa monica的海灘，在巴塞隆納的酷兒藝廊，在巴黎女性電影，甚至在古巴的高端旅遊業。我卻無從想像那樣的leisure，或無國界的自由。才記得昨晚談到，我對美國沒有一點幻想。也許是因為擁有相對的選擇，所以我可以放棄去相信去保守那樣的美國夢。但在這種因為特權所帶來的國籍被徹底鬆動的空間之中，面對他們感到可以擁有世界的霸氣，經常我感到荒唐，並且憤怒。

小國情愁。

星期日的早晨我第一次一個人待在我們的台北公寓，在巷口買早餐時不斷誤解我是韓國人的老闆，問我是不是又要點妳總是喜歡的蘿蔔糕加蛋，生活的小情趣就是被新聞的置入性行銷影響不顧順丁烯二酸而更想吃統一布丁，和研究師大夜市女同志情侶的夏日穿搭，從這幾年來路人和店長誤解我的國籍和口音，來辨別城市此刻盛行的觀光客潮。我把熱浪曬得乾爽的衣物收好，想著妳總是刻意嚴苛的表情，督促著我該將衣物摺成方形，或者因為熱水器忘記關掉而被倒扣十分，熱了妳今天的中藥又被加回兩分。妳是我這座城市的唯一邏輯。在節能省碳的房間中，一邊喝著不是奶也不是茶的早餐店奶茶，看著某種軟性新殖民主義的新聞台巴勒斯坦特輯報導，其實也說不上哪裡不對勁，太幸福的時候容易讓人感覺政治不正確，幾乎可以被催眠妥協於22K的薪水，我卻對有妳的一切無盡上癮，看著整個下半年的行事曆，和我們滿牆的必須完成的計畫清單，而又再度恢復野心。

to exist.

「妳因為出生於中產階級家庭沒有太多現實包袱，所以過於理想主義。」活到二十五歲原來這是我母親對我的理解。而問題在於？「我擔心妳學不會折衷所以會傷很慘。」她說。究竟是不是一件壞事，沒有中間值的這個個性。誰也說不準。對於理論、對於喜好、對於感情，如此極端。我只相信每個人在這世界上都有自己需要精準扮演的角色，和非經驗不可的事物。有一部份的人必將建築而有一部份的人必將毀滅，於是這個世界才能不停地運轉下去。如馬克斯所說，這是一個相對的社會關係。而也許我就是注定成為一個歹性子橫衝直撞並且過度依賴感覺的人，建築了許多也毀滅了許多。我也不是沒有嘗試妥協，但全部的直覺都在鞭策驅使我走向另外一條崎嶇的道路。有時候我感覺也許自己是一個在肛門期沒有被完整訓練好的人，所以對於pleasure和perfection過度地執著。感受歡愉的時候覺得罪惡，並永遠追求著完美。但完美是什麼。我總覺得我要的不多。不過就是和我愛的人一起，讀書寫字創作生活，盡力地在這殘缺的世界中感受快樂，去理解它的不完美和某種物種必死的命運(mortality)。也許卸下馬克斯女性主義政治生活的實踐，我的本質是一個究極的存在主義者。如沙特所說：existence proceeds essence／存在先於本質。只有先感受了才能理解意義。讓意識自由吧，讓思想自由，以自己可能最誠實的方式生活下去，並且去愛。

我愛妳而那讓我感受存在。

my almost last party in seattle

I spent most of April trying to pull off a queer people of color dance party as a fundraiser for the may 3rd strike--it was extremely stressful but too fun to resist! We got the space at Hidmo, awesome qpoc spoken word poets and musicians. Everything just seemed to come together on that night, the poetry, the movie, the music, the people, the space, and the political messages we were sending out. It's weird because you would think that making qpoc the targeted audience you would be limiting who you were attracting. On the contrary, we had almost 200 people showed up that night--and lots of folks can't wait for another event like this. As a qpoc i feel everything we are fighting for--labor, immigrant rights, queer lib--just came together on that night, when i saw a room full of queer folks and folks of color responding so well to the May 3rd strike and March 4th action against privatization of university and its workplace. Some queer folks may see labor as something not concerned them or not related to their life struggle, but i would say labor is as much about workplace as bedroom. I know locally some queer activists are fighting for a grant that can build a cafe shop that would continually hire queer youth. While I understand the work is important, I also feel like we've fought for queer only space for a while, and it's about time for us queers to join the struggle at workplace, fighting for more accessible education, and just workplace for all. This notion of queer vs. class could be really harmful for the working-class and queer communities and would just continually privatize queer issue as something thats only about our sexuality.

On the next day I saw a lot of qpoc from last night at the May Day immigrant rights march. That was the time i felt this is really my community. I felt very honored to work alongside with everyone for queer lib even though we have to fight through so many barriers to come together and to finally get to know one another.

資本生活中的矛盾是被經常過度簡略的挑戰。

我坐在roy street上的咖啡廳看著這莫名其妙的雨－－極快速地、四十五度傾斜、綿密的雨，而感到疲憊不堪。我目前的生活充滿著我應付不來的矛盾：和學校工友組織的勞工運動，革命者訓練，並一邊兼差幫一間支持戰爭的保守日裔美國人組織做數據管理的工作，你會非常驚訝他們可以籌到多少亞裔美國人的捐款！一週的下午全被會議的時間佔滿，即使搬來和L一起住，我們頂多只能在睡前一個小時好好說話，然後就是睡眠時間和在這資本主義社會下另一天的開始。媽媽的政治家學生的朋友在曼哈頓中央公園旁有一棟兩億的公寓，只是空著來招待朋友；而台北的房價炒到一坪八十五萬－－這樣的房子到底有誰可以買得起？！我身邊圍繞著比例相對高的勞工運動者，但一離開這個圈子，大多數的人還是迫不及待想要成為中產階級，考醫學院、唸MBA、上大型企業公司、競選民主黨的新星有色人種政治家、花六十萬去歐洲旅行。這對將要上博士班的我代表的是什麼呢？即是我拿的是比低收入戶還低的獎學金。也許學習去拿些生活中存在的這些矛盾是目前生存的必須。我只是想要有更多的時間建築我的感情和社群，並且更多在短期計畫之外的自由思考空間。我在清掃房子時發現去年買的鴻鴻的詩集《土製炸彈》，一直沒有時間好好讀，現在才發現原來這是一本不僅是反戰，並且是反帝國主義和反猶太復國主義的驚人詩集。我想這些看似過度簡單或草率的知識一直是存在我們的周圍，但有時候它的傳導力量和解析都比什麼薩伊德的東方主義還來得有力量多了。也是這些露骨或溫柔的文字一直督促著我學習的動力。我的焦慮總是在閱讀文學或者胡亂寫些日記後減輕許多。即使這雨還是他媽的奇怪地傾斜下著。

My post on Gathering Forces on transliberation.

Sylvia Rivera, transliberation, and class struggle

Street Trans Action Revolutionaries (STAR) was founded as a caucus within Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in 1971 to put forth trans demands in the gay liberation movement. The co-founder of STAR, Sylvia Rivera, was a Puerto Rican trans woman who led the Stonewall Riots in New York City in 1969 along with other trans of color. Yet gradually, the gay liberation movement was co-opted by white middle-class folks who are gender-conforming and became conservative. Gay Activists Alliance (GAA), a New York based gay rights group was founded by ex-members of GLF who did not appreciate its radicalism and wanted to form a single-issued organization that only focused on reformist gay rights. GAA’s conservatism and transphobia showed when they dropped the trans demands while advocating citywide anti-discrimination rights in the 70s. They saw actions put on by STAR and Sylvia Rivera as too “dangerous,” “crazy,” and “extreme.”

Trans folks were not only attacked by mainstream gay rights groups but also in their own neighborhoods. In the West Village, a gentrified gay neighborhood, trans sex workers, who were mostly homeless and of color, were kicked out of the streets by white gay homeowners because they were “low-class, vulgar transvestites” not the usual entertaining drag queens. A real-estate-driven Quality of Life campaign led by the city continually pushed for the closure of clubs where trans folks hung out. Fighting for trans rights is thus a class issue. Rivera, who was homeless herself, saw the link and pushed STAR to organize a community space for homeless trans folks as well as fight for labor justice. They found a building for street gay kids, fed them and clothed them, while the government was cutting the healthcare, taking away food stamps, and putting more people with AIDS, youth, and women on the street. In Leslie Feinberg Interviews Sylvia Rivera, Rivera reiterates the importance of not only doing community work but also fighting against the government and the ruling class. STAR joined the mass demonstration with the Young Lords, a revolutionary Puerto Rican youth group, against police repression in 1970. STAR also built alliances with the Housing Works Transgender Working Group and the New York Direct Action Nextwork Labor Group to form picket lines at a club where a trans dancer was dismissed from work. Fighting for trans rights is a class issue–to resist the rich property owners who push trans folks out of their neighborhoods, to confront the managers that try to fire trans workers, and to fight back against the state that cuts back healthcare...

(read more on questions and comments)

breaking rules to survive

I enjoy very much using a white girl's bus pass found in the street to commute to campus and pretend that i'm still one of the college kids every morning. There's something that feels really great when you break the order of the universe, even just something trivial like pretending to be a blond college student. I'm reading my future PhD advisor's (no i really wasn't stalking her) interview with a feminist group--it really blows me away. Ever since i knew i got into the program i had some sort of intellectual crisis with this discipline i'm going into. Oh psychology. My training at UW focused so heavily on the classics, strict experimental methods, and decontexcualizing reality to find the precise variable that would get your statistically significant data. I had to stop and ask myself if i really wanted to be a scientist who objectively stays behind the scene and believes that i could understand human mind and human behavior this way? FUCK NO. She says in the interview and i agree with her, that it's important to ask where the knowledge lies and WHO HAS IT. Almost always when knowledge lies on the bottom of social hierarchy is neglected by intellectuals. Such as a custodian knows how to work under the repressive management and redistribute her shift with her coworkers. Or like a lesbian plumber knows how to navigate in a male-dominant workplace but still remain her queer working-class cool. And this kind of knowledge is not articulated enough, not in grad school.

There is something really problematic with the way psychology categories its subjects. If we wanna study race, we go find 100 African American samples and sometimes Latino. If we wanna study women, we recruit 200 college-educated white women and give them Starbucks gift cards after the interviews, and we would be glad if we had 5 lesbians or 20 women of color and maybe 3 immigrant women to make the sample somehow representative. If we wanna study class, we go to the low-income communities, and we find all sorts of folks--blacks, immigrants, queers, youth--so are we studying class or race or sexuality or immigration or what? Most of us get panic. This kind of categorical understanding of social identity is very limited. We simply can't understand class if we just go out to survey poor people, she says.

The hardest part is that in this discipline, researchers who use the classical methods (often white men with good intention studying "minorities") are the gatekeepers and they are the standers of who psychologists are--which means who gets the funding, who gets to publish, and who gets the job. The way to understand social injustice can't be monopolized by a singular method--and this would probably be one of the biggest challenges for me at least in the next 5 years. How can i navigate the classical but also the critical method? How can i estabalish myself as a psychologist thinker but also a serious organizer and revolutinary? At least it seems like my future advisor can very much be some sort of an anti-zionist socialist femnist--that would certainly make my grad school life a lot easier.

(psychology's feminist oral history project)

MARCH 4TH HELLA STRIKE!!!

Nearly 1000 students and workers came out to form picket lines with us. Lots of women and people of color leadership--that's what's up! We took over the Ave and had speak out in the busiest intersection on 45th. We got away with hella shit while the cops are around. The movement has just started and i can't wait for the day when we take over 1-5!

Some students were dissing my "Queer Struggle is Class Struggle" sign. But brothers this is the worst timing for you to hate on queers because WE ARE FIGHTING FOR THE SAME THING. Get used to it, don't fuck with us!

Video News on Kiro



What our comrades in California and NYC did:

STUDENT STRIKE ON MARCH 4TH! 1PM ON QUAD!

Post-racial soceity? That is white liberals' myth

A climate of campus racism
UCSD & UCLA sit in/occupation
Open Letter to White Student Movement

It turns out that the white supremacists hang out in UC San Diego. Maybe it's because I have been in Seattle for too long, this passive-aggressive city where racism is more subtle, it's hard for me to imagine some people can do such outrageously racist acts near a university campus. But this incident also shows how oppressed people united quickly to respond to the violence. The Black Students Union occupied an administrative building soon after the incident and put out demands for racial justice on campus. Anti-budget cuts activists from UCLA, UC Irvine, and UC Berkeley soon responded by organizing solidarity actions on their campus. March 4th the National Day of Action to Defend Education is coming up. It seems like the movement has a potential to move away from the white liberal occupationist/dance party tendency to a mass movement for racial, gender, and economic justice. As people of color involving in the work that has been dominated by showy white men, we need to keep our demands and presence front and center. The struggle cannot be a mass movement if we don't engage or outreach to women, people of color, queer folks, and folks with disabilities. History has erased us thousands of times and we cannot tolerate to let it happen again.

bottom up mind shift

Since 2010, there are a few significant changes in my life:

1. My relationship with my family, especially my mom, has drastically changed. I still can't comprehend what CONCRETELY that looks like. But i already feel the warmth and openness from both her and myself. I feel like I am finally not running away from them anymore.

2. I believe that revolution is necessary in order to change the lives of the oppressed. What I mean by revolution is a class struggle from below. Yes, social service is important, but it cannot change the structural violence that causes many of us to end up there for support in the first place. Yes, workshops are good. But you can only raise awareness and educate people to a certain extent. Folks don't learn through being what to do or what not to do by others. Folks learn through fighting for our own living.

3. I have an awesome partner who supports all of these things I believe in not only emotionally but physically. This has freed me from the myth that i need to have a middle class lifestyle in order to live happily in my life. I cannot verbalize what a radical change it really is in my mind. But it really is. Love after all is really almost spiritual in a way. It's not about what kind of house we will be living in or what kind party we will throw. I feel secure, content, and excited about what we have and what's gonna come in the near future.

unemployed and gay

Looking for a job has been a stressful process. I feel like I'm stuck in a weird time, waiting to hear back from school and to move, but somehow it's still important to get a decent job so I can be treated like a normal adult. Six applications this week. More waiting. I don't know if it's because I have this so-called cultural issue of not knowing how to sell myself or the economy is just that bad. I almost felt okay last weekend, thinking that I should use this time to read, write, organize, volunteer, and maybe finally learn to cook. One phone call from my mom where she said, "if you are not doing anything in America, you should pack your bag and come back to Taiwan," totally destroyed my inner peaceful state with my unemployment.

This is it. Under the Capitalist structure it is hard to feel like a decent human being without a job. The funny thing is, no one around me who has a job loves working anyway. We are all just trying to get by, probably with some hope of upward mobility.

But fuck I can't just go back and live in my parents' guest room now pretend that the world is still a cute and fuzzy place with lots of good street foods. They almost make it sound so easy for me and I hate the misguided feeling of comfort. I hate this nasty rain in Seattle but it always reminds me that life is a struggle. There are things needed to be fought for. I feel calmer living with this state of mind than pretending that the world is made for us. And that there will always be warm meals on the table at 6:30pm when you go home.

But hey can you just freaking call me back, H&M??!! I would even try Banana Republic but i might just be too Asian or too queer for them.

Jane mee's awesome article on queer liberation and class struggle:

Queer Liberation is Class Struggle