tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6744114065733119575.post5349820464479505911..comments2024-03-13T11:14:26.768-04:00Comments on A Radical Profeminist: Celebrating the Career and Mourning the Loss of the Marvelous Gladys Horton (1945 - 2011), age 65, not 66Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6744114065733119575.post-54900196026605591032011-01-31T16:05:46.831-05:002011-01-31T16:05:46.831-05:00Thank you for sharing that with me, Dark Daughta.
...Thank you for sharing that with me, Dark Daughta.<br /><br />I'm sorry to hear your mother was abused and that your relationship with your father was complex, but am not surprised.<br /><br />I know of very, very few people who had fathers around who didn't have similar experiences. Sadly. Tragically.<br /><br />I feel that your last two paragraphs just should be made available, like running text on the bottom of the screens tuned into CNN, interrupting all scheduled programming. Because what you wrote there feels TRUE to me in a way that most of what the media communicates is total CRAP. So thank you for stating that and putting it here. I hope people who are in mass media read it and register, deeply, the implications of all of that when discussing "what we can do to better our health". What we can do is end white supremacy and patriarchy. That'd go a long way to improve the life expectancy and quality of life both of people who are not white and people who are not male.<br /><br />Blessings to you. I hope your therapist is excellent. If they don't get your experience, or minimise the role of racism and misogyny in shaping it, I hope you have the option to ditch 'em. I am VERY lucky, and privileged, to have a great therapist who "gets it" about systematic political oppression. She's the only person I know of in the region who does, who is a psychotherapist. So I'm wishing you at least as good a therapist as she is. And I know that's wishing a lot.Julian Realhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02933612851144914687noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6744114065733119575.post-13343342825294781842011-01-31T11:18:37.309-05:002011-01-31T11:18:37.309-05:00Thanks, Julian Real. It was, as I wrote, only two ...Thanks, Julian Real. It was, as I wrote, only two years ago. Ours was a complicated relationship in love but also in struggle. He was, after all, a man, a patriarch. He was also the abuser of my mother...who she sent me to live with...who did love me but who also did not understand me.<br /><br />The memories are...complex. I struggle with them. I deal with them. I'm in counseling. :)<br /><br />I think you're right about the denial based in privilege that allows space for them to not see what's right under their noses. We do die young very often especially when we live in the cities or in north amerikkka as opposed to in other places in the amerikkkas.<br /><br />I think there is something about proximity to that much white domination, sitting next to it on the bus, walking into stores to buy from it, being policed by it, being taught by it in schools, having even local news dominated by it...it's so pervasive.<br /><br />I do think that this is what sticks in our throats, clogs our arteries, sends clots to our brains, dis/eases us and eventually stops our hearts cold.Dark Daughtahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07461439416312772862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6744114065733119575.post-38852383688987111492011-01-30T13:49:17.663-05:002011-01-30T13:49:17.663-05:00Hi Dark Daughta,
I'm so sorry for the loss of...Hi Dark Daughta,<br /><br />I'm so sorry for the loss of your father. My own father also died way too young, before I turned twenty, of heart disease. <br /><br />I see little to no evidence, on any major scale, of the lives of Black and Brown women and men being less burdened and less oppressed. As I hear it from white people, the insistence that "life is better" becomes yet another form of denial, privilege, and invalidation of the experiences of those in society who pay the highest price with their health and their lives.<br /><br />I wonder all the time about how my father's life would have unfolded and I miss him even while his passing was quite a long time ago.<br /><br />My heart goes out to you for your loss--which to me sounds terribly recent. I hope you had a loving and close relationship with him with good memories to hold dear.<br /><br />And, my heart goes out to the loved ones of Gladys Horton as well. At least they and the general public have videos and recordings by which to remember her talent.Julian Realhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02933612851144914687noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6744114065733119575.post-64584344670584297242011-01-30T10:03:28.450-05:002011-01-30T10:03:28.450-05:00Thank you for this. When reformers and progressive...Thank you for this. When reformers and progressives talk about the society having changed and become a less oppressive place for all, we need really only point at life expectancies for people who experience multiple forms of oppression daily to see how little things have truly changed. I try to think positively about having potentially another forty years to go. But the reality is that my father died two years ago in his sixties unexpectedly. The more things "change"...Dark Daughtahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07461439416312772862noreply@blogger.com