Sexual Politics (or, How I Got To Where I Am Today)
There was a time when I let my sexual orientation rule me. For 4 years it was the focal point of nearly every conversation, every joke, every academic paper. As one of perhaps 4 out teenagers at a fairly conservative Christian high school, I occupied a nether region somewhere between circus freak show and official queer spokesperson. People would ask me questions randomly, during lunch hour: “Did you know right away?” “Are you going to be like this forever?” “Do you think you’re going to be a good mother?” I answered these questions with aplomb and fortitude that I didn’t truly have – I was still searching for the answers to those questions myself, but admitting this would have meant diminishing my credibility as the resident gay person in high school.
As many young teens do, I struggled to find an identity for myself, and being known as The Lesbian provided not only a script to reference and follow in social situations, but a painless way of ignoring the sexual politics of high school that I so desperately wanted to avoid. So for a while, I was fine with the rigid definition of “lesbian.” However, in time I grew weary of having only one sense of identity. I am not only queer. I am a musician, I am a woman, I am a writer. I want people to see these parts of me before they see my dating habits. I became restless.
Summer in New York. Take 2.
I went to the Brooklyn Flea with my friends today. I got overwhelmed by the cool stuff and didn’t buy anything, but I did take some pictures and drink Hibiscus tea. Summer’s looking up.
On Living a Nomadic Life
Today I packed up more than half of my possessions and put them in a storage unit in Tribeca. Next week I will move into a cute but tiny apartment, and live out of boxes for 2 months. Over the course of the next year, I will live in 4 different places: a New York apartment, Hawaii, London, and then an NYU dorm.
I’ve had people tell me that if there’s ever any time to live a nomadic life, it’s when you’re in college — but I still can’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that this isn’t what’s best for me. I’m the kind of person who likes routine. I want to put down roots. I want to stack my books on a shelf and not have to worry about packing them up 8 months down the line.
I keep reminding myself that if I can put up with this for one more year — one more year – then the reward is that I will finally have my own place to live and my own part of the city. But that doesn’t really make the unease go away, the feeling I have that if you don’t have a place to go home to, you’re really just drifting in the wind.
Something there is that doesn’t love a paywall (Thoughts on Hawaii Civil Beat)
Honolulu Civil Beat, Pierre Omidyar’s new journalism project, officially launched today. As excited as I am to witness the birth of a new media organization in my home state, I was disappointed when I learned that Civil Beat is planning to charge $20 a month for access to its site – disappointed because I want to see what happens with it, but I don’t know if I’m willing to pay the fee.
Conflicted by this, I decided to seek advice from the twitterverse, where more of my journalism friends spend their time. I posted a status update asking whether people though it was worth it for me to fork over the money. And CivilBeat responded to me, saying, “Definitely don’t go without life’s necessities!”
Okay. Wait a minute. Life’s necessities? Can we examine that statement for a bit?
Thoughts on Kick-Ass
When I first walked out of the theater after seeing Kick-Ass, I didn’t quite know what to think. After mulling over the film a bit more, I know why part of me didn’t like it: the director tried so hard to make the movie grounded in reality (this is, after all, a movie about a high schooler who decides to become a superhero) that the violence in the film is disturbing.
In your typical superhero movie, no one would have batted an eyelash at the violent acts the main characters committed. The kind of killing that Hit-Girl does in Kick-Ass is almost comically tame compared to a movie like, I don’t know, The Punisher, which features stone-cold murders and a couple of brutal fight scenes. But because these are “real people,” in Kick-Ass, acting out the superhero fantasy in “real life,” the audience sees the violence as truly disturbing.
It is precisely this factor that makes me like this movie so much.
Kick-Ass is not, in any way, your typical superhero movie. It’s saying something, in an uncomfortable way. We cringe at the violent acts that Hit-Girl commits — which in turn begs the following question: why are we okay with similar violence in a movie like Crank or Spiderman or The Incredible Hulk, but not okay with what Hit-Girl does?
The Women’s Ass-Kicking Committee
I wasn’t really sure whether I liked the movie Kick-Ass when I saw it. I’m still mulling that over, but either way: Hit-Girl is awesome.
Dear Creepers
Dear creepy men of the world: I do not want to be your girlfriend. When I act cold, it is not because I’m being coy. It’s because I’m not interested. I do not have to talk to you, accept your friend request, respond to the comments you leave on my blog, be nice, or listen politely to your solicitations. You are not entitled to any part of my attention. It doesn’t matter if you’re a homeless man in Washington Square Park or a fellow student. You’re creepy, and I don’t like you. Leave me alone.”
This is something I jotted down in a notebook a while back, in response to something that recurs in my life with alarming frequency: I attract creepy men. It doesn’t really matter where — on Twitter, on Facebook, in person. They are there. They often approach me first with an innocuous question, which I answer, because I generally try to be a polite person. It goes downhill from there. They ask overly personal questions (asking my opinion on abortion is NOT an appropriate way to introduce yourself; nor is asking me about my religion), try to solicit me for a date, and generally expect me to be OK with entertaining them and engaging in long drawn-out conversations, because I’m a girl in public so of course it follows that I must want to talk to EVERYONE. I’ve been approached by strange guys 4 or 5 times in the past 2 months. I’m getting really sick of it.
I’m aware that the line between friendly and overly friendly is a rather fine one. So at what point does conversation become intrusive and creepy? Read the rest of this entry »
I’m Keyana. This blog is a compilation of the random things I do. I'm a writer and musician living in New York and Entertainment Editor of 
