i just want to say i'm sorry if i keep saying the same things over and over in all these posts. i feel like i do. i think its just reflective of how i'm thinking, like all these things require thinking again and again and again. i'm amazed at how similar the things i wrote about this issue in 1999 are to what i'm writing now. what does that mean? that i'm not creating enough conversations to move to new places? i hope this is beginning to change with this rad conversation we're having here. i feel like all of this is stirred up in me in a more focused way than it has ever been before.

i was just talking to my friends emily and james about this conversation. one of the things we talked about was how we all feel different kinds of pressure from what our upbringings taught us about money and security and insecurity. it made me think about how much pressure we all feel from what our upbringings taught us about gender and sexuality, yet what a rich and robust set of communities i'm a part of that provide tons of space and models for resistant gender and sexual practices. i really don't think i could ever have openly identified as trans, and especially allowed myself to be a non-traditionally gendered queer trans person, without knowing that others existed and eventually meeting them and then more and more. still, when i hang out with certain friends like james who have really non-traditional trans identities i feel like his very existence opens space for me to be less judgmental toward myself and less internalizing of other people's transphobia toward me. i want to think about how we can do this with economic justice practice.

emily and i were talking about what a gathering of friends to discuss these themes might include. we talked about something like a dinner party, where people know they are specially invited and come with a more intimate and open feeling than a large event. we talked about how 70's feminist consciousness raising groups focused on people sharing openly and learning about sexism and feminism from each other's experiences. i like the idea of building shared analysis from what people already in the room know, and teaching each other. we also talked about creating a moment when people can all share their anxieties about the conversation at the beginning, in order to help people move out of a judgmental space and into a compassionate space, recognizing that we're all there together to help each other be the good people we are and build strategies to live that.

those ideas seem really smart for working with the group of friends emily and i share, who are familiar with and invested in feminist practice. i imagine other things would work better in other circles. we also thought that it would be essential at such an event to do a visioning exercise about what people think economic justice looks like, so that it wasn't just a depressing apathy-producing conversation, but was one about vision and practice. i can imagine planning something with emily with a certain group of friends we share, and i enjoyed how concrete it was to talk to her about it. i could imagine a dinner party/facilitated conversation like that resulting in that group of people doing a project of some kind together, making a zine, or deciding to meet again and that was fun to think about.

i keep having lots of these conversations with people in person who have or have not been reading this series of posts and comments. it seems like a main sticking point keeps being my bits about cell phones. in some ways, it makes me want to stop mentioning it, because it seems like such a stumbling block for some people that gets in the way of the rest of the conversation. in other ways, i feel like it kind of gets to the heart of what is hard here. why do we find each other's practices threatening? why do we need each other to do the same things or dismiss what others are doing?

i was thinking about environmental practices again, and how my friend asher moved to LA and got a veggie diesel car. its a great thing to do, and i am really excited to learn about it. yet, i don't feel threatened or defensive that its not something i can do right now. similarly, when i had a garden and composted all the time, i loved telling people about it and showing them, and none of them seemed to see it as an indictment of how they threw away vegetable scraps. why were we able to, in those conversations, each see other people making different contributions, recognize them as significant even though they are relatively small, find them inspiring, and still be engaged in different practices related to those principles in a non-defensive way? i want to think about flipping the money script to look more like that. so that nepon's story about selling the house in a way that reflected economic justice goals is fuel for our thinking, or someone else telling us they make their own sex toys instead of buying them, or someone else saying they've stopped buying coffee, or me saying i don't have a cell phone, are actions that we can reflect on and consider as options for ourselves and hear more about and embrace. i'm not quite sure what makes the argument about cell phones so hard to hear, and result in such vigorous defense of a product that, while it is not the root of all evil, can't really be argued to be a politically liberating or environmentally friendly or economically redistributionist item. i mean, does it deserve defense? i think i need to think about how i'm talking about it that might contribute to this. i want to approach these conversations non-judgmentally but still be allowed to have strong feelings about the products and marketing schemes and trends, while being clear that i'm not judging the buyers, though i am sharing my critique because i think it's worth something.

anyway, these thoughts are a bit disconnected. tyrone and i are working on ideas for creating some kind of space for this conversation and i'm so excited. we'll write with updates and requests for articles and stuff as it comes together.