First Five Facts for Feminist Fellas

By Pirp A. Treytor

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This publication is written from the perspective of a cis man with a lot of white privilige who has mostly dated women. My intention is to explore some of the oppressive dynamics that exist between people with male programming and people with female programming. As such, the language is often framed around men and women. This is done to explicitly share some lessons that I have learned as a guy who has mostly had relationships with ladies, and some of the dynamics that I have recognized in those relationships among my friends. Much respect to the gender spectrum and the LGBTQIA community and people, and I hope that it’s understood that this is offered as an expression of solidarity and not meant to be exclusive in any way, shape or form. 

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I am a past, present, and future recipient of white male privilege and a perpetrator of violence against women. My awareness of this is a result of substantial chronological and emotional investments on the parts of many people in my community to help me see my patterns of disrespect and violence, as well as my programming around gender roles and the ways in which I am not anything like as good a feminist and ally as I once thought I was.  

In retrospect, this should have been obvious. I was raised with two primary influences; the first was my parents, who modeled a classical 1950’s power dynamic where my father maintained order with a constant stream of verbal abuse peppered with physical abuse while my mother deferred to him in fear of his anger. The second influence were my profoundly badass older sisters who bucked off my father’s oppression and found their own voices early enough to start feeding me a feminist literature and conversations at a very young age. This gave me a great ideology and rhetoric, I believed passionately in feminism and I was able to speak eloquently on feminist ideals and issues early on. I lived the first 23 years of my life very grateful to my sisters for helping me dodge the bullet of my father’s role modeling. While I remain eternally grateful to them for their continued work and investment in me, I did not dodge that bullet at all, and I’ve been carrying a festering wound from it that I have passed on to women around me my entire life. 

My goal in writing this is to help other recipients of male privilege who are working on being feminists and allies to be accountable and honest with themselves. It’s far too easy to live in the comfortable delusion that I did for many years at the expense of my female friends and partners. Women are not empowered to speak about their experiences. They are actively told not to in ways ranging from a closed fist or worse to a subtle ignorance when they raise concerns. As a male, it’s completely possible for you to go through your entire life believing yourself an ally while eroding community and perpetuating a paradigm of violence and oppression. 

In the course of my work and growth over the last year, I have discussed these issues with many of the women in my community, and found that while many men in my community go through their lives thinking of themselves and their male friends in terms of being pretty good about gender issues, basically all women in activist circles are aware of the fact that all men are perpetrators. In fact, it seems as though the majority of women in the broader culture are acutely aware of these prevalent trends in men, though they cope with that awareness in a wide variety of ways. The ability to go through our lives unaware of the wake of pain and suffering that we cause is a function of male privilege. By virtue of our privilege, we are allowed a comfortable ignorance to our crimes and the crimes of our male friends. It’s up to us to open our eyes and look at the effects of our actions fully, and we’ve been overdue for that reality check for a couple thousand years.

The perspective that I share here was bought with pain and suffering in my community that I caused. I share these experiences of perpetration of sexual violence because I believe that the more we can own our offenses and put them into a context of community healing, the easier it will be to break the patterns that they are part of, both in ourselves and in our communities. For too long, the experiences of sexual violence have been shut behind closed doors. The sooner those of us who are in a place to do so share openly our experiences on both sides of sexual violence, the sooner we can begin effectively organizing and acting to prevent and heal from it. 

In the spirit of healing, I offer these experiences. 

Disclaimer: the following paragraph contains summary descriptions of sexual violence.  

When I was 17, I ignored my ex-girlfriend’s overt body cues and lay on top of her on the floor, effectively pinning her and kissing her until she got so tense that I finally understood that she was not interested and we sat up, at which point she started crying and ran from the house. Last year, I was hanging out with one of my friends and we had been flirting a little and I hugged her. We talked for a minute or two, and she told me that she was not sure she wanted to kiss, so we talked for another couple minutes and then I leaned over and kissed her anyway. This past winter, I was being intimate with a friend. We had both been checking for consent, and I was on top of her and decided to go down on her, without asking. She became so stiff and tense that I eventually stopped. 

On several occasions, my partners and I have agreed to have sex using condoms. After a while, I would initiate sex without a condom, and if they did not bring it up, we would have sex without a condom. 

These experiences are profoundly damaging. They are obviously damaging to the survivors, in ways that are covered in more depth and with more direct experience elsewhere than I can offer here. 

They are damaging to the community in several ways. Firstly, they erode trust. When we behave in unsafe ways, it requires that people around us do more work around putting up walls and protecting themselves. It effectively forces work that we should be doing in ourselves onto the survivors of our offenses. It perpetuates the model where women expect men to be aggressive and potentially dangerous. 

Finally, they are damaging to the perpetrators. To perpetrate an act of consent violation has myriad effects across all levels of conscious and subconscious being. Since most perpetrators are unaware, at least initially, of the lack of consent, it teaches us that we are intrinsically dangerous even when our intentions are healthy. For example, my conscious intentions in my perpetrations of sexual violence were never about harming my partners. If anyone had asked me, I would have said that my intention was usually a deeper connection. Often there was a semi-conscious intention of “giving” my partner an orgasm, and being a self-stylized feminist I wished my partner to orgasm first so that I would have perceived “permission” to come. One of my sub-conscious intentions was the sense of self-worth that I was taught comes from sex and sexuality. Notice that nowhere in this list is anything malicious. While there certainly is malicious sexual violence, I believe it is orders of magnitude less common than unintentional violations of consent, as well as being outside the scope of this writing. (If you approach sexuality with the conscious intention to do harm, I would recommend immediately abstaining from any and all sexual activity and seeking therapeutic counseling and treatment as soon as possible.)

So what effect does it have to unintentionally harm someone that you are intimate with? Well, this depends on whether we consciously face our violation of consent or not. If we do not consciously face it, then what we take away is an even worse consent model than we started with because we believe that what happened was natural. The stiffness of our partner’s body, the lack of eye contact or communication in general, the interpersonal dynamics during and after the experience are all subconsciously naturalized in our minds. Since we live in a rape culture where male domination of women is seen as normal and healthy, this is by far the easier path to take. It also make it much more likely that we will violate consent again, since the red flags that should lead us to stop and check in have been artificially naturalized in our minds; we think that sex is simply like that. 

If we, voluntarily or not, consciously face the fact that we have violated someone’s consent, this teaches us that we are unsafe people. As I mentioned, it teaches us that even if our intentions are good, we can still hurt people. This is true, and in many ways it is a necessary lesson if we wish to grow into healthier beings. However it’s truth makes it no less hard to hear and integrate. It then requires an intensive process of deconstructing our patterning and programming that lead us to such a perpetration. Especially in a culture that actively undermines our self-esteem at every turn, this process can be very difficult to undergo without slipping into very dark mental territory around depression, self-loathing, self-deception and other such pitfalls. From there, we then have to reconstruct a sense of self-as-sexual-partner that is based in positive consent models. All around, this is serious and difficult work. Imagine how much easier and healthier it would be all-around if we lived in a culture that modeled, taught, and reinforced consent from an early age?

As recipients of male privilege, it’s our responsibility to step up and stop perpetuating and tacitly allowing oppression. To me, a part of that is sharing openly about our pasts and sharing the lessons that we have learned with each other. Because of this belief, I have decided to share some of the lessons I have learned, even though I am in no way qualified to speak to what a healthy paradigm of masculinity is. I’m still actively in the process of becoming aware of all the ways in which I’m perpetuating oppression within my community. I do feel qualified to speak on the topic of starting to look at yourself honestly, and offer a few pointers to other recipients of male privilege who are trying to see their patterns and change them. With that in mind here are some of the things that I wish, for the sake of the people I have hurt and for myself, I had known sooner. 

  1. You have more work to do. 

In this society, we are taught patterns of oppression from the day we are conceived. If you want to be a good ally, it will be a constant investment for the rest of your life. At no point will you get to sit back and relax in the knowledge that you are no longer perpetuating systems of oppression. Even if your consent process seems perfect and you have checked with everyone in your community that you are behaving in a respectful and balanced way, your programming is still finding subtle ways to express its-self to the detriment of you and those around you. The sooner you accept this, the sooner you can actually get to work. 

Tip: Let your communities know that you are working on growth as a feminist and an ally. Specifically ask for community support around your growth and ask that any community members who are willing talk to you about ways in which you could grow as a feminist and an ally. The more open you are about your process and intentions, the safer people will feel helping you see your growing edges.  If this seems scary, GREAT!

  1. Intellectual feminism is the easy part.

It’s great to read feminist literature, and have deep, heady conversations about the roots of oppression and such. These things give a broader cultural understanding of the challenges we face and can help motivate towards growth. But: How you behave in the bedroom/kitchen/field/etc…  does not necessarily reflect the your academic beliefs. If you want to change your patterns and learned behaviours, it requires serious emotional work and a visceral understanding of the pain caused by oppression. Patterns of oppression exist on the emotional plane more than the intellectual, and as such must be addressed there. 

Tip: Seek out contexts where you can feel safe exploring the emotional aspects of your patterns and the pain that is caused by oppression. This could be with close loved ones one-on-one, with a feminist therapist, or in workshops available to you. By far the most valuable context that I have found is a small, closed men’s group comprised of other recipients of male privilege who are working on their issues in a serious way. 

Also, seek out public accounts of the first-hand experience of gender violence. Sit with an open heart and a clear mind and read/watch videos on/listen to what it’s like to experience oppression.  Additionally, you could consider volunteering your time doing feminist work. This could look like working at a shelter, doing support work around rape counseling centers, etc.… Again, ask some empowered local ladies if they would be willing to point you in the direction of where work needs to be done in the community. You’ll never fully understand the mindset that women are raised with, but the more you try to really get what oppression feels like, the more realistic an emotional understanding you will have. 

  1. Your perspective on yourself is very limited.

You cannot judge your own feminism. Especially if you identify as a feminist, you will be blind to the things that you do which are not supportive of that view of yourself. The ego works to cling to it’s power and the status quo, and your ego will try to convince you that point number one in this zine is incorrect. It will tell you that you are a great feminist and all set. If you reject that, then the ego will try to convince you that because you recognize that you are not perfect, then you are enlightened and one of the good guys and therefore couldn’t be a perpetrator, etc.… This pattern is what leads to rationalization and denial of behaviours and patterns that are not in sync with your self-image. 

Almost no one thinks of themself as a rapist, as abusive, as coercive, as manipulative, and so on. When I committed the crimes that I described above, I did not think of them as sexual violence at all. I justified them in all sorts of ways; my ex and I had seduced each other in similar fashions many times since our break up, I thought that the friend I was hugging had changed her mind over the course of our conversation, the girl that I went down on and I were both wearing all our clothes, so in the moment I did not think of it as an escalation of what we were doing, I thought that both my partner and myself had gotten caught up in the moment and decided to have unprotected sex etc.… 

All of this is peripheral nonsense. It’s your ego trying to justify violent, nonconsensual behavior.  In order to maintain your sense of self, you will automatically deny (internally and/or externally) anything that would force you to change. This manifests in overt ways such as vehemently denying rape accusations to very subtle ways such as looking hurt/surprised when a partner mentions something that was hurtful to them. 

The effect of this on partners, especially female-bodied partners, is incredibly destructive. It constantly forces them to second-guess themselves and over time can become a pattern that reinforces a lack of self-trust. 

Long story short, if you are serious about seeing yourself honestly than your community is a much better resource for holistic perspective on you than you are. 

Tip: Find safe ways to ask the people who have experienced you up close and personal to describe what they have observed. Ex-partners can be a dangerously good resource, if they are willing. If you are on good terms, this can be a casual request. If there is any inkling that you might have messed up in your past relationship or if it ended poorly, err on the side of caution and write an open letter asking if they would be willing to consider doing you this favor, and have it passed to them through a safe friend of theirs. Aside from ex-partners, female friends are often great at telling you ways in which you are not yet where you should be with your growth. 

  1. If you openly identify as a feminist, you shoulder more responsibility for your behavior.

Women are oppressed in this society. Literally every woman has had some direct experience with oppressive and/or abusive men. Many of these women are seeking healthier relationships for themselves, and seeking healthier men to have them with. Healthy men being a rare commodity in this society, these women are in some ways forced to take men at their word at first that they are feminists. If you identify as a feminist, and then behave in an oppressive patriarchal way, you do a great deal more damage than if you did not identify as a feminist at all. The conclusion that this supports in your survivor’s mind is that no men are to be trusted, and even men who are ostensibly working on their shit are not safe. As one of the survivors of my actions insightfully yelled at me: “I’m not here to tell you to take the ‘feminist’ sticker off your bike, but what the fuck?” 

One anonymous wise woman on infoshop.com wrote the following about self-identified anarchist/feminist men:

“…shouldn’t men in these communities be held to a more immediate standard, given their implicit allegiance to certain ideals off the bat, and their (unfortunately, often falsely) assumed understanding and critique of capitalist patriarchy and its functions? Shouldn’t men in these communities be even more detested for falsely displaying comradeship for, and then afterwards still expecting it from, the survivors of their actions?”

It’s really fucked up if you are reaping the social benefits of being a feminist without actually doing the work. If you do this, even unintentionally, you are stealing the work that was bought with blood and tears by generations of true feminists to allow you to abuse women. Take a second to think about that. It’s a corrosive, destructive form of lying that will erode your sense of self as well as your community. 

Tip: Be up front about your shit. If you’re with someone and things are moving in a direction where it might come up, stop and have a conversation about your patterns and where you are at in your growth and development. It’s wicked awkward, and can feel like a real break in the flow of what’s going on; but women who have empowered themselves enough to see systems of oppression in your community will appreciate it. Also, it can really help to ground you and may help prevent you from making the same mistakes again. I find it helpful to take some pride in my hard-earned consent model. A new connection is, in one light, a chance to practice really awesome consent. I’m sure that sometimes this shows and especially at first people thought I was a little over the top with my verbal check-ins, but it’s far better to have someone think you’re sort of self-absorbed in your consent model than to accidently violate someone’s consent. 

  1. It is never, ever, ever OK to assume consent. Not even a little, Ever. 

In this society, we are taught that our value as an individual is determined by our sexual conquests and appeal (see every tv show and movie for details.) As a male in this society, your sense of self is tied up in sex. Your ego will want you to have more sexual experiences in order to support this. You’ve been taught that “going further” sexually is the point of sexual experiences, and you’ve been taught that you always want penetrative sex. None of this is true. Connecting with another person in an intimate, loving, mutually consensual, fun way is fantastic and feels amazing. At our cores, that’s what we all want. Unfortunately, even after you understand this, you’ll still slip back into the old paradigm that you want to have penetrative sex, the point is to “go further,” and so on. In your heart, you actually don’t want to do anything that your partner does not want to do. It would be a form of rape, and a violation of the trust and mutual respect that you actually desire. The fact that you would ever think or act as though your physical pleasure is a higher priority than your partner’s desires is an inheritance that you have received from millennia of rape culture. 

Beyond the sexual boundaries issue, you may find that you have patterns of non-consensual behavior in other places in your life. The old “Spheres of Influence” bull is still alive and well, and many of us were raised subconsciously expecting things of those around us without asking or even knowing. A really common one is to just put down a dish near a sink and walk away. Guys do this all the time, and it’s a form of nonconsensual behavior. If you do this, you are requiring someone else to clean up after you without any hint of consent in the process. Beyond being quite rude, this is a function of privilege.  Also, it will make your friends dislike you, even if you never hear a word about it.  As the sink at JED so eloquently puts it, “Everyone wants a revolution, but no one wants to do the dishes.” There’s a thousand other ways to not check for consent, ranging from showing up unannounced and expecting to have you needs met to behaving in a way that requires others to intervene (e.g.: I had two friends crash at a mutual friend’s house in an urban neighborhood, and at 2am they started howling wicked loud in his driveway, knowing that our friend and many of his neighbors had very young children.) 

Tip: Spend some time looking at what you want. Then, spend some time looking at why you want what you want. Are you seeking sexuality to feel valuable? Are you seeking sexuality to feel a deeper sense of connection to the person you are with? Are you seeking for sexuality just for fun?  If you have clarity about your motivations, than you can look clearly at the best way to meet your goals. 

Even if you are still seeking sexuality for the sake of your self esteem, which is going to make you feel like a more worthwhile person: coercing someone into a level of sexuality that they are not interested in and will hurt them, or having a mutually consensual experience of intimacy that leaves both of you feeling safe, warm, and fuzzy? If you are seeking sexuality for connection, or for fun, which of those scenarios is going to lead to that goal? 

Before you start to get intimate, communicate to your partner about consent. Tell them that you are invested making sure that the experience is safe for both of you, and express that you will check in with each other before progressing sexually. 

Always ask. Before every single step in the process, check in with your partner.  It’s far better to err on the side of being oversensitive than to perpetrate sexual violence. Even you are 100% sure that it’s ok, just ask. Especially in the beginning, just ask about every single thing. Don’t let your hands wander, don’t hint that you want things, don’t expect. Have clear communication so that you are both on the same page, and within that framework you will both have a much deeper sense of connection and a great deal more fun. 

Check-ins: Consent is ongoing. By this I mean that a consensual experience is one where all parties are constantly giving their consent, and it can be withdrawn at any point in time. Check-ins are a great way to re-affirm consent. Like all consent, verbal is by far the most reliable, especially at first. Pausing a moment and asking something like “How are you feeling?” or “What would feel best to you right now?” give your partner a chance to express their preferences without a more awkward break. 

Get in the habit of meeting your own needs. This involves, but is not limited to; washing all the things that you make dirty, providing all the food that you will consume, ensuring that you have adequate shelter, getting your transportation worked out yourself, and if you expect mind-altering substances, bring them yourself or expect to compensate those who did, if they are willing to share. Also, meeting your own sexual needs is awesome. Get comfortable masturbating; it’s great. Also it can be a shared experience. Sometimes when partners don’t feel like touching one another, it can be super fun to make out and masturbate. 

Once you are in the habit of being self-sufficient, then you will truly appreciate the times when your community supports you. It will seem obvious that you need to ask before assuming that someone else will meet your needs, and you will be more respectively grateful for what you receive. 

Finally, and once again, ask your community. Ask if any members of your community will help you in your work and hold you accountable for the times when you are not checking for consent. Ask for support around your growth with consensual sexuality. It may be that your friends see things that you do not, even in your public interactions with your partner. 

My final piece of advice in this process is this: Be Humble. Approach your community, friends, ex-partners and sweeties, and everyone else with the awareness that you are a perpetrator of oppression in your community, and have a great deal to learn. No one owes you anything in this process, it’s up to you to do all the work and make all the investments. Any advice, time, resources, or other investments made by people in your community is them doing you a favor. Most women have first-hand experience with oppression, so for them to take time out of their days to work with you is not necessarily pleasant. Often women will make these investments for the sake of their community, not your privileged ass. With all of this in mind, sincerely thank anyone who is willing to give you a hand. 

I sincerely hope that this publication is distributed to anyone who might benefit from it. Please replicate and duplicate as much as seems helpful. 

Addendum on Rationalization: 

Rationalization is a quick and dangerous trap that it’s very easy to fall into. I catch myself doing with regularity and have to maintain a more vigorous awareness of than other pitfalls. 

In short, rationalization is the process of taking external input, whether that’s body language, verbal communication, vibes, whatever, and using the logical mind to make it fit into the story that one already believes as opposed to allowing the input to lead one to another story that would force a larger change in one’s self or self-image. 

Example one: Starling thinks of themself as a fairly tidy person. One day their landmate Thrush mentions that Starling has left the extension cord out a couple times in the last week, and it’d be appreciated if it landed back in the shed when Starling was done using it. Starling politely says “Yeah, of course. Sorry about that, I’ll put it back now” and puts it away.

However, in Starling’s mind, they’re thinking: “Huh, Thrush has a higher standard of cleanliness than I do. I’m happy to meet Thrush’s standard.”

This is a rationalization. If Starling were to take the input they were being given by Thrush, that their pattern of cleanliness is not up to snuff, and let it blossom into it’s own truth, they might reach a very different conclusion. It might be that Starling does have some room for growth in this area, and growing would be healthy for Starling and the whole community. Instead, Starling takes the easier path. It requires less work for Starling to rationalize the situation by making it about Thrush. In this way, Starling limits their own growth and sows the seeds of discord in themselves. By making the situation about Thrush, Starling outsources the problem in their mind. Starling can only do this so many times before it starts to build into serious resentment and conflict. Eventually Starling makes themself the victim, and things go downhill. 

Example two: Fox and Raccoon are poly. They’ve been together for a year or so, and have agreements of disclosure of any new sexual contact prior to contact between each other, no fluid bonding other than saliva with other partners, and heads-up about new potential romantic partners when feasible. Fox wants to go to the ALEC protest; it would be a week long including the planning meetings. Raccoon can’t afford it, so Fox heads out on their own. Fox is pretty obviously cool, and when they get there they find a new sweetie, Badger, on the second day. On the third day, Raccoon calls Fox and says that they unexpectedly got the money together, and were checking with Fox about how it would feel to Fox for Raccoon to join them at the protest. Fox lovingly discloses about Badger and asks Raccoon how it would feel to share space with this new sweetie. Raccoon’s agreeable and excited to meet Badger, and head out. 

Upon arrival, Raccoon and Fox meet up and spend the night together. The next day, Raccoon meets Badger, and Badger and Fox head out to some previously agreed upon logistical tasks. Raccoon makes themself busy plugging in wherever they can, but feels sort of isolated and a little lonely. That afternoon, Fox and Badger come back and Raccoon asks for a little of Fox’s time. Fox and Raccoon go for a walk, and Raccoon expresses that they’re feeling a little lonely and insecure, and asks if Fox could spend the next morning with them. Fox expresses that they all ready have plans the next day, but would love to share breakfast and make time later on to spend with Raccoon. 

Fox says all of this very lovingly, but in their mind they’re feeling a little put-upon and can’t help but think that Raccoon just isn’t as experienced and relaxed in polyamory as Fox is. 

This is a rationalization. If Fox were to really allow Raccoon’s input to express its own reality, Fox might see Raccoon’s feelings and needs in a much more compassionate light. But Fox is excited about their plans tomorrow, about Badger, and about the protests; so it’s far easier for Fox to make it a problem with Raccoon that Fox can then emotionally nod to and dismiss than it would be to really hear Raccoon and engage in a supportive and emotionally present way. 

Obviously this is not malicious in any way on Fox’s part. Fox is probably doing their best to balance their current commitments and needs with their previously established relationship. It is, however, not the most self-empowered, conscientious or constructive approach. 

Let’s back up a step to when Raccoon and Fox are on their walk and Raccoon expresses their feelings and needs, and imagine a different scenario. When Raccoon expresses these things, our new Fox’s response is very different. Instead of first considering their own needs and preferences, Fox gives Raccoon’s statements real space. Fox uses their sweet nonviolent communication skills to confirm that they understand Raccoon’s concerns and then validates them. Then Fox expresses how important their relationship with Raccoon is to them, and asks how they can help Raccoon feel loved and respected. In this instance, Fox is viewing Raccoon’s feelings and needs not as a problem with their partner that needs to be addressed, but as an expression of Raccoon’s strength of sensitivity and honesty. When Fox frames the experience in these terms, their only logical reaction is genuine support and compassion. 

It’s likely that over the course of the following conversation Fox will need to assert that they have previous commitments the following morning, and that’s healthy. The difference is that in the first conversation, Raccoon is in many ways relegated to a lower priority in Fox’s mind, or at least it’s going to be a challenge for Raccoon not to interpret it that way. In the second model, Raccoon’s feelings and needs are given space, validation and respect. From there, the two of them can balance both Raccoon’s and Fox’s needs and feelings from a much safer, more loving place. 

This is a long example, but necessary to exemplify the level of subtlety that many forms of rationalization can take. Most rationalization is not as overt as the classical “Oh, I didn’t want to go out with that person anyway” routine. The differences in Fox’s first and second responses may not seem all that different at first glance. In both, Fox is polite and loving. In both, Fox expresses their own needs. In both, Fox is neither overtly oppressive nor self-centered; they’re trying. But the underlying dynamics are worlds apart, and in many ways mark the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships. 

Some Awesome Resources:

  • “Ten Suggestions for People Called Out for Abusive Behavior” by Wispy Cockles
  • “Taking Risks: Implementing Grassroots Community Accountability Strategies” by CARA
  • “Don’t Be A Dick” by P. Brown
  • “The Trickster, The Magician, and The Grieving Man: Reconnecting Men with Earth” by G. Mazis
  • “Sexism and God-Talk” by R. R. Ruther 

Much Thanks to Sonia and Becca for editing this, and to Noah for calling me out on some of my destructive patterns. Also, to my sisters for putting my feet on the right path. Finally, much thanks to my nieces for driving me towards health and wellness. 

I’d really love to hear your responses. Feel free to send thoughts/critiques/insights to Poecile_atricapillus@riseup.net

P.S. My mother divorced my father seven years ago and is now teaching Sex & Gender Studies, Environmental Aesthetics, and World Religions at a local college. She’s doing much better, and I couldn’t be prouder of her.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.