Wonder Woman kicks ass, takes names, brings home the bacon, and fries it up in a pan. And no you can't have any.
Now THIS is an avatar of feminine power we can all support. Sure, she may have taken jobs away from the odd dashing prince or fairy godmother, but now they can find new, rewarding careers as ghost writers for her autobiography, fan club presidents, or personal assistants. Win/win/win!
Besides, it’s not like those off-the-shelf Disney Princesses turned out so goddam well.
Hipster Ariel will self-harm if she doesn't get a goddam beer already
Which brings me to a slight rant, not for the first and surely not for the last time.
Have you been to the GA lately? No? Been to any populist movement of any kind recently? Even a City Council meeting? And seen? These girls? (and they’re always girls, you know?) Who really, really want to make the world, like, a better place, and, huh, oh, just want everyone to FEEL oKAY about it, okay? Okay?
“In case you hadn’t realized, it has somehow become uncool to sound like you know what you’re talking about? Or believe strongly in what you’re, like, saying? Invisible question marks and parenthetical ‘you know’s and ‘you know what I’m saying’s have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences? Even when those sentences aren’t, like, questions? Declarative sentences, so called because they used to, you know, like, declare things to be true, as opposed to other things that are, like, totally… not?” – Taylor Mali
Yes, our movement is a tentative one. It is conditional. It is not sure it should be out so late on a school night, and it doesn’t want to run into its boss at the GA. “If there ever was a time it would be now,” says Third Eye Blind in their Occupy anthem, and that’s as conditional a statement as was ever shoehorned into a revolutionary theme. Ambivalence is the precondition of all Occupiers, but we needn’t let it paralyze us. Let’s get okay with uncertainty, with backlash.
Kids, girls, poke your heads out of your scarves for a moment, unturtle thyselves, and listen to me:
If everyone feels safe and supported and comfortable about what we are doing then
WE ARE DOING IT WRONG.
Hipster guys for whatever reason don’t seem to insist that everyone feel okay about things, so I’m leaving them out of this rant although I’m sure to rant on them sometime or other, if only for their choice of novelty facial hair. It’s the girls (and yes, only some of them but enough that it’s led me to conclude this is a problem with the hipster worldview per se and not just two or three girls who bug me) who really want to change the world, who realize that to do it you need to step up into a position of action and power and who, once there, turtle themselves into their scarves, stare at their pigeon toes and hold up the GA while everybody gets “okay” with things.
Girls, you’ve got halfway there. Once the spotlight is on you, remind yourself this isn’t a photoshoot for Tumblr. This isn’t an audition for Suicide Girls (think about that name).
This is your chance to change the world, our REAL chance to change the world, and it requires more courage than anything any of us have ever done before. It is okay to fear. There is plenty to fear. But fuck “fierce.” Become fearsome.
Hold your heads high when you facilitate a GA. Shut down the randos; empower the change artists. When you’re stacking, own your power, because the power of the GA flows through you; you are a vessel of democracy at that point. Feel it. Live and breathe it.
And then lay it on an unsuspecting world.
raincoaster 
Damn, you’re good Lorraine!
It is like members of the aggressively inarticulate generation speak in Seinfeld riffs (I could be wrong) but ultimately I am not really invested – you know?
Someone said “It is easier to obtain forgiveness than permission”. The tentativeness of “everyone being OK” leadership rankles me as well. It homogenizes and outrightly squelches individual voices and doesn’t move the movement. Sometimes one has to swallow their fear, rather than their opinion, and step up. In a global protest movement the most important thing in the world isn’t the number of “likes” one receives. You can’t sleep in a house made of digital gold stars or eat them either. The issues on the ground are literally life and death for many people.
Good post, I definitely know where you’re coming from. My one criticism is your point that “it’s always girls.” Only because in my experience the hippy guys are just as bad as the “hipster” girls. Now I camped on site full time, and I got frustrated with people needing everyone to “be ok” with things on a daily basis. And I’d say it was about an even split. The worst was when a really awesome guy completely caved and broke an agreed upon security measure when a few people yelled at him because they felt left out. Back to the original point though, I think the ideal of wanting everyone to be on the same page is a good one, and something to strive for. But ideals must be approached with reality in mind. What a lot of these people are facing is the realization that some people just don’t trust ANYONE, and when you’re a trusting person, who realizes trust is essential to a completely harmonious community, that realization hits you like a ton of bricks, and you want life to go back to when you were innocent/naive. Then, on the other extreme it leads far too often to becoming jaded. There is a lot more to it than that, but I think the trust issue is one that is often overlooked.
OVperson, thanks for chiming in. Your experience has obviously been quite different from mine. Your point about the trust issue is well-made, but I would disagree: sometimes you have to act before you trust. And yes, you’re going to get used, but those of us who are older (and maybe jaded {MOI???}) know you can survive being used. Hell, one of the most important people at the camp was an undercover agent, but if we hadn’t trusted him we wouldn’t have gotten as far as we did. Yes, he was reporting everything we were doing, but he was damn helpful and I saw tears in his eyes as he talked about the breakup of Tent City.
What I’m saying is, if you can trust no-one and will not act without trust, you obviously preclude yourself from participating in, well, ANYTHING. If you will not act without trust and must trust everyone, you are going to get hurt, but at least you can act. You can change the world. Whether your trust is misplaced or not, ONLY people who will act, whether they are deluded or not, can change the world.
I appreciate everyone’s support. Frankly, it surprises me; I expected more pushback, but then haven’t we all just made the point that these particular people don’t push back and that is the whole problem?
NellaLou, that’s well-said.
Nancy, thanks.
RtCN, thank you. Is it all Seinfeld’s fault?
Absolutely – look, he even ruined a marriage – http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31749_162-20075002-10391698.html
Perhaps I am just bitter because I never caught the Seinfeld craze…nice guy, just disliked the show. Though I could be wrong….
I, on the other hand, dislike the guy but liked the show the one time I saw it. I mean, he claimed he had no idea how old his girlfriend was when he picked her up. She was wearing her school uniform at the time.
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