Hotashi

One of my roommates (the emotionally needy one) showed our apartment and her room to a potential subletter. After a week of living together in Septemeber my roommate had decided that the apartment was too ugly for her to live in. Well…it’s definately not the BEST looking apartment, but it is far from disgusting. I guess she’s a spoiled rich kid who has never had to put up with average living standards.

Anyway, she told my other roommate and I (there are three of us all together), that she will move out in the Winter term if she finds a person to sublet her room. At first it upset me a bit since we had gone apartment hunting together, but I had eventually decided that it wasn’t a big deal since we didn’t really know each other that well to begin with. Now I’m feeling indecisive on whether having a new roommate would be better or not. As socially awkward, emotionally needy, and downright stupid my roommate is, I’ve gotten used to her. Is it worth going through another three months of stress while I get used to another weirdo? I feel like I’m in a lose-lose situation…unless the subletter is a super cool person. That would definately be a plus.

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Note: This post is in reflection to North American expectations of legitimizing a marriage. Therefore this post is targetting self-proclaimed Christian readers. Other issues regarding marriage and legitimate marriage are not intended to be underlying messages in this post. They deserve their own space to be discussed.

I mentioned before that I had gone through an angry period where I would get enraged for reasons that I didn’t fully understand. I’m happy to say that for the most part I don’t have any rage issues. They still strike me from time to time, but it definately isn’t as overwhelming as it used to be. And really, what is wrong with being angry? I’m very grateful for going through that period because it made me let go of a lot of crap that I held onto. A good portion of this was many of my ignorant, conservative views. These views weren’t so much specific situations (although sometimes it was), but it was more a perspective and a worldview that needed to be changed. It has been an ongoing process for many years, and it is only recently that I’ve started to articulate my frustrations with values I have been socialized with.

Of these values include a perspective of what it is to be a Christian. It really bothers me that many Christians in North America (I would rather not generalize about all Christians since the majority of my experience has to do with North American Christians) do not understand that despite their siblings in Christ sharing the same or a similar theology with them, that this theology is expressed culturally. The way you interpret the Bible is relative to your position in the world. The way people interpret the Bible is in response to their need to understand their world. A woman understands the world differently than a non-woman (notice I did not say man - I did that on purpose). A non-White person understands the world differently than a White person. A working-class person understands the world differently than a middle-class, upper-middle-class, and upper-class person. To think that there is a universal understanding of God’s word is just nieve. God is absolute but we are not. We understand things through the blinders in our life. And those blinders are constricted by our “race” our ethnicity, our gender, our age, our sexual orientation, etc. Our standpoint determines how we interpret God’s word.

So with this, what makes us think that we can determine what constitutes as a marriage ceremony? If Jack and I choose to move in together and live the rest of our lives that way, how is that any different than getting “married”? If Jack and I were to go through a socially acceptable ceremony (according to “Christian” standards and legal standards), but we decide not to live under the same roof and continue with a happy relationship, does that make us any less married? Would I be less married if I didn’t wear my wedding ring (another culturally expressive tradition), or if I didn’t change my surname (yet another culturally expressive tradition)? Would Jack and I be any less Christian if we did not get married in a church or by a Christian pastor? Would I be a bad Christian if I chose to walk down the isle by myself, or with Jack by my side, or not at all? What if I wanted to wear a green dress? Would my chastity be questioned? Who decides these standards and why should I conform to them? Who is anyone else to tell me what is acceptable for my marriage to be legitimized? Why should I care what anyone but God thinks? If He recognizes my union with Jack, then who is anyone else to tell us that we are not married?

Wake up! These are all cultural. They way you interpret Genesis 2:24* is based on your culture. You cannot look at this verse and say that constitutes a specific type of living arrangement or a ceremony that defines a marriage. Does the way you declare a marriage validate one type of ceremony over another? Does the amount of money one spends on such a ceremony determine how legitimate their marriage is? Does the number of people who are witnesses legitimate it? If one uses a term other than marriage, such as a union or a partnership, does it make it any less of, or different than, a “marriage”? If you go through the wedding ceremony but do not sign the legal documentation required are you any less married before God’s eyes? If the government or society refuse to acknowledge your marriage are you any less married in God’s sight?

The way you constitue marriage is relative to YOUR understanding of marriage. So think long and hard about how your own ignorance and ethnocentricism is preventing you from seeing people the way God sees them. Wearing a white wedding dress, walking down the isle, moving in together after an “official” or “socially recognized” ceremony, exchanging wedding rings, etc. are NOT Christian. They are culturally constucted traditions used to legitimate a marriage. And what I have to say to those traditions is that they are not part of who I am. For the most part they are oppressive, sexist, and Eurocentric. So fuck them. I will not conform to such bullshit. As far as I’m concerned, Jack and I are already married.

*Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

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I remembered a classic Ness moment!

Ness: I really don’t like that green guy from Shrek. I can’t remember his name.
Maki: You mean Shrek?
Ness: Yeah, him.

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You know what’s great? Post-it notes. You know what’s better? Post-it notes for your desktop. Fuck yeah! [DOWNLOAD]

I’m so tired right now. This week is killer. Damn you all that are done exams…and school! I am so envious of you. I have to finish my 20 page proposal tomorrow and then go to a faculty lunch on Thursday followed by non-stop marking of 200 papers, and then work on my take-home exam for THEORY! I’m dead. Shoot me now. I am going to get wasted Friday night.

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I just finished writing the hardest paper I’ve ever had to write in my life. Not only was the topic quite psychologically scarring, but the aspect I had to take of it was too. It’s for my course, the political economy of human rights, which I’ve never had to think about before. It was a real eye-opener. My paper was on the “interrogation techniques” -cough-TORUTRE-cough- that occurred in Abu Ghraib. I read about it for a good two weeks which literally drove me mad. MAD! As a result I have become desensitized to the pictures, but I’m sure if I saw the ones of women and children being tortured that were withheld from the media I would go through the emotional cycle all over again. Regardless of what this topic has done to me I’m glad I did it. I truly believe that you cannot turn your face away at injustice even if it is incredibly hard to face it.

It really saddens me how naive people can be about this scandal. How can anyone truly justify such practices for the “good of the world” or “the good of Iraq”? How can we justify torture after our declaration of never again after the world wars? Hello?! Geneva Conventions anyone? Internment camps? Gas chambers? Doesn’t anyone remember history? I cannot understand how anyone can look at these pictures and believe that the American military (as an institution) was NOT responsible for this. Do they REALLY believe that they didn’t know? Do they REALLY think that it was an isolated event orchestrated by a handful of “corrupt” individuals? Do they REALLY believe that the majority of the detainees in the prison were part of a terrorist group? If you do then you need to WAKE UP! The American military has been using torture as interrogation practices for decades. Those at the top of the military knew all along that the torture was occurring. If you talk to the Red Cross they will tell you how they sent a formal complaint with their findings to the military about the abuse before the pictures came out. Talk to the soldiers who tried to report the abuse and were ignored or told to shut up and just do it (conduct the abuse). Talk to the victims’ families who weren’t able to make formal complaints about the treatment of their family members. What kind of a democracy is this? That is, if you even want to call it a democracy. I’m not saying that those who committed the acts are not responsible for what they did to the Iraqi detainees, but we need to look at the bigger picture.

Anyway, here is the introduction to my paper just in case you are a little o_O about my mini rant. I think the introduction gives more clarity.
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