blah blah blah

Identities are strange stuff. (Duh.) If it weren't, you know, impossible, I'd want to understand how people see themselves and their identities. Even just one other person. That would be some sort of life project. Not so that I could point out how diverse visions lead to New Feminist Possibilities or New Understandings of Agency or New Methods of Subversion that would somehow make them "okay" or "acceptable" or "suitably postmodernist" for someone from my background, but really just understand, you know? I guess that's a pretty tall order though. And I'm not entirely sure what the use would be.

If I don't end up coming back to Cairo and interning next spring, chances are I'll stay at IU and get myself a gender studies minor. But isn't it weird that that's a separate thing? That anything's a separate thing? There's fundamentally no such thing as religion without gender, no such thing as either without class, ethnicity/race, (dis)ability, nationality, age, and a whole host of other variables. But the second you acknowledge that, you find yourself looking at a web of identities so thick that it's incomprehensible. The Gordian knot of this day and age. I feel like academia (or the social sciences rather) keep getting progressively hairier—like, oh wait, we forgot to deconstruct this particular aspect of the situation at hand, let's do that too!—to the point where it almost loses all meaning and just makes my brain hurt. Or it could be that I'm just not smart enough. I don't get it.

I guess the thing that got me thinking about this is the fact that being here is the first time I've ever really not felt / been treated as white. In the states, I am an upper-middle-class midwesterner and all my friends are white and I think I'm usually considered to be the same—at the very least, I consider myself to be the same, and I don't notice others doing anything differently. White is the "default," the "non-identity" (though of course it isn't really) in the same way that upper-class is and female isn't and midwestern is and androgynous isn't—in the way that I feel my gender and my gender presentation but I don't feel my class or my region or my ethnicity.

Here it's different, of course, because white is now the "other," now a marker of something that isn't the default. And I keep expecting to be singled out for it, to feel acutely white like everyone else on the program does, and it keeps not happening, and then I realize with a jolt and a sense of unease that I'm not white, not here at least. And it's really, really weird and kind of frustrating because (as I now realize) I think I was implicitly identifying for most of my life with white as an ethnicity, and when people don't recognize/respect that identity it is as disconcerting and untrue as when they don't recognize I'm an adult or an American or a lefty or what have you. And when the others keep telling me that it's a blessing to not be singled out, I want to scream that it isn't, that the fact that I'm apparently not marginalized by this thing I now am (a brown person)  doesn't mean that I like it or identify with it, in the same way that straight privilege doesn't mean everyone wants to be straight or male privilege doesn't mean that everyone wants to be male.

I keep thinking that if it's possible to be transgender it should be equally possible to be transethnic or transage or transclass or transabled—and, is it? Are those communities/identities that people have belonged to / claimed? I should do some googling, I guess. But you get the point. I'll stop now.

ohgodonlyonemoreweekleft.

shifting seasons

It's mid-May, and when the cars and motorcycles whizz by as always there is now a palpable wave of sultry air that comes with them. At times the wind isn't caused by traffic, but even then you can feel it nearing you. It's like when you approach a lamp, or the stove, or a fire, but more all-encompassing—a rush of warmth that briefly, completely envelops you. In a weird way, it's comforting. At least until you realize it's a hundred degrees out. The policemen's uniforms have switched from navy or black to a blinding white that I guess keeps them cooler. I can't fathom the amount of bleach it must take to maintain their (lack of) color in a city like Cairo, and I'm not sure it's worth it, but either way they, too, are a sign of the fact that summer is indeed finally here, and here with a vengeance. The smell of heat, especially at night, reminds me more of India than I realized was possible.

A couple of weeks and it will be India. I'm trying hard not to resent that—trying hard to not be jealous of the people on the program who will be spending the summer here, or in Palestine—and I think I'm succeeding. I think enough things will stay the same that India, too, will be awesome: The smell of laundry drying on the balcony, for one. Also: the crowding, the noise, the heartbeat of the masses unencumbered by the sanitization that makes America so repulsive, so boring, so not something I ever want to go back to. Ha. I mean, I do, kind of. Dryers are nice. Clean air, open spaces, et cetera. But it just feels like it's lacking something. And when I'm there, so do I.

I should be devoting more time to talking-about-adventures and less to waxing-poetic-about-things but I'm sure I'll have plenty of time for that once I'm home. Right now I'm just relishing the last couple of weeks I have here, hoping I'll be back next spring, and pleading that I'll survive all the papers and projects and exams that are coming up. If I can make it to 9:00 Monday night, I'll be set. For now: good night. Summer is here and it is significantly different from not-summer. I'm sure I'll get over it soon, but for now, it is beautiful. That is all.