It may be hard to tell what era this picture is from, but this is me when I was going to school at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA. Over the weekend, a group of terrorists (people are calling them “White Nationalists”) attacked Charlottesville and the people protesting their efforts to protect statues dedicated to oppression and the division of this country. I got really sad and scared after reading the news and didn’t know what to do with my emotions, but after thinking about it for a while, I’ve decided to write out some positive memories I have from my time in Charlottesville that make me smile when I think of them.

I played the Lady in Green in Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem “for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf” and learned so much about myself and performance. This show inspired me to become a Drama major. Prof. Theresa Davis/Mama T directed the show and told the cast to go talk to the audience in costume after our performances. People of all different ages, genders, and ethnicities came up to us crying and telling us how much they connected to the words and emotions of the show, and that’s when I knew I wanted to do this forever. I loved making people feel something when they left the theater, and that’s still my goal today.

The first time I bought a car with my own money was in Charlottesville. It was so old that when I tried to get new parts for it mechanics would tell me it’s not possible because the parts I would need for that car don’t get produced anymore. But it did its job and got me around.

I leaned American Sign Language and going to signed lunches and dinners in the city was part of the curriculum. I liked learning about and communicating with a community of people I didn’t know much about prior to college.

I starred in my first short film (by Konstantin Brahznik) and we shot it during my first winter break at UVA. I played a slave who was raped and impregnated by a slave owner, and the campus was an appropriate setting since the school was built by slaves and the slave quarters are still intact. Despite how heavy the content may have been, I had a blast being in town while everyone else was home for break because, for a moment, the campus felt like it just belonged to me.

I started an improv group, called Amuse-Bouche, with my friend Natasha Vaynblat and it’s still active at the school. UVA had a very student run vibe when I was there and it gave me the sense of “if you see a void in this community, you can fill it.” I did that in many ways, but one of my favorite ways was creating a reason to play with my friends every week.

I co-directed the Vagina Monologues with my friend Brenna Lynch. She worked hard on creating a pre-show sexual health fair called the Vulvapalooza, and I remember she fought really hard to get the school to let us put a giant image of a vagina on the wall. We got a hard no, but I loved that we tried. That show helped me view empowerment and my vagina in a new way.

I got hit by a car, and that part wasn’t fun, but the outpouring of love and support I got from my friends and other students was so overwhelmingly positive that it dulled my cynicism and increased my love and appreciation for people.

I’m not saying that Charlottesville is full of inclusion and harmony. The racism I saw at the school made me want to transfer my first year, and after talking to a peer advisor (a black upperclassman), I decided not to. She said that I could transfer and maybe things would be easier at a different school, or I could stay and learn about racism now so I’m not surprised when I encounter it after college. I thought that was a pretty bleak way to look at it, but she was right. I’m glad I stayed and I was able to witness racism in a safer environment than I would on my own as an adult.

I essentially minored in race relations while in school, and I imagine a lot of students of color feel the same way. So now when racist things happen, I’m not surprised. I still get sad and angry, but I’m not surprised, because I know how to identify it. Fortunately, racism was only a small part of my college experience and not the first thing I remember when I think of Charlottesville. There are things to work on, like in every community, but the revisionist history that the Robert E. Lee statue promotes is no longer welcome.

I’m excited about its removal and the progress we’re making by acknowledging this country’s transgressions. Like Mayor Mitch Landrieu said in his speech addressing the removal of the Confederate monuments in New Orleans, these monuments were “erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city.” And that’s why these hate groups are scared, they’re afraid they’re not in charge anymore, and they should feel that way. They can keep rooting for a losing team if they want to, but the Confederacy didn’t win and neither will they.

You guys, you must stop doing this. You must. We cannot keep yelling at you about it because it makes us so angry, and we are already angry all the time, about real things, like how our lives are turning into a real world Handmaid’s Tale, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haha ha ha ha ha ha. We cannot keep spending our energy being mad at mediocre men for writing mediocre books that inexplicably win awards and that people tell us to read, for some fucking godawful who knows reason.

So men. My guys. My dudes. My bros. My writers. I am begging you to help me here. When you have this man in your workshop, you must turn to him. You must take his clammy hands in yours. You must look deep into his eyes, his man eyes, with your man eyes, and you must say to him, “Peter, I am a man, and you are a man, so let us talk to each other like men. Peter, look at the way you have written about the only four women in this book.” And Peter will say, trying to free his hands, “What? These are sexy, dynamic, interesting women.” And you must grip his hands even tighter and you must say to him, “ARE THEY, PETER? Why are they interesting? What are their hobbies? What are their private habits? What are their strange dreams? What choices are they making, Peter? They are not making choices. They are not interesting. What they are is sexy, and you have those things confused, and not in the good way where someone’s interestingness makes them become sexy, like Steve Buscemi or Pauline Viardot. Why must women be sexy to be interesting to you? The women you don’t find sexy are where, Peter? They are invisible? They are all dead?” He is trying to escape! Tighten your grasp. “Peter, look at this. I mean, where to begin. ‘She could have been any age between eighteen and thirty-five?’ There are no other ages, I guess? Do you know what eighteen-year-olds really look like, in life? Do you know what thirty-SEVEN-year-olds look like, god forbid? And not that this is even the point, but why are these supposedly sexy and dynamic and interesting women BOTHERING with your boring garbage ‘on the skinny side of average’ protagonist? Why did you write it like this, Peter?” 

And maybe Peter will say at last, “I don’t know.” Maybe he will be silent for a long long long time, and then maybe he will say, “I guess it’s scary and difficult for me to imagine the interiority of women because then i would have to know that my mother had an interiority of her own: private, petty, sexually unstimulating, strange: unrelated to me and undevoted to my needs. That sometimes I was nothing to my mother, just as sometimes she is nothing to me. That I was not at all times her immediate concern.”

“I know, Peter,” you can tell him gently.

“I don’t want to know that my mother was a human being with an internal life, because to know that would be to risk a frightening intimacy with her,” Peter will say, maybe. “Because to know that would be to know that she was only a small, complicated person, no bigger or smaller than I am, and I am so small. To know how alone she was. How alone I am. How alone we all are. That my mother survived with no resources more mysterious than my own. And yet she gave me life. My God: she gave me life. How can I pay her back for that? And how can I forgive her for it? How can I ever repay her for the good and the evil of it, my life, every day of my life?” He will be sobbing probably. “I am frightened of her. I am frightened of loneliness. I am frightened of dying. O God. My God. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.” Drool will run from his mouth as he cries. The way babies cry. He will be ashamed. You must hold him. You must say, “Shh, Peter. Shh.” Wrap your man arms around him. Hum into his thin hair as your own mother hummed once into your own sweet-smelling baby scalp. Kiss him gently on his mouth. There. You did it, men. You fixed sexism. Thank you. You’re the real hero here, as always, you men, and your special man powers, for making art. 

If you are rich in Trump’s America, your extra money better feel like a hot potato. I know mine does.

@mylittlespoopy-muffin

Calling bullshit on Trump’s blatant, enormous lies is *so easy* to do. News outlets have no excuse for this.

This is the one of the main reason this man is president elect. Because our media Never had the balls to call him out on his lies his racism xenophobia prejudice sexism. They r still doing it.

Didn’t he win? IF this had actually happened, why would it matter now since he won?

You’re not serious, right? You’re joking, right? (genuine question) It matters a hell of a lot more now because he is going to perpetrate EVERY sort of crime and he’s already putting together THE most corrupt administration EVER, and they’re gonna try and normalize it instead of calling it out for what it is.

Most important part: Trump always accuse others of doing EXACTLY what he did. 

That is the reason we are pushing for an election Audit. That is exactly why it is already a petition to happen in some states and need to happen everywhere.

Also think about it: Who was benefiting from wiki/russia leaks? Perhaps the same person who was behind the DNC hacking in the first place! Think about it.

Reblog this picture of me holding a Family Size box of Honey Nut Cheerios? I’d really appreciate it.

How can I say no to such a great photo and such a polite request?

i will always support this post

@mooserattler back on my dash!

Why isn’t this at a million notes, yet, Dante???

I’m not sure. Hey lovely people who have taken me over half way to a cool million! If you’d like to reblog again, I’d love that, if not, I still love you, and hope you’re having a great day. I’m gonna go do some stand up tonight.

god come on we’re so close. this is like the only meaningful thing that this website could ever achieve

Clearly you missed the “get Peyton a fluffy chicken” debacle 2013

Hello 1 million! You guys are the greatest, and I love all of you! I’m gonna cry, and do a live video chat!!!!

COME ON

The Half Hour S05E09 – Emily Heller