freckles make me strong.

(via transparentcommunity)

Read this.  It’s very comforting. 

cakeordeath:

I’m late on this news, but I loved this magazine. Total eye candy.

notthatkindagay:

Former President George W. Bush’s first confirmed speaking engagement since leaving office will take him from Crawford to Canada.

Invitations to the event, billed as “a conversation with George W. Bush,” say that the former president will “share his thoughts on his eight momentous years in the Oval Office” during a March 17 speech in Calgary, Alberta.

Dear Canadian People:

He’s your problem now.

Sincerely,
American Public

(via robot-heart-politics)

I removed my hijab a little over a year ago.

It was hard to get used to going without it at first. After all, I had worn it for over half my life.

The decision to remove it was difficult to make. (The details of why are not relevant here. Suffice it to say that the factor which weighed most heavily in the decision to take it off at that point was that I needed a job in order to leave an abusive marriage, and to support myself and my kids.)

Everything changed.

Now, I’m white. Fully white.

At first, things changed at university. Some (white) professors became noticeably more friendly, and treated me as a more serious student. When I presented a paper about my research, one even complimented me afterwards, saying that not only was the paper good, but I was now unveiled! That prof really did mean it as a compliment. What could I say? I didn’t say anything. I felt sick.

Then, things changed when I got a job. I was later informed that two brown men had also been in top running for the job, but they had unanimously decided to hire me instead. I felt sick again.

Things also changed once I moved. On the day of the move, my about-to-be ex-husband turned away in disgust from the sight of me, bareheaded for the first time in many years, getting ready to drive away. “Don’t you have any shame at your age?” was all he would say.

“So,” I thought as I drove down the highway, “That was all I was worth in the end. I merited some residual degree of respect as long as I wore a scarf, because I was supposedly pious. Now, I’ve removed it, so I’m shameful.”

I felt strange in public without a head-covering. But also, strangely invisible. No one looked twice at me now. Store clerks let me shop in peace without asking me two seconds after I had come in if I “needed anything.” No one on the street looked offended by my presence. If I got lost, I felt comfortable asking a stranger for directions.

If I hesitated too long when making a turn (as I often do when driving), I was comfortable knowing that my inattention or ineptitude would not be seen as representing the ummah. I could make mistakes driving, even be impatient with my kids in public or confused about which bureaucrat to speak to in a government office without carrying the heavy burden of publicly representing Islam and Muslim women on my shoulders. What a relief to not have to bear that scrutiny. What a relief to be able to just be a fallible, normal, average human being, rather than an example, or a problem to be solved, or a puzzle to be investigated.

I was once again fully white. I blended into white, middle class society at work, at the mall, in the street. No one stared. No one asked me “where I am from” any more (or, upon hearing that I am from Canada, wanted to know “where I am from originally”). No one tried to guess my ethnic origins. No one asked if I speak English, or commented on my (nonexistent) accent. No stranger on the bus demanded that I explain why Islamic divorce laws are unfair to women, or why I am dressed this way. No one told me to go back to where I came from.

White privilege. It’s real, so real. I felt sick.

In hijab, I was always made to see myself through non-Muslim eyes. White eyes. I had to represent. And I had to be careful about what image I was projecting. If people already assume that you probably aren’t too bright, you have to always compensate. You can’t take respect or acceptance for granted.

Yet now, nobody salaams me in the street. I see a sister in hijab sometimes, and automatically open my mouth to give salaams—and then stop myself. She will wonder why I’m doing that, just as I used to wonder on the rare occasions that an apparently non-Muslim person would salaam me. That feeling of community when you get a salaam from a stranger will never be mine again. Some Muslims wanted (and still want) to know why I decided to take off my hijab. What is my action based on, they want to know. Is there some interpretation of the Qur’an, some obscure Islamic law that I know and they don’t? (No.) I have made some old convert friends uneasy without meaning to do so.

But not all Muslims I knew had been too thrilled about my wearing hijab when I did wear it. And it is those whose reactions right now are grieving me the most. One, a secular Muslim and (I thought) a good friend, recently suggested that I could solve my financial woes by spying for CSIS.

That person had always been ambivalent about converts in general, and about the fact that I was a convert in particular. Part of the reason is because being LGBTQ, they always were sharply aware of how conditional acceptance of them by other Muslims is, even by family members (basically, acceptance in their family and homeland was premised on “don’t ask, don’t tell”). Not only was I a white outsider, but one who clearly didn’t fit very well into the restrictive mold of the “ideal Muslim woman,” no matter how hard I tried. The suspicions that I didn’t fit the mold were confirmed when I finally came out to them… but that’s another story.

When I was struggling with my decision about whether or not to dehijab, I confided in that friend, who encouraged me to do whatever felt authentic, whatever made me comfortable in my skin—and would secure my economic future. When I ceased to wear hijab, that friend expressed full support.

But now, that friend is increasingly treating me as an “other,” holding me at arm’s length. As an outsider, a non-Muslim. As white.

At a progressive Muslim gathering I attended last time I was in a big North American city several weeks ago, my presence was questioned by several attendees, one of whom was not a Muslim: How did the organizers know me? Where had I met them? Why was I there?

In my hijab-wearing days, I would never have gotten questions like that. My visible whiteness was offset to some extent by my scarf. People would ask (almost inevitably) when, where and how I had become Muslim, but my presence itself wasn’t regarded as something that needed to be explained. I was a Muslim convert; it was a Muslim event.

At first, I took these unprecedented questions as friendly attempts at making small talk, and cheerfully explained how I knew the organizers and why I attend their events on the rare occasions that I can. Until afterwards, when I was invited at the last minute to go to another event. Several of us piled in someone’s van; jokes began about the chances of the cops pulling us over for racially motivated reasons. One passenger pointed out that the driver was brown, not black; another topped that by observing that “the white lady” (me) was in the front, so the cops couldn’t claim that I wasn’t with them of my own free will.

My jaw dropped almost to the floor. And nobody raised an objection to that remarkable statement—ironic, since all men present were queer except the speaker, and some of those men pride themselves on being non-sexist.

I finally said that I didn’t find that funny. Nobody understood why; they seemed to think that I have no sense of humour.

After getting home, I felt sick. Maybe I shouldn’t have objected to that comment. Maybe I do have no sense of humour. After all, the police do stop people for “driving while black,” don’t they? They probably also look askance at white women in cars with black men, don’t they? People are entitled to joke about things like that, aren’t they? Isn’t gallows humour the only way to survive certain situations—either that, or you go mad (or paranoid)? Was I just falling into the stereotype of the uptight, humourless (white, middle class) politically correct lesbian feminist?

I had gone to that meeting for social support, essentially. So that I could feel that I’m not alone in the world. There aren’t many Muslims where I live now, and those there are are mostly conservative. I can’t be open with them about what I am or what I think, so I feel that it is best to avoid them when possible. I don’t want to bother them. I don’t want to be that pushy white woman, coming from outside and forcing my unwelcome, untraditional, queer presence on them. Especially now that I don’t wear hijab, my very presence at the mosque would be an intrusion.

But until last year, my social life was with Muslims. The only friends I had were Muslims. The only people I looked to for advice or support were Muslims. That’s what I’m used to doing; after living in Muslim bubbles for over half of my life, it’s what I’m most comfortable with. I don’t have a Muslim social network where I am now. I don’t have any friends or support out here at all. Until now, I have eagerly looked forward to the rare opportunities I have to go to that progressive group’s events. Now, I’m seriously asking myself if I should go again.

I’m white now. Fully white. And I’m now a full-blooded intruder. My presence bothers some people. What right do I have to bother people?

I understand the social and political reasons behind all this. Of course in the present political situation, there’s a niche for marginal people familiar with the North American Muslim scene to work as spies. Undoubtedly, some who have good reason to want payback for how they’ve been treated (or who are in financial trouble) will work for CSIS. Of course, with all the rhetoric in the media that paints Muslims as a fifth column, people are going to wonder why any white person—who can easily escape the scrutiny that Muslims of colour have to put up with—would continue to want to attend Muslim events, especially if they don’t seem to be practicing the faith in a “conventional” way (i.e. wearing hijab, being in a patriarchal marriage to a Muslim man).

I don’t blame Muslims for asking questions, being suspicious, or being ambivalent about me—especially not queer Muslims.

But at the same time, I am at a loss. I no longer feel part of a community. That metre or so of fabric is gone, and so are my visible ties to the ummah.

And I can’t stop feeling sick.