feminist blogs

I was all set to dig into some unpleasant political blogging when I got a surprise text from my old friend Julie Tangelder on Kauai. She and I went to high school together - Kapa’a High, Class of ‘88 - and were pretty close then; since that time, we’ve had curiously parallel lives even while never speaking to each other or exchanging correspondence until quite recently.

And amid the rapid-fire texting back and forth, came some unfortunate news; our former classmate (though he was a year ahead of us) Keoni Lucas died recently in a car accident in Santa Monica, California.

I didn’t know Keoni all that well, but, along with Julie (and another friend, Jeremiah Johnson, who died in a diving accident last year; I wrote about this tangentially here, and still have not managed to complete a much longer work in progress about him), we rode the same bus to school.

This was, mind you, quite a distance - about 25 miles, one way, from where Jeremiah and I lived in Hanalei, and at least 30 from where Keoni and Julie lived in Ha’ena. And given that there was such a distance involved, all of us on that bus got to know each other to some degree. The bus had a culture all its own, with various cliques (none of which I ever fit into, of course) - and Keoni was one of the The Beautiful People.

That is to say, he was not only stunningly gorgeous in appearance, but graceful in his movements - owing, in great part, to his already considerable experience as a surfer.

But unlike his close friend, the very differently gorgeous Lyon Hamilton (brother of the now quite famous big wave surfer Laird Hamilton, whom I wrote about here), he seemed relatively unselfconscious about his own beauty. He was simply radiant.

And now, I learn that from the North Shore of Kauai, Keoni had gone on to study filmmaking at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, and eventually moved to LA to pursue a career in that industry (even while he remained active as a surfer, and helped start a clothing line).

Here is Keoni happily behind the camera recently in Bali (click through to Flickr for image attributions):

Now there are a great number of people in mourning for him. A memorial service attended by nearly 500 people took place in Malibu on Sunday, while a ceremony back on Kauai is now scheduled for Sunday, April 20th.

I won’t be there, of course (I’ll be lucky if I can scratch together the money to attend my 20th high school reunion in June), but I did want to post something in acknowledgment of his passing. And it seems fitting in doing to recognize some of the success he had begun to enjoy in the film industry, with this clip from his supporting role in the (hilariously titled) independent film, Pee Stains and Other Disasters. He plays the prisoner:

Rest in peace, Keoni.

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Links:

• North Shore Kauai: Respected Kauai Local, Keoni Lucas, Dies in LA Car Accident (Note: this is a reprint of a Surfline article, but has section for comments)
• Kauai Garden Island News: North Shore surfer dies on Mainland (Note: Article gets details wrong, such as Keoni’s age; he was 38, not 35)
• Donate to Keoni Lucas Memorial Fund

When I was fifteen, I had a gig babysitting for a prominent pot growing family on the North Shore of Kauai. I loved those kids and we had a lot of fun - even if we had to take our recreation elsewhere during the plant-drying process, when the house was filled with part-time help and overflowing bags of pakalolo.

Anyway, this one time they came home from a late night out, and tried to pay me $15.00 for my time - at my fee of $3.00/hr. And for some reason, I just couldn’t take it. It’s not that I had a problem with where the money was coming from (having lived in several hippie houses over my young life, I was pretty unfazed), rather, I just didn’t think I deserved that much money. I mean, not only did I enjoy the work, but I ate meals there myself and, what was more, got to play awesome records from their vast collection after the kids were tucked in. (This was how I got hooked on George Benson.) And it’s also not that I didn’t need the money. We were on welfare, and things were precarious. Hell, when my mother had first gotten me registered for high school, we’d had to list my address as “Anini Beach.” But for whatever reason, I insisted they take back a third of the money. They were confused, but I was adamant that $15.00 was really too much. They were loaded, of course - richer than anyone I knew - but at the time that seemed irrelevant.

I laugh about this now, because in the twenty-two years since then, I haven’t gotten any better at accepting, much less asking for, financial support when I need it.

But the truth is, I do need help.

Recently, blogger Elaine Vigneault raised objections to the choice of Feministing’s Editor-in-Chief, Jessica Valenti, to purchase a purebred dog from out of state (rather than adopt from animal rescue organizations), and then to post pictures and video of her dog on the website. This has created quite a kerfuffle. (The post that started it all is here; some of Elaine’s responses are here, here, and here.)

Fast-forward, then, a few days, to Feministing’s post explaining the appearance of new advertisements on their site, and also soliciting donations. Elaine commented:

I still won’t be donating to feministing.

However, those of you with small time blogs who do serious feminist activism, please leave a comment on my blog and I’ll consider donating to you.

Impulsively (and also because I could really use the money), I responded.

Now, Elaine may well reject this blog as a site she’d want to support, as is her right. After all, I’ve given full disclosure that, for instance, I am not a vegetarian, and also that I have no beef (no pun intended!) with Feministing’s solicitation*. But I thought it would be interesting to take this woman, who’s been pretty vilified of late, at her word. I disagree with her on a variety of issues, but it’s clear she is sincere in her convictions, and I respect that.

So, I described to her, in detail, the nature of my request, which I’ll excerpt here:

I write about a variety of feminist issues (plus plenty of apolitical stuff), frequently about issues impacting women in the sex trade. (If you want to read only my posts in the “Feminism” category, you can click here, or for the tag archive for posts addressing the sex trade specifically, you can click here, though be aware I’m nowhere near done with tagging old posts, so it’s not a complete archive.)

If you are interested in offering some support for my blog, I could sincerely use it. I paid for my initial website with proceeds from my last regular job, which ended two years ago next month, and my account will soon be up for renewal. Also, I have new (as in, charged on my credit card yesterday) expenses to attend the upcoming Prostitution, Sex Work, and the Commercial Sex Industry conference in Toledo, which I’m doing not only to further develop my activist connections with women working on this issue (women on various ideological “sides” of the matter), but as part of launching an action- (rather than blogging-) oriented project, socialchange.org. (Please excuse the terrible, outdated state of the draft site… I no longer have access to the software with which I wrote the first version last year, and I’ll probably be redoing the whole thing within the next two months.)

My pre-tax combined family income, supporting two adults, two children, two cats and one dog is below $50,000 annually (includes my disability check), if demonstrated need is a factor. I receive no income from advertising or other sources (though, really, perhaps I should be)**.

Needless to say, even if Elaine chooses to donate $50.00 (or some portion thereof, if the gift is divided between multiple sites) to my blog, I’m still going to be struggling like all-get-out.

Which is why I am (finally) posting this here.

So… if you read me, if you like me, if you think I have valuable contributions to make on feminist issues, if I amuse you, if I freak you out, if you think my discursive commentaries on everything from hardcore metal to radical feminism are oddly stimulating, and/or if you’re just feeling like being a nice person right now, I’m (gulp) willing to accept any contributions you may be willing to offer. (I’ll even resist any perverse urges to return 1/3 of any such donations!)

If you do choose to donate, drop me an email and let me know if you would prefer to be thanked on this blog by your real name, pseudonymously, or not at all.

If you want to help, see the new “donate” button at the top of this page. (You don’t need to have a PayPal account.)

Other ways you can help:

• Checks by snail mail to Victoria Marinelli, PO Box 2508, Richmond, VA, 23218.
• Include a link to this post on your blog, if you want to encourage your own readers to donate.
• Add me to your blogroll. (Note that my own blogroll is down for editing right now, and should be up again within the week. Sorry about that.)
• Comment from time to time, so I can keep sight of the fact that what I’m doing has merit. That way, if I still can’t afford to buy shoes on account of my blogging and activist expenses (that conference is going to eat half of my next disability check), I can tell myself (and my husband, whose paycheck keeps a roof over our heads) that it’s been worth it.

Thank you.

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*See yesterday’s This blog will now feature porn for a more mischievous take.

**This post at Bitch, Ph.D. (and the astonishing comment thread that followed) gave me a walloping dose of perspective on how different my concept of financial need is from many other women’s. I have no doubt that many other feminist bloggers have more demonstrated need than I do (indeed, as a former welfare mom who has also been, on several occasions, homeless, I’ve been a hell of a lot worse off than I am right now), but damn, some of us also have craploads of class privilege, the likes of which I can’t begin to wrap my head around.