Last night I hosted a small gathering at my house and after a few brews, McCain/Palin and Obama/Biden came up in discussion. An acquaintence asked me excitedly, “As an Independent, do you think you’ll switch and vote for McCain?”

First, I don’t know much about Palin, but the news so far isn’t too impressive. I don’t have a report on her yet, but what I can write about is the hilarious and entertaining reaction of so many women democrats who want to keep the swing-Clinton voters away from the GOP side.

If my memory serves me correctly, I remember a brief six months ago when I was receiving emails that it was un-feminist of me to not support Hillary simply because she is a woman. It was un-feminist to prevent the first [white] viable woman candidate in contemporary politics to reach the White House. This extended to the WAM! conference, email listserves to which I belong, and personal conversations regarding the election. And while Hillary has an incredible list of credentials that make her a qualified candidate for presidency, it was her sex that was often referenced in rallying dem-woman behind her, “She’ll be the first woman president!” In those conversations, it wasn’t that she’ll bring universal health care or that she’ll end the war in Iraq or that she has the experience, it’s that “she’s a woman!” and by voting for Obama over her, it was deemed putting race over gender.

And now Dem women are asking, “Do you think we’re that stupid to cast our vote one way because of gender?”

Uh, yes.

People ARE that short-sighted, on both sides of this political circus. Absurdities have been played on BOTH sides. Many dem women were blasting Obama supporters for not voting “pro-woman” and now their blasting the Republicans for thinking their stupid enough to just vote based soley on sex. That narrow line of reasoning has been alive and well for a long time.

I don’t think it’s about McCain thinking women are stupid as much as it is that he is relying on a fundamental and tested truth that many folks do not think critically. Many women do vote based on sex alone and are wooed by “first woman ever to Fill In the Blank” tactics, so why are dems acting as if those voters don’t exist and it’s insulting to pitch Palin to attract that sect?

I love being an Independent – the circus is much more entertaining when you can see the clowns and the mimes.

Here is fantastic opportunity for Filipina poets and all who are interested in having a mad love affair with beautiful words.

Jessica Hoffman.

BIDEN?

I am open to any and all advice, direction, and need to hear from experienced folks who know what needs to happen to organize and plan a photo exhibit from scratch.

This has been an unexpected hiatus from blogging.

I can’t tell if it’s the hiatus from blogging, or thrilling adventures, or the extreme alternative learning experiences that has yielded a cleansing in my life and soul.

I think I’ve stayed away from my site because I am afraid of the inevitable fragmentation that will happen when I try and write about my experiences here in the Philippines over the past two months. My life in the US is hanging in a balance; a pendulum held between forefinger and thumb, waiting for release. I return in two weeks and both tears and joy will burst from me when August 25 arrives.

This trip was unrealistic from the start. My research plans were to investigate the contemporary women’s movement in the Philippines. My life plans were to meet family I have never met and grow to understand the land from where my parents were born and raised. I came here to expand the proverbial perspective of the mind.

That’s all shit now. Shit, I tell you.

Life is never as smooth as we plan. It’s so very American for me to have arrived in a foreign country with objectives, maps, and timelines with no consideration that perhaps the most critical component for me is not research but to allow myself a natural progression of self-transformation through cultural immersion. How noble but foolish for me to project my work into a country with no thoughts of physical ailments and fatigue or mental strength.

I am humbled by the gift of opportunity. Each day here has been an adventure through heaven and hell, paradise and cave, devastation and euphoria.

I do not know when I will blog again. I hope tomorrow, but while I am in this land, I want to be in this land. Blogging takes me back to America too soon. The words, the fighting, the disrespect thrown around in the femblogland holds no interest to me right now. This adventure has led me somewhere else. I see, hear, taste, and feel differently here. Those most oppressed ask me to tell their stories on my blog, to get their stories out.

It’s not my blog that’s the problem, I say, it’s how it is received and interpreted that can be problematic.

Blogging is not just a privilege, it’s another passage of classism that I am struggling with. I began blogging to have a space for myself, but don’t I already take up enough space in this world? Have I not received the privileges associated with citizenship and education that less than 1% of the world are given?

This is not a problem of reconciling privilege. For me, this is an issue of media justice. Who I am to tell these stories of rape, torture, political killings, and poverty so severe I’m wondering how the earth isn’t already shaking?

The biggest problem of feminists, in my humble opinion, is not that US feminists don’t have the right to ask questions, it’s that US feminists ask the wrong ones. It’s equal pay and panties and book covers in femblogland. I can’t stand it and for that anymore. What the shit does that have to do with ANYTHING that I am passionate about? I am passionate about singing political prisoners who go on hunger strikes during marshal law. I am passionate about the surviving comfort women of WWII – The Lolas – who I danced with for 30 minutes to old kareoake music. I am passionate about garbage eating families who are being displaced by foreign investors and children who are being forced to learn and speak English. I am passionate about asking what in the hell George W. Bush is doing on a Philippine stamp.

These are my passions and, yes, I am a feminist. I do not want to be told “that’s not a feminist issue,” and have no space anymore to pretend I care about 80% of the shit that is written by contemporary “feminists” who blast womyn of color on the left and preach about intersectionality on the right. I’m sick of anonymous cowards who have nothing better to do than leave their unchecked baggage at my station and expect me to deliver their goods because they forgot how to unpack their own shit.

I have 13 days left. These precious days are gifts and I hope to return to you soon with more than just ramblings.

Tomorrow, Monday July 28 is the State of the Nation Address (SONA) here in the Philippines. No doubt, Gloria Macagalpo-Arroyo (GMA) will be distributing her fact sheet of lies that say that employment is up, the economy is better, and the Philippines is on its way to being a “first world” country by 2010.

I have so much material to write about and so many pictures I would like to post, but it’s getting backed up.