Real or Not Real....."Drunkorexia"

Earlier this week I was scrolling through my usual feminist blogs and I came across a piece about a concept I have encountered TONS of times as a feminist, eating disorders, but this time it was one I am less familiar with. They call it “Drunkorexia” This is the practice of restricting food intake in order to feel justified in drinking alcohol. There are 2 ways this can go, either you trade food calories for booze calories because you are restricting your diet, or you just want to be drunk faster with minimal calorie intake.

            Before reading this post I had never really sat down and thought about drinking this way, and it really made me think about my own friends. I know that I know girls who do things like this and I very seldom have thought about it, unless I notice it in conjunction with other food restriction practices.

            But the real question is, does “drunkorexia” deserve its own category, or should we just call it what it is, anorexia? Does giving this practices it’s own sort of silly sounding title taking some of the edge off what could turn into a serious problem? Or does it address a different area of eating and restriction? Do you think this is serious?

Here is a quick link to the original post that I read on Jezebel

http://jezebel.com/5992637/is-drunkorexia-really-a-thing-meh

            In some respects I agree with this author and say “meh”. I think it is a real issue, and that people just need to live healthier lives and that restricting calories is just another form of anorexia that needs to be addressed, but if it has yet to reach a point of alarm, it is ok to use a word like “drunkorexia”.  It just blows my mind that our society is in a place where we need to come up with words like that.

Generational Differences

Who Are We to Decide?

As long as there has been language, there have been words to bring others down.  As part of the different activist movements people have begun “reclaiming” the words that have been used against and finding empowerment in using them to describe themselves. This is a concept that I am not sure I completely agree with.

For instance, the word queer was and still is used by a number of people as a negative term referring to people who do not identify, or seem to not identify as heterosexual. I personally have never had this term used against me but have a lot of close friends who have issues with the word because of past experiences. Things like reclaiming words get sticky because there is no real line distinguishing that words can be reclaimed and which ones should just stay offensive and never be said. For instance “the N word” is never going to be acceptable to say out loud, but the word “fag” which was used against gay men, is still vocalized all the time.

Who are we in this generation to decide that words like queer can be empowering? I think it is insulting to those who came before us to start using words that were used to demean our communities. By using words that were created out of hate, that may still trigger people who have had them used against them, are we belittling the struggle of early activists, or are we creating change?

I think it is a really slippery slope. Once you decide to reclaim a word, you then have to decide who gets to use it. For example,  my friends call me queer, or refer to my hair as my “dyke spike”, but I get really offended hearing it come from other people. So, why is it ok for some and not for others? Why are we still using these words when the English language is so easy to adapt? If the idea of activist movements is to move people’s thinking forwards, why do we keep going back?

http://www.nohomophobes.com/#!/today/

The above link is to a running feed of how many people have used homophobic speech on twitter today, if words are still being thrown around like this have we really actually reclaimed them? 

Should I Tattoo "I'm GAY" on my Forehead?

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Should I Tattoo “I’m GAY” on my Forehead?

 Hi, my name is Jax and I just want to get this out in the open. I’m a lesbian, a dyke, a queer, a … . Label it as you will, put me in your easily defined box, but mostly people just say gay.  I’m sorry but I always have to give a schpeal or people wonder and talk and then it becomes a huge deal to “come out” to them.

If you are differently orientated (part of the LGBTAQ….. alphabet) you know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about how coming out isn’t a one time “Hey everybody, guess what!” kind of deal. Most of the time it actually feels like a daily thing, and it is.

            Being queer is a different kind of minority. Most minorities are pretty obvious; they are based on skin color or biology. But being gay? People automatically assume everyone they meet is straight, hell even gay people do. I can’t even begin to imagine how often gay people have to come out to other gay people (even with “gay-dar”).     

An example:

When I was 15,I came out as a lesbian to all of my friends and some of my family. As to be expected some reacted well (like my girlfriend), others not so well (like my parents), but it definitely was not a one time experience, each person/friend group had to be told individually. The thought of doing an intervention style meeting to come out is just terrifying.

Since I started coming out, I’ve had to come out, in some way, every single day.  Whether it be to a classmate who asked me a question during small talk before class, various employers, or to family members who have finally discovered Facebook.  Some days I think I should just walk around with a big sign saying “I’m GAY!’ just to get that out of the way (though that tends to bring thoughts of the holocaust and pink/black triangles).

Today, I do a fair amount of advocate work, and am often asked about my coming out story. At moments like these I smile to myself thinking “which one?” but ultimately never say it. I give them the story of coming out to my parents because, whether they say it or not, that’s the one want to know.

When I first came out to my parents it was not one of those happy scenes that we all hope for. My parents tried to force me to break up with my girlfriend and shove me back into the closet. They said that I was too young to be making choices like that about my life. Little did they know that I had come out for the first time, to myself, around age 12 and had been itching to tell the world ever since I finally found a word to describe how I felt inside.

6 Years later my mom still thinks I am going to snap out of it and marry Mr. Right. So with just her alone I feel like I come out every time we have a conversation about my love life. I wish she could find it in herself to realize that this is who I am that there is really nothing she can do about it. It really hurts me that she still thinks that I am gay because of something she did as a parent, or that I choose this way of life to hurt her because we have a rocky history. 

And there you have it, today, I just came out, loud and proud….again