Too late to think or revise, but had to get it down.

This week has been generally good and satisfying. The mood in the box is good, I got an 85% on my all-nighter paper, and I don't feel like I want to cry all the time.

This week has been interesting too because I'm starting to see the changes in my body from going off the pill. I knew there were going to be changes, but I didn't really expect them to affect me too much. The wierdest part for me is that my skin has gone back to the way it was three years ago. I had kind of hoped that I had grown out of the bad skin, but apparently not. It's all kind of wild. As it's been pointed out I have looked the same since grade five, so it really is like looking in the mirror at my old self. A lot has happened in the past three years and looking at this old skin of mine resurfacing is making me feel really strange and vulnerable. Maybe it's exposing that I haven't come as far as I think I have. But then I think of how much I've developed in the past three years and maybe I need to look at this change as the positive removal of synthetic business from my body in order to let myself learn to love these flawed physical traits that the pill covered up. I don't know if I can do that.

I feel like I've changed a lot. Tonight Jess and I attended the Annual General Meeting of the Central Student's Association on campus. The CSA recently decided to allow groups that represent marginalized peoples like the Aboriginal Student Centre, Women's Resource Centre, C.J. Munford Centre (for people of colour), Guelph Queer Equality, and the Centre for Students with Disabilities, have a CSA board seat with a vote. The first motion that was put forth was to remove these seats from the CSA board. This motion was largely supported by about 75 huge white male agricultural students who just don't make sense to me. It seems incredibly logical to me that marginalized people need to be represented on a board that is supposed to represent the interests of the student body. I don't see how this is even a question as these people are basically trying to silence oppressed people. This motion was so blatantly sexist, homophobic and racist, and yet their stance was that if we let some people have a vote on the board, where do we draw the line? Right now as it stands, the five members in question were all elected/appointed by their own groups. The opposition really wanted to present a compromise by either having the members be a part of the board but not have a vote, or to run in elections and have the entire student body vote. This poses a problem when trying to decide who exactly is queer enough to represent the queer organization, etc. The whole debate became really opressive and really frustrating. It was literally like watching privileged white men yell into the faces of those that have been historically oppressed by them that they've had enough of a voice, and now it's time to shut up.

Apparently there was some corruption where the Aggies were tipped off that this issue was on the table, so there were way more of them then there were of us. I just felt so frustrated, powerless and incredulous. It was unbelievable. So as we were moving closer to voting time I asked Leah if I was right to think that if we lost quarum there couldn't be a vote. And then things got interesting. We found out that only 18 people had to leave in order to lose quarum, so we waited a little while longer as a few more people left, and then we got up and walked out. The women taking numbers at the door saw us standing in the hall and told the chair of the meeting. He announced that we were seven people away from losing quarum in a "please don't leave" kind of way, so of course all of those in favour of keeping marginalized people on the board walked out. Boy were they pissed.

It really just got to the point where we had been robbed of our voices so much that the only thing left to do was to walk out in silent protest. As the room emptied the big Aggie men started harassing us and yelling really derrogatory oppressive comments. Of course we yelled back, but it was scary. I felt like I was in physical danger.

It just horrifies me that no matter how much I've changed and developed, I'm going to have to keep fighting these battles and feeling this anger at the fact that the world does not see the logic in working for human rights. I have been fighting that feeling of oppression all my life and being in this Guelph community can be misleading because we're all so aware and we are very commited to maintaining safe anti-oppressive spaces. That's why events like tonight just blow my mind where I get shocked back into that feeling of danger and fear of having my voice silenced.

I just don't want to be back in that space and tonight I looked it and I felt it.