CURRENT MISSION

To learn what I can, to reduce suffering, to believe it's not butter

ABOUT ME

Hi! I'm a 24 year old graduate student in gender studies in Bloomington, Indiana. I'm a vegan (more on that later) and an overall softie. I'm definitely an animal lover, (especially lolcats!!), and seeing people loving each other gets a happy squee out of me (especially if they're gay!). I'm also a huge nerd. I love video games and have a fully-geared max-level priest (healer :3) in World of Warcraft. I am fascinated by the Internet and can't stop thinking about the incredible social implications of this omnipresent, almost omniaccessible, increasingly user-generated web of information. (Don't get me wrong, I have more prurient Internet interests as well--I'm a somethingawful.com goon and proud of it!) I also have recently really come to embrace the more fannish side of myself, and I really enjoy media and fandom of all sorts. My current academic interest is actually a study of female agency and desire as expressed through slashfiction.

PHILOSOPHY

"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind!"
-Kurt Vonnegut
I try as much as I can to be compassionate and reduce suffering. I went vegetarian in 2005 and vegan in 2008 out of a desire to be kind to myself and the world by refusing to eat food that caused suffering. (I keep rephrasing that sentence to come off as less preachy, and it's hard. Rest assured, another part of my desire not to cause suffering is not to guilt or alienate the people around me by constantly being on a soapbox/high horse about veganism <3). My politics are very progressive and I am currently in graduate school for gender studies. In addition to being surrounded by queer, scary-smart people all day, I get to learn about gender but more importantly about power and oppression as well as liberation. My thinking is very postmodern, but my "gut feeling" about my personal philosophy is why I love that Vonnegut quote I opened with so much. God damn it, we've got to be kind. We've got to stop oppressing each other for being different, we've got to stop seeing others as somehow less than human.
(Long story short--I'm a big vegan softie that would, seriously, like nothing better than for everyone to stop fighting, join hands, and start up the Kum-ba-ya, and a doobie or two. :) )

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I'm new to CouchSurfing and am hoping to show visitors to my humble little town a good time. :)

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Last year a friend of mine had a CS buddy (not through the website, but the philosophy was remarkably similar) who visited us from Belgium. We taught him the joys of American binge drinking and he taught us beer songs, and we grilled and played horseshoes and sang songs with him as he played his guitar. It was a fabulous moment of intercultural connection and I know we learned as much from him as I hope he learned from us.

Interests

I covered most of my interests in the "about me" section (since my identity kind of seems to be at least partially wrapped up in the stuff that I like) but I'll reiterate here: gaming, Internet surfing, music (especially rock and techno!), gender, knitting/crocheting/crafts, peaceful living

• animals
• dogs
• womens rights
• dining
• cooking
• beer
• vegetarian
• vegan
• drinking
• crafts
• politics
• video games
• knitting
• scrapbooking
• music
• guitar
• hiking
• surfing
• communications
• gender studies
• psychology
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

I love funny movies--there's so much ugliness and violence in the world already, I don't really like watching fictionalized versions of it if I can help it. I'm still up for serious movies, though. I like Will Ferrell.
Music--I love rock of all kinds--classic, glam, heavy metal/industrial, alternative. I also am a big fan of techno--I really have not found a genre I don't like. I love completely dancing myself ecstatic to some jungle and drum and bass, and then just drifting in and out of the endorphin rush to some deep house or trance. I actually really like to have ambient techno playing while I write--it satisfies my need for music without taking up any verbal space in my mind.
As for books: I know I'm in the right major, because all of the books I've read for class so far have been so amazing I couldn't bring myself to sell any of them. I read piles of queer theory/gender studies books (the theoretical paradigm of my current project is actually based around Jose Munoz's "Disidentifications."

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I was in Ogden, Utah for a summer research internship. I often went hiking with my advisor and her two dogs on the beautiful surrounding trails up the mountains. One particularly humid evening at sunset we hoofed it up a particularly steep, rocky trail. We emerged on a beautiful outcropping overlooking the entire town as well as the Great Salt Lake. Because it was so humid, the city was blanketed in haze, even over the dimly sparkling miasma of the lake, orange from the sunset. Ogden and the Salt Lake are in a depression, the basin of what used to be a much larger prehistoric lake. From our perspective we could see the rim of higher ground in the distance, sloping downward, obscured in haze. The city was so obscured it was impossible to see, and for that breathtaking sunset it really did feel like we were at the dawn of time, surveying a pristine, unsettled prehistoric landscape.

Teach, Learn, Share

I can teach about: vegetarian/vegan nutrition and cooking (including the world's best vegan peanut butter cookie recipe), gender/women's studies, feminism, knitting, crocheting, scrapbooking, polyamory, alternative lifestyles, psychology, particularly psychology of women, psychology of sleep, dream analysis

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