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• Being in a Dick Hijab: Getting To Know My Audience

  

  I’ve been putting myself out there into the cosmos of the Interwebs for over a decade now – weaving my way into the collective consciousness one “like” at a time. It’s been a slow process of gaining an audience of people curious about what will come out of my mouth hole, especially considering the plethora of gaping holes to gaze into on your screen. Of all the dark abysses that are available on the Internet, I thank you for choosing mine over the myriad of anal cavities currently begging for your attention. Namaste.

  I’m grateful for all the various mediums to actively prostitute my art on. I can pimp myself through a variety of social media platforms, and trick people into consuming the contents of my psyche. It’s a gift to be born in this time where I can broadcast my thoughts out into the hive mind, to desperately buzz around trying to make my quasi-feminist, pseudo-intellectual, semi-philosophical, and comedic-dramatic mark on society. Yet within this quest to create content for the Internet warning people of the dangerous distraction of consuming too much content on the Internet there is one element- perhaps one of the most important- that I have no real control over. Who the hell engages with my work?

  When I think about whom I’m creating my art for, the consumer in my mind is a woman wearing hemp flowing robes that’s free-bleeding onto the dirt floor of her yurt to fertilize her organic chia seeds while hosting a scared ceremony of the high priestess to end world suffering through mass meditation and yoni inspired dance. Not that I’m trying to be super specific or anything – and in truth, I’m happy anyone takes the time to read me or watch my videos. Yet I do have to say, when I go through my Google analytics I’m noticing that my audience isn’t exactly what I expected.

  For one there’s my blog. I’ve made many friends through my writing – glorious individuals I’ve never met, but who’ve resonated with my words, and supported me throughout the years. Yet when I look at the top searches that bring people to my blog, I have to say, it’s the most disturbing shit I’ve ever read in my life. Here’s a sweet example of what’s on there today.

  

  Wow right??? And that’s actually a tame one! “Kid’s eating cum” isn’t as bad as the one last week of “little girls choking on dick.”

  This is HIGHLY disturbing, but maybe also a victory? I picture the man who’s typing these pedophilic, misogynist, and perverted searches into his Google bar – he get’s out his lotion and Kleenex, all ready to beat his meat to the sight of whatever horrid “virgin sister fucking brother” visuals he can find. As he’s going through his many options, lubing up his hand and practicing his intro strokes, he then lands on my blog to read about ending the patriarchy!!!??? Assuming he makes it even half way through before realizing there is in fact no description of “pussy Viagra,” I think by that point I’d have made a real impression on that guy!

  Yeah, maybe he’s not my ideal reader, but at least I’m not preaching to the converted??

  Then there is my video work. Again, I’d think I’d be making videos for ladies that fashion their hair in fallopian tubes while adorning themselves in uterine lined scarves weaved from their pubic hair and singing the ancient chants of Mother Gaia into pink seashells. Yet I recently put out one of my stand up comedy sets on Instagram and when I looked at the engagement statistics, 83% men clicked on the video!? Keep in mind, the subject of the video was “why men fear the matriarchy,” yet majority men clicked on it! I’m assuming neither women nor men were reading the title of the video, and simply decided whether or not to investigate further pending on my looks. So men thought I was hot enough to see what I was doing, and women decided I was hot enough to NOT be curious about what I was up to?

  

  I became so disheartened when trying to understand what was going on. Yes there is a real hilarity of men clicking on my video thinking I had a face they’d want to fuck and then having to hear about the matriarchy, yet I was equally despondent my fellow sisters were not inspired to see what I was about. What was I doing wrong?

  I then posted a video where I was dressed as a giant penis, and my male friend was costumed as a vulva, and wouldn’t guess it… the engagement for that video was 50/50. It was an equal opportunity genital video! I was delighted I had accrued more female interest, yet could not help but wonder if that was because I was in a dick hijab?

  

  Honestly I’m in no position to be overly picky about who’s absorbing the work I share. Every “meeting” with people with power that I’ve ever had trying to take myself to the next level in my career has stressed the need to develop my audience and accrue hundreds of thousands of “likes,” “shares” and “followers.” So who am I to reject lonely men seeking to furiously masturbate??

  March 7, 2018 • Ambitions, Emotions, Musings • Views: 4445

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• Maybe I’m not a total failure after all?

  

  In this age of social media where we’re constantly seduced into comparing our lives to the glorious existence of others, it’s easier than ever to feel like a total failure. If it weren’t for Facebook I wouldn’t know that a kid I went to high school with was now a U.S Representative and probably going to be president one day while I’m watching his speeches about health care stoned in my sweatpants. Forget the fact that he’s a Kennedy, he knew what he wanted out of life and pursued it with focus while I’m busy thinking how I should start micro-dosing mushrooms because then maybe I’ll come up with more vaginal related humor.

  I try not to envy others because jealousy is one of the most useless emotions. It doesn’t motivate me but rather traps me in a cage of my own insecurity and all I can do is feast off the flesh of whatever carrion the zookeeper of my psyche nonchalantly tosses at me. I grew up in a very competitive environment living in a Harvard Dorm as a child, and then going to a private school where kids were having panic attacks in the 5th grade because they feared an 85% on their spelling test meant they weren’t getting into MIT and only getting into Brown would cause deep shame to their family.

  I was used to competition and probably even felt it was healthy. It wasn’t until I drank ayahuasca in my 20’s (of course that happened) that I realized my competitive nature was part of my dis-ease. The medicinal vine showed me that comparing myself to others was what was holding me back emotionally in life and an energy I had to address. From that moment forward every time I felt myself comparing myself to someone else, either to feel better than them or worse than them, I would send that person loving kind energy. You should fucking try this sometime because it actually works. The minute you feel the impulse stop yourself, send them some love, and move on to the next thought. Don’t worry – you have thousands up there, like being curious if white supremacists worship albinos. I HAVE TO KNOW!

  Yet even though I developed this practice to stop me from comparing myself to others, I still have all this competitive energy socialized into me. Because I’ve been so committed not to direct it towards other people, its morphed into competing with myself. I think this is mostly okay, but also means that I’m always striving towards something in front of me. No matter what I accomplish, I’m then already focusing the next goal. I’m like one of those horses in a race chasing a fake rabbit that will always be a few paces ahead. I run faster and faster, frothing at the mouth hoping to catch up with a dream that is unattainable because I’m not meant to reach it. Okay fine, that’s not a great way to be either. Whatever no one’s perfect.

  Everyone always tells me I have to enjoy the journey because the journey is all we have. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the stupid journey. Don’t get me wrong, I believe this to be true, it’s just hard for me. I try my best to have patience with myself and realize that there is no destination because the place I’m trying to go will always change. I can’t reach the horizon because it actually doesn’t exist. It’s just an abstract line in front of me that will always move farther into the distance. There’s no point in stressing out about my lack of success because I’ll probably always want more. The best thing I can do is to accept that truth, and appreciate the process. I’m trying. I really am. Some days are better than others, but there are moments where I can actually feel this peace of mind and not just pretend I do.

  But what is success really? The way I measure success is through my work ambitions, but is that a metric I should be using? Aren’t there other ways to track success beyond the recognition of the economic marketplace validating your effort? Is my obsessive determination to quantify my artistic self my only worth? Of course not, even though it can feel that way for me.

  What I realized about myself recently is that all the parts of myself I value the most are the most conventionally “masculine” aspects of my personality. I respect that I work really hard, that I’m driven, that I don’t have emotions, that I rarely cry, that I’m hyper rational and argue like a corrupted corporate lawyer. It’s rare that I look at my more feminine qualities and honor them as part of my success.

  YOU GUYS!! DID YOU HEAR WHAT I JUST SAID? This is so humiliating to admit? I secretly worship my inner male and cast aside my inner female? Me?? The womb worshipping witchy woman? How can this be? How insane is it that a rabid feminist that gnaws at the heels of the patriarchy is still so internally ruled by it. I never feel pride about my more “feminine” successes. They are not a part of my self-esteem. In fact, I barely even notice them. So how can someone like me, who so openly honors the feminine in others, disgrace it in myself?

  When I confessed this to myself I was overcome with confusion. My whole life’s goal has been to venerate the metaphoric vagina in all of us. I believe the feminine aspects of all humans have to be penetrated into culture. Society has been ruled by the so-called “male” for so many thousands of years and we’re obviously out of balance. I’m not talking gender binary because gender is a fluid spectrum every person experiences. I’m talking about how society has defined, boxed in, and co-opted our understanding of gender. Whether we identify with gender or not, the gender stereotypes exist and we’ve been over valuing the “masculine” since the dawn of the patriarchy.

  If I’m going to self-righteously preach the glory of the feminine and how we need its influence, I also have to apply this rhetoric to myself. Isn’t it time I de-program my vision of success through this masculine financially based model and look at what I’ve accomplished that isn’t quantified? I may be an economic failure, but that doesn’t mean I’m useless. For the first time I looked at my life and proclaimed to myself that my greatest success has been being a mother.

  I know. I just said that.

  This may be something many women feel, but it was never something I felt. It didn’t even occur to be to see my mothering as a success. First of all, my life is my writing and that’s not funny content to write about – no one wants to hear about that. Can you imagine if my blog was just a series of humble brags about how much I loved my kid and what an easy time we were having? Boring. Snore. Blah. Makes me want to barf. But the truth is, that I’ve done a pretty fucking great job raising my kid, so much so that I can barely write about her anymore because she’s just so damn delightful. We have very little conflict, she’s wonderful to be around, I really enjoy her company, and our boundaries are super clear. I don’t feel like I even have to parent The Munch right now. I ask her to do things and she just does them because we have an understanding of how to best live together and there is mutual respect. The Munch is more like a roommate than I kid that I have to constantly monitor their behavior. I mean just writing this paragraph kind of made me gag, but I’m trying to hold back the bile.

  I’m sitting with this. I’m doing my best to let myself feel the success in my mothering and just not feel like a total failure for one day of my life. Sure most of the things I apply to reject me. Yeah I prostitute myself on the regular for “likes,” “comments,” and “followers.” Yes I spend everyday desperately trying to make myself culturally relevant in an artistic world oversaturated with talent and content. That’s all still true and can eat away at my soul like a raccoon at the dump of trashed self-confidence. Yet I do have this one gem in my life – this little person I’ve influenced that is not an asshole. That’s got to count for something right?

  

  December 6, 2017 • 7 years old, Ambitions, Behavior, Change, Children, Disciplining, Emotions, Family Drama, Parenting, Problems, Responsibilities, Women's Business • Views: 4518

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• Donald Trump Self-Esteem

  

  I think the one thing we can all learn from Donald Trump, is how to maintain unwavering positive self-esteem, even in the face of total failure. His confidence is remarkable! He doesn’t care about the approval of others! If people aren’t into him, he just thinks it’s a lie constructed by the fake news made up of a bunch of dummies. Trump’s sassier then the sassy friend in a movie who knows how to sass it up!

  I don’t know about you guys, but I could use some of that Trump-esteem. My life is filled with rejection. I am constantly dealing with people telling me, “thanks, but no thanks.” It’s hard to keep going in the face of that. When you work in a creative field, you have to be somewhat, if not completely delusional. Even when people tell me that the films I make, or the things I write aren’t good enough, I have to tell myself “keep trying Toni… Not everyone is going to understand your style of genital humor.”

  But if I were in any other profession, say a surgeon, and hospitals kept rejecting me – I would probably stop. I would never be like, “they just don’t get my type of surgery.”

  If I were a lawyer and lost every case, chances are I would quit, rather then yell at the judge, “my law is post-modern, avant-garde, reductionist… and you have no taste because you’re provincial philistine!

  The other day I went for a walk, got pretty stoned, and thought to myself “wow, I am the hardest working unsuccessful person I know.” It would be one thing if I didn’t work that hard, then I would have an excuse. I could be like, “well Toni, you never really tried.” But I really try!! Then I started to think that I must just not be that amazing at anything, and my current life is the consequence of my being un-amazing. Then I got soooo hungry. But then, I got a new video idea!

  I think we all have to deal with disappointment and rejection – whether in love, work, school, or public approval. Yet even though we are a social species, we also can’t allow other’s to define our sense of self. In matters of the heart, we often take breakups so personally. “Oh dear, that person doesn’t love me, therefor I can’t love myself.” Well, maybe you were an asshole every so often and could have done more to clean up your dirty dishes. But you can learn from your mistakes and still think you are worthy of love. Rejection, although damaging for the ego, is also an opportunity to grow, improve, and better define what it is you actually want.

  So in these dark political times where the face of Donald Trump causes my mouth to water at the precipice of constant retching, and my vagina to dry up, ready to turn itself inside out – there is something positive I can learn from him. I can channel his unrelenting pride. And you can too, the next time an entire world thinks you’re a piece of shit.

  Looks like I need a dose of Trump-Esteem!!!

  

  March 30, 2017 • Current Events, Emotions, Musings, Political Banter • Views: 7668

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• The Cost of Free Art

  

  I remember paying for art.  If I wanted to own music, I would go to the store and buy a tape. If I was interested in a movie I could either rent it, or pay more and own it.  If I wanted information in the form of print, I would buy a newspaper, magazine, book, or go to the library.  I never felt cheated. I never resented this process.  It all seemed fair to me.

  But now the idea spending money on media seems absurd.  Don’t’ get me wrong, I fully believe the creators of content should get paid… just not by me.

  The Internet has made me an entitled little shit.  I am ashamed of this truth.  The access to free art has corrupted me completely.  It is too tempting, too hard to resist, and too easy to obtain.

  I don’t really feel sorry for the poor rockers and movie stars who are making less millions.  But they are not the only ones affected.  The desperate artist is also at the mercy of the free art paradigm.  The Internet has provided a medium where anyone and everyone can expose their art to the public, and potentially gain an audience.  This democratic platform is like a wet dream for creative people, but also a really easy way to exploit your self.  You can put your heart into the process of entertaining and engaging people, but that doesn’t mean you are ever going to make money doing it.  Although in the past the middleman had control over the industry, he also made sure you got paid.

  People are relying heavily on advertising and corporate backing, but getting into bed with big business does not guarantee satisfaction.  In fact, you are majorly compromising your self, and I don’t mean in a fun S&M kind of way.  Especially when dealing in the realm of journalism and writing.  Considering 6 companies control 90% of the media in this country – that means the vast majority of the mainstream media is corrupted.  But relying solely on blogs for information, and people with little resources or financial compensations, doesn’t guarantee reliability either.  I mean I love my some conspiracy theory sites, but I am not sure that it is scientific fact that the Royal Family are lizard people.

  The idea that everyone one, regardless of income, can have exposure to information and art is magnificent and should never change.  But the idea that art is free does not honor the time and effort put into it.

  I guess it sounds like I want to have my cake and eat it too.  But I don’t get who just sits around watching a cake.

  

   

  March 20, 2013 • 2 years old, Current Events, Education, Musings, Political Banter • Views: 3717

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