Doreen Michele

My maiden name is Irish in origin and I realized in recent months at the age of sixty that my Irish heritage was in some sense treated more secretly than my Cherokee heritage. My mother was a German immigrant who grew up in Germany during World War II and its aftermath. My father spent 18.5 years of his 26.5 years of military service overseas, possibly in part because it was easier for him to be White passing as a foreigner. I was molested as a child. I grew up in a family haunted by "dirty secrets" many of which were dirt from other people, from a larger context, from a racist society and from a world unable to heal up in the face of wars and other large scale problems individuals typically don't know how to adequately navigate. We fight over an offense we did not give against those who were not alive to be offended. While poor, I sometimes experienced abusive behavior from Black Americans thrilled to take their anger out on a White woman they thought was beref...

I like running my big fat mouth via keyboard and internet. I like sharing what I know in hopes it improves things for someone and I'm very socially observant. I've spent a lot of years trying to find ways to mitigate problems like: 1. People feeling like I'm dictating answers to them rather than just trying to add information to their decision-making process.  2. In online forums, people squeeing at me like I'm a celebrity, thereby sucking the life out of the conversation and promoting drama. 3. People lining up in two groups as either strongly FOR my "position" or strongly AGAINST it! I would rather we all tell our story to create a database of experiences so the person asking the question has options.  4. Trying to account for the internet having a highly diverse audience, so no matter what I say, some people are likely to misinterpret something. I work very hard at including provisos, warnings, links to background information and other safety things. I like...

The existence of trans people speaks directly to the defects in heteronormative culture. I am trying to: 1. DESTROY heteronormative culture.  2. Install something less dysfunctional in its place.  The site Formulary of Life exists at all as a power play political move to say FUCK YOU DONALD TRUMP.   Donald Trump is openly transphobic, homophobic, racist, hates Native Americans, has a wife more than twenty years younger than him and in a nutshell represents everything wrong with heteronormative culture which actively promotes subsistence culture  and actively turns sex into a negative experience we should fear and loathe. Heteronormative culture is a paradigm that insists that there's one and only one correct lifestyle: A nuclear family with a breadwinner father, homemaker mother and dependent minor children. This encourages old farts like him to marry much younger women under circumstances that make it a negative experience for everyone involved resulting in A...

I want to design a better culture. A better way to feed people than what we currently have that adequately nourishes people without chaining women to the stove and a second class citizen status. I want to make clothes and change housing . I don't need all jobs and housing and food everywhere to change. I just want planet Earth to ALLOW a new option to exist for those who want it.

I grew up in the Deep South which defacto uses honorifics that are peculiar to the local culture. It's well known that Southern culture is shaped by The South being historically more strongly Christian than most of the nation and Southern manners are typically attributed to Christian influence. My understanding is that a lesser known factor is European nobility historically established an expectation of court-like respect and diplomacy. So Southern Manners and Southern Hospitality is also a political  heritage, not just a religious heritage, and is shaped by the culture of European nobility who weren't simply wealthy upper classes , they were the ruling class politically and their children were expected to be officers in war, married off as defacto ambassadors to other countries, etc. So with that background, unsurprisingly, my political views and ideas on what makes sense politically boil down to looking to treat ALL people with a certain baseline respect for bodily autonom...

1. I'm socially observant and interested in figuring out how social stuff works. 2. I'm an ordinary person, not one of the upper crust, who knows how it works if you are a big fat nobody. 3. I'm interested in parsing how someone can get their own needs met without stepping on anyone else's toes. AKA "ethics" or good boundaries. 4. I'm not interested in controlling anyone. I just want to TALK about what I know so other people can look at that and go "Oh, x and y are useful to me, z is irrelevant to my life. I can make some adjustments here and be less miserable/have less friction with other people."

Keep it among consenting adults. There are circumstances under which a legal adult may be considered incapable of giving meaningful consent, such as when they are too drunk to consent. I write really in hopes of helping others figure out what I never did: How a couple can find their way to a happily monogamous relationship... My writing is sometimes supportive of things like polyamory or open relationships to some degree. Sometimes the journey we take is not as straightforward as we might like. It's also sometimes critical of such practices because often people practicing such things aren't doing so ethically.  I also take a critical eye to heteronormative relationships and all the ways those go wrong. I'm not your friend. We don't know each other. I don't "approve" of your alternative lifestyle. I can't meaningfully approve of something when I don't actually know you personally and the details of what you are up to. I have had relationships that...

1. Parenting and Education.  I think good parenting is teaching your kids how to live right and there is no clear bright line between raising them well and teaching them.  Raising Future Adults Adult Learners Handbook   r/MovingOnUp r/TheGraceProject 2. A new clothing paradigm as women move into the work force and stop being primarily paid for sex, sex appeal or "women's work."  Coastal Clothes   November West Wears r/FrenchWardrobe 3. Adequate nutrition via a paradigm other than "We assume you live in a household with a full-time homemaker, either your wife or mom, cooking for the entire family and memorizing all the health issues and special dietary needs of all members so you don't have to think too much about food."  Lunchbox Essentials Nutrient Dense   r/NutrientDense  4. Towns, neighborhoods, transit and other "urban planning" stuff, though I'm interested in giving pushback against the trend of big cities eating the world. My interests tr...