Writings

Thoughts, ideas, musings on current events, politics, music and their intersection

6/15/2025

Don’t Face The DJ

A Feminist discussion of Hedonism, Art, and community

  1. Respect For What Came Before: House music got its name from the parties that birthed the genre. These parties are of course unbreakably linked to the DJs whose experimentation with breaks led to the development of house music as a genre. While they played an irreplaceable role, DJs were not the focus of these events. The focus was dancing. The warehouses served as unforgettable musical spaces because there was no front of the room. There was no back of the room. The music came from above and all around. DJ booths were located outside of the sightline of the crowd.

  2. Watch Less. Dance More: When we are focused on the DJ, we are not thinking about how we move our bodies. Dancing is easy “You’ve gotta move at least your hips or your hair” (Anushka Sarah) and the rest will come.  But when we dance passively we miss the opportunity to find out what feels good to our bodies. We miss the opportunity to ground ourselves in movement. Instead each individual Body becomes an object of observation. We watch the DJ. We watch each other. We perpetuate the cycle of loneliness and we police ourselves into embarrassment and conformity.

  3. Dance with somebody: When we face the DJ we line up shoulder to shoulder with little interest in each other except maybe to pass a cheeky bottle of poppers around. Formal rows pack the dance floor like sardines. We stand close but dance separately. Dance with somebody. Spin a friend about. Close your eyes and dance with yourself. Feel your body alive and moving! Hold someone cute. Hold a friend! Make them feel like hot stuff! When we dance together we build skills of physical intimacy and communication that we are robbed of by the structuring of modern life. When we do not practice how to approach each other with consent and care  on the dance floor we lose one of the most freely available opportunities to teach ourselves and those in our communities what consent looks like. Currently dance floor politics is steeped in the dominance of the male gaze and rape culture. The hunter looking for a good time and the hunted who deserves their own fun without interruption, insult, or assault. We fail both of these people.

  4. Making space in Public Space: When we do not control our sexual identity, the expression of our body, and the expression of our desires we are easier to control. The space for expressing sexuality is in private. The thing about private spaces is it makes sexuality taboo and it makes access to the erotic dependent on capital. The ownership of property is a prerequisite to sexual expression. Dancing together is an expression of sexuality, of desire and of relation. When we engage with another person physically. When we feel the push and pull of their muscles we must acknowledge their humanity or else trip over each other. 

  5. Creating space for everyone to express themselves: We have all heard the joke that everyone is a DJ these days. And it’s true. A lot of people are DJs. Everyone wants to be a DJ because it is one of the few social roles available to us where we can express ourselves artistically. We artificially limit ourselves and place ourselves in competition with one another when we see the DJ as the only expressive one on the dance floor. That being said. DJ booths are an artificially limited resource. By emphasizing the DJ as an individual we lose the chance to make music together. The tables are a place to explore and create let us make space for each other, trade off, take turns, create collectives. Abandon the spectacle of the hours-long headlining set. We can take joy in DJing to make great music that makes the dancing experience better. We can Dance to give joy to the DJ, and joy to ourselves and other dancers. We get to express ourselves on the dance floor and the more we do it the more space we create for other people to do so. It’s a slippery slope. Let's ride it down.

  6. Redefining Beauty: Dancing frequently has romantic undertones. The couples first dance at the wedding, the night out that's going to end in a stranger's bed, a cohabiting couple dancing the night away in the living room of their house, or the handsome stranger approaching from across the room. While these are all lovely, they limit dancing to Heteronormative roles. The dance floor can and should be a space to explore the feelings and desires we otherwise repress in the name of normalcy. Some ideas: When we practice intimacy skills that fall outside the patriarchal norm we strengthen our understandings and fuel the creativity of our desire beyond the norm. The strength of alternative pleasures is a key bastion as we attempt to move away from the primacy of the rape fantasy in heteronormative relationships and the puritanical myths that controls the way we are allowed to desire. The endless differentiation we can experience when we dance with a partner or two or three or four provides us with a certain decadence. A renewable and efficient resource of pleasure, intrigue and discovery. As Zarinah Agnew says in their writing we should reject luxury which is scarce and wasteful and instead embrace decadence which is a renewable resource of novel pleasures. How do we define beauty, and how can we redefine it to empower everyone?

  7. Creativity is natural: We are at our most full when we are in touch with the parts of us that create. Most aspects of the world around us are designed to stifle our impulse toward creativity. We often mistakenly recreate these stifling structures in the few spaces we are generally allowed freedom. Dancing in a typical modern house music setting can be a task that provides some limited rewards. It’s a way to look cool, a way to get drunk, a way to get laid. Dancing is more than this; it is an expression of our erotic nature and our capacity to create. In her essay “Uses of The Erotic”, Audre Lorde describes erotic experiences like dancing as connective. It ties two ends, two people, disparate ideas together and in doing so “lessens the threat of their difference” (56). When we get in touch with the thrilling and forbidden, like facing each other when we dance, we break artificial barriers and build bridges between each other. We go from distracted preoccupied consumers of music to creators of connection. Or perhaps we were creative all along and dancing together is just an act of reorienting from creating a facade of our self to control how we are perceived to building bridges to let other people really see us. 


Further Reading

Out of Context

An Op-ed on the aggression between Israel and Iran

6/20/2025

Born within a year of 9/11, it feels to me that the United States has perpetually been at war in the middle east. After four years studying political science in college I still find myself a bit perplexed by the geopolitics of it all. As a fresh round of hostilities is exchanged between Iran and a close U.S. ally the news feels both shockingly familiar and perplexingly random. The sense of confusion in western media around the conflict should be seen as a predictable propaganda tool of the Israeli state. To find meaning in the current violence it must be situated in its historical context.

Israel claims they attack Iran based on suspicions that the country is coming close to creating nuclear weapons (Inskeep and Adams). Israel's concern on this front arises from internal intelligence and Iran’s recent censure from the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) for failure to comply with inspectors. Israel has yet to provide substantive evidence of their claims, raising parallels to the “weapons of mass destruction” line used to justify an US invasion of Iraq in the 2000’s.

Iran has had nuclear energy since the 1950's, a time when the proliferation of nuclear technology was in alignment with US foreign Policy (Malus). To put a long history very briefly, In the very early 1900’s Iran was discovered to be rich with oil. The monarchy allowed a British company to control initial oil prospecting and contracts. In the Early 1950’s Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh announced plans to nationalize the oil industry in Iran. This was met with immediate pushback from the British oil companies and their allies in western governments (Painter and Brew). The conflict culminated in the 1953 coup of Prime Minister Mosaddegh solidifying the rule of the monarchy in Iran. The coup halted progress toward democratic liberalization in Iran pushing the country into an era of authoritarian rule that would last until the Iranian Revolution. In short, Iran served as a proxy location for the cold war hostilities of the United States that feared the influence of redistributive ideologies economic ideologies. Nationalization of Iran's oil industry was an existential threat to capitalist ideology, and a tangible one as oil became more and more central to global financial systems throughout the later half of the 20th century.

The US entered into a deal with Saudi Arabia in 1973 that linked the value of the United States currency to oil (Khubchandani). Global oil trading was done using US Dollars. Called the “Petrodollar System”, the US Dollar transitioned in the 70’s from being value backed by gold to being backed by global oil trade. 

At the end of the 70’s the Iranian revolution kicked off in response to decades of United States influence over the government and economy. The head of the Iranian monarchy Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was forced to step down and power was ceded to revolution leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (Maloney and Razipour). The decades of cooperation between the United States and the Iranian Monarchy were over. American policy toward Iran shifted to limiting Iranian economic growth through sanctions.

Around this time Israel comes into the picture as a major player. In the period of the Shah’s rule following the coup and preceding the revolution, Israel and Iran generally saw each other as allies. Their alliance was based on them being two of the only non arab states in the region, and a mutual desire to maintain close connections to the power and influence of the United States (Kaye,Nader, and Roshan). Relations soured after the revolution as Khomeini made the eradication of the state of Israel the official stance of the Iranian government. Despite the strong words, the two states again found themselves in an uncomfortable alliance for a decade more. Iran went to war with Iraq and Israel supported them in their endeavor. 

By the 90’s the Iran-Iraq war was over and tensions ramped up between Israel and Iran. In 1995 the United States imposed Sanctions on Iran in an attempt to control the growth of its oil production. The US listed the security of Israel as a central concern and motivating factor for its sanctions. US secretary of state Peter Tarnoff is quoted in the Iran Oil Sanctions Act of 1995 saying “a straight line links Iran's oil income and its ability to sponsor terrorism (and) build weapons of mass destruction” (D’amato). Notably, Iran does fund resistance groups in the middle east and is a longtime backer of Hezbollah and Hamas groups that are classified as terrorist organizations by the United States and Israel (Vesely). Iran was also accused of using nuclear power technologies to try to develop atomic weapons.

Given the nonspecificity of the nuclear threat described by Israel, the recent attacks feel a bit arbitrary when they aren’t situated in a broader context. Three aspects of the ongoing conflict must be considered. First, offensive military action was a very dramatic way to handle a problem that has been over the years addressed with meticulously negotiated sanctions. The attacks fanned the flames of a “Weapons of mass destruction” dialogue that consumed the attention of western media outlets for decades. Second, support for Israel's military actions in the Gaza strip have been under serious criticism recently as they abuse and restrict the flow of humanitarian aid into the territory. Lastly, the Israeli regime has a pattern of executing military action at times when international media attention is occupied (Harmon). 

For example an estimated 67 Palestinians were killed on super bowl sunday this year  (Horn). Ten people were killed and more injured in an attack during the 2024 oscars. Since late March more than 400 people have been killed by the IDF while attempting to access humanitarian aid including 59 people just this last Tuesday and 72 Wednesday.

The Israeli state is tremendously skilled at propaganda. No matter where one stands on the issue of Israel and Palestine it cannot be denied that Israel and its global network of zionist organizations have been very successful in convincing a lot of people of the need for a jewish state.

There is no direct evidence that the current Israeli aggression against Iran is a purposeful PR move, but it certainly has been a successful one. Israel remains in global headlines, but not for its blockade of the gaza strip. It is instead attacking Iran, a nation against which a lot of islamophobia is still harbored by many people in the United States and Europe. 

It remains to be seen if the conflict between Iran and Israel will continue, and in what ways it will materially affect Israel's War on Gaza. What is clear is what is happening in Gaza and what is happening in Iran are connected. Perhaps my hypothesis is incorrect or incomplete. Maybe Israel is escalating the conflict to draw further military aid from the United States. Maybe the Israeli government is candid and desires only to eliminate the nuclear capacities of a regional rival. Time will tell. For now, it is important to understand that In the same way that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people did not start October 7th, fighting between Iran and Israel did not start last week.


Further Reading