February 23 2025
Reading for my Women in Literature class. This is the 4th book of 8! We’ve nearly reached the halfway point. 🎉🎉🎉
March 1 2025
Finished with the Community Accessibility project for my Disability Ethics class. 1200 words! This was a pain in the butt, but I’m glad it’s part of this class. It can be a real eye opener for folks who’ve not thought about accessibility and inclusion before.
March 1 2025
Monday NIght Poetry Prompt: Censorship
Executive order 14168
(My version)
We, women, do not need defending
From gender ideology
We, humans, reject this extremism
We reject your ridiculous calls
Of restoring so called biological truth
For like a manipulator
Like a gas lighter
You twist and stretch the truth
To conform to your version
A version that bans words
Forbids phrases
Calls upon those who bow down to you
To remove words and phrases
To delete these words from government
Documents and websites
We reject this extremism
We reject your ridiculous calls
Of restoring so called biological truth
By the authority vested in me
As a Poet by the Constitution and laws
Of Monday Night Poetry
Including section
Go Fuck Yourself of the
United States of having your head’s so far up the felon’s ass
It is hereby ordered:
Section 1
Purpose
Across the country
Fascist assholes who want to police
And control people’s right to live openly
As who they know themselves to be
This is wrong
We, women, including transgender women
DO NOT need protection from our
Fellow transgender women
We need protection from heterosexual cisgender men
Section 2
Policy and Definitions
It is the policy of humans to have free speech
To continue to use these words and phrases
To continue living as we know ourselves to be
To continue to tell the fascists to fuck off
Sex IS a concept of gender identity
Women and girl refers to those who identify as such
Men and boy refers to those who identify as such
Female and Male are NOT binary
Gender Ideology will continue to be used and written
Gender identity will continue to be used and written
Each agency and all Federal employees
Shall mind their own damn business
The Secretaries of State and Homeland security
Shall keep their hands off our
Passports
IDs
And visas
Section 4
Protecting Rights
The Attorney General shall not
Issue guidance to restrict freedom to
Express beyond the binary nature of sex and gender
Section 5
Agency Implantation and Reporting
The agency shall not change agency documents
To reflect this fascist change
This order is intended to allow
We citizens to exercise our freedoms
For you can erase and ban all the words and phrases you want
You will NOT erase the existence of who and what these words represent
Camilla Downs, 2024
Prompt: Censorship
I used EO 14168, mirroring my poem with it.
Link to this horrible, vile order –
March 1 2025
This is what it looks like when a room full of poets just yelled, “fuck censorship”. Prompt for the night: “censorship”
There’s a reason that the script I’m writing is set at Shim’s with this amazing cast of characters. These people are fierce, yet full of love, empathy and compassion. 🖤✊🏻🖤
February 26 2025
The absolute best birthday message I could ever receive. ❤️❤️❤️ My day is already complete.
I love you, G. I will never give up on you, as long as I breathe, and even after that. 🖤🖤🖤
Postponing my birthday celebrations until this semester is finished, and hopefully I’ll feel better by then, too.
February 23 2025
Discussion question from my Women in Literature class. Did I mention how much I love these classes?!
Although Wollstonecraft and de Beauvoir write from the past, are their insights valuable today? How are they anticipating the model of the ISA and “ interpellation” for example?
Wollstonecraft and de Beauvoir’s writings are absolutely valuable insights today. Unfortunately, they are becoming more relevant with each passing day. It’s as if the human race has collectively entered a time machine traveling back to the era of first wave feminism.
Wollstonecraft argued that if men and women are political and social equals, they can develop the mutual respect that is necessary to create universal harmony. I wonder what she would think of how far we’ve come and that we have still not reached this place of mutual respect. de Beauvoir’s point that men set themselves up as subjects, setting themselves apart, regarding the other (women) as a thing to be taken, gets at one of the reasons that we have not attained mutual respect. Women are “othered” by men, making it impossible to reach this goal.
Both women write about how women come into subjecthood due to social constructs (ISAs). de Beauvoir writes that from the time they are young, women are taught to forget themselves, to dream about becoming a plaything for a mature man. She further writes that women were taught to regard themselves as objects, to see themselves as prey. Wollstonecraft writes that men were taught to secure the good conduct of women by attempting to keep them always in a state of childhood. I’m inspired by the fire both of these women spit! Wollstonecraft goes so far as to say that women might as well not have been born if society would have us always be in a state of childhood. All of this stemmed from schools, religion, media, families and laws.
Still relevant today and further examples of social constructs, Wollstonecraft compares women to young military men who have been taught to please, and they only live to please. She questions why the men are still considered superior to to men. There was so much I appreciated in this excerpt, but was especially moved by this quote, “Educate women like men,” says Rousseau, “and the more they resemble our sex the less power will they have over us.” “This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves.” Wollstonecraft. This is perhaps a most important point and the root of ISAs, and why the feminist fight for equality and equity has moved slowly, and appears to be reversing.
February 23 2025
Sexy Grown Folks Poetry and Jazz
Inspired by Goblin Market by Christian Rossetti
Grapes
It’s the season
The season of intoxication
The season of ache
Plump globe grapes
Engorged and juicy
Warmed from the heat of the sun
Fondling the grapes
Caressing them
Choosing the perfect one
I brush the grape across my lips
Licking the nectar that gets stuck
Teasing myself with the
Forbidden taste
Tempting myself
My pulse quickens
My lips glisten
As they part
My face flushes
Pausing to
Slow my heartbeat
I lick the swollen grape
Wrapping my lips around it
I suck the juice from the grape
Sliding it into my mouth
Rolling my tongue around it
Exploring it
Sucking it
Whew
Biting into it
The juice exploding inside my mouth
Savoring the thick nectar
Swallowing
I tremble
As I exhale
Camilla Downs, 2025
February 23 2025
I adore my poetry friends! Friday night was Sexy Grown Folks poetry with improv jazz to accompany.
February 17 2025
Treatment for the script is finished! Just need to add a synopsis. It’s kind of wild doing something that you’ve never done before, with feeling along the way that you have no freaking clue what you’re doing. With guidance from the professor, making it up as I go along, pulling from life happenings. We have some uncanny, weird shit happening currently.
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February 19 2025
Reading for my Women in Literature class. Goblin Market is one wild poem. 😳 The combination of classes I’m taking this semester fit together perfectly. It makes my brain happy when I can combine material from one class to the other.
Creative Writing
Craft & Forms of Creative Writing (Horror)
Screenwriting
Women in Literature
Disability Ethics
Also, I’m convinced this country has collectively gotten into a Time Machine and gone back to the 30s. Half the country has lost their damn fucking minds, with no empathy to be found, dragging the rest of us with them. Wish there was a way to add critical thinking skills to the water or better yet, to Coke and Pepsi products. And maybe show a documentary about eugenics and “Ugly Laws” inside their eyelids.
February 16 2025
The Treatment for the script I’m writing is due on the 19th. Damn! This is a tentative title for the series. I just like having graphics to accompany my writings.
My Monday Night Poetry friends will love this as Shim’s Tavern and MNP plays a huge role in the series. In fact, that’s where most of the setting will be.
Yesterday I had to submit my answers to these questions for the Treatment:
* Who is the protagonist? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Do they have a fatal flaw? If so, what is it?
* What is the inciting incident in your show/movie? How does it disrupt the protagonist’s daily world?
* What does your protagonist want?
* How is your protagonist introduced? What is the first thing that we see them doing? What is the first thing they say?
* Where is your script set? Be as specific as possible? Is your protagonist an outsider or an insider?
The professor gave me encouraging and positive feedback. Onward! I’ve got to figure out my antagonist.
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Currently reading for my Women in Literature class.
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Reading for my craft and forms of creative writing class at UNR. Loving this one!
February 15 2025
Surprise gifts are THE BEST!! Thank you @eralomusic for the early birthday gifts! 💜💜💜 I appreciate you, and am cheering you on from Reno. 💖💖💖
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I’ll be sharing snippets of my UNR classes during the semester.
This is from my Disability Ethics class. We read the essay, “The Nazis’ First Victims Were the Disabled”.
Quote from the essay, “Too often the lives of those of us who live with disabilities are not valued, and feared.”
We recently watched the video “War on the Weak: Eugenics in America” the role of the US and eugenics in Nazi Germany was discussed.
These are my raw notes from watching the video:
The president was behind it. Liberals behind it. Conservatives behind it. Catholic Church behind it. Degeneracy an inheritable trait. ??? Eugenics was because America didn’t want to make social changes. There was an American Breeders Association?? Damn! Carnegie Institution helped fund the Eugenics Record Office. It was in place for 34 years! Administered eugenics laws nationwide, including immigration and marriage restrictions, and forced sterilization of criminals, race segregation, and other undesirables. And integrated it into popular culture, made race hygiene household words. Popular 20’s literature often mentioned eugenics. The fairs gave awards for the fittest families, purest pedigrees. Gross!
Euthanasia became a part of the movement internationally, but not so much here in America. In 1907 in Indiana was the first jurisdiction to force sterilization of citizens it deemed unfit. Connecticut followed. By 1924, 3000 socially inadequate people had been sterilized. Feeble minded and sexual promiscuity were reasons to sterilize. Based on flimsy evidence. “Three generations of imbecile are enough” Oliver Wendell Holmes (Buck v Bell – and it has not been overruled). HAS NOT BEEN OVERRULED
Nazi Germany borrowed eugenics from America and upped it. German scientists had affinity for US eugenics laws. Germany modeled their eugenics after Americas. This was a prelude to the holocaust. Mentally ill of Germany were first to be exterminated.
This was my response on the quiz regarding our reading and the video:
I did not know that Nazi Germany borrowed the idea from America. I am utterly disgusted. Even more so in our current political climate. I find myself moving through this material wondering what the heck is going on. We are looping back to vile things that should have been left behind.Eugenics came to be because America did not want to invest in social programs (sounding eerily like our current climate). It was supported by both political parties as a way to only allow people with certain characteristics to procreate. It also included forced sterilization of criminals and undesirables; which included women who were deemed feeble minded and promiscuousm (by flimsy evidence).