“Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.”
— Benjamin Disraeli (via queerbois)
This is a space concerned with social power:
power & gender, power & sexuality, power & translation, power & language, power & race, power & class, power & politics, power & words, power & performance.
This is a space about in-betweenness, grey areas, the spectrum, unrest, uneasiness.
This is a space for heavy things, hard things, uncomfortable things, beautiful things.
This Gendered Life: Pass This Information On.
[All information included is from an individual who was present at the meeting, during which the policy was announced by administrators to the small handful of students. I have intentionally not included the individual’s name.]
Tonight I found out that Smith College is planning to invoke a new,…
IRIS:
Mexico City artists Sego & Saner create a mural for the Wynwood Walls. Would die to see another of their pieces on the Houston Wall! Watch more on Here Comes the Neighborhood series.
(Source: hypebeast.com, via fuckyeahmexico)
One teachers approach to preventing gender bullying in a classroom
Alie arrived at our 1st-grade classroom wearing a sweatshirt with a hood. I asked her to take off her hood, and she refused. I thought she was just being difficult and ignored it. After breakfast we got in line for art, and I noticed that she still had not removed her hood. When we arrived at the art room, I said: “Allie, I’m not playing. It’s time for art. The rule is no hoods or hats in school.”
She looked up with tears in her eyes and I realized there was something wrong. Her classmates went into the art room and we moved to the art storage area so her classmates wouldn’t hear our conversation. I softened my tone and asked her if she’d like to tell me what was wrong.
“My ponytail,” she cried.
“Can I see?” I asked.
She nodded and pulled down her hood. Allie’s braids had come undone overnight and there hadn’t been time to redo them in the morning, so they had to be put back in a ponytail. It was high up on the back of her head like those of many girls in our class, but I could see that to Allie it just felt wrong. With Allie’s permission, I took the elastic out and re-braided her hair so it could hang down.
“How’s that?” I asked.
She smiled. “Good,” she said and skipped off to join her friends in art.
‘Why Do You Look Like a Boy?’
Breast ironing tradition targeted in Cameroon - CNN
1/4 girls in Cameroon affected by the practice. Mothers forcibly try to eliminate signs of puberty to protect their preteen girls from incest, HIV, pregnancy… But the girls get raped anyway. So, what’s the f*** ????
Resistance Is NOT Futile.
Today, I encourage everyone to fight fat hate by resistance.
It’s 80 degrees out, take off that cardigan.
Enjoy every bite of your ice cream cone. In public.
Kiss your partner in the middle of the street.
Dip yourself into the ocean with your half-naked body held high.
Sit next to someone on the bus.
Ask that girl out on a date.
Wear your shortest pair of shorts.
Smile the biggest and laugh the loudest.
Don’t engage in diet, body-shaming talk.
Buy the dress you’ve always wanted.Don’t allow others the power to dictate what we have the freedom to do.
Don’t be silenced. Speak up, stand out.
RESIST.
It may be the best tool we have.(by kylathegreat)
(via wallofbooks)
The challenges of genderqueer love
So maybe you’re attracted to people outside of the gender binary. Maybe you’re wondering how you go about loving a person who categorizes themself as genderqueer, gender non-conforming, transgender, transmasculine or transfeminine, agender, androgynous, bigendered, or perhaps no category at all.
I wish it was as easy as just loving the person for who they are … I really do. But I truly believe that the way that we have been conditioned in this society really informs our relationships and our interactions within romantic relationships, especially.
When a lesbian wants to date a trans man, many times there are expectations for the behavior of that trans man. I have heard many times from trans men that they don’t want to be seen as a butch lesbian or a stud by their lesbian or queer women partners. They are men. But many haven’t been socialized as men all their lives, yet their habits are similar … so what does one do with that?
It’s difficult to navigate. All I ask for from my partner is that they acknowledge how I see myself and check their expectations for me. I haven’t been socialized as a man, so much of our interactions will not be the same as you and your past boyfriend.
I identified as a lesbian for 10 years so, in some ways I have been socialized as a lesbian. I understand that scene, even though I fit like a round peg in a square hole there now. I’ve spent some time thinking, fretting, and overanalyzing about this…
In some past relationships I didn’t even bring the genderqueer thing up. I was processing it myself and whatever I mentioned was just shrugged off so as with most of my life I just kept a lot of things to myself.Or maybe I was just expecting my exes to “accept me for who I am”…that old queer motto. Because I was the “same” as I ever was. But…you know…that’s really not true. As I’ve come to accept my identity and discovered more about myself through all those hidden facets of Me-ness that I had buried under some feigned sense of normalcy (and once queer- queeritude), I’ve come to realize that I have changed quite a bit. I’m not really sure that my exes could have handled who I am today … then. I couldn’t.
All in all, I guess I’m tired of people using that “but you’re the same person” line. I feel like it allows people not to acknowledge who you are becoming. It allows people to stay comfortable with who you were and never fully process the transition you have undergone.A while back, I would have welcomed this for friends and family in true protective fashion. I would have shielded them from my queerness and would have worried about just being accepted. I would have taken whatever bone anyone would have thrown me.
And I guess you might say that at times I still do when it comes to pronouns. I realize that I’m living in this no-man’s land and it’s really hard to wrap your head around something you haven’t seen. So I allow for the “ma’ams” and the “young ladies” in certain contexts. It still makes me feel torn and creates this state of dissatisfaction …unrest… because that’s not who I am.
I know I “look” like a Miss if you look hard enough and I know that sometimes people are just trying to be nice or don’t want to make a mistake. I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with that … strangers versus people who have known you for a significant amount of time versus people who met you at this particular point in your gender expression.
So I’m coming to terms with how to deal with that … and this genderqueer love. Do we genderqueers date those in the LGB who fetishize us? Are we relegated only to each other? Do we get into relationships full of teaching moments, false hopes, and expectations?Is there queer relationship counseling including therapy on gender expression? Sigh. Just like the majority of queers, I want to be seen for who I am now, not who partners wish I was … or remember me as … or wrongly think I am because so and so who is masculine of center or FTM is that way.
Hi, I’m Toi…have we met?
I think that what it comes down to is actually talking about these things up front, which is hard to do. Gender can be fluid just like sexuality. Maybe it’s important to have check-ins periodically (What? did I just say that? Is this a performance evaluation?).Not to “keep track” but to stay in touch with who both are becoming. My ideal partner shares this struggle with me and is cognizant of the way I decide to move through certain spaces. Damn, that’s a hard gig and it doesn’t pay much. But I am willing to do it for them, too.
I realize it’s really difficult to be that person on the other end. How does the relationship not become about the transition or the trials and tribulations of one person’s experience over another?
How can both involved learn to respect and appreciate each other and free themselves of all these expectations and falsitudes? We’re up against a lot, aren’t we? From internalized homophobia, the way we may be treated by society, evolving identity, and then after all this we’re expected to be decent partners.
Why aren’t there more than a handful of books on this? And don’t say that the books from straight or lesbian or gay relationships apply … the dynamics are really, really different, in my opinion.
I plan to write more on this later as I process solutions, but am interested in others’ thoughts.
SlutWalk: A Stroll Through White Supremacy by Aura Blogando
SlutWalk: A Stroll Through White Supremacy
By Aura Blogando
from http://tothecurb.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/slutwalk-a-stroll-through-white-supremacy/
Note: I had long ago decided to stop blogging here for a couple of reasons. For one, I could not devote enough time to posting as regularly as I had in the past, but I also found more and more outlets with wider audiences that would publish my pieces. With so much dialogue surrounding SlutWalk lately, I wanted to insert the voice of a woman of color to add critical pressure from the margins; however, I found it difficult to find an outlet that would publish me. I first queried The Guardian, which had already printed a couple of pieces authored by white women about the event, and never heard anything back (they have, subsequently, posted more pieces about SlutWalk, all authored by white women). I then attempted to add this post on HuffPo, where I have contributed in the past – although they were nice enough to at least respond to me, they rejected my post. Rather than waste another week trying to find an outlet, I’ve taken the advice of people I love and trust and have revived my once-retired blog to post a piece that (oddly enough) explains some of the ways in which white women have constructed a conversation that women of color can’t seem to participate in.
According to its website, SlutWalk was created by women who “are tired of being oppressed by slut-shaming; of being judged by [their] sexuality and feeling unsafe as a result.” SlutWalk aims to “reclaim” the word “slut,” by taking to the streets and demanding people begin to think about the way women are damaged by stereotyping. What’s now grown into a Global North movement, SlutWalk has predictably captivated the media. One can read numerous blogs and articles, and examine diametrically opposed op-eds posted on both sides of the Atlantic – all authored by white women. With such a sensationalized event name, it makes sense that the event would gain attraction. What doesn’t make sense is the racist way in which SlutWalk has chosen to present itself – the result of the group’s white leadership, which has systematically silenced the voices of women of color. Women are left with little assurance that the word “slut” can even be reclaimed at all, and it would be absurd to imagine that SlutWalk’s dramatized events will do anything to stop any kind of violence against women.
SlutWalk was conceived after a cop reportedly told a group of Toronto students that women “should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized” during a campus event to address sexual assault, which he was invited to. I understand the need to denounce this type of speech, particularly when uttered by a law enforcement officer. But what struck me was the fact that a group of students gathered with law enforcement to begin with. As people of color, our communities are plagued with police brutality, and inviting them into our spaces in order to somehow feel safer rarely crosses our minds. I’ve attended several workshops and panels on sexual violence and would never imagine seeing law enforcement in attendance. Groups like INCITE! have done a tremendous amount of work to address the way that systemic violence is directed against women in communities of color through “police violence, war and colonialism,” as well as to address the type of interpersonal violence between individuals within a community, such as sexual assault and domestic violence. SlutWalk “want[s] Toronto Police Services to take serious steps to regain [their] trust;” our communities, meanwhile, never trusted the police to begin with. For a group of privileged students to stage such a massive event and dismiss the work that our communities have done to make sense out of the disproportionate accumulation of violence that we face is wholly unacceptable.
As Trymaine Lee has reported, black, poor and transgender women are being disproportionately and systematically branded as criminal “sex offenders” on an online database for engaging in “survival sex” in New Orleans. Under the cover of an obscure, slave-era legal term called “crimes against nature,” police officers target those who engage in oral or anal sex-for-money. Those targeted for a second time are charged as felons (vaginal sex-for-money, meanwhile, is considered misdemeanor prostitution). 40 percent of those who appear on the sexual predator database are there because they were accused of committing a “crime against nature;” more than 80 percent of those are black women.
If SlutWalk truly wanted to bring attention to the systematic ways in which women are harmed by regressive and misogynistic thinking, they could have done the heavy lifting of reaching out and supporting black, poor and transgender women in New Orleans, for whom the word “slut” carries a criminal sex offender record. Instead, they force us to keep bearing the multiple burdens that come with not only being a woman, but also being a working class woman of color. Had SlutWalk organizers considered New Orleans – or perhaps any city in the Northern Hemisphere where undocumented women possess a very real fear that a call to the police for any reason will result in her own deportation – they might have thought twice about sinking so much time and energy into their event. They might have had to listen to women of color, and actually involve them in visioning for what an equitable future would look like. Instead, they decided to celebrate a term not everyone is comfortable even saying. While I will not pretend to speak for women targeted in New Orleans, I doubt that the mere idea of naming themselves “sluts” would be welcomed. SlutWalk has proven itself to be a maddening distraction from the systematic and interpersonal violence that women of color face daily.
On my Facebook feed yesterday, a prominent Boston-based white feminist complained that, although the BBC had interviewed her for one of its internationally highest rated programs, she “was on for like two seconds in the second hour which doesn’t air in the US. Verrrrrrry [sic] frustrating.” This woman had already participated in a 40-minute episode on a Canadian television program with four other white women, where they debated each other about SlutWalk. She was also a featured speaker at SlutWalk Boston, and her speech was posted online with full transcripts (as far as I know, not one person of color spoke at the event in question). The tremendous amount of entitlement implicit in her post felt suffocating. When I responded that two seconds of airtime was considerably longer than women of color had on the topic, she wrote that she agreed “with the larger critique,” but felt compelled to correct me by adding that “there were a number of women of color on this program.”
Her entitlement was coupled with the kind of lip service intended to keep women of color quiet, as well as a dose of correction to prove her superior ability to still be right – all typical of liberal white women who have never truly listened to begin with. Regardless of the fact that a scarce amount of women of color got international airtime on the BBC for the first time since SlutWalk was conceived several months ago, its organizers never reached out to women of color as equals to begin with; instead of making sure our voices participated in its visioning, we have been painted into a colored corner inside their white room. SlutWalk’s next turn, I’m quite sure, will be our tokenization. I imagine that women of color will be coddled by white SlutWalk organizers, eager to save (white)face, into carrying their frontline banners and parroting their messages at a stage near you. I’m hoping my sisters won’t fall for it; I know that I, for one, will stay home. This is not liberation – if anything, Slutwalk is an effective exercise in white supremacy.
There is no indication that SlutWalk will even strip the word “slut” from its hateful meaning. The n-word, for example, is still used to dehumanize black folks, regardless of how many black folks use it among themselves. Just moments before BART officer James Mehserle shot Oscar Grant to death in Oakland in 2009, video footage captured officers calling Grant a “bitch ass nigger.” It didn’t matter how many people claimed the n-word as theirs – it still marked the last hateful words Grant heard before a white officer violently killed him. Words are powerful – the connection between speech and thought is a strong one, and cannot be marched away to automatically give words new meaning. If I can’t trust SlutWalk’s white leadership to even reach out to women of color, how am I to trust that “reclaiming” the word will somehow benefit women? The answer is, I can’t. In fact, “reclaiming” is defined as taking something back that was yours to begin with, and the word “slut” was never ours to begin with, so it would be impossible to reclaim it.
According to SlutWalk’s website, the event is slated to be reproduced in Argentina sometime this year. It’s the country I was born and raised in, among Spanish, Guaraní and Portuguese speakers – and I can assure you that the word “slut” is not used by anyone there. This is not what we need. I do not want white English-speaking Global North women telling Spanish-speaking Global South women to “reclaim” a word that is foreign to our own vocabulary. To do so would be hegemonic, and would illustrate the ways in which Global North “feminists” have become a tool of cultural imperialism. I will be going back home in about a month, and want to do so without feeling the power of white women bearing down on me from 6,000 miles away. We’ve got our own issues to deal with in South America; we do not need to become poster children to try to make you feel better about yours.
Whether white supremacist hegemony was SlutWalk’s intent or not is beyond my concern – because it has certainly been so in effect. This event will not stop the criminalization of black women in New Orleans, nor will it stop one woman from being potentially deported after she calls the police subsequent to being raped. SlutWalk completely ignores the way institutional violence is leveled against women of color. The event highlights its origins from a privileged position of relative power, replete with an entitlement of assumed safety that women of color would never even dream of. We do not come from communities in which it feels at all harmless to call ourselves “sluts.” Aside from that, our skin color, not our style of dress, often signifies slut-hood to the white gaze.
If SlutWalk has proven anything, it is that liberal white women are perfectly comfortable parading their privilege, absorbing every speck of airtime celebrating their audacity, and ignoring women of color. Despite decades of work from women of color on the margins to assert an equitable space, SlutWalk has grown into an international movement that has effectively silenced the voices of women of color and re-centered the conversation to consist of a topic by, of, and for white women only. More than 30 years ago, Gloria Anzaldúa wrote, “I write to record what others erase when I speak.” Unfortunately, SlutWalk’s leadership obliterated Anzaldúa’s voice, and the marvelous work she produced theorizing what it means to be a queer woman of color. They might do us all a favor now and stop erasing the rest of us for once.
“Memoirs of a Black Latina” trailer
(Source: bad-dominicana)
Tacit Subjects is a pioneering analysis of how gay immigrant men of color negotiate race, sexuality, and power in their daily lives. Drawing on ethnographic research with Dominicans in New York City, Carlos Ulises Decena explains that while the men who shared their life stories with him may self-identify as gay, they are not the liberated figures of traditional gay migration narratives. Decena contends that in migrating to Washington Heights, a Dominican enclave in New York, these men moved from one site to another within an increasingly transnational Dominican society. Many of them migrated and survived through the resources of their families and broader communities. Explicit acknowledgment or discussion of their homosexuality might rupture these crucial social and familial bonds. Yet some of Decena’s informants were sure that their sexuality was tacitly understood by their family members or others close to them. Analyzing their recollections about migration, settlement, masculinity, sex, and return trips to the Dominican Republic, Decena describes how the men at the center of Tacit Subjects contest, reproduce, and reformulate Dominican identity in New York. Their stories reveal how differences in class, race, and education shape their relations with fellow Dominicans. They also offer a view of “gay New York” that foregrounds the struggles for respect, belonging, and survival within a particular immigrant community.
