"Despite what HRC would have you believe, the reality is that this organization doesn’t speak for our community, or even reflect it. The HRC’s cadre is made up of disproportionately white, cisgender people of wealth, power and privilege, who end up fighting, not for social justice, but for personal self-interest. Donors think they are putting their dollars toward equality, but they are merely paying for homonormativity and assimilation. There’s nothing equal about deciding who gets rights and who gets left out."
—
Blogs | Nico Lang on HRC trans flag incident | WBEZ 91.5 Chicago
Compelling arguments about why the pink & red equal sign that was making the rounds last week isn’t as rosy and inclusive as it purports to be.
"Not being racist is not some default starting position. You don’t simply get to say you’re not a racist; not being racist — or a sexist or a homophobe — is a constant, arduous process of unlearning, of being uncomfortable, of eating crow and being humbled and re-evaluating. It’s probably hard to start that process if you’ve been told that every thought you have is golden and should be given voice, and that people who are offended by what you say are hypersensitive simpletons."
—
PostBourgie (via thugzmansion)
have repeated this countless times - yet it bears repeating again and again and again…
(Source: iamjudithbutler)
"‘But I never looked like that!’—How do you know? What is the ‘you’ you might or might not look like? Where do you find it—by which morphological or expressive calibration? Where is your authentic body? You are the only one who can never see yourself except as an image; you never see your eyes unless they are dulled by the gaze they rest upon the mirror or the lens (I am interested in seeing my eyes only when they look at you): even and especially for your own body, you are condemned to the repertoire of images."
— Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (via starlit-mire)
(Source: hfml, via lionza)
"But the more vexing problem with Morrissey’s stunt is that it bolsters the idea that racism is a terrible personal failing that can be corrected through sufficient public shaming. This notion of racism-as-evil is so pervasive that few people who readily espouse bigoted beliefs would recognize those ideas as racist; unsurprisingly, people don’t like to think themselves monsters. And so our conversations about racist behavior and racism write large get frustratingly bogged down in trivia about how churchgoing Suzie is or Connor’s friendly rapport with his Hispanic teammates."
—
- G. D. in “Doing Antiracism Wrong at Jezebel” at Postbourgie (November 12th, 2012)
absolutely fantastic article that articulates all the reasons why i was/am uncomfortable with that approach to naming-shaming online racism.
related readings:
"I am angry at capitalist systems that not only abuse fat people for not looking good in clothes, or not providing fashionable clothes, but also make us feel some kind of imperative to spend above and beyond what we have to make up for our fat bodies."
—
An Unedited Rant About Looking Into Fatshion’s Navel - definatalie.com
Angry blog time.
(via fancybidet)
Blog post of the year.
(via bossyfemme)
(via bossyfemme)
"If we actually started calling bullying what it is and address it as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, fat phobia and classism it would actually give children a better way to deal with the very same power dynamics they will face as adults, while also giving adults more responsibility to challenge the intolerance that is rooted within our society overall."
— Amanda Levitt at Fat Body Politics (October 5th, 2012)
"The fashionable ideology that “artificial” lacks the inherent goodness of “natural” is an appealing, but hopelessly simplistic notion of the intellectually chic. Artifice is the result of a deliberate intent to make. Nature also “makes” things, using a set of basic building blocks common throughout the universe. Exchanging infinite time for deliberate design, nature has ingeniously built plants, planets, galaxies and unimaginable constructs which seem to structure the universe itself. What we call “natural” is simply the result of whatever set of rules nature has followed in fashioning our observable reality. On planet Earth, nature has manipulated the common elements to fashion everything from bacteria to the molten core of the planet. Discoveries in the “nano” technologies of bio, molecular, and micro engineering will re-edit the nomenclature of “natural” versus “unnatural”, blurring if not erasing the line of distinction between “machine” and “organism”, “natural” and “unnatural”, “God-given” and “man-made”."
— syd mead (via starlit-mire)
(Source: heksenhaus, via bitethebolster)
gussyyoself:
ourcatastrophe:
I am somewhat interested in fashion, but certain clear-cut exceptions aside (fascist symbols, misappropriated regalia, etc) I don’t believe individual style choices significantly help or harm your political goals. I think visual culture of all kinds is of central importance to being human but too slippery, too polyvalent, too fluid, too cooptable to be of significant tactical value in a plan for political action. my political values are a deeply felt part of me and therefore influence everything I do including how I dress, but it’s all very individual and not readily decodable. wearing a particular shade of eyeshadow because it makes my eyes look more green and that makes me feel like a witch is obviously influenced by my feminist politics, but it’s not the same thing as wearing a pro-choice t-shirt or whatever, and most fashion isn’t.
so when I talk politics and fashion, or any other intersection of politics and visual culture, I’m still usually, primarily talking aesthetics. I’m saying “this is how this makes me feel and what it makes me think of”, not “this is what should be condemned and what should be done instead”. if I’ve said a particular fashion is politically regressive (and I know I’m given to hyperbole but it’s not that often that I’ve actually said that) the negative consequences of wearing that would be about 2% betraying the movement and about 98% potentially looking dorky. likewise, wearing something politically interesting is probably not going to do anything other than make you look cool.
basically I just want to talk about stuff in a way that doesn’t make an artificial divide between the political and non-political but that keeps out “literally everything I do is revolutionary because I chose it, fuck you” feminism.
bolded mine & just things to think about.
(i don’t necessarily agree with this but definitely) thought-provoking.
(via gussyyoself-deactivated20120630)
