elections headache: is it from lack of sleep, too much coffee, or smashing my head against my desk five times a day?
is anyone else following the quebec election campaign?
"To depict the eroticized grotesque female form on a public stage breaks implied ordinances around which bodies are permissible to be seen. A century and a half of institutionalized residences for those deemed too disabled to be a part of society existed in Canada until as recently as 2005, when the largest was closed (a full 30 years after the federal government had been informed of the widespread abuse and violations of human rights at these institutions). And not before the vacant facility was exhibited for the sensationalizing whims of the media."
—
- what if I told you it was an accident? by jes sasche (march 15, 2012)
a fantastic article that touches on disability, nationalism, canadian identity politics, some of my favourite artists, and bodies rebelling. read the whole thing.
Contribute to my New Queer Feminist Zine Thing Please
So there are several feminist publications out there right now — I even contribute to some of them! But none of them are very specifically queer and feminist and talk about fashion, specifically, and not in that ‘groundbreaking’ way that discusses how fashion can be feminist. I know it can be, there are lots of people I know who know it can be, and it informs how we approach feminism and vice versa. I want to bring that discussion to the table. I want to share the stories about how fashion informs feminism and feminism informs fashion and how they help each other out. I want the discussion to move past how problematic the industry can be (because newsflash, we all know it can be, and how it is, and how it needs to change) and talk about how much fucking fun it is. Because how I present myself is fucking subversive. Because how I treat my body is a political statement. Because I am queer and feminist and yeah I like fashion, and it doesn’t make me a lesser queer or a lesser feminist for doing so.
There is no current publication that speaks about fashion from a feminist point of view that doesn’t consider the industry to be an inherently destructive structure. I think it needs to happen, and I think I can make it happen, even if what I create is really small, and maybe won’t be a huge series. I think I can do it and I think you all can do it too, and we can do it together.
I already have seed funding so this isn’t even a call for donations — I don’t need them at the moment. I just need your stories. Your contributions. Your artwork, your photographs, you — not your money. Do you identify as queer? Do you like fashion? How does it help you and give you power? How does art give you agency as a person? As a feminist? As a queer sea monster?
If you don’t feel like you’re represented in other mediums, if you want to talk about fashion from a feminist perspective, if you want to talk about wearing stockings as a dude, I don’t care what you talk about, throw your ideas at me, I want to hear them, I want to publish them. This zine will include art, poetry, interviews, photoshoots (if you live in or around NYC we can work on this together!!), articles, anything that can fit. Spill your guts and let’s make this shit happen. Email me: arabelle@fashionpirate.net and let’s work shit out.
Signal boost please! Luv u ok bye.
HOW AM I JUST SEEING THIS NOW.
(via rgr-pop)
Your fatness, femmeness, queerness, disability, or age does not make you not racist
don’t forget it. you have to work at it, you have to unlearn that shit.
“The veil in front of your eyes is much more dangerous than the veil on my hair.”
The sign of protester in France in reference to the law which places a ban on face veils.
Flawless people. I can’t with this world. I just CANNOT. I want to cry. This world. What is wrong with you people. These women can’t walk down the streets of their own country, go to school, to the groceries dressed the way they want to because they’ll be fined, it’s illegal, they’ll be sent to re-education classes. Their own country. If you are a Muslim you will be judged instantly, you can’t walk down a street, can’t walk into an airport, get into a plane, tell someone what you believe in without people telling you’re a terrorist, without being judged, without being ostracized. This is what we live with everyday. Who gave you the right to tell these women what to wear and what not to wear? No one. So stop it.
has anyone read any good feminist analysis of this fuckery/islamophobia masquerading as “liberation” happening in france? i read this too at the daily what but i’d love to read a critical analysis…
(via marxist-feminism)
hey y’all. i was talking to someone on gchat earlier today about how i’ve been thinking about my native american roots. my great grandfather on my dad’s side was part of the narragansett tribe. that’s a fact i didn’t know until i was about 11 years old and i met him at a pow wow. it’s funny how strong his genes are. i pretty much look just like him because i look like my dad, who looks like his mom, who looks like her dad. it’s a part of me i know nothing about. i grew up with my white mom raising me while my dad worked his ass off. i spent some time with my black family but they didn’t talk/know about their native american heritage so it was a very black american experience i had when i was with them. but all that lineage and family roots are shown on my face. i’m pretty ignorant about it. and it’s weird how native americans are always in percentages. the less you are, the less native you are. so how that shit is step up here i even feel less a part of what’s going on. i feel like i shouldn’t explore it, shouldn’t learn about it, because i am barely indian at all. but that’s bullshit because those percentages suck so much and i shouldn’t have them hinder the exploration of my family. also i should just learn about people even if i am not related to them! they are right there, not so far from me. an hour of driving, maybe. i have the internet, the library… it’s just something scary to jump into for some reason and i don’t know why. it terrifies me to even say i have family that is narragansett because i don’t feel like i am part of that at all. not one little bit. so we’ll see what i end up doing.
(emphasis added by me)
holy fuck man i want to take you out for a drink so we can try and figure out our shit. fuck. some of those pharses i feel like i wrote myself… unfortunately we live on different coasts, don’t we? i’d love to meet up and talk about this. i feel like i am in a similar boat in a sense, or at least a different boat on the same ocean, stuck between this idea of ignoring my native identity altogether or trying to acknowledge and respect it. as someone of québecois/acadian/abénaki descent, this is something i struggle with all the time. a quebecker once called me assimilated because i speak english and i lost my shit. fuck you i’m assimilated. this fucking world of colonization we live on, makes white dudes think they can say shit like that. i feel like i’ve spent so much of my life dealing with the anglophone/francophone debate that i forgot about the other parts of my family that are so often swept under the rug and hidden away… when i met jessica yee two years ago (who is mohawk and chinese) she told me to identify as native, to be a strong native woman. that it didn’t matter what percentage you were, as long as you respected your roots and were open to learning. it’s still something i struggle with and can’t really write about or articulate in a lot of ways. basically,
identity politics are HARD.
also, this might particularly interest you if you haven’t already read it: black looks by bell hooks. i remember there being a chapter about native american and african american identities intertwining. it might be of interest to you.
Bisexuals
We have a hard time maintaining a coherent identity. We are erased: the male bisexual is completely invisible and the female bisexual is just playing for male attention. We are dismissed: gays are distrustful of their bisexual brothers and sisters who have chosen opposite sex partners. Pretty much everybody thinks we’re greedy sluts and it’s hard to push past that.
The vast majority of my sexual experiences have been with women. This doesn’t negate the fact that I came out to my parents as bisexual in high school and that I’d known I was attracted to men since I could think about sex. It does, however, make it difficult to maintain an identity. Without a gay male cultural presence and a gay male sexual history it’s hard for me to feel like i fit into that identity.
this is so depressing because it’s so true. my struggles are very very different than the ones talked about here, but feels really inextricably linked. i’ve never felt an affinity towards the term bisexual and once i found queer it felt right and everything fell into place. but what really hits me about this is the idea around the difficulty of maintaining an identity. i’ve never heard it put in those terms before but i completely, completely understand and relate.
"
these feelings come not from the fact that i don’t share similar political beliefs – i’m as much an anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, smash-hierarchy kind of person as the next anarcho-dude. my dissatisfaction & alienation come from not feeling a part of (nor wanting to be a part of) the sort of material trappings of the anarchist scene. i don’t wear all black, unless i’m in a black block, and no i don’t feel the need to have my bandana swinging from the pocket of my supertight torn black pants all the time. no, i don’t identify with your insurrectionist zine because it doesn’t pull from my life experiences, or leaves very important life experiences out of its rhetoric (like race & gender). to put it frankly, the radical scene here makes me feel whitewashed. and i don’t like being whitewashed, because it’s something i’ve felt like i’ve had to do for most of my life. and i’m beginning to refuse, consistantly and constantly, to ever be whitewashed again. problem is, my refusal to be whitewashed also makes me feel like i’m not welcome.
the number of times i’ve been told, jokingly of course, that i don’t “look radical” or that they thought i was a “norm” or they’re “surprised” by “how radical” i turned out to be once they got to know me – all of these times make me realize just how much these otherwise good folks are caught up in a certain white subculture that i’ve never wanted to be a part of. looking around the room and realizing that not only am i the only non-white face, but i’m also the only one wearing blue jeans, is getting really fucking tiring. and my problem isn’t that folks like to wear these things and express their radicalism in these ways – that’s fine, if it makes you feel good, then go for it. what pisses me off, what makes me want to not be a part of it any more, is that i am judged as not-quite-radical because of the way that i look – or rather, the way that i don’t look. it feels yet again like i’m expected to assimilate. well, fuck you, i refuse to assimilate. fuck your cultural hegemony, fuck the fact that you call yourselves anti-racists but you don’t have a problem with trying to whitewash me. i’ve fucking had it.
"—
Why I’m More Inspired by UC Student Actions than I am by NYC Student Actions « SDS Womyn’s Caucus Blog (via clingtomymouth)
“the radical scene here makes me feel whitewashed. and i don’t like being whitewashed, because it’s something i’ve felt like i’ve had to do for most of my life. and i’m beginning to refuse, consistantly and constantly, to ever be whitewashed again. problem is, my refusal to be whitewashed also makes me feel like i’m not welcome”
my feelings exactly. thank you for posting this
(via sweaterves)
i’ve been talking a lot about this with many friends… thanks for sharing.
