a blog about great posts

marshmallowmegamama:

and it’s my personal opinion that “judging somebody by their skin color (or sexuality, gender, etc)” is…shitty, but whatever. WHO CARES. if you look at me and see a breeding animal or a invading cockroach? I don’t really all that much give a shit.

what I *DO* give a shit about is you USING THAT JUDGEMENT TO DENY ME RESOURCES, LIFE, SAFETY, AND/OR HAPPINESS.

so even if every single person of color ever in the entire world thinks JUDGE ALL WHITE PEOPLE BY THEIR SKIN COLOR—until those judging people of color start denying white people voting writes, quality food, clean water, warm houses, jobs to buy all this with, AND they start building coal burning plants in their neighborhoods, shooting their children in the backs, arresting them protesting for educations, etc etc etc etc???? UNTIL THAT TIME HAPPENS—

white folks need to sit down and contemplate “racism” and “white supremacy” in a way that extends beyond quoting dictionaries.

littleojibwe:

This is traditional native clothing:

Eastern Shoshone (Wyoming), Girl’s Dress, beads/leather, c. 1900.

Not this:

Or even this:

Wanna know why that second one still doesn’t count?
Because ladies and gents that is Iron Eyes Cody. He was a famous actor who did western movies. He was an Italian that liked to play Native American, not just in his movies, but in real life.

This is what we dance in:

Not this:

This is the proper way to wear a warbonnet:

This is Phil Fontaine. He is the former National Chief. He can wear a war bonnet.

Improper way to wear a war bonnet:

These are “Indian” Blankets:

These are not:

This is what native art looks like:

Not this:

This belongs under #indian hat:

This does not:

This is native jewellery:

My friend’s bead work.

This is not:

GOT IT?!

moarhelenplz:

moarhelenplz:

emerald-ace replied to your post: I’m a bad ace.

I guess, by most of these standards, that that makes me a good ace? Fuck that. I wanna join the bad ace club!

No no. See, no ace is ever good. That’s the nature of double-standards. The double-standards people place on aces.

You see, we can’t be virgins, because then we’ve never tried sex, and how would we know? We also can’t have had sex, because then we’re obviously not asexual, we’ve been with someone! We can’t be aromantic, because then we’re just cold and aloof and inhuman. But we also can’t be romantic, because relationships are more than sexual orientations, don’t’cha know! Relationships are built off of romantic ties!!!!

We can’t be white, because then we’re just succumbing to Western, Christian ideals. We can’t be black, because then we’re just repressing the sexuality that society punishes us for. We can’t be neurotypical, because asexuality is a disease. We can’t be mentally ill, because then it’s obviously just a symptom of our illness. We can’t be able bodied or disabled but able to have sex, because the ability to have sex means we’re consexual. We can’t be physically not able to have sex, because otherwise our sexuality is simply because we’re not physically capable of the act. You can’t be young, because then you just haven’t “bloomed” yet. You can’t be old because then you’re past your prime.

We can’t be female, because then we’re just giving into our prudish society. We can’t be male because all males want sex! We can’t be neither male nor female, because otherwise it’s a symptom of our biology. We can’t be religious, because then we’re just repressing for our beliefs. We can’t be atheists or agnostics because sexuality is a natural part of our existence, and as atheists or agnostics, we have to accept that and stop this asexual nonsense.

THE FUCKING MORAL OF THE STORY IS THAT EVERY ACE IS A BAD ACE. BECAUSE FUCKING HELLO DOUBLE STANDARDS. The unassailable asexual does not exist, there will always be something wrong with every ace, that is the nature of discrimination against asexuals - the premise is that asexuality does not exist, and that we’re all liars, sick or delusional - and all one has to do to fulfill that premise is to find some half-baked proof.

I am simply embracing my bad aceness, because I will never win. So I’ll be ace and I’ll be bad, and that’s the end of that, and if people wanna fight me over it, I welcome them to it. I’m ace. That’s all there is.

I need this on my dash again, right now.

garconniere:

findesiecle:

Lately I’ve been really into weird concepts of something like failed, desperate, self-conscious deliberate performative femininity? Part of this is evidenced by the fact that I’ve been doing my hair in big curls with my kinda-crappy-blonde-dye-job and wearing a ridiculous faux-leopard coat with ripped tights and messy eyeliner, and part of it comes together more in at least 47 different e-mail conversations about books and movies with “unrepentantly fucked up” lady characters that I’ve been having with at least 5 different people of late.  Some of these ideas have been written very eloquently by other folks already, and some of it is obvious and some of it is still vague, and all of it is definitely not “complete,” so, like, go at it in the comments, y’all, I wanna know what you’re thinking.

It begins, I think, with my ongoing frustration that when we are presented with male characters (or personas, or even real persons) who are basically bad people with one redeeming quality (still sleeps with a teddy bear, is a brilliant filmmaker) we let that one redeeming quality, you know, redeem them, and are collectively charmed by their fucked-up-ness.  But I have a really hard time coming up with similar female examples: all of the ones I can think of we have opted to either lambast or concern-troll instead.  And we always need to redeem them. They always need to learn something or be rescued, which we all know is basically the opposite of how the world really works.  Kids, I am a hot mess, and almost all of the women I admire and love and am fascinated by are also hot fucking messes, and I so rarely see that represented in a real, nuanced, and fascinating way.  To simplify: I am eternally tearing my hair out over the fact that I desperately want more female antiheroes. In books, film, pop culture personas, whatever.  And I’ve been seeing this idea come up again and again lately.

As a brief list of some of what I’m referencing: There’s this Lana Del Rey album review, which is kind of the most astute thing I’ve read on her yet, and which hit the nail on the head of my bizarre, obsessive preoccupation with her and her aesthetic — though it condemned her where I obviously am fascinated instead.  There was that Marie Calloway brouhaha, and the fantastic response to it all from Kate Zambreno, which also lead to The Rejectionist’s interview with her here.  There were a bunch of folks over at Emily Books who managed to somehow misread a lot of lesbian moralism into Eileen Myles’ Inferno, when I thought it was just a book about, like, someone very funny and intelligent and unapologetic, who also lived a life that reminds me an awful lot of my life now. There was Charlize Theron in Young Adult, who would have been way fascinating if not for Diablo Cody’s frustrating insistence on de-nuancing her characters in favor of twee trope-tastic banter.  There’s Cat Marnell at XOJane and the no-nonsense-it’s-okay-to-be-human writing at Rookie.   Sarah’s and my Rayanne Project (which sort of fizzled out probably partially because I am a little bit too much of a whacked-out womanchild to coordinate and motivate folks to write me things like that, but the stuff that’s up there is still amazeballs!)  The Amy-Winehouse-inspired couture collection that Gaultier showed yesterday.  Courtney Love, like, in general.

I am really into this, you guys.

Read More

this is so good i had to read it twice.

the second time? it made me cry.

i want those antiheroes too. i wanted those antiheroes when i was a teenager, and i wanted them five years ago, and i want them today and tomorrow.

i wish i could have read something like these when i was twenty-one and heartbroken. heartbroken because my best friend called me a slut, told me i was sleeping around because i wasn’t over my ex-boyfriend, the only reason i was sleeping with women was because i wanted approval from boys, that i wasn’t really in love with the person i was in love with and that an open relationship was just a code word for whore. i tried to tell her, drunkenly, angrily, no, i sleep with women because i find them attractive, and want to sleep with them. my sex life isn’t about me not being “over” something, anything. my drinking is about me wanting to get drunk, and just because sometimes when i get drunk i go home with people i don’t know very well and sometimes have awesome sex with them does not mean i am trying to block out some traumatic experience, or that i am desperate for approval.

after a lot of time had passed i realized so much of what she said to me wasn’t, in fact, about me at all. it was about these boring tried and untrue tropes we have for women who don’t fit into a tiny little box of what a “good” girl is supposed to be. it was the first time in my life i realized how pervasive the idea that “women have sex for any number of other reasons than sexual pleasure” is. that women have sex because “they want to feel loved.” that women have sex with strangers because they were abandoned by their daddy/sexually abused/etc. etc. etc.

how many aspects of our lives, of our experiences, are judged based on how messy we look, how messy we are? how many of us LOOK messy because it is the only way we can look in the mirror and feel like it is an accurate reflection of how we feel on the inside?

i love that meg talks about this in a way that is clear, that is awesome, that makes me want to hop on a bus to nyc and conquer the world in ripped fishnet stockings and smeared makeup and greasy unwashed hair. you should read it.

aceupyoursleeve:

background images from articles in Nerve, Marie Claire, and Folha.

There’s been a recent discussion about the cover of a potential asexual romance anthology, The Heart of Aces. Everything has already been said, but it reminded me of something else that I wanted to do. So here’s an analysis of the imagery that the media considers appropriate to accompany articles about asexuality, because they seem to fall into a few camps, and maybe I can learn something from this. I’ll link the articles, but this isn’t a critique of what they wrote; I’m interested in the types of visuals they use. And after each category I’m going to make a comment on what I think I learned about asexuality from the image and (for the asexually-uninformed) why I feel it does or doesn’t work, in the unlikely event that there are people who are madly Googling right now to try to find inspiration for the kind of photos to accompany their asexuality media piece.

For those of you who are more visually inclined, I have made an easy to use rating system on how these visual representations make this individual ace feel, because otherwise someone confused is going to come along and miss the bloody point:

Analysis below the cut.

Read More

gleekwithasplashofsondheim:

freedominwickedness:

freedominwickedness:

Trans men often complain that they are culturally underrepresented compared to trans women, but this is only true if you accept the ludicrous premise that positive attention and negative attention are of equal value. The reality is that trans men enjoy both a near-total monopoly on positive media attention and a near-total exemption from negative media attention, and both of these are absolutely huge pieces of privilege over trans women.

The degree to which trans men get a free pass on privilege is a direct result of the second wave feminist movement’s enthusiastic enthusiastic adoption of transmisogynistic bigotry and the third wave feminist movement’s subsequent (and ongoing) attempts to shove that past under a rug instead of disavowing it. Both second and third-wave feminists tend to be so obsessed with the male privilege supposedly possessed by trans women that they completely overlook the male privilege actually possessed by trans men.

This in fact extends to all trans people who were assigned female at birth, as opposed to trans people who were assigned male at birth. The patriarchical power structure of Western society rewards transitioning towards any position within the gender spectrum which is percieved as more masculine and attacks transitioning towards any position which is perceived as more feminine. This is because those who reject the validity of trans people’s gender identities perceive a “woman” transitioning towards masculinity as affirming the superiority of men over women, but a “man” transitioning towards femininity as rejecting the superiority of men over women.

It is this perception which drives the disparity in mainstream cultural treatment between trans men and trans women — trans men can be safely ignored or even encouraged, but trans women are an existential threat to patriarchy and must be suppressed at any cost.

Remind me not to enable answers next time, since answers do not get copied into reblogs. I was entirely expecting to get a busted-ass reply from an AFAB trans person, and here we are:

FYI no one wins the “Who has it worst” game. Seriously. Lets stop bickering within our own community and get back to educating.

For your information, pointing out that AFAB trans people reap massive benefits from male privilege is educating. Furthermore, your knee-jerk response of telling me to shut up and focus on your oppression is a perfect example of privileged behavior.

The one thing I’m going to add is that, in my opinion, there is a difference between cis-gender male privilege and male privilege of AFAB trans* people. I base this on my own experience as a trans man, not being raised socially the same as cis-gender males and/or AMAB individuals. But it is still male privilege, I’m absolutely aware of that.

sovegnavos:

fromonesurvivortoanother:

1. Mainstream feminism hasn’t even accepted race as a factor for analysis yet.

We are still having race problems; the Slutwalk sign fiasco is notable. Mainstream feminists like Naomi Wolf and Jessica Valenti getting away with barely mentioning intersectionality (or non-white authors) in their work is another. Or, you can just open up the pages of Ms. Magazine and see how very white it is. When Women of Color are mentioned, we are tokenized or have colonial and racist ideas projected onto us. Two decades ago, Elizabeth Spelman’s Inessential Woman critiqued mainstream feminism for hoisting sexism over all other oppressions, and even suggesting that it was the “root” or precursor to all other oppression. That was in 1988, and people still think this is the truth.

If feminism can’t even handle racism against Black people— a racism that has been consistently studied and tracked, and which has an overarching narrative in the West, then it’s no surprise that it can’t handle disability, which has no overarching narrative and which has only come to public awareness and study in recent decades. Feminism can barely handle a rigorous analysis of oppression against Latin@, Asian, and Middle Eastern peoples as they intersect with sexism. Even fewer people have questioned colonialism or even know what it is; one example of this is how there are still white feminists out there who see the hijab as something “oppressive” and Muslim women as people in need of their “rescue”.

2. Mainstream feminism has not accepted class as a factor either. 

In fact, it has an investment in ignoring class analysis. 

The commodification of feminism has turned it into middle class, white women’s activism. This is why talks about contraception and abortion focus exclusively on “rights”, without much discussion on being able to actually afford those rights (for more on this, see Andrea Smith’s Conquest). This is why there is almost no push for food stamps and other welfare programs in mainstream feminism, despite study after study showing how poverty has disproportionately affected Women of Color and their children. If mainstream feminism was concerned about class, it would be pushing to free the disproportionate number of imprisoned Women of Color, or finding ways to fund and support survivors of domestic abuse and sexual abuse, with specific emphasis on more marginalized groups. Instead, these fronts are conspicuously silent.

With the commodification of feminism, white feminists have written about the dangers of sexism without ever having to question their own privilege and how that protects them from many of the things WoC have to deal with. Some of them have even gone as far as to piggyback on the work of other Women of Color, using their ideas verbatim without credit, and profiting hugely from it. Mainstream media publications like Jezebel will question sexism while simultaneously refusing to “believe in” trigger warnings. Others like Shakesville talk about how women are not “crazy” without ever questioning why “crazy” is a bad thing to be called in the first place.

3. Mainstream feminism is still invested in the gender binary.

Full stop. Many prominent feminists are still openly transmisogynistic. Others still have the idea that biology is destiny. If feminism can’t get past an either-or western dualism, then it definitely can’t handle intersectional analysis of disability, which often does not present clear choices.

4. Mainstream feminism is not teaching history in a critical way.

Women’s Studies as a whole is still dominated by a white, middle-class, thin, able-bodied, neurotypical, and cisgender analysis. The majority of WST students also fall into this worldview. These students (and casual feminists) are never taught about the racism, cissexism, and heterosexism throughout the history of feminism, much less “privilege” as a concept. Reading lists are still overwhemingly white and middle class— many of these students haven’t even heard the word “intersectional”.

The wave model for feminism is also problematic, in that it prizes physical activism— activism that was only possible for (educated) white women who did not have children, or who had enough money to get someone else (read: Women of Color) to take care of their kids for them. This capitalistic model of success and failure completely ignores analysis, thought, and the mundane but necessary background work that made these things possible. It also prizes a western-centric historical view without acknowledging work done by others.

5. Disability, unlike other oppressions, lacks unifying factors.

There is no underlying dynamic which influences all disability experiences. Disabled people themselves are split along lines of class, race, gender expression, and sexuality. Even the other, “less complicated” axes like race and class are still infinitely complex. But disability is a huge range of experience that even disabled people don’t understand completely. You could be disabled in one way but never understand how another person with a disability experiences the world.

On the outside, ableism is regularly joked about as a non-existent axis of oppression, while inside, we form our own disability hierarchies and try to judge who has a “legitimate” disability and who doesn’t. A middle class white, cisgender woman with a disability experiences a very different reality from a poor Black trans woman with a disability. We have also been raised to believe that things like race and gender take priority over other identities.

In mainstream feminism, where an individualistic, capitalistic, success-based ideology is touted as the way to go, there is no room for people who literally cannot work. There’s no room for disability when women— that is, able-bodied and neurotypical white women— are supposed to be succeeding in the same way that men do. 

My Conclusion: If you are a person who deals with disability issues, don’t rely on feminism for it. It’s not going to happen for a long time.

sad but true

hobbitdragon:

When someone calls you out about something you did or said, whether it was something bigoted or something personally hurtful, here are a few great responses. If it helps you can just memorize them so you have them on hand when you’re upset/scared/angry/hurt that you just got called out.

“Thank you for telling me what I did. I really value knowing how to do better.”

“Thank you for telling me what I did. I’m glad you trust me enough to let me know.”

“I’m sorry I hurt and upset you. Your feelings are important to me.”

“Now that you’ve pointed that out, I agree. I don’t like what I did either.”

If you don’t remember what you did or don’t understand why what you did was wrong, here are some more.

“I don’t remember doing that, but I believe what you say. Your feelings are valid and I won’t do that again.”

“I don’t understand why my behavior was wrong, but I know I can’t always judge my behavior objectively, and I trust your judgment.”

“I don’t understand why my behavior was wrong, but I want to. If you are interested in explaining, I value your opinion, and if not, I’ll try to figure it out myself.”

If you’re too upset to react well to a callout, here are a few good ways to end the conversation so it’s clear you care and won’t make it worse.

“What you said is important, but I’m having a really intense reaction. Can we talk about this again when I’m calm? My emotional response isn’t your responsibility.”

“What you said is important, but I need to go away to process it.”

“What you said is important. Can we talk more about this over email/phone/text/[mode of communication that is more emotionally manageable] so I’ll be more able to listen?”