The Anarcho-Feminist

temporarilyeuropean:

Read it to the end. Bolding toward the end mine.
thematerialworld:

[Photo by Adam Feldman]
Last night, Adam Feldman (theater critic for Time Out New York) organized a midnight vigil for Mark Carson, the Black gay man who was killed in the West Village Friday night. We gathered on 6th Avenue and West 8th Street, on the corner where he was shot in the face. It was an intense, emotional event. I’m bad at estimating these things, but I think there were around 100 people there. While a few speakers betrayed an upsetting short-sightedness about how violence operates in our society, most were eloquent and inspiring. In no particular order:
Performer and playwright Justin Sayre started things off with a volcanic, passionate sermon about the perceived danger of queer love — how the straight world fears us for the very thing that makes us most powerful, and so the only response is to love harder, love louder, and love more than ever. His tone set the stage for the event, and allowed people to fully feel the emotions we’d all been locking up tight.
Photographer and ACT UP vet Jon Nalley revealed, shockingly and emotionally, that Mark Carson is also the name of a fallen ACT UP comrade. Jon schooled the crowd about the true cause of AIDS death (not the HIV virus, but government neglect and institutional heterosexism), highlighting the connections between one Mark’s death and the other’s.
Long-time activist and Stonewall vet Jim Fouratt pointed out something that SHOULD be obvious, but which hadn’t occurred to me — that there used to be a hospital TWO BLOCKS from that corner, but in the wake of St. Vincent’s closing, Mark had to be rushed to Beth Israel all the way across town. Perhaps, in the distance between these hospitals, Mark’s life could have been saved. In that sense, the politicians that allowed St. Vincents to be converted to a luxury condo high rise — politicians like lesbian mayoral candidate Christine Quinn — may have gay blood on their hands. Jim helped us understand how depriving a gay neighborhood of a hospital is inherently homophobic and violent.
A trans woman who was once homeless in that same neighborhood spoke intensely about how vigils shouldn’t be the only time we come together, and how we must take our struggle to the U.N. to fight for queer safety internationally, and hold the U.S. to the highest possible global standard.
A member of Queer Fist read a first-person account of the Stonewall Riots, in which a gay rioter’s head was injured on that very corner, his blood pouring into the street. Another rioter screamed into the city, “THIS IS THE BLOOD OF YOUR BROTHERS!” It was chilling, to consider the bloody history of that location.
Another Queer First member pointed out that this murder was allowed to happen because the killer had access to a gun, and that the supporters of gun rights, deep down inside, are primarily afraid of the specter of the Black gunman, who will infiltrate their towns and homes. These gun rights advocates feel they need weapons to protect themselves from their racist fantasy. It underscored how racism fuels violence against ALL peoples.
Khaela Maricich from The Blow was like: we’re all going to die anyway, and it’s better to die being yourself and expressing your love and your identity than hiding it and living longer. Her comment was somewhat insensitive to queers in greater danger than her, like trans people and people of color, but I understood what she was trying to say.
An older trans man shared that he was attacked in Manhattan only a few days ago, and reminded the crowd, with tremendous grief in his voice, that trans people are killed CONSTANTLY in this country.
A straight mother spoke because her adult son in another city asked her to, so she could share her love and support with us.
Interestingly, a straight young woman who lives on that block confessed that her initial impulse was to text her gay friends, warning them to “dial it down” so that no one on the street would know they’re gay, but that, after hearing the speakers, she realized that this was the wrong lesson - that we should “dial it up,” to demand our right to exist. ”DIAL IT UP” became a chant, briefly.
A Black gay man spoke with great anguish, commenting on how not many other men of color were in attendance, and laying out so clearly how different queer people have unique challenges and specific circumstances — that Mark Carson’s life as a Black gay man was significantly different from the lives of the white gay men who made up the majority of the crowd.
A few speakers mentioned the importance of hate crimes legislation, and thanked the police for their cooperation with the vigil, and one speaker even said, “THANK YOU TO THE NYPD OF TODAY FOR NOT BEING THE NYPD OF 1969!” and though I had been resisting the urge to speak, that was my last straw
I got up on the box and said something like this:

I hope this doesn’t sound callous, but I was not surprised by this death. Queer people are killed in this country all the time. I have always thought of myself as someone who is vulnerable to murder. Four trans women were killed in the month of April alone — four in one month! So when things like this happen in our neighborhoods, we need to ask ourselves what this violence means. And we have to be skeptical about solutions like hate crimes legislation, which just feeds the prison industrial complex — an industry that profits from the imprisonment of queers and people of color. One third of all adult Black men in the U.S. are in prisons, and trans people are disproportionately arrested and locked up. We cannot continue to support this! And while I’m sure individual NYPD officers were polite in the lead-up to this vigil, we cannot forget that the NYPD ritually harasses trans people and people of color in this city! Trans women are arrested simply for walking down the street! So when we talk about how queer people need to be “safe,” we have to ask ourselves what “safety” really means — because the NYPD does not makes us safe! It harasses and imprisons us! We must reckon with these connections — that Mark Carson’s death is an extension of the violence that oppresses so many others, from the institutional violence of governments to the random violence of a crazy guy with a gun.

I make a living speaking in front of people, but talking at this vigil was terrifying. As I spoke, I felt myself hyperventilating, and I worried I would vomit. After I stepped down, I sat on the curb a few yards away from the crowd, catching my breath.
I wish I had specifically named the Stop & Frisk policy that makes queers and people of color vulnerable to police harassment. I wish I had called out Christine Quinn for supporting this policy.
I wish I had acknowledged a previous speakers’ disappointment about the lack of people of color in attendance. I wish I had pointed out the sad truth: that our queer “community” is still so segregated, such that when a white person organizes a vigil and spreads the word through his social networks, that message will not automatically filter into Black queer circles. When I mentioned this afterwards to Ted Kerr from Visual AIDS, he added that many queers of color are not willing to make themselves vulnerable to the kind of police surveillance that surrounded the event. This hadn’t occurred to me, and reminded me that so many aspects of our queer condition are so complicated, and we all have so much to learn and understand about each other.
When the event was over, I was surrounded by friends and colleagues. People whom I respect, and who inspire me on a regular basis — the people I came to NYC hoping to meet, and the people who keep me here. I was proud of Adam for making this happen, and proud of my community for showing up.
But I was sad too — not just about the senseless death of this man — but that there didn’t seem to be anyone at this vigil who knew him. It seemed indicative of the intense divide amongst queer people in this city.
Tomorrow night, there will be another rally — this one sponsored by the (often idiotic) LGBT Center and featuring Christine Quinn herself — the lesbian mayoral candidate whose policies hurt queer people and may have allowed Mark Carson to die. I will not be in town for this event, but I am fixated on it. Will there be resistance to the party line? Will Quinn be heckled? How can we best honor Mark Carson’s death? What comes next?

Read it to the end. Bolding toward the end mine.

thematerialworld:

[Photo by Adam Feldman]

Last night, Adam Feldman (theater critic for Time Out New York) organized a midnight vigil for Mark Carson, the Black gay man who was killed in the West Village Friday night. We gathered on 6th Avenue and West 8th Street, on the corner where he was shot in the face. It was an intense, emotional event. I’m bad at estimating these things, but I think there were around 100 people there. While a few speakers betrayed an upsetting short-sightedness about how violence operates in our society, most were eloquent and inspiring. In no particular order:

Performer and playwright Justin Sayre started things off with a volcanic, passionate sermon about the perceived danger of queer love — how the straight world fears us for the very thing that makes us most powerful, and so the only response is to love harder, love louder, and love more than ever. His tone set the stage for the event, and allowed people to fully feel the emotions we’d all been locking up tight.

Photographer and ACT UP vet Jon Nalley revealed, shockingly and emotionally, that Mark Carson is also the name of a fallen ACT UP comrade. Jon schooled the crowd about the true cause of AIDS death (not the HIV virus, but government neglect and institutional heterosexism), highlighting the connections between one Mark’s death and the other’s.

Long-time activist and Stonewall vet Jim Fouratt pointed out something that SHOULD be obvious, but which hadn’t occurred to me — that there used to be a hospital TWO BLOCKS from that corner, but in the wake of St. Vincent’s closing, Mark had to be rushed to Beth Israel all the way across town. Perhaps, in the distance between these hospitals, Mark’s life could have been saved. In that sense, the politicians that allowed St. Vincents to be converted to a luxury condo high rise — politicians like lesbian mayoral candidate Christine Quinn — may have gay blood on their hands. Jim helped us understand how depriving a gay neighborhood of a hospital is inherently homophobic and violent.

A trans woman who was once homeless in that same neighborhood spoke intensely about how vigils shouldn’t be the only time we come together, and how we must take our struggle to the U.N. to fight for queer safety internationally, and hold the U.S. to the highest possible global standard.

A member of Queer Fist read a first-person account of the Stonewall Riots, in which a gay rioter’s head was injured on that very corner, his blood pouring into the street. Another rioter screamed into the city, “THIS IS THE BLOOD OF YOUR BROTHERS!” It was chilling, to consider the bloody history of that location.

Another Queer First member pointed out that this murder was allowed to happen because the killer had access to a gun, and that the supporters of gun rights, deep down inside, are primarily afraid of the specter of the Black gunman, who will infiltrate their towns and homes. These gun rights advocates feel they need weapons to protect themselves from their racist fantasy. It underscored how racism fuels violence against ALL peoples.

Khaela Maricich from The Blow was like: we’re all going to die anyway, and it’s better to die being yourself and expressing your love and your identity than hiding it and living longer. Her comment was somewhat insensitive to queers in greater danger than her, like trans people and people of color, but I understood what she was trying to say.

An older trans man shared that he was attacked in Manhattan only a few days ago, and reminded the crowd, with tremendous grief in his voice, that trans people are killed CONSTANTLY in this country.

A straight mother spoke because her adult son in another city asked her to, so she could share her love and support with us.

Interestingly, a straight young woman who lives on that block confessed that her initial impulse was to text her gay friends, warning them to “dial it down” so that no one on the street would know they’re gay, but that, after hearing the speakers, she realized that this was the wrong lesson - that we should “dial it up,” to demand our right to exist. ”DIAL IT UP” became a chant, briefly.

A Black gay man spoke with great anguish, commenting on how not many other men of color were in attendance, and laying out so clearly how different queer people have unique challenges and specific circumstances — that Mark Carson’s life as a Black gay man was significantly different from the lives of the white gay men who made up the majority of the crowd.

A few speakers mentioned the importance of hate crimes legislation, and thanked the police for their cooperation with the vigil, and one speaker even said, “THANK YOU TO THE NYPD OF TODAY FOR NOT BEING THE NYPD OF 1969!” and though I had been resisting the urge to speak, that was my last straw

I got up on the box and said something like this:

I hope this doesn’t sound callous, but I was not surprised by this death. Queer people are killed in this country all the time. I have always thought of myself as someone who is vulnerable to murder. Four trans women were killed in the month of April alone — four in one month! So when things like this happen in our neighborhoods, we need to ask ourselves what this violence means. And we have to be skeptical about solutions like hate crimes legislation, which just feeds the prison industrial complex — an industry that profits from the imprisonment of queers and people of color. One third of all adult Black men in the U.S. are in prisons, and trans people are disproportionately arrested and locked up. We cannot continue to support this! And while I’m sure individual NYPD officers were polite in the lead-up to this vigil, we cannot forget that the NYPD ritually harasses trans people and people of color in this city! Trans women are arrested simply for walking down the street! So when we talk about how queer people need to be “safe,” we have to ask ourselves what “safety” really means — because the NYPD does not makes us safe! It harasses and imprisons us! We must reckon with these connections — that Mark Carson’s death is an extension of the violence that oppresses so many others, from the institutional violence of governments to the random violence of a crazy guy with a gun.

I make a living speaking in front of people, but talking at this vigil was terrifying. As I spoke, I felt myself hyperventilating, and I worried I would vomit. After I stepped down, I sat on the curb a few yards away from the crowd, catching my breath.

I wish I had specifically named the Stop & Frisk policy that makes queers and people of color vulnerable to police harassment. I wish I had called out Christine Quinn for supporting this policy.

I wish I had acknowledged a previous speakers’ disappointment about the lack of people of color in attendance. I wish I had pointed out the sad truth: that our queer “community” is still so segregated, such that when a white person organizes a vigil and spreads the word through his social networks, that message will not automatically filter into Black queer circles. When I mentioned this afterwards to Ted Kerr from Visual AIDS, he added that many queers of color are not willing to make themselves vulnerable to the kind of police surveillance that surrounded the event. This hadn’t occurred to me, and reminded me that so many aspects of our queer condition are so complicated, and we all have so much to learn and understand about each other.

When the event was over, I was surrounded by friends and colleagues. People whom I respect, and who inspire me on a regular basis — the people I came to NYC hoping to meet, and the people who keep me here. I was proud of Adam for making this happen, and proud of my community for showing up.

But I was sad too — not just about the senseless death of this man — but that there didn’t seem to be anyone at this vigil who knew him. It seemed indicative of the intense divide amongst queer people in this city.

Tomorrow night, there will be another rally — this one sponsored by the (often idiotic) LGBT Center and featuring Christine Quinn herself — the lesbian mayoral candidate whose policies hurt queer people and may have allowed Mark Carson to die. I will not be in town for this event, but I am fixated on it. Will there be resistance to the party line? Will Quinn be heckled? How can we best honor Mark Carson’s death? What comes next?

Reblogged from QUEERING THE GAME OF LIFE

Tags: murder text hate lgbt anarcha-feminism gay violence police racism queer USA nyc

Stoya™: The Choice Of Motherhood and Insidious Drug Store Signage

stoya:

I had the privilege of growing up with a second wave feminist/reformed hippy mother. Before I sprouted my first pubic hair she handed me a mirror and a flashlight and told me to get to know my vagina. I was raised to believe that my body was mine to share with whoever I chose, whether that was…

Reblogged from Stoya™

Tags: stoya pornstar prochoice reproductive rights text article story abortion

The Struggle Part Two:

Black people in the 1800's: I know first hand what racism is. I am a victim of a violent diaspora and genocide, like many non-european whites around the world.
Black people in the early 1900: I know first hand what racism is. Reconstruction of the South only led to the KKK, who stalk, torture and humiliate my family for no reason, other than or skin color. They bomb our churches, they kidnap and rape our children, they harass us to no end, even though we are a peaceful people who just want equality.
Black people in the 1930s: I know first hand what racism is. I have seen my family members lynched and killed for trying to vote (cough my great Uncle). I have been denied the right to education since my ancestors arrival. Ethnic Cleansing/Lynching/Genocide occurs in the south everyday at this point. I fear for my life.
Black people in the 1950s: I know first hand what racism is. Jim Crow laws. Segregation created by whites. Without Brown vs. Board of Eduction, I would not have any access to real schools. And they continue to lynch our people. Police invade our houses and kill our unarmed sons for no reason, and get away with it. The KKK has infiltrated our justice and legal system for hundreds of years now, ensuring that there is no legal justice for Blacks in America, ever.
Black people in the 60s & and 70s: I know first hand what racism is. I have been denied equal access to Colleges despite Brown vs. Board of education. I have been denied access to equal housing even if I do have the money to buy a house in the "white" part of town. I have witnessed my leaders (Martin, Malcolm, Medgar) murdered in cold blood.... simply for fighting for whats right in this world... civil rights.
Black people in in the 80s and 90s: I know first hand what racism is. I have witnessed the governments (Reagan) direct tactics against Black people; the contra deal, placing drugs in Black and Mexican communities. then changing laws to make sure they are placed in jail for disproportionate amounts of time. We still need to bus our children into white areas to ensure they have equal access to education. And still they will experience racism. I am denied equal access to bank loans, house loans and credit cards because of my race.
Modern era Black people: We experience racism til this day. We are still denied equal access to schools with the removal of Affirmative Action, we are still harassed by police frequently via racial profiling, and blacks are twice as likely to be unemployed not because of skill... but because no one will hire us. We deal with the onset of White Privilege everyday with psychotic terms as "reverse racism." Even if we are college educated, the average white person believes we are a part of gangs, on welfare or live in the "ghetto" (a jewish term). We are still discriminated against by banks, police and the government as a whole. When will this end?
White People: I know what racism is. A black person was mean to me once. I once lost a job to a minority. I have to hear Blacks complain about racism all the time. Its not real. Its all about class now. I totally voted for Obama. Racism is over.
Black People: .....................................................

Reblogged from mirkwood

Tags: quote text racism USA history

La Fête du Slip - Festival of Sexualities

La Fête du Slip is a brand new multidisciplinary festival in Lausanne, Switzerland, that positively and festively celebrates the diversity of gender identities, sexual orientations and practices.

For this first edition in early march 2013, we have a small three day program with exclusive films, discussions, concerts, parties, performances, photography exhibitions, installations, art and illustration as well as litterature.

But to make it happen, we still need quite a bit of financial support. We are only supported by a small feminist foundation so far, and we would like to avoid sponsors and shady businesses putting their money in. We would be much more confortable knowing it was financed by people who put their heart into it too.

So please support, and feel free to pass the word on!

https://wemakeit.ch/projects/la-fete-du-slip-festival-of-sexualities?locale=en

http://lafeteduslip.ch

Tags: festival la fête du slip text gender

fag-prince:

I am spending this day dwelling on the very very important fact that its not trans*phobia, but trans*misogyny that leads to the death, abuse (mental, emotional, physical, sexual) of trans* folks.

this is not to say that trans* people are not all discriminated against or injured across the vast wibbly-wobbly spectrum of identifications.

but that we trans*men benifit from the patriarchal system and we have male privilege no matter how much we “pass” or “don’t pass”.

this male privilege gives us extreme privilege in the world of identification, we are often able to bounce back and forth between foully exclusive groups…groups that exclude our trans*sisters.

and although this is clearly just a part of the vast intersectionality of identification, race, class, and so on, it is a crucial part.

its trans*misogyny.

Reblogged from no fun

Tags: trans misogyny text quote gender violence hate anarcha-feminism

The Weekly Sift: The Distress of the Privileged

In a memorable scene from the 1998 film Pleasantville (in which two 1998 teen-agers are transported into the black-and-white world of a 1950s TV show), the father of the TV-perfect Parker family returns from work and says the magic words “Honey, I’m home!”, expecting them to conjure up a smiling wife, adorable children, and dinner on the table.

This time, though, it doesn’t work. No wife, no kids, no food. Confused, he repeats the invocation, as if he must have said it wrong. After searching the house, he wanders out into the rain and plaintively questions this strangely malfunctioning Universe: “Where’s my dinner?”

http://youtu.be/EZiKAskjPF8

Privileged distress. I’m not bringing this up just to discuss old movies. As the culture evolves, people who benefitted from the old ways invariably see themselves as victims of change. The world used to fit them like a glove, but it no longer does. Increasingly, they find themselves in unfamiliar situations that feel unfair or even unsafe. Their concerns used to take center stage, but now they must compete with the formerly invisible concerns of others.

If you are one of the newly-visible others, this all sounds whiny compared to the problems you face every day. It’s tempting to blast through such privileged resistance with anger and insult.

Tempting, but also, I think, a mistake. The privileged are still privileged enough to foment a counter-revolution, if their frustrated sense of entitlement hardens.

So I think it’s worthwhile to spend a minute or two looking at the world from George Parker’s point of view: He’s a good 1950s TV father. He never set out to be the bad guy. He never meant to stifle his wife’s humanity or enforce a dull conformity on his kids. Nobody ever asked him whether the world should be black-and-white; it just was.

George never demanded a privileged role, he just uncritically accepted the role society assigned him and played it to the best of his ability. And now suddenly that society isn’t working for the people he loves, and they’re blaming him.

It seems so unfair. He doesn’t want anybody to be unhappy. He just wants dinner.

Levels of distress. But even as we accept the reality of George’s privileged-white-male distress, we need to hold on to the understanding that the less privileged citizens of Pleasantville are distressed in an entirely different way. (Margaret Atwood is supposed to have summed up the gender power-differential like this: “Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them.”)

George deserves compassion, but his until-recently-ideal housewife Betty Parker (and the other characters assigned subservient roles) deserves justice. George and Betty’s claims are not equivalent, and if we treat them the same way, we do Betty an injustice.

Tolerating Dan Cathy. Now let’s look at a more recent case from real life.

One of the best things to come out of July’s Chick-fil-A brouhaha was a series of posts on the Owldolatrous blog, in which a gay man (Wayne Self) did his best to wrangle the distress of the privileged.

The privileged in this case are represented by Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy, who stirred up a hornet’s nest when he denounced the “prideful, arrogant attitude” of those who support same-sex marriage, saying that they “are inviting God’s judgment on our nation”.

His comments drew attention to the millions that Chick-fil-A’s founding family has contributed to anti-gay organizations, and led to calls for a boycott of their restaurants.

To which his defenders responded: Is tolerance a one-way street? Cathy was just expressing the genuine beliefs of his faith. As an American, he has freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Why can’t gays and their supporters respect that?

“Nothing mutual about it.” Self starts his post by acknowledging Cathy’s distress, but refusing to accept it as equivalent to his own. Cathy is suffering because people are saying bad things about him and refusing to buy his sandwiches. Meanwhile, 29 states (including Self’s home state of Louisiana) let employers fire gays for being gay. There are 75 countries Self and his partner can’t safely visit, because homosexuality is illegal and (in some of them) punishable by death.

The Cathy family has given $5 million to organizations that work to maintain this state of oppression. Self comments:

This isn’t about mutual tolerance because there’s nothing mutual about it. If we agree to disagree on this issue, you walk away a full member of this society and I don’t. There is no “live and let live” on this issue because Dan Cathy is spending millions to very specifically NOT let me live. I’m not trying to do that to him.

Christian push-back. That post got over a million page views and (at last count) 1595 comments, including some push-back from conservative Christians. Self’s follow-up responded to one commenter who wrote that he supported Chick-fil-A as

[a] company with a founder who speaks for what seems to be the minority these days.

In other words, I specifically feel BASHED by the general media and liberal establishment and gay activists for simply being a Bible-believing Christian. From TV shows, movies, mainstream news and music, so much is Intolerance of my conservative beliefs. I am labeled a HOMOPHOBIC and a HATER. … I neither fear nor hate homosexuals.

Self brings in a blog post by Bristol Palin, in which she scoffs at an interviewer’s implication that she might refuse to have a gay partner on “Dancing With the Stars”.

In their simplistic minds, the fact that I’m a Christian, that I believe in God’s plan for marriage, means that I must hate gays and must hate to even be in their presence. Well, they were right about one thing: there was hate in that media room, but the hate was theirs, not mine.

… To the Left, “tolerance” means agreeing with them on, well, everything. To me, tolerance means learning to live and work with each other when we don’t agree – and won’t ever agree.

Like Bristol Palin, Self’s commenter sees himself as the victim of bigotry. He isn’t aware of hating anybody. He just wants to preserve the world he grew up in, and can’t be bothered to picture how others suffer in that world.

He wants dinner.

Aesop II. Self answers with a story: a sequel to the Aesop fable of the mouse who saves a lion.

[A story is] the only way I know to address some of these things without resorting to words that hurt or offend, or shut down discussion.

Aesop’s tale ends with the mouse and the lion as friends, but Self notes that they are still not equal: The Lion is King of the Jungle and the Mouse … is a mouse.

In Self’s sequel, the Lion hosts the Kingdom Ball, to which mice are never invited, because they disgust many of the larger animals. Nothing personal, the Lion explains to his friend, it’s just the way things are.

At this point, Self breaks out of the story to explain why (in spite of the fact that his commenter feels “BASHED by the general media and liberal establishment”) he is casting conservative Christians as the Lion and gays as the Mouse: It is not illegal to be a Christian in any state. You can’t be fired for Christianity. Christians may feel bashed by criticism, but gays get literally bashed by hate crimes. Christians may feel like people are trying to silence them, but the Tennessee legislature debated a bill making it illegal to say the word gay in public schools. (The senate passed it.)

There is a vast difference between being told you’re superstitious or old-fashioned and being told you’re an abomination that doesn’t deserve to live. There’s a vast difference between being told you’re acting hateful and being told God hates you.

I’ve been gay and Christian all my life. Trust me: Christian is easier. It’s not even close.

Leonine distress. But does the Lion have reason to be annoyed with the Mouse? Of course. The Mouse is making trouble by asking to go where he’s not wanted. The Mouse is “prideful” for expecting the rules to change to suit him. However, Self admits that the Lion probably doesn’t hate or fear the Mouse.

I don’t think you hate me. I certainly don’t think you’re afraid of me. Neither is Bristol Palin. She probably even has LGBT people she calls friends. She just disagrees with them about whether they should be invited to the party (the party, in this case, being marriage).

But here’s the problem: the basis of that disagreement is her belief that her relationships are intrinsically better than ours.

There’s a word for this type of statement: supremacist.

Ah, now we get to “words that hurt or offend”. Here’s what he means by it:

Supremacy is the habit of believing or acting as if your life, your love, your culture, your self has more intrinsic worth than those of people who differ from you.

Self sees a supremacist attitude in the commenter’s

sense of comfort with yourself as an appropriate judge of my choices, ideas, or behaviors, … unwillingness to appreciate the inherent inequality in a debate where I have to ask you for equality … [and] unwillingness to acknowledge the stake that you have have in your feeling of superiority rather than blame it on God.

[The third point is one that is not made often enough: A lot of interpretation and selective reading is required to find “God’s plan for marriage” in the Bible. Did that doctrine arise on its own merits, or because it rationalizes heterosexual supremacy? Elsewhere, I made a similar point about right-wing Protestants’ adoption of the bizarre Catholic ensoulment-at-conception doctrine: Anti-abortion politics came first, and theology changed to rationalize it.]

Now let’s finish the fable: Uninvited, the Mouse crashes the party. The shocked guests go silent, the Lion is furious, and the ensuing argument leads to violence: The Lion chucks the Mouse out the window, ending both the party and the friendship.

The lesson: Supremacy itself isn’t hate. You may even have affection for the person you feel superior to. But supremacy contains the seeds of hate.

Supremacy turns to hate when the feeling of innate superiority is openly challenged. … Supremacy is why you and Bristol Palin have more outrage at your own inconvenience than at the legitimate oppression of others.

We can talk about the subjugation of women later, honey. Where’s my dinner?

George Parker’s choices. All his life, George has tried to be a good guy by the lights of his society. But society has changed and he hasn’t, so he isn’t seen as a good guy any more. He feels terrible about that, but what can he do?

One possibility: Maybe he could learn to be a good guy by the lights of this new society. It would be hard. He’d have to give up some of his privileges. He’d have to examine his habits to see which ones embody assumptions of supremacy. He’d have to learn how to see the world through the eyes of others, rather than just assume that they will play their designated social roles. Early on, he would probably make a lot of mistakes and his former inferiors would correct him. It would be embarrassing.

But there is an alternative: counter-revolution. George could decide that his habits, his expectations, and the society they fit are RIGHT, and this new society is WRONG. If he joined with the other fathers (and right-thinking mothers like the one in the poster) of Pleasantville, maybe they could force everyone else back into their traditional roles.

Which choice he makes will depend largely on the other characters. If they aren’t firm in their convictions, the counter-revolution may seem easy. (“There, there, honey. I know you’re upset. But be reasonable.”) But if their resentment is implacable, becoming a good guy in the new world may seem impossible.

Only the middle path — firmness together with understanding — has a chance to tame George and bring him back into society on new terms.

Privileged distress today. Once you grasp the concept of privileged distress, you’ll see it everywhere: the rich feel “punished” by taxes; whites believe they are the real victims of racism; employers’ religious freedom is threatened when they can’t deny contraception to their employees; English-speakers resent bilingualism — it goes on and on.

And what is the Tea Party movement other than a counter-revolution? It comes cloaked in religion and fiscal responsibility, but scratch the surface and you’ll find privileged distress: Change has taken something from us and we want it back.

Confronting this distress is tricky, because neither acceptance nor rejection is quite right. The distress is usually very real, so rejecting it outright just marks you as closed-minded and unsympathetic. It never works to ask others for empathy without offering it back to them.

At the same time, my straight-white-male sunburn can’t be allowed to compete on equal terms with your heart attack. To me, it may seem fair to flip a coin for the first available ambulance, but it really isn’t. Don’t try to tell me my burn doesn’t hurt, but don’t consent to the coin-flip.

The Owldolatrous approach — acknowledging the distress while continuing to point out the difference in scale — is as good as I’ve seen. Ultimately, the privileged need to be won over. Their sense of justice needs to be engaged rather than beaten down. The ones who still want to be good people need to be offered hope that such an outcome is possible in this new world.

http://weeklysift.com/2012/09/10/the-distress-of-the-privileged/

Tags: privilege article text

ghost-of-algren:

dagseoul:

arielnietzsche:

Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire page 3

hells yes.

Relevant to two posts I’ve written this past week:

http://ghost-of-algren.tumblr.com/post/28717349973/ghostnotes-atheist-universalism-vs-older-ways-of

http://ghost-of-algren.tumblr.com/post/28882176509/thanks-for-reblogging-that-critique-of-wes-anderson-i

Reblogged from Tractor-Loving Communist

Tags: quote book text judith butler homonationalism feminationalism islamophobia

“

Sex is not a goddamn performance.

Sex should feel as natural as drinking water.

It should not require confidence.

Sex should happen, because the moment is ripe.

Ripening lips, ripening labia, ripening cock, ripening pupils, ripening state of being. Ripe and augmented and brimming. Your energy goes to your pumping heart, then to every external nerve, then to theirs, on fire.

You bask, roll, play in it. You sigh, moan, laugh.

It’s not about being “good in bed.”

It’s about being happy.

One should never worry if they’re doing it “correctly.” Sex is not factual. I don’t want your cookie-cutter sex, I don’t want your meticulously crafted, calculated, fool-proof fuck. I don’t want a show. I want you. Let your instincts, urges and whims define that. It’s enough.

What do most girls like? Forget about it. Statistics are meaningless when there’s only one. Hello, here’s me. Here’s you.

Don’t worry about taking it too slow. We got time. We got infinite rhythms, combinations, possibilities. Explore each fuck. Take our time. We can do a different one later.

Don’t worry about making me come. I’m here. Right where I want to be.

I am overwhelmed by wanting; you don’t have to convince me. I want you because I like you. So don’t put on a front. Don’t taint this.

I’m frustrated—it’s just authenticity I want.

It’s originality.

It’s passion.

It’s joy.

Don’t say that something I like is ugly. Don’t compare yourself to the rest. You will live and die with and within your experiences like everyone else. If someone thinks you are amazing, they are not wrong. Their universe is as real as any other; it is forged through perception.

I don’t care if you accidentally slammed my head into the wall, if you slipped out, if my arm cracked, if the delightful pressure of your wet lips on my anything made a silly sound. There is no right way and no wrong way.

“Good in bed,” what.

You’re good in my bed. I’m pleased you’re there. I feel it suits you.

Shove your technique. Let your memory swallow it. Fuck me like you’d fuck me, fuck me like you feel.

This isn’t a test.

— (via nikolaiolivier)

Reblogged from

Tags: text sex positive body performance

lacigreen:

transgender & cisgender!

Reblogged from N. Dion

Tags: Illustration text trans anarcha-feminism gender cis definition

Reblogged from It's a journey.

Tags: fuck yeah fuck you body acceptance feminism photo sign text

size and representation in Shrek

hothotsexsex:

feministdisney:

phoetiquette asked: What about Fiona from Shrek? I know she isn’t a Disney character, but does she partially fit the bill of a fat princess, or does she not count b/c she starts off thin, or because her fatness is part of being an “ugly” ogre, etc? ——————————————————

I’m not sure what the “what about” refers to- main, fat leads? To be clear, I don’t deny that it’s possible to scour the last 4-5 decades of children’s media and find a handful of fat leads, but their limited presence does not negate the fact that fat people are vastly under and misrepresented in media.   No matter how positive of a representation Fiona is, it doesn’t even matter because she is one character in a sea of characters that are otherwise generally a fairly uniform (small) size.

As far as Fiona goes, I’m of several minds. At least this franchise has sequels that were nearly as popular as the original so it’s less of a “no one sees it tack on”, but in the first movie, yeah, I don’t think it counts much because she spends 95% of the movie looking like a generic pretty princess.

My second “meh” feeling about her and characters like her is that I find the messages in those movies to often not go much beyond a surface-level feel-good.   The movie does not teach us that all sizes are beautiful; it teaches us that Shrek is considered ugly by everyone, and Fiona is considered ugly by everyone, yet in spite of their ugliness they love each other because love (and happiness) isn’t about appearance.

The message is never really, “You can be fat and beautiful” even though we end up sort of interpretting it that way, as do the characters at times, but I think there’s a difference.   I get really tired of fat characters always being props for the “beauty on the inside” messages because isn’t that what society is always telling fat people 99% of the time to begin with, that they’re only beautiful on the inside, that for someone to love them they need to show personality because their looks are never going to cut it, that only the magical transformative powers of love will make someone think their body is wonderful?

What I would really like is a character that is not treated, or feels, like they are ugly just because they are fat.   Someone who does not need some magic fairy or trickery in order for someone to fall in love with them “despite” their fatness. Fat and beautiful- on the outside.   If that makes sense

~originally a reply, reposted by request~

And let’s not forget that when Fiona turns “ugly” her facial features become more like the ones from a black womyn, wider nose, thicker lips…

Reblogged from CAN A BITCH DREAM?

Tags: fat body acceptance body positive love beauty norms quote text

Imperial Gaze & Male Gaze

dufflecoatarmy:

E. Ann Kaplan has introduced the post-colonial concept of the imperial gaze, in which the observed find themselves defined in terms of the privileged observer’s own set of value-preferences. From the perspective of the colonised, the imperial gaze infantilizes and trivializes what it falls upon, asserting its command and ordering function as it does so.

Kaplan comments: “The imperial gaze reflects the assumption that the white western subject is central much as the male gaze assumes the centrality of the male subject”.

~

Mulvey stated that women were objectified in film because heterosexual men were in control of the camera. Hollywood films played to the models of voyeurism and scopophilia.

(Wikipedia)

Reblogged from Feminist Sociology

Tags: text male gaze imperial gaze imperialism colonialism sexism politics sociology

On birth control.

kungfucarrie:

thisthat-and-liberalstuff:

So, I see a lot of arguments talking about how “but birth control isn’t JUST to prevent pregnancy, it’s health care X, Y, and Z!”

And I’m just sitting here like “is the prevention of unwanted pregnancy suddenly NOT legitimate healthcare?”

When people give reasons as to why birth control in its various forms should be provided cheap and affordable, prevention of pregnancy is always listed last, as an afterthought, or is presented as “well yeah, SOME people use it so they don’t get pregnant, but MORE people use it for ~medical reasons.~”

So, my wanting to have control over when I become a mother isn’t “medical” enough for you? My wanting to have safe sex while not having to compromise the goals that I have laid out before I enter motherhood isn’t a ~legitimate~ reason as to why I shouldn’t have to struggle to pay for BC, or go to the Health Department because I have no insurance where the people don’t or can’t give me proper reproductive services other than “use condoms” and send me on my merry way without having the decency to help with the constant bleeding after sex/unusual pains/ect?

What I’m trying to get at, is, why isn’t safe sex and pregnancy prevention not considered a legitimate reason for people to have birth control? Is it because it doesn’t fit into the GOP’s “traditional family,” where everyone is magically virginal until marriage, and then the sole goal after he “puts a ring on it” is to reproduce at the rate of rabbits, and any kind of hindrance on “God’s Plan” shall surely send us into the pits of hell?

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that people don’t want to acknowledge that we weren’t put on the planet to be incubators for future generations.

Or maybe it’s because people don’t want to realize that those of us capable of getting pregnant like to have sex (and sometimes a lot of it) without the hassle of also being pregnant. Perhaps they realize we don’t give a fuck about their shitty standards of how we “should” act, and that pisses them off because they can’t have total control over us.

Whatever the reason is (and all of these reasons and then some probably fall as a reason) my decision to prevent pregnancy IS legitimate health care, and I am honestly sick and tired of hearing people place the qualifier “but people use BC for health and medical reasons, not just prevention of pregnancy” as if preventing pregnancy ISN’T a medical decision, or like I should be ashamed because a big reason that I’m on birth control is because I fuck, and I like it, and I DON’T want to be a mother.

I would like to *highfive* this post

Reblogged from This is Only a Test

Tags: text Health Care birth control Contraception quote sex

transcatharsis:

New Call for Submissions flyer that includes the mailing address! PDF available upon request. If you know of an organization that serves people that might not be able to submit online or might not see the information here, please let me know!

Reblogged from sexgenderbody

Tags: call for submissions text story trans anarcha-feminism feminism violence oppression

chubby-bunnies:

I just saw the video you posted about hymens and I just wanted to say that there are so many different kinds of hymens, and if you don’t know which one you’re dealing with then you had better find out. I thought I had “broken” it a long time ago, but when I was fooling around I hooked my finger around something. I found out I had a septate hymen, and because of a hymens elastic nature it wouldn’t break and was uncomfortable during sex, so I dropped by the gyno and then two weeks later I was in the OR getting it removed. I am not advocating this, in fact I hope you never have to do it. What I’m saying is familiarize yourself with your body so that you know the best way to enjoy it. I felt a lot of shame having to do this, I felt like I wasn’t normal and that there was something that had to be fixed about me. But I shouldn’t have. Societies norms have told us there is only one good way to lose virginity.

But Fuck them.

or Butt fuck them idk what their preferences are.

And it doesn’t matter.

Reblogged from ✿ CHUBBY BUNNIES ✿

Tags: illustration story text sex ed hymen submission

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