Blackamazon Speaks

And she does it HERE

Congratulations.


I quit.

I’m done. My blog will go live again when I’m compiling stuff for my time to apply to gradschool but I am done for now.

I want to say that this is permaent or that this is just a small break but no , this isteh beginning of a death knell.

You know what every body feel good about themselves ?

I think the point where I went fuck it , is when a law student, a couple writers, and a professor basically endorsed a book and MISSED in reading something they were ATTACHING their names to .

Racist comics, about MY PEOPLE. Yeah MY PEOPLE, being KILLED and destroyed to save a white man and give a white woman the “courage” she so desperately desires .

And people fell over themselves to excuse them . Cause they’re learning

You know what , fuck off.

Read more

Fuckin' hell.

Two of my favorite WoC writers, gone from the blogosphere for who knows how long. And Jill from Feministe taking a break too. I'm on the look out for a couple new blogs, if any of you have one you especially love not already on my blog roll. Speaking of which, the blogroll isn't going to change. They may link to empty pages but... for now I think that speaks to something in of itself, and I want that to stay.

How To Fuck Up

Great thoughts for anyone who interacts with other people. But especially for those of us who claim to give a shit about those people we interact with.

Um, yah... No?

WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU?!

I had Marcotte's book on my eventual to read list, just cuz I figured knowing more is better than knowing less.

But after this? Oh no. It's off the list. I'm not giving her one red cent of mine.

2nd Sex Positive Carnival!

Up at my beloved Meg's Labyrinth Walk we have The Second Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy.

Next time the party is here! I will be considering topics and prompts in the coming week. Right now my mind is still very wrapped up in the X/BFP...THING, what it means to be an ally, what it means to divest oneself of privilege and dealing with the myriad issues therein. We'll see, maybe this processing will itself lead me to a prompt.

BFP SPEAKS

HERE

I wrote what I wrote in response to all those feminists who, during the Full Frontal Feminism blow up, kept insisting over and over again that if “WOC” want book deals, they should “go get it them themselves.” That publishers weren’t skimming through the blogosphere looking for just anybody who’s a good writer. That you had to work for a book deal—you had to fight for it, show a little initiative, stop complaining, just do it. JUST. DO. IT.

As if there were no such thing as racism—as if there was no such thing as racism that is alive and well and present in the most cellular of spaces. As if simply opening a proposal and viewing the odd name at the top of the proposal doesn’t influence how the person reading that name will understand the rest of the proposal.

I wrote what I wrote to all those people, to all those feminists, who insist that short of refusing publication (and what good is that?) there is little to nothing feminists can do to stand in solidarity with other feminists who are not as privileged as they are.

I wrote what I wrote to say that there either is a feminist movement or there isn’t—and if feminists can’t even be called on to point to the work that other feminists are doing—if simply pointing to a whole sphere of pro-immigration bloggers (because, to be clear, I stated pro-immigration bloggers and men and women bloggers of color NOT brownfemipower) who have been blogging incessantly about this is too much work for feminism—well, then there’s no fucking feminist movement.

That if dabbling into and getting to know an actual community working in a certain way is too much work for feminism, then there is no fucking feminist movement.

Check Out This Fucking Brilliant Post

by judgesnineteen

I didn’t know that even in black families with the same income as my family (which were probably rare because they probably had less chance of getting the education my dad got), black people had less wealth than my family had, and that the difference in wealth was due to the accumulation of racist government policies and white privileges. I didn’t know that the kind of cocaine more commonly used by black people was punished 100 times more harshly than the kind more commonly used by white people. I didn’t know that black women try to change their appearance to look more like white women because they’ve gotten the message that black is ugly. I didn’t know that the reason other races have their own special clubs and magazines and TV shows and so on was because they didn’t feel welcome in ours, and I was completely unaware that my clubs and magazines and TV shows and so on weren’t just general, they were white. I didn’t realize that if I was able to see white as general it was because of racism - because I saw white as the Norm, because I had no trouble momentarily forgetting about the existence of people of color, because I saw people of color as the Special Case, the people that would only be on a TV show if it was expressly trying to prove it wasn’t racist, and that PC stuff is so annoying, isn’t it?
[...]
But what makes privilege so dangerous is that it includes the luxury to ignore. As Kate Harding said: That’s what privilege is. It’s the option to ignore nasty shit that doesn’t directly affect my own life, my career, my relationships, my bank account, my social standing, my housing situation, etc. I can ignore people of color; they can’t ignore white people. I can ignore racism; they can’t. And when I ignore them and I ignore racism, I make the institution of racism stronger, because I cover for it. I can swear up and down that it’s not there because I don’t see it, then sit on the pile of advantage I have and yell down at black people that they must not be working hard enough. There aren’t a whole lot of people in the US anymore who are willing to openly say they hate people with a certain color of skin, but there are plenty of people who are willing to ignore what happens to people with a certain color of skin, and if there’s no listening to what people of color are saying, no awareness of the long history of institutionalized racism, no acknowledgment that it was more than “hard work” that got white people where they are today, and not even much concern for what it’s like to be a person of color because they’re not your friends or really on your radar, can you really be so surprised that racism is still around?

Real Women Have Bodies

I'm reading some good stuff today

New Mantra: Real Women Have Bodies.

Those bodies are of different shapes and sizes and colours. Some of them you will find more attractive than others. That's fine. I want to see advertising that reflects me, my friends, that beauty and attractiveness are subjective, and all of those other things. Real women have bodies. Hating on women who either easily fit into advertising's definition of attractiveness or have to harm themselves to do so helps no one. Yes, some of the women in my life have eating disorders, and a lot of that is caused by very high pressure to be thin... and yet, they are still real women.

Real women have bodies. Big ones, small ones, curvy ones, flat ones, bodies. There is so much hate every day thrown at women's bodies that I just can't sit back and listen when someone spouts out that real women have curves.

Check this out

Via Afrospear

For years, white people have been spreading propaganda that black people are the bane of white people’s existence by characterizing black people as the epitome of every negative social ill. Black people have been described as lazy, shiftless, and immoral with a sex drive that could make a rabbits look celibate. So many people now believe this tripe that we as a national community can justify black people not being offered opportunities for education and employment as black people not wanting to take advantage of opportunities. Black people don’t have the aptitude to be anything but the most basic of employees. Black people must be thoroughly controlled because of our penchant for unethical behavior. And because we as a nation are quick to support this thinking that promotes black people as inferior we will justify the resulting racism as little more than the way things are.

The practice of racism is an attempt to make true artificial barriers that defy nature and the natural. A society that tolerates racism as just the normal course of business cannot and will not survive itself. A society works best and is healthiest when it is completely and thoroughly healthy. A society needs all of its parts strong in order to be its strongest. Like proverbial chain a society is only as strong as its weakest link. And through a series of manipulations that have lasted for centuries the black community is no where near as strong as it should be. Crime and poverty are allowed to fester throughout entire segments of many large inner cities. Drugs and blight dominate the black community. The raw potential of so many people has been diminished significantly.

Follow the link for more. Really good stuff.

More Obama Bullshit

“So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” Mr. Obama said, according to a transcript on the Huffington Post Web site, which on Friday published the comments.

Yes.

And?

Pardon the Witches?

Wow, people suck.

Amanda, BFP and Hugo

So today on my Google Reader reading I see: "If it's stealing you'd better prove it".

And I go "....................................."

Since BFP's server is down or something at the moment. I can't go look at this post.

But, I have to tell you, Hugo's post here, it smacks of everything privilege has to offer. And it makes me incredibly uncomfortable.

Cis/hetero-privilege?

I don't think of myself in terms of labels much anymore when it comes to sexuality. I guess I am primarily hetero, as I feel strongly attracted to men on an every day basis. I find women attractive, but not at all in the same way, I don't see a really good looking woman and get all atwitter like I do with men. They don't make me forget how to talk, like one very good looking guy I know does regularly. At the same time, I enjoy looking at them, and find more women attractive than men. And I'm clearly not only hetero, as I am interested in having sexual experiences with women should the opportunity present itself.

On the other hand I'm not at all comfortable calling myself bi-sexual. For one, I don't believe in the gender binary (which the whole "bi" thing reproduces, imo). For another, I wouldn't have a partnered relationship with a woman. Just, does not interest me. Even entertaining the thought of polyandry, multiple male partners are my fantasy. On that note, why not identify as pansexual? Same reason. I'm happy to draw sexual partners from any category; trans men, trans women, cis men, cis women, androgynous, non-gender identified... doesn't matter to me much. But relationships? Nope. Men offer something unique for me in that regard, cis men in particular. I'm not sure what (a penis to my vagina coupled with masculinity to my femininity maybe? perhaps in relationships I am just that binary-oriented?). But there's a balance for me in cissexual/heterosexual relationships that I've never had in a relationship with a woman (but perhaps could have with a trans man).

In a similar vein, I also have a hard time finding a label for my husband and my relationship. Are we swingers? Sort of, but not really, "swapping" isn't our primary interest. As we've sort of stalemated at this point, partly waiting for me to get the courage to venture into something new, partly lack of opportunities where we currently live, I don't know how this might change in the future. But anyway, we're definitely not polyamorous, because that implies love involved, not just sex. And it's just sex for us. Though, like I said above, I wouldn't mind having a few close guy friends who I occasionally slept with. Not boyfriends, but, just friends I chat with semi-regularly, where we know each other pretty well, are comfortable with each other, sleep together on occasion, but no investment, no "omg if you don't call me Friday I get to yell at you" bullshit. So even that isn't involving love.

Swingers works well enough for now. I can't say the same for any label I've ran across for sexual orientation, however. Since I'm married, people tend to assume I'm hetero anyway, and when it comes down to it that's the label I'm most comfortable with, despite it's obvious flaws. This begs the question of WHY that is, though. And hence the title of this post. Cis- hetero- is the norm. There's privilege that go along with this (like, for instance, that I get to BE married), how much of my comfort with the mislabeled label stems from this? On the other hand, I WISH I could take on the pansexual label, because it's cool, and forward thinking. But as far as I can tell I would be rather an interloper, not REALLY pan. A poser. And I hate posers.

So... I dunno. Fuck labels, I guess. If people want to have an actual discussion about the interactions of gender, sexuality and orientation, I'm happy to get into the intricacies that are me. But until then, it just saves a lot of headache to let them assume whatever they want to assume, I guess.

*edited to remove problematic language on Dec 23, 2010*

57th Feminist Carnival

The 57th Carnival of Feminists is up at Pandemian!

Free Tibet

I will make this short and sweet, bottom line talk!

China sucks.

Fuck them.

Free Tibet!

The Parisians had fun today, San Francisco's turn tomorrow (but we got started early).

Further Understandings of White Privilege

In the comments of this post Donna asked:

Who says it's [racism in feminism] over done? I'd like to see where white feminists are discussing this at all.

And I replied:

For ME that topic is overdone. In my one women's studies class I've taken so far, we talked at length about the issue of race in feminism. And I've heard it over and over and over again. Feminism is white-centric, it ignores issues of economy and race. That doesn't mean that's true for all feminists, but for me, growing up in the politically conscious family I did, and going to the schools I have, it's been done. I recognize there are shortcomings in mainstream feminism.

You know what's funny [read: rather embarrassing] that I realize now, months and much reading later?

Those classes and my family, I mean, yah we talked about race and racism, in the WS class in particular we discussed criticism of the feminist movement being rooted in the experience of white middle class feminists. But, that was it. We never took the next step into understanding white privilege, or what white people need to do for feminism to be INCLUSIVE.

Isn't it funny (read: painfully frustrating) how a topic can be covered so often and yet the heart of it never examined?

I have to change my previous statement. As while the concept has been acknowledged, the actual work involved in it has not, is not, and that's what actually counts.

In other words, you were right Donna.

Assasination of MLK Jr.

I can't possibly put up something as eloquent as BFP already has, so I forward you to her moving post.

First Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy

No. 1 is up at Uncool

Woot!

Great reading y'all, looking forward to the next one. :D