When Was the Last Time I Did a Round Up of Good Shit to Read?

I don't even know.  But as I was linkspamming the shit out of my Facebook friends (sorry y'all) I thought to myself that really I should be doing this here....  And it's going to be quite the clusterfuck of various areas of my interest and their recent discussion in media, so buckle up.  You're welcome!  :D


Cleveland anarchist bomb plot aided and abetted by the FBI

Rather than target real risks of domestic terror, like neo-Nazis, the FBI entrapment machine demonises anarchists and Muslims

A+ priorities and strategies FBI!  /sarcasm  This is one of the reasons why I am so burned out on anything professing to be "law and order" or "security" matters.  We're creating terrorists so we can catch them...instead of looking at ACTUAL TERRORIST GROUPS like neo-Nazis.  Oh, ok.


The homeless man and the NYPD cop's boots: how a warm tale turns cold

A picture that started as a seasonal heartwarmer has now become a reason not to feel sorry for the homeless as Hillman is painted as a wilful eccentric.

I was really struck by this story and what a great example it is of the demonization of the poor, the way that there is only one "proper" way to BE poor, and the way deviance from that narrative is SOUGHT OUT by people and then used to blame the poor for their situation and thus absolve all others of any complicity or guilt in the system that keeps them there.  I also think this overlaps with my final story....


In solidarity for the respect of Holy Places

In appreciation of the many gestures of solidarity from the Muslim world following the recent desecration of Christian Holy Places, the Auxiliary Bishop of Jerusalem, Bishop William Shomali, visited Al-Aqsa Mosque on Thursday, October 4 where he met Grand Mufti Mohammad Hussein and the grand magistrate of the mosque Abdel Adhim Salhab...The Bishop also assured Muslims the support of the Christian community with respect to their holy places.

People not being assholes.  I felt like I should mix it up a little bit.


Homefulness! A Real Solution to Houselessness

Homefulness, a project of POOR Magazine, is a solution of interdependence, love, and equity-sharing for landless youth, adults, and elders across Pachamama. It is a poor people-led, self-determined, truly green model for housing, art, microbusiness, spirituality, interdependence, self-accountability, caregiving, and community that incorporates the teaching of our elders, ancestors, and spiritual leaders in harmony with Mother Earth. We aim to create permanent and lasting solutions to houselessness for families in poverty who have been displaced, evicted, gentrified, and destabilized out of their indigenous lands and communities.

An IndieGoGo campaign that I would really encourage you to participate in, if you can!


Remember Their Names: In Memory of Kasandra, Cherica & Others

This tragic story pushes to the forefront an important issue in terms of domestic violence and murder. When the murderer is famous, attractive, rich, or charming people don’t want to believe that they are guilty. I don’t pretend to know Jovan Belcher’s heart, motives, or mind set when he fired numerous gunshots into the body of his baby’s mother, and then turned the gun on himself. I don’t know why his only option, in that moment, felt like a desperate one. I don’t know what caused him to murder Kasandra, but what I do know is that it was not Kasandra’s fault. I know that staying out until 1 o’clock in the morning at a concert was not an invitation to die. I know that it doesn’t matter what she wore that night, or what she may have said, or whether or not she may have been intoxicated, or rolled her eyes at him, or called him out of his name, or talked to another guy in passing, she didn’t deserve to die.

Nigeria: Security Forces Open Fire On Protesting Ogoni Community

Armed security forces protecting the interest of the Anglo-Dutch oil and gas major, Shell, on Friday, opened fire on a protesting Ogoni community in the Rivers State axis of Southern Nigeria. The community, Eleme, was protesting against the presence of some Shell officials at the Ebubu Oilfield.

U.S. finalizes $3.4 billion settlement with American Indians

The missing funds at the center of the class-action case involve what are called Individual Indian Money accounts, which are supposed to represent the property of individual Indians. The accounts are held by the United States as trustee.
The lawsuit had accused the government of failing to account for the money, failing to make proper payments, and converting tribal money for the government's own use.
In making the announcement Monday, Obama remembered Cobell for "her honorable work." In 2009, she said that many represented in the class-action lawsuit "subsist in the direst poverty," and that the settlement is "significantly less than the full amount to which the Indians are owed."

This one made me happy, sort of, and also really fucking angry and sad.


The Adoption of Johnny Depp

A video from the 1491s recounting and dramatizing the events of Johnny Depp's adoption by LaDonna Harris of the Comanche nation. Not to be missed.  I'm serious.  Watch this shit.



WUT DUZ TRNAS GENDERE MENA?@??!

An absolutely wonderful infographic on what "Trans" means!!!!!!!  <3

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell Confirmed for BBC Miniseries

If you've read this book, you know why I'm excited!


Who's Afraid of the Qassams?

So stopping Palestinian rockets is not a plausible explanation for Israeli attacks. Indeed, the Israeli leadership – at best – does not care much about such deaths, posturing to the contrary. There’s a reason for that. The Zionist political and intellectual elite makes a lot of cantankerous noises about the rockets falling on southern Israel, usually accompanied by the question, how would you respond if rockets were falling on your head? But less frequently noted is whose heads those rockets are falling upon. Sderot and other southern cities are not merely populated by Jewish Israelis. They are also populated by mostly Mizrahi, usually lower-class, Jewish Israelis, the outcome of a planning regime which puts some populations of Jews in some places and kept other populations of Jews in others. 

Sderot, summoned up so sedulously as the very symbol of Israeli terror and fear due to Hamas’s – mostly ineffectual – rockets was initially a transit camp for Kurdish and Persian Jews. Later, it was populated by Moroccans. And still later, Ethiopians and the darker Jews of the ex-Soviet Caucasus. That was where they were dumped, with the European elites concerned, according to a 1950 Jewish Agency brochure, that the darker Jews might create “quarters of poverty, filth, unemployment, and crime.” Accordingly, there needed to be “a greater effort to settle the immigrants in the countryside.” And so they were. 

[...]And so Tel Aviv, the cosmopolitan, Ashkenazi, cultural core of Israel could remain distant from the front lines of the conflict created by the policies pursued by its economic and political elites, while the cannon fodder on the Israeli periphery would bear their brunt.

So, yeah.  Let's keep this in mind when we're talking about rockets and "retaliation," yeah?


Finally, 'Squatters are not home stealers'

What the squatting dispute boils down to is a split between those who consider private property to be sacred, and those who would prioritise the right to shelter. Few people would happily forfeit a second home to squatters, but nor does it feel morally justifiable for a nation to have an estimated 930,000 empty homes while people sleep on the streets.

This is a really interesting article recounting the situation primarily for squatters in the UK, where a measure (section 144) was recently passed criminalizing them in new if not unprecedented ways, as well as in several other European countries and the United States.

The part I've highlighted here is, for me, one of the common denominators in all of these debates: private property and profit versus the right to shelter and measurements of worth outside of capitalist profit.

Even as I plan to buy a house one day and thus participate more directly than I currently do in the system of private property/profit (through equity), I really think we as communities need to THINK ABOUT what private property means to us, its "sacredness," its use for profit, and our priorities around use of space.  Because it's simply not a question of IF we have an excess of buildings - WE DO - and if people are going to put them to use as homes, gardens, community spaces; isn't that a GOOD THING?

I think it is. And I don't think everything needs to be about PROFIT, or that the use of space is only "good" if PROFIT is made.  But that's the way all this is constructed and POLICED right now.....

This is just one of those things I don't think many people know about, much less question. It's something I didn't know about or question until it was put in my face with the response to building "occupations" over the last couple of years.  So here I am...writing about it.

Love It/Shove It?: Dan Savage Can Shove It

So earlier today Cara pointed me to the newest edition of Bitch, to a specific portion of a regular feature; "Love It/Shove It." This particular piece would be put in the "love" portion. It is a "love/open letter" to Dan Savage. One which seeks to educate him on gender, a subject on which he had professed he is lacking in a recent column. The author signs this piece "Gender Wiz (Bree Kessler)."

To sum up my reaction earlier in the day is quite easy, it went like this: WHAT.

And as I walked away from my computer to read a book, something that during my summer break I have been trying to make sure I take time to do every day, I just could not get this article out of my head. This post kept trying to write itself and wouldn't let me concentrate. And so, though I don't really feel that I can entitle myself a "gender wiz" and given my cis-privilege I will probably miss pieces of what makes this thing so, well, awful, I am going to take a stab at it anyway and I hope if I utterly fuck it up that you, dear readers, will be there to tell me so.

As Cara so eloquently put it in her Tumblr post, "my head exploded about twelve times" reading this, but I am going to try and hone in on just the worst bits.

For instance,

I give the students in my Human Sexuality course a handy way to remember the difference between ["sex" and "gender"]: "gender" is pink and blue; "sex" is penis and vagina.

Do you see what is going on here?

Here is what I see, and it centers around that last part: "'sex' is penis and vagina." First, I would agree that this is the common construction of sex, the assumption that it is a label for which secondary sexual characteristics you are born with. The problem is, Kessler is, quite clearly, not setting up that assumption to be challenged, but accepting it as fact. And let's be absolutely clear here: that is not fact.

Sex is something that is assigned to us by doctors and/or our parents when we are born, usually based on a visual examination of our genitals. If we have something that looks like what these people think of as a vagina, we're labeled "female," if we have something that looks like what these people think of as a penis, we are labeled "male."

And then there are those whose "sex characteristics" do not look like either of those things.

So, quite literally, right off the bat Kessler utterly erases intersex people for her discussion (and for her students...from understanding that they exist at all).

Secondly, what I see going on here slightly more subtly (or at least it would be subtle to anyone who has absorbed the ideas of cis-normativity, which most people, especially cis people, have) is that Kessler is also equating penis with maleness and vagina with femaleness. There are, apparently, no females with penises and no males with vaginas. They, like intersex folks, don't exist in Kessler's world.

This constant conflation of sexual organs with sex identity and gender identity is one of the major obstacles, in my experience, with acceptance of and real respect towards trans people's identities. The idea that penis=man and vagina=woman is so entrenched that (cis) people just do NOT question it, even when contradictions of that assumption are staring them in the face. Oh, you look like a woman, talk like a woman, etc. but if I find out you have a penis under that skirt you are clearly "really" a man, or, at the most generous, "were a man once."  That you could have been a woman ALL ALONG is not even up for consideration.

And that dynamic is being reinforced here.

I am editing the original post to insert a paragraph here because in comments it was pointed out that the "pink/blue" dynamic is just as problematic as the "penis/vagina" dynamic. Originally, I sacrificed this piece for the sake of "honing in," but on reflection I don't think that's really appropriate, so let me say here that this binary construction leaves yet another group of people erased: people who are genderqueer.  Specifically, those who don't identify with gender at all.  If "gender is pink and blue," where does that leave them?

Let's go on to another part (and I think it's worth pointing out that this section is the "pull quote" for the article, so apparently someone in the layout or editing department of Bitch thought it was noteworthy, presumably in a good way),

So back to that caller's question: Can you raise a child with a different gender than the one assigned at birth? Yes, you can.

And before going on let me just say that, since she recognizes (or at least uses the rhetoric of) "assigned at birth" what she goes on to say I find even more baffling:

According to gender schema theory, kids don't even identify their own gender until they are about two or three years old. If you have a boy who wears dresses, and no one tells the boy that this clothing is not "appropriate" for boys, then indeed you have changed this boy's gender.

I'm going to let that section sink in for a minute.

...........................

Did you pull the pieces of your brain back together?

Ok. So, most bluntly, NO. Just, NO. Allowing a little cisgender boy to wear dresses if he wants to does not change his gender. It changes nothing about his gender. All it does is mean that this little boy does not hold the now common belief (in the U.S.) that dresses are "girl's clothes." If anything, what has happened here is that the clothing of a dress is DE-GENDERED. But that has nothing to do with this little presumably cis boy and his gender identity.

I mean I'm pretty sure all those Scottish men who wear kilts aren't changing their genders, I'm pretty sure they just have a cultural tradition/understanding of men wearing what are heavily considered "skirts" (aka female clothing) in the U.S.

Gender identity is not something you can just outright change, in the way being suggested here. I mean, I would argue that gender identity is somewhat changeable, in that each person kind of has their own, unique, spectrum of "masculine" and "feminine" behaviors and appearance etc. that they are comfortable with, and that those understandings of self can change over time. But this hypothetical little boy who wears dresses isn't going to think himself a girl just being he wears dresses! That is, unless she really is a little girl, and the assignment of her sex was (as it sometimes is) just outright wrong.

As with the more "subtle" portion of the "sex" definition, what we have here are cis-normative-meets-gender-constructivist assumptions about what gender is. And those assumptions utterly undermine the credibility of trans and genderqueer people's gender identities.  Because if gender can be taken on and off as easily as the clothes you wear, what possible motive do cis-supremacist people have to take trans people's identities seriously?  And if sex and gender are always binary, how can cisgender people take genderqueer people's identities serious?

This works perfectly in tangent with the point before, that man=penis and woman=vagina; THAT is the understanding people will fall back on when in doubt!

And as we see time and again, that understanding leads to violence when those poor cis people are "tricked" by some "man in a dress."

Also, somehow, I have a hard time believing that this presumably cis woman who authored this piece would agree that her womanhood is as malleable as she is suggesting "gender" is. Somehow, I don't think she believes she has changed genders when she wears pants.

If there were any doubts about the comfort which Kessler has in undermining the gender identities of trans people they were silenced for me in her final paragraph. She has earlier stated that, unlike with gender, you can't "change a gay man and make him straight" and not long after says,

Even Oprah, goddess of advice, as evinced confusion on this issue, when (in discussion of her book-club pick Middlesex) she wondered aloud if being transgendered was the same as being homosexual.

This states loud and clear that Kessler does not actually believe trans people when they say they were "born this way." Gay cis men, apparently, are believable when they claim the same for their sexuality, but not trans women or trans men (or, presumably, genderqueer people) for their gender identity.

Now, look, I AM a gender constructionist. I DO think we are socialized to look and behave a certain way, based on our assigned sex and that, that socialization shapes how we think about and present ourselves, etc. But, CLEARLY, there is more to it than that, as well.

I am a cis woman; being a woman is part of my identity. Often "woman" to me does not mean what it means to cis-supremacist society, and I sometimes defy expectations. But fundamentally, under all that, there is some core understanding of myself, in this body, as a female person. You can't change that fundamental piece of self, whatever exactly it is.   And to openly invalidate that piece of self for trans and genderqueer people is just...absolutely horrific.  It is violent.

And to do so in the name of being an "expert" on "gender" and "educating" a man who has time, and time, and time again been lambasted for his transphobia (among all his other race fails, bi-fails and just general douchiness), and specifically transmisognyny, is AT BEST extraordinarily irresponsible.

So let me just say this, I am no expert on gender, I think I know a thing or two about it, but if you REALLY want to understand gender, Dan Savage, (and I think there's a lot more it would be good for you to understand too, btw...) then here ARE some experts (and this is just a brief list) (and do read the comments on this post):
bird of paradox
Combat Queer Online
Life Journeys to a T
nueva voz
The Second Awakening
TransGriot

My last thought on this now rather long post is that, you know what, Bitch? I'm appalled that this piece got by your editors.

ETA: Thoughts from the author of the piece can be found in comments. Feel free to join the continuing conversation.

Urgent Help Needed! Please Help Me Save Bitch!

Bitch is by far my favorite magazine. It is reliably interesting and thought provoking. I look forward to each edition and if you have never read one, head out to your local book store or newsstand and buy one, then come back here and help me save them!!

This is not new to feminist publishing, but this is one we just can't let slide by.

Bitch

The new edition of Bitch is fabulous, as usual.

I haven't finished it yet, but I've already had post topics going through my head. Especially on the "domestic discipline" article. I see that Amanda Marcotte was also struck by this article, but I found it interesting how differently she took it.

I didn't take it as suggesting that ALL domestic problems arose from the female partner (or that this had one single thing to do with Christianity). I read the situation more like when the women partner does something to mess up (in her own estimation) that she is disciplined for it. I definitely didn't read in it the tone from domestic abuse situations where any small problem can and will be placed at the woman's feet. Though I have to admit that at times the perspective made me very uncomfortable. The way the women felt about themselves was chief in that.

At the end of the day it seems like an issue of choice, and taste, to me. And brings up difficult questions. Where do we draw the line between respecting individual choice and actually OK'ing abuse? And how do we tackle the very obvious possible self esteem issues that bring women to find DD attractive?