littlearchitect:

Here is the video for my special studies presentation/one-person show, FRESH OFF THE BANANA BOAT. It is about coming into myself as a queer Asian American person in white liberal spaces.

I am incredibly honored and humbled at the positive response this performance has received. To me, the most important work this show has done has been to bring together Asian American and hapa students who have never before been encouraged to build community together. In particular, I have been grateful to connect with other mixed Japanese kids because of this show. 

This show is about (one part of) my identity and my experience, but I am trying to make a statement about the importance of everybody investigating and sharing their own stories. I believe it is largely through sharing stories and being open to the stories of others that we can learn not to oppress each other. 

so, so awesome and hilarious.

(via mermaidheartsongs)

HOAX ZINE IS HAVING A PRINTING EMERGENCY

hoaxzine:

Dear Hoax Zine readers and supporters,

Hoax Zine exists as a collaborative effort to name the ways in which the “isms” play out in our everyday lives. This project is rooted in a transformative framework of organizing, meaning that we strongly believe in concepts such as equal and nonhierarchical partnerships, the value of personal, cultural, and non-institutional knowledges, and that the personal can be made political through the process of storytelling. One of our goals is that readers and contributors alike can learn how to act as “allies by bearing witness of the experiences of others.

Over the past four years, the two of us have taken on a plethora of responsibilities to keep this project alive. These responsibilities have included, but are in no way limited to: promoting our publication, painstakingly designing layouts, constructing and putting out calls for submissions, editing submissions and assisting contributors in developing their voices, sales, budgeting, and physically assembling every issue. During the past year, both of us have relocated to different states and have continued driving upwards of six hours to our printing source in Maryland. We have done this to ensure that the zine remains affordable and, thus, accessible.

Unfortunately, we can no longer continue printing Hoax Zine at this said source. The commute has exhausted both our energy and our bank accounts, and unfortunate life circumstances and family crises have made it nearly impossible to travel. Additionally, we just learned that our printing source has taken unprecedented and extreme measures to ensure that we will no longer have access to their printers.

For this reason, we are asking our readers for help. We are looking for access to discounted, double-sided, mass printing in the New York City Metropolitan area. We would be able and willing to travel throughout New Jersey and to Philadelphia if necessary. Private colleges are very likely to have these resources and, if you are a student at such an institution, we would especially appreciate your support. We are also willing to work with a student anywhere in the United States who has access to mass printing to set up an established internship. Contact us as hoaxzine at gmail dot com for more information.

Until we can access a new printing source, we will only be selling an extremely small number of each issue on our Etsy shop. This includes each of our individual zines that are currently for sale (You’ve Got a Friend in Pennsylvania #3-7; Thou Shalt Not Talk About the White Boys’ Club: Challenging the Unwritten Rules of Punk; Neither Doll Houses Nor Tree Houses: On Living Outside of the Gender Binary;  Reimaging Queer Community; Not Queer as in Radical but Lesbian as in Fuck You). This way, we will ensure that we do not run out of any remaining issues and can mail people and distros that have already sent us payments.

Regardless of your location or access to printing, we would greatly appreciate it if you re-blog and share this post in full on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Thank you and in solidarity,

sari and Rachel

zuky:

This is the story of a racist myth that began with a light-hearted letter to the New England Journal of Medicine in 1968 and subsequently exploded in North American culture — in direct opposition to every shred of scientific evidence — becoming so prevalent that credulous eaters buy into it to…

questions I’ve been thinking about

crossposted from fetlife:

things that I want the kink community to figure out, develop resources on, develop more nuanced conversations about, from a place of groundedness in and literacy on BOTH abuse/power/safety/assault and kink/BDSM.

Read More

fotojournalismus:

Women protesters shout slogans calling for better working conditions for garment workers during a May Day rally on May 1, 2013 in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

[Credit : Wong Maye-E/AP]

(via brujacore)

Re: the problem with individualist “choice” feminism and sex-positive vs. sex-negative frameworks

brujacore:

(Rebloggable as requested)

Frankly, my philosophy is that individualist feminism is fucked up and only promotes solipsistic notions of what feminism is. Yeah, so feminism means different things for everybody, but as long as we keep this moral relativist approach to feminism, it means people aren’t accountable or responsible for doing generally fucked up shit to others. It also makes it harder to identify fucked-up behavior when it happens.

A feminism that is all about choice means people who DO NOT have the choice to “give consent” or DO NOT have the choice to stay at home with the kids or DO NOT choose to work low-wage jobs are NOT addressed. And the majority of non-cis men today haven’t had the same plethora of choices as white middle-class cis women, who have embedded choice rhetoric into current mainstream feminism. (I also think it’s a symptom of late capitalism, in which choice feminism prioritizes a careerist approach to “fighting the man,” and “shopping around” for industries to try and equalize, even if they’re intrinsically unethical— i.e. finance.) I am done with choice rhetoric, because the choice to do much of anything is restricted to only one chunk of people lucky enough to have the choice of whether or not to suffer. Patriarchy is a complex system of social relationships, some of which some of us have no choice but to endure, and others which some of us cannot access or benefit from because of race, class, etc. Examples include being able to go to college, to have heath insurance, to be CEOs, to be ruling-class. Choice feminism is about picking and choosing which social relations and positions are most personally bearable for you, but at the expense of ignoring or even legitimizing others’ suffering. (Ex: “But I can do this, why can’t all women?”) Choice feminism makes intersectionality impossible when it’s about the individual.

Now, do I think people should be able to choose to get abortions? Yes, and in fact I’d rather that people didn’t have to pay for them. Do I think sex work should be decriminalized and taken seriously as a profession? Absolutely, as long as we understand them as workers and make the distinction between worker and trafficking victim, then sure, go right ahead. Being against choice rhetoric as a central theme in feminism does not mean I want to restrict peoples’ choices. “Choice” rhetoric is just dangerous in a world in which non-cis men have very few choices. It means we only account for those of us who have a choice. Leaving feminism up to choice is a superficial and lazy analysis of patriarchy. It fails to address larger systemic issues like institutional sexism, racism, ableism, etc. as long as it’s “all about me.” Choice feminism allows for more conventionally ambitious members of the “marginalized” (i.e. women, LGBTQ folks) to abandon the rest of us in their endeavor to sit in the oppressor’s chair.

Sex-positivity also toes this line of people thinking feminism is all about them and not about a larger system of violence perpetuated against non-hetero/cis men. Also, sex-positivity vs. sex negativity is a terrible way to polarize discourse on sex within feminism; and oftentimes when people call someone “sex-negative” it’s really just because they don’t center sexy sex in their analysis of patriarchy. My feminism, at least, is not just about what I do in my bedroom, but how to challenge systems of domination that keep me from functioning as a working-class queer woman of color. Few sex-positive advocates on tumblr do any analysis of the latter— and I can say that as someone who spent 4 years in college giving talks on consent.

As for “sex-negativity,” all the people who responded to my post on sex strikes with “Ew, I’d NEVER CHOOSE to sleep with an anti-choicer” clearly don’t understand that not everyone has the luxury of “choosing” whom they sleep with, or are sexually assaulted by. Nobody fucking chooses to be raped, which is why choice doesn’t have a place in anti-rape rhetoric. It is why consent is better left as a safe sex practice than an anti-rape tactic. Call me sex-negative, but believe it or not, there are people out there who do NOT care what you want and WILL violate your space the best they can while they can benefit from it. Sex-positivity only goes so far in mediating mutual sexual relationships, but doesn’t take power (or abuse of power) into account. The feminism of our generation must address power. Because behind having a choice is even having the power to make it.

TL;DR I have a headache and I think your feminism is bullshit if it’s only about you and not the implications of your actions/others.

thepeoplesrecord:

Every 28 hours an African American is extrajudicially executed in the U.S.
April 24, 2013

Every 28 hours a black woman, man or child in the United States is executed by a person employed or protected by the US government according to a year-long investigation by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM), which has thus far been virtually ignored by the news media, progressive outlets included.

Following the murder of Trayvon Martin, the MXGM embarked on a year-long study to determine the prevalence of extrajudicial killings of black Americans. The organization initially recorded around 120 killings in the first half of 2012, which came out to one black person murdered every 36 hours. That number climbed to 313 by the end of last year, forcing the MXGM to update its findings to every 28 hours in their latest report, titled “Operation Ghetto Storm“. That’s almost one black American killed every day by law enforcement, security guards and/or vigilantes, which the MXGM believes is more accurate since their numbers reflect only those killings that are reported by police departments and the news media. As the organization points out in the report, there exists no national tracking of police-involved shootings, so it’s impossible to know the full extent of the crisis.

The Numbers

The largest portion of those killed in 2012 (40 percent) were between the ages of 22 to 31, followed by 18 to 21 year olds at 18 percent. Children made up 8 percent of extrajudicially executed black Americans.

Furthermore, 44 percent of those killed were unarmed while 27 percent were “allegedly” armed, meaning police claimed the victim was armed but no corroborating evidence existed to prove this was the case. Only 13 percent of those killed were said to have “fired a weapon either before or during the officer’s arrival”, according to the MXGM.

One of the report’s most damning findings is the sheer lack of accountability for these killings. Thus far, less than 9 percent of those responsible for the deaths have faced charges, almost all of whom are security guards or vigilantees and all of which have yet to be determined. Despite the fact that an overwhelming number of the victims were definitively unarmed, only 3 percent of officers officers responsible for the deaths have been charged: “3 for vehicular crimes stemming from their crashes, 5 for manslaughter—the killers of Remarley Graham, Wendell Allen, Dane Garrett Scott Jr, Christopher Brown, and Bobby Moore Jr.”

And the justifications are almost always the same: “I felt threatened”, “he reached for his waistband to get what I thought was a gun”, “he was acting suspiciously”, etc. All are based on personal perceptions that are no doubt influenced by racial stereotypes, given that every American is surrounded by a culture that conditions them to fear the “criminal black man”.

This isn’t speculation. Study after study has confirmed the lethal consequences of the black-as-criminal stereotype.

Source (there is much more text to this article here - check it out)

(via navigatethestream)

fuckyeahfeminists:

In discussing two women who document a culturally and commercially vibrant community at risk, the author explores the racist policy and politics behind the onslaught of gentrification.

In a city like New York, if you have your eyes open and headphones tucked away, you can easily observe deepening inequality. Generally, New Yorkers perceive these changes as part of rampant gentrification—where rents and real estate prices rise as gentry who can afford more move into a neighborhood. But the reality reflects a combination of public cuts, biased development policy and shifting investment citywide. Essentially, our perception of gentrification is out of step with the reality of gentrification.

A new film called “My Brooklyn” (2012) by director Kelly Anderson and producer Allison Lirish Dean offers a broader analysis of the many factors behind gentrification. The film focuses on how exploitative real estate policy radically altered the cultural and physical landscape of the Fulton Mall area of Downtown Brooklyn and how community organizers struggle for representation among a web of government and development agencies conspiring to “improve” New York City.

Read more—>

(Source: womensmediacenter.com, via navigatethestream)

"I don’t see why we should abolish gender. We should abolish exploitation and gender exploitation…The people who say we should abolish gender are the true essentializers, because they assume what it means to be a woman is set in stone, and it isn’t. Just in my lifetime, what it means to be a woman has changed dramatically, and the next generation will change it further still."

Silvia Federici, at the 2013 Historical Materialism Plenary, “The Politics of Feminism” (via mansplainedmarxist)

okay i find federici’s work very interesting (especially caliban) but she’s seriously wrong here. while gender roles vary across time and culture and are not “set in stone”, they have always been, and still are, used to demarcate masculinity and femininity and have always been boxes to determine “proper behavior” for males and females (ie their sex determines which gender they’re supposed to fulfill).

by abolishing these expectations and changing/expanding the definition of what is proper behavior for a woman you are abolishing gender. if you want to have it your way you can say “anything a woman does is feminine behavior,” but that is ultimately rendering gender meaningless because its purpose in a patriarchal society has been to restrict the behavior and actions of people (mainly women).

i also personally don’t think gender expectations have changed all that much for women. yes we can (in theory) be astronauts and CEOs, but we’re also still expected to look good doing it, as well as be willing to have dinner on the table and raise a family when we get home.

(via sendforbromina)

I can see the argument for the comments made by sendforbromina but I think what Federici is getting at here is something slightly different, and to be fair, not especially clear in the way she phrased the statement. It seems to me that what she’s saying is that gender abolitionists are functionally gener essentialists insofar as they tend to ascribe to the discursive category of gender a certain kind of power or agency that operates independent of its articulation in and through the discourse of gender itself. I read the statement “they assume what it means to be a woman is set in stone” as “they make the category ‘woman’ fully identical with and exhaustive of the various social forms that woman-ness might take.” Federici seems to be claiming that the position is essentialist because it locates within the term ‘woman’ a kind of final authority on what that term can mean. 

Certainly, the term—as it’s articulated within a patriacho-capitalist political formation—does do things, and often those things are violent, restrictive, and oppressive. But to advocate for the abolition of the category that “woman” defines on the grounds that it can only ever and will only ever operate in the service of those violences is to grant it a measure of autonomy that elides the way that “women” is, as you point out, underwritten and overdetermined by other forces (particularly capital). I think it also does a disservice to feminist agency: the ability of women to dis- and re-articulate the terms on/through which their gendered category is constructed.

I think if there’s a mistake here—and I think there is—it’s with the way that Federici seems to rhetorically collapse “woman” as a signifier of gender as a system into that very system. Or, at least in this phrasing, she seems to conflate the literal word “woman” with the construction it points to. Because obviously abolishing the word “woman” wouldn’t abolish “woman” as a constructed system, and I think her feminism is (by a significant distance) nuanced enough to apprehend that. I just think her phrasing here doesn’t quite do that nuance justice. But then it was probably a spoken remark during a panel or whatever, and it can be hard to capture those little details when speaking off the cuff. 

So yeah. I think there’s a mistake somewhere in here. But generally I kind of dig the claim that gender abolition subscribes, in effect, to a kind of gender essentialism. 

(via mirrortheories)

^^^^^

(via rhizombie)

My roommate came home from this talk and told me about this. What this quote is missing, apparently, is that she mentioned that several genders should be allowed to exist, as opposed to the binary; and she thinks that focusing on ending exploitation between all genders rather than total abolition of them is a response she aligns herself with. I think I do too.

(via brujacore)

(via brujacore)

theraceproblem:

afrodiaspores:

Black, Chicana, and First Nations radical socialist and anarchist labor organizer Lucy E. [González or Gonzales] Parsons (1853-1942) ca. 1920.

“Feared by the authorities because of her charismatic fiery speeches and intellect, the first Afro-Latina woman of color to engage prominently in the history of the Leftist American labor movement was labeled as ‘more dangerous than a thousand rioters’ by the Chicago Police Department.” 

William Loren Katz writes in a passage adapted from Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage,

A dynamic, militant, self-educated public speaker and writer, she became the first American woman of color to carry her crusade for socialism across the country and overseas. Lucy Gonzales started life in Texas. She was of Mexican American, African American, and Native American descent and born into slavery. The path she chose after emancipation led to conflict with the Ku Klux Klan, hard work, painful personal losses, and many nights in jail. In Albert Parsons, a white man whose Waco Spectator fought the Klan and demanded social and political equality for African Americans, she found a handsome, committed soul mate. The white supremacy forces in Texas considered the couple dangerous and their marriage illegal, and soon drove them from the state…

She was one of only two women delegates (the other was Mother Jones) among the 200 men at the founding convention of the militant Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the only woman to speak…

Lucy Parsons’ determined effort to elevate and inspire the oppressed to take command remained alive among those who knew, heard, and loved her. But few today are aware of her insights, courage, and tenacity. Despite her fertile mind, writing and oratorical skills, and striking beauty, Lucy Parsons has not found a place in school texts, social studies curricula, or Hollywood movies. 

On this May Day, I will honor the legacy of women of color like Lucy Parsons, labor organizer and radical activist for the poor, the disenfranchised, and communities of color.

(via fabianromero)

descentintotyranny:

Documentary — The Eyes of the Rainbow (1997)

“Eyes of the Rainbow” deals with the life of Assata Shakur, the Black Panther and Black Liberation Army leader who escaped from prison and was given political asylum in Cuba, where she has lived for close to 15 years. In it we visit with Assata in Havana and she tells us about her history and her life in Cuba. This film is also about Assata’s AfroCuban context, including the Yoruba Orisha Oya, goddess of the ancestors, of war, of the cemetery and of the rainbow. Gloria Rolando on “Eyes of the Rainbow”:

“In the struggle of the African American people, many women’s voices in the past and the present have always called for social justice, women who throughout the years have shown integrity and firmness in their principles. For this reason, “The Eyes of the Rainbow” is dedicated to all women who struggle for a better world.

One of those voices that already forms a part of the history of the African American people is that of Assata Shakur. In the documentary “The Eyes of the Rainbow,” she recounts aspects of her path as relentless warrior. We are able to create a meeting with Assata Shakur through the symbols of AfroCuban culture, which offer us beautiful songs evoking the ancestors.

Representations of the Yoruba warrior orishas such as Oya and Ochosi support the discourse of this story, which also has its moments of poetry and tenderness as in the dance of Oshun, through which is illustrated Assata’s decision to become mother while still in prison.

The blues interpreted by Junius Williams and his “Magic Harp,” the songs of Sweet Honey in the Rocks, and the Cuban group “Vocal Baobab” give a special stamp to this valiant testimony which defines the spirit of struggle in the African American woman.”

(via navigatethestream)

"

“Don’t you know that slavery was outlawed?”
“No,” the guard said, “you’re wrong. Slavery was outlawed with the exception of prisons. Slavery is legal in prisons.”
I looked it up and sure enough, she was right. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution says:

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Well, that explained a lot of things. That explained why jails and prisons all over the country are filled to the brim with Black and Third World people, why so many Black people can’t find a job on the streets and are forced to survive the best way they know how. Once you’re in prison, there are plenty of jobs, and, if you don’t want to work, they beat you up and throw you in a hole. If every state had to pay workers to do the jobs prisoners are forced to do, the salaries would amount to billions… Prisons are a profitable business. They are a way of legally perpetuating slavery. In every state more and more prisons are being built and even more are on the drawing board. Who are they for? They certainly aren’t planning to put white people in them. Prisons are part of this government’s genocidal war against Black and Third World people.

Assata (via michellehuxtable)

(via tremuloides)

chiefelk:

Dear Eve Ensler,

I want to start off by saying thank you. I appreciate the time you took to reach out to me, because I know you’re incredibly busy. I know there are much more important people in this world than myself, so I appreciate you engaging in dialogue with me and my colleague Kelleigh…

loneberry:

The FBI has added the former Black Panther Assata Shakur to its Most Wanted Terrorists list 40 years after the killing for which she was convicted. Born Joanne Chesimard, Shakur was found guilty of shooting dead a New Jersey state trooper during a gunfight in 1973. Shakur has long proclaimed her innocence and accused federal authorities of political persecution. She escaped from prison in 1979 and received political asylum in Cuba. On Thursday, she became the first woman added to the FBI’s terrorist list, and the reward for her capture was doubled to $2 million. We begin our coverage by airing Shakur’s reading of an open letter she wrote to Pope John Paul II during his trip to Cuba in 1998 after the FBI asked him to urge her extradition. “As a result of being targeted by [the FBI program] COINTELPRO, I was faced with the threat of prison, underground, exile or death,” Shakur said at the time. “I am not the first, nor the last, person to be victimized by the New Jersey system of ‘justice.’ The New Jersey State Police are infamous for their racism and brutality.”

*
HANDS OFF ASSATA

also, having random thoughts about “emotional justice” (just made that up) and calling out the co-optation or exploitation of peoples’ emotional lived realities for other agendas as a form of violence… incredibly hard/ complicated to name in specific situations but it seems like a bedrock of how the state and/or right wing creates broad bases of support for bullshit and also mirrors stuff like gaslighting and manipulation in abusive relationships. michelle gottschalk, author of ‘the prison and the gallows’ actually wrote that the anti-DV and anti-rape movements were a major building block for mass incarceration,  and in my research i found the feminists calling that out talking about how it was just another example of the state exploiting and using them. what would it mean for people to have self-determination over how their emotions are interpreted, understood, and incorporated into collective action? or to have more resources to clarify what actions and consequences are generated from our emotional lived experiences?