Your new post is loading...
A symposium at Harvard Business School delved into intersectionality—the seemingly obvious yet complex idea that gender interacts with other axes of inequality such as race, age, class, and ethnicity.
(Brennan Linsley/AP Photo) WASHINGTON — Former President Bill Clinton warned Saturday night that despite great gains for the gay and transgender community, the lines of gender and race in politics could still cast a shadow in the years ahead.
Via bobbygw, Deanna Dahlsad
NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER! Shipping mid-November 2014.
LiartownUSA is proud to offer a full-color, glossy, 12” x 12” wall calendar, painstakingly crafted to honor and celebrate our bravest, most productive modern heroes: ONLINE SOCIAL JUSTICE ACTIVISTS.
What began as an imaginary calendar on a blog post is now the first Liartown artifact to respectfully and consensually enter the real world. Hailed as “the absolute best cat calendar!” by none other than Jezebel.com, this impressive calendar showcases 12 absolutely precious kittens, each carefully selected through a grueling audition process. Unlike bland, privileged garbage kittens chosen for nothing more than shallow good looks, Social Justice Kittens radiate fierce strength in the face of untold adversity, and all are gifted with a dazzling array of genders and orientations to go with their tiny, oh-so-kissable faces! THE STATUS QUO WILL NEVER FULLY ACCEPT THESE KITTENS!
After thousands of years of cis-het, patriarchal BULLSHIT, here’s a calendar that DARES YOU to speak truth to power. A calendar which boldly announces to the world that you aren’t going to sit back and let others speak for you. A calendar that holds you up high so others can see you’re able to stand proudly on your own. Here at LAST is a calendar that urges you to lean in really close and actually drink the sweet, pathetic tears RIGHT OFF YOUR OPPRESSORS’ STUBBLED CHEEKS!
Each month features a charming kitten professionally photographed in a heroic pose appropriate to a small cat defiantly speaking out on the hottest social justice issues of the day. A sassy, challenging declaration erases any doubts about each cat’s passionate rejection of the dominant paradigm.
In the end, the choice is simple: financially support the ideals embodied by this treasured, unique gift, or refuse to purchase a copy and become one of those hateful fake allies who actively embrace injustice and murder.
Today begins a weekly series of posts about white women and white feminism. There is something troubling to me in the pattern of white women’s behavior and white feminism’s response to inequality that I want …
In which I introduce RH Reality Check's latest venture: MY BLOG.
The many stereotypes of black women are used to justify violence and aggression against them. Because black women are mythologized as gold-digging, angry, physically strong, provocative shrews some black men assume (and this is something that having a mama, a auntie, a grandmother who raised you, or your own damn daughters doesn’t change) that if/when black women are hit, they asked for (or deserved) it. At the end of the day many men empathize with other men and instead of vilifying any act of violence, physical or otherwise, against anyone, especially a woman, they attempt to justify it. They put themselves in the shoes of the aggressor, but not the victim, and see themselves as blameless and reactionary, rather than violent and misogynistic.
New data from the EEOC show that pregnancy discrimination hits virtually every industry and every geographic area of the country.
Via Community Village Sites
The Horrifying Women's Rights Injustice That Modern Feminism Forgot Mic Such an infuriating issue should attract the ire of the feminist community, but so far there are mostly crickets.
Recent legislation regarding the forced sterilizations performed on incarcerated women in California prisons evokes a muted time in U.S. history when sexist, racist, classist and ableist eugenics policies were orchestrated by the state.
Via bobbygw, Deanna Dahlsad
A new report says that the federal government is the largest funder of low-wage jobs for working women and people of color, and that President Obama should take executive action to help lift them into the middle class.
Perhaps I am too Utopian *wink* but I do believe that when we gain insight & understanding, we can put our hearts & ethics into action. I respect the hell out of Kola Boof. Admire her greatly. Even when her words sting. For behind them, truth rings. I'd like to think there are others out there who can be taught daily, and not just from some 'word a day' calendar.
Gracie talks with Kola about the messages in her book of poems, Nile River Woman.
Twitter has come under fire from mainstream journalists and institutional gatekeepers, derided as "toxic" and a "poisonous well." But this opposition to Twitter—to its strengths as a democratizing platform—is as old as media itself.
Internet culture has become increasingly meme-heavy, and the mainstream (white) feminist meme du jour is “toxicity.” Twitter, they claim, has become hostile to them. When Louise Mensch wrote an article last year about why she didn’t need to check her privilege, there were few feminists rushing to her side. This year, however, daring to call a white woman out on her privilege – even when done in one’s own space in an entirely non-confrontational manner – is met with cries of bullying and worse.
Why the sudden change?
Language is an extremely finicky thing. Much like a snowball, a language picks up habits from the culture that uses it as time goes on, especially our really bad habits like racism, sexism, and homophobia. If a single word is enough to dismiss and disregard an entire population’s feelings, ideas, and humanity, you can imagine why those people would want it erased from society’s vocabulary.
The Nation recently published a column by Michelle Goldberg entitled, “Feminism's Toxic Twitter Wars: Empowered by social media, feminists are calling one another out for ideological offenses. Is it good for the movement?
Via bobbygw, Deanna Dahlsad
I am not new to masculinity, but I am new to being a black man. I am new to the experience of male privilege, as well as the disprivilege of race that marks my black male body as suspect.
Via Thabo Mophiring
Personally, I haven’t encountered that argument in the feminist blogosphere, and I would never make it myself. It’s the first lady’s life that sounds like the nightmare to me. You only need to spend one election season writing about Michelle Obama’s clothes to be caught in a fusillade of drive-by commenters’ hate speech. Yes, they’re only Internet trolls, but they’re digital traces of the simmering racism that makes being a high-achieving and high-profile black woman in America singularly frustrating. Cottle pays lip service to the racial limitations of Michelle Obama’s public persona, noting that some say Michelle “must tread lightly to avoid being stereotyped as an Angry Black Woman.” As if that were an abstract theory used to rationalize Obama’s frivolity and not a racist episode we collectively watched unfold over the past five years.
To be fair, this isn’t about Eroll Louis. His is a belief held by many people, including lots of black people, poor people, formerly poor people, etc. It is, I suspect, an honest expression of incredulity. If you are poor, why do you spend money on useless status symbols like handbags and belts and clothes and shoes and televisions and cars?
One thing I’ve learned is that one person’s illogical belief is another person’s survival skill. And nothing is more logical than trying to survive.
Foz Meadows from “I Am So Very Tired” in shattersnipe: malcontent & rainbows October 4, 2013 (via nonmono-perspective)
If only 12 Years a Slave (or Roots, or any other wrenching American slave narrative) could move audiences beyond those already eager for a dose of feel-good shame.
...Which leads to the more important question: Could this film possibly preach to the unconverted? Could it reach Americans who at this late date, in the 21st century, still haven’t gotten Stowe’s message? Will it even be seen by any of the millions who swear by Glenn Beck? This question might be asked of all the recent movies that touch upon America’s unfinished racial business: Lee Daniels’ The Butler, the Jackie Robinson biopic 42, and Fruitvale Station, as well as Django and Lincoln.
Liberals are fond of chastising the right (accurately) for living in a media echo chamber of Rush and Drudge by day and Fox News by night, with no other reality penetrating the bubble. The left has never been able to replicate that mass-media ecosystem; an exclusive diet of, say, the Times and NPR would be far more porous to contrary views than 24/7 of Fox and friends. But whenever mainstream media start gushing en masse about a cultural work with an uplifting historical or political message, a smaller liberal echo chamber does spring up that I’ve at times been part of: We tend to assume that a wide audience will be converted by the power of the new masterpiece at hand, especially under the tutelage of critics, editorial pages, magazine cover stories, and awards ceremonies. Much as the right can convince itself that all of America must regard Obamacare as the worst piece of legislative blight in the country’s history, or that easy access to guns is a God-given right tantamount to freedom of speech, so liberals can become prisoners of our own bubble.
CAP examines both the progress made and the challenges remaining for women of color across the country.
Throughout the 20th century, women fought for and achieved countless victories for women’s rights and became a political and economic force in our society after winning the right to vote, equal pay, and reproductive rights. While women have continued to organize for collective gains into the 21st century, the benefits of those achievements have not been equally shared. Over time, those gaps have expanded into wide and deep inequalities for some women—namely, women of color.
In May of this year, I talked to Deon Haywood, Executive Director of Women With A Vision in New Orleans about her approach to organizing. WWAV scored a significant grassroots legal and political victory in the last year with the NO Justice campaign, which removed hundreds of cis and trans women from Louisiana’s registered felony sexual offender rolls. Deon is a longtime activist in the city of New Orleans, with a history of organizing low-income women of color around reproductive justice, harm reduction, and human rights. ...We are not all in the same boat. And if we keep playing like we are, we’re not really going to make the kind of change we’d like to see. Because the women I work with are never going to be able to jump into the sex workers’ rights movement. They don’t feel like that movement is for them.
Via Gracie Passette, Deanna Dahlsad
And then in Zami, when Audre Lorde shares with us another memory, a memory of people spitting at her in the streets, I understood something. An experience of racism can involve the loss of the words to explain what is going on. It was a memory of her mother explaining to her that people were spitting into the wind because they were ill-mannered and rude, because the mother wants to protect her black child from the knowledge that those people are spitting at her, because she is a black child. I understood something. I understood that racism can be what happens right in front of us – in the direction of violence towards some of us – but also that we learn not to see it. We might learn not to see racism as a way of being protecting from racism: but of course we are not protected. We might not learn the word ‘racism’ or learn not to say that word ‘racism’ as if by not saying it, it might go away. Not naming racism as if racism is not going-on keeps racism on-going. This is why, in naming racism, we are always doing something. We need to find the words. Black feminism can be a way of finding the words.
From Black feminism as a Life-Line by Sara Ahmed. (via tamghrabit)
I've read through your blog pretty extensively, and theres something I'd like to ask from a place of honesty and genuine desire to understand. A white man can never begin to understand the struggle of a person of color or the struggle of a woman against oppression, because he can never walk in that person's shoes. He can also never renounce the privilege that he has (simply because he exists) no matter the amount of self-educating he does. What, then, should he do to be an ally?
The Tri Delt member said members scored the rushee extremely well during the first round, and she believes sororities would have been fighting over recruiting the rushee -- if she weren't black.
Via J'nene Solidarity Kay, Deanna Dahlsad
|
Curated by Deanna Dahlsad
An opinionated woman obsessed with objects, entertained by ephemera, intrigued by researching, fascinated by culture & addicted to writing. The wind says my name; doesn't put an @ in front of it, so maybe you don't notice. http://www.kitsch-slapped.com
Other Topics
Antiques & Vintage Collectibles
Crimes Against Humanity
From lone gunmen on hills to mass movements. Depressing as hell, really.
Cultural History
The roots of culture; history and pre-history.
In The Name Of God
Mainly acts done in the name of religion, but also discussions of atheism, faith, & spirituality.
Kinsanity
Let's just say I have reasons to learn more about mental health, special needs children, psychology, and the like.
Nerdy Needs
The stuff of nerdy, geeky, dreams.
Readin', 'Ritin', and (Publishing) 'Rithmetic
The meaning behind the math of the bottom line in publishing and the media. For writers, publishers, and bloggers (which are a combination of the two).
Sex Positive
Sexuality as a human right.
Vintage Living Today For A Future Tomorrow
It's as easy to romanticize the past as it is to demonize it; instead, let's learn from it. More than living simply, more than living 'green', thrifty grandmas knew the importance of the 'economics' in Home Economics. The history of home ec, lessons in thrift, practical tips and ideas from the past focused on sustainability for families and out planet. Companion to http://www.thingsyourgrandmotherknew.com/
Visiting The Past
Travel based on grande ideas, locations, and persons of the past.
Walking On Sunshine
Stuff that makes me smile.
You Call It Obsession & Obscure; I Call It Research & Important
Links to (many of) my columns and articles.
|