Important.

thespiritwas:

in 5 hours over 700 people reblogged my post about CeCe choosing a plea deal. wow! to me that communicates that we’re outraged by interpersonal & systemic transphobia, racism, ableism, sexism and classism that we know all to well happens every day. it communicates that we’re going to keep fighting…

Worth a read regarding teen pregnancy, body- and sex-shaming, capitalism, etc.

fatandtheivy:

Chanel Dubofsky and I have been galavanting around the city talking abortion, 16 and Pregnant, nail polish, and critiques of capitalism. She recently attended the CLPP conference and went to a panel discussion called “Teen Families Take the Lead.” Upon her return to the city and after…

And I like it but also groan as every other page is essentializing binary gender riles trying to explain why women need friends (and what kind of friends) in ways more than/different than men. And while all of the authors research may be spot on, her voice doesn’t have the gravitas to make me take her seriously as a gender theorist - which is a line I feel like she’s trying to walk 25% of the time so far. I just wanted a memoir, not so much of a social commentary.

Anyway. There’s that and then it feels like a rom-com of the best-worst kind. And then she quotes KISSING JESSICA STEIN. Which I own and enjoy, but also see it is of course the perfect fit to this book.

(and seeing as I really did just use “gravitas” when rambling about this book, I don’t fail to see how pretentious I sound.)

psychotropicpolitics:

I wrote my final in American studies on this video last year. Good to revisit.

I think I have thoughts about this video but I can’t even wrap my head around them. Just. What. And also: why I need to continue my education.

wicked-grin:

alliterate:

[video is the music video for Beyonce’s “Run the World (Girls)”]

inkstone:

squintyoureyes:

hopesichord:

I’m sorry, but the fact that there exists any progressive human being who thinks this song is inappropriate in its politics is unfathomable to me.

#THE MEN HAVE FUCKING BODY SHIELDS #YOU CAN ALL GO HOME #did you all sleep through the girl power movement or #god damn #actually my biggest issue with the girl power movement is that it was always very white and very thin and very peppy and very safe. so i will happily take this WOC-filled music video about militaristic feminism any day of the fucking week

check out those tags

hadn’t seen this yet. had been avoiding the commentary because i figured it would all be coded in racist and slut shaming language - or just plain overt fucked-uped-ness.

but this is fucking badass

When I wasn’t looking, Beyonce became one of the most fascinating people for me to pay attention to.

(Source: demarches)

I once spent a year only reading books written by women. If I remember correctly, this was one of the first years I was living in Seattle - on my own, fresh faced from college - and I think a lot of my motivation came from not being surrounded by a lady community and a political community and trying hard to hold onto some straws. Which may sound like I don’t think it was a worthy effort - it was. It was also hard. Maybe because I spent six months trying to read one book, so I a) didn’t read as much as I would have liked in total that year; b) spent half a year reading a book I didn’t particularly like; and c) unfairly came to kind of resent the whole project, even though I spent six months trying to read Crime & Punishment a couple years later. (Incidentally, after finishing each book I had the same reaction: in whole, and in hindsight, I liked both a lot; I just am not sold on how long they each took me to read.)

Sometime around August of that year I started looking at books in bookstores written by men with a certain amount of longing. Books I really wanted to read but through some self-imposed regimen I was forbidden from reading for another five months. My “To Read” wish list grew exponentially as I continued to count down months until the next January. When, in my head, it seemed like the floodgates would open. I admit I probably wasn’t working very hard at my project. I could have put some more effort into finding books that intrigued me just as much as the ones I wasn’t letting myself read. Still, in bookstores of any size and any ownership (independent, chain, small, giant, full price, half price, etc) - the vast majority of books written by women, that were being featured on the “New and Noteworthy Paperbacks” tables, were all about the same thing: either a romantic comedy, a romantic drama, a romantic thriller, a health scare, a career vs. home dilemma, how to hold a family together in this crazy world, or trials and tribulations of best friends. I don’t pretend that the books I read by men are all that different from each other either, their story lines just appeal to me more maybe or they’re easier to find (yes).

I also don’t think there aren’t any women writing stories I want to read. It was also in this year that I read Margaret Atwood, Zadie Smith, Octavia Butler, and Jhumpa Lahiri made it to my shelf. At the beginning of this, I said I spent a year on this project. More accurately, I spent a year not reading books by men from North America or Western Europe. Which I realized even then was a cop out - but also remarkaby more difficult than I had anticipated. I think after Darkmans I read One Hundred Years of Solitude and then I read a history of queer politics which was co-edited by a man.

Still, my favorite authors are men and I feel a little guilty about that. I know I still haven’t done enough work to shake up my reading list. I also blame lists like Esquires and the publishing industry and the book selling industry and the agents involved in making it easier for men to have books made and marketed. For the people who create a climate where the majority of books by women on the “New and Noteworthy Paperbacks” tables will be print versions of Julia Roberts movies (movies, by the way, that I love and some of which, are actually pretty great). And I’m a part of that climate too. Voting with my dollar and my library card.

fatandtheivy:

“When the show went to No. 1 in December 1988, ABC sent a chocolate “1” to congratulate me. Guess they figured that would keep the fat lady happy—or maybe they thought I hadn’t heard (along with the world) that male stars with No. 1 shows were given Bentleys and Porsches. So me and George Clooney [who played Roseanne Conner’s boss for the first season] took my chocolate prize outside, where I snapped a picture of him hitting it with a baseball bat. I sent that to ABC.”

Ditto to all below. I think I’ve seen this - or similar - before, but it’s always a good refresher.

genderqueer:

pansexualpride:

queerwatch:

bitterbuffalo:

What’s this? An anti-rape campaign that focuses on preventing rape instead of preventing women leaving the house? Holy crap it’s Christmas. 

mencanstoprape.org

facebook page

For @photojojo’s July photo contest: theme a day, voted on by Tumblr photographers.

July 1st: beginnings. One of the first pics I took as I began my transition a few months ago, playing with gender imagery.

This shot, and others, on my Flickr.

whakahekeheke:

Cutest fucking thing ever

I feel like a woman watching this stuff. I mean, not “woman” as in I’m validating the dominant norm of femininity being female or anything. I mean, I’m not sexist or androcentric of course. I understand that gender is primarily a social construct, so no, I mean, I’m not denying the effects of historical patriarchy. I’m certainly not saying feminism is irrelevant, but obviously I’m not female so I’m not saying I can speak to the relevance of feminism because I haven’t had that experience, but of course I’m not claiming that woman’s experience is reducible more than male experience or that I have grounds to claim that post-feminism is invalid or that feminism only deals with biological females or anything.  Don’t get me wrong, though, I don’t want to disregard sociobiologists or hereditarians - I’m not disregarding biological reality, but I’m also not denying that biological sciences are affected by historical patriarchy. I mean, obviously women’s liberation can’t be assessed by sex ratios in some academic science, but I don’t want to deny the androcentrism of Western academia, but of course I’m not implying that non-Western women face less patriarchy or anything…

This is why it’s so hard to live in this space I’m in. Because gender is already a fucked up thing to try to talk about, though this dude gives it a good college try.