Sedentary Meanderings

tiaramerchgirl:

nwbtcw:

tiaramerchgirl:

…if you’re going to commit a massive fail by claiming that “if you’re in a third-world country I doubt you’d have internet access and a Tumblr” us third-worldies will come en masse and poke you in the eye.

Also? The first-world/third-world terms are deprecated. (Did you know it originally meant countries that were neutral during the Cold War?) Try terms like “developing” or “newly industrialised”.

Because I spend a lot of time discussing the first/third world and various global economic inequalities, I feel it’s important to address these points. Yes, it is easy to make the ignorant mistake of “poor people have nothing” and “the third-world is ____,”filling in any sort of stereotype of brown people in dirt huts and so forth.

However, while there are legitimate improvements in living conditions and much industrialization has been done in places where (some) people may not expect it, there still exists radical discrepancies in governments and economies that creates a valid usage for “first-world”/”third-world” terminology (which has long been acceptable within Marxist circles).

Firstly,  while we can acknowledge the developing economies of places like Malaysia, South Korea, the Mideast (everyone loves pictures of Dubai), and so forth, we still must recognize much of these wealth increases are a result of expansive neoliberalism, economic colonialism, and globalization (I only use wiki as a reference because there are so many aspects to each of these, you should consider it a starting point). There still exists, in those countries, disparaging political and economic conditions (meet the new boss, same as the old boss), and a need for self-determination among citizens. Certainly in many middle eastern countries, we have the example of autocratic regimes whose secret police enforce the authoritarian agenda. Often, activism in these countries is met with strict oppression from security authorities.

Second, even when the wealth gap in those countries is lesser than in the US, GDP of those countries is incomparably less. As such, their influence among global markets can’t begin to compete. Often times, western (first-world) view those lesser developed countries (the actual correct term if you’re concerned with what’s appropriate among political scientists) as emerging markets, with fewer environmental and labor regulations, leading to large social justice abuses from massive “sweatshop” manufacturing which unfairly exploits workers, to environmental disasters such as the Bhopal gas tragedy.  

Thirdly, the United States foreign policy treats nations as “first-world” and “third-world” in an assertive foreign policy which both projects power (hard and soft) by manipulating various state actors through multilateral (or hub and spoke) associations in the case of Europe and developed countries, versus bilateral relationships with more tumultuous areas (Africa and Mideast, South America in some cases). To put it more simply, “third-world” is a legit term because much of the way the US treats the world is based on the Cold War - when the USSR fell, there was a decade of various power reshuffling until the GWOT emerged as a better ominous enemy through which to continue US imperialist policy. Third-world actors kept their positions on the American chessboard.

Summary: have those terms depreciated? No, they’ve evolved. Do people in the third-world have computers and Tumblr? of course they do. Are they still repressed by terrible economic inequalities? …have you been paying attention?

I hope this isn’t an effort at trying to school me about economic inequalities in the countries of my origin, because…dude, I know. I saw it, lived it. It’s how I could be practically aristocratic in Bangladesh, upper-middle-class in Malaysia, and barely middle-class in Australia as a casually-employed artist whose familial privilege and money didn’t travel far.

In Bangladesh you either were the maid or you had a maid.
One of my Malaysian university lecturers told me that the Founder of the college, a rather power-mad individual, had me on a list of “VIP students” because of my dad’s position as CEO of a State-owned corporation.
In Australia I barely fit in amongst the expats (what’s the difference between an expat and an immigrant? Money) and could very well pass as a boat person if you didn’t know me personally.

The problem with the very US-centric use of “first world” and “third world”, besides privileging an event that really only concerned the US and the Soviet Union for the most part (hence most of the world being third world/neutral) is that it doesn’t express the vast differences between third world countries, differences much more severe than that of the first world (which I’ve also heard as OECD countries - more an organisational term but still useful). There are huge differences between Malaysia and Bangladesh, between Bangladesh and Somalia, and hell, between states in each country. And there’s places in the USA and Australia that are total slums compared to cities like Kuala Lumpur or Johor Bahru. (Honestly, the New York subway system made Malaysia’s LRTs look good.)

Also these terms are solely counting on economic capital as the main marker for success, when there’s a lot that third-worlders contribute in terms of other resources that gets overlooked - for instance, the human capital available in countries like The Philippines, Indonesia, and India (outsourcing or migrant labour), or the cultural capital provided by places like Bangladesh (the impetus for International Mother Language Day) and Thailand (all the tourism), or even something really specific like Bulgaria being the world’s largest producer of rose oil. It’s not just industrialization that makes you important, especially with the current shift towards knowledge-based economies, but it is what apparently gets you the most attention.

First and Third World: US-centric terms lacking significant nuance.

Um, no. That’s a severely abridged history of the term “third world” that erases huge swathes of activity by people from areas designated “third world”.The term “third world” was pretty thoroughly reclaimed through the non-aligned movement and the national liberation movements that inspired/were inspired by it. There were also entire national political-economic paradigms informed by a third-worldist ideology of self-reliance (as opposed to colonial dependency). And the intellectual and political impetus for this political paradigm came from South Asia and Latin America, not the USA.

There are some serious issues with third-worldism as an ideology, especially its focus on nationalism and industrialisation, which tended to displace indigenous peoples and religious, ethnic and social minorities. It’s also tended to marginalise women. I think it’s these violent excesses, rather than the term being “US-centric” (a totally misguided critique if ever I saw one), as well as geopolitical changes resulting from the debt crisis and oil crisis, and the ascendancy of fundamentalisms, that date the term “third world”.

The most widely-accepted current terminology for referring to poor and disenfranchised people in the world is the Global South. Granted, the term shares some of the problematic connotations of ‘third world’ as a collective term, but Global South arose from a very different context, in which popular social movements were challenging national governments and economic elites in the Global South.

Technocratic language like “newly industrialised” depoliticises the actual causes of poverty and deprivation in the world: the economic and political domination of European and North American countries. The notion of “developing” countries is pretty problematic as well: it naturalises some countries as the ideal of “development” and assumes that all countries can follow that path so long as they do what the wealthier countries say. In some contexts, I think these terms are perfectly appropriate, but they’re not without their own issues, most saliently the erasure of imperialism and geopolitical hegemony by certain countries.

I agree that in some contexts that fixating on the dominant elite is US-centric and erases the value that people outside the imperial centres contribute to the global economy. But when discussing the relationships between countries, regions of countries, or groups of people within different countries in the world, avoiding any acknowledgement of the power relations between dominant and marginalised countries is erasing as well. People in the Global South might contribute much of the intellectual and physical labour to the world’s society, but that labour is still controlled and profited-off by an elite.

That said, most of the Global South has better mobile infrastructure than in some parts of the Global North. And the dipshit who wrote that comment to jaded can go suck on that.

afghanipoppy:

octobersurpriserevolution: Dalia kindly translated those Egyptian slogans that I posted yesterday:

“ا مبارك ارحل غور أحسن بكره تموت مقتول
“Oh Mubarak leave for good, or else tomorrow you’ll be killed”
• الهلال ويا الصليب بيقولوا لأ يا حبيب “The crescent and the cross say “no” my love / darling”
(Jonathan sent me this: “Just FYI the Habib in  الهلال ويا الصليب بيقولوا لأ يا حبيب   is surely Interior Minister Habib el-Adly, not ‘darling’”

• الهلال ويا الصليب ضد القتل والتعذيب “The crescent and the cross against murder and torture”
• حسني مبارك يا عميل بعت الغاز وفاضل النيل “Husni Mubarak, you agent, you sold the gas and (only) the Nile is left (to be sold)”
• قولوا وردوا أنت وهي …مصر هتفضل غاليه عليا“Say and repeat, you and she….  Egypt will stay dear to me”
…مصر حتفضل غاليه عليا رغم الخونه والحراميه“Egypt will stay dear to me, despite the traitors and the thieves”
• ارحل ارحل ارحل غور خلِّي بلدنا تشوف النور“Leave, leave, leave, for good, let our country see the light”
• ارحل ارحل يا عميل بعت بلادك لاسرائيل“Leave, leave you traitor, you sold your country to Israel”
• ياعيون العالم طُلي مصر لبست توبها التلُّي“Oh, eyes of the world behold, Egypt wore her tulle dress”
• ارفع ارفع الهتاف شعبنا حر ومش هيخاف“Raise, raise the chant / call / slogan, our people are free and not afraid”
• اضرب اضرب يا حبيب مهما تضرب مش هنسيب“Hit, hit, you darling, no matter how much you hit, we won’t let go”
• مش عايزينه مش عايزينه ولا كلابه ولا زنانيه“I don’t want, I don’t want, neither his dogs nor his prisons”
• اصحي يا مصر وفوقي م النوم نهبوا ولادك يوم ورا يوم“Wake up Egypt and become aware, they had deprived your sons of sleep day after day”
• ثوره ثوره في كل مكان ضد الخونه والأندال“Revolution, revolution everywhere, against the traitors and the scoundrels”
• ثوره ثوره يا مصريين لجل ما نخلص م الخاينين“Revolution, revolution, oh Egyptians, so that we can get rid of the traitors”
• اهرب اهرب ياجمال انت وابوك والأندال“Escape, escape, Gamal, you and your father are scoundrels”
• يا مبارك يا خرتيت ارحل ارحل يا غتيت“Oh Mubarak, you rhinoceros, leave, leave, you’re annoying”
• علِّي الصوت علِّي كمان لجل ما يسمع كل جبان“Raise your voices even more, so that every coward hears”
• حسني مبارك جلده تخين هو وعيلته مش سامعين“Husni Mubarak has thick skin, he and his family aren’t hearing”

• حسني مبارك يا بليد شعب مصر مش عبيد“Husni Mubarak, you lazy one, Egypt’s people are not slaves”

• حسني مبارك يا جبله اطلع اطلع اطلع بره“Husni Mubarak, here’s the clarification, get out, get out, get out, outside”
• يا جمال يا غراب البين خد ابوك وروحوا لزين“Oh Gamal, you crow, we’re turning your father’s cheek, so you two leave to Zayn (al-‘Abideen Bin ‘Ali)”
• شعبنا رافضه من سنين بس مبارك جلده تخين“Our people are refusing him, it’s been years, but Mubarak’s skin is thick”
• علِّي علِّي علِّي الصوت النظام خايف موت“Raise, raise, raise the voice, the regime is scared to death”
• التغيير التغيير ارحل ارحل يا حقير“Change, change, leave, leave, you contemptible (person)”
• مش ماشيين قاعدين قاعدين حسني مبارك جلده تخين“We’re not leaving, we’re sitting, sitting, (because) Husni Mubarak has thick skin”
• ارحل ارحل ياخسيس بره بره يا عجل يا تيس“Leave, leave, you despicable (person), outside, outside, you calf, you ass”
• فاقد الحس والأهليه هو وابنه والوليَّه الخرتيت ابن الحراميه“They don’t have sensations or qualifications, he and his son and his wife, the rhinoceros, the son of thieves”
• كل الشعب يقول وينادي حسني مبارك بره بلادي“All the people say and call:  Husni Mubarak (get) outside his country”
• يا حبيب يا حبيب حسني مبارك قتله قريب“Oh sweetie / darling, oh sweetie / darling, Husni Mubarak’s murder is near”
• السرطان في كل مكان والغاز متباع بالمجان“The cancer is everywhere, and the gas is sold for free”
• باعوا دمانا وباعوا كلاوينا وبنشحت احنا وأهالينا“They sold our blood, they sold our kidneys, and we beg, we and our families”
• تسقط تسقط العصابه الزعيم ويا الديابه“Fall, Fall, the gang, the boss, and the wolves”
• مسلمين مع مسيحيين كلنا طالبين التغيير“Muslims with Christians, we all demand change”
• الكرامه والحريه مطلب كل المصراويه“Dignity and freedom, is the demand of all Egyptians”
• التحرير التحرير من حكم الرمه الخنزير“Liberation, liberation, from rule by the dregs / junk, the pig”
• التحرير التحرير من حكم عصابة التزوير“Liberation, liberation, from rule by the gang of fraud”
• مصر بلدنا مش تكيه للهليبه والحراميه“Egypt, our country, is not a hospice, for villains and thieves”
• شرطة مصر يا شرطة مصر انتو بقيتوا كلاب القصر“Police of Egypt, oh police of Egypt, you’ve become the dogs of the castle”
• لأ لأ لأ يا جيش خليك بره واوعى تطيش حسني مبارك مش حيعيش  ”“No, no, no, oh army, stay out and aware, don’t be reckless, Husni Mubarak will not live””

I’ve been in a bit of a snit for the last 2 weeks about anarchists ruining protest (cos they Ruin Everything), but the actions in Tunisia, Egypt, and now Yemen have given me hope again. Note to self: ignore white anarchists when they talk about “resistance” (when what they actually mean is making everything About Them and their beef with cops) & get the fuck out of hipsterville.

dancingonembers:

September 30, 2008 (so, this might seem weird, but in addition to its actual content, this post is laying the groundwork for an analysis of the silence surrounding the recent anti-muslim terror attack in Ohio (see also. h/t to Cheshire Bitten. More of the groundwork will be done in a post to follow.)

How often do you see trans women of color speaking in their own voices? On the blogosphere (that is, user created media), there are quite a few: Holly, Tobi, Little Light, Mia Nikasimo, and Monica Roberts, who in turn highlights the voices of Marisa Richmond and Claudia Charriez, as well as (to a lesser degree of self determination) Isis Tsunami, Bulent Ersoy, Leang Sothea.

In non-blogosphere media (that is, media filtered through an organization), there are any number on the Being T documentary (whose names I don’t know)(h/t Monica), and the deceased Marsha P Johnson (who is rarely shown speaking for herself, almost always reduced to ‘activist and murder victim’) and Sylvia Rivera. Seriously.

In Chicago, one friend of mine is a labor organizer, and acquaintances of mine work at the Broadway Youth Center, and Howard Brown. In Minneapolis I met and briefly worked with women from The African American AIDS Task Force, The Indigenous People’s Task Force, District 202, and All Gender Health.

I make this long, long list not because it’s exhaustive (it’s not, please comment if I forgot you), but in order to make it painfully obvious that there are lots and lots of trans women of color speaking, saying and doing important shit.

And if you’re white and that’s what you think of when you hear “trans woman of color” (etc), I’ll eat my shoes. My hat, too. Hell, if you could name 5 accomplishments by trans women of color I’ll be impressed. But not because they aren’t accomplishing them. Because they’re not being reported.

Media visibility for trans women of color (scanty as it is) goes to 1)objectifying portrayals of sex workers, and 2)murder/hate crime victims. The white trans community seems to have replicated this pattern–while Becoming a Black Man¹ and Still Black may have achieved some popularity, and Whipping Girl has spread like wildfire, almost all of what I see reported in transnews and on the blogosphere at large that covers TWOC is focused almost exclusively on their victimhood, and the commentary limited to that & dissection of the fetishization.

Of the top twenty hits googling “trans woman of color”, only two were definitively not about that person being a victim (or survivor) of racist trans misogynistic physical violence, one of which was a comment by Little Light in response to transphobic hate speech included in the 59th Carnival of Feminists; 7 of the first 10 results for “trans women of color” are about transphobic violence (though one does have a positive unrelated story), and the other three are about Isis and Lavergne on reality TV. By contrast, not one of the first 10 for “trans women” focuses on physical violence, and only three out of ten for “trans woman”. Neither “trans man of color” nor “trans men of color” turned up any results obviously violence related (though the “Becoming a Black Man does relate to violence, it’s not in such an objectifying way.).

Say it with me now: trans women of color are not objects. They are not (only) victims. They are not the people you can push the pity party onto when you’re tired of dealing with it yourself and want to be seen acting to change shit. Yes, they are at vastly greater risk of violence than the rest of us trans folks–and just because you bring that up when transphobic/trans misogynistic violence is being talked about does not make you a “good ally“. Their deaths do not define their existence. Yes, many are sex workers because of economic marginalization–and this does not define their lives. They are more than points in a power struggle between multiple groups of white trans activists and cis feminists.

As Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha writes in “The Femme Shark Manifesto”:

FEMMES ARE LEADERS IN TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS/ DEFENDING OUR QUEER AND TRANS OF COLOR COMMUNITIES.

WE USED OUR STILETTOS AS WEAPONS AT STONEWALL

WE WERE THE TRANS[ ]WOMEN WHO FOUGHT BACK AT THE COMPTON CAFETERIA

WE’RE THE GIRLS WHO STARE DOWN ASSHOLES STARING AT OUR LOVERS AND FRIENDS ON THE SUBWAY….

WE REMEMBER OUR DEAD- SAKIA GUNN, GWEN ARAUJO, AND MANY OTHER QUEER AND TRANS POC WHO DIED BECAUSE OF RACIST, HOMO/TRANSPHOBIC VIOLENCE. NOT AS A POLITICAL STATEMENT BUT AS WOMEN WE LOVED IN REAL LIFE WOMEN WHO COULD’VE BEEN US OR OUR LOVES.(link) (note–this piece is about queer femmes of color, not specifically trans ones. And you should read it.)

More later.

1: A rather (trans) misogynistic article at that–it does include trans women’s voices, but only as a means to further oppress them/erase their voices and further the subtextual point ‘black men have it worse than black women’. See also my performance piece, So Shut Up.

* * *

bolding is mine, because that is what I did in my hysterical post last night. - C

So very true, although really US-centric.

ourcatastrophe:

caitlinate:

ourcatastrophe:

leonineclaire:

The Strategic Report describes it as the ‘gradual gentrification of Footscray’, and the State Government and Maribyrnong City Council are encouraging the change, allocating $52.1 million towards its renewal as part of the 2030 Transit Cities Program.

Upgrades for Nicholson Street Mall and a new pedestrian bridge at Footscray Station are nearly complete. The new bridge dominates the skyline. In its space-ship curves and its glass and Swiss-cheese sheeted-metal, there’s promise of blue skies and safer streets. If the Government and private investors have their way, Footscray will assimilate and become the new Fitzroy, Richmond, Northcote: ethnic on the outside and white underneath.

I also wanna note that most of this has happened under a Labor and Green dominated local council and a Green mayor.   just sayin’

This is something I think about. Cos like, heaps of people I know are moving to Footscray and I am torn between being like “okay, cool!” and like “why? don’t do that! you will contribute to the wave of gentrification that is not-so-slowly creeping West!” Just cos you are a cool queer squatter punk or whatever, doesn’t mean people won’t see you as the nice white boy or nice white girl who will possibly buy things from the up-market pizza place business they are going to start. Your fashion might be a physical presentation of your political identity but other people aren’t necessarily going to discern that & it’s not necessarily going to be enough to discourage them. I don’t think people get to say “I am all aware of capitalism and white supremacy and the evils of gentrification! But I want to live in this place! So I’m going to!”

AND. Arguments about being poor and not being able to afford other places are rubbish - you’re white, you’re young but not too young, you can afford and access plenty more housing than the people you’re going to displace, even if some of it is in less fashionable locations. VISIT FOOTSCRAY, LIVE SOMEWHERE ELSE.

Relevant side note, my dad lives in Footscray. He is mad, working class & a bogan and is always complaining to me about the Greens in his electorate and how they have NO IDEA and how their priorities are rarely things that mean anything to the local communities of migrants and workers and how they’re all stuck up middle & ruling class toffs who just want to put bike paths everywhere instead of “doing something useful”. WHICH IS WHY EVERYONE THERE VOTES LABOUR.

yes, exactly

I struggle with this a bit because I grew up in footscray and don’t really like the white studenty inner north suburb I currently live in, like, at all, and I really want to move back west when I graduate — I miss it like a hole in my heart, no kidding — but I’m not sure if I should because I would definitely be part of the gentrifying wave and my personal history doesn’t change that.  people aren’t gonna see me and think “local kid, the mad plumber’s daughter”, they’re gonna think “trendy young uni student who eats bourgie health food”.  even though both of those things are true.  like, there’s no point moving back there if my presence means it won’t be the there I remember.  

but I mean there is always the totally-gentrified-for-decades parts of the west like yarraville and williamstown.  yarraville is like a twenty minute walk from the centre of footscray, you know?  there’s other options open to me. 

either way it’s not enough to be “aware” of gentrification, you have to do something about it.  that could mean putting your time and energy into the initatives of working class and migrant people in the Scray (which exist aplenty, and generally reflect different priorities than those of young white students), or it could mean staying away, or it could mean something else, I don’t know.  but it probably doesn’t mean making grumpy noises about gentrification while failing to see how you’re softening the ground for it. 

(also my mum has pretty much the same rant about the greens, right down to the bike paths bit.  hahaha shit)

I don’t think that not living somewhere where you otherwise could get access to is really going to make a difference in terms of gentrification. I think that’s a bit of an individualistic way of looking at gentrification and centres the motives of gentrifiers…

Gentrification is driven by a housing and real estate structure that makes people profits for jacking up prices. And, I think, changes to the structure of the Australian economy that depend on both a housing price bubble and a skilled labour bubble. There are systemic reasons for gentrification happening which don’t just boil down to simple shortages of housing, but to a general polarisation of incomes both in wealthy countries and across the world. There are more high-income people in the world and more of them are concentrated in wealthy countries like Australia.

I’m all for centring the local, but I think it also needs to be contextualised in broader forces.

theafricatheynevershowyou:

Empowering local communities to solve their own problems is the best way to improve health across the continent.

By Juanita During

The deadline for the world to meet its millennium development goals is now only four years away, yet in sub-Saharan Africa, there are still 570 million people without adequate sanitation, and it will be another 200 years before just half of the population of this region have access to a safe, private toilet.

In Nigeria where I live – alongside one-fifth of the continent’s population – sanitation coverage stands at just 32%.

And while we wait for the pundits, politicians and policymakers to do something about this, our children die at the rate of 4,000 a day. That’s the equivalent of one child dying in the time it takes to read this paragraph.

I have seen many technologies designed to solve our problems parachuted into Nigeria. Some work, most don’t. I am continually amazed at the products thrust at us and the astonishment that then follows when something that we have had no consultation on fails to work in our local context. The lesson should be simple: know the area, know the people.

It is only through talking and listening to the people on the ground that we will be able to make long-lasting and sustainable moves out of poverty. This is especially pertinent when trying to educate people about sanitation and hygiene and bringing about a change in behaviour.

All too often I have seen latrines built and used as broom cupboards or goat sheds while the people carry on the way they have always known - using the great outdoors. Those trying to help scratch their heads and wonder why the latrines aren’t being used. If only it were that straightforward, then we would probably have made a lot more progress on the sanitation MDG target than we have so far.

Local knowledge is everything. WaterAid conducted its own research across west Africa into different ethnic groups’ attitudes to going to the toilet. The results go some way to explaining why simply building a latrine is only half the battle.

In many rural areas in west Africa, the practice of open-air defecation is ritualised and bound in tradition. Beyond individual differences, the members of a group or society are united by similar ways of thinking and behaving, and will react to situations in similar ways. Our research showed that reasons for resistance to using a latrine included beliefs that one might be possessed by demons, lose magical powers or live a shorter life. Some believe a toilet is meant only for wealthy people or that, if somebody feeds you, you should in turn defecate in their field.

For many in so-called modern cultures who take the use of a safe, private toilet for granted, these reasons may sound funny, even ridiculous. However, it soon becomes sobering to think that each of these beliefs may be directly linked to disease, debilitation and death.

WaterAid is adapting an approach known as community-led total sanitation (CLTS) in west Africa. First conceived in Bangladesh, it is a concept that has been sweeping across south Asia with impressive results, and many are hoping that it can bring similar results to Africa. It is based on an understanding that the people themselves have the solutions and are best able to determine which interventions will enable them to attain a self-defined, collective destiny.

Instead of focusing on the supply and installation of sanitation hardware to communities, CLTS focuses on changing attitudes and behaviour through community mobilisation to stop open defecation, and to build and use latrines.

Participants have reported that they find the approach engaging, participatory and, most notably, empowering – putting them in control of their own destiny, in a context in which, more often than not, death by disease is accepted with fatalistic submission to the ‘will of God’ or the hex of an enemy or the local witch.

Empowering local communities – especially women – with information that allows them to make decisions pertaining to their health and wellbeing ensures that they “own” the desired change. It is they who can be credited for the health benefits of safe sanitation and hygiene practices. It is they who commit to the necessary behaviour change, they who hold themselves and their peers accountable.

Here, help is not coming from outside, but from within - and people are in charge of their own destiny.

etiquette-etc:

sisteroutsider:

So,  a few weeks ago I posted a link to a blog Passing for Straight in the 21st Century, about passing for white and straight by Aviva Dove-Viebahn.  I thought it was interesting and thoughtfully written and it called into question my own experiences with passing for straight in a very gendered world.

 

Several years ago, when I first came out, I remember going to our local gay bar with a few friends and being approached by a rather attractive woman while waiting for my drink.  She asked, “Where’s your husband?” Now this might have been her pick up line, or just a way to ask me if I was lesbian without making any assumptions based on my “straight” appearance. Either way, I told her that I wasn’t married and that I was indeed lesbian. Otherwise why would I be hanging out in a gay bar? I guess I need to give you a little background. I’m a black lesbian woman who also identifies as femme. Yeah, femme.  In other words, I am not masculine identified and I tend to subscribe to a few traditional notions of femininity.  And I do not apologize for it. I like wearing lip gloss and skirts. I’ve never worn a lot of make-up, but I do wear eye-liner and mascara since it tends to accentuate what I think are one of my best features, my eyes.  

 

Still, my first experiences with the black lesbian community in my hometown were rather strange. I was often accused of being “too femme,” and in my naivete at the time, I really couldn’t understand why it was an issue. Regardless, I tried to conform, wearing more pantsuits and slacks than skirts and dresses.  I was also told that butches and femmes were “out of fashion” and that no one “did that” anymore. I’ve come to realize that these black women were feeding into common arguments at the time (especially in white lesbian communities) that butch/femme relationships mirrored heterosexual relationships. I know now that that was bullshit; just another way of folks trying to police our sexual and gender expressions. 

 

In any event, through the years I have become more comfortable with identifying as femme, although in most cases people (even lesbians who should know better) assume that I’m straight. I’m always asked about a boyfriend or husband, and frequently have had a hard time meeting women who assume that because I do not transgress gender boundaries, that I must subscribe to heteronormative ones. 

 

Nothing could be further from the truth.  However, I love being a “girl,” and as a feminist I make no apologies for my own brand of gendered expressions, fully realizing that not everyone feels the same way. And?  I also love love love more masculine identified women, and have generally dated what I would consider “soft” studs. For me it’s all about attitude, and less about any particular brand of masculinity. Nothing gets my pulse to racing quicker than a cool-ass woman, or what is more commonly known now as her “swag.” 

 

There you have it, I’m a black lesbian femme, and although I realize that I pass for straight, I’m also aware that my very existence counters common stereotypes about what lesbians “look like.” As far as I’m concerned, they look like me and you. So there.

well put and so refreshing to hear

madamethursday:

microaggressions:

A submission we received:

I know that this blog is dedicated to microaggressions, but I wanted to suggest the possibility of starting a blog of…I don’t know if there’s a word…Micro-supports? You know, the little things that people do, sometimes, but not always, without…

INSTA-FOLLOW. INSTA-REBLOG. 

I seriously hope this doesn’t just become about giving cookies to people for being decent human beings.