May 2011
41 posts
“Female sexuality is based on a series of myths and we are going to undo all of them.”
—
Betty Dodson (via notyourheart)
fuck yeah.
(via sexisbeautiful)
Oakland Elementary School Teaches Pupils That There Are More Than Two Genders →
pacificjustice.org
On May 23-24 Redwood Heights Elementary School will be teaching children in grades kindergarten through fifth that there are more than two genders. The two days calendared for this are entitled “Gender Spectrum Diversity Training.” In documents released by the school, students will be taught that “gender is not inherently nor solely connected to one’s physical anatomy.” Further, gender is a “complex interrelationship between [physical traits] and one’s internal sense of self as male, female, both or neither as well as one’s outward presentations and behaviors related to that perception.” Another document from the school advises parents: “When you discuss gender with your child, you may hear them [sic] exploring where they [sic] fit on the gender spectrum and why.”
In case all the scare-quotes didn’t tip you off, the organization that put out this press release is somehow under the very firm impression that these are BAD things.
Reblog if you have ever felt personally victimized by Regina George.
who is that in your most recent post?
I think he’s just a random dude? I found it on one of those fuckyeah-beautiful-people tumblrs. I WISH I KNEW THOUGH.
“
Though in the lower standard deviation, I fall, the statistician says,
within the normal range of happiness. Therefore, no drugs today.
What about tomorrow? What if doodling stars isn’t enough?
Will I be asked to color the rainbow one more time?
Name three wishes that might come true?
List everything I’ve been given within a minute?
Though within the normal range of happiness, I score poor
on bird appreciation, poor on oboe joy. My responses, in fact,
seem to indicate an overall confusion concerning joy itself.
What did I mean that during parties I choose the sofa
like a sick cat? That when tattoos are dispensed I’m first
in line? That books full of other people’s misery
make the beach infinitely more pleasant? Stargazing is another weakness.
Too much I examine the patch of dirt where nothing grows
where buried curiosa aren’t deep enough, though in Short Answer
I’m all for dancing alone in a silken robe. Friends call.
Mostly the machine answers. Mozart makes me cry.
I kill spiders without guilt. To make up for this
I take the kids to the golden arches play area.
A positive indicator. Also, interest in the existential
is minimal. I approve of make-up and ice cream.
When I wake early, I get out of bed. When I wallow
in planetary counterpoint, it never lasts. And here’s what really saves me:
if I were a ghost I’d be Casper. If I were a tradition
I’d be a dreidel. I like the rain. When the boat drifts off
I wave. When the dog runs off I follow.
“The fukú is machismo. It took me a long time to realize that. For a long time I was ineffably enamored of the novel. I knew I loved it, but, when faced with criticism – as I was one day by one of my colleagues, an expert in Latino literature, who found Yunior’s voice merely sexist, infuriatingly self-assured and macho – I found myself at a loss to say why. I hadn’t yet worked through the deep irony of the novel. It was on the surface as broken and postmodern as a Ph.D. in English could want, a fractured collection of incomplete narratives, with almost all the characters consumed by the merciless Angel of History; it was stuffed to bursting with references to geek culture that I reveled in seeing in a “legitimate work of literary fiction”; it was funny the way much Latino humor is funny, fast and black and fearless and savage. But what I loved most about it, inarticulately at first, is that it identifies machismo as a soul-crushing fukú for both women and men. Machismo is a curse that must be broken.”
—
Carlos Hernandez, “Oscar Wao: Murdering Machismo”. Via SF Signal.
Woah, have to read the whole thing when I have time
(via mamitamala)
One of the best books I’ve read.
Teenage lesbian is latest victim of 'corrective rape' in South Africa →
english.aljazeera.net
A 13-year-old lesbian has become the latest victim of “corrective rape” in South Africa, prompting activists to call for direct retaliatory action.
The girl, who is said to be open about her sexuality, was raped in Pretoria last Thursday, a government spokesman said.
Campaigners say so-called corrective rape, in which men rape lesbians to “cure” them of their sexual orientation, is on the increase in South Africa. Thirty-one lesbians have been killed because of their sexuality in the past decade, campaigners say, and more than 10 lesbians a week are raped or gang raped in Cape Town alone.
Last month, a 24-year-old woman who belonged to a gay and lesbian rights group was stoned to death after an apparent gang rape.
Officials said the 13-year-old victim’s case is being investigated by police and she and her family are receiving support. Tlali Tlali, a government spokesman, said it seemed to be another incident of corrective rape, adding: “Government condemns this senseless and cowardly act of criminality.”
Tlali said every South African had the right to express themselves in the sexual orientation of their choice. “Gay and lesbian rights are human and constitutional rights which must be protected and respected at all times.”
Ndumie Funda, founder of the Luleki Sizwe Project, a charity that supports survivors of corrective rape in Cape Town, said she had heard reports of a transgender person being raped over the weekend. “It is getting worse and needs to come to an end,” she said. “People are not being given a platform to come out of the closet. What about those who are locked in a cage and cannot come out? It’s not fair and it’s about time we talk.”
Funda, 37, became involved in the campaign when she met Nosizwe Nomsa Bizana, who had been raped at gunpoint by five men and infected with HIV. The couple became engaged but Bizana died in 2007. Funda is forced to take a different route home every day to avoid being targeted because of her public activism.
“Real women have curves” was a marketing slogan thought up to sell people overpriced, ill-fitting pants. It does NOT promote body positivity – it only perpetuates body policing by turning the tables on people who don’t fit into yet another arbitrary ideal. The job is to BUST THE FUCKING PARADIGM APART, not shift it a little bit toward the fat side. The job is to remind people, bodies are not public property and your opinion about an individual’s body is only an opinion, not a valid judgment of their worth as a human being. The JOB is to destroy systemic oppression of nonconforming, rebellious bodies no matter what those bodies look like.”
—
Job Number One; Destroying the Paradigm, Not Shifting It. (via wallofbooks)
death to all body commentary
(via bunnygamer)
“BE QUIET, TIFFANY, BE QUIET! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? STOP IT! I HAVE NEVER IN MY LIFE YELLED AT A GIRL LIKE THIS. WHEN MY MOTHER YELLS LIKE THIS IT’S BECAUSE SHE LOVES ME. I WAS ROOTING FOR YOU, WE WERE ALL ROOTING FOR YOU. HOW DARE YOU? LEARN SOMETHING FROM THIS. WHEN YOU GO TO BED AT NIGHT, YOU LAY THERE AND YOU TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOURSELF, ‘CAUSE NOBODY’S GONNA TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOU. YOU ROLLIN’ YOUR EYES AND YOU ACTING LIKE THIS BECAUSE YOU’VE HEARD IT ALL BEFORE. YOU’VE HEARD IT ALL BEFORE, YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE THE HELL I COME FROM, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’VE BEEN THROUGH. BUT I’M NOT A VICTIM, I GROW FROM IT, AND I LEARN. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOURSELF.”
—Tyra Banks (via vogueweekend)
“Words are less integers than points in a continuum. Indeed one might well describe the structure of the lyric as the expression of the interval.”
—Carole Maso, Ava (via holdonmagnolia)
“Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.”
—
Herman Hesse
this is why i don’t talk
(via bonemachine-)
“The ways in which contemporary capitalism undermines women’s bodies, from advertising to pornography to the structures of gendered labour and domestic conflict, are not private troubles with no bearing upon the wider world. They are necessary fetters in a superstructure of oppression that has become so fundamental to the experience of femininity that it is effectively invisible. This superstructure is vital to the very survival of the patriarchal capitalist machine. If all women on earth woke up tomorrow feeling truly positive and powerful in their own bodies, the economies of the globe would collapse overnight.”
—Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism, Laurie Penny (via shandog)
“
At last, a reason
not to want to live
forever: the stars
are winking out,
apparently, although
it won’t be apparent
to most of us any time
soon, one here,
one there, it will be
eons before noticeable
holes appear in Orion’s
belt, for example, or
the Water-Bearer’s
bucket, but just knowing
they’re going out e-
ventually, who would
want to stay on
under what will become
an unpunctuated
sky, just a few faint grains
of light, too few to make
anything of, nothing
to wish on, hitch
our wagons to, nothing
to lift us out of ourselves,
no pinpricks of hope
in our black box, no reason
to stay, no place to go.
“Women are not inherently more interested in or more able to love than men. From girlhood on, we learn to be more enchanted with love. Since the business of loving came to be identified as woman’s work, females have risen to the occasion and claimed love as our topic…The most popular movies and television shows with women as lead characters are all about the female search for love.”
—bell hooks, “Communion: The female search for love.” (via blueletter)
“It was your idea
to park and watch the elephants
swaying among the trees
like royalty
at that make-believe safari
near Laguna.
I didn’t know anything that big
could be so quiet.
And once, you stopped
on a dark desert road
to show me the stars
climbing over each other
riotously
like insects
like an orchestra
thrashing its way
through time itself
I never saw light that way
again.” —Dorothea Grossman, The Two Times I Loved You the Most In a Car (via grammatolatry)
to park and watch the elephants
swaying among the trees
like royalty
at that make-believe safari
near Laguna.
I didn’t know anything that big
could be so quiet.
And once, you stopped
on a dark desert road
to show me the stars
climbing over each other
riotously
like insects
like an orchestra
thrashing its way
through time itself
I never saw light that way
again.” —Dorothea Grossman, The Two Times I Loved You the Most In a Car (via grammatolatry)
“Our war is not against Islam, Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader. He was a mass murderer of Muslims.”
—Barack Obama (via iheartdescartes)
