Loving, Remixed
June 2011
your girl, she's a renegade: a woman, taking up space →
myslumberingheart.tumblr.com
When I was in fourth grade, I was sitting with my cello, waiting for my orchestra concert to begin. The cello was on the floor, but I was seated in my section in a long dress with my knees spread wide, and my elbows on my thighs. My mom - in the audience - gestured to me for five minutes to sit “properly,” and when I didn’t follow her instructions, she came up and reprimanded me for sitting “like a boy.”
When I was a senior in high school, I gave one of my good friend’s a copy of my senior portrait. Rather than thanking me and saying I looked cute/pretty/whatever, she looked at it for a while until she asked, “Why are you posing like a guy?” In the photo, I was sitting on steps, but my legs weren’t crossed … you know, how people normally sit on steps.
When I was in graduate school, I was walking to dinner with some colleagues. I was in front of the group with a male friend, walking as I normally do - rather quickly and in a straight line. A guy moving toward us had to step out of the way for me, and my male friend said to me, “Wow, you just barrel right through, don’t you?” I replied, “Yeah? Why shouldn’t people get out of the way for me?”
The way women use space and move through space is constantly policed. We are told to fold up, cross our legs, defer space to others, be as small and insignificant as possible, and interfere with the movement and space of others as little as possible. I see it on public transit, where women shrink into their seats. I see it in classrooms, where women don’t spread their stuff beyond the width of their chair. I see it in magazines, where women are photographed differently from men. I see it everywhere.
A good number of these “presence” norms are embedded into gendered constructions of etiquette, and they get internalized; so much of the policing women experience is actually self-policing. It is rude for a woman to cross her ankle over her knee, or stand with her legs shoulder-width apart, or to expect others to move around her. A woman can get all of the other bits of a feminine gender performance right, but if that woman doesn’t use space in the proper manner, she will be met with resistance and condemnation - her own or someone else’s. But where she has gone wrong will be noticed, and she will be told. Even if she is not corrected outright, her behavior will be the subject of comment (as was the case with my male colleague above). She will be made to feel continually anxious about her presence in space. She will shrink and fold until she nearly disappears.
Men can be expansive, and command as much space as they like. They can sit with knees splayed wide and arms draped over several seats, their crap strewn six feet in either direction, creating a massive bubble of space that is theirs. They can walk down the street, and assume the straight line in front of them is theirs, as far as they desire to go. Men take up space - even technically unoccupied space - and no one questions them.
Women’s space is always borrowed. Even women’s bodies don’t really create a bubble that is all their own. If a woman has enough room to sit or to stand, that is deemed to be enough for her. She isn’t supposed to claim anything beyond her physical, bodily allotment, and even that is policed if she is “too tall” or “too fat.” If she does, she’ll be made to feel it.
May 2011
“When a family is struck with tragedy — like the family of Joplin … let’s say if they had $10,000 set aside to do something else with, to buy a new car … and then they were struck with a sick member of the family or something, and needed to take that money to apply it to that, that’s what they would do, because families don’t have unlimited money. And, really, neither does the federal government.”
—
Eric Cantor explaining why Republicans won’t help natural disaster/Joplin victims without more budget cuts.
Also strangely, he’s describing a situation that argues for Health Care Reform since people don’t have unlimited funds they deserve to die when they run out.
-Joe
(via stfuconservatives)
FUCK THIS MOTHERFUCKER.
I want every single voter to read this quote and think about it, just for ten seconds. Hell, just for five seconds. I don’t need to point out that his position is heartless and vicious. However, I really want to draw attention to the particular amount he chose to use - ten thousand dollars. Ten thousand dollars. I’m not just outraged that he’s arguing a family should be happy to wipe out their savings to pay for healthcare. I’m also horrified (though not surprised) that he thinks ten thousand dollars would cover jack shit in the case of serious illness or injury. If you have a condition more serious than a cold, ten thousand dollars barely gets you in the door. Have a condition that requires surgery or a few nights in the hospital or physical therapy? Fuck you. Is more than one member of your family sick or injured? Fuck you. You still have to feed your kids and put a roof over their heads? Fuck you. Did you need that car you were saving for to get to work or school? Fuck you.
What’s that, victims of natural disasters? You lost your house and your means of transportation? You don’t know when you’ll be working again? You’re living off your savings? Your kids still need shelter and food and clothes and doctor’s visits and school supplies? Well, the Republican party has a message just for you. FUCK OFF AND DIE. You should have saved up a decade’s worth of income when you had the chance, whiners.
(via clivewarren)
Yeah I didn’t consider how comically low that amount was. If there’s a serious illness in your family it’s not a matter of “well darn, now we can’t buy that subaru we were saving for” it’s a matter of “how the fuck are we going to pay the mortgage now?”
(via stfuconservatives)
the person i reblogged this from is worth following.
“Hipsters are a driving force behind gentrification, driving out low income people and people of colour. They consistently co-opt and appropriate elements of other cultures, piecemeal, and often without any cultural sensitivity or respect. They regularly draw upon the work and legacy of people of colour, usually without crediting them, and most of their contact with people of colour comes in the form of the service personnel serving them their food, cleaning their wine bars, and picking their organic produce.”
—
touché
(via kevinetc)
Just read this interview where Chris was asked about Adam Lambert and he said, “He’s a sweetheart.” and I thought it was sweet.
I’d make a quote post, but it’s three words and not really that big of a deal, so…
:3
Crap. Crapcrapcrap. Where are my teenage lesbian followers?
I have somehow managed to get myself roped into hosting a 16 year old baby-butch for the summer. I am now more terrified than Burt Hummel when Kurt asked for those black pumps.
I know nothing about lesbians. All of the teens I work with are straight/bi girls and gay/bi guys. Let alone butch lesbians who make me look like the nelliest thing that ever lived. I mean, ok, girl is pinging my baby-trans-dar more than a bit, but even if I wanted to make blanket gender assumptions based on the very little I know of her…I know even less about straight trans guys than butch lesbians.
I know, logically none of this should matter. She’s a teen who needs a safe place to stay for a few months and I happen to have a reputation for taking in strays. They’re always guy strays though, not to mention strays that have found their way to me on their own rather than being shipped off because their relatives know me. They’re easy, I just let them meet a few of my friends to see that there’s a wide variety of happy gay guys out there and eventually they start opening up. That’s not so much an option this time, my only butch lesbian friends are my surrogate mommies and they’re on the opposite coast.
I am in so over my head. Help? What the hell are teen lesbians even into these days anyway? I’m guessing talking about how hot Darren Criss is won’t help me here…
LESBIAN FOLLOWERS: Any of you want to help? NotAiden is awesome and obviously in need of some advice.
xxx
HOW IS YOUR NEW LIFE GOING?
Better than expected with some parts, worse in other areas. I really like all the people here, I think I can connect well with them because we’re all ecology nerds (we are so much different from your average science nerd, but I think you’d know that somewhat from your environmental studies). I’m a little unsure about the project that I just wrote a proposal for, which is the bad part, but I’m sure I’ll be more confident once I talk with my mentor a bit more and with the permit review committee about how to make my project better.
And I’m going to the Grand Canyon tomorrow! I’ll be gone from the internet until Monday morning or night, I just realized. I think I can survive.
“The experience of oppressed people is that the living of one’s life is confined and shaped by forces and barriers which are not accidental or occasional and hence avoidable, but are systematically related to each other in such a way as to catch one between and among them and restrict or penalize motion in any direction. It is the experience of being [sic] caged in: all avenues, in every direction, are blocked or booby trapped.
Cages. Consider a birdcage. If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires. If your conception of what is before you is determined by this myopic focus, you could look at that one wire, up and down the length of it, and be unable to see why a bird would not just fly around the wire any time it wanted to go somewhere… . There is no physical property of any one wire, nothing that the closest scrutiny could discover, that will reveal how a bird could be inhibited or harmed by it except in the most accidental way. It is only when you step back, stop looking at the wires one by one, microscopically, and take a macroscopic view of the whole cage, that you can see why the bird does not go anywhere; and then you will see it in a moment. It will require no great subtlety of mental powers. It is perfectly obvious that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relation to each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon.” —
Cages. Consider a birdcage. If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires. If your conception of what is before you is determined by this myopic focus, you could look at that one wire, up and down the length of it, and be unable to see why a bird would not just fly around the wire any time it wanted to go somewhere… . There is no physical property of any one wire, nothing that the closest scrutiny could discover, that will reveal how a bird could be inhibited or harmed by it except in the most accidental way. It is only when you step back, stop looking at the wires one by one, microscopically, and take a macroscopic view of the whole cage, that you can see why the bird does not go anywhere; and then you will see it in a moment. It will require no great subtlety of mental powers. It is perfectly obvious that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relation to each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon.” —
Marylin Frye, “Oppression,” from The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory.
This metaphor is wonderfully useful for explaining to people with little exposure to feminist theory society’s continuing need for feminism(s). Also for discussing anti-racist and other struggles.
(via workandentropy)
“Is it that you believe that I am attention-seeking or shock for shock’s sake, or is it just that it’s been a long time since someone has embraced the art form the way that I have? Perhaps it’s been a couple of decades since there’s been an artist that’s been as vocal about culture, religion, human rights, politics. I’m so passionate about what I do, every bass line, every EQ. Why is it that you don’t want more from the artist, why is it that you expect so little, so when I give and give, you assume it’s narcissistic”
—Lady Gaga on attracting attention (via ladyxgaga)
Racism: A Primer~*
Racism is sociologically defined (and therefore not going to be used in the DICTIONARY) as policies and practices put into place to enforce hierarchies. These hierarchies are also known as ways to keep white people in power.
In short, racism = prejudice + power. Power being the way that white people exert their power just by having white skin. Although race is a biological concept and therefore it has no place in being used in conversations tied to one’s worth, it is still used as a tool to support racism.
Being the good citizen that I am I have uploaded some amazing articles written by mostly men (so hopefully you will take them more to heart but some of these men aren’t white so idk) who have degrees and shit in sociology and this is taken as fact and this is their life’s work. They have been published in journals! Read them.
First: The mostly easy to understand wikibooks to racism.
Works on post-racial/post-privilege:
- Becoming Post-White: Robert Elliot Fox
- The Persistent Power of Race: Harrison
- White Americans, The New Minority? (THIS ARTICLE IS NOT WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE IN THE TITLE SO FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON’T CITE IT WITHOUT READING IT): Warren and Twine
- From Bi-racial to tri-racial (something about exploring racial stratification): Bonila - Silva
On racism/democracy/policies/culture/whatever:
- The Great Islamphobic Crusade: Blumenthal
- The Criminalization of Undocumented Migrants: Golash-Boza
- Racism and Democracy Reconsidered: Gould
- The Rise of Anti-Muslim Hate: Kumar
- Structural Racism and American Democracy*: Marable
*THE MOST IMPORTANT TEXT YOU WILL READ. IF YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT THE REST OF THE POST I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT
And then you go on to say wow but racism is only in America!1!! Something about Africa to disprove my theory!!!
Racism in South Africa:
- From Racial Class to Apartheid: Bond
- Beyond Racism (discusses in SA, Brazil, and the US): Fredrickson
Racism in Brazil:
Racism in Germany:
Racism in Europe:
- Racism and Anti-Racism in World Perspective: Solomos
- Talking Culture: Stolcke*
- French Racism/veiled racism (youtube link)
*also good one on who’s allowed to culture and who is not
More:
- Spike Lee talking about Obama (video)
- Racism in Brazil (vid)
- Racial Tensions in South Africa 1, 2, 3
- America’s Native Prisoners of War (vid; I noticed there is a lack of NA discussion in this post and I’m sorry about that)
The only reason I am doing this is because I can’t just keep trying to explain this to people and I think it’s a damn fucking shame that people do not want to learn about this. Additionally, I have the privilege of taking a solid class on this but I did learn from the internet. There is some privilege in learning but in no way should I have to put up with racist and sexist remarks everyday (online or off) and be okay with it.
