Columbia FemSex

SIN FRONTERAS: One of my coworkers is texting with me talking about how she’s still...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 00:22:13 -0400

SIN FRONTERAS: One of my coworkers is texting with me talking about how she’s still...:

One of my coworkers is texting with me talking about how she’s still mindblown from the idea that desegregating schools may have been motivated by the fact that the state not overseeing people of color’s education led to them learning about their histories and revolutionary politics, so they…

Public Shaming: Racist Basketball Fans PISSED a Mexican-American Boy Dared to Sing Their National Anthem

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 14:14:46 -0400

Public Shaming: Racist Basketball Fans PISSED a Mexican-American Boy Dared to Sing Their National Anthem:

publicshaming:

10 year old Mariachi singer Sebastion de la Cruz was thrust into the national spotlight last year on America’s Got Talent. Tonight, he was once again seen by the nation as he sang the national anthem at Game 3 of the NBA finals in San Antonio where the Spurs took on the Miami Heat.

As you…

fyeahkerrywashington: Emmy | Issue No. 5, 2013

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 23:16:16 -0400

fyeahkerrywashington:

Emmy | Issue No. 5, 2013

[ESSAY] "My Struggle with Bulimia Started at 9"

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 23:41:00 -0400

[ESSAY] "My Struggle with Bulimia Started at 9":

[trigger warning, descriptions of eating disorders]

“At thirteen when I’d learned that the punishment I kept putting my body through had a name, I rejected it. Bulimia was an eating disorder, and all of the literature that I’d read about it told me that eating disorders were for young, White girls from affluent families. I was a young middle-class Black girl from South Carolina. We don’t get bulimia.”

Surviving in Numbers:: Anniversary Support

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 01:07:49 -0400

Surviving in Numbers:: Anniversary Support:

survivinginnumbers:

Assault anniversaries are tough — and are often an isolating experience. We feel triggered, nervous, shaky, and no one around us really “gets” it. “You’re not being assaulted now,” they might say. “This was years ago. Why does this day still affect you so much?”

It’s out of our control. So, as…

Walking the Tightrope: Good Indian Girls, Race, and Bad Sexuality | Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 21:56:56 -0400

Walking the Tightrope: Good Indian Girls, Race, and Bad Sexuality | Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture:

By Guest Contributor Chaya Babu; originally published at Feminist Wire Image by xpgomes11 on Flickr I was a few weeks into my freshman year at Duke when

“The concepts of good and bad within Indian society, particularly when it comes to women and girls, are built around virtue. Ahem, chastity. This is widely known to be the case in India itself, where women’s lives and choices are largely restricted and controlled supposedly for their own safety. But in reality, these protections are meant to hinder their sexual freedom, not ensure their overall wellbeing. Similarly, the Indian American community and its values are not far off from this culture. The women are expected to be, and are viewed as, virginal and sexually submissive. The silence around female sexuality – everything from the onset of puberty to reproductive health to attitudes about sexual activity – is common in Indian American homes. And then young people take this with them into their personal and social lives, carrying stigmas about sex and judgment for those who break the rules.”

annfriedman: In my ongoing quest for the perfect framework for...

Thu, 30 May 2013 17:42:10 -0400

annfriedman:

In my ongoing quest for the perfect framework for understanding haters, I created The Disapproval Matrix**. (With a deep bow to its inspiration.) This is one way to separate haterade from productive feedback. Here’s how the quadrants break down:

Critics: These are smart people who know something about your field. They are taking a hard look at your work and are not loving it. You’ll probably want to listen to what they have to say, and make some adjustments to your work based on their thoughtful comments.

Lovers: These people are invested in you and are also giving you negative but rational feedback because they want you to improve. Listen to them, too.

Frenemies: Ooooh, this quadrant is tricky. These people really know how to hurt you, because they know you personally or know your work pretty well. But at the end of the day, their criticism is not actually about your work—it’s about you personally. And they aren’t actually interested in a productive conversation that will result in you becoming better at what you do. They just wanna undermine you. Dishonorable mention goes to The Hater Within, aka the irrational voice inside you that says you suck, which usually falls into this quadrant. Tell all of these fools to sit down and shut up.

Haters: This is your garden-variety, often anonymous troll who wants to tear down everything about you for no rational reason. Folks in this quadrant are easy to write off because they’re counterproductive and you don’t even know them. Ignore! Engaging won’t make you any better at what you do. And then rest easy, because having haters is proof your work is finding a wide audience and is sparking conversation. Own it.

The general rule of thumb? When you receive negative feedback that falls into one of the top two quadrants—from experts or people who care about you who are engaging with and rationally critiquing your work—you should probably take their comments to heart. When you receive negative feedback that falls into the bottom two quadrants, you should just let it roll off your back and just keep doin’ you. If you need to amp yourself up about it, may I suggest this #BYEHATER playlist on Spotify? You’re welcome.

** I presented The Disapproval Matrix to the fine folks at MoxieCon in Chicago yesterday, and they seemed to find it useful, so I figured I’d share with the class. It was originally inspired by a question my friend Channing Kennedy submitted to my #Realtalk column at the Columbia Journalism Review.

For gamers and non-gamers alike!“Although the narratives...

Thu, 30 May 2013 16:02:38 -0400

For gamers and non-gamers alike!

“Although the narratives all differ slightly, the core element remains the same. In each case, violence is used to bring these women back to their senses. These stories conjure up supernatural situations in which domestic violence perpetrated by men against women who have lost control of themselves not only appears justified, but is presented as an altruistic act, done for the woman’s own good.”

see Part 1 for historical background and some classic examples of video game damsels in distress, like Princess Peach and Zelda!… and stay tuned for Part 3!

As[I]Am

Wed, 29 May 2013 13:37:58 -0400

As[I]Am:

SIGNAL BOOST!!!

“Hey all! I am very excited to announce that my website project As[I]Am, a pan-Asian American social justice online magazine, has just formally launched!

Check out our first issue at http://project-as-i-am.com/. In this issue, we have some exciting works in a variety of mediums, including poetry and photography, a graphic novel, and a very special interview with David Henry Hwang.

Consider submitting or getting in touch to help us continue our work! And please send your feedback through our survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/YCH8N8D.”

AfraFemme: How To Be A Victim...

Tue, 28 May 2013 18:53:25 -0400

AfraFemme: How To Be A Victim...:

[trigger warning for racism, rape, murder, victim-blaming]

afrafemme:

As a black person, if someone kills you, you better had been a perfect student, or been nice to all your co-workers, and been obedient in every way possible, you had better not fought for your life, or stolen anything, or had children out of wedlock, or been on welfare, or been a gang member, or…

thecouscousqueen: British-Somali songwriter, feminist, and...

Tue, 28 May 2013 14:48:28 -0400

thecouscousqueen:

British-Somali songwriter, feminist, and musician Marianne Joan Elliott-Said, also known by her stage name Poly Styrene, is most notably known for being the founder of punk rock band X-Ray Spex.

She was born in Bromley, London, and ran away from home at the age of 15 with just £3 in her pocket, hitchhiking from one music festival to another. This adventure ended when she stepped on a rusty nail while bathing in a stream and had to be treated for septicaemia.

After seeing the Sex Pistols performance at the Pier Pavillion Hastings on her 19th birthday she thought that anyone could do what they were doing and so decided to form her own Punk Rock band, putting an ad in the paper calling for ‘young punx who want to stick it together’, and that was the beginning of X-Ray Spex. She eventually became a passionate feminist and posted a blog dedicated to women’s rights and defense of women.

She was described by Billboard as the “archetype for the modern-day feminist punk”; because she wore dental braces, stood against the typical sex object female of 1970’s rock star, sported a gaudy Dayglo wardrobe, and was of mixed race. She was “one of the least conventional front-persons in rock history, male or female”.

Needless to say, she was a total bad ass.

idg why this post doesn’t have more notes

hello

it’s poly fucking styrene omg

Let's Reinvent the 'Don't Be a Slut' School Dress Code

Tue, 28 May 2013 14:47:47 -0400

Let's Reinvent the 'Don't Be a Slut' School Dress Code:

http://jezebel.com/lets-reinvent-the-dont-be-a-slut-school-dress-code-509077807

“A Northern California middle school banned girls from wearing tight pants. Reason? They distract boys.

A Minnesota high school went one step further and banned girls from wearing tight pants with short tops. Reason? The look can “be highly distracting for other students.”

A Cincinnati high school asked two girls to leave prom for being “inappropriately dressed.” Reason? Appropriate dresses “can have no curvature of the breasts showing.” Too bad for adolescent girls who’ve progressed beyond training bra status!”

colored queer waters: if there is one thing radicals/progressives/liberals have failed to get right in the new age

Sun, 26 May 2013 00:12:50 -0400

colored queer waters: if there is one thing radicals/progressives/liberals have failed to get right in the new age:

navigatethestream:

its the notion of boycotts

you wanna know why the bus boycotts of the civil rights movement were so successful?

because an alternative black run transportation system was created for those who couldn’t walk to work or whatever they had to go

they didn’t just tell people “oh the bus enforces…

astrojhon: lalobalocaart: I got this patches from 1384...

Sat, 25 May 2013 18:46:42 -0400

astrojhon:

lalobalocaart:

I got this patches from 1384 screenprinting at the last anarchist book fair in Los Angeles right after a horrible white fucking person yelled at a beautiful brown mama for selling chicken at the gathering. The horrible person, skin waste and excess population was so fucking violent towards the brown lady that her gorgeous chubby lil brown kid felt embarrassed and was telling her mama they should go home. This pisses me off A LOT, pero for reals whats up with the amnesia? Who the fuck are the people that create the most waste and use up the most resources in the world? Who da fuck is related to the people that own Monsanto and all that horrible shit? Who da FUCK are the people that colonized, rape and took over land and COLONIZE indigenous foods?GUESS! So yeah amnesia pisses me off.

Como si fueramos nosotrxs who made up the horrible meat industry, como se fueramos nosotrxs who own those fuking meat businesses. como si nosotrxs no supieramos lo que es comer real food. Fuk that shit! Our muxeres are the reason why this world still revolves, they are the ones that use plastic containers for pots, to pack lunch, to store their money, to keep their legumes….they are the ones that cross seeds from one country to another, LAS SEMILLAS NO TIENEN BARRERAS EUROPEAS. Our muxeres are the ones that make sure that the food is eaten to its last bite. Our muxeres are the ones that plant flowers and make homes and entire neighborhoods beautiful full with plants that attract colibris and birds and all that magical shit.

The lady selling the pupusas, tamales, tacos in the corner WITHOUT fucking permits, maybe without fucking papers are THE REAL FUCKING REVOLUTIONARIES, FUCKING RADICAL ASS BEEZHIES.

We are hella DIY, some of our people don’t even need dishes cause they wrap their food with leaves. Some of our people don’t even need to buy dipers cause they use those 100% cotton panales to re-use and re-use. Some of our mamas used reusable fucking pads before being an eco-feminist was “in”. Some of our people had almost ZERO negative effects on mother earth cause they lived up in las montanas y en el rancho. Some of our people eat meat in minimal quantities, and guess WHAT some of our people still kill their own food. Some of our people have never had cars pero have hella tight nice walking/running legs. GUESS WHAT ELSE! The colonial food system, that McShit, Wendy BS, Burger Caca ALL that white trash food that is killing our people and creating an epidemia of diabetes WAS NOT CREATED BY OUR PEOPLE. My people drink fucking REAL fruit juice with honey, bitch.

So yeah let’s eat local! Let’s pick fruits from the trees in our neighborhood, let’s support our local corner muxeres huslting, let’s TIP our muxeres. Let’s honor the REAL DIY queenz that make trash into magical useful things. Let’s honor our muxeres that use the little money they make in this patriarchal racist system to fill their children tummies with ancestral beans, corn, potatoes and all that beautiful foods that are truly BROWN and from this continent.

DECOLONIZE VEGAN, DECOLONIZE LOCALLY MADE FOODS, DECOLONIZE D.I.Y, DECOLONIZE EVERYTHING!

por La Loba Loca

If you are into vintage bags check out my grrl ARTE CON ALMA!

si y si y si,
con todo amor

tranqualizer: tranqualizer: When eating organic was totally...

Sat, 25 May 2013 18:45:24 -0400

tranqualizer:

tranqualizer:

When eating organic was totally uncool

Before hipsters got rooftop gards, my poor, refugee family ate that way because we had to. And we were ashamed

by Pha Lo

To me, the organic food movement has become dizzyingly, surreally chic. Farmers have become rock stars; the most exclusive restaurants name-check them so much you can almost see dirt on the menu. But before organic produce exploded into a $25 billion industry, before city gardening became cool, I grew up in a Hmong refugee community, living the urban organic lifestyle not because it was fashionable, but because we were poor. I couldn’t wait to leave it behind.

I grew up in Del Paso Heights, a mixed-race inner city of Sacramento, Calif. — the kind of neighborhood that had just two grocery stores between endless fast-food and liquor shops, and where we all paid for our groceries with food stamps. It was where we grew organic food and raised chickens in our backyards to survive. And where we did it in secrecy.

Like most Hmong in the United States, our community was from Laos, transplanted here after an alliance with the CIA turned our isolated tribe of farmers into mercenaries — a failed secret war against the Communist Vietnamese that left Hmong as the targets of ethnic cleansing. Lifelong farmers-turned-international refugees, the older generation was ill-prepared to thrive in modern America. They settled into inner cities where many turned to social services as safety nets.

I remember watching grown-ups lose their identities and self-worth, slip into depression and cycles of poverty, illness and suicide. These were clan leaders who once commanded the respect of entire villages, tough guerrilla soldiers trained by the CIA — like my father — and proud providers who had, without writing, committed to memory centuries of the best farming practices. And they were humbled, receiving welfare and food stamps because there was no opportunity then in urban America for their main skill. Still, they farmed in the city for two necessities: food and a wistful connection to the old way of life.

We grew crops in every plot of soil that hinted of fertility — parking lots, front lawns, even inside discarded paint buckets, which made terrific homes for lemongrass and chili peppers. When I was in elementary school, the families in our apartment building worked a farm just outside of Sacramento. Every person, every age, had a job. Meals were planned around what we gathered: We scraped fresh cucumbers, serving them with sugar over ice on hot summer days; we pounded the signature Hmong mix of hand-picked peppers, cilantro, green onions and lime in a mortar and served it as a dip for meat and sticky rice. I remember loving our imperfectly shaped cucumbers because I got to watch each one grow into its own unique shape and thought they all had more character than the “beautiful” ones wrapped in plastic at the grocery store. And I loved mustard greens, which grew in abundance once a year but could be pickled for year-round consumption.

We bartered with each other. We raised chickens in the backyard, letting them out to roam and feeding them by hand. We didn’t have a label for this back then, though now I suppose people call it “free-range,” and it costs more. We slaughtered our own hens, sometimes with rituals honoring the sacrifice of the animal’s life.

With the costs of vegetables offset by our gardens, all the families pitched in to buy a pig or cow from the closest farmer, dividing the meat. This way, we could also afford to buy rice.

But we had to keep our locavore tendencies secret. America’s food rules, which seemed to us to go against nature, left us fearful of punishment. At the time, exactly one person from our clan had attended an American college and became our cultural broker, translating to shamans the world of Western medicine, and to lifelong hunters and fishermen the rules of hunting and fishing. What license was needed for what, how many of what thing could be caught during which season, if you could take fruit from a tree depending on which side of a fence it hung. All of it was too complicated to keep straight, and so it felt safer to keep our food producing regimens to ourselves. I can’t remember how many times my father built, tore down and rebuilt the chicken coop, afraid that neighbors who heard crowing would report us.

“Don’t tell the Americans,” my mother would always say, and, eventually, as I grew into adolescence, I couldn’t agree more. I was afraid of being judged.

My mother sprinkled only fresh-cut grass in her garden, swearing by its ability to grow bigger and tastier vegetables. She often crossed dangerous lanes of traffic to get to a pile of lawn clippings. My sisters and I would jump out of the car to bag the grass, and we did it with the speed of a NASCAR pit crew, terrified of being seen by friends.

The parking lot of our neighborhood Kmart was a regular pickup spot for lawn clippings. In my teens, when merely being accused of shopping at Kmart was an epic embarrassment, you can imagine the horror I felt about being spotted stealing grass from its parking lot. “If anyone sees me, MY LIFE IS OVER!” I’d say. Unfortunately, dramatic teenage declarations of “life being over” didn’t fly in Hmong households, not when there would always be someone around to remind you of the time he narrowly escaped the death camps.

As the adolescent me tried to find her groove, navigating deeper into the treacherous social maze of an American high school, I tried to talk my mother out of picking cilantro and scallions from her garden, cleaning and separating and selling them for 50 cents a bunch at a local Hmong store. It never made her more than $20 a week, but she didn’t care. She was obsessed with the idea of doing something she knew how to do, something that could earn money.

My family searched for new places to grow food while I became increasingly afraid that outsiders would find out we lived in a replica Hmong village, built to resemble what the older generation knew as “home.” Then one day, I was outed by a classmate as a food stamp user as I stood in the collection line to count money for my mother. That was the day that I decided I hated everything about the way we got food — from the paint-bucket chili peppers to the communal pig, cut up in pieces, ready to be bagged and shared. I wanted to run away from this mess. I wanted to be one of the cool kids. I would feed myself like they do.

Now, as an adult, I don’t have a garden. Years after I finished college and was well into the working world, long after credit cards made checks obsolete at the grocery store, I still insisted on writing checks to pay for my brand-name groceries. The defiant child food stamp user in me still needs the validation that comes from putting pen to paper and declaring, in writing, that I earned the right to take this food home.

But who’d know that, just as I finally shed a former life of organic necessity, my mother would be the hip one? Now I go to the market and hear people boasting about the eggs in their backyards, or how much their garden looks like the one on the White House lawn. My best friend, also a former Hmong child gardener, laughs with me about collecting lawn clippings. If only we had had cool recyclable cloth bags with eco-friendly slogans, we joke. If only we could be heroic, claiming to be launching a food revolution. But for us, there was no room to think about glamour. That life just felt backward.

I imagine now how many “I told you so’s” my mother would impart on me if she could grasp the enormousness of today’s food movement: Pesticide-free produce, hand-fed chickens, cuisines boasting minimal ingredients all represent billions of dollars to be made. And, irony of ironies, now people’s food stamps can’t even cover the costs of organic and local produce at our markets.

But I stood recently at a popular farmers’ market in San Francisco, where I now live and where my relatives have a vegetable stall. Surrounded by a flurry of patrons enthusiastic about locally grown food, I felt … proud. Proud that Hmong farmers owned their own stalls, their tradition of necessity now trendy and profitable. That day, my uncle gave me a bag of cucumbers and tomatoes from his stall. He said he had heard all about my schooling and my travels, and that he was proud I had made it. But as I looked at my bag and at all the customers flocking to his stall, I couldn’t help thinking he was making it in his own right.

Pha Lo is a freelance writer/nutrition educator and teaches food budgeting skills to low-income parents.

beyond relevant right now as we witness yet another trend of pushing for urban gardening as this hip new trendy thing.

sad-queer: Building an Abolitionist Trans & Queer Movement...

Sat, 25 May 2013 18:37:52 -0400

sad-queer:

Building an Abolitionist Trans & Queer Movement with Everything We’ve Got

from Captive Genders (eds. Stanley and Smith) (2011) by Morgan Bassichis, Alex Lee, and Dean Spade.

cosumosu: Project for one of my classes @w@;)

Sat, 25 May 2013 18:36:41 -0400

Whether it's a cute ensemble for a fun day

or a cute lil black dress for a party

gym wear too!

swimming suits, undergarments, even being flat out nude is never an "invitation" for assault, it's the assaulter's fault.

cosumosu:

Project for one of my classes @w@;)

gradientlair: Alice Walker defined colourism (also spelled...

Fri, 24 May 2013 21:44:07 -0400

gradientlair:

Alice Walker defined colourism (also spelled colorism) as “prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their color” in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. Colourism prevails intraracially and interracially for Black people because of the same reasons; the dominance of Eurocentric beauty myths via White supremacy, external racism by Whites and internalized racism by Blacks, and rigid notions of femininity and masculinity as it pertains to race and complexion. Though these 6 reads above present a plethora of topics, revealing the intersectional experiences of Black women, all of them elaborate on colourism quite well and are critical reads. The first two are non-fiction, latter 4 are novels. MUST READ.

I’ve also written a few essays that elaborate on colourism and its impact on beauty and more (and some of these essays on natural hair also touch on the topic):

Black Women Do Not Have To Reject Any Mention Of Beauty To Be Womanist/Feminist

Black Couples In Television/Film - Casting and Colourism

“Keep That Talk On Colourism Quiet!”

F*CK Nude And Flesh-Toned

Hierarchy amidst the WoC Label?

Black Women and Erasure

Before Whites Wag Their Fingers At Colourism and Black Hair Politics…

Politics and The Blackness Police

Bigotry Aside, Why Not Go For Aesthetic Truth? (In Reference To Zoe Saldana Portraying Nina Simone)

Black Girls, Black Women and TV Commercials

"I don’t expect gay people to prove to me, a straight person, that there’s actually homophobia. I..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 21:31:32 -0400

“I don’t expect gay people to prove to me, a straight person, that there’s actually homophobia. I don’t expect poor people to prove to me, a Harvard grad, that hunger and poverty are widespread problems. And if someone asked me, as an Asian person, to “prove” to them that racism exists, I would laugh all the way back to Chinatown. Marginalized groups are not responsible for explaining their marginalization to you. If you are actually concerned, you would take the initiative to do some research yourself instead of showing up at some oppressed group’s door step demanding a list of citations for things (racism, sexism, etc.) that are proven time and time again in the real world.”

- WORD (via 5ft1)

I’m not above answering questions, but I feel this way SPECIFICALLY about people who are asking questions with the core intent of disproving my experiences with bigotry.

(via sonofbaldwin)

he, schme

Fri, 24 May 2013 21:26:23 -0400

he, schme:

http://www.makezine.enoughenough.org/pronouns.html

“it is very hard to make pronouns into a concious process instead of an assumption based on social signals that we’ve all been trained in from birth. however, their willingness to fail at the difficult task of thinking where non-thinking has existed is not okay. it is inexcusably short-sighted to look at this difficulty only from an individualized perspective of how hard it is, rather than from a understanding of it as a political condition imposed upon everyone. it’s understandable to feel daunted when coming up against a new and difficult concept and use of language, but it’s not okay to refuse critical engagment and expect those whose identity positions you foreclose to be infinitely patient.”