March 2012
“Only when you require no approval from outside yourself can you own yourself.”
—Neale Donald Walsch (via cavesoflilith)
“It can only mean one thing: not that there is no way out, but that the time has come to turn away from the old ways.”
—Aimé Césaire, Lettre à Maurice Thorez (via ibik23)
“In precise contrast to Foucault’s argument about the declining importance of the state in the disciplinary age, male social power and the production of female subjects appears to be increasingly concentrated in the state. Yet like the so-called new man, the late modern state also represents itself as pervasively hamstrung, quasi-impotent, unable to come through on many of its commitments, because it is decentralizing (decentering) itself, because ‘it is no longer the solution to social problems,’ because it is ‘but one player on a global chessboard,’ or because it has forgone much of its power in order to become ‘kinder, gentler.’ The central paradox of the late modern state thus resembles a central paradox of late modern masculinity: its power and privilege operate increasingly through a disavowal of potency, repudiation or responsibility, and diffusion of sites and operations of control.”
—
Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (1995)
(via lazz)
Poems of the Dead: I have a tough time dealing with appeasers and activists in general. →
poemsofthedead.tumblr.com
That archetype in the good old EssJay activist/advocate/etc community, the group that likes to play nice, educate educate educate and try to draw the privileged onto our side. What causes me the most trouble with them is their inclination to tell the folks that do activism a different way and people who don’t do activism, just survive, how do deal with the priv’d folks who fuck us over.
Look, I get it. You wanna make all sorts of change. You think you got the key. You think we need the privileged to get what we want, whatever. Many harder activists and non activists don’t agree. Whatever.
Right now I’m not talking about what works. IDGAF about what works right now. I’m talking about what allows us to survive. To get through the day without the stress of having to play nice with someone who is twisting the knife with a grin on their face on top of that twisty blade piling you down. To not have to bottle up every goddamn emotion cuz some jackass thinks it’ll “hurt the cause”.
I got friends and family who are activists. I do. I’m still close to all of them. Love em tons. Wouldn’t trade em for the world. I appreciate what they do. I appreciate that they put themselves into the fire, that they deal with these fuckers and build up groupings of people that will make our lives a little easier cuz privileged voices and efforts go further than ours in a privileged fuck run world.
All my trans brothers and sisters and nonbinary siblings who educate even when the q’s repeat and stab. All my neurodiverse, disabled and mentally ill cousins who deal with the pain and talk civilly to abled shits. All of my homeless and poor friends, stuck like me, but willing to deal with middle classers+. All of my queer brothers, sisters and nonbinary siblings who fight the fight against straightness with a smile and a nod and a handshake. I appreciate you all. I really do.
But you need to stop fucking telling me and anyone else who doesn’t lightly step around the privileged, whether they’re a different sort of activist and especially if they’re no activist at all, to do things your way.
You need to back the fuck up and appreciate the reality. That some of us don’t have the fortitude to deal with the priv’d on their terms, to bottle our feelings and play nice. That some of us are real fucked right now and need to concentrate on us and to survive. And even those that do the essjay thing sometimes need a fucking break.
I’ll be honest with you, I haven’t been an activist for a long time. I stopped and concentrated on getting my story out there. On sharing my life so that our own people, the trans kids that don’t know wtf they’re going through, the mentally ill folks who are struggling with depression or anxiety or some other shit and are lonely and scared, the poor and homeless that wonder if anyone else has seen what they’ve seen, can benefit directly.
I’m done concentrating on the cis people, the straight people, the neurotypical, the abled, the middle class and up. My people are more important. Our people. And my life is more important. My survival. My soul. My emotional state.
I appreciate your work but it ain’t mine. Stop fucking making it mine.
Don’t call me the “trans mafia” or that “angry bitch that messes stuff up”. Don’t tell me I’m fucking up your fight for our rights. Because when you do that, you fuck up my life. You fuck up the life of one of your own who needs to survive and you’re fucking up the lives of all of those who need to survive, need a break or handle stuff a different way cuz that’s how their minds work.
You need to step the fuck off and respect my space, my survival and my health. My appreciation only goes so far. And when y’all push us to do what you do and jeopardize ourselves you’re doing the oppressors’ work for them.
You’re part of the problem.
And that’s the last thing you wanna be, right?
“”White audiences are not the only ones that turn away from progressive images. Often, unenlightened black and other nonwhite groups who, like many whites, have been socially conditioned to accept the denigrating portraits of black people are dissatisfied when they do not see these familiar stereotypes on screen. White supremacy hegemony works because everyone is in on the act.”
—bell hooks (via daughterofzami)
something that i’m really having a problem with is the way in which black womyn refuse to center themselves and other black womyn. we deserve praise, encouragement, support, space to be vulnerable, multifaceted, adored, regardless. i really really really am sick of the traditional black social justice trope that we are supposed to martyr ourselves for black men, give them everything, hold our breath and take all their shit and exalt them when that is NOT what they do for black womyn. in fact they even feel like they have the right to tell us how we should behave in order to deserve the things that are our basic fucking rights, they add to the degredation of black women in the culture by constructing hoops and ordering us to jump through them, they will invoke the insidious and oppressive myth of the ‘strong black woman’ to justify it. martyrdom is NOT solidarity. if you are not anti-kyriarchal, then i am NOT in solidarity with you, whoever you may be.
February 2012
“I want to throw up because we’re supposed to quietly and politely make house in this killing machine called America and pay taxes to support our own slow murder and I’m amazed we’re not running amok in the streets, and that we can still be capable of gestures of loving after lifetimes of all this.”
—David Wojnarowicz (via thecryingbench)
the bad dominicana: thatmuchlove: 13 Year Old Jada Williams Persecuted by the Rochester... →
baddominicana.tumblr.com
the principal of this school? and the teachers? major white-supremacist oppressive assholes. if you are anti oppression situations like this are manifestations of kyriarchy that cannot go unchallenged. this girl deserves all the radical support she can get from across the country and the world, the oppressive school system and her schools and the people who work in them and run them need to be fucking fired and publicly shamed.
“On Saturday, February 18, 2012, the Frederick Douglass Foundation of New York presented the first Spirit of Freedom award to Jada Williams, a 13-year old city of Rochester student. Miss Williams wrote an essay on her impressions of Frederick Douglass’ first autobiography the Narrative of the Life. This was part of an essay contest, but her essay was never entered. It offended her teachers so much that, after harassment from teachers and school administrators at School #3, Miss Williams was forced to leave the school. We at the Frederick Douglass Foundation honored her because her essay actually demonstrates that she understood the autobiography, even though it might seem a bit esoteric to most 13-year olds. In her essay, she quotes part of the scene where Douglass’ slave master catches his wife teaching then slave Frederick to read. During a speech about how he would be useless as a slave if he were able to read, Mr. Auld, the slave master, castigated his wife. Miss Williams quoted Douglass quoting Mr. Auld: “If you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there will be no keeping him. It will forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master.” Miss Williams personalized this to her own situation. She reflected on how the “white teachers” do not have enough control of the classroom to successfully teach the minority students in Rochester. While she herself is more literate than most, due to her own perseverance and diligence, she sees the fact that so many of the other “so-called ‘unteachable’” students aren’t learning to read as a form of modern-day slavery. Their illiteracy holds them back in society. Her call to action was then in her summary: “A grand price was paid in order for us to be where we are today; but in my mind we should be a lot further, so again I encourage the white teachers to instruct and I encourage my people to not just be a student, but become a learner.” This offended her English teacher so much…”
Wow.
Read and reblog!!
“this offended her English teacher so much that the teacher copied the essay for other teachers and for the Principal. After that, Miss Williams’ mother and father started receiving phone calls from numerous teachers, all claiming that their daughter is “angry.” Miss Williams, mostly a straight-A student, started receiving very low grades, and she was kicked out of class for laughing and threatened with in-school suspension.
There were several meetings with teachers and administrators, but all failed to answer Miss Williams’ mother’s questions. The teachers refused to show her the tests and work that she had supposedly performed so poorly on. Instead, the teachers and administrators branded her a problem. Unable to take anymore of the persecution, they pulled her from School #3. Wanting to try another school, they were quickly informed that that school was filled and told to try “this school.” During her first day at this new school, she witnessed four fights, and other students asked her if she was put here because she fights too much. Long story short, they took an exceptional student, with the radical idea that kids should learn to read, and put her in a school of throwaway students who are even more unmanageable than the average student in her previous school. To protect their daughter, her parents have had to remove her from school, and her mother has had to quit her job so she can take care of Miss Williams. To date, the administrators of School #3 have refused to release her records, even though she no longer attends the school, and they have repeatedly given her mother the run around. We at the Frederick Douglass Foundation have contacted school administrators in regards to this situation and have also been told to hit the pavement.
That’s what we intend to do. If this school will sacrifice the welfare of an above-average student whose essay, that they asked her to write, they find offensive, we intend to make everyone aware of this monstrous injustice. The school has a job, and it is not doing it. We would like as many folks as possible to call the Principal of School #3 and complain about this injustice. Her name is Miss Connie Wehner, and she can be reached at (585) 454-3525. This treatment of Jada Williams cannot stand.
See Video of Jada reading her Essay Here
Read Related Blog posts Here, Here and Here”
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wow wow wow i am just
omfg
wow
this country. i cant anymore.
“If love be rough with you, be rough with love; Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.”
—Mercutio, Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene IV
(via old-no7)
i always hear this in harold perrineau’s voice.