kxra

[kxra]

Trans Women and Non-Binary Femme Entrepreneurs Workshop & Clinic: Presented by Pipeline Angels and Goodwin  

SIGN UP Trans women and non-binary femme entrepreneurs interested in FEMPRENEUR.XYZ’s pro-bono name change and incorporation workshop can fill out this survey to receive more details about the online webinar and in-person events in Charlotte and NYC. BACKGROUND Pipeline Angels, a network of women investors that’s changing the face of angel investing and creating more capital for women social entrepreneurs, is thrilled to announce the first program of its kind, FEMPRENEUR.XYZ: Trans Women and Non-Binary Femme Entrepreneurs Workshop & Clinic. Pipeline Angels has teamed up with Goodwin, a global 50 law firm with a history of working on groundbreaking legal and social justice matters, to provide a pro-bono name change and incorporation workshop for trans women and non-binary femme entrepreneurs. The workshop will include thirty-minutes of one-on-one, pro-bono legal counsel on the incorporation tools available on Goodwin’s Founders Workbench, and each participant may also apply for additional pro-bono counseling through Goodwin’s Neighborhood Business Initiative. While entrepreneurship is tough, it’s a rewarding road that allows founders to take control of their own fates and shape them as they see fit. Unfortunately, Black, Latinx, and/or Indigenous trans women and non-binary femmes often find themselves left in the dark due to poverty, fear, and lack of accessible resources about what entrepreneurship requires. Pipeline Angels is committed to supporting more voices and when we were encouraged to launch our signature angel investing bootcamp in Charlotte, North Carolina, it was important for us to identify a way to support more voices locally. Pipeline Angels Founder & CEO Natalia Oberti Noguera brought Riley Hanson on board, Co-Founder and CTO of Inclusion Through Innovation (ITI), to help engage more trans women of color entrepreneurs in the Pipeline Angels Pitch Summit application process. Riley’s feedback inspired the launch of FEMPRENEUR.XYZ. FEMPRENEUR.XYZ will hold in-person events in Charlotte and NYC, as well as host an online version to help trans women and non-binary femme entrepreneurs incorporate their businesses and participate in the 2016 Fall Pipeline Angels Pitch Summits. Goodwin will also provide name change services to those who need it, so entrepreneurs can focus on growing their businesses as their true, authentic selves. Harmony Rodriguez, a trans woman interested in FEMPRENEUR.XYZ, had this to say: “A service like this is necessary because traversing the legal system to change one's name is a daunting task. Doing it on your own can be difficult and costly, so it's good we have someone in our corner.” “A name change for trans women and/or non-binary femmes can be as life-saving as any other aspect of publicly embodying our gender. For trans women especially, having a legal name that can out them as transgender is dangerous, given the transmisogynist violence within the civil and penal systems, which is in turn used to deny them access to basic human rights and dignity,” explained Boudica Cooper, a non-binary Black femme who is the Program Coordinator at Pipeline Angels, adding, “To offer this service to trans women and non-binary femme entrepreneurs allows us to grow our businesses without needing to sign or create documents with a legal name that misgenders us. It allows us to order services, to incorporate our businesses, and to market ourselves, all under our correct name. Instead of being financially burdened by needing to change our documents, contracts, and licenses to our correct name at a later date, by providing name change services, FEMPRENEUR.XYZ will help us save money that can go toward growing our businesses, our communities, and ourselves.” FEMPRENEUR.XYZ supporters include the founder of TransH4CK, Dr. Kortney Ziegler. We will be leveraging the technology of AerialSpaces, a startup he co-founded with Tiffany Mikell, to offer the program as a webinar for trans women and non-binary femme entrepreneurs unable to attend any of the in-person events. Dr. Ziegler, who is trans himself, had this to say about the program: "Business literacy is important for trans and gender non-conforming individuals who are often excluded from spaces that provide it. We're excited to work with Pipeline Angels and use our online platform to help reduce those barriers and make this important information more accessible to trans women entrepreneurs." Blake Liggio, a senior associate at Goodwin, is excited to be supporting this effort. “Diversity and inclusion are core values at Goodwin, and it means so much to me that I can work with my firm to empower trans women and non-binary femme entrepreneurs to build their businesses in our communities. Transgender and gender non-conforming people face unique challenges in our society from discrimination, stigma, and systemic inequality. I have experienced these challenges first-hand and I am eager to help others who might find themselves encountering similar adversity in whatever way I can. We hope that by assisting the participants in this workshop advance professional opportunities available to them through the formation of their businesses, that we will help contribute to dismantling discriminatory hurdles and enhancing visibility for issues facing the trans and gender non-conforming communities.” Incorporation fees for a limited number of participants will be covered by Pipeline Angels member A. Sparks, the Director of Queer Leaders in Philanthropy. Sparks’ commitment to FEMPRENEUR.XYZ comes from her belief that, "The transgender community has a wealth of untapped knowledge and creativity to add to the field of entrepreneurship. Supporting greater inclusiveness for transgender entrepreneurs is both an equitable and strategic approach to propel innovation and lift up all disenfranchised communities." CONTACT INFORMATION info@pipelineangels.com ABOUT PIPELINE ANGELS Pipeline Angels (pipelineangels.com), a network of new and seasoned women investors, is changing the face of angel investing and creating capital for women social entrepreneurs. Pipeline Angels holds a signature bootcamp for new investors and a signature pitch summit for startups looking for funding. 200+ women have graduated from our angel investing bootcamp and have invested over US$2M in 30+ companies, with two exits in under five years, via our pitch summit process. Pipeline Angels has opened a call for applications for its fall 2016 signature programs in Albuquerque, Atlanta, Austin-Houston, Baltimore, Bangor-Portland, Boston, Boulder-Denver, Burlington, Cedar Rapids, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland-Akron, Columbus, Dallas, DC, Jackson Hole, LA, Memphis-Nashville, Miami, Minneapolis, New Orleans, NYC, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Raleigh-Durham, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Seattle, SF, Silicon Valley, and Vegas. ABOUT GOODWIN At Goodwin, we use law to achieve unprecedented results for our clients. Our 900+ lawyers across the United States, Europe, and Asia excel at complex transactions, high-stakes litigations, and world-class advisory services in the financial, life sciences, private equity, real estate, and technology industries. We partner with our clients to practice law with integrity, ingenuity, agility, and ambition. To learn more, visit us at goodwinlaw.com and follow us on Twitter at @goodwinlaw, as well as on LinkedIn. ABOUT INCLUSION THROUGH INNOVATION (ITI) Inclusion Through Innovation (ITI) provides trainings and consultation to address societal imbalances and marginalizations including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and other influences of the kyriarchy. Riley Hanson and Crystal Huff, co-founders, work across the United States to help foster societal change and encourage necessary conversations. They have a range of experience spanning the past decade of activism in tech and geek spaces. ITI supports inclusion efforts from the ground up, with extensive perspective and knowledge of inclusion policy best practices. Their training courses give people the tools to take an active role in reinforcing an inclusive environment and society through hands-on and discussion-based learning. Find them on twitter at @IncludeBetter.

We will be launching soon.

Stay tuned for more details!

[kxra]

#BernieBitch hit up @CultureBombTV on twitter/youtube/fb for the full track #BernieSanders #FeelTheBern #chillaryclinton #tronalddump

[kxra]

[kxra]

OK SO SOMEBODY IN A FACEBOOK GROUP I’M IN MADE PARODY FCKH8 POSTERS AND THEY ARE WONDERFUL

[kxra]

This is old, but a brilliant piece. (I altered the quote to fix the link)

I also wrote the piece quoted documenting the events that unfolded. In retrospect, I wish that I hadn't tried to distance whiteness from the band members' behaviors that lead to their removal from the Hampshire Halloween event lineup. If Hampshire gets a reputation for being an anti-white reverse-racist community and—better yet—could stand behind that, maybe it could actually live up to the current facade of anti-racism despite institution-wide white dominance, and students/faculty of color wouldn't have to constantly appease and coddle whiteness.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/kẏra/a-clarification-on-the-events-leading-to-shokazobas-removal-from-the-hampshire-h/10151921947694235?pnref=lhc

Last week, a white afrobeat band called Shokazoba took to their facebook page to claim reverse racism. They claimed that they were told not to perform at Hampshire college because they were “too white”. They then told people to protest and spread the word of this alleged discrimination. They even went to FOX news with this tale of reverse racism. Naturally, this turned into anti-black vitriol, and harassment towards black students and Hampshire college faculty from their fans. Naturally.

Here is the thing, Shokazoba weren’t denied a performance because they were “too white”. It didn’t go down like that. Furthermore, if people were to stop US-based afrobeat bands from performing because they are “too white”, then there would be no US-based afrobeat bands performing anywhere because most of them are white. It does not get whiter than American afrobeat at the moment.

I wrote piece about this pathetic situation, and what actually happened. Read it here.

[kxra]

And admission is only a first step; it’s only a basic, formal acknowledgment that our womanhood cannot be invalidated or denied with any accurate and historically grounded understanding of sexism, oppression, and gender-based violence. Once we can attend these schools without having to conceal our trans histories, though, what will we have to face in classrooms and on campuses? Transmisogyny won’t disappear because these schools begin to consider accepting trans women.

Kẏra, writing at RH Reality Check in “Transmisogyny at Women’s Colleges Goes Beyond Questions of Admission.” (via rhrealitycheck)

[kxra]

This my speech that I did for CLPP! 

[kxra]

wait… if there is compulsory femininity

then this means that being butch is necessarily resistance to this

and then this means that butches are inherently more radical/revolutionary than femmes

gosh.

i swear…

this sounds EXACTLY LIKE the typical white discourse around gender and masculinity

(both queer and not-queer)

i mean…

obviously butches are more valuable bc of their revolutionary expression and resistance to compulsory femininity…

this means we ought to centre them in our discourse and spaces!

[kxra]

As we write this piece, we have to turn our phones on silent to drown out the frenzied buzzing of our inboxes and texts. We’ve gone on strike. It’s not the kind of strike you are used to, like an MTA shutdown or a crowd outside of Walmart with picket signs. We are Black Women, AfroIndigenous and...

[kxra]

Liberalism’s Inherent Racism: How to Uphold White Supremacy by Focusing on Diversity and Inclusion

I wrote this for those of you with friends who don't understand why liberalism (not just white liberalism) is inherently racist and think that racism is just the sum of hate and difference, rather than power and privilege. Peace, love, and unity is not the cure. Originally posted at: https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/how-to-uphold-white-supremacy-by-focusing-on-diversity-and-inclusion Since the civil rights movement, white people have exploited every opportunity to conceal their colonialist legacy and longstanding (ab)use of white supremacist power. They’ve proven time and again that they have no interest in rectifying that history, only in dealing with the fact that they could no longer deny the reality of those injustices. One effective tactic has been to separate white supremacy and colonialism from the way racism is understood and taught through schools, history textbooks, news media, and through any white-controlled institutions. These lessons, of anti-racism as-told-by-white-people, will be familiar to you: that racism is only explicit racial prejudice; that separatism is the essence of Jim Crow (and therefore inclusion is the antithesis to de jure segregation); and that the remedy for a racist society is a colorblind one.

All of these assumptions are grounded in liberalism: the egalitarian principle which works to ignore and erase difference rather than to undo oppression. It strives for a post-feminist, post-queer, post-racial or racially colorblind world. Liberalism as an ideology deems equal rights and equal treatment as a higher priority than  material justice, or as an effective means towards  it. Its presumptions of equality are false, as individualist equality may be written into law and policy while material inequality thrives. It effectively abstracts and obscures power dynamics along lines of race, class, and gender. The difference between material justice and liberalism is the difference between actually making reparations for a long history of racism and countries like Austria, Finland, Hungary, France, and now Sweden removing all mentions of “race” from their legislation.

Liberalism is not the opposite of conservatism on a left-right political spectrum, but a set of values that informs various other political ideologies including conservatism and libertarianism. Even the most popular manifestations of feminism and radical political thought (anarchism, communism, and socialism) are their most liberal forms. You can recognize the influence of liberalism in any political philosophy or practice that ,  consciously or not ,  focuses on individual equality before social power. What is it that says that ending racism means setting aside our differences and finding commonality? Liberalism. What is it that says that we need love to bring us together and to end the hate which drives us apart? Liberalism. What is it that says to choose unity over disunion? Liberalism. What is it that says racism/sexism/sizeism hurts everyone? Liberalism.

Photo CC-BY jm scott, filtered.

All of these ideas value a certain perception of equality at the expense of those who suffer due to social inequality. That’s why you’ll notice this rhetoric so frequently employed to dismiss oppressed people who direct their anger…at their oppressors. Through a white-writing of history (and history textbooks) that erases and minimizes all of the revolts that were necessary for change, liberals are able to demand that protesters remain totally peaceful, pacifist, and nonviolent (by which they mean non-destructive of property) in the face of dehumanization, degradation, and absolute repressive violence (the actual destruction of human life). White liberals and their sympathizers take ideas and quotes from Martin Luther King out of context and use them to shame disruptive protesters as rioters and looters, dismiss more militant activists as spiteful and vengeful, blaming them all for their own conditions.

The toxic effects of liberalism are clear in diversity advocacy and its language. Take the reframing of affirmative action as an initiative to promote diversity. Affirmative action was created in recognition of a centuries-long legacy of racism and historically discriminatory hiring/admissions practices. It is remedial in nature, and requires the recognition of past and ongoing wrongs that need to be righted. In stark contrast to this, diversity emphasizes the pragmatic benefits to morale, productivity, and profits. Diversity is the practice of mixing together different bodies within a common organization, and is a prime resource to be capitalized upon by businesses and organizations that are white owned and/or operated. Diversity still benefits those in power by taking advantage of the various experiences and vantage points of different racial/gender/sexual backgrounds. Rather than respecting difference and redistributing power based on it, diversity only “celebrates” difference in order to exploit multiculturalism for its economic value.

There is a reason that diversity is consistently promoted as being beneficial to everyone, disregarding who benefits most from various arrangements of diversity. As a dominant mode of thought, we must challenge liberalism if we hope to challenge the structures of domination that it both masks and reinforces, through diversity or otherwise.

Image CC-BY Matteo Piotto, filtered.

“Inclusivity” and “exclusivity” are politically meaningless without context and divert attention away from specific power dynamics. In common use, they are assigned inherently positive and negative values without specifying who is being included or excluded. This is why you might see a group proudly promote itself as being more “open” and “inclusive” than a group which is intentionally exclusive to create a safer space for a specific marginalized group. This is because de jure segregation is so strongly associated with racism. Still, segregation is not racist in and of itself. It is racist depending on a history of white supremacy, depending on who is enforcing segregation, and depending on the material impact of said segregation.

While after a history of slavery and Jim Crow segregation, fighting for desegregation was obviously necessary, but that progress is not inherent to diversity and inclusion. They are only valuable insofar as they reduce a white stronghold on power. How would racial diversity or the inclusion of men benefit the organizational team behind Black Girl Dangerous? What about organizations like the Trans Women of Color Collective or INCITE! which could only be opened to more racial diversity through the inclusion of whites? Diversity and inclusion whitewash and undermine the very basis of their value for racial justice and feminism: providing access to resources, representation, and power to identity groups that lack them. Not only is “inclusivity” politically meaningless, but to frame the benefits of stronger representation of marginalized races, genders, etc. within “diversity” gravely strips the progress it provides of its power and political significance. There is then danger in uncritically advocating for—or even just discussing power dynamics in terms of—diversity or inclusivity.

Closed spaces for marginalized identities are essential, especially ones for multiply marginalized identities, as we know from intersectionality (not to be confused with the idea that all oppression is interconnected, as many white women who have appropriated the term as self-proclaimed “intersectional feminists” seem to understand it). Any group, whether organized around a shared marginalized identity or not, will by-default be centered around the most powerful within that group. For example, cisgender white women will dominate women’s groups that aren’t run by or consciously centering trans women and women of color. A requirement for all groups to be fully open and inclusive invites the derailment and silencing of marginalized voices already pervasive in public spaces, preventing alternative spaces of relative safety from that to form. Hegemony trickles down through layers of identity, but liberation surges upwards from those who experience the most compounded layers of oppression.

So why do so many people seeking racial justice, female empowerment, and queer liberation still choose to advocate for “diversity” and “inclusion”? They appeal to liberalism. They prevent oppression from being named. They prevent us from speaking truth to power. They make progress sound friendly to those in power. Companies can tokenize women and people of color throughout their advertising. They can get way more credit than they deserve for being not 100% white men. They can profit from the increases in efficiency and productivity associated with more diversity. All of the above ignore the fact that companies needed to have diversity initiatives to make them less overwhelmingly white in the first place; that white people are the ones in the position of being able to grant access in the first place. When we work for justice and liberation, we can’t accept progress that is conditional on being economically beneficial.

The only way to prevent that is to name oppression for what it is; to speak truth to power. If a group is dominated by whites, men, and other privileged classes, don’t let that be reduced to a diversity issue.

You may have seen the phrase before and possibly even used it yourself, but if you still focus on inclusion and diversity, you don’t truly understand: assimilation ≠ liberation. When we talk about diversity and inclusion, we necessarily position marginalized groups as naturally needing to assimilate into dominant ones, rather than to undermine said structures of domination. Yes, we need jobs; we need education; we need to access various resources. What we don’t need is to relegate ourselves to the position of depending on someone else to offer us inclusion and access to those resources. Inclusion is something they must give, but our liberation is something we will take. The cost of assimilation is always in the well-being and lives of those who are not close enough to power to be able to assimilate. Another less popular expression of our expression more sharply calls attention to these dangers of uncritical integrationism: assimilation = death.

This work is licensed under the Decolonial Media License 0.1.

[kxra]

Dear White People: Let me give you a little history lesson on violence, rioting, and looting because y’all seemed to have forgotten that we learned this from YOU. It was white people who looted black churches, burned black towns and churches to the ground, and rioted when they were unhappy with passage of civil rights laws. It was white people who beat us senseless at restaurants and lunch counters when we peacefully tried to break down “separate but equal”. It was white people who terrorized, spit on and hit black children in Little Rock when they were integrating public schools. It was white people who MURDERED our civil rights heroes like MLK and JFK to silence them and derail the fight for our civil rights. It was white people who lynched black men & killed Emmett Till for so much as looking at a white woman. You see, violence is okay when YOU don’t get what you want, rioting is fine when YOU don’t like the laws or rules, YOU kill and assassinate leaders who don’t support your agenda. So please miss me with all of your hypocritical condemnation of rioting, looking and burning things down when things aren’t going your way. #KnowYourHistory #JudgeNot

Tiffany R. Harper (via bvsedjesus)

[kxra]

Juliana Huxtable!

Can I get a list of ten trans women of color makin music? 

[kxra]

"body/Horror:Yours/mine" by Lyric Seal

soundscape by BED DEATH

video documentation by kbytes

Transcript:

body/Horror: Yours/mine

Let me tell you something. I didn’t mean to be like this. I meant to grow up. Before I had ever given head or kissed horizontal under leaves or even touched my own lips- lips face or down down down, scalpels had made new orifices in me. Before I could say yes or no or know that yes or no could be mine to give, surgeons and nurses slipped fingers and tubes and titanium spores into my tiny body and said,

Here is what we’ve got for you now live if you can.

There is a difference between agency and consent. One I have, the other I do not have. In surgery, art, and sex, much of the consent is implied. This surgery, this last one, was the only elective surgery I have ever gotten. I have choices, not consent. My body’s trauma and recovery has no awareness of what I did and did not choose. The temporary psychosis that is produced by seeing your own flesh turned purple and green, loosening not only at the edges, bleeding from what might be pores, or new ports, is not alleviated by the words,

You asked for this.

The narrative you’re looking for is illusive/elusive. You can search anyway, you will not be alone. Every self-assured man I have had will be right there with you. He felt entitled to who he is, but now he is worried about his body. He keeps looking for the story, the reason for his shape in the canals and caves of me.

This is a love story, but there is no triumph. It is a ghost story, but the ghosts are tangible bodies that have entered mine.

There is this: the queer problem. I did not grow up. I keep coming undone! It’s possible that I grow, but laterally, and snaking. This piece is a hole you can look into. It is a wet chunk of me. I will flay it out to you. I am not sure what will stick, but, open your skin, open your mouth, swallow, rub it in. I prefer to tend to myself, after.

This takes place after I became myself: a wet,

wounded,

steaming beast.

that this body

mine,

it deserves pain or love or any sensation at all.

I wait in the cave of

myself. I look and feel

around for all the years.

I recoil from texture, a presence, a lack.

I cannot recoil. I am already inside the body I fear. I am in that flat little bed with its funny architectural embellishments. The black, curved, almost corkscrewed guard rails. Clever design. This is the day of every surgery. This is every threshold. We are living in the future. My cyborg body has fallen away from linear restrictions. Consent to incisions never existed for me. I am totally autonomous, in control of myself, and this control leads me to what is good for me.

Here: obedient to knife love.

Someone who might be my lover is here. He has touched parts of me which will be altered today. I wanted him to. Blood and milk and hope can come out of the things he touched. Does this make him my lover? My mother is here. I am followed around always by how boy lovers can and cannot see my body, how they can and cannot touch it. By doctors. How they can and cannot and see my body. How they can and cannot touch it. How they will anyway. By my mother. What she has loved of me. All of me. Muddy broken parts too. What she has witnessed that I wished she did not have to. The humiliation I felt in her seeing me not know myself while the others touched on. What she has worried I would never alter. I ask them all to fuck off. I ask them all to tell me that I am alive and that I am okay. I ask them, but my mouth tastes like anesthesia and vomit and silent clouds and, the nurse asks,

Any other surgeries? This is a list.

Four others yes…

Are you different now?

I’m different, yeah, I’m different.

And are you whole? Any other lovers before this? Any other wounds? Can you still feel where they entered you? And how long did it take for them to close up? Do you have any[metal][thing] left inside of you?

The night before this surgery- I cry like I’m dying. Like I will never be empty. This lover who is not my lover- he spoons me like there is no spoon and we are just a line on a curve. When I don’t stop him, he holds tighter, breathes on my neck. I soften, my sobs quiet a little. Then his hands are my ribs, I remember my ribs. Then his hands are my breasts, I remember he will be the last to touch them as they are. Even though there are new kinds of breath with my crying, I am still crying. He rubs and pulls on my nipples, and I dip into this. He has calloused hands and stark blue eyes which make orbs of an earnestness I don’t know how to fake, so I believe it, and am grateful.

I think it’s gonna be okay…he calls into the mouth of my cave.

Surgery always reminds me of surgery. Sex always reminds me of sex. Surgery also reminds me of sex. It feels like being fucked, not consensually. Not nonconsensually either. I am reminded, I am reminded, and yet each time it is horribly new. I asked for this. I wanted this. And yes I even want it as it is happening but parts of me are asleep, and in the room with us are all the other things that have happened and other others too. I know horror and ecstasy all at once and yet I do not know them.

There is this: a dangerous hope as the digits descend. There is this: a hole, a cave, a cut, and a wave bringing those digits home to wherever home may be. There is this: a great risk. A great longing. A great chance that everything will get wet and stay wet and never be dry again. There is this: a gasping as sleeping parts of me awake. And after: I am altared in this permanent and important way. I have tasted bliss and come or anesthesia and experienced a loss. I have waned.

Let me tell you something, I didn’t mean it to be like this. I meant to be whole. I meant to fix myself. Grow. Up. I melt out and down. I roll. I erode. I am penetrable. The tape, the sealing peels back, I see myself, undead, and I scream.

Every time I have sex I remember what I am afraid of. This one, he had freckles on his shoulders. Like a snicker doodle. Every time he kissed me he punctuated it with a moan like I was this real hot thing. He fucked with his mouth open the whole time like awe and crying. Afterwards, I showed him my scars and asked, Do they look crazy?

I mean yeah, they look kinda crazy…

Sex with someone who doesn’t understand or even completely want me is so normal it’s reassuring. I have loved to let cis-boys fuck me. Pastries I craved but feel unsure about, after. Sweet ones that don’t want to feel vulnerable but believe that they are very sensitive. I can avoid myself this way: my body and what it wants

to receive, to give.

My very real attraction to

holes. This is a kind of inertia.

I sit naked in the cradle of my recoiling from myself. I cannot bear to look and I count on my lover not to see. It is alarming to be sought, and it is so scary to want. There are haunted swamps hiding in my holes. Even if you think you want me. You might regret it. You’ll find secrets I haven’t touched in years.

Sometimes he does not touch the scary parts that I tell him are okay to touch if he wants to. Because he does not want to. He does not want to touch those parts of me. When he wants to I am also burning. It is like being burned a little. I show him the places that used to have ripe chunks missing the places that were green for a time the places I thought I would lose forever, if they were ever mine. He looks. Like a scientist. Or an artist. Runs his fingers down the short curve of my torso so that in my head I might be an oil painting. He doesn’t think I’m dry yet. He kisses my mouth and smirks.

After this beautiful boy fucked me I tried to scrub my skin off. Every one of my pores looked filled with some thing. I turned the shower up as hot as it could go, and hoped I would pass out. I only hyperventilated. I asked my friend to examine the angry red skin of every nook, cranny, and hole as I turned for her, a modern dance. Is this scabies? Is this scabies? Is this? What is wrong with me?

You have hysterical scabies. They’re honestly just as bad.

Having consensual sex is not supposed to make you feel horrible a day later, the sex posi kids tell me. Do you ever look down at yourself and remember that you are at sea? What sort of material do you wish you were made of? What sort of vehicle, vessel, are you? When I fuck I remember the endless wound of me.

After they make the wounds to remove the weight in my chest that I did not want, I wait. For the feelings. It is not that I am entirely lacking now in feelings and sensations in the land called my chest but they are harder to identify than they were. I cannot feel much on the outside surface of ⅔ of my breasts and yet I feel more inside expelling itself like shrapnel and shit and vomit and declarations of love than I ever have. I always imagined the root of my wings to be in front, not back. There’s this stirring there, a vibration. A solidifying of sound. And memory. My blood falling down. My nerves wandering, lost.

In order to enjoy body horror, one must be able to relish the adrenaline rush to be found in a brief loss of control. Enjoying a horror movie is like playing dress up as a child. Imagining a love affair between you, sweaty, young, pulling the straps of your tank top down in the back seat, and Death. But you are a tween, and you do not imagine what a love affair with Death would really be like, so you make it up. And it is very scary, and a little dangerous, and pretty messy, and also pretty nice. You see everything slowed down as the instrument descends. You can freeze that moment forever, if you want. You can replay it. You can screen capture. That is why indulging in horror is like a love affair with Death.

The first time I really looked, looked at, looked into, looked up and down and checked out what terrified me, I registered arousal. I think they were the red soles of a strange boy’s feet. Or my own strange curves. Or zombies, lips a tapestry of welts, falling a part. It is a manic sort of arousal, a hyperventilation. So much hot air along with my wetness. How do I calm down? Where do I become whole? Where, not when, it must be, since being queer means that I forfeited time a long time ago.

I did not mean to be like this, I said, to my own shaking and pooling. These vibrations are where sound becomes solid, body becomes leak, and my sense of my own proper place becomes taffied.

The potential for transformation is in our own squeamishness. Our own bravery, compassion. When you watch a horror movie, or indulge in looking at the horror that is the healing process of your body or your lover’s body, do not think that becoming desensitized means that you are brave. Compassion is the really tough stuff. To squeam is to return. A boomerang, yet a destabilization. To squeam is to occupy uncomfortably, and with difficult joy, a place of living death. To squeam is to reanimate. You zombie. You sexy thing. With this type of squirming there is the potential to deepen your relationship with your own holes. With your lover’s holes. Forget about light. Forget about surfacing for air. Forget about Demeter for a minute. To squeam is to look into your lack, in relation to a normative standard of wholeness, and to say, “Yes” to that horror. And “yes” to the possibility that you do not need or desire to be sealed up. Squeamishness is a moving shape in a static space. A different kind of dance. You are committing to the body you occupy, or the body you have given your attention. Allowing it to turn you, turn your stomach, turn you on. Move you around. Pull you down. Pull you in. Deeper. Make you come when called.

Let me tell you something, you don’t know how to worship me.

You don’t even know how to want me. Each time I become altered, I also become altared, a new landscape for you to reckon with. You can place consent on me somewhere, tell me to look to back at it. It disappears. There are foreign objects held in these holes. Ghosts of doctors, digits, desire, men. People with phobias of being penetrated and who cut me open easily. I’m not saying that you know how to worship yourself either. It is a mobile act.

We meant to grow up. That’s not how bodies grow.

[kxra]

Calling all anti-copyright QTWOC (please signal boost!)

We’re looking for at least three volunteers who are interested in helping lead an organization/initiative that promotes copyleft & digital/media literacy from an anti-colonialism perspective (anti-liberal/racist/capitalism/state should go without saying).

All of the volunteers will be involved with organization, planning, & coordination, which means working with the rest of the group to set our priorities, come up with project ideas, and map out the direction of the org.

Extra skills that would be highly valuable:

Sysadmins: We currently use GNU Mailman, WordPress, and MediaWiki In-person organizing: Events, etc. Treasury: not sure whether we want to regain nonprofit status or do much that requires money, but it will probably be v useful to be able to Web or graphic design: we want to publish educational resources that are attractive and easy to understand Programming: Haskell, especially happstack

If you are a trans and/or queer woman of color who is interested in helping lead this effort, please reach out via Twitter, Facebook, or email and we can discuss details!

[kxra]

sea-splashed beach goth

[kxra]

I made an updated version of this image (which apparently made it around Tumblr without me sharing it here, and I'd appreciate people pointing to this new graphic) that more accurately represents the issue, since the original implied that gender dysphoria is the main struggle of trans identitified people, rather than a response to violence that is not a universal trans experience.

New text:

THANK YOU for proudly serving as an officer of the GENDER POLICE FORCE upholding a time-honored colonial legacy of patriarchal transmisogyny and the rape, incarceration, and dehumanization of trans people by invalidating our gender identities.

Original: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3351795769471

[kxra]

Thanks #VampireFreaks