#just a reminder that voting this year is a vote against patriarchy

[letterstothefutureme]

Tell me you’ve never opened a history book without telling me.

[kaifish-pond-afterdark]

STOP counting on Black Women to save ur white asses then turn around and launch racist abuse at us. Fr fuck you. Its NOT a Black Woman’s responsibility to save white women from the mess they had a hand in creating.

White women are thee FIRST to participate in white supremacy + patriarchy by using white tears to get black men killed, black women fired from jobs, etc.

THEN yall expect Black Women to save yall from Trump when an OVERWHELMING number of yall voted for him, then realized hungry leopards would in fact eat even the porcelain white faces of yall.

Yall CONTINUE to profit from + exploit Black women, you call us roaches, ratchet, Black bitches, etc. you invite us to sleepovers and vacations, murder us (and get away with it) then BEG us to save you.

White women have BEEN stepping on the necks of Black women for GENERATIONS.

Yall claim that you’re feminists, but you don’t care about liberating Black women or other WoC, you use us as stepping stones, as pawns, as accessories. But you dont actually care about us as humans that also deserve liberation. You dont see us as people, just objects to use.

You’d talk about animal liberation before ours. You walk in your whiteness when its convenient. But the SECOND you get called out, for some fucked shit, you leverage your minority status as a woman and weaponise it against black women and fems.

Yall act like youre THEE most oppressed group in the world. You act like you are divorced completely from whiteness, while ACTIVELY benefiting and leveraging whiteness against us.

You aint slick, we see RIGHT through you. We see you when you refuse to speak up when your racist boyfriend makes jabs at us, when your family reminds you “we arent racist… but we just couldn’t bear to see you with a… *whispers* Black person”

If my white passing partner can stand up to her 80 some year old grandparents and HELP THEM GROW and change. What’s stopping you? Why is my life worth less than your comfort?

Fuck you. Do better White women.

[hopelittledreamer]

India and Independence- Part 1

Tomorrow, 15th of August, is when India celebrates her 77th Independence day and I'd like to rant on everything that should be brought in spotlight. Here we go:

Religion and its role in today's India: I expect we all know what's the current state of religion is in India. It has became no more than a political tool to gain votes. Nothing more. People kill, torture, rape, exploit in the name of religion. The united front this country once presented in the face of the colonisers has long been collapsed. People of different faith find themselves questioning their safety and rights in our country. Have we all forgotten? That in the struggle of independence, we didn't see eachother as hindu, muslims or Sikh, we were just Indians. That during the Jallian wala bagh shootings, the Britishers didn't discriminate between Hindus and muslims, they open fired at all. So why today we point fingers at eachother? Why does extremist parties still thrive in this country who spread religious hatred and entice communal violence? They put on a facade that 'blah blah religion is under threat' and naively everyone agrees. The higher ups plays with the religious beliefs so that they can remain in that position of power. We must remind ourselves this independence day that as long as we foster religious hate, we are never going to develop.

Deep rooted patriarchy and it's cruel effects on the women of this country: Oh I can never run out of words when speaking on this topic. Whether you're a man who has been told since childhood that "boys don't cry" or a woman who has experienced all the atrocities committed by people around you just because you're a woman. We all have experienced the toxic effects of Patriarchy in our daily lives. The mindset that men are superior, more logical, more capable, owner of the house, women are emotional, weak, should stay at home, lower their voices while talking to men, each and every one of this point mixes the poison of Patriarchy deeper into the rivers of this country. It is so deeply engraved that people don't even bat an eyelash when a husband treats his wife like shit. Domestic abuse is common in India. Violence against women is justified. "Husbands have a right to beat their wives", I heard this from the mouth of my own grandmother 2 days ago. This country got independence 77 years ago, but women don't have any in this country. From the second we step out of their homes, men eye us lecherously, we step into our workplace, the manager gives us a creepy smile, we go to schools and colleges, the principal teaches us "don't dress provocatively." Where are the morals? Rape has became so common that we don't understand how horrific it is. And how do the rapists get punished? Bilkis bano's rapists were bailed out and were felicitated with garlands and bouquets as if they did some great thing for the country. THEY GANG RAPED HER. Nirbhaya's case (Delhi 2012), changed nothing! The convicts were hanged yes, but what did the government do to lessen the chances of another nirbhaya? What did they do to protect the women of our country? Nothing. Prajjwal Revanna, a renowned politician, whose rally our honourable pm😍 himself attended, had raped women and had recorded sex tapes of him doing the act. What was the action taken against him? Nothing. The recent news that cut deeply through the medical community, The kolkata doctor's horrific rape and brutal murder. She had completed her 36 HOUR shift and had dinner with her juniors at 2 am. Then went to rest in the seminar hall. What are they doing to bring justice? Nothing, just false assurances. All this country does is sits back and wait for another Bilkis bano, another nirbhaya, another female doctor. When is this going to change?

I wanted to delve even deeper into the issues but the post is getting too long. So, wait for part 2 ig?

[broodsys]

been on the fence about saying this. don't really want to become a politicized blog, but still, i think it's worth mentioning

but over the last few years, i've been noticing a trend - just personally noticing, i'm not saying it's exclusive to the last few years bc i doubt it is - about leftist people becoming radicalized in ways rooted in exclusivity

and the thing is, this happens. propaganda works. exposure to ideas works. and then, once the beliefs begin to take root, there's a reactiveness there, a defensiveness, that becomes harder and harder to get around. i say this as someone who's been there, and is really determined to never return. but it takes intention

so, one thing i've been seeing a lot of since the election is a wave of hating all men. i get it. really, i do. but i am here to gently, compassionately remind ppl that this is the exact opening te/rfs look for. this is their in. they'll like your posts about hating men. they'll establish a connection, a rapport

some other points about the All Men Are Awful Monsters discourse:

harms trans men, like myself. contributes to us feeling like accepting the gender we are is harmful, damaging, etc. makes us more likely to stay in the closet. also works to exclude trans men - especially those who pass - from queer spaces

speaking personally, when ppl seem to accept the fact that i'm a man but turn around and disparage all men, i feel like they view me as a woman-turned-man, or a Man Lite, or something else along those lines. i'm not! i'm just a guy.

harms trans women. whether through arguments of "male socialization," or considering the penis to be a tool of violence rather than just genitalia, or through only accepting them provisionally, if they're feminine enough, if they pass enough, etc

harms all trans people, including nonbinary people, because it demonizes the role of masculinity; whether that's a past role for them, or a present role, or a partial/sometimes role, or something else entirely

harms disabled men, neurodivergent men, queer men, POC men, etc.

specifically works to support some really heinous stereotypes about certain groups of men, like Black men

and also

makes men - including cishet, white, able-bodied men, privileged men - less likely to escape their own radicalization. i don't expect this point to matter to everyone, but if any of your personal activism work revolves around deradicalization, i think this has to be one of your tenets

and none of this is to say:

that you have to admire or forgive men who do bad things

that you have to forgive men who have abused you or others

that you have to accept patriarchy

that you cannot speak of your own abuse or struggles

that you must, personally, guide every man to what is "right"

that you cannot point out things like how western men have voted in the recent election

it's really just about questioning the "all men" phrasing. i understand where it's coming from. i get the pushback against the "not all men" argument, i really do. i sympathize with the frustrations. but anytime you take a whole entire demographic and label them in one way, you are limiting your own perspective, whether that's your intent or not

the language we use matters. that includes the language we use in our own thoughts. repetition creates pathways, pathways become familiar routes, familiar routes become ingrained, and ingrained routes become very, very difficult to question. yes, you know that your "all men" is really just saying "all men who do bad things," but brains are silly. all men can eventually come to mean all men. all of them. forever. and even if that wasn't true, your "all men" might mean "all men who do bad things," but you'll draw in people who think you literally mean every single man

i'm not trying to shame anyone. i'm not trying to start an argument. i'm just saying, from experience, that this is something to be aware of. and even if the potential harm to men and trans people doesn't really matter to you, i'd hope that most of the people following me don't want to be sought after for recruitment by te/rfs, so that's something to keep in mind

[daffodilhorizon]

i've always been outspoken about equal rights. It started with posts about mental illness stigma. Since being traumatized as a child, i've struggled with depression and anxiety. I opened up about this, in hopes others would feel inspired to share their stories. There's every reason why suffering from mental illness should not happen alone. Then i started talking about gay rights and biphobia and feminism and #metoo and the patriarchy. I tirelessly educated on rape culture and mansplaining. I went hard on telling people to vote (haha) for the most liberal option available. I told people about the wealth gap and classism. I educated myself and read both anarchist and communist theory, and then i started criticizing colonialism and exploitation itself. I advocated for unions, i told people to never cross a picket line and to support strikes. I was already ACAB before Ferguson, but after that i spent years reading antiracist theory and seeking out black revolutionaries. I had to tell an extended family member "all lives don't matter until black lives do". I did not shy from my work in attempting to gently radicalize the people in my life. I attempted to educate others on why we need prison and cop abolition and the alternatives. I got pretty far, even with people i don't consider leftists! Like anyone else, i of course, advocated for environmentalism. I myself do not own a car and go to great lengths to use fully renewable energy. I re-use before recycling. I avoid plastic when i can. In my veganism self-education, i learned about disability rights. This was enforced further during covid. I stopped using ableist language or comparisons. I have successfully eradicated using comparisons to intelligence in my daily life and gently correct people around me when they use them to use a better word. None of this lost me any friends. Until i brought up animal rights. Even the tamest "i'm vegan" had acquaintances putting distance between us. My entire family turned on me, simply for saying stuff like "you are a good person, you just don't see the difference between your cat and a pig because of defense mechanisms, but you would be upset if your cat went through what animals at those places do." or saying killing a turkey is wrong. Then i started losing friends and being ostracized. From people who said nothing even when i pointed out war crimes against Palestine and are full anti-capitalists. People who are open minded, and generally kind to others. People's environmentalism evaporated when i pointed out that methane from cows is x28 as heating as CO2 in the short term, that we can't stay under 2c without people being plant based, or that the majority of plastic in the ocean is from fishing nets, or that fishing is killing way more sea turtles and other "cute" animals than straws. Even just mentioning animal victims a few times every now and then is enough to make people uncomfortable. Definitely not a sign of their own guilt or anything! How painful must the reminder be, to have to completely block out not only the victims at every meal, but humans who remind them of the suffering they are inflicting as well. So it's very jarring to me now, to see other people advocating for other causes saying much more extreme things and not getting any negative social feedback. Straight up mainposting things like "you are a bad person for voting wrong" is becoming more normal with the election season coming up. But vegans get shut down simply for bringing up animal abuse, because carnists know deep down it's wrong to hurt animals and objectify them into commodities. That's why they care so much about animals they view as "cute" "pets" or value (at least on the surface) animals they admire for being free and wild such as Elephants, pretty birds, and whales.

[haggishlyhagging]

The American Constitution embodied the patriarchal assumption, shared by the entire society, that women were not members of the polity. It was felt necessary by the founders to define the status of indentured servants, persons "bound to Service for a Term of Years, " and of Indians in regard to voting rights, but there was no need felt even to mention, much less to explain or justify, that while women were to be counted among "the whole number of free persons" in each state for purposes of representation, they had no right to vote and to be elected to public office (U.S. Constitution, Article I, 3). The issue of the civil and political status of women never entered the debate, just as it had not entered the debate in Aristotle's philosophy.

Yet women in large numbers had been involved in political actions in the American Revolution and had begun to define themselves differently than had their mothers and grandmothers in regard to the polity. At the very least, they had found ways of exerting influence on political events by fundraising, tea boycotts and actions against profiteering merchants. Loyalist women made political claims when they argued for their property rights independent of those of their husbands or when they protested against various wartime atrocities. Several influential female members of elite families privately raised the issue of women's rights as citizens. Petitioners of various kinds thrust it into the public debate. Unbidden and without a recognized public forum and emboldened by the revolutionary rhetoric and the language of democracy, women began to reinterpret their own status. As did slaves, women took the preamble of the Declaration of Independence literally. But unlike slaves, they were not defined as being even problematic in the debate.

The well-known exchange of private letters between John Adams and his wife Abigail sharply exemplifies the limits of consciousness on this issue. Here was a well-matched and loving couple, unusual in the wife's political interest and involvement, which would find active expression during her husband's later term as President when she handled some of his correspondence. In 1776 Abigail Adams urged her husband in a letter to "remember the ladies" in his work on the legal code for the new republic, reminding him that wives needed protection against the "naturally tyrannical" tendencies of their husbands. Abigail's language was appropriate to women's subordinate status in marriage and society—she asked for men's chivalrous protection from the excesses of other men. John's reply was “As to your extraordinary code of laws, I cannot but laugh. . . .” He expressed astonishment that like children and disobedient servants, restless Indians and insolent Negroes "another tribe more numerous and powerful than all the rest [had] grown discontented." Chiding his wife for being "saucy," he trivialized her argument by claiming that men were, in practice "the subjects. We have only the name of masters." A problem outside of definition and discourse could not be taken seriously. And yet, for an instant, John Adams allowed himself to think seriously on the subject—her code of laws, if enacted, would lead to social disorder: "Depend upon it, we know better than to repeal our Masculine systems."

Here we see, in its extreme manifestation, the impact on History of men's power to define. Having established patriarchy as the foundation of the family and the state, it appeared immutable and became the very definition of social order. To challenge it was both ludicrous and profoundly threatening.

At the time Aristotle defined the rightness of slavery, the issue of the humanity of the slave was debatable but not yet political. By 1787 the founders of the new republic had to recognize the humanity of the slave and deal with its denial as a controversial political issue. The statement that the slave may be fully human yet for purposes of political power distribution (among the masters) may be counted as only three-fifths human and not at all as a citizen, was so profound a contradiction in a Christian nation founded on democratic principles that it made the end of slavery inevitable in less than a century. But for women nothing at all had changed in terms of the debate since the time of Aristotle. As far as the definition of humanity was concerned, they were still defined as incomplete and marginal, a sort of sub-species. As far as the polity was concerned, they were not even recognized sufficiently to be coddled with the sop of "virtual representation." The issue defined as a social problem can enter political debate and struggle. The issue defined out, remains silenced, outside the polity.

This ultimate consequence of men's power to define—the power to define what is a political issue and what is not—has had a profound effect on women's struggle for their own emancipation. Essentially, it has forced thinking women to waste much time and energy on defensive arguments; it has channeled their thinking into narrow fields; it has retarded their coming into consciousness as a collective entity and has literally aborted and distorted the intellectual talents of women for thousands of years.

-Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness

[facingecologicalcollapse]

{f.e.c.}

This is a blog/writing/collecting/archiving project I’m starting, mostly for myself, and hopefully it is helpful for anyone who finds themselves spiraling and confused in the same way. It would be cool if this became a collaborative project some day, or the scaffolding or a contributive resource for a decentralized learning and political education network.

I’m starting this project to discuss, consider, and try to answer one main quesiton - how do we face ecological collapse?

Like really, face it head on, look the facts dead in the eye, and deal with those emotions. Process them in a way that ‘makes sense’,’ on a human scale, on the scale of our individual lifetimes, and in the context of our collective struggle towards restoring balance within our ecologies.

It feels too big a question to really answer, but I have found some reprieve and refocusing in asking it, re-asking it, re-framing it, and in deciding when to set it down.

This line of inquiry really started after I read the paper “Deep Adaptation” by Jem Bendell. He writes about his defection from sustainability science, and the general delusional, false-positivity that has taken so many academic spaces by grip. the ‘carbon emissions have risen by xxx amount this year BUT there are new recycling bins installed in every building on campus!’ Type of unbalanced comparison bullshit. He also writes about deep adaption as a framework to utilize in our climate-change related thinking, centering the inevitability of extinction. This piece both unsettled and comforted me, for its realistic dealing with our conditions, and with the reminder that extinctions are! Inevitable, regardless of humanity’s impact on the rest of the planet. The real variables are not IF the next extinction will come, but HOW, WHEN, at what pace?, under what circumstances? With what enablers and accelerants? With what harm reductive and slowing measures?

Even though species* is a terribly fraught category, as a collective with similar physiology, who contain political + economic systems of domination and control, we are likely in a predicament different from every other mass extinction this planet has ever seen. We are struggling, suffering, drowning, and grappling with the problem/question of CONTROL. Control over, dominance over, other people. Systems of control are marginalizing genders, marginalizing ethnicities, and seek to conquer land, and view land as inert. Object oriented ontologies reify control and control reifies O.O.O. There are many ways to try and summarize this nefarious and traumatic record of colonial patriarchy. The point is, this is a very different type of extinction than say, the pre-Cambrian explosion. The sea slugs and crustaceans weren’t building up industry on the back of enslaved and exploited workers, and a hostile domicile culture on the back of sadistic rape culture. Maybe there was some other type of fuck shit going on but how are we really to know. Again, the point is, we are maybe very likely in a novel kind of situation, grappling with control.

This feels important to name here, and try and explore more later, especially as it relates to the wave of “climate solutions” and the nausea of green-washed technopilia that has saturated most ‘academic’ and ‘political’ spaces of ‘integrity.’

Bendell’s drop out and tell that shit like it really is, found me in the thick of my graduate program in environmental communications at St*nfucc University. My program itself was alright, but couched within the most mind numbing and infuriating surroundings in the Stanford School of Earth.

home to Herbert Hoover’s geologic training before he went off to be a diamond miner in apartheid South Africa. Home to a sizeable chunk of the global fossil fuel wealth. Headed by a petroleum engineer who instructed all underlings to vote against fossil fuel divestment. That stanford school of earth, to name just a few choice details.

Anyways, in the depth and deep bullshit of all of that, Deep Adaptation as framework helped me hold my head together. Helped me start to ask different questions, questions that actually opened up space for how much grief I was holding in and desperate to feel. I was able to start asking question that I actually wanted to find answers to, that I believe it is worthwhile to try and find answers to. Not just “how do we stop climate change?” “How do we fight climate change?” But, what really is “climate change,” “what is happening in our changing global climate?” “If extinction is inevitable, what is truly different about this one?” “How did these changes come to be?” “What can realistically be done about them in the time we have on this earth as individuals? In the projected time we have left to make an impact as a collective?” “If our ecologies are collapsing, and many of these changes are irreversible, how do we face these realities with a sense of sober realism, purpose, intention, and focus?” “What are our goals within a landscape of imminent mass death?” “How should I organize my thoughts and feelings and life plans in the context of all of this?” “What is beyond my control? What do I need to release control thinking over, and try to accept and reckon with?”

Full transparency, asking many of these questions precipitated intense mental breakdowns, and physical symptoms that would require their own blog to really get into. The act of asking these questions, with the naive thinking that I myself, an arrogant and sickly individual, could answer alone, nearly brought me to my demise. A lot of information was harvested and continues to be harvested from this process, and I am still learning how to ask these types of questions more generatively, more communally, and with less (ideally NO) martyr-complex type hyper-individualism.

This is a first brush stroke, in what I anticipate to be a winding and iterative writing process. Maybe I will come back and edit this, maybe it will stay just as stream-of-consciousness as it is now.

I think I understand why, collectively, publicly, in most media outlets, collapsing ecologies are not discussed with more frankness. The information is profoundly upsetting, and can be panic inducing. Where the line really is between delusion, distraction, and harm reduction, I cannot really tell anymore. Most if not all of major media outlets and governmental entities seem averse, if not plainly inept to discuss these matters with regularity and integrity. I don’t think that this scrappy little blog is qualified or trying to try and fill that niche. But it is the impetuous for my inquiries, it is the context within which I gather information and educational resources, and it is also the bane of my existence as an artist and environmental commutations writer. “Why we turn away from ecological collapse?” Is a question that deserves its own time and space. Unfortunately we are in no shortage of source material to demonstrate all the ways people ignore and deflect the changing reality of planetary conditions.

It’s hard to know what’s scarier, what it will take for transformative change to take place, or what will happen if it doesn’t.

We know that we have to abolish patriarchal racial capitalism, decolonize, decarbonize, and liberate our food systems, and ways of life from extractive economies.

ANDDDD it’s the 59th second of the 59th minute of 11th hour, and capitalists, rapists, racist abusers, patriarchs, and transphobes still want to play fkn games!

Defending ugly ass death cult ass destructive ass sinking ships of systems.

Like……

Anyways, Regardless of this disturbing state of collective consciousness, there’s also the quagmire of general confusion, lack of coordination, and de-fanged / disabled radical political movements.

What’s also been anxiety inducing to me for like a decade straight, is the fact that we know urgent action is needed, and its not always clear what that action is. And if there’s some idea of solutions, there’s usually a fucked matrix of obstacles, opponents, and life /health risks.

Even if we have all the information possible, all the possible solutions (technological and convivial) that could ever be dreamed up,

If all that is already on the table, would we still have the spiritual and communicative capacity to activate the changes necessary for a harm reductive transition out of this era of extractive growth industrialism, and towards a chance a living planet continuing past these horizons?

My take is this — nothing, none of it, absolutely shit, is possible if we are not actually facing ecological collapse for what it is - our inevitable death.

This inevitability as beyond our control, as always programmed into the clock of the universe, as sure-fire as our individual morality. The human species cannot go on for ever, life on earth definitely cannot go on for ever, and the sun in this galaxy will not burn on forever. So what then, can we release control then? Can we release that icky type of trans-humanist, conquer death type attitude towards “fighting” or “stopping” climate change then? And start asking questions that we actually need answers to?

Facing ecological collapse involves opening up to grief, opening up to lack of control, as a means of seeking grounding and refocusing our intentions.

We aren’t going to stop climate change. And there is no use in “fighting” it, simply for the fact that the universe is an intricate dance of constant motion. Controlling dams, controlling forests, controlling fossil fuels, that has all been done already, and these now are the impacts. They cannot be undone, so why now continue on, introducing more control mindset into the ether. De-salinating water, capturing carbon from the atmosphere with fossil fuel powered machines, etc. etc.

What is ecological collapse?

How can we face it?

What does facing collapsing ecologies mean for me? My life? What feelings are activated?

What am I going to do about these feelings?

What do I care about? What do I want to protect? What will help me be prepared to continue staying vigilant to my changing conditions?

Am I at peace with the inevitability of my own death?

If not, will I ever be? Do I have the resources and support to grapple with that fact?

If not, why was I conditioned to fear death, to avoid and ignore it? Was I conditioned to hate the elderly? To hate disabled people?

The questions really run on and in, and interconnect, and collapse again.

A mentor and friend mentions often, that the exercise of asking the questions is what keeps us curious, and keeps us present. We may very well never find concrete or fixed answers, but by continuing to ask, we will get closer to the questions we actually want answers to.

My interest is truth telling, and mental sobriety. I don’t think any of what’s coming will actually be possible to fully deal with. Really the most informed climate scientists among us are scared shitless. I ask these questions to try and feel better on a day to day basis. I read and listen and write in hopes that the process of information sharing is helpful to me later on, or helpful to others.

The nightmares of current and on-coming mass-death are beyond hard to grapple with. Really actually paralyzing. Sometimes I am grounded by mediations on the inevitability of my own death, in any timeline, and occasionally I am inspired at the nuance of the times we are living in. The more challenging our conditions, the more complex the problems we are faced with overcoming. My friend told me that we, the people coming of age in this time of exponential change, are being asked to things that have never been done before, never been asked. Worlds have ended, time and time again, and yet we all sense that this ending feels different. It’s the threat and fear of something so total, and so horrible. Collective suicidality manifest. Yes it is mostly paralyzing, and nausea inducing, and scary. I also prefer to face what is than live in media and advertising inducted cognitive dissonance.

We’re being asked to face things that have never been asked at this scale. And while the process of asking these questions is usually so fucking terrifying, there is a sliver of inspiration in that.

The plague of reformism and assimilation have thus far capitulated and captured so much of our resistance to systems of domination, and the threat of global annihilation may very well create opportunities to truly unroot core ecology collapsing algorithms of control and commodification.

Ok onward now to these writings, scratchings, and collections.

[rantingcrocodile]

You made a good post, but get ready! Lesbians whose parents were kinda mean want you to know that they are ABSOLUTELY NOT PRIVILEGED over lesbians from fundamentalist communities that forced them into actual arranged marriages with men. I wish you the sincerest of luck.

The lack of reading comprehension is astounding.

Obviously it isn't a "privilege" for someone, for example, to come out and be made homeless, but it is absolutely homophobic victim-blaming if it turns into anything like, "Well, I'm still gold star despite homophobia, and if any lesbian couldn't do what I did, then they can't be a real lesbian."

It is a privilege to be able to be a lesbian who comes from enough of a supportive environment that they don't question themselves or feel pressured into "trying sex with a man".

I know what I said. They know what I've said. The few that don't like it are downright ignorant and are only interested in creating a pecking order to excommunicate lesbians that they don't like, to be homophobic and abusive, and then take advantage of the biphobic mini-culture in radfem spaces to use us as an excuse for that ignorant bullying.

It reminds me of Phillip Scofield, a well-known morning TV presenter in the UK, who came out, despite being married for 28 years and having two children. He thought that he was bisexual, but he's gay. I have not personally seen a single person claim, "He's just a homophobic bisexual claiming to be gay when he isn't." No. He came out, admitted he came to realise that he was gay, and it's now easily accepted.

Lesbians do the same thing, and suddenly they're only allowed to be bisexual. It's obscene.

The irony is that I'm told it has nothing to do with me, and that I'm not allowed to speak because I'm not a lesbian, when this homophobic set of beliefs actively harms bisexual women, too. All it does is promote homophobia against traumatised, confused thanks to patriarchy and homophobia women, and then adds to more claims of, "Look at how the bisexual women are taking over lesbian spaces!"

You're talking about lesbians in fundamentalist contexts, but I'm also talking about lesbians who aren't in fundamentalist contexts who are still afraid to come out.

It's ridiculous. It reminds me of the anti-feminists that claim, "Women can vote and it's illegal to not pay women the same as men, so how are you even oppressed?"

I mean, realistically, we're in a world where, right now, young lesbians with internalised homophobia are reacting to being lesbians by transitioning to claim to be straight men, and yet there's a belief that no lesbian ever could possibly feel forced to be in relationships with men due to internalised homophobia and heavy societal/familial/communal expectations? When homophobic hate crimes are still common when lesbians are out in the street with their partners? Really?

Are the lesbians of the past who married men and had children with them "not real lesbians" either?

This is exactly why I constantly repeat that too much theory online has rotted minds and made internet keyboard warriors forget actual, real life contexts.

I should not have to repeat a thousand times that I hate bisexual women that claim to be lesbians when they aren't. I keep saying how homophobic it is. I keep saying that it shouldn't be tolerated. It definitely happens. Those bisexual women should not be protected and should be held accountable for that appropriative homophobia. Political lesbianism is wrong, full stop. I'll keep repeating it if I have to, but it has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.

For the few people that want to liberate lesbians from oppression, yet refuse to accept the very real, common sense, historically proven fact that homophobia means that life can be incredibly difficult for some lesbians to come to terms with being lesbians, particularly older lesbians, is obscene.

If they genuinely hold those beliefs, then that's devastating and I feel upset for every lesbian they harm, and feel angry for every bisexual woman they blame unfairly.

Honestly though, I believe that the majority of that minority only use that discourse to silence lesbians that they don't like and use it as an excuse to be biphobic, all to enjoy their false sense of superiority. I would say that it's embarrassing for them to be that bone-deep stupid, but I feel worse for the lesbians who will be too terrified to admit dealing with those specific kinds of traumas, knowing that if they do share those stories, they'll forever be hounded as "not real lesbians" and attacked instead of given the support they fucking need and deserve.

And yes, I am selfish enough to also be angry that once again, for simply existing, I and other women like me are somehow used as an excuse for a small number of lesbians rubbing their hands with glee that they can be exclusive and gatekeep being lesbians over something that's basic common sense.

[fall-and-shadows]

As a women’s history scholar at Berkeley, I’ve been approached by many reporters this month — each asking me to comment on what’s changed (or not) in our gendered society since Anita Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas in 1991.

To their surprise, I raise the subject of bathrooms and lounges. These weren’t readily available to female senators in 1991. The construction of centrally-located restrooms for high ranking elected women, in 1993 and again in 2011, is perhaps one point of progress we can see.

When Hill gave her famous testimony in 1991, so few women were senators that no real provision had been made for a women’s room adjacent to the Senate floor. Men enjoyed such a convenience, but women were forced to leave and walk considerable distance for a comfort stop, which meant they risked missing the announcement of a roll call vote. The situation was the same for female House members, who actually had no bathroom at all on the first floor of the Capitol until 1962. In such ways, the very architecture of the Capitol reminded women that they were, at best, tolerated as adjuncts to the male members of government.

Are you some kind of graduate student?

The structural presumption that women would never be in the halls of power wasn’t limited to government. Just miles from the Capitol, I was told many times while I was teaching there, Georgetown University had to convert a broom closet into a women’s bathroom for its science classroom building. It had been constructed in a time when no one envisioned female undergraduates being a majority on campus — or excelling in STEM fields.

As a young research scholar at Harvard in 1991, I had access to women’s bathrooms, but experienced a chilly reception in at least one faculty lounge, where a male professor sputtered at me and asked if I was some kind of graduate student. When I flashed my faculty ID, he recovered with “Well, but you look so pretty.” This, I understood, was a compliment, but one insinuating that “real” female scholars were unattractive.

Similarly, the historic lack of bathrooms/locker rooms and showers for female athletes at many colleges mirrors the biases found in government and academia. During the 1970s, at the height of second-wave feminism, women on Yale’s crew team had no changing room boathouse, though the men’s team did. With nowhere to change from damp sportswear after workouts on the wintry Charles River, female rowers preparing for the Olympic Games caught pneumonia while seated on a freezing bus, waiting as the male crew team showered and warmed up.

Fed up, Yale rowers confronted their athletic director — topless. Across their bared, chilled chests was the reminder, “TITLE IX.”

Our society has much farther to go

Title IX law, part of the Education Acts of 1972, helped change some of the imbalances on college campuses, but many women then graduated into workplaces filled with unregulated harassment.

Anita Hill’s 1991 testimony, broadcast nationally at a time before Internet and social media gave most Americans access to government proceedings, showed America just how male-dominated our government appeared. A majority of men making critical legal decisions about women’s lived experiences suggested a system of patriarchy, not democracy. Emboldened to create change, more women than ever before ran for office and won in 1992, giving the Senate a new high of six women — with no accessible bathroom.

Finally, in 1993, a women’s restroom was built off the Senate floor, at the direction of Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-Maine.) Still, female Representatives on the House side did not get their own bathroom off the House floor for another 18 years—in 2011. Within two years it had to be doubled in size, a reflection of the dramatic gain in elected women.

I’m now teaching at Berkeley, where I have access to a new mothers’ lactation room should I require one, and I can say that much has changed. But while public life and institutions have gradually accommodated female bodies, our society has much farther to go in seeing, understanding, and believing the lived experiences which accompany those bodies.

Bonnie J. Morris is a visiting lecturer in history at UC-Berkeley and author or co-author of 16 books, including this year’s "The Feminist Revolution: The Struggle for Women’s Liberation." 

[letterstothefutureme]

This man can vote.

[ratingtheframe]

Everything wrong with... Ep 3 - Pretty Woman

*sigh* *big sigh*.  I’m back here giving you another politically charged review of a film I like to call a femmeçade:

Femmeçade /fɛm//fəˈsɑːd/ noun noun: femmeçade; plural noun: femmeçades; 1. A genre of films directed by men that forefront yet misinterpret the female narrative and representation on screen. "Pretty Woman is the worst femmeçade of them all in the way it depicts women as the lesser gender"  (definition by yours truly).

I have to say, I have never felt more compelled, more angry in my entire life to write such a review and tear this film down until there is nothing left but the underlining, prominent misogynistic aspects of this film. I am talking about the 1990s classic, Pretty Woman starring Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. Now a musical, the film has survived three waves of feminism (if you count MeToo), and yet is still available to access for our entertainment. Even though censorship is less common in the Western World, the only good thing about watching Pretty Woman would be to see how vile and unacceptable it is in the eyes of our modern and ever changing society. It truly brought tears of anger to my eyes to watch such a film and see how its lead was shoved into the spotlight for a round or two of humiliation and prodding by the fingers and eyes of the male gaze. There is A LOT to go through here, so grab a snack and buckle in as I put Pretty Woman to shame.

Let's just start with the title itself Pretty Woman, a pretty lazy title for a film if you ask me. I understand it does what it says on the tin, like any title should, however the irksome thing about the film and title is what it’s selling. The lust and beauty of Julia Roberts as opposed to her character or story for that matter. Stood alongside Richard Gere in thigh high boots with her legs for days, months and years on show. We get it, Julia Roberts is a beauty, but why does a film have to focus on that sole part of her? By doing this it creates the idea that it’s her only asset and BOY does this film do a good job at reminding us just that. They’ve got the man’s vote and supposedly the woman’s seeing as the story is about them or who they’d like to be. WRONG, seeing as the crew behind Pretty Women were mostly men themselves. The writers, cinematographer, director, producers, best boys and gaffers, you name it. So who was this film for if it wasn’t to satisfy at least it's mostly male crew members?

Male satisfaction are the appropriate words to use when we are introduced to our leading lady in close up shots of her bra and knickers. Vivian is played by the highly talented and ordained Julia Roberts. Ever since seeing Erin Brodkovich which bagged her an Oscar in 2001, I’ve been in love with her spirit and confidence on screen. As we all know she is certainly one of Hollywood’s shiniest stars, up there with the elites like Meryl Streep, Viola Davis and Angelina Jolie. Why she decided to sign onto such a film, I would hate to speculate seeing as Feminism was more of a dirty secret than a positive movement back in the 1990s. Many (mostly men, though women too, especially those in the film business) would accuse the movement of threatening the comfortability and fun out of life’s pleasures, like women wearing makeup, dresses and being groped at office parties (sarcasm). However, as we now know, feminism isn’t the demon that the 1990s tried to make it out to be and I hope that Julia Roberts was unaware of feminism back then rather than being a strong opposer of it. 

Vivian Ward is a hooker living and working on the streets of LA, the city of dreams as some may brandish it. She lives with her roommate Kit (Laura San Giacomo) and between them they spend their nights trying to scrape enough money for their rent. I’m glad that sex work isn’t as scrutinised as it was back then and another arresting aspect of Pretty Woman is the way it depicts the so called “atrocities” of being a sex worker. The propriety and haughtiness of those who laid eyes upon Kit or Vivian was degrading and dehumanising, simply because they choose to lead a different lifestyle to those around them. It seemed so archaic, almost Victorian like the way people ogled and gazed upon Vivian at the hotel where she was taken in by her male counterpart. Pretty Woman again proves itself to be an anti-feminsit horror show for shaming women on choosing what to do with their own bodies and how they dress. We need to cut this BS out of society ASAP that women dress in certain ways to attract the attention of the opposite sex. Clothes are a form of expression and 9 times out of 10, that expression hasn’t anything to do with wanting to be leered at in public. Enough with the victim shaming as well; asking women what they wore when they were sexually assaulted. Instead let's ask what the attackers were THINKING when they decided to prey on an innocent victim....

One night whilst Vivan is looking for clients, she meets the so called delectable and mouth droppingly handsome male lead that is Edward Lewis, played by Richard Gere. I didn’t get the hype at all as I felt Vivan to have enough personality and lust for life to fill both of her and Richard Gere’s character. Edward Lewis was wooden, stern and boring, and despite this, Vivian seems to see more in him beyond her usual hookups. That’s another irritating thing about Pretty Woman. Edward Lewis didn’t have to do FUCK ALL to prove his love or worthiness in the life of Vivian. 

He didn’t have to (nor did) change one thing about himself throughout the entire film and that’s not only extremely sexist, but shit filmmaking. Did the writer of completely forget or give up on Edward Lewis’ character arc whilst he was too busy making drooling over Vivian? All Edward Lewis had to do was wave his card around and POOF Vivian was at his knees. No wonder the 1990s shamed feminists because this is the exact sort of crap they were trying to prevent from happening on screen. It may seem like fun and games when Edward Lewis tells Vivian to go shopping, buy herself a new dress for dinner, but in reality this is just a fresh case of misogyny, served up with a side of degradation and bigotry for dessert. 

Edward Lewis goes as far to hire Vivian for the week as his...escort? His actual motive isn’t known and we are left as an audience to conclude that it’s because she’s pretty. Again, selling the film title through and through and deminishing the worth of women with each scene. Vivian is never actually asked what she wants, nor do we get to know her seeing as Edward’s inflated ego and wallet covers up most of the screen time whilst watching this film. If you didn’t think this film could get any more horrific is the age gap between Julia Roberts and Richard Gere at the time of filming, to which Roberts was 22 and Gere, 40.

One moment in particular that proved this film to have zero substance to it, is when Vivian eventually gets down on Edward and to my absolute horror, her bra strap is INCREDIBLY and shockingly inauthentically loose. Like falling off loose. Not one woman in the world who chooses to wear a bra; not in China, India, Pakistan, the U.S, Ukraine, Hooker, doctor, astronaut, teacher, hairdresser or not would ever EVER wear their bra strap so loose. An impractical and uncomfortable choice, this tiny infinitesimal yet significant part of this film showed that this film doesn’t care or know how to show accurate female representation on screen and goes against any sense of providing women with strong characters they can use as role models. And all from one bra strap. 

The shopping and transformation part to this film had to be the big red thumb that stood out the most from the eternity of this film as AGAIN for the fifteenth time this film has proved itself to be in favour of entertaining those who like to ogle at Vivian as opposed to getting to know her. Edward thrusts his card at her once again (without giving her much choice, a common behavioural pattern associated with sociopaths and abusers) and she goes to Rodeo Drive to essentially pretty herself up for him so that Edward isn’t judged by those he introduces Vivian to. 

When Vivian had attempted to go shopping alone on Rodeo Drive in her casual attire, the female employees of one of the stores behaved abominably towards her, classing her as someone who didn’t have the means or appearance to shop in such a place. This film just got even worse as not only do we have the opposite gender dictating the appearance of women, we’re having our own sisters do the same whilst investing in the patriarchal narrative of the way women should be seen in public. At this point you may think I’m going crazy and repeating myself, of which I am doing both, however once you’ve fully taken the time to wake up and smell the patriarchy’s cup of coffee, there’s no turning back. These details become smoke signals that turn into epiphanies and realisations that have you questioning is this really okay? And a Pretty Woman is NOT okay.

Once Vivian has had her transformation (so kindly afforded by the dominant Edward Lewis) she seemingly begins to enjoy her new life as a piece on the side, until she is presented with Edward’s lawyer, Philip Stuckley.

So here’s what we have so far on our checklist of misogyny and anti-feminsit motifs to Pretty Women

A poster and title created in the eye of the male gaze CHECK

A female character whose worth is based on her desirability and propriety CHECK

A mediocre white man who doesn’t progress and gets his way through charm, money and power CHECK

Women who take unkindly to other women because they don’t fit the normalised standards of the patriarchy CHECK

Shaming women for their dress sense and career choices CHECK

Lack of women in general, most of which don’t speak throughout the film CHECK

The list could go on but another motif to add to the list from this film that acts as big shiny wrecking ball that smashes up feminism and leaves its values in the dust is sexual assault. Or attempted sexual assault at that, as when we see Phillip Stuckley’s first interaction with Vivian he says right out that he knows she’s a hooker, whilst running the edge of his sunglasses down Vivian’s arm and suggesting they get together after Edward’s demise back to wherever he came from. EW, this was one of the many moments of the film where I had to swallow my vomit. Phillip attempts to rape Vivian back at Edward’s penthouse suite, when luckily Edward comes in to stop it happening, which was the most decent thing he did the entire film. Edward’s lawyer represented a hoard of men that existed back then and now who feel entitled to a woman’s body, hooker or not. Even though Pretty Woman had dug itself a big enough hole, by the time I got to this part of the film I had been sold on the idea that this film is completely out of line with women’s liberation and empowerment. It’s just one big game to prod and poke at women, seeing how far they can go, which in itself is a metaphor for sexual assault. 

I’ll wrap up on the lack of diversity in Pretty Women. Because the world affords white men and women more luxuries and privileges than people of colour, they were at the forefront of this story whilst black and asian minorities were put in the background as butlers, maids and chauffeurs. It makes me so angry that on top of being a whirlwind of misogyny and sexism that such a film would have the audacity to misrepresent minorities entirely and highlight their so called use as servicing white people. IT. IS. GETTING. OLD.

Hopefully you’ve made it to the end of this “review” (kinda) and seen the damaging implications such a film has on our society. On reading Feminists Don’t Wear Pink and Other Lies curated by Scareltt Curtis, I read that “Books and things reflect what’s happening in the world, Hollywood movies DICTATE IT and MOULD what people think”. 

You may think movies don’t matter or a film of the 1990s doesn’t matter, but if we are to learn from our mistakes and progress our movements, we must unpick the past and see it for how it was. Movies are our culture, our representation of what we’ve learnt or seen in the world. I don’t want to see women as sexual objects without their permission. I don’t want to see them being moulded by the patriarchy or by women who support it. I don't want to see women only good enough to be hookers, wives or mistresses. I want women to be the strongest versions of themselves and for films to buckle up and show that shit on screen.

Pretty Woman can kiss my ass and if it’s a film you like in  unlike it. Pronto.

[obeymebutnotlikethat]

A friendly reminder to people because of this years events (tw: sexual assault and r*pe):

Almost everything you own was made from China or Southern Asia

Your racism and white supremacy complex stems from Northern Europe and its early colonization exhibitions.

At one point, poc with lighter skin faired better in the climate of racism than those with darker tone.

At no point is the excuse "he was having a bad day" is acceptable when someone kills a bunch of people.

Ted Bundy used the excuse of his porn addiction to get a lighter sentence and seek sympathy from the court. The man in Atlanta used it as a cover up that he had to get rid of his temptation. That's why people watch porn.

If you get drunk willingly and are assaulted (no matter what way) you are considered mentally incapacitated. All other definitions that only include forcible are incorrect and cherrypick.

In 2009, American companies had a rape clause that came down to "its ok if you get raped" and mainly republicans wouldn't vote to support a bill that would end that loophole of a clause.

In 2011, the American government fought to change the definition of rape to only include forcible. This would exclude a someone with limited mental capacity, someone who is drunk or drugged, and statutory rape. They fought to change the definition to cut back on abortion funding. Which would limit who is able to get an abortion.

When woman say the patriarchy and overseeing woman's bodies can kill them and belittles their entire existence to nothing more than breeders this is what they mean.

Assaulting someone and telling them to go back to their country because they aren't wanted here doesn't make you the good guy. It makes you appear as an insecure little twit who doesn't know how your ancestors weren't welcomed on this same ground you base your rights on. How your white ancestors showed up and snatched this land from the others originally inhabiting it and yet you believe you have the right to tell others to get out. I'm not saying you should take the fault of your ancestors. I am just saying, you can't forget that part of your history.

9/11 spurred an epidemic of anti-islamic hate crimes. The country was petrified of outside attacks we increased security and monitored all those who we believed fit the description of the attackers. Anti-Asian hate crimes have been here and they were spurred by covid as an excuse for people to express their racist ideology.

The media outlets have been pushing Anti-Asian, Anti-Islamic and practically anti- anyone-who-isn't-white. From the culture of portraying all muslims as terrorists to Asian countries are doing the same things we are but look how weird and freaky they are to Mexicans are coming in swarms/immigrants are coming in hordes.

Raiding a capitol, threatening to lynch people, and saying your patriotic does not make you patriotic...it makes you a terrorist. Republicans voted against security that would protect them as if they weren't also in danger.

The american system is more right winged than left winged policy.

Not all media is targeted towards children. If your child is listening to a song about sex and drugs or murder...that isn't the artists problem. Those songs are at first targeted towards an adult audience before teenagers pick it up and pass it to younger children.

Separating children from their parents and then stating they have better set up does not solve the problem.

Many immigrants fleeing from South America and Mexico will be turned away at the border for not seeking refuge in another city or country before coming to the border.

For over the past 20 years, there was a push that christians were facing prosecution in the states. This was often used after discussing same sex marriage, making cake for same sex couples and legalization of abortion. However, those things have nothing to do with them and it was all a false sense of fear. It was a way for them to express their bigotry without having to face backlash on it. It made them able to play the victim card.

LGBTQ+ don't owe you a reason for their existence or that they are people too. They don't need to make an argument as to why they have the right to healthcare or the same rights as you do.

If we are going to play history, the bible was originally written in Latin. This caused people from the lower class and all those who couldn't speak Latin to not understand the bible. The church was basically gatekeeping holy and salvational scripture.

[unpaidemotionallabour]

Feminism: Then vs Now

Men love to compare the quiet, socially acceptable, totally non-radical ladies of the women's liberation movement to the new age ****s and ********s of today.

Collage: top left- a woman holding a sign which reads- this is what a feminist looks like. Underneath her sign, someone has applied text which reads- that's pretty much what I expected. Second left is a picture of a crying woman with a hand over her face. The text applied reads- wants to be kitchen forced to get a real education and job. Third left is a picture of a woman with short hair, wearing a pink shirt which says dangerous. Someone has typed- yall feminists should dress up as women for Halloween because yall been tryna act like men all year. Bottom left: a picture of a sliced loaf of bread with a stick of butter, above the two symbols for male and female. The text says: Man ≠ woman. Men and women are equally valuable and both can survive on their own but neither can live to their fullest potential without the opposite sex.

Collage: top middle- Feminism before. Left picture is a black and white of a street booth with several people standing around, a sign hangs above the booth which reads- Come in and learn why women OUGHT to vote. Right picture is another black and white of a protest with someone holding up a large sign which reads- Women unite for women's liberation. Feminism now, underneath is a picture from a slut walk where women in bikinis each hold up signs which spell out s l u t. Right picture- another picture from a slut walk. Four women in dresses stand in front of a sign which reads slut. Bottom middle- an anti suffrage comic of a woman grabbing a man by his neck and forcing a kiss on him. The original photo reads- suffragette vote-getting the easiest way, but is cut off in the collage.

Collage: top right- antisuffrage comic. Women sit before a woman speaker. A sign on the wall in the background reads- husbands for old maids. Second right- a black and white drawing. On one side is a woman kissing her baby, on the other side is a woman holding a pamphlet and screaming. In the middle is a circle which reads- which do you prefer. Beneath that reads- the home or street corner for woman. Vote no on woman suffrage October 19th. Third right- a black and white drawing of a woman in the foreground dressed in grecian robes, with a suffragette in the background running behind her with a flag which says vote in one hand and a hammer in the other. The original picture shows the woman in the foreground holding up a banner which reads- no votes. Thank you. And another banner at her feet reads- the appeal of womanhood. Bottom right- a woman in a red dress has a rope tight around her waist which is also tied around a man's waist who stands behind her holding a screaming child. The text reads- held in bondage.

The fact is, men have been painting women as abhorrent, violent, manipulative, and downright ***** creatures since before feminism even began, and have viewed feminism as an affront to God and nature since its inception.

Collage: top left- color antisuffrage comic- one woman jumps on a police officer lying on the ground while another woman hits him with her umbrella. The original text reads- suffragists on the war path. Jump on him. He is only a mere man. Top right- a girl in a red dress reaches out to a startled boy in a white shirt with gray slacks. The original text reads- we've issues of our own. Leave well enough alone. Bottom left- two women kiss each other in public. The original text has been cut off in the collage but reads- girls are doing all the felows' jobs now! Bottom right- a woman in a green dress is tied to a chair, with a vice on her head. The text reads- what I would do with the suffragists. Central image- overlaying the other images has three pictures. The first image is a black and white with two women. The image reads- feminism first wave. People deserve equitable treatment. Equal rights, equal responsibility. The second image shows the radical feminism symbol of the female symbol with a fist in the circle, and a gray arrow pointing down and to the right. The image reads- feminism second wave. Class warfare, women are victims of men, "patriarchy". The third image shows a woman raising her fist with her mouth open in a scream. The image reads- feminism third wave. Men are dangerous, violent, patriarchal oppressive rapists. The bottom text reads- the theft of moral authority. Your bigotry was never their intention.

And men COUNT on historical amnesia to continue perpetuating the myth that our foremothers were polite society ladies who never did anything more than write a few mildly worded letters to our representatives and perhaps put up a few booths to gently encourage society to allow women to vote.

Men know this is not the case. They are counting on women to forget. They are erasing our history before our very eyes.

Image: a drawing of a dunking stool hanging above a river, with a bridge in the background. The text reads- for a suffragette. The dunking-stool and a nice deep pool, were our fore-fathers' plan for a scold. And could I have my way, each suffragette to-day, should "take the chair" and find the water cold.

Unfortunately, men have been quite successful in this endeavor, not least because of women who, for whatever reason/s they may have, help them.

While men continue to accuse feminism of devolving into misandry (which, coincidentally, is a term not coined until the feminist movement was created), it has been men who have devolved further and further, committing greater and greater violence against women to the point that violence against women is not simply accepted, but publicly praised and encouraged through violent pornography, punch a TERF rhetoric, and "black knight" advocacy. (And that's just in the first world.)

History is written by the Victors. It's time for all the Victorias to speak, write, share, and, perhaps most importantly, remember.

So, the next time a man says feminism has devolved into a bunch of misandrist ****/*s and ********s, bare your fangs and remind him we used to burn shit down for less.

[badasscrossstitch]

Some Thoughts For My Irish-American Family and Friends on St Patrick’s Day Weekend

Hello My Fellow Irish-American Friends

It is St Patrick’s Day weekend and the festivities are about to begin. I’m baking a soda bread as we speak and there are Smithwicks chilling in the fridge. 

This St. Patrick’s Day I would like to just quickly remind us all of some major moments in our history as Irish descendants and Irish Americas through the lens of oppression, sexism, and racism.

I know I know...that’s not very festive and this is OUR holiday. But we live in America in 2019 and shit is fucked so we need to use every opportunity we can to find solidarity and look to our past to inform our future. And since “everyone is Irish this weekend” it is a good time to leverage all that internet clicking to educate.

I hope you will just read through this and as you do look for the parallels. Think about our ancestors, our immigration stories, how we, as Irish-Americans, ended up where we are now in the United States with the privileges we have. Then dive deeper and read up on some of the things that stand out to you. 

If you really want to level up I highly recommend reading:

How the Irish Became White and Working Towards Whiteness. 

When you finish those I have more for you.

Let’s talk about St Patrick for a minute since it’s his holiday…

St Patrick was stolen from Britain and enslaved by the Irish in Ireland. After many years as a slave he escaped and fled back to Britain. Then he believed God spoke to him and told him he was to go back to Ireland and convert the Irish-heathens to Christianity.

So...a former slave who heard voices and had visions became a missionary and converted thousands to Christianity and is largely credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland. No snakes, no clovers explaining the trinity, and I’m fairly certain he didn’t raise the dead but I have no proof so I’ll leave that alone.

Irish Immigration…

We just learned about St Patrick bringing Christianity to Ireland. Well, not all Irish were/are Catholics. In fact, the majority of the first “wave” of Irish immigrants who came to the US were Protestants who were descended from British and Scottish COLONISTS and were fleeing religious persecutions and tensions in Ireland. It was even against the law at the time for Protestants and Irish-Catholics to marry in Ireland.

In the southern states of the US at this time, Irish immigrants were valued because...wait for it... white slave owners recognized the importance of Irish workers to the protection of slavery. How you ask? The Irish would do life-threatening work which would ensure slave-owners could protect their more high valued property (slaves). Please do not read this and think “shit we had it worse than black slaves!” … NO. That is not the point of sharing this. It is meant to provide a layer of context around how white protestants thought of Irish immigrants at this time.

The next “wave” of Irish immigrants came as refugees fleeing the Great Irish Famine of the 1840’s and in response to the need for laborers in the US. One million people died in Ireland as a result of the famine. ONE MILLION Irish died in a food crisis.

Most of these Irish immigrants/refugees came over on ships known as “coffin ships” because of how deplorable the conditions were. Some were the very same ships that used to transport the enslaved from Africa (again...context only! Choosing to come to the US on old slave ships is NOT the same as being enslaved). A quarter of these refugees died en route.

These immigrants chose to live in cities in areas with other Irish immigrants so that they would have support and protection. Most of these immigrants were Catholic. Guess what? That was a very unattractive thing at the time. Anti-Irish mobs burned churches and homes. Read about the Bible Riots of 1844. Walls were built around churches. Armed guards were put in place to defend and protect church-goers. (Pause here and really consider this. Consider the Mosque attack that just happened).

There are many stories of young and single Irish women who were brought over to marry men they had never met who could pay for their trip to the US.

The press positioned Irish men as violent gang members who were prone to alcoholism and women as “reckless breeders”. The Irish represented the highest ethnic population in prisons, in poorhouses, and in insane asylums.

Societies of men started forming...Nationalists. Native-born, Protestant men who wanted to make America great again and formed a new political party called the… wait for it...Know Nothing Party. They believed Catholicism was way out of alignment with American values and these Irish-Catholic immigrants and refugees needed to go back to where they came from. Guess what? They were pretty darn successful in oppressing Irish immigrants through deportations and voter suppression.

So how did the Irish go from a despised immigrant group to plain old white folks?

1) Having melanin-free skin and embracing white supremacy

2) Becoming a major voting force and acquiring political power

3) Assimilating

embracing the english language and giving up Irish

taking on civil servant roles (police, firefighters, judges)

espousing capitalism

4) Pointing to the influx of non-anglo immigrants as a threat to America - most specifically Chinese laborers

5) The labor movement and acquiring power through unions

Irish-American history is one riddled with xenophobia, religious persecution, racial supremacy, capitalism and labor exploitation, and patriarchy. I encourage you, my Irish American friends and family, to know your history. Explore these ideas. Study our history and use it to determine how you want to move forward. 

How will you use the white privilege you now hold to dismantle the systems of white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism that are built to oppress and suppress? How will you build solidarity?

Slainte!

Shannon

[soulbrotherv2]

Open Letter to “Trump’s Preachers”

by Dr. Frederick Haynes III and Colleagues

Dear Colleagues in Christ:

With heartbreak, yet hope, we reach out to you in the name of our Lord and Liberator, Jesus, the Christ. It was unsettling and upsetting to witness the meeting with you, our moral leaders, and one of the most amoral persons to ever occupy the White House in the name of discussing prison reform.

We are sure it must have been intoxicating to walk the corridors of power and sit at the table of governing authority. Unfortunately, those precincts of power have been infected by white supremacy and moral bankruptcy. Dr. Cornel West is correct, “we are in the spiritual eclipse of decency, honesty and integrity,” leaving our nation in the chaotic shadows of emboldened racism, ugly xenophobia, predatory patriarchy and unvarnished greed.”

Given your proximity to power and your “seat at the table” in this toxic, political climate, it’s painfully disappointing that instead of being prophetic clergy persons you became presidential cheerleaders. We could never imagine the eighth century prophets cheering the kings of Judah and Israel who were in similar political climates. We know John the Baptist wasn’t content to cheer Herod on and express his gratitude and honor for a seat at the table, declaring that Herod was the most “pro-Jewish king in our lifetime.”

We need not remind you of the posture of the Prince of Peace, our Savior from the streets, when He stood before Herod and Pilate. He didn’t even pray for them. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr was quoted yesterday but not emulated. Dr. King had a seat at the table at the White House, but he brought the menu of a civil and voting rights agenda to Presidents who transformed the nation.

It was errantly exclaimed that “this is probably going to be the most pro-Black president that we’ve had in our lifetime…” Were the fumes from the intoxicating toxins that strong? Was he being pro-Black while building his political platform as the number one purveyor of birtherism, which was fueled by racism? Is it pro-Black to label Black NFL players protesting racial injustice in the criminal justice system you were there to reform, “SOBs?” That’s what your pro-Black president did. Was he at his pro-Black finest and most eloquent when he referred to countries of color as “s-hole countries?”

Was he being pro-Black when he equivocated during the white supremacist rally and violence in Charlottesville, that left one person dead and more than a dozen injured, declaring there were “very fine people on both sides?” Was he pro-Black when he appointed a white supremacist, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions (who was deemed too racist to be a judge by a bipartisan panel and Coretta Scott King) to serve as Attorney General? Did your cheerleading blind you to the fact that the policies of Sessions contradict and overrule the prison reform you were cheering for? Attorney General Sessions wants to stall a federal review of police departments where racial profiling, excessive use of force and racially discriminatory police practices have been exposed.

During the Obama Administration (who was disparaged during the meeting to the delight of 46-1), the Justice Department began 25 investigations into police departments and sheriff’s offices and resolved civil rights lawsuits filed against police departments in more than 15 cities. Sessions is stopping and reversing these investigations and consent decrees. Were you cheering for Trump and this Justice Department to continue to ignore the broken body of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, the last gasps of Eric Garner in New York, the slain body of Michael Brown in Ferguson, the aborted life of Tamir Rice in Ohio and so many others? Are you cheering for his “law and order” dog whistle calls that encourage over policing and underserving of our communities? You do know his attorney general also has plans to restart the “War on Drugs,” which was really a war on Black and Brown communities!

We are sure you recognize the importance of judicial appointments in criminal justice and prison reform. The president you cheered for contradicts real reform with his appointments of judges. While purporting to be concerned about prison reform and the negative effects of mass incarceration on communities of color, Trump’s actions demonstrate a blatant disregard for the welfare of people of color by pushing judicial nominees with disturbing records on racial equity issues into lifetime positions as judges, which will have ramifications in the lives of people of color long after he has left the White House. Of the 87 judicial nominations Trump has made, 80 are whites who have made careers in undermining civil rights, while only one is African-American.

We understand that the stated intent of the White House has been to focus its criminal justice reform efforts on improving re-entry, rehabilitation and workforce training programs. That’s nice, but if you have a room filled with spider webs wouldn’t you clean the webs AND remove the spider? You cheered him on for removing a few webs, but you didn’t prophetically challenge him to remove the spiders of sentencing reform, ending the money bail system, profiteering from prisons, and the caste system who author, Michelle Alexander insightfully deconstructs in her book, The New Jim Crow. One of the biggest and most venomous spiders is the school to prison pipeline that begins with expulsions of Black and Brown children from school. Expulsions push our children into juvenile court systems and they commence their passage through the pipeline to prison.

Since you’ve been selected to serve on the front-lines of prison reform, as your colleagues, who have been doing this work and fighting to eliminate the spiders of injustice, we would be remiss if we didn’t give you resources for your new assignment. We encourage you to read the aforementioned, The New Jim Crow. And Paul Butler’s, Chokehold. He documents and declares how police officers, politicians, and ordinary people are afraid of Black men. The result is the chokehold: laws and practices that treat every African-American man like a thug. The former federal prosecutor shows that the system is working exactly the way it’s supposed to. Black men are always under watch, and police violence is widespread—all with the support of judges and politicians.

Add to your justice edification Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. Stevenson is a gifted attorney who is engaged in the work of criminal justice reform and testifies that mercy can be redemptive and offers a challenge and tools for fixing this broken system that has resulted in destroying lives, dismantling families and devastating our communities.

Our beloved colleagues, the leader of the free world you met with has a contagious narcissism that has given him a Messiah complex. Please remind him of the first-person pronouns that saturate the model prayer, “Our,” “us” and “we.” No one can overhaul the criminal justice system alone. Remember the wisdom of the Apostle Paul, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.” The flowering of criminal justice reform will require all of our hands for this great work.

Our dear colleagues, the man you met with yesterday during his divisive and incendiary campaign asked the Black community repeatedly, “What do you have to lose?” In less than two years we’ve lost a lot and you have become his cheerleaders with a collar.

We are praying for you. We invite you to join us in dialogue that will prophetically challenge the poison of Trump’s politics, while we work to develop our underserved communities. We are called to speak truth to power. May God give us the courage and power to tell the truth.

Peace and Power,

Dr. Frederick Douglass Haynes, III

Dr. Jamal Harrison Bryant

Bishop Rudy McKissick

Bishop W. Darrin Moore

Bishop Talbert Swan

Dr. Wendell Anthony

Dr. Traci Blackmon

Dr. Amos C. Brown

Pastor Corey Brown

Bishop John R. Bryant

Dr. Iva Carruthers

Dr. Delmon Coates

Dr. Jawanza Karriem Colvin

Dr. Marcus Cosby

Dr. Wayne Croft

Dr. William H. Curtis

Rev. Leah Daughtery

Dr. Marcus Davidson

Bishop James Davis

Rev. Jacques D. Denkins

Dr. James W.E. Dixon, II

Dr. John Faison, Sr.

Drs. Elaine and Floyd Flake

Rev. Willie D. Francois, III

Bishop Sam Green

Dr. Neichelle Guidry

Dr. Cynthia Hale

Pastor Victor T. Hall

Rev. J.C. Howard

Rev. Alexander E.M. Johnson

Dr. Jeffrey Allen Johnson, Sr.

Dr. Marcus D. King

Bishop Vashti McKenzie

Pastor Breonus Mitchell

Dr. Joshua L. Mitchell

Bishop Paul S. Morton

Dr. Otis Moss, III

Dr. James Perkins

Dr. Zina Pierre

President Welton Pleasant, II

Bishop Dennis Proctor

Dr. Nelson B. Rivers, III

Bishop Marvin Sapp

Drs. J. Alfred Smith Sr. and Jr.

Dr. Gina Stewart

Dr. Warren H. Stewart, Sr.

Dr. Alyn Waller

Dr. Lance Watson

Dr. Maurice Watson

Dr. Howard John Wesley

Dr. Ralph Douglas West, Sr.

[thequietoftheroom]

Hi. Is this thing on? Lauren Graham said in her new book that we should write more so this is my attempt at that. Oh by the way, I started reading again. I write these for myself so why don’t I just use “we”, but that will probably be weird reading it back. I’ve read Feminasty: The Complicated Woman’s Guide To Surviving The Patriarchy Without Drinking Herself To Death, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice On Love And Life From Dear Sugar, and now I’m almost done with Talking As Fast As I Can: From Gilmore Girls To Gilmore Girls. I’ve gone through several lists to pick out the books I plan on reading in the next few months, at least if I can afford them, but I like to think the books I ultimately bought found me and not the other way around. I have been read cover to cover, my soul pierced, and my mind opened. Of course fiction books have a similar effect but I never thought I would be interested in what people had to say about this grand thing called life and I learned that I cared a whole lot, not because I wanted to model myself after them but because I care about people and reading their explanations on life is like suddenly remembering they’re my best friends and they’re just catching me up on little secrets that come packed with nuggets of wisdom. 

I got myself into several situations I never planned on getting myself into even though the red flags were there and even though the people very openly said “Hey, this is exactly who I am”, but you know how your mind works when you have anxiety and depression. You start to convince yourself the puzzle pieces you find yourself assembling are actually part of the picture even though they don’t fit because deep down you’re trying to finish the puzzle of your life and no one is giving you quite the right pieces. In other words, and to quote my friend Allie, I drank a nice glass of “dumb bitch” juice. Which lead me to want to consider joining a dating site sooner than I planned. I know these things take time but it’s been 3 days and I’ve sent 40 likes (I think that’s how okcupid works idk) and practically got 0 back. Here’s why that sucks. On okcupid they focus strongly on your personality and beliefs. So someone not only saw my face and said “yeesh no thanks” they took the time to get to know the information about myself I put on there and were still like “yikes I don’t think so”. So all in all this was an experiment in derailing my self esteem and increasing my depression. What crazy color will I dye my hair to suddenly avoid dealing with my problems? Or maybe I’ll give myself another buzzcut. Stay tuned!

On a serious note, a lot of the stories I’m reading made me SO relieved that at 27 I’m still very much single and have only had 1 relationship which wasn’t that great (it was both of our faults). There were so many stories and anecdotes about young love being messy and about true commitment coming in your 40′s. Honestly, idk if I can wait that long. If NASA and the CIA and the FBI were like “you have been randomly selected to test mating with androids” I’d be like “yes please but can I choose their face”. I mean realistically I’m in the worst position to be in a relationship. For one, I don’t have much money saved because I’m sadly addicted to ordering things online, most of which are either useful to me or to my job (and no I don’t get reimbursed but I think the prospect of waiting for something in the mail to kill time is momentarily greater than the prospect of having more money later). I still live at home. Obviously, that’s a hella yikes and tbf I’m reading to get the fuck out of here but {see A: i have no money} and I have no one to move in with. I keep doing extensive research but I learned that in 2018 everywhere is problematic. So as much as my love for NYC is slowly fading I also realize this is it for me! I’m a city gal who needs to be surrounded by diversity. I can’t do suburbs and I can’t do living near more than 50% white people. I’ll die. I know that’s discriminatory but we are in the dawn of BBQ Beckys so can you blame me when the majority of white people keep voting against my existence. So I’m stuck. Every once in a while I look up “most LGBT friendly places to live” or “least racist places to live” and hope there’s a magical place with both but there isn’t (especially since, hello, twinks are hella racist). But I’ve literally cuddled my body pillow to death: it broke apart and I need a new one. And I learned I can’t fall asleep unless I’m cuddling it because I’m that lonely.

Everything in life is so complicated. I hate not being out at work but at the same time everyone there is ignorant so I wouldn’t be any more comfortable having them walking on eggshells around me. I love the individuals though and sometimes I feel very motherly or big brotherly towards them and they make me REALLY love work. But I want to be me. And I want to get rid of my legal name. Every time someone calls me John I die inside. Sometimes I don’t even respond because I have to be like “oh shit that’s me”. Can I change my name now? Probably, just have to have the money and redo all my paperwork at work? Will i? No because then either a) the individuals will have to learn my new name and their lives are confusing as fuck as it is or b) i keep my current legal name as a nickname but then it will get confusing for paperwork. I don’t like inconveniencing people that much even for something super important to me. I’ll just die inside until I save enough money, do my last few undergrad psyche classes, and then get into grad school. So like in 5 years, knowing me.

I’ve developed some little crushes here and there but most of the time it’s people that live out of reach or are straight or bottoms or any combination of them or I can just tell they will never like me in that way. So honestly, why bother. I miss the days when I didn’t care about this and the only thing plaguing my mind was what show I should marathon while building in minecraft.

Speaking of games, I play a lot with my friend Sal. He’s like my best friend which is weird because he was my boss once on a minecraft server but now I can’t ever think of him that way? He’s more like an older brother now, even though he’s younger than me. We talk a lot and also enjoy a lot of silence, and introduce each other to different games and shows. But mostly games. We’re both obsessed with 7 Days To Die and I check constantly for news about the update (no set dates for Alpha 17 AHHHH). To fill that void we started playing Fortnite, which I know a lot of people make fun of but it’s actually fun. Here’s a fun fact about me: I can’t take serious games serious so if there’s no building element, or fun element, or explosives I can blow things up with, I won’t do it. I have 0 competitive bones in this body. I like to have fun. That’s why Fortnite is perfect because it is a competitive FPS type game but it’s also a parody of that genre and it’s so whimsical. Save The Day is a lot like 7 Days To Die so that’s been fun. Listen, when you play a game with someone and you beat it, especially a survival game, it’s such a relief and you learn so much and it’s like you went on a literal adventure with that person. Did Sal and I actually get stranded on an island full of mutants and cannibals? No but that’s what it actually felt like after finishing The Forest because it was that real for us. My love for Pocket Camp is fading because it’s the same stuff, new textures. I mean the prospect of having a cute camp is fun sometimes (fun enough for me to spend way too much money on it. HELP!) but now it’s like “oh they just stand there and I don’t really do anything”. ALTHOUGH they are saying that now they are adding a LOT more gameplay to the point that you need at least 1gb of space of the game so I’m excited. I’m still obsessed with minecraft so there’s nothing new there.

Here’s something weird. I spent much of my time, when I identified as gay, being annoyed at gay stereotypes and mostly twinks being like “if you don’t do x,y,z you might as well be straight”, so much so that now that I came out as queer those things still bother me and I have to be like “it’s okay that’s not you anymore you literally figured this out which is why you’re this person”. That’s how I should introduce myself tbh “Hi I’m the Q in LGBTQ”. I don’t care about fitting in but because of my lack of in person friends sometimes I worry that maybe I should care, just a little. I’m so tempted to try Tinder just for that but then I think of all the people who have Tinder that live in this building and I’m like God that is a huge mistake. I need a huge life change. I need someone to come in and shake up my life but no one has volunteered. I’m kind of regretting thinking of all those stupid romantic things like “Oh I want my future boyfriend to teach my how to ride a bike :)” “I want my future boyfriend to take me traveling” “I want my future boyfriend to serenade me”. I’ll just become a full on Capricorn and teach myself everything, travel the world alone, and serenade my goddamn self.

Speaking of which again, can my depression like.. not? I was so into learning and practicing chords daily and I just stopped? Like my motivation was like “It’s been a nice 1 week. back to not caring about anything again” I mean I started to try to learn Burn and Satisfied from Hamilton (well, “learn”) so I at least have interest and I still listen to classical music and jazz to light that fire under my ass but still. I’m just going to do what I always do and restart from lesson 1 and hope I make it to 3 although my extensive research of chords has already put me at an advantage for lesson 3, which is chords. Of course I would go and try to learn something in an unstructured manner because I have a problem with routine and authority even when that authority is me.

I should write me. Which reminds me I was going to write about this one dream I had on my regular blog. See ya!