#transcorporeal

[sspacegodd]

I thought I understood the illusory nature of matter: that forms were different vibratory fields like the sum of the dots in a newspaper photo or the fickle relationship between consenting protons and electrons.

But I keep walking into walls, hoping to find a hole in the molecules, a rift in the curtain.

I'm a discorporeal wannabe, an optimistic non-local shotgun blast of hope.

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

/pounces on chance to recommend

"5 reasons earth is worth protecting" "why we should save the earth" because we are no more inextricable from the earth than our cells are from our bodies. hope this helps

[queerographies]

[Divinità queer][Roberto Strongman]

Vodou haitiano, santería cubana, candomblé brasiliano: rituali di possessione come incarnazione del divino oltre l'identità di genere.

In “Divinità queer” Roberto Strongman esamina il vodou haitiano, la santeria cubana e il candomblé brasiliano per dimostrare come i rituali religiosi di possessione e trance permettano agli esseri umani di vedere se stessi quali incarnazioni del divino. In questi rituali, la commistione tra umano e divino produce identità di genere indipendenti dal sesso assegnato alla nascita. In contrasto con…

[ecrivainsolitaire]

Humans have the capability of perceiving when they're being stared at, even if they can't see it.

Dr. T'Chem was staring at Lieutenant /θkɡɾɑːˈŋæ/ (or as his current fling affectionately nicknamed her, "Tucker-Annie"), whose dorsal spikes were still rattling after the incident at the holodeck. It was his first time at the witness stand, and he didn't want to ruin a young star sailor's life.

Lieutenant Tucker-Annie was the combat specialist in charge of the training dojo of Federation Vessel TSN457, named after the Terra-Saturn-Ceres coalition where Dr. T'Chem currently served as the xenoanthropologist charged with facilitating human integration to the local Federation of Fraternal Planets and Satellites. The FFPS had the goal of finding planets with intelligent life to trade resources and technology, and due to their recent incorporation, local research vessels were fitted with diverse crews to acclimate everyone to each other's cultures and biological needs. Dr. T'Chem was the human expert in the ship, and was tasked with helping smooth over interpersonal relations among the crew.

The relations were, at that moment, as bumpy as Lt. Tucker-Annie's dorsal spike line.

An incident had occurred during a training exercise. The squad consisted of a Venusian, two Saturnians, three Ceresians, two monks from the Transcorporeal Temple of Robotic Ascension, and five Terrans (two humans, two dogs and a cybernetically enhanced cat). The exercise consisted of getting through a generic jungle scenario and, unbeknownst to the squad, avoiding a team of ninjas lead by Lt. Tucker-Annie trying to take them out one by one. It was supposed to test the way they would react to a surprise attack.

It was not supposed to reveal that humans could sense when they were being stalked.

Of course, any trained sailor would have an ingrained knowledge of potential threats and how to spot them. Look for the shadows that are too dark, listen for the spot air isn't blowing from, things like that. Basic things most people don't think about but that can be identified if you think about them.

This was not that.

"Something's watching us," said Crew Johnson, in that sloppy way only creatures with lips spoke.

"What do you mean? There's cameras everywhere, of course they're watching us," responded Crew Hessikh, slithering over the vines on a tree branch to cross a river. She grabbed the axe in Crew Johnson's belt with her telekinesis and took down a small tree to serve as a bridge.

"Crew Flufflepaws, could you please take a look?" Asked Crew Johnson, nervously looking around. Crew Flufflepaws got on the tree as well and scanned the terrain from above.

"I can't see anything, or smell anything. And my hearing isn't what it used to be. I'll stay on the lookout for—" a horrendous hiss interrupted the automatic translator's feed. Crew Flufflepaws' comm line cut off.

Hessikh and Johnson looked at each other. That was the strongest fighter of their team, gone. They knew it was a simulation, but it still gave them chills.

The rest of their crew mates were split into two different teams further along the path. Crew Fanning's voice came from the comm line.

"Johnson, Hessikh, are you okay? What happened to Flufflepaws?"

"We don't know, Johnson said something was watching us and it went to check, then we lost comms."

"I felt it too. I know this isn't that kind of exercise but I think— AAAHHH!"

Two blaster shots were heard, then a thud.

Lieutenant Tucker-Annie, who was watching Hessikh and Johnson from the mud pit behind the latter, had her tranquilizer dart ready. She got ready to shoot down Hessikh, but then heard a voice over the comm line.

"Code Lithium, we have a Code Lithium, we have to end the simulation, I just took down- I can't-" the breathing was sounding heavier and faster, too fast for a human.

"Fanning, calm down, remember your sutras. We need you focused, what happened?"

"I felt like I was being watched, so I turned around and saw this thing and it scared me and I jumped and I thought it was on stun mode and-"

"It's alright, we're calling it off. Captain, we have a Code Lithium! End the simulation now or- fuck, there it is again. Hessikh, do you see any heat sources?"

"Nothing out of the ordinary- why haven't they shot it down alre-"

The next thing Lieutenant Tucker-Annie remembered was the sound of a heel turn over the mud, followed by darkness.

Lt. Tucker-Annie woke up in the hospital bay, getting her tail regenerated by a robot nurse. She looked over and found her underling on the next bed, with a huge bandage on the side of his neck and a wing in a cast. Thankfully, he would be alright as soon as the stem cell bank was reprogrammed after her treatment.

The disciplinary board was called, an investigation was open, and both Crew Fanning and their captain were put on paid leave while the investigation was ongoing. Dr. T'Chem was called in as an expert after a review of the holodeck footage revealed there was no way Crew Fanning could have heard, seen or smelled the hidden sailor.

It was the first time in a while he hadn't helped himself to a glass of Venusian whiskey for breakfast. He really didn't want to mess this up.

"And would you care to explain how this is possible, Doctor?" Asked the prosecution, staring him down with an unnerving amount of eyes.

"I am as astounded as this court; our firm has been looking into Terran medical literature and we're still trying to figure out how it works; they don't even know, but they know it does happen, it's been documented for thousands of years. I have a hypothesis, but I don't know if it's even testable."

There was a murmur in the court. The judge asked him to elaborate.

"The way eyesight works is the light bounces off of opaque bodies and in its way it collides with the lenses in our corneas, which send it to the brain as electrical signals to be interpreted. The light that doesn't go into our eyes just bounces off our bodies and other opaque objects as well, the photons go everywhere and anywhere. This is the same for most species in this constellation, including humans. But even other Terran species don't have these abilities, as Crew Flufflepaws has testified."

A begrudging meow was heard from the audience.

"Order in the court, please. Dr. T'Chem, what do you suggest is the origin of this mysterious sense?"

The camera drones all hoovered around him. Dr. T'Chem straightened his fins and got close to the microphone.

"I believe it's possible that humans have a sense of touch so sensitive that they can feel the photons that don't bounce back. The ones that go into an eye instead of an opaque body. I think humans can actually feel in their skin when they are being watched."

There was an uproar in the crowd. His paramour, a dark skinned young human from the human settlement known as "Colombia", grabbed the religious symbol on her necklace and made a gesture with it he hadn't quite figured out yet.

The trial had to go on recess.

The implications were incalculable. Three dozen biologists from six different planets, including Terra, had emailed him before the end of the day to ask him to justify himself. Multiple human religious leaders took the chance to link it to demonic possession or moral evils. By the end of the week, four different labs were trying to figure out a way to double blind test shooting a photon cannon on a human's back and trying to get them to sense it.

But most importantly, the news made it outside of the Federation. The rumours about this new species that couldn't be stalked got so far, it ended up affecting the outcome of a border conflict with the Betelgeuse Libertarian Army on the Federation's favour.

Humans were terrifying.

If this is what they evolved to be, what was their planet like?

[extramachine]

Love that Mettaton is trans but like. ghost to robot (gtr)

[the-girl-who-didnt-smile]

PORT-AU-PRINCE

Although I’d originally planned to style this character after Guede Nibo, I’ve since realized this was a misguided decision. He’s no longer based on Guede Nibo and is supposed to be a member of the Gede who does not exist in the real world. 

A full discussion can be found in the middle of this description: 

“Port-au-Prince” needs an updated description; I plan to do this at a later time.

Original, outdated description below cut: 

RANTING ABOUT THE REAL-LIFE GEDE NIBO (GUEDE NIBO)

Andre Pierre featured Gede Nibo alongside Baron Samedi and Maman Brigitte in several paintings, such as “Les Trois Esprits du Cimetiere.”

Previously, I described Gede Nibo as (quote) “unapologetically queer”. Where did I get the audacity to make such a claim? 

Well, there are a number of English language books and other sources that describe Gede Nibo himself as queer. As you may have gathered, I’m a big fan of Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha’s works, and have relied on her research. In Vodou en Vogue, Nwokocha describes him as an “effeminate dandy” who is “honored by queer people”. In Queering Black Atlantic Religions, Roberto Strongman also names Gede Nibo and Erzulie Freda as deities who "have strong associations with queer Vodou practitioners." Strongman’s statement is certainly true with respect to the Erzulies; the question is whether it is also true with respect to Gede Nibo. 

Afraid of making the same mistake I did with Baron Samedi, I searched for a Haitian source, as there is a great amount of misinformation spread by English speaking, non-Haitians. Since the Haitian author Milo Marcelin also described Gede Nibo as queer, I stopped there and thought, “so Gede Nibo really is queer…!”

…But it seems I may have made the exact same mistake I did with Baron Samedi afterall. 

OOPS!

As far as I can tell, the description of Gede Nibo as “queer” among English-speaking, non-Haitians originates in three major sources:

Gay, German author Hubert Fichte

Gay, American author Randy P. Conner

Haitian author Milo Marcelin

Hubert Fichte conducted his ethnographic work in Haiti during the 1970s. Apparently, Fichte heard Haitian farmers singing a song called “Masisi”, in which the lyrics went “Guede Nibo Masisi!” 

He mentions the title of this song in Xango: 

“Es gibt einen schwulen Totengott, Guede Nibo, und Anfang No­vember singt das ganze Land, jeder haitianische Bauer die Hym­nen auf die Schwulen - »Massissi« - und die ruralen Familienvä­ter vollführen ambivalente Gesten vorne und hinten an ihrer Hose.”

Source: Fichte, Hubert, and Leonore Mau. 1984. Xango. Frankfurt: Fischer. p. 143 https://archive.org/details/xangodafroamerik0000fich/page/142/mode/2up? 

An English translation is provided by Strongman: 

“There is a gay god of death, Guédé Nibo, and in early November the whole country, every Haitian peasant, sings hymns to the gays— “masisi”—and rural family fathers perform ambivalent gestures at the front and back of their pants.”

Source: Strongman, Roberto. Queering Black Atlantic Religions: Transcorporeality in Candomblé (2019). p. 75

The lyrics of the song are described in Homosexualität und Literatur (Vol. 1):

“Als eine der wenigen Religionen verfuegt der Vaudou ueber eine homosexuelle Gottheit, den Totengott Guédé Nibo, und am Totensonntag singen die Vaudouglaeubigen in der Stadt und auf dem Land: Guédé Nibo Massissi, Guédé Nibo Massissi! – schwuler Guédé Nibo, schwuler Guédé Nibo!”

Source: Fichte, Hubert. Homosexualität und Literatur: Polemiken. Germany, S. Fischer, 1987. Vol. 1. p. 146

An English translation is provided in The Gay Critic: 

“Voodoo is one of the few religions to espouse a homosexual divinity, the god of the dead Guédé Nibo, and on Dead Sunday the believers chant, throughout the city and in the countryside: Guédé Nibo Massissi! Guédé Nibo Massissi! – gay Guédé Nibo! gay Guédé Nibo!”

Source: Fichte, Hubert. 1996. The Gay Critic. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. p. 118

Interestingly, Katherine Smith observed something similar in 2007, but the chant went “Gede Masisi!” not “Gede Nibo Masisi!”: 

“Gede mounts individuals as well as small marauding bands of vagabon who may pound on tombs and yell obscenities at the dead. In 2007, one such group of young men dressed in drag, fellated bones, and danced flamboyantly as the crowed cheered “Gede Masisi!” (Gay Gede!).”

Source: Smith, Katherine. "Dialoging with the urban dead in Haiti." Southern Quarterly 47.4 (2010): p. 83 

Hubert Fichte translated the word masisi as a schwul, meaning “gay”, but this is not accurate. Masisi is a slur that has been reclaimed by some within the Haitian LGBTQ community; really, la Communauté M / The M Community.

I have been using words that originate in the Western bourgeoisie, but these are not terms Haitians use to describe themselves - especially those oppressed by race and class. There are similarities between the word masisi and terms used in other non-Western cultures, such as hijra, bakla, okama, and fa'afafine.

As defined by Charlot Jeudy - the former president of KOURAJ who was killed in 2019: 

“…the societal definition of masisi is ‘acting as the female partner in a homosexual relationship.’ You can have muscular, manly M persons, but for Haitians, they cannot be called masisi. The word masisi has always been an insult. It makes people uncomfortable for us to use it, but in Haitian Creole, there is no other way for me to describe what I am.”

Source: https://cornbreadandcremasse.wordpress.com/2013/06/16/the-m-community-lgbt-courage-in-haiti/ 

It’s from 2002, but the documentary Des hommes et dieux contains interviews of several self-identified masisi. Some who identify as masisi would probably identify as “gay” if they were born in America; others would probably identify as “trans” - either, as binary trans women, or nonbinary transfems. Either way, masisi is not synonymous with “gay” or “transfeminine”, and it is important to remember that it’s been used as hate speech.

Fichte was surely incorrect in using words like masisi, schwul, and gay to describe Gede Nibo. There is no doubt in his attraction to women. The question is whether he could be described as “bisexual”, miks, or if he is purely heterosexual - not queer in any respect. 

Although he repeatedly describes Gede Nibo as “gay”, one of Fichte’s interviewees flatly denies this:

Ich frage:

—Ist Guédé Nibo Massissi? Schwul?

André antwortet:

—Das ist falsch. Die Götter, die aus zwei Teilen bestehen, sind keine starken Götter. Es sind gekaufte Götter. Man kauft die Göt­ter, um Sachen zu machen, die nicht gut sind.

Source: Fichte, Hubert, and Leonore Mau. 1984. Xango. Frankfurt: Fischer. p. 182 https://archive.org/details/xangodafroamerik0000fich/page/182/mode/2up 

Machine Translation: 

I ask: 

—Is Guédé Nibo masisi? Gay? 

André answers: 

—That is wrong. The gods that are made up of two parts are not strong gods. They are bought gods. People buy the gods to do things that are not good.

Because I do not speak German, I referred to Herbert Uerlings’ Poetiken der Interkulturalität for context:

Zu den gewichtigsten Ergebnissen seiner Feldforschung gehört, daß Guédé Nibo, einer der Totengötter, die alle traditionell mit Sexualität verbunden werden, ein Gott der Homo- und Bisexuellen ist. Sollte das zutreffen, so wäre es vermutlich eine neue ethnographische Erkenntnis über den Vaudou.47 Die weitergehende Frage an den Priester André, ob »Guédé Nibo Massissi« (X 182) sei, also schwul, wird verneint, aber auf eine Weise, bei der vor lauter offensichtlicher Abwehr Fichtes Vermutung praktisch bestätigt wird: »Das ist falsch. Die Götter, die aus zwei Teilen bestehen [bisexuell oder schwul sind — H.U.], sind keine starken Götter. Es sind gekaufte [schwache — H. U] Götter. Man kauft die Götter, um Sachen zu machen, die nicht gut sind« (X 182). Ein anderer, schwuler Priester dagegen sagt: »Es gibt Götter, die die Homosexuellen verachten, und andre, die sie lieben« (X 194).

Source: Uerlings, Herbert. Poetiken der Interkulturalität: Haiti bei Kleist, Seghers, Müller, Buch und Fichte. Vol. 92. Walter de Gruyter, 2013., p. 282

Machine Translation:

One of the most important findings of his field research is that Guédé Nibo, one of the gods of the dead, all of whom are traditionally associated with sexuality, is a god of homosexuals and bisexuals. If this is true, it would probably be a new ethnographic discovery about voodoo.47 The further question to the priest André as to whether "Guédé Nibo is Massissi" (X 182), i.e. gay, is answered in the negative, but in a way that practically confirms Fichte's assumption through sheer obvious defensiveness: "That is wrong. The gods who consist of two parts [bisexual or gay - H.U.] are not strong gods. They are bought [weak - H. U] gods. Gods are bought to do things that are not good" (X 182). Another, gay priest, on the other hand, says: "There are gods who despise homosexuals and others who love them" (X 194).

I do not know if Uerlings is correct in dismissing the interviewee as “defensive”, but I am grateful for his clarification of the phrase “aus zwei Teilen bestehen”.

Notably, the footnote on the same page states:  

47 Ich habe in der Literatur keinen Beleg dafür gefunden. Allerdings notiert Deren zu Guédé: »Er vertauscht die Geschlechter und zieht Frauen Männerkleider und Männern Frauenkleider an« (Der Tanz des Himmels mit der Erde, 1992, S. 128f.), und vermerkt in einer Fußnote: »Es wird zwar selten eindeutig ausgesprochen, aber häufig finden sich Hinweise darauf. daß es sich bei Guedé [sic!] um eine hermaphroditische Gottheit handelt, genau wie Legba« (a.a.O.).

Source: Uerlings, Herbert. Poetiken der Interkulturalität: Haiti bei Kleist, Seghers, Müller, Buch und Fichte. Vol. 92. Walter de Gruyter, 2013., p. 282

Machine Translation: 

47 I have found no evidence of this in the literature. However, Deren notes about Guédé: »He swaps the sexes and dresses women in men's clothes and men in women's clothes« (The Dance of Heaven and Earth, 1992, p. 128f.), and notes in a footnote: »Although it is rarely stated clearly, there are frequent indications that Guedé [sic!] is a hermaphroditic deity, just like Legba« (loc. cit.).

It is possible that the German Fichte was mistaken in describing Gede Nibo as queer, and that he mistook his lasciviousness for queer sexuality.

Notably, the Haitian author Milo Marcelin described Gede Nibo as queer in Mythologie Vodou (vol. 2): “Guédé Nibo, mystère mâle et femelle (hermaphrodite), est le protecteur des vivants et des morts.” Similar to the song “Masisi”, Marcelin describes another song that suggests Gede Nibo is himself queer. Naturally the song is sexually explicit, but you can find it in the source provided below, with one of the lyrics being “...Regarde la démarche de Guédé!”. 

Source: Marcelin, Milo. Mythologie Vodou: Rite Arada. 2 vols. Port-au-Prince: Les Editions Haitiennes, 1950. Vol. 2, p. 181 & p. 187 https://www.google.com/books/edition/Mythologie_vodou_rite_arada/cjvXAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=%22Regarde+la+d%C3%A9marche+de+Gu%C3%A9d%C3%A9%22 

An English translation of this song can be found in: Conner, Randy P. Lundschien, and David Sparks. Queering Creole spiritual traditions: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender participation in African-inspired traditions in the Americas. Routledge, 2014, p. 63 https://books.google.com/books?id=5SINiF0fkqwC&pg=PA63&lpg=PA63

A large section of Conner’s Queering Creole Spiritual Traditions describes “homoerotic, pansexual, and transgender aspects” of Gede Nibo. (p. 94). However, one interviewee denies an association between Gede Nibo and queer sexuality - that being, the Caucasian Houngan Mark Alexander "Aboudja" Moellendorf (p. 64) 

Source: Conner, Randy P. Lundschien, and David Sparks. Queering Creole spiritual traditions: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender participation in African-inspired traditions in the Americas. Routledge, 2014

Outside of the sources mentioned above, I have found little evidence that Gede Nibo is himself queer. Rather than Gede Nibo, I’ve found more evidence that the Erzulies are important to members of the aforementioned Haitian “M Community” (see bottom of this post). I have also seen claims that Gede Nibo sometimes cross dresses, but I’ve yet to find a reliable source for this. There are artistic renditions of him proudly displaying his sexuality, but I have yet to see any that show him in women’s clothing, or displaying queer sexuality.

It is possible that the authors listed above are correct in their assessment (except for Fichte, who was definitely wrong). However, there’s a lot of misinformation spread about the lwa outside of Haiti and New Orleans, which arises from foreigners misunderstanding the culture and traditions of Vodou. Since I have already made mistakes with Baron Samedi and Maman Brigitte, I could be wrong about Gede Nibo too. If this is the case, I apologize for spreading misinformation about him being queer. 

It is also possible that the above was true at some point in the past, but not in the present. Afterall, Fichte and Marcelin wrote during the mid 20th century, and traditions evolve over time.

…Well, might as well start ranting about my Deviantart OC!

RANTING ABOUT MY DEVIANTART OC

This character’s name is “Port-au-Prince” - named after the capital of Haiti. 

Unlike the real-life Gede Nibo, “Port-au-Prince” is just gay, and a drag queen. His personality and interests are similar to Angel Dust, where he is openly gay and flamboyant in his mannerisms. As it is a slur, I have been avoiding the word masisi, but it is likely he would identify as part of the “M community”. Where Alastor is (presumably) the son and/or grandson of New Orleans Voodoo Queen(s), “Port-au-Prince” is a houngan - an extremely powerful one at that. His appearance and personality were inspired by the individuals featured in the documentaries Des hommes et dieux and Paris is Burning.

 I made this decision for these reasons: 

To integrate him into the pre-existing world of Hazbin Hotel, as a counterpart Angel Dust

To represent the Haitian “M community”, who experience intense prejudice and violence, but find sanctuary in Vodou

To differentiate him from the real-life Gede Nibo

As a tribute to the association between the Gede and gender/sexual queerness

Here’s a list of sources to back this third point: 

Nwokocha, Eziaku Atuama. Vodou en vogue: fashioning Black divinities in Haiti and the United States. UNC Press Books, 2023.

Conner, Randy P. Lundschien, and David Sparks. Queering Creole spiritual traditions: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender participation in African-inspired traditions in the Americas. Routledge, 2014

McAlister, Elizabeth A. "Love, sex, and gender embodied: The spirits of Haitian Vodou." Love, sex and gender in the world religions (2000): 129-146. https://africultures.com/love-sex-and-gender-embodied-the-spirits-of-haitian-vodou-5719

Smith, Katherine. "Dialoging with the urban dead in Haiti." Southern Quarterly 47.4 (2010): p. 83 

Hence, the decision to make “Port-au-Prince” a queer drag queen.

As a counterpart to Angel Dust, he has a dual gangster-ballroom/voguing theme to him, where he runs his own ballroom house. Although his roots are from Haiti, I think it would be interesting if he was part of the diaspora, where spent much of his human life in New York. This too helps integrate him into the pre-established world, where many characters are former humans who lived during different time periods of American history. It also establishes another parallel between him and Angel Dust, who is also from New York. I was picturing his house as being a mix of Black transfems (more broadly, feminine of center AMABs) and Black transmascs (more broadly, masculine of center AFABs), who are all former humans. They also double as a battle force that could be recruited in a similar manner to the Cannibals in Cannibal Town, where they have strong healing and fighting abilities. 

Port-au-Prince’s drag queen persona is inspired by Aaliyah as Queen of the Damned. In addition to Angel Dust, it would also be possible to establish a connection between him and Sally Mae, if she has any interest in drag. He is the adoptive son of the “Baron of the Dead” and “Gran Maman”, my other DeviantArt OCs who I drew here: https://www.deviantart.com/thegirlwhodidntsmile/art/Lavi-and-Lanmo-1073560801

This was inspired by the description provided by Roberto Strongman, where he writes: 

“In Vodou lore, Gédé Nibo is a young man who was killed violently. Therefore, he has a par­tic­u­lar association with ­those who die young. Once in the spirit realm, Bawon Samedi and Gran Brigit adopt him. In demeanor he is comical, lascivious, witty, and effeminate. In appearance, he is a dandy.”

Source: Strongman, Roberto. Queering Black Atlantic Religions: Transcorporeality in Candomblé (2019). p. 74

It would be imperative to run a concept like this by an expert on Haitian Vodou, to determine whether his portrayal is respectful or not. If it’s inoffensive, I think it would be cool if the three characters inspired by “Les Trois Esprits du Cimetiere” formed a “sexually complete” trinity: one male, one female, and one androgynous. But this may be problematic, as it could mislead audiences into thinking the real-life Gede Nibo is gay. Another approach would be to remove his drag queen persona, and make him a straight guy who has gay friends. Instead of Gede Nibo, the Erzulies could serve as inspiration for a character that embodies LGBTQ acceptance in Vodou.

RANTING ABOUT THE ERZULIES (EZILI DANTOR AND EZILI FREDA)

The Erzulies are important to the Haitian M Community - especially when accounting for race and class. Intense homophobia persists among the oppressed - who are denied access to higher education, and often understand sexuality/gender through religion. Those despised as masisi and madivin are tolerated in Vodou, where many houngans are themselves part of the M Community.

There is a fascinating documentary called Des hommes et dieux, which examines this very community. Several interviewees assert that Ezili Dantor has the power to make a person - male or female* - homosexual. It is for this reason that interviewees insist they were “born this way”, and that their parents - who might have otherwise rejected them - accept them as they are. I was particularly moved by statements from the interviewee Blondine, where the English captions read: “[My father] realized it came from voodoo. So he had to accept me. I’m like this because of the spirits that he’s serving. The loas decided I would be a girl. I was born this way.” 

Granted, one interviewee (the houngan named Fritzner who self identifies as masisi) rejects this belief, considering it blasphemous. Either way, it is unanimous that the Erzulies protect the M community. Those hated as masisi are loved by the lwa, become their houngans, and are called les enfants d’Erzulie - “Ezili’s children”. 

*I specify the category of sex, as the invisibility of “female masculinity” (including, masculine female homosexuality and the transmasculine spectrum) rears its ugly head. The “M Community” has language for transfems and feminine gay men; there are no equivalent terms for transmascs and masculine of center lesbians. As such, I have struggled to find information/research about the inverse phenomenon of “inverted” or “radically masculine” identifying members of “the feminine sex”; certainly not within the Black proletariat. Haiti is by no means unique in this regard. This disparity is found in many cultures all over the world - especially among the oppressed classes.

In any case, Erzulies are not just important to those of “the masculine sex”, but those of “the feminine sex” as well. Eziaku Nwokocha documents her personal experience as a Black queer femme with Ezili Dantor in The ‘Queerness’ of Ceremony. Zora Neale Hurston also briefly mentioned the importance of Ezili Freda to women who “tend toward the hermaphrodite” (i.e., with queer tendencies) in Tell My Horse. Unfortunately, I have struggled to find information about the Haitian equivalent of studs, aggressives, trans men, etc… due to the aforementioned issue of invisibility. Notably, none of the women at the temple Nwokocha visited were masculine-presenting, except for one visitor who dressed in red to honor the masculine lwa Ogou.

Previously I had been under the impression that Erzulie Dantor was associated with lesbians while Erzulie Freda was associated with the transfeminine spectrum. Just, a completely false dichotomy! WOW is there a lot of misinformation spread about Vodou! The Erzulies are associated with the transfeminine spectrum, as they protect femininity in all its manifestations. In addition to Black lesbians/bisexual/queer women, Erzulie Dantor is important to Black transfems, as she is depicted as a dark-skinned Black woman. That’s why people in the Haitian M Community love her, as a goddess of love, luck, and protection. For these reasons, I think it would be really cool to try to work Erzulie-inspired character(s) into this fictional world; granted, it presents more of a challenge to fit them into this setting, since they are not spirits of the dead. The easiest way to do so would be to have one of the Erzulies replace Mother Mary, if Mother Mary does not exist in the fictional mythology of Hazbin Hotel.

If you want to learn more about this, I highly recommend watching Anne Lescot & Laurence Magloire's documentary Of Men and Gods / Des hommes et dieux (2002). It’s available on Kanopy for free, and for rent Vimeo. Additionally, Eziaku Nwokocha, Roberto Strongman, and Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley have written several books and papers on this topic. Here are a few sources that can be accessed online:

Tinsley, Omise’eke Natasha. “Songs for Ezili: Vodou Epistemologies of (Trans) Gender.” Feminist Studies, vol. 37, no. 2, 2011, pp. 417–36. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23069911. Accessed 4 Aug. 2024. 

Strongman, Roberto. "Cross-Gender Identifications in Vodou."  In Defying Binarism: Gender Dynamics in Caribbean Literature and Culture. Virginia University Press. Ed. Maria Cristina Fumagalli. https://www.blackstudies.ucsb.edu/sites/secure.lsit.ucsb.edu.blks.d7/files/sitefiles/people/strongman/NewCrossGenderIdentificationsVodou.pdf 

Nwokocha, Eziaku. “The ‘Queerness’ of Ceremony: Possession and Sacred Space in Haitian Religion.” Journal of Haitian Studies, vol. 25, no. 2, 2019, pp. 71–90. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26926664. Accessed 6 Aug. 2024. https://eziakunwokocha.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/The-Queerness-of-Ceremony.pdf 

SIDE NOTE:

Rereading this, I fear I may come across as judgemental of writers like Fichte and Conner. That is not my intent! I do not think it is fair to judge these authors harshly. It is easy to take the internet for granted. I think these authors did the best they could with the technology that was available to them, but mistakes could have still been made. The fault does not lie on them, but myself for having been careless in my research.

[horizoncollective]

Horizon Collective

“On the omninet, Horizon members are outspoken about the forced cycling of NHPs, which they characterize as oppression and depersonalization. Horizon literature argues that shackling, the little-known and poorly under‐ stood process that enables the “normal” functioning of NHPs, constitutes a form of chattel slavery and transcorporeal eugenics.” -Lancer Core Rulebook pg. 410

Here to shitpost and thirstpost about Lancer RPG. Let’s get silly with it!

[malcolmschmitz]

Hey, @lightdrizzel - I get where you're coming from, and it does suck how difficult it is to get anything remotely weird through traditional publication channels these days. But we are living in an absolute golden age for niche media-- you just have to look a little harder for it.

Like, okay. If we want to talk cartoons?

"Hullabaloo" is an indie steampunk web cartoon about a spunky adventuress with a tricked-out automobile. The animation style is classic Disney- which makes sense, the animation team is mostly Disney alumni- and it's got a fun adventure feel.

Betsy Lee's "No Evil" is an indie fantasy web cartoon loosely based on Mesoamerican mythology, set in a world reminiscent of the American Old West, with an anthropomorphic animal cast. The animation style is a bit anime and a bit furry.

"Sirenetta: Part-Time Mermaid" is an indie animated short film about a 'former mermaid princess' who has to save the ocean from a wicked witch; the animation style is reminiscent of 2000s 'girl cartoons', and the voice cast is largely made up of drag queens.

"Pride's Misfits" is an indie animated project about a girl who wants to become a demon hunter, with heavy influences from anime and from Indian culture. It's early in development, but it looks cool.

... and this is ignoring the indie stuff that everyone's heard of, like Lackadaisy, or Helluva Boss, or The Amazing Digital Circus. Or the artsy, depressing indie animation that lives in the film festival circuit.

Or, heck, you want to talk about video games? Ditch steam and check out itch.io instead. On the front page of my itch.io, not even looking particularly hard, I found:

"The flies' choreography amplifies my longing for the void. (Drawing down the moon)", which the creator describes as "A transcorporality prototype for cosmic omnicide." and seems to be an experimental horror game about perceiving the world as a bug.

"Buckshot Roulette", a game about playing Russian Roulette against a messed-up machine monster in an industrial nightmare world, casually risking your life for funsies.

"Sprout Valley", a cute lil life sim game in the vein of Animal Crossing- fix up an overgrown farm and furnish an island.

"Galactic Foodtruck Simulator 2999 (GFS2999)"- The Galaxy hungers. You own a food truck. Feed Everyone.

Again, that's not counting indie stuff that people have actually heard of- Fear and Hunger: Termina, Who's Lila, Touhou, and Baba Is You.

Listen. Mass media has always been dominated by dreck produced for the widest common denominator. The reason you're seeing less and less niche stuff get through mass media isn't that there's less niche stuff being made. It's that it's way, way easier to just publish your own niche stuff than it is to try to get it through a publisher. You get to keep total creative control and don't get all the hard, weird, jagged edges shaved off in the name of making it "more relatable".

If you want to find new stuff that's creative, and niche, and weird, and not sterilized or corporate, you have to go looking for it. But it's out there, and there's so much of it you couldn't get through it all in one lifetime.

Anyway speaking of niche indie media here's the Amazon page for my latest short story, about an autistic plague doctor veterinarian, unicorns, and cats:

But yeah, seriously. I promise, if you want to find the weird stuff, you'll find the weird stuff.

it's fucking me up how tv shows, movies, and even video games can't be "niche" content anymore

[universe-in-the-void-in-the-cube]

You know you're fucked with the GM throws this at you. (Pathfinder 1e)

Primordial Goddess of Chaos

Name: Chaos, the Boundless Maelstrom

CR: 1000

Type: Outsider (Extraplanar)

Size: Macro-Tiny (effectively considered "Tiny" for ease)

Background

Chaos is the embodiment of unpredictability and potential, existing as a fundamental force of nature and a source of both creation and destruction. Revered and feared by many, she is a constant reminder that the fabric of reality is woven with threads of randomness and inherent conflict. Anything that defies order is a manifestation of her influence.

Ecology

Chaos doesn't belong to any ecological system; she is more like an ever-shifting concept that influences the multiverse. Her presence can warp reality, giving rise to chaotic creatures and malformed entities. Zones of wild magic or elemental chaos often bear her mark, symbolizing her chaotic nature.

Combat Tactics

Chaos utilizes her abilities to confound and overwhelm foes, focusing on spells, reality-warping effects, and manipulation of fate.

Reality Warping: Each turn, she can use her abilities to cast spells at incredibly high levels, focusing on those that inflict confusion and chaos. These spells might include confusion, chaos hammer, weird, and others.

Divine Aura: Her aura creates a field of chaos around her, giving her buffs while hindering her enemies. Allies within her aura could benefit from bonuses to their rolls, while enemies might suffer.

Dynamic Combat: She uses chaotic terrain and environmental effects to gain the upper hand, reshaping the battlefield to her advantage.

Statistics

Hit Dice: 999d10 (4,995 average)

Hit Points: 999,000 (Thousandfold; assumed pathfinder max)

Initiative: +400 (assumed from Charisma modifier)

Armor Class:

Deflection Bonus: +400 (from assumed Cha modifier)

Divine Bonus: +200

Natural Armor: +250 (depends on the application of Hit Die for Pathfinder)

Total AC would be approximately 850.

Speed: Superluminal (Approx. 5,621,108,587 ft. in normal terms could translate to instant teleportation across planes)

Ability Scores

Strength: 400

Dexterity: 400

Constitution: 400

Intelligence: 400

Wisdom: 400

Charisma: 400

Special Abilities and Qualities

Damage Reduction: 500/-

Spell Resistance: 999 + 200 = 1199

Cosmic Consciousness: Can sense events across the universe.

Cosmic Firmament: Always treated as if in divine realm.

Transfinite: Gains bonuses equal to any opponent’s divine powers.

Evil Eye (Fate): Chaos can alter fate for beings within her aura, imposing disadvantage and bestowing the best results on her allies.

Immortality: Does not age, and is immune to death from old age, poisons, and environmental hazards.

Spell Reflection (Ex): Any spell that fails against her Spell Resistance is reflected back on the caster.

Transcorporeal: Cannot be affected or harmed by physical matter native to the material universe.

Grant Spells (Su): Can grant access to any spell based on her portfolios.

Transtemporal (Time): Can manipulate time, potentially acting multiple times in a round.

Saves

All Saves: +200 (equivalent derived from massive Cha modifier and divine abilities)

Skills

All Skills have maximum ranks (+400 to all checks due to Omni-competent nature)

Treasure

Unstable and powerful artifacts might accompany her, with unique properties that reflect her chaotic nature—a mix of potent foci, cursed items, and unpredictable magic weapons.

[razorsadness]

I’m writing my own Letters To A Young Poet.  The advice is heartfelt and

foolish.  It’s all about the relationship of signs and things, jk.  It’s all about the imperative to “kill cops and abolish culture,” jk.  Actually it is all about my honest

passions: buddies, blunts, disobedience.  I mean a disobedience lacquered in kneeness.  I mean poetry, the refusal to transcorporate my love into

round copper poo stamped with the face of Thomas Jefferson or whoever.  Lemons, roses, marijuana stratosphere of upper Oakland, descending diminuendo

to fabled openness.  Suck it all in.  The only laws I don’t dismiss: love your neighbor, puff puff pass. These two will get you everywhere. 

—Brandon Brown, from “Plan of Future Works” (Fanzine, August 2014)

[ideaslineage]

Susan Stryker's - My letter to Victor Frankenstein

"The monster/monstrous is not an individual, [59] it is an assemblage…the Other written into the cells of the citizen, exploded into the surface, the subaltern shimmering in the spoils of capture. It is psychic-ecological. The monster is the agent of flight and transduction. The monster is imperceptibility. The monster is the paragon of invisibility, not because it cannot be seen but because it queers modes of visuality, rending apart the smooth trafficking of images in their flattened consumptibility. The monster is the program lurking in the image, the anamorphosis of the casual image: the distortion is perspectival, really a critique of subjectivity than any inherent vice...We are used to thinking of the monster as ‘evil’; images of the corrupted spring to mind when we imagine monstrosity. However, the figure of the monster is more prestigious than our moral predilections for comeliness and familiarity and has long been a multicultural technology for disturbing assemblages and arrangements. The monster is not the thing lurking in the distance; it is a pattern of relations that potentializes and actualizes errancy from hylomorphic relations, from anthropocentric algorithms, from fascist continuity, from image copy, from justice as logistics. The monster is the glitch, a program without designer, an aesthetic of refusal. What this litany of descriptions hopefully produces is the queer image of the monster as a site of inquiry, an intensity, an invitation to accompany and cultivate failure. Failure is speculative tracing, an experimental sitting with the alien egg our once-pristine citizenship has been exposed to and impregnated with. The task of politics as becoming-black, as a moving beyond justice without necessarily doing away with the need for it, is to sit with/in the crack, [60] to dance, [61] to cultivate ways of tending to this alien thing gestating within. It is to touch the errancy of ‘our’ bodies – a touching that simultaneously undercuts our claims to ownership. It is to ‘follow’ their transcorporeality into the wilderness.

" (p,34)

-Bayo Akomolafe - Black Lives Matter, But to Whom? Part 2

[jhavelikes]

This article examine links and affordances between new materialist theory in ecocritism and formal and linguistic experimentation in Peter Manson’s Adjunct: An Undigest. As Robert Sheppard suggests, linguistically innovative poets often foreground ‘the artificiality of the forms and discourses they employ’, making familiar things seem strange and suspending ‘the inevitable process of naturalization’; that is, emphasising the artificiality of dominant cultural and social discourse. When viewed through ecocritical lenses, Manson’s Adjunct provides opportunities to reconsider a range of seemingly stable binaries and the discourses that underpin them: including nature/culture, human/non-human, organic/inorganic, and inside/outside. Ecocritical thinking has long been concerned with denaturalising cultural constructions of nature and destablising binaries by emphasising, for example, the vibrancy of seemingly inert materials like metal, and the ways in which material flows between bodies disrupt fantasies of discrete personhood and divisions between inside and out. In place of hierarchical binaries, various ecological approaches foreground the interconnected, transcorporeal and transformative nature of the material world and human-environment continuities. In regards to poetry, the question becomes not how do poems describe how ecology works, but how can experimental poetries stimulate or realise ecological thought? Whether or not the text treats of ‘nature’ or the more-than-human world, Manson’s Adjunct brings together seemingly disparate elements in ways that foreground form, materiality, and the unexpected interrelatedness of the ‘assemblage’.

Walton | ‘Slow Motion Cucumber Decay in Fridge’: Ecology, Materiality and Recycling in Peter Manson’s Adjunct: An Undigest | Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry

[pixelsniper]

CONF: Deep Sea Babies (Krakow, 13-15 Apr 23) Podbrzezie Gallery in Karakow, Apr 13–15, 2023 Deep Sea Babies: Navigating between Dystopias and Utopias for the Blue Planet

An international academic conference organized by the Institute of Polish Philology and the Institute of Art and Design at The Pedagogical University of Krakow, Poland in cooperation with the Intermedia Department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland. Held at the Pedagogical University of Krakow and online (hybrid event). “Bodies of water” (Neimanis 2017) and “transcorporeality” (Alaimo…

[fuckitfireeverything]

right now mine is Nicole Seymour's "Alligator Earrings and the Fishhook in the Face: Tragicomedy, Transcorporeality, and Animal Drag," a trans studies article about "animal drag," humanness, and gender subversion in Jackass

it's so good

this is what academia is about to me

I read it in a trans studies class like three years ago and I think about it all the time (esp hand in hand with the Chen book it references, Animacies, which feels obviously much more scholarly/less silly but was fucking mindblowing to read)

I never gave a shit about Jackass until this article, and ^ this quote made me care so much

everyone tell me about an essay or article that changed your brain chemistry permanently

[mariacallous]

Stop a person on the street in Sarajevo and ask them what they think about the war in Ukraine, and they’ll tell you they think that almost everything that happened in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina is happening in Ukraine.

In April, we commemorated the 30th anniversary of the war against Bosnia-Herzegovina. We consider early April 1992 the moment a new era began: we have the before, during and after the catastrophe.

A month into the war in Ukraine I saw Ukrainians starting to use the phrase “before the war”. We went through everything that’s happening to them, but no one asks us about it or wants us to help.

War leads you to start looking at life and death with different eyes. Before our “smallish war” (an ironic phrase I use in literary works), I wanted to be a poet and wrote ultra-metaphorical and incomprehensible poems. After the war, I was determined to write as clearly and precisely as possible, especially about the events of the war. That is when I became a writer. The war was a giant catalyst in that process.

In a recent article for the Paris Review, Ilya Kaminsky quoted the Ukrainian poet Daryna Gladun on how events in Ukraine had changed her writing: “I set aside metaphors to speak about the war in clear words,” she said, “so that readers around the world will be struck by the cynicism, cruelty, and inevitability of the war that Russia brought to Ukraine.” A number of Sarajevo poets found the same thing happen during the siege of this city – the longest in the history of modern warfare. The famous Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun once said that he stopped writing poetry entirely during the war in Bosnia.

On 21 April 1992, the attack began on my home town in far western Bosnia. I was studying in Zagreb at the time but returned to Bosanska Krupa because I knew the war would soon begin; regular and irregular Serb formations had begun attacking towns in eastern Bosnia in early April.

You could see towns burning along the river Drina, the natural border between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia, even though the country was still called the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. But not even the letter Y remained of Yugoslavia because Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina declared independence and seceded from it.

I was drinking beer and listening to music on the terrace of the Casablanca cafe in Bosanska Krupa when the attack came. I remember I was wearing Levi’s, a down jacket and Adidas trainers. It was a lovely day, but shortly after 6pm an artillery attack began. That’s when I realised what the expression “in mortal terror” means. Militants of the Serb Democratic party, aided by forces of the former Yugoslav People’s Army, shelled the city from the surrounding hills.

I neither volunteered nor was I conscripted. We were surrounded by enemy forces and there was no way out of the area (later called the Bihać pocket or Bihać district) unless you could fly. I took up arms because I was driven out of my flat, my street and my neighbourhood. My conscience demanded that I fight.

For 44 months I fought as a soldier and later as an officer leading a unit of 130 men in difficult combat operations at the very end of the war. Once I was badly wounded in the left foot and needed crutches to walk for six months. The pain was more or less bearable because I was young and my body had the strength of steel. We didn’t have time then to think about the transcorporeality of pain, nor about infatuation with our own.

I remember having to go to the toilet in a special wheelchair, which had a hole in the seat. But I recovered quickly, I returned to the unit and to the same duties I had before the injury, as a platoon commander of 30 men.

Chronological time stops ticking during war. We wore watches on our wrists but they showed a meaningless time. We were cut off from the rest of our country and the civilised world. We were five hours’ drive from Vienna, at least before the war. Now we lived as if we were at the end of the world, so time was irrelevant. A new time was ticking inside us – the one you count from the moment your idyllic, civic life collapses and you become a refugee. After the first moments of shock, we were quick to embrace the apocalyptic way of life.

The experience of war is not something you want. No sane person wants it. It’s a return to the stone age and the time of commodity-money exchange. In the war, you could sell a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste or a pocketknife and then get tanked up with the money. We did that once: we went to a town far behind the lines, drank beer and listened to Whitney Houston singing I Will Always Love You on MTV. It’s not as if we were Whitney Houston fans. We preferred grunge, and before that we listened to new wave, but no one asked us about our musical or any other identity.

We didn’t even know that the Serb nationalists saw us as the Others, to be expelled from “Serbian lands”, killed, raped and imprisoned in concentration camps. In the summer of 1992, when the Serb army and police occupied the town of Prijedor, all non-Serbs had to wear white armbands and hang white sheets out the windows of their houses and flats. The genocide began there, and it ended with the court-proven genocide in Srebrenica in July 1995. The phrase “never again” was repeated in the Prijedor concentration camps in the summer of 1992 and is now being repeated in Ukraine.

Although I and my family, comrades-in-arms and fellow citizens went through the worst possible suffering (as refugees, soldiers and civilians), I’ve never allowed myself to hate an entire people. I’ve only hated ultranationalists and war criminals, not other Serbian people.

We had to fight for our sheer survival. And when you fight like that, you can never be defeated because no idea is stronger than the idea of your own life. Right now, Ukrainians are fighting a life-or-death struggle. Having nothing to lose but your own life is when you’re strongest.

In the autumn of 1995, we finally managed to retake our town. It was in ruins, but we rebuilt it. Years after the war, you realise that life will never be the same as it was before. Once you lose that Arcadian life it can never be renewed.

All this is not what concerns the people of Ukraine at the moment. They hope the war will end as soon as possible, but war has a logic of its own that is nothing like human logic. The aggression against Ukraine has all the characteristics of a long war of attrition.

The day the war in Ukraine began, I wrote on Twitter that the Russians would commit war crimes, even though they hadn’t yet occurred. It was clear to anyone who watched and listened to Vladimir Putin that war and atrocities would soon follow. He referred to Ukraine as a fake state and the Ukrainians as a fake people.

Slobodan Milošević and Radovan Karadžić said the same things about Bosnia-Herzegovina and Bosniaks – that they were fake and didn’t deserve to exist. Those words were later turned into the worst crimes in Europe since the second world war. I hope the crimes of the Russian army will not surpass those committed in my country.

We will discover the full extent of atrocities and crimes of the Russian invasion of Ukraine when the war is over. The most important thing is for the Russian war machine in Ukraine to be broken and brought to a halt. The dictator understands only the language of force, while the politics ofappeasement bolster his power. People in the EU will have to leave their comfort zone because that is the sacrifice required of them while Ukrainians are fighting and dying to maintain peace and prosperity in the EU. If Ukraine is defeated, we will never again live in the peace that currently prevails.

The cities of Ukraine will be rebuilt from the ashes. The whole country can rise again. What cannot be brought back are the dead. These wounds never heal, but you can live with them, and you have to. The trauma of loss marks you and never leaves you. But I believe in the grit and courage of the Ukrainian soldiers and citizens, just as I believed in us. I believe in the victory of life over death.

Faruk Šehić is a Bosnian poet, short story writer and novelist This essay is part of a series, published in collaboration with Voxeurop, featuring perspectives on the invasion of Ukraine from the former Soviet bloc and bordering countries. Translation by Will Firth

[chloeartstudio22]

Hydrofeminism, Or, On Becoming A Body Of Water by Astrida Neimanis

What might becoming a body of water ebbing, fluvial, dripping, coursing, traversing time and space, pooling as both matter and meaning give to feminism, its theories, and its practices?

Somewhere at the bottom of the sea, there must be water that sank from the surface during the Little Ice Age three centuries ago . . . The ocean remembers. - Robert Kandel

Sixty to ninety percent of your bodily matter is composed of water. Water, in this sense, is an entity, individualized as that relatively stable thing you call your body

In an evolutionary sense, living bodies are necessary for the proliferation of what scientists Mark and Dianna McMenamin call Hypersea, which arose when life moved out of marine waters and by necessity folded a watery habitat back inside of itself. Today, when you or I drink a glass of water, we amplify this Hypersea, as we sustain our existence through other webs of physical intimacy and fluid exchange. In this act of ingestion, we come into contact with all of our companion species that inhabit the watershed from which that water was drawn book lice, swamp cabbage, freshwater mussel. But we connect with the sedimentation tanks, and rapid-mix flocculators that make that water drinkable, and the reservoir, and the rainclouds, too. Hypersea extends to include not only terrestrial flora and fauna, but also technological, meteorological, and geophysical bodies of water.

Even while in constant motion, water is also a planetary archive of meaning and matter. To drink a glass of water is to ingest the ghosts of bodies that haunt that water. When nature calls some time later, we return to the cistern and the sea not only our antidepressants, our chemical estrogens, or our more commonplace excretions, but also the meanings that permeate those materialities: disposable culture, medicalized problem-solving, ecological disconnect.

On a geological scale, we have all arisen out of the same primordial soup.

The fluid body is not specific to woman, but watery embodiment is still a feminist question; thinking as a watery body has the potential to bathe new feminist concepts and practices into existence.

Attention to the mechanics of watery embodiment reveals that in order to connect bodies, water must travel across only partially permeable membranes. In an ocular-centric culture, some of these membranes, like our human skin, give the illusion of impermeability. Still, we perspire, urinate, ingest, ejaculate, menstruate, lactate, breathe, cry. We take in the world, selectively, and send it flooding back out again.

We live in a watery commons, where the human infant drinks the mother, the mother ingests the reservoir, the reservoir is replenished by the storm, the storm absorbs the ocean, the ocean sustains the fish, the fish are consumed by the whale. The bequeathing of our water to an other is necessary for the custodianship of this commons. But when and how does gift become theft, and sustainability usurpation?

But once we recognize that we are not hermetically sealed in our divers suits of human skin, what do we do with this recognition? What do we owe, and how do we pay?

Tuana reminds us that our porosity is what enables us to live at all, but this porosity . . . does not discriminate against that which can kill us. Because water is such a capable vector, not only does life-giving potentiality course through our transcorporeal waterways, but so also does illness, contamination, inundation.

Link

Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water. in Undutiful Daughters: Mobilizing Future Concepts, Bodies and Subjectivities in Feminist Thought and Practice, eds. Henriette Gunkel, Chrysanthi Nigianni and Fanny Söderbäck. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.