#you dont know shit about the range of activists and their work

[our-queer-experience]

how do you feel about the terms misandry and transandrophobia

i dislike misandry as a term because the only times its widely used is by radfems who joke about killing all men and follow bioessencialism heavily or misogynists who believe women are making up their struggles and men are the real victims because of xyz. i dont think transandrophobia does that because its specifically like. a lens for looking at the intersection of manhood and transness, like butchphobia, with an emphasis on how the two interact and how we’re treated. some people dont use it that way but i block so transmisogynists liberally on my main that like i literally dont see that shit and i think that there will always be shitty people and good ideas can be used in a shitty way, but i dont see the term being used that way. i do get annoyed when i see it used to mean “anything a trans man goes through”, because thats not super specific and genuinely could be covered by transphobia. but there is specific rhetoric pointed at trans men and mascs and its good to have a term for it. transandrophobia, imo, is the not problematic the way the word transmisandry is and is the most commonly used: i think it suits it’s purpose.

sorry if this last bit doesnt make sense, i’m sick and have been napping on and off all day, but i also think it is important to look at ideologies in small communities and critique them!!! there are feminists out there who genuinely hate men. they say so. explicitly. its a core tenet of some peoples ideology. im a raging feminist, most of the activism i do is feminist activism, i guarantee you most places are not overtly “all men are irrieamably evil and should die” but some people do and its worth pointing out and criticizing. sometime niche groups of trans people are ragingly anti-masculine and this is not everyone!!! but subtly and overtly, it’s good to point out

[blackgirlblues]

Being A Black Girl: And Chasing Your Dreams.. Yikes.

Hi, 

It’s me, your resident black girl back with some new shit to rant about. I’ve been posting a few screenshots of short poems and paragraphs I’ve been writing on my phone as a way to heal and get over Capricorn boy from my last post on here and I see you guys like and reblog. Thank you for showing love, although it makes me sad that so many of you seem to be going through the same range of emotions I am. I’m sorry. 

I know it’s a lonely place to be in. 

But, on the bright side, I’ve got a lot of new followers joining the diary/manual/rant page that is blackgirlology and it’s nice cause I think it’s becoming a little bit of a community. So, in a way, were never really going through any of these emotions alone. If you’ve found this page-you’re part of a community. Bask in it. 

Anyways, that aside, a lot has happened since I last spoke to you. I don’t know if any of you may remember, and for some new people this will be a surprise. But I’m actually a singer songwriter from Ireland. Moved to London a year and a half ago to pursue my music dream and that’s how I met Capricorn boy whos been the source of all my poems. 

Throughout this time in between, I’ve been trying to chase my dreams, and chase them relentlessly. and this summer i did just that, let me tell you, what im about to tell you guys, is to put it simply, wild. I’ll just cut to the chase. 

It all started in July. I’d been in London for quite a long time now, over a year and now have a manager who’s my best friend first and foremost. We’ll call her Maya. I met her in my first week of moving to London in the student halls I was staying at and we became best friends pretty quick. She studies music business, so it made sense and she just naturally ended up taking up the role as my music manager. Shes seen everything. The songs I wrote about Capricorn boy, the tears, everything. And she saw everything this summer. 

I saw an ad for a record label opportunity in London. It was advertised on my university facebook page; a new indie label, looking for demo submissions for a competition they were setting up to find their new signee. I sent a screenshot to Maya who agreed I should send my stuff in. I did, they liked it, I got a meeting, we were sent terms and conditions for the competition. We signed it, the rest was supposed to be history. 

Big yikes. 

There’s so many layers to this story that I will be shortening it, just because it can get very draining for me to talk about or even write about. I’ve healed from it i think, but I still want to put it here and write it about to finally close that chapter and be done with my feelings about what happened to me and my music. 

Basically, the whole competition, the record label, the dickhead CEO, it was all a scam. I had accidentally signed away the master rights to my new song to a record label started by a fake CEO who was committing fraud and known for tricking young artists into handing over their master rights so he could profit off of them, for power. 

It was a mess. Another contestant told me and Maya when we were outside of their office. Just minutes before we were under the impression that I was doing an interview for Billboard Magazine. Honestly, I never truly believed it. Shit was too good to be true. 

But she told us everything. How he was actually a run away from Spain, where he was caught and exposed for doing the exact same thing to artists there, how he didn’t have any money to fund the competition he had somehow roped all of us into, how he was illegally avoiding paying his team, how none of the creatives we had collaborated with for photoshoots etc were paid, how everything was a lie, how he didnt have any connections, and how he was trying to convince me specifically to sign a 360 deal with his label. 

Which, guys, I’m not stupid. After the first week of being with the label for the competition and letting my song live through their disastrous marketing campaign, Maya and I long decided that regardless of what they said, I would not under any circumstances be signing anything with any entity of their company. 

After being told the truth, I had to sit down. You see, when I came across this opportunity, I thought this was finally the life I’d been manifesting coming true. I had begun to grow in my spirituality and start journaling, writing down my manifestations, and getting to work with a record label who would later offer me a fair contract before I turn 20 was one of the manifestations I had written down every night before I went to bed. However, what I’d gotten was the exact opposite. 

I remember, me, Maya, and 2 of the girls from the competition all stood around in a circle outside of their new office that the CEO also hadnt paid for wondering what our next move would be with this new information. There was still 2 other contestants inside who had no idea what was really going on was an elaborate scam. One of them wanted to go in and expose them on the spot. I said no, we had to go in and pretend like everything was normal until we figured out what to do afterwards. 

So in I went, plastering the fakest smile on my face and pretended like I still thought I was about to be speaking with Billboard Magazine. Once I got out, I broke down in Maya’s arms. 

I went home to my flatmates, Ellie and Bea and cried for hours before I had to go work a 7 hour shift at a pizza place. 

I stayed in bed, and cried, and cried. and cried again. I didn’t get out of bed unless I needed too. The only people I talked too were my flatmates E and B and Maya. 

Everything was sorted out eventually, a lot more happened, but as I’ve been writing this article for you guys, I realised that all of that stuff is no longer relevant to my journey and isnt something I want to bring back into my energetic circle because I’ve made peace with the fact that a lot of people who betrayed me when I was at my lowest, peace with the fact that these contestants who wanted to “work together” to get out of this mess, actually wanted to save their own asses and leave me in the cold. 

But I still got out of it and I’m still here. 

I nearly got sued by a man with less than 20 pound to his company account online, but hey, I’m here.

I guess why I’m telling you guys this really short account of my summer is to both record it for myself but also to say its okay to flop, its okay to fail. I did both this summer. and thank god i did. it was the best thing that ever happened to me. 

following your dreams is scary, doing it as a black girl is terrifying because society has already kind of set you up to fail. there’s already misconceptions about what you do, who you are, where you come from and how good you’re going to be at what you do. its almost like we cant fail and we need to work 10 times harder to obtain half of what the average white person will get. and sometimes it can feel like we dont have any space to fail or make mistakes because of this but let me tell you thats not true. 

if anything, the universe will put you in places that will force you to grow through the mistakes you make. and thats exactly what happened to me this summer. 

i chased my dream so relentlessly i ended up in an environment i thought i manifested, i thought was good for me, only for the universe to show me that that specific environment i’d been wishing to be in is the furthest from what i need right now in my life. 

this so called failure showed me that not everybody who smiles can be trusted, and that people can be way more deceiving than i ever thought, especially when push comes to shove and they need to save themselves. you start to see the real them when it starts to get tense. the people who seem to be around you when you’re doing good will most likely dissapear when things start to go south, including some of your oldest friends. you will get radio silence on their end. be upset. cry. but after that be glad that this situation revealed their true colours. 

and then never put any more energy into them again. 

this failure showed me how fucking strong i am. how resilient and kind i am even in the face of disrespect and actual evil. it showed me how much i can care for someone who i believe is at a risk of losing it all, and showed me that this will not always be reciprocated. and for a while i thought that meant that i had to harden myself up and grow a shell. but i dont think so. i will not allow the things ive been through to make me into a hard person when i was born soft. i mean now, im a little rough around the edges, jagged enough to cut anyone who comes too close with some of that bad energy, but soft enough to hold myself tight and glue myself back together when i need to. soft enough to hold the people who held me this summer. soft enough to help people who i know deserve it. 

im a good person in a shitty world, i don’t need to match the world and become a shitty person to survive. 

after all of this happened, i stopped writing music. 

i haven’t written anything properly or produced anything in months and sometimes i get worried that ive completely lost my talent. but thats another thing that this failure taught me, i can never truly lose whats meant to be mine. i know that i was put on this earth to create change, to inspire, to be an activist and a voice for people who dont have one. i know i was put here to do it through a creative medium and right now i still think that is music. 

i think i just need to stop being so scared to start again, to learn my craft again.

i used to be so scared of failure but now i am so thankful for it and the lessons its taught me. i had so much hurt and pain and hatred in my heart for the universe for, in my head, doing this to me. but then i realised that the universe never does anything to you, it does it for you. all of this happened in my best interest and while i definitely didnt understand at the time, i get it now.

thank you universe for the worst summer of my life. 

and my black ass will be continuing to chase my dreams relentlessly, failing, tripping and falling on my ass until i get to the very top. 

besides, if everything had just gone right, that wouldnt have been very interesting, would it?

[sighingtirf]

Just saw a conversation between a couple people about how they’d love to see a Hunger Games type of thing, but with “TERFs” as the contestants, and sending mutated dogs in after us and essentially just torturing us for fun and entertainment

And one of them said that we’d definitely be killing each other out of our own free will, because “knowing them they would kill each other and then their own allys because they dont agree a 100%"

And holy shit, the projection

Radical feminists consistently disagree with each other, and while there are certainly some groups (who are loud but make up the minority) who go around bullying people and harassing those who disagree with them, there’s such a bigger difference in opinion here, and (for the most part; albeit there are some topics “rudefems” tend to get vicious about and target people for) I feel safer expressing my varying views and opinions than I ever did while I was with the genderist crew. And unlike in genderist circles, if there’s people being nasty and awful because of a difference in opinion, there are other women who stand up for the person being harassed. Even if they truly disagree, there’s tons of posts calling out that kind of behavior during disagreements.

Meanwhile, among genderists, you make a casual post with one wrong word and immediately get 50 hateful anons. There’s constantly call-outs for people who use terms slightly differently. You’re constantly guilt-tripped and threatened to the point where you’re scared to even follow someone who has a slightly different viewpoint than you. You have to re-read a post that you made about your own personal experiences 95372984 times before posting it to make sure it, at the very least, has perfect wording and caters a million times over to apologize for the fact that your personal experiences aren’t perfectly in line with their thought experiments. You’re under immediate suspicion if you so much as reblog from someone who has been deemed problematic (for anything ranging from “I don’t think aces are inherently a part of the lesbian-gay-bi-transgender community” to “gender doesn’t exist”). 

You say “femme and butch are lesbian-specific terms with meanings that are rooted in the lesbian experience and culture” and get hundreds of people insulting you, threatening you, sexually harassing you, calling you “TERF”, messaging you to threaten you, kicking you and anyone who so much as considered what you had to say out of the group, stalking you on your post talking about abuse you faced so they can call you abusive (for saying please don’t use femme and butch outside of lesbian contexts) and demanding an apology and threatening to kick you out of the autistic trauma survivor support group if you don’t apologize.

Old ladies who haven’t even heard the term “transgender” can go to a trans activist event, ask someone at the back of the crowd if they’re cross-dressers because she genuinely doesn’t know and is asking to learn more, and the entire crowd will start chanting “SHAME” in her face until she walks away.

Open a feminist bookstore that has a few books written by radical feminists? Trans activists attend the grand opening to barricade the entrance and threaten anyone who tries entering, run around pouring wine on the bookshelves, trip the fire alarm, and scream at the women who poured their time and energy and money into creating the store.

Exist as an old woman and ask the question “who’s attacking?” in response to a “TERFS ATTACK, WE FIGHT BACK” and try to do your job and take photos of the event you came to take photos of? Trans activists beat you up and then blame you for it, saying you “deserved” it, “it’s your fault”, “you asked for it”.

Buy a billboard and put a dictionary definition on it? Get doxxed. 

Be a lesbian of mixed race, and work hard to direct a movie about a trans boy, and commit two crimes while making it: 1.) cast a cis girl to act as the trans boy, and 2.) include the phrase “I feel like a boy trapped in a girl’s body”? Trans activists put a sign at her podium reading “fuck this cis white bitch”, scream over her whenever she tries to speak at her event, shout “fuck you scared bitch” at her.

Silently exist as a biologically female person who is homosexual (aka, exclusively attracted to other biologically female people), or turn down a trans woman, or--god forbid--say the words “lesbians don’t like dick”? Lots of rape jokes. Normalized and celebrated rape fantasies. Gaslighting. Conversion tactics. Threatening people who so much as ask for communication before-hand as to “are you cis or trans” or state “I’m not interested in dating trans people”. Sexually traumatizing and abusing lesbians directly. Joking about how gang rape should be punishment. Talking about how “cool” it would be if trans women were filmed raping these women as a threat to other lesbians and showing how “lesbians secretly want it”. Turn around and scream at traumatized lesbians that “nobody says that / does that”, then go back to ignoring the problem and brushing this violence under the rug and minimizing the problem and agreeing with the perpetrators if ever forced to confront an incident.

A survivor of severe abuse can speak out and take a stand against her incredibly powerful and widely supported abusers, do an incredible amount to help other victims of sexual abuse, be open and vulnerable about her trauma to a world that hates her for existing and hates her even more for speaking out, but when she rightfully snaps at and yells back at a pedophile who came to scream at her at her own event, generists hate her. Didn’t matter how validating she was, the only thing she would have been allowed to do was sit there and take it and apologize profusely for somehow “not doing enough”. Her events were cancelled, people all over genderists circles were yelling about how awful she is and how much they hate her and how she deserves the worst of fates, comments are made about how they “hope she gets stabbed in her vagina”, etc. etc. etc.

I can go on and on and on.

Trans activism is a fucking cult where you’re under threat even if you nod and agree and conform as quickly as possible, while radical feminists consistently disagree and call out each other out if someone tries to settle debates with bullying and harassment. 

Maybe they somehow think that disagreement is an issue that should result in violence? If someone thinks that, doesn’t that kind of...make their statement about themselves?

[bookspoils]

This month I went back to rediscover some more favorites in the nonfiction genre. From feminist collections to essays and short stories, I tried my hand at a handful of them. In total I read 19 books in April:

https://bookspoils.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/review-bad-girls-throughout-history-by-ann-shen/

https://bookspoils.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/review-note-to-self-by-connor-franta/

https://bookspoils.wordpress.com/2017/04/07/review-the-best-we-could-do-by-thi-bui/

https://bookspoils.wordpress.com/2017/04/17/review-ivy-and-the-lonely-raincloud-by-katie-harnett/

https://bookspoils.wordpress.com/2017/04/03/review-the-beauty-queen-of-jerusalem-by-sarit-yishai-levi/

https://bookspoils.wordpress.com/2017/04/05/review-the-sound-of-the-world-by-heart-by-giacomo-bevilacqua/

https://bookspoils.wordpress.com/2017/04/14/review-the-good-immigrant-by-nikesh-shukla/

https://bookspoils.wordpress.com/2017/04/26/review-this-is-really-happening-by-erin-chack/

https://bookspoils.wordpress.com/2017/04/25/review-giant-days-vol-5-by-john-allison/

https://bookspoils.wordpress.com/2017/04/09/review-does-my-head-look-big-in-thisby-randa-abdel-fattah/

https://bookspoils.wordpress.com/2017/04/06/review-america-2-by-gabby-rivera/

https://bookspoils.wordpress.com/2017/04/22/review-good-night-stories-for-rebel-girls-by-elena-favilli-francesca-cavallo/

https://bookspoils.wordpress.com/2017/04/16/review-the-moth-presents-all-these-wonders-by-catherine-burns/

https://bookspoils.wordpress.com/2017/04/28/review-leaf-by-sandra-dieckmann/

https://bookspoils.wordpress.com/2017/04/21/review-the-refugees-by-viet-thanh-nguyen/

https://bookspoils.wordpress.com/2017/04/11/review-stolen-words-by-melanie-florence/

https://bookspoils.wordpress.com/2017/04/12/review-what-it-means-when-a-man-falls-from-the-sky-by-lesley-nneka-arimah/

https://bookspoils.wordpress.com/2017/04/29/review-dancers-among-us-by-jordan-matter/

Favorite current listen:I’d been looking for the perfect podcast for awhile now when I gratefully stumbled upon Rookie’s announcement of launching their first ever podcast at the start of this month. It premiered on April 4th, and I’ve been hooked and tuning in every week since.

Description: On the Rookie Podcast, hosted by Tavi Gevinson, we’ll interview people we admire: artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, activists. We’ll also have teenagers ask semi-qualified grownups for advice, feature work by our readers and listeners, share some life skills and pop culture recommendations, and discuss the human experience through the teenage lens. Then, we’ll all know how to be people! Or at least not know, together.

Not only is Gevinson’s voice eerily soothing and relaxing, the wide range of evergreen issues and topics discussed ring true than ever for me. I also cherished the addition of the interviews in here. We get to hear people from all walks of life talk about those aforementioned subjects and add in their own point of views. From Lorde and Hilton Als to Heben Nigatu and Tracy Clayton of Another Round, Rowan Blanchard, Winona Ryder, Olympic medalist Ibtihaj Muhammad, and so many more influential individuals that graciously imparted their wisdom.

New episodes release on Tuesdays via iTunes and the Panoply platform. You can subscribe to the podcast and listen to it here!

Honorable Mention: The one thing I’ve been anticipating for months and months has come back into my life: Skam with its brand new season.

http://bookspoils.tumblr.com/post/159520073773/skamdaily-401-squads

This newly released (and sadly last) season revolves around one of my all-time favorites: Sana Bakkoush. And I truly couldn’t have been more grateful and joyful. I hold a special place in my heart just for her, because she was the one that made me initially interested in watching this phenomenal series, as I mentioned in my December Wrap Up.

To give you some context on the atmosphere and themes being explored in this new season I’d like to voice this on-point post: up until now, sana has been painted as this incredibly fierce, strong, unapologetic girl who doesn’t tolerate any kind of ignorance. she’s consistently portrayed as confident and outspoken throughout the past three seasons. then BAM. s4 airs, we’re seeing things from her perspective, and there’s this dramatic shift, almost instantly. 

she’s still the same sana. she stares down the woman on the bus. she snaps at vilde when vilde won’t shut up about how much sex she’s having and corrects her when vilde says “you can’t have sex”. she tells the girls that she thinks it’s their responsibility to tell noora about william’s new girlfriend considering william won’t tell her himself. these are all very sana-like traits. 

but now, we see just how much she has to put up with, too. it’s the more subtle things. the rushing to silence her phone when she was on the bus because shit shit shit, it’ll freak some people out. the fact that yes, her friends ordered another pizza without any pork on it, but the meat was still haram. but it was a kind gesture of them to think of it in the first place, right? so she doesn’t complain, she just silently picks the meat off, not wanting to seem ungrateful despite the fact that really, don’t they know by now?

…

and it’s so subtle. things that we would only get from seeing life through her eyes. but it’s chipping away at her, bit by bit, these little instances of being excluded, of her friends not quite getting it. and it’s so heartbreaking to see, but so, so clever, too. because suddenly i just feel like we – like the characters on the show – have misjudged sana completely. she’s still strong, she’s still fierce. but she swallows a lot down, too. she’s hurting more than we originally thought. she feels more misunderstood than we originally thought. and i am so impressed that in a clip that was less than 8 minutes long, we have already seen a completely different side to sana than we got throughout the last 3 seasons.

http://bookspoils.tumblr.com/post/159637343273/aminyard-insp-x

Getting to see things from Sana’s perspective profoundly changed my outlook on so many things. I started to become aware of all the cracks and the constant little hurts that she has to put up with almost daily, especially those from the girl squad. Also, now that I got to see it all play out from Sana’s pov, I quickly started picking up on how inconsiderate and at times even ignorant people – strangers, classmates, etc.- came to be around her. Sana Bakkoush deserves the whole wide world, so it continually crushed my heart to see her being under appreciated.

But I was interested to see how the show – a known barrier breaker – would handle said situation with the utmost care and expertise, as it has done with significant topics in the past three seasons.

Which leads me to the next point that I want to talk about: Skam portraying their Muslim main lead. Religion is such a crucial part of my everyday life as a practicing Jew, so I was beyond ecstatic to have a young Muslim woman of colour represented in this season. And it defied my exceptions in all aspects, to say the least. The utter respect and admiration I have for Sana Bakkoush – played by the effervescent Iman Meskini – is difficult to articulate, so I think it’s best if I let this next post sum it up:

http://bookspoils.tumblr.com/post/159590440178/imansmeskinis-because-this-right-here-needs

It made my heart soar to see this on television.

And just a few more things I’d like to vent about:

I adore the fact that I became smitten with Sana and Yousef before they’d even spoken more than one sentence to each other. Their eye contact alone was reason enough to give me butterflies.

http://bookspoils.tumblr.com/post/159883830118/aleolightwood-i-dont-want-to-be-rude-now-but

So you can only imagine how utterly alive I felt when those two finally had some dialogue. I was living vicariously through them, to be quite frank.

I also feel compelled to share this next gifset because there’s no going back with my love for Sana and Yousef:

http://bookspoils.tumblr.com/post/159966591298/yousanas-sanas-crush-on-yousef-is

thumbs up while choking back tears This is how I like my flirting.

Also, Sana’s season had barely even started and it was already the most iconic Skam season for me. That first episode alone covered so many vitally important topics, which consequently reminded me exactly why this remains to be my favorite tv series. Nothing quite compares to it.

The soundtrack is as always eerily on point with the characters.

An uplifting and healthy mother-daughter relationship represented between Sana and her mom had me all that more enraptured.

Sana Bakkoush is an incredible positive influence in my life. Just seeing her be herself genuinely inspires me. And if I am half the person she is, I’ll consider myself to be fortunate.

The balloon squad (called by that name because the first time we saw them was in a behind the scenes photo and they were holding a bundle of balloons) are the ultimate #squadgoals.

http://bookspoils.tumblr.com/post/159590843938/skamedits-fy-faen-fy-fy-faen

They come off like a bunch of funny, loving, handsome, wholesome, complex characters. And I was won over one line at a time. Also, I high-key cherish the fact that they have a Youtube channel where they post videos throughout the week.

I love the intricate attention paid to details in Skam. Absolutely everything is there for a reason; things are never as simple as they first seem. But then this also leads to me overanalyzing each episode. Oh, and the fact that this was the first season where I kept up with the release of each clip and episode only added to the immense thrill and excitement.

Honestly, I could go on and on about how season four has quite quickly become my favorite Skam season, but I think you get my point. Plus, I’m still in denial that it’s the last one… I can’t quite wrap my mind around the fact that they’re ending it on such a good season.

http://bookspoils.tumblr.com/post/160053775603/nalle-cishet-drama-bonus

P.S. since we’re less than a handful episodes into season four, I wasn’t anticipating to write so much but hey, what can I say? I love this show with all my heart. And I imagine I’ll have a lot more to say about the remaining episodes left, so if you’re interested in keeping up with my fangirling you’re more than welcome to follow my Tumblr here or my Twitter here.

That was my April wrap-up, thank you for reading!

April 2017 Reading Wrap Up