wocinsolidarity

[wocinsolidarity]

Women of Color, in Solidarity: Hiatus Announcement

Hi everyone!

Did you know that a few days ago (March 3rd, to be exact), marked Women of Color, in Solidarity turning five years old? 

Wow!

I’ve been thinking over this post for a few days, constantly coming back to it to figure out the right things to say. But it’s been difficult to really put into words everything I feel about this blog. 

When Aiesha, Attanya and I first started it, we were just juniors in college really going through some rough fucking times. I think it’s okay to speak for all three of us when I say we really needed a place that we could hold space with and for each other. Somewhere to vent, to share resources, to celebrate women who looked like us, and to wrestle with some really fucking hard-hitting ideas and emotions. At least for me, I didn’t really have any specific ideas about how I wanted this blog to form. I was angry and felt isolated and was yearning for a space to just kind of exist… even if that space was this online platform. 

I don’t think any of us really knew what running a blog like this would entail or that it would gain the traction that it has. I guess to be transparent: I didn’t realize how emotionally draining this would be. The first couple of years (and damn do I feel old saying that!) were probably the hardest because I always felt a pressure to Know everything. To constantly be available for this blog and always have an opinion on everything. Now that I’m a little older, I know that is A) just unrealistic B) totally unhealthy and C) in total opposition to what movement building and activism is. 

Maybe it sounds obvious, but one of the best things I learned from moderating this blog is that I don’t need to know about everything and it’s more than okay to say “I’m not informed enough about that to speak on it” and “there are other, better resources to help with that” and “I’m moving back from this conversation.” One of the great things about this Tumblr for me has been learning from not only outside resources - other blogs, people I know irl, journalists, academics, activists, friends, people who fall into all those categories - but from you. From other people running Tumblogs similar to this. Being able to consult other resources or just point others out has always been important to me - and over the years I realized through this blog how critical it is to my mujerista/feminist formation. 

Tied for that is the idea that I - and we all - are constantly growing and changing people. As I continue(d) to learn and engage with communities I want to be in solidarity with and do grassroots work with people I realized that at the end of the day, who I was even five minutes ago is not who I am. I read through some of the things we first posted about and I’m almost surprised at how different my feels are now. Lol not so much about base theory, maybe. But about how I critique others (as well as myself!) and how I am reframing how to navigate spaces and people. As I continue on - hopefully with a more and more nuanced lens and self-awareness an constant reflection about who I am and what I do and what my communities work for and what we can be - I find myself coming back to this Grace Lee Boggs quote:

As Jimmy Boggs used to remind us, revolutions are made out of love for people and for place. He often talked about loving America enough to change it. ‘I love this country,’ he used to say, ‘not only because my ancestors’ blood is in the soil but because of what I believe it can become.’ Love isn’t just something you feel. It’s something you do everyday… Love isn’t about what we did yesterday; it’s about what we do today and tomorrow and the day after.

I strive to embody this idea. At the end of the day, when I’m angry and tired and fucked up (And these are all emotions that have their uses… and sometimes they don’t and that’s okay too, sometimes we just need to feel) I always try to come back to this. To love as action and as liberation. And maybe this is extraordinarily corny to say but moderating this blog is one of the things has helped me to come to this place. 

I love Women of Color, in Solidarity. 

And not for nothing - I love that this is a space that people know about, that they reference and that they get excited about when I tell them I’m a founder. I love that this has been a starting resource for people and that it’s helped people to start their own journey into feminism, womanism, mujerism, or however they label. I’ve met so many people irl (not to brag, but including previous bosses) who have told me how impressed they are with this blog. With the work and care we have put into it. 

And I know that recognition isn’t everything, just as I know follower count isn’t everything. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m not constantly awed that there are 27,000 (give or take) or you out there. I hope that for all of you, this has been a good online place. Where you celebrated or learned or heavily critiqued or downright disagreed (because spoiler alert: that’s how I’ve felt about everything we’ve posted, at one time or another). I still can’t believe we got a shout-out from the Tumblr staff last year (thank you to the intern snuck that in ;) )

So. This all being said.

Some of you may have noticed that we’ve slowed down a lot on this blog. Aiesha and Attanya have both been on leaves of absences for a while, and I’ve been mostly just posting via queue. As much as I love this space, it’s a lot of work to maintain. I know it’s “just” a Tumblog but a lot of work goes into finding resources, fact-checking things, and posting/reblogging pertinent information. Where all three of us are now is much different than where we were in the past, just in terms of what we have time and space for and where are priorities are.

This is why I am officially announcing our hiatus. I’ll reblog this post a few times just to keep you all updated, but this will probably be for a few weeks. Just as we regroup and determine what we want for the future of this blog. That could look like any number of things - but just know whatever we decide, the page will still be up with tons of resources, including our archive, list of other Tumblrs like ours, and formative texts.

In solidarity,

Jennifer 

March 8th, 2018 

[wocinsolidarity]

JANUARY 12: Nobuko Yoshiya (1896-1973)

Nobuko Yoshiya! Out and proud lesbian! Author of lesbian lit & stories with titles like “Husbands Are Useless”! What’s not to love about her?

Her middle-class, conservative background did not necessarily predispose her to become the lesbian icon she’s known as today, but Nobuka Yoshiya never quite seem to fit the role of the good, dutiful wife she was supposed to take on. She developed early on a love of reading and writing that came in the way of her learning domestic skills (who can relate?). When she moved to Tokyo in 1915, she started breaking away more visibly from gender norms and expectations: she adopted a more androgynous style, cutting her hair short (thus also emulating Western fashion of the 20s), she traveled extensively, and she’s recognized as one of the first Japanese women to own a car and a racehorse. She loved horse racing and golf, and designed her own house, which became the Yoshiya Nobuko Memorial Museum after her death (but if you want to go see it, make sure to plan in advance: it’s open only twice a year, in early May and November, for three days each time).

Even though she was one of 20th-century Japan’s most popular, commercially successful and prolific writers, there’s not a whole lot of scholarly work on her or translations of her writings, at least in the English-speaking Western world – perhaps because the bulk of her writing was serialized romance and teen girls’ novels, and thus not seen as a contender for the ‘serious literature’ category. Even so, she enjoyed an especially broad readership among young women; she pioneered the Class S genre – which refers to literature dealing with strong friendships and romance between schoolgirls – and was influential in developing shōjo (schoolgirl) anime, manga, and literature.

Yoshiya was in a lifelong partnership with Chiyo Monma, a math teacher in Tokyo whom she met in 1923. Their life together was no secret, and Yoshiay openly talked about it in personal essays and magazine interviews. Their relationship was both romantic and professional, as they worked together as author and secretary. Since same-sex marriage was not possible in Japan, Yoshiya adopted Monma in 1957: this was the only legal way that made it possible for lesbians to share property and make medical decisions for each other – in short, to be recognized as family for each other. Their relationship only ended with Yoshiya’s death in 1973.

(I STILL can’t get over the “husbands are useless” thing.)

- AK

[wocinsolidarity]

Mwasi Collective: Afrofeminist Resistance in France | Clementine Burnley

The confident prints and colours at the Afropunk Festival this weekend in Paris lifted my heart. For my generation, to wear anything “African” was to risk being identified with Africa and treated accordingly. Many of us shied away from that experience. The young people at Afropunk seem different from their parents and grandparents. Their homes are in Africa as well as in Europe, North America, Australia.  Their concerns and understanding of their Blackness is probably different from mine. But we share a common experience of discrimination. There are people who assume that as time goes by and hipsters grow facial hair, discrimination fades away.  Instead, the attitudes of the past find new expression with each generation and so Black consciousness is remade in each new generation. I caught up with the Mwasi Collective, a black feminist organization active in France.

Read more on Ezibota.com

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Laura Aguilar is a Los Angeles-based photographer whose work mines the intersection between feminism, body image, queer politics, and latinx identity. Her earliest works depicted latina lesbians in intimate portraits, calling to mind the frankness of Catherine Opie, while her best known series features self-portraits of Aguilar posed nude in the California desert landscape. These photographs are instantly striking, finding in the artist’s body formal elements that echo the landscape itself, as in its doubling here with the giant rock that eludes the frame. Aguilar also forces our gaze onto a body that does not conform to stereotypical images of latinx or feminine identity—a body type that is not so much othered as invisible, despite its ubiquity. The artist originally began to produce these photos as a means of grappling with her own issues with weight and self-acceptance, but quickly came to see them as something more. They offer a profound, ambivalent vision of woman and nature. We see Aguilar dissolve into the landscape in search of anonymity, at the same time that she reclaims the pride and beauty in her body far removed from the society that rejects it.

Laura Aguilar, Grounded #111, 1992

[wocinsolidarity]

I am a semi-out sex worker. By semi-out I mean I’m internet out: I haven’t announced anything to most of my family and the “in-real-life” people who need to know, know. I have dabbled in a bit of everything, from stripping to prostitution to sugaring to camming. I am also an artist, freelancer and homeschooling mother, so there is a lot of nuance in what I desire out of life for my son and I. My only other avenue would be minimum or below-poverty level wages.

When I write, I focus on sex workers of color. Most of the time I narrow it even further to Black sex workers and Black trans sex workers who face the most ire, discrimination and violence from both the police and within the Black community.

I wrote a series of Twitter threads on sex work that discussed sex worker rights and briefly mentioned our place in Black Lives Matter. Here is one of them.

[wocinsolidarity]

The dominant narrative of marriage equality is overcrowded with stories about white men, which has obscured the pioneering roles played by people of color. Everyone knows about Jim Obergefell, one of the plaintiffs in Obergefell v. Hodges, where the United States Supreme Court said that the Constitution requires marriage equality. After the Supreme Court’s decision, Obergefell got a call from the White House, tremendous celebrity, and a publisher for his memoirs.

Yet almost no media attention was directed to two of the other Ohio plaintiffs, Brittani Henry and Britini Rogers. A simple Google search yields thousands of articles on Obergefell, hundreds on most of the other plaintiff couples, and only a few that even mention Henry and Rogers, two mothers with an infant son. They have a dramatic story of trying to persuade Ohio to recognize their family and are a charismatic couple and mediagenic family. But these plaintiffs, black lesbians, did not garner the significant spotlight lavished on Obergefell.

Their relative obscurity is not unusual. Indeed, it is the norm. Books and articles have whitewashed the struggle for marriage equality.

[wocinsolidarity]

It was there that I internalized respectability politics — behaviors that align with mainstream (white, normative) values in order to gain social acceptance — deeply.

In high school, I often gained approval from the white people in my class by maintaining Eurocentric beauty standards and fitting easy stereotypes. This was also my respectability at work.

I wasn’t ready to disrupt any of that, because, at that point in my life, social acceptance was way more important to me than anything else.

And so respectability became a part of me. It’s only this year that I’ve begun to understand that my family’s comfort with this mindset — of trying to keep the ‘peace’ rather than disrupting it for good reason — is part of the Asian model minority concept.

That being said, when I’m writing on this topic, I’m not preaching about something that I’ve fully unlearned. I’m actually just sharing what others have put labor into teaching me either by example or after instances when I’ve reproduced this harmful behavior.  

[wocinsolidarity]

They Told the Women in Bahia They Couldn’t Drum. Try Telling That to Banda Didá

Jan. 30, 2018

SALVADOR, Brazil — This northeastern Brazilian city is famous for its Afro-Brazilian drumming traditions; the internationally acclaimed bloco-afroband Olodum has broadcast its colorful drums and pounding syncopation internationally for decades through music collaborations including Michael Jackson’s “They Don’t Really Care About Us” and Paul Simon’s “The Obvious Child”. To see that band — which is composed almost exclusively of men — or any of the city’s other renowned bloco-afros, like Ilê Aiyê, perform live in the streets of Salvador is a deep dive into the roots of this country’s musical traditions.But traditions change. Or actually, traditions are changed. By women like the ones that make up Banda Didá, a group composed exclusively of black women, pounding out those same Afro-Brazilian rhythms, filling up Salvador’s night with its old sounds, played by new hands.  

[wocinsolidarity]

Mindfulness curricula grounded in Whiteness means that there is an overt assumption that the content presented is universally beneficial to EVERYbody. That the empirical evidence driving the curricula is “robust and rigorous” so of course its application is relevant to EVERYbody. And all of this universality is assumed while never having to say that decades of evidence-based, well-funded, highly visible, and industry standard findings that support mindfulness curricula and practices are predominantly normed on the lived experiences of White people. And quite honestly, that lack of inquiry—not having to ask which bodies receive benefit and which ones don’t; which ones were included in research studies and which ones weren’t, all the while garnering major dollars to further the development of this blind spot—is not only an oversight, but a demonstration of how capitalism and White privilege is driving the mindfulness movement.

Dr. Angela Rose Black, “Disrupting Systemic Whiteness in the Mindfulness Movement” (December 2017)

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Blackness is often only discussed in an American context, without an understanding of its social, political, economic, and cultural interconnections to the rest of the Afro-Atlantic, Europe, Asia, and the continent of Africa. Far too many Black folks in America remain unconcerned or without knowledge of the African Diaspora worldwide. It is imperative for Blackness to be understood in an international context, as Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael and other Black freedom fighters attempted to do so in the formation of their own radical consciousness and revolutionary politics. The following resources and media are not by any means exhaustive, but an attempt to hold Black millennials in the Western hemisphere accountable for developing a complex, internationalist analysis as Afro-descendants, particularly in respect to the radical history of Black power movements in the Caribbean. Resources will be given on Puerto Rico, Barbados, Martinique, Guyana, Haiti, Suriname, Grenada, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, the Virgin Islands (U.S.), Jamaica, and Trinidad.

[wocinsolidarity]

In 35 states, it’s legal for cops to detain and have sex with someone in their custody. Is your state one of them?

Yesterday, Buzzfeed News published an investigative piece about Anna Chambers, a New York teenager pressing rape charges against Eddie Martins and Richard Hall, two members of the New York Police Department. Last fall, Anna was picked up by the two cops who told her two male friends to leave, handcuffed her, and led her into their van. According to Anna’s lawyer, the policemen ordered her to undress — and when they didn’t find drugs, they raped her.

It’s a stunning story of state violence — of cops using their guns, their badges, and their impunity to attack vulnerable women. Anna’s far from alone: sexual assault is the second most commonly reported form of police misconduct and brutality (after excessive force). A 2015 investigation found that over 1,000 officers across America have lost their badges because of sexual assault — and their report noted that number is “unquestionably an undercount” because many states, including New York, don’t keep state records of decertified cops. Further, sexual violence and police violence are highly underreported — meaning these number represent a mere fraction of the actual prevalence of police-perpetrated sexual violence.

You’d think this would have been an open-and-shut case. Anna’s forensic exam (commonly known as a ‘rape kit’) matched Martins’ and Hall’s DNA, and a security camera shows the detectives leaving her on the side of a street a quarter-mile from a police station. Anna says she repeatedly told the detectives no; the detectives say it was consensual.

[wocinsolidarity]

This is why “Black Panther” is sort of an anomaly. Based on everything we know about colorism, who it affects, and what exactly feeds into it, we wouldn’t expect that many (or really any) dark-skinned and brown-skinned actresses would appear in “Black Panther.”

And yet there are. And here’s why it matters:

‘Black Panther’ goes out of its way to cast dark-skinned women in every single role that calls for a woman — including the love interest.

Dark-skinned and brown-skinned black women are abundant in the movie. You can see it in the background characters, the promotional material and in the much-talked-about Dora Milaje — an elite team of female bodyguards that defer to our good King T’Challa, played by Chadwick Boseman. And every single significant speaking role has been cast with a dark-skinned or brown-skinned actress.

[wocinsolidarity]

(articles from February 15, 2018)

HEY GUESS WHAT HAPPENED TODAY

The House of Representatives voted in favor of destroying key provisions of the ADA to allow businesses to continue, penalty free, to remain inaccessible, possibly indefinitely.

All y’all who like to talk about ableism on here and are eligible to vote in the US:

call your senators. Tell them no on 620. Tell them why accessibility and the ADA matter to you. 

[wocinsolidarity]

If the only Peruvian on your social media newsfeed is your ceviche food porn, then, yum!, but you’re seriously missing out. The only thing more poppin’ than Peru’s delicacies — which makes the South American country the top culinary destination in the world, so this is saying a lot — is its people.

Peruvian femmes are out here producing music, cracking jokes, droppin’ knowledge, making art and looking fine as hell. If you’re not following these Inca goddesses yet, you need to get on it.

[wocinsolidarity]

In organization after organization, I saw the same pattern. Folks mobilize through an intense period. They do what we've all been taught and save their critique for later discussion. And when there's a break from the external crisis, they tear each other apart. As an organizer, I was taught to recruit people into the movement and to support them to stay involved. But I wasn't taught how to repair relationships or to prevent harm. Many of us aren't taught these skills.

Our campaigns, our base-building and our political analysis cannot and will not save us from this threat. Even worse, our external opponents not only are capitalizing on our fractures, but feeding them. Sometimes, we are our own strongest opposition. Without shifting our focus to repairing our relationships, our movements will rot from the inside out.

[wocinsolidarity]

In the aftermath of Wednesday’s mass shooting at a South Florida high school, students who survived have been vocal in their anger and grief after losing 17 of their classmates and teachers.

On Sunday, five students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School took to morning shows on CNN, ABC, and Fox News to demand action from adults. They announced that they will lead a nationwide March for Our Lives on March 24 to call for action on gun control, and for politicians to be held accountable for donations they receive from the National Rifle Association.

Survivors of the school shooting in Florida are calling for a march on Washington to demand action on gun control. “People are saying that it’s not time to talk about gun control, and we can respect that. Here’s a time: March 24, in every single city.” https://t.co/7KxMqjCem8 pic.twitter.com/KVsDy0W9cJ

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) February 18, 2018

“People are saying that it’s not time to talk about gun control, and we can respect that. Here’s a time. March 24th in every single city,“ said Cameron Kasky, a junior at the high school, on ABC’s This Week, flanked by four fellow students. “We’re going to be marching together as students, begging for our lives.”

“My message for the people in office is: You’re either with us or against us. We are losing our lives while the adults are playing around,” Kasky said on CNN’s State of the Union.

“My message for the people in office is: you’re either with us or against us. We are losing our lives while the adults are playing around,” says Cameron Kasky, a junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS who survived the shooting https://t.co/7jSICvoB38 https://t.co/r8RceZVfVu

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) February 18, 2018

“In the next election we are saying that if you are accepting money from the NRA there is a badge of shame on you, because you are enabling things like this to happen,” Kasky said on Fox News Sunday.

Stoneman Douglas students announce March for Our Lives on March 24. “One of the things we’ve been hearing is that it’s not the yet time to talk about gun control… so here’s the time we’re going to talk about gun control.” pic.twitter.com/CLUf6JM9fs

— Axios (@axios) February 18, 2018

On Friday a senior at the school, Emma Gonzalez, also directly called out Trump and the NRA during a speech at a gun control rally in Fort Lauderdale.

“If the president wants to come up to me and tell me to my face that it was a terrible tragedy and how it should never have happened and maintain telling us how nothing is going to be done about it, I’m going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association,” she said at the rally. “But, hey, you wanna know something? It doesn’t matter, because I already know: $30 million.”

The protest announced by the students on Sunday is one of several planned in the coming months: a national high school student walkout is being planned separately for April 20, the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High shooting, and Women’s March organizers are planning another walkout for 17 minutes on March 14, one month after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting.

[wocinsolidarity]

Resistance can take many forms - from education to litigation, from within a small community to throughout the globe. Though I have omitted highly important figures like Yuri Kochiyama and Fred Korematsu, I wanted to spotlight lesser-known individuals who resisted injustice in a variety of ways. They demonstrate that we too can act against oppression and inequality, however we are able.

[Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga] [Ina Sugihara] [Mitsuye Endo] [Norman Mineta] [Aki Kurose] 

Many thanks to The Densho Project for the research materials

I’ve put a printed zine version of these drawings and stories on my Storenvy for preorder, all profits from sales of the zine will be donated to the ACLU. Zines will be shipped out in early March.