"Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You [white women] fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you; we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs on the reasons they are dying."
"When feminists can see the problem with all-male panels but can't see the problem with all-White television programmes, then it's worth questioning who they're really fighting for."
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| Reblogged from come correct |
"Rude girls aren't the antithesis of feminism. They aren't even a different form of feminism. I am hesitant to label women of color's efforts to survive and carve a place in the world anything as flawed as feminism because things really just tend to be larger than the labels we give them. A rude girl is just the girl you need her to be, point blank. Get into her narcissism, her cockiness, her sex-positive approaches. Honey, really get into the way she tears down obstacles--with a little flair and a whole bunch of attitude. Even if you can't hang with her, you can hang with the way she handles her shit--because it's the way we sometimes want to: open and blunt, with the tell-tale knowledge that she is, and always will be, the shit."
"A racist woman is not a feminist; she doesn’t care about helping women, just the women who look like her and can buy the same things she can. A transphobic woman is not a feminist; she is overly concerned with policing the bodies and expressions of others. A woman against reproductive rights — to use bell hook’s own example, and an issue close to your heart — is not a feminist; she prioritizes her dogma or her disgust over the bodies of others. An ableist woman is not a feminist; she holds some Platonic ideal of what a physically or mentally “whole” person should be and tries to force the world to fit inside it."
"Queerness, to me, is about far more than homosexual attraction. It's about a willingness to see all other taboos broken down. Sure, many of us start on this path when we first feel 'same sex' or 'same gender' attraction (though what is sex? And what is gender? And does anyone really have the same sex or gender as anyone else?) But queerness doesn't stop there.
"This is a somewhat controversial stance, but to me queer means something completely different than 'gay' or 'lesbian' or 'bisexual'. A queer person is usually someone who has come to a non-binary view of gender, who recognizes the validity of all trans identities, and who given this understanding of infinite gender possibilities, finds it hard to describe their sexuality any longer in a gender-based way. Queer people understand and support non-monogamy even if they do not engage in it themselves. They can grok being asexual or aromantic. (What does sex have to do with love, or love with sex, necessarily?) A queer can view promiscuous (protected) public bathhouse sex with strangers and complete abstinence as equally healthy.
"Queers understand that people have different relationships to their bodies. We get what it means to be stone. We know what body dysphoria is about. We understand that not everyone likes to get touched in the same way or to get touched at all. We realize that people with disabilities may have different sexual needs, and that people with survivor histories often have sexual triggers. We can negotiate safe and creative ways to be intimate with people with HIV/AIDS and other STIs.
"Queers understand the range of power and sensation and the diversity of sexual dynamics. We are tops and bottoms, doms and subs, sadists and masochists and sadomasochists, versatiles and switches. We know what we like and don't like in bed.
"We embrace a wide range of relationship types. We can be partners, lovers, friends with benefits, platonic sweethearts, chosen family. We can have very different dynamics with different people, often all at once. We don't expect one person to be able to fill all our diverse needs, fantasies, and ideals indefinitely.
"Because our views on relationships, sex, gender, love, bodies, and family are so unconventional, we are of necessity anti-assimilationist. Because under the kyriarchy we suffer, and watch the people we love suffering, we are political. Because we want to survive, we fight. We only want the freedom to be ourselves, love ourselves, love each other, and live together. Because we are routinely denied that, we are pissed.
"Queer doens't mean 'don't label me,' it means 'I am naming myself.' It means 'ask me more questions if you're curious' and in the same breath means 'fuck off.'
"At least, that is what it means to me."
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| Reblogged from Lavender Labia |
When I was a student at Cambridge I remember an anthropology professor holding up a picture of a bone with 28 incisions carved in it. “This is often considered to be man’s first attempt at a calendar” she explained. She paused as we dutifully wrote this down. ‘My question to you is this – what man needs to mark 28 days? I would suggest to you that this is woman’s first attempt at a calendar.’ It was a moment that changed my life. In that second I stopped to question almost everything I had been taught about the past. How often had I overlooked women’s contributions?
“Society has a problem with female nudity when it is not… ” —Badu pauses to get her words together; she wants this point to be very clear— “…when it is not packaged for the consumption of male entertainment. Then it becomes confusing.”
"I don’t think it’s terribly controversial to note that women, from a young age, are required to consider the reality of the opposite gender’s consciousness in a way that men aren’t. This isn’t to say that women don’t often misunderstand, mistreat, and stereotype men, both in literature and in life. But on a basic level, functioning in society requires that women register that men are fully conscious; it is not really possible for a woman to throw up her hands and write men off as eternally unknowable space aliens — and even if she says she has, she cannot really behave as though she has. Every element of her life — from reading books about boys and men to writing papers about the motivations of male characters to being attentive to her own safety to navigating most any institutional or professional or economic sphere — demands an ironclad familiarity with, and belief in, the idea that men really are fully human entities. And no matter how many men come to the same conclusions about women, the structure of society simply does not demand so strenuously that they do so. If you didn’t really deep down believe that women were, in general, exactly as conscious as you, you could probably still get by in life. You could probably still get a book deal. You could probably still get elected to office."—Jennifer duBois, Writing Across Gender (via florida-uterati)To apply a bit of intersectionality to this…women of color and the many marginalized communities we belong to—especially communities of color—have been saying this for a minute.(via strugglingtobeheard)
