Bossy Femme!

glitterpolitic:

“My Dearest Queer Communities, I’m feeling really sad, angry, and frustrated with this politics of exile that i see everywhere around me. maybe we need to stop for a second and think really hard about how self-righteous and exclusive we are. maybe we need to think a little harder about how our experiences of class, gender, ability, racialization, sexuality, size are extremely nuanced and complex. maybe we need to start thinking a little harder about how we reinforce shame, and hegemonic binary narratives within our communities. maybe we need to stop for a second and instead of making dehumanizing, universalizing judgments about each other, maybe be quiet and listen. maybe we need to be thankful that we can learn from each other. maybe we need to be kind and gentle and loving and take care of each others’ hearts a little better. i mean…who needs the state to fuck us over when we have each other, right? Yours truly, Ashley Aron”

—

for some reason i am still shocked to discover that the term “intersectionality” is bandied about a lot more these days but still not properly applied so often.

readnfight:

healingsakina:

folks can be dealing with multiple oppressions.

and can care deeply, personally or not, about multiple issues.

when it comes to oppression, there is no hierarchy.

each individual has to pick their own battles, and those battles may be fluid & changing depending on what they can handle at a given moment. but that doesn’t mean by focusing/caring about a particular oppression they don’t give a damn about another.

UNLESS THEY ARE ACTUALLY SAYING “ya’ll are focused on the wrong thing! why aren’t you giving enough attention to xyz? abc has been done to death and xyz matters more now.” which, sadly, some folks really keep doing…

prescriptive activism does not bring me on board.

WORD. The word & concept of intersectionality are so important to me, really, that I hate seeing it become an empty buzzword. But I am worried about that, because I see it get done in ways like, We totally get intersectionality, so here’s the chapter of women of color writers in our book about feminism. Which misses the damn point.

I really love this essay/speech by Mia Mingus, “Intersectionality is a Big Fancy Word for My Life;” when I read it it put into words a lot of my frustrations, especially with organizing with mostly white people.

We must be willing to have hard conversations as queer people with each other about how we are different as queer people.  It helps us to expand what “queerness” is—to see that there are many different ways to be queer.  We can’t be afraid to do our own work at our own tables.  And yes, there is much work to be done out there, with folks who aren’t queer.  Yes, that is important too, but we are outsiders here as well.  Because really, there is no “out there.”

…

To the queer white folks in the audience and the folks who benefit from white privilege, I would ask you: how are you connecting your fight for queer liberation to challenging white supremacy?  How are you connecting your queerness to your white privilege?  How are you listening to queer people of color in your world, supporting them and practicing solidarity?  How are you actively noticing how whiteness, racism and white supremacy play out in queer communities, student groups, organizations, and movements?

…

Intersectionality is not just talking about the places you’re oppressed, but also the places where you have privilege.  Intersectionality is disabled white folks enacting their white entitlement through their disability identity.  It’s me having to choose between the POC caucus, the disability caucus, the API women’s caucus, or the adoptee caucus at the Creating Change in Detroit.  It’s thousands of LGBT and queer folks coming out for pride and 150 people coming out for Transgender Day of Remembrance…

Like I said, I don’t want to see intersectionality turned into a buzzword, with all of its power hollowed out. I don’t want lip-service. This needs to mean more than tacking bell hooks on to the end of an otherwise-white canon of women writers, more than adding marriage equality onto an agenda to sum up all of queer, trans*, and genderqueer people’s lives. For real. I will be very very upset to see this get its life sucked out.

This is a call to action that really excites me. And some a+ commentary/discussion, too.

I find that dating an older man

mymuffinroared:

is like coming out all over again. I am still not completely used to the facial expressions I see whenever I tell someone who I am in a relationship with. I can honestly say that I am experiencing more of a backlash than when I first came out as a person who did not exclusively date men. Because my partner is both male and older than me, the amount of times I puzzle people has exponentially increased. For the record, my choice of mate does not mean I am now less of a member of the queer community. My sex life is still none of your business (unless I am speaking about it freely in my own space). I am not establishing a preference and I am not asking for permission; I am simply embracing happiness. My mother seems to believe that I have given in to what was right all along, because a man is supposed to take care of a woman. I can take care of myself, and I am with someone who respects me and my individuality. Judge me if you wish, but I’ll be looking the other way with a smile on my face.

Yes yes & yes.

(via bowfolk)

straight queerz

besttumblr:

i find myself wanting to talk about heterosexuality a lot in queer spaces

and then feel shame for it, like i’m appropriating a space that’s supposed to be free of an often-compulsory act that many in those spaces found/find oppressive

but like, obvi queer isn’t just about same-sex relationships, and thinking of queer as not-opposite-sex is meaningless within a gender paradigm that doesn’t ascribe to the concept of “opposite”

at the same time, is the time i spend praising positive, consensual, communicative heterosexuality just giving out awards to people for being *not* terrible? is it undermining the power of queer spaces by tokenizing and rewarding simple decency in non-queers while holding queers to significantly higher standards of anti-oppressive behavior?

or am i standing up for myself as a person-in-transition, who needs to assert my right to be in a relationship that is simultaneously “straight” and “queer,” and who sometimes wants reassurance that “heterosexuality” is a narrative with multiple possibilities?

I’m a cis queer woman in a relationship with a cis dude. I don’t try to talk about straight people often in queer spaces because I worry about appropriating space that isn’t meant for me, but then again, it is - I’m still queer & I understand myself as femme, rather than as straight. I think that most dykes I know find this pretty laughable, but that’s true. When I am in spaces w. straight people, especially with my partner, especially when everyone is in a hetero partnership and people around me presume that about me, I feel like my identity is being erased, but I also feel that - in a different way - in queer spaces. 

I’m with you on the idea that “not-opposite-sex” seems like an imperfect definition in a community that is generally so supportive of more plural conceptions of gender.

In the community I’m in, too, I feel that there is a lot of conflation between one’s relationship status/gender identity and one’s IDEAS ABOUT/political stance/understanding of queerness and genderqueerness. Like I will probably never have dysphoria, but that doesn’t mean that I totally don’t understand anything about my trans friends, or that I am somehow less politically radical than they are.

Simultaneously, I think that my queer friends don’t make a distinction between COMPULSORY heterosexuality & heteronormativity on the one hand and heterosexual partnerships on the other hand. There is a lot of pressure for me to be as queer as possible - I feel like sometimes new queer acquaintences are interested in knowing me insofar as they think they can “convert” me into “coming out” as a dyke and, well, fuck that. I’m already queer.

I think that many of the people I know are invested in redoing relationships in a way that’s radical, in a way that rejects lots of things that traditional straight relationships tend to perpetuate -  no presumed heterosexuality, no rape culture, no coercion, no slut shaming, no dishonesty, no pressure. People who are into support and communication and redefining what counts as satisfying sex and changing the model of a happy relationship, and asserting that you don’t have to have a primary partner to be happy, and questioning norms about gender - I think these are common & worthwhile goals.

this ain’t livin’: I Don’t Mind If You’re Straight, So Long As You Act Gay In Public

peerpleasure:

this ain’t livin’: I Don’t Mind If You’re Straight, So Long As You Act Gay In Public

Why is it that members of the QUILTBAG community are taken to task for being ‘too…’ while heterosexual people are not? It’s a pretty clear function of privilege—people don’t challenge behaviour they see as ‘normal’ and heterosexuality is read as ‘normal’ despite the fact that very few people are actually purely heterosexual, as the Kinsey Reports helpfully demonstrated. Normalising expression of all sexualities rather than just one would make society of a hell of a lot safer for everyone and I don’t see anything ‘too gay’ about that.

I note that the sexuality of gay men in particular is often perceived as threatening. They are either deemed too sexually aggressive or they are deemed too flouncy and flamboyant for polite company. Policing gay men’s sexuality has really harmful effects, both on gay men and society. Plenty of people are flouncy and flamboyant. Being a man who is flamboyant does not make you gay, but thanks to stereotyping and policing, femme men are often assumed to be gay. If they aren’t, well, ‘it’s only a matter of time,’ people say sagely while nodding their heads. A man who chooses to wear dresses or skirts now and then, to dress in women’s clothing, is presumed to be gay because he isn’t performing heterosexual masculinity to the satisfaction of everyone around him. Men who play with their gender expression and sexuality are deemed frightening and scary and they must be shut down; they’re ‘in your face’ and we can’t have that.

I agree that this type of pressure is bullshit. However, as a queer-lady-with-a-boyfriend, I gotta tell you that I DO experience the pressure to queer-it-up from within queer communities, as tho my own assertion of my queerness is not enough. & I am tired of feeling like this experience is one that is somehow unimportant because the majority of queer folks feel pressure to be straight-appearing. Guess what though? I get that pressure too, even moreso because straight people think I’m straight. Biphobic catch-22s are awesome! Yuck.