#good causes are never off topic
- kiriamaya could use some help so she doesn’t have to choose between food, meds, and rent;
- rosasparks’ neighbourhood got hit by Hurricane Irene, they don’t have power yet and she’s low on food.
Chip in if you can!
August 2011
World-Renowned Chef Karl Wilder Tries Living on Food Stamps →
huffingtonpost.com
Still think people on food stamps have it too good? Chef Karl Wilder is trying to feed his family on the budget equivalent of what they would receive on food stamps. He’s been documenting his meals on his blog as part of an awareness campaign for the San Francisco Food Bank.
He just finished his two months on a food stamp budget, and he says, “I admit to being bored by it. I am sick of many of the foods that work in this budget. I am ready for it to be over.” He went to the doctor and found that although he’d lost weight, his body fat percentage went up, and his blood sugar, cholesterol and triglyceride levels were all higher.
Still think poor people have it made on food stamps?
The only ways to eat well on a food stamp budget are to a) to sacrifice some of your cash to supplement your purchases, b) have a thriving garden, or c) very generous friends. How many times do we have to have people do this experiment before we admit that the formula for the amount awarded is incredibly flawed & doesn’t take into account the range of food prices in this country, access (or lack thereof) to full fledged grocery stores, potential storage restrictions, dietary needs, or ability levels? I mean really, can we move on to discussing those issues instead of yet another “Eating well when you’re poor is hard” project?
“
Can fat people be healthy? A provocative new study shows that obese people who are otherwise healthy live just as long as their slim counterparts.
And that wasn’t the only surprising finding. The study also showed otherwise healthy obese people are even less likely than lean people to die of cardiovascular disease.
“Our findings challenge the idea that all obese individuals need to lose weight,” study author Dr. Jennifer L. Kuk, assistant professor at York University School of Kinesiology & Health Science, said in a written statement. “Moreover, it’s possible that trying - and failing - to lose weight may be more detrimental than simply staying at an elevated body weight and engaging in a healthy lifestyle that includes physical activity and a balanced diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables.”
” —CBS article on a new weight study via @Fatheffalump on Twitter (via shallanelprin)
So fat isn’t a disease in and of itself???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
AH MAH GAHD!!!!!!!
-___-
(via liquornspice)
“Can I just say there is no such thing as reverse racism? Like the term itself is silly, you cannot “reverse racism” because racism isn’t directed at a specific group but more so the ideology that a specific group based on their skin color is inferior and thus is subject to institutionalized, systematic oppression. White people aren’t victims of racism, they can be victims of violence or hate but very rarely on a scale of a minority or person of color faces through multiple outlets.So if a white person DOES faces oppression it has very little to do with their skin color or the idea that their race is inferior.However since this is rarely the case,white people are in no place to mock and present pseudo-racism claims when it seriously effects and harms POC daily and historically, that in itself is racist ignorance.”
—Brazen Bitch-On Reverse Racism and the harmful mockery it inflicts towards People of Color. (via brazenbitch)
So, white feminists where were y’all when:
- John Mayer called his dick a white supremacist.
- To call out Eminem who is still around and is still from my understanding rapping about killing women. And is yeah, still anti-gay as ever.
- Why aren’t you as concerned with Charlie Sheen, who’s getting a new show apparently, as you are with Chris Brown?
But you’re right there [late as hell anyway] to call out Tyler, to call out other black rappers. To call out rap & hip-hop music as a whole. To say some of you say, you don’t know how to work with women of color you’re very worried with calling out poc as loudly as you can. Trying to over-talk the woc who already are. Who already have.
Rule of thumb for all fandoms: if you hate a female character, imagine a male character behaving the same way. Would you still hate him? If the honest answer is no, stop talking.
Addendum to this rule: If you hate a black character, imagine a white character behaving in the same way. Would you still hate zir? If the honest answer is no, stop talking.
This. Both things, but especially the last bit. Though I think that rule should extend to all non-white/POC/non-Western characters, especially when they’re being talked about by Western and/or white fandom. Because goddamn fandom has really showed it skeevy underbelly when it comes to the hate on for such characters. Especially WOC’s.
Or: Fuck you Lost fandom, Ana Lucia was flawless and Rose was not pointless at all, she was amaze sauce all the way. The show didn’t do them justice, but that was the show’s fault. Not the characters’. They were stunning.
But hating on Ana Lucia for sexing with Sawyer to get his gun while letting Kate slide for doing the same thing because she did it with her delicate white girl feelings with her flowy white girl island hair and special snowflakery? NOT OKAY.
We will not get into my angry feelings about the comments re: Michael and Walt.
Fat is not an evil substance that will cause every medical problem known to the world, it just isn't
“…fat people (especially fat women) die every year because they walk into doctors’ offices with complaints that are ignored by doctors who can’t see past fat. Shortness of breath? Lose weight. Whoops, that was a pulmonary embolism. Pain in your leg? Lose weight. Whoops, that was bone cancer. The first doctor I saw when I had a herniated disk in my back many years ago told me it was back pain from fat. Lose weight. I damn well knew it wasn’t muscle pain, and I knew damn well it was something related to a known cyst on my spine, but I walked and walked and walked because, well, maybe if I lost weight I would feel better. That’s what all my doctors told me. I went on a 20-mile hike through the Scottish Highlands, and went into shock at the end of it, because my disk had herniated so severely. By the time I went to the emergency room at Northwestern in Chicago after I got home, I couldn’t even walk and had permanent nerve damage to my left foot.” - by Melissa McEwan in “Imagine That” http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2011/08/imagine-that.html
Emphasis of the first line mine. I HAVE KNOWN PEOPLE THIS HAS HAPPENED TO. None who are no longer with us, thankfully, but I’m reminded most specifically of one girl who went in for what she later learned was kidney problems that could be fatal and have nothing to do with one’s weight but was turned away several times because, well, she was fat.
We really really really need to unlearn our bigotries about fat.
Yup. I had a class with a girl whose doctors saw “fat, Black woman” and nearly missed her pancreatic cancer. She told the entire class about it one day, how she had to fight to get her symptoms taken seriously. This shit is life and death.
THIS. Especially at intersections where the medical system really lets people down (class, gender, race, AND size), we need to re-evaluate not only what we’re thinking about fat, but about the idea of healthy and what it means and why we need to totally dismantle a system that prizes perfect health as a sign that a patient has complied with the near-infalliability of doctors (which is a BIG FAT LIE) and been a good person.
Because it’s bullshit. Because doctors are just people. People who screw up, get tired, get lazy, get mistaken, have prejudices and isms, and may frankly be only mediocre at what they do on the best of days. Investing them with the kind of authority to declare that they are right and the patient is obviously wrong even when it comes to what the patient is LIVING AND EXPERIENCING is part of where this shit starts.
I won’t get into the fact that one of the basic problems with the health care system (esp. in the U.S.) is the idea that doctors are authorities and that patients must be “compliant”. That we think of “doctor’s orders”. Doctors, at best, should be thought of as health consultants. They give advice, they recommend things, they lend expertise, but the ultimate expert and authority ought to be the patient. Because when it swings the other way, people think that bad health is a failing that must be laid at a patient’s door rather than the sign of an issue that is not a moral failing but simply a biological issue.
What really hurts patients in relation to obesity is not the weight, its the stigma and the attitudes of the doctors who give them substandard care.
Remember When House Republicans Voted Against Hurricane Forecast Funding? →
motherboard.tv
In the US, we rely on the National Hurricane Center to forecast storms. The NHC is in turn a division of the National Weather Service, itself a part of the NOAA. Which, in the GOP’s 2011 budget bill, had its funding slashed by $1.2 billion from what was proposed in the president’s own budget bill, a bill that very notably included a $700 million increase over the previous year to cover needed upgrades to the satellites that gather the data that gets crunched in order to predict storms and weather in general.
NY prisoners left to die in hurricane Irene →
solitarywatch.com
“more than three-quarters of Rikers Island’s 400 acres are built on landfill–which is generally thought to be more vulnerable to natural disasters.”
“normally house at least 12,000, including juveniles and large numbers of prisoners with mental illness–not to mention pre-trial detainees who have yet to be convicted of any crime. There are also hundreds of corrections officers at work on the island.”
fuck everyone
7 year old transgender boy isn't being allowed to use the boys' bathroom
http://www.change.org/petitions/allow-transgender-students-to-use-the-bathroom-at-school-too
If you can sign this that’d be lovely.He’s been withdrawn from school because they were forcing him to use the wrong bathroom. All his classmates know him as a boy…and yet the school’s superintendent is insisting he use the girls’ room and also threatened to call Child Protective Services. There is a gender neutral bathroom available (a possible compromise), but they’re insisting it be kept “staff only.”
No one should be forced to leave school over bathroom breaks. It’s just ridiculous. The staff need a wake up call.
Let’s give it to them.
“Hey honey, you’re going the wrong direction, the border’s that way!”
—
Said by a white man of at least thirty to a 3 year old Latina girl at a restaurant as she was heading to the bathroom. The little girl was out with many members of her family. (via microaggressions)
Harassing a three-year-old child just trying to get to the restroom?
FUCK THAT NOISE ENTIRELY. Fuck it fuck it fuck it fuck it. There is nothing on this green and verdant Earth that gives an adult the right EVER to intimidate or harass a three-year-old kid like that in public.
Asshole and a half.
Also, if your beliefs and political positions lead to you these actions, you need to re-examine them. Pronto.
where are the commercials about getting rid of dick smell?
a man looking at his reflection through a store window, his reflection of himself is sullen and he is wearing a grey hoodie with the hood up.
THEN, DICKASIL
men out shopping, laughing with their friends, playing sports, all now because their dicks don’t smell like dick anymore.
it doesn’t mask the smell of dick, it prevents the smell from happening!
thanks dickasil, now i am free to be myself~
seriously, cos god know dick doesn’t smell like vanilla scented candles
lmfao!!
{dies and comes back to life laughing}
I’ve seen this across my dash and while I’d like to point out that dick doesn’t equal guy (there are lot of women and non-binary peeps out there who have penises, because hey, some women and some not-men-types have penises, get the frell over it!).
But the point is valid. Where are the “stop your junk from smelling up the joint and ruining your life, CIS dudes” commercials?
“So in the DSK rape case, we’re supposed to believe that an African immigrant housekeeper suddenly decided to have sex with a wealthy white man 30 years her senior for 3 minutes on a bathroom floor in the middle of her work shift. To believe this story, you must know nothing about race, class, power and rape.”
—
Sherry Wolf (via jessrosney)
there’s nothing more to say about this.
(via listofnow)
YES. THIS. YES THIS YES THIS YES THIS YES THIS.
(via thecurvature)
Why is it that these things are simple when I read them?
(via ouyangdan)
Seems legit.
OH WAIT.
(via craftastrophies)
Dear White GLBT
Stop co-opting Baldwin & Lorde.
The shit is gross.
You can use their words but can’t do anything for their people?
HIV infections are alarmingly rising among Gay Black Men. What’s your plan? How about the senseless hate crimes Gay Black Men are still victims of? What’s your plan?
How about the invisibility of Black Lesbians? What’s your plan? To say nothing for your lack of acknowledgement of Black Transgendered Individuals? Any plans for them?
How about the predatory sexual violence perpetuated against young Gay Black Men by your GOP funded Black acolytes? Nothing? Really?
And still not a word about about Shirley Q. Liquor, Andrew Sullivan, James Kirchick or Dan Savage? Didn’t think so.
Yet tons of love for newly out POC who finger wave & victim blame their own community while remaining silent about yours. Strange.
James & Audre’s legacy wasn’t meant FOR you.
It was meant as a critique OF you.
And you dishonor their memory by attributing their brilliance to your petty class war bullshit.
“Pet peeve time: for the contingent out there who sneer at heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman and Captain America, those icons who still, at their core, represent selfless sacrifice for the greater good, and who justify their contempt by saying, oh, it’s so unrealistic, no one would ever be so noble… grow up. Seriously. Cynicism is not maturity, do not mistake the one for the other. If you truly cannot accept a story where someone does the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, that says far more about who you are than these characters.”
—
Greg Rucka (via unicornicopia)
ouch. is it cynical to mistrust a character named ‘captain america’, to doubt that his interests - ‘doing the right thing’ - would coincide with what someone from, say, a country colonized by the usa, would consider ‘doing the right thing’.
(via crossedwires)
This! This! This! This! Crossedwires, as per usual, is right on target.
If you truly cannot accept a story where someone does the right thing because it’s the right thing, it might be because you’ve lived in a world that’s taught you all too well that mostly, people (especially powerful white people or at least those who are stronger than average) are going to do what they THINK is right which is usually just what’s right for THEIR interests.
You call it cynicism, I call it “basing future predictions on past events and present conditions in one’s lived experience.”
“Having privilege isn’t something you can usually change, but that’s okay, because it’s not something you should be ashamed of, or feel bad about. Being told you have privilege, or that you’re privileged, isn’t an insult. It’s a reminder! The key to privilege isn’t worrying about having it, or trying to deny it, or apologize for it, or get rid of it. It’s just paying attention to it, and knowing what it means for you and the people around you. Having privilege is like having big feet. No one hates you for having big feet! They just want you to remember to be careful where you walk.”
—
Sindeloke, on Privilege (via rebel-grrrl)
Not at all agreeing here, actually.
I’d feel a lot better about this quote if the words “or get rid of it” weren’t included. Because privilege is NOT like big feet. Big feet are something you were born with that is inherent to YOU as a person. Nor do I like privilege being compared to a large body part or needing more room. Because it isn’t the fucking same. Inherently needing more room to walk because you’ve got big feet isn’t the same as privilege. Privilege is where you don’t need the space or even really want it, but you take it anyway.
Privilege is something society bestowed upon you that is not inherent to YOU as a person. For instance? White people would exist just fine without whiteness. My identity as a human being, what makes me who I am is not dependent on whiteness. Infected by it, linked with it, but if whiteness fell away, I’d still be who I am. The inherent truth of myself would not be so damaged or altered as to be destroyed. My privilege is not my self.
In the areas where I’m oppressed - like gender or sexuality or size or whatever - I don’t just want people who’ve learned to walk on eggshells around me and say only the “right” things. I want people who don’t have the power to step on my neck in the first place so that if they do fuck up, as all human beings will, it won’t be magnified by their privilege.
No, I don’t hate men or straight people or thin people. I hate that they have privilege. But I’m not really concerned with reassuring them that they’re wonderful people and not to feel bad when they use their privileges in a way that makes me feel like the scum of the fucking earth because I don’t have it.
It’s not just about being careful where you step because everyone is going to misstep. The “be careful, that’s all” principle doesn’t work unless you can find me human beings who never get tired, emotional, confused, or just plain old apathetic. It’s about saying that you don’t have big feet, you have GIANT CONCRETE CLOWN SHOES that make your steps painful for the rest of us when we get stepped on. Don’t just stomp around trying to be careful. Start trying to TAKE THE DAMN SHOES OFF.
Moving Toward the Ugly: A Politic Beyond Desirability →
leavingevidence.wordpress.com
“I would rather you be magnificent, than beautiful, any day of the week. I would rather you be ugly—magnificently ugly.”
*Femmes Of Color Symposium Keynote Speech, Oakland, CA (8/21/11)
Here is a transcript in it’s entirety of Mia Mingus’ speech.
Every word of this is amazing. I encourage everyone to read it in its entirety.
“Getting a tattoo of a dreamcatcher to represent Cherokee culture because it’s “easily recognized” is like getting a tattoo of an origami crane to represent the fact that you’re Italian because it’s an “easily recognizable” symbol from Eurasia. We aren’t all the same, ya’ll.”
—
- Svnoyi, here. (via pizzadrivefaster)
This jammed. (via jillianmaris)
I’ve heard logical and reasonable explanations for having a dreamcatcher tattoo to represent Native heritage. The person this is referring to couldn’t even pull one out of their ass.
(via custerdiedforyoursins)
I loooooove synovi. All the vegan cupcakes for her.
(via moononwaters)
D’awww….you guys <3
(via svnoyi)
Anti-choice priest assaults clinic director with cross →
rhrealitycheck.org
While protestors were outside Volunteer Women’s Medical Clinic, 313 Concord Street, Rev. Fr. Richard G. Armstrong, 39, of Knoxville, placed a cross in a grassy area on what was allegedly believed to be public property. However, the property belongs to the facility.
A few minutes later, clinic owner and Director Deborah Walsh, 58, came out of the building, showed the protestors that she had a federal injunction against protestors on the property and removed the cross.
Then William Robert Gogar, 52, of Knoxville, drove up in a pickup truck, got out and, according to Walsh, used the cross to push her to the ground.
Gogar also allegedly grabbed her arm and pushed her to the ground a second time.
Walsh had a visible scrape on her right leg and scratches on her elbow.
Gogar was arrested and charged with criminal trespassing and assault.
Armstrong, who is the assistant director of the Diocese of Knoxville’s Christian Formation Office, is charged with criminal trespassing.
Always pro-fetus, never pro-life.
I’d upload a facepalm image, but Tumblr’s on drugs.
I love how the lawmakers here in the U.S. are so concerned about waging a war on wombs (whoever they belong to), but there are few if any protections for people who are helping these folks to get a safe, legal medical procedure.
Such bullshittery in my country. And in my former home state. This is why I am ashamed of the state of Tennessee.
“
The sprouting began in late December, and it didn’t stop. By early spring, the bounty was stalling traffic, with rubber-neckers taking in the eruptions of tomatoes, peppers, chard, melons, squash, pumpkins, onions, broccoli, eggplant, celery, kale and herbs. Some passersby helped themselves, others asked. Conversations began, friendships formed.
“He told me to take what I needed,” said Peter Arceneaux, who was down on both luck and money.
[…..]
As for the permit, those begin at $400. And the city’s “residential parkway landscaping guideline,” which Nishida dug up, says that even with a permit, plants must be drought-resistant and no taller than 36 inches.
In other words, you can plant turf and pour untold gallons of water into keeping it green, as thousands do in our state, despite its history of water shortages. But heaven forbid you plant fruits and vegetables that require less water and actually feed people. And in Finley’s case, he collects rainwater in drums and uses it to irrigate his garden well into the summer.
“People are losing their homes, they’re hungry, they’re unemployed, and this area is so under-served with nutritional food,” argued Finley, who has given away bushels of free eats.
Nishida called Finley’s acreage a “demonstration garden” that would be visible to all who ride the new Expo line. She said there are tons of places in upscale neighborhoods where homeowners are violating the landscape guidelines, so why single out farmer Finley?
Finley said he would hate to lose the plot after experiencing what gardening does for the soul. The resilience of plants has made him see people differently, especially those struggling for a foothold. If he were in charge, thousands of miles of L.A.’s wasted curb strips would become neighborhood produce sections. One street would grow peaches, the next would grow peppers or tomatoes, and everybody would meet at the corner to share the harvest
” —In the weeds of bureaucratic insanity, a small reprieve sprouts - latimes.com
1) go farmer finley. GO
2) I need to learn gardening
3) Parable of the Sower is calling to me HARD!!!
(via blackamazon)
If this shit does not tell you exactly how privilege works to shut down the oppressed while pampering the privileged, you’re obviously trying really hard to cling to your misguided notions.
I’ve seen more water-wasting, environment destroying bullshit done in the name of manicured lawns in suburbia, and a lot of it probably does violate a lot of codes. But those are the nice looking lawns of the privileged. Those are the dogwhistle signs that tell people who’s still in charge around here and what the community values (ie - whiteness, richness).
But start growing a garden that will nourish the bodies, minds, and souls of those who society has conspired to deprive and demean? Well, that’s shit’s gotta go.
This man’s vision is glorious. I’m going to be keeping up with this story and if he needs any donations for legal fees/funds, if any signal boosting needs to be done (and I don’t catch it), please let me know. I want to lend as much support as possible!
“Femmephobia can also be seen in marketing. We have diet soda, and we have diet soda FOR MEN; we have loofahs, and we have loofahs FOR MEN; we have canned soup, and we have canned soup FOR MEN. Men cannot be expected to consume feminine things like body care items or diet food or soup in cans (!?) unless it is specifically marked out as Not Girly, and therefore Not Bad. With a few obnoxious exceptions, such as tools for girls (they’re pink) or video games for girls (they’re pink and have Barbie), women who like traditionally masculine hobbies get to have the same fishing poles, golf clubs and bad Trekkie novels as the boys– because, since masculinity is valued, it doesn’t matter if a woman tries to become masculine.”
—On Femmephobia | No, Seriously, What About Teh Menz? (via zaftiggles)
Florida’s welfare drug testing costs more than it saves | Raw Replay
A WFTV investigation found that out of the 40 recipients tested by Department of Central Florida’s (DCF) region, only two resulted in positive results. And one of those tests is being appealed.
Under the rules of the program, the state must reimburse recipients who receive negative test results. The state paid about $1,140 for the 38 negative tests, while saving less than $240 a month by denying benefits over the two positive tests.
“We have a diminishing amount of returns for our tax dollars,” the ACLU’s Derek Brett told WFTV. “Do we want our governor throwing our precious tax dollars into a program that has already been proven not to work?”
The cost to taxpayers could end up being significantly higher because the state expects to have to defend the law in court.
via
Posted via email from Ziapost | Comment »
Oh, but without drug testing, how will we know what desperately impoverished people really, truly deserve our precious goddamn money?! G-d forbid anyone but the most virtuous low-income citizens get a roof over their heads or food on the table. Come on, Florida, what’s more important—some silly budget, or the very moral bedrock of society?! Go on! Keep testing people for drugs! I hope you pour all your upstanding taxpayers’ money into this program until you bankrupt your own goddamn state and turn into a harsh postapocalyptic wasteland, The Road-style, with vagabonds shanking each other over the last can of beans and burning books for warmth, all because you couldn’t fucking bring yourselves to cast off your smug middle-class self-righteousness that declares poverty a moral failing.
…I’m a little bitter. Can you tell?
What is it with privileged people wanting in on marginalized identities?
Cis-straight people wanting to be included in queer. Thin people wanting to be included in fat.
It’s like “oh, I get to claim something as an identity that I’ll never face oppression for”.
Go join the straight pride movement. Go try on clothes at the mall. It’s not about having a cool thing you can call yourself, it’s about living in a culture that wants you to die because of who you are or your body. You don’t live that reality. Be happy about that. Go celebrate.
Leave me my words and my identity, stop trying to dilute them until they mean nothing. Quit being a fucking thief.
Hm but who falls into “thin” and who falls into “fat”? Is there a specific weight cut-off point? This kind of sounds like policing OTHER people’s identities to me, a bit.
The day I fired this off, I was reading a size 6 woman’s diatribe about how she was fat. I’m a size 30. I can’t use the regular sized stalls in a public restroom. I can’t sit in most chairs that have arms on them. If I go to see a health care professional, they aren’t going to treat me, they’re going to ignore everything I say and tell me to lose weight. People MOO AT ME. I have to travel ten miles out of my town to go to the ONLY brick and mortar store where they carry clothes large enough to fit me. I need dramatic social changes and accessibility because of my body size.
I’m not saying that fat as an identity needs to be reserved for people as huge as I am, but there’s a vast difference between “feeling” fat and actually being fat. There’s a difference between finding an inch to pinch and not being able to find pants to cover your ass in straight size stores. There’s a difference between “I could stand to lose 15 pounds” and knowing that losing 10% of your body weight would still leave you fat.
When people come into fat activism spaces with very small bodies and want in on the identity, it shifts the focus from the very real physical needs that some of us superfatties have. The needs for better medical care, better accessibility, better safety, employment non-discrimination laws, access to affordable insurance, and at every turn not being penalized for having our bodies. It shifts the focus away from a society that literally does want us to die.
Bless this post. Bless it.
I’m a smaller fatty than this person, but I feel the same frustrations. Society making you feel fat and actually being fat are two different things. I have to keep repeating this over and over and it sucks.
I also know that as a smaller fatty who has the privilege of being able to use a lot of the things they aren’t that if they, for instance, want to have spaces just for people their size that it isn’t for me to go around butting in and insisting I be included and centered.
*shaking my head*.
A Black Woman Speaks of White Womanhood by Beah Richards
In response to the insulting book and now the wretched film “The Help,” I was reminded of Beah Richards’ most appropriate, poignant, and (unfortunately) TIMELESS poem, written 60-years ago. (Thank you Barbara Kellom)
For my known and unknown maternal and paternal BlackWomen ancestors who both slaved and worked (for barely liveable wages) in White folks’ homes for centuries…
by Beah Richards 1951
A Black Woman Speaks…
Of White Womanhood
Of White Supremacy
Of Peace
It is right that I a woman
black,
should speak of white womanhood.
My fathers
my brothers
my husbands
my sons
die for it; because of it.
And their blood chilled in electric chairs,
stopped by hangman’s noose,
cooked by lynch mobs’ fire,
spilled by white supremacist mad desire to kill for profit,
gives me that right.I would that I could speak of white womanhood
as it will and should be
when it stands tall in full equality.
But then, womanhood will be womanhood
void of color and of class,
and all necessity for my speaking thus will be past.
Gladly past.But now, since ‘tis deemed a thing apart
supreme,
I must in searching honesty report
how it seems to me.
White womanhood stands in bloodied skirt
and willing slavery
reaching out adulterous hand
killing mine and crushing me.
What then is this superior thing
that in order to be sustained must needs feed upon my flesh?
How came this horror to be?
Let’s look to history.They said, the white supremacist said
that you were better than me,
that your fair brow should never know the sweat of slavery.
They lied.
White womanhood too is enslaved,
the difference is degree.They brought me here in chains.
They brought you here willing slaves to man.
You, shiploads of women each filled with hope
that she might win with ruby lip and saucy curl
and bright and flashing eye
him to wife who had the largest tender.
Remember?
And they sold you here even as they sold me.
My sisters, there is no room for mockery.
If they counted my teeth
they did appraise your thigh
and sold you to the highest bidder
the same as I.And you did not fight for your right to choose
whom you would wed
but for whatever bartered price
that was the legal tender
you were sold to a stranger’s bed
in a stranger land
remember?
And you did not fight.
Mind you, I speak not mockingly
but I fought for freedom,
I’m fighting now for our unity.
We are women all,
and what wrongs you murders me
and eventually marks your grave
so we share a mutual death at the hand of tyranny.They trapped me with the chain and gun.
They trapped you with lying tongue.
For, ‘less you see that fault-
that male villainy
that robbed you of name, voice and authority,
that murderous greed that wasted you and me,
he, the white supremacist, fixed your minds with poisonous thought:
“white skin is supreme.”
and therewith bought that monstrous change
exiling you to things.
Changed all that nature had ill you wrought of gentle usefulness,
abolishing your spring.
Tore out your heart,
set your good apart from all that you could say,
think,
feel,
know to be right.
And you did not fight,
but set your minds fast on my slavery
the better to endure your own.‘Tis true
my pearls were beads of sweat
wrung from weary bodies’ pain,
instead of rings upon my hands
I wore swollen, bursting veins.
My ornaments were the wip-lash’s scar
my diamond, perhaps, a tear.
Instead of paint and powder on my face
I wore a solid mask of fear to see my blood so spilled.
And you, women seeing
spoke no protest
but cuddled down in your pink slavery
and thought somehow my wasted blood
confirmed your superiority.Because your necklace was of gold
you did not notice that it throttled speech.
Because diamond rings bedecked your hands
you did not regret their dictated idleness.
Nor could you see that the platinum bracelets
which graced your wrists were chains
binding you fast to economic slavery.
And though you claimed your husband’s name
still could not command his fidelity.You bore him sons.
I bore him sons.
No, not willingly.
He purchased you.
He raped me,
I fought!
But you fought neither for yourselves nor me.
Sat trapped in your superiority
and spoke no reproach.
Consoled your outrage with an added diamond brooch.
Oh, God, how great is a woman’s fear
who for a stone, a cold, cold stone
would not defend honor, love or dignity!You bore the damning mockery of your marriage
and heaped your hate on me,
a woman too,
a slave more so.
And when your husband disowned his seed
that was my son
and sold him apart from me
you felt avenged.
Understand:
I was not your enemy in this,
I was not the source of your distress.
I was your friend, I fought.
But you would not help me fight
thinking you helped only me.
Your deceived eyes seeing only my slavery
aided your own decay.
Yes, they condemned me to death
and they condemned you to decay.
Your heart whisked away,
consumed in hate,
used up in idleness
playing yet the lady’s part
estranged to vanity.
It is justice to you to say your fear equalled your tyranny.You were afraid to nurse your young
lest fallen breast offend your master’s sight
and he should flee to firmer loveliness.
And so you passed them, your children, on to me.
Flesh that was your flesh and blood that was your blood
drank the sustenance of life from me.
And as I gave suckle I knew I nursed my own child’s enemy.
I could have lied,
told you your child was fed till it was dead of hunger.
But I could not find the heart to kill orphaned innocence.
For as it fed, it smiled and burped and gurgled with content
and as for color knew no difference.
Yes, in that first while
I kept your sons and daughters alive.But when they grew strong in blood and bone
that was of my milk
you
taught them to hate me.
Put your decay in their hearts and upon their lips
so that strength that was of myself
turned and spat upon me,
despoiled my daughters, and killed my sons.
You know I speak true.
Though this is not true for all of you.When I bestirred myself for freedom
and brave Harriet led the way
some of you found heart and played a part
in aiding my escape.
And when I made my big push for freedom
your sons fought at my sons’ side,
Your husbands and brothers too fell in that battle
when Crispus Attucks died.
It’s unfortunate that you acted not in the way of justice
but to preserve the Union
and for dear sweet pity’s sake;
Else how came it to be with me as it is today?
You abhorred slavery
yet loathed equality.I would that the poor among you could have seen
through the scheme
and joined hands with me.
Then, we being the majority, could long ago have rescued
our wasted lives.
But no.
The rich, becoming richer, could be content
while yet the poor had only the pretense of superiority
and sought through murderous brutality
to convince themselves that what was false was true.So with KKK and fiery cross
and bloodied appetites
set about to prove that “white is right”
forgetting their poverty.
Thus the white supremacist used your skins
to perpetuate slavery.
And woe to me.
Woe to Willie McGee.
Woe to the seven men of Martinsville.
And woe to you.
It was no mistake that your naked body on an Esquire calendar
announced the date, May Eighth.
This is your fate if you do not wake to fight.
They will use your naked bodies to sell their wares
though it be hate, Coca Cola or rape.When a white mother disdained to teach her children
this doctrine of hate,
but taught them instead of peace
and respect for all men’s dignity
the courts of law did legislate
that they be taken from her
and sent to another state.
To make a Troy Hawkins of the little girl
and a killer of the little boy!No, it was not for the womanhood of this mother
that Willie McGee died
but for a depraved, enslaved, adulterous woman
whose lustful demands denied,
lied and killed what she could not possess.
Only three months before another such woman lied
and seven black men shuddered and gave up their lives.
These women were upheld in these bloody deeds
by the president of this nation,
thus putting the official seal on the fate
of white womanhood within these United States.
This is what they plan for you.
This is the depravity they would reduce you to.
Death for me
and worse than death for you.What will you do?
Will you fight with me?
White supremacy is your enemy and mine.
So be careful when you talk with me.
Remind me not of my slavery, I know it well
but rather tell me of your own.
Remember, you have never known me.
You’ve been busy seeing me
as white supremacist would have me be,
and I will be myself.
Free!
My aim is full equality.
I would usurp their plan!
Justice
peace
and plenty
for every man, woman and child
who walks the earth.
This is my fight!If you will fight with me then take my hand
and the hand of Rosa Ingram, and Rosalee McGee,
and as we set about our plan
let our wholehearted fight be:
PEACE IN A WORLD WHERE THERE IS EQUALITY.
American Gothic,Gordon Parks, 1942
after you're recent post on english, i wondered if you (who are a writer it says) write in english or another language. are you native english speaker?
I probably should have done a full disclosure on that piece, because I don’t want to seem like I’m co-opting or appropriating the identities of people who do not speak English as the first language or who speak it as a first language but not entirely willingly. I am a white U.S.ian who is a native English speaker, and sadly I am (mostly) monolingual save some smatterings of Spanish and Latin.
Sorry if I caused any confusion there!
Just wanted to say I liked your piece about putting Tumblr on notice for the English-Only bullshittery. Love it!
I’m glad that you liked the post!
Crimes Committed by Abortion Protesters in the United States and Canada, 1977-2006
(also known as “Cool pro-life story, bros!”)
- 7 murders
- 17 attempted murders
- 52 bombings
- 180 arsons
- 89 invasions
- 1,211 incidents of vandalism
- 1,341 trespasses
- 100 acid attacks
- 655 anthrax threats
- 146 cases of assault and battery
- 375 death threats
- 3 kidnappings
- 96 burglaries
- 480 cases of stalking
One in five clinics experiences blockades, invasions, arsons, bombings, chemical attacks, stalking, gunfire, physical assaults, threats of bombs, death or arson.
(source: This Common Secret, which cites the Feminist Majority Foundation for these statistics)
Pro-life*!
(*Some exceptions may apply, including, but not limited to: foreigners, homosexuals, the poor, medical providers, criminals, and anyone who disagrees with us.)
Just putting Tumblr on notice
When you post/reblog pithy little graphics or other things that bemoan others not using English words or grammar correctly, it makes me lose a lot more respect for you than anyone else. It makes me want to unfollow you.
On the best days, that kind of language policing and shaming is a little brother to the tone argument in which you don’t care if someone has said something true or important because you’re just there to tear it down any way you can by disapproving of the words, letters, and structure used and the failure of them to meet arbitrary standards.
Arbitrary standards which, I should add, usually reside with the most privileged groups to set. Don’t believe me? Go look up the MLA (Modern Language Association) sometime and see how many rules of grammar and usage they’ve elected to change over the years. With them? Overnight what was correct before becomes incorrect and vice versa. Any group that can decide stylistic rules for millions without ever talking to those millions can fuck right off.
Or go look up how many words have entered and left “the dictionary” because a handful of privileged people have the power to make something a “real word” just by wielding such tools.
I’m going to make this simple. English as a language is not this perfect, beautiful, logical thing that must be preserved and protected from the dirty, filthy hands of people who won’t use it “correctly”. It isn’t even something that is actually all that streamlined.
English is a tongue that’s been forced on millions of people around this globe either at the direct end of a colonizer’s weapon or by circumstance which makes English the language people have to speak in order to get better social and economic opportunities.
How about you start with the ways in which Native languages here in the U.S. and in Canada were forcibly ripped from people through extermination and rounding up Native children and sticking them in hellish boarding schools until they spoke it just like white people thought it should be spoken. Then you can move on to other places in the world, (including the British isles, where languages like Gaelic declined greatly under English occupation in the seventeenth century and onwards) and see that English has often been a way for colonizers to have a stranglehold on the very method on which the colonized communicate with themselves, each other, and the world.
Part of these groups recovering, rebuilding, and empowering themselves is being able to use the English language however they want, in the way that best suits them.
If someone breaks into your home, beats up or kills your family, steals your treasures, smashes the rest and kidnaps you and then happens to give you their language along the way? You don’t owe them shit. You certainly don’t owe the native speakers of your assailant’s tongue a damn fucking thing when they’re running around benefitting big time from the suffering of you and yours.
Nor is language something that is automatic or universally easy to use in the standard way for all people. More than a few disabilities or conditions mean that the standard use of English is either exhausting and difficult or damn near impossible for the person writing, speaking, or communicating with it. It doesn’t mean that what such people have to communicate is worthless because while trying to tell their stories or communicate they substituted “your” for “you’re”.
See again the: you don’t owe anyone shit rule. You don’t owe a society that decides you’re subhuman based on bullshit criteria and wants to silence you anything. You don’t owe them a perfect presentation of your thoughts and ideas.
I mean, really, do you have any idea how arrogant, officious, petty, and utterly soulless you come off as when you start waggling your English teacher finger at someone for such things?
It doesn’t make you sound smart, it makes you sound snooty and spiteful. It makes it clear that you’re not interested in communication or actually understanding what anyone has to say. Complaining about improper grammar usage, especially in very informal settings, makes it clear that you’re interested in asserting privilege and dominance, in setting yourself up as some kind of authority who has the right to hand down condemnation and censure if someone comma splices a sentence.
So when you go around shaming people who do not use the English language the way you (especially if you are a white middle-to-upper class first language English speaker) think it should be spoken, you’re basically just spewing everything from classism to racism to imperialism/colonialism, and ableism. And you’re thinking that you’re superior because you’ve been privileged with the education, upbringing, and sheer LUCK to be able to easily use the English language in the standard fashion.
And if the “there”/”their” issue is more important than all that to you? Then you’re the problem here.
“To many Christians their immense privilege seems invisible. They don’t understand how much of our society panders to their unspoken power. The churches on every corner, the holidays and celebrations structured around Christian dates, the pandering of politicians, the ceremonial deism that acts as a placeholder for state-sponsored religion. Even our vernacular is colored by Christianity: “God bless you,” “we’ll pray for you,” “I’m in heaven,” or even “go to hell.” Yet despite this, many Christians, particularly conservative Christians, have a major investment in seeing themselves as part of a persecuted minority. This was reinforced for me in the comments section of a recent post at the journalism commentary site Get Religion. There, I was informed that Michele Bachmann was part of a religious minority, and that due to mainstream media criticism “one has to speculate that perhaps Christians are a small minority in the United States.”
Where does this inaccurate perspective come from? How can a group see itself as a minority when it holds so much power?” —Invisible Christian Privilege (via the-sun-eclipses)
Where does this inaccurate perspective come from? How can a group see itself as a minority when it holds so much power?” —Invisible Christian Privilege (via the-sun-eclipses)
very important
As audiences continue to debate whether The Help is an inadequate racial drama or a crowd-pleasing discussion starter, Treme actor Wendell Pierce has joined the fray. “The movie The Help was painful to watch,” he tweeted last night. “This passive segregation lite was hurtful.” Pierce went to a screening with his mother, who told her son for the first time that she, too, had once been “the help”; she was angry that the movie was sentimentalized and didn’t touch on the curtailed education options for black children that often steered them toward a lifetime of maid service. “[I was] watching the film in UptownNewOrleans to the sniffles of elderly white people while my 80 year old mother was seething,” wrote Pierce. “She told me how she wasn’t allowed in the kitchen. She couldn’t eat during a 12 hour shift. Only left overs if there was any. She couldn’t drink water from the kitchen but had to go to the faucet out doors.” Even more problematic for Pierce was the presence of Emma Stone’s lead character: “Hollywood loves the formula: the Great White Savior. I am tired of this cliche. These black women didn’t need a young white woman be empowered.”(via Vulture)