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[marxisthayaca]

Reading Journal: June

June has been a busy month. We cannot proceed without acknowledging the continued cop riots and abuse of protesters out in the streets. It also breaks my heart to see that Black trans gender men and women that continue to die at the hand of abusers, and cops. For that reason, before I proceed I want to encourage anyone that can afford to share or donate, to check out the bottom of the post with a list of various trans gender gofundmes. 

The choice for this month was a collection of writings from various authors, so they vary wildly in range, tone, and topic. But there are unifying threads aside from the most obvious one. Aside from being, you know, queer. The unifying theme was for me, the act of defiance.  

We see it in Escalante’s *Gender Nihilism*, she/they argue that even in engaging in gender as a non-binary, you are still admitting to a binary of gender;  in addition, the gender binary of man or woman, is fraught with violence to its very core, so one must reject it altogether. 

>To say gender is discursive is to say that gender occurs not as a metaphysical truth within the subject, but occurs as a means of mediating social interaction. Gender is a frame, a subset of language, and set of symbols and signs, communicated between us, constructing us and being reconstructed by us constantly.Thus the apparatus of gender operates cyclically; as we are constituted through it, so too do our daily actions, rituals, norms, and performances reconstitute it. It is this realization which allows for a movement against the cycle itself to manifest. Such a movement must understand the deeply penetrative and pervasive nature of the apparatus. Normalization has an insidious way of naturalizing, accounting for, and subsuming resistance. (Escalante, 2015)

Gender abolition becomes an act of defiance, and it occurs even during the mundane activities of daily life. You have to be aware of its frame, and how it shapes and describes things around you. In fact Jules Joanne Gleeson alludes to this very process in her quotations and analysis of Monique Wittig (Gleeson, J.J, 2017). Quoting Wittig’s recommendation to deny using the language of anatomical parts as they have been developed within the patriarchal, gendered framework of our society. Going so far as to deny having a vagina, if asked. I think that’s a monumental challenge. Language is such a symbolically powerful thing. To mount an attack on the words we use to describe our body parts, and bring into question the role those words play in framing everyone into a very limiting worldview. Reflecting on how this resistance has to occur even in the most mundane aspects of daily life, brings me to Mary Nardini Gang’s *Be Gay Do Crime*. 

In Be Gay Do Crime, Mary Nardini Gang describes the acts of rebellion towards a society completely hostile to LGBTQ people. The steps towards achieving a queer insurrection and what it requires. They raised hell at book clubs, armed themselves in self-defense, turned tricks to fundraise bail for comrades, attacked and terrorized scumbags and cops.They embraced and took pride in the idea that queers will be the fall of civilization. 

>Many blame queers for the decline of this society– we take pride in this. Some believe that we intend to shred-to-bits this civilization and its moral fabric – they couldn’t be more accurate. We’re often described as depraved, decadent and revolting – but oh they ain’t seen nothing yet.” (Gang. M. N, 2019). 

To embrace this path is to spit on the face of all Western civilization and traditions. Engage in spiritual practices, bacchanalias, violence, illegalism, communing with the dead, while practicing solidarity all at the same time. In all, it is not just demanding a seat at the table, or a plate of scraps, but acknowledging that the table ought to be burned down, gathering the kindling and fucking while it turns to ash; however, I had some criticisms with the approach, or at least my initial interpretation. Since they don’t talk in the specifics, and probably for good reason, it is hard to measure things in concrete terms. And while they practice radical solidarity within their group. They have a deep distrust for ‘the Party”, marking it as a vampriic force on the life of those “subsumed to it” (Gang. M.N, 2019); I think that is a deeply cynical view of what a party organization can do. Specially for the success of a class-wide revolution, not just a small subset of anarchist collectives. 

Lastly, James Butler makes an impassioned speech for a set of liberatory politics that does not rely on the same state that actively brutalized you at worst, and coldly victim-blames you when you are assaulted at best. He makes some very astute observations. The politics that came out of the HIV/AIDs crisis, how that was a political crisis (sounds familiar!) and, making the connection to April’s reading, shocked doctrine LGBTQ advocacy. 

>It is a thought that comes and go over the years, but which has been in my head because I have been thinking about the huge rent in LGBT culture that was left by the AIDS epidemic, which we still hesitate to name as a political crisis exacerbated by homophobia, refuse to name as a crisis that should always have been laid at the door of the government.

As the LGBTQ movement exited the crisis period. Society as a whole provide relief to certain parts of LGBTQ demographic. White Gays. As a society, there’s been a movement to put gays “on equal footing” (Butler, J. 2014) when it comes to owning private property, visitation rights, gay marriage etc. But:

> we must pack away our dreams of anything more than that, we must look away from the detention centres and violence at our borders, we must dissociate ourselves from sex workers, or our trans friends, we must be happily ornamental, provide sufficient human rights cover for politicians or large corporations. We have been taught, in other words, to modify our demands so they can be easily met and close our eyes to the violence that guarantees those rights.

Butler minces no words when he says the state will not and cannot properly defend the rights of the oppressed minorities. He demands a different type of politics. Not survival, but liberatory. 

He reminds his audience that all the injustices and crises are political, even hunger. And we need to fight not just for the survival but the liberation of all those oppressed whether at home or at the border: 

>What I mean by this is we should start to realise that the way in which some segments of society get their oppression, their deprivation, their harassment and even their deaths treated as merely unfortunate but natural phenomena (which cannot be avoided) is politically charged, and can be changed (Butler. J, 2014).

This last part of the speech resonated with me, we have seen this in action. The way that a Black trans persons death, Black Women, Immigrant detainees, and their deaths are seeing as just the price to say for this society and we ought to say and act, like enough is enough.

#GoFundMe

https://www.gofundme.com/f/21nhfqs4uo?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-a-Black-trans-woman-w-advanced-cancer-in-atl?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

https://www.gofundme.com/f/furloughed-of-work-at-amazon-i-have-2-kids?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

https://www.gofundme.com/f/elena039s-transition-fund?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

https://www.gofundme.com/f/jameshealthsupport?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

https://www.gofundme.com/f/levi039s-top-surgery-fund?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

https://www.gofundme.com/f/black-transwoman-in-need-of-assistance?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

https://www.gofundme.com/f/building-funds-to-leave-abusive-situation?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

https://www.gofundme.com/f/helptwenny?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

https://www.gofundme.com/f/black-lgbtqia-therapy-fund?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

https://www.gofundme.com/f/xafs73-black-lesbian-and-queer-digital-residency-fund?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

[Twitter thread with these links and more](https://twitter.com/Iuzers/status/1274681005132169216?s=20)

[marxisthayaca]

Building Your Personal Style | Part 1 w/ Bill Perkins

chronological timeline

Notes

Intro to Visual Literacy

Flat mass/ shape

Forms/rendering of light vs shadown

Line / texture

Visual arts should be treated as just another language - I see Math the same way - and it is used to communicate, feelings, and ideas like a written language with its own set of components and their relationships. So we gotta think of grammar in art? You don't often put verbs before subjects or breaks too frequently, so think about that when you draw.

Slide 2

As society has advanced, our modes of communication have accelerated. Along with new artistic directions and different methods. However, the principles have not changed.

With this information overload we gotta become more visually literate so we can communicate clearly and understand things.

recommendation: 1941 Maitland Graves "the Art of Color and Design" - he lists the elements of design, line, value, shape, proportion, color, direction, and texture.

Important quote

Bruce Block presented and wrote a book called The Visual Story (1988?) - he talks about line, tone, color, shape, space, rhythm, and movement.

A Primer to Visual Literacy (1973)

Visual elements are not the same as the medium. We are looking at dot, line, shape, direction, tone, color, texture, dimension, scale, and movement.

Workshop activities

The visual matrix

Primaries of Design

The Line, Mass, Form principles

Visual components

Line, tone, color, shape, space, rhythm, transitions

Methods of Measure

Major Key-proportion

Minor Key-range of contrast

So part of the initial presentation is coming to the same words and understanding their definition.

For example in the subject of color, people might use the words

hue :: chroma :: color;

value :: tone :: light;

saturation :: brightness :: brilliance.

So we want to define our terms and create our own terminology of common ground. Funny enough we have the same dilemma or challenge in the Instructional Design or in socialist theory! Words have meaning!

This isn't a how to make images but studying the components of image making!