#my understanding of masculinity is that of white colonial binary masculinity

[ftmtftm]

I've been scrolling through your blog, and I saw your post about discussing the racialized nature of gender. As someone who has several transmasc POC friends, and someone who's a nonbinary POC themself, I wanted to give my 2 cents.

It's important to understand that "woman" in the "man vs woman" gender binary is a colonialist, white supremacist construct, especially in Western countries where you are the numerical minority. My trans friends aren't on T, they haven't gotten top surgery, we are all quite young. But they all have numerous stories about being addressed as "sir" which brings them euphoria but as one person said, while we were making fun of the amount of white people in our club, "Due to my race and skin color, I get masculinized."

And again I'd like to emphasize, that since we're young, none of us really have medically transitioned due to financial and familial barriers. Their hair is long, our binders we definitely have notable chests, and even if they dress masculine, it's notable that no one in our communities would ever gender us properly. It's often white people calling them "sir." Again, I think this reflects how gender performances in mainstream queer communities are deeply White. Like, trans boys talk about having haircuts, but only one of my friends has that wavier, more manageable hair that will help them pass. When you've got curly/kinky hair, the standards are different. For a white person, what's the difference between a "girl" Afro and a boy "Afro"? White cis people have a harder time identifying us, and literally talk to any black girl, and they'll tell you about being mocked, dehumanized, and called "manly".

I don't have much else to say. These are just my personal experiences. But if you want to be an ally to POC in the queer community, this is why it's so fucking important to bring in colonialism/imperialism/white supremacy into discussions of queer liberation. My biggest gripe with ignorant white queers is when they ignore their white privilege, and act like "cishets" (AKA the patriarchal system regulating sexuality and gender) is the only enemy. Because cishet POC deal with plenty of shit with being infantilized, masculinized, feminized, seen as brutish & dangerous, the list goes on. Doberbutts had a post saying, "Believe me, your family's going to care more about me being black than my queerness." towards his white partners. Acknowledging and creating a framework that centers these intersections of queerness and race into your beliefs is true allyship. This is why if you're not anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, ACAB...I do not think you care for queer liberation. None of us are free until all of us are free.

Please don't view this post as an attack. But this is my perspective, and I thought you'd be receptive to me sharing my lived experiences.

Oh I absolutely don't view this ask as an attack, and I really appreciate you bringing these things up because you're right! Like, just very plainly: You are right and your and your friends lived experiences are extremely important to the conversation on the racialized aspects of gender.

It gets me thinking about where Misogynoir and the social White Fear of Black manhood intersect for Black trans men in particular. Because Black women and Women of Color in general are masculinized by White gender standards and the ways in which Black trans masculine people are gendered in alignment with their identity is absolutely not always done with gender affirming intent. In fact, it's often actually done with racist intent or is fueled by racist bias when it's coming from White people or even from non-Black POC.

That's kind of restating things you've said but differently, it's just such a topic worth highlighting explicitly since it's extremely relevant to the conversation that's been happening about Male Privilege here the last few days.

I do think I know exactly what @doberbutts post you're talking about and yeah. It's just truth. It's something Black queer people have been talking about for ages in both theory and in pop culture (my mind immediately goes to Kevin Abstract and "American Boyfriend") where Black queer/trans identity is both materially different from (neutral) and is treated differently from (negative) White queer/trans identity in multitudes of ways and those differences are worth sharing and exploring and talking about.

Genuinely, thank you for sharing! I try really hard not to lead these kinds of conversations outside of explicitly referencing back to non-White theorists because I don't particularly feel like it's my place to do so, but I will always provide a platform for them because they're extremely important conversations to be had.

[gatheringbones]

[“…. right from its psychoanalytic beginnings, mental illness was connected to amorality, a legacy that is challenging to distance ourselves from, and amorality was connected to femininity. Although we have come a long way, assumptions about the superiority of rationality persist in our field, at least within Anglo and Western dominant paradigms. For example, the field of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) rests on the assumption that we can literally exercise mind over matter. CBT does view a connection between thoughts, emotions and behaviors but mostly intervenes at the level of thoughts and behaviors, trying to change “distorted thinking” and “maladaptive behaviors.” There is an almost unspoken assumption that “rational” thoughts and behaviors are always morally superior and to be preferred in the field of mental health.

It is no accident, in my opinion, that rational thoughts and behaviors are stereotypically associated with masculinity and, more specifically white and Anglo masculinity. Even though gender seems to be but a minor branch of topical interest in psychology and mental health, gendered assumptions run deep in our field. It’s rare that anyone questions bold assertions, made by mental health providers on a daily basis, on how “men and women work.” Those assumptions are, after all, foundational to many theories and approaches.

Even when gender is not mentioned at all in certain theories, in practice people tend to apply them differently with “male and female” clients. It’s even rarer that the whole premise of two gender is put into question and, when it is, it only seems to pertain to transgender and/or nonbinary people, leaving the main tenets of gendered thinking in dominant culture untouched and unquestioned. Mental health with and for transgender and/or nonbinary people then becomes its own specialist branch, which means the rest of the field can continue undisturbed in their assumptions about men and women, as long as we keep to our turf and don’t shake the cisgenderist foundation of the whole discipline. This too is a colonizing and capitalist approach. If we’re kept separate from one another, we can be better controlled and, most importantly, there can be more specialties, and therefore more certifications and trainings to be sold and bought.

Even in the field of family therapy, where systemic thinking could open a different conversation about gender, all too often we fall back on established stereotypes and pseudoscience about gender as a rigid binary. Yet, I have found that when I can support people in connecting genuinely to gender as a historical, social and cultural construct, a better understanding of one another can emerge across differences that are made to look chasmic by people who are invested in selling solutions specific to “men,” “women,” and “transgender and/or nonbinary people.” Unfortunately the discourse that men are from Mars, women are from Venus and trans people from Transylvania (at least according to The Rocky Horror Picture Show) is familiar to people and, like many other popular discourses, is reproduced effortlessly by providers and researchers who are also brought up within these dominant paradigms.

Sometimes people acknowledge that what they’re working with are issues like toxic masculinity, but they’re reluctant to then broaden the lens to indicate how larger systems support the reproduction of such harmful, colonial binaries. This means that, ironically, while working to dismantle toxic masculinity, they also keep reifying it by framing their work as being with “men” or “boys.” I can understand how the latter is more marketable than the “smash the colonial patriarchy” approach I am proposing in this book but I truly believe that if we don’t start questioning the rigidity of the gender binary altogether, for everyone, we will keep running around in circles to find ourselves in the same places, or maybe just a few inches over to the left.”]

alex iantaffi, from gender trauma: healing cultural, social, and historical gendered trauma, 2020

[kaitlynn4628]

Afrofuturism- Blog 1 

I had no expectations or any knowledge of Afrofuturism. This is such a cool lens to look at music and media in general. I have always loved anything that has to do with magical realism, mythology, dystopia, and utopia. I think that these things intrigue me because my identity is so mixed; ethnically (Irish and Filipino), sexuality-wise bi-sexual, using pronouns of she/they, growing up socio-economically in two very distinct social classes. It gives me an insight into nuanced experiences regarding race and the role of race. I think that there are a lot of things that have resonated with me heavily. I think the first piece of literature that resonates with me is “Aye, and Gomorrah”. I think that for me trying to grapple with identity over gender is something that I had to grapple with. For me seeing that I am fine with using she/her pronouns as my biological assigned pronouns but then also when researching and learning about how the two genders are rooted in colonization this westernized binary of gender didn’t exist in the pre-colonial Philippines and that they/them figures were presented in the Pilipinx Pantheon was super fascinating. Diving into that I started to think that I don't want to continue to succumb to those notions of binary and also started to use they/them pronouns to show in my mind that I'm still decolonizing and grappling with identity. I think that there are no distinct differences in the roles of masculine and feminine qualities. I think it is how you are raised and the characteristics of both. For example, boys are strong and are leaders, stereotypes can also and should be applied to girls' upbringing instead of falling into patriarchal views that think that girls aren’t able to be strong and suitable leaders. I don't care to succumb to the limitation of gendering in the westernized world. I also feel attraction to anyone that I like, not just men. These thoughts have made me feel a little isolated and make me think of  this sense of “other”. In the story, this other and this grapple of identity in a society that puts labels on you their society takes it a step forward of body mutilation to make you think of gender roles is something that resonated with me. Then I resonated on the theme of loneliness because I think that we all have this sense of desire to be loved. After all, that is human. I think the story talks about emotionally unavailable people in a way that is so relatable. I think my definition of love and the standards I hold my parents to are completely different from when I first started dating. I know that these past relationships made me feel lonely and confused. 

I also understand my positionality in this class which lets me see and think critically of the experiences of other minority groups and specifically of African American and African experiences through art. I was talking in my other classes about how sometimes learning and relearning the history of Black history in America and how constantly African Americans/Africans are treated is so defeating. I feel like we live in a system that is working perfectly on white supremacist ideology and that through art we can reimagine a new world with hope. I am learning the power of hope, that this is what keeps communities that constantly get shit on for so long wanting to wake up the next morning. I saw this in Kendrick Lamar’s video in the end when he smiles even though he gets shot. 

[kaleidoscopic-quiddity]

gonna be honest i lowkey don’t like using the word ‘transgender’ to describe myself at this point, like idk maybe this is because i’m Chronically Online TM or whatever but i feel like the term ‘transgender’ carries like,, so many implications about someone’s political stance and how they view themselves, or that just being trans is a political identity in and of itself, and like fair enough if that’s how it feels for other people but like,, that’s definitely not how it is for me. i view myself more as just some dude who happens to be afab, my being trans has fuck all to do with my political stances, my personality, or my personal preferences. like i am literally Just Some Guy. the issue here isn't that i’m ashamed of the term ‘trans’ or feel that its literal definition doesn’t apply to me any more, it definitely does, but more so that i hate how just one singular word is used to imply so much about who someone is as a person and their relationship with gender, whereas a term like ‘blonde man’ literally just tells you that someone is a man and is blonde.

like as far as i’m concerned i have no ~special~ relationship with masculinity, my gender is identical to that of a cis guy’s in the way that a blonde guy and a ginger guy are both guys, and thus the same gender. and the only reason i have ‘relationship’, (if it can be called that), to femininity at all is because i was socialised as a girl for roughly 14 years. and if i’m honestly, femininity means nothing to me in the sense that it doesn't apply to me at all nor do i have any desire to partake in it, or be perceived as someone who posses the quality of femininity. not to say that men cant be feminine, or that femininity is an undesirable trait, neither of those things are true at all, but rather just that i hold no connection to femininity at all, other than an understanding of what it is like to be socialised as somebody possessing that trait, and i feel like these days ppl who are defined as trans men are expected to have this complex, possibly resentful, possibly nostalgic relationship with it and are also perceived as like, being men, but being men in a different way from the way cis men are men, which is honestly fucking infuriating to me because i’m just a man, period, and my being trans doesn’t actually affect how i’m a man because i just am. 

to me the word ‘trans’ should imply just as much about somebody’s relationship to gender as the word ‘brunette’, which is to say, absolutely nothing other than that they are a person of a particular gender who also happens to posses a particular superficial trait, but it doesn’t. instead, ‘transgender’ is used as a shorthand to imply a whole lot of complex gender shit, or that ppl who are trans are actually a somewhat different ‘type’ of male or female than ppl who are cis, and as someone who absolutely none of that is true for, it makes using the term ‘trans’ as a self descriptor really fucking annoying. like i said, i view myself as Literally Just Some Guy who also just so happens to be someone who was assigned female at birth, which doesn’t actually mean very much in regards to my relationship with gender, because i’d be a man in the exact same way if i just so happened to be someone who was assigned male at birth. i don’t have any special relationship with masculinity or femininity by virtue of being trans, nor do i feel that i navigate my gender identity differently from that of a cis guy or that my gender is inherently different from that of a cis guy’s, and i definitely dont consider my gender to have a bond with or encapsulate or overlap with femininity in any way. 

as fucking dumb of an oxymoron as it is, ‘cis man who happens to be afab’ honestly feels like a better description of my gender than ‘transgender man’ because of the way i feel that the term ‘trans’ has been warped by online spaces and irl political discourse. like, trans masculinity is meaningless to me in the sense that i don’t feel that it’s any different from cis masculinity. or rather, i dont feel that there are such separate things as ‘trans masculinity’ and ‘cis masculinity’. men are men, women are women, enbies are enbies, yknow? things like ‘trans’ and ‘cis’ are just vague descriptors that don’t actually mean anything in regards to gender identity and self-image, (as well as political leanings, personality traits, etc) in the same way that ‘blonde’ and ‘brunette’ don’t tell you anything actually important about someone’s gender identity. i just dont feel, that im my own particular personal circumstances, that there’s actually any valid distinction to be made between ‘trans’ manhood and ‘cis’ manhood, male-ness is just male-ness in and of itself. 

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

(1) Hi, I’m not asking this question to offend anyone, this is a genuine question I have. If I offend anyone for being insensitive I am very sorry. So I've been thinking a lot of the differences between transracial vs. transgender and the more research and opinions I find on it the more I get confused. The main argument against being transracial is that a transracial person hasn't gotten the full experience of the specific gender they are identifying due to them living as birth gender. continued

(2) Like Rachel Dolezal being told she is not allowed to identify as black because she hasn’t gotten the true experience of being a black woman in America due to her living the her life as a white woman. However, can’t the same thing be said, for example, a MTF transgender person? It is undeniable that there is a specific woman experience. And for people (especially who realize they are trans late) live their lives passing as a man and don’t get this experience. (continued)(3) Being a woman is being catcalled, is being objectified, and is being paid less than their male counterparts. A MTF trans person doesn’t experience those for most of their life until they begin to live their lives true to their real selves. Why does this ‘experience’ argument work to discount transracial but doesn’t discount transgender? Again I’m very sorry for this question, I will admit myself it is very ignorant. But I just really want an answer to this and I hope I can get that.Harper says:Hi there, I’m going to assume you are asking this in good faith but to be quite honest the phrasing of some of your questions seriously makes me doubt that. Before I start, I want to clarify as Kii does in this ask that transracial is a term that actually describes someone who has been adopted by someone to a family of a different race, rather than the racist stuff Dolezal is doing.First off I’m going to address some assumptions about being a woman that you make in your question: “there is a specific woman experience” and that that experience “is being catcalled, is being objectified, and is being paid less than their male counterparts.” It’s curious to me that you claim there is an “undeniable… specific woman experience” and then only cite moments that we can see other people who are not women experience. For example, homophobic catcalling, i.e. verbal sexual harassment can and does happen to effeminate gay men on the streets; black men are a site of sexual objectification in much of media, consider pornography for example; gay men, men of colour are also paid less than their male counterparts and have been for some time historically. If you base your understanding of what makes a woman entirely on something like misogyny, you have to be open to the fact that other oppressive forces will coalesce in the same way to recreate similar experiences in similar liberation groups. You should also acknowledge that gendered discrimination doesn’t operate on a basis purely targeting women. I think you should broaden your understanding on how such forces work. I recommend reading Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl:

While often different in practice, cissexism, transphobia, and homophobia are all rooted in oppositional sexism, which is the belief that female and male are rigid, mutually exclusive categories, each possessing a unique and non overlapping set of attributes, aptitudes, abilities, and desires. Oppositional sexists attempt to punish or dismiss those of us who fall outside of gender or sexual norms because our existence threatens the idea that women and men are “opposite” sexes. This explains why bisexuals, lesbians, gays, transsexuals, and other transgender people — who may experience their genders and sexualities in very different ways — are so often confused or lumped into the same category (i.e., queer) by society at large. Our natural inclinations to be attracted to the same sex, to identify as the other sex, and/or to express ourselves in ways typically associated with the other sex blur the boundaries required to maintain the male-centered gender hierarchy that exists in our culture today.In addition to the rigid, mutually exclusive gender categories established by oppositional sexism, the other requirement for maintaining a male-centered gender hierarchy is to enforce traditional sexism — the belief that maleness and masculinity are superior to femaleness and femininity. Traditional and oppositional sexism work hand in hand to ensure that those who are masculine have power over those who are feminine, and that only those born male will be seen as authentically masculine. For the purposes of this manifesto, the word misogyny will be used to describe this tendency to dismiss and deride femaleness and femininity.

I’d also like to turn your attention to Jacob Hale’s essay Are Lesbians Women? in which he lays out a list of factors of what makes a woman. He does so in such a way where each individual item on the list is not necessary nor sufficient in order to be a woman. For example, although he lists ‘presence of breasts’ as one such condition that is often correlated with being a woman, there are plenty of women without breasts in the world: trans women without breasts, cis women who have had double mastectomies, and so on. Hale also notes that his list is not entirely exhaustive: there’s always the possibility that this list will be added to in future. I’d highly recommend you look at it if you’re after your “undeniable” “woman’s experience”.Next I’m going to look at your claim that “an MTF trans person doesn’t experience those for most of their life.” This entirely constructs a similar narrative for trans women and entirely disregards the possibility that such a person was raised by understanding and supportive parents from a young age and grew up as a girl from an early age. Whatever your argument about ‘transracial’, it’s clear that you already have a reductive understanding of womanhood and a transgender experience. Such forces and experiences that play into gender interact in ways far more complex than what you’ve detailed above. I also want to point out here that you’ve failed to describe how the arguments above apply to trans men: that is to say a trans man who transitions in his late twenties in the western world will probably experience all of what you label as the “woman experience”, and yet they are men. The argument you present is typical of the considerations ‘transracial’ arguments operate with. They are often circulated by people with a vested transmisogynistic interest as a “gotcha!” designed to portray trans women as either dangerous or ridiculous. As a result they are designed to eliminate any shred of transgender voices. What is implicit in the argument you’ve laid out is that 1. trans women aren’t women and 2. trans men are. The argument fails completely to consider how a trans person articulates their own understandings which often run contrary to the line of argument. I urge you to consider how this argument is made and what purposes it serves. Is it an honest exploration of the workings of gender and race or is there a bias or a motive driving the ‘logic’ of the argument.On to the ‘transracial’ aspect of your argument. I hope so far I have managed to draw your attention to the implicit biases given in the argument, as well as the levels of complexities you have yet to acknowledge. Much of the same can be said about how you present race in the argument.First of all, I’d like to draw your attention that considerations of being perceived as a different race is a reality faced by many white-passing people of colour and many mixed-race people who live through this daily. It is a consideration that has been often articulated and is still often articulated. If the argument was an earnest exploration of the shifting and transitory nature of the perception of people of colour in a racist society, would it not rather look at this aspect? If the argument was an honest exploration of the similarities and differences a construction of both racialised and gendered experiences, would it not center trans women of colour’s voices as they are best situated at this intersection of race and gender to experience this? Is it not suspicious that such an argument doesn’t do this? In fact, go read Franchesca Ramsey’s article on this for a black trans woman talking about it, and Riley’s arcticle, a black non-binary person who highlights:

Rachel Dolezal flat out lied about her life and her experiences, and not to protect herself, but to protect the benefits she received and the space she acquired through those lies. She lied to protect her privilege, a trait of white people and all privileged groups. Her life could have been the same had she merely remained the white woman she was. White people already devour space in Black communities as a bonus of their whiteness, but she chose to take her farce further, becoming a “Black” woman who happened to be indistinguishable from the party in power.There is no benefit to being transgender, and there is no harm, but there is every benefit and harm to a white person picking a less privileged race to join because white features are privileged in every race and identification has no effect on that.

(my emphasis added.)In addition to the points raised by Riley and Ramsey, I’d point out that the move to make a blind comparison between race and gender on the basis of “they are both experienced by people” or “they are both social constructs” “so why can’t x” is just so materially and historically off. There is no consideration in your given argument over the differences between race and gender. There is no consideration that racism was founded by a white ruling colonial class to dominate a colonised and enslaved population. Such a population had within it differently gendered and transgendered people. There is no consideration that this domination was a product of hundreds of years of a capitalism that needed a large white working class to carry out a sustained colonial project: a colonial project that is still in action across the world today. There is no consideration of the formation of gender and the nuclear family as a product of the division of labour enforced by capitalism and the ruling classes on the working classes.In effect, gender and race are two different things. They of course intersect, but the ways in which they operate are distinct and different. Reducing both down to a level that strips them of their actual effects and lived realities in order to further either a justification for a racist white woman exploiting black people or to further a ridicule and strawmanning of the transgender community is a shameful act of bigotry posing under a guise of logic and inquiry.

Check out our /tagged/transracial for more commentary. 

[sciencespies]

The Trailblazing, Multifaceted Activism of Lawyer-Turned-Priest Pauli Murray

https://sciencespies.com/history/the-trailblazing-multifaceted-activism-of-lawyer-turned-priest-pauli-murray/

The Trailblazing, Multifaceted Activism of Lawyer-Turned-Priest Pauli Murray

Attorney, author, scholar and reverend Pauli Murray, pictured here on December 22, 1976 Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Milton Williams Archives, © Milton Williams

“I’ve lived to see my lost causes found,” legal trailblazer Pauli Murray once said.

Murray—a lawyer, academic, writer and priest—is the multihyphenate subject of the recently released documentary My Name Is Pauli Murray. And the “lost causes” Murray championed, including fighting against systemic racism and sexism, are potent rallying cries for activists today.

Born in Baltimore in 1910, Murray became a prolific writer who decried entrenched inequalities via what the activist dubbed “confrontation by typewriter.” Murray’s ahead-of-the-times vision and influence are evident across 20th-century social movements: Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall called a tome compiled by Murray the “Bible” of civil rights litigation. As a law student in the 1940s, Murray participated in Washington, D.C. restaurant sit-ins long before the 1960 Greensboro counter protests. The activist was also the first female-presenting African American Episcopalian priest and has since become one of the church’s saints. Murray counted First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt as a confidant, took part in the same artist’s colony as James Baldwin and inspired Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s landmark arguments against gender discrimination.

This list only skims the surface of the depth and breadth of Murray’s life and legacy. Despite Murray’s accomplishments, the name isn’t a familiar one. In comparison to directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West’s previous documentary about one particularly notorious Supreme Court justice, RBG, “it wasn’t an easy sell,” says producer Talleah Bridges McMahon. “There weren’t a ton of studios and funders clamoring to get this out into the world.”

The 93-minute documentary introduces viewers to Murray, who grew up in a multiracial family in Durham, North Carolina, and was rankled by injustice from the beginning. After graduating from Hunter College as one of only a handful of Black students and hitchhiking in search of work, Murray became involved in the labor movement and advocated against segregation. (Fifteen years before Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat to a white man, Murray and a friend met with NAACP lawyers after being arrested for violating bus segregation laws—but the case went nowhere.) In sharply worded letters to politicians and local newspapers, Murray critiqued Jim Crow policies, later coining the term “Jane Crow” to describe the compounded effects of racial and gender discrimination that Black women faced.

In private life, Murray existed outside of mid-20th century society’s rigid understanding of gender as binary, dressing in androgynous or masculine clothing, forming romantic relationships with women, and unsuccessfully asking doctors for testosterone and gender-affirming care. The aunt who raised Murray fondly referred to her sister’s child as “my boy-girl.”

Despite being rejected by various graduate programs on racist and sexist grounds, Murray eventually accrued a J.D., a master’s degree and a doctorate in judicial science. In a law school paper, Murray even outlined legal reasoning later used by a professor in Brown v. Board of Education. “I had entered law school preoccupied with the racial struggle and single-mindedly bent upon becoming a civil rights attorney, but I graduated an unabashed feminist as well,” Murray once told an interviewer.

The activist sharply criticized the civil rights movement for its sidelining of women. Murray also helped found the National Organization for Women (NOW) and joined the board of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), pushing the group to oppose gender discrimination by citing the 14th Amendment. (In acknowledgement of this foundational work, Ginsburg, before she became a Supreme Court justice, listed Murray as a co-author on a winning brief that argued an Idaho law stipulating “males must be preferred to females” was unconstitutional.)

“We were not inventing something new,” Ginsburg recounts in the documentary. “We were saying the same things Pauli had said years earlier at a time when society was not prepared to listen.”

In addition to authoring a poetry collection and an autobiography, Murray helped establish the American Studies program at Brandeis University and—after a loaded dispute—was granted tenure. The death of partner Irene Barlow in 1973, however, prompted the peripatetic scholar to change course and attend seminary at a time when the Episcopal Church was not yet ordaining women.

It’s a tall order for a single documentary to capture such a multifaceted person. “We knew, going into this, that we were not telling the definitive story of Pauli Murray,” says McMahon, adding that she hopes the project leads viewers to “then go do a deep dive into Pauli Murray’s life.” (To learn how Murray’s Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family created a template for Black genealogy research, readers can consult online resources from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.)

Murray, who died in 1985 at age 74, had been dead for more than 30 years by the time Cohen and West filmed their first interview (with Ginsburg, in 2018). The creative team relied heavily on primary sources, scholarship and interviews with contemporaries who knew their subject in real life: Murray’s great-niece, students and classmates like Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton. “What we did was really try to rely on Pauli’s words as much as possible,” says McMahon.

Fortunately, Murray left behind a comprehensive written trail. In addition to audio and published non-fiction and poetry, Murray’s personal letters, photos and other documents fill some 140 boxes at Harvard’s Schlesinger Library. (Murray personally arranged for the donation to the women’s studies repository, which now includes letters detailing Murray’s rejection from Harvard Law School and subsequent battle against its men-only admissions policy.) McMahon made several multi-day trips from Los Angeles to Boston to scan and pore over the archival materials. Shortly before the pandemic began, she found a documentarian’s treasure: largely unseen letters exchanged by Barlow and Murray that showcased the couple’s affection and playful signoffs, such as “007” or “Charlie Brown.” The handwriting in these missives arcs across the screen in the film, making tangible a relationship that was kept quiet.

In telling Murray’s story, the creative team had many conversations about cultural sensitivity. Murray used she/her pronouns in written work but lived at a time when more flexible or gender-affirming pronoun usage wasn’t widely accepted. McMahon says the group talked through pronoun usage with people from the trans community, including Chase Strangio, an LGBTQ rights attorney at the ACLU who suggested using “Pauli” in lieu of pronouns as a respectful option. (Strangio is one of several transgender activists interviewed about Murray in the documentary.) Instead of labeling Murray posthumously, West explains to Slate, “We made an effort to let people speak about Pauli in the way that they chose, but to be sensitive about using the pronoun ‘she/her’ too aggressively.”

In depicting Murray’s experiences as an African American person confronting racism, Cohen and West, who are both white, were telling a story beyond the limits of their own personal experiences. McMahon says the pair listened to her and editor Cinque Northern, both of whom are Black, when they offered feedback on the film’s handling of race. In a scene featuring Murray’s former Brandeis students, for example, McMahon and Northern pushed for an ending that they thought showed genuine affection between professor and pupils: Murray, unlike younger activists, strongly preferred the term “Negro” over the lowercased “black,” and, knowing the students disagreed, would tell them, “You need to learn something, Negro.”

“[The directors] were underwhelmed with that ending, but Cinque and I were like, ‘It’s so endearing. … Please just trust us,’” McMahon recalls. The directors did.

In private life, Murray existed outside of mid-20th century society’s rigid understanding of gender as binary.

Carolina Digital Library and Archives via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 3.0

The documentary takes pains to highlight the varied facets of its subject’s identity—and how they all collided to shape Murray’s revolutionary perspective. “As a human being, I cannot allow myself to be fragmented into Negro at one time, woman at another or worker at another, I must find a unifying principle in all of these movements to which I can adhere,” in a 1967 letter. (Murray had helped create the “NAACP for women” but soon became disillusioned by its infamous lack of intersectionality.)

“What Pauli Murray really did was fight to create the kind of world in which every part of her could live,” writes Dolores Chandler, a former coordinator at the Pauli Murray Center, which “lifts up the life and legacy” of its namesake, for Scalawag magazine.

Murray was a pathfinder who pointed out legal arguments against societal injustice—paths that other better-remembered individuals would later help pave. My Name Is Pauli Murray makes that underappreciated impact visible, and in doing so, asks the implicit question of why Murray lacks name recognition today. As Cohen tells the Washington Post, “Murray’s story overall, and I’d say even the film specifically, is arguing for a deeper, more inclusive look at history.”

African American History

African American History Museum

American History

Documentaries

Law

LGBTQI History

Racism

Religion

Smithsonian Institution

Women’s History

Women’s Rights

#History

[hiraethhalcyon]

Blog Post #3: Gun Rights

Sorry this blog post is all over the place

Research???

This last week I went on a hunt to to find relevant theories, theorists, and historical events that play a part in understanding the place guns have in our society. In American Popular Culture with Dr. Rado we have been focusing on those logocentric ideologies that make you focus on oppositional binaries. In my blog and research last week I realized social scientists have been insisting on the gender binary that guns pose since men get “masculinity” from holding a gun. In reality in they are simulating this false belief so that they can continue to cover the binary of guns being a black and white race problem.

Made Me Think

I went to the March of Our Lives this weekend and it made me focus on the race binary that exists within the school shooting epidemic. I found this amazing article that talks heavily about the history behind binaries that lie within schools. I found it lies within white resistance to the right of education for African Americans. And the problem only continued to grow when European immigrants got the right to education. White people now needed another way to set them apart from the “other” (minorities) and a way to continue their race binary. The authority continued to show itself through minorities higher chances of getting suspended in schools (Fundr, 2015).

Theorist

The past week I have been looking at W.E.B. Du Bois, Derrick Bell, and Bell Hooks. Du Bois is relevant to my research because he studied all oppositional binaries that are present in our society. His socio critical framework was dynamic and incorporated diverse theories such as African American Liberation theory, Women’s Liberation, Anti-colonial theory, Peace & International politics theory, and many more. Derrick Bell is significant because he is a key figure in Critical Race Theory, and Bell Hooks focused on Black women in feminism.

[tedfashionski]

Finking, Finking.

Hi, welcome to my ted talk. (That is the only time I will ever make that joke. This is Fashionski Finks. Expect radically low standards of self-involved rantiness with zero research or accountability from here on out). For a while there I seriously thought that the covid-19 quarantine was going to result in people being increasingly placid and accepting of creeping extensions of the police state. But here I am, getting depressed again, not about the protests, which I love, but more about my relationship to in-group pressure dynamics. One of the problems with being a relentless contrarian is the discomfort of my impulse to rebel against groups even when they’re championing the right thing. I have to find my own way to fight against the system as an outsider. No gods, no masters, no fucking peer pressure.  I’ll never be happy joining a chorus line. I don’t sign fucking petitions (they’re just lists for the NSA). I do donate, but like fuck will I do it performatively. I can’t go to protests cus I get panic attacky in crowds. I empathise pretty strongly with outsiders of all stripes but believe ridiculously excessively in the public good of criticism, and have a nostalgic love of trolling (I like to think I’m gentle with it though). Bring back the troll! We need that fucker, he’s a sign of a healthy internet. I’m writing this blog thing as an extension of my need to vent my extreme negativity. TBH I never expected to get any followers with ted twitter and the bizarre welcomingness of the hf twitter community totally wrongfooted me. I’m not nice. Ted isn’t meant to likable. He’s my dark side. I was meant to be using this alt as a way to terrorise the nice nice (secretly cruel) fashion people. I’m gunna try and up that aspect more. Just bear in mind, my complaints are largely about the system, but if I see you perpetuating fashion’s entrenched anti-intellectualism or its insidery bullshit, I’ll come for you with a little meta-bomb with your name on it. Maintaining my misanthropic tone does take work tho, like, deep down in some twisted part of my psyche, I guess I do actually want to be liked. It’s fucked up.

I suppose it’s only fair to explain this Ted fursona. Like, new concept, who dis? Why all the furry porn? …..because I just think it’s hilarious. Every time I think about the furries I cackle (not at them, mind). I just love the mad corruption of pure Disney aesthetics into hardcore pornography. That’s anti-authoritarian as fuck. I love the sincerity of their culture. The way the crazy fetish aspect means they’ll never be fully blandified by mainstream acceptance. The way it’s so cringe but so delightful. And more seriously, I’m interested in how a culture of mostly gay male nerds developed to the point where they’ll invest 10k in custom fursuits and support eachother’s independent businesses in ways that the fashion community completely fails to do. The fashion world sucks. There’s so many correlations there that I want to investigate: the newness (furries date from around the 70s, fashion culture in its self-aware state dates from the late 19th C – both very young fields); the centralisation/decentralisation; the hierarchy (furries can be pretty catty, I have discovered in my research, and we all know what fashion people are like); the adoption of new identities; the cis-boy gayness aspect (I’m increasingly tired of the extreme nasty hierarchy of certain CSM queens. It’s all very UGH. Just, fuck those particular bitches.) There’s more to the furry love, but I’ll explore it in future posts.

More importantly, why Ted fucking Kaczynski? I’m not like, actually a terrorist. (….yet. tehehe. NO, seriously I like non-maiming violence. Fuck yeah to property damage. Fuck yeah to disabling the system in extreme way. But no to wooden IEDs. Think of my shitty jokes that fail to land as my hand-crafted bombs). I think I like the shitness of Ted. He was just an epic fail of a terrorist. I’m a little white girl living in London. I’m not actually a primitivist, as much as I crave a hut in the woods. I did go to an elite school though. I had some really shitty experiences in the fashion industry in my early 20s, and I watch my friends who are relatively successful in that system and I get so angry on their behalf at their poor treatment. They think I’m too angry. Fuck that. They should be more angry, and the fact that they can’t be angry at their extreme precarity and the fact they’re still insecure and terrified of being ejected by the system after all their investment and skills they’ve built up is BULLSHIT. I’ll be double angry for them, I’m not invested in that system. I don’t need it to pay my rent. I’m free, motherfuckers, and I’m coming for the abusers and exploiters. If you’re a complacent industry figure not fighting hard from within, uggghhhhh fuck you. Yes, YOU. Soooo, I relate pretty hard to the MK ultra stuff. (go look him up, he was basically tortured and experimented upon by the elite). But there’s a pretty big chasm between my views and his, and I’ll try to be clear about the extent of my interest in his extreme beliefs. I haven’t even finished reading the manifesto. Basically, I watched that shitty show on Netflix with sam worthington around the same time I watched Joker (that movie fucked me up) and thought it’d be a good outlet to larp online as a terrorist. There’s the angry white alt-right school shooter aspect, which I’m still figuring out, cus I’m non-binary and I was raised by nutso trumpy right-wingers, who I barely speak to anymore, and I struggle to get along with people generally. There’s sad, self-pitying rage here. I empathise with the angry white dudes too much. I feel guilty about it. That’s good ground for artmaking (yes, shamefully, this…is…art. Sorry). I modelled this fursona a little after my brother, who I spent years living with and arguing with and trying to lift out of his scary racist youtube rabbit holes. This is actually quite an emotional thing for me, cus I did the ‘talk to your fascist family’ thing. And I completely failed. I realised his right-winginess wasn’t lessening, I wasn’t gaining ground, and in fact my excessive empathy and desire to reach out to the relative most similar to me in character meant his extremism was rubbing off on me. Making me more resentful and depressed. Feeling powerless. I was being too kind-hearted and forgiving of his masculine impotence. So I’m exploring some personal shit here. But Ted is also a cute lil fuzzball teddy bear. He means well, but me being super autistic and faily at social skills means he’s kind of a dick, cus I am. I’m going to try and further develop this character, this POV, and this post is the only time I’ll explain the divide between him and his creator (moi). The ‘I’ on the twitter and here is Ted Fashionski, I need that space between me and him. Masks give us this freedom to be more ourselves. Internet culture has lost a lot of its wild brutal anonymity in the last decade or so, now everyone’s afraid of making mistakes. How the hell do you grow if you’re not allowed to fuck up? This is a vital outlet. He’s become an important part of my life and I have to say, I love being Ted Fashionski. He’s like Paddington Bear who just escaped form Guantanamo or something.

I get pretty fatigued as a matter of course. I’m a long-term depressive since childhood. I have a difficult time keeping my hard-on for living. I don’t get suicidal really but I do struggle with extreme fatigue. I sleep a lot. I often fall into spirals of self-hate. And as someone who utterly believes in revolutionary leftist politics, I beat myself up about not doing enough. I’m so middle class and english and white. I was raised in such a chauvinistic and complacent culture; I don’t even know where to start. I’m wading my way through post-colonial literature and beating myself up for finding it boring and uncomfortable. It’s hard to force yourself to acknowledge your culture is The Bad Guys. It’s easier to fall into fanstasies of supremacy and butthurt misunderstoodness. And it’s not like my depressive brain needs any encouragement to hate me. My trajectory is ever leftwards, but I remember the righteous fury of being right-wing. I get it, that was me. We need more paths back from fascism, more comprehension of why people are that kind of shitty. I talk less, and less well, the more depressed I am. If I’m talking, it means im feeling a lot better. Just, fyi.

Give me a minute to be critical here. With the George Floyd protests, a lot of the cool guys on fashion twitter has gone blazingly hardcore on the political side. But there’s this troubling rhetoric about ‘no return to normal content’ or ‘this isn’t the time for fashion’. Like fuck it isn’t. This is a key problem with fashion culture right here, we have this received perception of fashion as empty escapism. Escapism matters in fashion, yes. But seriously, talking about the surfaces of things does not equal not caring about deeper meaning. What the fuck. Clothes are a connective tissue, a membrane between us. They’re emotional and powerful. We can talk about things that matter THROUGH clothes. I speak fashion, pretty fucking well. Most people who work at fashion magazines are morons with no understanding or respect for their subject. They’re incapable of doing it justice, and that’s deliberate. On this tumblr you’ll see rants and reviews of fashion and other artforms, always interpreting through a fashion lens. cus it matters, cus it’s a vital part of the culture, cus just because something has a glittery, seductive surface doesn’t mean it doesn’t communicate or contain depth. There’s no going back to ‘normal fashion content’, yes. Normal fashion content is a fucking psyop to divert legitimate interest in aesthetics amongst largely non-academic dyslexic visual types away from careful thought/feeling and towards empty consumerist commericiality. The traditional fashion media wants you to express yourself and your interest in the zeitgeist through buying more shit. Another fashion world is possible. Let’s destroy the old and build a new one, one where surface and spirit are connected and true and fashion can’t be abused in service of evil industrial monopolists.

/end rant. TLDR: angry fictional teddy bear with tin-foil hat and an eco-anarchist fetish says no to stupid fashion and yes to the renewal of conceptual fashion. Also, Fuck White People.

[laymlone-blog]

Fatphobia (20.12.19)

Fatphobia is a systematic dehumanising of fat people that takes on different forms from media representation to microaggressions. 

Usually, people try to say ‘nicer’ ways for fatness like ‘curvy’ or ‘plus sized’. Plus sized is particularly problematic. 

If I am plus sized - what’s so plus about it? The extra, like something you can just take on and off. Ever heard of the “dream measurements”: 90-60-90 (hip/waist/breast) with about a 6’0ft/180cm height? That’s the bullshit standard for female supermodels. 

Google: Twiggy

Some people have never walked into a shop and found nothing in their size and it shows. 

The racial aspect of fatphobia lies in biological essentialism, and especially the creation of ‘BMI’ (Body Mass Index).  BMI was invented in the 1830s by Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet, a Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist. This was the same time people were putting forth bullshit ideas about ‘criminal types’ - equating looks to criminality. It specifically targeted disabled, poor and dark skinned people.

BMI is a mathematical formula (BMI = weight (kg) / height)  based on an ‘ideal’ human body; in this case, a Caucasian, able bodied, cisgender Male. This was used in the 19th century as a measurement of fitness to sterilize POC, Indigenous people, disabled people, poor people, immigrants and other marginalised minorities. 

It’s connection to eugenics leads on to the next point of health and fatness. 

The connection between fatness and unhealthiness is forced and upheld by rigid norms in households in the western world. With things like ‘Fat Camp’ being implemented in America to deal with the capitalisation of poverty by the fast food industry, fatness is strongly seen as a negative. 

To some assholes, a fat person is barely a person, they’re a walking heart attack waiting to happen. 

A good quote from @ lex_about_sex on Twitter:

“I feel like the go-to-stock response about fatness “you can be fat and healthy” that’s true - but 

Fatphobia is not genuinely about the concern for health and that response legitimises it as a concern

It’s okay to be unhealthy! Unhealthy people deserve respect too!

Instead of continually vesting in the poor healthy/good healthy binary let’s unpack “why” we think it’s okay to debase people for being unhealthy and how it really is ABLEISM which is ultimately a byproduct of capitalism which measures validity via “productivity””

^^ I love this. 

Fatness is fatness - whether it is healthy or unhealthy, a fat person deserves to be treated like a person. 

Now, the stigma, how does it build up? What does it look like?

Let’s think about stereotypes of fat people in media:

The rich, fat asshole who doesn’t give a shit about anyone

The comedic female side character who takes all the shit and probably has good one liners

The old, warm granny

The Black, fat woman who knows how to cook up a feast

The angsty fat girl who sees her fatness as the main thing stopping her from doing anything

The really girly and frilly fat girl who’s bubbly personality makes up for her fatness as ‘ugly’

The guy who likes fat, salty girl because he has a fetish

The fat guy, who happens to be disabled in some way, in some wierd adult cartoon show and has a tendency for violence and being ‘unintelligent’ and has a ‘hot’ wife and kids

The fat kid, who lost weight and is now hot and desirable - ‘the ugly duckling’

The fat person with no morals and probably gets eaten by the end of the story

A bully who is bullying others because of their insecurity about their fatness

The rich, fat king/noble who feasts whilst the peasants are poor, frail and starving

The beer belly abusive step father

I honestly can’t think of many others. 

But yeah, we have these images instilled in us. 

Other shows obsessed with weight loss and gain: Biggest Loser, Supersize Me etc. 

When is the last time you saw a fat girl being completely and utterly happy about her size without being frowned upon? When was the last time you saw a sexed up, healthy version of a fat guy? 

You see so many ads telling people to lose weight, but what about putting on weight? Except pregnancy - which then tells you to lose the weight you gained during pregnancy with a ‘bounce back’.

Skinny people being afraid to be fat, and fat people being afraid to be fat. 

Fuckkk, the skinny characters eating whatever they want because they have a ‘fast metabolism’ but if a fat person ate the same things - ‘they could lose weight by cutting that junk’. Fuck that. 

Oh, getting on a weight measure scale and FEARING putting on weight. The skinny one looking in the mirror and grabbing at a slightly tubby stomach ‘oh my god, I am SO FAT’. 

One thing I want to touch on briefly is the gender aspect, yes it’s difficult for men, women and non binary people. But, the way young girls are brought up, spoonfed media about fashion, girl power and skinniness, thin barbies to play with instead of cars etc. Women are under the misogynist stereotypes. Men have different pressures on them, but fatness is also masculinised. What I mean is that there are different expectations for ideal bodies, but men are (mainly white guys) encouraged to take up space via their bodies, voices and presence whilst women are expected to be as small as possible and be desired by dudes. 

So if fatness is somehow masculinised, what does this do to feminine bodies? It makes them invalid. It creates a sexless idea around fat women. The objectification of feminine bodies disempowers fat women from two angles. 

However for MOC who are really pressured to keep a slim, ‘fit’ figure to be classified as a ‘man’. Fat men are a product of gluttony by over masculinity - they get what they want but have got too much. The stigma around dark skinned, fat men is shown in representation of Black/Brown men being large and angry, abusive or on the other angle being emasculate and feminine. 

It differs when including gender, disability, class, race etc. 

Fatphobia at its core is a White, middle/higher class, able bodied, heteronormative, patriarchal tactic to objectify certain bodies and dehumanise people that doesn’t fit their ‘ideal’ for productive citizens of a capitalist society. 

Fat Acceptance movement has been going on since early 2019. It’s not about ‘liking’ or ‘glorifying’ or ‘beautifying’ fatness; it’s asking to respect fat people. 

Simple basic, fucking respect and inclusion. 

It’s not encouraging skinny people to be fat, it’s saying: it is ok to be fat.

What, you're gonna see a women empowerment post, and say it’s telling men and non binary people to be a woman? Of course fucking not.

It’s about R E S P E C T. Respect. 

Say it again: respect.

Okay, so what can you do?

STOP using ‘fat’ or fat references as insults 

STOP commenting on people’s weight

STOP only including thin people in ‘inclusive’ events

Remember where you have seen fatphobia in your life

Call out your friends on their bullshit

Follow fat people on social media (actively)

Look at the racks when you shop, and see what bodies it prefers and think about it

Don’t determine health by appearance

Throw away your fucking scale

Weight loss doesn’t equal fitness journey

Fuck you and your unsolicited health advice

Don’t buy bigger clothes if there are clothes that fit you right there 

Call it out when you see it

Follow the hashtags fat activists use: #fatacceptance 

It doesn’t matter if a person is healthy or not, just fucking respect them. 

HASHTAG: #fat and angry

Resources:

https://www.them.us/story/these-fat-men-in-fashion-are-tired-of-being-left-out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkWjdnc77Mw

Sykes, Heather, and Deborah McPhail. "Unbearable lessons: Contesting fat phobia in physical education." Sociology of Sport Journal 25.1 (2008): 66-96.

Al-Adawi, Samir, et al. "Culture to culture: Fat-phobia and somatization." Handbook of behavior, food and nutrition. Springer, New York, NY, 2011. 1457-1473.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/sep/03/diet-advice-and-tiny-seats-how-to-avoid-10-forms-of-fatphobia

https://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/44828/1/plus-size-mannequin-nike-telegraph-fat-woman-fatphobia

Forth, Christopher E. "Fat, desire and disgust in the colonial imagination." History Workshop Journal. Vol. 73. No. 1. Oxford University Press, 2012.

Strings, Sabrina. Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia. NYU Press, 2019.

Russell, Constance, et al. "“Fatties cause global warming”: Fat pedagogy and environmental education." Canadian Journal of Environmental Education (CJEE) 18 (2013): 27-45.

http://ravishly.com/fat-camp-survivor

https://www.plasticsurgery.org/news/press-releases/new-statistics-reveal-the-shape-of-plastic-surgery

Monaghan, Lee F. "Body Mass Index, masculinities and moral worth: men's critical understandings of ‘appropriate’weight‐for‐height." Sociology of health & illness 29.4 (2007): 584-609.

https://elemental.medium.com/the-bizarre-and-racist-history-of-the-bmi-7d8dc2aa33bb

https://youtu.be/HXGwJevjOfs

https://cocainemodels.com/requirements-modeling-height-age-measurement/

Norman, Moss E. "“Dere’s Not Just One Kind of Fat” Embodying the “Skinny”-Self Through Constructions of the Fat Masculine Other." Men and Masculinities 16.4 (2013): 407-431.

Bailey, Courtney. "Supersizing America: Fatness and post‐9/11 cultural anxieties." The Journal of Popular Culture 43.3 (2010): 441-462.

Usiekniewicz, Marta. "“Dangerous Bodies: Blakness, Fatness, and the Masculinity Dividend." A Journal of Queer Studies 11 (2016): 19-45.

[anniekoh]

Getting ready for the American Association of Geographers’ annual meeting and went galumphing through the preliminary program to compile my session wishlist. The “author meets critics” format has been a favorite - these are the ones that caught my eye (in chronological order) with book descriptions and links to publishers below.

1158 Author Meets Critics: Gautam Bhan's In the Public's Interest: Evictions, Citizenship, and Inequality in Contemporary Delhi is scheduled on Wednesday, 4/5/2017, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in Gardner B, Sheraton, Third Floor

In the Public’s Interest (2016): “This book studies the recent legacy of basti “evictions” in Delhi—mass clearings of some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods—as a way to understand how the urban poor are disenfranchised in the name of “public interest” and, in the case of Delhi, by the very courts meant to empower and protect them. Studying bastis, says Gautam Bhan, provokes six clear lines of inquiry applicable to studies of urbanism across the global south.The first is the long-standing debate over urban informality and illegality: the debate’s impact on conceptions and practices of urban planning, the production of space, and the regulation of value. The second is a set of debates on “good governance,” read through their intersections with ideas of “planned development” within rapidly transforming cities. The third is the political field of urban citizenship and the possibilities of substantive rights and belonging in the city. The fourth is resistance and the ability of a city’s subaltern residents to struggle against exclusion. The two remaining inquiries both cut across and unify the first four. One of these is the role of the judiciary and the relationships between law and urbanism in cities of the global south. The other is the relationship between democracy and inequality in the city.”

1244 Author Meets Critics: Amy Trauger's We Want Land to Live: Making Political Space for Food Sovereignty is scheduled on Wednesday, 4/5/2017, from 10:00 AM - 11:40 AM in Constitution A, Sheraton, Second Floor 

We Want Land to Live (2017): “First coined by La Via Campesina (a global movement whose name means “the peasant’s way”), food sovereignty is a concept that expresses the universal right to food. Amy Trauger uses research combining ethnography, participant observation, field notes, and interviews to help us understand the material and definitional struggles surrounding the decommodification of food and the transformation of the global food system’s political-economic foundations.Trauger’s work is the first of its kind to analytically and coherently link a dialogue on food sovereignty with case studies illustrating the spatial and territorial strategies by which the movement fosters its life in the margins of the corporate food regime. She discusses community gardeners in Portugal; small-scale, independent farmers in Maine; Native American wild rice gatherers in Minnesota; seed library supporters in Pennsylvania; and permaculturists in Georgia.”

2166 Author meets Critics: Rebecca Kinney's Beautiful Wasteland: The Rise of Detroit as America's Postindustrial Frontier is scheduled on Thursday, 4/6/2017, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in Columbus 1, Marriott, First Floor

Beautiful Wasteland (2016): “What is the “new Detroit” that everyone keeps talking about? Rebecca J. Kinney reveals that the contemporary story of Detroit’s rebirth is an upcycled version of the American Dream, which has long imagined access to work, home, and upward mobility as race-neutral projects. She tackles key questions about the future of postindustrial America, and shows how the narratives of Detroit’s history are deeply steeped in material and ideological investments in whiteness.”

2404 Author-Meets-Critics: Brenda Parker's 'Masculinities and Markets: Raced and Gendered Urban Politics in Milwaukee' (2017) is scheduled on Thursday, 4/6/2017, from 1:20 PM - 3:00 PM in Room 104, Hynes, Plaza Level

Masculinities and Markets (2017): “Studies of urban neoliberalism have been surprisingly inattentive to gender. Brenda Parker begins to remedy this by looking at the effect of new urbanism, “creative class,” and welfare reform discourses on women in Milwaukee, a traditionally progressive city with a strong history of political organizing. Through a feminist partial political economy of place approach, Parker conducts
 an intersectional analysis of urban politics that simultaneously pays attention to a number of power relations. She argues that in the 1990s and 2000s, the city’s business-friendly agenda—although couched in uplifting rhetoric—strengthened existing hierarchies not only in class and race but also in gender. Taking on municipal elites’ adoption of Richard Florida’s “creative class” thesis, for example, Parker looks at the group Young Professionals of Milwaukee, exposing the way that a “creative careers” focus advances fundamentally masculine values and interests.” 

3177 Author meets the critics: The Geopolitics of Real Estate: Reconfiguring Property, Capital and Rights is scheduled on Friday, 4/7/2017, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in Harvard, Marriott, Third Floor

The Geopolitics of Real Estate (2016): “Individual foreign investment in Western nation states is a long-standing geopolitical issue. The expansion of the middle class in BRICS and Asian countries, and their increased activity in Western real estate markets as foreign investors, have introduced new and revived existing cultural and geopolitical sensitivities. In this book, Dallas Rogers develops a new history of foreign real estate investment by mapping the movement of human and financial capital over more than four centuries. The book argues the reconfiguration of Asian geopolitical power has ruptured the conceptual landscape for understanding international land and real estate relations. Drawing on assemblage theories (Latour, Deleuze and Guattari), assemblage analytical tactics (Sassen and Ong) and discursive media theories (Kittler and Foucault) a series of vignettes of land and real estate crisis are presented. The book demonstrates how foreign land claimers and global real estate professionals colonise, subvert and act beyond the governance structures of settler-societies to facilitate new types of capital circulation and accumulation around the world.”

3501 Mapping Flexibly 3: Author Meets Critics, Jill Desimini and Charles Waldheim's Cartographic Grounds is scheduled on Friday, 4/7/2017, from 3:20 PM - 5:00 PM in Room 101, Hynes, Plaza Level

Cartographic Grounds (2016): “Mapping has been one of the most fertile areas of exploration for architecture and landscape in the past few decades. While documenting this shift in representation from the material and physical description toward the dpiction of the unseen and often immaterial, Cartographic Grounds takes a critical view toward the current use of data mapping and visualization and calls for a return to traditional cartographic to reimagine the manifestation and manipulation of the ground itself.”

4114 Author Meets Critics: Elizabeth Povinelli's Geontologies: A Requiem for Late Liberalism is scheduled on Saturday, 4/8/2017, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in Room 203, Hynes, Second Level

Geontologies (2016): Elizabeth A. Povinelli continues her project of mapping the current conditions of late liberalism by offering a bold retheorization of power. Finding Foucauldian biopolitics unable to adequately reveal contemporary mechanisms of power and governance, Povinelli describes a mode of power she calls geontopower, which operates through the regulation of the distinction between Life and Nonlife and the figures of the Desert, the Animist, and the Virus. Geontologies examines this formation of power from the perspective of Indigenous Australian maneuvers against the settler state. And it probes how our contemporary critical languages—anthropogenic climate change, plasticity, new materialism, antinormativity—often unwittingly transform their struggles against geontopower into a deeper entwinement within it. A woman who became a river, a snakelike entity who spawns the fog, plesiosaurus fossils and vast networks of rock weirs: in asking how these different forms of existence refuse incorporation into the vocabularies of Western theory Povinelli provides a revelatory new way to understand a form of power long self-evident in certain regimes of settler late liberalism but now becoming visible much further beyond.”

4124 Author Meets Critics: Iyko Day's Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism is scheduled on Saturday, 4/8/2017, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in Room 304, Hynes, Third Level

Alien Capital (2016):  Iyko Day retheorizes the history and logic of settler colonialism by examining its intersection with capitalism and the racialization of Asian immigrants to Canada and the United States. Day explores how the historical alignment of Asian bodies and labor with capital's abstract and negative dimensions became one of settler colonialism's foundational and defining features. This alignment allowed white settlers to gloss over and expunge their complicity with capitalist exploitation from their collective memory. Day reveals this process through an analysis of a diverse body of Asian North American literature and visual culture, including depictions of Chinese railroad labor in the 1880s, filmic and literary responses to Japanese internment in the 1940s, and more recent examinations of the relations between free trade, national borders, and migrant labor. In highlighting these artists' reworking and exposing of the economic modalities of Asian racialized labor, Day pushes beyond existing approaches to settler colonialism as a Native/settler binary to formulate it as a dynamic triangulation of Native, settler, and alien populations and positionalities”

[nikolinaboldero]

Identity in Late Capitalism. Following reading on ‘Intersectional, Transnational Fashion Subjects’.

23/11/18

Links- positives and negatives of globalisation.

 Overall positives are more interconnectedness between people around the world, greater developments in technology and fashion shared globally, ability to move more freely between countries.

 Negatives: a more homogenous world, certain countries acquiring stronger political power than others, generally the western countries and Japan, US. Erosion of unique national identities, greater disparity between rich and poor, not everyone receiving the benefits of globalisation.

 Cultural imperialism- Colonialism.

Colonialism definition: policy or a practice of acquiring political control over another country, ‘occupying it with settlers and exploiting it economically’.

‘Cultural imperialism refers to the enforcement of one group of people’s cultural ideas on another group’.

 One culture may dominate other culture through their ideas and cultural/religious beliefs.

 An example of cultural imperialism; During the British imperial rule in India, various policies were established, thus impacting the culture of the nation and creating cultural imperialism. One example of this is the language. British recognized English as a unified language, this altered the way in which Indian people communicated.

 ‘To be sure, there are now twenty- one national editions of Vogue… However, the content of these magazines fits a pretty, consistent pattern of a focus on local designers, shops and events, mixed with constant reference back to the established centres of fashion’s world order’.

-        Gilbert 2013.

 ‘To appreciate a culture, one must step back and actively learn about it and how to support it without thinking about how they can benefit from the beautiful characteristics of it’. I took this statement from Teen Vogue, I strongly agree with the message they are trying to convey. Cultural awareness is essential, if people do not understand the culture and its traditions, rituals associated with that culture they begin to exploit it, they can appropriate it. Kim Kardashian has largely been inspired by black women, she has been wearing cornrows in her hair. This is most problematic because she has been awarded for her appropriation, whilst black women are often demonized or misjudged for those same styles. Cultural appropriation is harmful because it ‘glorifies or degrades cultural aesthetics based on skin colour, as if the value changes when something is expressed on one race as opposed to another’.

  In one of Katy Perry’s performances she decided to dress in a kimono style dress, have her make up done to look similar to that of an Asian, wearing oriental flowers in her hair and the typical Japanese umbrella in her hand. ‘Katy’s performance reinforced the notion that it’s convenient to tap into Asian aesthetics for magical, sensual and mystical purposes, while disregarding the complexity and diversity of Asian identity.

 Whiteness:

‘Whiteness as a racial position tends to be rendered invisible’.  This marks out all of the other ethnicities as ‘Other’. Dyer therefore argues for the importance of making ‘whiteness strange’. Whiteness is not uniform as a category. I think that if white was portrayed as a strange it would help to reduce the amount of racism (self- assurance).

 Flows and Fashion

‘If we apply this concept of disjunctive flows to dress, one might call this mixture of style a form of creolisation or hybridity where nothing is dominant entirely traditional, or fully modern’. Maynard 2004.

 ‘It is clear that diasporic cultures do not adopt western dress without consideration. They draw selectively and unevenly on the clothes of dual cultural systems and for a variety of reasons.

 Diaspora refers to groups of migrants or refugees who have moved away from their country of origin to live in a new country. ‘Scattered population of a specific country or geographic place of origin’.

 Tartan through the African Diaspora. Hidden cultural ties.

Tartan as a fabric is closely linked to Scotland but it also has strong ties to Africa as well. The Maasai is a semi- nomadic group of people from East Africa who are known for their unique way of life, as well as their traditions, customs. The Maasai identity is defined by its colourful beaded necklaces and the red shuka cloth. The Maasai wear these blue, striped and checkered cloths to wrap around their bodies. It is known to be quite durable and thick therefore protecting the Maasai tribe from harsh weather conditions and terrain of the savannah.

 Intersectionality

Race, class, education, sexuality, ability, age, gender, ethnicity, culture, language. All of these words could be used to help understand someone’s identity.

Theory of the Leisure class- 1899.

‘conspicuous consumption is necessary to communicate the status of the leisure class’.

‘A cheap coat makes a cheap man’.

Victorian binaries-

Male characteristics; public sphere, art, mind, active, adult.

Female characteristics included: private sphere, nature, body, passive, childlike.

The gender binary, is the classification of sex and gender into two distinct, opposite and disconnected forms of masculine and feminine. 

 Binaries are the ‘simplest way of making difference’, however the issue with binaries is that they are extremely reductive and they are stereotypical. Binaries help us to establish meaning. However, binaries are not usually an equal categorisation. There exists the dominant binary, which results in there being negative connotations associated with the ‘other’ binary. For example, high and low, if someone has a high income that is the dominant binary whereas low income would be associated with negative connotations, same pattern follows with able- bodied people and disabled people. It is certainly not the best form of understanding identity.

 Identity is intersectional- this idea suggests that threads of our identity overlap and intersect.

‘opens up imagination beyond binaries, allowing for more complex ways of thinking about identity and the self’.

 ‘My identity has been constructed from my own sense of otherness, whether cultural, racial or sexual. The three aspects are not separate within me.  Photography is the tool by which I feel most confident in expressing myself’. It is photography therefore- Black, African, homosexual photography which I must use not just as an instrument but as a weapon if I am to resist attacks on my integrity and, indeed, my existence on my own terms’.

Rotimi Fani- Kayode.

 I really enjoyed this lecture I think that it covered so many interesting topics. I found the reference to the Dolce and Gabbana campaign particularly interesting, I remember first seeing this advert and I didn’t think much of it, I thought it was taking a different approach but I didn’t think that it could be racist in any way. Watching it over again and looking at comments I could see how it would be insulting to the Chinese population. I have always found fashion journalism really fascinating, talking about different issues associated with the media which have impacted on the industry.

[casynsgsscrapbook-blog]

Scrapbook Analysis

This scrapbook project serves as a way to summarize the Gender studies class by taking four “artifacts” from each chapter discussed in class and relating them to those chapters. When searching for my artifacts I tried to relate them to pop culture and this generation. A lot of my artifacts come from other posts on social media sites, including Instagram and Twitter. I also had artifacts about well-known social media influencers that many people would recognize, as well as a character from a well-known TV franchise. I also made sure to include artifacts that I found entertaining, and not too many long articles that may seem boring.

Part II

When making my scrapbook, I decided to keep things in order. The first part I posted was ideas. In this section I posted a video called “Sexist Toys” the video was uploaded by Rachel Ballinger who is the person talking. She made this video because she saw Target was selling a selfie kit that was “for girls only”. This sparks some anger inside her and she discusses other harmful stereotypes in toys. I put this under ideas because it touches on what we stereotypically believe is “for boys” and “for girls”. The next thing I posted is an article about a genderfluid Character on the Netflix show Degrassi. The “Ideas” chapter touches on the binary and the character, Yael, feels as though they do not fit in the binary, they don't feel like a boy or girl. The article provides basic information about the particular episode where Yael comes out, without spoiling. My next post is a video of Youtuber, Gigi Gorgeous, coming out as transgender. The video was uploaded a few years ago and Gigi has recently made a documentary showing her process. I would definitely recommend the documentary to anyone who is still confused about what being transgender means, so I included a link to the trailer in the caption of my post. My last post for the Ideas section is an Instagram post by the account “greenboxshop”. The image shows someone wearing a shirt that says, “gender is a social construct”. The owner of the account also owns a clothing business with shirts like this one. The Ideas chapter mentions the idea of gender being a social construct, which this shirt claims to be true.

Part VI

The next section I have in my scrapbook is inequalities, and my first post is an Instagram post, from “soft.feminism”, of a screenshot from Twitter. User @MrLawson posted a picture of a list of things 4th-grade boys don't like about being boys. The chapter discusses inequalities that men and women both face including some of the things on the list. The next post is a video about school dress codes. The woman in the video interviews female students at a high school in Kentucky who are fighting the dress code which has very specific measurements for the skirt and short lengths. The video not only talks about the inequalities for these young women, but it also touches on how it impacts the male students as well, saying they often feel insulted by the rules. The next thing is an article that suggests that men use sexist and homophobic jokes because they are insecure about their own masculinity. The chapter talks about men avoiding feminine things in order to boost their masculinity, this may involve putting femininity down. The last item in this section is a video of fathers reacting to their daughters getting catcalled. Catcalling is a common example of an inequality women face. Usually, men are not aware of how serious and scary this experience is unless they witness it happening to loved ones. In this video, it's obvious that they care that it is happening to their daughters but, is that the only way we can get them to understand?

Part III

The next section on my scrapbook is bodies, starting with a short video about the nature vs nurture debate which was discussed in the chapter. The next item is another video that talks about the nature vs nurture debate, but this one goes more in depth and provides claims and evidence for both sides. It also questions whether gender is a social construct or not. The next artifact is an Instagram post from “stayfrostyfob” of a screenshot of a Tumblr post. The image shows two identical babies, one is a “big, strong, boy” and the other is a “little, cute, girl”. The description basically says that there have been experiments where people reacted differently to a babies behavior based on whether they thought it was a boy or girl. When babies cried, for example, people described the “male” babies as being angry and the “female” babies as being scared. The last thing in this section is a video called, “are boys smarter than girls?” it provides information about the differences between the sexes.

Part IV

Next, I moved on to performances starting with a TED talk with a teacher talking about how her kindergarten students taught her about gender. She begins by talking about a student she had in the past named Michael who was extremely shy. She then explains how she bumped into that student who now identifies as female and goes by Mandy. This inspired her to ask her kindergarten students to list the differences between boys and girls. And they, herself included, learned that there weren't many significant differences. The artifact is a video of a guy listing five times schools tried to enforce gender roles. One school made a boy remove his makeup because it was “distracting”. And another school kicked a girl out of prom because she wore jeans. They claimed it went against the dress code, that did not exist. The performances chapter talks about gender rules and when breaking the rules is acceptable. For these students, it was not acceptable for them to break the rules, and for these schools, gender rules and roles are important to maintain. I then posted another video, this one talking about gendered marketing. It points out how companies can sell the same product to men and women by simply changing the packaging, and many other ways they do it. The last thing is something I feel sums up performances, and how silly gender roles actually are, is a drawing of a little boy dressed as Elsa, and a little girl dressed as Spiderman. The writing on the drawing says, “It’s okay for girls to be Spiderman, and it’s okay for boys to be Elsa”. The Instagram account, “activistbitches” posted this image, however, I am not sure if they are the original artist. The image really questions society’s reasoning for specific gender rules.

Part V

I posted artifacts that related to the Intersections chapter, and to start it off I reposted a simple image reading, “Your feminism isn’t feminism unless it’s intersectional”. This was posted by the Instagram account, “idonthatemenchill”. A lot of people who claim to be feminists only care about problems that they face, and do not acknowledge sexism for people of a different race, class, sexual orientation, or ability. The next post comes from the same Instagram user and relates well to the previous post.  It is a screenshot from a tweet from @ThatBoyYouLike, that basically explains how gender fluidity had been widely accepted amongst cultures in the past, and because of colonialism, trans people of color suffer. This chapter talks about how it may be harder for people who aren’t wealthy, white, straight, and able-bodied to express their gender identity. This post provides a potential reason why people of color in countries that dominantly white have a harder time expressing their non-binary gender identity. The next post is a video that explains “white feminism”, or feminism that is not intersectional. It is important that we learn to identify white feminism in order to educate people about intersectionality. The last artifact I have for intersections is an article about intersectionality and stereotypes that harm people. It also discusses how it can be hard for people of minority groups to move past those stereotypes.

Part VII

The last section in my scrapbook is sexualities which talks about hookup and rape culture for not only cisgendered straight people but for those in the LGBTQ+ community. The first thing I posted was a video that questions if hookup culture is real. It provides evidence to disprove that hookup culture is a new thing. The next item in this section is a video interviewing young people from Toronto about hookup culture. They ask about what happens the morning after and how they get people to leave. This video does not say if the students are all straight, but it seems like they are. The next artifact I posted was a video talking about rape culture, which is discussed in the sexualities chapter. The speaker in the video provides a good explanation of rape culture and her own personal experiences. She talks about rape culture and how it impacts men and women, she also provides an example of how it does this. The last artifact I have is a video uploaded by a gay man named, Alex. He talks about hookup culture in the gay community. My previous videos about hookup culture did not seem to be gay-inclusive. From watching this video I figured that this is because straight hookup culture is different from gay hookup culture. The book talks about hookup culture not including people with sexualities other than straight. The books reasoning was that the LGBTQ+ community is not accepted in the straight party scene. This video confirms that gay people experience a different hookup culture, inclusive of LGBTQ+ community. Alex also talks about how hookup culture not being a new thing, like the first video from this section.

To conclude, this gender studies class has opened my eyes and introduced me to new topics about gender I had never been exposed to. I learned a lot from researching these artifacts, and I hope they provide people with the information they need to start to understand the complexity of gender. We live in an era where this information is at our fingertips, it is easy for us to share and educate others with our technology. Things like Gender rules greatly impact the way kids are raised. Future generations will be able to take this into consideration when raising their children. This class has taught me a lot about the binary and just how ridiculous it is. It’s crazy to think that for so long society has made us believe we can only be one thing or the other. That is not the case for many things, especially gender.

[nyklifsondiviiportfolio-blog]

Division II Retrospective

Nyk Lifson 

Hampshire College 2017

Taking Invertebrate Zoology was a great class. We spent a week studying cephalopods and then I got to dissect two sepia officinalis, common cuttlefish. This was a fantastic learning experience where my interest in my own personal gender exploration is realized in marine life. Dwarf male cuttlefish in many species participate in mating rituals where they flash “female” patterns to appear female to pass by large male cuttlefish to deliver their sperm packets to impressed females. Queering of gender happens more often in invertebrates, which is something that binary science does not teach. In school systems we still label parts of plants as having female and male reproductive organs which makes no sense. There are not even two genders within humans, intersex people exist. But, we are taught that this is unnatural? Slipper-shell snails of New England are hermaphroditic and often both reproduce and send off sperm. This is a very common endemic mollusc, yet these are not common facts that are taught? Instead charismatic megafauna is what conservation focuses on. But, what about transgender organisms?

Homosexuality and the blurring of gender lines are extremely common even within mammals. I was able to continue looking into these studies. I feel like this is important work, not that anyone is going to trust studies anyways because radicals will not even believe in climate change. But I am not studying why people stay willfully ignorant, I am lucky enough to be studying parrotfish with supermales and land snails that change their organs to reproduce whenever a mate crosses their path. Humans are the ones lacking in evolution, stuck in a binary. That is why my Div II is still called getting weird underwater. I leave division two needing two more class requirements and a project to complete The Five College Marine and Coastal Science Certificate.

I did not study enough film in these past two years, and that is one of my bigger regrets. I had tried to get into the claymation class being offered this past spring, but messed up my scheduling. I am imperfect. I am not the most organized person. I also am not the best when it comes to due dates. I work on these skills every day, but can only achieve so much when working a job, playing rugby, being a signer, and a full time student. I took Video 1 with Lucretia Knapp, it was a Queer film class where I learned to make a rotoscope. I filmed in interesting abandoned locations and made a music video for my non-binary friend and invited other trans* friends to come into the woods and make art with me. I got to break some bottles, splatters some queers with blood, and had a great time. The editing process went not as well as I planned due to an unforeseen concussion I got playing rugby my 1st spring semester of Div II. I finished my classes that semester and then went abroad over the summer, so everything worked out. Both videos I made in this class I will have links to in my portfolio.

The more important skills I learned in my time at Hampshire are that I am a survivalist. I can and will flourish. I am capable to continuing on. I have to do more work than others to grow and I try hard every day. I will not let my past or who others think I am stop me from living. I will not let people, places, or unknown languages be barriers to my discovery and thirst for knowledge.  

One important part of my growth was that I realized I am an alcoholic. This really stunted me at Hampshire. Many professors told me to take a semester off. I know myself. If I went on medical leave I would not have come back. I would not finish school for years. I wonder what would have happened if I had transferred or left, but I did not. I stuck with my education. I want a degree because no matter what happens to me in this world, no one can take my education from me. I am privileged to have family who can pay for part of my schooling and to have access to a liberal arts college like hampshire. Many of my friends in Kentucky went to state schools and then fell through the cracks. I am grateful to Hampshire. That being said I became the jaded older student I knew I would be. Hampshire is still an institution, so it is inherently racist/sexist/ableist/homophobic/and transphobic. That can be seen in my mostly white professors and being misgendered in evaluations. That is felt on campus. This is all relevant because I withdrew from classes each semester because I had too high of expectations for someone in recovery. I always want to learn more than my workload can truly handle.   

Around 4am the night before my Prose Poetry final portfolio was due I realized how little I have done in the last two years. This was startling. It washed over me. But now in the light of day I see that is not true. I can argue why this should not matter due to being a Hampshire student. I have had a job this year while working, being in recovery, taking classes at three colleges, and living in a trump era. It is difficult to write job applications when all I really am interested in academically is queer fish and dragons. Oddly enough, I just want to be a firefighter or first responder, which is not what I am taking classes for.; I want to someday have enough money to house multiple foster kids. I will most likely not have a legal gender in my home state. And my average life span to beat is 26. I know this is supposed to be about my academics, but I don’t want to go to graduate school.

After reading A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway and Embracing true monstrosity, I gave my character, Iphis wings to fly. I wrote in a dragon myth after learning about Queer dragon-based creation stories from Ancient Ghana. I have inspected my everyday colonialism. Sitting in a mostly white class in Massachusetts. Every cryptid is dragged through the dirt. Looking at geographical mountain ranges and local reptiles in the area. Dragons are a powerful myth in mosts cultures around the world. Dragons live among humans. Some humans are dragons. We are constantly trying to build from trauma and hurt others. I took took risks and did research for my upcoming DIV III. I am planning on taking an oceanography class next summer. I also am taking two marine science classes next year. I have to live in the science world to have a say in it. But I have a proposal for my research project. I want to draw a coloring book of queer sea creatures. Ones that science talks circles around to make sense of a gender that does not matter. I could title it “Nemo was a lie” but I won’t. Clownfish always have one that is the largest that can lay eggs. They change systems for this rule. The rest are at a certain age changing to what binary-biased-science deems, female.

A degree is one of the few things in life no one can take away from me once I obtain. I could lose a house, car, children, pets, the clothes off my back, but never the knowledge I cultivate. My life may be taken away but never my schooling. I owe it to those who are not fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to go to a liberal arts school, or college in general. That is the argument I have used to stop myself from dropping out. The animosity I have experienced from students and administrators on this campus has made me want to leave on a multitude of occasions. I live off campus and no matter how many times I am offered to drop out I march on towards an oval diploma. Because learning never ends. Neither does my passion.  

I took many classes in preperation for Division III and have been seeking literature for reference in my free time. I have continued to study androgyny in fiction and how race intersects with feminine and masculine imagery.

In my Prose poetry class I did my presentation on Audre Lorde; a black lesbian, poet, and activist. I read speeches and her compilations of poems late at night in the Mount Holyoke Library. My other presentation was on Yusef Komuntakaa and two of his works. He mainly deals with the vietnam war and experiencing cross-generational diaspora.

In Professor Susan Loza’s class I learned about marginalized monstrosity. I read Octavia Butler, Ursula Leguin, and this fantastic article called Punks Bulldaggers and Queers. I wrote about the consumption of bodies and queer people of color. Constructed bodies through diaspora and trauma. I think this needs to be a requirement. Being open minded and respectful of historical oppression that is the elephant in the room in everyday life.  

In Dragon Myths--Global Symbols of of Power at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. I gave a presentation on Both South African cryptids and Eastern European myths. In addition I researched in my free time each week background information at every myth would read. I strengthened my research skills by looking through an anthropological lense. We asked questions about how the victors of colonization might have changed these stories? How do local religions and systems of power influence oral story-keeping? How can typography and endemic species influence these mythological creatures? How do bias’ come into play? How could translations have changed from the primary source?

Learning for learning’s sake is rewarding but hard to explain why my education isn’t a waste of time. I have hated school passionately since I was in middle school. I went to both private and public learning institutions and both seemed full of bull shit. But maybe that is just life? It is not that I do not want to gain knowledge, but the way that normalized education systems go about it makes me want to rip my hair out. That is why I am so grateful to Hampshire. I have been able to follow my interests with very little push-back and a whole lot of understanding. I am not planning on going to graduate school and I sure as hell did not think I would make it this far at any institutional learning facility. The fact I am finishing my third year of college alive, with my head held high, is a goddamn miracle. I was thinking of how to change my Division two contract to seem professional and like I know what I am doing. But, in the last three years the glimmer of truth has show through to the surface; no one at this damn school knows what is going on. So, instead of lying through my teeth, here is a full account of what I have fought tooth and nail to learn.

Invertebrate Zoology with Stan Rachootin was incredible. I missed plenty of class due to it being at 8:35am at Mount Holyoke twice a week and then 9am on Fridays, but I only missed one lab. We studied molluscs for two weeks and one those consisted of cephalopods. Considering in depth interest in cuttlefish, I was overjoyed. I dove into my studies and made it out with an A- in the class. I got to dissect not one, but two sepia officinalis and a multitude of other inverts including a lugworm and a scallop. Stan lent me reading materials on cephalopods including an anatomical guide for sepias. I gained insight into sequential hermaphroditism and how common it is among marine invertebrates and fish. This has sparked a personal study of mine compiling a list of queer marine organisms. There are so many clear instances in science where the gender binary is a hindrance upon data collection. I hope to unpack and then rearrange that data in my own research on creatures such as parrotfish and moray eels.  

I was in over my head in my Conservation Biology class at Amherst College. I made that decision, though. I wanted to be in a 300 level class where I was the only 2nd year compared to the seniors and juniors. My writing was not that great. I was battling my addictions and myself that semester. I missed a presentation and turned in a paper with horribly done citations. I did give two well thought out and researched presentations, one in a group and one by myself. My teacher was not quite impressed with how I presented my work. My final research project was on cuttlefish conservation. No shock there. That class required a post a week on our readings and to read many wordy articles to be discussed in class. I held my own in a room with more experienced Amherst students. Most importantly we all learned how to look for bias and statistical flaws in scientific articles. Which, in turn, helped me in my research.

I am studying video, yes I am including this even though I only took one film class.  I still am passionate about film. I have been doing projects on the side and tried to take multiple classes but either they clashed with my schedule or I was unable to get into them. Independently I have made vlog pieces and an animation. I continue to study film outside of class. In Myth’s of America I did a final project based on Emily Dickinson. I went out into the woods in the pioneer valley for my own work and then experimented with found footage. This piece was a discovery in collaborative work and got me through the grieving process over my past self and my grandfather passing away that semester.

I took a Queer Film class with Lucretia Napp. It was a positive experience. I learned how to make a rotoscope animation, which was very exciting. Then I made a music video for my friend with all non-binary representation in the footage. There was a lot of fake blood and a lot of queers, which is the epitome of a fun film shoot. I was recovering from a concussion I received while playing rugby, so my editing was not my best work. But, I overall am happy with the way it turned out and Cass Hoke, the musician and a dear friend, loved the outcome. In addition, I was exposed to a lot of queer documentary and short film work that I had never seen before. Those influences benefitted my end project.

Creative writing, the book that is a little bird trapped in the cage of my soul and has been begging to fly out. I just needed the key, and that key was Nell Arnold. Being in a room with her I felt like a fraud. I am no artist, and as you can see I have no understanding of grammar rules. Yet, I found myself lucky enough to be one of the 16 people chosen to be in her group. I got to explore characters that I would be friends with. But mostly, I got to listen to Nell. I had never been in a room with someone who made me feel like a better writer by sharing the same oxygen. Her diction is on point and she is ever-so-eloquent. I worked my butt off in that room, editing peer work and trying to not be afraid to write from perspectives that I struggled imagining.

Both of my classes with Thom Haxo were for my mental health. He is the same flavor crazy that I am, so we got along smashingly. I found a niche where I produced upcycled artwork based on my creative writing. I was able to create performance pieces where I would read out loud and interact with the art physically while bringing viewers into the story. This helped me with figuring out my process in designing characters. I am not in school for my art because that is more of a coping skill than something I want to study, but I plan on having illustrations as a final part of my DIV III. Thom’s class boosted me in my confidence with my work and to not be afraid to go with what feels right.  

In Susanna Loza’s class I kickstarted my research for my division three. I read Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway, Wild Seed by Octavia Butler, and The Left Hand of Darkness, and many other valuable works. My final paper looks into depictions of androgyny in science fiction and fantasy. The saddening part was how little representation I found in both research and actual literature I could read. I was hindered by emotional setbacks, rendering me unable to fulfill the amount of time I needed for research and actually writing my paper. I am not pleased with my end work, but I am so glad I was able to spend time in a theory class looking into what I am most interested in. This was a valuable class that opened my awareness and I worked more on my multicultural perspective. Cyborgs are androgynous, aliens can be, scifi full of asexually reproducing being is trans*.

Why did I withdraw from so many classes? First you must know what add drop looks like for me. I start out being enrolled in as many classes as possible, show up to the first class for all of them, and then withdraw from the ones I do not need/like/or can not make it to. After that I often will stay in a larger class load than I can handle because I am optimistic in my goals at the beginning of the semester. I am paying enough money that I try to get my money’s worth from school. This goes south about midway and I will realize that I have either not gone to a class or am unable to keep up with the demands. I withdrew from RAD because it is a gendered self defense program that is partially taught by a cisgendered male. I never went to a single class because of those two reasons. I withdrew from Oceanography because my seasonal depression made it difficult to get out of bed at the ungodly hour of 7am to catch a bus in the morning. I am disappointed in myself because I needed to take Oceanography to for credit in the Five College Marine and Coastal Science Certificate I am working towards, but hopefully I will take the needed class over the summer.

I regret not being a Teacher’s Assistant for Pat, because she is doing great work at Hampshire. Lemelson is a cis-male dominated space that tries to be inclusive, but like most shops, falls short. She is being payed not enough to do so much. I took glass blowing from her and realized that my hands are amazing tools. Pat has been fighting the patriarchy in shops for years by teaching and creating like a badass. I had wish I had had enough spoons to TA that class, but I really needed to take care of myself. The bond we could have explored is a loss I still am saddened by. This is one of my bigger disappointments.  

I am proud of myself for:

Being a Signer of the QCA

Asking for help (writing center/talking to teachers)

Taking classes at all five colleges

(mostly) Navigating the PVTA

I realized that my goals from DIV II were actually just me knowing what I wanted to do during my DIV III. The road to my final projects was confusing and a journey, but I do feel like I cam out the other end with skills for my future. These past two years I have acquired so much self-wisdom, but that is hard to put into an academic context, even though it happened within an academic bubble. So what did I do? I wrote, read, and remained undead. I dreamed and hung out with starfish. I am my biggest critic. But, I have accomplished so much in spite of all of my pitfalls. I am prepared to write a book and make a coloring book my last year. I gained some maturity and learned some valuable life lessons. I figured out my work ethic and found my voice.

[anautisticdragon-blog]

Binary Absolutes

I think I'm finally beginning to understand a wrinkle of the human condition, one I'm unable to name anything other than 'The NT Problem.' It seems to me that the autistic brain is drawn to gradients, it sees not just the stark contrasts of black & white, but many shades of grey between them. The NT mind, on the other hand, enjoys the arbitrary simplism of the binary absolute. Where something is either a perfect state of 1.00 or 0.00. There is no maybe, or perhaps, or "I don't actually know, yet, as I don't possess the information enough to make a call." but rather it is, in an absolute sense, or it is not. This is how the NT mind works, everything fits into the 1 box, or the 0 box. There is no in-between, there is no fuzziness where they might be uncertain. Worse is that they have an absolute confidence in these simplisms. The autistic person holds the ground of "I don't know, yet." but that's incompatible with the NT who needs to hold the 'correct' position for the sake of dominance. Not to actually be correct, mind you, but to be 'correct.' There's a difference between the two and you might have spotted it already. They need to have others convinced that they're infallible, regardless of what reality might have to say on the matter. So they have this cognitive bias that anything disagreeing with their world view is 'incorrect' by default. You see, in the almost klingon-like world view of the neurotypical, that implies weakness. The NT plays social 'games' of dominance where they try to figure out the hierarchy of humanity to see who is the superior NT, thus who can claim the most resources. It's all quite, quite tribal. I know I've spoken of the toxic issues caused by a tribal mindset before, it's not just harping on old topics, it is incredibly relevant. Consider the arbitrary yet absolute binary of Us vs. Them. How about the absolute binary that NT alt-righters use with Man vs. Woman? Not enough? How about White vs. Every Other Ethnicity? Seeing it yet? The 1 is the NT, which is automatically 'good,' and 'correct,' which really means that they think they have the right to dominance. The 0 is 'bad' and 'flawed,' which they believe permits them to exploit said 0 by the very virtue of being 1 rather than 0. Every neurotypical I've ever thought of seems to think like this. One of the most fascinating examples is watching a neurotypical 'debate.' I don't actually mean debate, of course, as it's not rational. It's all very loaded with them, so what I mean here is 'manipulate and convince to join my thought tribe.' "No. You're not agreeing with me. Therefore I can't be explaining myself right, or you must be misunderstanding or misrepresenting me. If that wasn't happening then naturally you'd be agreeing with me." I've seen neurotypicals say this so often that it's wearying, they love to belabour this as they can't get over their own cognitive biases toward their own self. Hands up if anyone sees the problem, here. You, at the back of the class with the funny hat! What's that? They're automatically working from the position that they believe themselves to be infallible and absolutely correct? Precisely! The autistic person is willing to admit they're wrong, they'll own their mistakes, realise their errors, and re-evaluate based upon new data. The NT always sticks by their initial assumption regardless of what new information shows itself, they're so amusingly klingon that they can't change their opinion because that would imply weakness. If they accept that this new information proves whatever position they hold to be wrong? They have to deny it. Can't be weak! So they'll stand by their biases regardless of how one tries to convince them and that's their default state. You can, with great amounts of effort, bring them around to realising that reality is more complicated than their binary inclinations, but you have to do this with them on just about every... single... topic. I found myself getting worn out after about the twentieth time of explaining exactly what's wrong with absolute binary thinking in great detail once again. I think the only way one can escape from this is being introverted or autistic, there's something weird going on in the brain that encourages them to be very binary. They can't see the world in anything other than the sense of a 1 or a 0, and they always want to be 1, they want everything else to be zero. They don't understand that both things could be 1, both could be 0, or both could even possibly be 0.5. Gasp! I explained this in the post where I was detailing an NT's more sexist viewpoints that arose because of this exact sort of thing. So, this kind of thing happens... Neurotypical: They're all towel heads. We shouldn't let them into our country because they'd replace us, they'd cause white genocide by erasing all our culture with their own. We should keep them where they are, away from us. Autistic: Why do you think they're different than us? Are both groups not human beings? I'd say they fall more into an 'us' camp than any other based on those grounds alone. And consider, there have been lots of invasions throughout history -- the saxons and Britain, the colonials and America -- and native cultures still exist. You could have one culture, and another culture, standing beside one another. There's no evidence that one would replace the other. And it would go back and forth like this with the NT just reiterating their position over and over, saying the same thing, and offering no evidence whilst telling everyone they're being irrational for not accepting their truth. Oh, and that we must all be misunderstanding and misrepresenting them because we don't automatically agree with their position. Two autistic individuals can happily disagree. With NTs it's this whole 'game' where if one doesn't acquiesce in some way then it's bad, so everyone must, in their world there can be no 'agree to disagree.' I've asked NTs to do that until I'm blue in the face, out of breath, and so exhausted I'm ready to keel over, dead. Despite my best efforts, am I offered any quarter? Like buggery I am. This is exactly why I don't like NTs. It's also why misdiagnosed NTs are always painfully obvious. Autistic people will always be able to see the world in a more nuanced way that involves gradients rather than arbitrary binary absolutes. It's why autistic people don't fall for marketing because they're just looking for a good product rather than to be a part of some tribe. The NT just wants to be a part of the best 'product tribe,' so to speak, instead of just wanting the best product. This is why marketing works on NTs. They want to be on the 'winning side.' This is why there are social constructs as blitheringly tiresome and boorish as 'console wars' in the first place. Gotta pick that winning side! You have to have that dominance! Can't just pick the best product for yourself based upon your own needs! It's sad that NTs even make this a binary. I wish it wasn't so cut and dry, but it is. Every NT I've ever met has operated on completely rigid thinking involving binary absolutes, as arbitrary as they are. I've often complained about NT simplisms to other autistic people who seem to be every bit as bothered by it as I am. NTs appear ot have less that diversifies them from one another than autistic people do, they're all united in this absolutely rigid, worryingly binary thinking. Then again, there might be yet other brains out there that function differently compared to both NT and autistic brains, so... It's fascinating that cognitive biases are so resplendent amongst NTs, which is why so many of them tend to have religious, political, or other faith or abstracted systems of belief which can be so contrary to reality. This is why you'll find lots of NTs proselytising but no autistic people, it's obvious why. The NT wants more people in their 'religion tribe,' whom they can be of superior rank to, this conversion into the NT's tribe gives them power and superiority over the other person they wished to have it over. It's part of the social 'games' NTs tend to always play. This comes into my hypothesis against that autism and sociopathy are separate spectrums. Not opposite to one another. No. Bad. No dualism. Just two distinct spectrums. There may even be more than two, these are just the two I'm currently aware of. Anyway... Introversion is on the most shallow end of the autism spectrum, and extraversion is on the most shallow end of the sociopathy spectrum. So all introverts have a certain degree of autism, and all extraverts have a similarly certain degree of sociopathy. Again, I didn't classify this, I just noticed it in the very manipulative social 'games' that NTs (extraverts) like to play. In this sense, NT and extravert are really interchangeable, since NT is simply a mind without autism. Which is a mind without introversion, to wit. I would love to find other spectrums out there to truly expand on this as I do believe there are more. I think that there are spectrums we're ignoring involving people with ADD, Down, Parkinson's, and so on, for example. They might have something unusual and incredibly beneficial to offer, too. So, back on topic! Consider, if you will, toxic masculinity and toxic femininity. It's not real. There's only toxic extraversion, which NTs love to peddle. What do I mean? Well, the NT always wants others to be a part of a tribe, in this case it's the 'man' or 'woman' tribe, which has very simplified categories of what the 'man tribe' or 'woman tribe' entails. As such, the NT woman will push other women to wear make-up and use dieting pills, heckling them for being overweight. The NT man will hassle other men for signs of weakness, for having feminine interests, and for being overly intellectual and not aggressive enough. Now consider the NT who's on the alt-right and peddles MRA nonsense, yes? They couldn't even begin to wrap their mind around why a man would ever be a feminist, this makes them a 'man tribe' traitor. Can't help but have me a giggle, here. Sorry. That's how they view it, though, and they'll lash out at anyone for daring to ally themselves with the enemy, the 0 to their 1. And consider the NT who's a trans-exclusionary feminist who'll flip a table at those who 'pander' to transgender people as it allows what the TERF views as a man to enter into their 'woman tribe.' So any woman who allows that is a 'woman tribe' traitor. It's morbidly fascinating seeing this all from the outside, being so completely aware of it and watching them have no self awareness at all. I feel like Uatu the Watcher from Marvel Comics. Forever watching, never to intervene. It reminds me of the dark matter situation, too. Every NT 'scientist' I've spoken with has had the attitude that either you believe (yes, believe, as it's a system of faith rather than a science) in dark matter or you're not one with science. There is no in-between. If you dare even ask questions about the validity of that concept, you're branded as a heretic to be burned at the stake. These days, witches are hunted by NT 'scientists' rather than churches. And it's not like there aren't any good questions out there, either, which would cast doubt on the whole concept of dark matter. Verlinde's theory of how our understanding of gravity might be wrong is a good one, he asks the question of whether gravity coul, perhaps, be emergent? Still, that would suggest the superior NTs are wrong! Haha, perish the thought. Oh, and... BURN THE NON-BELIEVER!!!! Don't buy it? Talk to someone who supports the dark matter hypothesis and ask them for evidence, you'll have fun. It's fascinating because NTs will often say something like 'humans will always automatically default to binary thinking.' Funny, that. You see, they say that kind of thing all the time. That's the sort of thing that leaves us autistic people feeling like we're aliens. We don't default to binary thinking, we prefer spectrums, gradients, and scales. Are we inhuman? We'd be the 0 to the NT's 1, so apparently. That's how that works. I just don't think it's valid to dismiss every other spectrum out there other than the NT one. And I do strongly believe that there are other spectrums. Even if there are only two it doesn't mean that they're a binary, where one is 1 and the other is 0. They're just different from one another in how they function. Regardless, I do believe there are more out there, we need to investigate further to learn. You see?! It's so incredibly easy to not think in binary terms! Well... Unless you're an NT, apparently??? I guess the moral of the story is: Question, don't assert. You'll be smarter for it.

[the-best-is-still-unwritten-blog]

A Brief History... of My Restored Love for Fiction

In reading A Brief History, I was borrowing a book from my aunt to help me get through my summer waiting at airport terminals and taking cute but lonely trips to bars and cafés in between the sights and scenes of continental Europe. Truly, I was exposed to beautiful stories of complex cultures, within themes of poverty and wealth disparity, the growth of gang culture interlinked with politics, cultural divides of tradition and modernity and of American idolisation and western tragedy. Mystifying prose adjoins a showcase of beautiful stories, rich personalities, Caribbean sexualities and refreshing female and queer perspectives. This book is a giant, encompassing a vast range of modern problems from the social, cultural, economic and political, which allows it the grand promise of giving every reader a different story or a fresh understanding. Its context is historically accurate even if such an account is highly fictional; this means it sheds light on modern racism by crudely and hilariously accepting and publicising the true struggles since colonisation, slavery, independence and globalisation.

A Brief History of Seven Killings’ plot revolves around the 1976 failed assassination attempt of ‘the Singer’, who we know to be, Bob Marley. It offers this story through the eyes of ‘slum kids, one-night stands, drug lords, girlfriends, gunmen, journalists and even the CIA’ but in reality, offers much more. Through a number of books within the book - 5 to be exact - each set in a different time and to multiple locations, stories and characters, a most vivid picture of life, never mind Jamaica, is painted. Truly, the patient reader will come to feel for this as real as any textbook history.

One of the most annoyingly effective writing styles for fleshing out such a robust narrative is found by telling the story through a myriad of characters. In such an ambitious book, having characters juxtaposed against another but ultimately linked to the life of Jamaica’s almost omnipotent Singer, the book arrives at a place of joy for a reader who revels in the complexities and variations of humanity. Not just being inclusive and varied, this joint narration gives the reader added reason to continue on through another chapter, another voice, another story, another Jamaica and another world.  Flicking through tense visceral scenes from one character to the next, James offers little time for recovery. Sometimes the divide in characters appropriately furthers the cleavages of scenes and scenery, from heavily cocaine-fed patois to the Americanised yuppie talk of white visitors, from those who live in the Bush or the Ghetto and ‘don’t speak good’ to the suburban and apologetic middle-classes who do. Jamaica is provided as a divisive and divided place, with different and diverging ideas of how to change or flee the so-called ‘shitstem.’ This review will feature a selection of my favourite characters and scenes and thus contains some mild spoilers, I hope this review is taken as my personal understanding and critical analysis as I refute to be asserting anything as fact.

We are introduced to Bam-Bam early, in the first story of the book ‘Original Rockers’, he is one of a number of Jamaican gang-men narrating the book alongside Papa-Lo, Weeper and Josey Wales. Having grown up in what he describes as ‘the Ghetto’, he has been scarred by the inequality of poverty, his life subverted into crime early through desperation, anger and madness. In his first chapter he argues that within poverty is madness and that reason is only for the rich. “Madness that make you follow a man in a suit down King Street, where poor people never go and watch him throw away a sandwich, chicken, you smell it and wonder how people can be so rich that they use chicken for just to put between so-so bread, and you pass the garbage and no fly on it yet and you think, maybe, and you think yes and you think you have to, just to see what chicken taste like with no bone. But you say you not no madman, and the madness in you is not crazy people madness but angry madness, because you know the man throw it away because he want you to see. And you promise yourself that one day rudeboy going to start walking with a knife and next time I going jump him and carve sufferah right into him chest” – Bam-Bam.

Bam-Bam is less than pure, his vision of the world blighted by extreme poverty and a thirst to distance himself from the parents who were viscerally killed in front of him during childhood. Such brutal scenes of violence are further brutalised through the poverty they are set in, as he holds on to his Clarks throughout his loss it becomes an apt metaphor for his hardened clinging to materialism in spite of serious emotional turmoil. His passages succinctly signify the subtlety of violence and the inevitable initiations to gang culture, a lifestyle factor that ultimately leaves him vulnerable, cocaine addicted and imprisoned during various scenes of the book. Personally, I found Bam-Bam one of the least lovable characters, his fiendishness of cocaine and the homophobic suppression of his sexuality offer a number of ways this character denies himself dignity and understanding. His envy of wealth, and the selfishness associated with it, should however be universally understood. In a world where poor means bad and rich means good, he is trapped in poverty (badness) with no education (escape) and understandably, he sees crime not just as the only realistic opportunity to change this but an obvious reaction to his experiences and upbringing.

 From PNP to JLP, Cuban to American, Jamaican to Syrian, Black to White, Young to Old, Expat to Local, Traditional to Modern, Rastafari to Baptist, Religious to Apathetic, Poor to Rich, every vision of Jamaica reeks of the competition of peoples and cultures, ideas and morals. Contemporary issues here are far from ignored, with a seriously post-colonial and modern examination of race and racism presented and the understanding of this reproduced in a multi-ethnic but unarguably black culture, providing us with something as lovely but as barren as mountain scenery, beautifully stark but unarguably pure. Although overt racism has become almost unacceptable, the remnants of black oppression are still found in the global regime of idealising western beauty standards which leads to microaggressions of shadism, even (or more likely especially) in lands with majority black populations.

“Sometimes I think being half coolie worse than being a battyman. This brown skin girl look ‘pon me one time and say how it sad that after all God go through to give me pretty hair him curse me with that skin. The bitch say to me all my dark skin do is remind her that me forefather was a slave. So me say me have pity for you too. Because all your light skin do is remind me that your great-great-grandmother get rape.” – Tristan Phillips

Naively, I did not realise the Marlon James was a queer Jamaican, but in the BBC one documentary, much of his struggle during his youth and time in his homeland was blighted by his inability to accept his sexuality. Still, I wouldn’t define this story as a ‘queer read’, but it wholeheartedly offers broad and unexclusive understandings of masculinity and feminity. Weeper is another Jamaican gangbanger in Copenhagen City, his sexuality can be seen as fluid, Bam-Bam confirms for us that Weeper has homosexual tendencies when we learn of his time in jail.

“Three year in prison and a dick is just another thing to put up your ass.” -Weeper

Accordingly, there is still inequality and a binary to be found in these acts. Bam-Bam, with his hyper masculinised heterosexuality, sees this as a somewhat acceptable due to the unavailability of women, but this is only ever for the active (or dominant) partner.

“Don’t think the man who getting fucked must be the bitch. I shut him mouth and show him what my hole was for. I love you – I don’t mean that, I said.”

Weeper is clever and somewhat inspirational, a ‘ghetto’ kid with a love of books and self-education. His type is doubly conflicted in that he will be seen by many as a samfie gangster, but by his own friends as a bookworm. He leaves Jamaica in 1979 and becomes head of a Manhattan gang that distribute crack cocaine. Here we rediscover his sexuality and his awareness that what he enjoys and wants is not glorified or acceptable, whether in New York or Kingston.

“Think like a movie. This part you put on your clothes, boy wake up (but boy would be a girl) and one of you say babe, I gotta go. Or stay in bed and do whatever, the sheet at the man waist but right at the woman breast. Never going to be a movie with a scene like this bedroom ever. Don’ know. Could go back in bed right now, move in under him arm and stay there for five days […] Lookin’ at what just went up in me last night. Bad man don’t take no cock. But me not bad, me worse”

Another gay character, John-John K is introduced as the story weaves from the broken idyll of Jamaica to the greyer and dirtier New York, where a heap of Jamaicans, like many others, have resettled in an attempt to flee the ‘shitstem.’ But unknowingly, they often find a wholly shitter system with bland food and harsh weather, but the bonus of being anonymous, away and blissfully alone. Here we find good and bad, some characters find traditional employment and culture, often worth the not-so-subtle racism of American society. Others use their lack of morality (or privilege) and connections to the dark side of island life to sell crack cocaine in the neighbourhoods of New York that don’t defy the term ‘well-heeled’ - but much like their prostitutes - would be better described as completely fucking broken heeled. In the fringes of the city, in large derelict brownstone tenements, the crack epidemic of the eighties thrives on the souls of the city’s unloved. While in Jamaica the dabbling of cocaine is to the odd toot on the pipe in New York. This is the end of our story, the effects of violence and drugs complete, Josey shoots out every junkie in a crack den, including one unlucky mother interrupted with a bullet while giving head too busy multitasking with childcare and professionalism to realise. This chaotic scene is beautiful in its Irvine Welsh style brutalism, as Josey goes on a kill streak, oblivious addicts rummage through rubbish for needles in a bacground of desperate prostitutes and their johns being murdered gangland style, too busy with their work or pleasure to pause for final words.

Organised crime in Jamaica fuelling local and political rivalries are not played down and gangs in opposing communities and territories are stuck to a backdrop of serious poverty and marginalisation, seeming all too established to destabilise. Their exploitation by political groups and American influence seems to further fuel their need to escape while contradicting itself in the same breath: How is Jamaica really independent when everyone decent dreams of leaving or has already left? This desire reinforces the motives and storyline of our lone female narrator Kim, who readily pins her hopes on her one night stand with the Singer to result in visa rights and a general rescuing/escape plan. Kim, truly an independent woman, seems to contradict herself in externalising her ability to leave through her sexual and personal relations and never her own volition. Kimmy’s story has it everything it needs to earn her both my respect and my pity. An educated girl, her snobbishness is a reaction to her delicate and insecure nature in a country where she is neither pale nor dark, neither rich nor poor. She is cultured and intellectual, occupied in her fiery mind is a bold sexual energy and she features in scenes of heart-wrenching betrayal, oppression and downright abuse, continually struggling to reinvert herself and repress the situations that shaped her.

Standing outside ‘the Singer’s’ property time after time, she hopes he will recognise her and rescue her. After accidentally witnessing the infamous shooting of Marley and almost killing her father in a retaliation to a beating she receives from him after he finds out about the liaison, she becomes bound to our main storyline and runs away to Mobay with a newfound persona, her new meal ticket (or plane ticket) becoming her white American lover, even though he openly has a family stateside. The failure is hard on the reader, but harder on Kimmy; in desperation she results in paying a hefty amount for her visa, in both cash and her sexuality, before founding a new life in the run down suburbs of multi-cultural New York. Somewhat ironically, it is this move that prompts a rekindling of Kim’s love for her native land, her avoidance and repression ends abruptly in a hungry visit to a Jamaican café and the shocking news of the death of the one of our familiar Kingston gangsters.

Our story is often one of hopelessness and of discontent with the status quo being corrupt politics and rabid cutting inequalities. Of race and class determining who we are and what we do before our personality, intelligence or ideals have even the slightest chance of doing this for us. This is a world where politicians are gangsters and gangsters are political. Escaping the struggles of a post-colonial society riddled with crime and corruption is impossible if it leads to the same again, only with a different accent and a paler face. Our ideas of identity and home are bound to things that are somehow ubiquitous, following us no matter where or how we run and hide. For Kim, running is futile if all we realise is who we aren’t or where we’re not from, no matter how long we stay or how much we change. As she stops for Jamaican food on the way home, a symbolic peace offering to her homeland, she is confronted with her past, one that cannot be erased no matter how many times she changes her name or how much she learns about contemporary American art.

Jamaica is a product of imperialist greed, in this time alone we are told a story of secretive American intervention and the covert operations of the CIA in their dreams to operate a global regime. Jamaica, an island completely changed through slavery and the empires of France and Britain, now faces a new face of imperial force, the United States of America. While the island is a product of brutal colonial histories, it struggles with globalised issues stemming from these same persecutors. Leaving behind racism, homophobia, ethnic and religious tensions the island is now to deal with the growing appetites of American consumers of cocaine as Jamaica serves as an important logistic hub for the Caribbean. Alongside organised crime we find guns, violence and misery. Maybe worst of all, Jamaica is plundered of its traditions, aspirations and ideals as it continues to carry the risk and violence of submitting to helping wealthier, whiter Americans get coked up. Whereas much of the beauty of Jamaica, found in the soulful lyrics of soca and the brilliant white beaches in tourist resorts are exported for a different audience, creating an anger and a disconnect between the internal and external fictions and realities of Jamaica. I guess like Weeper and Kim, Jamaica has been used, like most of us deemed ‘unlucky’ or even just desperate, we have been victimised and we have victimised ourselves. Turning to others for safety and salvation: Kim, Weeper and Jamaica have been failed, their weakness and desperation exploited for the benefit of those more powerful or maybe just more confident (but often more moneyed and paler). A Brief History is (defiantly) not Brief but this isn’t to be criticised; as this History could never be complete; these struggles are not over. There are to be far more killings, real and metaphorical, before it could ever be.

Thank you Marlon, for the education - and the entertainment.

[womens-studies-degree-blog]

Africanism in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”

March 2007

In her essay “Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination,” Toni Morrison discusses the concept of Africanism as an understanding of blackness central to American culture. She argues that a constructed Africanist presence exists in American and Eurocentric literature and serves various artistic purposes. Denied an individual history, this Africanist presence manifests itself in the construction of a white American identity: the juxtaposition creates a binary conceptualization of subject. Morrison explains that “Africanism is the vehicle by which the American self knows itself as not enslaved, but free; not repulsive, but desirable; not helpless, but licensed and powerful; not history-less, but historical; not damned, but innocent; not a blind accident of evolution, but a progressive fulfillment of destiny” (52). Thus, in literature, the Africanist presence is constructed and employed as a misrepresented Other inextricable from the meaning created by the subject (the white American man).

           The dynamics of Africanism in American literature carry negative implications. Morrison argues that the valuation process “has led to the popular and academic notion that racism is a “natural,” if irritating, phenomenon” (7). According to Morrison, however, these implications are masked by the naturalized manner in which Africanism appears in literature. William Shakespeare’s The Tempest demonstrates this phenomenon. In the story, a group of shipwrecked Italian noblemen arrive on an island inhabited by Prospero, a former Italian duke possessing magical powers, his daughter, Miranda, and his two servants: Ariel, a spirit, and Caliban, the only remaining native to the island, described as a “savage.” Using his powers, Prospero manipulates events on the island so that, ultimately, he is granted his dukedom once again, Miranda will marry the king’s son, and they will thereby return to Italy.

The Tempest allows for an examination of Africanism in European literature as the character Caliban represents an African people colonized by the European. The relationship between Caliban and Prospero exemplifies the many uses of the Africanist presence in European literary representation. During lines 310-378 of Act I, scene ii of The Tempest, Caliban argues with Prospero and Miranda about his worthiness as an independent human being. Caliban speaks of his native rights to the land, and Prospero and Miranda scold him in return, reminding Caliban that they civilized him. They argue that not only is he ungrateful, but he attempted to rape Miranda, and is therefore unquestionably indebted to the pair as a slave. An examination of this passage through Morrison’s conceptualization of Africanism reveals that, as a character, Caliban is ultimately denied agency and serves primarily to construct the character of Prospero in various ways.

Despite Caliban’s prominence in The Tempest and his extensive speech throughout the text, the character is denied true agency in subtle ways. In the Act I, scene ii passage, Prospero introduces Caliban immediately as a slave. Although he is a “villain” (I,ii,313), Prospero and Miranda discuss, he “does make our fire, fetch in our wood, and serves in offices that profit us” (I,ii,314-16). Caliban is also readily associated with stereotypes surrounding black savagery, as he is accused of raping Miranda (I,ii,350-1). Thus before Caliban even appears he is reduced to a representation of an Africanist bodily schema. In Frantz Fanon’s discussion of bodily schema in “Black Skin, White Masks,” he reflects: “I was responsible at the same time for my body, for my race, for my ancestors. I subjected myself to an objective examination, I discovered my blackness, my ethnic characteristics” (112). Fanon’s conceptualization of bodily schema illustrates that a black body can serve as nothing more than a site for representation. In this passage of The Tempest, it is evident through Prospero’s introduction that Caliban serves as this site. Therefore his body and, consequently, himself are denied agency.

Shakespeare’s point of view in this passage further evidences the absence of Caliban’s agency. Caliban voices his opinion: “This island’s mine, by Sycorax my mother, which thou tak’st from me” (I,ii,334-335). Nonetheless, the protagonists devalue his opinion through mockery and the power to define Caliban; Prospero and Miranda name him “lying slave” (I,ii,348), “abhorred slave” (I,ii,354) and “hagseed” (I,ii,368), and they decide when he exits and enters. Furthermore, the language spoken by all characters is that of the colonizer, exemplifying the invisibility of Caliban’s history. Thus, despite Caliban’s opinions, the narration does not ultimately belong to the slave character. As Morrison reflects in her analysis of Willa Cather’s Sapphira and the Slave Girl, “this Africanist presence is permitted speech only to reinforce the slaveholders’ ideology” (28). Denied his agency, Caliban serves this purpose as an Africanist presence.

The character of Caliban also serves the construction of Prospero, the protagonist, through a fundamentally colonial relationship. In her discussion of Africanism, Morrison argues that romantic literature explores European fears and anxieties surrounding the desire for freedom. These anxieties appear in the formation of new colonies such as America or Prospero’s island, as there exists a “terror of human freedom—the thing [the colonizers covet] most of all” (Morrison, 37). Therefore Eurocentric romance employs slave identities as both a site for these conflicts to be played out and an un-free presence to highlight the freedom of the master. In The Tempest, Caliban’s slave status posits Prospero as master.

Prospero appears to need validation as a ruler; he possesses magical powers yet still needs a slave. Anne McClintock argues that the leaders of imperial “discovery” suffer from “the fear of being engulfed by the unknown [which is] projected onto colonized peoples as their determination to devour the intruder whole” (27). Prospero’s words to Caliban exemplify this relation; he spurns, “I have used thee, filth as thou art, with humane care, and lodged thee in mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate the honor of my child” (I,ii,348-51). This accusation highlights Prospero’s fear of Caliban’s violence as well as the reassurance of his power over the slave.

In addition to validating Prospero as a master, Caliban’s presence serves to illustrate Prospero as a worthy and superior ruler. Shakespeare employs Prospero’s scolding commands towards Caliban to illustrate his capacity to rule, a masculine quality not effectively revealed through his caring relationship with his daughter. Because only four people inhabit the island, Caliban then serves to convey to the reader that Prospero is a man of great power: as Caliban states when exiting the scene, “I must obey. His art is of such power” (I,ii,375).

Morrison argues that the Africanist presence serves convenient purposes. She states that “it was this Africanism, deployed as rawness and savagery, that provided the staging ground and arena for the elaboration of the quintessential American identity” (44). In this manner, Africanism in Shakespeare’s The Tempest serves to construct and validate both the agency and worthiness of the colonial master. As an Africanist presence, Caliban literally and literarily serves Prospero, the ruler of the island.

References

Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Charles L. Markmann. New York: Grove P, 1967.

McClintock, Anne. "The Lay of the Land: Genealogies of Imperialism." Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York and London: Routledge, 1995. 21-61.

Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.

Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Ed. Gerald Graff and James Phelan. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000.