Can you believe Taurus season started on 4/20? What a weekend it’s been! It’s also been a damn fine week, here’s some news.
Films, Fonts, Ancient Sex Toys
Daniels is no stranger to the film world, having directed The Butler and Precious, but Pimp will mark his first role as executive producer. The film has already been shot, and was written and directed by Christine Crokos, so Daniels must be helping out in the post-production process. According to The Hollywood Reporter, he wanted to join the project to “support a new generation of filmmakers with authentic voices and a unique approach to storytelling.”
There’s a feminist font and the letter N is a whip.
IMAGE: SHANNON CONNELLAN/MASHABLE
Take your sexting to a new level!! This emoji ? , also known as a tengu mask, used to be a lesbian sex toy!
A 17th century shunga woodblock printing from Japan depicting two women having sex. One has tied a tengu mask around her waist, and penetrates her partner using its long nose. pic.twitter.com/UxKMksN2t0
— Whores of Yore (@WhoresofYore) February 17, 2018
TriStar Acquires the rights to “Happiest Season” from Clea Duvall and Mary Holland
“In ‘Happiest Season,’ Clea and Mary have come up with a brilliant twist on the Christmas comedy that is laugh-out-loud funny and deeply moving,” said Marty Bowen. “It manages to be both timely and timeless in the best of ways and we think it’s a holiday classic in the making.”
The Janelle Monáe Reader
Dirty Computer comes out this week, and I want to make sure you’re ready.
The film premieres this Thursday on BET and MTV before its internet premiere on Friday.
Tessa Thompson plays Monáe’s love interest!!!!!!!!
Jenna Wortham wrote about Janelle Monáe finding her authentic self for the New York Times Magazine
Monáe, who is 32, told me that she has been circling the themes explored on “Dirty Computer” for at least a decade, but that earlier it felt safer to package herself in metaphors. “I knew I needed to make this album, and I put it off and put it off because the subject is Janelle Monáe.” She’s still having a conversation with herself, she said, about who she wants to be when she’s in the spotlight. The sanitized android version felt more accepted — and more acceptable — than her true self. The public, she explained, doesn’t really “know Janelle Monáe, and I felt like I didn’t really have to be her because they were fine with Cindi.” When Prince died in April 2016, she started to rethink how she would present herself. “I couldn’t fake being vulnerable. In terms of how I will be remembered, I have anxiety around that, like the whole concept about what I’ll be remembered for.”
Here’s a playlist of all the music released so far!
And here’s a playlist of all the videos released so far!
Friends, I hope this roundup leaves you excited and prepared for the upcoming week! Make it amazing, and please block out some time to watch Dirty Computer when it comes out! I love you!
JM forever. I saw her perform live and I cried, there were so many feelings ahah. She crowd-surfed heheh and you know talked to us between sets. Can’t wait for her movie, gonna be epic.
Wow that font is just about the most cis thing ever. “X is for X Chromosome”, seriously?
Every person must have at least one X chromosome. A zygote will not survive without an X chromosome.
Ok but they’re obviously referring to the 2nd of two X chromosomes. See also: the menstrual cup “U” and uterus “T”. I think it’s a valid criticism is all.
You are a living human being, so you (as Jo Jern points out) have at least one X chromosome in every cell in your body. Your X chromosome carries around 800 protein-coding genes, out of the 20,000-25,000 total genes in the human genome. Quite an important thing, honestly. Least we could do is celebrate it in font form.
The website says “Each letter has been designed to call attention to things that either are uniquely experienced by or associated with women.” Like uteri, breasts, and pregnancy? The font is cis feminist trash and the commenters below you defending the use of the X chromosome are willfully missing the point ?
Many women do have breasts, uteruses, and the ability to become pregnant. If this does not include you, that does not mean that the person who created the font has created trash. It means that this person has created something that does not necessarily include trans women, yet might have some value to women who do have breasts, uteruses, and so forth. Not everything having to do with women includes trans women. It does not mean that women cannot or should not create art, fonts, essays, books, plays, films, whatever the case may be, that makes any reference to the experience of having breasts, uteruses, fallopian tubes, vaginas, and so forth.
Maybe think about why you feel the need to invalidate trans women and their observations.
No one is saying that women cannot or should not make art, fonts, etc. that reflect their experiences with breasts, uteruses, and pregnancy. Rather, it seems like folks (myself included) are pushing back against both the historical and continued discrimination of trans women within feminist spaces/language.
It is important to remember that “things that have value” to cis women simultaneously have potential to harm trans women. These things aren’t inherently harmful but they have/are/can be weaponized to cause harm. It is especially painful when this happens in feminist spaces where we theoretically agree to actively work on not causing/ reducing harm.
Final thought: when trans women (and trans folk) express anger and frustration with cis art/culture, their thoughts and feelings are not a personal attack. There is simply no reason to feel defensive. Let’s affirm the trans women in this community who feel safe enough to express their anger by listening and believing them when they raise their voices.
The fact that it is not personal is precisely the point.
The idea that women speaking, writing, and making art about their bodies can somehow be a weapon against transwomen is absurd and astoundingly misogynistic.
Frankly, at this point it appears that the only way to quell claims of “cis trash” is for women to just shut up. Talk about repeating history.
“Women speaking, writing, and making art about their bodies” are not inherently acts of violence/weaponization. However, virtually all transmisogynistic arguments/acts of discrimination and violence are built on the harmful belief that cis women’s speaking, writing, art, appearance, and body parts are “real” and trans women’s expressions are not. This is what I mean when I say cis women’s experiences can be used to cause harm.
When you say things like, “the only way to quell claims of ‘cis trash’ is for women to just shut up”, I feel like you are simultaneously insinuating that Abeni’s experience as a multiracial black trans woman should be “quelled” in the first place and cis women are the “real” victims here. These ideas are profoundly unproductive and transmisogynistic.
Pointing out the misogyny of the claim that a woman’s body can be used as a weapon against anyone, ever, silences no one. It rightly points out misogyny, which obviously can and does cause incredible harm. Such a body is no more or less real than anyone else’s. These are motives you are assigning to me that have nothing to do with what I’ve actually said, as plainly as I could. Pointing out misogyny has nothing to do with whether or not a group of people is more or less real or valid than another group. Abeni does not need to be silenced. Nor does anyone who disagrees with the use of the term “cis trash”. Disagreement is neither invalidating nor silencing.
I’m glad we’re on the same page about not silencing people. I also think that your original comment could still use some reworking in order to make this conversation less divisive and more productive. And to center the act of listening. For example, I wonder how this conversation would be different if you asked why previous commenters felt like the font was “cis trash” instead of jumping to the conclusion that they were saying women can’t/shouldn’t create things around breasts, uteruses, etc.
I hear your concerns about misogyny but I also think you might be misinterpreting what I mean when I say women’s bodies can be used for harm. So let’s take women’s representation in advertisements in the U.S. as an example. Advertising companies take photographs of women’s bodies and manipulate them with photoshop to produce desirable images of women’s bodies intended to sell their products. The final images often represent unrealistic and unattainable body types. Many women across the country inflict varying degrees of harm against themselves (physically and emotionally) in order to see themselves as beautiful and thus valuable. Would you contest that this example reflects advertising companies use of women’s bodies to cause harm?
I was talking about women’s representations of their own experiences through their own eyes. The advertising scenario you describe has absolutely nothing to do with this–it’s filtering a woman’s body through a male gaze, altering it, destroying it, all to sell some bullshit product. The harm being done here doesn’t come from the woman herself, so it is not her responsibility. Her body itself does not cause harm, because it is not truly her body.
The tone of a conversation does not depend solely on one person.
What Abeni said.
As much as I thought the font is awesome, it’s important for me to realize it is not, because it doesn’t include all of us.
It’s a hard balance to achieve for the feminist movement to reclaim women‘s bodies without excluding some of its women.
And the calling out is absolutely necessary for us to gain equilibrium at some point.
I for one, though my organs came out female-identified, don’t appreciate the font at all.
I find it tries to capitalize on the most popular, homogenized issues to gain attention. It was designed by PR firms and it shows. The Religious Rights one makes me shudder. Heck they’re all insulting in their own way.
THAT BEING SAID… Alaina, I _do_ like the whip.
Organs don’t have an identity. They are what they are.
Umm where can I get a print of that woodblock? Asking for a friend
So ready for Janelle’s album!
i have no strong feelings about clea duvall but love mary holland and wild horses! stoked for “happiest season” if only because it might be a xmas movie i actually like <3