Another Friday, another glorious excuse to sing Mariah Carey songs in your underwear while you wait for the Greek cheese pie to crisp up in the oven. Make it a great one!
You Should Go or Do or Give
+ Definitely head over to Single de Mayo if you’re in the LA area! Brittani Nichols will be there! Also Molly Adams!
Queer as in F*ck You
+ Lorde Lives: A Conversation with Author, Activist and Life Partner, Dr. Gloria Joseph.
+ The Queer Black Women Who Reinvented The Blues.
+ Rachel: “I thought this would be entirely about gay cis men but it is only like 75% about gay cis men and mentions like two lesbians, for what it’s worth.” How Gay Culture Shaped the Modern World.
+ Gay Themed Movies in India Fight Back Against Taboos.
+ The Early Days of Queer Cinema.
+ This video of a lesbian being forced out of a bathroom by several cops is from last December, but it’s making the rounds now. Obviously these bathroom-focused bills are actually targeting trans women and they’re the most vulnerable here, but this is an example of how ridiculous they are in practice.
+ For a firsthand account of this situation from a trans woman: Mara Keisling’s Interview After North Carolina Arrest.
Doll Parts
+ House GOP Blocks Abortion Access for Troops. This is so fucked up I can’t even find all the words for it!
+ Kristen Griest on Course to Become First Female Army Officer Trained to Lead Troops Into Combat.
+ Ads That Empower Women Don’t Just Break Stereotypes, They’re Also Effective, “So why are we just starting to see them now?”
+ Listen, I like a good empathy lesson as well as the next gal, but wow holy shit, this video! Men Struggle to Read Tweets Sent to Female Sports Reporters.
Like oh are some adult men crying because they had to say “mean” things to a woman’s face in order to illustrate how outrageously fucked up it is that other men voluntarily say these things to women all the goddamn time? Well pin a tail on my ass and call me a donkey WHO COULD’VE GUESSED?? What man among us would’ve thought, of his own volition, “Women exist, and therefore men — on the internet and in person — say and do the most violently misogynistic shit to them, eternally, and it’s very fucked up.” Who?? You’re saying someone had to put together a whole staged situation — one that actually subjects these women to this violence all over again and in living color — for men to wrap their peabrains around the concept that it probably doesn’t feel good to have to wade through this kind of slimy shit on a daily basis? They had to see it on the women’s faces? Had to put themselves in the shoes of trolls who overuse the word cunt and dream of raping and killing random women so they could feel enough visible discomfort that perhaps other men would think twice about being violent trash jackasses? This ranks right up there with the video of men unknowingly catcalling their own mothers. Give me an entire fucking break.
+ Relatedly! I Do Not Need to Be Surprised by Bigotry to be Outraged by It.
+ Teacher Fired for Saying Vagina in Class, and for good measure: Why Teenage Girls Hate Their Vaginas So Much.
+ Oh the gifts just keep coming: Weird Shit People Have Thought About Women’s Bodies.
+ How Beyoncé’s Lemonade Reclaims Rock’s Black Female Legacy.
+ The Agony and Ecstasy of the Ugly Cry. Amen yes.
Saw This, Thought of You
+ #AirbnbWhileBlack: How Hidden Bias Shapes the Sharing Economy.
+ Love and Sex are a Swipe Away, But Finding Friends Digitally Is Still Hard.
+ The Revolutionary Life and Strange Death of a Radical Black Mayor.
+ Enjoy Two Full Hours of Steven Universe‘s Entrancing, Blippy Music Score??!
+ These Linguists Want to Help You Speak Fluent Cat.
+ This is from last year but still interesting! There Are Almost No Black People Brewing Craft Beer and Here’s Why.
And Finally
I already told you to follow The Audubon Society on Instagram because I care about you a lot, so you’ve probably seen some of these photos there already, but JUST IN CASE: 2016 Audubon Photography Awards!
This shot of a sassy looking mousebird is by Nancy Gaudino, and now you know there’s such a thing as MOUSEBIRDS.
I’ve read 3 versions of “the teacher who invoked vagina” so far, (because the situation just baffles me and I pray for some smidgen of logic anywhere), and each time I think the Principal is a d-bag a little bit more. In one article I saw that she had previously been asked to remove a piece of artwork by a student that related to LGBT equality.
I have a lot of feelings about the legacy of queer art on the heteronormative world. I was in London with my parents, and we went to an exhibit that was putting side by side Avedon’s photography with Warhol’s work.
Of course Avedon’s beautiful wide shot of the Factory (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/avedon-andy-warhol-and-members-of-the-factory-30-october-1969-p13101 ) was there, and we started looking at faces to put names on each person in the picture. At some point my mom finds a name she recognizes and says “oh yeah it’s that f****t”. I turn around really quickly outraged but calmly and quietly (in the museum) asks her not to use that slur. She brushes it off saying “well I mean he was selling his body”, to which I replied “so what? it still doesn’t make it ok to use that word” (I didn’t bother explaining to her she even had her slurs mixed up), but she still seemed unbothered, thinking that because she didn’t use it in “the common way” it made it ok.
(i mean this is someone who defended using whore to talk about a woman in politics once because “she deserved it” so).
But anyway I spent the rest of the exhibit thinking about heteronormative people thinking that queer art is interesting or good enough to be looked at, even seen as revolutionary or beautiful, but that these people themselves aren’t worthy of respect and you correcting your own language… talk about exploitation!
oh btw this was in response to “how gay culture shaped the modern world”.
This is such a good point, Chloe!
Marginally off topic but Tate Britain is having a queer art exhibition…guess how many women are in it… Go on…
1.
Ugh. At least I was super pleased about how many women where in the Modern Tate’s exhibition :D. There were a lot of super feminist pieces too, what a delight !
(I meant Tate modern, woop)
On the military abortion situation: how is this even legal? Roe v Wade was a thing, right? Am I just imagining that? I mean, obviously in practice the same thing happens for women around the country in it being damn near impossible to procure an abortion at any stage of pregnancy, but this is making it LITERALLY impossible.
I talked to my grandmother the other day, who joined the Air Force at 17. She planned on being career military, and she did not want children. Birth control at the time was hard to come by, and she ended up getting pregnant a year after she joined. Because she couldn’t get an abortion, she was forcibly kicked out of the military. That was the law at the time: pregnancy meant you were discharged. And honestly, it still happens a lot if the woman isn’t married or partnered.
Once again, the military is shoving women between a rock and a hard place. They’re not making their hatred of the fact that they have to allow women in their forces any less transparent.
i’m not positive but i think it has something to do with the fact that tax money can’t be used to fund abortions. but that still doesn’t make total sense because these women aren’t able to receive an abortion at these facilities even if they pay for it themselves, so what the fuck?
Yeah, it’s somehow tied back to taxdollars and whatnot (I can’t remember how they get into outlawing it even if you use your own money, though I would assume that it would be pretty difficult to obtain for many people, by nature of available providers and ability to take time away from military duties to have the procedure done if it isn’t a medicinal abortion, granted my views may be tainted by living in a state with only a handful of abortion providers and mandatory 24 hour waiting periods…)
Also, unless things have changed in the last year or so without my knowledge, similarly horrible, restrictive laws exist for American PeaceCorp volunteers…. ugh.
Mara Keisling is a total badass! I’m amazed that she could remain calm in such a stressful situation, and even use it as an opportunity to do something good. Can y’all invite her to A-camp?!
But uh… I’ve got a problem with Single de mayo. So cultutrally insensitive towards me as a Mexican-American! (Haha, not really, just being facetious, I love a good pun and don’t think it’s disrespectful at all ?)
Thank you for articulating why that “men reading tweets to women” trope feels so condescending and useless. Ughgh.
Exactly! As if an issue is not really an issue until there are man tears shedded for it.
being kicked out of a bathroom or assaulted has always been on my mind, women as soon as they see me pausing to think, “wait did i go in the wrong door?”. whenever i see anyone, i always say something. my voice gives me away and i try my best to always have my wallet with me. so this has always been a concern, but people having the license to do this….. hurts
YES my wife does the same thing! and when megan and i go to in a restroom together and there’s someone else in there, i instinctively address her using her name so the other person in the bathroom will realize she’s a girl. every single time. it absolutely INFURIATES me that i do this to make someone else comfortable with my wife’s presentation, but then i tell myself that i’m ultimately doing it for megan’s comfort and safety.
the degree to which the onus is placed on trans women and masculine-of-center-presenting women to make other people comfortable is fucking disgusting.
http://jezebel.com/helpful-man-patrols-texas-ladies-room-tells-woman-your-1773882994?utm_campaign=socialflow_jezebel_facebook&utm_source=jezebel_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow
can you imagine, disgust is now a luxury? some idiot decided he needed to make sure this woman wasnt a man. i’m scared to see how bad this is going to get
“i’m scared to see how bad this is going to get”
It’s going to get pretty damn bad unfortunately. I’m not trying be rude or minimize what’s happening to you but this just any day week for many trans women. We try to be nice and say otherwise but the truth is a lot of trans women do not pass so this kind of thing is routine for most of them. Drawing off what happens to them you can realistically expect that in bathrooms and changing areas some GNC cis women are going to be physically assaulted by men and women, verbally harassed, leered at suspiciously, and in gun nutty states maybe even shot. The gun nuts are already sharing meme’s on social media about shooting trans women they catch in “the wrong bathroom”. Bigotry and stupidity go hand in hand so a lot of GNC cis women ARE going to get caught in the, I hope not literal, crossfire.
Some people resort to “holding it” until they can find single occupancy or a low traffic washroom, some people bite the bullet and use the men’s, some use the women’s but keep their head down like a second class citizen and hope for the best, and others proudly saunter into the ladies like they own the place and stand up to whatever abuse is hurled at them. There is no right or wrong answer on how to handle it. You need to do whatever makes you feel the most comfortable and safe. It breaks my heart that is how things are starting to shake out. No woman, trans or cis, should have to wonder if she is going to be beaten or possibly even killed for needing to void her bladder.
The whole bathroom thing is positively horrifying. Time after time after time, cis-men (usually also white and hetero) are the people actually committing violence against the children these “bathroom bills” are supposed to protect, but laws are never made to protect any of US from them.
Yeah, I feel this a lot. I’m mostly angry because things had been getting better! I wasn’t getting harassed as much, and I haven’t had a physical confrontation since I was a child (like 12 years ago) and while I haven’t felt “safe”, it had gotten to the point where nasty words and the threat of security were all I had to face and people weren’t going to assault me (probably because I’m on the larger side of average honestly).
And now. Now. I’m just waiting for the physical threats of violence to come. I’m waiting for someone to pull a gun on me. And there’s a certain form of helplessness knowing that this is a situation where I can’t defend myself if need be because I’ll be painted as the aggressor.
I fucking hate this.
As someone who teaches young men and boys I can entirely see the point of the video of men reading out staggeringly offensive tweets to their recipients (who presumably happily agreed to the whole thing in the full knowledge of possible effects), what I question is the assumption that if you had to read out what you wrote, you’d re-think that tweet. For some maybe yes, but for others I suspect they would happily read out the trash they write to the targets. But the larger point for me would be to catch the writers early enough that they’ve got a shred of empathy left in their brain to spark a ‘let’s think about this’ response.
As to the Audubon society – AS so should run a caption this photo competition!!
this is a good point marianne! a good way of looking at it. i still think that young boys should come equipped with those morals from the get-go and shouldn’t need an awkward video to reach these conclusions, but i see where it could have that effect on some of them, which would be great!
A friend of mine posted the man tears video on Facebook. I ALMOST pasted your reaction to it, but then I remembered that I hate comment wars on FB. Very well articulated, Laneia, thank you.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who didn’t give a single fuck about that men reading mean tweets to women video. For one thing, I’m not sure what it accomplishes. The guys hurling abuse at women everyday would probably just see this video, call those guys pussies, laugh at them and then wish that their whole family was raped, or something.
Grade-a rant, laneia!
This comment has been removed as it is in violation of Autostraddle’s Comment Policy. Repeat or egregious offenders will be banned.
I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not.
yeah me either?
My personal opinion as a trans woman? She’s not being sarcastic. I’ve heard this kind of thing too many times from anti-trans cis women.
Also, this is the same commenter who called the 105 Trans Women on TV article a “weird” article to publish on a site for lesbian women. I think that there’s your answer.
She isn’t. This is what a TERF looks like. They’re still big in LGBT spaces, and they’re the reason I don’t trust cis gays, including this site.
Are you one of those who doesn’t believe that Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson were at the forefront of the StoneWall Riots?
This comment has been removed as it is in violation of Autostraddle’s Comment Policy. Repeat or egregious offenders will be banned.
WTF is even happening???
A temporal displacement?
Invasion of TERF Snatchers?
If it weren’t for the fact you weren’t straight woman, this could almost pass as what a republican in the South would say and do.
Medicalese.
Cause micturate is straight up a from a medical physiology dictionary or they watched the Big Lebowski.
So medicalese or other Lebowskian.
Trans women are real women. Some of them are lesbians. This type of legislation is intended specifically to harm trans people and then other folks get caught in the crossfire. Things were not going well for lesbian and gay rights up until now – please note the slew of legislation in the last year or two that attempts to allow businesses to discriminate against LGBT people.
OH and even if everything was fine for cis LGB people that’s not enough. The goal should be liberation for all of us, not just the most privileged of us. Trans folks should not be getting thrown under the bus so everyone else can be more appealing to bigots.
Yes liberty and justice for all of us, not just some of us.
Not under a deity or a nation’s flag but in civil statue and every day life.
What the what?
Umm…why are you blaming this on transgender people? The reason this is happening is because of transphobic people, not trans activism. Transphobia is tied in with fear of gender nonconformity in general. It all comes down to the “you have ‘insert genitals’ therefore you must be like this” mentality. As a primarily masculine presenting woman, it actually kinda pisses me off you’d even blame the trans women for my suffering. It’s not their fault women like me are suffering. We have a common enemy, and this whole panic by transphobic people is simply bringing out the worst in gender-conforming cis people’s fears. As a general rule, a lot of transphobic people also fear butch lesbians and femme men. Again, it all comes down to the stupid “genitals policing.”
This comment should be hidden. It’s blatantly calling trans women “fake”.
Agreed. Also, this user is leaving similar comments on several articles. That seems like grounds for banning…
The problem with many of the friendship and dating apps is the lack of Android support. Sure most of them say it’s coming soon, but sometimes it takes at least a year before it comes out(HER is a good example). This is kind of key as Android is more user world wide. Not to mention socio-economic thing comes into play when choosing a devices. Sure, there are people who prefer it(like I), but for many Android is the low cost/free option. One can get a 5in size Android phone for under $100 on contract(or even off contract) vs $650 for the base iPhone 6S(less if you go older or smaller SE model). I also understand that iPhone users are willing to spend more money and in turn developers make more money; but, what about people who have android out of budget constraints? Do are these people not looking for new friends or to go out on a date? Why not make both apps at the same time for once? Cause maybe two people on tight budgets become friends and come up with a great idea that brings up their community.
Looks like we need a staff clearing of some hateful comments.
TERF spill in aisle A.A.A
Staff to aisle A.A.A
We have have a TERF spill in aisle A.A.A
A TERF spill, over.
Thank the gods, one of those comments seriously disturbed me and I’m glad to see it hidden.
Both of them did. That sort of hate is inhuman.
Yeah…still confused why the other one isn’t hidden yet. But one of them was especially triggering for me, particularly due to the whole scenario of “my significant other came out as trans so I hate them now.” When I considered transitioning, that was one of my biggest fears. Got into an argument with a best friend (who used to be a boyfriend) over that exact issue. My heart goes out to any trans person who’s been rejected or beaten by a significant other after coming out.
Yeah, I don’t know why the comment hasn’t been removed either. I’ve messaged staff about it.
Crows can be mean. I will give you that. That is why a group of them is called a Murder.
Of course a group of peacocks is called an ostentation.
That is perfect.
Made my day.
Isn’t it? I’m so happy there are little delights hidden in the English language.
And a group of pugs is a grumble.
(Well, since I keep commenting on this sight, might as well make an account)
Seriously though, when I first heard about the HB2 bill I knew crap like this was going to happen. Despite Republicans claims to “protect women” they’re actually screwing over women big time. I knew from the start this trans panic was also going to affect androgynous/masculine cis women and it’ll probably even affect cis straight women who are not conventionally attractive and have “masculine features” (due to inaccurate media portrayals of how trans women look). As I’ve mentioned before, it’s not always that easy to tell if someone is cis or trans by first impressions, but for some reason transphobic people think they know what a trans person looks like and know they’re jumping on anyone who’s gender nonconforming.
I don’t present as masculine as I used to because I realized that my back is terrible and wearing a binder is Bad For It / that I don’t have the life skillz to get my hairz cut Every Single Month (more like once a year, tops)
But when I used to get mistaken for a tween boy
(oh how I miss getting called “buddy” and “champ” and asked to leave the bar!)
Walking into the restroom was a mini panic attack
I can’t imagine what it’s like for Trans women and I can’t imagine what it’s like for all women who aren’t cis and Femme now
After all the recent insanity
Feeling sick to my stomach tonight over this
Also I really do miss my more masc days :( my gender presentation is v all over the place atm and I’m feeling odd about it
Thank you for sharing. As a super femme person I am eternally humbled by my privilege, I wish I knew how to make bathrooms safer spaces for all. I try to take a moment to pause and remind myself that every time I walk carelessly into the women’s bathroom that I am living an experience denied by many ?
i followed that #airbnbwhileblack convo on twitter and was more surprised than i should have been. why do i keep being surprised by racism y’all???
also loving both the articles about black women’s importance in american music history!!
ALSO PLEASE MORE CRYING ARTICLES. formulating a performance art piece about crying in public and i just want to keep reading about people crying in public and seeing people cry in public and just cheer us all on. keep crying babes.
I’m personally a huge fan of crying in my car. Not hiding in my car to cry while I’m at work – getting in the car, and listening to some “old, sad bastard music” (TM jack black in high fidelity), and driving around town weeping my guts out. I see you looking at me, other drivers. I give NO FUCKS.
I had no idea that I needed a gif of Bruce Lee saying “that’s racist!” until right fucking now, thank you so much! Besides the whitewashing thing, I’ve been seeing a lot more overt racism against asians in the last few months and a bunch of media pieces that keep trying to pit asians against black people. Like, y’all don’t understand that we’re smarter than this? No one’s fucking fooled about who’s doing the oppression around here.
This was packed to the brim with great articles and links, Laneia, I love it.