>What Women Deserve

>cross posed from my RH Reality Check blog

The work of Sonya Renee Taylor is timeless. I first met Sonya Renee when I was living in Maryland and organizing with Visions in Feminism (ViF), a collective of activists who wanted to create an accessible and affordable conference discussing issues of feminisms for folks who were often excluded in such dialogues. At the time Sonya was working at HIPS and beginning to transition into a full-time work as an artist. It was after this transition that I met her, as she was the keynote speaker for ViF 2005.

A few months ago I saw a video of her performing her work “What Women Deserve.” I immediately reached out to her asking for permission to share the video of her performance and the transcript of her poem. This poem can be found in her book A Little Truth On Your Shirt: A Collection of Poems published in 2010 by GirlChild Press. One of the reasons I’m sharing this poem and video is because it is an amazing piece of art that speaks to so much of what many of us value and are seeing continue in our society. It also speaks to women’s work and how art and poetry is a part of a movement and it is work as well!

I also share this because it is important to know that if there is artwork/images/media that we value, and wish to use/support and include in conferences, classrooms or organizations, the creators are approachable! There was a time early in my career where I thought people who I saw online, whose work I read, seemed so far away from where I was. It was not until I began to contact the people who create the media I value did I realize how approachable, close, and excited they are to have folks reach out to them. It has become part of my usual communication to reach out to artists and media makers and share my support and adoration of their work and it has resulted in amazing friendships and building of community. This communication has also resulted in their work becoming more widely known, selling more books, and exposing their work to more people, which they value very much!

I hope you enjoy this piece by Sonya as much as I do and can find ways to use it and her other poems in the work you are doing. There is some language in the video that may not be suitable for some work places. Transcript is after the video.

What Women Deserve by Sonya Renee Taylor

Culturally-diversified bi-racial girl,

with a small diamond nose-ring

and a pretty smile

poses beside the words: “Women deserve better”.

And I almost let her non-threatening grin begin to

infiltrate my psyche

-
till I read the unlikely small-print at the bottom of the ad. 
‘Sponsored by the US Secretariate for Pro Life Activities

and the Knights of Columbus’

on a bus, in a city with a population of 563,000.

Four teenage mothers on the bus with me.

One latino woman with three children under three,

and no signs of a daddy.

One sixteen year old black girl,

standing in twenty two degree weather

with only a sweater,

and a bookbag,

and a bassinet, with an infant that ain’t even four weeks yet

Tell me that yes: Women do deserve better.

Women deserve better

than public transportation rhetoric

from the same people who won’t give that teenage mother

a ride to the next transit.

Won’t let you talk to their kids about safer sex,

and never had to listen as the door slams

behind the man

who adamantly says “that SHIT ain’t his”

-
leaving her to wonder how she’ll raise this kid.

Women deserve better than the three hundred dollars

TANF and AFDC will provide that family of three.

Or the six dollar an hour job at KFC

with no benefits for her new baby-

or the college degree she’ll never see,

because you can’t have infants at the university.

Women deserve better

than lip-service paid for by politicians

who have no alternatives to abortion.

Though I’m sure right now

one of their seventeen year old daughters

is sitting in a clinic lobby, sobbing quietly

and anonymously,

praying parents don’t find out-

Or is waiting for mom to pick her up because

research shows that out-of-wedlock childbirth

don’t look good on political polls.

And Sarah ain’t having that.

Women deserve better

than backward governmental policies

that don’t want to pay for welfare for kids,

or healthcare for kids,

or childcare for kids.

Don’t want to pay living wages to working mothers.

Don’t want to make men who only want to be

last night’s lovers

responsible for the semen they lay.

Just like [they] don’t want to pay for shit,

but want to control the woman who’s having it.

Acting outraged at abortion,

when I’m outraged that they want us to believe

that they believe

“Women deserve better”.

The Vatican won’t prosecute pedophile priests,

but I decide I’m not ready for motherhood

and it’s condemnation for me.

These are the same people

who won’t support national condom distribution

to prevent teenage pregnancy—

But women deserve better.

Women deserve better

than back-alley surgeries

that leave our wombs barren and empty.

Deserve better than organizations bearing the name

of land-stealing, racist, rapists

funding million dollar campaigns on subway trains

with no money to give these women—

While balding, middle-aged white men

tell us what to do with our bodies,

while they wage wars and kill other people’s babies.

So maybe,

Women deserve better than propaganda and lies

to get into office.

Propaganda and lies

to get into panties,

to get out of court,

to get out of paying child-support.

Get the fuck out of our decisions

and give us back our VOICE.

Women do deserve better.

Women deserve choice.

>What’s Up With The Fellas?

>cross posted from my Media Justice column

This week has been filled with a whole bunch of people who identify as men acting out! So, I wonder, what’s up with the fellas this week?

My homegirl Barbara sent me this evolving story of Tom MacMaster, a 40-year old heterosexual married man who is a US citizen posing as a young Syrian lesbian woman named Amina Abdallah Aral al Omari on the blog A Gay Girl In Damascus (go search for it because I’m not linking to it!). He creates this persona and person on a blog he establishes and creates fictitious experiences, the most recent being that she was kidnapped. I remember seeing this story come up on my Tumblr page with an image of what is to be Amina Abdallah Aral al Omari saying she has been kidnapped. Shortly after that exchange, it comes to light that he was making it all up. In an interview with the Guardian, MacMaster speaks on the portrayaland is basically very matter-of-fact regarding his posing. Not only is he posing but he’s also stealing fotos of a woman from Facebook and using them for his story(ies).

His reasoning for doing this was one of selfishness. He wanted to be a lesbian Syrian woman because it was a “challenge” for him as a writer. He wanted to be challenged in the stories he creates. Oh, but folks it gets better! He also created an online relationship with another woman in Canada who alleges the relationship was “serious” and may have been sexual in nature as well. MacMaster says he feels “regret” and talks about how hurt he feels for tricking folks all over the world. He says he “regrets a lot of people feel I led them on.”

Now, who does this man think he is? Why does he think it is alright to do this? Oh, right it’s that little thing called male privilege when it hooks up with white supremacy. This is one example where people create specific messages for specific purposes. An example of how art can hurt other people, communities, and halt/distract social justice movements and agendas worldwide. But we can rest assured “justice will be served” right? WRONG. There are currently NO, I repeat NO legal ramifications for anything that he did/created, even stealing the images of another woman.

What message does this send about the lesbian community? Activists in Syria? Middle Eastern women?

Ok, Syria too far away from home for you? Ok, let’s try the creator of the lesbian news website Lez Get Real who goes by Paula Brooks is actually a man also posing as a woman online. Bill Graber is a 58 year-old heterosexual married veteran from Ohio, posed as a deaf lesbian!

What’s going on here folks? I’m not going to try and “figure out” each man in these stories, I’m far from figuring folks out these days. Instead I’m wanting to understand how claiming an identity and performing what one thinks that identity includes is so appealing. Let’s be honest, since the internets have existed folks have been posing online. Some folks who are against Net Neutrality could use these examples as reasons to put boundaries on the internets, however what about the misuse of power in these scenarios? I’m not talking about folks who go onto sites and build avatars that don’t look like them to play games or build community, or folks in chat rooms who are looking for something specific, or to lure others into giving them things or manipulating them. Those instances, of people lying about who they are online, is old news. But this, using the media in a way that is international and reaches multiple people is something that may be a bit new, at least it is new to me!

However, the main issue about why folks may be attracted to such activities, I believe, remains the same: power. Kira Cocran at The Guardian speaks to this in her article The Weird World of Lesbian Hoaxers where she speaks with several lesbian writers. She reports:

In fact, as the psychotherapist and feminist writer Susie Orbach says, they seem to have been using these lesbian personas as a “double inversion – exploiting the ‘illegitimacy’ of the person they were impersonating to give themselves legitimacy”. In apologising, MacMaster wrote that he had seen “lots of incredibly ignorant and stupid positions repeated on the Middle East” online, and had found that when he, as “a person with a distinctly Anglo name, made comments on the Middle East, the facts I might present were ignored and I was accused of hating America, Jews etc. I wondered idly whether the same ideas presented by someone with a distinctly Arab and female identity would have the same reaction.”
And so he took on the persona of someone whose views are so rarely heard or listened to. Iman Qureshi, a Pakistani lesbian writer, sees this as a very distinct form of egotism. “I think the rise of identity politics – a concerted effort to give marginalised people a voice – has made some white heterosexual men a little paranoid or insecure,” she says, “so they invent an oppression and position themselves as victims. I would assume MacMaster felt ostracised from his ‘own people’, as it were, and as a result took on a persona in which he felt he could be heard without criticism. This seems to me to be a hero complex that’s really a very smug delusion – ‘Look at me, look at how I’m standing up for oppressed people.'”
Both cases, says the feminist writer Beatrix Campbell, can be seen as a portrait of male dominance – men needing to infiltrate discussions where they wouldn’t otherwise have an obvious, and certainly not an authoritative, place. She says that when it comes to MacMaster, “he clearly doesn’t have a clue about what the politics of identity has tried to reveal, which is, first, that we are not all white men, and second, that white men are always treated as the supreme identity. Here he is, doing the same thing – claiming the virtue of representing a repressed condition, in a repressed part of the world, deciding that he is the person who will give that voice. That is the supreme irony. Here we have a boundaryless white American boy absolutely habituated to a kind of supremacy, and reiterating that supremacy through his blog. It speaks to an omnipotence that doesn’t understand its own limits.” As Carolin says, he is ignored the first rule of being an ally, which is “don’t try to speak for the people you’re trying to support”.

Then, I am reminded of Tracey Morgan’s trifling rant, which I’m sure you have read about, has influenced a lot of the writing that has come my way. I’m sure you’ve also read abouthis numerous apologies. He has been working with the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and will be meeting with families of LGBTQI youth who have been murdered because of violence in NYC and returning to Nashville to apologize. Now I could go on a tangent about how GLAAD has it’s own mess to clean up, but for now I’ll stick to Morgan. There’s something going on here and I know I need more time to think on it, but I’m wondering if it is connected to attention. Or rather the impression that people are being seen and heard. I know what it feels like to want to be heard and seen and taken seriously in what you do and believe. So, how does this desire/need become something so harmful and manipulative?

Maybe stories like these are why I’m so thankful for types of media by men like the ones below. The first on is a video of a performer, J-Jon. I have no idea who this young man is to be honest and my searches lead me to different folks, and I’m not sure which to link to so if you have information on this performer please share!

This is my first introduction of him and it came from youth and a teacher at a school where I provided an HIV/AIDS education and prevention workshop last week. After speaking to the students for a class period, the teacher shared with us this artists and song title telling us we would really like the video and song. The teacher shared that the students they work with shared it and they thought we would appreciate it as well. It wasn’t until Tuesday afternoon that I remembered and looked it up. Now I realize why they think we would appreciate this video. Check it out below, there is some language that may not be appropriate for some work places (no transcript, if someone is able to or knows where one is located please share)

I’m sure if I was in another headspace I could provide further discussion and critique of this piece of media. For now, I’m glad I have it as a tool to use when needed. What are your thoughts?

Finally, this weekend I read an article by a Native writer of novels, comics, screenplays and young adult books, Sherman Alexie. If you are not familiar with Alexie’s work may I suggest his latest works War Dances and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I have not ever taught Alexie’s work, mostly I’ve read it for my own pleasure and passed books around among my friends and folks I’ve had the privilege to mentor. Yet, when I managed a literacy project for youth of Color in east Harlem six years ago, young adult novels became a part of everyday work. There has been a lot of talk around young adult novels and Alexie has responded.

In his Wall Street Journal article titled Why The Best Kids Books Are Written In Blood Alexie makes an argument for why young adult novels address difficult and challenging topics (i.e. sexual orientation, teenage pregnancy, addiction, sex, homelessness, rape, -isms, war, survival, etc.).

Alexie argues:

When some cultural critics fret about the “ever-more-appalling” YA books, they aren’t trying to protect African-American teens forced to walk through metal detectors on their way into school. Or Mexican-American teens enduring the culturally schizophrenic life of being American citizens and the children of illegal immigrants. Or Native American teens growing up on Third World reservations. Or poor white kids trying to survive the meth-hazed trailer parks. They aren’t trying to protect the poor from poverty. Or victims from rapists.
No, they are simply trying to protect their privileged notions of what literature is and should be. They are trying to protect privileged children. Or the seemingly privileged.

It is this privilege that I hope my students may be able to discuss when I use this article in my class. How are our ideas of protection ones that are very specific and limited? How do our ideas of protection reach far beyond books, to law enforcement, social expectations, and reproductive justice? Who are we really protecting and why do we think we even have such power?

Power. It’s a topic that has come up a lot in this article, and in this column since it began in 2008. I think this topic is so important. We must realize that we individually and collectively have power. We must also recognize when we use that power over others versus with others. How that power may shift and become oppressive and we must hold ourselves accountable and learn to grow and heal so that it does not happen again. I think some folks, such as the two men above, have yet to really grasp this idea of power and how to use their power in strategic ways that make connections and not stroke their egos. My hope is that we all discover our power and that we choose to use it to create change that will eliminate any form of injustice and oppression.

>The US Maternal Health Care Crisis

>

>Why I Don’t Like Bridesmaids

>cross posted from my Media Justice column

***SPOILERS***

At first I wasn’t going to dish out any money for any movie that wasn’t 100% on my “to see” list, and Bridesmaids wasn’t! Then I had dinner with two great friends last week and one shared how amazing she thought Bridesmaids was. Then I remember reading this post on RH Reality Check on why so many folks enjoyed the film.

Then this same homegirl gifted me two free movie tickets and I told her I’d used them to watch Bridesmaids. And I did. I dragged my partner in crime with me to an almost sold out screening on Memorial Day Monday at 8pm. We were seated in the third row from the screen and I was prepared to laugh. Prior to going to the film, I had called my sister who had shared that she wanted to see it. She too echoed my friend’s enjoyment of the film.

Ten minutes into watching preview trailers and I already realize that I may have made the wrong decision to see the film. The only film trailers for upcoming films that had any people of Color is The Help, a story about Black maids in the US South. It stars an amazing cast of Black female actors, but the narrative still revolves around a racially White woman sharing their stories. I was so tired by the time that preview was over, I threw popcorn at the screen!

Let me be clear what my main issues are with this film: Casting, character development, stereotypes, and issues of class that are represented.

So I don’t really mind who was cast in this film, but how the casting was decided. This film falls into that space that Sex In The City does: being centered in a metropolitan area (in this case Maya Rudolph’s character, Lillian, aka the bride, lives in Chicago) but there are only three people of Color with speaking roles. Lillian’s father is played by SNL legend Franklyn Ajaye (yeah I called him a living legend!), a Black man and is partnered with a racially White woman to demonstrate Lillian’s multiracial identity (and Rudolph’s background). Her father speaks, but only says the same thing: mention the cost of the wedding and how his budget is not very large. Her mother doesn’t speak. Terry Crews is also in the film during a cameo with a speaking role where he yells at the main characters for not paying $12 to join his exercise program in the park and instead do his workout from behind a tree.

So Lillian has no friends of Color. The only people in the film of Color we are lead to believe are her father’s family members and they are sprinkled throughout the film in non-speaking roles. To be fair, I knew that this would be an issue; my friend had mentioned it to me. However, after watching the trailer for The Help, and then sitting through 2 hours of this ish, I about had it with the triflin’ casting!

The character development was less than exceptional. Yes the main focus was Annie (Kristen Wiig) and Lillian. However, there were several other characters that were (more) complicated, layered, interesting and could have been provided with fantastic stories. For example, the married mother of 3 boys Rita (Wendi McLendon-Covey), the newly married, was a virgin until marriage, Becca (Ellie Kemper), and the love interest of Annie, Officer Nathan Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd). These characters had speaking roles and supported the overall progression of the film, yet I was left wonder, how did they come into the story and what happened to them?

There are several racialized jokes as well. One which discusses a tall Black man who stands behind Annie while speaking to Megan (Melissa McCarthy) at the engagement party asking if he (Hugh Dane) is Annie’s “mistaken” partner. As the crowd laughs at the idea of he being partnered with her or the idea that she once again has to admit she is single, Megan says something about having to “climb him” which is very sexual in nature. So far we have seen angry Black men in Terry Crews, over-sexualized Black men in this character, and older Black patriarch that is not happy to spend money.

Other racialized jokes that I choose to remember (I believe I ignored many of them to cope) were during a drive by when Annie was attempting to get Officer Rhodes attention, she passes by him playing what I’ve heard referenced as “shoot a cop Hip-Hop” blasting from her windows as she has lowered the back of the driver’s seat and rolls slowly past him. Thank goodness he ignores her! This made me like his character more.

And then there are the fat jokes. Megan (Melissa McCarthy) plays Lillian’s sister-in-law and her gender expression is one that in our US society is labeled as “stereotypically masculine.” There is nothing wrong with this, let’s be clear. The problem is in having people laugh at what she does and says because the joke is that she is doing and saying these things while being fat. The audience is given permission to (continue to) laugh at fat people for existing. Lillian is comfortable in who she is and her character is what some may call “rough around the edges” in that she says what’s on her mind without filtering. I find this characteristic refreshing, personally. Perhaps the audience is expected to laugh at a fat person who has confidence and self-esteem? When Megan begins to hit on a man, who she thinks is an Air Marshall on the plane, the audience roars. They laugh all over again when we see them engaging in foreplay using food, wow how unpredictable and unique!

Not so ironically, Megan becomes the one character that has the most stability and that connects to Annie when she finds herself unemployed, living at home with her mother, in a fight with Lillian, and depressed. It is Megan who shows support for Annie, who gives her some “tough love” and shares her own story of overcoming challenges. The one character the audience is supposed to laugh at is the same character that is the most present.

Then there is the lover of Annie, an ex-partner who she has decided to remain in a sexual relationship with, a character we are expected to not appreciate. Surprisingly, I found his character one of the most honest. One of the reasons we as the audience (and as women?), are supposed to dislike him is because he is “using” Annie for his own sexual satisfaction. This may be true from some perspectives, especially with the scenes of them in bed we see, yet I believe here we have a very real scenario where people are trying to create a situation to enjoy one another and the woman is demonstrated to be wanting something more/else, thus having a hidden agenda. Yet, because many of the viewers are expected to identify with Annie, we are to not like her lover, when in reality he is being honest with what he is interested in maintaining with her. It is Annie who must be honest with herself and realize this is not the relationship she desires. Instead, we see a stereotypical representation of a man “getting over” on a woman because he is asking for what he wants. Why can’t we see a film with women asking for what they want?! Why do we have to knock people who attempt to have polyamorous and open relationships? How is this an attempt to socialize us to believe monogamy is the best and only form of relationships?

Finally, the class jokes are front, center, and constant. There are many class representations in this film with Annie being at one end (making no money) and Helen (Rose Byrne), one of Lillian’s bridesmaids, being at the other end living a wealthy life. We watch as Lillian decides to have the planning process of the bachelorette parties go from Annie to Helen. We are lead to believe that all of the other characters live middle-class lives that allow them to go on a trip to Las Vegas without having to budget or plan as Annie does.

Aside from having Lillian’s father complain about the cost of the wedding, we also watch as Helen makes very expensive choices for the wedding. She takes Annie’s idea of having a French-themed party for Lillian and claims all the glory. Then she gives to Lillian as a gift a trip to Paris, followed by hooking her up with a French wedding dress designer. This is when Annie erupts. Much like I have experienced (and others in similar situations), when people in certain situations of power and authority, claim the ideas of people who do not have as much power as their own, we get mad.

At the end of the film Lillian is overwhelmed and realizes that Helen has planned the entire wedding considering only her own personal budget, and has an expensive event planned. She cries to Annie as they both bond again and we watch as Helen’s event planning snowballs into a final performance by Wilson Phillips (Lillian’s favorite musical group).

As my homeboy Jerome had shared, he heard this film defined as “Homance” (a play on the term “Bromance”) and asked “on what planet would that be appropriate?” I have to agree. This is one of the reasons the first thing I said to R was “I think I’ve aged out of this type of humor.” After some conversation on the film and what parts we enjoyed the most, R agreed this film is more about class than just a comedy. He said: “some people play too rough, others play too rich.” That exactly sums up this film, and had it had this approach it may have been a completely different film!

I know I’m in the minority in not enjoying this film. And I get that this is a film that makes a lot of people smile and enjoy themselves. It’s the same formula that we see in films focused on men and masked with characters that are women. I’m just over people being happy with the minimum that we are given and expected to enjoy.

>The Origin of the phrase "Women of Color"

>

The Origin of the phrase “Women of Color” by Loretta Ross of Sistersong

>Watch "No Easy Decision" Online

>If you live an analog life as I do and missed “No Easy Decision” for lack of access to cable, or a TV that doesn’t use rabbit ears you may watch it here:

http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:uma:videolist:mtv.com:1654990

No Easy Decision – MTV Shows

>Prevent, Don’t Manage: Women of Color on HIV/AIDS

>

Please join me and several other activists and educators for an important conversation and action planning regarding HIV/AIDS in communities of Color. Bring a young person with you!

Tickets are FREE and you can reserve yours here. Donations are accepted and 100% goes to Love Heals The Alison Gertz Foundation for AIDS Education and the Black Girl Project After School Initiative. The agenda is as follows:

Keynote: Carmen Mendoza; Ms. Kings County 2011 “The Stigma Around HIV/AIDS Testing”
Short Independent Film Screening: “Prevent, Don’t Manage” by Aiesha Turman
Roundtable for Activists and Educators

Sunday December 12, 2010
2:30PM-4:30PM
Center Stage
48 West 21st Street
4th Floor, Buzzer 401#
New York, NY 10010

>Support “To The Other Side of Dreaming”

>

Support “To The Other Side of Dreaming”

In a flash of bold courage and brave vision Mia Mingus and Stacey Milbern began a journey of possibility the likes of which the world… well at least we’d never seen. “..two queer disabled diasporic Korean women of color in the process moving from the South to the Bay to create home and community with each other”?! While surely such a phenomena cannot be new to the universe, have YOU ever heard of such an amazingly beautiful thing?!

This radical act of love and reclamation cannot be performed alone. The costs of moving from coast to coast is daunting for anyone, yet even more daunted when dealing with the realities of our able-bodied and inaccessible world.

In an effort to lend our support to two of our favorite people we are working to help them raise the $12,000 necessary to make their dream a reality.

Energized by the collective spirit that their move embodies, we are calling on our communities to support their vision by giving what ever you can give!

Let’s put our money where our Disability Justice rhetoric is!

As Mia writes, “the reality that once we’re there, there aren’t even going to be that many places we can go to, get into, be with people in. Will we be able to go over to people’s houses to build with them outside of public spaces (the limited accessible public spaces that is)? the knowledge that what we are doing here is finding not just space for us, but for community as well. we are finding home to be intimate with people in, to be queer in, to be women of color in. we are making accessible queer space, accessible queer people of color space, accessible disabled queer people of color space, for all of us; something that i have been yearning for for what seems like forever. places where we can begin to build past these concrete divides of stairs, money, bathrooms, doorways, reading, speaking…silence and exclusion.”

Don’t you want to be a part of this awesome vision?! Don’t you want to build this amazing inclusive community?!

We thought so! So here’s how!

Chip In!

$12,000 is a lot of money but it’s the actual, for real, no frills, cost to get Mia and Stacey to the bay.

* For Stacey and PA to go out to see a house and/or continue house/housing hunting on next trip flight for two – $750
* PA gas and tolls to get to Mia’s house in ATL- $150
* PA food for a week – $125
* PA pay ($150 x 5 days) – $750
* For Mia to go out to the bay again to either do the walk through (since the house won’t be ramped yet) or go and continue looking for housing since Stacey won’t be able to go and look at most things to see if they can be modified to be made accessible flight – $300

House alterations (if they get this house):

* Main ramp: $1,215
* Home modifications: $500

* Personal care attendants at 8 hrs a day $15 a hour for 2 months: $7320. This will be for the 2 months (we hope it’s only 2 months!) when Stacey is moving her state services over to CA.
* Taxi from airport because of no access to van: $40
* Extra crip baggage: $50
* Shipping our stuff: $800

But building collective disability community… priceless!

If you’d like your contribution to correspond with one of the above needs, let us know by leaving us a note with your donation!

And of course, money isn’t the only way you can help! Check out these other creative fundraising ideas that folks have come up with!

* Etsy Sale – Join Teukie Jae in creating jewelry to sell w/ all proceeds going to The other side of dreaming
* Thaura Zine Distro Sale for The Other Side of Dreaming – people are selling books from their personal libraries to make it happen!

If you have other ideas (like you’ve got a moving truck or you and friends can build a ramp) please email us at totheothersideofdreaming@gmail.com!

In radical love,

the Quirky Commune aka 2/3 or simply, Moya & Yolo

>(repost) Call for Submissions!!! Women of Color & Sexuality

>There is STILL time to submit!

I’ve partnered with an amazing media maker and radical educator: SuperHussy to help her find, edit, and publish an anthology focusing on women of Color, sex and sexuality! Here’s the Call for Submissions:

Alright ya’ll, it’s time to expand the reach of Super Hussy Media. You know there;s the blog, and the film projects in the works, but wait, here it comes…our first call for submissions for our annual publication, The Compendium.

Our first issue, The Talk, focuses on self-identified women of Color and how they learned about S-E-X. Here are the details:

The Talk: Women of Color On Sex is an exploration of how self-identified women across the Diaspora came to learn about sex and what it meant to have a sexual relationship. Did your mom, aunty or tia sit you down? Were your homegirls or hermanas responsible for giving you the blow by blow? Was Cinemax After Dark, Youtube or a telenovela your sex ed instructor?

Super Hussy Media seeks fresh and daring writers who can coax the reader into an intimate understanding of not only how they learned about sex, but how that knowledge impacted their sexual exploration. We want submissions that are funny, sad, enraging, and transformational.

The Talk is ultimately about our testimonies regarding how we were taught or chose to learn about our sexuality. How we are continuing to learn, lessons we wish we could share with other women of Color, introspective activities of reflection. This is all about us.

Submission Requirements

• Deadline: July 1, 2010

• No more than 2 previously unpublished short stories per submission

• Simultaneous submissions okay, but notify if your work is accepted elsewhere

• 4,000 words or less

• Double spaced

• Poetry and non-English submissions accepted as long as they are accompanied by an English translation

All contributors will receive a copy of the anthology.

Submissions

All submissions must be sent electronically using .doc or .pdf to submissions@superhussy.com.

Title of submission should be placed in the subject line. Please include your name, email address, mailing address, phone number, and short bio with your submission.

Superhussy Media publishes work that celebrates girls and women of color everywhere!

We look forward to reading your submissions.

>Why I’m Not Celebrating the Pill

>Cross posted from my rh reality check blog post.

I’ve mentioned before that hippie immigrant Puerto Rican parents raised me in the US. One of the messages that was transmitted to me as a young Puerto Rican woman growing up was that the birth control pill kills Puerto Rican women. And it did.

Excuse me if I do not partake in all of the celebration of The 50th Anniversary of The Pill because from my perspective it is still very much a reminder of the exploitation and violation of human rights among Puerto Ricans (and Haitians, and working class women in general) that continues today. Ignoring this reality is easy. Yet, it is a part of my, our history that I can’t simply forget or overlook. If I choose to ignore this history I also choose to ignore the history of activism by members of my community that has helped to create change at an institutional level. Ignoring this reality and history also perpetuates the ideas that historically oppressed communities are not important in the work we do today.

There are some things I’m not ready to ignore or forge and many of those are the power of language. The adjectives used to describe members of my community are horrifying. I don’t care if it was how people spoke “in that time,” they were and remain inappropriate. To describe our homeland as “slums,” “jungles,” and our community as “undesirable,” “genetically inferior,” and “ignorant” is defendable? The ideology “that the poor, uneducated, women of Puerto Rico could follow the Pill regimen, then women anywhere in the world could too” is not condescending to you? Don’t be fooled. There was almost nothing that was “female controlled” or “empowering” about being a part of the trial for many participants, especially after they realized they were taking a medication that they did not know was not approved.

I remember reading the book Sexual Chemistry: A History of the Contraceptive Pill over a decade ago when I was in graduate school. The conversation we had as a group about the book shocked me. While I was sickened by the overt ethnocentrism, classism, ableism, xenophobia, and racism, other classmates were mostly intrigued by what the history was in the US. It was an extremely painful book for me to discuss with a group of 99 percent White people who viewed the history of my community as less than and Othered as fascinating. When I realized a yam in Mexico was a part of the early production of the pill and how the US obtained it, the inclusion of animal products that included pork and how some communities do not consume this product for various reasons, I was floored. Some classmates rolled their eyes at me as if I was making something out of nothing. To this day I’m surprised those people are now working within my community. I hope they have learned something over these ten years about the ways their thought processes isolated the people in the community they now try to provide services to. Engaging in these conversations continue to hurt.

Often, when I bring up this topic, I have people who say to me “but that was the ‘norm’ back then.” Just because it was/is the “norm” does not automatically make it “right.” Others have said to me “Look at how many people and families the pill as helped.” As if the lives of the women who were injured, died, or experienced some major side effects during the trials makes that ok. Who is thanking them? Who is remembering them? Then there are the “We need more of a biomedical model and not just a social one.” I don’t disagree, I just think that a biomedical model can also recognize how the field is constructed and given value by a society that gives it value (and money). I also think a biomedical model can be one that does not completely ignore a community response. Just because it has more money behind it does not make it better than other models.

On anniversaries such as these, I ask that we all take a moment and think about the people who have been directly impacted negatively during trials, especially when historically discussions are not comprehensive and exclude us. Also think about how pharmaceutical companies are still engaging in some questionable actions and continue to purchase land in Puerto Rico, which does bring jobs to the island, yet those jobs are not always permanent.

All these talks about Puerto Rico and our status, do people really think that big money corporations want to lose the ability to work in a “foreign” country with a completely different approach to taxes? Think about it and consider doing some research on your own.