No title available
Jules of Nature
if i look back, i am lost
wallacepolsom
AnasAbdin
Keni
Today's Document
@theartofmadeline
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
No title available
Love Begins
Kaledo Art
dirt enthusiast
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
cherry valley forever
h
Andulka
🪼
titsay
styofa doing anything
seen from Malaysia
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Iraq
seen from United States
seen from Argentina
seen from South Korea
seen from Serbia
seen from Denmark
seen from United States
seen from Australia
seen from Türkiye
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from Türkiye
@breakingmyheartopen
“Todo está por construir. Deberás construir la lengua que habitarás y deberás de encontrar los antepasados que te hagan más libre. Deberás edificar la casa donde ya no vivirás sola.”…
Fue después de haber sido acosada en la calle por un extraño que pensé: “Finalmente sé lo que se siente ser trans”. En cierta forma ese acto legitimó mi identidad disidente. ¿Pero por qué tiene que ser así? ¿Es acaso la violencia un rito de iniciación para cada persona trans?
"El cuerpo es un texto socialmente construido." ~Beatriz Preciado "Pensé que talvez eras una mujer trans; no sabía qué encontraría entre tus piernas." ~Confesión de una pareja Por Gabriela Maldonado…
:: Quiero contar mi historia, el descubrir que no soy mujer aunque eso es lo que se me asignó al nacer por tener una vagina. ::
Mi historia.
When Anthropology Stopped Making Sense
This is an unedited email I composed to a professor explaining the story behind my decision to not finish my master’s and move back to Guatemala. This is also the story of how my heart broke until it opened up, and how I re-gained my connection to self and to my country.
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Hi Trish! It's been almost a year since I left Knoxville and relocated to Guatemala and I can't believe how fast time has gone by! All of this time I've known that I left a few conversations pending when I left Knoxville, including talking with you about why I decided to leave. Maybe my reasons are not important anymore, but I find myself turning to anthropology again in hopes of getting a better understanding of what I'm trying to accomplish now. So I reach out to you for guidance if you have the time to write me a few lines.
But before I get to that, let me tell you the following story of finding anthropology, leaving it and needing it again:
Anthropology completely changed my worldview. More specifically, my friendship with Tony and your classes changed my worldview and for that I'm forever in debt with both of you. Before starting the anthro program I cared about community development and social justice, but having been brought up in Guatemala City (a very polarized society) I was at a loss in trying to decipher how social change was suppose to occur; I was even more confused about what that really meant and how it looked like.
Moreover, at a personal level I felt very disconnected from the world around me. I mostly felt like I had missed the childhood lesson on how to be a social human being because I felt very socially awkward. So when you once told us the story of how as a kid you were convinced that you were sent to earth to study humans I totally understood the feeling; I too felt an outsider. Since you had indeed ended up studying humans, as an anthropologist, I felt like I had found my calling as I longed to understand human society and what makes humans tick.
Through social theory the world started to make sense and I began to understand how social norms (and reality at large) is constructed, inculcated and reproduced, and how it slowly changes through time in ways that go beyond individual action but respond to collectively agreed constructs, mostly imposed and unconsciously accepted. You might remember, I was fascinated with Bourdieu's theories and practice theory was one of the best things that read at that time.
But despite getting this basic understanding of how the world works, I still felt disconnected from the it and from the social struggles happening all over. In the summer of 2012, when I came to Guatemala to do research for my thesis that feeling of disconnect grew bigger as I realized that I was very out of touch with the reality of present day Guatemala, its hegemonic structures and the counter hegemonic movements.
At that time my relationship with Suman, my partner for two years, was one of the few things that made my life seem normal and in a way bearable. That's why when the relationship ended when I returned from Guatemala, I was immediately and immensely depressed. A couple of months later Carlota, the Mayan woman who had raised me and who was my only connection to indigenous Guatemala, passed away. In the weeks prior to her death, she had gotten seriously ill and my family had refused to visit her in her rural village which made me feel angry and guilty that we hadn't been there for her after she had devoted half of her life to care for us.
Depression was pervasive. I felt like my research made no sense in the context of present day Guatemala and I felt like I had no longer had a real connection to my country. Up until that point I had hoped to someday return to Guatemala to live with Carlota and make up for the time I was away and even for all those years that we had lived in the same house but during which our relationship had been marked by classism and racism -- even though I didn't have a name for those structures yet.
Earlier that year, in an Occupy UT meeting, I had met Jayanni and other few activist students. When efforts to get the movement going failed, Jayanni and other girls invited me to be part of a feminist reading group that they were starting. The first time I attended a group meeting was after I had struggled with depression on my own for a few months and had finally started to reach out for help. Trish, I don't know if I can accurately describe how much that group change me, but the language of feminism and my friendship with Jayanni and with a lesbian transgirl, rescued me.
It was until I learned the language of oppression and privilege through intersectional feminist readings, and until Jayanni called me "a person of color" (which I had never considered myself to be, as I grew up as part of a non-racialized privileged group in Guatemala), and until I attended a workshop on transgender issues and began questioning my own gender and sexual orientation, it wasn't until all of those things happened, luckily at around the same time, that I started to understand my connection to the social structures of power that anthropology had made visible to me years before; more importantly, I began to understand my connection to the majority of Guatemala who, unlike me, was indigenous, rural, illiterate, and poor.
At that time I wrote:
Truly discovering myself is discovering myself in relation to this world and its structures of oppression. I have not always recognized how I have been oppressed (marginalized, limited, prevented from being) by the sociocultural space I inhabit. Likewise I have not been aware of how I have oppressed others by unconsciously participating in such sociocultural oppressive space. Now my eyes are open.
Privilege -- economically, racially, educational -- had marked my upbringing in Guatemala, although not entirely. But it wasn't until I explored my identity as member of an oppressed minority in the United States, as a brown latina woman, that I started to unpack the privilege that had taken me all the way to a US higher education institution. It was during that inner exploration that I decided to distance myself from anthropology because it was vital for me to understand my position within the networks of privilege and oppression more than to make sense of anthropological theories.
Although I had once read of our "positionality" as anthropologists in a feminist anthropological article, I still wondered why anthropologist didn't seem to speak of social power using "oppression" and "privilege" as categories of analysis. But at the time I didn't have the energy to ponder more deeply into those questions and much less to make them public. So I simply went directly to the sources of those theories, which initially meant reading Black feminist writers and later, as I delved into queer theory, the tumblr blogs of queer immigrant writers.
Many tears and spiritual awakening later, I decided to quit my master's program and move back to Guatemala because I had come to realize that my soul needed healing from the ways racial, gender and economic privilege and oppression had marked my relationship to self and others. Besides, I needed time and space to nurture the new self that was emerging from underneath repressed feelings and identities.
Now, after being back in Guatemala for 10 months, I openly and proudly identify myself as a queer, anarchist, gender non-conforming individual and I'm happy building community with other like-minded folks. The remnants of my depression are still present, but I have been developing wellness practices that have helped me cope with it (and I honestly think that being away from an academic environment has also contributed to lessen the anxiety). My interest in community development and social justice continue and just recently a couple of friends and I started a popular education center in a small agricultural community in the rural highlands -- a friend is from that town.
I don't know exactly what I need to do this work, but being immersed in a 100% Maya-K'iche' town in a rural setting makes me turn my gaze to anthropology in order to make sense of what happens in this town in the context of larger national events (like the controversial Monsanto Law that was recently passed and was quickly overturned in response to massive strikes and protests, to youth's dreams of migrating north to flee structural and gang violence). I also wonder how is it that a popular education center can contribute to social justice and participatory development (so I look up to the history of the Highlander Center and I have Myles Horton's biography at hand as well).
But Guatemala breathes and moves in ways that go beyond my academically trained mind. Mysticism and magic infuse everyday reality, for better and for worst, and seem to make it incomprehensible to the untrained eye. After 2 or 3 years of taking anthropology classes my eyes are still untrained. Part of me thinks that I could now go back and finish my anthropology degree as I have a better grasp of Guatemalan reality. But to be honest I don't want to leave this place again (I don't think I could take it), at least not for now.
I know I have just mentioned a lot of things in this email, but I wonder if there's any readings or online lectures that you can recommend me. I have, for example, starting re-reading Besteman's Transforming Cape Town and she addresses some of the issues I have mentioned in this email. I specifically wonder if there are other ethnographies, that include discussions on methods, that focus on educational, artistic or other social justice grassroots projects. Or maybe anthropological work that speaks to the structures of (racial, gender, and economic) privilege and oppression?
Thanks for taking the time to read my email. I hope you and Randy are doing well. Tony has mentioned over emails that the department is undergoing a lot of changes and I can only imagine how much work that must mean for you. I hope you are also able to find what you need to care for yourself.
Much love and respect,
Gabriela~
P.D. I think that one of the issues with anthropology and anthropologists is that we tend to see ourselves beyond society and social norms. Thus, we are incapable of positions ourselves within the networks of oppression and privilege that pervade society, much less to see ourselves as active participants in those networks, which is the privilege of the anthropologist, as Besteman seems to imply.
:: Siento la herida pulsante sobre la superficie de mi piel y como a una loba me atrae el olor de la sangre fresca que emana de ella. Me acerco a olfatear y lamo el flujo que me mantiene con vida; su sabor despierta mi apetito. Muerdo la carne, que es mi carne. Mastico los huesos, que son mis huesos. Soy un banquete irresistible y me devoro ferozmente. "Todo lo que necesitas está en tus huesos", dijo Mamá Nayo. Así, sacio mi hambre animal. Así, sacio mi sed animal. Lamiendo, mordiendo, masticando-me. ::
:: Necesito que me sigas viendo y me sigas diciendo lo que ves. Pues mis ojos no pueden verme ni mis manos palparme. Necesito de tu mirada para saber quien soy, de tus palabras para valorar mi camino. Escucha mis pasos, atiende a mi necesidad, que mis oídos son sordos a mi voz.
La auto-aceptación es una forma de resistencia, el reconocimiento de una verdad interna profundamente conocida, que no cambia por la negatividad ni el maltrato… Muchos de nosotrxs interiorizamos sentimientos de vergüenza sobre nosotrxs mismxs, miedo a ser vistxs y conocidxs como realmente somos… El ser tu mismx sin pedir disculpas no surge de la valentía, sino de la necesidad.
Escuchame, tu cuerpo no es un templo. Los templos pueden ser destruidos y profanados. Tu cuerpo es un bosque -- un follaje frondoso de árboles de maple y flores salvajes de aroma dulce brotando bajo los troncos. Volverás a crecer, una y otra vez, sin importar que tan devastada estés. Listen to me, your body is not a temple. Temples can be destroyed and desecrated. Your body is a forest — thick canopies of maple trees and sweet scented wildflowers sprouting in the underwood. You will grow back, over and over, no matter how badly you are devastated.
- Beau Taplin || T e m p l e s
queer love exists
Queer love exists and it smells like a rainforest roots connected underground and shared nutrients that sustain formations resistant to the normalizing force of gravity.
Queer love exists and it looks like a tardigrade capable of surviving during the silences of the waiting in the in between emptiness under the darkness of the unknown.
Queer love exists and it sounds like echo between self-love and shared love oxygen that flows freely feeding the flames that will consume it.
Queer love exists but I don’t know what it tastes like.
~Fabian Soloasi
el amor queer existe
El amor queer existe y huele a bosque lluvioso a raices conectadas bajo tierra y nutrientes compartidos sosteniendo formaciones resistentes a la fuerza normalizadora de la gravedad. El amor queer existe y tiene forma de tardigrade capaz de sobrevivir durante el silencio de la espera entre en los espacios vacios bajo la oscuridad de lo desconocido. El amor queer existe y suena al eco entre el amor propio y el amor compartido oxigeno que fluye libremente alimentando las llamas que lo consumen. El amor queer existe incluso en las cenizas que aun queman.
:: Sin contar las veces en que me han acosado verbalmente en la calle (que de hecho son incontables), han habido tres ocasiones en las que las manos o la boca de un hombre han traspasado el perímetro de mi cuerpo sin mi consentimiento. Escribir públicamente sobre esto me aterroriza...
//compasión-con pasión//
:: no quiero que mis palabras tomen tanta forma que dejen de tener sentido. ni que sean bienvenidas por oidos sordos.
quiero que sean mis manos las que digan y que desde mis ojos se escuche mi voz. //compasión-con pasión//
quiero que otras vean su reflejo en mí y se sepan escuchadas-amadas, minúsculas partículas de esta totalidad que aún no comienza a latir.
Suspiro esos suspiros emburbujados y con maripositas alocadas. Pero las mariposas no son mariposas, son palomillas que vuelan apresuradas hacia cualquier fuente de luz y mueren calcinadas en soles electricos. Soy una noche a la que se le niega la oscuridad y encienden velas cuando me ven pasar. Soy una garganta que se quedo muda; la pared fría que no deja avanzar. Quiero verme reflejada en ti pero el espejo está roto y mi sonrisa es tímida. A veces quiero -- una, dos, tres veces, todas las veces -- quiero que te reflejes en mí pero tú no tienes cuerpo. Como las burbujas te esfumas; las burbujas son de jabón, pero ni el jabón limpia ni el viento las detiene.
Para entender las identidades trans* primero hay que saber la diferencia entre identidad de género, expresión de género, sexo biológico, reasignación de sexo y orientación sexual. Aquí les presento una guía básica sobre estos conceptos.
Entre suspiros, mariposas, chicle y sudor
Suspiro esos suspiros emburbujados y con maripositas alocadas Pero las mariposas no son mariposas, son palomillas que vuelan apresuradas hacia cualquier fuente de luz y mueren calcinadas en soles electricos
Me da miedo que mi corazon se derrita y se te pegue a vos como chicle en suela de zapato Aunque el romaticismo hoy se me sale como sudor en dia de verano jeje
En cada soplo y exhalación pierdo una parte de mí En pedazos quiero flotar por el universo y llegar a ti Ser los átomos que vibran en tu garganta cuando ríes Ser la composición química de tu sudor cuando bailas Desintegrarme y dejar de ser para volverme la expansión que persigo Explotemos juntas en la danza erotica del cosmos
"I really am not shy."
Love this outfit!
Son niños y niñas que desde su primera infancia manifiestan ser del sexo contrario al que dice su cuerpo y sorprenden a sus familias por la firmeza con la que defienden su identidad. La sociedad española ha cambiado y las familias de estos menores escucharon a sus hijos (sic) y, la mayor parte de ellas, los apoya e intentan que su vida no sea un infierno. Hay muchos obstáculos que salvar porque los protocolos existentes van dirigidos solo a los transexuales adultos.
Que lindo es conocer sobre estos niños y niñas con una experiencia de vida trans y familias que les apoyan! Aunque me parece erronea la forma en que se habla del género en algunos momentos, en especial género vs. sexo, se puede aprender mucho de este documental, los “expertos”, y las experiencias de las chicas y chicos.
