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Chinese feminists made their own sex ed app

(via Women Take Sex Ed Into Their Own Hands and Phones | Sixth Tone)

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Such ideas resonated with Qing, who spent many uncomfortable nights lying beside her boyfriend after intercourse, dissatisfied and wondering if she could surreptitiously rub one out without him noticing. She knew how to get off on her own. “I had my first clitoral orgasm when I was 10,” she tells Sixth Tone. But she didn’t think to talk with him. “I only thought of one way out,” she says. “I should find a woman instead.” It was in Beijing’s small but vibrant lesbian community in 2011 that she met Zhao Jing, then the editor of lesbian magazine Les+, and later the founder of Yummy.

Women Take Sex Ed Into Their Own Hands and Phones | Sixth Tone

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Women Take Sex Ed Into Their Own Hands and Phones

By day, Qing Yue is a radiologist at a children’s hospital in Beijing. And even when she starts talking about anal beads and spanking, she has the calm, frank, and unhurried manner that you’d expect from a doctor. Behind her clinical demeanor, however, it’s obvious that she has a real passion for women’s sexuality. That’s why she’s the chief sex toy reviewer for Yummy, a Chinese app that gives women a platform to discuss all things erotic and intimate.

Sex talk in mainland China

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There is also a belief among some [trans people] that remaining hidden may prove safer than fighting for change. Mr. C said his critics are worried about being discovered. But he is hopeful that Chinese society is ready.

http://www.sixthtone.com/news/unfair-dismissal-case-puts-transgender-discrimination-spotlight#

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On Monday in the southwestern Chinese province of Guizhou, a labor arbitration court heard China’s first case of unfair dismissal on the basis of transgender discrimination. Although the hearing was inconclusive — a result should arrive in late April — it has succeeded in bringing wider attention to…

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‘Shapeshifting in the Year of the Monkey’, by Lia Incognita

Photo by Jonathan Kos-Reed. Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic Licence.

There’s this game. It’s the sort of exercise you might do as an icebreaker in the first meeting of your direct-action affinity group or whatever. It goes like this:

You tell everyone three facts about yourself – two true, one false.

Everyone tries to guess which is the lie. They discuss their reasoning out loud.

Then you reveal the truth.

So I could say: “I used to be married to a man; English is my first language; I’ve been to every continent except South America and Antarctica.”

PULL QUOTE: You win when the most important things about you are invisible.

I could say: “I’ve never completed a Rubik’s Cube; one time I hitchhiked three thousand kilometres in two days; I’m an only child.”

It’s the sort of getting-to-know-you game where there aren’t supposed to be winners and losers. But if you’re competitive enough—and I am—you can make a win out of anything.

I think that you win when no one guesses your truth. You win by defying expectation. You win when the most important things about you are invisible.

Keep reading

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(by gauche)

I blog here now.

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Invisibility is a relationship, not a characteristic. You can achieve invisibility, so long as you’re only seen by people who don’t know what they’re looking for.

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My piece about gender fluidity and transformative monkey magic. Maybe the second most fannish thing I’ve ever written.

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2015

Just to keep myself entertained on a Friday night, I decided to make a list of some of the things I did last year …

Short-listed for Whitmore Press Manuscript Prize, 2015.

Poem: Lia Incognita, [Untitled], The Lifted Brow, Issue 28, 2015, p 93.

Roundtable: Lia Incognita, Tasnim Hossain, Ava, Peter Paltos and Adolfo Aranjuez in conversation with Lisa Divissi about sex and relationships as people of colour, Plaything, Issue 2, December 2015. [Print]

Performance: Right Now fundraiser featuring Lia Incognita, Maria Tumarkin, Martin McKenzie Murray and Melanie Joosten, Ascot Vale, 10 December 2015.

Presented at the Asian-Australian Studies Research Network conference ‘Mobilities’ at the Immigration Museum, Melbourne, 27 November 2015, with Arjun Rajkhowa and Jessie Richardson. We gave a multimedia presentation on creating our multilingual queer radio series, We Weren’t Born Yesterday, and the complex cross-cultural experiences of queer migrant communities in Australia.

Panel: Our Voices, Changing Cultures, Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health at Footscray Community Arts Centre, 22 November 2015. The panel also featured Dawn Iris Dangkomen, Uma Kali-Shakti, Bex djentuh, and Lisa Sarmas, and followed a creative performance by a group of young LBTIQ women from culturally diverse backgrounds.

Performance: Inside Out at Big West Festival, 21 November 2015. This was a solo poetry feature from my bedroom window onto the street.

Produced Inter Views, a live and recorded talk show with artists and thinkers from the Western suburbs speaking on culture, place and gentrification, as part of Big West Festival, 21 November 2015. The guests included Megan Cope, Ihab, Naup Waup and Liz and Lloyd Patterson. Online (partial audio): https://soundcloud.com/lia-incognita/sets/inter-views  

Commentary: Lia Incognita, ‘No platform for outdated ideas’, Overland, 10 November 2015. Online: https://overland.org.au/2015/11/no-platform-for-outdated-ideas/

Prose: Lia Incognita, Pham Phu Thanh Hang and Arjun Rajkhowa, ‘Queering the Air’, in David Hardy (ed.), Bold: Stories from older lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender & intersex people, Rag and Bone Man Press, Melbourne, 2015, pp 228-231.

Poem: Lia Incognita, ‘Mainland Girls’, Cordite 52 (Toil), 1 November 2015. Online: http://cordite.org.au/poetry/toil/mainland-girls/

Translated Lian Low’s script for Victoria Chiu’s dance work, Do you speak Chinese? into Mandarin and Shanghainese ahead of the performance on 18-19 October at China Shanghai International Arts Festival.

Panel: Masses and the Media: Ensuring equal representation in a changing media environment at RMIT University. Lia Incognita, Adolfo Aranjuez, Evelyn Morris and James Robinson, 1 October 2015.

Essay: Lia Incognita, ‘Things and their makers: From “European Labour Only” to “Ethical Consumerism”’, Right Now, 8 September 2015. Online: http://rightnow.org.au/writing-cat/feature/things-and-their-makers-from-european-labour-only-to-ethical-consumerism/

Essay and poem: Lia Incognita, ‘Consumed without consent’, Writers Victoria, 15 September 2015. Online: https://writersvictoria.org.au/writing-life/featured-writers/consumed-without-consent

Performance: short poetry set as part of a fundraiser for Monash Wholefoods’ Refugee and Asylum Seeker program, 5 September 2015.

Performance: Melbourne Writers Festival Closing Night Party at The Toff in Town. Lia Incognita, Robert Coleman, Antonia Hayes, Michaela McGuire and Jack Colwell, 30 August 2015. Partial video recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4iNCt38Z5Y

Panel: Art/Life at Melbourne Writers Festival. Lia Incognita, Cameron Baker and Esther Anatolitis talking about balancing art and life under late capitalism, 28 August 2015.

Conference: Spoke about intersectional feminism and performed poetry at Macrobertson Girls’ School and Melbourne High School’s joint feminist student conference, 26 August 2015.

Panel: Storytelling and Social Change at Melbourne Writers Festival. Lia Incognita, Dennis Altman and Michael Green with Right Now editor Roselina Press, 25 August 2015.

Poem: Lia Incognita, ‘Floodgates’, featured in the Dear/Hello audio story series, produced by Josie Smart and Izzy Roberts-Orr for the Community Radio Network. Distributed 27 July 2015. Online: http://www.dear-hello.com/

Interviewed on Radio National Life Matters program with Natasha Mitchell about cosmetic surgery and the Asian face, 9 July 2015. Online: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/cosmetic-surgery-and-the-asian-face3a–whose-beauty-ideal3f-v2/6604876

Poem: Lia Incognita, ‘Leaving Traces’, recorded by Izzy Roberts-Orr. Released as part of National Young Writer Month along with an interview with the poet, 29 June 2015. Online: http://www.expressmedia.org.au/blog/nywm-poetry-lia-incognita/

Performance: Words Out West: Alice in Downunderland, Emerging Writers Festival. Featuring Lia Incognita, Stephanie van Schilt, Leni Shilton and Rachel Perks at The Dancing Dog, 28 May 2015.

Event: Co-produced and programmed Reframing Gender, a performance night and art exhibition celebrating trans and gender diverse community and creativity, 16 May 2015. The all-ages event showcased over 20 trans and gender diverse artists and performers to a sell-out crowd.

Produced radio episodes monthly for Queering the Air on 3CR Community Radio 855 AM from June 2012 to June 2015. In 2015 this included a two part special on the arrest and month-long detention of five Chinese feminists, featuring an exclusive interview with one of the recently released women (Wei Tingting): Part one - http://www.3cr.org.au/queeringtheair/episode-201505031500/chinas-feminist-five#sthash.9Fa9TntQ.dpuf  Part two - http://www.3cr.org.au/queeringtheair/episode-201506071500/feminism-lgbt-activism-china-gender-diversity-meets-classical#sthash.c0UzyczN.dpuf

Performance: Captured Whispers puppetry and poetry slam, produced by Black Hole Theatre at Thousand Pound Bend, 17 May 2015. I collaborated with puppeteers Beth McMahon and Michael Bevitt (the indirect Object) who created a beautiful multisensory accompaniment to my poem, ‘Tong Xing’.

Panel: Same Same But Different: GLBTIQ people navigating sexuality, gender and culture, Victorian AIDS Council, held at the Multicultural Hub. Featuring Lia Incognita, Monique Hameed, Gilbert Caluya, Raina Peterson and Shinen Wong with moderator Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli, 30 April 2015.

Performance: Short poetry set at International Women’s Day party, 3CR Community Radio, 8 March 2015.

Panel: Growing Up Chinese in Australia, ACMI, featuring Lia Incognita, William Yang, Benjamin Law and Annette Shun Wah, moderated by Tseen Khoo, 24 February 2015.

Co-ordinated and co-produced We Weren’t Born Yesterday, Queering the Air’s four-part multilingual radio series exploring queer heritage in Arab, Indian, Vietnamese and Chinese migrant communities in Australia. Created at 3CR Community Radio in Melbourne with financial support from the Community Broadcasting Foundation, the series was first broadcast through February 2015 and went on to be rebroadcast on SBS, Joy FM, 4ZZZ and distributed nationally on the Community Radio Network. The series was also a finalist in the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia’s 2015 National Community Radio Awards, for Excellence in Ethnic and Multicultural Broadcasting. Whole series online: www.3cr.org.au/wewerentbornyesterday

Creative Non-Fiction Editor of Mascara Literary Review, Issue 18 (October 2015) and Issue 17 (April 2015).

Vice-President of Peril Asian-Australian arts and culture magazine (from May to December 2015, prior to that was ordinary Board Member).

Member of Programming Sub-Committee at 3CR Community Radio (January-September).

Emerging Writers Festival, May

AASRN Mobilities Conference, November. 

Melbourne Writers Festival Closing Night Party, August.

Inside Out, Big West Festival, November. Photo by Carla Gottgens.

Storytelling and social change panel at Melbourne Writers Festival, August. 

Growing up Chinese in Australia panel, February.

Thank you to everyone who has supported, encouraged and sustained me this year. 

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Last year.

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Let me email you.

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In a live talk show from the bench on Nicholson Street, Lia Incognita asks artists, thinkers and activists from the Western suburbs to share their insights into place, land, community, gentrification, housing and belonging. From the unseen history of here to our fears of what might disappear in the future, we invite you to look beneath, between and within where we are. This event is held on the land of the Kulin nations - the Boonwurrung, Wurundjeri, Wathaurung, Taungarung and Dja Dja Wurrung peoples - with recognition of their continuing culture and sovereignty.

3pm - 4pm, Nicholson St Footscray. More info at the link.

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(via Floodgates - YouTube) My first video! Performing ‘Floodgates’ at Melbourne Writers Festival 2015, on the land of the Kulin nations.

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We can’t afford to see any workers as foreign. We can’t rely on borders, and we shouldn’t entertain the fantasy that they will ever help to protect anyone’s rights. We need a labour movement that has no outside.

Lia Incognita, Things and their makers: from “European Labour Only” to “Ethical Consumerism”, Right Now

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Lia Incognita traces the discourses of patriotism, protectionism and ethical consumerism through the objects in their room.

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THE STING, THE BEES AND OTHER YELLOW-BELLIED SWARMS

by Lia Incognita as Yi-Fen Chou He looked ridiculous, staggering through the blue corridor with my books, an unruly stack behind which only his pink elbows and forehead were visible. I wondered how I’d ever kissed the scraggly hillock of that head. I took all the furniture. He asked if he could keep my name. I thought it was a joke. We’d never married but when I penned angry letters to newspapers I signed them Mrs Hudson. Five years later I find my name, his poem, another paragraph of explanation like so many unasked for paragraphs littering my inbox in dark hours. Am I supposed to say something?

—

1. The context.

2. The original poem.

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We were not at our most interesting during our moments of precolonial innocence, and we need not be “exotic” to have something worth saying to the world.

Angela Serrano, ‘Is the Philippines even an Asian country? (And what would it be if it weren’t?)’, Peril Issue 21 Marginasia

http://peril.com.au/featured/philippines-even-asian/

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"Don’t let yourself be spun into a language of hatred and exclusion, at this hot moment in which it’s deemed OK to support refugees but still condemn migrants. I say refugee, I say migrant, I say neighbor, I say friend, because everyone is deserving of dignity. Because moving for economic benefit is itself a matter of life and death. Because money is the universal language, and to be deprived of it is to be deprived of a voice while everyone else is shouting."