– & it was then she began to think of revolution

look at me as if you had never seen a woman before / I have red, red hands and much bitterness

[thecommonwoman]

But you aren't going to get from here to there without discomfort. If you wait for a time when you no longer feel uncomfortable, then you'll be waiting forever, and that time will never come, because the very act of working on the fears and insecurities means being uncomfortable. You cannot challenge a fear without exposing yourself to it.

Ohhh.... Right. That's right. <tattoo this on your brain, self>

From here. Many many moons ago, amatorcula posted this on her livejournal and i hearby give her oodles of fanfare for an excellent link to excellent advice. Even if I have yet to put it into real practice. I will continue to aspire to good communication about my feelings in relationships that I value.

[thecommonwoman]

This is a really interesting article about how white radical queers who have relocated to the Bay Area talk about it as if:

- everyone who lives in the Bay Area is from somewhere else and has the ability to move whenever they want

- everyone experiences the Bay Area as a queer paradise

- and more!

(By the way, before you tune out, non-Bay Area folk, this article is uber applicable to other "queer destination cities," so read on.)

I don't live in the Bay Area anymore, and I can't claim to have grown up there. But I went to high school in the Bay Area and I lived there longer than I've lived anywhere else, so I guess it's the closest to the traditional definition of "home" as I've got. And while I've certainly bought into the idea of SF/Oakland being The Queer Paradise, it's weird to read some of the quoted comments in this article talking about "Bay Time" and "I just left my radical organizing group and now I"m going to my [some other radical queer group], ugh do I live in the Bay or what?" It reminds me of times visiting friends who have moved to Oakland who (unintentionally) make me feel dumb for not knowing about All the Queer Places in the place that I'm purportedly from.

I definitely wasn't very aware of the nuances of this situation before reading this article, and I'm certainly guilty of fetishizing SF/Oakland, but the idea of this radical, white, queer, handkerchiefs-and-spandex identity being broadly attributed to the entire Bay Area is WEIRD. I can't say that I've frequently experienced this happening myself because I haven't really visited a whole lot since I left, but it's WEIRD to hear about it being a thing. A lot of this is because I did not experience my part of the bay area to be a Big Queer Paradise, but mostly it's because, Hello, Most of the Bay Area? Not white. Also, not gay.

Disclosure: I am a white uppermiddleclass highly educated cis currentlyablebodied queergirl who (for the purposes of brevity) grew up mostly in Silicon Valley and didn't even realize she was queer until college. Silicon Valley (which is part of the Bay Area btw) was not a friendly place to be gay or pre-gay or even just politically nonconformist. My highschool now has LGBT-friendly stickers on the doors to all the classrooms, but it wasn't friendly then and even now Silicon Valley does not feel (to me) like a place that is welcoming of queer people who aspire to politics that are any more radical than voting for whatever democrat is currently running. In fact, that is why I never went back after college and why I continue to live in St. Louis where I am constantly frustrated by the queer community and constantly asked "why are you HERE??" when people find out that I am (for the sake of brevity) from California.

Not to mention all the queer people of color and queer working class folk who are actually from the Bay Area who may also have experienced it as not very queer-friendly.

As the author points out, we radical white queers with privilege need to think about who gets marginalized, gentrified-out, and erased from our narratives of community when we essentialize cities, towns, neighborhoods as being Queertowns and Gayborhoods. We need to be accountable for our unearned privilege of being able to waltz into a city we're not from, define Where The Gay Places Are, be as flamboyant as we want without having to worry about what our family/community thinks, and then be able to leave whenever we feel like it. We need to think about who isn't feeling safe/welcomed/belonging to part of our community because they do not have the privilege of transience or because they experience their town fundamentally differently than we do.

[thecommonwoman]

"So, the challenge: how to get across the ideas bound up in the word “privilege,” in a way that your average straight white man will get, without freaking out about it?"

John Scalzi explains how to talk about privilege to those who have it without using the word "privilege." Yesyesyeyes

[thecommonwoman]

From the BBC:

"The city of St Louis, Missouri, remains one of the most segregated cities in the US, according to a study by the Manhattan Institute. But one street in particular has been known to residents as the "dividing line".

Delmar Boulevard, which spans the city from east to west, features million-dollar mansions directly to the south, and poverty-stricken areas to its north. What separates rich and poor is sometimes just one street block.

The BBC's Franz Strasser talked to residents, business owners and pastors on both sides of the street about why things are the way they are."

It's definitely worth watching the video.

[thecommonwoman]

oh, tumblr. i forgot about you already. and now here i am and you're showing me so many pictures of cats that i am reminded all over again of how the internet is 90% composed of pictures and videos of people's cats.

also, this is hopelessly luddite of me i'm sure, but how do i comment on somebody else's post?

[transfeminism]

It’s a sad irony that we promote self-defense classes as a way of combating violence against women, yet many of the women of color, trans and cis alike, are currently imprisoned precisely because they fought back against violence in their homes and in the streets. Too often trans and queer women of color survive violence in their homes and on the streets only to have the police, courts and prison-industrial complex come after them for having the audacity to survive in a world where, as Audre Lorde said in her poem “A Litany For Survival,” they “were never meant to survive”.

The Trans Women’s Anti-Violence Project: Self-Defense and the Criminalization of Survival (via lavender-labia)

[thecommonwoman]

love belongs to those who do the feeling (a review)

well. i took my user id & title from judy grahn quotes, so it seems appropriate to begin with a review of her volume love belongs to those who do the feeling. i forget sometimes how much i love judy grahn. her poetry had such a feeling of community and warmth while at the same time maintaining a sense of history and realism.

Ah Love, you smell of petroleum and overwork with grease on your fingernails, paint in your hair there is a pained look in your eye from no appreciation you speak to me of the lilacs and appleblossoms we ought to have the banquets we should be serving[...] someday. Meantime here is your cracked plate with spaghetti. Wash your hands & touch me, praise my cooking. I shall praise your calluses. we shall dance in the kitchen of our imagination. This volume includes The Common Woman Poems in their entirety, selections from Edward the Dyke, She Who, Confrontations with the Devil in the Form of Love, The Queen of Wands, and the Queen of Swords, we well as some new poems. I'm reading the full length volume of The Queen of Swords right now which is -- hmm, a theatre poem? a poetic play? a modern epic poem? -- based on the Sumerian myth of the goddess Innana/Helen/Ishtar/Astare. However I think I like the poems better a bit more out of context as they are in this volume. My favorite selections though are from Confrontations with the Devil in the Form of Love. Some of the poems in this volume get a little weird occasionally in that Mary Dalyesque way of being too smart and punster-y for me to really follow, but it seems really clear to me that Judy Grahn has been a seminal (if you will) influence on a lot of lesbian/feminist poets, even if she's not as widely known as other writers. Apparently Ntozake Shange was partly inspired to write for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf after reading The Common Woman Poems, Ani di Franco has done readings of "Detroit Annie, Hitchhiking", and her favorite poem is said to be "A Woman Is Talking to Death". Reading some of the She Who poems I see a lot of similarities to some of Alix Olsen's calmer pieces and both The Queen of Swords and The Queen of Wands seem as if they were written while Judy Grahn was sharing a studio with Judy Chicago.

This creative cross-pollination can hardly be a coincidence. Grahn talks of consulting with lesbianfeminist luminaries like Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldua, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Cherrie Moraga, and June Jordan. She says that her writing is so tied to community that "if I don't have [a community] I will go create one, just to have a community to write into; to connect with; to write from." The title of the volume, Love Belongs To Those Who Do The Feeling, is taken from the poem "a funeral plainsong from a younger woman to an older woman" -- a poem Grahn wrote for the funeral of her former partner and longtime friend. It is specifically noted that the poem is for ceremonial use only (e.g. funerals and memorials), not to be simply read, as poetry, in a appreciation of its artistry. It is a poem meant for a very specific purpose: creating a space for queer women to mourn & honor the death of one of their family/women and take on her work and passions as a way of remembering within the community. i will be your mouth now, to do your singing breath belongs to those who do the breathing. [...] now you have left you can be wherever the fire is when it blows itself out. now you are a voice in any wind i am a single wind now you are the source of a fire i am a single fire [...] i will be your heart now, to do your loving love belongs to those who do the feeling. life, as it stands so still along your fingers beats in my hands, the hands i will, believing that you have become she, who is not, any longer somewhere in particular [...] love of my love, i am your breast arm of my arm, i am your strength breath of my breath, i am your foot thigh of my thigh, back of my back eye of my eye, beat of my beat kind of my kind, i am your best [...] i will take your part now, to do your daring lots belong to those who do the sharing. i will be your fight now, to do your winning [...] we are together in my motion you have wished us a bonded life