Unpacking Queer

[unpackingqueer]

I'll be switching back to my old Tumblr now that this class is finished. If anyone wants to add me over there, that's fine. My Tumblr name for the other account is justabowlof. 

Mostly that blog is just a conglomeration of re-posts and bookmarks for things I want to read later. But I'll be there, occasionally a pic or two of me, or a poem, might show up. I'm saying goodbye to this account for now. See ya on the flipside. 

[unpackingqueer]

Adopt-a-Diva

Did you know that One N Ten (Phoenix-based org for queer and questioning youth and allies) has an Adopt-a-Diva program for Christmas and holiday gifting? Consider picking up an Adopt-a-diva card at local Phoenix-Area coffee shops, and give a gift to a queer/questioning/underprivileged youth who may not otherwise receive any gifts this holiday! Adopt-a-Diva Cards are available at Urban Beans on 7th & Osborne, among other places. Look for the little pink Christmas tree! Drop off *unwrapped* gifts to One N Ten Admin Offices 2700 N. 3rd St, Suite 2011 by Dec. 19th (Location printed on the back of the card.) 

[unpackingqueer]

Ants- A poem

Now that I don't have to physically face all of you in class every week, I can start posting some more "real" stuff here, hiding behind the safety of the internets. :) Starting with a poem. I broke up with my girlfriend a few months ago. It's still really hard. This is a poem I wrote last month. We've since stopped seeing each other, or at least stopped sleeping together. Which makes things easier in a way (easier to separate emotionally) but also harder (loneliness & loss of the relationship are becoming more real now.) So this is where I am right now. Real shit. Big ugly crocodile tears. Leaning heavily on friends. Learning how to be alone. 

I am purposely posting this here and not on my poetry blog, because there are people who read over there (including the ex- although it's possible she reads here too, I've shared the link with her) who I would not feel ready to have reading this piece. But if you are interested in reading more of what I write, you can pop over there and read. It's a lot of very spiritually-oriented stuff & navel-gazing, as all good poetry should be. (Tongue firmly in cheek.) It's not all so melodramatic and woe-is-me as this one. I'm not sure why this text copied with such weird spacing, but oh well. 

Ants  

copyright 2014 by Omy Keyes (all rights reserved, etc.)

Curled against the smooth shape of your body

one month after we break up

It feels so comfortable and good and I wonder why we had to

end things.

I see an ant carrying more than its body weight and I remember that

was how I felt most of the time when we were together.

 That night I brought you home after reading

the sex poem about you at the Queer open mic

and I made you come so hard you left a sweat stain in the shape of

your body on my bed,

we had to change the sheets before we went to sleep

and in the morning you asked me to breakfast.

Over crepes you asked me if I thought I had made a mistake

breaking up with you.

Looking over my decaf latte, my heart lurched a little into my throat

and as I gulped it down I said “No.

Do you mean because of that poem I wrote?”

and you nodded, “Yeah.”

I said no again, and then I told you about the ant, carrying more

than its share of the weight,

and you sighed that heavy sigh

and even though I could not see your eyes behind your sunglasses

I believed that your sigh breathed the relief that I felt.

You put your hand so kindly, so softly on my upper arm and you said,

“I felt like that too.”

And then it was my turn to sigh a heavy breath of release.

  Then you said “That’s why in that letter I wrote you

I said that line- ‘We tried. Goddamn Did we try.’”

And then we both just sat there

nodding at each other

in mutual

understanding.

Until I started to cry.

One big, Hollywood movie-style tear, rolling down my face, slowly.

You joked, “Are those happy tears?”

And I shook my head no,

and said, “These are because I am feeling again

just how HEAVY that felt and how HEAVY our relationship was.

I weighed too much. You needed so much

and I am sorry. I’m sorry that I needed more but I did.”

And you said, “I’m sorry too.”

And I chuckled at how, one month later we are still sleeping

together and we’re still spending hours processing

that we’re still sleeping together--

“Is this okay for you/do you have expectations/I don’t have expectations/but I want to be

sure that I don’t start to get them by accident/I mean by default/I mean we are lesbians after all,”

And everyone knows how much we like to process shit

and how women can’t have sex with no strings

and how our emotions, tied up with the moons and the tides

can’t ever just be simple. And I’m okay with that.

Because we’re on the same page.

Maybe two sides of the same coin.

And I still fucking love you

and you can’t just turn that shit off.

[unpackingqueer]

Just found this very cool site which has millions of zines (okay, maybe hundreds) listed for sale, if you're interested in finding some cool new reading material, or perhaps getting YOUR zine put up for sale to share with the world!

[unpackingqueer]

"The idealized nuclear family is Mother + Father + kids. Parents are mid 20s to late 30s when the first kids are born (Idealized age increases over the course of the 20th century.) All family members are straight, middle class, middle- to-high- income, able-bodied, mental-illness free, pretty, happy, successful, and white-identified. 

Any short-falling in any of the above categories is one's own or another immediate family member's fault and may be addressed via all known control and escape mechanisms-- preferably administered behind closed doors-- including but not limited to: Verbal shaming ("What will the neighbors think?"), neglect, nurturance-withholding, domestic abuse, sexual violence, nonverbal shaming including the invocation of "family secrets," illicit sexual escapes, alcoholism, and drug addiction. 

All this to say that No, I'm not interested in any of your "gay rights" or "women's rights" or "funny-looking people's rights" that will get me access to or membership in this cultural disaster. I don't want to join the country club and my desire to ride on by has nothing to do with sour grapes. If the universe is made up of stories, not atoms, like Rukeyser said, then I'm an expert in the universe and I know a black hole behind a country-club facade when I see one.

In truth, I want only a few things vis a vis this idealized nuclear family:

To be a threat to it.

To thrive outside its boundaries.

To live to see the end of it.

To use my limited talents and energy to be of whatever help I can to those damaged by its legacy as we begin to heal, to make art, and build lives free from its intrinsic violence."   --Ariel Gore, "Down with Ugly Idealized Family", an editorial of sorts. Hipmama no. 56.

[unpackingqueer]

Nucleus/what is central/the positively-charged mass within the atom/ it's not surprising that we've used the same word/ nuclear/ to describe both the intimate lives we were all supposed to strive for and the greatest threat to humanity we ever created/ this is war/ this is the language of your death/stay alive/ thrive/ if you're going to be a target/ make sure you're a moving target/ the positively-charge heart within the story.

Ariel Gore "Down with Ugly Idealized Family"

[unpackingqueer]

Leslie Feinberg, who identified as an anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary communist, died on November 15.  (link to obituary written by her wife of 22 years.) She succumbed to complications from multiple tick-borne co-infections, including Lyme disease, babeisiosis, and protomyxzoa rheumatica, after decades of illness.

She died at home in Syracuse, NY, with her partner and spouse of 22 years, Minnie Bruce Pratt, at her side. Her last words were: “Remember me as a revolutionary communist.”

Feinberg was the first theorist to advance a Marxist concept of “transgender liberation,” and her work impacted popular culture, academic research, and political organizing.

Her historical and theoretical writing has been widely anthologized and taught in the U.S. and international academic circles. Her impact on mass culture was primarily through her 1993 first novel, Stone Butch Blues, widely considered in and outside the U.S. as a groundbreaking work about the complexities of gender. Sold by the hundreds of thousands of copies and also passed from hand-to-hand inside prisons, the novel has been translated into Chinese, Dutch, German, Italian, Slovenian, Turkish, and Hebrew (with her earnings from that edition going to ASWAT Palestinian Gay Women).

In a statement at the end of her life, she said she had “never been in search of a common umbrella identity, or even an umbrella term, that brings together people of oppressed sexes, gender expressions, and sexualities” and added that she believed in the right of self-determination of oppressed individuals, communities, groups, and nations.

She preferred to use the pronouns she/zie and her/hir for herself, but also said: “I care which pronoun is used, but people have been disrespectful to me with the wrong pronoun and respectful with the right one. It matters whether someone is using the pronoun as a bigot, or if they are trying to demonstrate respect.”

_________________________________________________

I haven't ever read any of Leslie's work, but a lot of the queer writers I respect have mentioned her work as highly influential to them, and so I now have her books on my reading list. 

May she rest in power. I love her last words: “Remember me as a revolutionary communist.”

[unpackingqueer]

I had an opportunity to see Denice Frohman and Dominique Christina, two awesome queer slam poets, perform at ASU law school on Thursday night. Denice performed her poem "Dear Straight People" and I was able to get a pretty good video of it. Please check it out!

[unpackingqueer]

Wow, definitely not something I would have expected to see on Cosmo. Awesome, way to represent Trans* people!

[unpackingqueer]

Olly, Olly, Oxen Free Zine Survey

Welcome! Thank you for your interest in taking part in this survey. This survey is about sexual and gender identities and coming out. Please answer as many questions as you feel comfortable answering. The results will be published anonymously in a Zine called Olly, Olly, Oxen Free. The Zinesters anticipate completing this survey should take about 15-20 minutes of your time.

This zine is being independently published, but it is also an assignment for a class (WST394 Queer Studies) at Arizona State University. No part of your information will be made public other than being published in this zine, and no part of your identifying information will ever be made public in any way. The surveyors have no way of identifying you or your email address (unless you separately send us that information as part of an art or writing submission.) Please do not include any identifying details in your responses.

Thank you for completing the survey all the way through to the end! If you complete the entire survey and would like to have a zine mailed to you after publication, please send an email to [email protected] and include your name, street address, city, state, zip, and the date you completed the survey. (Again, this information will NOT be gathered other than to send your free copy of the zine as a thank you for participating.)

Free copies will also be available at One n Ten, or if you would like to support the cost of mailing free zines to other people, you can pick one up for $1 at Lawn Gnome Books after December 15th. Free copies will be mailed out approximately Dec. 20-27th in a non-marked envelope. The intent of this survey is to identify the various ages at which people come out, as well as the general environment that they came out into and the amount of stress that happens as a result.

Factors such as regional/national location, religious affiliation or nationality/ethnicity are not being considered as a part of this survey, although the Zinesters realize the importance of intersectionality in a person’s choice to come out/and-or delay coming out. Again, we thank you for your participation! Your responses are appreciated!

Please feel free to complete this survey and/or share the link around! The more responses I get, the more thorough and interesting my zine will be. I appreciate your help in spreading the word! --Omy 

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"Un(dis)sing Our Abilities is an experimental sexplicit short movie showcase presented by Periwinkle Cinema that explores sensuality, intimacy, safety and consent through the lens of the less-represented. Curated by Lisa Ganser and Lorin Murphy, this screening implores the erotic pleasure and sexual abilities of those of us dissed, dismissed, (mis)labeled, disabled and generally passed over in mainstream queer crowds. Redefine sexy through sex and sensuality that is healing, empowering and arousing. You’ll get turned on by fat, word associate crip and porn, challenge and subvert your notions of gender, sexuality and self, while exposing what it means to “work with what we got (or not).” Experience images of (ourselves) sexually empowered within our own very different, and always changing bodies. We tell our stories on film and come together to experience each other’s in the dark, then see each other in a new way when the lights come up. This screening had its world premiere June 18th at the QCC’s National Queer Arts Festival in San Francisco and includes the brand new short movie Wall of Fire by and featuring Nomy Lamm and Lisa Ganser."

Virgie Tovar, author and fat-activist extrodinaire, says of the film:

"The film serves as this gorgeous portrait of intimacy between two people who are majorly and clearly hot for each other. One of Nomy's signature layered tracks plays over the scene, which progresses from undressing to full on sexy times.What makes the film so powerful is that it offers a critique of the ideas and representations of fat bodies and disabled bodies in not only mainstream but also queer media and discourse.

Beyond its value as an arousing and intimate portrait, this film has clear political significance as a documentation project. Lisa archives this typically hidden or absent-from-public-memory narrative around the disabled body, the fat body and the multiplicity of queer sex."

I think it is very interesting how this ties into our readings on disability and the disabled body being made to be invisible in typical cultural representations. 

[unpackingqueer]

Why I Posed Nude for Diva Magazine

The final results are gorgeous, I am absolutely in love with the shot that Sophy chose for my feature. I was interested to note it features prominently my stomach rolls and my stomach is an area of...

Bevin is a blogger who is queering the body norm paradigm. Her intro on her blog is this: "I'm Bevin Branlandingham your Femmecee at QueerFatFemme.com, where I chronicle the relentless pursuit of my joy. I believe all bodies are good bodies and work to make the world safe for people to love themselves.”

I love that she is so body positive. All kinds of bodies deserve love and deserve to be recognized as beautiful exactly as they are. I love that Bevin is queer and femme and out and fat and positive about all of those things!

As a mostly-femme queer woman, it’s good to have a role model like her, someone who is out in the world, doing her thing, loudly and proudly. As a thin woman, or as she puts it, a “normatively shaped” bodied woman, I am proud to call her my sister. I know this subject is very Women’s Studies 101, but considering that I know so many people who still diet, who still hate themselves for their rolls, who still think that their life will be better when they just lose that last 10 pounds, I feel like this is still a subject worth talking about. And I think it relates to Queer studies because of how shaking up the body norms is a way of queering culture. There is still a lot that needs to be done here on acceptance, and on loving ourselves and on the “relentless pursuit of joy.” Loving bodies at any size, yes! 

[unpackingqueer]

What is homonormativity?

Before we can talk about homonormativity, we have to talk about heteronormativity. Simply put, heteronormativity assumes that every person is straight. Not just that they are straight, but their...

Lisa Duggan defines homonormativity as: 

HOMONORMATIVITY:  "A politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions, but upholds and sustains them, while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption" (Duggan 2003)

Several of my friends have posted this article on Facebook as a response to the lift on the gay marriage ban in AZ. I was glad to see this idea of homonormativity being shared beyond the classroom. Ever since we have started to talk about this in class, I have begun to shift my views on marriage ideologies. I of course still think that everyone should be able to marry (Or not marry) whomever they please, but I had never really been exposed to the idea that this focus on marriage equality was taking away from more pressing issues.

As one of my friend’s friends put it: “Now that we have passed gay marriage, I am really excited to see all the hundreds of thousands of dollars that gay rights groups have been pouring into the marriage issue be put into fighting for other rights such as the very real life or death issues of HIV/AIDS, homeless LGBTQ populations, etc.”

It’s good to see some issues we have discussed in class translating out into the world and being dicussed outside of an academic environment. I guess I'm just glad that someone cares about this subject other than us. 

[unpackingqueer]

I’m not a girl, I just look like one: femme identity, gender and queerness

Recently I attended a workshop on non-binary gender identities where we were talking about agender identity. I identify strongly as agender and/or trans, because I feel that I don’t have a gender....

At the workshop someone asked how agender people present, as most people’s gender expression stems from their gender identity. Some people answered that they tried to look as androgynous or as genderqueer as possible. I’ve taken a different approach by using the space where my gender expression would be to parody the construct of femininity and reveal it to be performative - created through collective repeated iterations, a copy without an original. I call this femme.  

This interests me greatly because I have long been interested in why people choose to present in the gender-style that they do. I always thought that women who presented “femme” and especially “high-femme” were doing so, not to queer the gender norm, but to intensify it or to conform to it.

I really had no idea that there were people who chose to present in a femme way although they don’t even identify as female in the first place.

It makes sense to me, completely, that if you don’t identify as either male or female that you might take this as an opportunity to queer the gender paradigm. And why not?

Personally, I have tried on wearing more androgynous, or butch/masculine styles, and it always has the result of me feeling like I am dressing up in drag, but I know that for some people, wearing feminine clothing never felt right, and once they started to dress in a more masculine style or androgynous style, they felt more themselves than ever.

But this idea of dressing in a way that is completely out of line with one’s own gender, or that one doesn’t need to present in a way that aligns with one’s gender, that all gender is performance anyhow, so why not use the every day way of dressing as a comment on society’s idea of what “woman” looks like, or what “man” looks like? 

For more critique and learning about femme identities, see http://queerfatfemme.com/, and the other links at the bottom of the squeamish bikini article. 

[unpackingqueer]

10 posts!

This is super-goofy. I had a Tumblr before this class but I never checked the email associated with the account so I don't know if it's something new they're trying out or if they always did this. Did anyone else get this little sticker? 

[unpackingqueer]

Official site for AIDS Walk Arizona

Are you aware that Phoenix has an AIDS Walk coming up on October 20th? Perhaps you have heard of this event but you're not sure why you would want to participate. 

Aunt Rita’s Foundation sponsors this event every year and it’s a great way to give back to your community. The event takes place with entertainment beginning at 7:45 a.m. on the day of the walk, and the 5K walk starting off at 9:10 a.m. (for runners, 5K run begins at 9:00 a.m.) leaving from 3rd Avenue and Washington in downtown Phoenix. There is a light rail stop nearby, so not having a car is no reason not to participate in this walk!

The fundraiser is $25 to register and $30 if you are running. Both registration fees include a 5K t-shirt (Yay! None of us have enough free T-shirts, right?) But the real reason to support this event is that all funds raised go to support several organizations directly supporting people living with HIV/AIDS.

Joshua Tree Feeding Project is a group that provides food boxes to low-income individuals living with HIV/AIDS. Aunt Rita’s Foundation helps to pay their rent when they cannot work. The HIV/AIDS Law Project helps people with legal issues related to discrimination/housing/job loss, etc.

Government funding for HIV is down, as with most other things, and the costs of living with HIV can be very high with a single medication running as much as $1000-$1500 per month.

Please consider attending this important event. You can even bring your dog, if you pre-register them! (Cost is $10 per dog, with a max of 2 dogs per participant. Only friendly dogs, please.)  

[unpackingqueer]

Building on my last post regarding queer homeless youth, this documentary trailer for "A Day in Our Shoes" discusses the loss of critical services for LGBTQ homeless youth in New York City.

With the average coming out age being 14 (as of the date of this video; I think it may be even younger now) the homeless LGBTQ youth population is ever-growing, while government services for this population continue to be cut.

At the time of this filming, there were 50% cuts being applied to the government funding for beds for the homeless LGBTQ youth population in New York City, bringing available beds down from 200 to only 100 beds—for the some 1500 LGBTQ homeless youth in New York City. (LGBTQ youth make up nearly 50% of the homeless youth overall population.)

Carl Siciliano, Executive Director for the Ali Forney Center, says in the video that his group is requesting the New York City government to provide a minimum of $1.5 million per year to fund beds for homeless youth, until such time that this problem is under control, or “until there are no longer waiting lists for beds at LGBTQ youth centers.”

The youth pictured in the thumbnail, who is interviewed throughout the video, describes having to sleep on a park bench and breaking into abandoned buildings with friends in order to have a place to get away from the cold.

Clearly this is not only a problem within New York City, but all across America. I do not know if funding beds for the population is the solution, but it is part of our responsibility as citizens, as is pointed out by the speaker at the end of the video, to take responsibility for these youth. “We may not be their parents,” says the speaker, “But we are responsible for them.”