today i got a pottery barn catalog addressed to the past tenant

so i flipped through it for decorating ideas

i saw that they have started carrying remakes of quilts from gee’s bend:
a remake of a star quilt based on the quilts of gee's bend

what thorough and absolute exploitation

i know that people buy prints of art all the time, but i just can’t get over this cycle of what something being “art” means, and how thoroughly it exploits rural women of color in this case.

some white folk art collector found that a group of women of color in a tiny town in rural alabama were producing exquisite, innovative, unique quilts unlike any form of fiber art before—>an art museum in houston picks up their work—>the women of gee’s bend start a collective where they make quilts to sell—>pottery barn rips them off, probably using unethical labor to mass produce these quilts so you can buy one for your fucking bed for $150.

the pottery barn product description:

The women of Gee’s Bend, Alabama have developed a distinctive, bold, and sophisticated quilting style based on traditional American and African American quilts. Crafted by one of their most prolific and celebrated artists, Rachel Carey George, the original Star Quilt was made from feedsacks and recycled clothing. We collaborated with the Gee’s Bend Foundation to replicate it closely in this wall hanging, capturing the original’s lively mix of prints and patterns and intricate eight-point stars.

  • 50” square
  • Made of cotton.
  • Expertly hand quilted.
  • Trimmed in cotton piping.
  • Reverses to solid.
  • Hangs from the pole pocket. Hardware sold separately.
  • Machine wash.
  • Imported.
17 notes

The Atlanta region ranks among the worst major metro areas in the nation for putting transit services within reach of people without cars, the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program said in a report released Thursday.

Of the nation’s 100 largest metro areas, Atlanta ranks 82nd, providing 68.5 percent of its households without vehicles access to transit services, the report says. That leaves 37,634 such households out of reach, the largest number among the 100 regions studied.

Study: Atlanta among worst regions for access to transit services  | ajc.com
11 notes

“Hundreds of foreign students, waving their fists and shouting defiantly in many languages, walked off their jobs on Wednesday at a plant here that packs Hershey’s chocolates, saying a summer program that was supposed to be a cultural exchange had instead turned them into underpaid labor. The students, from countries including China, Nigeria, Romania and Ukraine, came to the United States through a long-established State Department summer visa program that allows them to work for two months and then travel. They said they were expecting to practice their English, make some money and learn what life is like in the United States. In a way, they did. About 400 foreign students were put to work lifting heavy boxes and packing Reese’s candies, Kit-Kats and Almond Joys on a fast-moving production line, many of them on a night shift. After paycheck deductions for fees associated with the program and for their rent, students said at a rally in front of the huge packing plant that many of them were not earning nearly enough to recover what they had spent in their home countries to obtain their visas.” (via Foreign Students in Work Visa Program Stage Walkout at Plant - NYTimes.com)

“Hundreds of foreign students, waving their fists and shouting defiantly in many languages, walked off their jobs on Wednesday at a plant here that packs Hershey’s chocolates, saying a summer program that was supposed to be a cultural exchange had instead turned them into underpaid labor.

The students, from countries including China, Nigeria, Romania and Ukraine, came to the United States through a long-established State Department summer visa program that allows them to work for two months and then travel. They said they were expecting to practice their English, make some money and learn what life is like in the United States.

In a way, they did. About 400 foreign students were put to work lifting heavy boxes and packing Reese’s candies, Kit-Kats and Almond Joys on a fast-moving production line, many of them on a night shift. After paycheck deductions for fees associated with the program and for their rent, students said at a rally in front of the huge packing plant that many of them were not earning nearly enough to recover what they had spent in their home countries to obtain their visas.”

(via Foreign Students in Work Visa Program Stage Walkout at Plant - NYTimes.com)

5 notes

Nelson said she and her children crossed Austell Road outside a crosswalk because the nearest one was .3 mile away, and she was “trying to hurry up and get home so we wouldn’t have to be in the dark.”

She said that she had accepted that Guy, who had also been convicted of similar charges in 1997, served only six months for striking and killing her son, then fleeing the scene. “Even though he has had a history of it, nobody gets up that day and says, ‘I’m going to kill a 4-year-old,’” Nelson said.

“However, to come after me so much harder than they did him is a slap in the face,” she said.

She said that she didn’t think that the jury that convicted her “could relate to what I was going through. All of the jurors stated they’ve never ridden public transportation, and they’ve never really been in my shoes, so I think there was maybe not a jury of peers.”

Mom whose son killed by hit-run driver asks compassion in her sentencing  | ajc.com

fuck this whole thing is so fucking awful

6 notes
Originally Posted By fuckyeahfamousblackboys

youarenotyou:

karnythia:

corigami:

lamocosa:

brokeymcpoverty:

champagnexwishes:

Two young black men, dressed like most young men (of every color) dress are followed around Publix by a white worker who seems to think they’re going to steal something. They purposely allow him to know he’s being recorded in hopes that it will stop, but he continues to follow them anyway all the way to the counter. They stopped him and asked him why he was following them and he said “I can go wherever I want.”

Ashame…. This Deff Deserves to Be Reblogged, maybe this will get bigger, and he’ll get Fired

This is so sad :(

smfh

wow.  i thought we was posed to be postracial and s***.

REBLOG

M blood is boiling. I am going to pull this video out when ever someone (like one a week) tells me we are post racial or that white privilege/racism is not that big of a deal. Right on to these young men for doing something about this. 

This reminds me of that “What Would You Do?” ep where the white kids vandalizing a car are ignored, while the cops are called on the black kids napping in another car. 

this is awful. i would like to address the comment that “well maybe he’ll get fired” — no, i highly highly doubt it. this shit is ridiculously common, and i am willing to bet that the man who’s following them around is in management. i have worked in so many places (grocery stores, mall stores, other retail) where coworkers/managers/loss prevention were openly racist and admitted to racial profiling, or they’d deny it but i’d watch them do it anyway. usually they are much less obvious than this man is.

(Source: fuckyeahfamousblackboys, via youarenotyou-deactivated2012022)

20,435 notes

On Gentrification in Franklin, TN With little more than a third of that number of blacks still living in Franklin today, those who still live here say they struggle to hold on — and fear what the attrition might mean for their future. “There was a variety of people contributing to our history. Franklin was built on the labor of this very group of people,” said Pearl Bransford, a Franklin alderman and one of only two black elected officials in Williamson County. “It’s very important to not tear down but repair, replace and fill in.” (via Franklin sees number of blacks dwindle | The Tennessean | tennessean.com)

On Gentrification in Franklin, TN

With little more than a third of that number of blacks still living in Franklin today, those who still live here say they struggle to hold on — and fear what the attrition might mean for their future.

“There was a variety of people contributing to our history. Franklin was built on the labor of this very group of people,” said Pearl Bransford, a Franklin alderman and one of only two black elected officials in Williamson County. “It’s very important to not tear down but repair, replace and fill in.” (via Franklin sees number of blacks dwindle | The Tennessean | tennessean.com)

Originally Posted By thedailywhat

thedailywhat: This Is Important, You Should Know About It of the Day: Republican presidential nomination hopeful Michele Bachmann is the first candidate to sign the “pro-marriage” pledge of conservative Christian group The Family Leader. According to the Des Moines Register, those who sign “The Marriage Vow” [pdf] agree “to personal fidelity to his or her spouse, the appointment of ‘faithful constitutionalists’ as judges, opposition to any redefinition of marriage, and prompt reform of uneconomic and anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy and divorce law.” The vow also affirms the signee’s belief that homosexuality is a public health risk and a choice, and on par with polygamy and polyandry. Worse still is the vow’s shocking suggestion that children born into African-American families under slavery were better off than they are today because they were “more likely to be raised by [their] mother and father in a two-parent household.” And, finally, for good measure, candidates who sign the pledge must also make a point of rejecting Sharia law. A spokesman for Rep. Ron Paul has expressed reservations on behalf of the congressman, while Tim Pawlenty’s spokesman said the former Minnesota governor was reviewing the document. Most of the other candidates refused to comment on their plans; only Jon Huntsman has stated (through an aide) that he will not sign the pledge as he “never signs any pledges.” Family Leader CEO Bob Vander Plaats — who was state chair of Mike Huckabee’s Republican presidential campaign in 2008 — said his organization will only support candidates who sign the pledge. (NB: It should be noted that the controversial passage in the pledge that refers to the “protection” of women and children from “all forms of pornography” may not be a call for the outright banning of porn as some assert, but is certainly worth questioning.) [dmr / tp / wonkette / mediaite / photo: politico.] Related: Bachmann compared same-sex marriage to Pearl Harbor in 2004. Worse still is the vow’s shocking suggestion that children born into African-American families under slavery were better off than they are today because they were “more likely to be raised by [their] mother and father in a two-parent household.” Jesus H. Christ, that’s not true at all and is so fucking racist.  I can’t even wrap my head around how evil a claim that is!

thedailywhat:

This Is Important, You Should Know About It of the Day: Republican presidential nomination hopeful Michele Bachmann is the first candidate to sign the “pro-marriage” pledge of conservative Christian group The Family Leader.

According to the Des Moines Register, those who sign “The Marriage Vow” [pdf] agree “to personal fidelity to his or her spouse, the appointment of ‘faithful constitutionalists’ as judges, opposition to any redefinition of marriage, and prompt reform of uneconomic and anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy and divorce law.”

The vow also affirms the signee’s belief that homosexuality is a public health risk and a choice, and on par with polygamy and polyandry.

Worse still is the vow’s shocking suggestion that children born into African-American families under slavery were better off than they are today because they were “more likely to be raised by [their] mother and father in a two-parent household.”

And, finally, for good measure, candidates who sign the pledge must also make a point of rejecting Sharia law.

A spokesman for Rep. Ron Paul has expressed reservations on behalf of the congressman, while Tim Pawlenty’s spokesman said the former Minnesota governor was reviewing the document. Most of the other candidates refused to comment on their plans; only Jon Huntsman has stated (through an aide) that he will not sign the pledge as he “never signs any pledges.” Family Leader CEO Bob Vander Plaats — who was state chair of Mike Huckabee’s Republican presidential campaign in 2008 — said his organization will only support candidates who sign the pledge.

(NB: It should be noted that the controversial passage in the pledge that refers to the “protection” of women and children from “all forms of pornography” may not be a call for the outright banning of porn as some assert, but is certainly worth questioning.)

[dmr / tp / wonkette / mediaite / photo: politico.]

Related: Bachmann compared same-sex marriage to Pearl Harbor in 2004.

Worse still is the vow’s shocking suggestion that children born into African-American families under slavery were better off than they are today because they were “more likely to be raised by [their] mother and father in a two-parent household.”

Jesus H. Christ, that’s not true at all and is so fucking racist.  I can’t even wrap my head around how evil a claim that is!

2,996 notes
Originally Posted By mewmewfoucault

on ‘fierce’

mewmewfoucault:

a friend of mine posted the following on my facebook wall the other day, probably in response to this post of mine

I saw on your tumblr that there are some problematic issues surrounding white cis queer folk using the term “fierce”. I tried to look up why that would be but didn’t really find anything. I was wondering if you had the time/inclination, could you maybe explain why that is to me? I’m totally not doubting you or trying to imply that a lengthy explanation is needed before I stop using a term that’s problematic, I just am kind of curious and would like to know more.

i wrote the text quoted below in reply, and i think it gets at most of what i think about the term - though there’s a lot more to be said about the specifics of what’s happening with the way that a lot of white queers variously fetishize and hate on non-white femininities, especially black femininities (at least in the south)

i feel like in a lot of white-centric queer spaces, particularly gay male spaces, there can be this weird mix of on the one hand outright declaring non-white (and often working-class) femininities to be nothing more than tacky failures to be appropriated for campy humor, and on the other hand i think there’s more complicated white guiltish stuff going on, especially when white gay men appropriate styles and cultural codes they associate with non-white femininities because they feel an emotional or cultural connection with racially marginalized femmenesses due to the marginalization of their own queer femininity

plus there’re all these narratives/stereotypes that are like ‘black women are so sassy and in-charge and sexual’ or ‘latinas are so tough and loud-mouthed and brassy’ etc converging with gay male identifications with a certain construction of strong sexy women

thank you for asking! i’ll try my best to think this through:

many uses of the word ‘fierce’ are in my experience strongly associated with gay/queer/trans communities of color, and are particularly linked in a lot of people’s minds with more femme-gendered black gay men and black trans folks, especially not-wealthy ones

and i often see white queers - mostly but not only gay men, some of them middle-class or wealthy and some of them not so much, many of them them openly racist or at least not really interested in thinking about how racism benefits them in and outside of queer spaces - who i feel are deploying the term in a particular way to kind of, hmmm, either to derisively or “affectionately” mock what they see as the campy ghetto-fabulous tackiness of such folks (which is clearly racist and classist and often straight-up misogynistic and anti-femme)

or to do this more complicated appropriation thing where white queers use the word in an attempt to signal a knowledge of or connection to PoC/black queer cultures because they want to kinda go culture-slumming and feel like they’re part of something cool or trendy or exotic etc - without actually giving much of a shit about racism or capitalism or gay/queer/trans people of color

and also there’s this thing a lot of white culture does where white folks can deploy what they accurately or inaccurately imagine to be black vernacular in order to construct themselves as being down with black people, and thus reassure themselves and others that they’re cool good white people and couldn’t *really* be racist (even when they, well, emphatically are)

i don’t think all uses of the word ‘fierce’ by white gay/queer/trans people constitute an attempt to mock or appropriate - but i do think creepy racist sexist classist uses of the word aren’t that uncommon

60 notes

Racist Obama Email: Marilyn Davenport Insists It Was Satire

“I think it’s only racist when the intent in my heart is to make it that way, and that was not the intent in my heart,” she said.

oh my god then what the hell was the fucking intent in your heart

6 notes
Originally Posted By munachao

The 10 most segregated urban areas in America

so-treu:

munachao:

no southern cities, small or major..well would you look at that.  people always shit on houston for no zoning but the stats don’t lie.  :)

yeah, i think that’s when i realized that NYC living was not for me….. i was there for undergrad and you know, growing up outside of the city you’re always hearing how AMAZING! it is and growing up in the South you always hear about how NOT RACIST! the North but. but i dunno, at some point it hit me that you could live just as segregated a life in NYC as you could as (fill in the blank of a southern town or city). because yes NYC is diverse, but that doesn’t mean that people are actually interacting with each other. IME “diverse” was shorthand for the new Thai fusion restaurant on the corner and all of the different language you hear as you *pass by* rather than meaning any sort of deep engagement with a community of heterogeneous people.

I really liked the quote about NYC:

“Here in the home of limousine liberalism, the first part of the problem is to get anyone to stop talking about ‘diversity’ in the aggregate long enough to acknowledge that municipal and neighborhood segregation didn’t just drop from the sky … and isn’t simply a function of economics or of self-selection,” Craig Gurian, executive director of the Anti-Discrimination Center, says. “Rather [it] was created by explicitly discriminatory conduct on the part of both public and private actors over the course of decades. Patterns, once established, tend to stay in place unless active steps are taken to undo them.”

you can move that out to pretty much all cities. atlanta has some really obvious markers—street names changing when they cross ponce de leon ave, for instance, dividing the white and black neighborhoods; the way that marta was designed in general; the way marta is consistently under/defunded; fucking “activism” around the beltline (why aren’t all the white enviromentalist progressive people pouring their power into helping marta grow?)

but i really appreciated that this article drew out how a lot of cities up north are deemed so racially progressive but really, they can be not much better/worse than cities in the south.

(also i’m a little shocked that salon wrote such a good article…)

(via mewmewfoucault)

78 notes
Originally Posted By transartorialism

lol oppression aka queer aesthetics and normalization

mewmewfoucault:

aaka mewmew has no few reservations about being grumpy on tumblr

transartorialism:

i am not posting this to be mean or grumpy but just to comment on the nature of tumblr, which i like to do from time to time.

[…]

i find it interesting that i can post a picture of a pretty stand mixer or something from hyperbole and a half about avoiding people for the internet (which is still getting reblogged from time to time, even though i posted it months ago) and that will get 300 reblogs in an hour

and i can post a screenshot of mubarek resigning, or something about something oppressive, or a picture of fat identified folks looking fucking hot, etc etc, and it will get maybe three or four reblogs

what is the point of tumblr?  what are we here for?  how can we mix the gawking and admiring of beautiful things/art/lovely objects with actual constructive thought and discourse?

finally reblogging this because i’m kind of legit pissed at the queer tumblrverse for having only given this photo from fuckyeahhispanicbears eight notes so far

eight! what is that shit?!

fuckyeahhispanicguys.tumblr.com

this photo is fucking awesome y’all

no, seriously, it’s one of the best sexyphotos i’ve seen on tumblr in a while

i love the hot chubby cub, obviously, and i love his cute undies and his pose: and, as much as that, i love that it’s clearly in a family home, i love that he took a sexy photo of himself - i think with a timed camera - in a room that was probably decorated by his mom or his auntie or his abuelita, i love the gold-tone drapes and the mismatched sofa, i love the family photos, i love the oldass computer, i love the vacuum in the corner and the soda bottle in the foreground

idk, like - and this is not not not a personal attack on any of the people who’ve said whatever in response to transartorialism’s original post - but a chunk of the response has been like “yeah! isn’t is weird how i can post a cute pic and get dozens of reblogs and post an actual idea and get like three??”

- but that’s kind of exactly the point: it’s pretty overwhelmingly urban skinny white kids with a certain cool hipsterish queer fashion who get 30, 50, 100, 400 reblogs

not chubby brown guys who take pics of themselves in their family’s livingroom, you know?

and partially it’s straightup body-normalizing stuff ‘cause he’s a chub-of-color but i also think the photo’s setting is at least as important; i find it really beautiful and charming and, just - it means something to me that this sexy photo is happening in a family home with family pictures on the wall, and not in some cool kid’s apartment in the city where they live with their cool kid roommates or whatever

there’s the life-style normalizing: the normative queer-white-middle-class assumption that you move away to the city and live ‘on your own’ and don’t (need to / want to) stick around to pay your share of your family’s rent or take care of your little siblings or your grandparents or whoever else

i mean i definitely know queer and otherwise not-het adult folks who live with their biological families, and they are all working-class or poor and almost all are not white: the expected queer life trajectories are very! raced and classed!

even though i’ve followed the normative queer young adult life path pretty closely, i can’t believe / would like to not believe that there are really so few people around here who have some - some sense of emotion and eroticism around the home-ishness of this photo, some idea of what it could mean, some sense of pleasure around the queer norms it subverts

so, yeah

i’m grumpy that this photo only has eight notes right now

whatevs! toxicass normalizing queer aesthetics and thought patterns

what

evs

yeah that’s actually what i wanted to say

48 notes
Originally Posted By tranarrchy-deactivated20110901

perpertuating cissexist bullshit so transphobes don’t have to: a longer post (with a little more commentary on things about OP that make neil itchy)

don’t know how substantive my comments will be, so i’m just going to cut and paste some points i really liked on this tumblr thread

mewmewfoucault:

trigger warning: this post discusses the fucked up ways that a lot of folks talk about trans male bottom surgery, and frankly i got kind of mad and angsty just writing it, so, yeah: stay ‘way if that shit’s upsetting for you (as it quite reasonably may be)…

basically my objection is: trans male bottom surgeries (especially phalloplasty) are way hated-on and marginalized in a lot of trans and queer spaces, including so-called sex-positive or body-positive or trans-positive ones

this often has the effect of marginalizing and really fucking hurting guys and female-assigned-at-birth genderqueer people who have had or want to have such surgeries; it also really marginalizes folks who think that post-bottom-op guys have sexy and desirable genitals, and makes it really really difficult to find safer sex and other types of sexual health info on the bodies of post-op folks

(seriously - i have literally never come across sexual health info resources that deal specifically/explicitly with post-op dicks; in my experience, most guides to safer sex for trans people don’t even mention that some guys and FAAB non-binary folks have genital surgeries at all - best i’ve found is in the primed guide to gay sex with trans guys, which basically just acknowledges that sometimes trans guys have genital surgery)

that’s so true, and i’ve not thought about it. beyond safe sex there’s definitely very little information out there about having pleasurable sex with folks who want/have had bottom surgery, and that’s really awful too considering the plethora of “how to have good/fun/pleasureable sex” guides for trans guys (or trans folks) out there for assorted ways of doing it.

i’ve heard a lot of guys, some of whom i expected to know way better, say terrible shit about post-op dicks: that they “don’t work” or “look ugly” or whatever

this shit is clearly transphobic because it’s about hating on trans-specific dicks; it’s also cissexist because the reasons that people give for this marginalization set up a way of thinking about dicks that means that cis dicks are pretty much by definition the only dicks that could possibly be good dicks: people will say that post-op trans dicks ‘don’t work’ because they don’t produce sperm, or are ‘too small’ (for metoidioplasties), or don’t get hard on their own (for phalloplasties), or ‘look wierd’

this is especially icky sometimes when people make a point of comparing trans male surgeries with trans female surgeries - i’ve heard several times trans guys claim that trans women “have it better” because “their post-op junk works and ours doesn’t”, basically because post-op trans female genitals tend to look more like conventional cissexual cunts and can function more normatively in penetrative sex - folks never say (in this context) that trans female genitals ‘don’t work’ because they don’t self-lubricate or don’t produce eggs or need to be periodically dilated: this says a whole lot about the varying ways that dicks and cunts and cisness and transness are valued, y’know?

as if a dick’s a failed dick if it can’t do everything while a cunt’s a successful cunt as long as it’s fuckable and looks cis-aesthetically pleasing

that’s gross and sexist and cissexist and i hate it

obviously, individual people with their own feelings of dysphoria or dissonance or displeasure with the surgical options available to them should have those feelings respected: it makes a lot of sense for a person experiencing bodily dysphoria to feel really really unhappy with the fact that they may not be able to get everything that they personally want or need for their body, due to medical limitations or cost or whatever else

but it’s never ok to put down and ignore the bodies and desired bodies of other trans people

and, like: i get that bottom surgery isn’t something that every FAAB trans person wants, obviously, because there’s nothing that every FAAB trans person wants for their body; and also i get that lots of people don’t even have bottom surgery on their personal transition radar because it’s often prohibitively expensive

but, c’mon folks: ‘i-statements’ are our friends

“i don’t think i want to have any bottom surgeries because i like the dick i have now”

“i don’t think i want to have a phalloplasty because i like the cunt i have now”

“it would make me feel a lot better to have a bigger dick but the idea of taking a skin graft from my arm is scary and makes me reconsider whether i think it would be worth it”

“i think i need to get a metoidioplasty but i have a lot of concern and anxiety over the amount of money it would cost and the possibility of losing erotic sensation, and i’m afraid potential partners will judge my body negatively”

“i think i want bottom surgery some day but none of the currently available options are a good fit for what i need for my body, so i’m going to wait and save up”

not. hard. y’all.

the way that post-op folks get pushed aside or straight-up assumed not to exist is appalling, and totally ignores that fact that lots and lots of FAAB trans folks love their post-op dicks and have partners who’re way into them; and it makes it even harder to tell more complicated narratives about bottom surgery without fear of ridicule or disbelief or other negative repercussions

so

this is why i think original plumbing’s title is transphobic and cissexist: it’s a reference to a phrase that some trans male folks who haven’t had bottom surgery use to talk about their genitals in personal ads; mostly gay/queer personal ads on forums like manhunt or craigslist

so while it’s ostensibly supposed to be a compact reference to trans male bodies and to the ways that trans male folks negociate queer sexual spaces, the decision to call the magazine original plumbing is part of a whole culture of disparaging and marginalizing the bodies and desired bodies of a whole lot of trans people, and of setting up ways of thinking about dicks that assumes cis dicks are the only dicks that are ‘good enough’ or ‘real enough’ for anyone and everyone, regardless of individual feelings of pleasure or dysphoria

and that is some hurtful bullshit

word.

teen wolf pretty kind of sums up what i think about OP:

As for Original Plumbing, i have my issues with the magazine. It’s almost exclusively made up of trans men who are: hipstery, able-bodied, white, young, and skinny or buff.  I appreciate the eye candy, but i’d really love to see all kinds of bodies, ages, and colors represented. As well as people who aren’t on the cutting edge of fashion.

While i love swooning over all the cute boys, i really want it to showcase all kinds of trans men. Personally, i’m attracted to fat people, people of color, and people with disabilities. I wish OP didn’t show a preference to one type of body, because it reinforces a pre-exsisting hierarchy. Trans folk already deal with a lot of shit as people with non-normative bodies, and our liberation is really closely tied up with other groups whose bodies have been rejected, shamed, de-sexualized, and fetishized (fat people, disabled people etc), so i think it’s important that we don’t displays those same preferential behaviors within our own communities. 

I realize that Amos and Rocco mainly interview people who run in their social circle, so i’m hoping that as the magazine gains momentum, more kinds of trans folk will be featured.

yeah, that.  also, i’m going to take a moment and say that i feel like op is really tokenizing about the people of color who actually are in their magazine.  i read the last issue, and while there were really great pieces by and about people of color, they were alongside this really terrible piece of some guy who’s thesis was “i’m a WASP and people who try to incorporate that kind of fashion but didn’t grow up in it are hipsters but PREP will never die because that’s the point of it.” as if there aren’t preppy people of color who grew up preppy, or as if fashions can’t be as changeable and revisable as anything else that’s socially constructed.  also i was REALLY MAD about the collasping of WASP fashions into prep fashion.  That acronym is white anglo-saxon protestant.  What does it mean to take pride in being a WASP?  To me, there’s not much of a line between being proud of a certain kind of ostensibly white lifestyle and, well, white pride.  AWKWARD.

thenarius:

I do think that some guys do need an outlet, though, to express frustration with current medical availability of something that suits us. Sure, post-op cocks can be great but to so so so many of us they are not what we want…and letting it be KNOWN that current surgical methods are inadequate is at least something of a push for NEW surgeries to be developed that are more pleasing to more guys, and damn-well-hopefully more cost-effective, too.

That’s why I think what besttumblr and mmf said about I-statements is really true.

besttumblr said:

as a bonus, this post is also a really fantastic illustration of how what may seem like subtle changes in language (I-statements vs. statements without subjects that thus have a super problematic generalizing effect) make a *REAL* DIFFERENCE in how/the extent to which oppressive systems are perpetuated in speech/text/sign

guess what everyone: speech has “force,” it perpetuates oppression, it is not empty, it is not the weaker-sibling to “action”

It’s one thing to say, “I wish that there were better/more accessible bottom surgeries for trans guys out there and it’s just not for me right now” and quite another to say, “God, I hate phalloplasties, they look so FAKE and they don’t do X and they don’t do Y, etc.”

ok, gotta get back to work/my 250 words on “how marginalization has affected me” for the point foundation scholarship.

129 notes

at first i thought the subject line of this email was a typo (go south for VD for $9), but then they really went there. wow, that is so racist.  (all the flights are, of course, to places in the caribbean/south and central america)

at first i thought the subject line of this email was a typo (go south for VD for $9), but then they really went there.

wow, that is so racist. 

(all the flights are, of course, to places in the caribbean/south and central america)

3 notes

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