Hello, beautiful butterflies! Spring has sprung and it is a lovely sight indeed! Here’s what we missed while the flowers were blooming.

 On Art and Identity

+ Here are “10 Transgender Artists Who Are Changing The Landscape of Contemporary Art.” And Ivan Coyote is one of them! I have a lot of feelings about Ivan Coyote because they have produced some truly amazing art and poetry and scholarship. Their piece “To all of the kick ass, beautiful fierce femmes out there” almost always makes me super emotional and I think you should probably watch it right now.

+ At Black Girl Dangerous, Adrianne Diaz-Cebreiro explores “Butch and Femme Through a White Lens:”

And we, as Black and Brown masculine-presenting queers, need to start unseeing the white gaze. We need to review our own internalized misogynoir that was forced on us prior to transitioning. We need to decolonize ourselves and our pursuit of white partners. We need to stand beside our Black femme sisters in the face of white supremacy in the LGBT community, rather than be complicit in it.

+ Andy Marra talks about adoptee identity in an episode of “Adoptees in the Wild.”

Andy is a Korean adoptee from Bethlehem, NY, who currently lives in New York City. She is a member of the LGBT community. Andy’s story became widespread after she blogged about her visit back to Korea for the first time and about her reunion with her birth mother and sister: huffingtonpost.com/andy-marra. Hear her talk about that experience, as well as her journey as a Korean adoptee.

 Back on the Ranch…

Or should I say, the farm? Here’s our news on women (and feminists) in agriculture!

+ There’s a new movie about Cesar Chavez, but Feministing asks “So…where’s Dolores Huerta’s movie?”

I don’t mean to throw shade at what looks like a really great movie. But I think it’s important to talk about whose stories get told — who gets selected as important and significant and worthy of having a story to be told. And the reality is that the ways that process happens — even in our own progressive communities — is raced, classed, and gendered.

+ Women in Chile organize, mobilize, shut down Monsanto’s Law:

The law would have given multinational corporations the power to patent seeds they discover, develop or modify. For small and mid-sized farmers, which is to say for the rural 99%, this would have been catastrophic. It would have been disastrous for Chile’s ‘seed heritage’ as well. Women lead the campaign to stop the law, and last week, the government withdrew the bill.

 Disney Can Do Better; We Won’t Let it Go!

+ The Guardian reminds us that we need more representation of LGBTQ families in Disney movies:

Last year I interviewed Kori Rae, Pixar producer and lesbian, and asked when we’ll see a gay Pixar character. She replied: “The answer is, I don’t know if there’ll be a gay character. I hope so, I really hope we get to a place were we can do that.”

With growing numbers of LGBT families across the world, aren’t we are already at that place? The children interviewed for the Team Angelica short film Kids of Gay Parents Speak Out don’t think their families are strange for being LGBT; but in order for other kids to realise that non-heteronormative families are as “normal” as any other, gay parents need to be given cultural and social visibility. Which means we need LGBT families to feature in ads, kids’ books, Disney/Pixar movies – everywhere we see heterosexual parents.

Techically Timon and Pumbaa in The Lion King can maybe also represent a family with same-gender parents, but we need to see actual human characters with specifically LGBTQ identities too!

 Every Week Should Be International Anti-Street Harassment Week!

+ International Anti-Street Harassment Week coincides with Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and fosters a climate of conversation, education, and awareness about street harassment. Folks all over the world are getting involved in activism and discussion about this important topic, whether through chalk-ins, group events, art, or videos.

+ The Atlantic Cities asks, “Will Women Ever Feel Completely Safe on Mass Transit?”

It’s no wonder there’s a gender gap when it comes to transit riders’ concerns. But there’s also a gender-class gap, between the women who can simply refuse to ride because of those concerns and those who have to get on the bus anyway. “Women tend to be more fearful in public environments like the bus stop than when they’re on the bus or on the train,” says Loukaitou-Sideris. This makes sense: on the bus there are often other travelers, but at the bus stop you might be alone. Even then there are exceptions; late at night, a woman might find herself on the train with only one other passenger she doesn’t trust, just the two of them in an enclosed space.

+ Trans women are still facing undue discrimination for using the restrooms that are appropriate for their gender:

A student at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina alleges that she was harassed by campus security and suspended by the Dean of Student Life for being transgender after she used the female restroom.

Youngist is Telling Millenials’ Stories; Queer Stories

…and doing a fantastic job of it! From Editor Muna Mire and The Nation:

While we are coming together to tell the story of a generation that has been dispossessed, a generation that has inherited climate and economic crises, we also want to tell stories of how youth are mobilizing to organize around immigration, LGBTQ rights, racial and climate justice, education, labor and more. We are a relentlessly hopeful generation. When we say that we are dispossessed, we say that with an understanding that we also possess the tools, capacity and motivation to contend with these issues. We at {Young}ist want to intervene in the narrative about millennials not just because we think it’s wrong but because we know we embody its opposite: a thriving, capable, growing network of youth fighting for a more just world.

The Power of Poetry

+ On Monday, curator and arts organizer Sarah Duncan worked with LaMaMa Experimental Theater Club to produce The Lot I’ve Got:Poetry on Privilege.

The show “explore[s] the concept of privilege in terms of (but not limited to) race, class, sexuality, and gender with poignancy, and a necessary dollop of acerbic wit, and features performers Justin Woo, Sarah Duncan, Nicole Goodwin, Queer Folk Duo Anna/Kate , Safiel Vonay, Michelle Y. Thompson, Henry Lee, Amy Virginia Buchanan, Safia Elhillo, Kit Yan, Adam Falkner and Timothy DuWhite.

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