What if I start using this space to keep you posted on the ins and outs of planning my wedding in April? Like for example do you want to talk about how to fit five 60″ tables in a backyard? The merits of unfrosted cakes? Or perhaps you’d like a running tally of how many times I’ve said “jewel tones” in the past two weeks. Here are some things we missed while I was coming to terms with how I really might, in fact, prefer the eggplant tablecloths to the white ones. Didn’t see that coming.
You Should Go or Do or Give
+ Queer Astrology Conference 2015??!!? One of the perks is “Merperson on a mug” I am dying please I want this mug omg.
interrupting heternormativity one galaxy at a time
+ L7 is reuniting, making a documentary, making your dreams come true.
Queer as in F*ck You
+ Which Side Are You On?: Queer and Trans People of Color Acting in Solidarity with Queer and Trans Black Lives by Deanna Gao on BGD.
+ Sally Kohn wrote about taking her daughter for a princess makeover at Disneyland! Daughter to Disney: I’ll Take the Tiara, You Keep the Prince.
I have been a tomboy all my life. When I played with dolls they were usually being sacrificed in some sort of erupting volcano-like mud hole in my backyard or running for their lives from monsters who had taken over my Tonka truck. I know I had some dresses. I’ve seen pictures of me wearing them, around the same age as my daughter. But I look stiff and decorated, more like a tree at Christmastime than a girl in a dress. It just wasn’t my thing.
It is, however, very much my daughter’s thing. I don’t know how it is that in the modern era, I still can’t get decent reception on my cellphone but somehow traditional gender norms are silently communicated and crystal clear. My partner and I certainly didn’t teach our daughter to like pink and ruffles and such. And I can’t fathom some genetic or biological nodule that predisposes my girl to like dolls while little boys like trucks. Baloney. But somehow, even in the midst of our hyper-liberal and hyper-diverse neighborhood with girls and boys of all kinds on display every day, it happened. Did I do something wrong? Is feminism mysteriously skipping a generation? Meanwhile, I have to bribe her to wear jeans.
+ How about some Rachel Maddow on this beautiful earthly day.
http://youtu.be/f1bJZRGXjqI
+ Um excuse me your nom de plume is perfect: Life as a French Lesbian in Istanbul by Jodie Foster Wallace.
Doll Parts
+ Noah Berlatsky interviewed Netta Elzie (@nettaaaaaaaa) for The Women of #BlackLivesMatter:
“I didn’t even know what I was doing was considered organizing until someone told me,” she said. “I didn’t know I was an activist until someone told me.”
Like many of those in the #BlackLivesMatter movement, Elzie came into activism not through an organization or institution, but through Twitter. Many of those new activists and organizers, like Elzie, have been women. As a result, the visible leadership of Ferguson protest, in comparison to that of past civil-rights struggles, has been much less male.
+ Oh wow jesus. The Feminist Frequency has put together a post of one week’s worth of twitter harassment and it’s fucking appalling.
+ On Being Black and Punk by Pilot Viruet:
On the second night—a particularly long one in which I found myself falling asleep in a dive bar as a loud band played—I wandered to the back bathroom to splash water on my face and wake up. Someone walked in while I was at the sink and suddenly a girl wrapped me up in a drunk, sloppy hug. When we were untangled from each other, she exclaimed, “I’m sorry, I’m just so happy to see another brown person at Fest!”
I had, as always, been aware of the sea of whiteness in the crowds and on the stage, but I hadn’t thought about it much until that moment when I realized that I was so goddamn happy to see her, too.
+ Is this legit? We’re not sure, but it’s definitely horrifying/satisfying. When Street Harassers Realize the Women They’re Catcalling are Their Moms in Disguise.
+ George Lucas: “Girls Go to the Movies Just Like Anyone Else”. YAH WE DO.
Saw This, Thought of You
+ Obama Protects Alaska Refuge, Opens Drilling in Arctic and Atlantic. Oh.
The wilderness designation is “the highest level of protection available to public lands,” the Department of the Interior said. “If Congress chooses to act, it would be the largest ever wilderness designation since Congress passed the visionary Wilderness Act over 50 years ago.”
No sooner had he done so, however, than two days later Obama also announced he would open the Atlantic Ocean to drilling and would sell more oil and gas leases in Arctic waters. The Center for Biological Diversity blasted the new drilling plan, citing the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico as well as a series of mishaps in 2012 that eventually caused Shell to suspend its deep-water drilling operations.
+ Despite the fact that this is the most infuriatingly formatted article I’ve seen since we were all still updating our Blogger profiles, Medium’s Never Trust a Corporation to do a Library’s Job is super important and I command you to read it! “As Google abandons its past, Internet archivists step in to save our collective memory.”
+ Vocal Color In Public Radio and Challenging the Whiteness of Public Radio. WILDLY INTERESTING. Follow #PubRadioVoice for more of the conversation.
+ Woman Gets Her Anus Bronzed by Mischievous Gnome and It’s On Video. Real talk, I wasn’t sure if I should pass this along to Carolyn for the NSFW roundup or include it here, but then I watched the video and I knew — the way you know things, like that you’re truly in love or you left the iron plugged in — that I had to share it with you myself. Carolyn I’m deeply sorry and I hope you’re still fond of me.
+ Followup: Sarah Gray Miller will oversee Modern Farmer on an interim basis so calm down, relax.
+ Sorry I’m just fascinated by the teenage brain and how it’s still developing and has to be cared for differently. Are you a teenager? HI I’M FASCINATED BY YOUR BRAIN. Also it’s v important that you wait to smoke pot until you’re a little older. Just FYI.
Local Autostraddle Meet-Ups
No events this week! Who will cheer on your local roller derby team? Who will swap the books? =(
And Finally
A teaser for Netflix’s series, Wet Hot American Summer!
Did anybody read the Gossip Girl books? An entire A-plot of the first book is about an art photo of Serena’s anus popping up all over town, which is the first thing I think of when I think of butt art. Or YA-to-TV-properties.
YES I READ THE GOSSIP GIRL BOOKS
i have not read the books but now thanks to rie i really want to
Wait, what?! I always thought it was her actual belly button in the books. I guess I took the “is that her… belly button?” at face value back then and never gave it a second thought, how naive of me. Definitely going to re-read the series now though!! Haha.
Uhhh…Laneia…yes, just yes, please talk about all the wedding things! I mean, if you want to.
Please! I’m super excited about it
Seriously, fuck everything else, I want all the details for your wedding!
Real Life Teen (TM) here! I totally agree that teenagers are addiction-prone, at least I know I am. It sounds like such a nerdy thing to do but bc my brain is basically my money-maker I try really hard to limit my vices that hurt it. I didn’t smoke weed at all until my spring quarter freshman year of college bc I didn’t want to hurt my brain (that didn’t stop me from drinking multiple times a week tho ha…ha.) and I rarely smoke now just because I feel like i don’t want to add it to the list of things I do that are bad for me.
HELLO TEEN. these all sound like smart decisions. you should also be getting lots of sleep and taking multivitamins ok, including a probiotic. xoxo
I’m so flippin excited for the Wet Hot American Summer series I cannot comment on anything else. I want it inside me.
same
formal motion to rename this column wedding.wedding.wedding
WEDDING! april is probably my favorite wedding month (october is a close second though). people who get married in april are the best. people who get married outdoors in the middle of august (esp in the south) are the worst. hello i am just sweating all over myself and thus can pay no real attention to the majesty of your nuptials!
also no way is that mom harassing video for real, but i loved the mom makeover montage and the intent all the same. v satisfying indeed.
WE’RE GETTING MARRIED ON THE DAY OF THE LUNAR ECLIPSE ok sorry for yelling at you lomy i’m just so excited
gah i am so in love with this! MOON GODDESSES!
a friend of mine has a tattoo of the solar system with the planets aligned the way they were on the day that he and his wife got married. so now i cant help but imagine what your hypothetical celestial tattoo of your wedding day could look like and it would so.fucking.awesome.i.cant.
i hope you share more wedding stuff! the eggplant tablecloths sound excellent.
“Woman Gets Her Anus Bronzed by Mischievous Gnome and It’s On Video” sounds like one of those sentences they use in linguistics textbooks as an example of ‘unlikely to occur, possibly never has occurred, but comprehensible if it did occur’ utterances that they use to illustrate the infinite possibilities of language.
You really hooked me with the title! I didn’t know what to expect. It actually is pretty cute.
Also congrats on the wedding!!!!! I would honestly love to hear about your wedding planning….
right? like i want one but i don’t want an old man painting my butt.
“What if I start using this space to keep you posted on the ins and outs of planning my wedding in April?”
I would be into this
I listened to that Freah Air podcast yesterday and used it as an excuse for why I keep overdrawing my bank account! My real adult brain isn’t fully formed in my early 20s BoA, so you really should stop charging me overdraft fees.
Apparently, my 52-year-old brain has some growin’ up to do. Just sayin’.
Totally thought that meant bronzed as in they were brushing on bronzer makeup. My brain was like, “Wait, weren’t people bleaching their assholes not so long ago? Has this trend come full circle?” Pun intended.
YES thank you this was also my initial thought upon seeing lindy’s link on twitter.
I really dislike the article about the daughter who wants to be a princess. D: The author seems to think that dresses+glitter=gender conforming and not a feminist, which really squicks me out. Her daughter is obviously happy!
Like: “Did I do something wrong? Is feminism mysteriously skipping a generation? Meanwhile, I have to bribe her to wear jeans.” why does she need to wear jeans? Why can’t her mom just let her be comfortable with what she likes, even if it isn’t what the mom likes? I just gahhhh
Also this: “Feminism didn’t skip my daughter, it was just hiding underneath all that pink and glitter.”
Idk, as a very femme bi girl who is very definitely a feminist, this all rubbed me the wrong way. People can like dresses and makeup and still be feminist.
I hope this article was meant to be about her growing as a feminist (or becoming a real one), because implying women have to be masculine to be empowered shows she missed the basic ‘appearance does not determine a woman’s worth’ principle. I see why she’s upset her five year old is wearing makeup, but it’s upsetting she started raising a child thinking there was only one right way to be a girl- tomboyhood- and even more troublesome that there are self-identified feminists who consider femininity inherently undesirable.
I agreed with you except I think in the end the writer admits her own bias in failing to recognize that being Princess Glitter is not mutually-exclusive to being a badass feminist. That was what I took away, at least.
I didn’t feel like she totally got it with the “hiding” comment though, like saying you can’t be obviously feminist and still be femme. Makes me think she must be judging all femme women she sees as non-feminists purely on how they present their genders.
Yes! I completely agree. I adored playing with Barbies as a kid (Barbie and Barbie, not Barbie and Ken!) and wearing skirts and dresses. I’m a liberal pro-choice democrat lesbian feminist. Does that make me wrong?
i like pink, mostly fluorescent on black but other varieties will do. Am turned out an armchair, overweight cat, wall screen and insane laughter type of woman – and a proud traitor to the revolution. If you for a moment assumed correlation implies causation – yes it was definitely the pink stuff that did it.
I definitely agree. My first thought when I read the excerpt was “what, has she never heard of femmes?” Even though she seems to come around a little at the end, it’s frustrating to hear (yet another) argument that femininity is inherently anti-feminist and any feminist sentiment expressed by a feminine person is done *in spite of* their femininity. I’m a Femme who loved anything pink, glittery, or princess related growing up, and instead of being a depressed body-hating antifeminist creature, I somehow ended up as a queer lady in STEM with no fucks to give. I don’t feel like this happened independent of or in spite of my feminine gender expression.
The thing that rubbed me the wrong way the most was probably the conclusion that because her daughter wasn’t the little tomboy that she was, she had somehow failed as a feminist mom.
yeah i thought the piece was super interesting from the standpoint of being a parent and wanting to give your child different/more choices than you had, only to find out that they still prefer X, whatever that is. i absolutely see what y’all are saying about it being very exclusionary of the femme existence bc the author’s mindset ~as it pertains to her daughter~ definitely is that: exclusionary of the femme existence. but idk there’s this weird micro/macro thing that happens when you’re a parent bc it’s just happening right there in your house and i think — and maybe i’m giving sally kohn too much credit here — but i think she was speaking from a space of parenting in a way that gives your child the experience you wish you could’ve had. i think the piece speaks more to what it means to parent as a queer, butch woman raising a daughter than it does to sally kohn’s realization that femme feminists exist.
but also yes — everything y’all said! idk i just thought it was an interesting piece for sure. i really loved this conversation!
I’m trying to raise my two year to be comfortable liking what he likes and to not feel restricted by what society pushes on him for being ‘male’.
In saying that, he is addicted to cars and trucks and it was pretty unexpected. All day everything is cars and Thomas the Tank Engine.
He does share my love of cats though and tries to carry ours around the house/offer him shoes to wear/shares his food with him.
Kids are going to love whatever makes them happy so it can’t be a bad thing.
OMG. One of my only actual real dates was an L7 show. I still feel bad about having a teenage lesbian avoidance meltdown on her.
loved this
the link seems to be gone. It does not matter i did not see the bronzed anus, though it was the reason why i looked at all. I knew a girl with bronzed human flesh earrings though, which is a statement both more in-depth meaningful and… more persistent in time. Human games are always ending when it gets dark and mum calls them in from the playground and washes things off…
Came here to see an anus get bronzed. Was not disappointed.
i didn’t even know you were getting hitched omg congratulations
i am also wedding planning. it would be comforting to read about your wedding planning decisions and thought processes, such as how you came to be so on board with eggplant. or perhaps you have some ideas as to how one might transport approx twenty 36 inch inflated balloons across town using a honda civic.