January 2012
67 posts
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open.
the space is different. the s p a c e is different. the space i s different th e sp a ce is d if ferent.
the space is different. thespaceisdifferent.
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…and open. o p e n. and[ours.]
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“You can be “born this way,” or have a desire or attraction to the same gender or...”
– from the blog “Queer Black Feminist” by Adreana Clay
Reading this reminds me of how some folks have a hard time with sexuality occurring on a continuum. I also don’t know how useful the “born this way” versus it’s a “choice” binary is. Or even if it is in fact a binary. I know that sexuality drives...
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luminousmk:
i dreamt i was tangoing with you, you held me so close we were like the singing coming off the drums. you made me squeeze muscles lean back on the sound of corpuscles sliding in blood. i heard my thighs singing.
- Sonia Sanchez
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“i wanted to write a poem that rhymes, but the revolution doesn’t lend itself to...”
– nikki giovanni (via negrosunshine)
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Chile Bye: Dee Rees and Nekisa Cooper made Pariah... →
newmodelminority:
Why is it that when Lucas says “Ya’ll need to come off the plantation and see this film”, did it garner the kind of press and conversation?
Cooper and Reese flipped a fucking miracle. Black girls being intimate on screen? Black girls demanding to be treated like human beings on screen?
Shiit gina. Even straight Black women don’t have sex on the silver screen, unless it is...
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In Memory of Common Sense: VSB's 'Rape... →
…This is the most problematic part about the whole thing. Cautioning a woman on what she can or should do to promote her personal safety has no place in a conversation about stopping or preventing rape, because there’s nothing we can do to prevent it. Suggesting that a woman can somehow avoid being raped implies that she can also invite it or create an opportunity for it to happen,...
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If You Missed It...Watch The Spike Lee And Dee... →
howtobeterrell:
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Watchtbgptumbles:
Here’s a peek into the documentary that got us going as an organization. It drops on March 16th and you can pre-order yours now by going here. Proceeds go toward our programs and outreach. Enjoy and thanks for the support!!!
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"Giving a Face to Black Queer Identity" (via... →
dirtylibrarianthoughts:
A wonderful piece on Zanele Muholi at hyperallergic. In talking about queer photography and queer artists, names that come up tend to be overwhelmingly white and from the U.S. or Europe. Considering the amount of queer photographers out there in the world, all of whom may or may not be working with specifically queer issues, it is great that Muholi’s work, which focuses...
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“I’ve learned to live with rage. In some ways, it’s my rage that keeps me going....”
– Etta James, in her autobiography, Rage To Survive. (via shana—e)
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“Like all profound repression, my rage unleashed made me afraid. It forced me to...”
– bell hooks, Killing Rage: Ending Racism
I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about the transformative and healing powers of radical rage. I’m often told that I’m too angry, too filled with negative emotion, when in actuality, I genuinely believe that rage - beautiful, healthy,...
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lazygoddess:
“They say we were meant to lose something in order to find that which is truer. And that which we find may well be that which we have lost but which is found on a different day, when we have changed. And that which we have lost and found differently may well now be the magic stone with which we can, in greater readiness, continue our unending journey.” ~ Ben Okri, Starbook
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"Why I Became a pacifist" by June Jordan
Why I became a pacifist and then How I became a warrior again:
Because nothing I could do or say turned out okay I figured I should just sit still and chill except to maybe mumble “Baby, Baby: Stop!” AND Because turning that other cheek holding my tongue refusing to retaliate when the deal got ugly And because not throwing whoever calls me bitch out...
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“There is a sense of the grotesque about a person who has spent his or her life...”
– Baldwin, James, and Randall Kenan. “The Uses of the Blues.” The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings. New York: Vintage, 2011. 57-66. Print. (via stetx)
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breathing [part deux.]
& i’m still okay. still okay & fighting; preparing for [som e thin g.]
“steps are everything.”
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breathing.
& it was worth the risk.
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“When Tish cries for Fonny and longs for his freedom, she is the Baldwin voice...”
– David Leeming
James Baldwin A Biography by David Leeming
p. 325 on James Baldwin & If Beale Street Could Talk
(via allthingsjamesbaldwin)
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…i think it’s time for my annual gathering with Tish & Fonny.
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“Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.”
– Octavia Butler (via ahnka)
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notesonascandal replied to your photo: [currently watching:]
where is this? i’d like to watch it too.
i downloaded it from itunes, but it’s also on amazon for download too.
iTunes
Amazon
:-)
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…some of the illest most blending ass background singers ever!
my love for trina broussard ra-re valverde & toni scruggs runs hella hella deep.
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Interview with Andrew Haigh, the director of... →
Do you see this film as sort of validating – for lack of a better word – the ways in which gay men have connected historically, ways that are kind of demonized by some of the more vocal, increasingly conservative quarters of the community? It’s such a complicated issue, isn’t it? For a long time gay men fought to be seen as different, doing our own thing: This is our lives, this is what we do,...
its not long enough to be a manifesto, but it... →
navigatethestream:
To me, the whole notion of Malcolm X being a coward for not coming out when he was alive and well points to a larger problem, come out culture in general.
I’m not talking about coming out as a personal process, but a larger LGBT culture which perpetuates multiple falsehoods about the motivations and realities for coming out of the closet.
A larger culture which has...
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negro sunshine.: Dance of the Hyphen: a meditation... →
negrosunshine:
i got into this argument a few years ago with another black queer male that i had a crush on. then i thought we would just be friends. then we argued some more. then he started hating me. then i hated him. then we did not speak anymore. and there is much more to that story, but its besides the point i want to make right now, rather, the argument we had focused on many of the...
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thinking aloud 4: (AND I WANT THIS TO BECOME A...
@greydotmatters: *nods* everything is political. marginalisation, the domination and “power” to regulate a group/person postion [in] society/politically. i don’t see how “hurt feelings” alone can make one marginalised? can you give an example? weren’t the predatory home loans all about the marginalising the poor/working class/poc’s? could it be argued that individual violence is supported and a direct result of “state violence, state sanctioned violence, and paradigmatic violence”?
…and isn’t that violence rooted in whiteness? maleness? which goes back to privilege and power and who has it?
@negrosunshine: on the question of hurt feelings, i cant give an example. that was kind of the point. all this talk surrounding the "shit_____say to_____" videos, particularly the thread this evening on "shit straight girls say to gay men" is a lot of chatter about a lot of nothing, or hurt feelings. conversations of privilege usually don't point to concrete examples of how privilege works, outside of rhetorical gestures that acknowledge whatever identity is on the table at the time. in other words, people seem to find a pseudo liberation in saying "i exist!" and stopping there. im NOT disregarding the life affirming gestures in acknowledging our existence (its why i write), but too often we stop there. "im so and so, and im a -gay-cis-poor-blah-blah-blah-blah, check yo privilege!" 'okay, its checked, you called me out, what do we do now?' why is that an important question? because whether or not its checked, or whether or not offensive rhetoric or rhetoric that erases existence is used or not by the individual people we check, IT DOES NOT CHANGE THE systemic violence, structural position, life chances of anyone involved. that is going to need to be done with the same if not higher amount of violence the state or perhaps civil society has at its disposal to maintain its order (and thats when shit gets scary/bleak). so what does regulation in society actually look like, who is regulating and who is being regulated? and the answer is not as easy as a question of privilege. it is a question of power. and power reveals itself in ways and it also conceals itself in other ways. which is why conversations like this are so important. figuring out what power is, where it is, how it operates.
(breathes)
@negrosunshine: on the question of predatory home loans, if we track the history, i think a good starting point would be around Emancipation and the promise of 40 acres and mule. (and its been awhile since ive discussed this, so perhaps someone could help me out *cough* @jeromeiznice @james-bliss or really ANYONE *cough*) and the Homestead Acts. The secret to American wealth is property ownership (duh, slavery), but post formal slavery, landownership (later transformed into homeownership), America, never making good on that initial promise, started giving land to Blacks under the Homestead Act, and disqualifying them because they couldnt maintain the land "properly." The land goes back to whites after the "fall of slavery" (which were the old slave masters) and then we get the birth of debt-peaonage, or sharecropping (Blacks still working land for whites). Fast forward a few years to the north, and you get the creation of the suburbs, and segregation laws that don't allow Black in certain neighborhoods, segregation goes away "technically," but you have all these weird rules and redlining that make it financially risky/irresponsible for whites to live near Blacks so the suburbs stay white, and inner-cities become overcrowded ghettoes. Plus after WWII, veterans come home and are promised homes! all these lovely homes for real cheap in the suburbs, but Black veterans are not afforded the same loans! true story.
(breathes)
@negrosunshine: so you have this whole history of Black people being excluded from land/home ownership, which is THE BEST way to ensure wealth gets passed down generation to generation. fast forward to just a few years ago and these predatory home loans you talk about, but noone puts them in context of the history they directly stem from. yes they were a way to marginalize poor/people of color, but few, very few attempt to get at the root of the problem, and reckon the fact that the institution is anti-Black, it was since its conception and it certainly is now. what could we do if we mobilized that way?
(breathes)
@negrosunshine: violence rooted in whiteness and maleness? sure and sure. individual violence supported by state violence? sure. its getting late and ive been reading all day, if someone is reading this join in this conversation! ill keep thinking on it, and come with a better answer than "sure and sure." or you, my friend @greydotmatters, can preempt my strike (in a george bush fashion) and drop some knowledge on me (in an un-george bush fashion) :)
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“Through poetry and playwriting I go to the limits of my being to forever...”
– Assotto Saint. “Why I Write.” Spells of a Voodoo Doll. New York: Masquerade, 1996. 8. Print. (via stetx)