talking at me, not talking to me

there were some middle age white communist dudes passing out literature at the hollywood farmers market today. one of these fuckers invoked harvey milk in an attempt to draw common ground after i had begun speaking about the legacies of black feminist marxism within this country.

excuse me sir, my first reaction is anger.

*how dare you make assumptions about my political identifications. you might as well call me a lesbian (a low down dirty shame on you). you are listening to the words i am saying. no no. you are looking at me and assuming i am at best a leftist leaning dyke with some complimentary economic views that you might be able to sway into organizing ranks for your leader bob avikian.
you need to sit down and think about a few things.

another smug asshole scraping from the barrel of identity politics. i am wiser than i look.

*why is harvey milk standing in as a the placeholder for the common ground of our conversation? and does it make you feel good about yourself that you can get out there in the middle of hollywood and preach the gospel, you aint trying to hear it from anyone but yourself?

youre up there riding on an awfully high horse to be considered a comrade.
dont get it twisted.
those persons constituted into subjects in the aftermath of the recognition of your own privilege are making you feel real good about your solidarity capabilities.
and i bet you call yourself an lgbt ally.

my second reaction is anger tempered with a bit of saddness.

the rich historical and contemporary litany of great organizing work being done by and for queer folks engaged in a struggle for economic justice reaches far closer to my heart than that of a post-sean penn harvey milk symbolism.

Feminist?

Want an article that fails to complicate feminism's relation to the sex trade?

Here it is:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/mar/25/iceland-most-feminist-country

Apparently Iceland is completely closing down all strip clubs in the country, leading the article-writer to herald the country as "the most feminist in the world." Wha? From where I'm standing "feminists" have been asking to decriminalize the sex trade, not ban it.

According to the ban, this decision might be attributed to the lesbian prime minister or the many vocal feminist groups in the country. This article writer fails to even reference the common anti-porn/pro-sex debates common to feminisms before, fails to make any reference to the possibility that this might not be a win for feminism but the opposite.

This might lead us to the question: Have these stripping women been in the way of feminist change the entire time? How dare they! Don't they understand the ways that their choice to take off clothes for money keeps women from rising above oppression? No? Okay, let's put them out of a job; I've heard the economy's really good lately.

Andrea Dworkin writes of the ways that strip clubs, the porn industry, and the sex trade tells men that they should always have access to sex. These avenues teach men incorrectly that women's bodies should always be available to us. This logic follows objectification in any form to violence, from an American Apparel add to rape. I do not necessarily disagree with this logical tract, in fact I wish that this article on Iceland could have at least made some mention as to possible decrease in violence against strippers outside of their clubs that this might lead to. But it doesn't.

I do think that feminist responses to sex work, especially when the argument is to legalize sex work, needs to be very articulate about relationships between sex and violence. And I think we commonly are: when you criminalize these people who use their body for money you contribute to a prison industrial complex, one of the most violent institutions in existence.

Granted, I know nothing about Iceland's prison system. It will be interesting to see how this stripping ban shapes the political and feminist landscape to come. But articles like the one above makes me HATE calling myself a feminist, which I've come to understand as largely a too-broad-to-mean-anything-and-sometimes-dangerous-term. Just go ahead and google: "feminism" and "middle-east" if you want a world of complicated and fucked-up "feminist" reading.

hello again

i paid money to see that horrible film, Avatar 3D. and i will apologize in advance for what might seem like an incoherent rant.

starring a young white disabled ex marine twin who utilizes an avatar in order to infiltrate an indigenous community and resistance movement. and throughout the course of the film our white saviour - through a number of couragous able bodied hyper masculine acts- is accepted by the community and finds affinity with their cause. he is seen and sees.
(call and response interpellation ?)

what the fuck. what the fuck. what the fuck.

1. why are the scientists left free of blame? excuse me. sigourney weaver being brought to the navi diety as the entire community prays for her human spirit to enter a native body. are you kidding me!

2. the discourse surrounding jake sully's romance with female lead, zoe saldana was disgusting.
and the part at the end when she holds his human self as a baby made me want to vom.

3. the part where jake sully dominates the giant bird thing and ascends to the symbolic throne of leadership and gains the silent respect of the new warrior king - dick fest.

4. jake sullys video diaries. fuck off.


the scariest thing about this film for me was the fact that it encouraged the very same kinds of multi-culti diversity post racial bullshit that perpetuates US imperialism in a very very real way and it does so through a weird retelling of indigenous struggle led by a white US marine.
the arc of the film pulls the audience in to empathetically identifiy with jake sully as a race traitor and with the indigenous people as spiritually pure underdogs. it focuses on jake sullys ability to become one with the navi people through his avatar. let me say that again.....
THE MOVIE REVOLVES AROUND THE FACT THAT (through technology) THE MAIN CHARACTER A FORMER MARINE CAN UTILIZE A NATIVE BODY IN ORDER TO BECOME A SYMBOLIC AND POLITICAL LEADER FOR AN ENTIRE ANTI-COLONIAL MOVEMENT. and this is the highest selling movie in America baby.

as you probably can see i have only half formed thoughts and fairly good amount of anger.
so for the purpose of furthering the convo to bring something good out of it... i will pose some reflective questions to help think through it all

how does this film make meaning out of bodies and which bodies, and what is that meaning used to do?

how is the nobility and innocence of scientific discourse upheld through the film in order to differentiate between good colonialism and bad colonialism. sigourney weaver wants to educate the natives and mine delicately for research whereas the big bad white dudes just want to mine for precious natural resource and kill anyone in the way. how do these two seemingly different approaches push and pull with each other to create good guys and bad guys and for what reason?

jake sully is taken as a joke by weaver for not being smart or well studied enough and by the marine general for being in a wheelchair. when do we get to see him shine with courage, quick wittedness, physical prowess, and sweltering romance? oh yea. thats right.

and of course there is more. but we will talk of it in later times i am sure.

and even more interestingly....
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/avatar-on-the-west-bank/

Feminists with Disabilities Talk Back: Amanda Palmer and Avant-Garde Ableism

Hello Everyone,

I thought you may want to check out this:

http://disabledfeminists.com/2010/02/22/a-few-words-on-some-previous-words/

It maps the controversy (and lets say extremely problematic and may I add violent conceptions) of the Evelyn Evelyn show/album by Amanda Palmer. I didn't know who she was before but I sure do now! I encourage everyone to read it. It is written by one of my esteemed cohort members, Anna, whose work encompasses the intersections and necessity of disability/ability within feminist discourse and action. I find that this actually speaks to the larger impulse on the side of art (black face in vogue cause its so avant-garde) to use controversial images and minstrelsy for capitalist gain. Anyway, I really enjoyed reading it and I hope you do as well!

Law and (Dis)Order: B.D. Wong and Psychosis

In the second season of Law and Order SVU we are introduced to the department's psychologist(chiatrist?) Dr. George Huang (B.D. Wong) who comes off as the slightly nerdy, well-informed and dare I say dashing man - duckbill hairstyle and all. As he steps into the multicultural circle of the SVU unit he is met with extreme distaste from those officers, namely Stabler, who can't fathom that this small time doctor knows about the big leagues. Oh, but he does! With a simple look at the case file, Huang can attest to the killer's personality right down to his intimate habits and possible working environment. How does he know? Psychology of course, something that doesn't stand up to Stabler's years of experience and NYC swagger. He finally becomes one of the crew, though, and most certainly post-9/11 becomes an asset to the team. What amazes me about Huang in these episodes is that he is so spot-on. I had no idea that forensics and criminal psychology was so great at identifying the criminal body and mind (insert sarcasm here). Huang finally makes the beginning credits and notorious shot of the SVU unit with arms crossed and gazing into the camera as if to say, "we know who you are." And I am led to believe that yes, Dr. Huang, you know who I am. I could possibly make a point here about the impulse of psychological knowledges that were used to describe, codify and order the terrorist body in times of national dilemma but the show doesn't seem to follow this call. There victims and killers span seem to be relatively white washed with obvious motives (money, sex, control). The slew of psychological disorders are saved for them - antisocial, DID, gender dysphoria. As for their racialized counterparts they seem to lack psychological distress. Why is this? My guess would be that rehabilitation, as it is shown in the show, is reserved for white bodies. They do their crimes because they have mental disorders. They often have family trauma, mommy and daddy issues, pedophilia urges and an inability to articulate their feelings. Whereas the criminals of color seem to be just bad. They are caught up in gang activity or just on the wrong side of life. Thus, in the midst of psychological narratives for terrorist bodies of color abroad there actually seems to be a lack of necessity for bodies of color within the nation state. While psychology may appease those going to war by ensuring them, that indeed they know the terrorist mind it doesn't seem to work the same in the context of SVU and the space of NYC. This contradiction is well worth noting in times of prison popularity. While the liberal eye is asked, for a moment, to reflect on what is going on with the white criminal mind they are also asked to kindly dispose of bodies of color without the same kind of respect. Now, psychological narratives are fucked up, I am not asking that they should be reserved for profiling (EVER) but I will say that they work in insidious ways to dissagregate those who may be curable and those who just need to be locked away.

Dating Tips...

Wanna know how to date right?

http://pbh3.tumblr.com/post/390543309/1938-dating-guide-for-single-women

This link was sent to my girlfriend by her sister. I feel like I encounter something like this every six months where people look at old dating advice for women or old advertisements and go "oh that's scary; things used to be so different back then." Bullshit! This kind of stuff is everywhere still. Every magazine advertised to straight women HAS to have some sort of list dating tips or ways to "please your man." You can easily google search "dating tips" and find contemporary lists that are more conservative than this one. (I found one that encourages women not to act so "butch" and never to be the first person to say "I love you." I'd like to give men a little more credit than these stereotypes that so many self-help articles do.)

We should do our best to avoid these false narratives of progressive gender politics. In cases such as "dating tips," the tips are often removed from their specific contexts: was this from the Glamour of the time, or from some gender-conforming propaganda? We also cannot assume that tips directly correlate to customs of the time, although it is true that cultural artifacts such as this do influence the norms of the time. By painting these progressive narratives we often effaces our connection with the past, how the past still haunts and stays with us. We can shrug our shoulders and say "that was then, we're much more advanced now." Not only is it dishonest, but these narratives of progressivism underlie excuses for colonization (speaking of histories we often try to distance ourselves from).

I do think the photos are pretty hilarious though. Especially the one where she rubs the head of the person in the next booth. If a girl did that on a date she'd be a total keeper in my book. But that's just me.

Citizenship Application

Here are some questions one must answer in order to apply for U.S. citizenship

"Have you ever been a member of or in any way associated with:

The communist Party

Any other totalitarian party

A terrorist organization

Have you ever advocated (either directly or indirectly) the overthrow of any government by force or violence

Have you ever persecuted any person because of race, religion, national origin, membership in a particular social group or political opinion?"

It then goes on to ask if you’ve ever been in direct relation with the Nazi party. Or any association with Germany during the Nazi regime.

I think the irony of asking "have you ever persecuted any person because of...national origin" is particularly rife. I assume the correct answer is "no," and that this application process does not count as persecution. I also can't tell if the advocation of the overthrow of any government by force or violence is something that would make you a bad candidate to be an American. I'd imagine that there are certain governments that would be considered acceptable to overthrow. What if the person was a member of a communist party, but only to start a ring of terrorists within the group with the party in order to overthrow the totalitarian regime? It seems like the application process is missing out on these very specific potential patriots.

Also, who is going to admit that they have been a member of a terrorist organization? That would be stupid.

The whole application is a good indication of the types of people The U.S. government considers "undesirable." Much like the type of people recent liberal legislation is hoping to crack down on with new reforms, while allowing for "better" processes for the desirable one. This is a time when I wish I had a good critique on how discourses on desirable versus undesirable immigration relied on racial and xenophobic histories that suck.

It later asks about things like prostitution and arrest record, an other example of the ways our frameworks for immigration our not created solely on racism and xenophbia, but gendered and sexual phobias are at play as well.

Fuck, it's been a minute since I've made myself think and write critically and complicatedly. I take solace knowing that no one is reading this.