July 26, 2015
from the bb desk
I did not see any movies with rape in them since last we spoke, dear readers. However, the other night I went to see a concert with my beloved and a strange man complimented my partner on my beauty instead of me, and I so wished in that moment that I had MORE WITCHY POWERS—I would have conjured many birds to land on his house and just poop all over it. Or maybe transformed the luminescence emanating from my perfect face into lasers that singed off all his hair and left him so smelly!
Shit hit the fan at Gawker HQ this past week. If you google “Gawker Media” and select the News tab, there are like 900 chronologies of why. Here, though, is Charlotte Shane on the collective reaction to this news:
There are a lot of threads to follow if you’re looking at all this from a place of concern for the safety/human rights of sex workers, but here’s the one I’m hung up on: the belief that this man deserved to hire someone for sex quietly, privately, and without consequence. That obtaining a thoughtful, ethical level of service was his right. And the attitude that, because two people participated, two people should be named (or outed) in spite of the fact that only one party (the sex worker, in case you’re confused) is likely to be at risk of public retaliation or arrest.
Do you have an extra few dollars? Support Brown, Black, and Fierce, an arts collective dedicated to centering the experiences and voices of Indigenous people and people of colour.
Two of #BlackLivesMatter’s cofounders, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi on getting credit for work and why recognition is only the penultimate goal: “it’s vital that they have the opportunity to shape the conversation that they started. As women, members of the immigrant community and members of the LGBTQ community, they bring a unique dimensionality to a story that’s often seen from a single viewpoint.”
I have two fave videos this week: this girl who can throw anything into anything and land the shot perfectly?! And also THIS BEAT BOXING FIEND. They both grin in the way that lets you know that they are great co-conspirators in this life and I feel a real solidarity with them.
Blatchford and Wente truly form the ultimate terrible twosome when it comes to Canadian journalists who report with impunity: the former “presents her opinions as objective realities, and couches them in rhetoric that any reasonable person would understand could incite a violent reaction” in her reporting on the harassment of Stephanie Guthrie and Heather Reilly, writes Anne Thériault in a piece at Canadaland.
TW for transmisogynoir—India Clarke, a Black trans woman, was murdered this week in Tampa, Florida. Infuriatingly, local media have, without fail, misgendered her in their reporting, brought up her past arrest, and consistently placed her chosen name in quotation marks.
Jessica Machado in Guernica on shame and her mom’s reproductive choices
When conservatives dismiss the idea of slut shaming, I think of my mother. Shame was not a moment or a phase; shame held her tight, right up until the end. Shame is your subconscious breaking through all the boundaries of your body to scream, “Please don’t tell her.”
CWILA has a new call for submissions! They’re “actively seeking essays by women, transgender, or genderqueer writers who identify as being people of colour, raced, or mixed.” See the whole call here.
Disappointed in Taylor for self-interestedly obfuscating Nicki’s point about racism following the VMA nomination announcements, which, as Zeba Blay points out, is peak White Feminism; glad she endeavoured to apologize. Also, let’s be clear: this assertion that white women made it possible for black women to have rights as women? It is deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply flawed. Like, dangerously, absurdly flawed. Ugh.
Transphobes that they are, British Columbia’s Liberals are refusing to sign a Vancouver Pride-mandated pledge calling for new legislation to protect trans people, and as such will not participate in this year’s parade. Meanwhile, trans people in Newfoundland and Labrador finally have the right to have their ID match their gender without undergoing surgery! Congratulations Kyra Rees!
Image
Via theynamedmeadam on tumblr.
