OUR SUNDAY LINKS

March 6, 2016
from the bb desk

Hello, I saw Deadpool this week and it made me so frustrated (DON’T WORRY, A MAN PAID FOR MY TICKET SO I DIDN’T GIVE MONEY TO A PIECE OF MEDIA THAT DOESN’T PASS THE BECHDEL-DUVERNAY TEST). Are any of you filmmakers? I would love to see a superhero movie where the superhero’s origin story doesn’t make them Strike Out On Their Own and Lie To Their Loved Ones in the name of Saving Everyone. Like, can’t someone save everyone by like, disclosing that they’re scared? Asking for help? Accepting care? Negasonic Teenage Warhead was the only acceptable part of the movie and the LEAST acceptable part was the fucking RAPE JOKE about her character. Let’s move on to more bolstering things.

This is a thunderstorm of an essay by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah in consideration of James Baldwin’s legacy on the occasion of her visit to his house in France.

If I knew anything about being black in America it was that nothing was guaranteed, you couldn’t count on anything, and all that was certain for most of us was a black death. In my mind, a black death was a slow death, the accumulation of insults, injuries, neglect, second-rate health care, high blood pressure, and stress, no time for self-care, no time to sigh, and, in the end, the inevitable, the erasing of memory. I wanted to write against this, and so I was writing a history of the people I did not want to forget. And I loved it; nothing else mattered, because I was remembering, I was staving off death.

A comic about medical abortion! The editrixes want you to know that we have abortion-havers in our circles for whom medical abortions caused labour, which is considerably more intense than just having period cramps. Could this be some “cis women just have such high pain tolerance” garbage reflected in the scientific literature? ONLY TIME WILL TELL.

I LOVE this photo series by Tenille Campbell celebrating Indigenous people’s romantic relationships. The pictures are SO sexy and SO sweet.

Eight things everybody needs to know about art and disability.

I’m very interested in this article by a person with a penis about dick pics.

On black women’s selfies in a white-feminism selfie world : “To consider the specificities of our experiences as black women — the surveillance and ghostly or bodily violences in our histories, our constantly shifting orientations and centers — and really considering them for what they are without whiteness looking over our shoulders.”

One of the things I do really love about Broad City is its “insistence that bodies out of control are hilarious and lovely, not dirty and grotesque,” but I disagree with the assertion that Ilana’s character isn’t a nightmare of cultural appropriation. Judaism isn’t a free pass to automatic anti-racist white person status, you guys!

Do you think we’ll ever live in a world where people won’t have to learn self defense because they can’t trust the people around them not to ASSAULT THEM IN THE STREET for not being a straight white cis man?

A thorough and smart explanation of colourism and the frustration that many dark skinned black women have with Zoe Saldana playing Nina Simone in the upcoming biopic.

One of Chris Rock’s racist jokes in the opening monologue for the Oscars involved using Asian American children as props. One of the kids, named Estie Kung, is interviewed here.

On being Muslim and queer: “When the correct term finds its way to you, it’s liberating, like a big sigh of relief. If people don’t understand you, it’s probably because they don’t need to. They’ve never had to explore themselves the way you’ve had to (or maybe they have, but they’re in denial) you shiny, beautiful thing.”

Canadian campuses aren’t exempt from white supremacy.

Call for papers on climate realism: an occasion to rethink the aesthetics and politics of climate in its myriad forms; to capture climate’s capacity to express embedded histories; to map the formal strategies of representation that have turned climate into cultural content; and to index embodied currents of past and future climates.

Living with sickle cell anemia: still perfect, almost a year later.

This essay is just fireworks all the way through; it’s about disability and fashion and being a handsome lady!

So many suggested readings on sex work!

An advice column on how to talk to your partner about non monogamy!

The shelter situation in Toronto is absolutely a morally reprehensible shit show.

Friend of GUTS Kaarina Mikalson on her burgeoning derby career.

Vine of the Week

MUCH LOVE TO YOU ALL HAVE SUCH A GREAT WEEK XOXO

International Women’s Day Addition from the GUTS Editors:

Gilary Massa is an amazing black Muslim activist and new mother who needs you to get angry. She was “laid-off” by the Ryerson Students’ Union executive while on maternity leave. The situation is legally messed up in various ways you can read about here. But right now the Students’ Union executives responsible think they’re getting away with it and are running for re-election. Elections are one of those beautiful times when elected leaders get held accountable for their decisions.You can help make sure the Ryerson Students’ Union are held accountable by:

tweeting and following #IstandwithGilary
Letting the RSU Exec know that maternity leave is a mother’s legally protected right, and they should be recognizing this amazing black Muslim feminist and mother as their greatest resource.
And if you’re a Ryerson student, know that the @ImpactRye slate is responsible for this and make sure they answer for it!