October 11, 2015
from the bb desk
Darlings, as you read this I am returning from visiting a dear friend in a city where, earlier this week, a cougar exercised its rights as a fuckin’ animal to go where it pleases. I would one as a companion animal, given that they apparently “don’t habituate themselves to garbage” like my fool dog, so.
“Give Your Money to Women: Think of it like carbon trading, but for being an asshole.”
5/5 feminists agree that the interview with Nicki in the NYT Magazine was a shitshow and you should only read the parts that are direct quotes of what she actually said. Here is a summary for your convenience and delight; it is SOLANGE APPROVED.
Someone’s proposing an alternative to the Kinsey scale called the Purple-Red Scale of Attraction. I love purple and I also love red, and I am all for expansionary conceptualizations of sexuality, and if charts help you render your experiences legible to yourself and the world around you, then great. Still not so sure if there’s such a thing as “the opposite sex” though, so, always work to be done.
My friends, the conservative party hopeful for my riding. Speaking of the PCs, behold Erica Violet Lee’s precise and accurate articulation of the fragile and dangerous logic behind the party’s success:
I strongly believe that the reason the Conservatives have held power comes down to hatred and fear of Indigenous people, migrants, and those whose bodies and voices challenge the myth of Canadian benevolence. They are afraid of us and literally want us destroyed because our very existence is a constant threat to the legitimacy of the Canadian state.
Note also in relation to the whole barbaric cultural practices hotline that
The culturally specific connotation of the phrase serves to mark gendered violence as crimes that are inherent to particular cultures, ones that ostensibly do not share Canada’s touted values of gender equality. Rather than tackling widespread patriarchal violence, this logic exceptionalizes and essentializes violence against women as a foreign phenomenon, imported to Canada by migrants whose belonging is configured as threatening.
Also in election news: the NDP have put together a gif story to explain why the Trans-Pacific Partnership is global internet censorship, Megan Leslie for frikkin’ prime minister, and Harper says most cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women are solved. Cool thanks bro you’re a peach.
To this day, the government continues to take it upon itself to determine what needs to be done, how it needs to be done, and the level of resources. If the government continues to approach Indigenous people as just an issue that needs to be addressed, or as a social problem that needs fixing, tragic outcomes are guaranteed.
What do prominent Indigenous people want from the next Prime Minister?
Until dudes sit the fuck down and stop having violent temper tantrums about things girls have, from puppies to knowledge to bodily autonomy, we will never have peace.
Dating is hard for most people. But when you’re trans, it’s hard in a completely different way. It’s all too easy to internalize the assumptions that we are rudimentary facsimiles of the people we actually want to be, or that we take on a lifestyle that’s all about mutilating our “God-given, natural” bodies. Being a person of color that floats between the queer world and the straight world adds all the more pressure. I constantly have to juggle other people’s hangups around gender, sexuality, and race simultaneously.
Thank you for this, Raquel Willis.
Remember how I told dudes the other week that they should ask their partners about their desire and encourage all their dude friends to ask their partners about desire? Here are some HOT TIPS FOR DOING SO.
Ellen Page is a cutie patootie and I like her.
This week in white feminism, the stars of the movie Suffragette would, astonishingly, rather be rebels than slaves. Then, at a Suffragette premier, staff forcibly dragged protesters from Sisters Uncut off the red carpet. I think you should read Shahida Rahman’s profile of Sophia Duleep Singh and Bhikaji Cama instead of seeing this movie.
I have definitely whispered at least 80% of these statements to myself happily and soothingly while watching Miss Fisher.
On “foreign accents” and “sounding white.”
May you all spend this most violently colonial long weekend convincing your families to not vote PC. xoxo
