Tag Archives: fighting

What We’re Reading

8 Aug

bell hooks got quickly tossed aside when Sarah SK finally pushed the first book of this YA trilogy into my hands and I surprisingly couldn’t stop myself from devouring it.

Now, it should be noted that I’m not the most avid reader of young adult fiction.  My poor mother has been trying to get me to read the Harry Potters for years now and Twilight just seems like a creepy waste of time.  (I don’t care what you say.)  But, I take SK’s opinions very seriously and since I’ve finished it, have passed it onto my roommate, my BF, strangers on the street, anyone who’ll listen.

The Hunger Games follows Katniss Everdeen, a seventeen year old woman from a poor district of the nation of Panem (a post-apocalyptic distopian USA) through her performance as a contestant on a compulsory televised teen-aged battle to the death, her political enlightenment and radicalization, her two simultaneous romances, and finally her role as the figurehead of the leftist revolution.

Obviously, it’s an effortless read.  Katniss is a badass.  It’s equally critical of capitalism as it is of the power seeking left.  There’s all sorts of tantalizing softcore that leaves you jonesing for some erotic fanfic–if you were secure enough in your “coolness” to actually allow yourself to indulge in it, that is!  And, except for the super boring, super hetero-mono-normative let down ending, is PROBABLY the perfect distopian tale ever.

But, what do I know?  Who else has read it?  Any thoughts?

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DOUBLE TAKE flashback friday

22 Jul

How is it that sweet, sweet summertime paired with sweet, sweet unemployment leads to ANYTHING but goal attainment/productivity/creative expression? I missed community ballet class, my collective meeting, and Maddie Ruthless’ set at the Saint last night so I could indulge in the seasonal alcoholic hedonism known as Tales of the Cocktail at the Hotel Monteleone.

It wasn’t my intention. I was simply PMSing and in need of a dip in the Monteleone’s rooftop pool. Upon our arrival and at the realization that the booze conference had just serendipitously begun, I was overcome with joy. Sophie, more sober in mind and spirit, was immediately repulsed by the scene there. It took me a minute. Years past, Tales of the Cocktail was an opportunity to get top shelf drunk and nibble on canapes for the FREE. Therefore, every drunk punk you knew in New Orleans was there rubbing elbows with alcohol distributors and Yankee mixologists. But, this year they were all conspicuously absent.

THEY’RE CHARGING NOW. FTW.

Everything about it just seemed grosser than usual. Sure, we got drunk but, we were lonely, too. The pool was a nightmare. Some horrible, older Aussie decided it was a really cool idea to slap my besequinned bottom without my expressed consent. I shouted “Welcome to America!” while proceeding to give him a bloody nose in front of his buddies. I pissed all over myself in the hallway where we found some unattended club sandwiches. Hungover by sunset.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, sorry for not posting for a bit. Since we missed last Friday, here are two 90′s throwbacks for your weekend amusement, comrades. Hope you’re surviving your summer better than I.

(Probably the most arousing music video I had ever seen in the third grade.)

(And, my first concert! Sixth grade! Natalie Lawson and I sung every word, SEVERELY pissing off the mother and daughter seated in front of us. When they asked us to pipe down, we sung twice as loud. Fuck you!)

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REPOST: More Sex Workers Arrested, Charged with “Crimes Against Nature”

28 Jun

Reposted from Nola Anarcha:

Less than a month after Women With A Vision won a victory for sex workers by getting a repeal of the Solicitation of Crimes Against Nature (SCAN) law through the Lousiana legislature, a law which labels sex workers with Sex Offender status meant for sexual assault perpetrators, NOPD continues it’s racist, P.R. motivated sweeps of minor offenders by arresting 9 women and charging them with the soon-to-be-repealed SCAN law.

The average age of entry into prostitution is 13 or 14 years old. Most of these 13 or 14 year old girls were recruited or coerced into prostitution. Others were “traditional wives” without job skills who escaped from or were abandoned by abusive husbands and went into prostitution to support themselves and their children.[1] The fact that New Orleans cops firstly failed to protect these women when they were children from the violence of patriarchy and class society, and then have the gall to ATTACK THE VICTIMS when they use a means of survival that is a visible reminder of this system’s failures is a despicable attempt at obliterating any activities which remind them of where their massive degree of power, control and wealth in our society came from, while simultaneously re-producing and furthering that inequality as these women are forced to pay money to the courts for fines and fees, as their bodies in cells mean daily money to pay the Sheriff to house them, and as they lose the money from Johns to the whiter, more privileged sex workers (“escorts”) not targeted by NOPD. NOPD’s action simultaneously attacks society’s victims, takes away more power from the oppressed and gives it to the more privileged, and blames sex workers instead of Johns for prostitution when most wealth is controlled by men in our society, re-enforcing the system of patriarchy.

The insults against the dignity of the people who live in this city just keep on coming fast and furious. 

Continue reading →

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Dear ladies kicking ass in the streets, THANK YOU!

2 Feb

For me, one of the more exciting aspects of the uprisings in Egypt is that it’s serving as a reminder of how necessary women are to any revolution.  From London, to Greece, to Iran we’ve been seeing a lot of bad ass women taking over the streets lately.  There’s nothing more beautiful than a woman standing up against a wall of armed and armored men- the very representation of masculine militarization.  Everyone benefits from the mass dissemination of images of women resisting and antagonizing the state.

I’ve been greatly inspired by Mona Eltahawy, a reporter and analyst who’s been an outspoken advocate for the Egyptian people on cable news.  She’s been calling out mainstream broadcasters for describing the events in Egypt as chaos and disaster, when they should be calling them by their proper name, uprisings, or a revolution.  On Democracy Now!, she also described how Mubarak’s attempt to reek more havoc by releasing prison inmates was met with community solidarity.  Prostesters are organizing themselves into community watch groups to protect themselves and each other, and to stop looting at libraries and museums.

Many Egyptians have pointed out that there is a great history of woman resistors in their country.  During the Egyptian Revolution of 1919, three hundred women came together to denounce colonialism and the British occupation of Egypt.  It was March 16, 1919, when they demonstrated, and the event is known as Egyptian Women’s Revolution against Colonialism.   Even though the protest was organized by upper class women, other women began to join them, including Hamida Khalil, who became the first female martyr for the cause of national liberation in Egypt.

It’s a shame that often insurrection is seen as a masculine effort.  I blame this on the fact that it’s militant male voices who are the loudest and most listened to.  Fortunately, there are a plethora of women and queer people who have been declaring that we must reclaim the language and sentiment of revolution to reflect the fact that everyone has a place in it and must be a part of it.

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Post-Apocalyptic Tank Girl

26 May

Tank Girl taught us to fight, but as stright anarcha feminist females, sometimes we get tired of fighting.I grew up on Tank Girl.  Tank Girl was a freedom fighter who led the boys to battle and won.  Her image and comic book life taught me as a young girl that to be a liberated woman, I needed to fight harder, better, and badder than any boy around.  So, I hung with the boys because liberated girls are bad bad girls.  But she did nothing to teach me how to love and be loved.

She walked softly, but she carried a big gun and so did I.  I shot vile grenades from my mouth.  I still do, probably.  She was the kind of girl who could hold her own in any battle.  Just because I wasn’t living a comic book life didn’t mean I couldn’t make her strength relate to the realities of being a girl.  The hardest part to learn was and continues to be the fact that women bear the brunt of love and war.  Oftentimes, love and war are truly indistinguishable from each other.

Of course, all the pop images of women that came up in the 80s were hard nosed bitches who fought hard to gain some equal footing with men.  That’s just how it had to be in the second wave.  Feminists often talk about the first, second and third wave, but truth be told, I’m not even sure what that is supposed to mean or how women are supposed to identify with these theories.  Theories explain what has already happened, but they don’t instruct us how to live today.  All I really wanted to do was to learn how to live unencumbered and unafraid of myself.

I can identify with the underpinnings of this third wave that embraces all aspects of humanness, rejecting the gender binary we are trying to free ourselves from.  I believe that in contrast to the criticism, third wave attempts to unify us as people rather than according to genders.  But while the theories explain a philosophy, I’m still lost in second wave struggles to gain equal footing.  As the third wave came up, it left the second wavers who straddled the two movements without skills to adapt.  Instead of fighting, we were asked simply to love.  That sounds great, unless most of the country is still living on the cusp of the beginning of the second wave.

Most social movements take years.  Civil Rights took nearly 60 years to come to fruition–not that it’s even completed yet.  First wave feminism started at the turn of the 20th century, but the second and third wave swooped in within the past 20 years.  Social movements take time, not just to organize, but to bring everyone along with us. It’s a collective move toward liberation. I am one of the women who learned how to fight in second wave.  Third wave left me behind as I reached the age of maturity to allow me space to use my skills and develop new ones. Third wave very quickly imposed polyamory on my take no prisoners second wave doctrine.

I haven’t hopped on the bandwagon of polyamory of third wave; I can’t divide myself up to different people.  I love the images of the 1960s strippers and housewives because it reminds me of what women did in the sexual revolution.  I’m multi-racial, so it is difficult to self-identity, but I can look at the women who came before me in this country and see my heritage. I still believe, like the housewives of the 1960s, that there is one person to love intimately, closely, and tightly.  I embrace the part of me that really needs the security of a best friend who I can love completely, without hesitation, and with whom I can share the parts of me that don’t love as easily as the third wave wants me to.  But I’ve been taught how to fight first and maybe love one day, if it’s suitable to my liberated schedule.

Second wave taught me how to fight and now I don’t know where the war is.  So, I brought the war home.  To every relationship I have had, I brought the war home to my house and duked out my liberation with my lover.  I’ve been enslaved by a relationship because I wanted it and never really understood how to nurture it and make it the vehicle to my freedom.  Instead, I fought for my relationship.  I always thought fighting is what I was supposed to do because if he doesn’t understand me, a woman, then he’s just a man and never will understand what it means to be a woman.  I have been taught to be self-reliant, to depend on no one, to hold my own, and be independent.  I have been taught how to be alone.  Now, I’m tired of being alone, especially when in a relationship.

Maybe now I’m just angry.  I can’t hang with the boys anymore because I’m a woman now.  It may be a false binary, but it’s a real sense of the world I live in and interact with daily.  I have been fighting like hell to be seen as “just me” absent gender and race, but I’ve only been fighting to ignore myself. I’ve failed many radical feminist politics and simultaneously failed mainstream society, too, because I’m a fighter, but I’m a fighter who cries.  I don’t remember Tank Girl ever crying.  Even she finds love in the end.

I’m angry that I don’t know how to love and be loved.  I’m angry that the third wave blowback is that women like me grapple with how to love while carrying a big gun.  I’m angry that radical communities require endless love, but daily world living requires fighters.  I’m angry that men have so easily hopped on the third wave polyamory because it suits them sexually, but fails women who are still fighting for equal footing.  I’m angry that I have destroyed the one thing I ever wanted, if only I could have known how to love and be loved.

Third wave, I don’t believe in you; what theories call third wave, I call human rights.  I still believe in second wave.  I don’t believe second wave is over.  If anything, third wave was co-opted by men who love polyamory.  I believe in monogamy.  My wave of feminism is still working on being equal and loving at the same time.

I’m scared of loving because I’m fragile.  I fight because I’m fragile.  I’m at war with myself

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