1TBM

Okey dokie...marriage traditions are for EVERYBODY :)

2012-01-26T14:01:00.001-05:00

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

Exerting pressure over Carleton U as unethical corporate body...

2012-01-26T14:00:00.001-05:00

I've been spending time on fetlife...

2012-01-20T10:26:00.000-05:00

Difficult and challenging place filled with many, many oppressive people whose sexualities and desires are so reinforcing of dominant values and dynamics that I've found it difficult to breathe around them. There are racists, misogynists, classists, homophobes, ableist people, islamophobes, fat phobes, ageists, so, so many different kinds of FAIL on a site designed by people who don't have any kind of politics to speak of.

hmmm...
fetlife, despite the images on the splash page they use to promote the site, really is a microcosm of the larger world in that there are all types there.

Due to being so stubborn and inquisitive I've also managed to feret out some really fascinating and politicized misfit/freaks on that site who are gems I'm honoured to have met. These are people with minds filled with ideas that intersect, who are radically political who also incorporate difficult pieces around desire and deviance. I've been writing and posting a lot there and getting lots of feedback which has been so valuable to me as a writer and exile.

Most recently I wrote something having to do with gender that is in process but that I'm really proud of even as it's still in formation. I thought I'd share it...

My contextualized, multifaceted notes on gender...in process because I'm in process

"Monoculture is, by definition, the creation of a privileged class; it rejects the value inherent in diversity in order to favor a particular set of traits. Like all other institutions, monocultures are inherently exclusionary."
- maymay

My name is darkdaughta or T.J. unless I offer you something else.

I am a placental, diurnal, carbon based, upright walking, bipedal, descendent of primates.

I am humaaan. That's star trek ferengi speak for humanoid earthling.

I am female bodied.
I was gendered at birth.
I'm confused about who I actually am/want to be because I was gendered at birth.
I hate having that sinking feeling that my mind has been molded in particular ways without my consent or intent.
I resent the feeling that whole worlds of knowledge have been created to speak to this specific facet of me by people who don't know anything about me and mine, who still, nonetheless, believe that their words designed to fit their experiences will somehow fit me to a T.

I have a lot of rage about having so many different kinds of relationships to gender as related to different kinds of oppressions and about how this layered complexity is not reflected in dominant/popular white queer discourses as created and maintained by people who have not cultivated a complex relationship to gender that would allow them to move beyond critiquing people's analytical and textual missteps right on into them being able to layer their experiences of dominance when writing their own notes on gender.

I'd like to have more spaces where the emphasis is not on how well I can parrot white queers' words and ideas about gender and instead more focused on how much I can complicate my own understandings of my identities in ways that challenge not simply gender but oppression and domination across the board.

With this in mind, I thought I'd write something about my in-process, ever morphing, fluid relationship to the concept of gender to whatever is in here with me that is about gender.

Here's what I've got today...

I suspect that a lot of the reason why gender, although it has been a lifelong companion, is not an issue that makes me move into defense mode, is because I've been reading a lot of science fiction since I was an elementary school student. My father was a sci-fi geek, among other things, so writings about beings who weren't even human at all, let alone gendered, were always strewn all over my childhood home.

I am a queer woman who has a thoroughly fucked and convoluted relationship to gender informed by multiple, layered relationships to various communities who code, understand and value gender differently, who as a result code, understand and value my gendered experience filtered through different living performances differently depending on whether they even see me or not.

As the middle passage African descended child of stolen Africans who were brought to the amerikkkas to toil without rest in white colonizer's fields, who were killed in the millions as ships holding them crossed the atlantic, bones littering the path between Africa and the amerikkkas, millions of deaths, a continent depopulated genocidally, still under attack to this day, bones of ancesors strewn across time from then till now, I am forced to give a damn about having the ability to make babies.

I'm rabidly, radically pro-choice. My body, my uterus, my egg, my vulva, my belly, my back, my stretch marks, my nutrients, my nerve endings, my choice, MINE).

At the exact same moment, I make it a point to give a damn about serving as orifice for future time descendants who can draw breath in peace and happiness.

I am forced to give a damn about numbers untold gone from this world and what will happen if my peoples ever reach the brink of extinction.

Everybody knows that veiled genocidal axiom about how racism will finally be "cured", stricken from the face of the globe when everyone is a nice shade of light mocha brown?

Well that means at least some people are waiting for people like me to stop making babies who look like me so that they can finally feel safe/r in this world, more comfortable in this world.

I choose to give a fuck about birthing Black diasporic African babies even though I don't identify as some man's breeding cow. I guess in the eyes of those who don't have to worry about being killed en masse simply because of the colour of their skin that may make me a "breeder".

I don't feel comfortable in some cisgendered women's spaces, particularly those that are explicitly based on dominant world patriarchal, essentialist notions of what it means to be a woman, a mother, a wife, a biological family member, based on oppressive ideas about what it means to be "good", to be "nice", to be acceptable, palatable or courteous.

I don't often feel comfortable in white dominated queer spaces of any kind as I experience them as extremely, unrepentantly, shamelessly, incorrigibly white supremacist and completely predicated on ideas that offer inclusion and attention to those who can find some way to manifest as aesthetically and linguistically acceptable to white queer cultural norms.

When I think about radical gender theory with discourses so completely dominated by white queer people, I get annoyed.

Deeply triggered, I time and geographically travel back to places and realities of the African ancestors before they were stolen.

They had their own fucking ways of understanding what it meant to be humaaan. They were developing their own discourses related to genital configuration and cultures based on these beliefs dating back to prehistory.

Then they met diseased people in boats who were most likely lost, out of food and drinkable water, whose understandings of everything about themselves and the world was so profoundly fucked.

So fucking fucked, that all they could do was project their fears, insecurities, bankrupt beliefs, diseased cultures vis a vis the body, sex, sexuality, gender onto the African peoples they encountered.

I spit on the memory of those colonizer/explorers.

I spit on the ways they warped the beliefs and cultures of everyone they came into contact with as they roamed across this world like so many blood thirsty homocidal brutal Reevers.

When I think about what I've read of the descendants of these colonizing, raping, abusing, invading, thieving, brutalizing "explorer"/slavers and their struggles to understand what was bequeathed to them by their ancestors, gender, I think about an obsession with categorizing and compartmentalizing things stretching from their ancestors right through to present day.

Catalogue and define, thereby ultimately owning and restricting everything to within bearable parameters.

Every experience, every place, every people, even if all these actually defy compartmentalization.

When I remember their ancestors and hold that memory close, I feel white hot fury when I see the ways present time colonizing descendants gather together and threaten to disrepect, cuss, invalidate, laugh at, chastise, scold, punish, ban, traumatize people who do not understand, label, think about, theorize about, live gender radicality in the ways they do.

I can't help but remember that their obnoxious ancestors also did that exact same thing...in regards to Black African people.

Just to be clear...
I don't mind that some of their descendants have decided to mount a critique of gender in ways that work for them. I don't mind that they have found names to call themselves and their tribes that fit with their realities.

More power to them.

I do, however, take massive issue with the fact that at least some of these colonizer descendants have decided that what works for them will now be the gold standard for all who they encounter or who encounter them.

I get really pissy when I see that because many of them don't pay close attention to their own white histories...because many of them don't incorporate an analysis of their own racist white selves into their understanding of queerness, queer culture and gender, they fail to see the racist underpinnings of a gender challenging movement that says "anyone who is like us or who wants to be like us just use these rules and anyone who does not use these rules is can just fuck off" will inherently be a racist movement.

I am really fucking incensed with the arrogance of a white dominated gender challenging movement led by people who are mostly not fit to lead a truly diverse movement because they have not been doing their homework and seem completely fixated on their own comfort, cultures, realities and ideas defined as now the new norm for any of us queer peoples who are struggling with gender should struggle to attain if we want to be seen as valid or even seen at all.

Old, tired, racist bullshit.

sigh...
I've got more...
I was born into this world in a body identified for me as female.

I was born into the hand of Black African descended doctors whose ancestors, like mine, encountered the colonizing Reever folk hundreds of years earlier, and as a result, by the time they met me emerging from my mama, did not know how to truly welcome a new spirit to this place and instead did as they were taught to do and slapped a categorizing label of contents on my forehead.

I cannot hate them for that as they were as much victims of the colonizer/Reever folks' gender obsession as I was/am.

So yah...I was assigned female at birth.

Please don't expect me to use the going kewl acronym for this as I really hate kewl in group acronyms and think they're meant to do that in-clique exclusion thing. If you're a white queer and you're talking to/writing to me and want me to understand what you're saying, just fucking say it. Don't give me the acronym the white queers who dominate the discourse are using.

I haven't really had issue with being defined as female. I've searched around inside from time to time over the past say 20+ years since I started to encounter lesbians who seemed curiously to no longer be defining as lesbians but as bois and daddies and men, which I did not at first understand at all, having been born into the second wave and come into feminist consciousness during the seventies "I am strong. I am invincible. I am woman" period of feminism.

I didn't understand the differently gendered people I was encountering. I didn't even understand the word gender as related to anything but the patriarchal biological and socially inscribed differences between wimmin and men, that's how grounded in the 2nd wave, where sex was only in the past few decades replaced with gender I was.

But...
I started reading and did start to grok what the bois and men I knew and shared community and family with were saying, started to notice that the people around me who I'd known and loved were changing, transforming. And as I read and thought, I ended up asking myself questions about gender and me, about who's here and what this socially positioned, dominated, dominant, claimed and labeled and contextualized flesh might or might not mean.

What I've found is that there never was, nor has there ever been a profound sense that my body was different than how I understood it, felt it, saw it.

I have, however, had massive difficulty with being forced to function in ways coded as "womanly" by the society.

Fucking hate roles assigned to those forcibly defined as "female" in this world. I have no patience for any of it and am less interested in challenging word/labels like "woman" or "female", less interested in transforming this flesh, than I am in completely challenging the syndrome of fucked behaviours that are repeatedly offered to me as someone who is offered these labelings.

"Female".

"Woman".

Those have been me.
I never really thought about having other options, didn't realize for the first 25 or so years of my life that I had options. In considering my options these days, which I do from time to time, I realize I'm not attached to those assignations. I don't have a heart/spirit in the gut core connect to them.

Nonetheless, I don't ever hesitate when checking off boxes. It's taught behaviour - that acquiescence, that acceptance.

I think that as a Black woman in this society where behaving as woman comes with perks and privileges, I realize that it's pretty damned easy for me to have those labels offered or taken away, validated or denied.

Performing those identities isn't second nature to me. I've been teaching myself how to do them, how to perform them for safety's sake. When I don't do a good job passing, pretending, perpetrating I am punished, when I don't make it seamless I stay up at night wondering how the world will make my children pay.

Sometimes, ofttimes, I will slip up and then I see that "tsk-tsk-tsk" look in people's eyes, as if they'd like to correct me on the spot.

I don't like it when cigendered men, refer to women as "ladies" or "girls". It feels like they're explaining how well behaved we should be. These words feel like boxes with descriptions meant to be adhered to on the outside and inside.

I think that there is a place for these kinds of namings in bdsm play. But I don't take these things seriously outside of ritual play spaces.

If I see that you take this kind of labeling seriously in your day to day I won't energetically swat you or cuss or you challenge you. But I will take you less seriously as a sentient human being without you even realizing it.

Because I don't have certain kinds of privilege and power in this world, I never assume that anyone from worlds outside academia or activist circles where queers roam would be so under the sway of my power, presence and privilege that they would be automatically interested in entertaining a conversation about anything having to do with my radical political. I never assume that anyone will have my back or that I will be safe having a conversation about anything radically political with anyone in meat space or online just because I felt pissed off, offended or horrified.

Mostly I can only talk or write about what works for me with family/partners/friends, what I'd like, how I understand myself and how I understand other people and the world.

I think that the white dominated queer nation has created a class of extremely arrogant radical academic politicos who do feel that they can easily recognize, define and insistently step to anyone understood by them as being oppressive. They get away with some pretty horrendously out of order behaviours not because they are powerful and intelligent but because they have white privilege, function in groups and are the newest incarnation of those who have held the means of production of queer thought, culture and community for many decades now.

Many days leave me with a sense of just wanting to distance myself from that community online and in meat space. They function in ways that I find deeply offensive.

But I can't leave queer environments, queer communities, queer cultures, the formation of queer theories and queer languages to them to entirely construct and define.

Their dangerously one-sided self serving critiques mean that people who may not have as much language or confidence as I do, who truly need to be able to access queer spaces may be left out in the cold, may choose to stay out in the oppressive dominant world environment (as I have) rather than deal with the shite white queers who only see themselves and their own agendas have built and called their communities.

Queer...
I have presented as so boi that I've passed among my own Black people, asked by Black men, who should have been able to see me, if I was a man or a woman.

I've been so flamingly gay man that I've been fiercely cruised by Black gay men who just couldn't tell fer sure and didn't seem to care. And still some asked if I was a man or a woman.

Those are happy memories from times long gone that I may choose to revisit again one day.

I've never gotten much play from white queers who, in my reckoning, with very few exceptions encountered by yours truly, always seemed to behave in ways that said they expected any queer of colour who wanted to attract their attention to do all the work, to prove themselves and their queerness, to make a case for why this white queer or that should even bother to pay them any mind, whatsoever.

Gender...
I periodically become so annoyed with the gender-based limitations placed on the ways I can express and be and breathe in this world that I have warned at least one of my partners that he might eventually end up in relationship with a gay man. More than the body (which I don't think I'd necessarily need to function in ways coded as "masculine"), I crave the license to live free offered to those who present as masculine in this world. I want that freedom more so than I want to be a man.

Stubbornness...
I am verbal, analytically, contrarian, defiant, not easily led or forced to change on other people's time tables.

I'd like to encounter queers of colour interacting with other queers of colour, discussing queerness and gender around kitchen tables filled with queers of colour.

The only issue is that when I do come home and attempt to function in those kinds of spaces, other kinds of oppressions come into play. I am older and therefore mama bird to all. There's class, shade, even career driven and academic elitist shite, too. Sex negativity and body shame if we're talking the children of christian west indians who have not unpacked our luggage brought straight from home.

No place really seems to fit with what I'm seeking. So, often I end up exploring what it means to be queer via the writings of other queers in the form of books or via my own stumbling, explorations turned into text.

Namings...
I spell "wimmin" like "wimmin" not because of some misguided essentialist feminism but because I am from the caribbean and have an example set by other Black wimmin writers and poets of speech that can be written in ways that indicate that the user understands english with a dialectical difference.

I have often experienced insults against used against wimmin collectively being used against me for being who I am.

I have been understood as rude, scandalous, a dirty disease carrying jamette or skettle (again, if you make a habit of only paying attention to your own white european culture and languages feel free to look "jamette"and "skettle" up), an entrapping opportunist trading off her pregnant belly, as an indiot who just did not understand the rules of the game, as a pollyanna, as a liar, as someone tripping, as dangerous, as to be avoided, as evil, as an interloper, as unwelcomed, as not knowing my place, as loud, as gutter trash.

These are some of the labels that have been attached to this body/spirit/psyche as I've moved through the world and through this life.

Power...
I was raised by my mother in my grandmothers house for many years as a small child after my parents divorced. I'm what some would label "illegitimate" or a "bastard".

My mother's side of the family is unofficially matriarchal. The men are there but do not dominate. The wimmin make crucial decisions and plan for the future bringing the men along with them, moving around them but not actually leaving the crucial decisions to them.

I'm not the only out queer in my family and all the queers are not from my generation or later. I may be the only family member wondering about the intersectional politics of gender, though.

Upbringing...
I was not raised, nurtured or guided by my mother's understandings of who she had been taught to be and who, as a result she thought I should be, after the age of eight. That's when I moved from my homeland, the stolen lands I was taught to call home, over to the mainlands, the stolen lands I was taught to see as never home, a place of not belonging.

My mother was abused by my father and eventually left him. I am the child who most looks like him. He is the one my mother and patriarchy nonetheless taught me to identify strongly with.

"Never turn a child against its father, no matter how cruel or abusive he is to you, personally."

How many cisgendered wimmn, parents of children, have we heard conflate telling a child the truth about their male parent with supporting them to see them as is for "turning them against" that parent.

So, I was fucked in the head for many, many years. I idealized my father and took my mother for granted. I identified with my father, clearly the source of all kinds of unearned, abusive power in the house. Who would want to identify with the losing party, with the subordinate party? With the "woman"?

When my father left the island to go live in kkkanada, at eight I, as my mother tells the story to herself and to me, insisted on immigrating to the north to live with him.

When I did, unbeknownst to me, that spelled the end of my ongoing, consistent, maintained connection and relationships to my mother's side of the family.

After I lived with my father for many years, experiencing him as he was, emotionally distant, contradictory, disinterested in my thoughts or feelings, absentee, authoritarian, dominating, I ceased identifying with him and started idealizing my now, non-existent mother and continued to do so until my twenties.

My twenties being when I became more consciously feminist. In fact, feminism was what helped me to more identify with my mother but also to eventually see her less as a needy child's iconic saviour ready to ride in any moment now and save me...more as fallible, real, having made choices, some good, some not so good. Later as I became more life experienced, feminism combined with counseling also helped me stop lying to myself about my mother eventually being a part of my life. This is when I had to start dealing with the fact that I had been abandoned and would never have a mother again.

hmmm...
Nonetheless, I'm thinking that mother's absence is actually part of what happened with me and my thoroughly wonky relationship to gender.

I think her submissiveness, her silence, her willingness to just give me up, give up the child whose face was as they say "the spitting image" of the father, cut me loose not just from her and her family/my family, but more importantly from the expectation that I perform femininity or identify with femaleness and female roles at all, offered me a particular kind of pained leeway to explore and become.

Although I have bits and pieces of what it means to be feminine, what it means to be "woman" which I can trace back to my mother, the connect, the indoctrinating link was broken fairly early on. I'm thankful about that...in a teary sort of way.

Even though it took me a while to realize the emotional pieces around her abandonment of me as a child, it's taken me right up to writing this to realize that what I also lost was a gut level commitment to compulsory gender female identification via a relationship with the parental model who would have demonstrated how all the bits fit together.

So, where I might have had a whole bunch of ideas about femininity and gender downloaded lovingly, imperceptibly, constantly by a biological mother who was cisgendered female, into me from birth to present day, getting maintenance fixes, corrections and oppressive narrowing redirects along the way as I needed, I wasn't primarily shaped by these.

I did have a white stepmother for four years. I loved her, was amazed and fascinated by her and her angular, hawk like, pointy, hard features, nothing generous in her body or features, so white featured, so white, white, white skinned, frecked, red head.

She was definitely every inch the "lady", overly proper, courteous, contained, feminine, female identified, "woman". But I couldn't absorb her coding. To me she was lovable but alien, different, something apart from me, something I did strive to mimic at different points in my childhood but never fully understood. Futility.

She left my father, left me to figure out a whole bunch of things just as puberty started to loom. She tried to connect with me. I can see that. I can acknowledge that. But my connection with her was flawed, not primary, not seamless.

I was raised and guided primarily by my father after the age of eight. He raised me as a boy would have been raised "back home", I think, because all he knew about raising children with ease, without thinking too hard about how best to do it came straight out of his experience as a cisgendered boy on that island so far away.

All this to say...
I ran "wild". By this I mean girls back home are kept close to home, in house and school. This is how the evolution of a girl morphing to woman's identity, I'd say, is supervised and molded.

Me?
I did as I pleased. I roamed far and wide on my bike. I roamed alone or with packs of children from my building and the neighbouring buildings. We read porn mags left out on garbage day, made forts, climbed trees and played "doctor" in groups. I made my own decisions a lot of the time. I just had to be home by the time the lights came on. I just needed to be sure to go to school and do my homework and do well educationally.

My father wanted a first son. "Should have been a boy." He got a first daughter. So he raised a son with no gendered impositions about behaviour or clothes...until I hit puberty. Before puberty none of my activities were gender coded.

I'm just now remembering that at twelve, around the time I got my period, he actually cut my hair short.
hmmm...
He really wanted a boy, I'm realizing. He had massive difficulties with what it could mean to not be able to avoid the biological reality of having a bleeding girl child under his roof, a breast growing child, a hip growing child under his roof.

Did he, with the hair cut, try to extend that period during which he could easily relate to and understand me as boy child? (nodding) Yeah, I think so.

It traumatized me - the haircut.

Before the haircut I never needed to defend anything about my gender one way or another. I had been taught that my gender was neutral, invisible. I felt more invisible vis a vis gender with hair than I did after my hair was cut off. After the haircut I was "boy". After the haircut I ended up having to defend something I'd never even had to think about.

It's not that gender didn't exist or that femininity didn't exist for me at that age. It's just that I didn't benefit from it. I wasn't included in any of the other mostly white children's understandings of what it meant to be female, what it meant to be feminine, anyways.

Or maybe, it was more that my being located as low level female, less feminine, less of interest was meant to highlight, to put the spotlight on those who were understood unanimously by all as feminine, as the epitome of what it meant to be female - the white girl children.

Me?
I was fat. I was dark skinned. I was poor. I was tall for my age. I was much too smart. I was an immigrant. I was an outsider in so many different ways. My white frienemies were gendered female but not as I was. Their membership was shored up, ratified by them also being understood by all as extremely feminine.

Even white or light girls who did not fully relate to their femininity, those seen in that time period as "tom boys", and there were a couple I remember, were still offered and could still claim privileges attached to femininity and people connecting whiteness/lightness to something in them inherently beautiful, good, female that they could not give away...something I did not have and was not offered.

I...
Was just...a lump of ugly duckling, unattractive me. I wasn't someone to be chased after when it came time to play kissing tag.

Once I my father cut my hair...
Once I had the short afro, seeming more boy than girl out in the open, rather than having the space offered by no one really noticing me, I felt exposed and made fun of.

"Are you a boy or a girl?"

They couldn't tell from my features, from my height, from my big feet, from just looking me over. For many, feminine features are still equated with proximity to small, thin, white features, white features being small, pointy, red cheeked, pink lipped, limp haired.

"Are you a boy or a girl?"

Most people could not discern who was t/here. They had no way to read me according to dominant world standards. I became a curious specimen to poke and ponder aloud.

Tired of being buffeted with The Question, I went into eye liner'd, lip glossed, femmey clothing reaction, hardcore.

In the mean time, at home my patriarchal, old world west indian father was desperately trying to figure out, much too late, how exactly to raise a Black girl child. For him this looked like teaching me to cook, sweep, mop, stay in the house and always be sure to cover up.

None of it "took", none of it "worked". It was too late, really. No source could fully replace the devastating effect another forcibly gendered female, charged with teaching the ins and outs of internalizing gender assignment to a child constructed as female, could have on the first twenty years of her child's life.

Present tense...
That was some background. Feel free to ask any questions you'd like as this will most likely help me figure out what I need to about what gender means to me as a Black person coded in different ways by different people who is still trying to see past the vulnerability covering strategic reaction/s to finally have a gander at who's t/here.

"Jail break"...
There are a myriad of ways that I just don't fit and don't at all enjoy the company of those who have been forcibly gendered by their mothers. There are a myriad of ways listening to them reason their ways through making choices, navigating their ways through conversation, deal with disagreements or arguments, in ways taught to them by mothers gendered as female, forced to take on the roles assigned to those forcibly gendered female, that I find deeply disconcerting.

I can spend time around these wimmin, I can even love them, but there's always a part of me that sits to one side observing them, recognizing their ways, calculating how best to communicate with them, figuring out how best to go unnoticed by them, so I can pass.

Sanity...
I write a helluva lot every day as a way to keep my brain active and also to help me process the different kinds of oppressions and privileges I experience simultaneously.

Writing my truths is risky. I do willingly continue to take that risk in the hopes that I will one day be able to know many different kinds of people who don't go into shut down and run away mode when I start discussing all of what goes into being me.

Two...just twos...
I think a cultural fascination with twos is just as ridiculous as a fascination with the number three or thirteen.

Since I'm a biological parent of Black children, a lot of what I have learned about gender binarism ends up being translated into real world form. I don't take what I've learned as a queer and use it undiluted as a map or guide to raising them.

White queer parents, white privileged queer parents who have the the benefit of a white queer community support structure they and their families can call home, might decide that this Black woman is not going far enough, not actually doing trans positive gender challenging parenting.

But since I try not to measure my successes or my radical political consciousness against the teachings or existences of white people no matter how alternative their life choices are, I often remind myself that when compared to the people I come from, when stacked up next to the collective of people (who encountered the colonizer/Reever folk and suffered because of it) I'm actually doing a pretty intrepid, exploratory, transformational, transgressive good job at rearing the Black children I birthed in ways that make space for them to speak and think about and resist gender with full support from me and from their two other parents.

I teach my children that gender is a societal obsession but that it is truly insignificant to their formation as good, smart, responsible, reliable, beautiful, critical human beings. I reinforce that message on the daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. I don't want them to be tied to understanding themselves as gendered. But as Black children, I still need them to understand the language and beliefs of this world because to not give them that basis would not serve them well in a world that already hates them.

Journeying...
I define as queer having settled on that one after having already tried on bisexual, gay, lesbian and dyke for size in my twenties and morphing into someone who was open to having relationships with people of all different genders and sexualities in my thirties. Queer seems to fit that sexuality and the accompanying radical political best.

Forced...
I am not a butch. But I have ofttimes been told to my face by non-Black queers (white and light of colour) that they don't see me as femme because I'm so butch.

I have sighed and explained that what they understand as my butch energy is racialized by their inability to even conceive of a person who energetically and physically manifests as Black also being femme.

Again, with the taking away possibilities for gender expression, I have to wonder when people will actually leave me sufficient space to just figure shit out rather than smearing me with their racist assumptions about who I can be.

Everyone seems so obsessed with telling the dark child I must be this or that. No one seems so interested in hearing who I say I actually am, or in taking time to walk alongside me as I struggle to figure it out.

Is there anyone available to just walk alongside me regardless of what pronouns I choose to use? I'd appreciate that.

If...
I am not masculinized in non-Black wimmin's spaces, in white dominated queer spaces...
Then I am seen as an intimidating femme no (most often) butch, boi or dyke would have to ballz to approach.
If...
I am not seen as intimidating femme...
Then I am seen as low level femme who can have the dregs of attention left over after white queers have had their fill.
If...
I am not seen as crumb feeding low level queer...
Then I am not seen at all.
I don't exist as a queer in relation to the white queer nation at all.

In truth, I've spent so little time in white dominated wimmin's or queer spaces, I'd have to say that I don't know how to function among them, don't understand the unspoken shared rules and regs, what constitutes normal group or individual behaviour. Moving through those kinds of spaces so infused by white domination has always been rife with anxiety and discomfort for me.

All this to say, for most of my lesbian, dyke, queer woman dating other queer wimmin career, I've mostly kept to Black people and to other Black friendly people of colour spaces as hanging around the margins of white dominated queer community was and remains such a disgusting fucking ego slam.

Avoiding that feeling of subjugation...
That I was somehow of less quality, less attractive, less interesting, less in the know, is actually how I started dating Black cisgendered men. In my very early thirties had sufficient passing gendered privilege "female" among Black people, lighter than some, educated, soft of voice, body within acceptable parameters able to be defined as "sexy", tall, that I was able to move from a place of very little privilege, very little option, very few dating opportunities among the sex radical, politically radical, butch/femme white dominated queer community to walking among mostly hetero or closeted Black people...for a time.

This didn't quite work in the long run, because I was not "woman", was not well-behaved in the ways someone labeled female at birth would have had to be in order to survive in circles stratified according to strict patriarchal dynamics and gender binaries, among other things.

Still...
Patriarchal shite or no, I got better quality attention from most of the Black men I dated, no racist shite that left me feeling like second fiddle to a more well known, well placed white (queer) woman constructed as more attractive, as pale limp haired goddess.

I hate that shite. I hated that shite when I was in community. The ways that white femmes or even white gender fucking queers could just walk through a space and have their pick of whoever they thought was most interesting, who they assumed would like them or be interested i them without question, doubt or hesitation. White privilege. All eyes were on them. When it came to benefiting from whiteness, they were always in the right spaces and places.

I've not been treated by most of the Black cisgendered men I dated as third or fourth string date possibility (with one exception and even he seemed to be doing in favour of another Black woman).

At the height of what was happening in my vicinity in queer circles in this city 10+ years ago around butch femme really coming into it's own as well as sexual radicality more taking center stage, without a critique of race, it became clear that queers who were white and/or light would always get most attention, that they would be the ones to look out for and to court. Everyone else...well, who else was there, really?

sigh...gross.

So, I've found that among queers, where the going theories say I should feel most safe to not over gender performatively feminize myself, I've instead often gone into aesthetically femmey over reaction to gender stuff predicated on racial constructs that told me in no uncertain terms I could never be femme or feminine because that space is reserved for white femmes and queers who want to play along gender lines, if they choose to.
That space of fluidity, flexibility and possibility...
It's not for me.
My racialized gender is carved in stone...by them, by their gaze...
So that their genders may better function as a shining example of what it means to be fluid, mutable, toying, playing, trans...forming...
I am offered cement shoes and pushed to the very...bottom...
Stuck standing stiff and still.

Making choices...
For me, wherever or whoever I interact with besides at home, always feels like somewhere I have to intentionally decide what gendered version of me I will present/offer.

I don't like presenting as femmey for cisgendered heterosexual men. So many of them often being comfortable with familiar essentialist gendered dynamics that can only lead to them on top of me, them inside of me, them possessing me, them dominating me, makes me feel uncomfortable...disempowered.

Don't get me wrong, someone inside of me isn't a place of discomfort in and of itself. But...it's just that so many cisgendered men seem so certain that I want that from them or that I should be chosen or culled on the basis of my ability to give that to them.

So much of what they understand of gender ends up being predicated on an assumption that I will play my part and allow myself to be chosen (by them) or not.

As a result, although I've found that I will not alter how I present aesthetically when around them, I will, depending on how intensely their gender and gender role stuff is smeared onto me, become more bratty, forthright and button pushing in my communications, going on the offensive, challenging their ideas about who I can be for them/to them in ways they find hard to ignore.

I am not a lesbian. But I was a Black lesbian separatist for many years. I parted ways from lesbian separatism over its adherents being too uncomfortable to actually deal with all of who lesbians are, with our multiplicities, with our sexualities, with kink, with evolving gender, with lesbians becoming all sorts of different breeds and beings.

Lesbian separatism was a safe place for a time...for me. My consciousness, my creativity, my ability to hold firm in even the most inhospitable environments...I mostly learned how to connect to these pieces in me as a lesbian separatist. Aaaaannndddd....THEN it started to feel constricting. So, I decided to become another kind of monster.

Real...
I do not believe in the concept of real men or real wimmin.

Careful, now...
If you're a white gender challenging queer and behave towards me in ways that assume that since I come out of the African Diaspora and the Diaspora at this moment in time being so filled with gender binary obsessed pop culture, definitely hardcore obsessed with performative, essentialist gender binaries...
If you make the mistaken assumption that I am also obsessed with essentialist performative gender binaries and that I will fight tooth and nail to uphold them...
I will call you out about your racist assumptions.
You don't even have to overtly make the link for that shit to be transparent and clearly seen by me.

If you pounce on a Black person or on a person of colour who is not known to you in ways that immediately see you putting your words in their mouths, you're getting your information about who they are from somewhere and it's not all about them coming across as cissexist and therefore oppressive.

Hiding behind that even when there might be something else at work on your end as a white privileged queer just lessens the credibility of a movement that has far reaching, important and powerful implications.

Envy, yessssss...
I really would have liked to have been born with a cock because...cocks do things vulvas can't.

I complain about this with my partners on the regular. I like to fuck one of my male defined at birth partners with a dildo. But I hate using it in my hand. I prefer to have the cock attached to me via a harness because that feels more like the real thing. Does that sound fucked? Probably. I'm okay with that not sounding tidy.

Race...isms...
I am often read first as Black on the street unless I'm encountering other Black people. I'm read as cis by Black people because they see me. Black cisgendered men and wimmin definitely see me.

If I'm with my children people will see me as cis.

When I'm walking with either or both of my partners I'm seen as/treated as old, fat, unattractive, overly large of body before I'm seen as cisgendered.

When people see me with my partners (if they see me), and they read me as cisgendered, it's most often with revulsion and with the desire to find a way to ignore me (what are they doing with her). This is not a place of offered privilege but instead an aberrant anomalous space they try to erase from their view and brains by even more focusing on them and less on me.

Cisgendered in this body is about being seen as less attractive and less central and less normal than cisgendered people who have more privilege on continuums of power and dominance, say for instance white cisgendered wimmin.

I don't derive much cis privilege from being cisgendered in and of myself at this point in time.

I do, however, receive some leniency for being "mother" of children but not in places where white WASP wimmin who are parents rule. In those spaces I'm invisible as a cisgendered woman and as a mother, if not subtly psychologically attacked and forced to protect the psyches of my children by leaving altogether.

If I'm wearing something particularly sparkly that attracts attention or if my face is painted, then I'm seen most places as cisgendered...except among gay men who will sometimes, if I get my look just...right...read me as a drag queen before they read me as a cisgendered woman. But that's just perfect. ;)

If I'm tarted up, that still may not necessarily translate into cis privilege for me as a fat, Black, middle aged woman. Combined with being painted and wearing revealing clothing this will often code right across the board with everyone with the exception of queers in party environments as "low class", "whore", "hole" which is not a place of privilege. That's a place of objectification with accompanying loss of status.

If I don't wear make-up and don't colour my hair, then I'm coded as old, unnattractive, Mom - invisible, completely invisible...unless someone is attempting to offer me their seat or trying to confide in me about their deepest, most painful secrets in need of the healing, assexual touch of a nurturing parental type.

All this to say, performing gender as expected by the society or defying those norms and functioning as a sexual kewl gender traitor does not work the same way for this Black woman living outside radicalized queer communities, experiencing multiple oppressions on top of white domination, in the outside world or anywhere for that matter, as it would say, for a white cisgendered woman or a white gender challenging queer living mostly inside queer or queer positive communities.

Still...the privilege...
Nonetheless, I do walk in between and criss cross all sorts of lines when the mood strikes me. The fact that this is a choice rather than a visceral compulsion is what I'd say would be the mark of my privilege. I can choose to toy with gender even as I still have precious little choice about how people can gender code me. That still happens regardless of what I do.

Black wimmin and gender.
Black wimmin...gender....
Denigrated...gender
As a planetary collective we've occupied deviant fluid space ever since the above mentioned colonizer/Reevers kidnapped us and brought us over here.

Fucked both ways...
We were holes to be used and also ungendered workers to put out into the fields even when pregnant, beating, bellies resting in dug-ut holes while pregnant, rape while pregnant, reminded of how being gendered worked for us while pregnant.

Really in a lot of ways, slavery was about being defined as ungendered animals more so than females benefiting from the privilege white people, white cisgendered wimmin, white cisgendered men, even closeted white queers most likely collectively accessed at that time.

The vestiges of that experience remain for me.

I understand myself to be ungendered by racism, treated as beast not human. I've seen/experienced white people, white cisgendered men real time and online talking to me, address me in ways they would never, ever think to address another white person, a white cisgendered woman.

Okcupid was rife with this kind of behaviour more so than fet. It's probably the rules that keep most of the shit at bay in this place. Such rage, such lack of courtesy. Such denigrating condescending disdain, such power from so many different white people, especially, specifically those who understand themselves to be alternative or radically politicized and (obviously) more in the know.

I think that cis privilege exists but that my privilege should probably not be compared to a white queer gender challenging person's lack of privilege or against a white cis woman's privilege as race already tips the scales in particular ways and not in my favour.

I think that when white queers talk about cisgendered privilege, it is probably best for them to mostly deal/challenge laterally, with other white people, especially if they know they are not so well able to explore, understand, claim the full significance of their own white privilege and racist actions in the day to day.

Whenever I see or experience being called on cis privilege by a white person, by a white queer who I know does not, has not been able to, willing to fully examine their own white privilege, this feels oppressive to me. I'm left wondering, how they are even sure they're seeing what they think they're seeing? How do they know that their understandings are not being filtered through an uncritiqued relationship to systems of white domination?

If many of them do not even spend time with or know any people of colour, I mean having real friendships with them, links to them, how do they feel so comfortable transferring their experiences with their own white kin, white communities, white people onto the skins and backs and wordings and intentions of people they don't even really know or understand?

I think the white queer nation, so white dominated, so full of itself, so self centered and self maintaining, so filled with euro-culture should stick to calling other white people on their cis shite until it is more willing to call itself on it's stultifying replication of systems of white domination and culture in community.

If they do indeed welcome interactions with queers of colour, even those who would not kowtow to their power, what they could spend their time doing, rather than teaching their white queer gender challenging languages is interfacing with whoever comes, learning alternate ways of seeing and being, taking in information rather than indicting it because it did not flow from them and from sources they recognize.

sighing...
I think that lots of pieces come into play that mediate how cis privilege does or does not function for me. But I do have it and have been offered it in different ways however relative, however mediated by other equally present forms of systemic oppression.

None of this of course means that I don't have to keep picking away at what gender means for me.

Stumbling...
If you're a white gender challenging queer and I fuck up your pronouns while talking to you or of you, please don't be such a legend in your own head that you can't just say and see me/read me receiving the communication and offering an apology.

I won't gratuitously torture you about being cluelessly white dominating and disinterested in critiquing (without much prodding) how that identity couples with your gender identification, if you won't torment me when I make busted moves and choices that I willingly claim and move to take responsibility for. Thanks.

This flesh...
I do not plan to take hormones or have surgery. I don't see the need as this body serves me just fine, except for the cock piece, as is.

I have wide hips. The whole cool, queered, masculinity, butch boi daddy experience so coupled with thinness, narrow hippedness, I find oppressively fat phobic and gross. I cringe when I see thin queer people put forward as the essence of what it means to look and dress "queerly".

I do not shave my legs. I'd like to say fer sure that this is because I don't believe in leg shaving. But I can't really tell because I have such precious little leg hair, I've never had to deal with the kinds of oppressive peer pressurings some wimmin have had to navigate. I think that not shaving can be a stance...for some. But what happens if you don't shave and your hair is imperceptible? Does that mean that because your resistance can't be detected that you're not actually resisting?

I get my eyebrows waxed. That I would say is fully about performing femininity and attempting to be recognized as female.

I have very thick hair around my face that ends with noticeable sideburns. The barbers will shave those when I go see them. When I was a dyke who loved that I could pass as a young man/androgyne, I would get the barbers to clip around my sideburns, to shape them and accentuate them. I have massive facial hair envy, especially for men who have nice thick sideburns.

I have flesh hanging off my chest. Two bits. I have breast fed my children. I don't have issue with the flesh being referred to as breasts. But also don't mind chest, flaps, mammaries, teats, flesh sacks. Knock yourself out.

I have a vulva, folds, cunt, twat, pooni, poonani, pooner, pussy, hole. If you're white don't get all up in trying to use cutesy ebonic vernacular for my parts. That just sounds wrong. Just say vulva or cunt or twat or something more slangy but considered linguistically universal.

I bleed from my cunt, from my crotch, from my hole. When I was a young dyke I used to track that cycle like nobody's business. I read The Curse. I definitely felt that part of what it meant for me to be feminist was to be able to feel much, much more comfortable in this body and to have a better understanding of what it meant to have this body, this woman's body than I'd been encouraged to have.

As I age, still wanting at least one more child, I have been obsessively tracking my bleedings and feeling relieved when they still come every month, but not so relieved when I still don't get pregnant.

I've always wanted babies but I didn't equate being able to bleed and have babies with being essentialist cisgendered because as a dyke I knew how being capable of breeding was held over the heads of so, so many wimmin who felt compelled to find sperminators, to marry them and breed or be doomed to always being infantilized, condescended to, erased and forced into always being the ones who would take care of ailing parents because everyone in their families told themselves these dykes had no lives.

Not at all interested in being able to trace all the humans who come out of my parts back to one sperminator. Any child who comes out of me is of me. Any partner who is capable of participating in child rearing who wants to participate in child rearing can do so. Any fool who hinges their participationg in the life of my family off having a genetic connection to any of my children shouldn't let the door hit them on the way out.

I have ballz. Big, brass ones. They're in my head. They're in my attitude on good days. I refer to them fairly often and don't think that saying I have ovaries is a good substitute.

I have a cock. It's in my head. I also have a few silicone cocks. If you'd like to suck either of them feel free to check in with me.

I have a nice sized ass, azz, butt, bum, buttocks. I notice that for many, having a large butt is equated with femininity. For many having a large butt is equated (thank you weave-on queen Beyonce) with a certain kind of Black femininity. Having a big Black butt is not seen by many as evidence of androgyny, queerness or any kind of masculinity. These, without being connected or spoken to, can often be seen as about having flat/narrow/hard butts, butts I'd consider white butts.

How does everything cool about queerness end up being pissed on by whiteness, accorded signifiers and icons associated with whiteness?

sigh...
Whenever I start talking about my Black ass I can't help but think about Saartjie Baartman, a Black woman from South Africa who was for all intents and purposes caged and put on display like a zoo animal by white european people who were fascinated by the size of her labia and her buttocks. Again, I should point out that signs of female bodiedness did not garner her any privilege.

Less seen as woman and more as animal with curiously pendulous, protruding female parts, signs of femaleness in the flesh, combined with her Blackness, her Africanness, gained her a place in a cage, poked and prodded at until her captors could find no one else interested in paying to see her parts.

Then she became a sex worker in order to support herself, dying of an STI given to her by some european man.

After her death, still simultaneously gendered and ungendered, she was dissected like a lab rat. I think her skeleton was removed and (I know) those parts that exposed her as female, as a Black female to the world, put on display in a jar. It was only fairly recently that the prestigious european institution holding her genitals and buttocks hostage were persuaded to finally let her go...tears...home to be buried among her ancestors.

Was Saartjie Baartman cisgendered?
I think the white people who put her on display and those who paid to see her and fuck her relied on an understanding of her as gendered female and gender neutral simultaneously.
Black and female so as to better exploit her, her genitals and her buttocks and In order to better oppress her.
Female, low level female, accessible female, female without any resistance means.
They needed to see and relate to her female parts as deviant, unnatural. They needed her femaleness to exist but as set apart from their white european wimmin of "good stock".
They also needed to relate to her as distinctly without gender, not worthy of care, (positive, loving) attention alloted for/white european cisgendered wimmin. They needed to be able to ungender her so as to be immune to what her being gendered female would call for them to understand and do about her plight.

None of their white cisgendered female kin would ever have been asked to step into that cage. Even in those days where europeans were still so obsessed with upholding gender roles, none of the people involved felt that what they did to Saartjie Baartman was inhumane treatment not befitting a person of her gender, befitting a humaaan being.

All this to say...
Yes, let's talk about gender.
But I'd like to be able to identify as one of those who has been experiencing the razor's edge of a more complex relationship with gender for a few hundred years, now. Even if some aren't able to understand what it means to have been birthed on the narrow cutting edge of a surgical tool cutting, slicing and dicing identities to fit all manner of people and their uderstandings of what constitutes gender, that doesn't mean I'm not hacked to bits daily and put back together at the whim of whoever should walk on by.

So...
If you come perceptually simple and flat, from a fairly limited set of historical, social, ethnic experiences and have white privilege and define as queer...
If you do not understand the histories of all the peoples you're talking to and about, it might be best to move with a bit more care when you decide to start defining them/me according to your limited, ethnically specific experiences of gender oppression.

sigh...
The fucking...
I like giving and receiving penetration of all different kinds.

The lustful, loving, knowing...gazing...
I prefer to love and lust after and fuck people who can see and love Blackness in their partners.

I prefer people who will actually go out of their way to respectfully interact with Black people, build communities that centrally involve Black people, offer career opportunities to radical Black people, who are not scared of saying hullo to, having conversation with, cracking jokes with, commenting on the writings, notes, comments and posts of Black people as lovers lovers and partners.

If they're queer on top of that, if they're perverse and political, which they'd have to be for them to have met the first set of criteria, then BONUS!!!!

Nope...definitely not...
I'm pretty much off limits to white queers who have no Black friends or friends of colour, who don't know how to interact in human way with people of colour, who are not comfortable around people of colour, who make a habit of of automatically assuming that any person of colour they encounter who does not define in ways that seem familiar to white queers or intimately involved in white queer culture, will be queer phobic or transphobic, who treat Black people and other people of colour like alien science fair projects, or whose only consistent contact with people of colour is via discussing with much performative passion and rage, how we (people of colour) are all soooo oppressed by this new law or that piece of blogland writing...because they know so much about us from reading huffington posts articles...written by white people who know soooo much about us from studying us in the field like antelopes on the savannah while taking notes? whatEVAR.

These kinds of attitudes seem to be fairly ubiquitous online and show, not a critical analysis, but an inability to uncouple white domination and assumptions about who is evolved, from the creation of queer spaces and the devlopment of queer theory. Somehow whiteness, evolution and queer theory always seem to end up in bed together.

Memory...
Some really fun times have been had with white queer folks who just didn't have any experience interacting with Black people/people of colour. And how it showed. I remember walking in the white gay male dominated part of this city when I was in my twenties, wearing African inspired clothing. I remember the ways store clerks would automatically go on guard, bristle, their hackles rising at the site of androgynous me dressed and barbered to mimic a Black African man, you would have thought that I was walking with murderous homophobia on the brain, explosives set to detonate at the push of a button, under my clothes.

Policing who?
I recognize that shit when I see it and I know how to call a person on it. So all the white queers who function as police guarding the gates of supposed queer friendly spaces on fet with knee jerk reactions set to deal in the exact same ways with cisgendered heterosexuals who wouldn't crack open a book about radical queer theory if you held a gun to their heads and started playing russian roulette as with queers who do not kowtow to white dominated queer community standards of conduct, theory production or praxis, knock it off. You're coming across as soooo exclusionary and oppressive to this particular Black queer.

Not so much...
I'm not big into cisgendered heterosexual men who do not have any radical analysis related to the dominance of cisgendered men and constructs of masculinity.

I am drawn by misfits and freaks and aberrants of any gender or sexuality. But I tend to meet people who are white privileged misfits, freaks, aberrants who don't see anything particularly fascinating in my Blacknes, who don't see Blackness as potentially also a place of much freakish, aberrant delight, who are just scoping around to see themselves, their multicoloured hairstylings their flaming hula hoops, their miscoloured, mismatched clothing, mirrored back to them by another oh-so kewl agent of white domination.

Nonetheless, I do keep looking and hoping to find ones who aren't completely xenophobic and exlusionary. I have been known to make space for people who made/make me giggle with the freakishness or sheer shamelessness of their presentation.

I really like gay men, bisexual men, queer men of whatever ethnicity or kink. I'm realizing that I really like men of any gender, positioned all over the place along continuums of masculinity, who like being penetrated and sucking cock. Men of any gender who would like to be penetrated by me make me really happy. :)

Summation...not...
This is where I am right now when/where it comes to gender.

I'm not where I was last week, last month, last year, ten years ago, twenty years ago, as a teenager, as a child, as a baby.

I won't be in this place tomorrow or next week or next month or next year or on my death bed...if I do my work as well as I plan to.

My understanding and analysis will no doubt morph again and again in some places as I learn more and not in others as I realize that some things about me and/or the world and/or white dominated queer communities just will not be changing any time soon.

My comprehension and identification will shift at a pace that allows for other parts of my identity that are equally important to transform as well. I've got ableism and my own disability, ageism and aging, classism and my shifting classed experiences and a host of other pieces on the burner in this exact same moment.

I'd really respect and welcome any queers of any gender of or ethnicity who could come also in-process, willing to share their process rather than coming to point fingers...at someone besides back at themselves...to share company and develop critiques alongside me.

sigh...
In the meantime, this is what I've got. These are my contextualized, multifaceted notes on gender.

So sorry, Breanna Manning...FREE BREANNA MANNING...

2011-12-24T02:02:00.000-05:00

Why does the media still refer to “Bradley” Manning? The Curious Silence Around a Transgender Hero
By Emily Manuel

One of the most persistent threads throughout the two years of imprisonment of accused Wikileaks leaker Private Bradley Manning has been the rumour that he is in fact, she–a transgender woman. Manning faces thirty charges, one of which “aiding the enemy” potentially carries the death penalty (though life in prison is more likely) for leaking hundreds of thousands of documents via the website Wikileaks including the shocking “Collateral Murder” video. Dismissed by many as a smear or simply irrelevant to the case, this transgender story has nevertheless refused to die.
In June 2010, Wired published excerpted chat logs between Manning and hacker Adrian Lamo that suggested that Manning considered herself female. Manning states quite clearly:

“ I wouldn’t mind going to prison for the rest of my life, or being executed so much, if it wasn’t for the possibility of having pictures of me… plastered all over the world press… as boy…”

Wired then followed this up a year later in published the full chat logs in which Manning very clearly states that she is trans, frets about accessing transitioning treatment and talks about being discharged as “adjustment disorder” rather than GID under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Finally, she gives us a female name for herself: Breanna, stating that she’d set up a Twitter and Youtube account.

New York magazine added to the speculation by publishing a feature articlefocusing on Manning’s sexuality and gender identity in which an anonymous counselor claims that Manning had talked to him on the web about being transgender:

“Bradley felt he [sic] was female,” the counselor told me. “He [sic] was very solid on that.” Quickly, their conversation shifted to the practicalities: How does someone transition from male to female? “He [sic] really wanted to do surgery,” the counselor recalled. “He [sic] was mostly afraid of being alone, being ostracized or somehow weird.”

Despite this mounting evidence, Manning’s lawyers and supporters continued to make no mention of any preference for female identification, pronouns or the name Breanna, leaving Manning’s likely transgender status something of an open secret, and posing journalists with a conundrum: either the logs are true, and then we should be respectfully following APA protocol for transgender people and using female pronouns and possibly the name Breanna, or they are false and we should not. Whether they believed in the logs’ veracity or not (and odds are, most who believe Manning to be a hero do), I have not found a single media source who appears to have considered the possibility of writing about Manning as a woman.

In the meantime, Manning’s name and image have become something of a rallying point for supporters–as in this image of Code Pink protesters carrying cut-out headshots of Manning “as a boy” and signs that say “I am Bradley Manning” shows. The blogger JR Worsement pointed out that:

“ultimately I’m unable to stand with all the admirable and sympathetic solidarity activists who say they are Bradley Manning. I’m not Bradley Manning, and even B. Manning may not be Bradley Manning.”

I wrote in July for Tiger Beatdown that:

“What lawyer would advise someone accused of multiple crimes against their country to choose that time to come out as a trans woman? What is the likelihood that the Left would rally around a trans woman as a hero? Would there have been the kind of support that caused Manning to be moved from apparently torturous conditions in Quantico to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas? Would there be a wide movement caring about a trans woman being tortured? What if she wanted to be housed with female prisoners, would many people support that?

We can’t know any of that for sure, either, but we can guess. And my guess is: not bloody likely.”

Over the weekend, however, this has changed, with Manning’s trial beginning in the United States and Manning’s lawyers pursuing a gender identity disorder defense, while forensic investigators confirmed that they found copies of the Lamo chats on Manning’s own computer. The timing of this revelation now is extremely telling, given that public support becomes rather less important in the notoriously closed trials. At this point, Manning’s outing may be more useful to her lawyers as a kind of “mental instability” defense than harmful.

Nevertheless, the media and the vast majority of Manning’s supporters continue to refer to her as male (for instance, this Glenn Greenwald segment on Democracy Now still using male pronouns, and still conflating gay and transgender, or Michael Moore’s steady stream of supportive tweets and blog posts). But at what point will progressive media, those who are at least pay lip service to the idea of being LGBT allies, decide to respect the most likely scenario of Manning’s preferred gender ID? What does it mean that the burden of proof is this high to “prove” that a person is transgender? Why do we assume that “hero” and “transgender” are mutually exclusive, and are unwilling or unable to imagine rallying around a transgender woman rather than a bright-faced young man? If “Bradley” Manning deserves a medal, as Greenwald so eloquently argued last week, would Breanna? And lastly: what does it mean that acknowledging Manning’s identity would have in all likelihood exposed her to even more violence?

Private Manning has endured horrendous treatment in prison waiting for trial. But listen again to what she had to say, in chats whose validity would seem to have been proved over the weekend: “I wouldn’t mind going to prison for the rest of my life, or being executed so much, if it wasn’t for the possibility of having pictures of me… plastered all over the world press… as boy.”

This kind of “ungendering,” as trans theorist Julia Serano has argued in her landmark book Whipping Girl, is itself harmful, an act of violence by a world that has little inclination for respecting the self-identification of transgender people and exposes them to violence in every sphere of society.

Now that we have entered the trial stage and the facts are being confirmed, it is mindboggling that her supporters continue to engage in this, in the very act of “support”–and it says everything about how we on the Left see transgender women.

Cynthia McKinney on AFRICOM...

2011-12-20T10:50:00.001-05:00

Strategy sharing from Occupy Portland...

2011-12-16T15:04:00.002-05:00

Occupy Portland Outsmarts Police, Creating Blueprint for Other Occupations
by Lester Macgurdy

The Portland Occupation stumbled upon a tactical innovation regarding occupying public spaces. This evolution in tactics was spontaneous, and went unreported in the media. On December 3rd, we took a park and were driven out of it by riot police; that much made the news. What the media didn’t report is that we re-took the park later that same evening, and the police realized that it would be senseless to attempt to clear it again, so they packed up their military weaponry and left. Occupy Portland has developed a tactic to keep a park when the police decide to enforce an eviction.

The tactical evolution that evolved relies on two military tactics that are thousands of years old- the tactical superiority of light infantry over heavy infantry, and the tactical superiority of the retreat over the advance.

Heavy infantry is a group of soldiers marching in a column or a phalanx that are armed with weaponry for hand to hand, close quarters combat. Heavy infantry function as a unit, not individual soldiers. Their operational strength is dependent upon maintaining the integrity of that unit.

Riot police are heavy infantry. They will always form a line and advance as a unit. Light infantry are armed with ranged weapons for assault from a distance. Light infantry operate as individuals that are free to roam at a distance and fire upon the opposition with ranged weapons. Cops firing tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannons, bean bag rounds, etc. are light infantry. They remain to the rear of the phalanx of riot cops (heavy infantry) and depend upon the riot cops maintaining a secure front and flanks to provide them a secure area of operations.

Protesters function fluidly as either light or heavy infantry. Their mass, because it is lacking in organization, functions as a phalanx, having no flanks or rear. Lack of organization gives that mass the option of moving in whichever direction it feels like, at any given time. If protesters all move to the right, the entire group and supporting officers has to shift to that flank. While the protesters can retreat quickly, the police can only advance as fast as their light infantry, supporting staff can follow and maintain a secure rear (if the mass of protesters were to run to the next block over and quickly loop around to the rear of the riot cops, the organization of the cops would be reduced to chaos). If that police cannot assemble with a front to oppose protesters, they are useless. The integrity of that tactic is compromised, and unable to maintain internal organization, the cops revert to individuals engaging in acts of brutality, which eventually winds up on the evening news and they lose the battle regardless of whether they clear the park or not.

Because of the lack of organization in a crowd of protesters, light infantry cops firing tear gas, etc. has little effect because it just serves to disorganize a group that relies upon disorganization in the first place. All it really does is disorganize the riot cops, who then resort to brutality.

The lack of weaponry on the part of the protesters grants them the luxury of opposing riot cops at close quarters, or remaining at long range in a refusal to engage the heavy infantry riot police at all. They have the advantage of the retreat, they can quickly move away, or in any direction, and the heavy infantry riot cops lack the swiftness to respond.

So far, all the occupations have, in a grave tactical error, agreed to engage the riot cops when they march in to clear parks. This has been a show of bravado that has the tactical benefits of providing media coverage of the brutal methods of police and the benefit of draining the resources of the oppressor by forcing them to incur the expense of arresting and prosecuting people for trivial offenses. Now, to move on to the actual application of these tactical principles (that evolved by accident rather than conscious thought), we can take the example of Shemanski park on the 3rd. We occupied the park and set up a few tents and facilities to serve food and coffee. The police soon declared an emergency closure of the park and came out in force, with full riot gear and all the weaponry. The line of riot cops soon forced us out of the park, so someone decided that we ought to march to City Hall. It was about 9 pm on a Saturday night, so City Hall was closed, but we marched there anyway, 800 of us blocking traffic the whole way. Once there, the riot cops once again lined up to disperse the crowd. However, since City Hall was closed and there was no point in staying there anyway, someone had the idea to march down to the area of town where all the clubs were, so we took off marching again. The riot cops were trailing behind us, as was the truck with the giant speakers on the top repeatedly announcing “This street is open to traffic, individuals blocking traffic will be subject to arrest.” Announcing this repeatedly was useless. One principle of non-violent resistance is this: one person has to walk on the sidewalk, 500 people can walk wherever they please. The riots cops had no place to form a line, so they were crippled.

Since we had no clear destination, the police were unable to get ahead of us and set up roadblocks. They were helpless to do anything but trail along as an escort to the march. The only other response they could have had was for the riot cops to charge into the marching crowd and attempt to disperse it by brutality, which would have been mayhem that could have only resulted in a PR loss by the police department as the images of beatings and brutality hit the airwaves the next day.

The march, having no clear destination, marched wherever it willed through the downtown area, blocking traffic and light rail at will and growing larger as onlookers joined in. One of the participants of the march had a three-wheeled bike with a loud amplifier hooked up to batteries with which to hook up an iPod and blast party music the whole time. This kept the atmosphere enthusiastic and energized and served to motivate onlookers to join.

The ability of music to raise morale can’t be understated. Slayer, Metallica, etc. wouldn’t be good music for this because it would induce aggression. Rhythmic music that’s usually danced to or played in clubs works best. If a DJ would play it as the ball drops on New Year ’s Eve, then it’s perfect.

After marching for 3-4 hours, we eventually found ourselves a block away from the park that we’d been forced out of, so we took it again. The riot police lined up and prepared to take the park again, but the attempt was called off and the police just left. They realized that they would have to go through the standard military procedure of clearing the park inch by inch, only to have us go back out into the streets and march again while they, one more time, trailed along helplessly- their entourage functioning as a part of the march, creating an even larger disruption to traffic (the marchers covered a city block, the trailing police took up another city block, effectively doubling the size of the obstruction to traffic).

In summary: when the cops come to clear the park, don’t resist. As they are preparing for their military maneuver and use of force that the Occupiers cannot reasonably be expected to resist, the occupiers should be packing up their tents and baggage and loading them into wagons, bicycles, backpacks, etc.

Force the cops to clear the park inch by inch, but try to avoid arrest in so doing. Once they have cleared the park, rouse the crowd through loud amplification announcing that you intend to march (any destination will do). Get the music blaring and then march aimlessly, blocking traffic the whole way, for hours. The crowd will be energized and willing to march for a long time, being spurred on by energetic music and chants.

The police will eventually trim down their entourage because they realize that they are helpless. Eventually, work your way back to the park. Or, if the police have fenced off the park, head to another park. If the police force you out, march again and they will be forced to follow. Eventually, they will inevitably come to the conclusion that they would rather have you in a park than disrupting traffic.

The police have no response to this tactic, other than resorting to brutality. And if they do that, we win whether they clear the park or not.

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

I came across this bit of Hacktivist news via Censored News...

2011-12-12T00:56:00.003-05:00

Hactivists become heroes of the voiceless

Censored News

The hacktivists at AntiSec are becoming the heroes for the voiceless, the only place to turn for those who are beaten by police, or victimized by the ruthless.
With their typical humor, and genius, AntiSec released 'Suckerpunching Sunday' today.
Those in power, who long believed themselves to be 'untouchables,' because of their positions and who they knew, now have a new entity to reckon with.
And, as they say, there's too many of them globally to arrest them all. They are modernday Robin Hoods, increasingly in demand. Here's their release today.
--Censored News

Suckerpunching Security Sunday \$$$$$$ |
\__| \______/
Greetings, lulzlovers around the world.
The American law enforcement's inhumane treatments of occupiers has caught our attention. You have shown through these actions that you are nothing more than puppets in the hands of your government. We have seen our fellow brothers & sisters being teargassed for exercising their fundamental liberal rights, the exact ones that were bestowed upon them by their Constitution. Due to this and several other reasons we are releasing the entire member database of clearusa.org (The Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail). An organization who works to "encourage mutual cooperation between all law enforcement agencies and retail corporations". This fun little database dump includes hashed passwords, physical and email addresses, phone numbers etc. of many military, law enforcement officers, large corporations such as Microsoft, federal agents & security companies. Many of the users reuse their passwords elsewhere, so we encourage all of our lulz loving friends to deface & leak their twitters, facebooks and private email accounts as well as spreading their d0xes far and wide across the internet ocean. The website requires new members to be approved by an administrator, meaning the validity of this information is relatively high.
### PASSWORDS, EMAIL ADDRESSES, PHYSICAL ADDRESSES, PHONE NUMBERS ETC ###
Pastehtml Link: http://pastehtml.com/view/bgz9c5zk8.html
Backup Link: http://speedy.sh/t8tAn/clearusa-member-completex1.html
################ FORUM PM'S #################
Link: http://pastehtml.com/view/bgz9jo1s8.html
We are Anti-Security
We do not forgive police brutality
We do not forget our brothers suffering
We will avenge.
You should have expected us.
Remember - We are always inside your rootdir.
Brought to you by your friendly lulz loving pirate - Exphin1ty (@exphin1ty on twitter)

But racism as a contributing factor goes unmentioned...

2011-12-09T02:11:00.002-05:00

Report concludes British riots provoked by police brutality and poverty
By Julie Hyland

The first comprehensive investigation into the riots that swept London and other parts of England in August has confirmed that police brutality, poverty and social inequality were the primary motivating factors in their eruption.

The “Reading the Riots” study was undertaken by the Guardian newspaper and the London School of Economics (LSE) following the government’s refusal to establish an independent inquiry into the inner-city disturbances. It is the only report based on evidence gathered from those who were directly involved in the events.

The study involved a team of 60 academics, journalists and researchers. They conducted interviews with 270 people who took part in the riots in London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham and Manchester. A separate analysis of a database of more than 2 million riot-related “tweets” was undertaken by Manchester University.

Those interviewed were between 13 and 57 years of age, with most aged 16 to 24. They were drawn from all ethnic backgrounds and most had not been arrested for their involvement in the disturbances.

The accounts of those interviewed, who reside in some of the most socially deprived areas in England, refute the claims made by the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government, with the support of the Labour Party and the media, that the upheavals were the product of the “criminality” of a “feral underclass.”

This libel was used to justify wholesale police and judicial repression against working class youth. Over 4,000 people were arrested. Specially convened kangaroo-style courts were set up in several areas, sitting for 24 hours in some instances, to dispense summary justice. Hundreds have been imprisoned, mostly for petty offences, and three young men have been jailed for four years for Facebook postings supportive of rioting.

Time and again, those interviewed identified police harassment, poverty and social injustice as the main causes of the riots.

Many described the disturbances as “anti-police” riots, citing the police killing of 29-year-old Mark Duggan in Tottenham on August 4 as the major factor that precipitated the eruptions.

At the time, it was claimed that Duggan had opened fire on the police and the officers shot him in self-defence. That account has been proven false, as Duggan was unarmed when he was killed. A whitewash inquiry by the Independent Police Complaints Commission is ongoing, while no police officer has been identified, let alone charged, in relation to Duggan’s death.

The investigation found a “deep-seated and sometimes visceral antipathy towards police,” with Duggan’s killing meeting up with the interviewees’ own experiences of police harassment and brutality. Of those interviewed, 73 percent said they had been stopped and searched in the last 12 months, a reflection of the common practice in which police arbitrarily harass working class youth.

Eighty-five percent said that poverty was an “important” or “very important” factor in causing the disturbances.

“Rioters identified a range of political grievances, but at the heart of their complaints was a pervasive sense of injustice,” the report stated. “For some this was economic: the lack of money, jobs or opportunity. For others it was more broadly social: how they felt they were treated compared with others. Many mentioned the increase in student tuition fees and the scrapping of the education maintenance allowance [a benefit paid to poorer college students that was abolished by the coalition government].”

The study confirms that those involved in the riots were generally poorer and less-educated working class youth, but it notes, “While general levels of achievement for the group as a whole were relatively low, many were highly articulate and politicised, particularly when it came to describing the problems they faced, the frustrations in their lives, and the lack of opportunities available to them.”

The findings flatly contradict the fraudulent “investigation” initiated by the government into the disturbances. The Riots Communities and Victims Panel was set up to deflect demands for an independent inquiry into the causes of August’s events.

Prime Minister David Cameron has insisted that no comparison can be drawn between the summer disturbances and the inner-city riots of the early 1980s. The latter were the subject of the Scarman Inquiry, which found that police brutality, especially against young black people, was the primary cause. Cameron’s assertion flies in the face of the facts, including the fact that the August 2011 disturbances were far more extensive, involving larger numbers of people in many different areas of the capital and the country, than those investigated by Scarman.

The Victims Panel took evidence only from those affected by the riots. Unsurprisingly, its report insisted that the disturbances were not “political” and could not be compared with those of 1981. Its main recommendations were for more robust policing, including a call for a review of police “emergency plans” to deal with similar “public disorder.”

An interim report by London’s Metropolitan Police claimed that it had been unable to respond with sufficient force to the riots because it feared criticism over “heavy-handed” tactics.

What unites the various reports is their conclusion that more riots can be anticipated. The Victims Panel said “riots will happen again if urgent action is not taken,” while 81 percent of those interviewed in the Guardian/LSE study said the same.

Earlier this week, the former Metropolitan Police chief, Lord Stevens, warned that Britain faced “years of public disorder.” Police would face a battle to keep control of the streets, Stevens said, as the economic crisis fuelled public disorder. “My gut feeling is it’s going to be a very difficult 18 months to three years,” he said.

The Guardian/LSE study was released at the same time as a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development that detailed the huge growth in social inequality across its 35 member countries over the last three decades. The sharpest increase has occurred in the UK.

The study underscores the principled stand taken by the Socialist Equality Party at the time of the riots. Entirely alone in the UK, the SEP condemned the state repression being meted out against working class youth. From the start, the SEP explained that the disturbances were an “elemental eruption of social anger” against the “entrenched poverty, discrimination and police brutality faced daily by many working class youth.”

Well before the OECD reported, the SEP noted that the ruling elite and their political representatives had carried out a war against society for more than 35 years, during which every aspect of life had been subordinated to the interests of a parasitic elite. Now, their orgy of speculation and greed had produced an economic catastrophe that was destroying the living standards of billions.

The SEP warned that the repression employed against working class youth was symptomatic of the ruling elite’s increasing resort to anti-democratic, class-war measures against all working people.

The so-called liberals and “lefts” were entirely complicit in this development, the SEP stressed, as Labour’s Ken Livingstone and numerous “minority” and “community” spokespersons demanded the use of water cannon and worse.

“The political tragedy of the youth,” the SEP wrote, was that “their entirely justified indignation has been unable to find any organised, progressive expression because of the utter rottenness and bankruptcy of the Labour Party” and the trade unions.

This essential political point has been further underscored by Labour’s decision to select former Metropolitan Police chief Lord Stevens to head its own “independent commission into the future of policing.”

This, Labour’s sole initiative in the wake of the riots, doesn’t even make a pretence of concern over poverty, rising unemployment or other conditions of social deprivation, much less police brutality. To these conditions Labour is utterly indifferent. Instead, the commission is to be used to demand greater funding for the police along with other measures to prepare for the public disorder warned of by Stevens.

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

Perfect morning music...

2011-12-07T09:02:00.001-05:00

"Thanks Taking" Day...

2011-11-26T02:59:00.002-05:00

Russell Means on Al Jazeera Thanks Taking

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

Rest in peace, Great Dragon Mother of Pern...

2011-11-25T23:47:00.007-05:00

what else could have kept a little black child with a vivid imagination from despairing but a world full of dragons and their brilliant, brave riders?

Anne McCaffrey dies at 85; award-winning fantasy fiction writer

Anne McCaffrey wrote two dozen 'Dragonriders of Pern' novels. She was the first woman to win the top two prizes for science fiction writing, the Hugo and the Nebula.

Associated Press
November 25, 2011

Anne McCaffrey, a fantasy fiction writer whose vision of an interstellar alliance between humans and dragons spawned two dozen "Dragonriders of Pern" novels, has died in Ireland. She was 85.

Her publisher, Random House, said McCaffrey died of a stroke Monday at her rural residence south of Dublin, her home for four decades. She christened her self-designed house Dragonhold.

McCaffrey turned to the male-dominated world of sci-fi writing after dabbling in singing and amateur acting.

"I have always used emotion as a writing tool," McCaffrey told the science fiction magazine Locus in a 2004 interview. "That goes back to me being on the stage. The thing is, emotion — if it's visibly felt by the writer — will go through all the processes it takes to publish a story and still hit the reader right in the gut. But you have to really mean it."

She was the first woman to win the top two prizes for science fiction writing, the Hugo and the Nebula, in 1968 and 1969 respectively, after publication of her first two novellas set on the fictional planet of Pern.

McCaffrey was born in Cambridge, Mass., on April 1, 1926, and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1947. She moved to Ireland in 1970 after filing for divorce from her husband of 20 years. She had ancestral ties to Ireland, which also had just launched a unique program to woo novelists to live there exempt from income tax.

Her popularity surged with the 1978 publication of "The White Dragon," which completed her original trilogy begun in the late 1960s. It was her only novel to break onto the New York Times best-seller list.

But she maintained a prolific writing pace, producing 21 more novels set in Pern at various periods of its imagined history.

Over the last decade as her health faded, she increasingly collaborated with her son Todd, who coauthored five Pern-based novels and wrote three others on his own. The 23rd novel, "Dragon's Time," was published in June with mother and son sharing the writing credit, while the 24th, "Sky Dragons," is set for publication next year.

She is survived by two sons and a daughter.

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

From Mostly Water - Occupy toronto disbanded...

2011-11-25T17:08:00.002-05:00

Police evict Occupy Toronto protesters

By Carl Bronski; 25 November 2011 - WSWS
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/nov2011/toro-n25.shtml

Toronto police moved in at dawn on Wednesday to evict supporters of the international Occupy movement from their encampment at St. James Cathedral Park. Over a hundred tents were dismantled and removed. There were eleven arrests.

That same day police in Ottawa dismantled the Occupy camp in that city. The evictions were part of a concerted effort by state authorities to bring an end to the Occupy protests across Canada. Earlier in the week, police mobilized to close the Vancouver, British Columbia and Quebec City camps, whilst mayors in Montreal and Calgary pressed forward with plans for similar evictions.

Much has been made by the mainstream Canadian press of the relatively peaceful police operations, pointing for instance to the absence of riot police in the front lines of the St. James Park eviction — but ignoring the presence of mounted and other tactical units sequestered in the side streets of Toronto’s downtown core that were to be deployed in the event the eviction was contested.

If the protesters chose to temporarily retreat from their round-the-clock positioning in the park, it was in the face of a massive campaign to vilify the social movement and mobilize the forces of the state against them. Newspapers, broadcast outlets and city politicians relentlessly depicted the protesters as drug addicts, sociopaths and self-indulgent “punks.” They have dismissed outright the opposition to social inequality that informs their protest and has garnered majority support amongst the Canadian population.

After the successful police eviction, City Councilor Doug Ford, brother of right-wing Mayor Rob Ford, gloated that, “Woodstock Toronto is all over.”

However, Ford ally Councilor George Mammoliti, in a moment of unguarded candour, admitted that the elite’s real concern was that the protesters’ call for the redistribution of wealth would resonate among broad layers of the population. “I think we should have (evicted) after a couple of days,” said Mammoliti, “after we realized that people were turning it into a Sherwood Forest (where) we have Robin Hoods and makeshift Jesuses walking around”.

The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper and the traditional mouthpiece of the Bay Street financiers, devoted no less than three lead editorials in the five days preceding Wednesday’s eviction to demand police action against the demonstrators and argue that they had “exhausted” their rights to free speech and assembly. Owned by one of the wealthiest families in the world, the Globe has promoted a social policy counter-revolution that has done untold violence to countless working families in Canada and internationally.

Particularly odious was a Tuesday editorial that virtually incited police violence against the movement. It described the occupiers as an “immediate menace” who have “stationed themselves with bullying force in neighbourhoods and public squares.”

The threat of a police riot was certainly foremost in the minds of the youth and workers who had settled in the Toronto camp. Only eighteen months ago, police forces were mobilized to wreak havoc in Toronto during the June 2010 G20 summit.

At that time, the violence and repression carried out by the authorities in Toronto was worthy of a police state. An army of security officers, both in uniform and undercover, took over the downtown portion of Toronto, a major world city, creating conditions of martial law. Protesters were kicked, bludgeoned, tear-gassed, trampled by police horses and shot at with rubber and plastic bullets.

Even prior to the beginning of the anti-G20 demonstrations, homes were raided in the middle of the night and without warrants being shown in a series of “preventative arrests.” Journalists covering these unprecedented events were arrested and assaulted. The 1,200 citizens who were apprehended were placed in primitive detention cages, strip searched, and denied legal counsel.

Toronto politicians were certainly cognizant of the lingering shock amongst broad swathes of the population stemming from the G20 attacks. Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday stated the city administration wanted to evict the protesters earlier, but the timing was not good. “There would have been a lot of arrests, I think there would have probably been a lot of injuries, and I don’t think we wanted the bad publicity,” said Holyday.

Instead, the ground had to be properly prepared. Along with the vicious press campaign, city officials in Toronto (and elsewhere) sought the imprimatur of the courts to legitimize their attack on the constitutional right to protest. Superior Courts across the country weighed in against the Occupy encampments, taking dubious and outright concocted charges of health and safety risks and “violent activity” as good coin.

In a landmark ruling, former Toronto corporate lawyer Justice David Brown distinguished himself with the opinion that the protection to dissent enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms must be over-ridden by virtually every other right. If the parks are occupied, he asked, “Where do I ride my bike?”

Central to the preparation for the dismantling of the camps has been the strong support provided by so-called “lefts.” In Vancouver, it was the New Democratic Party-affiliated Mayor Gregor Robinson who initiated eviction proceedings.

The Globe and Mail, in their Wednesday editorial, noted independent “progressive” Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi’s moves to end the occupation in his city. “If you’ve lost (Nenshi), you’ve lost the country,” they crowed. In Toronto, “progressive” Councilor Adam Vaughan praised the right-wing mayor stating that Ford deserved a lot of credit for the “peaceful” eviction — “for [exhibiting] something which he doesn’t show a lot of, which is restraint.”

Vaughan’s praise of Ford is all the more reprehensible given that it is well known that his administration is preparing to lock out city workers early in the new year and hire strikebreakers. In respect to these preparations for a major confrontation with the working class, the shutting down of the Occupy protest was viewed by the Toronto establishment as important, so as both to remove a potentially radical element and to send a message that occupations and other acts of civil disobedience won’t be tolerated.

The refusal of Toronto’s “left” councilors to defend the occupiers should come as no surprise. In the wake of the G20 police riot, the council, which at the time held a “left” majority under the regime of NDP-aligned Mayor David Miller, voted unanimously to commend the police for their service during the 2010 demonstrations.

No less treacherous has been the posturing of the trade union bureaucracy. The unions, long transformed into mere appendages of the corporations within the working class, have accepted and presided over the implementation of concession contract after concession contract across the country. If they have paid lip service to the Occupy movement it is only to steer it into the safe channels of support for the New Democratic Party.

On the day of the police eviction in Toronto, the Ontario Federation of Labour Annual Convention was in session for a four-day meeting at the posh Sheraton Centre Hotel — a site only a few blocks from the St. James encampment. Two thousand union officials were in attendance fully aware of the impending eviction threat. In fact, they had already sent a delegation to reclaim the tents that had been earlier donated.

As police moved against the encampment on Wednesday morning, the assembled officialdom continued their deliberations. At the lunch hour, in order to maintain a fig leaf of credibility, a few score of officials marched to the police lines and left several observers to “monitor” the eviction proceedings. Such was the “strength” and “commitment” of the official labour movement.

Reporters from the World Socialist Web Site spoke with a number of people at St. James Park during the eviction.

Ryan has been with the occupation since the first day. Asked what his plans were now that they were being evicted, he replied, “There are a few things in the works. This can’t die. You think if they kick us out of the park that’s the end of it? Absolutely not — we’re here to change the world. So is the world changed yet? No. And even after the world changes, I’m going to put my heart and soul into everything I do — even when things are good — to keep them good.”

Wanda, a community worker studying at nearby George Brown College was observing the eviction at the park and was concerned about what would happen to the occupiers. “I really hope no one gets hurt, that’s all. I know they’re fighting about homelessness and things like that. Most of the people that are protesting right now are homeless people, so maybe they’re just fed up. I’m just worried about what the future holds right now.”

Joshua works across the street from the park and said that most of the people he worked with were in support of the Occupy movement. “I think now it’s getting a little crazy with all the police coming in. It’s no longer peaceful with the police presence here, which is unfortunate. This seems a little over the top. But I definitely support the movement and the 99 percent, and the fact that we as a people need to stand up for what’s going on. Where I work there’s a lot of wealthy, wealthy people that just don’t understand the movement whatsoever and don’t want this going on any more. I definitely hope that something can be done, but I don’t know what we can do to make such a large change.”

The suppression of the Occupy movement reveals two basic truths. The first is that democratic rights are incompatible with a system in which society’s wealth is monopolized by the richest one percent. The demands of the financial elite — for austerity, the destruction of social programs, and war — cannot be realized through democratic means. The opposition of the overwhelming majority can be overcome only through the ever-greater resort to authoritarian methods.

The second is that the state — the politicians, the police and the courts — is not a neutral body. It is a capitalist state, which functions to defend the property and political rule of the corporate and financial oligarchy.

The impact of the worsening social conditions is driving ever-larger sections of workers and young people into struggle. It must be understood that this is a political struggle involving irreconcilably opposed social and class interests. If social needs are to take precedence over the profit interests of the banks and corporations, a fundamental and revolutionary transformation is needed. The working class — the vast majority of the population — must take the reins of political power in its own hands.

A redistribution of wealth from the top to the bottom is urgently needed. This requires replacing capitalism with socialism so that society’s wealth is put at the disposal of the majority — that is, the working people who produce the wealth.

The key issue confronting the Occupy movement is to turn out to the working class. This can be achieved only independently of, and in opposition to, the trade unions, with workers developing rank-and-file committees and other new forms of organization to advance their struggles. Above all, what is required is a new socialist and internationalist strategy that aims at ending the corporate-political domination of the “one percent” by abolishing the profit system internationally.

Whatever comes of this ruling, it's important to pay attention...

2011-11-23T03:05:00.001-05:00

Countdown to Canada's polygamy/polyamory ruling

At 1 p.m. EST tomorrow (Wednesday Nov. 23), the Supreme Court of British Columbia will announce its ruling on the constitutionality of Canada's broad anti-polygamy and anti-polyamory law.

We'll post news here ASAP, along with the official response from the Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association (CPAA) — whose activists and Chief Counsel plan to be in the thick of the media scrum at the Vancouver courthouse.

Their key point: Although attention has focused on the group of Fundamentalist Mormons in Bountiful, BC, that prompted the case, the vast majority of people criminalized by the law are the thousands or tens of thousands all across Canada living in healthy, modern, egalitarian, polyamorous relationships.

Already they're having some success. This just went out on the Canadian Press wire service:

Polygamy decision extends beyond isolated B.C. commune, say polyamorists

The Canadian Press
November 22, 2011 - 16:16

VANCOUVER - A group of so-called polyamorists say they're being ignored in the debate over Canada's polygamy law, and they say an imminent court decision will have implications beyond a tiny religious group in B.C.

The B.C. Supreme Court will rule on Wednesday whether the Criminal Code section banning polygamy is consistent with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The trial focused almost entirely on the small commune of Bountiful, B.C., where about 1,000 self-described fundamentalist Mormons practise multiple marriage.

But among the interveners in the case was the Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association, which says the current law also makes criminals out of consenting adults in relationships that happen to involve more than two people.

John Bashinski, who provided an affidavit in the case, says his group believes there are far more polyamorists across Canada than the polygamists in Bountiful, and he says the law should be struck down.

Bashinski, who lives in a household with a wife and another husband, says he's worried harmless relationships such as his are covered under the Criminal Code, and he says other laws should be used to punish abuse.

See an original.

Bashinski got a chance to say more in another Canadian Press article a few hours later:

...And then there are the polyamorists, who are in relationships with more than two people but describe them as consensual, egalitarian and often secular.

The Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association was among the interveners in the B.C. case, and they argued the law as it's currently written — prohibiting any conjugal union involving more than two people — wrongly makes their relationships a crime.

John Bashinski, who provided an affidavit in the case, said his group has identified more than 100 families that fit his description of polyamory, and he believes there are many more than that.

Bashinski said the focus on Bountiful ignores a larger number of relationships that will always be afraid of being targeted if the law is not struck down.

"Given that people like me, who practise egalitarian polyamory, are actually by far the numerical majority, it's a little annoying to see ourselves constantly ignored and to see this presented as something about patriarchal systems," Bashinski said in an interview.

"There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that S. 293 (of the Criminal Code, which prohibits polygamy), as written, applies to my family."

In response to that argument, though, the governments point out that polygamy prosecutions are incredibly rare.

Before 2009, when the B.C. government attempted, and failed, to charge to men from Bountiful with polygamy, the most recent charges were in 1937. The last convictions were more than 100 years ago.

Bashinski said that just shows why the government should abandon the polygamy law and focus on cases of abuse.

"They want this to be a prosecutorial tool at their discretion to use against people they feel are abusive, but it concerns me that any prosecutor in Canada has the discretion to apply that tool in a different way,"

"If I were drafting the laws, I would draft laws against abuse, coercion, using pastoral authority to threaten somebody into marriage, those sorts of things. Those abuses can be addressed directly."

He noted that the RCMP launched a new investigation earlier this year into allegations that young girls from Bountiful were spirited across the border to marry much older American men.

Whole article.

In a Vancouver Sun story today:

...Those favouring striking down the law included the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, polyamorists and civil libertarians, who argued that Section 293 of the Criminal Code is overly broad, criminalizing consenting adults whose conjugal relationships are benign and even beneficial for all involved....

Yesterday on the CTV site:

...Robert Wickett, a lawyer who represents the Bountiful faction that follows James Oler, said his clients are anxious for Wednesday's decision, but he acknowledges it could be years before the case is finally settled.

...Wickett said outsiders watching the case should also remember that Bountiful residents aren't the only Canadians in polygamous relationships.

The court heard evidence of polygamous marriages elsewhere in the country, as well as so-called polyamorous relationships involving more than two people who may not necessarily claim to be married.

"The issue of polygamy is far broader than simply the people who live in fundamentalist Mormon communities. The way the Criminal Code section is drafted, depending on how the court interprets it, could have an impact on a lot more people in diverse personal relationships," he said.

"So it's not just about Bountiful."

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

Communique from AW@L a year and a half after the G20 occupation of Toronto...

2011-11-23T03:00:00.002-05:00

AW@L Statement of Support for G20 Resisters and of Continued Resistance Against Colonial Capitalism

It has been a year and a half since the most massive police operation in canadian history targeted our communities and abducted our friends into the grips of the (in)justice system. In this billion-dollar 'security' operation, communities of activists and radical journalists were infiltrated, as the fortifications of corporate and government elite were intensified and guarded by their police. This attack on resistance is abhorrent, though it is also nothing new, and continues today with the ongoing criminalisation of dissent and the continued assault on Charter rights by governments, police forces, and judges.

It has been a year and a half since self-proclaimed leaders of the so-called free world met in luxury and penned the austerity programs which would be implemented against their citizenry and other inhabitants of the countries they rule. Tens of thousands of people, dreaming of a better world and those dedicated to social justice converged against this undemocratic process and filled the streets of Toronto with their love and rage and were met with baton strikes, police pens, and horse charges, snatch squads and in-house terrorisation, incarceration and isolation.

It has been a year and a half since the G20 tyrants fled Toronto to attack the social support structures in their countries, structures that have been built up over the past two centuries by those fighting for a more just world. And just as the streets of Toronto were ignited by resistance to this tyranny in June 2010, the streets and public plazas of cities around the world have been the site of unending protest since that time. We are humbled in joining 515 years of resistance to colonial and patriarchal injustice on Turtle Island.

AW@L has been a favourite target of the state's police forces since our first actions against Canada's massive military industrial complex. Our profile raised further as we united in solidarity in Indigenous-led land protection, and as we exposed the nefarious aims of back-room elitist transnational agreements. In 2010 we participated in the protests against the myriad injustices related to the Vancouver olympics, and our members joined in organising for strong, self-sufficient communities and against the G20 summit in Toronto.

Our efforts have cost us dearly. 10 of our members were arrested in Toronto, 6 being charged with conspiracy as a part of the “Main Group Prosecution” (with 11 other community organisers). It has been a year and a half since we have been able to speak freely with our friends, a year and a half of continued police surveillance, attempted intimidation, and further arrests.

Today, 3 AW@L members and 3 other amazing organisers are sacrificing themselves on the altar of injustice by pleading to charges of “Counsel Mischief not Committed”, and we, the remaining members of AW@L, stand in solidarity with their decision and will continue to support our friends as they are locked away once more in the concrete and steel cages of the provincial prison system.

We do not see victory in this decision—victory in the kangaroo courts is rarely an option—but we do take solace that the unreasonable crown prosecutors could not move forward with their conspiracy theories or their abusive use of the law to further their repressive (fascist) agenda. Their attack has only strengthened our resolve to fight against colonialism, against austerity, and against the destruction of this land; we have strengthened and grown our community and our networks, deepened our analysis, and fortified our own organising. Our resiliency is more complex than their violent simplicity.

Finally, we would like to express our deepest support for Ryan Rainville, Kelly Pflug-Back, Byron Sonne, and everyone else who is still a target of this sick system because of their beliefs, associations, and actions around the G20 convergence.

None of us is free until we all are free!

AW@L – peaceculture.org
Grand River Territory

I don't know what happened to their facebook shitstorm but...

2011-11-23T02:51:00.002-05:00

after what the police did (and got away with) before, during and after the g20/g8 occupation of toronto, this offers at least a little satisfaction...even if it's only one beest being targeted.

"you are cowards and bullies. tools of the corrupt. puppets for your masters."

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

Crucial question about the Palestinian freedom rides...

2011-11-23T02:46:00.002-05:00

Are the Freedom Rides a detour for the struggle?
Linah Alsaafin

Is Palestine’s an anti-colonial or civil rights struggle?(Ryan Rodrick Beiler)

Last week, six courageous Palestinians attempted to defy racism, segregation and apartheid by boarding Jewish settler-only buses in the hopes of reaching Jerusalem, a city off limits to Palestinians in the West Bank.

Activists and bloggers, intellectuals and independent journalists all supported the Palestinian Freedom Riders for their US civil rights movement-inspired act. Emotions ran high as it was clearly emphasized that racial supremacy still exists in this day and age, and highlighted were the harrowing parallels between oppression in the Jim Crow US South and in Palestine.

But crucial differences remain — for one thing, the indigenous population of Palestine is occupied by a colonial settler population; for another, there are two separate and completely different systems for Palestinians and Israelis, such as military and civilian courts, respectively, rather than a two-tiered system.

However, the symbolic, media-friendly act — and its debatable relevance to the average Palestinian — begs some important questions.

There is no doubt that what the six Freedom Riders set out to achieve was of significance. They challenged Israel’s arbitrary regime of exclusive settler-only networks that serve the illegal settlements throughout the West Bank; they highlighted the human rights abusing complicity of two companies, Veolia and Egged, which operate dozens of the segregated bus lines; and they fought for an essential basic right: freedom of movement. Apartheid is very much alive in occupied Palestine. It is our reality that we breathe through our congested lungs every minute of our waking lives.

Anti-colonial vs civil rights struggle

The Freedom Rides were intended as an anti-colonial act mirroring a previous and successful civil rights one. But our struggle is not a civil rights one. It is a struggle against a foreign occupation. We must be calling for the liberation of an indigenous population under a devastating settler-colonial rule, one that has continued to ethnically cleanse, commit large scale massacres, impose collective punishment, imprison and restrict the movement of Palestinians for decades.

The intentions of the Freedom Rides were transparent and clear, as stated by the second press release in which they stated that they do not seek to desegregate the settler buses, as the “presence of these colonizers and the infrastructure that serves them is illegal and must be dismantled” (“Palestinian Freedom Riders to ride settler buses to Jerusalem,” 13 November 2011).

But by using a tactic specific to the US civil rights movement, one risks the interpretation that Palestinians are asking for the same rights as settlers.

As one young activist critical of the Freedom Rides commented to me: “Do you obstruct settlements by demanding to get on a bus? What you are demanding when you attempt to ride a bus is the right to ride it, not the right to say I don’t want this bus here to start with. You don’t ask to ride the bus if you don’t want the bus in your neighborhood.”

She added, “There is an illegal railway in Jerusalem constructed on [illegally-occupied] territory that endangers children as [trains] pass by in residential areas … if I were to object to this train’s existence, do I make a protest and ask to ride on the train or do I sleep on the train tracks to stop it from coming to my area?”

Indeed, many Palestinians take issue with settlers factoring in a key role in the Freedom Rides event, saying that it blurs the lines of normalization of occupation and apartheid.

The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement defines normalization as “the participation in any project, initiative or activity, in Palestine or internationally, that aims (implicitly or explicitly) to bring together Palestinians (and/or Arabs) and Israelis (people or institutions) without placing as its goal resistance to and exposure of the Israeli occupation and all forms of discrimination and oppression against the Palestinian people” (“ Israel’s Exceptionalism: Normalizing the Abnormal,” the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Boycott of Israel, 31 October 2011).

Although the boycott call has been endorsed by nearly 200 Palestinian civil society organizations and political parties, the working definition of normalization of the boycott movement differs from many Palestinians’ personal definitions of normalization. Some view any association with settlers as normalization, others a bit more nuanced but still don’t like the idea, and still others consider it within the specific context in question. The reactions like that of the young activist I mentioned exemplify this concern.

Honor Palestinian resistance

The positive coverage in the Western corporate media shows that the Freedom Rides action appealed to foreign consumption. But it’s not up to Palestinian resistance to appease the tastes of Western audiences. We have our own lively and proud history of resistance stretching back to the days of British Mandate rule, exemplified by popular strikes, boycotts and demonstrations.

Moreover, tactics tailored to western tastes and reactions distract from mobilizing Palestinians on the ground into an effective popular resistance movement. The first Palestinian intifada was a true popular uprising in every sense. Palestinian society collectively organized strikes and rallied together. The level of cooperation was present in families hiding resistance fighters, and in mosques and private organizations hosting educational studies after the universities and schools were shut down.

Today, activism and popular resistance isn’t centralized but, rather, is scattered throughout particular villages and parts of cities. For an act that carries huge potential and holds meaningful implications by connecting the current reality of Palestinians to the history of other oppressed societies, there should have been more awareness on the Palestinian street of its occurrence.

The Freedom Rides event was very exclusive. This is in stark contrast to the recent Freedom Waves mini flotilla campaign, where activists were directly involved with producing, translating, revising and distributing fact sheets and press releases and statements for the UN and mobilizing people on the street and engaging with the media. It was a microcosm of popular resistance as activists from throughout historic Palestine all worked together efficiently to send the message of ending the blockade on Gaza and demanding protection for the passengers, and this message was directed not only at the West and foreign press but to Palestinians as well.

Any act of civil resistance should be inclusive of many sectors of Palestinians. The same efforts that the Freedom Riders took to coordinate with organizations in the US and elsewhere should have also happened in Palestine.

And while the history of other oppressed peoples unquestionably offers its lessons to us as an occupied population, we should be well aware of our own unique history of resistance, and the need for our movement to encompass all sectors of Palestinian society and the historic demands of our anti-colonial struggle.

Linah Alsaafin is a recent graduate of Birzeit University in the West Bank. She was born in Cardiff, Wales and was raised in England, the United States and Palestine. Her website is http://lifeonbirzeitcampus.blogspot.com/.

This site looks amazing...

2011-11-23T02:31:00.003-05:00

The Icarus Project envisions a new culture and language that resonates with our actual experiences of 'mental illness' rather than trying to fit our lives into a conventional framework.

We are a network of people living with and/or affected by experiences that are commonly diagnosed and labeled as psychiatric conditions. We believe these experiences are mad gifts needing cultivation and care, rather than diseases or disorders. By joining together as individuals and as a community, the intertwined threads of madness, creativity, and collaboration can inspire hope and transformation in an oppressive and damaged world. Participation in The Icarus Project helps us overcome alienation and tap into the true potential that lies between brilliance and madness.

The Icarus Project is a collaborative, participatory adventure fueled by inspiration and mutual aid. We bring the Icarus vision to reality through an Icarus national staff collective and a grassroots network of autonomous local support groups and Campus Icarus groups across the US and beyond.

To read more about our mission, vision, and work, check out the full text of our mission statement. We're non-profit and donation driven; please consider making a donation if you can, even $10 helps keep us going.

Disturbing...in a good way...

2011-11-21T08:44:00.006-05:00

Unsettling America

t/here i found this...

Waziyatawin Speaks to Occupy Oakland

Waziyatawin is a Dakota writer, teacher, and activist committed to the development of liberation strategies that will support the recovery of Indigenous ways of being, the reclamation of Indigenous homelands, and the eradication of colonial institutions.

Waziyatawin comes from the Pezihutazizi Otunwe (Yellow Medicine Village) in southwestern Minnesota. After receiving her Ph.D. in American history from Cornell University in 2000, she earned tenure and an associate professorship in the history department at Arizona State University where she taught for seven years. Waziyatawin currently holds the Indigenous Peoples Research Chair in the Indigenous Governance Program at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. Her interests include projects centering on Indigenous decolonization strategies such as truth-telling and reparative justice, Indigenous women and resistance, the recovery of Indigenous knowledge, and the development of liberation ideology in Indigenous communities.

She is the author, editor, or co-editor of five volumes including: Remember This!: Dakota Decolonization and the Eli Taylor Narratives (University of Nebraska Press 2005); Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities (University of Nebraska Press 2004); For Indigenous Eyes Only: A Decolonization Handbook (School of Advanced Research Press 2005); In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors: The Dakota Commemorative Marches of the 21st Century (Living Justice Press 2006); and, her most recent volume, What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland (Living Justice Press 2008).

Waziyatawin is also the founder and director of Oyate Nipi Kte, a non-profit organization dedicated to the recovery of Dakota traditional knowledge, sustainable ways of being, and Dakota liberation.

She can be found online at waziyatawin.net

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

About organizing feminist spaces of communication and connection...without anger...

2011-11-18T15:11:00.003-05:00

So, I've been having communication with some feminists in a distinctly non-political online sexual space called fetlife, where there are still radically political people present, even if in such small numbers that the site does not feel their presence or show any signs of transforming in the face of the challenges they pose there.

We.
We pose there.

Recently, I started posting on a feminist group's page, participating in some conversations that I found interesting. This came on the heels of me deciding to dial back my interactions with the mostly heteronormative, apolitical Black people I'd met there, who I had first decided to attempt to engage with. That didn't work out very well. You see, I started off interacting with the Black wimmin and fell in love with them, their spunk, their fire, their insistence on attempting to make choice and be powerful in ways that made sense for them. I also really liked the fact that they did not cringe when I described the kinds of things I like to do while naked.

But then...
I met their men folk. Our...men...folk...? Not.
I found them to be typical, overly dominant, hugely making assumptions about what they knew and what kinds of language and understandings I shared in common with them, what values Black people could assume to all hold dear, who a "good" Black mother was, who a "good" Black woman was and what she could be expected or peer pressured into doing or performing or maintaining when/if she encountered a "good" Black man. 1950's in full effect people had some seriously fuk'd ideas about what a Black woman's role was/is in relation to a Black man, how she is supposed to speak, the kinds of space she should make for Black men's insecurities, feelings of threat at the very thought of a Black woman not just nodding as they speak and letting them know how brilliant they are, ignorance of their own patriarchal privilege, of the power they wield inside Black community...
Oh my fucking GAWD! I could go on and on. In fact, I did go on and on, posting, questioning, journaling, challenging, redirecting, laughing at their (our?) men, raging against their shared values, against their insistence that I share their values...

Soooo...
Eventually they started to shun me. hehehe Old time, old school primate behaviour. The wimmin ceased popping by as did their (our?) backwards ass men. :) I also had to block one man from messaging me. He was writing, as one of the most dominant and unrepentantly ignorant, anti-feminist men in their grouping, to jeer at me checking to see if I was satisfied with how people were responding to my queries, to my insistence on not falling into line. He checked in to laugh at me, to attempt to mount me, to offer a little bit of fear juiced incentive to someone who clearly did not know her place. :)

But I'm accustomed to that. I had someone on fetlife, a white anarchist Jewish person also respond with extreme ire when I said that a bunch of white anarchists sitting around typing about pacifism and violence but speaking with sneering disdain at the thought and mention of ghandi had racist implications regardless of whether he was an effective fulcrum of change or not.

This person attempted to incorporate a consciousness of Ghandi having been an anti-semite in a way that said they thought speaking of him and his contribution (or lack of contribution) to struggle that was racist as acceptable. Locating me as an amerikkkan, this person tried to say that I was clearly not knowledgeable or up to date and that they would be the one to forcibly re-educate me. They attempted to institute a baiting interaction where I was, I think supposed to show my true colours as rabid anti-semite, disinterested in exploring the intersecting relations of privilege and oppression in a way that spoke to them being more interested in dominating me and mounting me than this person being interested in sharing communication and knowledge.

That didn't work for me. I left the white anarchists right there and then but not before pointing out that this person was trying to say that one kind of oppression was worse than the other, not that consciousness of both simultaneously was possible. But I lost my interest in having conversation with them. I shouldn't have had to explain why my point about their racism still stood. I shouldn't have had to deal with that person's unbridled, misdirected rage so willingly directed at me.

sigh...

So, first I engaged the anarchist kinksters and had to back out of their little group firing off rounds as I retreated.
Then I engaged the Black kinksters' patriarchal phallus heads and got the silent treatment.
Then I decided to go visit the radical feminist kinksters.

That's been trippy. Not because I didn't know what to expect when I opened the door and stepped in, but because I did know what I would find there...as I understood what I'd encounter in the anarchist group space, as I understood what I'd encounter in the Black kinkster community space.

Nothing much changes for me as I go visit the different communities I'm linked to. So, I'm always prepared, always ready with things that I can say, questions I can ask, challenges I can pose...things I can offer that might be useful...somewhere...somehow...I...hope.

As it turns out, I did end up writing a comment that offered something useful. So happy about that...genuinely happy in a thoroughly non-sarcastic way.

I wrote about anger, about what it means to be angry, what it means to see no end to being angry, what it means to communicate while angry, what it signifies when certain spaces expect me to wait until I'm not angry to communicate.

Some of the people in the feminist fetlife group asked if I would post my thoughts on anger somewhere. So, I thought I would take that opportunity to invite them over to my irreverent, annoying, bratty, tantrumming, unrepentantly complex, interdimensionally walking, radially politicized, completely unaffiliated space of exploration.
My home.
My core.
So filled with me being angry about pretty much everything under the sun...

"Some of us live angry. Wake up angry. Eat angry. Walk the street angry. Love our families while angry. Dance while angry. Make love while angry. Remember our childhoods while angry. Watch movies while angry. Pee while angry. Shit while angry. Go into labour while angry and come out the other side happy to have babies but still fucking angry.

For some of us who are too full of oppression, who encounter it in a myriad of ways and have no way of avoiding its sticky residue even for a moment here or there, there is always angry.

Other emotions folded in, roiling and rolling in tandem with angry, yes. But angry never goes away.

I'm typing a response to you right now and I know I'm angry. I've been angry most of my life.

There are a few things about being angry that make me angry.

I live in a white racist world where people are constantly accusing Black people of being angry, recoiling from us in abject terror over the possibility of seeing the undisguised, unbridled face of our anger, as if this in and of itself, will cause them to self destruct.

So many of us go to such great pains to present as not angry because of white domination and it's insistence that we not show any sign of anger over having been so thoroughly dominated for such a long time.

I live in a patriarchal world where wimmin are constantly being asked to be happy with their lot. Where we are invited to find the upside of everything. Where we are told repeatedly that if we do not paste idiot smiles on our faces at all times our families, our communities, the whole world will self destruct...in the face of our baldly expressed emotions. We are not allowed to do anything while angry. Even though many wimmin's and/or feminist writings point to the fact that a woman's anger is her early warning system and it's her having been socialized out connecting with her anger that causes difficulties for her, not the act of connecting to it.

I live in a WASP city. Passive aggressive central. Evil emotional sewer of a place. Hate it. Many people I've encountered, in response to a city wide culture of emotional suppression, many people who are in different ways grounded in alternative cultures across the city, have spoken or unspoken prohibitions against powerfully expressed...anything. There are a lot of fluttered eye communications, hand waving, cold energy environment building as a way to say "get the fuck out. we don't want to be around you...", people doing the shocked, wide eyed, doe in the headlights of oncoming traffic stares meaning "holy shit! we're not speaking. I'm not speaking to you. how am i going to get away from you before i say something...extreme..."

No one in this city is allowed to have any emotions whatsoever unless they're defined as within "pleasant" or "palatable" range. You're definitely not allowed to be angry.

Angry.

There is a school of professional, academic, social thought linked to the above locations for me that says:

"If you're angry, you are somehow incapable of processing information well. You can't function. You cannot skillfully discern your reactions from the content of any event, exchange or conversation. If you're angry, you're of no use to anyone let alone yourself. If you're angry you're not actually fit to interact. If you're angry, you might say something that upsets someone that, on further thought, if you'd given it more thought but were unable to because you were so angry, you'd realize that this person is of strategic importance and you should not have challenged them in the ways you did...because you were angry. You said/wrote things that now that you're not so drunk on rage you will regret, even if it's because others thought you should and are now jockeying for you to lose your job, your promotion, your academic standing, your tenure, your place in your circle of professional friends, your place in your circle of really, really cool and fascinating friends. Expressing angry, being angry and attempting to communicate when you're not able to be completely detached, detached being what we're all striving for, isn't it (?) communicating while angry is just sloppy."

If I wait until I'm not angry to communicate across my opinions, I'll be dead, cremated and in an urn on a mantle somewhere and still not be able to speak.

If I tell myself that I'll be clearer when I'm not angry, I'll miss the clear, honest, crisp kind of wording, so calculated and straight shooting that comes for me when something angers me...well, everything angers me in some way shape or form. :)

I disagree with you adding that to your otherwise flawless list of suggestions. I don't think that people being angry is the issue. I think that people who have been raised to not deal with their anger, who never learned how to deal with strong emotions while in the midst of them, who came out into political life, still not able to deal with their feelings might want to take a step back when they feel angry.

I think that people who feel as if they're functioning through a thick red hot haze when they're angry, who do not know how to take responsibility for what they say when they're angry because being angry is so alien to them or abnormal for them that they literally experience being angry and doing things while angry as someone else taking over their psyches and doing stuff, saying stuff and then running out the back door leaving them holding the bag...those people should not interact or pose challenges or write things here when they're angry as they will not be able to take full responsibility for what they say or do when the smoke clears.

I think that people who have difficulties expressing themselves with clarity when they're angry might want to think about self deselecting if they know that communication works better for them when powerful emotion is not causing them to communicate in ways that they find not effective.

I think that people who can identify themselves as indirect communicators, who were taught to not directly express annoyance but instead taught to cushion killing blows behind reprehensible indirectly aggressive behaviours imperceptible to most, should be honest about this fact, even if their chosen tools call for them to never be honest in the moment...and back away rather than harm people who can't quite put their finger on that sense of having been painfully winded or how.

This particular approach to expressing feelings, I've dealt with a lot. It's very common in this city, but also very common online. I've unfet-friended a few people recently for being horridly indirect, I've blocked two non-feminist wimmin for expressing upset in ways that I'm sure they thought was a sign of them being proper, more civilized, showing restraint and being "good" Black girls. All I knew, is that I had a powerful sense of needing to move back away from them. I listened to that.

Anger is not the issue.

Anger is an emotion in a range of emotions that are natural for human beings to experience.
It's not that we get angry.
It's what we do when we're angry, how we do it, why we do it and whether we can claim any after or negative effects real or constructed, that came out of what we chose to say or do.
It's whether the people around us have been taught to shy away from anger, taught to punish anger, taught to ignore it, taught to cordon it off, taught to shun it.
It's whether our communities have genetic memories of angry people doing horrible, violent things, hurtful things, things that can't be taken back...and whether these memories trigger us even hundreds of years later so badly that we can't even deal with our own anger collective or individual.

"Ask participants to never post while angry."

Perhaps we could change this to "Ask participants to never post if they know they know they have difficulties recognizing, dealing with anger or if they have a history of not being able to speak/write effectively if they are angry or if they know that they have difficulties taking responsibility for the things they say/write/do when angry."

That way, the issue doesn't end up being anger. It ends up being what people do and how well they're able to responsibly claim it."

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

Risking being more fully ourselves...

2011-11-17T01:44:00.002-05:00

I loved this. Although, without an analysis of power and domination, the ending seems a little liberal in that it could just as easily be used by someone who is being asked to be less oppressive by a group of people who have less privilege. A dose of context and the radical political would help immensely.

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

Saoirse and Tahrir Gaza Freedom activists kidnapped, beaten and held captive...

2011-11-13T06:37:00.002-05:00

Human Rights Activists on Boats to Gaza Beaten by Israeli Forces, Denied Visits by Lawyers and Access to Families Once in Custody
Contact: Felice Gelman, (917)-912-2597

New York, NY 11/6/2011 – Although Freedom Waves to Gaza organizers have not yet had direct communication with the people taken into custody by Israeli armed forces as they tried to peacefully sail to Gaza last week. Information is emerging that Israeli armed forces tactics in confronting the non-violent activists have been violent and dangerous. This despite claims from the IDF spokesperson that “every precaution will be taken for the safety of the activists.”

Prisoners include U.S. citizen Kit Kittredge, a delegate on the Tahrir from Quilcene, WA, and Jihan Hafiz, a U.S. citizen and journalist from Democracy Now, the national news program. Both have been advised by the U.S. consul in Israel to sign an Israeli deportation agreement. Both have refused because the statement says they came into Israel illegally and will not attempt another effort to break the Gaza blockade. Both statements are untrue.

A letter from Canadian David Heap, smuggled from the Givon prison, states that he was tasered and beaten when the Israeli Navy attacked the Tahrir. Irish prisoner, Fintan Lane, in a telephone call from Givon prison, reported that the takeover of the Saoirse was also violent. The Tahrir and the Saoirse were forced, by Israeli warships, to crash into each other, crippling both ships.

Palestinian Israeli Majd Kayal, a delegate aboard the Tahrir, who was arrested and released confirms these reports. “As a Palestinian, I was not surprised at how the IDF treated us,” said Kayal, after his release, noting this kind of abuse is a daily reality for the 1.5 million people of Gaza, who are indefinitely detained in an open-air prison. “However, for the Canadians and other Westerners onboard, it was a complete shock.”

“Israeli brutality and the unnecessary use of force against non-violent protests is well documented. What has happened to the passengers on the Tahrir and the Saoirse is just a tiny fraction of the daily abuse directed at Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank as part of Israel’s occupation policy,” said U.S. coordinator Jane Hirschmann. “Nonetheless, all people – Palestinians under occupation and peace activists kidnapped and imprisoned – have human rights under international law that civilized governments must respect. The purpose of the boats’ voyage to Gaza was to demonstrate that Israel continually violates those laws, and that the U.S. government cares more about Israel than about its own citizens.

Act now to Free the Saoirse and Tahrir and to Free Gaza

By now you are aware that the 27 passengers and crew on the Saoirse and the Tahrir have been kidnapped by Israeli forces and taken to Givon prison. They will be held there at least overnight if not longer. Please take these actions immediately and pass this on to your lists and contacts:

Organize support actions in your local area if possible. If you email the info to bio190d@gmail.com (our webmaster) we will post it to the “Support Actions” page of the US to Gaza website.
Check these websites for updates: Irish Ship to Gaza and Canadian Boat to Gaza, watch or listen to Democracy Now for live coverage and check their archives for coverage from the boats themselves. Search tweets using hashtag #Freedomwaves.
Call the State Department and the White House- demand that they take immediate action to free the passengers and the boats and to put an end to the siege of Gaza.

Call the State Department:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton 202-647-5291
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro 011-972-3-519-7575
Office of Israel/Palestinian Affairs Paul Sutphin 202-647-3672
Office of Consular Affairs, Kim Richter 202-647-8308
and the White House: 202-456-1414
email President Obama at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

Here are some talking points or suggested messaging:

Gaza has been under siege since mid-2006, depriving 1.6 million people of their liberty and basic human rights. Although the siege has been condemned by the United Nations, the Red Cross, and many national governments, nothing has been done to ease the plight of these civilians. Civil society has had to act where governments would not. Two ships with 27 passengers from 5 countries sailed to Gaza to confront the Israeli naval blockade, and to bring medical supplies and letters of support. They were seized in international waters by Israeli gunboats, and the passengers kidnapped and taken to Israeli prisons.

As Americans we insist that our government (which sends Israel $3 billion in military aid every year), demands that Israel immediately free the kidnapped passengers and boats and ends its illegal blockade of Gaza. There is absolutely no excuse to subject 1.6 million people to collective punishment. Ask your local press to cover this story. Up-to-date information and press releases will be available at www.ustogaza.org, www.irishshiptogaza.org and www.tahrir.ca

I don't know about emailing obamarama, though. He's not listening to shit from every day people. Was voted into office by manipulating them and their dreams. But he reports to a more monied constituency. And polarized, bi-partisan idiots - I'm not talking about the republicans. hehehehe :)

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

Belated veteran's day/remembrance day music...

2011-11-13T05:59:00.001-05:00

He claims responsibility for his actions as a soldier...

2011-11-11T11:16:00.001-05:00

He basically explains how he was tricked into joining the war effort...

2011-11-11T11:11:00.001-05:00

Drones on Trial...Democracy Now...

2011-11-04T15:49:00.001-04:00

38 Protesters Face Charges for Disrupting Syracuse Base Used in Overseas Attacks

The Wall Street Journal is reporting the CIA has made a series of secret concessions in its drone campaign after military and diplomatic officials complained large strikes were damaging the fragile U.S. relationship with Pakistan. Meanwhile, a trial is underway in Syracuse, New York, of 38 protesters arrested in April at the New York Air National Guard base at Hancock Field. The defendants were protesting the MQ-9 Reaper drones, which the 174th Fighter Wing of the Guard has remotely flown over Afghanistan from Syracuse since late 2009. "Citizens have a responsibility to take action when they see crimes being committed," said retired Col. Ann Wright, one of the 38 on trial. "And this goes back to World War II, when German government officials knew what other parts of the German government were doing in executing six million Jews in Germany and other places, and that they took no action. And yet—and they were held responsible later, through the Nuremberg trials. And that is the theory on which we are acting, that we see that our government is committing crimes by the use of these drones, and that we, as citizens, have the responsibility to act."

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.