Quirky Black Girls

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

i do not own a pink uhaul truck.

Sent to you by moya via Google Reader:

i do not own a pink uhaul truck.

via Freedom Fighter » i do not own a pink uhaul truck. by aliciasanchezgill on 6/23/10

i am a queer woman of color. in a world that tells me that i am not normal. i am a non-monogamous woman in a world that says "impossible." for many reasons, my relationships often fall outside of societal norms of acceptability, "normality" or hegemony. i like it that way. this is not a political rant, about being anti-capitalist, although i believe that concepts of ownership and consumption are deeply rooted in capitalism and often mirror our views on romantic relationships, (the political is personal) but no. this is about love. that's it. a whole bunch of love. and maybe a little bit about my resentment towards that uhaul lesbian in the picture with the mullet. but mostly love.

i don't call myself polyamorous often. although, i guess by definition, i may be. i'm not on my "poly is so enlightened" high horse. i know it doesn't work for everyone. for many reasons. it's hard to undo all of the things we have been socialized to believe about what healthy relationships look like- especially when we haven't had models for them. no one ever said "loving two people at the same time in a consensual, honest way is possible." but then again, no one ever said "lil' black girl, you loving women is possible" either. society doesn't usually reinforce queer, non-patriarchal, non-heterocentric relationships. my family assumed from birth, that because i was born with female anatomy, i'd identify as a woman, be attracted to men, one day marry one man, and have a baby or two. there was never any indication that there were other options. the first time i'd even heard of polyamory was maybe on maury povich or something. but the second time. oh, the second time, i knew. i was reading "defining our own sexual liberation" by ignacio [so fine in the face] rivera and yk hong and i remember thinking "it sounds like they are talking to me. about me."

i believe that awesome, queer, non gender conforming, non monogamous relationships can be healthy, and loving, and sustainable. or at least as sustainable as any monogamous relationship i've attempted. not all queer folks are running to our local city halls for marriage licenses. and not all lesbians own keys to an obligatory pink uhaul truck. for me, non monogamy asserts non-possession. and autonomy that i have not been able to experience in monogamous relationships. non-monogamy also overturns this idea that there is a scarcity of love. i resist the idea that, by loving more than one person in a romantic way, each love is diminished, when in fact, i believe that, the more i practice the act of loving [love is an action, never simply a feeling-b.hooks], the more love i am filled with- that's more to share, and more that i can hold. like i said, it doesn't work for everyone. i remember dating someone years ago, who, in a moment of fierce recognition, very early on, said to me "we're not just on different pages, we're in different books. you're in "The Ethical Slut" and I'm in "Monogamy: Mating Strategies and Partnerships in Birds, Humans and Other Mammals." this is important information to know at the beginning, right? monogamy wasn't for me. she knew it. so did i.

for me, non-monogamy is not about having it all [unless by "all" you mean, having all the love and joy your heart can hold] or being malicious. in fact, being poly takes immense honesty- with yourself, and the people you are engaging with. polyamory is not greed. it is not necessarily being "single" and dating around, it is not serial monogamy that changes monthly. and it is certainly not cheating. it's honest. and communicative. maybe more soul searching than i ever had to do in monogamous relationships. for example, i have had to explore issues of jealousy, my own insecurities, fear of abandonment. these are not just emotions that poly folks experience. often, folks who are monogamous experience the same things- i think it's how we choose to deal with them that are different. when monogamous couples experience jealousy, they often try to stop the jealousy by stopping the behavior that caused the jealousy- placing what usually becomes unrealistic expectations on their partners [don't look at other women, it makes me jealous]. when, in fact, what's often behind that jealousy is [i'm so insecure that, i'm worried that you will think she is prettier than me- and maybe you will leave]. that kind of insecurity can be shameful, but being poly helps me own my stuff, and interrogate it openly, and honestly. we all know, that when people are ready to leave, they'll leave anyway. the limitations of monogamy only heighten the pressure. being poly with reminds me that there are so many fabulous reasons that a person is choosing to be with me, instead of dwelling on insecurities or a need to identify as a couple. being poly is a reminder that we can choose partners. we want them. we don't need them.

we choose partners, and we choose how we engage with them. i have found the ability to be incredibly emotionally intimate with numerous friends and partners. after all, i have different friends for different needs. i don't expect one romantic partner to complete me, or to fulfill all of my emotional needs. but being poly is not an escape from emotional intimacy. i have loved very much in open relationships. loved with my whole self, and been absolutely heartbroken. being non-monogamous is not the easy way out of love and heartbreak. it is not emotional distance. but i know that love is not something i can hold. or guarantee. there is not enough paper in the world the guarantee that a person i am with, whom i love, will be with me tomorrow. and still want me in the same way. both of my parents have been married three times. trust me, the best we can do is love right now.

i recognize that every relationship is different; some are purely emotional, some are purely sexual, and some are both. that includes poly ones. what's important is that it works for you. you get what you want, what you need, feel safe, and empowered. i am a survivor- so i am always thinking about consent, trust and safety. and of course safe sex. to ignore those very real needs, logistics and experiences would be ridiculous. being in a relationship means setting some boundaries, but it doesn't have to mean controlling a person's heart. there are so many models of polyamory, so many ways of being. each person has to find what works for them and their partner[s].

"love possesses not nor will it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love." -gibran

that reminds me to love more. right now. without expectations except that i will always follow my heart and my happiness. and be more present, and not place unrealistic expectations on myself or partners. we are all growing and changing. who are we if we aren't growing? i can't expect the water to look or be the same in the next moment, it is always changing and i can't expect love to be the same. the only way i know how to love is openly, right now, and very hard. and in order to open my heart and hands to love, i have to drop the uhaul keys.

Things you can do from here:

Subscribe to Freedom Fighter » i do not own a pink uhaul truck. using Google Reader
Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

Musing on Black Women Writing

Sent to you by moya via Google Reader:

Musing on Black Women Writing

via The Crunk Feminist Collective » Musing on Black Women Writing by jneensy on 6/23/10

My post Black Women x The Streets x Harassment has 114 comments on Racialicious.

I don't think I have ever written something that has received such a massive response.

The comments are illuminating because they demonstrate the ways in which people may or may not see how racial sexism is at play when Black men harass Black women, White women, and other women of color in the streets.

As a writer, as a Black woman, and as a feminist I am incredibly grateful to have spaces to have my work read and responded to in real time. To that end, I appreciate the opportunity to write this post here as well.

I wrote it as a intervention on violence against Black women and street harassment.

I also really appreciate the ways in which article connects Black women's ability to be in the street to our ability to participate in democracy.

Having blogged for almost 5 years, (where did the time go?), I know that writing is work.
Full stop.

However, what is interesting about this piece is that it has allowed me to take relatively sophisticated legal, racial and gender theory and apply it to our every day lives. When I do this, I feel successful. Making theory relate to our everyday lives is an important skill and my blog is a place where I work hard on it.

What do you think about online spaces for Black women?

What would happen if we tried to make some of the theory that we learn accessible
to wider audiences?

Why is it so hard for folks to acknowledge that racial sexism is REAL on the streets?

Renina is a thinker and blogger at New Model Minority.com.

Things you can do from here:

Subscribe to The Crunk Feminist Collective » Musing on Black Women Writing using Google Reader
Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

Appreciation for Martha Southgate

Sent to you by moya via Google Reader:

Appreciation for Martha Southgate

via New Model Minority by Renina on 6/22/10

This one is for Jonzey and all the Black girls in the world who live to tell stories.

I reread Martha Southgate's Third Girl From the Left this week and I was moved by the fact that I read this book in 2005 when it came out, but I think that the fact that I am five years older, have lost and gained loves, lost and gained apartments, broken hearts and got my heart broken, lost and gained careers. I just look at the book, the importance of the narrative differently now.

The book is about a Black woman from Oklahoma who moves to LA in the 70's with dreams of making it big in Hollywood. What follows is a story about Black women's dreams, Black women desiring and loving Black women, constructions of family outside of the nuclear, and what happens to your dreams when they don't turn out the ways you expect them to.

Real Talk.

Here are of couple of excerpts that jumped off of the page:

Tamara Muses on the Politics of Getting her Film Made and her Film School Boyfriend

They made up. They didn't have time to keep fighting anyway. That as the other thing between them; the money and the time. They never talked about it. He was able to get enough money from his parents to hire a professional cinematographer. And she couldn't. She didn't have anyone to shoot for her. She had grabbed every grant possible, begged for every loan imaginable. Nothing had come through. She could not afford a crew. They were talking about it again on this night. Colin knew she was upset, even though her eyes were resolutely dry…..

Tamara Meets her Grandmother at Nearly 28 Years Old

"Well, I never. A black girl making movies. I never thought I'd see such a thing. I love the pictures. Your mama ever tell you that? We used to go every Saturday, rain or shine, no matter wht. We saw everything. You ask her." She stopped again briefly. "Whenever we wasn't fightng, we was at the pictures. We saw everything. Ask her about Carmen Jones." …."I don't know why you'd want to make a movie about an old woman like me. But you sure can…."

Honestly, we need to pool the money together to make this book into movie.

Cast who we want or who Martha Southgate wants, and screen it in our living rooms, lounges, screening rooms.

Ms. Southgate has given us a gift in this book. Rather than gripe and moan about new ways in which Nina Simone is being disrespected or Tyler Perry's latest iteration of normalizing violence against us, only when we control how our stories are told will we be allowed to be human in our art.

Speaking of Black peoples stories, my homie James just cut a trailer for his new film, The Bicycle. Check it out here.

Have you read Martha Southgate's work?

What are you reading now?

Crowdsourcing Black Women's Stories?

#ummp. #ummhmm.

No related posts.

Things you can do from here:

Subscribe to New Model Minority using Google Reader
Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

bodylandhome

Sent to you by moya via Google Reader:

bodylandhome

via Leaving Evidence by Mia Mingus on 6/22/10

If you asked it, this body would tell you that it is tired. That i run it harder than i should. That i don't take care of it the way it deserves. It would tell you about sterile white lights and sterile white voices beaming in on it from every direction. Demanding results, scouting for hidden keys. It could show you the places that were dug up, the pieces of it that were taken, the scars on the bodyland that will never fade. It could show you where tendons we moved, sensation was stolen–a casualty of a battle lost long ago by both sides.

It would show you how i have my sister's laugh, my father's face, my mother's hands and spirit. It would tell you that there were memories past on that only exist in feeling, color and dreams. It could recount the strength of my mother's arms, the way she cried and her pain in letting me go, passing me on to my mother's joy and oblivion in taking me in. It would tell you that i was already gone. It would tell you that maybe i was never found and that i am still finding. It would tell you that it loves me, even though i don't know how to love it.

If you asked it, it would tell you that we made it through; made it out. And we are trying to make it home.

(This piece was written at the Azolla Stroy* queer and trans of color disabled and chronically ill love and zine making workshop at the 2010 Allied Media Conference. Thank you to all of the amazing people that were there and shared such powerful, tender, moving and inspiring pieces of yourself. i love yall. Look out for the Azolla Story Zine! *The Azolla Story is a closed online community-movement-home for queer disabled people of color. )

Things you can do from here:

Subscribe to Leaving Evidence using Google Reader
Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

Amazon.com: Colored girls: a Hustler//Artist production (Volume...

Sent to you by moya via Google Reader:

Amazon.com: Colored girls: a Hustler//Artist production (Volume...

via maia medicine on 6/22/10

Amazon.com: Colored girls: a Hustler//Artist production (Volume 1) (9781452848730): anna Saini, Noemi Martinez, Fabiola Sandoval, Kameelah Rasheed, Nadia Abou-Karr, Stacey Milbern, Glennisha Morgan, annu Saini, Lottie Spady, Mai'a Williams: Books

Colored girls is a collaborative creation of 10 rad women of color artists. We have office jobs, we are sex workers, we do hair, we sell drugs, we teach highschool, we are dis/abled, we are mamis, we are all different cultures and coloreds. We hustle for our art. In April 2009 we came together to commemorate National Poetry Writing Month by participating in the A Poem A Day (APAD) movement. Not a single one of us produced 30 poems in 30 days. However, every single one of us explored the limits of our productivity and produced poems thriving with wisdom, healing, honesty and literary excellence. Contributors include Nadia Abou-Karr, Noemi Martinez, Stacey Milbern, Glennisha Morgan, anna Saini, annu Saini, Fabiola Sandoval, Lottie Spady and Mai'a Williams with cover art by Kameelah Rasheed. This is the inaugural publication by Husters//Artist Productions. Look for Volume 2 of this National Poetry Month anthology in May 2011.

Things you can do from here:

Subscribe to maia medicine using Google Reader
Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

12th Annual Allied Media Conference Report Back #AMC2010

Sent to you by moya via Google Reader:

12th Annual Allied Media Conference Report Back

via The Crunk Feminist Collective by moyazb on 6/22/10

This weekend I attended my favorite conference, The Allied Media Conference in Detroit. This year was way more subdued than the last two years I've attended. There were less people of color present, I didn't go to very many sessions, I was on my period, feeling real low energy and it was still amazing, transformative, and once again reminded me of what I'm here to do in this world. Even with its challenges, the AMC is the kind of conference that has me checking the calendar to make sure I've got it on deck for next year.

The most powerful part of the conference for me was being connected to the Creating Collective Access folks, organized in less than a month by some of the fiercest people I know. I was reminded how conferences themselves create a non-sustainable way of folks relating to each other, to themselves and their own needs. On some days the conference schedule was filled from 8am- 2am. Being connected to the collective access folks allowed me to give myself permission to chill, to not push through exhaustion and inattentiveness to be at every session, to not sacrifice a really good slow conversation to make it to a panel presentation on listening. I felt more in my body, more aware of my needs.

Creating Collective Access also had me questioning what collective space looks like and what to do when access may be so different for different people. I went to one of the sessions that was part of the Indigenous Media and Technology track and the presenters were using smoke as a tool in the workshop. I was thinking about folks with disabilities that need scent free spaces and how you hold those things together or if you can't, what do you do? Are we willing to do what it takes to create or use tools to share across real boundaries?

I was amazed by Adrienne Marie Brown's Octavia Butler Symposium, people's overwhelming interest as well as her awesome awesome facilitation skills. Adrienne is so fierce she had the notes up later that day! Check them out here! I was once again struck by folks reluctance and perhaps inability to talk about trauma in our movement and how we heal or don't from all these –isms that impact our lives.

I feel softer now and sharper at the same time. Refined and focused, recommitted to kindness with direction and more prepared to speak up as an ally for the disability justice movement and the rights of indigenous peoples. I'm full and content and feel myself coming into a new era of myself. I'm hopeful and it feels really good.

Things you can do from here:

Subscribe to The Crunk Feminist Collective using Google Reader
Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

Monday, June 21, 2010

On Jumping the Broom and Adventures South

Sent to you by moya via Google Reader:

On Jumping the Broom and Adventures South

via my best friend gayle by summer of sam on 6/21/10

My sister got married Saturday. (Take that, Steve Harvey, et. al.!) Since I've just arrived back in town mere hours ago, and feel like 8 pounds of crap in a 5-pound bag, I have no faith in my ability to compose a complete sentence let alone an entire blog about the news and culture of the day. As a result, I've decided to post thoughts and observations inspired by my trip to North Carolina and my sister's wedding. I'll have something more substantive next week. In the meantime:

In graduate school, they tell you that you should have a question or two at the center of your project(s). Folks around here love to ask you, "What's your question? What's your story?" Well, my question on this particular project was: Is there such a thing as too much Chick-Fil-A? The answer is a resounding no. It should be a sin for Chick-Fil-A to be closed on Sundays. If Jesus made chicken, it would taste like Chick-Fil-A, and he would want us to have nuggets on Sunday. Call it communion. Take. Eat...

I know naming is an incredibly important thing for folks, and who am I to tell you what to call yourself? But seriously, can we just cut out the hyphenation thing or at least establish a rule? Something like, if your last name is going to be more than 3.5 syllables if you hyphenate, please just pick one name and move on? If your hyphenated name is not going to fit on a scantron sheet, it's too long and you just need to pick one. He can change his name, you can change our name, you can pick a brand new name, create a portmanteau of both of your names. Something. Mary Stevenson-McDonald is doing too much. Trust me. If you're going to hyphenate rather anonymous last names, you're also doing to much. Be Tracey Smith or Tracey Johnson. Smith-Johnson is just the unnecessary joining of two unremarkable last names. Think of the children.

Weddings are so much funnier when the ring bearer and flower girl absolutely cannot stand one another.

I really never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever have to hear "Single Ladies" again. In fact, DJs, I recently heard that every time you play that song, God makes somebody smack a puppy. Think about it.

If your wedding budget would allow you to fly first class anywhere in the world and stay in a 5-star hotel for several days, and/or pay off your bills, and/or send you and your entire wedding party to Vegas, and/or is enough for a down payment on your first home, and/or would allow you to pay cash for a new Mercedes, you're spending too much on what really is 20 minutes and dinner and drinks for people you wouldn't even tolerate if they weren't family. The divorce rate is 60%. Think about that before you decide on lobster and shrimp over the Golden Corral buffet. There are retainer fees to think about, after all.

If more people eat Waffle House's cheese 'n' eggs, being a vegan will eventually become a federal offense. In fact, I'm thinking of starting a movement. Join me.

For the record, I don't trust a Waffle House above the Mason-Dixon. I have standards.

You can't unfriend family. Even if they post a picture of you in your maid of honor threads while you're on the road and have no internet access.

Speaking of dresses, a lot of folks, knowing my positions on dresses and traditional marriage, asked me if I was actually going to be my little sister's maid of honor. I responded that I loved my sister enough to dress in drag for 20 minutes. In some of those conversations, I heard about folks who had chosen not to participate in a sibling's wedding because of ideological differences. I say this without judgment, but I hope that I don't ever not do something for someone I love--that's not detrimental to them--because I don't agree with it ideologically. Politics are important, but not that important--for me, at least.