On Watoto From The Nile- Letter to Lil Wayne

 

 

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On Watoto From The Nile- Letter to Lil Wayne

via The Crunk Feminist Collective by moyazb on 3/3/11

This musical open letter to Lil' Wayne is getting lots of love!

I want to join the chorus and give a big ol' YAY to black girls creating media and saying what's on their minds! Speaking back to Wayne's misogyny is super important!

That said, I wonder about the limits of such a message.

Steve Harvey's views on women are not progressive. He's simply peddling a more respectable sort of black gender relations that still have women in the role of subservient sex goddesses but with a bit more modesty. To set him up as a positive alternative to Wayne misses his own belief in narrow gender roles for men and women. The song disparages Wayne for being single and seems to imply that ideally he should be married or that if he was acting right he would be. Erykah Badu is signaled as a "good" artist despite having worked with Wayne (and she's single too; tweets is watchin').

Wayne gets constructive as wholly negative and Lauryn Hill et. al as wholly positive. That good vs. evil split is a little too easy and doesn't get at the complexity of the issues I have with Wayne's music. For me it's not so much the "calling women out their names" as it is his objectification of women that informs his word choice and the earlier trauma in his life that may impact his behavior.

When we are young and maybe a little influenced by our parents, we can go a little too hard in the virtuous/Queen/good black people paint. In speaking back to Wayne and other rappers with misogynistic lyrics we have to be careful we don't end up creating a new box for women, that is just as limiting if a bit more respectful. The "Madonna" is just as limiting as the "whore", even if she gets more props.

I ain't mad at them though and I definitely am sending them love, particularly since they are getting such hateful comments on the video's Youtube page.

Congratulations, Watoto From The Nile, for rekindling a conversation that needs to be had!

 

 

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tomboyfemme:http://ashscupofnoodles.tumblr.com/

 

 

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tomboyfemme: http://ashscupofnoodles.tumblr.com/

via Brown Girls And Bois on 3/2/11

tomboyfemme:

http://ashscupofnoodles.tumblr.com/

 

 

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Dismantling the Master's Tools: Looking Out for Sistas' Welfare

Iresha Picot and Natasha Butler created a propaganda project “Dismantling the Master’s Tools: Looking Out for Sistas’ Welfare” under our overarching "The Assata’s Daughters Project". Many people believe that mobilizing themselves off of welfare is easy but in reality, the system makes welfare a false "need" and creates difficult hurdles for women and men to be independent off the system. It is very crucial that the Black community becomes self-sufficient and not rely on this system because it will not let us reach our full potential for self-determination. There is nothing wrong with being on welfare but it is important to not rely solely upon and instead, “ work the system” and take their resources to form group survival strategies and mobilize oneself off of this system.

Our goal for this project is to (1) ignite a discussion with Sistas around the welfare system (2) to get them to start thinking about moving away from this system with self-sufficient co-operative programs.

What we have been doing is putting these STICKERS (below) up on poles, bus stops, and places around low-income and subsidized housing. Then we flier our self-sufficient leaflets (that have resources for upward mobility) in the doors of these same apartments. If you would like to partake in the project, please run with it. Also if you would like to implement some of the “solutions” at the bottom, please hit me up and we can get busy!

In Solidarity,

Iresha & Tasha

(the stickers--please click on them to read!)






Ways in which we can form group reliance and give this system back its “resources”:Start a childcare collective with other women who are transitioning from welfare to work. Gather a group of friends and have each other baby-sit the other one’s children while you or another Sista goes off to work.

Start a clothing and food swap once a week, organize yourself and a couple of other Sistas together to trade staple foods (rice, can goods, bread, etc) and swap clothes that your children have outgrown to other women who may have clothes that fit your children.

Try saving money by growing some of your vegetables in your backyard or windows. Tomatoes, basil, carrots, spinach, and lettuce are easily grown in small places.

iembodywords:Age.

 

 

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iembodywords: Age.

via maia medicine on 3/1/11

iembodywords:

Age.

 

 

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By Great Eclectic. Love the colors + process. (via blackfashion)

 

 

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By Great Eclectic. Love the colors + process. (via blackfashion)

via the gang's all QUEER on 3/1/11

By Great Eclectic. Love the colors + process.

(via blackfashion)

 

 

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Photo

 

 

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Photo

via QBG Photography on 3/1/11

 

 

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Oya Sightings: "Black Girls Are From the Future"

“But wind is our teacher.”

-Audre Lorde

“Black girls are from the future.”

-Renina Jarmon

I am affirmed by windmills. Driving up and down California this past week we photographed them wherever we saw them. Tall and reaching out, tilted, in motion, waiting for new angles. Somehow familiar. Though our journey has been dominated by gas and our daily lives are still mostly framed by the unsustainable use of fossil fuels, windmills are like us, the future in the present, modeling the spiritual ecology we need to move into where energy is renewable and infinite and light and breathable because it is us, breathing our own inspiration, because it is the transformative travel of no separation.

In the Yoruba tradition the transformative power of the wind is deified in the name of Oya, an often feminized figure who is beyond gender Oya is like the wind powerful and disruptive enough to transform landscapes, Oya is everywhere as necessary as breath itself, reminding ourselves that even as we inhale we are transformed. Even as we exhale we are transforming everything.

We are the windmills. Honoring the wind itself in our shape, in our movement, in our stance and flexibility, and in our communities our tribe the quirky black girls, queer to definition of gender, race and restriction and breathing are the future and the present demonstrating what it looks like to power a life with love, rejecting the fossil fuel of fear more and more everyday.

So cheer when you see a windmill…this week I was affirmed by the work of windmill Amber Shigg organically creating a loving queer black context of musical, edible, tangible love with the rest of the Black Queer Society Crew in San Francisco a city where targeted gentrification has led to a situation where black folks are few and far between and where black folks seeking queer asylum find themselves shut out by walls of whiteness. This week I was affirmed by the work of Jamilah Shabazz and Bea Sullivan, Quirky Black Girls creating space for soul beyond hipster posturing in Oakland and was honored to tear up karaoke with a full body dose of show-em-how-its-done! This week I was affirmed by elders who work with divination and light everyday to welcome the future we deserve as a community. This week I witnessed you writing about reproductive justice and the meaning of Wisconsin, moving through the street, saying yes to something you know you’ve been wishing for. I am affirmed today by the start of Angela Harvey’s monthlong celebration of her 45^th birthday.

Honor these moments as Oya sightings. I see you transforming with every breath. I am transformed by you in every moment as you do what keeps you breathing, as you stay present to the legacy that flows through you, to the future you embody. I see you teaching more and more clarity about what it means to breathe. You are so beautiful, I hope someone takes a picture.

Love always,

QBG Lex

p.s. FYI session proposals dropped this week for the Allied Media Conference aka crucial QBG meetup that you should ALL try your best to participate in coming up June 23-26^th in Detroit. Check out the call for sessions here and embrace the opportunity to show your wind warrior steez and teach us all how you change everything!

Instructions for proposing a session here:

http://alliedmedia.org/amc2011/propose-session-amc2011

The Year in Crunk: CFC Turns One!

 

 

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The Year in Crunk: CFC Turns One!

via The Crunk Feminist Collective » The Year in Crunk: CFC Turns One! by crunktastic on 3/1/11

This cake was so good!!!

Today is the 1-year anniversary of the CFC!!! We want to thank all of you for your support and your participation in this community. It has been an absolutely CrunkTabulous year! And the best is yet to come!!! This month in addition to our regular posts on politics, relationships, and pop culture, we'll be featuring some periodic reflections on our year in Crunk. We invite you to share with us what this site has to meant to you — or anything else you'd like to share with us really. But to kick it off, below are a few CFs reflecting on their year in Crunk!

Btw, Happy Women's History Month as well!!!

CF Sheri:

I always feel like I am my best self when I am in community and collaboration with others.  The CFC has reminded me that when I ask the universe for what I want and don't shun the opportunity when it shows itself that there are great rewards.  The CFC has been better than any prestigious professional or academic fellowship because I have grown professionally and I feel supported personally.  The CFC displays the type of raceandgender-conscious commitment to people of color that makes me want to be a better writer, thinker, teacher, and organizer.  For the first time I am representing myself and my interests first as a member of a collective, rather than always being an advocate or representative for the interests and needs of others.  Being able to fellowship and learn from such amazing women makes all the difficult and confusing parts of my graduate experience worthwhile.  Being part of a sisterhood makes me feel powerful and accountable.  That's what I have always wanted.  Get Crunk!

CF Moya:

I had some initial hesitations about becoming a part of the collective. I felt ambivalent about hip-hop and wanted to focus on grad school by eliminating other "distractions." But my desire for connection to this group of people I really admired won over reason. I started posting and couldn't stop. I've really enjoyed the community that we've created for ourselves and those who read the blog. What was once a distraction has become a comforting reminder of why I do the work I do in the world.

CF Asha:

This year, I've learned that being crunk means that you boldly live out the politics you preach. The universe called me to do just that as I suddenly became one of the most deplorable characters/ caricatures in post-Moynihan American history: black, woman, single, with child, government-assisted… I became crunk by crucible, and like the flame-proven Biblical characters, I was never in the fire by myself. I have no sob story. My crunk family and I have always been America's damned and, like our mothers and grandmothers, we have created pleasure spaces and safe havens from which we've thrown our (well written) stones at those who plot to destroy us in mind, body and spirit. We've won. We're still here, still whole and still crunk. And that's more than an accomplishment in a year that has seen various wars on our reproductive rights, our psyches and our self esteem (can the church say "Shut the hell up, Harvey-ites?"). Most importantly, I've learned that the way to not die is to lean on, love on and laugh with those who stand in solidarity and struggle. Congrats on our first year together!

CF Robin:

This time last year I was ambivalent about female friendships.  I love/admire/respect/appreciate/stand (up) for in solidarity/treasure/collect stories of/write about black women and women of color…but I have also been injured emotionally and flat out rejected.  So, when initially approached about being a part of a collective, I felt "some kinda way about it."  But I did it anyway.  Hesitantly and enthusiastically at the same time.  And I was accepted. Liked.  Supported. Appreciated. Talked with (not to or about). Loved. Finally. I was not being judged because of my politics or marginalized for being different.  I was being embraced.  And I felt empowered.  And understood. Finally. I found myself in the words and act(ion)s of women who saw in me them, while I saw in them, me.  A year in crunkness has been a way and opportunity to save myself in a wasteland and to embrace the "blackgirlness" and "grownwomanness" that merge in me, and in others, in beautiful ways. Cheers to us!

CF Susana:

When I spoke to Crunktastic last year about reviving the CFC, I'll admit I had high hopes for what the collective could do. And the blog has been a runaway success, which is very gratifying. But what has perhaps been most gratifying is the camaraderie and support I have received from and seen shared among members of the CFC and our very crunk, very fierce readers. This past year has shown me in so many ways that feminism indeed lives and that the revolution is on!

CF Brittney:

This first year in Crunk has been soul-sustaining, life-affirming, communion-driven, and laugh-out-loud funny. It has shifted my paradigms, enriched my scholarship, emboldened my politics, and clarified my perspectives. I feel so incredibly lucky to be in intentional community with a group of brilliant sisters (and one brave brother) who have committed to caring for one another through our weekly words, our daily politics, and our very lives. This year I have been shown all the wonderful possibilities of a feminist life – every CF who has contributed to this endeavor has taught me something about myself, about how to make this world better, about how much we need each other. Feminism is not merely theory, nor even only what we practice. It is a lifestyle of intentional commitments to dismantling patriarchy and racism, and all their progeny – sexism, ableism, heterosexism, classism and more. This year in Crunk has been everything I love about chick flicks—Y'all have been my Girlfriends as I'm Living Single (and you have taught me how to do that with unapologetic verve); Here I have been able both to Exhale and to Set It Off. It has been everything I loved about those movies and nothing I've hated about the ubiquitous robber of Black women's stories movie producer who shall remain nameless. I have been reminded that feminism is not merely the progressive woman's annoying radio personality/pseudo love expert's relationship handbook (i.e. it'll teach you how to get your man to act right). It might be that, but it is so, so much more than that. For it has taught me to how to take the best kept lessons from the community of women who raised me and and translate it into a chosen family of scholarly sisters (and brother) who keep me lifted. Happy Birthday CFC, and here's wishing you many more abundant years to come!!!!

 

 

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The loneliest whale in the world.

 

 

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The loneliest whale in the world.

via freedom fighter. on 3/1/11

The loneliest whale in the world.:

liquornspice:

roxxxanne:

sabino:

I just read a comment from a 2004 article by the NY Times about the loneliest whale in the world. Scientists have been tracking her since 1992 and they discovered the problem:

She isn't like any other baleen whale. Unlike all whales, she doesn't have friends. She doesn't have a family. She doesn't belong to any tribe, pack or gang. She doesn't have a lover. She never had one.

Her songs come in groups of two to six calls, lasting for five to six seconds each. But her voice is unlike any other baleen whale. It is unique—while the rest of her kind communicate between 12 and 25Hz, she sings at 51.75Hz.

You see, that's precisely the problem. No other whales can hear her. Every one of her desperate calls to communicate remains unanswered. Each cry ignored. And with every lonely song, she becomes sadder and more frustrated, her notes going deeper in despair as the years go by.

this is fucking sad, I want to die

Gpoy. Forever alone. Fail whale. Frail wail. I'm going to hayle. This is the saddest thing of all time please let me die quickly.

just teared up. woah.

 

 

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thealphagirl:theblackhippie:Bruce Davidson, Mother and Child...

 

 

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thealphagirl: theblackhippie: Bruce Davidson, Mother and Child...

via maia medicine on 3/1/11

thealphagirl:

theblackhippie:

Bruce Davidson, Mother and Child 1968 from the book The Art of Photography

 the way the boys arm goes around his mum is so sweet….and just…*sigh

 

 

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