‘Detroit Women’s Press’, Detroit, 1974. First issue.
the first half of this recap is funny (if you watch pll) and the second half is maybe 45-65% persuasive
just. thank goddess for autostraddle. but just gawd, g-d.
Roxane Gay and Ta-Nehisi Coates had a conversation about Coates’s Between The World And Me, which he describes as a personal essay in three parts, black bodies, discussing race and more:
“There is tendency in academia and in (some) social justice circles to make that which is oppressive distant and abstract. We use a language, which at times obscures what’s going on — racial discrimination, racial segregation, racial justice, etc. This sort of language eliminates the actual actions of actual people. It was deeply important to me to situate racism as a done thing: as a thing you actually feel. I should add that in my stripe of atheism, it’s very hard to see beyond the body. There is a tendency to adopt euphemism when confronted with the very real violence that comes with having a foot on your neck.”
It’s lovely and strange how a few lines from a song can cast light on memories of people you haven’t thought about in years, can press urgently on that soft sad spot we carry for our past. This is a mixtape for my lost loves and missed connections, the humans who came too close and left too soon or not-soon-enough.
I do have friends. They are some of the greatest people to exist on this planet. I worship the ground they walk upon and the air that carries the vibrating energy of our group chat messages. My friends are the best. It’s just that my friends don’t live in my city. They don’t live in my country. They don’t even live on the same continent as me. So, disregarding the people I have only been able to virtually communicate with for the past year and a half, I have no friends.
If there is a column for these new narratives, it might be this: “falling in love with a woman made me realize I was capable of falling in love with a woman.” The sentence doesn’t have to end there, of course, most would also tack on an “and therefore I guess I must be queer or bisexual or gay or sexually fluid, but whatever, it’s not a big deal.” What makes these stories different than so many other queer narratives is the complete lack of internalized homophobia — for people like me, it’s stunning that any woman could be so nonchalant about suddenly finding herself playing for a different team.
This news fix, like almost every one we’ve published since we began doing news roundups in this way, contains stories about black Americans being killed by police officers over the past few days.
It’s a medium, not a genre. You can predict a certain kind of storytelling, but not necessarily the subject, or narrative, or tone, or really anything beyond the mechanism that links one scene to another.
Gayme Corner: “Videogames for Humans” and the Intimate, Playful Engagement of Twine | Autostraddle
The more I read about Twine, the more I want to make and play Twine games. And the more I want to make and play Twine games, the more I want to write about them.
(via grrdis)
Domestic and intimate partner violence prevention are communities’ duties, not the burden of victims and survivors. It is also important that victims and survivors are given the space to guide and direct these prevention tactics and the movement at large. The Lesbian Abuse Issues Network (LAIN) said in 1986 that “the lesbian/gay community as a whole seemed quite concerned about street violence against its members, but domestic violence within homes and relationships seemed off limits” (“Community Organizing”). It’s really hard to talk too loudly about domestic violence in LGBTQ communities because quite frankly, it makes us look “bad.” We have to acknowledge that the heteropatriarchy still wreaks havoc on our families and relationships, and that we find, hide, and sometimes even foster abuse in our own communities.
Communities, Not Police, Are Our Best Bet for Ending LGBTQ Domestic Violence, Autostraddle
This week leading up to our brunch next Sunday for the March to End Rape Culture we’ll be sharing articles and stories about rape culture in the queer community. Please message us if there are any pieces you think we particularly need to share or particularly need to quote in the zine we’ll make.
(via phillyqueerbrunch)