I feel perverse relief, knowing that my sisters and mother live abroad. But that relief is brief and followed by an immobilizing kind of fear that, on some days, I find myself drowning in. I think about the possibility of my sisters being next. I watch conversations of our parents pleading with our daughters to take off their scarves. I am paralyzed by daydreams where my best friend becomes the next dead Muslim body because Oklahoma police ignored gun threats against her.
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It’s been 6 years since I’ve left the Valley but the Valley is alive inside of me, wherever I go.
Your bodies are dangerous to the status quo. Your bodies bust through the armor of the gender binary and the patriarchy. Your bodies fuck up neoliberalism. Your bodies are ending white supremacy and heteropatriarchy. Your bodies are evidence that the colonial project has failed; you are here despite it all. We are here despite it all.
Don’t ask me, I wanted to say. You’re a tall, burly man with a deep voice and degrees more prestigious than mine. You’re like Dorothy in teaching Oz — you can go home anytime you want, all you need to do is click those particular ruby slippers three times.
I’ve been struck by how the contributions of Black women in feminism have been consistently minimized, erased, and co-opted by the people who taught me, and ostensibly, many others like me, in women’s studies. It’s legitimately shameful how little credit is given to Black women for expanding feminism and really challenging women who led the movement throughout herstory to consider other components of oppression in their analyses.
I’m going to put aside my sarcasm for a minute, because this is a serious issue with serious consequences. There’s been a lot of discussion about ‘authenticity’ in porn and how amazing and valuable and feminist a quality it is, but I call bullshit on that discourse.
Kitty Stryker via this week’s NSFW Lesbosexy Sunday
I’m not saying the makeup industry should be designated for women only. But it is troubling that beauty is equivocated to the female kingdom, and yet the queer women are left noticeably (pardon the pun) “out.” It feels strange to me that there’s so little evidence that women before me have found a bridge between love and lipstick in the same way before, and built upon it, made towers and empires of products for us to cling to. Where are their lipstick marks?
Arabelle Sicardi in Things I Read That I Loved #165
I’m currently pregnant with my second child and I thought I’d heard every pregnancy comment and fielded every pregnancy question that existed. But I was wrong.
Aubrey Hirsch via this thing of beauty right here
Writers can and should write across difference, so long as they do so respectfully, intelligently, with some degree of accuracy. They may not fully succeed, but a good-faith effort and a demonstration of empathy are generally all that is required.
Every civil rights movement has depended on allies to move forward and while we wouldn’t ever focus on our entire conference on allies, having a straight, white, tech leader like Marc Benioff show up and support our conference is a big step forward.