Attack on Moscow metro

Natalia Antonova has the story from a Muscovite perspective.

New group blog: Feminists With Disabilities/Forward

Belle Dame says check it out.

Donate to Trans Women Homesteaders

Lost home due to foreclosure (o brave new economy), starting new life on substistence farm. send money and/or leftover seed packets from your garden:

Alyssa and Crystal C.
PO Box 231
Richmond, ME 04357

Or to my PayPal, if you actually have money.
espacio.translatina@gmail.com

see voz_latina for more details.

Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom & Autonomy

is up over at Renegade's. check it out.

Chay Magaine #3 is out

a publication about sex in Pakistani society, from a feminist and gender-inclusive perspective.

Check out the latest feature articles, lots of good stuff.

Belatedly: The first WOC and Ally Blog Carnival is up!

At Tell It WOC Speak: Hear Us Roar. Check it out.

WOC and ally blog carnival

Deadline February 15. See Womanist Musings for details.

I'd like to thank the academy...

According to a very clever methodology as used by/noted at Fem2.0, this blog would appear to be among the top 30 in the "femisphere." Number...14? looks like, to be precise.

so, a w00t and also yay for Renegade, Renee, Cara and many other fine folks.

of course, which also means (in my head at least) more pressure to have more, like, actual content, again.

soon, really.

Duanna Johnson's Family needs donations for funeral

via shemale:

Duanna Johnson’s family needs donations for funeral.

The balance for Duanna Johnson’s funeral is $1195 and the funeral home is requiring Mrs. Skinner (Duanna’s mother) to pay it by tomorrow (11/14). The cost is a hardship, so we are asking anyone who can to donate. Please send any donations to:
N.J. Ford and Sons Funeral Home
12 S Parkway W
Memphis, TN 38109

If you want any clarification from NJ Ford, here is their contact number: (901) 948-7755.

Please forward this to as many people as you can!! Thanks!

Please donate or spread the word; if you can't afford yourself to donate but can put this someplace where people who can might read it, please put it there.

According to spoggly, out of state checks won't work (due to the length of time it would take for them to get there) unless you overnight them and the funeral home says that credit cards would be ideal; however, barring either of those options, it may be good to just call the funeral home and ask that they delay payment due date until it's possible to raise more funding...

ETA: More info, please read: something seems really dodgy wrt the funeral home.

11th Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

New! Transgender Carnival

c & p'd from the website.

We are delighted to announce the official launch of the Transgender Carnival website today (22 October 2008); with the first Transgender Carnival itself scheduled to be hosted at Bird of Paradox on 16 November 2008.

The Transgender Carnival aims to recognize and celebrate the full spectrum of gender identities by providing a platform for all our voices.

The Carnival is open to transsexual, transgendered, genderqueer, nongendered, gender non-conforming people, and anyone working in solidarity with us.

The format is similar to that of other carnivals and each month a different blogger will host it. Anyone can submit a link to a piece for consideration for inclusion.

Posts should not seek to disseminate hate speech or oppression and nominations should be sent either directly to the host of the next carnival, or to transgender.carnival@gmail.com

Schedule of Transgender Carnivals:

16 November 2008: Bird of Paradox

December 2008: Questioning Transphobia

January or February 2009 (to be confirmed): Sugarbutch Chronicles

The Transgender Carnival is currently accepting nominations for

(a) links to posts for inclusion in the first Transgender Carnival, and
(b) host sites for future Carnivals.

Please contact the organizers by email at transgender.carnival@gmail.com

with a little help

Lisa of Questioning Transphobia is in need of some assistance (see details), and subsequently hit a further snag with the first round of donations because Paypal is Satan (see details). I can't resend my own for at least a few days due to my own Paypal issues, but there shouldn't be any trouble for people donating to her new account, so if you can help, please do.

also, Renegade is helping to coordinate assistance for a sex worker in MN, see details.

Carnival of Feminist Sexual Freedom and Autonomy

up at XXBN.

Next edition: right here! on October 27. See here for general information about the Carnival and how to submit entries. Guidelines/suggestions for this edition to follow; stay tuned.

"An open letter to cis feminists:" a guest post by Queen Emily.

.

Reposting in full with her permission, as originally posted at Sexual Ambiguities [with some more added hyperlinks]. Also see x-post at Questioning Transphobia with Lisa's commentary.


An open letter to cis feminists

Stop fucking up.*

I have complained numerous times that the feminist blogosphere, such as it is, has one main conversation about trans people, one that is returned to again and again and again - the political implications of our transitioning. Click here** if you want yet another example of pointless bloody "analysis."

I don't CARE about whatever horrible thing some feminist has said anymore. I care that these discussions centre on cis concerns, even (maybe especially) allies respond mostly to the slurs, but rarely address the real issues.

Now, if you want to have those conversations, here's an idea. Subject yourself to the same kind of analysis. Honestly interrogate if and how you might have more or less privilege than trans people. And no, for the millionth time, trans women are not the fucking Patriarchy.

Or how bout this for an idea. Spend some actual time and energy on trans issues. Here is one thing you are barely talking about - the continual violence against transgendered people for being transgendered.

Blog about Angie Zapata. Blog about Ebony Whitaker. Blog about Sanesha Stewart (to name just three trans women murdered this year).

Try subjecting all that torturous analysis to something actually useful - how violence against trans people occurs. Try thinking about the fact that it is overwhelming trans women of colour being murdered. Try thinking about the intersections between race, transness, misogyny and sex work.

Try writing about the way that institutions collude with this violence - that medical professionals may willingly leave you to die, that police may not prosecute, that lawyers use "trans panic" as a defence to justify the death, and then to add insult to injury, the media effectively blames the dead person for their own deaths AND misgenders them.

And for fuck's sake, don't blame the fucking victims.

I DARE YOU.

* if this doesn't apply to you, then it doesn't apply to you.

posted by queen emily



**belledame again. Yeah, it WOULD be better to focus on other things beside what the latest drooling imbecile online said, wouldn't it. Unfortunately, they kind of tend to draw one's attention. Me, I clicked over there when making the hyperlink, got as far as the "no special rights" crap and saw red.

As it happens, I had been planning to write a "dear straight feminists" post myself for a while now. I have no idea what mAndrea's personal deal is and don't much care; but I've seen, like, maybe a handful (ew) of actual lesbian (cis) "feminist" women be able to read, even WRITE this kind of crap and somehow NOT immediately go,

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING SHITTING ME THIS IS HOMOPHOBIA ONE OH FUCKING ONE HELLLLOOOOOOOO

I do not know what their damage is. I will never understand what the fucking disconnect is. One is now over there in the comments quoting Oscar Fucking Wilde. I can't deal with the stupid today, I really can't.

"People: the other white meat"

--Renegade


Mostly, though? The people who actually spout or endorse this kind of bullshit, as opposed to just sort of blipping it over because oo well not my table really? Even the ones who AREN'T total fucking wastes of space like this one? Straight women. (And some straight men, of course, which is, if possible, even more special-er, always). Burbling about: how they want to -do away with gender- (please); how political lesbianism, or whatever the catchphrase for "just avoid men and make sappy noises about how WONDERFUL women are without ever having to have icky sex with them" is these days, is something they humbly aspire to, meanwhile just having to make do with their very own Nigel whilst pointing righteous fingers at everyone else in the entire world; and how TERRIBLE "queer politics" are, this or that kind of sexual act or desire that guess what! is mostly going to affect people OTHER than their crunchy abstinent selves, the ones who are ALREADY being spat at and being called "perverts" and "degenerates" and their internal reality isn't legitimate anyway, much less acting out sexual desires...

Sorry. Got carried away. Where was I?

Anyway. But you know, besides that, yeah, there is another post somewhere here, about the curious place that gay (cis) people/issues and particularly lesbians have in mainstream (het) feminism. Certainly you don't catch this kind of bottom-feeder button-pushing bigotry, -within- feminism as such, just for being queer, usually. And, hell, well, lesbians, at least for some people, there's that dubious pedestal again...well, this is, I suspect, another post.

But yeah. There's really other shit to talk about, here, was the point, other -issues- that aren't all about centering straight women and their needs as well as (even more so, Emily is right) cis women and -our- needs; and I need to get on more of it myself.

I'll be coming back to this.

Natalia Antonova asks the "realness" question

to wit, in this instance, "Who's a 'real' woman, anyway?"

more specifically,

How many times have you heard some idiot** say something like, “man, I hate American chicks, might as well go to Thailand/El Salvador/Moldova, that’s where the REAL WOMEN are at.”

Now, we all know what he probably means here - women who are at a similar economic level are not submissive enough, and women who are not are “easier” to deal with. There’s also the fact that a certain woman’s upbringing may make her more “susceptible” to what the man perceives to be submissive status, or else give the appearance of such status.

That’s all pretty much clear, or so I think. What isn’t often clear is the motivation of the “submissive foreign woman” in question. Based on my experience, scenarios vary wildly. A lot of women consider the arrangement a step up, and will tell you to fuck off if you try to lecture them on who to marry and how to carry themselves.

Were you born outside of Donetsk to an emotionally sadistic mother who cleaned hotel rooms and slept with guests for extra cash? Did you have an alcoholic stepfather who tried to bash your face in with a wrench after you refused to blow him? Did your mother then kick you out of the house for “trying to steal [her] man”? If not, you’re probably not going to have a whole lot of authority in the eyes of the eighteen-year-old who just wants a nice, stable life with some aging paramour in Milwaukee...

So what do you do about all of this? I don’t know. I know that until conditions markedly improve in my native Ukraine, people are going to want to get out. Until more men realize that women’s sole purpose isn’t to gratify their sexual and culinary needs, they’re going to seek out the vulnerable among us.

And we will keep on keeping on.

Though if I have any ideas about any of this, it’s to stress that all of us, the rich, the poor, the in-between, the misogynists, the crusaders, the quiet and shy, the loud and abrasive - we are all as “real” as the next person.

I think here, as with the prostitution...talks...in feminism (among others), what happens here is that...well, I dunno, there's a whole comment thread there and I'm not currently up to opining very eloquently or originally. Just: well, yeah, the situation is...grey and complicated. As are people, including women.

**in case you were wondering whether this was a rhetorical question, some lovely examples of said idiots came up in the course of the conversation. f'r instance, as found here,

I salute those men who have gotten the hell out of the feminist matriarchal West, and have managed to find some remaining enjoyment in their lives by going Expat.

...The poor schmuck who dares marry invites the host of Hell upon his head. At any time , for any reason, a wife may “cash out” and strip the man of his assets; and if he has children get child support and alimony in addition to the house and car. Men walk on friggin egg shells in their sexless marriages as the wife manipulates him mercilessly over the barrel. That they flee the country is no surprise.

Worse you do not consider, because of your isolated perspective, that many men do not have sex at all.

or from right there in the thread, for that matter,

“Firstly women from these countries often act a little more ladylike (e.g. avoid swearing, farting, obnoxious - not playful - man-bashing) and traditionally (e.g. support men making the money, and women tending to the home and family, and often more religious).

And secondly women from these countries believe marriage is a lifelong commitment, and certainly don’t use terms like “starter husband” in their native cultures (http://www.marieclaire.com/life/sex/advice/starter-husband). A lot of men have heard the horror stories and read the statistics about divorce in America, and want more than just Til-Inconvienence-Do-Us-Part”

...That being said...If a woman cheats, farts, and walks all over her man, that says more about him than it does her.

Doesn't it, just? -poot- oh, excuse me.

The things I learn. So, apparently, if I'd been married traditional, like (and if my husband kept me in line, of course), I'd cease to be flatulent again, EVER? wow, no wonder they want to keep marriage sacrosanct. -poot- goddamit. -urp-

...blimey, this homosexual agenda's more insidious than I thought.

My favorite, though, speaking of, was this one, as ganked from another thread and reposted here:

This string has me in complete disgust! Let me tell you all…all of you feminist, male bashing\hating\demeaning bitches, you are the reason so many American men are looking for (and finding) beautiful , intelligent , talented, warm and loving women abroad …Ukraine and Russia in particular, because they are disgusted with your feminist bullshit! Go to your Gay Pride parade but don’t expect any intelligent and decent man to accompany you !

so, basically,

"I'm NOT going with you to the Gay Pride Parade! I'm going to Russia instead! Because I am an intelligent and decent MAN, and you don't deserve me, you, you LESBIAN!"

I bet he has a great big gub, though.

New: Carnival for Progressive Christians

I can vouch for the awesomeness of the co-creators of this project, and definitely, speaking as a non-Christian who still gets the importance faith has for a lot of people who, no, are NOT reactionary rightwingers and are in fact some of the best activists as well as souls out there, I think it's a great idea. Read on and submit if this fits you:

The carnival for Progressive Christians came out of a conversation about frustration with the organized Christian church. As a Christian without a church, I am in a quandary about sacraments, worship, fellowship…all those things that happen in a church, and I am deeply conflicted about attitudes and behaviors I see within the organized church, attitudes that, in my opinion, do not reflect the mind of Christ. The Carnival is open to anyone, and is a safe place for queer/trans/non-normative folk.

Do you ever feel frustrated with Church? What do you do to keep in touch with God? Have you written about your experiences and how you deal with them? The theme for July is “Community”.

Submit a link to your writing to The Submission Page

The first submission will be at Reweaving sometime around the first of July.

The definition of Progressive Christian being used is this

Progressive Christianity is the name given to a movement within contemporary…Christianity characterized by willingness to question tradition, acceptance of human diversity (including the affirmation of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people), and strong emphasis on social justice. Progressive Christians have a deep belief in the centrality of the instruction to “love one another” within the teaching of Jesus Christ. This leads to a focus on compassion, promoting justice and mercy, and working towards solving the societal problems of poverty, discrimination, and environmental issues.

(taken from wikipedia)

Oh, give me a fucking BREAK.

Sam Berg, I'm sure you -are- crapping yourself, but at least be honest enough to say why, hm? It's not that you actually think Ren is going to push you in front of a truck. I mean, it's not like f'r instance these people had that particular excuse in similar circumstances. Or these, or these. Anything to avoid having to face down or even share space with the scary, dirty, cootie-infested "hot bisexee" sex worker "who will suck and fuck anything for money," not to mention a "disposable dick accessor[y]" who "hang[s] upside down from a pole like a painted negro in a minstrel show dancing for peanuts," mm? And really: you have nothing shameful you've said at all that William and Mary or anyone else who keeps hiring you for respectable speaking engagements might want to know about? Really.

Forwarded: Call for papers for new anthology, "Feminism For Freaks"

at Sexual Ambiguities.

Feminism For Freaks

At its best, feminism offers an emancipatory potential from gendered oppression, inequality, and violence. At its worst, however, feminism can work to simply affirm the rights of middle-class, heterosexual, white women, and exclude the voices of already-marginalised groups such as women of colour, trans* women, sex workers and so on.

Like Derrida's democracy, a truly liberatory feminism is mostly a feminism to come. Not un-coincidentally, those marginalised groups of women are often demonised by the dominant culture, rendered as monstrous, simultaneously invisible and hyper-visible, compelling and threatening, desirable and disgusting--and forever denied a voice ofour own. The question of if and how monstrosity can be reclaimed or re-worked is a vexed one for feminists.

We therefore invite proposals that affirm the voices of socially excluded people, that seek to create new and exciting knowledge and address themselves to feminist theory and activism or the wider culture, on such topics including, but not limited to:
* Monstrous bodies and identities
* Social marginalisation and exclusions (for instance, borders, walls,and immigration laws, and the silencing of voices such as those of women of colour and transgendered people)
* Liberation/transformation/organisation
* sex work
* queer sexualities and genders
* BDSM
* Visible signs of difference (Muslim women wearing the veil, disabled bodies etc)
* religion and spirituality
* freaks in popular culture, body modification etc
* fat positivity

Academic, non-fiction and creative work will be considered--the call is broad, and we're willing to accommodate new and interesting work by freaks of all kinds. Please submit abstracts of up to 250 words and a short bio by May 31st to estrangedcognition@hotmail.com and suzanmanuel@gmail.com

*Note - Given that some contributors may not feel safe or comfortable telling their stories in the public sphere, submissions under pseudonyms will be accepted.

New Carnival! "Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy."

Huzzah! This carnival was Lina's (of Uncool) idea, and congrats for getting it into shape and up so quickly! The first edition, that is, is up today, go see.

Time, gentlepersyns.

Last call for the 2007 Weblog Awards (vote for meeeee).

Oher finalists for best LGBT category:

Republic of T
Pam's House Blend
Joe. My. God.
GayPatriot
Average Gay Joe
Susie Bright
The Bilerico Project
Keith Boykin
Mombian

Other fine nominees in other categories: Shakesville for best Liberal blog, feministe for best 251-500 blogs, Rosemary Rowe aka Creampuff Revolution for Best Individual Blogger (woo!)