so ends a five month period of being in constant motion, living out of a bag, sleeping on couches, riding buses/ferries/airplanes to get me farther away from where i am.
ok vancity, i’m finally ready to fall in love with you.
doing shit and making shit with the coolest change-makers.
By Audre Lorde
I was born Black and a woman. I am trying to become the strongest person I can become to live the life I have been given and to help effect change toward a livable future for this earth and for my children. As a Black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, poet, mother of two including one boy and member of an interracial couple, I usually find myself part of some group in which the majority defines me as deviant, difficult, inferior or just plain “wrong”.
From my membership in all of these groups I have learned that oppression and the intolerance of difference come in all shapes and sizes and colors and sexualities; and that among those of us who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children, there can be no hierarchies of oppression. I have learned that sexism (a belief in the inherent superiority of one sex over all others and thereby its right to dominance) and heterosexism (a belief in the inherent superiority of one pattern of loving over all others and thereby its right to dominance) both arise from the same source as racism - a belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby its right to dominance.
“Oh,” says a voice from the Black community, “but being Black is NORMAL!” Well, I and many Black people of my age can remember grimly the days when it didn’t used to be!
I simply do not believe that one aspect of myself can possibly profit from the oppression of my other part of my identity. I know that my people cannot possibly profit from the oppression of any other group which seeks the right to peaceful existence. Rather, we diminish ourselves by denying to others what we have shed blood to obtain for our children. And those children need to learn that they do not have to become like each other in order to work together for a future they will all share.
The increasing attacks upon lesbians and gay men are only an introduction to the increasing attacks upon all Black people, for wherever oppression manifests itself in this country, Black people are potential victims. And it is a standard of right-wing cynicism to encourage members of oppressed groups to act against each other, and so long as we are divided because of our particular identities we cannot join together in effective political action.
Within the lesbian community I am Black, and within the Black community I am a lesbian. Any attack against Black people is a lesbian and gay issue, because I and thousands of other Black women are part of the lesbian community. Any attack against lesbians and gays is a Black issue, because thousands of lesbians and gay men are Black. There is no hierarchy of oppression.
It is not accidental that the Family Protection Act, which is virulently anti-woman and anti-Black, is also anti-gay. As a Black person, I know who my enemies are, and when the Ku Klux Klan goes to court in Detroit to try and force the Board of Education to remove books the Klan believes “hint at homosexuality,” then I know I cannot afford the luxury of fighting one form of oppression only. I cannot afford to believe that freedom from intolerance is the right of only one particular group. And I cannot afford to choose between the fronts upon which I must battle these forces of discrimination, wherever they appear to destroy me. And when they appear to destroy me, it will not be long before they appear to destroy you.
12 November · 19:00 - 23:30
Rhizome Cafe317 East Broadway
Vancouver, BC
Suggested $5 - $10, no one turned away
All proceeds go to Rhizome Cafe. Come support our much beloved community space.
This event is created by QTIPOC Nights to open intentional space for queer, trans, and intersex folk who are also Indigenous and people of colour. Allies welcome.
More info on accessibility, event details, etc to follow. Save the date and spread the word to qtipocs you know!
To provide a chemical and fragrance free event, we request that participants refrain from the following before or during the event: Smoking; Wearing colognes, perfumes or scented oils; and using chemical based laundry detergents or fabric softeners. We ask participants to wear something that has had limited exposure to the items above. For info on Multiple Chemical Sensitivities:
http://dualpowerproduction s.com/2011/03/14/multiple-chemical-sensitivities-mcs-accessibility-basics/
This film was a community effort with involvement from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Gay City, Lifelong AIDS Alliance, and Three Dollar Bill Cinema. It was shot in so many local locations like Purr, The Cuff, Mom’s Pharmacy, Cal Anderson Park, The Lookout, Vera Project, and Gay City Health Project.
About The Film:
A model queer activist and poet, Jesus (Maximillian Davis) prides himself in his work with the Seattle LGBT community. At the same time, Jesus is having unprotected sex and cheating on his long-time partner Johnny (Vancouver’s own Samonte Cruz). Jesus’s world implodes when he discovers that he is HIV positive, forcing him to confront his innermost fears, his relationship with his ex-boyfriend, and a future living with HIV. Faced with the unknown, Jesus is pulled from the brink of self-destruction by Sister Alysa Trailer (Brian Peters), a drag nun who leads him down a path of self-discovery.
‘heart breaks open’ is a feature film about queer life, public health and community accountability. It was written as a four page outline and transformed to a feature-length project through a collaborative filmmaking process. Actors used improvisational acting to create dialogue and action. Documentary filmmakers captured performances using cinema verité techniques. Seattle locations and their staff were used to create an undeniable meditative realism.
(For vivelesfemmes’ zine.)
To me, femme is about finding the strength within myself that I didn’t know I had. Finding femme has brought me the empowerment that I had always been looking for and never knew where to find, but was within myself all along. It is picking and choosing which rituals are meaningful to me, and participating in them for myself only. It is glitter and bright colours and saying fuck it to societal standards imposed upon me and my femininity. It is learning to love my body for every fold and roll and stretch mark. It is dyeing my hair queer spirit purple, or whichever other colour suits my mood. On days when my anxiety hits hardest, it helps me to be able to step out of the house. Finding femme has allowed me to embrace my femininity and my queerness as fundamentally interconnected. It is an act of self-love when society tells me there are so many things to loathe. It is an act of reclamation of what femininity is and means to me. It is a performance that gives me the strength to break past my anxiety, little by little. It is at once playful and powerful. On some days, femme is all I have, but it gives me the strength to keep moving forward. I am femme.
I LOVE ALL OF THESE POSTS. I feel this soooooo hard.
femme is deciding that love and beauty can be born outside of the male gaze and that when a community of femmes meet, it obliterates the proverbial penis that is patriarchy and crumbles the walls that have kept feminized identiites (whether they be feminized via gender, sexual identities, race, ability, class, size, etc) from being able to say that they love one another and themselves. femme is also about subverting presumed ideals of white femininity and proudly flaunting other intersecting feminized identities that you may have (again via the feminization of gender, race, ability, etc) like it’s everybody’s business. femme is decolonizing love and beauty, baby.
The New Age movement has sparked a new interest in Native American traditional spirituality among white women who claim to be feminists. Indian spirituality, with its respect for nature and the interconnectedness of all things, is often presented as the panacea for all individual and global problems. Not surprisingly, many white “feminists” see the opportunity to make a great profit from this new craze. They sell sweat lodges or sacred pipe ceremonies, which promise to bring individual and global healing. Or they sell books and records that supposedly describe Indian traditional practices so that you too, can be Indian.
On the surface, it may appear that this new craze is based on a respect for Indian spirituality. In fact, however, the New Age movement is part of a very old story of white racism and genocide against the Indian people. The “Indian” ways that the white, New Age “feminists” are practicing have little grounding in reality.
Edited by Max Haiven and Alex Khasnabish
This issue brings together a diverse range of critical voices to both clarify and complicate the vexing issue of “the radical imagination.”
What is the radical imagination? A Special IssuePDF HTMLMax Haiven, Alex Khasnabish
Interventions: Struggles
Precariousness, Catastrophe and Challenging the Blackmail of the Imagination PDF HTML Franco BIFO Berardi
What is Radical Imagination? Indigenous Struggles in Canada PDF HTML Taiaiake Alfred
Commodity Feminism and the Unilever Corporation: Or, How the Corporate Imagination Appropriates Feminism PDF HTML Julie E. Dowsett
Unfixing Imaginings of the City: Art, Gentrification, and Cultures of Surveillance PDF HTML Phanuel Antwi, Amber Dean
Interventions: Provocations
Other Presents: Imagining the Human and Beyond PDF HTML Larissa Lai
The Uneven Development of Radical Imagination PDF HTML Justin Paulson
A Radical and Elitist Imagination? Political Paternities and Alternatives in the History of Ideas PDF HTML Chris Churchill
A few notes on the question, what is radical imagination? PDF HTML Petra Rethmann
Dancing Through the Crisis PDF HTML Randy Martin
Interventions: Openings
Anarchist Imaginaries PDF HTML Allan Antliff
Re-Imagining RevolutionPDF HTML Judy Rebick
Giant Whispers: Narrative Power, Radical Imagination and a Future Worth Fighting For… PDF HTML Patrick Reinsborough
Place against Empire: Understanding Indigenous Anti-Colonialism PDF HTML Glen Coulthard
Peer Reviewed Articles
Beyond Protest: Radical Imagination and the Global Justice Movement PDF HTML Rachel Elaine Strasinger
Participatory Budgeting and the Radical Imagination: In Europe but not in Canada? PDF HTML Terry Maley
The Disruptive Time of the Gift: (Radical) Imagination at Work in Free and Open Source Software PDF HTML Michael Truscello
SADS.
Check out that link! QPOC Lit for the win.
BLESS YOUR HEART.
