our words cut & thrust

winecardigan:

Tangerine (dir. Sean Baker)
No, I think my favorite scene is the last scene, simply because for a filmmaker, your favorite scenes are always the scenes that are exactly how you envisioned them. We only did one take of that, because it was actually really brave for those two to do that. It was very uncomfortable for them. It was about as close to, like, when we think of a sex scene, because… they’re naked. When the wigs come off, for them, it was really stripping away any privacy whatsoever. (source)

(via arabellesicardi)

18th Mar 2017 19,416 notes

Hey, this post may contain adult content, so we’ve hidden it from public view.

Learn more.

11th Feb 2017

Hey, this post may contain adult content, so we’ve hidden it from public view.

Learn more.

20th Jan 2017

COLLECTIVE PROVOCATIONS FOR REVOLUTION AND REVOLT

For the local march this Saturday, I wanted to honor the radical histories that brought me to this moment and to recognize them as resources for movements going forward. The following is what I plan to read during the my five minutes – pieced-together provocations from feminist and queer thinkers from the last fifty years.

Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex. (1)

Each year, faced with the murder of trans* people, we are asked to REMEMBER. We are asked to hold candles and listen to politicians mouth empty platitudes. We are asked to MOURN. But all our tears cannot make sense of our pain, all our memories cannot halt the violent reality of our lives under gender. Let’s remember: it is this world that makes corpses of the bodies of trans* people…. Let’s remember: these same mealy-mouthed politicians, these same rich scum, these same police, mobilize trans* deaths to increase state power. (2)

Too many of us, but not enough of us, are no longer content with the same old tactics devoid of a larger strategy that stares transformation directly in the face. What is possible in policy and politics has been facilitated in large part by black organizing and black resistance. It is a resistance that challenges the notion that only policy change will get us to where we are trying to go. It is a resistance that calls us all to the mat, to live the values that we espouse. It is a resistance that says, “No, we are not happy with the lesser of two evils. We are not satisfied with the process as it stands.” (3)

Violent systems are sold to us with false promises – we’re told the prison systems will keep us safe or that the immigration system will improve our economic well-being, yet we know these systems only offer violence. So we have to build the world we want to live in – build ways of being safer, of having food and shelter, of having health care and of breaking isolation. (4) Local, grassroots work that is rooted in mutual aid and has lots of people participating is vital for both survival of the most targeted and building the power to displace the structures that have been making war on targeted populations for centuries. (5)

To the white women present…but most of all…to my sisters of Color who like me still tremble their rage under harness, or who sometimes question the expression of our rage as useless and disruptive (the two most popular accusations) – I want to speak about anger, my anger and what I have learned from my travels through its dominions. Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being. Focused with precision it can be become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change. And when I speak of change, I do not mean a simple switch of positions or a temporary lessening of tensions, nor the ability to smile and feel good. I am speaking of a basic and radical alteration of those assumptions underlying our lives. (6)

You all tell me, go and hide my tail between my legs. I will no longer put up with this shit! (7) It’s time to get out of the beds, out of the bars, and into the streets. Time to seize the power of dyke love, dyke vision, dyke anger, dyke intelligence, dyke strategy. Time to organize and ignite. Time to get together and fight. We’re invisible and it’s not safe – not at home, on the job, in the streets, or in the courts. (8)

Being queer means leading a different sort of life. It’s not about the mainstream, profit margins, patriotism, patriarchy or being assimilated. It’s not about executive directors, privilege and elitism. It’s about being on the margins, defining ourselves; it’s about gender-fuck and secrets, what’s beneath the belt and deep inside the heart; it’s about the night…. We are an army because we have to be. We are an army because we are so powerful…. And we are an army of lovers because it is we who know what love is. (9) Love isn’t about what we did yesterday; it’s about what we do today and tomorrow and the day after. (10) It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains. (11) We’re not waiting for the rapture, we are the apocalypse. (12)

And if we burn, you burn with us. (13)

1. Valerie Solanas, 1967, SCUM Manifesto (New York City).

2. Anonymous authors, 2012, “Remembrance, Revenge, Revolt” (Baltimore: https://actietegentransfobie.files.wordpress.com/…).

3. Alicia Garza (Black Lives Matter co-founder), March 2016, Citizen University Annual National Conference (Seattle: http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/why-black-lives-matter/).

4. Dean Spade, 2012, “Their Laws Will Never Make Us Safer,” in Prisons Will Not Protect You, ed. Ryan Conrad (Against Equality Press).

5. Sarah Lazare, January 17, 2017, “Now Is the Time for ‘Nobodies’: Dean Spade on Mutual Aid and Resistance in the Trump Era” Truth Out (http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/it…).

6. Audre Lorde, 1984, “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism,” Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Berkeley: Crossing Press).

7. Sylvia Rivera, 1973, “Y’all Better Quiet Down” (New York: Christopher Street Liberation Day Rally).

8. Lesbian Avengers, 1994, “Dyke Manifesto.” (http://archive.qzap.org/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/object_id/325)

9. Queer Nation Manifesto, 1990 (New York: http://www.historyisaweapon.com/def…).

10. Grace Lee Boggs, 2012, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century (Berkeley: University of California Press).

11. Assata Shakur, 1999, Assata: An Autobiography (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books).

12. Lesbian Avengers, 1994. “Dyke Manifesto.”

13. Katniss Everdeen, 2014, Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1.

20th Jan 2017 3 notes

anderlawlor:

Art Tips for Activists!
PROTEST GRAPHIC BANK (via Mimi Thi Nguyen)
MARCH SIGNS BY DOME: http://march.domecollective.com/
SIMPLE GRAPHIC MARCH SIGNS:
https://www.dropbox.com/…/moo5gm…/AAAeJIp78aweyDpTurFKec32a…
ANDREA AIDEKMAN’S MARCH SIGNS:
http://www.andreaaidekman.com/march-posters/
JUST SEEDS COMPILATION OF FREE GRAPHICS:
http://justseeds.org/graphics/
JUST SEEDS ART BUILD TECHNIQUES FOR PROTEST:
http://justseeds.org/art-build-techniques-for-protest/
Stephanie Syjuco’s MAKING FABRIC PROTEST BANNERS DIY TUTORIAL:
https://docs.google.com/…/1o1bCt5pBJS5P9ITUHSTMkPH2Zbr…/edit
SYJUCO’S BANNER IMAGE TEMPLATES:
https://drive.google.com/…/fol…/0B6g_dTRVOZg6eHhTU0pvTHBDejQ
SLOGANS & CHANTS FOR A BETTER WORLD:
https://docs.google.com/…/1RNwIdyHZWDztID2E8aOZ597RnQO…/edit
WINDOW SHOP SIGN “ALL ARE WELCOME / YOU ARE SAFE HERE”:
http://media.oregonlive.com/window-sh…/other/welcome%20g.pdf
HAWAII-J20 RESISTANCE GRAPHIC BANK:
https://www.hawaii-j20.com/hi-j20-downloads/
RUCKUS DIRECT ACTION VISUALS:
http://ruckus.org/downloads/RS_ActionVisuals.pdf
WOMEN’S MARCH DOWNLOADABLE POSTERS:
http://theamplifierfoundation.org/experiments/womens-march/
Favianna Rodriguez’s WAR ON WOMEN POSTERS:
https://motleynews.net/…/war-on-women-posters-go-f-yourself/
PROTEST BANNER LENDING LIBRARY HOW-TO (MAKE A PROTEST BANNER AT HOME):
https://www.facebook.com/…/protestbannerlendinglib…/photos/…

18th Jan 2017 4 notes

modernvoodoo:

givesmeguts:
Katie: I think physical displays of anger, like the performance of anger is extremely gendered. Men derive power from the physical performance of anger. I don’t like violence, objectively I guess, but it’s weird how once you get in touch with that stuff it gives you a boner or something. Like I am imagining what it was like when you smashed the guy with a beer can and it excites me. Like straight up I am excited by it! I always think of that Black Eyes song where the lyrics are like “I didn’t like it/I was excited by it”, I’m taking the lyrics out of context but just thinking about that conflict of learned notions of “right/wrong” versus the very primal feelings we all have sometimes. I think about how perhaps unlearning limiting or destructive patterns maybe involves getting in touch with that deeply rooted intuition that tells you what feels right rather than what is right. So yeah is it objectively cool for me to punch people in the face or pee on their rugs, no, probably not, but let us say it was some total scumbag loser who totally fucking deserved it. Um, I’m not suggesting that I’ve done either of these things. I just think in the mean time, until women and non-men feel safe in their daily lives, let’s get in touch with performing aggression and being physical. Not to everyone, but to directed targets. We were not taught these behaviors are ok but other people were, so perhaps we must teach ourselves.
Bryony: Completely. I guess I am also interested in how this all relates to the spectacle, who makes a spectacle of themselves vs. who becomes one for others without their consent. How one looks while we are doing these things will always be foregrounded when these primal rage-feels are swirling around inside vessels that present female externally. If women had held the reigns on what went down at shows in a more overt sense from the start you can bet that slamdancing would contain more options for those us needing to avoid constantly bruised tits. This sense of being more seen, though, more visible as a body but not as a force, is hard to reconcile. Especially as a fat woman feeling sometimes clowny and clumsy and outside looking in on all this performative abandon, this has at least been my experience growing up with so precious few to no women ‘up front’ at the gig. This has changed and as a comparative old lady (in London, anyway) at the show, playing in bands has provided props to counter all this.
Katie: We (as women) are constantly reminded to consider what we are foregrounded in: our bodies, our knowledge, our sexuality, the commodification of our identities and sexuality, I guess. I think we are always fighting a voice trying to whisper in our ear, “You are outside of this, you can watch if you are lucky, but it is not a part of you and you are not a part of it”. All of us experience this in varying degrees, I think the burden of this experience on trans*women must be enormous. But, it is an enormous burden for all of us. Any time a woman is looking at her self (often) and seeing that she is not looking how she is supposed to look to make it through the gate, because the way to “make it through the gate” is to look a very specific way, she has to wonder if performative abandon is even possible? I think of what those words might mean and what I could do in my everyday life with more performative abandon.
***
Bryony: To return to the dildo, though, Good Throb is completely in thrall to the lude joy of base innuendo. It’s a vector of camp, no doubt. The reception to having songs about ‘grooming your twat’ or lines like ‘there’s a supernova up in my dark matter’ was surprising. It seemed to REALLY freak people out… like interviews being ‘why are you so …DIRTY?!” I am desperately interested what happens when sex and sexual pleasure, when female and queer desire rubs up against (lol) punk and hardcore worlds.
Katie: I would love for this to happen! I think that’s where our joking stems from, too. We aren’t making fun of dildos. We think dildos are awesome. We’d like to talk about it. We are celebrating them, and other apparatuses of sex and desire. I often feel very preoccupied these days with wondering how to incorporate my sexuality into my everyday life. I’d like to know how this can be a thing that I don’t have to shove in a drawer all the time for my own safety and for others. How can I be sexual and acknowledge how much I like sex without people turning on me? It seems like the answer, a lot of times, is to un-sexualize ourselves in public spheres because like, ‘don’t wanna offend anybody’ — This seems true in a lot of punk/diy/hardcore communities. But how can I communicate my sexuality truthfully without offending you? And can I turn you on in performance with you enjoying it and still controlling yourself, and without you feeling cheated? Is there a truthful expression of sexuality in a community way? Because, to be fair, I might be emotionally 13 years old but sexually I might be only like 15 or 16, I am constantly thinking about sex. I didn’t really like sex when I was actually that age it was just this weird mystery I didn’t understand, so I feel like maybe I’m lagging behind.
Bryony: It has always interested me how ’77 punk, at least in its most exposed NY/London postcards, all felt so rooted in that world of sleaze, bricolaged camp and nihilist pleasure, oh bondage, up yours etc, an acceptance of ‘made-up boys’ (like, both eyelinered and invented) gender fluidity jarring with that unreconstructed ‘70s sexism, how so many London punk clubs were in the red light district, and so many iterations of first wave urban punk being founded on the lax approach of owners of queer bars, from LA to Chicago. And this is before you even delve into punk sex work and its attendant realities, from 53^rd and 3^rd to something more liberatory. I wonder if we got separated from all that by the hardcore turn… it’s such a puritanical thing these days, the figure of a writhing body on the floor that is so anti-sex, in a funny way. When you compare punk to (at least in subject matter… if not the social world/codes) of say rap or hip hop for instance, that exuberant pleasure seeking needs to return for us.
from: A Conversation Between Katie Alice Greer and Bryony Beynon, zine available on the Good Throb/Priests spring 2014 tour
number two, 2017, note to self

26th Dec 2016 58 notes

This is an image of the fourth illustration in the series “KEANU CARES,” by me (Mimi Thi Nguyen, professor and punk lifer). IT IS AVAILABLE AS A TWO-COLOR 11 X 17 SCREENPRINT. This series will also appear in the Asian American Literary Review’s issue, “Open in Emergency: A Special Issue on Asian American Mental Health,” edited by Mimi Khuc and Lawrence Minh Bui-Davis (http://aalr.binghamton.edu/special-issue-on-asian-american-mental-health/).

All profits will go to Toby Beauchamp’s GoFundMe for Legal Name/Gender Changes for trans individuals who want to get their ID documents in order before the new administration makes it more difficult (https://www.gofundme.com/fund-for-legal-namegender-changes). IT WILL NOT ARRIVE IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS. This print run is a last-minute fundraiser for the fundraiser, so I won’t be able to send out orders until after I arrive home from traveling in early January. BUT! IT IS STILL A RAD GIFT!

Please signal boost both the prints and the fundraiser!

PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE: http://sleezsisters.storeenvy.com

#Keanu Reeves

13th Dec 2016 5 notes

huntingtonlibrary:

Science fiction writer Octavia Butler died 10 years ago today at the age of 58 and left her papers to The Huntington. We’re celebrating her today by sharing a variety of items from her collection throughout the day.
Pictured here are some of Butler’s handwritten notes on writing and what it means to be a writer.
Learn more about Butler and her archive at http://huntington.org/octaviabutler/, and to find out about “Radio Imagination,” an amazing yearlong Octavia Butler project that Los Angeles arts organization Clockshop (@clockshopla) is putting on, head to http://clockshop.org/project/radio-imagination/
images:
Handwritten notes by Octavia E. Butler, ca. 1980. Octavia E. Butler papers. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
Pages of handwritten notes from one of Octavia E. Butler’s commonplace books, undated. Octavia E. Butler papers. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
Page of handwritten notes on inside cover of one of Octavia E. Butler’s commonplace books, 1987. Octavia E. Butler papers. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

(via arabellesicardi)

12th Dec 2016 1,987 notes

This is a set of all four 8 ½ x 11 offset prints of the illustrations in the series “KEANU CARES,” by me (Mimi Thi Nguyen, professor and punk lifer). This series will also appear in the Asian American Literary Review’s issue, “Open in Emergency: A Special Issue on Asian American Mental Health,” edited by Mimi Khuc and Lawrence Minh Bui-Davis (http://aalr.binghamton.edu/special-issue-on-asian-american-mental-health/). (These are not the final prints, just the scans of the drawings themselves.)

Please signal boost both the prints and the fundraiser!

PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE: http://sleezsisters.storeenvy.com

9th Dec 2016 4 notes

fuzzyberry:

apscores:
Hi tumblr…so. I wanted to provide you with an update on something I’ve been dealing with alone and in silence because I’m tired of feeling silenced and I need people to know what I’m dealing with and help support me through it.
I’m an undergraduate student at UNCW who happens to be queer as well as a muslim immigrant, and I have spent the last two years of my life being harassed relentlessly by a tenured professor who insists on comparing me to ISIS, sending his students and supporters after me to make death threats, writing blog posts about me claiming it’s not possible for me to be queer and muslim, slandering me in his classes, and ultimately doing everything he can to use his power, privileges, and platforms over me to make my life hell to try and stop me from speaking out against injustice. The university has been letting him do this since my freshman year and it’s only gotten worse these past few months.
This professor (who is 30+ years older than me, by the way) wrote an article about me called ‘A ‘Queer Muslim’ Jihad?’ outing me, comparing me to militant Islamic groups, attacking my intelligence, diagnosing me with mental illnesses I don’t have, and just being the most despicable kind of person you could be.
And if the article ITSELF wasn’t bad enough the comments are even better! :)
Not to mention that, because he used my full name, his supporters have been blowing up my Facebook with horrible comments and really despicable threats. Almost all of these people being 40+ year old white men doing this to a 19 year old girl.
I tried to talk to my university about this and let them know that I was tired of having to defend myself, my name, my sexuality, my religion, my EVERYTHING from a professor who is in a higher position of power over me and they told me they couldn’t do anything because he’d just sue the university.
And I’m just tired. I’m really, really tired. And I want all of you to see what the fuck I’ve been having to deal with and know why I legitimately do not want to continue my education somewhere where I continuously have to be called a jihadist. I don’t want to be threatened anymore. I don’t want to be demeaned. I don’t want to be stuck in an environment that deems this sort of behavior as okay. And I don’t know what to do.
Here’s a link to the article though. [x]
Read it and see the things I’ve been forced to hear about me and my religion and my sexuality all for the sake of getting an education.
Read it and see all the hatred that people of color are forced to combat just to be able to get a degree.
Read it and see how fucking hard it is for black women to succeed anywhere because people like this will say/do anything to bring us down.
Read it and understand that if a professor wrote about a white student this way it would have never been acceptable, but he knows he can get away with it because nobody cares about harassment against black students.
Read it and understand how fucked up society is.
And please help me figure out what to do, because I legitimately feel like I’m drowning.
In case it helps, and for those who might feel like it’s difficult to decide on what course of action to take other than raising awareness, I wrote a copypasta email you can send to university administration at the following email addresses. I’m not sure how useful it is, but it’s a way to do something, at least.
UNCW Chancellor: Chancellor@uncw.edu
UNCW Vice Chancellor: leonard@uncw.edu
UNCW Dean of Students: walkerm@uncw.edu
UNCW Head of Diversity: guionk@uncw.edu
Title: Concerning an article published by employee Mike S. Adams

Keep reading

(Source: hurricaneclouds)

7th Nov 2016 19,424 notes