I really DID spend 75% of that party last night, ruminating about astrology with a bunch of queers
I really hate that RadScum have ruined the term “radical feminist.”
I am a radical feminist.
However, what I won’t be is a transphobic douchenozzle.
First Queer Anti-Authoritarian Open Assembly
weds. 7pm brooklyn free school at 372 clinton
This is the first open assembly calling all anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist queers. While anti-authoritarian and anarchist spaces can feel entirely white, straight, and cis, they aren’t: many queer people exist in these circles. We are sick of being silenced and tokenized.
So let’s make a space of our own, get to know each other, and build affinity. The agenda will be fairly open, but this meeting does not exist to weigh the merits of a diversity of tactics.
PLEASE NOTE: This event is for self-identified trans, queer, lesbian, gay, bi, intersex, and any other non-conforming gender/sexual orientation. Straight allies are not welcome.
Possible topics of discussion:
- Challenging heteropatriarchy within the Ⓐ milieu
- Fighting gay assimilationism
- Racism in queer spaces / POC caucus
- What is “queer” and in what ways can it be inclusive/exclusive?
- Pride Festival NYC
THIS IS A SAFE SPACE: Absolutely no sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, classism, or cissexism will be tolerated. Many of us have experienced violent and oppressive behavior of this nature. If you have been held accountable through a process or other wishes of the survivor, please attend. lf you have not, you will be physically removed. We respect survivor autonomy above all- this is not up for dispute. If you are being oppressive or making someone feel unsafe, you will be asked to leave or we will remove you.
Please email us if you have questions about attending, or about any of these terms, or the safer space policy, we want to talk to you! hexxbrooklyn{at}gmail{dot}com
The only reason “coming out” is still even a thing is because it’s presumed that people are straight until they tell us otherwise. “The Other must identify itself, or else it is decieving us” is a fucked up, dangerous idea.
“
| — | Anon (via victor-the-richter) |
Our bodies must be constantly available for scrutiny by the state (for anyone who wants to see them, inquire about them, our fucking and genitals are the subject of endless discussion and condemnation) while remaining hidden and shameful, continually referenced in their (our) absence. In addition to being continuously available, our bodies are reservoirs of violence, we are to passively receive of any violence straight or cis people choose to dole out. And the passivity is important; as much as violence is directed at us, when we fight back we get ten times more. Indeed, even our supposed allies need us, demand of us, that we remain utterly passive in the face of potentially fatal violence. Liberal straight people need us to be victims (rather than agents) in order to uphold savior narratives that they have constructed. Cece McDonald, for example, is constantly positioned as a victim, a screen onto which the violence of her attackers is projected. The fact that she fought back is obscured, almost as if we are to be ashamed of that fact. As if her willingness to defend herself is not all the more reason to have her back; as if the nazi fuck she killed didn’t deserve to die. Her crime, as has been observed by numerous commentators, was not murder; it was surviving…more than that; it was fighting, refusing to be controlled. Which, really is at the center or things. Straight/white/cis/rich people deserve to live, and the rest of us should be grateful for their mercy or the opportunity to continue to live in the squalor they have created for us. Our lives are simply not worth as much.
What is a "demi-sexual" and where do these words keep coming from?!
I DUNNO THEY JUST COME FROM PEOPLE’S BUTTS
(As for the definition of “demisexual,” it means “a person who does not experience sexual attraction unless they form a strong emotional connection with someone.”)
**vagabondaesthetics replied to your post: What is a “demi-sexual” and where do these words keep coming from?!
So serial monogamists?
Uh sounds like it! It’s just frustrating to me. I understand feeling alienated from hetero hook-up culture. I’ve been there, done that (and then I realized I was just queer all along). But not enjoying hook-up culture is in no way comparable to not being able to be openly queer without inciting some kind of hate or violence. It’s just not. At the end of the day I get more shit because my partner is a transman, than I would get from being in a monogamous partnership with a cis-man.
oh I see
So when you don’t want to have sex without forming an emotional attachment that’s an orientation and therefor subject to privilege/oppression dynamics
but when I enjoy casual sex it’s a behavior so it’s perfectly fine for people to treat me like shit for being a slut, and that has nothing to do with misogyny or homophobia, because it’s just about my sexual behavior.
good to know.
P.S. “orientation is not behavior” will never not remind me of ex-gay ministries and people saying that queer people can and should just choose not to ACT on their desires.
Yeah! This is my issue with straight folks coming up with their own “queer” identities based on the way they practice HETEROSEXUAL relationships. Hetero “demisexuals,” GTFO of Queer, and for chrissakes try to understand that some spaces are just not for you.
THE GUERRILLA ANGEL REPORT — A passerby saw the flames and banged on doors and everyone in the building got out except Lorena Escalera who was found her bed by firefighters using thermal imaging. She was declared dead at the scene by paramedics.
Escalera, who worked as an escort, had two men in her apartment earlier. They have not been found as of this writing however, according to witnesses, the passerby said he saw two men in front of the building arguing when he saw the flame.
Fire marshals are investigating and authorities have deemed the blaze suspicious but have no evidence yet that indicates the blaze was deliberate.
Police say Escalera was a member of House of Xtravaganza — a well-known troupe of trans performers. Other sources say say her stage name was Lorena Xtravaganza.
More: Woman in Group of Transgender Performers Dies in Brooklyn Fire – NYTimes.com.
NOT. FUCKING. AGAIN.
There is a bar in Williamsburg called “Privilege.” I think some people need to sit the fuck down in there and examine it a little, yeah?
It’s a sad irony that we promote self-defense classes as a way of combating violence against women, yet many of the women of color, trans and cis alike, are currently imprisoned precisely because they fought back against violence in their homes and in the streets.
Too often trans and queer women of color survive violence in their homes and on the streets only to have the police, courts and prison-industrial complex come after them for having the audacity to survive in a world where, as Audre Lorde said in her poem “A Litany For Survival,” they “were never meant to survive.
Too often trans and queer women of color survive violence in their homes and on the streets only to have the police, courts and prison-industrial complex come after them for having the audacity to survive in a world where, as Audre Lorde said in her poem “A Litany For Survival,” they “were never meant to survive.
from Dean Spade:
CeCe just took a plea deal—2nd degree manslaughter with a recommended 41 month sentence (actual sentencing hearing will be in a month). Horrifying to watch her forced to recount the events of her attack on the stand, to watch the judge speak to her condescendingly about how pulling scissors out of her purse as her attacker chased her down the street unlawfully endangered her attacker. This system is so disgusting. Still, I am inspired by her support team here in MN and people all over sending love.
How fucking awful that a woman can’t even defend herself. While the outcome is surely not the most ideal, at least that fucker is dead and can’t hurt anyone else.
re: Brandi’s murder in Oakland
TW: trans murders, trans violence, and this is not an optimistic post, this is me processing publicly
I mostly do not know what to write about Brandi’s murder other than that I am deeply disturbed by the lack of reaction and passivity of many of the people around me. Obviously the mainstream news is not going to report on this without a fucking uproar. Obviously the paramedics did not arrive on the scene until she had been dead for twenty minutes in the lap of an #OO medic. Obviously the institutions that consistently support and uplift the lifes of straight, cis, and white people would be silent on her death. But I am generally appalled by the lack of response and apparent lack of mourning on the behalf of so many people in my life. I am the only trans person who lives in my house, and I feel lucky that last night enough friends were over/staying with us that I was able to sit on my front porch with three other lovely trans folk and cry, and talk clearly and plainly about how much we hate cis people, how we are afraid of being able to survive, how there are no safe spaces for us — not even in our own bodies. I am becoming disallusioned with spending time with any cis people at all, because even when I think that they might “get” me, there are times when the only way I can feel any shreds of safety is to be only with other trans folks, preferably trans folks of color. I wish I had been at her memorial last night, but my friend’s check-in about their time at the memoria/vigil makes it sound like it was dominated by screaming white cis bros (gay and straight) who didn’t know Brandi at all.
I am devastated, I am mourning, I am not surprised. I am violently angry. I am terrified. Brandi was murdered blocks from where my partner and friends live. But it’s like, of course that terrifies us and of course that unsettles us from any small pieces of safety we may have begun to feel, but this happens everywhere. So are we just supposed to be terrified all the fucking time?
On Thursday night I was at an event in South Berkeley (2 blocks from the Oakland — Berkeley border) that was billed as an “intergenerational queer event” where older white cis lesbians — sparked by a question regarding the inclusion of trans women in women’s spaces — talked about how trans women and trans men (they had no scope of non-binary trans folks) are disgusting, repugnant, vile, hidden rapists. It was every tumblr radscum shouting match but in real life. I had a panic attack, almost vomited, and ran outside to chainsmoke and scream and all I could think of were the murders (and “suicides”) of trans women of color.
About fifteen minutes and four cigarettes later, an elderly white cis woman from our event walked outside, attempted to cross the street and was struck by a car. It was terrible, and gruesome. I am in no way diminishing this. I am not trying to connect the actions of the radscum at the event with this woman, because I have no idea who she is or what her politics are. I was deeply disturbed by the event and prayed for that woman and that she would survive. I watched her get struck by the car, ran to the corner, and stood around while every person around called 911 (my phone was dead or I would have called, too). Within literally no longer than two minutes there were three ambulances, a fire truck, and police from both Oakland and Berkeley on scene. Lots of police. Everyone was freaked out. I heard talks of people from our event wondering if the news was going to show up. Like, queer folks were actually genuinely hoping/curious that it would get written up in the papers, to hopefully “prevent” cars from speeding down Shattuck and hitting another person.
Two days later, when I am trying to figure out how to deal with the aftermath of the event (it was organized by the non-profit I work for) a trans woman is shot and dies in Downtown Oakland, in the arms of an #OO medic, blocks from the fire station and the police station, after police walked away from her. I cannot stop processing these two events in tandem with each other. It is impossible for me to think about Brandi’s murder and not think about the reaction of the people in my house when we found out, the reaction of the queers on the street when that cis woman was hit by a car, the reaction of people when they heard the radscum talk about being disgusted by trans folks, and the institutional response on the behalf of paramedics and police in both occasions. I mean obviously, fuck the police, burn every cop… car, destroy every prison. I am not surprised it happened this way. I am just so jarred by the close proximity of these events in my life, am freaked out by having cis people in my life, and don’t know what to do next.
How are my partner or my friends supposed to feel safe in the places they live when feeling safe in our own bodies is such a fucking battle? How are we supposed to feel like any form of queer safe space exists, when so quickly we are told at “LGBTQI” events that we are the scum and “cis allies” just sort of hang around not saying anything? Like, really, how am I supposed to feel like having cis people in my life is something I want to try to do, at all, in any capacity? How are we to figure out strategies to survive/fight back/mourn/continue existing when so many people really just do not give a shit whether or not we are alive tomorrow?
Really, fuck everyone, die cis scum.
Rest in Power, Brandi.
this gave me chills.
