Mickey Rourke’s Pubic Hair Stencils for Men
Tracks
Our Life Is Basically A Tom Waits Song
Vera’s been in the basement for the last hour and the whole house has been filled with mysterious noises of sawing and hammering and cursing. She just came up the stairs, sweaty and sinister, clutching a severed rubber hose in one hand and a round boar-bristle hairbrush in the other and said, “Hello, how are you?”
Selfie. (Because selfie, that’s why.)
Building an Abolitionist Trans & Queer Movement with Everything We’ve Got
from Captive Genders (eds. Stanley and Smith) (2011) by Morgan Bassichis, Alex Lee, and Dean Spade.
A part of the porntastic comics page I’m drawing right now. Work in progress (unerased pencils and all). Mostly posted to assure my collaborator, Katie Zall, that I am indeed back at it and that she hasn’t written me anything I can’t really draw.
Ha! As though I ever had any doubts about your ability to draw hot trans people fucking. ;)
More Exile pages coming soon! Hooray!
Fierce...Flawless...: outrageous comments made by rich white man vs. 1,127 deaths in bangladesh
the disparity of internet attention between shitty comments made by a&f’s ceo and the garment factory disaster in bangladesh. human deaths in the context of extreme exploitation - less shocking, less rousing.
thank you thank you thank you for saying this. i’ve been feeling like an angry curmudgeon about this over the past week, yelling at my computer screen. here’s an angry (franglais) comment i left on a friend’s post about the “shocking” statement made by the company’s ceo, which is being covered around the world:
FYI Je m’excuse mais je trouve ça surprenant que les gens ne savent pas déjà a quelle point cette companie n’aime rien qui n’est pas blanc, skinny, hétéro, préférablement “Homme.” En plus, they have sold awfully sexist racist t-shirts (whose slurs I won’t repeat) for decades, and issued unapologetic press releases in response to organizations that call them out for it. (2005) They have produced and sold shirts for girls (not women, girls) with slogans like “Who needs brains when you have these?” referring to breasts they do not yet even have. They have had numerous successful lawsuits (2003) proving everything from the fact that they only hired men for managing positions, and discriminated against African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and women at nearly every level of their hiring practices. And what a surprise, they discriminate against people with disabilities as well (2009). Those are just SOME of the reasons why I don’t understand how people still shop there. (Oh yeah, and they even sued Beyoncé if that’s not enough)
other facts that have boggled my mind:
- the statement by a&f’s ceo that has gotten people so up in arms in early may, 2013? was made in 2006.
- people are talking about this ad nauseum in canada/quebec. there are no abercrombie & fitch stores IN THIS ENTIRE PROVINCE.
- the internet’s response? let’s put the clothes on the least cool people we can think of… homeless people! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU.
i seriously wonder, are we at a point where we really believe “plus-size” clothing is/should be accessible to everyone, by every brand, that a statement like his - which if you actually read it, is more about “cool” kids/class privilege than it is necessarily about shaming fat people - is beyond shocking and merits this much outcry? where was your outcry when the company was using racist hiring practices? selling racist and sexist products? why do you give a shit what some old rich white guy says about your body? and from where i stand, why the fuck do you care about a company that doesn’t even sell shit where you live?
why does it get so much traction when just last month, 1,127 workers die (and countless others seriously injured) in a garment factory collapse? when nearly every major brand, sold in every part of the world, uses garment labour from that part of the world?
it simply reminds me of flavia dozan’s words:
“Here’s the problem I have with this neoliberal feminism: they have traded an in depth geopolitical and social analysis involving gender and the position of women in the West in relation to women everywhere else for the promotion of consumer empowerment dressed up as “choice” and career advancement. “Here, improve your chances at success by wearing the garments of your choice!” or “Here, see the latest fashion trends and pretty outfits! Wear this to succeed in your office job”, promoting this aspirational, mind numbingly decontextualized consumerism. The role models of this neoliberalism parading their manuals to better lean in and “having it all” chants as the only kind of gender analysis we are afforded. As women, we should aspire to rule the corporations that caused this death toll; as consumers, we should aspire to close the wage gap that prevents us from buying more “stuff”, with nary a word about how that “stuff” is produced, by whom and under which conditions. And when faced with over a thousand deaths, this neoliberal feminism will induce us to some form of rightful indignation (OMG all these people died! OMG this is terrible! ad infinitum) while obscuring the root causes of this death toll.”
is it easier for people to vilify a brand that doesn’t even market their clothing to you than it is to step back and see the impact of a globalized market? to look at the textile factories that closed down in the 80s and 90s as brands decided paying their workers the least amount of money possible for their work led to the creation of this system? that your demand for the most amount of clothing for the least amount of money may have led to this system?
get your fucking priorities straight.
Wow! I kinda want to marry Fraction & Allred’s FF. Last month they gave us trans lady Moloids, this month they’re tossing the scary “c” word around like it’s no big deal in the middle of a story that’s explicitly about how chosen family is sometimes healthier than the one you’re born into. This is the kinda the best comic.
(Seriously, has any mainstream comic book ever used the word “cisgender” before? I’m pretty sure the answer is no.)
Ace & the 7th Doctor by Dave Sim
(Source: bleedingcool.com)
I lost my shit at self-governing snakes.
ONLY THINKS OF YOU AS A FRIEND
RECOGNIZE MY AUTHORITY GODDAMMIT
On May 13, 1985, Philadelphia police dropped explosives containing C-4 on the roof of a house where members of the black liberation & social justice organization MOVE lived. Right before, police attacked the house with 10,000 rounds of ammunition in 90 minutes, knowing that children were inside. The house burned for 45 minutes before hoses were turned on.
Eleven people, including founder John Africa, five adults & five children were killed. The incident also destroyed 65 homes in the area, leaving 250 homeless. Witnesses reported police officers shooting at those trying to escape from the fire that ensued.
MOVE continues to advocate for prisoners’ rights & for the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal & nine MOVE members who were found guilty of the murder of a police officer in 1978.
Preparing for tonight’s Doctor Who viewing party in the appropriate manner.
In other news, bowties really are cool, aren’t they?
Milk Junkies: Trans Women and Breastfeeding: A Personal Interview
I don’t think it’s any secret that I really want to be a mom someday (though it seems less and less possible as I ascend into my thirties *sigh*) and I’ve always been pretty adamant that if I had the good fortune to know my child as a baby, I would want to breastfeed them.
But there’s very very little information out there about trans women breastfeeding. As this woman’s unpleasant experience with La Leche League shows, it’s common for people to claim that only cis women can induce lactation based on nothing but the assumption that cis bodies are inherently superior.
(I also suspect a lot of trans women who’ve done it don’t like to talk about it in public because they don’t want to put up with the transmisogynist backlash.)
So articles like this are like gold to me, and I’m sure there’s other folks out there who need/want this information too! :)
culture ship name goes here: moniquill: What if people told European history like they told Native...
What if people told European history like they told Native American history?
The first immigrants to Europe arrived thousands of years ago from central Asia. Most pre-contact Europeans lived together in small villages. Because the continent was very crowded, their lives were ruled by strict hierarchies within the family and outside it to control resources. Europe was highly multi-ethnic, and most tribes were ruled by hereditary leaders who commanded the majority “commoners.” These groups were engaged in near constant warfare.
Pre-contact Europeans wore clothing made of natural materials such as animal skin and plant and animal-based textiles. Women wore long dresses and covered their hair, and men wore tunics and leggings. Both men and women liked to wear jewelry made from precious stones and metals as a sign of status. Before contact, Europeans had very poor diets. Most people were farmers and grew wheat and vegetables and raised cows and sheep to eat. They rarely washed themselves, and had many diseases because they often let their animals live with them. Religion infused every part of Europeans’ lives.
Europeans believed in one supreme deity, a father figure, who they believed was made of three parts, and they particularly worshiped the deity’s son. They claimed that their god had given humans domination over the earth. They built elaborate temples to him and performed ceremonies in which they ate crackers and drank wine and believed it was the body and blood of their god, who would provide them with entrance into a wondrous afterlife called heaven when they died. Many wars were fought over disagreements about the details of this religion, each group believing their interpretation was the right one that should be spread across the land.
Now imagine that is part of a textbook that has entire chapters on the Mississippian polities of the 1200s and a detailed account of the diplomatic situation of the southeastern provinces in the 1400s and 1500s, an enormous section that goes through the history of the rise of the Triple Alliance in Mexico and goes through the rule of each tlatoani and their policies, the heritage of Teotihuacan and its legacy in later Mesoamerican politics, elaborate descriptions of the trade routes that connected and drove various nations in North America. Long explanations of the rise of various religious movements such as the calumet ceremony and Midewiwin, and how they affected political agendas and artistic trends. Pages and pages and pages going through the past thousand years of American history century by century.
And these three paragraphs are the only mention of European history before the year 1500.
Squee!
Every time the wind blows the tree in our backyard rains literally dozens of little brown helicopter seeds and they all spin down to the ground and go whzzzzz and it’s really really cool and stuff.
That is all.
(Source: thingsofthisearth)
