Space Piracy in the Year 2013

Ace & the 7th Doctor by Dave Sim

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:38:23 -0400

Ace & the 7th Doctor by Dave Sim

mikeyfriskeyhands: ydgn4life: mira-of-sassgard: I lost my...

Wed, 15 May 2013 12:30:12 -0400

ydgn4life:

mira-of-sassgard:

I lost my shit at self-governing snakes.

ONLY THINKS OF YOU AS A FRIEND

RECOGNIZE MY AUTHORITY GODDAMMIT

thepeoplesrecord: On May 13, 1985, Philadelphia police...

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:54:12 -0400

thepeoplesrecord:

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...

Sat, 11 May 2013 14:31:17 -0400

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

Fri, 10 May 2013 16:11:38 -0400

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...

Fri, 10 May 2013 13:12:42 -0400

culture ship name goes here: moniquill: What if people told European history like they told Native...:

moniquill:

What if people told European history like they told Native American history?

sofriel:

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!

Fri, 10 May 2013 12:30:59 -0400

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.

Photo

Fri, 10 May 2013 12:30:08 -0400

I think you're swoony~ swoons

Fri, 10 May 2013 12:25:44 -0400

*blush* Gosh, thanks! And most certainly likewise, Ms. Sterling. :D

I am still getting crushes on basically everybody.

Fri, 10 May 2013 12:02:47 -0400

kiriamaya:

Because I am still hormonally a teenager, apparently. ^^;

Hormones schmormones: personally, I’m still getting crushes on basically everybody because basically everybody is swoony! :D

(Spoiler: If you are reading this, I probably think you’re swoony.)

ANNOUNCING Girl Talk 2013!

Fri, 10 May 2013 01:14:00 -0400

Bay Area folks! Do not miss this! You will weep copious tears if you miss this, trust me.

queershoulder:

I am so very excited to announce…

Girl Talk 2013!

Now in its fifth year, Girl Talk is a critically acclaimed multi-media performance show promoting dialogue about relationships of all kinds between queer transgender women, queer cisgender women, and genderqueer people. Queer cis women, queer trans women, and genderqueer people are allies, friends, support systems, lovers, and partners to each other every day — from activism that includes everything from Take Back the Night to Camp Trans; to supporting each other in having “othered” bodies in a world that is obsessed with idealized body types; to loving, having sex, and building family with each other in a world that wants us to disappear. At Girl Talk, trans and cis women and genderqueer artists create a wide range of artistic work about their relationships of all kinds – sexual and romantic, friendships, and chosen and blood family. Join us for a night of performance and conversation dedicated to building sisterhood and queer community for ALL women.

June 27
Girl Talk
Curated by: Gina de Vries, Elena Rose, & Julia Serano
Show Location: African-American Arts & Culture Complex (762 Fulton Street @ Webster, San Francisco)
Time: 7:30pm
Price: $12 – $20 sliding scale online; $15 – $20 at the door. (A limited number of Nobody Turned Away Tickets are available by writing to Gina at queershoulder[@]gmail[.]com, and a few work-trade for tix positions might also become available.)
Web Home: http://queerculturalcenter.org/NQAF/performance13/girl-talk/
Buy Tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/377312
Facebook Event Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/331871970271565
“Like” Girl Talk on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GirlTalkShow
Twitter: @queershoulder (Gina de Vries) and @JuliaSerano (Julia Serano).

ARTISTS’ BIOS

Dominika Bednarska holds a PhD in English and Disability Studies from U.C. Berkeley, and her new book of poetry, Smothered Breath, is forthcoming from Tulip Pulp Press. Her writing has appeared in The Bellevue Literary Review, Petrichor Machine, Blast Furnace, A Bad Penny Review, B (A Barbie Anthology), Journey to Crone, Avatar Review, Storm Cellar, Palimpsest, Muddy River Poetry Review, Wordgathering, Ghosting the Atom: Reflections After the Bomb, What I Want From You: An Anthology of East Bay Lesbian Poets, Cripping Femme, The Culture of Efficiency: Technology in Everyday Life, and Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity, a Lambda nominee. Her show My Body Love Story kicked off the National Queer Arts Festival in 2012. For more information, go to dominikabednarskaspeaks.blogspot.com or become a fan on Facebook.

Gina de Vries is a genderqueer femme, a queer Paisano, a devout pervert, and a writer, performer, activist, and cultural worker living, writing, and loving in San Francisco. Ze is the founder and co-curator (with Elena Rose and Julia Serano) of Girl Talk, and is thrilled to see the show going strong in its fifth year. Gina has performed, taught, and lectured everywhere from chapels to leatherbar backrooms to the Ivy Leagues to community colleges. Her university appearances include Harvard, Yale, Reed, The Pacific School of Religion, UW-Madison, and Hampshire. Ze is the founder and facilitator of Sex Workers’ Writing Workshop, a writing class for current & former sex workers at San Francisco’s Center for Sex & Culture (where she also serves on the Advisory Board).

Gina’s publications include That’s Revolting!, Bound to Struggle, Baby Remember My Name, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, $pread: illuminating the sex industry, Curve, Coming & Crying, Take Me There: Trans & Genderqueer Erotica, The Revolution Starts at Home, and Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots. Ze is currently pursuing her Master of Fine Arts in Fiction Writing at San Francisco State University, where ze is at work on How To Have A Body, a book of experimental prose about, well, how to have a body. Find out more at ginadevries.com, and keep track of hir on the daily at queershoulder.tumblr.com and howtohaveabody.tumblr.com.

DavEnd is a tenderhearted, genderqueer, accordion wielding songwriter, performing artist and designer based in San Francisco. DavEnd has released two studio albums (How To Hold Your Own Hand, Fruits Commonly Mistaken For Vegetables) and for the past 6 years, has been touring extensively in the U.S., performing at queer teen centers, theatres, festivals, colleges, and backyards. Between tours, Ms. End designs costumes, and most recently has been producing a new musical, costume designing and dancing in production numbers for songwriter Kimya Dawson, appearing in Taylor Mac’s epic 5 hour play “The Lily’s Revenge” and touring the US with Sister Spit. DavEnd’s current project, “Fabulous Artistic Guys Get Overtly Traumatized Sometimes: The Musical!”, brings together the worlds of music and radical performance art in a theatrical extravaganza, exploring the effects of heterosexism and street harassment on the development of queer and trans identity. Photo: Photo: Amber Gregory

Tara Hardy is the working-class queer femme poet who writes and teaches in Seattle, Washington. She is the founder and current creative director of Bent, a writing institute for LGBTIQ people based in Seattle. She is the writer-in-residence at Richard Hugo House in Seattle, and an alumnae of Hedgebrook. In 2002, she was elected by the people and named by the city council as Seattle’s Poet Populist, or poet of the people, and has appeared on seven National Poetry Slam stages. She holds an MFA from Vermont College in fiction writing, and an MSW from the University of Michigan in community organizing. Tara is a daughter of the United Auto Workers, and worked in the Battered Women’s Movement for 15 years. She has toured the United States with Michelle Tea in the Stromboli’s Island show, as well as with Oratrix, an all-girl, all-queer Seattle-based spoken word troupe. She is a member of the Bullhorn Collective, and has performed with the Rolling Thunder Democracy Tour, Vancouver’s Rock for Choice, various Sister Spit shows, the Washington Poet’s Association’s Burning Word festival, Portland’s Youth Pride, San Francisco’s Harvey Milk Institute, and at the Minneapolis Orpheum Theater on the National Poetry Slam team finals stage. Tara’s work appears in Without a Net, Sex and Single Girls, Fusion, Blythe House Quarterly, Brazen, Switched-on-Gutenberg, and her self-published chapbooks Vs and Rant-some. Recordings of her work can be found on Vox Populi Live (the best of the Seattle Poetry Festival), the Seattle Poetry Slam Live CD, and her self-produced CD Dirty River.

Dr. Carol Queen is a writer and cultural sexologist with a Ph.D. in human sexuality. She is a noted essayist whose work has appeared in dozens of anthologies. Her essay collection, Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture, was published in 1997 and reissued in 2002; it is read in university classes across America. Her erotic stories can be found in several Best American Erotica volumes, among many other anthologies; her erotic novel, The Leather Daddy and the Femme, was published in 1998 and won a Firecracker Alternative Book Award the following year. A “director’s cut” edition with new material came out in 2003. Her first book, Exhibitionism for the Shy, published in 1995, explores issues of erotic self-esteem and enhancement and was reissued with new material in 2009. She is co-editor of the anthologies Best Bisexual Erotica (volumes One and Two), Sex Spoken Here, Switch Hitters, and PoMoSexuals; the latter won a Lambda Literary Award in 1998. She’s also edited Whipped! and two volumes of 5 Minute Erotica, short-short erotic fiction.

Queen is the founding director of the Center for Sex & Culture in San Francisco (www.sexandculture.org) and works as staff sexologist and curator of the Antique Vibrator Museum at Good Vibrations, the women-founded sex toy and bookstore in San Francisco, where she has worked since 1990; she blogs for the Good Vibrations web magazine at www.goodvibes.com. She has addressed numerous scholarly and professional conferences, including the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, the International Condom Conference, the International Conference on Prostitution, and the International Conference on Pornography; she frequently addresses college as well as general and specialized audiences. In February 2009 she debated the question of promiscuity (“Virtue or vice?”) for the Oxford Union at Oxford University, England.

Carol Queen is active on behalf of progressive sex education and sexual minority issues. Perhaps most closely affiliated with the bisexual and sex work communities, she has been speaking publicly about non-mainstream sexualities, from lesbian to leather, for over 35 years. Her perspective in addressing sexual diversity incorporates personal experience, accurate sex information, and informed cultural commentary. For more information (including CV and bibliography) see her website: www.carolqueen.com.

Elena Rose, a Filipina-Ashkenazic mixed-class trans lesbian mestiza, rode stories out of rural Oregon and hasn’t stopped making words since. Raised as a curandera troublemaker, she writes online as “Little Light,” travels the country as a preacher and poet, and has dedicated herself to the labor of radical love, monster theology, and justice for those who live at the edges.

In her third year as “Girl Talk” co-curator and fifth as a performer, Rose has also sweet-talked bloody microphones with the Speak! Radical Women of Color Media Collective, Seattle’s TumbleMe Productions, the Bay’s own Mangos With Chili, and in sold-out shows up and down the Pacific coast. Her writing has been featured in Aorta and Make/shift magazines and everywhere from law school classrooms to bathroom mirrors, and her first book, “Mountain of Myrrh,” is forthcoming from Dinah Press. She lives, works, and attends seminary in the East Bay, and haunts abandoned places on the weekends.”

Julia Serano is an Oakland, California-based writer, performer, and co-curator of Girl Talk. She is best known for her 2007 book Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, which garnered rave reviews—The Advocate placed it on their list of “Best Non-Fiction Transgender Books,” and readers of Ms. Magazine ranked it #16 on their list of the “100 Best Non-Fiction Books of All Time.” Her other writings have appeared in anthologies (including Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape, Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation and Word Warriors: 30 Leaders in the Women’s Spoken Word Movement) and in feminist, queer, pop culture and literary magazines and websites such as Bitch Magazine, AlterNet.org, Out, Ms. Magazine blog, Feministing.com, and make/shift.

Julia has gained notoriety in feminist, queer and transgender circles for her unique insights into gender, and her writings have been used as teaching materials in queer and gender studies courses across North America. Her second full-length book, tentatively titled Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive, is slated to be published by Seal Press in the Fall of 2013. juliaserano.com

Jos Truitt is a Boston native currently living in the Bay Area. She is an Editor at the popular blog Feministing.com. Jos has worked for the reproductive health, rights and justice movements as a student at Hampshire College and a national organizer in Washington, DC. She has spoken and trained at numerous national conferences and college campuses about trans issues, reproductive justice, blogging, feminism, and grassroots organizing. Jos is currently pursuing an MFA in Printmaking and an MA in the History and Theory of Contemporary Art at San Francisco Art Institute.

tangentialramblings: Astronomical Clock, Prague, Czech Republic

Thu, 09 May 2013 12:30:22 -0400

tangentialramblings:

Astronomical Clock, Prague, Czech Republic

"American workers are more likely to be killed by their boss than a terrorist."

Wed, 08 May 2013 12:30:34 -0400

“American workers are more likely to be killed by their boss than a terrorist.”

-
Every day, workers are forced to minimize safety in order to keep their jobs. The vast majority of American workers have no unions to defend their right to workplace safety. The U.S. Department of Labor and other federal agencies do not protect workers from being killed on the job.

The explosion in West, Texas was as big as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh, yet there will be no war on this kind of terrorism. This is because the prevailing philosophy is profit before people.

American workers are more likely to be killed by their boss than a terrorist. Last year, approximately 5,000 workers were killed at work by unsafe conditions.

Kevin Harrington, New York City

(via socialismartnature)

UGH, something is WRONG.
(via khakhov)

melancholynecrokiss: Just so we’re clear.

Tue, 07 May 2013 22:18:23 -0400

melancholynecrokiss:

Just so we’re clear.

Katie Under Ground

Tue, 07 May 2013 13:50:00 -0400

It was almost midnight. I was sitting in a greasy spoon in Philadelphia drinking a cup of coffee with the lights of a police car flashing on my face from outside. I had a big red fedora on: in the film noir of the evening I was simultaneously the mysterious lady in red and the detective working undercover.

Nearby, the waitress was gossiping with two regulars while my empty coffee cup remained abandoned at the corner of the table. I took advantage of the break to start an overdue letter to my friend Sadie, but as I wrote I was quietly listening in on the waitress’s conversation.

“Honey we’re in the Gayborhood!” She said, “I see all sorts come through here. I seen some of these people make the whole transition from man to woman, all the steps. These really good looking guys, they take those pills to grow breasts. I seen ‘em get the surgery and everything!” (Who knew they even performed surgery in that diner? I wondered if it came with a side of fries.)

“Did they get better tips?” One of the men she was talking to asked.

“Oh, better tits, better butts, the whole works! Some of them get these silicone injections and they look really bad, they go way too far, but some of ‘em you can’t even tell they ever even were—“

“Tips,” he said, “better tips. You said they worked here?”

“Oh! No, we never had one of them work here. I just see them a lot. You know, I see a lot of things here. They do tip real good, though. I think a lot of them have money. I mean, you’d have to to do all that, right? But some of these guys, they get silicone injected all over, and sometimes they go to these real shady guys who don’t use silicone, they use motor oil. There was this one guy — I saw it on TV—“

“Huh!” The other man grunted. “Seems like too much trouble to me. I just don’t know why someone would do that. I mean, I wouldn’t want one of my kids doing that to themselves.”

“Well me either… but some of ‘em look real good after they get the surgery,” she shrugged. “They look just like women. I bet you couldn’t even tell — usually I can, though.”

She turned and walked over to my table. “Another coffee, miss?” She said. She scowled down at my letter. I got really nervous and I wondered if she could read my writing well enough to realize I was trans. Sometimes cis people work it out and then they get mad that you just sat there quietly and let them talk without standing up and confessing that you’re guilty of being a thing they failed to see.

But I guess she didn’t see anything: after she poured my coffee she jumped right back to her conversation about all the weird and fascinating trans women she had seen, safe in the certainty that none of us could hear her.

I finished my coffee quietly and shuffled out into the night, leaving an unremarkable tip under the cup.

miss-sakamoto: chosen-name: inorite?

Tue, 07 May 2013 12:30:08 -0400

miss-sakamoto:

chosen-name:

inorite?

Photo

Mon, 06 May 2013 12:30:23 -0400

"Writers don’t write from experience, though many are resistant to admit that they don’t. I want to..."

Sun, 05 May 2013 15:46:05 -0400

“Writers don’t write from experience, though many are resistant to admit that they don’t. I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you’d get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.”

- Nikki Giovanni (via amandaonwriting)

Photo

Sun, 05 May 2013 12:30:25 -0400

Story of Olmsted Towhship homicide victim riles transgender advocates: Ted Diadiun

Sun, 05 May 2013 11:51:54 -0400

Story of Olmsted Towhship homicide victim riles transgender advocates: Ted Diadiun:

Summary of the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s non-apology for their transphobic coverage of the murder of Cemia (Ci Ci) Dove:

“We’re totally baffled why anyone cared, but we do know now that the AP Stylebook says we shouldn’t have used ‘he’ to describe her, and for some reason doesn’t even think ‘it’ was a fair compromise. We’d never heard of the AP Stylebook before this, and it’s unfair to expect journalists to know as much about journalism as trans activists do. But if we start referring to women as ‘she,’ where will it all end? Anyway you need to be nicer to us when we insult and dehumanize murder victims. In conclusion, here’s a photo of the victim with her old name beneath it.”

Space Piracy in the Year 2013

Ace & the 7th Doctor by Dave Sim

mikeyfriskeyhands: ydgn4life: mira-of-sassgard: I lost my...

thepeoplesrecord: On May 13, 1985, Philadelphia police...

Preparing for tonight’s Doctor Who viewing party in the...

Milk Junkies: Trans Women and Breastfeeding: A Personal Interview

culture ship name goes here: moniquill: What if people told European history like they told Native...

Squee!

Photo

I think you're swoony~ *swoons*

I am still getting crushes on basically everybody.

ANNOUNCING Girl Talk 2013!

Girl Talk 2013!

tangentialramblings: Astronomical Clock, Prague, Czech Republic

"American workers are more likely to be killed by their boss than a terrorist."

melancholynecrokiss: Just so we’re clear.

Katie Under Ground

miss-sakamoto: chosen-name: inorite?

Photo

"Writers don’t write from experience, though many are resistant to admit that they don’t. I want to..."

Photo

Story of Olmsted Towhship homicide victim riles transgender advocates: Ted Diadiun

I think you're swoony~ swoons