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“One male poet approached me after a performance and said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but do you ever write about anything other than the struggles of women?” I replied, “I don’t mean to be rude, but take your finger off the trigger and I’ll stop.” After all, who among us ever wanted to speak about these things? What little girl dreams of growing up to write ‘rape poems?’ About violence? About the muffled voices of women worldwide?” -Andrea Gibson
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“One male poet approached me after a performance and said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but do you ever write about anything other than the struggles of women?” I replied, “I don’t mean to be rude, but take your finger off the trigger and I’ll stop.” After all, who among us ever wanted to speak about these things? What little girl dreams of growing up to write ‘rape poems?’ About violence? About the muffled voices of women worldwide?” -Andrea Gibson
Zoom
“One male poet approached me after a performance and said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but do you ever write about anything other than the struggles of women?” I replied, “I don’t mean to be rude, but take your finger off the trigger and I’ll stop.” After all, who among us ever wanted to speak about these things? What little girl dreams of growing up to write ‘rape poems?’ About violence? About the muffled voices of women worldwide?” -Andrea Gibson
Zoom
“One male poet approached me after a performance and said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but do you ever write about anything other than the struggles of women?” I replied, “I don’t mean to be rude, but take your finger off the trigger and I’ll stop.” After all, who among us ever wanted to speak about these things? What little girl dreams of growing up to write ‘rape poems?’ About violence? About the muffled voices of women worldwide?” -Andrea Gibson
Zoom
“One male poet approached me after a performance and said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but do you ever write about anything other than the struggles of women?” I replied, “I don’t mean to be rude, but take your finger off the trigger and I’ll stop.” After all, who among us ever wanted to speak about these things? What little girl dreams of growing up to write ‘rape poems?’ About violence? About the muffled voices of women worldwide?” -Andrea Gibson
Zoom

“One male poet approached me after a performance and said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but do you ever write about anything other than the struggles of women?” I replied, “I don’t mean to be rude, but take your finger off the trigger and I’ll stop.” After all, who among us ever wanted to speak about these things? What little girl dreams of growing up to write ‘rape poems?’ About violence? About the muffled voices of women worldwide?” -Andrea Gibson

(Source: talkaboutourbigplans)

Happy Birthday, Toni Morrison!  afrodiaspores: Toni Morrison (b. February 18, 1931) by Min Jin Lee, 2012 My grandmother would ask me about my dreams and, depending on the content of them, she would go to the dream book, which would translate dreams into a three-digit number. That was the number you played in the numbers game. You dream about a rabbit, or death, or weddings, and then color made a difference—if you dreamed about dying in a white dress or a red dress—and weddings always meant death and death always meant weddings. I was very interested because she used to hit a lot on my dreams for about a year or two. You mean she actually won money based on your dreams? She won [laughs], yes, she won. Then I stopped hitting for her, so she stopped asking me. It was lovely to have magic that could turn into the pleasure of pleasing one’s grandmother and was also profitable. My dream life is still so real to me that I can hardly distinguish it from the other, although I know what that is. It’s just as interesting to me and an inexhaustible source of information. I was very conscious of trying to capture in writing about what [B]lack life meant to me, not just what [B]lack people do but the way in which we look at it. 
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Happy Birthday, Toni Morrison! 

afrodiaspores:

Toni Morrison (b. February 18, 1931) by Min Jin Lee, 2012

My grandmother would ask me about my dreams and, depending on the content of them, she would go to the dream book, which would translate dreams into a three-digit number. That was the number you played in the numbers game. You dream about a rabbit, or death, or weddings, and then color made a difference—if you dreamed about dying in a white dress or a red dress—and weddings always meant death and death always meant weddings. I was very interested because she used to hit a lot on my dreams for about a year or two.

You mean she actually won money based on your dreams?

She won [laughs], yes, she won. Then I stopped hitting for her, so she stopped asking me. It was lovely to have magic that could turn into the pleasure of pleasing one’s grandmother and was also profitable. My dream life is still so real to me that I can hardly distinguish it from the other, although I know what that is. It’s just as interesting to me and an inexhaustible source of information. I was very conscious of trying to capture in writing about what [B]lack life meant to me, not just what [B]lack people do but the way in which we look at it. 

Five Ways Cis Feminists Can Help Build Trans Inclusivity And Intersectionality

1) Be willing to confront instances of transphobia, cissexism, cisnormativity, cis-centrism, cis privilege and other forms of destructive bias where you find them (especially when you find them within feminist, activist or queer spaces), not through “call outs” or other toxic, self-defeating or abusive strategies, but by taking the opportunity for genuine discourse.

2) Don’t take a purely passive, reactive approach. Rather than waiting for things like someone saying something overtly cissexist, or a trans person bringing up a particular concern, be willing to proactively introduce trans issues, or trans-relevant aspects of broader issues, to feminist discourse. Likewise, proactively treat possible consequences, perspectives and concerns relevant to trans people and trans experiences as being not only significant but essential to all feminist issues and conversations.

3) Don’t assume any given issue is strictly, or even primarily, relevant to cis women. All feminist concerns are also transgender concerns, and vice versa. There are no feminist dialogues in which trans voices “don’t belong”, or to which trans voices have “nothing to add”. There are no social issues related to gender that don’t have consequences for trans people.

4) Proactively seek out transgender voices, perspectives and input on all issues, not simply what you regard as “trans issues” or situations where the value of such perspectives is immediately obvious to you. Come to us, rather than waiting for us to come to you.

5) Don’t treat the larger social conflict of gender as being dialectic or binary in nature. Don’t assume a unidirectional model of gender-based oppression.

If you have a printer, print this out. If you don’t have a printer, befriend someone who does, and print this out.

(Source: loveyourrebellion)

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