wednesday linktastic

Things I am apparently currently bad at: link posts.

I don't like to group these link posts, because their inherent intersectionality makes grouping hard, but I'll never post if I don't.


things to do with gender (including gender norms, and trans* issues)

Love It/Shove It?: Dan Savage Can Shove It at the Jaded Hippy:

This constant conflation of sexual organs with sex identity and gender identity is one of the major obstacles, in my experience, with acceptance of and real respect towards trans people's identities. The idea that penis=man and vagina=woman is so entrenched that (cis) people just do NOT question it, even when contradictions of that assumption are staring them in the face. Oh, you look like a woman, talk like a woman, etc. but if I find out you have a penis under that skirt you are clearly "really" a man, or, at the most generous, "were a man once." That you could have been a woman ALL ALONG is not even up for consideration.

And that dynamic is being reinforced here.

This is old, but I think is a good summary of things, Tracing this Body: Transsexuality, pharmaceuticals & capitalism.

A Series of Questions, a photography series.

Many documentary photographic projects that deal with trans issues exploit the genders of their subjects, pointing to an "otherness" or inappropriately exoticizing their bodies. A Series of Questions seeks instead to make visible the transphobia and gender-baiting that can become part of everyday interactions and lives, forming a fuller picture of the various lived experiences. In so doing, this work contrasts with the dehumanizing approaches that predominate the images made of transgender, transsexual, genderqueer, gender non-conforming, and gender-variant people, which often focus solely on their gender or trans status, or use them to further a specific point about social construction and gender.

People I know are in it! ♥

At 8Asians, No More Girly Boys: Chinese Elementary School Teaches its Boys to be More Masculine.

I love this article: Consuming pop culture while trans: Disney's The Little Mermaid



stuff to do with ethnicity, race and culture

At Native Appropriations, Nudie Neon Indians and the Sexualization of Native Women.

What Kind of Card is Race? by Tim Wise is an old but good article.

Glass Icarus writes inscrutable, about yet another form of exotification and frustration and stereotyping.

At Overland, White Australia has a blackface history, by Maxine Clarke. What it says on the tin; something many Australians deny.

On Reverse Cultural Appropriation at the Merch Girl Tumblr.

ablesim

this is not gonna be coherent by unusualmusic:

Well, wasn't he fucked? Black teen male with Asperger's and mild autism who wanted to GO READ A FUCKING BOOK ends up ABUSED BY THE MOTHERFUCKING POLICE AND IN JAIL WITHOUT LAWYER OR MOTHER FOR 11 DAYS because some white asshole feels UNSAFE with him SITTING DOWN UNDER A TREE OUTSIDE OF A MOTHERFUCKING LIBRARY. I can't even. I cannot... He paid. He PAID for making some suburbanite racist human incarnation of vomit feel unsafe and so he/she made he PAY. Unleashed the power of the state to make him UNSAFE by MAGNITUDES of proportions that... goddamn. And at Wiscon, all these brown people who come to squeal with joy over media...we come to indulge in joy and you (letter writers and their brethren) claim that our very fucking existence makes you unsafe.

other stuff

Cyborg rights 'need debating now' OH YEAH.

An interesting discussion at Remade on The Politics of Fashion: Can you be smart, informed about world issues, and still think your personal style is pretty damn important?

Cadbury shies away from Aussie cynics , suggesting that Australians don't understand ethical branding.

june 19th

two things about yesterday:

it was the anniversary of Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, a commemoration of the abolition of slavery in the USA.

it was the Helen Keller blogswarm, which features some interesting links and discussions.

normalising ableism (ahaha, like it's not already)

I like this article (it's from 2005); it's got some really lovely ideas, about creating your own paths, and educating and design through what people choose and it's a nice 'think outside the box' sort of article.

I just wish it didn't start with this:

In the park where we play, there are nicely laid out concrete paths, leading from the swings to the picnic tables, from the castle to the soccer field, from the water fountain to the bridge, from here to there, from A to B.

And then there are the real paths, the dirt ones, the ones that shoot out from the concrete to connect where people really go, to memorialize the real actions of children playing, to acknowledge the real patterns of living, of human purpose, of some honest destination.

Because those are the "real" paths, the ones you can only get to if you're temporarily able-bodied, if you, I don't know, can walk up over an uneven surface okay. And those are the "honest" destinations, the ones you can only get to, again, if you're temporarily able-bodied, and don't need that path to access those places because of, for example, wheels.

I mean, screw you if you need a path, obviously. If you're blind, or use a wheelchair, or a walking aide, or something. I don't know.

I'm not super experienced at talking about disablism/ablism, and I can suck sometimes at spotting it, so I apologise if this seems out of line! But mostly I am just sad that we're so focussed on 'everyone is equal until we use ourselves to BREAK FREE' that it means cool posts about thinking start out with something that so clearly says, 'we use ourselves to BREAK FREE except you nonTABs who don't exist.'