In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Selfless Signal-Boosting Wednesday

tigtog

A complement to our long-standing Shameless Self-Promotion Sundays, this thread is for links to pieces on other people’s blogs that you have found delightful memorable/provoking recently, especially those who are blogging on issues Feministe has not recently addressed (the links can be to older posts, just something you’ve found recently relevant).  Please save the self-promotion links for this Sunday – use this thread to let Feministe readers know about the other blogs you love to read, especially those on the margins of the mainstream social justice communities, who tend to not get as much exposure as they should.

Guidelines:

  1. This is not a new Open thread – mainstream media/news links that you want to discuss should be taken there. This thread is for signal-boosting bloggers and ex-bloggers’ opinion/analysis pieces, not just journalistic reportage.
  2. Ensure other readers have enough information about the post to make an informed choice on whether to click on your link. Content notes are advised for posts discussing problematic issues/incidents that might be NSFW or potentially distressing/triggering.
  3. Keep this thread focussed on the linking – the idea is to make your comments on the other blogs being linked! By all means second a recommendation or thank someone for a link you found worthwhile, but please leave it at that. If you feel you must discuss a link in more detail here at Feministe, please take it to the Open or Spillover threads (see sidebar for quicklinks), depending on your assessment of its zombie stoush potential.

6 thoughts on Selfless Signal-Boosting Wednesday

  1. Kiss My Wonder Woman put a wonderful post up about Firefly during the self-promotion on Sunday, which led me to discover their blog.

    I’ve been reading it relentlessly since.

    Y’all should all read it too! It’s just excellent.

    Here’s a post on Terry Prachett’s use of female characters (among other things): “The Price of Being Queen is Being Queen.”

    And in case you missed the Firefly post the first time around: “Big Damn Working Class Heroes: Firefly.”

  4. I really liked this piece from one of the bloggers at transadvocate.com — unfortunately, I don’t know which one — responding to the anti-trans dogma emanating from a disgustingly transphobic, wannabe TERF, self-hating alleged trans woman named Aunty Orthodox who seems to spend most of her time attacking trans women on the Internet and sucking up to transphobes:

    http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1rm9gj1

    here’s an excerpt:

    Get this right: THERE IS NO PAIN OLYMPICS. WE ALL SUFFER. The type of suffering I endured while homeless is kinda unique, yet those types of oppression intersect with the very oppression you face. Recognizing that trans oppression has a context that’s different from racism, religious bigotry and sexism is okay. Also, noticing where that context intersects with these various forms of oppression is okay.

    It is erasure to assert that the privilege that comes from being white or male or American or non-trans isn’t real and TERFs like to do that A LOT. TERFs like to pretend that not being trans means that had they been homeless when I was then they too would have been rejected by each and every social service agency too. TERFs like to pretend the syndemics around the trans HIV infection, rape, murder, suicide, unemployment or homeless rate has nothing to do with being trans in a society that punishes people for being trans.

    I had white privilege even when I what homeless and even when I was being beaten for being trans. I had male privilege when I was a depressed suicidal pre-transition teen, though – like being white while being beaten for being trans – I cannot conceive how that privilege as a teen benefits me today. I don’t know what it’s like to be a boy like the cis boys around me when I was a child – which is probably why they tormented and beat me.

    I know what it’s like to have a parent disown me – up to the day they died – after I came out. That particular type of oppression intersects with the gay and lesbian experience, but isn’t the gay and lesbian experience.

    I know what it’s like to be a fucked up, scared, shame-filled kid and teen who thought they’d be better off dead because I believed every ignorant and cruel things my culture told me about trans people. Go ahead and pretend that this experience is the cis male experience if that cruelty makes you feel good. You seem to take particular delight in that equivocation.

    The part I boldfaced struck me particularly, because it addresses one of the most crucial mistakes that transphobes make (deliberately or otherwise), and one of the main reasons I don’t like the term “M to F”: the underlying assumption that trans women were once “men” in the same way that cis men are, and experienced male privilege (which, like the mark of Cain, can never disappear) in the same way that cis men do — as if transition really is just a case of a cis man thinking that “he” has magically become female. But that isn’t what happened with me, or any other trans woman I know. I was never a cis boy or man, and find it impossible to imagine what it would have been like to be one.

  5. [I posted a link with an excerpt, which is now in moderation; here’s the link without the excerpt]

    I really liked this piece from one of the bloggers at transadvocate.com — unfortunately, I don’t know which one — responding to the anti-trans dogma emanating from a disgustingly transphobic, wannabe TERF, self-hating alleged trans woman named Aunty Orthodox who seems to spend most of her time attacking trans women on the Internet and sucking up to transphobes:

    http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1rm9gj1

  6. Not sure who all has seen the godawful “FYI ( if you’re a teenaged girl)” post – I know Jill has, seeing from her “selfies in pajamas” comment in today’s post, but Role/Reboot has what I believe to be the best response to it so far


    http://www.rolereboot.org/culture-and-politics/details/2013-09-a-message-to-teenage-girls-about-that-letter-from-mr?fb_action_ids=10153194958895161&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582

    I read it, posted it to my Facebook wall, told my older kid to read it, and that we were going to have a discussion about it. Thought it was great.

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