Lisa Ugray

queeriotto:

Hey Folks!

Just letting you all know that Queeriot will now be happening on Labour Day weekend. The last day of August and beginning of Spetember (31-2).

If you’re coming out of town and need any accessibility needs or billeting please contact us at queeriotTO@gmail.com.

We will posting our workshop schedule, venue (it’s accessible!) and other details very shortly!

We hope to see you there. 

sinidentidades:

When trying to get with cis men, get close and seductively whisper, “I’m going to cut off your dick tonight.”

They love that shit. 

queeriotto:

Greetings from the Queeriot organizing crew,

August is fast approaching!  And with its advancement, we’ve come to realize that it’s wisest to reschedule Queeriot Toronto.  As organizers we feel that more time is needed for both us and potential presenters to prepare for a truly fabulous weekend. 

How can you help?  

Submit proposals   
We’ve receive a few titillating proposals thus far but we still really need more! If you have a workshop idea in mind, have longed to facilitate but never had the chance, or have a skill and/or experience to share, we would like to host you.   

Please send proposals to queeriotTO@gmail.com with “Proposal” somewhere in your subject line. Our extended deadline is now July 27th!

Volunteer
We will need tons of volunteers to help make our Queeriot weekend shine! 

We could use your help with any of the following: logistics; childcare; delicious food; and safety and accessibility. Please contact us at queeriotTO@gmail.com to volunteer.

We will be announcing our new dates very shortly and don’t worry this is still happening in the summer! 

****We apologize to those who took the time off or have planned around our initial date to travel and make it to toronto. We hope and wish you can make our new dates****

Shitty! I hope this gets a new date soon.

tobitastic:

By request, a re-bloggable version of my answer to this question.

About how trans-inclusive spaces can still be woman-only spaces: what kind of role do you see for transfeminine-spectrum people who don’t necessarily identify as women in those spaces, if any? Often times, nonbinary people who experience transmisogyny in social & medical settings have to misrepresent their identity even within “trans-friendly” circles in order have their experience of misogyny validated.

-Question Submitted By Anonymous 

Awesome question!  I think this is important.  When I create spaces for trans women, I try to state something along the lines of trans women / trans female / trans-feminine.  Because personally, in my trans women spaces I always want non-binary people who experience trans misogyny, although sometimes which language to use to express that is awkward.

In places that aren’t trans specific, it depends.  There are times that I’d like to have women-identified space with non-binary folks who ID as women, but not non-binary folks who don’t.  In most cases, though, I’m working on spaces that are not women-only, but women-centered.  With that distinction, it maintains many of the important elements of women’s space while allowing everyone to attend.  At least everyone who values opposition to misogyny.

I guess the alternative would be to have spaces explicitly stated as women + non-binary only spaces.  Should those spaces include non-binary folks who don’t experience trans misogyny? It gets more complicated as it gets more nuanced and I don’t have the answers.  I think it would depend heavily on what exactly the space or event is.  But regardless of how it is done, it should be done consciously.  Women + non-binary folks who are invited but forced to misrepresent their identity is a horrible model, and unfortunately tends to be the default if not done consciously.

tybaar:

autumn-and-eve:

Trans women are assumed to be men. When we’re feminine, we’re not feminine women (which the gender binary approves of), we’re feminine men. And being held to the position of maleness, at the top of the hierarchy, with the most gender capital, when we associate ourselves with the bottom of the hierarchy, when we give up our gender capital, when we’re women, it’s degrading. Or, especially amongst feminists, our presentation upholds sexist stereotypes. And of course it’s only our presentation that needs to be critically analyzed. The focus becomes on our presentation, because we apparently influence society so much, and not on the media’s portrayal of femininity, or on feminine cis women, or cis women who internalize misogyny.
The situation functions in the opposite way when we’re masculine. When we’re masculine - or anything that isn’t the Perfect Victorian Patriarchal Archetype of Femininity - our femaleness is gauged by our presentation. And being that we aren’t this Perfect Victorian Patriarchal Archetype of Femininity, we’re gauged as not “trying” hard enough to be women. Of course cis women are never judged this way.
Trans women don’t have a safe space in presenting in any way. CAFAB trans people can use “Schrodinger’s Gender” in a way where they can tiptoe back and forth between genders and the queer community generally celebrates that as this grand empowerment, and strives to make only those people visible. But the queer community uses Schrodinger’s Gender in a different way on us. It’s not performed by us, Schrodinger’s Gender is imposed on us. Our gender exists to be manipulated by others to the point where it functions to debase us, no matter what our identity is, or what our presentation is.

Always reblogging Autumn’s wisdom.

robocommie:

How to tell a rape joke: Take a metal bar, beat a rapist or rape apologist repeatedly and say “so a rapist walks into a bar” with each stroke.

Love this so much.

cuntheart:

I’m not anti-hate, I’m anti-oppression.

Hate is how I survived my abuse. Hate is how I survive my oppression. Hate is how I survive every fucking day.

Fucking yes!

cctcd:

kiriamaya:

Trans* folks often talk about “passing privilege” as an advantage that some of us receive when we look cis enough to whoever is passing judgment. Serano’s rather more blunt about it; she just flat-out says (and I’ll find the exact quote later; remind me if I forget) that trans* people who are “passed” by cis people are extended cis privilege. Which makes sense, and which explains why so many binary trans people try to “go stealth”. ‘Cause hell, in the end, who can blame them? Nobody wants to be seen as less-than.

I wrote in the past that I didn’t think I’d ever go stealth; I was wrong. I “go stealth” every day, by controlling my presentation enough that most people who give me a cursory glance and don’t explicitly look for “masculine” features will gender me female. It’s very situational, and there are times when it doesn’t work (i.e., when people gender me male anyway) and that tends to be with teenagers who are just gender-savvy enough to “spot the tr***y” but not enough to actually recognize that the body doesn’t make the identity. For the most part, however, I’m gendered properly and treated the same as a cis woman (which, as y’all know, is a double-edged sword all its own).

And lots of folks, cis and trans*, think they’re complimenting me by pointing this out. They tell me that I should be proud, that I’ve accomplished a great thing. And, like, I guess I have, in a sense… but it galls me that anyone should have to. I am also continually mindful that this is coming at the expense of my trans sisters: every time someone extends me female cis privilege, it shores up and reifies the oppression and marginalization of trans women. I am painfully aware of this.

But it’s either that, or spend all day every day trying to justify my right to basic respect/existence. :( So what do I do?

Something I struggle with, too.

Yep.

sirviscera:

*Welcome To This Side of The Rainbow*: Free T for USA trans guys

fuckyeahftms:

If you are an American trans guy who can’t get T because of lack money or your insurance doesn’t cover it, you may be able to get it for free directly from the pharmaceutical company that makes it.

One example is ‘Abbot’ who produce Androgel. They have a website (linked below)…

Signal Boost

safe-legal-abortion-is-prolife:

un-lugar-celestial:

This is Karen

Karen does not practice any religion and would consider herself an atheist. She fights to make abortion illegal because she recognizes that abortion interferes with human rights and has nothing to do with the existence of a deity. 

10 points for Karen. You go Karen.

This is Karen

Karen is a young, middle-class, healthy, white woman who is experiencing a wanted pregnancy, relatively free of complications. She is privileged enough to be financially, physically, and emotionally able to continue with her pregnancy and to support the resulting child. Unfortunately, Karen’s privileged upbringing has made her blind to the fact that not all pregnant people are in a similar situation. She fights to strip people of their bodily autonomy because she is self-righteous and unable to realize that forced pregnancy interferes with human rights, regardless of the existence (or lack thereof) of any kind of deity.

minus a million points for Karen’s willful ignorance. Please stop, Karen.

tal9000:

violentopinions:

Cops aren’t the good guys

whatnotery:

TO ANYONE WHO THINKS SOME COPS ARE GOOD

“When we are dealing with the police as an institutional structure, we are not dealing with a group of individuals acting on their own personal feelings and judgements, but rather, with a group of functionaries who have, as part of the terms of their jobs, agreed to set their personal opinions and feelings aside and instead act as obedient agents of the state… Thus, if we are referring to “the police” as an institution, rather than the personal feelings of individual police, no, they are not “part of the 99%”, they are the enforcers of the 1%’s power.” — David Graeber, PHD Professor of Anthropology

Would you say that Nazi soldiers were all corrupt? I would. Were there individual Nazi soldiers who were good people that were probably just led astray? Probably. But we would still say that Nazi soldiers were corrupt, wouldn’t we? Yes, I think so.

The same logic is applied to American police in their current form. No one cares if there are good individual police. The institution, as a whole, is corrupt. That’s the point. This “there are some good cops” rhetoric attempts to deny this by pointing out irrelevant opinions about individual officers.


“According to the 3rd Quarter Report of The National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project, police officers were accused of sexual assault at a rate of 79 per 100,000 law enforcement personal. The rate of accusations for the general public is 28.7 per 100,000 general public.  When corrected for gender these numbers tell us that there are 1.5 times more accusations of sexual assault among  male law enforcement officers than among the general male population.  The fact that rapists seem to be concentrated among a group of armed individuals who have the purported authority to detain and arrest other individuals should be more than a little alarming for even the most prolific police bootlicker.”

    “As you can see, when we examine violent crime statistics, law enforcement officers appear to be involved in violent crime in a comparable rate with the general population. 432 officers out of every 100,000 compared to 454.5 people out of every 100,000. So, roughly 0.43% vs 0.45%.

    Both seem like small numbers, don’t they? Yet most people would probably tell you that they are worried about the rate of violent crimes… but not police misconduct even though both occur at similar rates statistically.

    If you’re wondering about the homicide rates, “Homicide Charged” compares the number of alleged homicides in general population with the number of police officers actually charged with homicide or murder. The “Homicide” number compares the same general population statistic with the number of officers involved in questionable non-vehicular homicide deaths including deaths in custody as a result of excessive force that were not charged as homicides.”

    “The statistic for sexual assaults is the stunner for us though. 29.3 per 100,000 in the general population vs 73.3 per 100,000 for law enforcement officers. That would seem to catch people’s attention as a problem, but apparently it doesn’t.

    So, you see, it’s all a matter of context. Sure, .073% is a small percentage of the population of police officers in the US, but that number represents 522 officers per year and is a larger, by over 2x, ratio of the population of police than are the number of alleged sexual assailants in the US general population at .029%.

    So, the next time you find yourself challenged by a law enforcement officer who says that police misconduct isn’t a problem because it only represents a small percentage of the number of police officers in the US. Remember that it really does represent a small percentage but so does crime in the general population but that doesn’t stop people from worrying so much about it that they’ll spend a majority of their tax dollars to fight it.”

“When current data is filtered to examine only incidents that can be classified as violent crimes as specified per the US FBI/DOJ Uniform Crime Reporting standards and then compared with the 2009 FBI/DOJ UCR Crime in the United States report as a per capita general population and per capita law enforcement basis the results indicate that overall violent crime rates are not too divergent between the two population groups with a difference of only 20.1 per 100k point between the two. However, there appear to be some more significant differences at a more granular level with robbery rates for police far below those reported for the general population but sexual assault rates are significantly higher for police when compared to the general population.”

“While the rate of police officers officially charged with murder is only 1.06% higher than the current general population murder rate, if excessive force complaints involving fatalities were prosecuted as murder the murder rate for law enforcement officers would exceed the general population murder rate by 472%.”

But most cops are good right? It’s just “a few that spoil the bunch.”

In today’s American society, if you don’t suggest this propaganda at the end of any comment regarding police brutality, you’re labeled as anti-police, or perhaps a conspiracy theorist.

I just want to set the record straight: I am not anti-police. I am anti to the current form of law enforcement we have today. For far too long I have believed that the police have the ability to “adjust” the law, to serve it in any form they see fit. And what bothers me most is the fact that when one police officer does wrong, there are VERY few officers who will stand up for what it is right and come forward about the abuses perpetrated by their fellow officers. A lot of officers would say they wouldn’t rat on their “brother”. But in my opinion, this makes those officers complicit and equally responsible under the law as an accomplice.

So the next time you see a video of 12 cops, 5 of which are beating the shit out of a suspect, don’t just castrate the 5 cops who are clearly to blame. Ask yourself: What about the other 7? Why didn’t they come forward? Why weren’t those cops stopping the others? THEN… tell me it’s just a spoiled few in the bunch.

And just for good measure:

source

READ THIS

quinlan-skyler:

no worries: Dear My Fellow White People

therotund:

Listen, I know you mean well and you think you’re doing good diplomatic work or something. But the reward for anti-racist work is a society that is less racist. It isn’t personal acknowledgment that you are not like “those other white folks” or whatever.

When people of color talk about race, there is no requirement that they footnote their comments to disclaim that of course they don’t mean the good white people who are anti-racists. If you feel the need to insert that disclaimer for them? Then your need for acknowledgment has grown more important than your need to work against racism.

This isn’t that hard. Stop doing that. Because every time you do, you are actually just like those white folks with the perpetuating racism and making the conversation all about white people.

Love,

Me.

catheterqueen:

youarenotyou:

also it cracks me the fuck up when people tell me i’m not going to improve the world or fight racism/oppression by being so ~hateful~ towards oppressors.

why do you think i have an “agenda”? i’m not an activist. my whole life has been about survival. & this ain’t no idealist kumbaya blog. this is my personal space which involves, among other things, venting my frustration and connecting w/ people over shared experience. 

but y’all do realize i have privileges too right? nobody’s advocating for the death of all privileged people.

but people who actually want to challenge oppression and make the world livable for everyone? they don’t do that tone policing shit. they listen

and they learn

and they work on themselves

and they challenge other people’s bullshit instead of acting like marginalized people are the problem for being so ~angry~.

the rest of y’all can fuck off, as far as i’m concerned you’re the same as the openly and unforgivably oppressive folks. i have no desire to ~reform~ people like that. it’s not healthy to suppress anger. i learned a long time ago that if people don’t like what i’m saying it doesn’t matter how i say it and i can’t force anyone to listen or to change. telling someone to love their oppressor is just a way for you to shift blame so you don’t have to confront yr privilege and yr guilt, so get off it. stop pretending that yr so much better than me because you’re so much more ~positive~ and ~tolerant~. the world isn’t a positive place and if you think anyone should tolerate oppression you’re a piece of shit.

this fucking this! (bolding mine)

tobitastic:

Queer events rarely have a strong showing of trans women.  There are many reasons: historical exclusion, present day exclusion, ineffectively promoted inclusion, and sometimes it’s just not worth the $10 or $20 door fee to gamble whether or not everyone there will ignore you.

So I’ve worked with a few queer events.  Try to make them more explicitly inclusive.  Try to get trans women visibly involved.  This has worked to a some degree.  However, I have recently discovered a much more effective, dare I say surefire, strategy:

Don’t create a queer event and invite trans women, create a trans women event and invite queers.

invisiblyqueer:

       An insidious pop-up screen flattens out across my word document. It prompts me to submit a list of words to Microsoft to help keep their auto-edit dictionary up to date. The list is long and contains queer words like, “genderqueer, trans*, genderfuck, and faggotry.” The list is also peppered with words i use to articulate an anarcha-feminist critique of society, words like “anarcha-feminist, inconducive, normative, and multilateral.”

       My writing, although frequently sharp and articulate, is constantly draped in that squiggly red line of disapproval. My computer is a watchdog, constantly howling in alarm that my very language is a challenge to the status quo. The jagged red lightning bolts are a reminder that my work operates in defiance.

       My expression is not one that can be pinned down by Miriam Webster. It sings in a chaotic chorus that sings and screams; it’s a chorus that’s a harbinger of the changing tide. i’m constantly reminded that my writing is exactly what i want it to be, a threat to structures of gender and normativity.

       Queer folks, especially adamant and outspoken queer folks, are frequently accused in our society of challenging family values. That’s exactly what i’m going for. Family values are destructive to individuals’ capacity to self-determine, to uncover and express agency in society. i absolutely want to challenge that, to operate as a bulwark against oppressive structure.

       Red lightning streaking across my page shows me that i’m accomplishing that which i’ve set out to do. It reminds me that my writing is just so, red lightning in the face of an oppressively clear sky that doesn’t allow for the full beautiful expression of queer storms. We’re not “correct,” we don’t always fit snugly into the black-and-white comfort of the dictionary, but i refuse to be auto-corrected.