don't get caught

"…this hierarchy of head over body is the prototype for all the hierarchies we project in the..."

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 15:53:06 -0500

“

…this hierarchy of head over body is the prototype for all the hierarchies we project in the world; male over female , man over nature, mind over matter, doing over being etc. And within this hierarchy, the body and the world become mechanisms for exploitation, control of acquisitions of goods, money, property, status etc. become stand-ins for a full experience of the present. But the problem of course, is that substitutions never quite satisfy.

This is why the body is so much more than a meatsuit. It is the basis for everything we believe and act out in the world.

”

- http://bodydivineyoga.wordpress.com/2012/11/18/numbskull-the-brainbody-paradigm/

"our family is so big and we’re also very small let a web of relationship be laid over it..."

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 00:03:57 -0500

“

our family is so big
and we’re also very small

let a web of relationship
be laid over it all

over the strata of power piled up to the sky
over the illusion of autonomy on which it relies
over any absolute that nature does not supply

and the birthing woman shall regain her place
in a circle of women in a sacred space

turn off the machines
put away the knives

this amendment shall deliver from bondage
midwives

”

- Ani DiFranco, “Amendment”

"Forgiveness doesn’t come with a debt."

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 01:02:21 -0500

“Forgiveness doesn’t come with a debt.”

- Mary Chapin Carpenter

"Open wide your wounded heart / feel yourself be blown apart / and open wide your wounded heart /..."

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 01:00:00 -0500

“Open wide your wounded heart /
feel yourself be blown apart /
and open wide your wounded heart /
it’s a funny place to start”

- The Wailin Jenny’s

women in community

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 16:39:34 -0400

women in community

"This year women learned that if we aren’t at the table, we’re on the menu."

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 10:36:32 -0400

““This year women learned that if we aren’t at the table, we’re on the menu.””

- Cecile Richards

TELL IT

Sat, 08 Sep 2012 22:38:17 -0400

TELL IT

"I’m queer. I have a lot of really wonderful friends who are of very different sexes and..."

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 14:36:51 -0400

“I’m queer. I have a lot of really wonderful friends who are of very different sexes and genders. I am very much in love with no one in particular. I’ve been trying to figure out relationships, you know? I don’t know if it’s responsible for kids of my age to be so aggressively pursuing monogamous binds, because I don’t think we’re ready for them. The romanticism within our culture dictates that that’s what you’re supposed to be looking for. Then [when] we find what we think is love — even if it is love — we do not yet have the tools. I do feel that it’s possible to be at this age unintentionally hurtful, just by being irresponsible — which is fine. I’m super down with being irresponsible. I’m just trying to make sure my lack of responsibility no longer hurts people. That’s where I’m at in the boyfriend/girlfriend/zefriend type of question.”

- Ezra Miller, here.

"KNOW about Mobile Homecoming :: Mobile Homecoming is an innovative and loving response to a deep..."

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 14:04:18 -0400

“

KNOW about Mobile Homecoming ::

Mobile Homecoming is an innovative and loving response to a deep craving for intergenerational connection. A craving that lives in the hearts of queer black same gender loving elders and visionaries. A craving that has taken over the minds of two young queer black women. Julia Wallace of Queer Renaissance and Alexis Pauline Gumbs of BrokenBeautiful Press have decided to dedicate the next phase of their lives to collecting and amplifying the social organizing herstories of black women, trans men, and gender queer visionaries who have been refusing the limits of heteronormativity and opening the world up by being themselves in the second half of the 20th century.

We believe that the stories of how trans and cis-gendered women, trans men and genderqueer black people grew their own bravery and created community are priceless resources for our communities and the communities of the future. We want to know how these warriors nurtured their deviant selves, we want to know how they raised their children, we want to know how they supported each other, we want to know how they created a culture of love and inclusion despite facing multiple oppressions and social stigmas. We believe that these stories should live forever in our open mouths and our hands reaching for each other. We believe that these herstories are the seeds of a necessary transformation in our culture where deviance is acknowledged as creativity and every member of our communities is lifted up and supported for fulfilling their vision. We see the need to reinvoke submerged traditions of gazing at each other in wonder and taking care of each other diligently.

”

- http://www.mobilehomecoming.org/

"Clothing is a language, for better or worse. Each garment carries an encoded meaning, woven directly..."

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 11:34:00 -0400

“Clothing is a language, for better or worse. Each garment carries an encoded meaning, woven directly into the fabric between the warp and weft. A suit may assert professionalism, or seriousness, or an association with a certain job or socioeconomic class. A skirt may demonstrate youth, or sensuality, or modesty. When we dress ourselves, even when we are doing so not for the purpose of drawing attention, we are sketching out what we want to say to people who see us every day, people with whom our interactions are only as deep as the fabric we wear.”

- Lesley Kinzel, from “Two Whole Cakes”

"There’s nothing special about being in love. It’s only a matter of gradation away from..."

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:47:10 -0500

“

There’s nothing special about being in love. It’s only a matter of gradation away from being very close friends. The feelings I have for Rowdy are different only in degree, not character, from the feelings I have for other people with whom I share affection, trust, and loyalty. Being with my friends just plain feels good, too.

Love is wonderful, but love is not ineffable. Love is powerful, but love is not mysterious. Love is a rock in storms and an open meadow on sunny days, but love is not a bolt from the blue. Love is just really really really really liking someone. And that’s enough.

Maybe our problem isn’t that we think love is too magical. Maybe our problem is that we don’t realize how magical every human connection is.

”

- Holly P., http://pervocracy.blogspot.com/2012/02/our-weird-love.html

add LOVE

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 01:23:04 -0500

add LOVE

"Here’s the truth: friendships between women are often the deepest and most profound love stories,..."

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:38:25 -0500

“

Here’s the truth: friendships between women are often the deepest and most profound love stories, but they are often discussed as if they are ancillary, “bonus” relationships to the truly important ones. Women’s friendships outlast jobs, parents, husbands, boyfriends, lovers, and sometimes children.

…The youngest of the three had had a stroke as a result of a brain tumor. These friends she’d worked and traveled and lived and laughed and loved with for over half her life rented a new ground-floor apartment that would accommodate a wheelchair, took shifts taking care of her, all the while holding down jobs that were about saving other people’s friends, other people’s kids, other people’s lives – not directly, no, but on the sidelines, behind the scenes, booking travel and setting up conference space and directing supplies and networking with people on the ground who were face to face with whatever crisis situation needed to be handled. I was nervous as I sat waiting in a pub to see them all again, afraid of seeing my paralyzed friend. Would my face show a reaction that I didn’t intend? Fear? Disgust? The three of them came in together, smiling. The unaffected two had learned to understand the other’s few words; they wiped her face, helped her eat and made her laugh. This was a snapshot of what my own deep friendships could lead to: transformation. I saw, on that afternoon, that it’s possible to transcend the limits of your skin in a friendship. That a friend can take you out of the boxes you’ve made for yourself and burn them up. This kind of friendship is not a frivolous connection, a supplementary relationship to the ones we’re taught and told are primary – spouses, children, parents. It is love.

…Support, salvation, transformation, life: this is what women give to one another when they are true friends, soul friends, what the Irish call anam cara. It’s what the Wrinklies did for one another, what the French resistance fighters in Auschwitz did for one another, what women do for one another in real relationships with real consequences in real time, every day, what my friends do for me. We help one another other live and sometimes, we watch – and help – one another die. It happens in movies, sure, but it also happens every day, in real life – now, tomorrow, yesterday. It is transformative and transcendent. It is real. It is love.

”

- Read it here: http://therumpus.net/2012/01/transformation-and-transcendence-the-power-of-female-friendship/

" “Independence” is a complex word in a foreign tongue. To resist occupation, whether..."

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 12:34:32 -0500

“” “Independence” is a complex word in a foreign tongue. To resist occupation, whether you’re a nation or merely a woman, you must understand the language of your enemy. “Conquest” and “liberation” and “democracy” and “divorce” are words that mean squat, basically, when you have hungry children and clothes to get out on the line and it looks like rain.”

- Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

"Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be."

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 12:09:34 -0500

“Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.”

- Alison Bechdel, Dykes To Watch Out For

"yeah, art may imitate life / but life imitates tv"

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 21:04:00 -0500

“yeah, art may imitate life /
but life imitates tv”

- Ani DiFranco, “Superhero”

"We like to think that we are finely evolved creatures, in suit-and-tie or pantyhose-and-chemise, who..."

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 18:51:28 -0500

“We like to think that we are finely evolved creatures, in suit-and-tie or pantyhose-and-chemise, who live millennia and mental detours away from the cave, but that’s not something our bodies are convinced of. We may have the luxury of being at the top of the food chain, but our adrenaline still rushes when we encounter real or imaginary predators. We even restage that primal fright by going to monster movies. We still stake out or mark our territories, though sometimes now it is with the sound of radios. We still jockey for position and power. We still create works of art to enhance our senses and add even more sensations to the brimming world, so that we can utterly luxuriate in the spectacles of life. We still ache fiercely with love, lust, loyalty, and passion. And we still perceive the world, in all it gushing beauty and terror, right on our pulses. There is no other way. To begin to understand the gorgeous fever that is consciousness, we must try to understand the senses - how they evolved, how they can be extended, what their limits are, to which ones we have attached taboos, and what they can teach us about the ravishing world we have the privilege to inhabit.”

- Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

"When we describe ourselves as “sentient” beings (from Latin sentire, “to..."

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 01:15:07 -0500

“When we describe ourselves as “sentient” beings (from Latin sentire, “to feel”) we mean that we are conscious. The more literal and encompassing meaning is that we have sense perception. “Are you out of your senses!” someone yells in angry disbelief. The image of someone sprung from her body, roaming the world as a detached yearning, seems impossible. Only ghosts are pictured as literally being out of their senses, and also angels. Freed from their senses is how we prefer to say it, if we mean something positive - the state of transcendental serenity found in an Asiatic religion, for example. It is both our panic and our privilege to be mortal and sense-full. We live on the leash of our senses. Although they enlarge us, they also limit and restrain us, but how beautifully.”

- Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

"When your inner life is a place you have to stay out of, having an identity is impossible."

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 02:22:32 -0500

“When your inner life is a place you have to stay out of, having an identity is impossible.”

- Lynda Barry, One Hundred Demons

"…that time, you can’t forget it, but you do remember never to remember it, the time when..."

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 02:21:42 -0500

“…that time, you can’t forget it, but you do remember never to remember it, the time when the shattering into pieces became a way of life.”

- Lynda Barry, One Hundred Demons