Police Violence: A Link Archive

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/police-shootings-michael-brown-ferguson-black-men

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-many-americans-the-police-kill-each-year/

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/1-black-man-killed-every-28-hours-police-or-vigilantes-america-perpetually-war-its

http://www.vox.com/2014/8/21/6051043/how-many-people-killed-police-statistics-homicide-official-black

http://www.bustle.com/articles/36096-do-police-shoot-black-men-more-often-statistics-say-yes-absolutely

http://rt.com/usa/180648-police-shootings-african-american/

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/aug/21/michael-medved/talk-show-host-police-kill-more-whites-blacks/

http://www.rgj.com/story/news/2014/08/23/fact-checker-police-brutality-toward-blacks-rare/14424297/

http://www.colorlines.com/archives/2007/11/killed_by_the_cops.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/us/marijuana-arrests-four-times-as-likely-for-blacks.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1&

On Michael Brown and Addressing Anti-Black Violence

Some excellent pieces on Michael Brown and the killing of Black people in America:

America is not for Black people (Greg Howard, the Concourse)

Black kids don't have to be college bound for their deaths to be tragic (Jasmine Banks, The Root)

In defense of Black rage (Brittney Cooper, Salon)

I have zero answers here, but I've been thinking about what the structures are that enable violence, especially state-sanctioned and white violence, against Black people, queer people, Black queer people, and other people of color of various sexualities and genders to occur without repercussion (often--thankfully Renisha McBride seems to be an exception to this rule) and with impunity.

As Mia Mckenzie (Black Girl Dangerous) points out in her latest piece, "In this country, police protect property while killing human beings. Sometimes they, as well as civilians, kill human beings in order to protect property."  This one thought brings together the interlaced nature of white supremacy with corporate power. In our current oligarchy (to paraphrase Chomsky: "There is one party; the business party.")  And corporate power almost uniformly is held by white people (usually white men).  These men usually present as straight and/or gender conforming (i.e., cisgender) but who knows?  The take-away here is not whether they are or not, but rather they present as such, likely to retain their power and privilege in way that would be compromised (although perhaps not depleted) if they weren't.  For the record, I have no illusions that a gay white corporate power broker would be more just, less racist, or more equitable than a straight one, as illustrated by the numerous times non-powerful gay white men articulate and act on their white privileged worldview.

In our increasing carceral society (Foucault was right!) police power and the prison industry is tied to corporate interest and money.  I don't know if white supremacy is able to be defeated or even mitigated without de-powering corporations and the police.  I of course still believe in education and I think us white educators need to teach not just the evils of racism (i.e., don't be racist because racism is violence), but the harmful effects on all people (i.e., don't support racist policies and tactics because they're violence and they are also bad for you).

This is a small chip, and it might be my (or anyone's) primary chip, but I think it's going to take a long fight against the increasing state/police power our government at multiple levels is exerting against all its citizens, corporate influence on our political processes, and corporate ties with police and prisons. (In addition to the increased militarization of police as demonstrated in this article and others, I'm seeing more stories on police serving/protecting the citizens who can afford them.  A recent news story from a nearby town detailed a woman was charged a fee because she called police to investigate a situation at her house!)

TL;DR: Anti-black / anti-POC violence by police and white people is supported through corporate-government-police ties and it seems to me those ties must be dismantled or damaged.  How to do that however?  That, I have no idea.  I'm just sharing my latest thinking out loud.  Violence and state violence  in this country against Black and queer people has always existed.  Black people and their allies helped address some of it, but it seems to be gaining strength as white corporate interests continue to increase their power.

Gay White Men and Black Women: A Link Archive

http://time.com/2969951/dear-white-gays-stop-stealing-black-female-culture/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anthony-michael-dagostino/bye-sierra-mannie-a-slightly-ang_b_5588108.html

http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/07/why-white-gays-steal-black-female-culture.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/antwaun-sargent/a-history-of-throwing-cultural-appropriation_b_5586481.html

http://www.npr.org/2014/07/17/332283239/are-white-gay-men-stealing-culture-from-black-women

http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/07/11/are_gay_white_men_really_stealing_black_female_culture.html

http://www.xojane.com/issues/white-gay-men-cultural-appropriation

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/16/gay-men-black-women_n_5591565.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

http://time.com/2988033/white-gays-black-women-allies/

http://www.autostraddle.com/white-gay-man-publishes-epically-stupid-response-to-stop-stealing-black-female-culture-245972/

http://thoughtcatalog.com/h-alan-scott/2014/07/dear-white-gays-dont-listen-to-time-magazine/

Fat and Health: A Link Archive

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/opinion/our-imaginary-weight-problem.html

http://mic.com/articles/91407/9-facts-that-challenge-the-way-we-talk-about-fat-people?utm_source=policymicFB&utm_medium=main&utm_campaign=social

http://healthland.time.com/2012/09/05/can-you-be-fat-and-fit-or-thin-and-unhealthy/

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2013/01/if_fat_is_unhealthy_why_are_overweight_people_less_likely_to_die.html

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/overweight-bit-obese-bad/story?id=18108820

http://kateharding.net/faq/but-dont-you-realize-fat-is-unhealthy/

http://greatist.com/health/why-it-okay-to-be-overweight

http://everydayfeminism.com/2013/04/just-the-fat-facts-maam/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2539857/Obese-people-not-always-unhealthy.html

http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2009/11/03/there-is-strong-research-showing-fat-people-can-be-healthy-and-fit/

Trigger Warning: A Link Archive

"Christina Hanhardt's work on the concept of queer "safe spaces" - and the historical and political contours that define those as such - is worth looking at as well. What I find especially interesting about Ashon's work, and in juxtaposing that with Christina's, is how we're challenged to think about the basic questions: Who gets triggered? Who gets protected? And from what? How are triggering and protection raced, gendered, and classed? How does that work in a uni setting? In organising spaces (where it has, in my experience, often made it impossible to actually move forward in organising work)? There's a willingness to insist that TWs somehow protect people, but the larger question is: what are the political costs of that protection? What does "protection" really mean?" - Yasmir Nair, Facebook, June 24, 2014

http://thegeekypress.com/2014/05/29/on-why-trigger-warnings-are-a-bad-idea/

http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2014/05/23/treatment-not-trigger-warnings/?cid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2014/05/29/essay-faculty-members-about-why-they-will-not-use-trigger-warnings#sthash.7YFC3mNX.I4rXZB61.dpbs

https://storify.com/ashoncrawley/on-trigger-warnings

http://entropymag.org/on-trigger-warnings-part-i-in-the-creative-writing-classroom/
http://entropymag.org/on-trigger-warnings-part-ii-generational-tensions/
http://entropymag.org/on-trigger-warnings-part-iii-disability-and-accommodation/

http://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberal-rhetoric-of-harm-danger-and-trauma/

response to Halberstam: http://queerandpresentdanger.tumblr.com/post/91296439324

http://raneutill.com/how-trigger-warnings-broke-my-back/

http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/08/trigger-warning-stigma/?utm_content=buffer6fb51&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

The History of and Debate Over "Tranny": A Link Archive

http://www.transadvocate.com/tranny-an-evidence-based-review-2_n_13593.htm

http://veronicavera.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/miss-vera-on-tranny/

http://katebornstein.typepad.com/kate_bornsteins_blog/2009/07/who-you-calling-a-tranny.html

http://katebornstein.typepad.com/kate_bornsteins_blog/2014/05/tranny-revisited-by-auntie-kate.html

http://thefightmag.com/2014/05/performance-artist-justin-bond-fires-back-after-trannyshack-name-change/

http://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberal-rhetoric-of-harm-danger-and-trauma/

response to Halberstam: http://queerandpresentdanger.tumblr.com/post/91296439324

http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2014/04/17/op-ed-burning-books-one-word-time

http://www.bilerico.com/2008/09/is_tranny_offensive.php

http://www.bilerico.com/2010/12/context_lets_talk_about_tranny.php

http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/trans-community-debates-middle-ground/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/malek-mouzon/i-guess-i-should-stop-letting-people-call-me-tranny_b_5147564.html

http://zinnia.sexy/post/86765895585/why-cant-bailey-jay-just-have-her-feelings-about

http://chamblee54.wordpress.com/2014/05/23/wtf-rupaul/

http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2014/05/rupaul-still-clueless-as-usual.html

http://www.buzzfeed.com/tonymerevick/logo-tv-distances-itself-from-rupal

http://prospect.org/article/word-faggot

Miley, Madonna, Big Freedia, and Willi Ninja

In just a matter of hours, I've seen more coverage and discussion of Miley Cyrus's VMA performance than I've ever noticed before. The coverage generally seems to stem from peoples' deep discomfort with Cyrus's sexually provocative moves. I haven't watched her performance and I don't care to, although I've seen stills from it; most of them fixate on her twerking and simulated rear penetration. I have seen her rather disjointed and controversial ode to young adult (women's?) rebellion. I don't consider Cyrus particularly interesting or talented, but the attention she draws merits interest. Such attention, while clearly fed and furthered by media outlets who seek page views (i.e., ad revenue) and to line the pockets of the producers of Cyrus's videos and performances, calls attention to American society's need to continue to surveil and police women's bodies and sexuality. Regardless of the questionable aesthetic merits of Cyrus's VMA performance, video, or dancing, Cyrus is able to draw attention because she's clearly aware that women acting in highly sexual ways in public draws attention and controversy. Cyrus is no fool or dupe here; she's following in a financially proven tradition, whose more modern originators include Madonna, Cher, Janis Joplin, and others, although they did this, many would likely argue, in more daring, original, and aesthetically complex ways. (I omit women of color in these originators not to exclude them, but to highlight the tradition of white women Cyrus follows in, an important distinction.)

Clinton Yates at the Washington Post rightly calls out the pathologizing of Cyrus's overt sexuality as slut-shaming, or, in more academic terms, the social regulation of women's bodies. But then Yates goes off track, majorly. Yates want to make Cyrus a victim of racism because of her class status and Whiteness. Yates writes:

When the white, 20-year-old, former child star and daughter of a country singer goes on stage and does something that the so-called ruling classes deem unseemly, it starts a firestorm. ... By implying that Cyrus is somehow creating a minstrel act of sorts by including black dancers in her act, you are implying that there is something lesser than about such an act. As if it’s completely impossible that she simply enjoys and respects the talents of those she chooses to work with. In short, it is inherently racist to imply that there is anything wrong with anyone other than black women twerking.

Yates specifically refers to the Vulture piece on Cyrus, but would clearly also apply his thinking to this HuffPo piece. Yates's rightful assertion that Miley draws controversy because she is a White woman of a certain age and socio-economic class contorts what racism is and how it functions. Institutional and social racism demands that White women, particularly middle to upper class White women, act or be represented as virginal, pure, and innocent, but it makes those demands so that Black women can be portrayed as sexual beasts, uncontrollable in their desires. This is Patricia Hill Collins 101.

So, yes, racism, or more specifically institutional racism, makes certain demands on Cyrus's body, as does heteropatriarchy, but obviously she still benefits, at least financially, from those demands. She seems, in fact, to exploit the system for her own gain, her own attention. Black women are rarely rewarded, like Cyrus and other white women are, for performing in ways that verify or defy social images of them. Yates confuses personal racism with institutional racism, and doesn't understand either. Even within the realm of personal racism, Yates cannot possibly know the motives or thoughts of those who accuse Cyrus of racial appropriation, and doesn't write as if he cares. He seems to be employing a rhetorical strategy to simply end the discussion: call it racist and no counter-argument can be mounted, right?

Yet it is perfectly legitimate, if not out-right correct, to say that Cyrus, and other white performers, when they twerk are appropriating a dance move that originated among African-American communities. White entertainers have been doing this for decades, if not centuries, in this country. Cyrus and Yates cannot ignore this historical context and claim that it's racist to limit certain dance moves to certain racial groups.

What Yates fails to understand is that it's less about a White person dancing in an African-American style than it's about a number of things: to what end does Cyrus use this style? Does she care about twerking as an art form or does she simply seek to profit off it? Is she using the Blackness of twerking to appear edgy, dangerous, "hard"? Is she extending a commensurate amount of compensation to those who taught her to twerk or to those who originated twerking? These are just a few relevant questions and considerations. And focusing solely on twerking does not take into account Cyrus's use of other emblems of African-American rap and hip-hop culture, such as hoodies, grills, and gangster signs, all of which suggest that Cyrus is using Blackness for profit by trying to counter her innocent, young Whiteness which she built a reputation and career on during her "Hannah Montana" days. In addition to Black cultural symbols, Cyrus also fetishizes Black bodies, particularly the asses, of her VMA dancers and her video collaborators. At one point in the video, she spanks a person who presents as a Black drag queen in a kitchen. One cannot ignore the racist symbolism of a rich, White, straight, cisgender woman "punishing" a queer Black body in a place where Black people historically served.

In twerking and her video, Cyrus appropriates both Blackness and queerness. Twerking [seizure warning for link] originated in the New Orleans-based, African American Bounce and Sissy Bounce music scene, [UPDATE 10/27/15: In a televised interview in the past year or two, Big Freedia clarified that Sissy Bounce is not a thing. The correct term is Bounce.]  One of the leaders of whom is a genderqueer Black person--Big Freedia--who has received considerably less attention and money than certainly Cyrus does. Madonna did this with voguing, witch originated in the queer (predominantly) Black and Latino/Hispanic New York City Drag Ball culture. Yet, most people have never heard of Willi Ninja or other contemporaries, and those dance pioneers received considerably less (if any) remuneration for having their dance style stolen. Yates, and likely Cyrus, does not understand the history, (and I would be surprised if Cyrus cared so long as exploiting Blackness and queerness brings her plenty of attention and money) of this kind of institutional racism and heterosupremacy. Certainly Madonna wasn't the first and Cyrus isn't going to be the last White or straight and cisgender identified person to profit from the bodies and work of Black, Brown, and Queer people, but we must call them, and people like Yates, to recognition of these facts, and how the policing of Cyrus's body as a woman stems from these same systems of oppression.

An Open Letter to Anna Bross and Other News Editors

Today Anna Bross declared that NPR will not refer to Chelsea Manning as she/her, but will continue to use he/him despite Chelsea's express wishes.  Of course, NPR isn't the only news outlet stigmatizing and refusing to honor Chelsea's wishes. Below is the letter I just emailed her.  It applies to any news organization that refuses to recognize Manning's agency.

Ms. Bross,

As a long-time listener of NPR as a source of news with intelligence and depth, I am disgusted at your ignorance about transgender people and gender identity in general.  Your choice to continue to refer to Chelsea Manning, despite her stated wishes, as he/him is a display of the worst kind of heteronormativity, cis-gender privilege, and systematic genderbashing.  Do you understand those terms?  If not, I suggest you do some research.  Gender is not about genitalia, it's about how we understand ourselves.  Some people, like myself, and likely yourself, understand our gender (male in my case, female in yours) as aligning with the sex were were assigned at birth.  (You need to understand also how sex also is much less clear than what you likely believe.)  Others understand their gender differently from their assigned sex.  Chelsea Manning has stated that she is one of those people.  

Your insistence on continuing to use male pronouns for Chelsea, or anybody, who states a preference to be referred to otherwise (such as she/her, or perhaps ze/hir) needs to be honored.  Why do you feel like you have the authority or right to police and decide for Chelsea, or anybody, their gender?  Why do you think it's ethically sound to decide what Manning's sex is?  Are you a genitalia expert?  Have you seen Manning's genitalia?  Do you know whether Manning has a penis or just an enlarged clitoris?  Do you know Manning's chromosomes?  If not, I'd strongly urge you to let Chelsea decide what is proper to call her.  Even if you knew all of this information, you do not have the right to police other people's decisions about how they wish to be known.  

Would you object if, although you seem to present and identify as a woman, as female, news outlets, friends, family, the public, decided to call  you a man and refer to you as he/him?  I suspect you'd object strongly to this because you see yourself as a woman.  So does Chelsea.  It doesn't matter who you think she is.  I expect better from NPR and its staff: I expect you not to promote systematic discrimination.  Your actions today have done this.

I have donated to NPR in the past, but I will no longer do so unless you reconsider this decision.  I'm sure my donation is a small sum compared to your corporate partners, but it's what I can do other than urge you to consider how you are harming the life of not just Chelsea Manning, but effectively declaring that no trans person has the right to declare their own personhood and terms of engagement with others.

I urge you to rethink your position.