Reaching Out

Good morning f-list! It is Sunday 8th and I am ready to hit 40k today. I think. Anyway, here's a Sunday Linkfest!

We'll start with a fashion designer using dead animals as accessories. Some of it looks good, some of it is just LOL WHUT, and others are just meh.

ardwynna_m tips us off on some dumb RaceFail nonsense spouted by some makeup producer.

In Canada, sex trafficking has started to target aboriginal women.

What Tami said: Civil Rights, but Just For Me:
To my surprise, while doing a little research on the martyr known as "The Great One," I discovered that, though time has cemented Gandhi in the public consciousness as a loving but determined champion for world equality. He may well not have supported civil rights for all marginalized people.

Hugo Schwyzer on the words "engulf" vs. "penetrate", as well as the multiple meanings of the word "fuck".

Transgriot: Louisiana Justice of Peace who refused to marry an interracial couple has resigned!

The Fort Hood shooting makes me sad.

Anthropologist Levi-Strauss dies. And I have yet to catch up on reading his many essays.

From Racialicious:
Quoted: Kenji Yoshino on Covering and Conformity
Contemporary civil rights has erred in focusing solely on traditional civil rights groups, such as racial minorities, women, gays, religious minorities, and people with disabilities. This assumes those in the so-called mainstream – those straight white men – do not have covered selves. They are understood only as impediments, as people who prevent others from expressing themselves, rather than as individuals who are themselves struggling for self-definition. No wonder they often respond to civil rights advocates with such hostility. They experience us as asking for an entitlement they themselves have been refused – an expression of their full humanity.

Special Presentation: Wesley Du's If I Was Like You. This is a two-part video currently on Youtube that was showing at the DC APA Film Festival. Here's the first bit:



You can see the rest over at Racialicious, and there's a discussion going on there too, on how race affects interpretations of the film, and how the film addresses how intra-PoC conversations occur, or don't occur.

Over at FWD/Forward:
on Hipster Ableism

Representations of Disabled Bodies in Logos - a very interesting quiz

The International Symbol of Acceptance


From Shakesville:

Gabrielle Union is made of win. Her original post is here

More Polanski fail, but is kinda offset by a Shaker presenting a petition signed by other Shakers to Emma Thompson herself when she was at Exeter University. And whaddya know? Emma Thompson took the petition seriously and will be removing her name from the list! You can congratulate Caitlin here for her good work ^_^

Screaming or Not:
And, having found myself in a similar situation to Zan, and having similarly not screamed, I've realized that another part of the subconscious shit that creates my self-imposed silence in those quick seconds is the fear that screaming would induce him to violently silence me, that my screaming would somehow escalate the situation. Was I thinking there was still a chance he wasn't going to do anything, but would only if I screamed? As if rapists are made by screaming? Ugh.

Melissa McEwan gets discussed in forums. And yet she is still made of win. (MUST-READ OF THE WEEK):
This stuff is designed to dehumanize me, to scare me, to upset me, to deter me, to silence me. It does not work.

I've been reading it now for five years. I process it by putting it through a meat grinder, turning it into a juicy sausage, and eating it NOM NOM NOM. I process it by letting it be my sustenance. My belly is filled with this fuel, reminder after reminder after tired-ass reminder about why I'm doing what I'm doing.

Over at Womanist Musings:

Renee remembers Election Day. Heavens, has it really been a year since Obama was voted into office? Cripes.

sparkindarkness guests posts: Polite Prejudice:
There is no way you can say "I think you are inherently inferior to me and not deserving of the same rights as me" and not offend, annoy or insult me.

(Trigger Warning) My Friend Was Raped


To finish, Andy Hertzberg proposed to his partner at a DC Council hearing on a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in the capital of the United States of America. Good luck, America.



As Liss would say, FEEL THE HOMOMENTUM!

And have yourselves a happy Sunday ^_^