Elin, Moaquin, Jamie, Mo', Catch a ____ by the Toe or F*ck Tiger Woods

Nothing grabs the attention like a well placed expletive.

or a headline about golf's golden (Cablinasian) boy getting caught out there with a "side chick" (or three (or nine)).

I've never been a fan of the term side chick though I suppose it's better than some of the other names circulating for the women straight men have sex with outside of monogamous relationships. The term side chick presumes a certain marginal status, which really belies their prevalence in the world of male celebrity or in Tiger's life in particular.

All of the comments about their (un)attractiveness and more importantly their whiteness to his blackness are not really what this post is about. Clearly in the context of Tiger Wood's infidelity, the one drop rule is still in effect. Scan any sex shop or porn site and you'll surely find evidence of America's obsession with white women having sex with black men. Post-racial world my ass.

The human piece, a woman's hurt at discovering lies and infidelity, gets overlooked and Tiger's transgressions become a profit bearing clusterf*ck of sensational headlines, news stories, blogs and parodies. His wife's pain, or at least having her (American) dream life tarnished, is relegated to the background and folks even have the nerve to defend his actions.

The excuses, the letters of support and words of encouragement being made for him are blowing my mind. Even from sources I normally like. Because he's good at hitting a tiny ball he gets a pass on infidelity? Nope. I'm not biting.

Celebrity culture and sports mania allow men to get off the hook for cheating, abusing, and even killing the women they purport to love. I'm particularly pissed when these men make vows to not do what they've done (and continue to do). Straight folks, what happen to protecting marriage?

I think what is most unbelievably frustrating about this is the fact that these men have options besides cheating. Non-monogamy works for a lot of people. You don't have to get married and even if you do you don't have to be monogamous. All these women are asking is that you keep the promises that you made regarding the relationship and if that's not working anymore, ask for what you need. If fidelity isn't it, man up and say that shit!

It amazes me that men will complain about the rules they set up when they break them. White supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy privileges the nuclear family and so to be completely successful (and marketable) a man's gotta have the dutiful housewife and the 2.3 kids. But that's not enough. In America, excess doesn't exist so why sleep with one woman if you can sleep with 12?

In general, I don't give a f*ck about Tiger Woods or his lost endorsements. What I do care about is this situation as yet another example of problematic gendered relationships between men and women in this country.

Wheelchair Dancer: Trauma Matters

 

 

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Wheelchair Dancer: Trauma Matters

via Raven's Eye by maia on 12/12/09

Wheelchair Dancer: Trauma Matters.

Call for submissions: Icarus Scarsongs Trauma Reader

SCARSONGS
An Anthology Articulating the Terrain of Trauma and Resilience

Trauma matters.

When safety and connection are shattered, when we live through pain and horror, when we experience mutual support and resilience, fault lines erupt across our lives and divide our communities. Exploring the fallout is not a sign of weakness; it is an essential part of preparing to rejoin struggles for sanity, peace, and liberation. When we spend time healing and articulating the contours of our experience, we become capable of illuminating the way for others and building a movement that can sustain itself in the long term.

We believe it is time for a reader that tells our stories and gathers our poems, radiates with our art and speaks our thoughts. Understanding and being able to relate, calling out and hearing other voices can help us to find individual and collective strength in the face of political, ecological, social and personal trauma.

Your input can be very valuable to other people.

This project is a collaboration of the Icarus project, the Bay Area Radical Mental Health Collective, and Activist Trauma Support. Our aim is to create a beautiful, creative, readable document about trauma and resilience, drawing from a diversity of communities and backgrounds and addressing a wide range of topics and experiences.

We invite submissions in a range of formats, including, but not limited to, essays, interviews, stories, poems, songs, illustrations, photographs, paintings, and collage. We invite submissions on:

• The wounding and the pain - abuse, assault, rape, war, death, police brutality, oppression, physical and structural violence, ritualistic and systematic abuse, natural disasters, catastrophic and chronic illness, birth and generational trauma, and political repression. Fear, anxiety, panic, dissociation, nightmares, addiction, post traumatic stress, depression, self-mutilation, self-harm, suicide.
• The healing and resilience - community support, creativity, grieving, nature, self-care, personal ritual, expression, therapy, activism, holding abusers and oppressors accountable, connecting with allies, looking inwards and speaking out.
• The importance of trauma work to building movements of collective liberation and social justice.
• Experiences of trauma support on an individual, community and political scale.

We understand trauma as self-defined and submissions can stay anonymous if desired.

The deadline for submissions is March 21st, 2010. You can also send us your ideas and ask for feedback on whether they would fit.

For more info and submissions, email: scarsongs@gmail.com

 

 

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Urgent Community Support Needed For Youth Organization

 

 

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Urgent Community Support Needed For Youth Organization

via cripchick// blog by cripchick on 12/12/09

Hi beautiful blog readers,

A few of you may have noticed that a lot of my posts are about my experience as an organizer with the Disabled Young People's Collective, a crew of disabled youth living across North Carolina. By "collective" i mean that we share decision making power, rotate responsibilities, and are volunteer organizers working with a shoestring budget. It has been a challenge to become a collective (a lot of this has been around internalized ableist beliefs and disability hierachy) but I am so proud to be a part of DYP because it really teaches me what interdependence can mean and what leadership can really look like.

I am not able to go into too much detail online but the more we radicalize and organize from our own vision for what we want community to look like, the more we have taken financial losses. As a group made up of youth of color, foster youth, queer youth, low-income youth, and youth with disabilities traditionally ignored by the Disability Rights Movement, we are all fighting for self-determination in our own lives and do not have financial resources we can put in ourselves.

Right now, we are in the red and we desperately need to come up with some money so we can meet in January to regroup and figure out how we are going to move forward. Even though we will be sleeping on the floor of a friend's apartment clubhouse, cooking our own food, and carpooling, it still costs a couple hundred to host a meeting that meet all of our access needs.

Our collective has done a lot of amazing work this year (for example, our Disability History Month Initiative where we went into ten 8th grade classrooms to teach about eugenics, institutionalization, self-determination and youth power this past October) and we want to continue it. Please help us make this possible by visiting thedypcollective.org and hitting the paypal button on the left!

This organization has transformed me and I thank you for your support.

In community,

cripchick

PS. Everyone who makes a donation will receive either a button you can rep DYP with, one of our limited 113 page zines that will teach you more than you ever wanted to know about disability rights, a few of our bookmarks highlighting frida kahlo, audre lorde, teddy pendergrass and other amazing disability leaders, or one of the hot DYP tshirts we rock everywhere (this will get you noticed!!). Our website is still under major construction but you can find out more at http://thedypcollective.org

 

 

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