(no subject)
richard:
she thinks you are smart, she just doesn't like the whole lesbian thing.
the whole lesbian thing?
this girl whose outwardly queerphobic to the point of saying homosexuality is "sinful," stepped into my house last night. she had a class with one of my mentors who teaches radical black feminisms and is a queer-identified professor. i have seen her at halstead market days and at pride, preening over the gayborhood. queers and fags are only safe as festival objects as exoticized elements of your liberal digestion. we are not sinful when we spend our money like you do or have but one (flawed)day a year for acknowledgment, maybe empowerment. as long as we are on channel 5-7-9 as mockery and narrow queer story told by straight onlookers. how is that different than everyone talking about martin luther king during black history month or gloria estefan on hispanic history month? let's not start about asian-american(note: absence of pacific islander) history month. just give "them" a day, a month,give them. as if everyday is not a taking or not lived. when you see large steel boriqua flags, rainbow flags on car antennae, t-shirts with filipina folks songs, women sharing stories, we are giving ourselves what people continuously steal. our land, resources, our rights, our own stories and interpretations, our bodies, our music, our familía: our brilliant energies to change the world. i am not only gay during pride, only a dyke at dykemarch, only a woman at the march for women's lives, only filipina on filipino *independence* day. how kitschy it is to make whole cultures a sound byte only valid when your alright, ok, not too close now, don't revoltmobilizequestionshift power, ok with it. i have a problem with my close hetero friend fancying a girl like this. then the woman proceeded to say, "i was a little bit worried on my way here. it is pretty ghetto an dangerous." who says ghetto and dangerous and truly means it without any satire at all? there are people who valorize humboldt park for these reasons, think it cool, or more urban without any contextualization about the her/history of the neighborhood. the boriqua flags and the brown people aren't a measely excuse for your cheaper rent. this is still the north side. urban blacklatinoofcolorimmigrant youth isn't the absolute marker of directions and maps. for survival its been created this way. for segregation its been plotted this way. besides for a newly married middle-class couple, it's "bucktown" and for artists nauseated by wicker park landlords renting their rehabbed buildings say "westtown." politicized businesses, education, and neighborhood organizing have grown and continues to grow here. i don't date people who are tacitly or overtly racist. it would be immediately unacceptable, not a possibility, not an option in my spiritual space now. yes, two years ago say, i would consider someone in their liberal feminism who has yet to connect race,class,ability, nation of origin and queer analysis to the "gender revolution." these days though sun tea, my reading chair, and fresh mozzarella is fetching. there are better conversations with growing plants on the sill. my on-going correspondence with clouds or chipped paint goes better at the heart. forget about fancying people.
she thinks you are smart, she just doesn't like the whole lesbian thing.
the whole lesbian thing?
this girl whose outwardly queerphobic to the point of saying homosexuality is "sinful," stepped into my house last night. she had a class with one of my mentors who teaches radical black feminisms and is a queer-identified professor. i have seen her at halstead market days and at pride, preening over the gayborhood. queers and fags are only safe as festival objects as exoticized elements of your liberal digestion. we are not sinful when we spend our money like you do or have but one (flawed)day a year for acknowledgment, maybe empowerment. as long as we are on channel 5-7-9 as mockery and narrow queer story told by straight onlookers. how is that different than everyone talking about martin luther king during black history month or gloria estefan on hispanic history month? let's not start about asian-american(note: absence of pacific islander) history month. just give "them" a day, a month,give them. as if everyday is not a taking or not lived. when you see large steel boriqua flags, rainbow flags on car antennae, t-shirts with filipina folks songs, women sharing stories, we are giving ourselves what people continuously steal. our land, resources, our rights, our own stories and interpretations, our bodies, our music, our familía: our brilliant energies to change the world. i am not only gay during pride, only a dyke at dykemarch, only a woman at the march for women's lives, only filipina on filipino *independence* day. how kitschy it is to make whole cultures a sound byte only valid when your alright, ok, not too close now, don't revoltmobilizequestionshift power, ok with it. i have a problem with my close hetero friend fancying a girl like this. then the woman proceeded to say, "i was a little bit worried on my way here. it is pretty ghetto an dangerous." who says ghetto and dangerous and truly means it without any satire at all? there are people who valorize humboldt park for these reasons, think it cool, or more urban without any contextualization about the her/history of the neighborhood. the boriqua flags and the brown people aren't a measely excuse for your cheaper rent. this is still the north side. urban blacklatinoofcolorimmigrant youth isn't the absolute marker of directions and maps. for survival its been created this way. for segregation its been plotted this way. besides for a newly married middle-class couple, it's "bucktown" and for artists nauseated by wicker park landlords renting their rehabbed buildings say "westtown." politicized businesses, education, and neighborhood organizing have grown and continues to grow here. i don't date people who are tacitly or overtly racist. it would be immediately unacceptable, not a possibility, not an option in my spiritual space now. yes, two years ago say, i would consider someone in their liberal feminism who has yet to connect race,class,ability, nation of origin and queer analysis to the "gender revolution." these days though sun tea, my reading chair, and fresh mozzarella is fetching. there are better conversations with growing plants on the sill. my on-going correspondence with clouds or chipped paint goes better at the heart. forget about fancying people.