Because I am a Woman

I am a graduate student studying in Worcester, MA. I am also a peer sex educator, reproductive justice activist, and feminist.

This blog is about sex-positivity, sex-ed, feminism, reproductive justice, birth justice, intersectionality, and activism.

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Posts tagged "POC"

(via feminist-space)

Terms such as “culturally deprived,” “economically disadvantaged” and “underdeveloped” place the responsibility for their own conditions on those being so described. This is known as “blaming the victim.” It places responsibility for poverty on the victims of poverty. It removes the blame from those in power who benefit from, and continue to permit, poverty.

Still another example involves the use of “non-white,” “minority” or “third world.” While people of color are a minority in the U.S., they are part of the vast majority of the world’s population, in which white people are a distinct minority. Thus, by utilizing the term “minority” to describe people of color in the U.S., we can lose sight of the global majority/minority reality - a fact of some importance in the increasing and interconnected struggles of people of color inside and outside the U.S.

To describe people of color as “non-white” is to use whiteness as the standard and norm against which to measure all others.

Robert B. Moore, “Racism in the English Language”

Why people of color > “minorities” or “non-white”

(via wretchedoftheearth)

I definitely agree on using the phrase people of color instead of minorities or non-white. But the first few terms mentioned, especially “economically disadvantaged” - what is the appropriate term for discussing people who are poor? “Impoverished” is too strong, and just saying “poor people” over and over again doesn’t seem right either. I’m asking you, readers: what is the non-victim-blaming way to reference the poor?

(via stfuconservatives)

gaywrites:

Check out photographer Tatjana Plitt’s series of portraits titled “Gay Warriors,” a look at LGBT members of the armed forces and their families in the aftermath of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and in the ever-present shadow of DOMA. This one’s called Idalia & Angelie. Full interview here.

Fem Art Friday Feature; Kehinde Wlley

Wiley is widely known for his reappropriation of classic art poses and paintings into contemporary portraits of black men. From Wiley’s website:

Wiley’s larger than life figures disturb and interrupt tropes of portrait painting, often blurring the boundaries between traditional and contemporary modes of representation and the critical portrayal of masculinity and physicality as it pertains to the view of black and brown young men.

Read more here:

vizzzibility:

Every body is a beautiful body.

art by: k!m possible

(via safespacenetwork)

What does it mean to be a young Woman of Color studying the lives and work of dead white men? What does it mean to watch your best friend start shouting in a crowded bar on the lower east side because she can’t take one fucking class on Latin American art history and you both know, you know you’re supposed to be studying at the best university in the world? What does it mean to tokenize the work of People of Color—Frida reduced to sensuality, Basquiat just a savage made noble by New York City? What does it mean to sit in seminar and realize with a strange and sinking feeling that you are only one of two Women of Color in the room?

The Ivory Tower Doesn’t Yet Have a Room for Brown Girls « The Ellipses Project (via theuntitledmag)

i remember when i would literally hold my breath until a POC enters the room. i still do it now.

(via kagey)

I remember passing by a group of girls once talking about “you didn’t miss much in class today, we watched a documentary about how black people are like, not pretty.”

Awesome, so even when schools do have Africana Studies department and have spaces to discuss issues like western beauty standards - no one’s gonna take that shit seriously anyway. COOL.

(via newwavefeminism)

.pdfs

mylifeasafeminista:

are prisons obsolete? by angela davis

zami sister outside undersong by audrey lorde

black feminist thought by patricia hill collins

beyond the frame: women of color and visual representation by angela davis & neferti tadiar

selling hot pussy: representations of black female sexuality in the cultural marketplace by bell hooks

also, not by WOC but:

envisioning (black) male feminism: a cross-cultural perspective samuel adu-poku

black trans* fact sheet