!

"#$%&'()*+,-&
!
the radical notion that women are people. feminism [fem-uh-niz-uhm]
noun the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights o wom-
en equal to those o men. feminism is organized activity on behal o
womens rights and interests. as a woman i have no country, as a woman
my country is the whole world. - virginia woolf. feminism is a collection
o movements and ideologies aimed at deining, establishing, and defend-
ing equal political, economic, and social rights for everyone. feminism
is both an intellectual commitment and a political movement that seeks
gender justice and the end o sexism in all forms. feminism is respecting
people o all gendrs, races, and sexuality as human beings. feminism is for
everyone. feminism is the belie that equal rights are not deined by sex.
feminism [fem-uh-niz-uhm] verb to help women get the vote, ob- tain
equal rights for jobs, make laws to control domestic violence, obtain the
rights to own property, to divorce, to have access to birth control and to
have possession o their own bodies. wake up people, and look around you.
i you have some power than your job is to empower someone else. - toni
morrison. feminism means recognizing the past inequalities that have
historically denied women access to many social, economic and polit- ical
spheres that are mostly occupied by menalso recognizing the result o
these inequalities have lasting impacts today. a woman without a man is
like a ish without a bicycle. gloria steinem. feminism challenges the
dominant narrative. feminism is the difference between life and death.
feminism is a celebration o diversity. feminism is inclusion feminism says
the personal is political. feminism is having a room o ones own. feminism
blnestockings
(
qThe Radical Self-Respect o Zora Neale Hurston
Heike Rodriguez
,+ When Ghettos Become Verbs and
We Concede Our Wrongness o Being
Marco McWilliams
, In Memoriam and Solidarity
Paige Allen, Radhika Rajan, Amanda Jones, Kristy Choi,
Amy LaCount, Nicole Hasslinger
z diaspora(s)
maya inoh

q My Shanghainese Mama
Daphne Young Xu
o The Means Justify Themselves:
Queering as End-less Pleasure
Blake Beaver
Enough to Say Aloud
Sara Winnick
8+ Underground Dandelions
Julieta Crdenas
table ol contents
The Unlikely Success o the Single Father: +o
Towards a Queer Feminist Politics o Single Parenting .
L. Sovereign .
An Interview With Anne Fausto-Sterling +q .
Chanelle Adams for Bluestockings .
.
The Hill and the Man: Questioning Masculinity in +} .
the Richie Incognito Incident .
Dillon OCarroll .
I Thought I Was a SirenandIdTrappedYou inMy Hair z .
.Dee McElhattan .
z8 .
.
.
Rooted |, .
The Brown Market Shares Program Coordinators: .
Taylor Lanzet, Sam Dweck, Katie Parker, Erin Kelley, f
Anna Plumlee, Julie Rodriguez, Antonia Piccone, Meagan Miller .

More than Coincidence: Bridging Gaps Between |} .
Environmental and Reproductive Justice .
Yucca Bianca W. .

Young Bluestockings Writing Challenge 43 ff f
On Intersectionality ff f
Valerie Chu f
We identify as a feminist publication and community.
The four principles that guide our work are: inclusivity, intersectionality, diversity, and
community.
We do not try to answer the question, What is feminism? but rather, What can
feminism be? We recognize that people have different feminisms and we believe in a
plurality o feminisms. At the same time, our feminism is rooted in anti-oppression and
anti-discriminationin the belie that feminism is inextricably linked to issues such as
race, sexuality, and class.
We understand our feminism as an ongoing process that will always relect and build
upon itself. We constantly strive to do better in our theory and practice o feminism.
We openly accept and encourage submissions from many different backgrounds.
We aim to bring marginalized voices to the center; to consciously feature members o
communities that are marginalized because o race, color, religion, nationality, class,
disability, gender and/or sexual identity. We hope to promote and practice inclusivity o
all identities and orientations.
We accept work o every medium and from every genre, including: iction, noniction,
poetry, visual art, video, performance, and academic writing.
We work to make Bluestockings a platform for engaging work on feminist issues, in-
cluding those that express radical and dissenting viewpoints.
We believe feminism can be a generative process that has relevant and productive ties to
every other area o study.
We hope to create a community surrounding Bluestockings where creative production
can lead to self-relective conversations that develop into broader social impact.
We believe that empathy for ourselves and others is the foundation o our mission.
Mission Statement
!!!
blnestockings
lall zo+|

Editors in Chief
Kristy Choi Nicole Hasslinger Ann Kremen Amy LaCount
Design
Andrew Beers Namita Devadas Adeline Mitchell
Illustrations
Sarah Weiss
Business
Thomas Baker Amanda Jones
Academic David Sanchez-Aguilera Shierly Mondianti
Art Jennifer Avery Camille Coy Chaelin Suh
Culture Anastasiya Gorodilova Sophia Seawell
Features Lily Gutterman Tanya Singh
Literature Stefania Gomez Maru Pabn
Opinions Lucy Bates-Campbell
Politics Jasmine Bala Sara Erkal
Sex &Health Radhika Rajan Paige Allen
Blog Managing Editor
Einar Ragnar Jnsson
Blog Iditors
Lauren Allegrezza Amanda Duncil Ginger Hintz Andrea Jackson Mari LeGagnoux
Marco Lomazzo Sara Luckey Maria E. Orbay-Cerrato Shreena Thakore
Our hope with this issue is to provide a space to work out the
tensions that exist in ourselves and our communities between
responding to the mass media and making space to recount our
own narratives and the experiences o historically marginalized
communities. Who do we want to spend more time responding
to? Whose voices deserve to be included in the conversation? As
we look to the future, we want to make time and space to discuss
these questions with you.
Since our last publication, Bluestockings has expanded on all
platforms: our publication, blog, and zine. We are grateful to see
our editorial team developing to include new members. Through
the zine, we are beginning to build on connections we have
established with other groups o thinkers and activists on Browns
campus, creating coalitions and collaborative projects. Our blog
has been online for over a year, and our audience continues to
grow daily as we reach thousands o viewers across the United
States and around the world. We also started an Annual Young
Bluestockings Writing Challenge to give high school students a
space to discuss feminism; read the winner o this years challenge
in this issue.
It is humbling to see the growth o our voice and inluence,
and rewarding to have a chance to promote writers and artists
from our community as well as globally. But as Brown University
proves to be unaccepting o activism and anti-oppression views,
we are taking the time to remember and reclaim our origins as
this campuss only intersectional feminist publication. We want
to become a space where Brown students know they can safely
express themselves on issues like race, gender, and sexuality.
With love,
Kristy Choi Nicole Hasslinger Ann Kremen Amy LaCount
In 2013, feminism arose into public consciousness. Mass media
asked us repeatedly: Who is the new face o feminism? Offering
answers were igures like Sheryl Sandberg, who sold us Lean
In, and Miley Cyrus, who proclaimed hersel one o the biggest
feminists in the world.
Writers, scholars, and activists have rigorously responded to
mainstream feminism, critiquing the classism o Sandberg, the
racism o Cyrus and the exclusivity o those with the platform
to call themselves feminists. This work is certainly important.
But that game is rigged. Individuals like Sandberg and Cyrus have
privilege and power on their sidean entire capitalist system that
is eager to commodify and sell a brand o feminism for passive
consumption.
The equally challenging but, perhaps, more radical task is to
create space for marginalized and underrepresented voices so
that larger discourse can begin to respond to their stories. As we
constantly struggle to re-interrogate what feminism means to us
while the world around us presents it in unremittingly problem-
atic ways, we remind ourselves o our core mission: inclusivity,
diversity, intersectionality, and community. These four principles
have guided much o our work this semester, although not with-
out complications and shortcomings.
Ietter lrom
tbe Iditors
!!!
| 11
seasons o the 1990s show, Full House. The Tan-
ner family stands out among 1990s sitcom fam-
ilies because o the shows premise: that white
father Danny Tanners wife Pam died leaving
him to parent three daughters alone. Although
Pams death marks the Tanners as different
from most sitcom families, it is through her
death that the sitcom entertains, both creating
the series plot, and making single father Danny
endearing and lovable. We feel invested in Full
House because its dificult to imagine a man par-
enting three daughters without a wife. In the
midst o mourning their mother, the Tanner
family somehow pulls through. We mourn Pam
with the Tanners, and we celebrate Dannys
unlikely success as a single father.
Growing up, I frequently witnessed the Un-
likely Success o the Single Father. In contrast
to the single mothers I know, my dad always
won excessive praise and sympathy for his par-
enting. My dad is a good parent, and I certainly
agree with feminist theorists like bell hooks
who encourage more active fathering
1
. But
many people who applauded my dads parenting
did so with very little actual knowledge o his
parenting, and only the observation that my
sister and I functioned like most neurotypical
children our age. As with Danny Tanner, the
simple fact that my father was a man parenting
alone made him praiseworthy.
Single mothers, especially poor black single
mothers in the United States, historically have
received far less praise and wiggle room. In the
mid-1960s, one in ive Americans thought sin-
gle black mothers should be forcibly sterilized,
and many were
2
. Single black mothers faced
heightened obstacles to public housing, as social
workers increasingly viewed them as immoral
3
. President Lyndon B. Johnsons advisor Daniel
Patrick Moynihan released a report in 1965
blaming black womens excessive aggression
and independence for the disintegration o the
African-American family
4
. President Ronald
Reagan discredited the welfare state entirely
with thinly veiled racism and sexism, when
he named poor black single mothers Welfare
Queens. The mythical Welfare Queen purpose-
ly became pregnant with children she couldnt
support to collect state moneyher laziness led
her to choose unprotected sex over a job. With
appreciation for my dad and Danny Tanner
then comes a sad subtext about gender and par-
enting: a white man who parents his daughters
after his wife dies is so rare and notable that
the concept can stand as the primary premise
for a long-running and popular sitcom. Which
long-running American sitcom features a black
single mother and a generous laugh track?
I sexism privileges single fathering over
single mothering, the politics o mourning the
Mother certainly also contribute. Without the
tragedy o Pams death, Pam and Dannys mar-
riage would have likely lasted, a picture o white
heterosexual successDanny is not a single
father because o the failed heterosexuality o
divorce. Conident that neither Pam nor Danny
is to blame for disrupting their state-sanctiied
union, the audience can feel sympathy for the
Tanner family, relieved o their insecurity that
even heterosexual partnerships are lawed.
Pams death endears the Tanners to useven
without knowing Pam, we mourn her with
her family.
How can we mourn a character we never
even knew? Embedded in sympathy for the
Tanners is the troubling, i insidious, belie that
As a three-year-old girl in the mens bathroom, I walked up
to a urinal and picked up a urinal cake. After that, my dad began
carrying a pillowcase aroundi he had to use the restroom
in public, I would still accompany him, but now Id wrap the
pillowcase over my eyes. Blindfolded, I couldnt see the urinal
cakes, much less use them as toys to entertain mysel while my
dad peed.
Theres a certain humor in the moments absurdity: a young
girl in a decidedly masculine setting, not only oblivious to the
norms o the male bathroom that should exclude her, but also
unaware that urinal cakes absorb urine, and therefore dont make
for a great toy. Although certainly not my dads best moment as a
parent, the episode is also not particularly damning; he was, after
all, a single father raising two daughters, and he had to go to the
bathroom. I my childhood had been a sitcom like Full House, the
little girl in the mens bathroom scenario would have cued prere-
corded audience laughter. The audience would forgive my dads
temporary negligence not just because weve all had to pee at
inopportune moments, but out o empathy. He gets wiggle room.
He was just a single father, doing his best after losing his wife.
Its exactly this empathy that garnered popularity for eight
Tbe
Unlikely Snccess
ol tbe Single Iatber:
Towards a Qneer Ieminist Politics
ol Single Parenting
---
I. Sovereign
culture
| 12 | 13
writes, a hierarchy o grie could no doubt be
enumerated. We have seen it already, in the
genre o the obituary, where lives are quickly
tidied up and summarized, humanized or on the
way to be, heterosexual, happy, monogamous
5
.
I I grieve for my mom privately, I consider her
personhood. I I grieve with you, we grieve for
what the death o the Mother means to you,
and all the heteronormative baggage the word
Mother carries. Our grie both signiies and
intensiies our investment in the heterosexual,
happy, monogamous family.
Full House isnt just a sitcom about a white
family in San Francisco. Dannys unlikely suc-
cess reassures us that even motherless, wounded
heterosexual families persevere. Full House forc-
es us to confront the precarity o the two-het-
erosexual-parent home. As we grieve with the
Tanners and witness their recovery, we reach a
shaky catharsis for heteronormative anxiety. !
heteronormativity: the dominant narrative in
language, sociability, political structures, media
representations, et al. which normalizes het-
erosexuality as the only, and therefore, correct
behavior; casts other sexualities and sexual
behaviors as fundamentally atypical, abnormal,
unnatural and inauthentic
References:
(1) hooks, bell. Feminist Theory from Margin to
Center. New York: South End Press, 1984. 137.
(2) Orleck, Annelise. Storming Caesars Palace:
How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on
Poverty. Boston: Beacon Press, 2005. 78.
(3) Williams, Rhonda Y. The Politics o Public
Housing. New York: Oxford University Press,
2004. 40.
(4) Orleck, 81.
(5) Butler, Judith. Violence, Mourning, Politics
Wbicb long-rnnning American
sitcom leatnres a black single motber
and a generons langb track!
parenting becomes an entertaining struggle to
ease his daughters transition to womanhood
without their most important normatively
feminine role model. My dad receives buckets
o praise for doing what many mothers do
without recognition, simply because compul-
sive heterosexuality makes it tough to imagine
that he can do it alone.
Another consequence o heteronormativ-
ity is that even without knowing Pam, she is
familiar and we feel her absence. Mourning
someone elses loss requires a certain degree o
self-identiication. The Tanner familys grie
necessarily evokes a larger socially imagined
Mothersome amalgamation o your mother
and the other Mothers on TV. Anxiety follows:
i the Tanners could lose their mother, any-
body could. We mourn with the Tanners to
ease the anxiety o our own vulnerability.
Theres nothing wrong with worrying
about losing a loved one. But I share Judith
Butlers concern about using the familiar to
determine when a life merits mourning. Butler
children without mothers are deprived o their
natural entitlement to a two-parent heterosexu-
al home. This is not to say that fans o Full House
are homophobic, or even that all mothers are
heterosexual, but rather that heteronormativity
pervades social understanding o motherhood.
In broad American understandings o the family,
heterosexuality is as intimately connected to
parenting as Mothers Day and Fathers Day,
as MommyandDaddy spoken so quickly that
it sounds like a single word. Heterosexualitys
banality allows it to pass under our noses un-
marked, until we notice that its broken
or missing.
Because o heteronormativitys grip on the
family, heterosexuality is almost universally
knowable, even to queer people. Heternorma-
tivity provides an easily accessible understanding
o what it means to have a mother, and so con-
versely, what it means to grow up without one.
We watch Dannys children receive ample love
and care, but we still cant shake the concern
that they lack a Mothers tenderness. Dannys
culture culture
| 15
CA: When did you frst call yourself a
feminist?
AFS: The late 1960s during the second-wave
feminist movement. Before that, the term
didnt exist. I was a political activist, and it
was natural as that form o activism became
available that I became part o it.
CA: Other than a feminist, how else do
you identify?
AFS: Im way too old for identity politics now.
I think that those identity questions are for 20
and 30-year-olds, not a 70-year-old. I am who
I am in the world.
CA: Why is it that more scientists arent
involved in activism and investigating
how their science afects communities
and culture?
AFS: I think one o the reasons is what I call
the ideology o science which is the idea
that scientists are supposed to be neutral and
objective. Somehow having a viewpoint o the
world interferes with that objectivity. One o
the reasons why people become scientists is
because they like that life in the mind, abstract-
ed from the world. So people who want to be
more isolated from the world gravitate towards
science. And then, to have people pull on you
and say that, Science is related to the world,
and why dont you say anything about it is
hard for them.
CA: Tis is why there is a huge gap be-
tween scientists and the outside world of
culture and activism. How can that gap be
bridged?
AFS: There are a couple o ways. I you think
differently about how science works and how
you teach about science at the primary, sec-
ondary, and university levels, you might start
to recruit people who are more balanced into
the sciences. One thing to think about is who
becomes a scientist and what looks attractive to
them about science. I you begin to change the
worldview o what it takes to become a scientist
or what good science is, you might start attract-
ing different kinds o people to it.
Along with that is the whole idea o getting
diversity into science, and by diversity I mean
more people o color, more women, more
people from the working class to make it more
representative o our population. By doing that
you will start to bring in people who are more
connected to the rest o the world. Diversity in
science is an important piece o it, but it is not
the whole piece.
There is a huge need to continue to train people
to think critically about science, even i they are
not themselves doing science. Those people need
to have good relationships with scientists, which
is to say that they really need to understand the
science as well as be able to stand back and look
at its interconnectivity to the world. So that for
the scientists who say, It takes every ounce o
my effort to think about doing the science well, I
cant also be a science writer and communicator,
there is a community o scholars and profes-
sionals who can do that piece o it by working as
translators.
CA: You recently published a blog post for
the Boston Review, writing about the gender
discrimination you faced in academia. To-
wards the end of the piece you mention that
On July 27, 2013, Bluestockings editor Chanelle Adams sat down with
Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling to learn more about her personal views on
feminism, gender, and science.
Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling received her B.A. in zoology from
the University of Wisconsin and her Ph.D. in developmental
genetics at Brown University. Fausto-Sterling has taught at
Brown for over forty years. A controversial fgure through-
out her career, she has continually critiqued the lack of a
feminist perspective in mainstream scientifc research and
discussions. She is widely cited in feminist and scientifc texts
for her work deconstructing the sex/gender binary and her
rethinking of the nature/nurture divide.
Professor Fausto-Sterlings current research applies dynamic
systems theory to the study of human development, most
recently examining sex diferences in bone development and
gender behavioral diferences in early childhood. By chal-
lenging the artifcially constructed divide between nature/
nurture in both the academic and public discourses, Professor
Fausto-Sterling also aims to use scientifc research to re-frame
social policy. Although she recently stepped down as Chair
of the Science and Technology Studies Department at Brown,
Fausto-Sterling remains active in the University community
as the Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Biology and Gender
Studies in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and
Biochemistry.
an interview witb
Anne Iansto-Sterling
!!!
features
| 16 | 17
different physiologies. So the question is to igure
out what the distributions o norms is, as opposed
to the old way.
Historically, in the bad old days before feminism,
you had a single norm and that norm was 170lbs
in males and 58, and that norm had a certain
hematocrit [the percent volume o red blood
cells]. All my life people kept saying I was ane-
mic and Im not. My body just has a different
norm. We need to have multiple norms for peo-
ple o different sizes.
Now, whether gender is the best divider? For
some things height and weight might be a bet-
ter way to make categories. But the whole rea-
son why we categorize is in order to understand
whether someone is in medical trouble or not.
Its not like we can just get rid o all categories.
Its just not always clear that gender is the best
category to use. Sometimes gender can be a good
category. And obviously its a good category for
things having to do with reproductive health,
because the most dimorphic part is the repro-
ductive system.
In the early days o AIDS, and understanding it,
there was this idea that women didnt have it at
the same rate as men did. It was because all o
the symptoms that were being looked for were
symptoms that male bodies had. AIDS present-
ed rather differently in women. It was only after
feminist activists began to say, Look, there is a
pattern o AIDS with women and it looks differ-
ent and doctors are missing it because they are
Avesta Larly How to Be
the work of feminists in academia is not
yet done in terms of issues such as childcare
and tenure. What do you see as some of the
obstacles that my generation will have to
tackle? Can you identify more work that
needs to be done?
AFS: Thats a tough one. Im not sort o in the
head o your generation enough to know what
the world looks like from your point o view.
I do think there is still residual discrimination
o the overt kind. But much more o the subtle
kind that people dont even know is going on.
You know, theres a study that gets done every 10
years (there was one recently done at Yale) where
they submitted a research assistant job application
to a test panel and it was the same grant, but in
one case they used a womans name, and in the
other case they used a mans name. Both men and
women rated the application higher when it had
a mans name attached to it. There is still a sort o
default point o view that men are better at things,
especially in the science arena. And women have
that subconscious view too. I do think there is
still a whole question about afirmative action,
a need for it and a need to address the subtle types
o discrimination.
That gets into young womens own self-coni-
dence, to the extent that guys are still raised to
believe in themselves in comparison to young
women, who take longer to have conidence in
their abilities. There are still a lot o individual,
structural, and pedagogical things going on.
You still dont encounter enough different kinds
o female role models in the sciences. There
are certainly more female teachers in the sci-
ences than there used to be. But those women
are still facing problems, especially i they want to
have kids.
I always get back to the whole thing about how
the structures o universities dont support fami-
lies. Young families have a dificult time.
CA: In my experience in the classroom, it
is often that students who I perceive to be
white men are the ones who speak the most,
dominating conversations in the classroom.
AFS: Yes, and as a teacher, I can say that and its
not necessarily because they have anything more
to contribute. There is a lot o pedagogical things
that faculty could do to lessen that by really dis-
tributing the questions and the turns in terms o
talking.
CA: Especially in science classrooms, right?
AFS: Science pedagogy is a whole other thing.The
hierarchical, top-down approach to most science
classrooms is really a big problem and really dis-
courages many different kinds o voices from be-
ing heard and from developing. The big lecture
classroom, the high-pressure exams, the lack o
learning through experience in the classroom,
the authoritarian way the science classroom is
runthese are all just huge negatives. This type
o classroom keeps science structured the way it
currently is.
CA: Would you argue, just as a thought
experiment, that gender distinction
should be completely eradicated in
scientifc research?
AFS: This is the dilemma. We are, at least partially,
a dimorphic species. Adult men and women have
features features
| 18
There is a hill that lies down the street from my home in
Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is around sixty-ive yards long and runs
upwards at about a forty-ive degree angle. My senior year o
high school, my father would wake me up at ive oclock in the
morning, four days a week, to run up and down that hill ive
times. I like to think that when I die I will not experience hell,
but i I do, I know that it will pale in comparison to that hill. No
pain is ingrained into the depths o my nerves quite like the pain
my hamstrings and quadriceps had to endure on those mornings.
No burn will ever torture me as much as my lungs stung in the
cold fall air that year. It was hell. It was pain. It was beautiful.
In early November, Richie Incognitooffensive lineman for
the Miami Dolphins professional football team o the National
Football Leaguewas suspended for hazing fellow offen-
sive lineman and teammate Jonathan Martin. Incognito was
apparently told by the Miami Dolphins coaching staf that he
needed to toughen up Martin, who was not playing well and
was considered soft. Coaches presumed that Martin, a Stanford
graduate, was not physically and mentally strong enough to play
in the NFL. It was left up to Incognito to bring out the man in
Martin, to make him drop his nutsack, as some coaches might
Tbe Hill and tbe Man:
Qnestioning Mascnlinity in tbe
Ricbie Incognito Incident
!!!
Dillon O'Carroll
not understanding that there is more than one
pattern.
So, you cant take gender out o it, you need to
understand where there is difference, and where
it is salient and then also where it isnt salient.
You cant say there is one norm and everybody
should be looked at the same. On the other hand,
you cant say that men and women are two dif-
ferent species with no overlap. Its tricky; its
not clean.

CA: A lot of people have trouble under-
standing the diferences between gender
and sex, gender non-conforming identities,
intersex, and transgender identities. Why
is it that people are looking for biological
explanations when a lot of these concepts
are very social and cultural as well?
AFS: People think o science as more absolute
than it is. They igure they can get a simple, clear
answer from science. A lot o people like clari-
ty and simplicity. I think to the extent that we
are generally more inclusive o gender variabil-
ity, that trans* inclusivity will come along with
the rest.

CA: Is there anything you would like to say
to the young feminist community, advice,
cautions, etc.?
AFS: Im a lot older than a lot o you and so the
world that I inhabited and inhabit now looks
very different from your world. The irst thing
you need to do is take a good look at where you
are now and what the ongoing needs are for
you and for feminism more broadly. Dont just
make it about upper middle class white women.
A lot o you are very globally and international-
ly minded, which is a good thing. I urge people
to think politically, to think beyond their own
individual circumstances o people who are
different from you and have very different life
experiences. The feminist issues o my day were
very much about class, race and sexuality with
the goal to be a more inclusive movement. You
all start out in a better place with that regard
and you need to keep that in mind. Only you can
assess what happens next for your generation.
CA: We still try to do a lot of unpacking of
race, class, and gender at Bluestockings.
AFS: That always has to be part o the process.
It shouldnt paralyze you. But you should always
be thinking about it.!
This piece was edited by Einar Ragnar Jnsson
second-wave feminist movement: feminist activism
in the 1960s-80s; primarily concerned with achieving
equality in the workplace, protecting reproductive
choice, and passing the Equal Rights Amendment;
this movement was fraught with complications and
controversy, particularly because o its exclusion and
marginalization o women who did not identify as
white, cisgender, straight, and upper or middle-class
identity politics: political movements and discourses
centered around the concerns o social groups con-
structed mainly on basis o gender, race, ethnicity,
sexual orientation, and other categories o identity
trans*: an umbrella term for people whose gender
identity, expression or behavior is different from
those typically associated with their assigned sex
at birth; the asterisk indicates the possibility for in-
dividuals to identify with terms like genderqueer,
non-binary, agender, bigender, etc. which exceed the
prescriptive constraints o transsexual or transgender
features
| 20 | 21
In sports, and in lootball in
particnlar, men are snpposed to be
made ol iron and possess an indomi-
table will. Tbis is correct; lootball and
sports are nsnally a battle ol wills, and
tbe "tongber" person nsnally wins. Bnt
a strong will and passion do not and
sbonld not be associated witb tbe kinds
ol mascnlinity tbat abnsers nse to
jnstily tbeir actionsa mascnlinity
tbat reqnires men to bide emotion,
to obscnre trne leelings.
say. Incognito was charged with the respon-
sibility, like so many teachers, coaches and
fathers across the country, o helping a young
man grow into himsel as a productive member
o a team.
Incognito seemed like the man for the job,
but did not act like it. Instead o conferring
with Martin on what it would take to become
a better player in the NFL, he harassed Martin,
sending him derogatory text messages and
leaving him threatening and violent voicemails.
The crux o the abuse came from Incognito,
who is white, calling Martin, a black male,
the n-word (hard er). Martin suffered the
brunt o this abuse for an extended period o
time. After physically confronting Incognito,
he decided that showing up to work to be paid
hundreds o thousands o dollars for playing
Incognitos childlike game was no longer worth
being bullied. He checked himsel into a hospi-
tal for emotional distress, broken down from
the experience.
Through characterizing Incognitos text
messages and voicemails as harmless bully-
ing, many media commentators obscured the
connections Incognitos behavior has to present
and historic racial violence, framing it as an
isolated incident o bullying rather than as part
o a deeper culture o pervasive racism. Some
commentators, such as Skip Bayless, have gone
the opposite direction and blamed the n-word
for this situation entirely. He holds the belie
that the word should be eradicated from
the human language. Though this is certainly
admirable, Bayless misses the point that the
n-word is only a part o the problem. It is a ve-
hicle for racism but not the root o racism. The
culture around the word also creates problems,
a culture where black people are supposed to be
feared, inferior, or somehow less human than
whites. Calling this incident harmless bullying
or blaming the n-word entirely misses the
point that how we see and treat difference and
race in our culture allows for this type o harm-
ful and racist assault on human dignity.
This news (like most news related to
the NFL) held the nations attention for the
obligatory forty-eight to seventy-two hours.
During this time, several people o little to
no import gave their opinions on the matter.
Talking heads at ESPN, former players on
the NFL Network, and columnists (oh, how
many columnists there are in the world) broke
down both sides o the argument. They were
fair and balanced for the sake o being fair
and balanced. Some condemned Incognitos
actions as racist and wrong. Others questioned
Jonathan Martins openness in exposing this,
since these matters are usually handled in-
house. As former Baltimore Ravens defensive
tackle Tony Siragusa said on the Dan Patrick
Show, They talk about teams being a family.
When youre in the locker room, thats like
your homeThings are handled in there and
said in there that shouldnt be brought out to
the media. And plainly because the media, and
really the real world, cant handle a lot o those
things and things that happen in that locker
room. Some people wondered why no one in
the Miami Dolphin locker room stepped up to
defend Martin, while others defended the Mi-
ami Dolphins players who circled the wagons
around Incognito.
As a former player who has functioned in
a locker room, I completely understand the
sentiment to keep certain things inside o the
locker room. These players are your friends,
teammates, and, on a certain level, brothers.
You dont expose inner-workings to an outer
world that probably wont comprehend the
opinions opinions
| 22 | 23
weak. Surprisingly, both black and white peers
gave me this response. Like the Dolphin coach-
es, they all saw Martin as soft, and they agreed
that sometimes you have to just have to be a
man and ight. Incognito should not have used
the racial slurs, but Martin shouldnt be such a
pussy. Hes a 300 pound man! He shouldnt be
checking himsel into a hospital for emotional
distress. The coaches told Incognito to toughen
Martin up, and in the eyes o the masses,
Martin is a failing student, but not because
Incognito is a bad teacher.
My response to this makes me contemplate
questions o masculinity. It troubles me that
people think there is only one right idea o being
a man. There seems to be this prevailing idea
that manliness is measured by faux-machismo
signals. I am also concerned that my male peers
feel that sending derogatory text messages is a
useful and legitimate way to toughen someone
up. Somewhere between Teddy Roosevelt and
today, manliness was co-opted by tribal tattoos
and beer commercials.
How is showing great emotion, passion,
and vigor in all walks o lifesad and happy
not manly? In sports, and in football in partic-
ular, men are supposed to be made o iron and
possess an indomitable will. This is correct;
football and sports are usually a battle o wills,
and the tougher person usually wins. But a
strong will and passion do not and should not
be associated with the kinds o masculinity that
abusers use to justify their actionsa mascu-
linity that requires men to hide emotion, to
obscure true feelings.
In another example, Brandon Marshall, an
All-Pro wide receiver for the NFLs Chicago
Bears, was ined $10,500 by the NFL for wear-
ing green cleats during a game. He wore green
in honor o Mental Health Awareness Week,
having openly dealt with and confronted a per-
sonal bout with borderline personality disorder.
When Marshall was asked about the Incognito
incident, he said to the Chicago Tribune, Take
a little boy and a little girl. A little boy falls
down and the irst thing we say as parents is
Get up, shake it off. Youll be OK. Dont cry. A
little girl falls down, what do we say? Its going
to be OK. We validate their feelings. So right
there from that moment, were teaching our
men to mask their feelings, to not show their
emotions. And its that, times 100 with football
players. You cant show that youre hurt, cant
show any pain. So for a guy to come into the
locker room and he shows a little vulnerabil-
ity, thats a problem. Apparently the masses
think Martin should continue to hide his
feelings, that displaying them makes him look
like an untrained little boy. It takes incredible
strength and will to confront problems with
yourself, such as mental illness and other inner
demonscertainly more strength and will than
is required to beat someone of the line.
This brings me back to the hill. My father
woke me up at ive a.m. every morning to run
that hill, as he walked up it by my side. As a
captain o my high school football team and
senior offensive and defensive lineman, much
was expected o me. He and I both knew that a
state championship was an attainable goal, but
in order for that to be achieved, two things
must irst be earned. First, a level o physical
stamina unparalleled by any o my opponents.
Second, a mental toughness that would be a
guiding light in my hardest times. The hill
helped me gain both o those things. It burned,
it hurt, and it killed, but it made me tough.
Football games became easier for me, and
much more enjoyable. I took pride in knowing
I could climb the hill. The self-esteem gained
dynamics. But what i you no longer feel that
you are a friend, a teammate, a brother? Would
you not expect one o your brothers to stop the
bullying from escalating to the point where you
feel completely ostracized? Because once you
reach that level, you have no one to look out for
except yourself.
Jonathan Martin is an educated man, a
Stanford graduate who just so happens to play
football. Unfortunately, some people equate
a Stanford degree with being soft, though I
doubt Richie Incognito would have the mental
and emotional toughness to withstand the pres-
sures o being an African-American man nav-
igating his way through an elitist and rigorous
institution such as Stanford. But thinking about
this incident, I cant help but wonder why the
Dolphins coaches chose Incognito, who has had
a reputation o viciousness on the ield, to men-
tor Martin. Was there not another veteran on
the offensive line who could step in? Did they
not think about the type o person Incognito
is and how the dynamics o a relationship with
Incognito would play out? It should have been
clear that Martin, a minority in several senses
o the word (not only is he African-American,
but Stanford grads dont usually play in the
NFL) would not have responded well to a man
like Incognito, who has a history o arrests and
bad behavior. Martin was subjected to bullying
and abuse from a person with less character
than himself, a person who has been kicked of
teams time and time again. The Dolphins put
Martin in a situation where he showed up to
work every day as inferior to an inferior man.
But since Incognitoa white male, veteran o
the league, arrest warrant championhad more
experience, he was put into a position o men-
torship. A position one could say that wasnt
earned by merit, but by having the privilege to
be born a white man.
But some people do not see it like this.
Incognitos criminality and violence play into
hyper-masculine stereotypes valued in football.
Incognitos ability to faithfully display such
behaviors gained him the respect o his team-
mates. One Dolphins player went as far as call-
ing Incognito an honorary black. Because o
this, Incognito felt he was in a position to use
the n-word with impunity regardless o Mar-
tins feelings or skin color. This reinforces the
problem o associating this type o violent and
criminal-esque behavior with African-Ameri-
can men. Incognito probably thought what he
was saying was okay; he was violent enough to
be considered down as his organization and
the culture around him allowed him as a white
male to think his behavior and language
was acceptable.
This analysis was expressed by columnists
with a critical lens on race. However, the most
interesting commentary did not come from the
columnists, or the players, or the talking heads.
Rather, it came from my football-plebian
friends. Transcending class lines, everyone
from the guys I live with to the fantasy football
heroes back homeagreed that although the
use o the n-word was wrong, Incognito was in
the right.
It was in these conversations that I became
the most worried. One does not gauge the true
pulse o an idea by listening to the columnist
although they often fail (as do I)it is their job
to attempt to be nuanced and learned. It comes
from listening to people. When asking male
friends about the Incognito incident, the pre-
vailing reaction was Martin is a grown man,
he has to step up for himself. This usually
coincided with the idea that Martin had to step
up for himsel by ighting, and that he seemed
opinions opinions
| 24 | 25
warped conception o what being a man means.
Richie Incognito took the easy way out. He
could have built Martin up, turning Martin
into a better football player by staying late with
Martin to watch ilm, encouraging Martin to
run ten extra plays after practicerunning
the hill. Instead, Incognito thought that it was
his job to force destructive stereotypes onto
Martin. He took the beer commercial route
o masculinity, the one that stiles human ex-
pression. Incognitos actions did not toughen
up Jonathan Martin; they broke his spirit.
The pain o racial suffering is not the pain o
a muscle being built, it is the pain o an injury
going untreated. The pain made Martin hate
the sport he loved. It made Martin want to
walk away from thousands o dollars. Incog-
nito resorted to tactics o an abuser, belittling
another human being to manipulate their
behavior. Maybe this is what Incognito wanted,
envious o a man with an education, envious o
a younger and better player. Regardless, i any-
one in this situation should be labeled soft, it
is not Martin. Jonathan Martin made the brave
and correct decision for himselfhe sought
help. On the other hand, Incognito displayed
just how petulant, childish, and harmful many
o these masculine stereotypes can be.
Unfortunately, these stereotypes are pre-
vailing in our culture, as i they are the values
that I want placed on the top o my hill. But
they arent, and when we put these stereotypes
on a pedestal to be reached, we cloud out
the otheroften more productivetypes o
masculinity worth striving for. Hopefully this
conversation will not come to an uneventful
and unhelpful end, with Incognito only being
sent of to sensitivity training and Martin be-
ing pushed out o the league. No one wants to
talk about what it means to be a man, because
for the most part, we dont know. Whatever it
is though, it is certainly not the man Richie In-
cognito thought Jonathan Martin should be. !
from conquering it helped me to become a
better leader.
Although I was confronted with a literal hill,
people are faced with their own hills every
day. It is important that the mentors o the
future have a better understanding o what it
means to forge masculinity. Manliness is some-
thing that comes about in context, and since
every man is different, mentors need to be
receptive to an individuals needs. They should
be open-minded to difference and personal
history, and strive for a society that embraces
different types o manliness. Hopefully, when
a mentee reaches the top o their hill they will
have achieved characteristics to be proud of,
ones that promote human equality and love
without sacriicing strength. All young men
are unique and face different, but nonetheless
dificult, challenges in their lives. The people
who care for these young men are charged
with a responsibility to make sure that they are
supported in becoming men. Because Incogni-
to did not help Martin get up the hill, he failed
Martin, and that is Incognitos fault, due to his
Grace Ellis Digital Dis-integration
opinions opinions
| 26 | 27
I Tbongbt
I Was A
Siren and I Trapped
Yon In My Hair
I worked till midnight and when we
broke up after I got off, all I thought
on was my aching feet. I called you
an asshole and what I meant was why
did you have to wear my favorite shirt
and those torn cut-offs that make your butt
look like cotton candy Id sink my teeth
into, how I held back my tongue
so I couldnt shove it down your throat but
no, I dont want to be your friend and
no, I dont want to watch X-Files with
you anymore. Yes, I will miss your dog
Oliver. Yes, I want you to toss away my
toothbrush, my hairbrush, my lilac
shampoo, my coffee-stained mug, my

wine (dont dare drink that fucking wine).
No, I dont want you to walk me to the L
train but tonight, I hope you smell my lilac
shampoo on your pillow and stare at that
Polaroid o my drunken face on your wall and
!!!
Dee McIlbattan
please, read my poem about kissing you until
you wet our cum-stained sheets with tears. When
you are hungry, I hope you mistake that gut-
wrenching emptiness for missing me. I hope
you think o me when you pass the train, when
you walk by the lake, when you play fetch
with my socks that your dog loves and please
trust me when I swear your bed will feel one
thousand times too big without me in it. Trust
me The Mountain Goats will never sound quite
the same, blowjobs will never feel as good, your
Robert Johnson cassette will make you moody
Ive got an ambivalent feeling tomorrow when you
awake youll use my toothbrush and remember
the taste o my teeth, and just so you know when
I walked away I didnt look back, not even once.
Sophia Elizabeth Krugman Sumergida
literature
literature
| 29
Doreen Garner Study It
sex & health
| 30 | 31 sex & health sex & health
| 32 | 33
Sophia Elizabeth Krugman Erndira
sex & health sex & health
| 34
Te Brown Market Shares Programis a student-run, campus-based food
distribution programthat connects the Brown community with regional
producers through afordable weekly shares of fresh, local, and sustainable
produce, dairy, eggs, bread, and meat. As an organization, we are committed
to regional farmsecurity, equitable access to sustainably produced food, and
campus activismand engagement. We have a fnancial structure that allows
us to ofer lower-cost shares through a subsidized program. Tis part of the
programstrives to cut across fnancial and language barriers and make
the programaccessible to a wider range of individuals within the Brown
community, including staf, faculty, graduate students, and all of their
families. Fromthe Fall of 2011 to the Fall of 2013 the Brown Market Shares
Programpacked 22,000 bags of groceries; 6,600 of those bags were ofered
at a discounted price. To make that possible, shareholders invested $532,000 in
us and we invested 91%of that, $486,000, directly into the local food economy.
Farming as a profession is overlooked, undervalued, and held
by less than 1% o the US population. This decline is due not only
to complex interactions o political, legal, and economic inluenc-
es, but also to cultural stigmas. The image o a middle-aged white
man in overalls has come to embody farmer in our cultural lex-
Rooted
---
Tbe Brown Market Sbares Program Coordinators
sex & health
| 36 | 37
work, I again found mysel returning home
covered in dirt and sweat. In the July heat o
a New England summer, as I harvested snap
peas, I found another way to physically engage
with the landscape. Gender stereotypes typically
equate agricultural labor with a masculinity
that is supposedly at odds with my identity as a
woman. But for me this involvement with the
land is what makes me feel most alive. As such,
it is a crucial piece o all o my identities.
Anna
I can say with full conidenceand pridethat
everything I know and love about food I learned
from my mom. Many have described her to me
as the most active, engaged person I know.
She was the irst person to teach me to ight
for causes I believe in. Causes she is passionate
aboutnutrition, local and sustainable food,
fracking, farm securitywill all come up in
any How was your day? dinner conversation
at my house. All throughout my teens, in my
futile effort to differentiate mysel from my
parents, I resisted my moms food activism, as
well as any attempt she made to teach me how
to cook. Now I realize that I picked it up despite
my efforts, and ind that I, too, enjoy making
food taste good. So here I am at Brown, living
Market Shares and thinking o home.

Katie
I was scared o the rototiller. Cant he do it?
On a farm in my Long Island hometown, men
seemed very comfortable operating machinery.
I was not. I saw my mechanical illiteracy as a
function o my gender. As a woman, I felt this
skill was expected to be foreign to me. And it
was. However, slowly, I learned the basics. This
is where the gas goes. This is a choke. This is
what a choke does. After halting attempts, I got
the engine started and earned the nickname Til-
ly. Learning to operate a rototiller by no means
got rid o my aversion to machineryan aver-
sion nurtured from stereotypical gender norms.
I realized that operating a farm, even a small-
scale organic one, requires a mechanical skill set
that I am not expected to know. Nonetheless the
women in agriculture I know and have learned
from continue to show me that it is possible to
transcend these gendered expectations.

Julie
Growing up, my family portrait pictured me sit-
ting between my mother and my grandmother.
In my house, women did the cooking and
women paid the bills. They were hardworking,
generous, patient; they raised me to celebrate
myself, to be both forgiving and strong-willed.
For a while I worried I had turned out too soft,
too accommodating, too emotional. It was
through my work with this team that I dared
to revisit the question: what kind o woman
am I? Today, I see the qualities that I respect in
my mother and grandmother manifested in my
work. The women o Market Shares operate in
ways that constantly remind me o my roots. I
am grateful for my mother and grandmother for
shaping me, and I am grateful to the women o
Market Shares for valuing a work ethic based
in community.
Antonia
Its a Sunday October morning
in Enoosaen, Kenya
A day for picking pumpkins with Michelli
Overlowing from our uji breakfast, we run into
icon. It has rendered American agriculture
as the domain o white men. A homogenized
population feeding the world with monocul-
tures. This homogenization is problematic
for two seemingly contradictory reasons. On
the one hand, it renders many actors o our
food system invisible, ignoring the fact that
most agricultural workers are not white. But
on the other hand, the whitewashed image
o farmer calls another issue to our attention.
The majority o farm operators and farm
owners are in fact white, middle-aged men.
What does it mean when the ownership o
farms and food businesses is concentrated in
a group o people who do not represent food
production on the whole?
We see addressing this gap as crucial to
the mission o Brown Market Shares. At
Market Shares, positions on the leadership
team have always been open to all Brown
students. However, the majority o the
past coordinators have been female and
the current coordinating team is entirely
female. Given the gendered context o the
food system, it is important to us that we are
a group o women running a business that
moves capital, food, and awareness through
the local food system.
As a team, we have often discussed
why female leaders remain unheard in the
dominant discourse around food produc-
tion. What does it mean for us to be women
doing food systems work? Even within the
alternative modern food movement, upper
middle class, white male voices are gener-
ally privileged. They advocate for a new
age o conscious consumers; oft-repeated
is the mantra know your farmer, know
your food. Figures like Michael Pollan, Mark
Bittman, and Jamie Oliver urge citizens to,
Vote with your fork! but ignore the systematic
disenfranchisement that prevents many people
from exercising this agency.
Though we have come to this work for dif-
ferent reasons, we are bonded by our marginal-
ized position as women in the food movement.
We are concerned with hearing voices that have
traditionally been silenced and underrepresent-
ed: women, people o color, LGBTQ+ com-
munities, small organic farmers, food service
workers, and food insecure individuals.
Market Shares challenges dominant agro-
food industries, in which you need not know
your farmer, you need not know why he farms,
and you need not know his politics. At Market
Shares we constantly evaluate our transparency
so our shareholders have resources to know our
farmers, know how and why they farm, and
understand our political engagement: we believe
access to healthy, fresh, and affordable food is a
right and should not be determined by class or
geographic location.
Our opinions and conversations about these
issues are the result o our personal experiences.
Through farm work, food service, family cook-
ing, academic engagement, and Market Shares,
we have each dug up our own food narrative.
Erin
As a kid, I rolled my eyes and feigned annoyance
when my family packed our hiking gear into
our minivan and drove into the West Texas
landscape. But in truth, I loved the dirtiness and
physical exhaustion I felt after these weekend
backpacking trips. Later, as I began to discover
my passion for food studies and agricultural
features features
| 38
More Tban Coincidence
Bridging Gaps Between Invironmental and Reprodnctive Jnstice
It is not a coincidence that, as 2013 is coming to a close, the
southern portion o the Keystone XL Pipeline is almost complet-
ed and abortion clinics are dwindling here in Texas.
As someone familiar with both reproductive and environ-
mental justice in a red state, it doesnt surprise me. Reproduc-
tive justice organizers in red states often talk about how the
struggle is deep in the South, Midwest, Southwest, in indigenous
communities in the so-called United States, and other resource
sparse areas: the prairies, the piney woods, the desert, the third
coastthe gulf. These are all locations o trauma. They will
remain locations o trauma so long as these areas and communi-
ties are exploited by amerikkka. As the environment experiences
violence, peoples reproductive autonomy diminishes.
In order to have reproductive autonomy, we need to work
towards reproductive and environmental justice. Reproductive
justice only exists when weall the people o the worldhave
the political and economic power and resources to make healthy
decisions about our genders, bodies, and sexes for ourselves,
for our families, and for our communities
1
. People experience
reproductive oppression differently due to varying systems o
oppression. When our bodies, spirits, and communities are
unable to live healthy lives because o environmental injustices,
our reproductive autonomy is taken away from us. This is the
---
Yncca Bianca W.
her grandmothers ield
She quickly spots the biggest gourd
I mimic trying to pick it up and
She laughs like jumping jacks
Banana trees fan our dewed toes
and vined ankles
Whistling at contented calves
We hoist our golden pumpkin to the house
She is two and Im nineteen
Sitting side by side on the grass
we begin to carve our midday feast
Taylor
Do you think rainbow chard is queer?
I think a lot about consumer psychology when
I shop at farmers markets. I wonder how often
people purchase food based on what produce
looks the best or who looks the best selling it.
By this I meanare you more likely to buy food
from a farmer who looks like you? What are the
intersections o perceptions o beauty and value
judgments regarding who grows the tastiest
food? I will one day be a farmer, maybe in rural
America or maybe a city. But will my short
haircut, double nose piercing, and butch presen-
tation prevent someone from buying produce
from me? What does it mean for me, as a queer
female farmer, to ind solace in a profession that
traditionally has excluded my identity?
Sam
My inner feminist had become a little concerned
with my growing domesticity. I was spend-
ing a lot o time in the kitchen. I was reading
food blogs when I should have been studying.
Sometimes, I would even cook dinner for my
boyfriend. But then again, I also liked to dig
in the dirt. Id been known to wield a hoe, lug
irrigation pipes, and cart buckets o carrots. Id
found satisfaction in growing food, fulillment
in facilitating its distribution, and joy in ensur-
ing its consumption. Id found a place in the
kitchen, but Id also found one in the ield. And
on Thursdays, Id found a place in Hillel with
the Market Shares team. There, alongside my
fellow lady coordinators, my inner feminist had
inally begun to breathe a little easier.
Our narratives are but seven in a vast array
o stories from people who do not it neatly
into the dominant construction o American
agricultural and food systems work. We ask that
you dig deeper and look into these voices that
are not as easy to hear. Watch Jonah Mossbergs
ilm documentary project, Out Here: A Queer
Farmer Film Project to hear the stories o both
urban and rural queer farmers and how their
identities inluence the work they do; review
history with the Black Panther Partys Free
Breakfast Program; discover Soul Fire Farms
mission to dismantle oppressive structures that
misguide our food system, and their internship
programs to empower and create space for
people o color within the food system; research
Annies Projectan educational program com-
mitted to strengthening womens role in the
modern farm enterprise; look into FarmHer,
a photo documentary that captures women in
agriculture across the country.
We say thank you to all o the beautiful women
food leaders who inspire the work we do.
Thank you to our mothers and grandmothers
for showing us the taste o family history. We
appreciate your courage, commitment, and abil-
ity to lift 50 lb. bags o potatoes with grace. !
features
| 40 | 41
divisions were particularly apparent when a
woman o color coming from the effected com-
munity o Manchester in Houston, TX was re-
peatedly interrupted during her keynote speech
because she dared to challenge big green NGOs.
This incident demonstrates the way that people
from frontline communities are tokenized by
predominantly white organizers but silenced
when they try to express the concerns o
their communities.
I am over white-dominated environmental
groups, just as much as I am over the main-
stream white-dominated reproductive rights
pro-choice movement. I get frustrated when
these groups co-opt the environmental and
reproductive justice frameworks. I am waiting
for them to be held accountable for understand-
ing and acting on these intersections that they
claim to understand. They are the ones with
the most resources. Either they start centering
more voices from the communities that struggle
against environmental and reproductive injus-
tices or they should hand over their resources
to people who can adequately support their
communities. A perfect example o how many
activists fail to think outside their single-issue
framework is the recent gloriication o Wendy
Davis. Her face is being used in mainstream re-
productive rights organizations, while commu-
nities in North Texas face some o the worst air
quality in the nation. Those who praise Davis
as a pro-choice hero may not know that she
has played a crucial role in supporting fracking,
a practice that perpetuates both environmental
and reproductive injustice. It is impossible to
be simultaneously for reproductive justice and
pro responsible gas drilling.
This gloriication has built a narrative
o who (white, cis, upperclass, heterosexual,
citizen) and what (just vote!) is involved in the
ight for reproductive justice, and has caused
the erasure o marginalized people who have
been doing reproductive health-rights-justice
work here for years.
We must be reminded that women o color
developed the reproductive justice frame-
work. We must be reminded that people o
color developed the tenants o environmental
We mnst be reminded tbat women ol
color developed tbe reprodnctive jnstice
lramework. We mnst be reminded tbat
people ol color developed tbe tenants ol
environmental jnstice.
basic connection between environmental and
reproductive justice. Working for both is cru-
cial because those who experience reproductive
oppression are also more likely to be exposed to
environmental degradation, toxins, and other
dangerous effects o our current climate crisis.
Reproductive and environmental oppres-
sion are everywhere: the widespread sterilz-
ation o black, brown, and indigenous bodies
to control overpopulation, the use o the Rio
Grande River as a toxic waste dump for Agent
Orange-esque herbicides (making it hazardous
for undocumented immigrants to cross over
and see their families), the increase o violence
against Native women and children because
o man camps brought by the construction o
the KXL pipeline, the increase in asthma rates
for children in low-income families because o
reiners, bus depots, and air pollution.
In a room o 150 environmental activists
at Powershift 2013, one o the biggest environ-
mental conferences in the United States, only
ive raised their hands when I asked who knew
what reproductive justice was. The room was
made up o mostly white, long-term and newly
interested activists from the East coast. I suspect
that their white and geographic privilege plays
into their lack o awareness on the connection
between environmental and reproductive
justice struggles in marginalized areas. Similarly,
panels that address environmental and climate
issues are often lacking at the biggest reproduc-
tive health-rights-justice conferences. Without
understanding these intersections, organiza-
tions and individuals will not be able to do
social justice work or advocate with communi-
ties in holistic ways. I we are doing environ-
mental work but are unable to identify the ways
in which particular communities experience
reproductive oppression, then are we really do-
ing work that addresses all o the intricacies and
intersecting complexities o these communities?
This conversation is necessary.
I came into environmental organizing,
initially around hydraulic fracturing in North
Texas and the Keystone XL pipeline, with a re-
productive rights-justice background. I expected
these worlds to operate in very similar ways. I
was wrong. I was quickly disempowered as a
queer, gender non-conforming Chicanx in pre-
dominantly heterosexual-cisgender-white-male
organizing spaces. I have been somewhat
involved in environmental activism for over
a year now and have witnessed how white
supremacy, patriarchy, heterosexism, trans*
erasure and other oppressions permeate in
organizing culture. Anti-oppression politics are
not taken seriously in the white-dominated or-
ganizing spaces, and the people o color who are
a part o frontline communities are pushed to
the margins. Feeling these intensities, I realized
that my reproductive justice background made
me able to address how multiple struggles
are connected.
As I brought my analysis and experiences
to white-dominated environmental spaces, I
quickly learned that I would be seen as divisive
i I ever felt safe enough to voice my concerns.
To claim that impacted communities o color
are being divisive is a way o silencing; its an
aggression that further satisies the goals o col-
onization. Sadly this happens all the time, and
being in those environments made me realize
how widespread it is. Although I have learned
to expect such behavior, it breaks my heart to
witness the suffering that other people o color
experience on levels that I never will.
Powershift 2013 exempliied the ways that
already marginalized voices are silenced in
so-called environmental justice spaces. These
politics politics
| 42
justice. Without remembering and honoring
the historical roots to each movement, we
perpetuate the erasure o people o color and
their experiences with reproductive and envi-
ronmental oppression. We must also remember
to challenge power inequalities. It can only be
achieved i white supremacy is dismantled.
For those o us who are non-indigenous
people o color and white folx wanting to
organize in more holistic ways, we need to
recognize our settler privilege and honor in-
digenous communities that have been ighting
against colonization, reproductive oppression,
and environmental degradation for gener-fuck-
ing-ations! There is no way we can move
forward in this ight with true honesty and
intentionality i we do not recognize this.
Collaboration is key. This means centering
women, queer and trans* people o color from
frontline communities in our conversations
with both environmental and reproductive
justice movements. This also means taking
advice from one another, sharing skills, seeking
guidance, and holding each other accountable
for the big possibility o fucking up. We also
need to organize spaces for self-care, love,
self-relection, self-actualization and apprecia-
tion for one another.
We could all use some healing.
I dont want there to be a split anymore;
we are ighting for the same things. I want the
same people who are pissed of about the state
o reproductive health care access in Texas to
be standing up against the toxic agenda o oil
and gas industries and vice versa. I hope to have
these conversations and see this collaboration
in the future. I hope to witness the bridging
o gaps and the creation o an intrinsic web o
networks, resources, friendships, actions, rage,
and love. !
Agent Orange: a militarized herbicide notoriously
used against civilian populations in Vietnam, Cam-
bodia, and Laos during the Vietnam War; causes
environmental and reproductive health problems
primarily for indigenous communities o color
Chicanx: gender-neutral identiication that some
Mexican-American individuals claim
heterosexism: a system o attitudes, bias, and discrim-
ination in favor o heterosexual behavior, identities,
and relationships and against LGBTQ+ behavior,
identities, and relationships
politics
yonng
blnestockings
writing
cballenge
The First Annual Young Bluestockings Writing Challenge is part
o our ongoing efforts to ind new, dynamic voices for the magazine
and to provide high schoolers the space to articulate their beliefs on
feminism. We opened the contest to high school students across the
world and were loored by the thoughtful responses we received.
We are excited to announce Valerie Chu as our grand prize- winner.
Hailing from British Columbia, Valerie is a senior at Sir Winston
Churchill Secondary School.
features | 45
As I grew older, it became more and more evident to me that
everythingand I do mean everythingis interconnected. A
choice or an action will, in turn, spark a new chain o events,
exactly like the domino effect proposed by President Eisenhower
more than 50 years ago. In my history class, we discussed the
Wests fear o the world succumbing to communism, country by
country. This concept could be argued as the same for every-
thing else. Feminism is a true example, as other issues permeate
it as well.
It doesnt stand alone, unblemished, and in its own vacuum
o space. As Charles Eames, the American designer, once said:
Eventually, everything connects.
Feminism ties into many other social issues o today, includ-
ing (but deinitely not limited to) racism, classism, homophobia,
and queerphobia. Without understanding how these issues
intertwine, feminism cannot thrive. I know theres a lot o
variations o the deinition o feminism out there, but to me,
feminism is about being there for each other. Its about acquiring
On Intersectionality
!!!
Yalerie Cbn

Prompt #3: Audre Lorde once said, Theres no such
thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live
single-issue lives. What does this quote mean to you?
Ieminism cannot move lorward il privileged
leminists continne to pnsb back and oppress
tbe less privileged wbile berating and belittling
tbeir views and strnggles.
equality between all sexes, abilities, sexual
orientations, classes, religions, and races. Its
about making the entire world a safe space for
every single person. In short, feminism is ALL
ABOUT INTERSECTIONALITY. Without
the support o other women and men, how
can feminism grow and be accepted? How can
we create a movement, a cheese ball that never
stops rolling, i we dont support every person
who is struggling under the oppressive patriar-
chal regime? Feminism cannot move forward i
privileged feminists continue to push back and
oppress the less privileged while berating and
belittling their views and struggles. Ultimately,
feminism needs to be about solidarity across the
entire spectrum o feminists.
I remember recently there was a trending
hashtag happening on Twitter called #solidar-
ityisforwhitewomen, started by Mikki Kendall
in August, where Twitter users pointed out
the lack o intersectionality in feminism. The
hashtag exploded across the internet, coming
up not only in Twitter posts, but on other blog
platforms as well. The extent o the popular-
ity o #solidarityisforwhitewomen clariied
how much further feminism still needs to go
in terms o inclusion o POC and WOC. The
hashtag also led the inception o other new
hashtags like #solidarityisfortheablebodied,
sparking conversation about disability.
Im a WOC mysel o Canadian nationality,
and being a huge pop culture addict, its quite
disappointing when I watch a new TV series or
a highly anticipated movie and there is rarely
an actor or actress o colour in the show or ilm.
Thats why I honestly fell in love with the movie
features | 46
How do we who are part o marginalized groups build
and maintain self-respect in an oppressive culture? How can
changing and radicalizing our thinking be translated into actu-
ally feeling good about our identities, our sexualities, our races
and genders, our bodies, our capabilities? How can we import
feminism not only into our thoughts, but also into our emotions,
desires, practices, perceptions, our imaginations, and, ultimate-
ly, into our sense o worth? Zora Neale Hurston serves as an
example and a small starting point to this larger discussion. The
conditions that facilitated her development as a powerful person
and radical activist may help us recognize and cultivate condi-
tions that feel supportive to us, the people affected by oppression.
Zora Neale Hurston was one o the most resolute and
controversial writers o the Harlem Renaissance, the 1920s and
30s cultural movement that worked towards changing public
perception o African-Americans. Hurston was known for ex-
pressing unpopular sentiments; she did not limit the amount and
content o her opinions to the patriarchal view that only men
could competently discuss certain topics. As a woman o color
from a rural backgroundliving in a sexist, racist, classist,
Tbe Radical Sell-Respect ol
Zora Neale Hnrston
!!!
Heike Rodrignez
and cast more diverse people in interesting
and important roles that dont perpetuate racial
or gendered stereotypes. There have been
some fantastic new shows with well developed,
three-dimensional WOC characters (such as
Orange is the New Black and CBSs Elementary)
and its made me really happy to see that.
In terms o religion, a new charter has
popped up that has pitted feminists against each
other, once again showing the non-intersec-
tionality o feminists today. The province o
Qubecs proposed charter o values, revealed in
August, would ban workers in certain occupa-
tions from wearing any religious wear or signs.
This includes turbans, burqas, hijabs, cruciixes,
and other religious symbols. This charter appar-
ently seeks to establish religious neutrality and
gender equality in the province, but in reality,
its a thinly veiled example o white-washing
an entire population, obliterating diversity, and
stripping people o their religious rights. There
have been some feminists who have agreed with
this charter. For example, the feminist protest
group, FEMEN, irmly believes that religious
headdresses, such as the hijab, are a symbol
o patriarchal oppression, and that they must
ight for the liberation o these women. But in
fact, the opposite is true: many o these women
have chosen to wear headdresses and were
not coerced. Freedom doesnt lie in liberation,
freedom lies in choice. The fact that there are
feminists with similar views as FEMEN shows
that there is a huge gap between feminists, and
that were not listening or understanding one
another.
I volunteer at my local womens shelter,
and it is very aware o intersectionality and
inclusion. The shelter ensures that it creates a
safe space for women o all nationalities, races,
and sexual orientations by being inclusive and
by being aware o the struggles women face due
to those factors. There are many framed posters
lining the staircases o the relie house, and a
black and white photo o Audre Lorde, with a
quote o hers superimposed on the background,
is amid one o them. I cant remember the exact
quote on that poster, but Im sure its just as
prominent and relevant as her statement o
single-issue struggle being impossible, since
we dont live single-issue lives. I hope that the
message o intersectional feminism can reach
around the globe and be inclusive o every-
body; only then will feminism reach newer and
greater heights. !
| 48 | 49
can be seen as founded on hr early experiences
o racial equality.
During the 1920s and 30s, Hurston found
recognition and some material security in
Harlem through her writing, while living
in a community o African-Americans who
supported one another
2
. Here again, she was
part o a space created by and for people o
color. However, Hurston critiqued Harlem
political leaders who saw the Race Problem as
the most important topic for all works o art
and literature
1
. Hurston refused to concentrate
her writing on race relations; instead she took
on humanist themes like community, religion,
happiness, beauty, and culture. Thus, she
addressed race afirmatively, placing Afri-
can-American culture at the center o her work
and as opposed to positioning hersel against
racism, White supremacy, and White systems.
According to the documentary Zora Neale
Hurston: Jump at the Sun, the Harlem Renais-
sances reliance on White funding and White
audiences compromised its integrity. The
movements focus on race differences seemed
contrived to Hurston. She saw the singular
emphasis on race relations as deeply com-
plicit with White Supremacy and therefore
reinforcing a constant awareness o race for
African-Americans. Hurston also saw this
complicity in her own community:
Recognizing that a lack o race conscious-
ness is a privilege, Hurston, in a radical stance,
claimed that privilege as her own. Instead o
focusing on racial inequality, she wrote about
her passions: the richness o Black rural culture
in the South, its folklore, wisdom, and songs,
its philosophies and beauty. Hurstons meth-
Instead, Hnrston promoted a
vision ol a society in wbicb
Alrican-Americans did not need
to strive lor recognition by tbe
Wbite pnblic in order to lay claim to
lair and dignihed treatment.
Race Consciousness is a plea to
Negroes to bear their color in mind
at all times. It was just a phrase to
me when I was a child. I knew it
was supposed to mean something
deep. By the time I got grown I saw
that it was only an imposing line o
syllables, for no Negro in America
is apt to forget his race
2
.
and urban-centric societyher conidence and
self-respect were remarkable achievements.
The internalization o dominant racist ide-
ologies is dificult to escape in a racist society,
yet Hurston was shaped and nourished by time
spent in autonomous spacesmost signii-
cantly, Eatonville. This experience profoundly
shaped her political views, providing her with a
sense o self-worth and the ability to concretely
picture equality.
Having spent ten years o her childhood in
Eatonville, an all-black community in the rural
South, Hurston had already experienced what
leading igures such as Alain Locke or James
Weldon Johnson merely envisioned: an envi-
ronment where racial difference and White
Supremacy were not the underlying principle
in every interaction; a space where being seen
and treated as inferior by White people, while
still a structural experience, was not reinforced
by daily interpersonal aggression. Hurstons
biographer, Valerie Boyd, writes, anywhere
Zora looked, she could see the evidence o
black achievement
1
. Hurstons formative years
were spent in a supportive community that
gave her a sense o importance and belonging:
Zora had learned to revel in her individuality,
her me-ness, while still being part o a larger
community, one that valued her singularity, her
Zora-ness, yet considered her no more or less
valuable than anyone else. She was their Zora,
as she put it
1
.
Being able to cultivate a sense o sel while
belonging to a community appeared as her
primary source o strength and inspiration.
Hurstons experiences provided her with a
sense o possibility that was politically vital. Al-
though cultures o domination actively restrict
our ability to imagine anything but hierarchical
and exploitative systems, Hurstons conceptual
framework was not exclusively shaped by
oppressive conditions.
When she left Eatonville, Hurston was
introduced to the interpersonal mechanisms
o systemic racismin her words, she became
colored
1
. Whats more, in Eatonville she had
occupied an upper class position: her father
was the mayor o the town; her mother held
a powerful position in the church and created
Sunday school curricula
1
. Leaving Eatonville
immediately placed Hurston in a much lower
stratum o society due to her race, gender, and
limited inancial means. Yet, exposure to bla-
tant discrimination after leaving Eatonville did
not damage her core sense o self-worth.
In her autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road,
Hurston writes about her irst work experienc-
es in her early twenties:
The sexual harassment Hurston experi-
enced as a woman was compounded by the low
pay and lack o economic opportunities for Af-
rican-Americans in the United States. Hurston
refused to accept the racist and sexist treatment
at workshe left these jobs and elbowed her
way into school
2
. Hurstons resilience, self-re-
spect and dignity despite systematic oppression
[T]heatrical salaries being so
uncertain, I did not get mine hal
the timeI tried waiting tables [but]
I resented being patronized, more
than the monotony o the job; those
presumptuous cut-eye looks and
supposed-to-be accidental touches
on the thigh to see how I took to
things. Men at the old game o
stealing a feel
2
.
academic academic
| 50
Wben
Gbettos
Become Yerbs
and We Concede Onr
"Wrongness ol Being"
!!!
Marco McWilliams
odologies, as well as her interest in Southern
and rural African-American culture, differed
greatly from the urban, middle-class Harlem
Renaissance movement, and in this way she
found hersel a lone ighter. While her anthro-
pological research can be seen as an apolitical
stance, it was an act with political implications
the celebration not only o an oppressed race,
but also o a devalued class and culture.
Hurstons work did not it narrow con-
ceptions o activism: it did not try to integrate
and assimilate African-Americans into White
urban middle-class culture. She claimed a space
for appreciating her race and class identity.
Hurstons stance was and remains radical
because it targets the core o racismthe use o
differences to justify oppression.
As her position became unpopular, Hurston
could no longer ind publishers and worked as
a teacher, librarian, and maid to survive. The
criticisms Hurston encountered during her
life had devastating material consequences
and she died in poverty. All o her books were
out o print at the time, and she was buried in
an unmarked grave. Her analysis o effective
activism, however, echoes loudly through the
study o social movements today. Hurstons
point o view leads back to Eatonville and the
creation o autonomous spaces that provided
relie from oppression. This does not imply
systemic separatism. Hurston was an advocate
o interacting with White peopleon terms o
equality. In a letter to prominent poet Countee
Cullen she wrote: I have no desire for white
association except where I am sought and the
pleasure is mutual. That feeling grows out o
my own self-respect
1
. Hurston had a clarity
o vision unclouded by conformist hopes and
internalized inferiority. Hurstons condition
that the pleasure [be] mutual speaks o an
inner freedom from having to be recognized by
White society as an equalshe already knew
her own value as a human being.
It is dificult to know our own value
independent from our status in society and
in the face o daily attacks on our dignity and
sense o self-worth. Ultimately, I see Hurstons
self-respect, her connection to Eatonville, and
her critique o other Harlem Renaissance
artists methods in the struggle for equality as
mutually constitutive. Hurston valued creating
autonomous spaces to ground visions o equal-
ity in real-life experiences and was nourished
enough by such spaces to see and articulate
the bleak realities o oppression. She did not
shy away from honestly assessing the social
justice strategies o her timesuch as improv-
ing the public image o African-Americans
through achievements in art. She recognized
this particular strategy as an expression o
inequality rather than an effective countermea-
sure. Instead, Hurston promoted a vision o a
society in which African-Americans did not
need to strive for recognition by the White
public in order to lay claim to fair and digniied
treatment. Hurstons activist wisdom remains
incredibly relevant today as many social move-
ments struggle with co-optation, stratiication,
and the unintentional replication o oppressive
mechanisms in our own spaces. !
References
(1) Boyd, Valeria. Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life o
Zora Neale Hurston. NY: Scribner, 2003. Print.
(2) Hurston, Zora Neale. Dust Tracks on a Road: An
Autobiography. NY: HarperPerennial, 1991. Print.
academic
| 52 | 53
We change nouns into verbs.
But they still things even when they mere
words.
Is that what I heard, or is that what you
said?
Are those just words, or your voice in my
head?
Get out o my head! Get of my mind!
You been in there a proper long time!
No, I cannot. I will go, and I will come.
For I am not only in your head, I also live
on your tongue.
the structure of Platonic discourse itself forced those
who used it to accept a particular concept of social
order. In the very syntax of our speech as we
learn the English language, the justiication of our
inferiority is embedded, and, what is more, we accept
that fact as we master the language. -Dr. Marimba
Ani, Yurugu
I will argue the negative. I dare not utter ghetto.
Gently the ancestors remind me. Each time I
hear thats so ghetto I am resolved to never
repeat it thus prolonging its life, one oriented
toward the iniquitous. Yet, somehow we know
this. It whispers to us, but in a still small voice,
its malevolence. The historical memory o our
past glories and present indignities inform our
moral consciousness o its hostile subjectivi-
ty. We engage in escapades o white liberality
hoping to expedite the dolor and shame, telling
ourselves that these are just words; only words.
But the provenance o this instinct places it
outside o us. We have learned it from anoth-
er: an - other. We have adopted collective
coping strategies to dismiss the shame o our
imposed degradation while all the time forget-
ting or never knowingthat a ghetto is not
merely a term but someones creative project o
oppression. When and where we can no longer
hide the shame, we deploy discursive maneuvers
o misdirection. Despite the fact that we are so
often turned away from imaginatively construct-
ing freedom for ourselves, as a community we
must continue to actively produce new potential
futures. Colonizers imposed their languages on
us and with them, inextricably, their ontologies,
their ways for us to be. We are now what we
think we are. We are not what we think we are.
We take light in hopes that we shall evade their
vitriolic imagining o us. But still, we are afraid
because we know that for 500 years they have
written that vision on our varied and
beautiful bodies.
Thats ghetto, we say. This statement is truncated
in the audible. It is rarely complete in its speaking.
For really what we mean is Thats ghetto! Thats
not me. We do not remember Africa, but we
remember the plantation. And when we left the
plantation we stepped into something called
the ghetto. But then we ind the ghetto, like the
plantation before it, so very hard to leaveor do
I mean escape? When we live in nice places and
move, we say that we left. When we live in
ghettos and move we say that we got out. One
does not leave a ghetto, one must get out, right?
G-h-e-t-t-o G-h-e-t to Get to GET
TO!
As in GET TO another place!
But where?
Any place is better than here!
politics politics
| 54 | 55
ment, the slave master created as far as possible a
dependency complex in the slave, needing this op-
posed complex to constitute his own autonomous
and responsible role. -Sylvia Wynter, Sambos
and Minstrels
Spatial politics, that is, a groups perceived
social ownership o corporate space, is
germane to any discussion o ghetto naming.
Fundamental to the ownership o slaves was
the concomitant proprietorship o their ma-
terial environments, intellectual lives, spiri-
tual epistemologies, and progeny. Historical
examples are legion. This is why Special Field
Order #15 (forty acres and a mule) would
never materialize. The notion o turning land
possession over to a former enslaved popula-
tion, indeed a population who just prior did
not own even their very bodies, was anath-
ema to the ideology o ruling class whites, a
mainstream ideology in Anglo-American
thought. It is no mistake that few linched
when minorities began losing their homes
during the mortgage crisis at a shocking
rate. American banking institutions made
sure, very sure, that Black soldiers returning
home from WWII could not take full beneit
o their G.I. Bills the way white soldiers had.
This is why redlining became the de facto law
o the land. White American social cosmog-
ony, as i peering through a telescope, could
imagine no space for black bodies, save that
o the ghetto. And these ghettoized spaces
become exotic, voyeuristic playgrounds for
non-ghetto dwellers. Like visitors at a zoo,
they gaze upon the tiger, marveling at her
strength, astonished by her grace, in awe o
her dignity, stunned by her natural beauty, all
the while imagining that this zoo is somehow
an appropriate place for her, and that she is
happy there.
white people understand this. If you cannot
understand what is like to be a tiger in a zoo, I
dont know how you eva gon understand what its
like to be a nigga in America. -Kat Williams, Its
Pimpin Pimpin
When someone utters, thats so ghetto, real-
ize they are issuing a proxy accusation which
is embedded with meaning similar to the
dehumanizing colonial ideas Fanon theorized
so powerfully. The speaker, in effect, declares
People o Color
insensible to ethics; he represents not only the ab-
sence of values, but also the negation of values. He
is, let us dare to admit, the enemy of values, and in
this sense he is the absolute evil. He is the corrosive
element, destroying all that comes near him; he is
the deforming element, disiguring all that has to
do with beauty or morality. -Frantz Fanon, The
Wretched of the Earth
And when they do,
simply recriminate:
-What is the ghetto?
-Who created it?
-Who owns it?
-How is its existence
perpetuated?
-Who lives there?
-How did they get there?
-How do they leave? !
This piece was edited by Lucy Bates-Campbell.
To say that something is ghetto is to suggest,
indeed directly imply, that it is the cultural
progeny o an obstreperous and debased
group. We imagine that this group, unciv-
ilized and immodest, has taken normative
codes o behavior bequeathed to them by
socioeconomic superiors and bastardized
them. Thus, one can look ghetto, talk ghetto,
act ghetto, and conclusively be ghetto. In this
way, we continue to allow ourselves toas
my indigenous ancestors would assertspeak
with the tongue o the white man. The mas-
ters language is the masters tool. It will form
for him what he has desired and work only in
his interest. It was designed for this purpose.
Like Africans singing in Congo Square, like
African songs in the cotton ields o despair.
In d e s p a i r. For Africans the English lan-
guage has always been a New World lexicon
to facilitate our souls expression. We have
found it woefully inadequate to express our
humanityi only English could capture the
heart o Ubuntu (i.e., I am human through
the acknowledgment o the humanity o
others). However, we ight within it. We use
it to create our Ebonic. We play with it. We
morph it. We assign our own meanings. And
try as we might, the colonizers voice yet ric-
ochets inside our heads like a 500-year-long
echo. Like the Lion King, we have forgotten
who we are; content only to be not that
that ghetto thing.
Occultation of the conlicts of interest is gained
in their reduction from being struggles of highly
complex matrices of power to comprehensible
categories of natural diference. The overbearing
motif of this occultation is the exclusion of the
African from the space of Western history, and
the marginal inclusion of the Negro as negativity.
-Ronald Judy, (Dis)Forming the American
Canon: African-Arabic Slave Narratives and
the Vernacular
For Judy, occultation exist as a binary. It
does much more than hold two divergent
ideas at opposite ends o a spectrum; rather
it conceals the one to displace the other. The
occultation hides Black lives, not merely in
its aims to conceal our humanity, but also in
the overdetermining o our social context.
Here the essentialized Black American never
escapes the ghetto in the minds o the white
masses. Ghetto becomes a reinscription, ever
recasting African descended people into the
classiications created for them. What is more,
they are obliged to it themselves into lower
social orders designed to maintain higher ones.
Anyone can be a blacken-faced minstrel in the
show.
At least you get paid.
Ask Miley Cyrus and Lily Allen, they know.
Ask commercial hip hop artist who sell out,
show after show
because they have to sellout in order to sell
out.
Anybody can perform the ghetto.
By constructing Sambo as the negation of respon-
sibility, the slave master legitimated his own role
as the responsible agent acting on behalf of the
irresponsible minstrel. By making sure that the so-
cial process and legal structures deprived the slave
of any decision-making power over his environ-
politics politics
| 57
Jannary 8
Providence, Rhode Island
The Providence Police Department raids two
Cambodian households in the West End, en-
tering without a warrant. The policemen hold
everyone at gunpoint, beat a 13-year-old in his
sleep, arrest innocent people, and terrorize and
humiliate womenincluding a 77-year-old
grandmother. A week later, the Providence
Youth Student Movement organizes a march
in solidarity demanding an end to racist polic-
ing in Providence communities, full disclosure
o past home raids in the city, transparency on
gang database policies, a public apology from
the City, and for the charges to be dropped.
Jannary ++
Valdosta, Georgia
The body o Kendrick Johnson, a 17-year-old
black student from Lowndes County High
School, is found behind the school building
beaten, wrapped up in a gym mat, and stuffed
with newspapers. While his death has been
deemed suspicious by authorities, no other
substantial action has taken place as o yet due
to issues o potential cover ups including
tampered surveillance videos and the Lowndes
County Sherif Ofices assertion that Johnson
accidentally died while reaching for a shoe in
one o the mats.
Jannary z+
Washington, D.C.
President Obama ceremonially begins his second
term with an inaugural address that adds gay and
trans* rights to the quests for racial and gender
equality. While the speech proclaims a commit-
ment to expanding rights for immigrants and for
sexual, racial and gender minorities, President
Obama has yet to enact policies that adequately
address these issues.
Marcb }
Brooklyn, New York
Kimani Gray, an unarmed 16-year-old black
youth, is killed by two plainclothes police oficers
not far from his home in Brooklyns East Flat-
bush neighborhood. The oficers ire 11 shots,
three o which hit Gray in the back and kill him.
The NYPD calls the incident a good shooting,
prompting outrage in the community. Several
days o protests and riots ensue; approximately
40 demonstrators are arrested.
Jnne z,
Washington, D.C
Post-racial logic wins in the Supreme Court, as a
5-4 vote strikes down the hearing o the Voting
Rights Act o 1965 and allows nine statesmost-
ly in the Southto change election laws without
receiving advance federal approval. This decision
counters the original purpose o the Act, which
sought to prevent barriers to voting for black
communities and marginalized groups.
!
!
!
!
!
In Memoriam and Solidarity:
A Year in "Post-Racial America"
!!!
Radbika Rajan, Paige Allen, Amanda Jones,
Kristy Cboi, Amy IaConnt, Nicole Hasslinger
!"#$
timeline
| 58 | 59
October |+
Washington, D.C.
A federal appeals court blocks changes to the
New York Police Departments stop-and-frisk
policy after Judge Shira Scheindlin rules the
practice o stop-and-frisk to be unconstitutional.
Scheindlin is removed from the case for com-
promising impartiality.
Nationwide (Halloween)
The phenomenon o Trayvonningmaking
reference to the 2012 murder o Trayvon Martin
by dressing up like him and pretending to be
shotreaches its peak with a highly publicized
Facebook photo o two white men from Florida,
Greg Cimeno, 22, and William Filene, 25, dress-
ing up in blackface as Martin and Zimmerman.
November z
Dearborn Heights, Michigan
Renisha McBride, a 19-year-old black woman,
knocks on the door o a white mans home to ask
for help after a car accident. Theodore Wafer,
thinking McBride was breaking into his home,
shoots her in the face with a rile, killing her
instantly.
November ++
Los Angeles, California
California bans afirmative action in the late
1990s, prompting a major decline in the per-
centages o black and Latino students enrolled
in UCLA. Black student Sy Stokes and the Black
Bruins present a video calling attention to the
fact that only 3.3% o the student body are black
men and that UCLA has more national cham-
pionships [than] black male freshmen. The
video goes viral with over a million views.
November +z
Bucks County, Pennsylvania
Joseph Williams, a 14-year-old black youth, and
two older relatives are caught shoplifting at a
local Walmart and arrested. During the arrest,
an already handcuffed Williams begins to run,
allegedly compelling police to taser him in the
face to protect him from trafic.
November +|
Jacksonville, Florida
Marissa Alexander, a 31-year-old black woman,
was previously sentenced to 20 years in prison
for iring a warning shot to scare of her
abusive husband. Due to nationwide protest,
a judge awards Alexander a new trial, but
denies her bail and delays further action on the
case until January 15, 2014. The Stand Your
Ground law that acquitted George Zimmer-
man keeps Alexander in prison.
!
!
!
!
!
Jnly +|
Sanford, Florida
On February 26, 2012, Trayvon Martin, an
unarmed 17-year-old black resident o Stanford,
is shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a mem-
ber o his local neighborhood watch. On July 13,
2013, after two days o deliberations, Zimmer-
man is acquitted on charges o second-degree
murder under Floridas Stand Your Ground
law. Hundreds o Justice for Trayvon demon-
strations erupt across the nation. Several months
later, Zimmerman is arrested and charged for
assault after pointing a shotgun at his girlfriend.
Angnst +
Harlem, New York
Islan Nettles, a 21-year old black trans* woman,
is brutally beaten to death across the street from
New York Citys Police Service Area Six precinct.
Several witnesses see 20-year-old Paris Wilson at
the scene violently confront Nettles upon realiz-
ing that she is transgender. Charges are dropped
after claims o insuficient evidence.
September +q
Charlotte, North Carolina
Jonathan Ferrell, 24-year-old black man, has a
car accident and knocks on the door o a white
familys home for help. Police respond to a
breaking-and-entering call from the owner o the
house, and Oficer Randall Kerrick fatally shoots
Ferrell. Oficer Kerrick is charged with voluntary
manslaughter and remains on the police force.
September z+
Harlem, New York
Dr. Prabhjot Singh is assaulted on a Saturday
evening while walking along 110th Street near
Lenox Avenue in Upper Manhattan. Suspects
shout Islamophobic statements at him before
physically attacking him. Dr. Singh is a practicing
medical doctor in East Harlem and an assistant
professor o International and Public Affairs at
Columbia University.
October +q
San Jose, California
Police launch an investigation concerning a
series o incidents at San Jose State University
occurring since August 2013. Three white fresh-
menColin Warren, Joseph Bomgardner, and
Logan Beaschlerare charged with committing
racist acts against a fellow African-American
roommate, which included using racial epithets
like three-ifths and fraction, putting a bike
lock around his neck, writing the N-word on dry
eraser boards, and hanging Nazi symbols around
the apartment.
October z}tb
Providence, Rhode Island
An organized group o students and members o
the greater Providence community protest and
shut down a Brown-sponsored lecture by NYPD
commissioner Raymond Kelly. Their mantra:
Racism is not up for debate. Kelly is responsible
for current stop-and-frisk practices, which dis-
proportionately target people o color. Organiz-
ers and protesters face backlash from members o
the administration and student body.
!
!
!
!
!
!
timeline timeline
| 60 | 61
!!!
November +
McCalla, Alabama
Students at McAdory High School create and
prominently display a banner which reads, Hey
Indians, get ready to leave in a Trail o Tears
Round 2, for a football game against rival team,
the Prison Valley High Indians. The principal o
the school has since apologized.

November +}
Ann Arbor, Michigan
The University o Michigan Black Student Union
launches a Twitter conversation on being black
at University o Michigan, after a fraternity
plans a Hood Rachet Thursday Party. The
university eventually cancels the party because o
its racist, sexist, and classist invitation.
November zo
Worldwide
The International Transgender Day o Remem-
brance serves to memorialize those killed due to
anti-transgender prejudice. This year, the annual
Remembrance Report states that in the last 12
months there have been 238 worldwide cases o
anti-transgender murders, and since January 1,
2008 a reported total o 1,374 murders world-
wide. Trans* people o color are disporportional-
ly affected by racial proiling and violence.
November z+
Montgomery, Alabama
Alabama grants posthumous pardons to three Af-
rican-American men who had yet to be exoner-
ated for false allegations o rape 80 years ago. The
three men, Haywood Patterson, Charles Weems
and Andy Wright, were part o the Scottsboro
Boys, nine black Alabama teenagers falsely con-
victed o gang-raping two white women in 1931
by all-white juries.
November z|
Miami Garden, Florida
Earl Sampson is arrested again by police for tres-
passing at his local convenience storewhere
he is also employed. Over the last four years,
Sampson has been stopped and questioned by the
police 258 times, searched more than 100 times,
and jailed 56 times. The police department is now
being charged for racial proiling in this case.
!
!
!
!
!
timeline timeline
| 62 | 63
they tell me I should be grateful to be American,
but how can I fully claim a land that has never claimed me,
only told me I was Black enough to be three-ifths,
as long as I forgot the name of that other country
I come from.
no.
i am not able to it into your boxes, i am luid.
I am other: carved out of a diaspora,
my blood is illed with the dreams of a thousand ancestors,
and two brave immigrants
who gave up everything in the pursuit of a dream.
i am Mende and Kono and Sherbro and Black and proud.
Even with all that this land has taken,
it has still
given me new traditions & new eyes.
so i use them.
with my voice/pen i take my liberation:
i am the inbetween of two nation-bodies,

I am all these things.
3
4
5
i am other.
shaped not of only one place,
my identity transcends borders.
do you know what it means
to be forced from
a place you never knew?
i was born into displacement,
African & American.
im speaking english now.
english.
the language that scraped at and discarded my culture,
told me my people arent worthy of any
history books
(but our diamonds soaked in our blood ind worth in their pockets)
i was taught that the red palm oil that seeps out from our broken english
was something to be ashamed of.
no.
diaspora(s)
!!!
maya hnob
1
2
literature literature
| 65
1990, Ji-Ji, beginning a new life in Toronto
Dedicated to Zhang Qian (1964 - 2008), my mamas best friend, who
passed away before I could tell her she was a protagonist in all the
stories I grew up listening to.
It took eighteen hours o anticipation but time meant nothing
because she lew with a purpose: to bring her daughter back.
Hiring a babysitter cost six hundred dollars a month and her
bank account didnt stretch far enough. Letting her parents raise
her daughter at zero cost back in Shanghai was a well-reasoned
and natural decision.
But logic left her body the moment she couldnt see the pink
baby carriage anymore through the glass wall separating passen-
gers from friends and family at Pearson International Airport. A
gut-wrenching pull and a sharp intake o breath later, she was
at the closest travel agency she could ind. There, she spent her
savings for the irst light possible to Shanghai and return tickets
for two back to Toronto.
My
Sbangbainese
Mama
!!!
Dapbne Yonng Xn
literature
| 66 | 67
ten times their price. It took two weeks o
anxious self-isolation in a cramped hotel room
before the coast was clear. Depression hit. Ji-Ji,
weakened by the disappointment o a cancelled
interview, called her ex-employer in Shanghai
to inform him that shed be going back to work.
But despite the danger and the deaths that
racked up during those two weeks in Beijing,
my mama, to this day, credits her luck for
pushing her to cross paths with Chinas history.
As soon as she could set foot in the Canadian
embassy, looking startled and student-like
with her bright red backpack, she was handed
a visa. Palms sweating and heart swelling, Ji-Ji
accepted. She could ly to Canada the very next
day and begin her new life.
Eager and enthusiastic, she found her way
to Pearson International Airport to join Cana-
dian city life in Toronto. Ji-Ji lew of towards
her new world on July 9th, 1989, imagining
sparkling lights and glossy clean streets.
q
Ji-Ji landed at night, greeted by an insuf-
iciently-funded grey concrete highway in
barren suburbia. With nine hundred dollars
in her pockets, Ji-Ji paid a ive hundred dollar
deposit for a bed-sized room in Chinatown
and spent her irst night alone readying hersel
to survive with the four hundred left over.
Sitting on the side o her bed, Ji-Ji counted
the wrinkled twenty-dollar bills that she had
gripped too tightly in her sweaty palms. She
thought about the success stories she had heard
back home, o other Shanghainese students
settling abroad and buying their own houses
and cars. That wasnt possible back in China. I
there were any butterlies that luttered in her
stomach, they lew at a steady pace, one behind
each other, organized and purposeful.
As a Chinese student, Ji-Ji could ill out an
application to obtain the coveted Canadian
work permit immediately and thus achieve
permanent residency within two years. After
Tiananmen Square, Canadians couldnt bear
to witness more Chinese students suffering
at the hands o their government. Or at least
that was how Ji-Ji made sense o how quickly
the documents got processed and the sudden
laxity o immigration regulations for her and
others like her back home. Luck was on her
side. There was no longer a need to enroll in
university, and Ji-Ji knew she was in Toronto
to stay. Renouncing her Chinese citizenship,
my mother intended to plunge head irst into a
Canadian life.
The next morning, with a Sing Tao
Newspaper in hand, Ji-Ji answered classiied
ads from local Chinatown businesses by phone.
Did she have experience waitressing? O
course! Washing dishes? No problem. Cutting
hair? Every day back in China. How good was
she at English? I live in Toronto already for
hal year. Very soon, Ji-Ji was employed. But
because her prior job experience consisted o
teaching university-level textile engineering
and holding a prestigious secretarial position
under the Resident Architect o Shanghais
new Mandarin Hotel, Ji-Jis hands could not
bear to wash hair or balance dishes for a living.
Four hours into spreading her ingers
around the scalps o Cantonese men, the soaps
and shampoos savaged Ji-Jis sensitive skin.
Two weeks into serving chop suey to Canadian
businessmen, she was told to never return
because her hands, inexperienced and inefi-
cient, could only balance one dish at a time. My
mother was determined but proud. Leaving
One week later, I returned to Toronto with
my mama, Ji-Ji, who soon took on the name
Cathy. I go by both Daphne and Young-Young
and I grew up listening to my mamas stories
about her youth in Shanghai, told to me from
across the kitchen table over hot bowls o rice
cake and sriracha in homemade pork bone soup.
Twenty-one years ago, my mama decid-
ed Toronto would be my home but through
her stories o Shanghai, she raised me to be a
Shanghainese woman.
+
Ji-Ji insisted on moving to North America
for a better life. Although Shanghai would soon
skyrocket towards its global city status, China
was not yet the future in 1989. While others
saw hope in their country, daydreaming about
the possibility o proits now that its doors
were open to the international market, Maos
inluence plagued Ji-Ji.
For as long as Ji-Ji can remember, she was
afraid o hearing the word counterrevolution-
ary (fan ge ming). Whispered amongst class-
mates and neighbors, counterrevolutionary
taught my mama the art o avoidance.
Bullied from the day Maos men took her
father when she was four years old, until the
day she moved away for university, Ji-Ji learned
to plan escape routes between her school and
her room. They used to yell, eight zero eight
(ba ling ba)a slang term referring to the shape
o handcuffswhen they saw her on the street.
Or Fan ge ming! Wheres your dad?
Ji-Ji knew irst-hand that speaking against
Mao only lead to punishment and humiliation;
for over a decade, Ji-Ji stayed quiet. She saw
running away as her only option.
z
The one place Ji-Ji truly felt safe in Shanghai
was with Zhang Qian, her best friend.
Every Saturday when Ji-Ji was tasked with
writing her middle schools newsletter on the
blackboard, Zhang Qian would accompany her.
Afterwards, they would walk around Shang-
hai together, from Nanjing Road to the Bund
and back along Huaihai Road, eating ten-cent
popsicles and thirty-cent wonton soups along
the way. They even followed a celebrity once,
giggling the whole time. He was a famous na-
tional basketball playeras my mama recounts,
very handsome.
Zhang Qian never asked Ji-Ji about her
father, and Ji-Ji knew that while others looked
down on her, Zhang Qian would always be by
her side.
|
But that didnt stop Ji-Ji from running away
at her earliest opportunity.
Her chance came in March o 1989. The
sister o my fathers classmate in Macau decided
to sponsor her in an act o goodwill. As soon as
the sponsorship letter arrived, Ji-Ji scheduled
an interview at the Canadian embassy in Bei-
jing. It was to take place on June 5
th
, 1989.
On June 4
th
, when my mama took her irst
step of the train in Beijing, she was met with
a throng o interrogatory military oficials
brandishing riles. From the train station to the
hotel, the city was silenced by armed men and
their mammoth tanks.
The infamously bloody Tiananmen Square
protests had sent the city into agitated upheaval.
Pedestrians had disappeared and taxis charged
literature literature
| 68 | 69
Cherry Styles Second Bloodstream
one job only meant she could, and should, ind
one better.
More luck came. Browsing through the
Sing Tao, Ji-Ji found a secretarial position with
Shanghainese employers. Torontos Chinatown
was a Cantonese mans world. But in the same
way the Cantonese stuck together, the Shang-
hainese rallied just as strongly, i not more so.
Book Art Inc. was Ji-Jis ticket to stability. Mr.
Benjamin Koo, her new employer, called her
Cathy and introduced her to the life o an inte-
grated Shanghainese family in Toronto, com-
plete with invitations to weekend outings at his
familys summer cottage up north in Muskoka.
Three months after landing in Toronto, Cathy
mailed a check straight to her parents in Shang-
hai. Nong fang xing haw le. Dont worry.

,
It is funny how life cycles around and
the memories that stick help you realize what
really mattered.
On March 2, 2008, my mama found out via
email that Zhang Qian had passed away. Sick
with a brain tumor for hal a year, Zhang Qian
had been on the verge o being admitted to the
hospital for an operation the following day. In
an attempt to take a walk around Shanghai for
one last time before the risky procedure, she
had bent forward to tie her shoes and lost con-
sciousness. Zhang Qian never woke up.
The way that I sobbed uncontrollably when
I heard the news forced me to question why I
was so upset. Having met Zhang Qian once in
my life on a two-week trip to Shanghai in 2006,
I was in no way close to her. But I realized I
was attached to her in a far deeper sense.
In the same way children might imagine
themselves to be Disney princesses and learn
to fall in love with Prince Charming, or think
that they are Harry Potter and see Ron and
Hermione as their best friends, my mamas
storytelling made me fall in love with Shanghai
through her eyes, with Zhang Qian at my side
as my best friend.
Even though Ji-Ji and Zhang Qian didnt
have much as young adults in Shanghai, they
were empowered by each others presence. My
mama developed a sense o ownership over the
land she walked on and a love for the city o
Shanghai through her memories with Zhang
Qianthe memories she continues to treasure
most today.
Shanghai is a city my mama ran away
from for a better life, but the stories I grew up
listening to over hot bowls o rice cake and
sriracha in homemade pork bone soup have
overwhelmingly been about the adventures
o Ji-Ji and Zhang Qian. Behind my mamas
nostalgia for her youth is her desire for a home
that she had left behindand that slipped away
the moment Zhang Qian passed.
Love would have kept my mama back in
Shanghai to be at Zhang Qians side, where she
felt most at homebut love is also what kept
me in Toronto, where my mama created
a home for us on a bridge between Shanghai
and Toronto. !
This piece was edited by Sara Erkal, Stefania
Gomez, and Maru Pabn.
literature literature
| 71
Il tbe greatest gestnre ol
social-political agency
is to antbor a cbild wbo will
live, act, and procreate in
tbe political lntnre, tben many
qneer peoplesto
pnt it blnntlyare lncked.
On October 19, 2013, The Observer published an article on
the increasing disinterest o Japanese citizens in sex and ro-
mance, entitled Why have young people in Japan stopped
having sex? Abigail Haworth, Observer contributor and
Marie Claire senior international editor, centers her piece
around the igure o a dominatrix-turned-love-doctor, one
Ai Aoyama, who helps train the pathologically sexual (or
sexually pathological) in human intimacya phrase that
codiies heterosexual, cisgendered reproduction. Haworth
employs such a politically explosive igure to activate the
nuclear potential o Japanese extinction and the gravity o
oficial alarmism felt by Japanese individuals and govern-
ment bureaucrats alike. Through terrifying statistics, she
redirects our attention away from what I read as an implicit
queer politics towards the dire and irrefutable stakes o
Japanese survival.
The great irony o a woman who used to defy state
intrusions into private, sexual life by performing illegal
and non-normative sexual acts (such as sadomasoch-
ism, non-genital pleasure) now assuming the agency o
state-sponsored and state-interested reproductive politics is
Tbe Means
Jnstily Tbemselves:
Qneering as Ind-less Pleasnre
!!!
Blake Beaver
politics
| 72 | 73
seemingly lost on Haworth, whose journalistic
interest lies more in painting a statistics-driven,
sociological narrative o Japanese citizens
imminent extinction. Although in no way
afiliated with the government or family-related
political agencies, Aoyamas therapy reproduc-
es and perpetuates a politicization o private,
sexual life.
In Haworths depiction o Aoyama, she
emphasizes the love doctors encouragement
o clients, whom she urges to stop apologiz-
ing for their own physical existence. Haworth
disguises Aoyamas correction and erasure
o non-normative sexualities in terms o
body-positivity and self-love; the more Aoyama
trains those who fear (heterosexual, normative)
intimacy in proper love-making, the more
she trains them to love and accept themselves.
Although Haworth never explicitly valorizes
Aoyamas therapeutic framework, the journalist
carefully narrates only positive, healthy, and
curative images concerning Aoyamas relation-
ship to patients.
Aoyamas complicity in state reproductive
force achieves complete transparency in her
own self-deinition: She likens her role in these
cases to that o the Edo period courtesans, or
oiran, who used to initiate samurai sons into
the art o erotic pleasure. Aoyamas sexual
therapy is primarily a mode o training people
in healthy and socially viable sexual activity.
However, in her self-comparison to a courte-
san, she becomes both a prostitute o the state
and a perpetuator o state-approved patriarchy,
codes o masculinity, and masculine violence.
Shes not just creating sexually viable, hetero-
sexual citizens; shes creating masculinized and
sexualized soldiers.
The major political problematic at work
here is most easily relatable in Lee Edelmans
notion o reproductive futurism, an ideological
framework in which all political decisions (such
as abortion rights, civil rights, and environ-
mentalism) are made on behal o the igure
o the Imminent Child: the child-to-be-born,
the product o a singular, heteronormative,
procreative sexuality. This brings into question
the idea that we should make environmentally
conscious life-choices and industry decisions so
that our children, grandchildren, great-grand-
children, and so on may live healthily and
happily. Lee Edelmans primary frustration with
the terms o repro-futurity are their imposition
o an ideological limit on political discourse...
preserving in the process the absolute privilege
o heteronormativity by rendering unthinkable,
by casting outside the political domain, the pos-
sibility o a queer resistance to this organizing
principle o communal relations. Historically
and presently, lesbians and gay men are exclud-
ed from the political framework that centers on
this igure o the Child, as they are naturally
and biologically without the capacity to repro-
duce. I the greatest gesture o social-political
agency is to author a child who will live, act,
and procreate in the political future, then many
queer peoplesto put it bluntlyare fucked.
Aoyamas sexual therapy is just this sort
o ideological imposition, the major political
potency o which Aoyama achieves through
conceptual-intellectual violence: by wiping
away pathological desiresby making them
inconceivableAoyama helps clients achieve
healthy, sanitized, politically thinkable sexuality.
This makes queer, social agency unthinkable.
But from what exactly is Aoyama helping
clients turn away? She names their pathological
sexualities Pot Noodle Love: easy or instant
Nicolas Baird Cranium
politics politics
| 74 | 75
Robert Sandler cacdick
gratiication, in the form o casual sex, short-
term trysts and the usual technological suspects:
online porn, virtual-reality girlfriends, anime
cartoons. These simple and immediate forms
o sexual pleasure diverge from a procreative
sexuality that prizes the end and not the means.
Although Pot Noodle Love may contain and
reproduce heterosexual, cisgendered desires,
they can only do so under a queer-inclusive
umbrella in which the pleasure o masturbat-
ing without climax to virtual representations
o transgender cartoons is just as valid as the
pleasure o making a baby. Pot Noodle Love
virtualizes sexuality, and in doing so, draws
out its imaginative qualities and agencies. In
Pot Noodle Love, a queer love, sex becomes a
process and not a terminus.
The multiplication o pleasure-expressions
in Pot Noodle Love is precisely a sexual model
that opens up space for queer political agency.
By shattering the homogeneity o reproductive,
genital sexuality, Pot Noodle Love ushers in
plural sexualities. In Pot Noodle Loves virtual-
ization, we ind a radical political potential.
Queer as action and procedure deies
deinition. In that it always provides a little
more room for self-identiication [for (self-)
queering], queerness denotes a gesture o
political inclusivity and solidarity. I we reject
Aoyama (and the states) violent pathologization
o our pleasures, we queer our political-sexual
spaces and make room for not just lesbian,
gay, bi, and transgender subjects, but also the
asexual, the cyber-sexual, the virtually sexual,
and the men, women, and phes who simply
dont want children. Queerness is necessary not
just for the political and social humanization
o LGBTQQIAAP (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
Transgendered, Queer, Questioning, Intersex,
Asexual, Allies and Pansexual) peoples, but also
for the very people who want to fuck without
making babies. Queerness poses the middle
inger to state-sponsored repro-futurity. When
we queer, we stop making political decisions
in the name o our unborn Children and start
politically enfranchising the already living. !
This piece was edited by David Sanchez-Aguilera.
cisgender: identifying with the gender one was as-
signed at birth; assumes both a sex binary and a direct
relationship between gender and sex; used to label
the privileged identities o those who are not trans*,
genderqueer, or gender non-conforming
Edo Period: Japanese society under the rule o
Tokugawa military government between 1603 and
1867; period characterized by economic growth, strict
social hierarchies, and isolationist foreign policies, as
well as explosion o popular art and culture
phe: a gender-neutral pronoun popularized by the
Female Sexuality workshop at Brown University
politics
| 77
Dear Friend,
Today I wore a skirt that hung below my knees.
I wore a shirt that covered my shoulders, re-
tied to cover my exposed stomach.
Today I visited the Western Wall, a place Ive
learned about from school and Hebrew school
and people and peoples pictures. My friends and
my friends mothers have been here. My sister
and my grandmother have been here too.
Today I saw the ten-foot, green wicker fence
that stands limsily perpendicular to the West-
ern Wall, separating the men from the women.
Id never heard o this green wicker fence, this
Second Wall. I hadnt known it existed.
The tour guide ripped paper as
we waited in line at security. You
can write here something i you
want and stick it into the cracks
in the Wall the Israelis explained.
I disagreed. I thought room in
the Wall should be reserved for
people who knew before visiting
that i they wanted, they could
write something.
There is not so much space left
in the Wall, an Israeli said.
Dear Friend,
Do you know about the Western Wall? You
didnt go to Hebrew school, you went to Quak-
er school. Your friends and friends mothers
and sisters and grandmothers have probably
never been here.
Only the Western Wall remains from the
Time o the Two Temples. The temples housed
the Torahs written from the mouth o G-d.
Both Temples were destroyed. The Western
Wall did not touch the irst or second Temple
or the irst or second Torah but it also did not
fall. Today, for Jews it is the Holiest o Holy
places on Earth. A statistically impressive
number o people visit the Western Wall each
year. They come with prayers written down on
pieces o paper, which they place in the cracks
o the Wall. The notes are whispers; the cracks
are the ears o G-d.
While the tour guide ripped
the paper, I took a picture o
mysel in the rounded mirror
mounted above the dress code
sign, positioning the camera
to include my relection and
the instructions.
I wanted to capture both what
I was wearing and what I was
not allowed to be wearing.
Dear Visitors,
You are approaching the holy site o the western
wall where the divine presence always rests.
Please make sure you are appropriately modestly
dressed so as not to cause harm to this holy
place or to the feelings o the worshippers.
Sincerely,
Rabbi o the Western Wall and Holy Sites.
I walked through Jerusalem with a message for the ears o G-d
clutched in my hand.
I wrote it twice, irst with skipping lines. The empty space
looked cavernous, as i I had room to speak but no thoughts
important enough to say aloud. Second draft: shrunk the
two-sentence message to the smallest portion o page possi-
ble. Crammed in their corner, tripping over each other, my
thoughts for G-d looked appropriately crowded and confused.
I rolled it up and placed it in my palm.
Inongb to
Say Alond
!!!
Sara Winnick
literature
| 78 | 79
my irst TALLIS from my father at my BAT
MITZVAH when I was 13.
Boys also have their BAR Mitzvahs, at the
age o 13. BAR means SON. In Israel, boys read
from the Torah for their BAR MITZVAHS. In
Israel, girls have parties for their BAT MITZ-
VAHS.
I have a twin brother. Together, we turned
13. Together, we read from the Torah. Togeth-
er, we received our TALLIT. TALLIT is the
plural o TALLIS. BNAI is the plural for BAR
and BAT when the individuals in question are
not the same gender.
Yesterday, 10 women were arrested at the
Western Wall for wearing prayer shawls tra-
ditionally used by men. TRADITIONALLY is
a term that confuses me in this context because
when I looked up TRADITION in the dictio-
nary, it read the transmission o customs or
beliefs from generation to generation. A good
example o TRADITION, as deined by the
dictionary, is a father bequeathing a TALLIS
to his daughter at her BAT MITZVAH. At the
Western Wall, however, it isnt TRADITION-
AL, it is OFFENSIVE.
I waited, wearing a cerulean
skirt, white button down shirt
and bright red scar hung
loosely around my neck, wish-
ing I was wearing a thick black
babushka like the orthodox
women to my sides. I wanted
to feel the black fabric heavy
against my face, wrapped
twice around my head, once
around my neck, smothering
my hair, forming blinders at
the sides o my eyes. I was
willing to sacriice peripheral
vision for the privacy that
came with convention.
I didnt want my tears to
be misinterpreted.
Dear Editor,
There is a strain o argument in Jewish law
itsel that supports women donning prayer
shawls. Several rabbinical authorities have
taken this view as early as the 12th and 13th
centuries; not all consider this act to be wearing
mens attire.
These women are neither Jewish nihilists in
the strict sense nor crazy American ladies, as
some in the secular Israeli world view them.
They have a leg in Jewish law upon which
they stand.
Rabbi Ian Silverman, Greenlawn, NY,
12/24/2012
I faced a wall, divided. In two
but not in half.
This wall is divided and it is
divided unequally.
This city is divided and it is
divided unequally.
This world is divided and it is
divided unequally.
Thesedivisions aremadebyman.
The tour guide, with an Israeli
accent as thick as her brown
curly hair, said to our group,
Yes, this is a very religious
place. So there are very
religious rules. So the women
will go to the right and the
men will go to the left and we
will meet back here in ifteen
minutes, okay?
Dear Friend,
The men walked to the left. I went to the right.
I waited in line for a place to open up at the
Wall. I had time to calculate the percentage o
the Wall accessible to women and the percent-
age o the Wall reserved for men. I had to wait
because hal o the visitors had access to only a
quarter o the Wall.
I had no place to look except at the Wall in
front o me. Its cracks were overilling with
notes, some o which luttered to my feet.
Israel to Review Curbs on Womens Prayer at
the Western Wall
New York Times, 12/25/2012
Dear Sister,
Whenyouwent toJerusalemyouwereoverheated
andovercrowdedandover theageo 21. Whenyou
camehomeyoutoldmeabout your trip. Youused
words likefun andvacation andwhatever. You
didnt tell meabout theSecondWall.
When I went to Jerusalem I was under-
dressed and under the weather and under the
impression that I no longer believed in G-d.
When I came home I told you about my
trip. I used words like big and important
and meaningful.
Debate Over Womens Prayer at the Western
Wall
New York Times, 12/30/2012
Dear Sister,
We were born to the same parents, raised
in the same home. We were educated in the
same schools, taught by the same teachers. I
there is no mirror at hand, I look at you to
check i I have something stuck between my
teeth. You taught me what FEMINISM means.
Why didnt you tell me about inequality at the
Western Wall?
Arrests o 10 Women Praying at Western
Wall
New York Times, 2/11/13
Dear Reader,
A TALLIS is a Jewish prayer shawl. A BAT
MITZVAH is a rite o passage for Jewish girls,
signifying their transformation into Jewish
women, which happens in Jewish culture at
the arbitrary and non-negotiable age o 13.
The word BAT indicates that the individual
mitzvah-ing is female. In English, it means
DAUGHTER. As is customary, I received
literature literature
| 80
Saturday, October 19. MTA construction work means
the 4 is running local, which works favorably as I need
some time to sit quietly with myself. I am headed to St.
Marks Place for the Occult Humanities Conference. I
like it here on the subway. I pace my reading according
to the number o stops I have left. I pace my thoughts
to this as well. I sit down, I take out my paper and make
notes. This is what my handwriting should always look
like, as i it were always beyond my control. Automatism:
a quick hand, a lucky draw. I feel fast in my head too. I
have a pen and I make notes. I note that there is a woman
across from me with ruby all over. Ruby lips, ruby in her
ears, ruby is her wool coat, but her hair is grey and short.
I woke up in the apartment aware o the colors slipping
into grey morning. The irst talk o the morning is on the
British-born painter, Leonora Carrington.
Undergronnd
Dandelions
!!!
Jnlieta Cardenas
Ieonara Carrington and tbe Iemale Snrrealist
Dear Reader,
The state o Israel does not have a constitution.
It has a parliamentary legislature called the
KENESSET.
In 1967 the KENNESET passed The Pro-
tection o Holy Places Law that stated:
The Holy Places shall be protected from DES-
ECRATION and any other violation and from
anything likely to violate the freedom o access
o the members o the different religions to
the places sacred to them or their feelings with
regard to those places.
The Regulation for the Protection o Holy
Places to the Jews deined DESECRATION
as conducting a religious ceremony contrary
to accepted practice, begging, slaughtering or
wearing unit attire.
My tears were not symbolic.
They were not a whisper.
They were not a prayer. My
tears were not crowded on
a ripped piece o paper and
crammed into a crack in a
wall. They were a response
to a reality o injustice and
inequality and oppression.
They had nothing to do
with G-d.
Dear Friend,
The English language does not have a word for
the feeling o being in a place that people you
love experienced before you. It also does not
have nouns that are gendered. Today I felt the
feeling o being in a place where people you
love experienced before you. I felt the feminine
form o this nonexistent noun
When I developed the
pictures from my trip, the
mounted dress code was clear
and legible; the mirror was
visible, barely squeezed into
the frame.
I was a red, white and blue
blur in the bottom left corner.
Dear G-d,
The cracks on the womens side o the Western
Wall are overlowing with paper.I did not
know this until I saw it. I would have added the
word equality to my note, but there wasnt
any room left for me to write it. !
literature
| 82 | 83
I am invested in her work having seen it as
a child in Mexico City before developing the
biases o an art history student. My mother
would ask me to remind her where El Museo
Tamayo was inside the Bosque de Chapultepec.
Sometimes she would get lost, she had a lot
on her mind. I cannot remember my thoughts
clearly about people, about my family, but I
remember looking at lines. I promise to make
my hand and mind one organ. The lines guide
the hand, they are the direct link to the brain.
Leonora liked animals; sometimes in her
paintings there are rabid looking ones that look
like they would be hungry even after being fed.
Some o them look like the Xoloitzcuintles,
these black dogs without fur that run in the
garden o Dolores Olmedo near my aunts
house. Leonora added fur to them, probably
because they would be cold otherwise. I you
concentrate hard enough you can tell animals
your secrets and i they think you are kind they
will tell you theirsbut this is non-verbal tactile
thought: pet me here. There are always women
in her paintings, they look like dandelions and
hold orbs that look like eggs. I cannot think
about this right now, I am too young.

!!!
At 34 Stuyvesant St, I push the red doors.
Politely, in a kind manner, with a stack o
badges before her, a girl tells me that they
have sold out o tickets but that I should feel
welcome to have coffee with the lecturers
before the talk. I do as she says and walk into
the wooden room. I talk, with coffee, we talk;
who are you, how did you get here. It is a new
thing, this, the Occult Humanities, It is new
to me. There are no real questions when you
already have a sense o someones answer.
However, in conversation there are formalities
so I answer and smile with twitching legs. I
write, I am still a student.
It is time to go into the lecture hall. I am
not a child, my legs have grown and they walk.
Andre Breton, tbe sell-imposed
lonnder ol snrrealism said, Ieonora,
I like yonr style. Ieonora said, Sbnt
tbe lnck np. I am more ol a snrrealist
tban yon will ever be.
Annika Klein Untitled
culture culture
| 84 | 85
actions that are truly unconscious get their
direction from: breathing, heart rate, hands
and ingers. Leonora said, remember that we
are only one species amongst many animals.
Remember that we are animals. My neck-base is
where the basic animal gets instructions. I think
that is where my intuition comes from as well.
Leonora had a hard time in boarding school.
She painted hersel without breasts. In the Casa
Azul they say she was a lover to Frida Kahlo.
I am old enough to think about dandelion
women holding orbs that look like eggs. They
are always in impossible architectures: staircases
that spin, mazes. They can handle it, they have
a good sense o direction even though they have
a lot on their minds. Beautiful women have
special lives, but these lives are o their
own making.
Do I have magic? I cry. My neck hurts. I am
looking at Leonora on the projector screen.
She is sitting in a chair with a rocking horse
behind her, loating above her. This was 1936,
at mortal age 21. I I go uptown I can see this
painting, which she painted with her hands
with her skinwhile she was still with Max in
Saint Martin DArdeche before he was taken
away. The painting is at the Metropolitan.
But fuck that place. It will make me too sad
to see this painting on those walls. The man
next to me in the lecture hall doesnt mind that
I am there crying listening to Susan Aberth
talk about Leonora Carrington. Maybe they
think I have magic and so I am forgiven these
capricious tendencies. Maybe Academia should
catch up to the Occult and take crying seriously.
What makes you think, dear professor, that you
can talk about art at such a remove? Fuck you
Andr Breton, I am more o a surrealist than
you will ever be. Im more o a surrealist than
youll ever be, professor, and right now I am
not afraid o castrating your arguments.
Leonora drew hersel at sixteen. Leonora
was placed in an institution in Portugal.
Leonora. I cannot imagine her crying. Leonora
believed she was magical and this granted her
loating freedom. She knew she had enough
magic to say, Fuck You to male authority.
How much power does the Occult give back
to the Witch? Andr Breton, I always close
your eyelids in my textbooks. You annoy me.
Leonora wrote: P.S. Please note, the word
psychosis was created as an ego saver for
the psychiatrist.
Susan Aberth says that in the mid-90s
Leonora and her work were looked to as
examples o the products o A Beautiful Muse.
I do not know how many people still think this
way about creativity, insanity, and beauty. Is
it romantic to be a hysteric, to paint loating
saints? In dreams I would jump up and a gust
o wind would carry me through the hallways
and up the stairs. The men in the Surrealist
circles, they took her seriously. In her
paintings she has no breasts. There is a photo
o her and Max: Look at their work together. I
think they are still in love. I understand being
in love with a man and what affect it can have
on my work, dandelion work.
!!!
There are secret places I need to ind.
There is a hidden observatory in Mexico
where Leonora would go to with Remedios.
It is underground and only one photo o it
exists. It is a secret observatory. I will ind it.
Susan Aberth o Bard has titled her talk, Like A
Messenger to the Deep: Deciphering the Occult
in Leonora Carrington.
Leonora Carringtons DNA contained
Irish ancestry that brought Celtic rites to the
symbolism o her work. What woven pattern
o her unique double-helix calls forth ancestral
knowledge o magic? My deep is in the
Deoxyribonucleic Acid, which has claimed for
me my inheritance, the bad, the good, all o it
has been mapped already.
When I was a child I would see her
paintings, next to those o Remedios Varo. Two
women, best friends. In The Hearing Trumpet,
a novel Leonora wrote in 1950, the narrator is
an old man who says, Beauty is a responsibility
like anything else. Beautiful women have special
lives like prime ministers but I dont want that.
Andr Breton, the self-imposed founder
o surrealism said, Leonora, I like your style.
Leonora said, Shut the fuck up. I am more o
a surrealist than you will ever be. Leonora had
fallen in love with Max Ernst at mortal age 19.
He was mortal age 46. She left her home and
country and lived in Paris with Max and the
Surrealists. She had her own thing going on.
Dear Andr, just because I am naked at this
party doesnt mean that you can tell me what
to do, that you can tell me what my art means.
Deal with it. As a student o art history, I read
Bretons Manifesto, I learned about surrealism
and slowly I stopped being a surrealist. My
imagination had to stop, I had to learn to think
and write analytically. My natural epistemes, my
intuitive intelligence had to be defended using
the scaffolding o theory built by men. I found
mysel the youngest and usually one o only
two or three females in graduate seminars.
My lexicon had to match the professors, my
memory had to be sleek and sharp, I had to cut
the mens arguments down. Any mistake, any
misreading o Kant and you are dead meat. I
had to forget that I could cry. For three years I
almost didnt.
Leonora was still in love with Max when
they moved to Saint Martin DArdeche in the
south o France after his wife Marie-Berthe
Aurenche became too fed up. Max was taken
to an internment camp in September 1939.
Leonora tried to give him paintbrushes. She
vomited to try to purify herself. The vineyard
on their grounds...I wonder what the grapes
taste like now. Her friends took her away from
France; she ended up in Madrid at the British
Consulate having had the experience referred
to as a breakdown. Parents, convulsive
therapy, pentylenetetrazol. Induced seizures.
Leonora was then taken to Lisbon, Portugal
and escaped while under the care o a private
nurse. Like many Europeans she sought refuge
in Latin America and found it through the
Mexican Embassy. She lived with Frida Kahlo
in the Blue House. I remember the Blue House,
and the fountain o Coyoacn with coyotes
howling in Aztec Nahautl. Calling,
something, calling.
Susan Arbeth says, Leonora could write
with both hands at the same time, doing
different things with both. I can write with
two hands. How is Leonoras brain? Are the
hemispheres melted unto one another or are
they completely separate? I keep getting a pain
between vertebrae C1 and C8, the nerves at
the nape o my neck. This is where those
culture culture
| 86 | 87
Remedios had to escape Francos Spain. There
needs to be some safe underground for two
strong women. I can wish it. I can wish mysel
into inding it. Three women. Four, so that I
can bring a friend. That place is in hal my DNA
at least. I will ind the observatory.
I need to go outside now. I will walk in
the gray until I have found a place to do my
dandelion work. You cant blow me
away today. !
culture
| 89
Tala Worrell Gollum
art
art
| 90 | 91
Todd Stong All I Ask Gianna Baldi The Woman on the Couch
art art
| 92 | 93
Anna Muselmann Clowns
Cristine Brache Vacuum Series No. 3
art art
| 94 | 95
Annika Klein Untitled
Sally G. Kim Modern Woman
art art
| 96 | 97
Cait Cannon Armor of Venus (Detail) Robert Sandler Rimming
art art
| 98
Doreen Gardner Kleoid
art
)
Feminists @ Brown
Pembroke Center
Sarah Doyle Womens Center
Watermyn Co-op
Chanelle Adams
Kyle Albert
Ana Cecilia Alvarez
Amara Berry
Leah Douglas
Bridget Ferrill
Lily Goodspeed
Robert Sel
Iriends ol
Blnestockings
Bluestockings was made possible in part by grants from the Brown University Creative Arts Council and Gener-
ation Progress. The Creative Arts Council supports undergraduate or graduate student projects involved in the
study, critique, or production o the creative arts. Generation Progress provides funding, training and resources to a
diverse network o print, online and broadcast media on college campuses across the country.
the radical notion that women are people. feminism [fem-uh-niz-uhm]
noun the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights o wom-
en equal to those o men. feminism is organized activity on behal o
womens rights and interests. as a woman i have no country, as a woman
my country is the whole world. - virginia woolf. feminism is a collection
o movements and ideologies aimed at deining, establishing, and defend-
ing equal political, economic, and social rights for everyone. feminism
is both an intellectual commitment and a political movement that seeks
gender justice and the end o sexism in all forms. feminism is respecting
people o all genders, races, and sexuality as human beings. feminism is
for everyone. feminism is the belie that equal rights are not deined by
sex. feminism [fem-uh-niz-uhm] verb to help women get the vote, ob-
tain equal rights for jobs, make laws to control domestic violence, obtain
the rights to own property, to divorce, to have access to birth control and
to have possession o their own bodies. wake up people, and look around
you. i you have some power than your job is to empower someone else.
- toni morrison. feminism means recognizing the past inequalities that
have historically denied women access to many social, economic and polit-
ical spheres that are mostly occupied by menalso recognizing the result
o these inequalities have lasting impacts today. a woman without a man
is like a ish without a bicycle. gloria steinem. feminism challenges the
dominant narrative. feminism is the difference between life and death.
feminism is a celebration o diversity. feminism is inclusion feminism says
the personal is political. feminism is having a room o ones own. feminism