High-res
Nonsensical and super fun.
Whoa.
A health fundraiser for beloved poet Tara Hardy.
Our dear friend Tara Hardy is in need of our help. Since undergoing chemotherapy and enduring various visits to the hospital, she is left saddled with some very steep medical bills. By donating you’d help ease some of the financial burden Tara continues to face. If you’re unable to donate, you can read a sampling of her work and/or purchase Bring Down the Chandeliers from our online store. Tara is a dear member of our Write Bloody family and your ongoing support is very much appreciated. Please share this and repost. In the meantime, please keep her in your thoughts.
Cheers.
http://writebloody.com/?s=bring+down+the+chandeliers&post_type=product
This is important. She is important. Please give what you can.
Boost to the moon and back. Hearts can’t contain how we love this human.
(via everyjoyitbrings)
“
Gentlemen. This is what rape culture is like:
Imagine you have a Rolex watch. Nice fancy Rolex, you bought it because you like the way it looks and you wanted to treat yourself. And then you get beaten and mugged and your Rolex is stolen. So you go to the police. Only, instead of investigating the crime, the police want to know why you were wearing a Rolex instead of a regular watch. Have you ever given a Rolex to anyone else? Is it possible you wanted to be mugged? Why didn’t you wear long sleeves to cover up the Rolex if you didn’t want to be mugged?
And then after that, everywhere you go, there are constant jokes about stealing your Rolex. People you don’t even know whistle at your Rolex and make jokes about cutting your hand off to get it. The media doesn’t help either; it portrays people who wear Rolexes as flamboyant assholes who secretly just want someone to come along and take that Rolex off their hands. When damn, all you wanted was to wear a nice watch without getting harassed for it. When you complain that you are starting to feel unsafe, people laugh you off and say that you are too uptight. Never mind you got violently attacked for the crime of wearing a friggin time piece.
Imagining all that? It sucks, doesn’t it.
Now imagine you could never take the Rolex off.
”The Wretched of the Earth: [TW: rape] On Rape Culture (via ghettogwenythpaltrow)
Rape culture is having to use an object to explain what we go through when our bodies are violated.
(via moonlit—dancer)
I like the object comment too.
(via ellaminnowpea)
WILLOW oh my god
!!!!1
This. Wonder. Right. Here.
(via angrynaps)
Girl: Exploded is one of my favourite poems. I have a question: do you believe in patriarchy? Recently I saw a video from girlwriteswhat and I must admit that I’m really confused. That is rare because I have never doubted that feminism was about anything other than equality. I’ll like to hear you thought on that matter.
I had not heard of girlwriteswhat so thanks for cluing me in. I only watched two of her videos and read some blog posts and I started to feel some feelings. My guess is that’s what she is after. Here are the only thoughts I can articulate at this point.
I totally get identifying as a gender egalitarian more than a feminist and I get that some women have some pretty intense man-hatred that can be destructive. I mean, hatred and aggression can be destructive, period. I don’t think that is what feminism is about.
I dig that she makes videos and gets to speak her mind about things. I dig that she can sport a short hair cut, a tank top and be divorced with three kids supporting herself from blogging. That’s rad. Mad props. To me, it seems funny to be against feminism when you are directly benefitting from feminism.
She referred to feminism as “socialism in panties” and “the red-headed stepdaughter of communism” I like poetry. I like good imagery. I’m not into using belittling images of femininity to describe social movements.
Here’s some more shit I don’t like: (from her address to the NY State Libertarian Party)
“According to radical feminists, your grandfathers and great grandfathers were rapists and slave-masters who exploited, subjugated and violated the women who were nearest and dearest to them—their own mothers, sisters, wives and daughters. According to radical feminists, every atrocity ever committed throughout all of history can be laid at the door of normative masculinity, but every male-generated advance—calculus, alternating current, the telegraph, the transistor, radio, penicillin, the number system, hydro-electricity, microwaves, fiberglass, the theory of relativity, the periodic table, trigonometry, insulin, canned foods, vaccines, fire retardant, teflon, wireless communications, the microchip, the birth control pill and even tampons—is a result of men intentionally holding women back, keeping women down, refusing to allow women to achieve, and hogging all the power and glory.”
I don’t personally know any feminists who believe that all grandfathers and great grandfathers were rapists. I also think it is bizarre to site inventions of men that we should be grateful for when we don’t even know the quantity of things women invented because WOMEN WERE NOT ALLOWED TO HOLD PATENTS. It’s also bizarre that she talks about women feeling so “entitled to rights but not wanting to work for them.” Oh, the audacity of women to think they should just have the same rights as men for no reason other than we are both human.
To answer your question, yes, I believe patriarchy exists. Patriarchy is not the boogie man. It’s not the entirety of men in the world. It’s just a set of ideas and practices that inform how we live our lives. Those ideas feed things like female circumcision, human trafficking, inequality in compensation, property ownership, and multitudes of other arenas. It’s not something to “believe in.” It exists. It’s like Vitamin C. You might not be able to see it but it’s there.
Do I blame all of my problems on men? Nope. Do I think that marriage is an institution of slavery? Nope. Do I think that I can’t do what I want in life because I am so horribly oppressed? Nope.
Does my brother have to vote on what he is allowed to do with his sperm? No. Did my rapist cry himself to sleep at night when he decided not to keep the baby? Not a drop. Do men have a lot of tough shit to deal with too? Absolutely. A lot of what is hard about being a man right now has a lot to do with patriarchy. A lot of men fuck patriarchy all up in the face every day of their lives. I’m grateful for them.
That’s all I can say about girlwriteswhat right now. I am always in support of women speaking their truth. I feel grateful that we live in a country where she and I can both do that. Thanks for the message. Stay tuned for my new poem: Feminism is Not a Brand of Combat Boot.
“I’ve come from the bottom of of your mouth to tell you you cannot make ugly things beautiful. We were never ugly to begin with. I am not broken because no one can tell me what my use is.”
-Brian Ellis, American Dust Revisited
This.
Black gay kids need heroes too.
Go. Ahead. Saeed.
love the spiral staircase :)
Oklahoma Magazine’s Jenny Lloyd did a thorough article on the State of Women. Lots of great points and facts but this was my favorite part:
We asked the four teenage poets, revved on iced lattes and chai, what they think about Oklahoma’s failed Personhood Bill and got a raucous ear-full on everything from abortion to birth control and everything in between.
Johnson says she is frustrated with “old men” in Congress “trying to tell a woman what to do with her body.”
Weaver chimes in quickly, “I don’t think pro-choice means pro-abortion. It’s just about the rights over your own body.”
Schellhorn says, “People act like it’s some big thing,” she says. “But it’s a rights thing. It’s not a want-to-kill-babies thing.”
McClaughry says she thinks it’s an issue of control. Then she ruffles around in her beat-up black backpack and pulls out a book, then quotes her favorite lines.
The book is by Oklahoma City poet Lauren Zuniga, an idol among this group of girls. The award-winning writer recently published her second book of poetry, called The Smell of Good Mud, with Write Bloody Press.
A poem she wrote, called aptly “To The Oklahoma Lawmakers: A Poem,” appeared in her book and ends with these lines: “If you want to play god, Mr. and Mrs. Lawmakers, if you want to write your bible on my organs, then you better be there when I am down on my knees pleading for relief from your morality.”
Her words speak to younger Oklahoma women who are curious about gender equality and where they stand as legislators float bills that would affect their futures and their bodies.
For her part, Zuniga, a 31-year-old mother of two, says she is inspired by other “phenomenal activists, artists, teachers and mothers I know who are fighting every day to live the life they choose to live.
“Someday, I will have adequate health care, be able to marry the woman I love and be able to make decisions about my body in a loving, safe community,” Zuniga says, “all because of the women and allies working tirelessly to fight for basic human rights.”
