lauren zuniga

Spark Shira E's New Album & Adventures!

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:59:22 -0500

Spark Shira E's New Album & Adventures!:

Help Shira E make her new album & take her music to the masses!

Shira Erlichman is one of the most talented human beings on the planet and a huge reason that I started doing poetry again. Please support this magical being. The whole world needs her.

fatma-sketchbooking: Nonsensical and super fun. Whoa.

Thu, 09 May 2013 17:42:02 -0500

fatma-sketchbooking:

Nonsensical and super fun.

Whoa.

BOOST Tara Hardy

Thu, 09 May 2013 11:05:26 -0500

BOOST Tara Hardy:

sierrademulder:

writebloody:

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.

"Gentlemen. This is what rape culture is like: Imagine you have a Rolex watch. Nice fancy Rolex, you..."

Thu, 09 May 2013 11:02:58 -0500

“

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.

bigfatfeminist: myloveinthug: WILLOW oh my god !!!!1 This....

Thu, 09 May 2013 10:57:12 -0500

bigfatfeminist:

myloveinthug:

WILLOW oh my god

!!!!1

This. Wonder. Right. Here.

Comments on Girlwriteswhat and Patriarchy

Sat, 04 May 2013 18:08:55 -0500

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...

Sat, 04 May 2013 15:12:57 -0500

“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.

Fri, 03 May 2013 00:07:33 -0500

This.

Yes, It Matters That Jason Collins Is Black And Gay

Thu, 02 May 2013 23:51:00 -0500

Yes, It Matters That Jason Collins Is Black And Gay:

Black gay kids need heroes too.

Go. Ahead. Saeed.

rachelmckibbens: love the spiral staircase :)

Thu, 02 May 2013 23:12:04 -0500

rachelmckibbens:

love the spiral staircase :)

The State Of Women - Oklahoma Magazine

Thu, 02 May 2013 23:07:46 -0500

The State Of Women - Oklahoma Magazine :

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.”

What the queer? | GaydarGirls Blog

Wed, 01 May 2013 16:04:36 -0500

What the queer? | GaydarGirls Blog:

Look! They used my poem in the explanation of queer on the GaydarGirls blog! Or rather they said a lot of eloquent stuff about what it means to be queer and then capped it off with my poemy rant.

naylawriteshere: Queer Rage by Janani Balasubramanian, Alok...

Wed, 01 May 2013 16:00:50 -0500

naylawriteshere:

Queer Rage by Janani Balasubramanian, Alok Vaid-Menon, and Cam Awkward-Rich.

THIS. RIGHT. HERE.

I just watched Tiny Furniture. I like that it made me want to walk around in my underpants with my...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 22:21:03 -0500

I just watched Tiny Furniture. I like that it made me want to walk around in my underpants with my fanny out. And that nothing got resolved.

"The mistakes I tend to make in my first draft are too many adjectives. When I type it up and look at..."

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 22:13:44 -0500

“The mistakes I tend to make in my first draft are too many adjectives. When I type it up and look at it, I try to take out half the adjectives and a third of the self-pity.”

- Sharon Olds, interviewed by Mike Pride for the Concord Monitor (via nps2013)

“Poetry is a very stupid thing to be good at. Poems are basically like dreams–something that...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 20:06:28 -0500

“Poetry is a very stupid thing to be good at. Poems are basically like dreams–something that everybody likes to tell other people but nobody actually cares about when it’s not their own. Which is why poetry is a failure of the intellectual community.” Nadine, Tiny Furniture

You’re supposed to look sexy, so other people can benefit, but you’re not supposed to...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 19:22:31 -0500

You’re supposed to look sexy, so other people can benefit, but you’re not supposed to actually be sexual so that you benefit.

- Tavi Gevinson

Mom, do you think this is an earthworm? Are there other kinds of...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 22:02:46 -0500

Mom, do you think this is an earthworm? Are there other kinds of worms? I hope it’s not because I touched it. Now it will die tomorrow. We have chemicals on our hands. I named him Stanley. I have to cherish my time with him while I can. I’m going to build him a nice home so he can die happy. #kavimoon (at Clementine The House )

Wait. Pull over. Does that billboard have a black and white baby...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:24:30 -0500

Wait. Pull over. Does that billboard have a black and white baby in a bathtub saying abortion is a black and white issue? Wait. What?

Getting ready for show at OU tonight. I love performing there but I feel like they must get so sick...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 12:25:35 -0500

Getting ready for show at OU tonight. I love performing there but I feel like they must get so sick of me and the same ol’ poems. I’m gonna break out some new jams! After this show I am taking some big time off so it will be good to get it all out! If you are in town, come play. 7pm. Memorial Union, Molly Boren Ballroom. OH A BALLROOM! Yes. A Ballroom.