This Is What Makes Us Girls
iamateenagefeminist:
when men open doors for me
yearning for my smile
and my lover cups my hips, pulling me to her
whispering “mine”
and
when my mother looked at my skirt and said “you’re not going out in that”
and my father said I was dead to him,
an embarrassment to the family
and they gave him a job instead of me,
and again, and again,
and when they spoke over me, boys and beards alike,
wrote their words and theories on my skin
called me hysterical, unreliable, psychotic,
and
the psychologist asked me what underwear I was wearing,
and the doctor told me to get undressed
while another refused to treat my impure body at all
and strange men pulled at my crotch and my breasts, groping, reaching, tearing,
or the taxi driver said I could pay with sex
and I ran like hell
stumbling in the darkness
wishing I’d worn flats
and their fists hit my chest, and my body crumpled
they call me slut, whore, cunt
and everyone blamed me, anyway.
And you, my sisters, you closed the doors to shelters
and my bruises healed alone
organised conferences and
wrote books
while my words went unheard
and you told me die tranny bitch
called yourself radical
and never once realised how much
you are like the men
you hate.
This was written by Emily Manuel.
(via seriouslyamerica)
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Why I perform abortions: A Christian obstetrician explains his choice
bebinn:
tresfuegos:
Willie J. Parker, an obstetrician based in Washington, D.C., didn’t always perform abortions. He’s a Christian from Birmingham, Ala., who initially refused to even consider the procedure.
But about halfway into his 20-year career, he changed his mind. Now, he’s one of those rare doctors who is willing to push the limits and provide abortions at 24 weeks of pregnancy. That places him among only about 11 percent of all abortion providers who will do the procedure that late in the second trimester.
Click through to read more.
This interview is wonderful. He talks about who he sees coming in for later-term abortions, fetal pain, waiting periods, and anti-choicers targeting racial minorities. Read it!
266
Guide to loving your body:
1. Get naked and take a good long look at your body. Trace your stretch marks, feel your hip bones poking out, place your hand over your tummy and take a fistful of yourself in. Appreciate your scars and pimples, your uneven,large,or nonexistent breasts. Take pride in your un/shaven, un/cut, fantastically odd private bits. Hold up a mirror to yourself and study your body. Love it.
2. Be Ugly, reclaim words that are used to put you down and shut you up and scream right back at these fascist beauty standard reinforcing scumbags. Give them the finger and tell them to kiss your fat/skinny/somewhere in between ass ‘cause you ain’t got time to waste with their body hating bullshit. and remember, you don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Validate yourself by accepting yourself.
3. Wear clothes that don’t fit, that are too big or too small and show all your “problem areas” that cosmo insists you hide and walk down the street like the fucking fabulous queen you are. Sashay the hate away.
4. Do what YOU want with YOUR body. Shave or don’t, wear makeup or don’t, whatever choice you make is yours to make, and anyone who shames you for your decision can keep it moving. This also means respecting the choices of others, even if they differ from your own.
5. Surround yourself with loving and supportive people. Rid of the toxic bullshit in your life if possible, and immerse yourself in a community that embraces body positivity and diversity.
- brazen bitch (now blck-grrl) (via pussy-envy)
(via blck-grrl)
7683
I was born to an undocumented Mexican mother in San José, Califaztlán. When my mother was pregnant she crossed the U.S-Mexico border ‘sin papeles’, so that I could be born a U.S citizen. After about a year, we returned to Mexicali Baja California with the rest of our family.
When I was seven years old my mom left, or I should say, escaped my dad and a life of domestic violence. She took my one-year-old sister and me to live with my grandmother, mi Nana. Then she crossed over to the U.S. again, this time legally, to find work picking strawberries in Watsonville, CA. I really missed my mom then, but really enjoyed the new freedom. After doing my homework, I would spend the rest of the evening playing soccer in the streets and jumping on the hoods of abandoned cars lining the U.S.-Mexico border. You see, my grandmother’s house was just two blocks away from the line Gloria Anzaldúa called a “1,950 mile-long open wound.” My neighborhood friends envied me because I could cross to el otro lado to eat McDonalds and buy cheap clothes at the flea market. Sometimes my friends and I would sneak across the fence through one of its many holes. As soon as we saw the border patrol come by we would rush back across. I remember bragging to my friends that I wasn’t afraid of la pinche migra because I was a U.S. citizen. I did not know then that la migra sometimes can get trigger happy and shoot at children simply for throwing rocks.
Even though I flunked second grade, mi Nana used to say that I was the smartest child she knew. She would put her hands together and say “que inteligente es mi niño.” Her tone of voice and expression somehow convinced me that I was smart. So I started doing better in school. My uncles would joke about my good grades, and warn me that the Russians would come and kidnap me so I could help them compete with the US.
When I was thirteen years old my mother finally decided it to bring us with her to the U.S. so that we could get an education. At the time she hoped that I would finish high school and maybe get an office job with air conditioning. But I came to UC Berkeley instead. And like many first generation Chicano college student, I felt lost and uprooted on this campus.
I remember, as an undergraduate, entering Doe Library for the first time. And as I descended to the lower levels of the Gardner stacks, I pictured myself as the kid in Journey to the Center of the Earth, my face filled with fear and awe. Doe library became my favorite place on campus. It was quiet, like a cathedral. I remember wanting to show my mom how amazing this place was, and then realizing that my mother could not follow me inside those walls. The university library is not a cathedral but a vault. There are bones and blood inside those walls, histories of rebellion not meant for us to know.
And now, after four years of undergraduate education, and ten years of graduate work, I have a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. I also have a wife, two beautiful children, three chickens, and a vegetable garden. I have decided to become a scholar in the field of Ethnic Studies, in great part, because of the sense of empowerment and dignity I gained while taking undergraduate Ethnic Studies courses. This is what Ethnic Studies graduates learn. We gain the tools necessary to fight for the well being of our communities, and to push for the radical transformation our society so desperately needs.
And even though the library is still my cathedral and I have made the university my territory, I must remember to see beyond these local walls. See my brown and black brothers and sisters in the streets of Richmond, Oakland, Salinas, Mexico and all of Latin America. And as the fisherman casts his net over the waters, we must now cast our nets across these borderlands. Fish our youth out of the dangerous streets and into the university. So that they too can see beyond the local walls.
I will now like to ask all the children in the audience to stand up. Children, please place your left hand on your heart, and repeat after me. ‘I promise’ ‘that I will study,’ ‘that I will dream a better world,’ ‘and that I too’ ‘will one day’ ‘go to college and graduate.’
Thank you.
-
Agustin Palacios PhD Graduation Speech From UC Berkeley
via vickyinfinity
(via thinkmexican)
i was humbled to listen to this speech at the ethnic studies graduation. “I Promise” was such a heartfelt moment.
(via desahogovoz)
(via border-xser)
290
: "I feel so fat today." "Today is a fat day."
havingafatday:
Some times when this is okay to say:
- When you are experiencing your body and its fat.
Some times when this is NOT okay to say:
- When you feel lazy.
- When you feel like you can’t do anything correctly.
- When you feel stupid.
- When you feel ugly.
- When you feel useless.
Those feelings are very valid, and should be recognized. However, using “fat,” as a synonym for those words/feelings is hurtful and degrading. In addition, it may stop you from recognizing how you really feel, so you’re not helping yourself either!
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