Lolita's Fist

🍒  Short version. Loved it. There is definitely a lightning in a bottle element -- bringing a team together that made it better. The Garrett ending, nah, for instance. But I do think that is true of any art. I tend to think making it a collaborative event prevents up-your-own-arseness and can make a thing better. That's why you have editors and publishers and audiences and skin in the game. Font. I initially stopped watching the movie twice because of that Monster font. I couldn't. I immediately thought it was him. And that niggle said, But Julia wouldn't. Surely. Not now. I don't really watch movies with strangers in. They have to be introduced to me by the previous moviemakers. You endorse them, reflect on them when you choose them. We are the sum of who is around us. That's why the movie industry goes to such lengths to hide their misdeeds. So that font reeked of misdeeds. I do have the hair's breadth divider of -- she is over 18, and you become responsible ...

🍒  This short produced by Dust (see YouTube channel) just touched me. I don't often get touched. I cry often, because I am touched by sportspersonship or people caring about animals, or what what.  About a cranky man who pushes everyone away and then finds a robot that doesn't give up. The robot is industrious and changes him, waking him up to being in his life. This is a thread that runs through my life. Something primal because it has been a fascinating theme from the get-go. Almost every film I love has this thread. Butterflies are Free, Bobby Deerfield, so many. It's like I was reincarnated from a life with this theme. Pixie dreamgirl-ish trope. The overlap of robot-pixie. They are making pixie dreamgirls. Even when they make robots in the form of men, because they are there to serve, they are feminised through their role. This is the patriarchal world we live in that is using capitalism to make servants with male names, who are women. Source: This Time Away. https://y...

When I was writing scifi with my friends, we would write together on an online doc at the same time. Silently for the most part, but like we were in the same room and could ask each other stuff or clarify points. I loved it so much. But one thing was how it freaked them out that words come to me easily. The words were words they had not encountered... sorghum, sheath... words that astonished me they didn't know. Both are first language English in terms of proficiency, their mother tongue proficiency so undermined by the legacy of Bantu Education. It's horrible. When I was at university, when I was 20, I was already aware that people around me needed me to translate those words I wanted to use because they were the perfect word. Even now, irreducible. I love that word, but you said no. I am still there. Translating words. I looked at the word allay - allay fear - and thought, should I use it. Two minutes ago. That's why I am a better editor than writer. With editing I can pi...

A friend asked me why I took back a friend that hurt me: I didn't know how to answer your question about this friend. There are friends I am still friends with that I have cried for days on my bed for how hurt I feel by things they have done. This friend is not one of those friends. What she did made me sad, but I have more difficult hurt from others.  But I think the thing that is really part of this answer for me, that is the truth of the matter, that is why closer to the truth of it, is that if the role were reversed, how would I want that person to react? I react that way. I want them to give me another chance. When I go to someone and want to reconnect - even if it can't be with the most vulnerable thing - an apology - I would want them not to dismiss me.  I am the girl who stays.  I see the incredible generosity offered to me by my Black friends - white people do damage. And I don't always get it right. No one can shout louder at me than I have at myself. Apartheid-...

I had a friend ask me how to handle people justifying their poor treatment of non-binary people with biology - penis, vagina, procreation, chromosomes. I answered: It is important to address all the straw men that they throw out when they argue these points. They set up things for you to battle - gender, procreation, biology - and thereby define the terms of the argument. And those terms are (shrug) all good, for them. If they want to procreate, honor their penises and vaginas, and be addressed as Mr and Mrs, I would fight in the streets for their right to conduct their lives in any way they choose fit.  Point 1. However, just because they are offended by the way other people conduct their lives does not mean they are right. In fact, Mr and Mrs have no right to lean over any fence and dictate to anyone how that person chooses to be addressed or how that person chooses to think about biology.  Point 2. Under the guise of community or religion their attitude is unkind, ungenerou...

I thought you might like to look at this phrase as an indication of why Black should be capitalised. That Black is not ‘just an adjective’, that the adjectiveness and lowercaseness diminishes Blackness. The activists believe that along with ‘European’ (not really accepted in South Africa) the word White and Black are indicative of heritage and culture. Black is an indication of allegiance and statehood that is self-chosen and aligns so broadly with the Black diaspora. Inclusive, diverse, and welcoming. Some Black people born in America strategically avoid ‘African American’ as they feel they are neither, as neither identity is readily accepted by white Americans (see how I decentered white Americans here by lowercasing white). In South Africa, the idea that Whites are South African has also been destabilised, so they become Whites separated from country, and decentered when white. Whites don’t need to indicate allegiance and statehood and have already been White for so long. But y...

Apartheid was vile. And its effects are so far-reaching. Colonialism led to apartheid which led to eugenics. The whole world was gripped with hate. The task of dismantling that hate is slow, and this global recession will set our efforts back because precarity makes the powerful into monsters and conservative monsters.

  In watching #BlackLivesMatter I see how dismissive the term 'identity politics' is. "We can't talk about anything or get anywhere in discussions because of identity politics." Who is 'we'? 'We' who have the privilege to decide what is important and when someone is allowed to speak and what they are allowed to speak about.  When 'we' perpetrate violence by holding a (figurative/virtual/literal) bat over someone's head to say 'shut up', that is not conducive to them hearing the content of anything you have to say anyway. An inclusive and welcoming environment does not have to be crashed or boycotted or protested or derailed or identitypoliticked. These actions are your flag that your house is not order. Identitypoliticking is striking against 'we'. I believe in the people's right to strike. It is in their solidarity with each other that they are effective against 'we'. It is in their numbers th...

#Feminism #Racism  Fridging ~ female or black characters who are injured, raped, killed, or disempowered sometimes to stimulate protective traits among men or whites. The fridging is a plot device intended to move a male or white character's story arc forward. (From a comic book story where a female character is killed and stuffed in a fridge.)

I am often shocked by how people romanticize the past and the things that made the past what it is. Women who never have orgasms. Women who are ok with fellow women having their clitorises excised. Women who are no more than indentured servants indentured to their children. Slaves while men are getting their dick wet, having their food on the table at the same time daily, and free child care.  All courtesy of the virginity cult and women giving them a free pass to all women's bodies all the time, and then giggling as other women maintain the virginity cult with the word the men use - slut.  While the men close the clinics so women have no access to contraception. They're slut shamed at the clinics, so Russian roulette with men's lies is preferable. Not to mention how the shame culture works, that if you're raped it's your fault, if you believe the lies my friends are told so that men ~ fathers, uncles, brothers, strangers ~  can add their Virgin scalps ...

Via Sharlene Khan African Feminisms (Afems) Conference 2019 Call for Presentations. Closing date 31st March 2019. African Feminisms (Afems) 2019: Theorising from the Epicentres of our Agency 5-7 September 2019, Wits University, Johannesburg Organised by the Department of Visual Arts, Wits University and the Department of Literary Studies in English, Rhodes University The third edition of the African Feminisms (Afems) conference will happen from the 5-7 September 2019 at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa, in collaboration with the Department of Literary Studies in English, Rhodes University. The 2019 theme is based on Nigerian Stiwanist Molara Ogundipe's conversation in 2002 with South African black feminist Desiree Lewis in which Ogundipe states: For me, social ideas should emerge from a consciousness that thinks of what is beneficial to a human being as a person, not because the ideas occurred or are practiced in Europe or America. We need to overc...

Silence quotas. Men speak too much. White people speak too much. By bringing in laws of how much silence is required you will never notice when silence is offered. We cannot be healed by words alone. #MenAreTrash #WhitePeopleAreTrash

What people don't seem to get is that "White Feminism" is feminism  for  white people, and never exclusively feminism  by white people. It's more about who it benefits exclusively than who is perpetuating it exclusively. … a word for the institution we're trying to separate ourselves from." - TheWhistlingFish

Being rude is never right. And white women do have a slight advantage. I have been told by men that when they get angry things escalate much quicker. Another man will step in and violence erupts, so they hold themselves back. White women can get angry because it's unlikely someone will hit them, in public. So they are likely to right wrongs. They have the power to sit next to a person of color being harassed, or stand with a child being bullied, or rustle up the interest of a lazy rude fuck that's interrupting her busy two-job + housework + blow-job day. In private women get hit, so their silence is kept for their homes.

It's fascinating watching and hearing 'Borg' as 'Black'. The crew I watched so avidly seem very racist this time round. #WhiteSupremacy. IMDB Star Trek Voyager (Series)  Actors: Kate Mulgrew, Robert Beltran