Gender

The first thing everyone asks when you’re born.

LEGO’s female scientists are destined to a similar fate as female superheroes, possible to find if parents scour the internet, but missing from your children’s daily life, not present in stores that sell kids’ clothing, books, and toys, a venue where our children will mostly likely have to settle for slave Leia.

Fuck you, Lego | Reel Girl

Anger is not as acceptable for..wom[e]n…To be angry means you are temporarily alone; you are not in relationship to the person you are angry with. It means being willing to risk that others will reject you, abandon, dislike, even hate you. To many this would represent psychological death. It threatens the established pattern and can mean change. But anger provides energy for change. Women…have to redefine anger and use it for our own development. We have to stop idealizing self-sacrifice, and at the same time we must redefine and reclaim our justified anger.

Feminist have argued that anger and conflict are necessary for liberation and self-enhancement, for releasing our creative abilities, for serving our self, and for full development (Miller, 1976). Anger is a rational response to the injustice, exploitation, and denigration surrounding the dedicated nurturance and self-sacrifice of nursing. Self-sacrifice is exactly that: sacrifice or denial of the self, of one’s identity, needs, desires in order to serve others.

Finn, Geraldine. Voices of Women, Voices of Feminism: Limited Edition. Fernwood Publishing; Halifax. 1993. (pg. 54)

Emotional neglect lays the groundwork for the emotional numbing that helps boys feel better about being cut off. Eruptions of rage in boys are most often deemed normal, explained by the age-old justification for adolescent patriarchal misbehavior, “Boys will be boys.” Patriarchy both creates the rage in boys and then contains it for later use, making it a resource to exploit later on as boys become men. As a national product, this rage can be garnered to further imperialism, hatred and oppression of women and men globally. This rage is needed if boys are to become men willing to travel around the world to fight wars without ever demanding that other ways of solving conflict can be found.

bell hooks (via seaofbadstories).

Where do you think the cops of Ferguson got their deep, deep rage? And now they’re taking it out on Black people.

“She was a war veteran, and she’s been living her life and has been recognized as a woman for over 38 years. For the federal government to say, ‘You are not legally female’ was just so insulting at a time when she was already grieving the loss of her husband,” says Dru Levasseur, national director of the Transgender Rights Project for Lambda Legal, which took up Asti’s case in June 2013.

Adding to Asti’s argument: Her legal documents – from her Social Security card, to her passport, to her federal taxes, to her pilot’s license – had long reflected her legal status as female. Even so, none of it was enough to convince the Social Security Administration, which originally denied her survivor’s benefits because the agency claimed she was male at the time the couple wed in 2004.

Robina Asti Wins an Important Legal Battle for Transgender Couples – World War II, Real People Stories : People.com

Genderbending in the Roaring Twenties

Masculine Women, Feminine Men Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tumblr it Tweet about it Subscribe to the comments on this post Bookmark in Browser Tell a friend

Leslie Feinberg and the Problem of Family

Reposted from Questioning Transphobia Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tumblr it Tweet about it Subscribe to the comments on this post Bookmark in Browser Tell a friend

Hermaphroditus Intersex

Hermaphroditus_intersex Originally uploaded by enfemmetv I don’t know where this statue is, or if it’s just great Photoshopping. Whichever, I thank enfemmetv for allowing people to share the photo. Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook share via…

Oakland Cross-Dressers Will Soon Be Safer

Soon it will no longer be illegal to cross-dress in Oakland, CA. The final vote to change the law is expected on May 18. Of all the places I’d have thought cross-dressing would be legal, Oakland is high on the…