mississippist.

(Source: tastefullyoffensive, via alcindora)

lovers in the present afternoon

i recently read the book lovers in the present afternoon by kathleen fleming, on the recommendation of a friend or the internet or somewhere that said it was an “actually good” lesbian novel. i don’t know if i would go that far, but it was definitely a decent book.

so despite my lackluster review above, one thing that did strike me about this novel was the accurate descriptions of hetero sex.  the main character, lynn, falls in love with a writing partner, ruth. both characters have husbands. lynn is subjected to sex with her husband that is unfulfilling and mechanical. because it is written from her perspective, perhaps arguably from the perspective that the character subconsciously holds before she fully comes to realize it, the reader is never titillated by the hetero sex. in fact, it is so cold and disgusting (and familiar) that i had to rush through reading it. also mentioned: her partner, ruth, is correctively raped by her respective husband.

the book is set against the vietnam war. both women are afraid of the ramifications of their lesbianism; rape and forced removal of children is on the table as punishment. the “morality clause”, where women mustn’t have sexual partners and especially not homosexual partners after divorce, does not appear to apply to gay men who come out after being married to women. the intersection of motherhood/femaleness and homosexuality leads to these particular oppressions. despite the change in martial rape laws, we all know that they are effectively unenforced in many cases and the “morality clause” is alive and well. i guess things haven’t changed that much.

(via nothatsstupid)

riverdalegirlsrule:

and this is why you don’t tell random women on the street to smile!

(Source: cannibalhearts, via leaveitopen)

(Source: fearlessfeminism, via porcupunx)

(Source: sweet-pea-soup, via radastheyscum)

tenji-tosspot:

every damn day

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nooffswitch:

mississippistreet:

- Loving to Survive: Sexual Terror, Men’s Violence, and Women’s Lives by Dee L.R. Graham, pg. 112

I really want to talk about this more.Especially the first underlined bit about how their emotional bonds are with men though they have sex with women.

a common term for this is “homosocial”, coined by queer theorist eve sedgwick. once you start looking around, it’s rather obvious that men align themselves with other men and that they do not have any true connection with women (otherwise, you know, they would not be murdering/raping/taking away our rights/etc). men’s homosocial bonds, be they between heterosexual or homosexual men, reproduce and reinforce male dominance.

if you have more questions, feel free to ask. Loving to Survive is not really about male homosocial behavior, but you can understand how women align themselves with homosocial males in order to get by. on the flip side, there is much history and theory by feminists, such as audre lorde and adrienne rich, who assert that female homosociality is a key to female liberation.

(Source: mattbors.com, via plankhandles)

makingfists:

It’s like this…

You’re fourteen and you’re reading Larry Niven’s “The Protector” because it’s your father’s favorite book and you like your father and you think he has good taste and the creature on the cover of the book looks interesting and you want to know what it’s about. And in it the female character does something better than the male character - because she’s been doing it her whole life and he’s only just learned - and he gets mad that she’s better at it than him. And you don’t understand why he would be mad about that, because, logically, she’d be better at it than him. She’s done it more. And he’s got a picture of a woman painted on the inside of his spacesuit, like a pinup girl, and it bothers you.

But you’re fourteen and you don’t know how to put this into words.

And then you’re fifteen and you’re reading “Orphans of the Sky” because it’s by a famous sci-fi author and it’s about a lost generation ship and how cool is that?!? but the women on the ship aren’t given a name until they’re married and you spend more time wondering what people call those women up until their marriage than you do focusing on the rest of the story. Even though this tidbit of information has nothing to do with the plot line of the story and is only brought up once in passing.

But it’s a random thing to get worked up about in an otherwise all right book.

Then you’re sixteen and you read “Dune” because your brother gave it to you for Christmas and it’s one of those books you have to read to earn your geek card. You spend an entire afternoon arguing over who is the main character - Paul or Jessica. And the more you contend Jessica, the more he says Paul, and you can’t make him see how the real hero is her. And you love Chani cause she’s tough and good with a knife, but at the end of the day, her killing Paul’s challengers is just a way to degrade them because those weenies lost to a girl.

Then you’re seventeen and you don’t want to read “Stranger in a Strange Land” after the first seventy pages because something about it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. All of this talk of water-brothers. You can’t even pin it down.

And then you’re eighteen and you’ve given up on classic sci-fi, but that doesn’t stop your brother or your father from trying to get you to read more.

Even when you bring them the books and bring them the passages and show them how the authors didn’t treat women like people.

Your brother says, “Well, that was because of the time it was written in.”

You get all worked up because these men couldn’t imagine a world in which women were equal, in which women were empowered and intelligent and literate and capable. 

You tell him - this, this is science fiction. This is all about imagining the world that could be and they couldn’t stand back long enough and dare to imagine how, not only technology would grow in time, but society would grow. 

But he blows you off because he can’t understand how it feels to be fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen and desperately wanting to like the books your father likes, because your father has good taste, and being unable to, because most of those books tell you that you’re not a full person in ways that are too subtle to put into words. It’s all cognitive dissonance: a little like a song played a bit out of tempo - enough that you recognize it’s off, but not enough to pin down what exactly is wrong.

And then one day you’re twenty-two and studying sociology and some kind teacher finally gives you the words to explain all those little feelings that built and penned around inside of you for years.

It’s like the world clicking into place. 

And that’s something your brother never had to struggle with.

(via nothatsstupid)

porflavor:

Esther Werdiger, Spring 2013

(via thehairpin)

(Source: beyondgodthefather)

deviatesinc:

Controversial ad for DYKE A Quarterly, circa 1976

(via radscum)

(Source: kendrini, via femme-nistas)

"The most fundamentally misogynist part of “cis” is that it assumes non-trans women chose to follow their assigned gender role and that they are rewarded for it or gain privilege."

polarrainbow (via thentheysaidburnher)

(via bestiesnotestes)