i, mamí.

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i'm at the intersection of fashion and race.

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I'm so used to reading about Disney from a parent's POV, so this was pretty interesting. My take-away is that an exposure to Disney Princess paraphernalia doesn't necessarily block young girls from having an a-ha moment or eventually becoming a feminist ally. Good to know, just in case we lose Hugga to the pull of Disney!

Also, Hugga is newly obsessed with Ponyo, which is a retelling of The Little Mermaid, but MUCH LESS anti-feminist. I freaking loved Ponyo and I could watch it over and over again with her.

When I was about seven or eight, Ariel and I parted ways, and it wasn't until my sophomore year of college, when I had a roommate who was particularly partial to Disney movies, that I sat down and watched The Little Mermaid again. In the years since I had stopped watching the movie religiously, I had, obviously, grown up a lot. I had had my feminist "click" moment, and had started seeing the world through a feminist lens. I had started thinking about how women are depicted in advertising and movies and pop music lyrics and videos. I had been especially shocked and disappointed to learn, courtesy of a particularly fierce feminist English teacher, the origins of the fairy tales we tell young girls. The central message of the original Little Red Riding Hood, for example, is that curious young ladies who venture too far from home and get raped in the woods deserve what they get. But for some reason, it had never occurred to me to think about The Little Mermaid from a feminist perspective. When I sat down with my roommates at 19 and watched it again, The Little Mermaid just about broke my heart.

The Little Mermaid is, quite simply, a feminist's worst nightmare. This movie is about, as a very wise friend of mine once put it, a young woman who gives up her voice to get a pair of legs so that she can snare a man. It's about the triumph of "good" women - young, slender, silent and lovesick - over "bad" women - old, voluptuous, outspoken and sexual. It's about a young woman forced to choose between her father's world and her husband's world, and there is nothing in between. And there's the unsettling fact that the song "Kiss the Girl" tells us that the "one way to ask" if a woman wants you to kiss her, is to just kiss her.

Of course, when it comes to Disney movies, the problems I've pointed out here are only the tip of the iceberg. Disney movies, and the full-length animated features in particular, are almost all problematic. Whether it's how they deal with race, class, gender, ability or colonialism, all the Disney Princess movies have their problems. And of course, each of them is a product of their time. But knowing this makes me perhaps even more disappointed in The Little Mermaid came out in 1989, when feminism was alive and well and making its way into popular discourse. I can't help but wonder if the movie is indicative of resistance and backlash to the changing role of women in America at the time. The thought makes me feel, if possible, even more disappointed.

The lessons we learn as children are incredibly powerful ones - they inform the way we view the world for years to come, and because we learn them at such a young age, because we just know them, we often never think to question them. When we do, it can be uncomfortable and scary, as though a person you've known forever has in fact been lying to you all this time. For me, my first adult viewing of The Little Mermaid felt like a betrayal. I had loved this movie, idolized its heroine, believing that her thirst for knowledge and adventure made her a wonderful heroine, and even dressed up as her for my year-end dance recital (yes, that really is me in that photo). And for all those years, it had been lying to me, selling me a harmful sexist message in a brightly colored package, complete with witty lyrics and a happy ending.

Watching The Little Mermaid as an adult made me realize the importance of being open to questioning everything, even the things you know - or think you know - to be true. Watching this once-beloved Disney classic post-"click" moment made me realize that once you begin to view the world with a feminist lens, it's very hard to stop. Once you begin to view the world with a feminist lens, everything you know - or think you know - begins to look different. That's what makes feminism so powerful.

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The linked article has a good argument about women being more than babymakers, but in the US, we don't face the same population issue. I'm more interested Chally's argument here that the idea that women must have children at the "right time" is making it very difficult for women to pursue higher academic study while being a mom at the same time.

There was a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald the other week you should have a read of, Don’t be rattled by the baby guilt trip by Nina Funnell.

Funnell was recently in attendance when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd gave a speech ‘about the ”crisis” of Australia’s ageing population and the various economic challenges we will face as a result.’ For context, Australia’s birth rate has been below the replacement rate of 2.1 since the 1970s and Australia is strict on immigration. After the talk, Rudd came to speak to some under-30s who had grouped together, including Funnell:

At that point one of my friends introduced me, dropping in that I am completing a PhD. At this, Rudd rolled his eyes and in a terse voice lacking any sense of irony remarked that is the “excuse” that “all” young women are using nowadays to avoid starting families. Since then I’ve come up with numerous one-line retorts, but in the moment I just froze in shock.

You should read the whole piece as Funnell takes this down beautifully. (‘Why do we assume it is the obligation of all women to reproduce? And why do we label them as selfish when they don’t? We never label career-driven men as selfish.’) I’m reluctant to tear apart Mr Rudd’s statement myself as, well, while the sentiment is pretty clear, what’s not clear from the article is what he said in full.

In any case, we can turn to the general sentiment. There are various harms in treating women as a monolith. I resent the assertion that not having children and at the “right time” is a bad thing. It holds women to be essentially baby makers who aren’t doing their duty to their country if they don’t follow the script – and this is something that needs an excuse. It also holds women responsible for the difficulties involved in pursuing higher academic study and starting a family at the same time. If Mr Rudd’s government, and governments worldwide, would be more supportive of those in that position, fewer people would have to face a choice between them. Until then, that some are put in this position is hardly their fault, hardly something for which women ought to be treated condescendingly.

What this script also does is assume that “avoiding” starting families (avoiding the right and inevitable thing, those naughty girlies!) is a choice for all women. Not every woman is able to reproduce or adopt or some such, or is able to keep their children if they do. Some women are actively forced into reproducing. And some women, rather than having this obligation to reproduce weighed on them, are considered to have quite the opposite obligation, to not reproduce at all. Disabled and poor women, for instance, are often discouraged – if not actively prevented – from having children. You know, supposedly for the good of society. Placing the emphasis on “avoiding” reproducing means adopting a monolithic view of women’s experience, erasing many. They’re written out of the script.

And, moving back to the idea that women who don’t reproduce according to the script owe excuses, I think it’s important to determine precisely to whom these women are supposed to be offering their justifications and apologies. Really, who? We’re autonomous human beings, we don’t need to go around with bowed heads and guilty expressions for doing as we please, or as we must, with our own bodies and lives. Women certainly don’t owe babies to society, or to politicians, or to those judging them, or to anyone at all.

Women’s reproductive choices should be ours alone. We ought to be accountable to our own desires in these matters, not those of onlookers who think they know better.

Next time, I’m going to return to Mr Rudd’s remark and some of its particular significance in Australia’s federal political context.

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i'm newly obsessed with mixed media journaling. this is a great post by a pretty well known mixed media artist to help inspire yall.

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All too often I hear the "no such thing as reverse racism" argument oversimplified into something like, "POC's can't be racist against whites!" or "I can't be racist, I'm a POC!" The latter statement is obviously untrue, but I do feel the former -- I just was never able to nail down a good explanation for why without jumbling up terms like institutionalized racism and white-people-have-all-the-power and whatnot.

Thea Lim takes the words out of my mouth here.

By Deputy Editor Thea Lim

So we’ve been getting lots of emails about this, both from readers and friends – in late February Zeta Tau Alpha , a predominantly white sorority, beat out three black sororities at the Sprite Step-Off, nabbing the $100,000 prize and honours as the best step team in the country.

This caused an immediate backlash. In the video below, as soon as the second place winner is revealed you can hear the crowd booing while other audience members begin walking out:

Five days later, in an (alleged) panic Sprite announced that there was a scoring discrepancy, allowing them to announce a tie and give another $100,000 to the second place winners, Alpha Kappa Alpha.

For readers who don’t know about stepping and black sororities and fraternities, Lawrence Ross explains on CNN what it means to have a white sorority beat black greek associations at a massive, televised step comp:

To understand why this is a big deal, you have to understand that African-American fraternities and sororities are as close to the Animal House stereotype attached to white fraternities as Pat Boone is to hip-hop. Black fraternities and sororities, known as the Divine Nine, form the fiber of African-American leadership in this country and continue to produce the leaders of tomorrow.

…The roster of Divine Nine members is a Who’s Who in African America: the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson, Michael Jordan, Maya Angelou, Dorothy Height and over a million others count themselves as members. The civil rights movement is populated with Divine Nine members who developed leadership skills on college campuses… Pride in one’s organization is paramount to Divine Nine members, and one way to express that is through stepping.

Divine Nine fraternities and sororities take great pride in being original and innovative in their dances: highly coordinated, with elaborate costumes, and sometimes performed before thousands. It’s a point of pride to perform, but to win for the glory of your fraternity or sorority is the ultimate.

So when Zeta Tau Alpha members won the Sprite Step Off, it was not just that they’d beaten African-American sororities, it was seen as the first assault on yet another African-American cultural tradition that, if not guarded, would be appropriated from blacks like jazz and hip-hop.

For Sprite, Zeta Tau Alpha was enough of a racial minefield to justify spending an extra $100,000 to quiet folks down. Ok, so that’s just speculation.

But there’s been a backlash to the backlash. Several prominent black journalists (including Lawrence Ross) have chastised the black greek community for complaining about the white win.  Jason Whitlock writes that the case of Zeta Tau Alpha shows that “the moral of the story will be that black people have no issue with being just as discriminatory as the white power structure they rail against.”  This thread on Bossip is full of commenters saying that it is racist for Bossip to have a problem with Zeta Tau Alpha’s win.

Do I think Zeta Tau Alpha deserved to win? I don’t know a lot about stepping, but I’m going to trust the judges and I assume they were amazing.   But do I think they should have won?

Well, no.

Writing for the Root, Lawrence Ross says:

The problem with the arguments presented by the critics is that they tend to gloss over the question of whether the Zeta Tau Alpha steppers were actually better than their competition. Instead, most of the criticism has been reactionary and sought to deny Zeta Tau Alpha the opportunity to compete based solely on their skin color.

By doing that, black Greeks do a disservice to our historic legacy. African-American fraternities and sororities were born in circumstances that sought to combat judgments based on race. And to do the same as those who would deny us opportunity, based on the notion that we’re somehow protecting our black cultural integrity, is morally bankrupt.

The problem with this argument is that it lacks context.  Not historical context on stepping – Ross wrote the book on that, literally – but racial and political context.  As Ross states, black fraternities and sororities came up as spaces for black students to be together, necessary in a racist climate.  Well, it’s not as if that racist climate has disappeared.  I am not sure if there are black frats and sororities at UCSD – if there aren’t, they sure could use some.

When Whitlock argues that black folks who would deny a white step team step awards is bigoted, and akin to white folks who support segregation, he’s suggesting that systemic racism no longer exists.  In my book, the only way you can be racist is if you have the institutional power to be racist.   The fact that black folks have more presence within the world of stepping than white folks, does not delete the barrier that racism creates for black folks in many other arenas.  And you don’t have institutional power in bits and pieces – even if stepping is dominated by black folks, it exists within a racist context.  This means that even within the step world, black folks don’t have institutional power.  Stepping doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

When white folks don’t want black folks to participate in something, that’s racist. When black folks don’t want white folks to participate in something, it is not racist.  That’s right! And no, this is not because I have a delusional double standard.  In order for this to be a double standard, white and black folks would have to have to same level of power universally.  But instead power relations in our society continue to extend far far more opportunities to white folks than to black folks, or any other folks of colour.

I would have no problem with a white team winning at a historically black competition, if black students (and other students of colour) were excelling at every mainstream (read:white) college turn.  Instead, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education has multiple statistics showing that black students have lower rates of graduation, citing racism, lack of space for supportive black campus communities, and strained family finances as reasons for this discrepancy.  And if/when black students do graduate, it’s not like skin colour disappears.  This New York Times article from the end of last year states that:

the unemployment rate for black male college graduates 25 and older in 2009 has been nearly twice that of white male college graduates — 8.4 percent compared with 4.4 percent.

Racism hampers all students of colour.  Similar stats exist for black and non-black Latin@ students, and let’s not forget the recent admissions data we’ve seen about Asian American students.

Stepping and black fraternities and sororities exist to give black students a reprieve from these barriers, and a space to be together and celebrate who they are.  As a non-black person of colour, I wish I had that – if anyone is setting up dance competitions for mixed race SoutheastAsian/Irish/Canadian women, let me know.

When top honours in such a space go to a white team, it is not an aberration or a historic event – it is a repeat of what happens all day every day, outside of that very small space.  While I am absolutely sure that Zeta Tau Alpha are a great stepping team, they are still part of the dominant culture and reap its benefits, while black students bear its brunt.  Being told that you are inferior to white folks all the time takes its toll – as the struggles of black students to achieve academic success demonstrates.  Being told that you are inferior to white folks, within the place that you built to get away from such constant rejection? That cuts deep.

An academic I know bristles whenever teaching positions in minority literature go to white academics.  Can white academics teach minority lit? I’m sure they can.  But can they get jobs in every other lit position? Yes. Is it harder for academics of colour to get, say, Victorian Lit positions? Yes it is.  So until that difference is rectified, the few positions of honour that can go to people of colour, should go to people of colour.

I went to the sold-out semifinals of the Sprite Step-Off at Texas Southern University in Houston, where Zeta Tau Alpha went on to qualify for the finals* in Atlanta. It was a great night.  The crowd was deliriously happy.  And most of the night was spent executing Texas hip hop dance crazes, like the Mr Hit Dat, the Flex and the Halle Berry.  These dances may be redonculous, but they are also cultural rituals that above all express proud membership and belonging.  In other words, it was clear to me that part of the joy of that night derived from the chance for these black college students to be together, and celebrate each other and the culture they and their elders had built together.  There are so few spaces for young people of colour to do that.

When the entire college experience is a space for all kinds of youth to celebrate their personness, then it will be racist to complain when a white team like Zeta Tau Alpha wins a step competition.  But black president or no, that day is a long way away.  I look forward to it – even though it means I will be out of a job.

–

*Alas I actually missed their performance – I left in the middle of Lupe Fiasco’s number.  I just don’t care for him. I did however, get to see Latoya Luckett, which was just delightful.

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Wow, this shit is abysmal.

The Supreme Court yesterday chose not to block DC's gay marriage law. This means same sex couples should be able to apply for marriage licenses in the nation's capital today.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, which threatened to abandon their contracts for providing social services in DC if gay marriage became law, has already ended its foster care program. And starting yesterday Catholic Charities no longer provides benefits to spouses of new employees or those who are not currently enrolled in a health care plan. Because opposing gay marriage is way more important than the health care of employee's families.

These moves are despicable. And attempts by the Archdiocese to blame the new same sex marriage law are ridiculous. The law didn't force the Archdiocese to abandon children in foster care or screw over their employee's families. The blame sits squarely on the shoulders of church leadership that's decided to prioritize a commitment to discrimination over valuable social services work.

The church faced two options with the approval of the new law, said Robert Tuttle, a George Washington University professor who studies the relationship between church and state. One choice was to expand the definition of domestic partner, as the Archdiocese in San Francisco did years ago, to include a parent, sibling or someone else in the household.

The second choice was to do what the Washington Archdiocese has done: eliminate benefits for all spouses.

Or, you know, stop with their obsessive homophobia.

Congratulations to those who will soon be able to get legally married, and shame on the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington.

By Guest Contributor Pamela Merritt, originally posted at RH Reality Check

Just days before the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, a fellow activist sent me a link to a video posted by the anti-choice group Bound for Life.  I was vaguely familiar with Bound for Life from having seen their members at protests, signature red tape marked with the word “Life” fixed to their mouths.

The video promoted an action that Bound for Life participated in at a new Planned Parenthood clinic being built in Houston.  The spin for this specific protest caught my attention.  The angle – that reproductive health care providers are organized to increase abortions by people of color in a plot to commit genocide for profit – has been in play by anti-choicers for years.  That theory has been, is now, and will always be insultingly paternalistic in its assumptions about women of color seeking reproductive health care.  The allegation is also picking up steam this Black History Month.

The first time I watched the video I was struck by the theories promoted through it – that communities of color are tragically ignorant of some long standing genocidal plot and desperately need organizations like Bound for Life to come to educate us, that the size of a reproductive health care clinic is in some way connected to it’s intended scale of abortion services and that the location of that clinic (in communities of color) is proof of some long standing genocidal plot.  Bound for Life isn’t alone in putting forth these arguments.  Anti-choice groups recently put up billboards in Georgia claiming that Black children are an endangered species and other organizations, like The Radiance Foundation, target religious people of color with the same anti-choice message; their stated goal being to illuminate, educate and motivate their audience.

The fallout from this rhetoric is hard to measure, but I’ve heard of the black genocide conspiracy for years.  I am an activist in my home city of St. Louis Missouri and many of the young women of color I work with are aware of the rumors and ask questions about them.

In Missouri, where young people are often denied access to medically accurate comprehensive sex education in public schools, rumors can often be taken as fact.  In my volunteer work I have met young women who thought drinking a certain soft drink would either prevent pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections; others who have heard that contraceptives give users HIV; and some who were convinced that the withdrawal method protected them from sexually transmitted infections.  In the absence of knowledge, dangerously inaccurate information reigns supreme without challenge or correction.

It is in that knowledge-vacuum that the black genocide conspiracy hopes to set up shop, with hopes to take advantage of the fruits of anti-choice labor that has systematically removed sex education from sex education. It’s more than ironic that anti-choicers–who work strenuously to deny to medically accurate sex education and prevention programs to young people of color–are now trying to rally communities of color through a pseudo-community education program built on the myth of black genocide.  It’s far more than ironic…it’s shameful.

As a woman of color and a reproductive justice activist, I am appalled each time I hear the black genocide rap.  Quotes by Margaret Sanger are tossed out as if she were a prophet, as if reproductive choice a religion, and as if pro-choice activists were fundamentalists bent on staying true to Sanger’s words as a person of fundamentalist faith would to the word of God.  In reality, Margaret Sanger was a person whose work paved the way for legal access to contraceptives in this country.  Sanger’s personal beliefs on eugenics were and are wrong and do not hold any place in the mission of reproductive justice or reproductive health care providers.  We do not associate the Ford Motor Company with anti-semitism, despite the well documented history of it’s founder Henry Ford in collaborating with Nazis and we should not associate contemporary reproductive health care providers or the reproductive justice movement with eugenics because of some views expressed by Margaret Sanger.

But the truth has little to do with the black genocide scare tactic.  The truth is that reproductive health care providers open clinics to provide access to the full range of reproductive health care services in communities that need safe and affordable health care.  Those services include yearly cancer screenings, treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, education on how to prevent sexually transmitted infections, education on how to prevent unplanned pregnancy and abortion counseling and services.

The truth is: