thoughts on femme

One of my new favorite quotes:

"People associated short skirs, frenetic dancing, shared flasks, and public necking with feminism" - Linda Scott, "Fresh Lipstick"

People don't like femmes because we're dangerous.

We can fuck your shit up with our stillettos, the same ones we wore when you were checking us out, and we let you know that we could see you looking just by staring you bold in the face.
we're dangerous because we want you to look, and because we are that type of girl.

We're dangerous because our black as tar, brown as clay, lily white, fat, thin, curvy bodies make your dicks hard and your pussies wet.

We're dangerous because we don't really give a shit who shaves and who doesn't, and where they do and where they don't.

We show our legs, bruised from our romp with last night's mistress, or rollerderby, or dancing, under our sundresses, Carharts, lycra micro minis, and pantsuits.

We're flirtatious, we're coy, we're bold, we're direct, we're innocents and we're sluts. we are all of these as once, and don't see them as paradoxes, but as more chances to expand our arsenal.

We can change a bike tire with the best of the boys and the butches. And if we can't, we're not buying the bullshit that says that it makes us less radical than you.

We play dress up with our girlfriends, our girl-friends, our boyfriends, and our boy-friends.

We take care of one another's kids, and let them play in our makeup, if that's what he, or she, or ze wants to do that day.

By the way, that look that's on display in Forever 21? Yeah, We found some shit in a free box and handcrafted it about a year before they were mass producing it at the Gap.

walking home

Today I had I really great conversation with the mama of the baby I watch for work. She's writing her dissertation on representations of black female sexuality in cinema.

She provided for me, without having realized it, or at least not letting me in on it if she did, something I've been greatly needing lately, and that's a sense of direction and a pair of open arms.

Sometimes I wonder if the easier path would be better for me over all. I mostly just wonder that when I look at people I used to know. So many of them are living these lives that are, to some degree really appealing, if only for their comfort level. To be the prototypical upwardly-mobile black girl at college, with not a hair out of place or ever letting one's leg hair get long enough to notice, it'd be a lot easier in someways. To force down the parts of me that don't line up with convention, or to ignore the things that I think about, the ones that keep me up at night because they're burning for a voice. I give those things voice, because I've never been able not to notice them. I just got a vocabulary for the voice to speak with in the last couple of years. But when I didn't know the words it was so much easier to keep it quiet.

I wonder if all of the projects, both internal and external, are even worth it. I wonder frankly if I just try to do these things because I can see holes, and wiring, and marionette strings, but can't quite figure out how to make it stop, this system that I see ruining everyone that I love. So I do what I can, in the name of exposing the gears and churning cranks, but maybe I only do it so I can sleep at night.

bell hooks has this bit in "Yearning" where she talks about black folks who are at the margins not only of mainstream white consciousness, but mainstream black consciousness. Those who are committed to explicitly anti-capitalist projects, and don't equate black self-actualization with black capitalism, and are not afraid of losing their "blackness" by consuming all types of cultures. She brings in this awesome quote by Paulo Friere (that I'm gonna butcher) that says that we can begin as objects to then reenter as subjects. All of these projects are an attempt to steak out subjectivity in a culture and society that writes me out as the object, essentially by definition.

Introduction

I should start out by saying that I am planning to use this blog mostly to air out the things I turn over in my head and with my friends. It seems like writing them down would be a good way to track my thinking. I kind of have a tendency toward cataloging my processing.

Much of it will be political. Some of it will be poetry. Most of it will tackle my life, and how I see my experiences intersecting with privilege and oppression. A lot of it will undoubtedly be a little dramatic (I'm a girl who tends toward extremes, what can I say).

I have a lot of projects floating around too, and a lot of books that I'm reading. I also tend to think a lot about pop culture and the cultures in the often weirdly small and specific communities I'm apart of. I'll have a lot to say about that too.

And I have the good fortune of being surrounded by people who are ridiculously talented, so I'll probably show off some of their stuff too. In case anyone stumbles onto my little corner of the internet.

I'm taking an "it ain't much, but it's mine" attitude toward this whole blogging thing. At least for now.

I also really want to hear feedback from anyone who happens to read this. So please, leave comments and send emails! I'm brownskinnedpalimpsest[at]gmail[dot]com.

Here goes nothing, ya'll!