Move over Nicki Minaj, meet the women making queer hip hop their own

Forget homohop, meet lesbo hop. Originally published at the New Statesman. 

God Des and She holding non-suggestive objects

You haven't lived until you've seen a lesbian hip hop duo rap about best pussy eating technique to three hundred excited women. Best known for their appearance on lesbo-drama TV series The L Word, hip hop act God Des and She enchanted the crowd at long-standing London queer night Bar Wotever last week. Bringing a signature mix of rapped swagger and ovaries-busting soul - “You and me together we got that vibe/Plus I'm a ten and your girl is a five” -  they ensured there wasn't a dry seat in the house. 

Yet despite being regarded as queer hip hop “pioneers” by EvOn, another lesbian rapper and writer of the LGBT Underground blog, many in the audience of dykes, queers and assorted misfits had only vaguely heard of them before the show. Read More. 

Questioning the imperative to be gendered

Despite women's progress, the norms that dictate that people should act along gender lines are stronger than ever. The rules of gender come first, humanity second. Genderqueers are transforming gender and challenging the constricting gender roles that limit everybody’s lives - I argue at openDemocracy.

A way too fabulous image of artist Del LaGrace Volcano

It's 1983. Controversial radical feminist Andrea Dworkin stands in front of a crowd of 500 men. In an act of now legendary feminist bravery, she challenges the men to a 'truce', a short, 24 hour period during which rape will stop. Dworkin tells her audience about the presence of rape in women's lives. She explains that every three minutes a woman is being raped, every 18 seconds a woman is being beaten.

“Stop your side for one day”, she says. “I dare you to try it. I demand that you try it.” Despite or perhaps because of the content of her speech, one man physically threatens her after the lecture.

Exactly 30 years later, everything and nothing has changed. Women are still waiting for the 24 hour truce. Two young men convicted of rape last week in Steubenville, Ohio, were sentenced to less than two years behind bars, whilst media coverage fixated on the damage to their reputations. The problems remain the same. But the ways in which feminists, queer and trans* activists and anti-gender campaigners oppose gender norms have multiplied indefinitely. Read more at openDemocracy. 

Gay Star News stories of the day

Credit: GSN website. I hope they don't sue me or sack me for stealing this image. 

I'm doing a stint of work at Gay Star News, which is a website reporting international LGBT news. This means that instead of simply writing biting, funny and insightful commentary, I get to REPORT the NEWS. The real live events that are happening as we speak.

Over the next two weeks I'm going to post my stories up here daily. If you would like to know what's happening to queer people around the world (supposing you believe in global queer identity/ies) then I suggest you keep checking back.


Here is a selection of stories I wrote today:

1. Ghana Christian group slams pro-gay gender minister

Essentially, Ghana's new Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection is being badmouthed by a group of homophobic Christians:

http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/ghana-christian-group-slams-pro-gay-gender-minister140113

2. Calls for Burchill to be sacked over 'disgusting' anti-trans rant

I don't think there are any members of the British commentariat who haven't written an opinion piece about Burchill-Moore-gate over the past two days. But this is NEWS, and therefore bears reporting. The story is about how former Minister for Equalities Lynne Featherstone tweeted that Burchill should be sacked. It also has some other juicy info.

http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/calls-burchill-be-sacked-over-disgusting-anti-trans-rant140113

3. Aboriginal gay man murdered in Canada

This is a sad one. It's also the most interesting story I wrote today. Dolan Badger, the man who was murdered, had previously written a really exciting piece about two-spirit identities and his struggle with different kinds of oppression: race, gender, indigenous heritage and so on. I linked to it in the report.

http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/aboriginal-gay-man-murdered-canada140113

4. Judge says UK civil partners can divorce like married Canadian couples 

Some men who were civilly partnered in Britain were allowed to divorce in Canada. Because their partnership amounts to a marriage. Good news for people in favour of equal marriage. Actually, it's great for one of the guys involved because he can get a divorce settlement and rights and so on. Excellent.

http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/judge-says-uk-civil-partners-can-divorce-married-canadian-couples140113

Feminist slam poetry for National Poetry Day

To celebrate National Poetry Day, here are some of my favourite feminist slam poems. They are clever, moving, amazing, and about as far from the GCSE poetry anthology as you can get, thankfully. Some are long but they are totally worth the investment. Enjoy bubbelehs, enjoy.

*trigger warning*

Staceyann Chin - My first period. Also features a haiku about George Bush.

"Even Jesus had to pass through a punani
Angels and messengers aside
Mary had to lend passage to god
Or them Christians might still be Jews 
Waiting for a christ that was stuck up the ass of some man
Who thought he could do what little girls do
Every day against our wishes" 

Andrea Gibson - Letter to a playground bully from Andrea (age 8)

"I am not 'always crying', 

I am just thawing outside the lines."

Sonya Renee - What women deserve

"Women do deserve better, 
Women deserve choice"

I think I have linked to this on the blog before, but it is just so great.




Alix Olson - Subtle sister 

"So I take back the whispers, the cute, mute act and the high pitched giggles, 
Yeah I take them back 
I won't avoid your stare evade your step 
Nothing of that kind, 
I won't help you help me victimise the only space that's mine." 



(Unfortunately this video is cut with other footage - but its the only reasonable version I can find on Youtube).


And finally:

Mindi Nettifee - For young women who don't consider themselves feminists (the last nerve)





Who have I missed out? Please share your favourite feminist poems below!



More:

http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2012/03/27/future-of-feminism-telling-our-stories-out-loud/

How conservatives hijacked the gay movement

Gay marriage: the whole point of the LGBT movement?

Discussing assimilationists and gay marriage at the New Statesman:
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/lifestyle/2012/04/how-conservatives-hijacked-gay-movement

The lesbian adverts that "One Million Moms" should be protesting

Mothers beware! This advert could influence your teenager to purchase tie-die.  

Urban Outfitters has been in the news as the target of a campaign by homophobic, optimistically titled hate group "One Million" Moms. The reason? A catalogue photo depicting this exceptionally chaste kiss between two flouncily-clad women. I hate the idea that tie-die is in fashion again, but apparently that's not the reason for the protest. Apparently One Million Moms campaign against "immorality, violence, vulgarity and profanity." That they have decided to make this ad a focal point for a campaign suggests that this "picture of two women kissing in a face holding embrace!" (as they call it, complete with exclamation mark) falls short on one or more of these points. It must be the old "immorality" chestnut.

As queer adverts go, though, "two women kissing in a face holding embrace!"is pretty tame on the immorality scale. Not even a 2 out of 10. Its nice to see some lesbian-ish (who knows, they could even be bisexual, or just good friends) action, but it's not inflammatory enough to get me out on the streets looking for the nearest straight child to forcibly convert. Of all the queer adverts that One Million Moms could have picked on, some are far more risque.

Relatively few adverts depicting same-sex attraction between women exist, but those that do seem to fall broadly into two categories. The first, and this is by far the biggest, is the shameless lesploitation genre. These adverts may feature same-sex activity between women, but they have about as much to do with self-defining queer women as Margaret Thatcher has to do with feminism. This ostensibly-lesbian-but-actually-lesbophobic-and-misogynist Jim Beam ad - which makes me want to sick in my mouth - is a prime lesploitation candidate.

Ignoring the poor dress choice, I think that the Urban Outfitters' "face holding embrace!" advert falls into another, second category. Its a normal scene (if your version of normal heavily involves Urban Outfitters Spring/Summer 2012), in a normal room, between two normal (if exceedingly slim, white and pretty) women. Unabashedly, it's a consumer capitalist image, but at least for once the content is aimed at the demographic it depicts. It's pleasingly devoid of gratuitously oiled-up nudity. It's a women's same-sex image, aimed primarily at women. 

Unfortunately, One Million Moms' immorality klaxon doesn't seem so tolerant as to enable any consideration of subtlety in intent or representation. Obviously not. If their main worry is that their kids might catch gay from a picture, or that they might be influenced by some queer subliminal messaging sneakily inserted into a handbag advert, then of course they couldn't care less whether the imagery does anything good for queer visibility or not. 

All the same, if they're looking for some other quite nice representations of queer women in advertising to protest, I've found my favourite five: 

1. KY scoops the lesbian audience

Ok look, I obviously hate the idea of orgasms as "that big moment", but actually this is pretty cute observational comedy. There's even a sneaky cat in the top left corner. I can imagine lesbian couples seeing this, then buying lube. Works for me (the depiction, not the lube itself. I haven't tried the lube. Yet).  

2. Lesbian cruises for lesbians: "It truly does change your life." 

An ad made by queer women, for queer women, featuring queer women? Also advertising an niche lesbian service, I know, so not attempting to corner a widely commercial market. But still, stop the press, butch lesbians have made it into an advert! 

3. Martina Navratilova: can't see past her incredible arms to work out what she's selling

Something to do with the supposed "pink pound"? I don't know. It's got Martina Navratilova in. 

4. H&M does ambiguity 

H&M are prime offenders in the sexism stakes, not least for their propensity to photoshop models' heads onto computer generated, identikit mannequin bodies. This ad, however, is part of a series of beautifully constructed ads using intimacy between women to sell to women. 

5. Devin & Glenn: Overturn Prop 8 and Make Homosexuals Marry!

Self-evidently this has little to do with lesbianism, but it is my favourite gay ad ever. If One Million Mom's were to protest anything, it should surely be this. Join them and let them know here: http://www.onemillionmoms.com/register.asp

Regeneration: "The Feminist Evolution: Queer Feminism for the Next Generation"

My first print publication is out! It takes the form of a chapter in a book entitled Regeneration, mainly edited by Guy Shrubsole and Clare Coatman, but edited a bit more by Ben Little and Shiv Malik. It's primarily a book about intergenerational justice - proposing solutions (to pervert a favourite Tory phrase) to 'this mess we've inherited'. The first print run has already sold out, which suggests to me that it's bloody good. 

My chapter is called "The Feminist Evolution: Queer Feminism for the Next Generation". It has little to do with intergenerational justice, but much to do with how feminists might - and are - reconfiguring the movement in opposition to both new and old problems.

You can download the book (literally for free) here: http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/ebooks/Regeneration.pdf 

Here's an extract: 

To adopt a queer approach to gender is to recognise that transgression, subversion and play are kinds of anti-normative political activism that can also disrupt existing gender hierarchies. One person born with a body called ‘female’ assuming the trappings of masculinity is unlikely to change any government policy about women as a class, but neither was the vote won by one women chaining herself to the railings of Westminster. In time-honoured suffragette style, the more people who, by manipulating gender, expose cultural dogma about men and women for what it is – arbitrary and abusive – the more the binary line dividing ‘M’ from ‘F’ trembles.

My chapter is on p.70 - but the whole book is very much worth a read. Feedback on my ideas also very much appreciated. 

Other info here: http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/ebooks/Regeneration.html

Also if you're dying to get this book in the hard, papery flesh, there should be another printing at some point. Stay tuned! 

Familes are not factories

I'm guest blogging at The F Word this December! This is the first post, published last week: http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2011/12/post_6

Good question. Tangentially relevant to this post.

My parents have been married for thirty years. I grew up in a semi-detached house in a suburb, one of three kids. The only surprise in the set-up is that we don’t have a picket fence. It was a Tory government’s wet dream of an upbringing. 

Somewhere along the line, though, something went wrong. The conveyer-belt churning out endless, identical replications of this ideal kinship model hit a snag, shuddered and stopped. It turned out one of the slightly-more-than-2.4 kids was queer and at least one of the others didn’t really give a damn about marriage. Our predicted stable, nuclear futures wobbled as reality, in all its glorious diversity, failed to conform to ideology.  

Thank god, then, for the government, who have announced the return, albeit in diluted form, of Thatcher’s Clause 28. Children in free schools or academies will in future be receiving heterosexist brainwashing instead of Sex and Relationships Education. Perhaps they can halt the cultural decline in straight people buying into holy matrimony by literally legislating for its ideological imposition? 

How obnoxiously weird that a practice designed to institutionalise the exchange of women-as-commodities should, in 2011, be being brought back as if it’s the only excellent kinship model. Over one third of marriages end in divorce, we know that only about 50% of people get married anyway - why do conservatives insist on touting the myth that marriage provides a stability that other forms of relationship don’t? Could they actually believe it, or is this a Dorries-esque way of grooming the next generation’s prejudices against the rights of those who threateningly queer the picture? 

Against all the evidence suggesting that other relationship models are also great, we are hugely invested in the ideal of marriage, in particular, in the importance of marriage to women. Popular, mildly-misogynist TV shows Don’t Tell the Bride and Four Weddings (both guilty pleasures, I admit) speak to this, camping up the ‘greatest-day-of-her-life’ aesthetic until it is too absurd to take seriously. Unless you’re Michael Gove, who presumably resolved to bring back Clause 28 during the Don’t Tell the Bride adverts. 

Given how much pro-marriage marketing we receive, perhaps it is not surprising that our common cultural conception is that it is vaguely ‘best for children’ if they grow up with married hetero-parents. The viciousness of anti-single-mother rhetoric, returning time again to narratives of blame and failure, only compounds this problem. The government spectacularly fails to consider the possible impact of such negative socialisation on children growing up in single-parent households. 

No matter. It is best for children to be brought up by married heterosexual couples , apparently, because two parents provide more stability than one. If an extra parent is so great, why wouldn’t it be better to have more than two? Why not four? Or ten? Why don’t we bring children up in communes, as envisaged by our feminist foremothers? 

I want to know why a marriage certificate makes a difference, if it is not just to get couples bogged down in financial commitments to each other so that they can’t separate. I’d like to know, moreover, how it could be better for children to grow up the company of two parents who would really rather have gone their separate ways, and why it is thought to be right that parents abnegate those - potentially eighteen - years of their lives ‘for the sake of the children’. I’d like to know why gender is presumed to make a difference to that equation, why God is genuinely believed to have given a shit about anybody’s chromosomes. 

Clause 28 is a case of cart-before-horse. There is nothing inherently better about nuclear families except the belief that they are better (coupled with tax breaks). If the children of hetero-marriages turn out to be better adjusted, whatever the hell that means, than those from other families, we need to look at the ways in which the former set of children are systematically culturally privileged and change the system accordingly. To conclude that therefore marriage is best and should be preached to kids is question-beggingly circular. It perpetuates the cycle, excluding those who can’t or won’t fit. 

I have seen at first hand that a heterosexual marriage can provide a stable upbringing in which children can grow. But I would contend that if there is anything about my orientation which would prevent me from bringing up kids in just as good a manner, it is the attitude of Gove and co, who, through Clause 28, will attempt to make sure that the society my children will grow up in will be even more full of hate than the society we have now. Thanks Gove, you utter wanker. 

Staring at dykes on trains

Article originally submitted to Gender Agenda Zine, edited by Elly Robson and Clementine Beauvais, whose wonderful cartoons you can find here: Doodles from the Bubble

Like this (left), but with less touching and more staring

Saturday afternoon. I’m wearing a yellow vest top and long adidas shorts, listening to Sleater-Kinney at their angry best, reflecting portentously upon an event of singular importance: my next haircut. Should I go for the quiff and shaved side bits again, or is it time to change to the andro-summer crop? Every recent hairdressing experience of mine features this exchange - ‘I won’t cut it that short, you don’t want to look like a boy’... ‘No, I do! Make me a boy! I like masculine! Actually, maybe that’s too short. Oh God, what have I done?! Maybe it will be ok with lipstick.’

Its a truism that every lesbian looks like a lesbian in some sense. But if every lesbian really looked that different we wouldn’t be recognisable at all, and we are. Much of my commuting time over the years I’ve been living in London has been dedicated to figuring out what gives the game away, what distinguishes a straight-looking woman from an obviously, irreversibly flaming dyke.

From humble beginnings trying unsuccessfully to catch the eye of an attractive, shaven headed, twenty stone, dungaree-wearing bull-dagger holding a copy of the (sadly defunct) Pink Paper - she stared me down mockingly as she left the train - I have come to know something of what the signs are.

There are the socially visible markers of a woman with a butch identity. Docs, crop, shirts, jeans, ties, the ‘I can take you, your best friend, and your mother. As long as you all consent.’ attitude. There are the East Londoner signs: slightly more androgynous than your average hipster, likely to be found wearing an aggressive jacket. There are the femme indicators, sometimes nothing more than a look in the eye, a slightly geometrical haircut, short nails, and the all-over back-at-you appraisal which is definitely (in my imagination) more I’d-like-to-fuck-you than I-like-what-you’re-wearing-oriented.

There are lesbian-feminists from the hallowed field of Greenham Common. I often see them holding ‘zines, wearing badges and studiously defying fashion fascism all at once. There are queers who defy fashion fascism by denying that fashion could exist as a meaningful class. There are the bisexual women who might fall into any of these camps.

And of course there are the lesbians that don’t look back at me, who I don’t recognise and can’t put into a lesbian-concepts box based on outmoded ideas about what we look like. There are the straight women who I prejudicially stereotype as lesbians because they’re wearing plaid shirts. There are women of all orientations who probably want to know why I’m looking at them when they’re trying to get to work.

The train is one thing. The scene is another. In a lesbian club, or, more likely, a ‘mixed’ night (i.e. 94% cock, 5% cunt, 1% other) you’d be forgiven for the default assumption that whatever the woman in front of you looks like, she’s on the team. But given the straight female penchant for turning up with gay men at gay nights, it is not just interesting but also quite useful to keep an eye out for lesbians.

Please bear in mind, when I say that, that I once spent a significant proportion of a night chatting up the only straight girl at Brighton Pride. (She didn’t tell me until I tried to kiss her. She was at PRIDE, LESBIAN PRIDE, and I could not have made it more obvious that I was flirting.)

Anyway, in amongst this resuscitation of ideas so hackneyed they lived in squats in Dalston before it was hip, there is a point, I promise. Here it comes.

Why have I spent years, mostly on the tube, trying to distinguish dykes from heteros based mostly on cliche-driven assumptions? It’s not just because trains are long and boring, its because, in this big bad heterosexist world, seeing another queer woman is a little bit of reassurance. When I catch a lesbian’s eye and she catches mine back before I look away in terror, it’s a small affirmation of a shared identity. That’s what it is to me, anyway. And by the way, speaking as someone who has been scared of ‘looking like a lesbian’ for my whole life, I don’t think we should be scared of admitting that there is something true enough to stereotype that the many cultural signifiers of queer-woman-hood are visible to those who look.

By the way, for those of you that find this article pointless, superficial, objectifying, banal and generally offensive, feel free to leave a comment.

Who's the daddy: has Portia taken Ellen's name in vain?

This article was originally published at an awesome website called THE MOST CAKE. Click here!

The second picture of Portia and Ellen on this blog so far. Might have to start a new one dedicated solely to them.

I recently found out that our reigning celesbian married couple have now become as homo-norm as you can legally get – yes, Portia has officially taken Ellen’s name. They are now the DeGeneres’s. Doesn’t roll off the tongue, exactly. I can understand wanting to self-define in a way that reflects your married identity, but what’s wrong with Mrs. DeGeneres and Mrs. de Rossi?

According to BBC News Portia is keeping de Rossi as a professional name, to which I say – why bother changing it at all? Ellen and Portia are obviously the most famous married lesbians in the world: Portia doesn’t need to adopt ‘DeGeneres’ to define her, if you are anything like me you know and love them and the fact that they are married, presumably they know and love the fact that they are married, if she’s keeping de Rossi for half the time anyway why not just keep it full stop? Like, de Rossi is an awesome name, why get rid of it?

It’s irritating beyond belief when straight women today continue the old tradition of changing their names, blindly, as if it doesn’t mean anything anymore. Frankly, we haven’t reached the stage yet, gender equality-wise, where marriages are so equal that changing one’s name can just be a lovely custom, devoid of historical context.

Replacing your name with your partner’s implicitly supports a conception of marriage as an contract of possession – whereby the man takes the woman into his family as a nice looking bit of property. Protest as people might that they simply didn’t like their name before (my mother’s favourite justification), the fact is that assuming one’s partner’s name implies a dynamic of possessor and possessed, of one party’s control over what should be a twofold identity. The concept of the ‘head of the family’, the ‘man as provider’, and so on, really hasn’t gone away. Physical and sexual violence are still rife within marriages, and where customs uphold the sexism that feeds these inequalities, I reckon they need to go.

On the other hand, you might think that Portia and Ellen both being women alters the facts on the ground in some way. Like, if it’s lesbians it’s fine, right, because where there is no man it doesn’t matter who changes their name?

No way sailor-girl. Queer marriage is a relatively new thing, and people are still trying to shape it, and to make sense of it, and it’s not particularly clear to me that the adoption of another’s name, whatever genders you are, does anything to transgress or subvert. We’ve all experienced people insisting on viewing lesbian relationships through a straight lens: i.e. questions like ‘but, who is the man in the relationship?’ Worse, (and particularly infuriating if like me you can’t help looking femme most of the time), there’s still an assumption that the butch-er looking partner in any given lesbian couple is the dominant, manly one.

Listen, whilst my attempts at butch gender presentation can often be described as laughable, however successful they might be, I am not the man in the relationship. But neither is my (nonexistent) girlfriend the man – in my (not currently happening) relationship, there is no man: capiche? It totally doesn’t help that Portia is the ‘femme’ one and Ellen is the ‘butch’ one, and that Portia is the one changing her name, this plays right into the notion that the more masculine partner is the man.

Words are powerful, and where words characterise identities, they are doubly powerful. It’s amazing that in some countries in the world lesbian marriage is legal, and I stand up for the right of all people of all genders and sexualities to marry whomever they chose. But if we don’t keep our marriages queer, we end up assimilating into the very heterosexist dynamic that gay marriage should – if we are right to bother campaigning for it at all – transgress. And that kind of behaviour fucks me right off.