axes of empowerment

Fertile La Toyah Jackson...how i long for thee

2008-07-17T00:19:00.000-07:00

in 2006 i was in olympia, WA for homo a go-go.
one afternoon after the female ejaculation workshop i went to was an afternoon of film. we watched enough man, and then vaginal creme davis in all her performance art glory appeared to us to present some of her most fabulous videos from her LA days in the 80s and 90s. we caught a glimpse of Fertile La Toyah Jackson and Vaginal's escapades and we experienced a doses of Fertile's video magazine. while you can see one of the fertile/davis videos here, i'm really craving another look at an issue of Fertile's magazine. Fertile's deep, profound analysis of the axes of oppression and privilege in the racial matrix is uncanny. and i quoteth: "if you's white, you's racist!"

i'm going to write to vaginal to see how i can get the eyes of me and my loved ones locked in on that. for now, we'll have to survive with what's already floating around on youtube. it's Definitely worth a look.

part I:

part II:

2008-04-07T23:20:00.000-07:00

Lady Bitch Ray.

an immigrant, a media personality, an academic, and a sex-positive, female-positive rapper. if i were still in school i'd consider her well more than thesis worthy. while i can't understand the words that she says, the context of her life's work gives her music video more meaning. regardless she is rad. vagina style records, and its logo, speak to that.

my only quandary is why i can't find articles or websites that mention her in english - i'd be surprised if she weren't at least in a venuszine somewhere...

enjoy.

model minority

2008-01-22T22:38:00.000-08:00

my life has taken a strange turn into the model world. i have always resisted succumbing to the model minority myths that have so overtaken asian american identity, but since when have i become a straight up model?

a lot of what photographers shoot is sexist at best and misogynist at worst. and those kinds of images still sicken me, make me shake my head and think of the films "Killing Us Softly", one and two. how typical, i think. and i remember what a wise woman of RockrGrrl mag once said: "sex doesn't sell. sexism sells."

though as a rule i do not recoil against fine art and nude models. in fact, one of these days i may even be a real one. but for now, here is a link to my first try.

hapa i am

2008-01-13T13:14:00.000-08:00

recently while searching the word "hapa" on that famous search engine which does not need to be named here, i came across a site called realhapas.com. of course this peaked my curiosity because to say that there are "real" anything is a bold statement. reality has always come to mean a kind of relativity in my mind; each person's view on the happenings of the world, whether personal or political, always evolve in its own way. no two narratives are alike.

so what, then, is a "real" hapa? i had to click on the link. what i found within the site was a surprising mix of anger, history, and no-holds-barred shit talking. the "real" hapa is, according to the site, hawaiian hapas. it states that one cannot and should not identify with the term hapa unless one is part hawaiian because it is disrespectful to Hawaiian language and history. the author of the site concludes that japanese people who migrated from Hawaii to California did not like the other options available to them, and so considered themselves "hapa". From then on, apparently, it has been a losing battle. The "California Wanna Be Hapas" (according to the site) have miscegenated and, in a drunk-on-over-privilege-sort-of-way have started to call themselves hapa, much to the detriment (even "rape" as the author states) of Hawaiian people.

not only are "California Wanna Be Hapas" destroying Hawaiian culture, but we are doing it because we are rich and there are more of us than Hawaiians. we fake Hawaiians just want to destroy Hawaiian identity. or something like that.

well. i have absolutely no qualms about the anger that Hawaiians feel about the colonization of their country, the systematic oppression of their people, and the intense physical and political change of the landscape due to misunderstanding, miscommunication, and outright lies and manipulation. but i do take issue with radically-minded folks taking their anger out on a social symptom rather than the systematic problem.

to begin, japanese folks, filipinos, and other folks who immigrated to Hawaii in the first place did so under the false pretense that they would be given a great life and good pay for their labor in sugar cane fields.it was really a capitalist ploy to exploit folks who came to "paradise" they could support family and themselves. most people went under the promise of prosperity, from a country where they had no other apparent resources or means to make ends meet. being intermingled, assimilated perhaps to a bit of Hawaiian culture, left them with language and culture that they still proudly carry with them today, despite a cultural history of exploitation and hardship. so japanese people come to america, use language that they'd been acculturated to for generations, and suddenly they are exploiting Hawaiian culture?

i must admit that upon reading the content of the site i felt a bit ashamed, and also misinformed as to the roots of my hapa identity. but i thought for a minute, and realized that though there may be arguments for me not to identify as hapa being chinese and white, the author of the site did not present any that were very convincing. the author missed a larger connection among pacific peoples' oppression and subordination within a history of colonization, and conflated a result of the problem with a problem itself.

beyond that, my hapa identity has connected me emotionally, spiritually, and politically with all different kinds of people with different immigrant backgrounds, identities, and ancestries. it been nothing but a positive addition to my life to connect with other hapas, whether japanese, hawaiian, or chinese. it would take more than an angry spirit and a history of oppression for me to disclaim my identity. after all, hasn't that been the goal of white colonialization all along? divide and conquer. i won't fall for it.

An Auspicious Start for 2008

2008-01-07T22:51:00.000-08:00

in case you can't read it, the bumpersticker says FAIRYLAND.

...and the only thing that didn't get overturned in the torrential downpour in San Francisco (the same one that brought the above tree upon the poor homo's car) ...

maybe this says something about playing a less conspicuous role in the universe. or maybe it says something about the staying power of forgotten trash.

The Benefits of Womanhood

2008-01-07T22:47:00.000-08:00

because not only are we revered by being placed above other people (no, not emotionally, psychologically, or judicially, but physically), but society is also primarily concerned with our comfort and our saftey.

i'd rather be wearing paper bags on my feet.

veganism is to feminism...

2008-01-06T00:28:00.001-08:00

as a square is to a rectangle. that is to say that veganism is always an act of feminism, but not all feminist acts are necessarily vegan, and not all feminists are vegan.

yet the practice of veganism can not be separate from any other feminist act because the meat industry and, in particular, the dairy industry (which participates in, supports, and branches from the meat industry) is fundamentally misogynist.

the dairy industry is founded on the act of exploiting the female body. female cows are kept pregnant for their entire adult life so that they may continue producing milk for our consumption. when a female has a calf on a dairy farm, it is taken away, in most cases, no later than 24 hours after birth. the female is promptly milked (the entire purpose of the pregnancy) while the baby is kept away. female cows on commercial dairy farms die significantly earlier than other female cows because the constant pregnancies wear their bodies down to a dismal degree.

the female calves, as soon as they are able, are impregnated and become part of the milking factory. if the calf happens to be born a male, he is placed in a small cell where he can not move and fed an iron-deficient diet (so that his meat may be tender and pink), and then he is killed a few months into his life for the purpose of the meat industry. baby male calves who are a product of the dairy industry are turned into veal--essentially, an incredibly expensive piece of waste. not only are female cows employed in this disgusting manner to create unhealthy amounts of milk throughout their lives, but the live waste of the industry--male cows, and female cows who are no longer producing a profitable amount of milk--get turned over to the meat industry for a profit.

chicken farms are no better. it takes a lot of calcium for chickens to produce eggs. the sheer amount of eggs a farm chicken will produce in her life consumes three times the amount of calcium she holds throughout her bones in her entire body. by the time laying chickens are no longer producing a profitable amount of eggs, they are thrown into the back of a truck to be processed for other kinds of food. their bones are so brittle that they arrive at the factory mostly broken. that this merciless system is supported by my eating eggs and improving my own calcium is not only illogical to me, but cruel.

we women are participating in a system dominated by men who are exploiting other female-bodied creatures. we are robbing other living creatures of a chance of even a remotely healthy life by being irresponsible with our food choices.

yes, there are other ways to be conscious of our food consumption. to be aware of and do research about the local small farms with ethical animal treatment practices is a fair and practical choice. but the radical act of veganism is also a radical act of feminism. so i say congratulations to those who are successfully resisting our disgusting, hegemonic dietary culture.

loquesea

2007-09-20T20:31:00.000-07:00

i write and speak and breathe in your language because you are the only language i know, not because i am in love with you.

i am in love with the struggle of resisting myself, those subtle impulses that tell me to hold on when i should be letting go, and letting you in.
i am in love with the glowing golden dusk, in love with setting the sun myself.
i am in love with lust. the breath of a lover on my neck and our bare backs against hot sand.

i open myself to let things in and
something falls out.
your presence forces me into a question, but
no answer sounds right in this language.

Cunt Quilt Rock

2007-09-11T20:39:00.000-07:00

Last summer I came up with the cunt rag. The idea was simple: someone would supply a real-life picture of their cunt, I would draw a likeness of it and then embroider that likeness onto a piece of fabric. Then I would type the person's name and the date of the creation onto the kerchief. And voila! A personalized cunt rag. I was excited by the idea and so were most folks I knew, but most seemed to shy away from the most important part - supplying me with a picture!

After a few cunt rags, my project fell flat. My dream has evolved since then, from individual cunt rags to a grand cunt quilt. But the original idea has not shifted a bit: I still want real-life cunts to grace each quilting square. And I need your help!

I understand that some people may be shy about showing me their cunts. So I have figured out a way for people to send me pictures anonymously over the web without me ever knowing who you are. You can log into the email raging [dot] quilt [at] gmail [dot] com using the password "cuntquilt" and send a digital image to my email, erica [dot] bestpitch [at] gmail [dot] com. That way we're all anonymous but you are still contributing to a fabulous work of art and a raging hapa's dream.

I hope that you will participate. All I need is a straight-on shot of your cunt (labia and all, folks) and we're good to go. No name, no nothing. If you want to mail something via snail mail, email me and we'll talk about a mailing address.

Happy cunts, happy quilting!

Full Frontal Fat Phobia

2007-05-14T10:13:00.000-07:00

Why do revolutionary ideas have to be wrapped in complicit packaging?
Will this revolution be thin? able-bodied? white (or passable)?

While I was perusing the blog feministing.com the other day, I noticed that the executive editor, Jessica Valenti, has recently released a book called Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters. No, I haven't read the book. But something about it bothered me straight away: the half-shot of a nude, thin, light-skinned torso that takes up the entire front cover.

When I first watched India Arie's video for the song "I Am Not My Hair," I thought, what an awesome message to be sending out to anybody who looks different or has had an impulse to assimilate physically to feel like part of a group. And then it struck me: this music video looked just like a number of GAP advertisements I have seen that involve singing (often by professional pop musicians), dancing, a white background and clean-cut clothes. In fact, didn't Madonna wear that same tank top/blue jean outfit in her ad with Lenny Kravitz? And then something else struck me: were there any people in the video who, with the exception of race, did not fit into the U.S.'s paradigm of beauty, i.e. slim, able-bodied, heteronormative? The answer is no.

In our daily struggle to resist dominant culture, we are constantly having to choose our battles, perhaps to the point of prioritizing one marginalized identity over another, even at the risk of fracturing our own identities, or marginalizing other groups of people. This has become apparent to me in the above two examples of 1) prioritizing feminism over race inclusivity (sure it's cheesy, but there could have been a couple of Kashi Good Friends Cereal-like models on the cover to at least attempt a portrayal of the different kinds of women who are practicing third wave feminism) and 2) prioritizing race over body inclusivity.

But, lest you think those are the extent of my observations...

As I was walking down Valencia St. in San Francisco last week I passed Good Vibrations, a self-proclaimed feminist (well, "women-focused," if there is a difference), queer, sex-positive safe space that sells sex toys, erotica books, (queer) porn, and frequently hosts a variety of sex workshops ranging from planning to find "the one" in your life to beginner's bondage, flogging, lesbian sex, and anal/prostate play. Given that this is what I know about my beloved GoodVibes and the people it aims to serve, I was shocked to see an 8-foot-tall woman who could have been straight out of a Banana Republic ad in their main store window advertisement. The woman--a white, long-haired brunette, lips slightly parted and staring provocatively at the passersby-- is sitting perched on a chair with a ceramic coffee mug in hand wearing an oversized (dare I assume, a man's?) white collared button-up shirt that is hanging off her shoulder just enough to imply that she is nude beneath. The print reads: "Another sleepless night brought to you by Good Vibrations."

While I could go ahead to assume the best about the ad, queering it in every way in my head--perhaps she is a queer femme? perhaps she is wearing the large workshirt of her trans lover? maybe she spent the entire night alone masturbating and just likes big shirts--but I can not overlook the fact that this white woman may just as well have been in an ad for the "boyfriend shirt" at any major retailer chain in the U.S. Everything about her look adhered to dominant standards of desirable beauty, body, and class so much so that my trust in the GoodVibes mission statement faltered. After being a loyal customer and knowing their mission and programming, I was surprised to see such a normative advertisement reaching out to the general public. Am I supposed to believe that they were reaching out to the likes of me in that advertisement?

Am I supposed to identify with the thin white woman on the cover of Full Frontal Feminism? Or should I want to identify with those images of female bodies enough so that I will pick up that book, or walk through the doors of GoodVibes to be like those women? After listening to India Arie sing about her hair, maybe I should worry less about the color of my skin and worry more about toning my body like hers. Fit bodies in fact may be the key to positive mainstream representation, whether you are a feminist, a woman of color, or (god forbid) a woman who enjoys sex!

Positive gay and lesbian representation relies on the less-than-cover-model bodies being absent or abjected. One glaring (and active!) example of this is the Bravo channel's own "Workout." Southern California powerdyke Jackie Warner is a white, (now) rich gym trainer who has, in her own words, "built an entire empire on [her] abs". The show follows her through work and love, not shying away from her (elite) lesbian sexuality. Yes, she deals with homophobia from her employees throughout the most recent season. But her determination to help the overweight folk who frequent her fancy gym shed their extra weight rallies the group together and deflects both her and her employees' attentions away from her gay personal life and some peoples' homophobic attitudes toward it. Jackie's stance is not to deal with the homophobia enacted against her queer body, but to focus on the overweight, and therefore "unacceptable", bodies of the clients who come to the gym. While Jackie may have an unacceptable body of desire, she uses her toned abs and lean muscle to both leverage her power against her homophobic rivals (she is their boss, and she has less body fat than they do) and launch her into the mainstream, southern californian economic elite. And no, there are no out queer, overweight people featured on "Workout."

In all of the above the following is clear: people who inhabit intersecting marginalities are still being left out of mainstream representations of marginalized groups. Queer feminists of color, working class overweight women, disabled women who enjoy sex, or any combination of the above--we're too complicated for a "mainstream" audience! I am disappointed to see that in situations where a person with a marginalized identity may have decision-making power in who they represent and how, that these people still rely on prevailing attitudes about what is an "acceptable" body in the U.S. today, and employ these images which cater to classism, racism, patriarchy. Are mainstream icons with marginalized identities playing it safe? Watering down their politics just to stay in the game? And why is beauty the safeguard for a possible threat to the hegemony? If I can say, yes I'm feminist but at least I'm not ugly; or , yes I'm black but at least I'm not poor; or, yes I'm queer but at least I'm not fat...who has won?

For those of us who have any say in these situations--about who will be in our music videos, about who will be on the cover of our books, about who we picture on our pamphletes and advertisements, and about who is going to be on our television shows--I urge you not to shy away from multiple marginalities, from real people with un-toned abs, from butch dyke representations of masculinity, from those mixed and colored folk who haven't been deemed "safe for mass consumption."
To those who are making something of the media revolution--this revolution will not be a GAP ad!

Mother's Day for Peace

2007-05-13T18:15:00.000-07:00

Mother's Day Proclamation

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have breasts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.

It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."

Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,

Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
-Julia Ward Howe

[from MothersDayforPeace.com]

In the United States, Mother's Day was originally suggested by poet and social activist Julia Ward Howe. In 1870, after witnessing the carnage of the American Civil War and the start of the Franco-Prussian War, she wrote the original Mother's Day Proclamation calling upon the women of the world to unite for peace. This "Mother's Day Proclamation" would plant the seed for what would eventually become a national holiday.

After writing the proclamation, Howe had it translated into many languages and spent the next two years of her life distributing it and speaking to women leaders all over the world. In her book Reminiscences, Howe wrote, "Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?" She devoted much of the next two years to this cause, and began holding annual "Mother's Day" gatherings in Boston, Massachusetts and elsewhere.

In 1907, thirty-seven years after the proclamation was written, women's rights activist Anna Jarvis began campaigning for the establishment of a nationally observed Mother¹s Day holiday. And in 1914, four years after Howe's death, President Woodrow Wilson declared Mother's Day as a national holiday.

Shameless Self-Promotion

2007-05-13T01:08:00.000-07:00

In addition to working on this blog, trying to create and promote the queer/woman of color zine Watch Yer Mouth (watchyermouth.blogspot.com), and finding "real", i.e. moneymaking, work to support the payment of my debt, I craft. Yes, I am a shameless self-promoting craft junkie and if you would like to support my habit, all the better.

here is a sampling of my things. i am always making more and updating my smallish etsy site, so come back to visit often. also, if you can dream it, i may be able to make it. and if you want to barter, i'm game.

click on the thumbnails below to get a closer look.

Rites of Passing*

2007-05-11T00:08:00.000-07:00

* this is a new post, i decided to take the first couple paragraphs and rework the theme... enjoy.

Since childhood my skin has been a site of constant re/negotiation of my racial and ethnic identity, not only for me, but for those closest to me—my mother, my lovers, my friends—as well.

When I was very young, my mother—a Chinese Cultural Revolution escapist and U.S. immigrant—believed in her children's whiteness and saw my sister's and my body as sites of her own passing. It was as if she were leaving us a legacy of privilege by having had babies with my white father--and she was proud of us, for our strong profiles, our light skin, our small noses. I thought it was fun to play our little in-front-of-the-mirror game when my mother, sister, and I all happened to be sharing the bathroom. We squeezed our noses as tightly as possible then sucksucksucked the air in to keep our nostrils petite and pointy. She told us it was a game she played throughout her youth, with her friends in China—a temporary trade-in from her wide, flat nose that most people mistake for Filipina. Twenty years later, she was playing it again with us.

Growing up, I learned to believe in my own whiteness too. In fact the first time I heard myself described as hapa—I told a fellow 7^th grader that I was half Chinese, half white and he said, "so you're Hapa”—I was taken aback. Both the word itself as well as the way he said it to me—like it was so cut and dry, as if these definitions were so simple, so complete—that I couldn’t embrace it. The word certainly didn't resonate for me the way it does now. At the time I didn't even know there was a term for my mixed racial identity as Asian/American and white.

My 7^th grade classmate was the first of a slew of strangers, friends, and lovers to identify me racially before I got a chance to do it myself. In high school a half-black/half-white friend wanted to know if I was half black, too—I suppose he was cued by my thick kinky hair—and he was disappointed when I told him I wasn’t. One of my longest relationships was with a Salvadoreño who tried to convince the rest of the world that I was his light-skinned (i.e. rich) Mexican girlfriend. Every time we were in a Spanish-speaking situation he did all the talking for me, telling them about his “shy” Mexican girlfriend. My shyness was his excuse for my reticence. His machismo took control of me in those situations—of my life, my identity—and made them reflect an identity that he wanted, but that he could never have: a rich Latina girlfriend instead of a working-poor mother who had to support two children on her own.

Since then lovers have told me that I am “odd-looking,” or that on any given day I might look more white, or more Chinese, as if my skin is a racial prism to be held up to the light—on one day Black may shine through, on another, Chinese, on yet another, Latina.

At different times I thought it was fun, I even encouraged people to guess at what I “was” instead of just telling them outright. I thought that I held power in my passing, and in some ways I did—many people are easily recognized, categorized, and written off appropriately within seconds of contact because of their skin color or body type or facial features. And by virtue of being mixed race I was allowed, in many ways, to be a racial chameleon, changing my presence as the situation dictated. Or so I thought.

Despite my interest in maintaining some sort of racial ambiguity, I was convinced until just a few years ago that I could easily pass for white. When a friend of mine challenged my perception of being able to pass—telling me that I more resembled a Thai friend of ours than any white friends we had, telling me that my hair was jet black and not brown, telling me to procure the fake ID of an Asian person instead of white—I went into a tailspin. I felt as if I had been out-ed, betrayed even, by a friend who I thought believed in my passing too.

For so many years I believed what other people wanted me to believe about my own race—that I was white enough, that I was black, Latina, or indiscernible. And I played with many of these identities over the years. But the one I held closest too was my ability to pass as white. I knew, and had known for a long time that I was never going to be Asian enough. But after so many years of being rejected by the Asian American community, I found out that I was not white enough, either.

People have been defining and identifying their own racial and ethnic positions through me and against me (rarely with me) since I was a child. Instead of defining myself for myself, I attempted to find power in the “passing.” I entertained myself by stumping people as to my specific racial makeup and enjoyed the curiosity that my ambiguity provoked. But something of my personal identity was lost during those interactions, and only through subsequent self-definition and self-recognition have I been able to reclaim it.

Now I view my power as lying in the self I have molded over the last five years, the self I have reclaimed as feminist, dyke, raging hapa. I tell people who I am, I tell them about my inseparable, undeniable parts— second generation Chinese/white American. I am no longer interested in who people see in me. I am interested in people seeing who I am as I know it. I am interested in how people will respond to me now, knowing that I will never be what they want me to be. Though I once took pleasure in it, I realize now that the definitions I allowed people to give me, the racial guessing games I allowed people to play with me were never set up for me to win.

Your Thoughts on My Skin

2007-05-07T19:07:00.000-07:00

As a bi-racial Chinese and white woman, I am expected to choose one of my racial identities over the other, at other people's urging. My mother encourages me to pass as white. Most Asian Americans I meet or whose groups I try to join view me with distrust, give me looks that tell me not to bother. On forms that at least acknowledge multiple races and/or ethnicities, I am expected to choose the one I "most closely" identify with. Then choose a second. On forms I am given at least the agency to choose. On the street, people take liberties at their discretion.

When strangers or acquaintances I meet read me as white and I tell them that in fact I am half Chinese, they are shocked. "But do you speak Chinese?" they ask me. "No, I don't." Inevitably the look on the stranger's face turns from one of confusion to one of assured arrogance. "Ooh, okay." As if that explains my ethnicity. As if my inability to speak Cantonese is the second-level determinant, after my skin and hair color and facial features, as to whether I should, or could, actually identify as a Chinese woman.

In the United States, some people tell me they can see "asian" in my eyes. Others stop me as I am walking downtown and ask me if I am part black. Still others approach me speaking in Spanish, expecting a fluent response rather than the shaky "No puedo hablar, no entiendo" that manages to escape my lips.

When I traveled to China, on a tour with my mother and my sister and about 25 other Chinese visitors, my sister and I received forks to use at dinner while everyone else was given chopsticks. The conversation between me and my mother's friends was limited to them saying how beautiful I was. When they asked if I could speak Cantonese and I responded "a little" in the language, they were impressed, but knew to stop there. Still, though, at a popular tourist site my sister was stopped by two young white male travelers who found her to be the epitome of Asian exoticism.

At once denied access to an Asian/Asian-American political and social identity by virtue of my language and look and yet still fetishized and exoticized by white women and men alike
—here I recall being sung to by a potential lover, a line from a Weezer song, "Goddamn you half-Japanese girls do it to me every time." When I told him I wasn't even half-Japanese, he shrugged it off as if there were no difference at all. Not to him, anyway. Or being told by a customer at my last job that my skin tone is different from hers because I am "exotic."—

I have trouble moving into a serious discussion of race politics with most anyone because we get stuck on what my race is in the first place. I find myself non-threatening to white people as a person of color, both because I am half white and because I am Asian. In many instances being half-white makes me half-legitimate as a person of color at all, and being Asian on top of that allows people to see me as a docile, sweet, non-militant person (of color).

Being taken seriously as a person of color by different people of color has even proven to be a challenge. The model-minority stereotypes ring true for many fellow folks of color--that Asian American women are not oppressed because we benefit from and succeed within the "all-American" schema, the work ethic, the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality. And that we are docile and humble, not interested in confronting racism or acknowledging or expressing rage in any form, and clearly not allowed to--because how can we possibly desire to change a system that works to our supposed benefit? (Should we ask male feminists for the answer to that question?)

Must I explain over and over again the systematic oppression and exploitation of Asians and Asian-Americans through the history of the labor use in the expansion of the United States to the imprisonment of Asian immigrants at Angel Island to the internment of the Japanese in WWII? Is this how I prove that Asians/Asian-Americans are an oppressed group? If this works, how then do I prove that I belong to this group? Why should I have to?

I have no trouble identifying as a hapa, as an Asian-American, as a multi-racial woman of color, as half-white, half-Chinese, as a mutt, as mixed, as a mongrel, and using my woman of color stance to inform my politics and my activism. But it seems to me that everyone has their own thoughts on my skin.

ZinePoop

2007-05-03T23:26:00.000-07:00

i have been interested in starting a zine ever since i met my original queer hapa clique five years ago. now more than ever i want to compile the voices, herstories, and experiences of my fellow radical queer women of color through prose, poetry, images, critical essays, comics--anything that can be photocopied onto a piece of paper.

so here it comes, the birth of Watch Yer Mouth.

this zine is about existing within and speaking from our own axes of stratification and empowerment without apology. it's about using our words to rip the world as we know it apart, in all its gruesome glory, and stitching it back together to find us no longer occupying the margins.

i'm not going to pretend that we are all sisters and therefore know each other's pain. each of us has an individual, cultural, national, spiritual, and emotional existence that converges and diverges with every other one of us...

i am looking for any and all women of color who are interested in submitting work to this zine--this is a chance to be published and join a network of women with down politics and a commitment to changing this fucking world.

email queries or submissions to watchyermouth@gmail.com