Someone Should Have Told Madonna That Stealing Babies is Hard Work

I have a new op-ed up at the Loop21

Madonna is still an ambitious woman, but these days she finds that ambition tempered with the difficulty of raising four kids by herself. In an interview with The Sun, Madonna made it clear that since her separation from Guy Ritchie in 2008, being a single parent is tough. Discussing her latest song, “I Don’t Give A,” Madonna states, “It's about the life of a single mother.  It's a challenge juggling everything -- multi-tasking is my middle name.”  I don’t doubt that raising four children alone is a daunting task; however, Madonna certainly does not inspire any sympathy from me.

Shall we consider for a moment that two of the children in her custody – Mercy James and David Banda – are the result of dubious transnational adoptions?  Mercy’s uncle, John Nglanade, was initially responsible for blocking Madonna’s first attempt at adoption.  Lucy Chekechiwa, Mercy’s grandmother,made it clear that she did not want her grandchild adopted outside of Malawi.  Let’s not forget that David’s father only agreed to the adoption when he was assured by Malawian officials that Madonna would only have temporary custody of David.  Clearly, this man was misinformed as to exactly what adoption means. 

In her promotional interview, Madonna sought to position herself as the typical modern-day working mother, but her class position and race make this anything but the truth. Madonna made sure to highlight her ambitions while complaining about having to multi-task in raising her children ("I'm not going to lie — it's hard work having four kids and doing all the work I do.").  Unlike Mercy and David’s parents, Madonna does not have to worry that her children will be taken from her because she cannot provide the basics. Madonna instead wields the power to remove children from their country of origin.Despite clear familial objections to the adoptions of both David and Mercy, Madonna forged forward, determined to be yet another white earth-mother with black children in tow.  She has not reached the numbers of Angelina Jolie, but Madonna believed that her class status and her whiteness would offer a better life for these two children, even though removing them from Malawi means that both kids are now cut off from their nation and culture of origin.  This disconnect is not something new for children of the African Diaspora, but due to the circumstances of their birth, it is an emotion that Mercy and David could both have avoided if Madonna had chosen to invest in supporting black children by empowering their mothers, rather than assuming control of their children.

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Rice Queens, the colonization of the Asian body, and self-orientalizing, Part 3

Biyuti is a bakla Filipina living on stolen Algonquin land. He works to sustain and increase the biyuti of the world through decolonization and through her explorations of the intersections of race with queerness/gender. She also blogs at The Biyuti Collective and you can find her on Twitter: @JustBiyuti. 

When you are a young bakla and you’ve been thrust into this world where most of the (White) guys you meet will (at best) pretend you don’t exist and (at worst) tell you straight out that they don’t date Asians (because of bullshit, racist ‘preferences’), you are vulnerable to rice queens and the pressure they exert on your self-image. You start to re-imagine yourself as a delicate lotus blossom for them to admire (and control).

You start to wish that you were thinner, smoother, more delicate. You start to swallow your opinions and bite your tongue from expressing yourself. You begin, in so many different and small ways, to lose yourself and to reshape yourself into what is desirable to the white, Western gaze. Why? Because, like most people, you are but human and want love/company/sex/friendship/etc.

This is the process a dear friend of mine called ‘self-orientalizing.’ It is also the subject of a this post. It is especially of concern when speaking of sex... Because I do remember doing more than a few things in bed that I wasn’t super enthusiastic about, but did anyways, just because I didn’t know when the next chance I’d have to touch another human being was. Because part of being feminized is also becoming sexually available to men -- all the time.

We don’t live in a perfect world – so why expect us to pretend?

This is a guest post from Sparky, of Spark in Darkness.  Many of you are  familiar with him from Livejournal, as well as from his insightful and often hilarious commentary here. Each Tuesday, Womanist Musings will be featuring a post from Sparky.

On writing reviews for Fangs for the Fantasy – and media in general - one of the most common objections we find is people questioning our “assumptions” about the reasons for a character’s actions.

After all – we don’t know that that character’s love affair with its desperate tragic ending is because they’re GBLT. We don’t know that a gay man  who is flouncing, and mincing, and obsessed with fashion, is because he’s a gay stereotype. We don’t know that that snarky, sassy Black friend is a trope laden side-kick because she’s Black. We don’t know that a woman who has needed rescuing so many times that she must be positively bored during kidnappings by now, is constantly kidnapped because she’s a woman.

No, we don’t “know” this, but we can make a pretty good guess. Because assuming otherwise would be to pretend that this story is completely separate from the rest of the world – that the context of privileges and prejudices that so mar our society, are somehow blessedly absent from this particular book/story/game/film/series. Perhaps, it was created on Mars by little pixies, who never knew prejudice or hatred?

No, I don’t think I’ll assume that. I won’t assume that centuries of prejudice, of bigotry, or stereotypes have magically had no effect on this work and it is merely sheer coincidence that the portrayals (or erasure) within just happen to coincide with some very tired, very insulting tropes. There’s a limit to how far I will deny reality – and usually reality denial on this scale is only perpetrated when I want to poke Beloved – and I’m certainly not going to do it for the precious fee-fees of privileged folks who can’t abide criticism of their precious.

I also ask why these critics think it matters. Authorial intent is no more magical than any other kind of intent. Just because your writing of the GBF, or the camp buffoon, wasn’t meant to invoke a trope, doesn’t mean it didn’t walk the same, tired, path of a thousand stereotypes before it – causing all the damage, harm and offense of every other character that has walked that same damn path.

My gender is not merely male, but transmale.

Mike is an 18 year female to male transman. He is currently studying psychology at The Evergreen State College between making quilts. He someday aspires to be a social worker, and in the mean time, he wants to fix the fact that not everyone is born with an inherent right to be themselves.


I am never sure how well I pass. Sometimes, it's pretty clear that people don't really think I'm trans. Sometimes they find out I am trans because I start talking about being a girl in the past or because I stretch the wrong way. Sometimes other people tell them. I am out right now. It feels safer that way, and somehow more honest. I feel like it's being more honest to my gender and the way that I am in life. I can't imagine a time where I wouldn't want to be out.

On the other hand, I can see the appeal of stealth. No one questions a cisgendered man's right to be a man. Well... Ok, that's not true, if he does stuff outside of his assigned gender role, they will. But they
don't find out he's cisgendered and start using the wrong pronouns. In fact, he's most likely getting male pronouns because he is cisgendered! And passing well enough that people can't tell I'm trans means that sometimes I forget. It means that I can forget, for a moment, the pain of being born in the wrong body and it means that I am in the correct box. It's a nice feeling, to know that there are some people out there who don't see me as anything but a man.

The Walking Dead Season Two, Episode Eleven: Better Angels

 
The episode opens with Dale's funeral where Rick says that Dale was honest and brave.  "I couldn't always read him but he could read us. He saw people for who they were.  He knew things about us the truth - who we really are.  In the end, he was talking about losing our humanity and he said this group was broken. From now on we are going to do it his way, that his how we honour Dale," Rick said in his eulogy of Dale. 

In flash scene, we see Andrea, Shane, T Dog and Darryl driving until they come across some zombies, and then they stop to kill them.

They decide it's time to move everyone into the house, saying that with winter coming they are too vulnerable. When Rick talks about releasing Randall again, Shane is upset, but Rick tells him that the plan was right, but the execution was wrong. Shane is clearly not at all mollified.

Alone  with Rick, Hershel says that he has no patience with Shane anymore.  When Andrea joins them, Rick asks her to keep an eye on things.  Hershel says that if he stays there permanently that Shane has to understand that what he and Rick says goes.  Andrea is upset about being asked to baby sit Shane, and tells Rick that maybe he should stop leaving.  Yeah, so now they have Andrea saying Lori's lines?  If she hadn't aligned herself with Shane to begin with, Rick never would have thought to ask

Carl approaches Shane and wants to talk, but asks him to promise not to tell his parents.  Shane says that this is a bad idea for both of them, but when Carl walks away, Shane calls him back.  Carl shows Shane the handgun he took from Darryl's motorcycle and admits the role that he played in Dale's death. Shane tells him that it is not his fault, and that he needs to hold onto the gun to protect himself.  Carl tells him that he is never touching another gun again, but Shane answers that this is not an option. Carl tells Shane to give it back to Darryl and walks away.

Glenn comes in the house and Maggie tells him to put his stuff in her room, but Glenn is not comfortable doing that with Hershel in the house.  So he can have sex with her in a pharmacy with the threat of death hanging over them, but Hershel being in the same house is too much?  Really?

Hershel gives up the bed to Lori, and says that he will take the couch rather than seeing a pregnant Lori sleeping on the floor.  When Lori says that she can't because this is Hershel's home, Hershel tells her that it is their home as well. When Lori attempts to refuse, T-dog says "if you two can't decide, I'll take it".  Great, they can't give T Dog anything serious to do but move shit around, but hey, he can play the role of comic relief.

When Hershel and T-dog go inside,  Laurie see Shane fixing the windmill.   They chat about life before the zombies and Laurie asks him to come down. Laurie says, "this is real and we can't keep at bay; it's already got us and it just keeps coming.  I made a mess of things, and I put you and Rick at odds. I don't even know whose baby this is.  I can't imagine how hard that is on you.  You lead us out of Atlanta with no thought of yourself. " She tells him that she never thanked him for getting them out of Atlanta.  "Even though things got confused between us, you were there for me, thank you".  Shane says that he she doesn't need to thank him for that.  Lori says, "what ever happened between us, I'm sorry Shane. Please believe me I am so sorry".

Okay, what the fuck was that? No, seriously, what the fuck was that?  Did she suddenly forget that Shane tried to rape her?  What woman decides to thank her rapist?  I am sick and tired of the way that The Walking Dead has chosen to treat the attempted rape like it never happened.  We are only encouraged to see Shane as bad because, he killed Otis.  What's a little attempted rape right?  This is just one more sign that the writers don't take their female characters seriously.   

 

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Drop It Like It's Hot

This week is March Break for my angels and so this means that the posting will probably be light.  I just wanted to give everyone a heads up beforehand. Also don't forget to move your clock ahead one hour tomorrow.  Spring - I just can't wait.

Hey everyone, thanks for another great week of conversation.  I think that there were some really great conversations that challenged a lot of what has become normal discourse.  Please remember, we cannot always agree but it is important that we stay respectful and committed to listening to each other. Talking at each other, rather than to each other, get us nowhere.

I am still looking for new contributors.  Though I can write about a myriad of things, we all learn best from the people directly negotiating a particular ism.  I am particularly looking for someone to discuss fatphobia and class critically but I am very open to other ideas. Please be aware that womanist musings also has an open guest posting policy, so please feel free to submit a piece or a cross post from your blog.  You can reach me at womanistmusings (at) gmail (dot) com

Below you will find a list of posts that I found interesting this week.  Please be aware that a link does not necessarily mean an endorsement of the article, just simply that I found something about the piece interesting.  Please be aware that I don't read the comment sections so read those at your own risk.  Well start spreading the love, and when you're done, don't forget to drop it like it's hot and leave your link behind in the comment section when you are done.

Men’s Rights Movement Spreads False Claims about Women
Were Rush’s Slurs Against Black America Not Cancellation Worthy?
Team Katniss Fashion (Yes, I am a total Hunger Games geek)
Thoughts on Being “Othered”.
Things I’m Expected To Do for Cis People in Return for Their Not Hating Me: An Angry List
IN DISCUSSION: racism directed towards someone else expressed to you
I’ve seen the future, I can’t afford it
Not Okay (Sexism in Gaming/Nerd Culture)
Rihanna: From Ultimate “Niggerbitch” to Ultimate Ignoramus in One Racist Tweet
Can't Have It Both Ways
Our Black Women Icons 
Muslim Women Take Back the Mic on International Women's Day
Expanding Black Masculinity to End "Black on Black" Anti-LGBT Violence
Food Systems: Not Globally Universal!
Segregation begins at home
On Girlf@g by Janet W Hardy
Artist on Anti-Woman Attacks: ‘Politicians Off My Poontang!’
Male superheroes, drawn like female ones
Think Before You Retweet: Reflections on Kony 2012 & the Power of Social Media
Hollywood star Colin Farrell Stands Up!
Sex, Politics, and the Single Latina
Watch: Dr. Boyce Watkins & Dr. Michael Eric Dyson Discuss Accountability in Hip Hop, Who’s At Fault?
IS PINK "PINK" IN SAUDI ARABIA?
Introducing Prodigyrls: Real Black Dolls, For Real Black Girls
The Dangers Of An Educated Black Man
Double Rainbow: Autism and Race
The Alamo Heights Basketball “U-S-A” Chant: So, Patriotism is the New Racism in San Antonio?
Oh ANTM, Where Do I Even Start?: Mariah Watchman And The Pocahontas Controversy
Beyonce Breastfeeds Blue Ivy: Can White Advocates Give Black Moms Our Breastfeeding Victory?
Very Smart Brothas’ Fauxpology, Too $hort’s “Advice,” And Muffling About Intraracial Sexual Violence
Cover Snark: She Must Be Freezing

Jamie Foxx Does his Best Michael Jackson Impersonation in his Drawers

The following video could be an advert for this is your brain on drugs, but I still laughed.

Appropriation in Urban Fantasy Should Not be a Plot Point

One of the things I love about urban fantasy, is that it encourages a reader to travel to fantastical imaginary worlds.  Even if the world largely resembles our current society, the addition of vampires, fae, werewolves etc., adds new elements to any story.  A writer must interweave their version of our world into their story, to ensure that there is enough context, to allow the reader to relate with the characters.  Sometimes, this can be achieved with things like having characters go to a specific location, or participate in a very popular cultural activity like checking email.  Some writers however take these connections too far by engaging in revisionist history, and appropriating the experiences of marginalised people.

This can include inserting their protagonist into real historical situations, in an attempt to convey the age of the supernatural in question. Unfortunately, this usually leads to some sort of revisionism as an imaginary character, would have had no role to play for the allies in WWII. Yes, I am looking at you Sanctuary. Kevin Hearne, had his protagonist Atticus play a role in the French resistance.  In Eternal Law, Zak became the Angel of Mons (which is based on a real legend), who guided soldiers to safety in WWI, and was then punished for his action by being forced to defend soldiers accused of going AWOL. Rebbecca Hamilton inserted one of her characters into the Salem witch trials, and in Morgan Rice’s Vampire Journals series, she took it a step further and even used one of the historical people from the trials.  

The worst of this marginalisation is, of course, appropriating marginalised identities and equality movements.  If there were an award for squeezing in the most appropriation in a series, it would have to go to Dan Waters who wrote The Generation Dead Series. Waters has managed to appropriate slurs, appropriate the language of disability, refer to the closet, passing and coming out to describe his zombies revealing their true nature, as well as appropriating the language of the civil rights movement, and appropriating Jim Crow, to apply to the separation of the differently biotic (yes, he actually used that term) and living people. 

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A Personhood Ammendment for Ladies

This is a cross post from Liss at Shakesville

Shaker ma_am recently suggested, in response to the onslaught of anti-choice legislation that includes encroachments on reproductive rights that undermine the autonomy of women and other people with uteri as well as proposed "Personhood Amendments" to confer personhood on fetuses, that we need a Personhood Amendment for women and other people with uteri to establish our rights as autonomous people. I suggested we compose the amendment, and then try to get a clever Democratic Senator to introduce it into the US Senate.

So we did!

And then we composed a petition, and ma_am launched it at Change.org.

Here is our prosed Personhood Amendment:

A person identifying as a woman and/or having a uterus shall retain all of the full, basic, and fundamental rights of a US citizen as guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Congress and the States shall make no law that infringes upon a person's life, including but not limited to access to life-saving or life-improving healthcare, and/or medicines and procedures deemed necessary or beneficial by a medical professional and/or by the person having the uterus, procurement of which shall not by denied in and of itself by the presence of a uterus. Congress and the States shall make no law that infringes upon a person's liberty, including but not limited to autonomy over hir own body and the ability to make decisions regarding hir own healthcare. Congress and the States shall make no law that interferes with a person's pursuit of happiness, including but not limited to access to a full spectrum of reproductive options, freedom from forcible reproduction, and the ability to make decisions regarding family planning and family resources.

Please sign the petition in support of the Personhood Amendment here. Once it has 1,000 signatures, it will be delivered to Senators Patty Murray (WA), Al Franken (MN), and Kristen Gillibrand (NY) with a request to introduce the proposed amendment into the legislative session.

And please spread the word about the petition via social networking sites. Let's change this conversation. It's time to change "women's rights are human rights" from a radical statement to settled fact.

Rihanna Needs to Do Something About the Men in Her Life

I have a new piece up at Clutch Magazine

Rihanna needs to do something about the men in her life.  First, we have Chris Brown, who I like to call the new-age Ike Turner, and now her father Ronald Fenty, who seems to think that the fat-shaming of his daughter is a key factor in her success.  Fenty’s recent interview with Heat Magazine may shed light on why Rihanna seems so willing to put up with abusive behaviour.

Our first role models are our parents; for those raised in a two-parent heterosexual household, that means mothers and fathers.  There is a constant social emphasis on how boys need their fathers to teach them how to be men, but girls also need their fathers to model what a good man is and how they should demand to be treated by their partners (should they happen to be straight, of course).  Speaking on the role that her absentee father played in her life, Halle Berry once stated, “If I had a good father in my life growing up, then I do not think I would have made the mistakes I made. I would not have been lost in love.”

For many women, our fathers serve as our primary model of masculinity and those of us who choose to partner with men often notice that our spouses share very significant qualities and character traits with our fathers.  From the time that I was a little girl, I knew that I wanted a man to treat me the way that my father treats my mother.  I knew that settling for less would not make me happy.  However, Rihanna’s father doesn’t seem to take the intimate partner violence his daughter endured very seriously.  According to The New York Post, Fenty said, “Chris is a nice guy and everybody’s entitled to make mistakes in their life. God knows how many I’ve made.”

As if those remarks were not vile enough, he went on to discuss her weight.  “I actually thought she was a little fat the last time I saw her,” he said. “When I saw her at this year’s Grammys, I thought she was back to her normal size.  I used to joke with her, ‘Robyn, you’re getting too fat.’  But I think she’s fine.  I think she looked excellent, as everyone saw, at the Grammys.  She’s dieting, she’s working out.”
A mistake is forgetting your girlfriends’ birthday, not beating her until she is covered in bruises. Abusers are charming people; they have to be in order to instill confidence on the part of their victims.  They build confidence, separate the victim from their support group, and systematically attack the victim’s self esteem to prepare them for the idea that they deserve to be beaten and abused.  To the outside world they appear to be charming and sweet, but in private they are violent, controlling and cruel.

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Woman Wins Lottery and Still Gets Food Stamps

My Bff emailed me a story about a Michigan woman, who won the lottery and continued to collect 200 dollars a month food stamps.  Apparently, the state depends upon recipients to declare any change of financial status within 10 days, and a failure to report a change in status, could subject the recipient to fines, as well as jail time.

"I thought that they would cut me off, but since they didn't, I thought, maybe, it was OK because I'm not working," Clayton, 24, told WDIV when it asked whether it was appropriate for her to receive the money.

A state lawmaker is trying to stop such assistance, which is not illegal. He says the food assistance should not go to those who have found riches through the lottery.

"We need to continue to protect our taxpayers' dollars ... and taxpayer dollars should be going to those who really do need assistance," Michigan Rep. Dale Zorn of Ida Township told HLN's Vinnie Politan on Wednesday.

In October, Clayton walked away with $1 million in the "Make Me Rich!" lottery game show. She also bought a car, WDIV reported.

After taking a lump sum and paying taxes, the unemployed woman said she ended up with just more than $500,000.

Asked if she had the right to the public assistance money, Clayton answered, "I kind of do. I have no income, and I have bills to pay. I have two houses."

Zorn said the state House has passed bills on the matter. One would require a state agency to conduct an assets test if a citizen wins more than $1,000 in lottery earnings. "That will trigger whether or not the people are eligible to receive public assistance." [source]

Jessica Simpson, Shows Off her Baby Bump on The Cover of Elle

 

I first saw this cover on The View this morning.  The ladies were gushing how great it was that Simpson felt confidant enough to do this, and how far we have come since Demi Moore appeared naked and pregnant on the cover of Vanity Fair. There is no doubt that these images of pregnant naked women are indeed political.  They promote the beauty of pregnancy, and actively state that there is nothing shameful about this time in a woman's life.

Even as these images challenge the discourse surrounding motherhood, in many ways, they support a norm that is not oft discussed. The women displayed this way have largely been White, with class privilege, straight and in a long term or serious relationship.  Even though more women are either choosing to parent by themselves, or in situations where the father has abdicated responsibility, being a single mother is still very much a stigmatized identity.  This of course amplified when one is of colour, disabled, lesbian or poor.

Motherhood is not the universalizing experience that it is often framed as.  Even during pregnancy and labour and deliverym a mother's identity will greatly effect the treatment that they receive. Writing about her experience of delivering her daughter, Denne Miller had the following to say:

It didn't matter how much money I had in my bank account or how good my insurance was, or that I had a ring on my finger, or that I was smart and accomplished, or that I tried to pay my way out of substandard service. At the end of the day, to almost everyone in that hospital, I was just another black girl pushing out another black baby and neither of us deserved to be treated with dignity or respect, much less special. That human beings charged with caring for new life and the people who ushered in that miracle could traffic in this kind of reprehensible treatment of anyone, much less a new mother -- no matter her race, financial or marital status, or background -- is beyond my level of comprehension.

But it happens. A lot. And there are studies that show that my birthing experience is a lot like that of other African-American women who've had babies in hospitals.