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Disrupting Dinner Parties

~ Feminism is for everyone!

Disrupting Dinner Parties

Category Archives: Uncategorized

A Retrospective

10 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by Disrupting Dinner Parties in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Will you join me in a walk down memory lane? It has now been almost a year since we last updated, but some posts live on. Here is a countdown of the posts which continue to get the most views.

5. 4 Reasons Why, Actually, You Cannot Touch My Hair

Published June 12, 2013

Last week an art exhibit opened in NYC called “You Can Touch My Hair.” It featured three black women, all with different hair styles, standing in Union Station with signs featuring those same words. It was not intended to be the start of a hair touching movement, but a social experiment to explore the widespread tactile fascination with black women’s hair. This exhibit has opened up a floodgate of controversy, debate, and counter-exhibits.

But this isn’t about the exhibit. This is about why, although you were perfectly welcome to touch those three women’s hair last week, you cannot touch mine.

Read the Full Post

 

4. Take the Red Pill: The Truth Behind the Biology of Sex

Published April 8, 2014

Morpheus offers the pills in the MatrixThis is the first part of a series about the complex biological realities of sex. Though the posts build on one another, each can be understood alone.

Content note: this post contains images and language that may not be safe for work.

1. Introduction

I first learned about the social construction of sex from a lovely trans woman named Kiki.

She said, “You may have heard before that gender is socially constructed, while sex is biological. But I’m here to tell you that what you’ve heard isn’t true. Sex is socially constructed too. So are you ready for the truth? Are you going to take the red pill or the blue pill?”

Three years later, I was diagnosed by my gynecologist with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), which means that my body produces hormones intermediate between “typical men” and “typical women.” What I learned from Kiki gave me context in which to understand what this meant about my body and who I am. But it’s still very hard for me to talk about. My hormones affect me in ways that are hard to see, so even most of my lovers don’t know. I can count the number of people in my personal life who know this about me on my two hands.

I picked the red pill. If you read on, you can take the red pill too.

The problem with calling sex “biological” is that biology is complicated. Hardly anything in biology fits into two neat categories like “male” and “female.” To give you an idea of how complicated sexual development really is, let’s go to the very beginning. How do sexual characteristics develop in a human embryo?

Read the Full Post

 

3. How to be a good cis lover to your trans partner

Published July 23, 2014

This post contains text below the jump that may not be safe for work.

For the most part, dating a transgender person is no different from dating a cisgender person (someone who identifies with the gender assigned to them at birth). But if you are a cis person dating a trans person, there are some things you should keep in mind that may not have come up in your previous relationships with other cis people.

I am a polyamorous queer cisgender woman, and nearly half of all the lovers I’ve had have been transgender. I take this as a compliment: like everyone I make mistakes, but I figure I’m doing something right if so many trans* people have chosen to welcome me into their hearts. Keeping in mind that I’ve by no means covered every topic, here’s what I’ve learned about being a good cis partner to trans people I date.

Read the Full Post

 

2. Open letter to a loved one in an abusive relationship

Published May 31, 2013

"Tree Heart" by ~The-Dancing-Queen on DeviantArt

Dear loved one,

This is a letter for you, the person in our lives who is in an abusive relationship. You are our sister and our brother, the girl we went to college with, the friend with whom we went on that epic road trip, our coworker, our parent, our past self, our future child. The abuse you’re living though may be emotional, sexual, or physical. You abuser may be a boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, parent, friend, or some other relationship to you. Maybe you’ve spoken with us about your abuse, maybe you’re not yet comfortable sharing it, or maybe you’re not even comfortable labeling the treatment you endure with the “A” word. This letter is to you, the one we love who is enduring abusive behavior.

There are some things we want you to know, and the first, the most important, is this:

You are loved.

Read the Full Post

1. Dark Girl Nude: The Spring 2014 Guide

Published April 22, 2014

[I choose to believe this is not an accident of search terms, but that there are simply this many people seeking racially diverse fashion options. I invite you to join me in this belief.]

“They disappear like magic and become a fluid extension of her legs, as in a sketch, elongating the silhouette.”

– Christian Louboutin, shoe god

The nude shoe. It’s a shoe in  a color that comes as close as possible to blending in with your skin tone, and it’s been a hot trend for so many years that the fashion world is saying it’s a classic here to stay. From the castles of Great Britain to the streets of America , you can walk or click into virtually any shoe store and find a pair that works for you- unless you are a darker person of color.

For at least four seasons now, lighter skinned people have had easy access to an overwhelming selection of shoes in colors specifically designed to neutrally complement their skin, and they can often find such shoes in the section named “nude.” The same can’t be said for people who look like me, which has consistently frustrated my shoe shopping endeavors. The trend of labeling one color group “nude”, as if nude is not a relative color, also frustrates my brain- “nude” literally means “naked” or “skin colored” so applying it only to light beige-ish colors implies that the color of my skin isn’t actually a normal skin color. This just one of example the normalization of white skin across the fashion and personal care industries (and even the coloring crayon industry- the Crayola color we now know as “peach” used to be named “flesh.”) It also exemplifies the erasure of people of color (and black women in particular) even though we make up over one third of America’s consumer base.

a_chaque_peau_son_escarpin_christian_louboutin_9944_north_635x0

Read the Full Post

Langston Hughes wrote the perfect response to Donald Trump 80 years ago

06 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by Disrupting Dinner Parties in Uncategorized

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Donald Trump has been a source of vile political messages since he began his campaign for president of the U.S. Among countless other offenses, he has called migrants from Mexico rapists, refugees from Syria terrorists, and called for a national registry for all followers of Islam. He has done all this under the campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” which is exactly the sort of nationalistic bullshit those of us who grew up in the Bush years have come to expect our oppressive politics to come wrapped in (USA Patriot Act, anyone?).

The problem is that Trump and his supporters are using a definition of “great” that is exactly the opposite if you’re not a native-born, white, straight, cis, English-speaking man. Their definition of “great” includes a nostalgia for a monopoly of power many people have worked very hard to dismantle. Their idea of the American Dream is our nightmare.

As many have observed, “Make America Great Again” is a racist dog whistle for “Make America White Again”- it is, literally, a patriotic hat on a selfish, oppressive hack.

But not only does such a slogan lack subtlety; it also lacks originality. In fact, Langston Hughes wrote the perfect response to it in his 1935 poem, “Let America Be America Again.”

It begins much like Trump’s slogan, with an exhortation for our country to return to some mythical past, full of lip service to “freedom” and “dreams,” images of pioneers and criticism of tyranny.

But beginning as a whisper, a parenthetical aside, the people left out of that myth speak up, and slowly insert themselves into the narrative. “America never was America to me,” they insist. Given a chance to speak, they weave a story of the greatness they envision for America, a truly inclusive greatness.

I’ve copied the poem in full below, because every American deserves to read it, and read it repeatedly. The next time you hear someone say, “Make America Great Again,” tell them “America never was America to me.”

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? 
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?
Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

Invest in the world you believe in

29 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by ddpguestposter in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2016, donate, look for the helpers, new year, peace building, refugees, syria

This is a guest post by Emma Buck.

These are dark times. The refugee crisis in Europe and the attacks in Paris and Beirut sent a shock throughout the world, where before, some U.S. Americans may have been challenged to find Syria on a map, now key players in Syria and the diaspora have become household names in the United States and around the internet- from the Assad regime, the dictator being overthrown in Syria, to the island of Lesvos, a small vacation Greek island being rocked by the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees by boat. So, you know there’s a war going on in Syria and a refugee crisis as a result, and you want to do something about it? I have three organisations that I wish to highlight and link to ways to supporting them, because they are doing some of the best work on the ground here, because they need your support in continuing to do it, and because they bring me hope that light can emerge out of this darkness.

I’m in Southern Turkey living with displaced Syrian revolutionary activists, volunteering and collaborating with many local organisations that have sprung up in this crisis. Amidst the many challenges they must face and I struggle to even comprehend, I have found my hope in meeting the ordinary people, mostly women, who are confronting impossible problems, starting as grassroots activists and formalizing into organizations and, really, changing the world. These people work in and around Syria, every day, where and when everyone else fails. If you believe in a world where ordinary people help each other in need, where refugees are welcome and peace can be built from the ground up, here’s where to send your money and support. Invest in the world you believe in. If you’re thinking about where to give before the end of the year, please consider supporting them. If you are not able to financially support them, please consider learning more about them and sharing this post on your Facebook or other social media.

sawa 2

SAWA

In Lebanon, where Syrian refugees make up 1 in every 4 people, SAWA for Development and Aid was one of the first organizations on the ground in 2011 when Syrian refugees first started coming in. They were “founded in reaction to the dire gap of fulfilling the needs for Syrian refugees in Lebanon”- such gaps include, for instance, when weather conditions in winter get bad enough, the NGOs managing the camps abandon them to their fates. Really. SAWA are holding a supply drive called #beforethestorm, and every cent donated goes to coats, heating supplies, and shelter for refugees in Bekaa. Donate below, $10 buys a winter kit for a child, $25 buys blankets, and more can go towards tents, firewood, and more.

https://www.generosity.com/community-fundraising/before-the-storm-winter-drive

Starfish

In Greece, where Syrian, Iraqi, Afghan and other refugees arrive by rubber dinghy on the vacation island of Lesvos, the formidable local restaurant owner Melinda McRostie had to do something to help the wet and desperate people arriving by the hundreds every day (read more about them here: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/10/captain-table-restaurant-helping-refugees-151012133022206.html). Her organization, Starfish, until recently only an informal yet highly organized group of volunteers and now a Greece-based nonprofit, has since it begun helped shelter, feed and house more than 90,000 refugees, and counting. These were the folks I volunteered with back in October, and I cannot stress enough how much Starfish is holding up that side of the island, connecting refugees, locals, volunteers and the UN to get the job done. Just 1.60 euros buys a meal for a tired refugee. More info here, including links to the paypal donation page:

http://www.asterias-starfish.org/en/donate/

Centre for Civil Society and Democracy

All throughout Syria (Da’esh, Liberated Areas, Rojava, Regime-held areas, and the diaspora), multiple networks of over 25 peace circles led by Syrian women are negotiating ceasefires, opening schools in besieged areas, advocating for political prisoners, bringing together ethnic and religious communities to reduce tension, and so much more. These women are remarkable, sowing the seeds of peace amidst such a terrible war, and their stories need to be told. There are links to donate and also other ways to support below for their parent organization the Centre for Civil Society and Democracy- just put WFFS in the memo line. Added bonus, if you’re looking for donations to ease your tax burden, CCSD is also registered as a 501(c)3 in the United States, so can count towards your charitable donations. See below:

http://ccsdsyria.org/donate-2/

Will you make a donation to one of these organizations? They are doing urgent, important work, and they need our support. Sometimes, what makes the world brighter is also what makes it easier to bear the darkness: taking action to make it better.

Happy New Year, everyone. May it be a peaceful and just 2016.

Refugees and Feminism

20 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by Kate in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

After the Paris terrorist attacks, a plethora of US state governors came out against welcoming refugees to their state. This sort of xenophobic isolationism is nothing new, but it is incredibly dangerous. The ability of people displaced by conflict to find safe passage to a safe destination is a moral imperative, and, what’s more, it’s a feminist issue.

Continue reading →

Speak up and stop this shit

04 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by Barbie in Uncategorized

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Content note for police violence against children of color.

Last week in South Carolina, a white school officer, Deputy Ben Fields — or officer slam, as he has been known among the school’s students prior to this incident — attacked a non-resisting, silent teenage girl by violently throwing her from her seat, causing her multiple physical injuries and emotional trauma.  Her crime?  Earlier in the class period, she did not immediately comply with a teacher’s request to put away her cell phone.  Additionally, she was black.

Fortunately, one of her classmates took out his phone and videotaped the encounter.  In the video, as many have pointed out, it is clear that the officer made no attempt at intervention, other than to move the girl’s laptop off her desk, indicating that he had decided to attack her (which is the proper verb for when an adult man throws a teenage girl onto the ground) from the very beginning of the encounter. Continue reading →

21

20 Tuesday Oct 2015

Posted by Kate in Uncategorized

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A few months ago, Zella Ziona began living openly as a woman. Friends say that she was an inspiration, she helped people. “When Zella’s around, there’s not a single frown in the room.”

Photo of Zella Ziona, a black trans woman with a septum ring, pink lipstick, and long curly hair. She is smiling with her lips closed.

Zella Ziona, 21

Last Thursday, Zella Ziona was killed. Continue reading →

Five Family-Friendly Feminist Fights

27 Sunday Sep 2015

Posted by Kate in Career, Class, Organizing, Parenting, Politics, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

#standwithPP, black lives matter, childcare, dignified wage, family, family leave, family values, feminist, fight for 15, mass incarceration, maternity leave, minimum wage, movement for black lives, paternity leave, planned parenthood, police violence, reproductive health, reproductive justice, reproductive rights, trans, universal childcare

Let’s talk about family values, y’all. I’m not talking about the so called “family values” pushed by the religious right. This isn’t some anti-marriage-equality Focus on the Family nonsense that keeps families from accessing legal rights. And it’s not about pressuring hetero couples to maintain gender norms for the good of the children, nor is it about taking reproductive choices away from people. No, the anti-feminists have falsely laid claim to the political realm of the family for too long.

Families are important, and family values, real family values, are feminist values. To prove it to you, here’s a list of five family-forward policies feminist are pushing for and taking action on–and way that you can join in the work.

It's a cute baby in a ruffly dress, kinda sad or confused facial expression, tongue slightly out of mouth

Please enjoy this marginally relevant stock photo of an adorable baby.

Continue reading →

Promote a petition: Protect survivors of relationship violence

24 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by Barbie in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Content note for discussion of intimate partner violence, and for a semi-detailed account in the linked petition.

Greetings disruptors!

Today’s Promote a Petition is on a subject that is close to my heart: intimate partner violence.  There are a set of laws in place that have at least the potential to protect children from environments of abuse, though sadly these are often terribly or not at all enforced.  Yet for adult survivors of relationship violence, especially in South Carolina apparently, there is little if any legal protection even in principle.  As Melissa Walker, the petition’s author, painfully notes (please recall the content note for this article before clicking “Continue reading” — we are about to jump right to the heavy stuff): Continue reading →

Towards Better Fetish and Kink Conventions

11 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by Luz Delfondo in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

I went to my first fetish convention not long ago. A fetish convention is where vendors, teachers, and kinksters come together to share skills, buy and sell fetish gear, and discuss issues in our community. They are, generally speaking, not spaces where people come to actually do kink or have sex.

I would say that I had a positive experience at the convention overall, but it could have had greater inclusiveness and diversity of opinion. Here are some concrete steps that I think kink conventions could take to become safer and more welcoming.

1. Train instructors on how to include everyone in their workshops.

The instructors at the workshops I attended varied a lot in their awareness of gender and sexuality issues. There were some instructors who always referred to genders as “male, female, or other,” and others who assumed the gender and pronouns of their students without asking first. There were some instructors who used examples of all kinds of gender combinations when they talked about kink scenes, and others who used only examples of heterosexual couples, and yet others who only referred to scenes with male tops.

This kind of awareness isn’t just about language, but also about who the instructors chose as their demo bottoms – the people on whom they performed the skills they were trying to teach. All of the workshops I attended that were led by male tops had demo bottoms who were cisgender, conventionally attractive white women.

To have a more inclusive kink convention, organizers should have a training for all instructors about how to talk about gender and sexuality, how to respect the genders and sexualities of workshop participants, and considerations for choosing a demo bottom.

2. Reach out to marginalized communities for organizers, vendors, and instructors.

You’ll never get diversity in any institution if you just sit back and wait for marginalized people to appear. The whole point is that there are barriers to inclusion that make it hard for them to join. It’s the responsibility of people in power to break down those barriers by reaching out.

There were definitely workshops geared specifically toward discussing issues like queer and trans* participation in kink communities, and those were headed up by people with those identities. But when I went to workshops about flogging or caning or anything not specifically about these issues, all of the instructors were heterosexual and cisgender – not to mention white. (And make no mistake; racism is a serious problem in the kink community.)

It’s not enough to recruit marginalized people to educate the powerful about their own issues. You have to recruit them to be a part of everything. That’s the only way to truly integrate a variety of perspectives.

3. Hold instructors accountable.

My most negative experience from the convention was when I was at a rope class practicing a tie, and one of the instructors stepped in and started redoing my knots without asking me or my demo bottom for permission. I was appalled, and I wanted to report his behavior, but he didn’t have a prominently featured name badge, so I had no idea how to identify him in my complaint.

Any instructor at a kink workshop should have a prominently placed name badge and state their name when they come and interact with you. There should be suggestions & complaints boxes everywhere with slips for general suggestions and for complaints about bad behavior, where you can write down the name of the offender. There should be clearly designated people whose job it is to help you in general and to handle complaints of bad behavior in specific. These people should be trained in how to handle cases of assault.

The more potentially dangerous an activity becomes, the more important it is to put safeguards in place, especially in the context of rape culture. I am a woman, my demo bottom was genderqueer, and the person who violated our boundaries was a man. Considerations of how to handle misconduct at kink events must take these dynamics into account.

4. Host critical dialogue.

I went to a couple of panels specifically aimed at female dominants, who are substantially more rare, or at the least less visible, than male dominants. But these panels turned out to be more like “how-to” guides for how women can navigate the kink scene and play as dominants. What I really wanted was a panel that discussed
issues like why most kinky photography features male dominants and female submissives, how women new to the kink scene get steered toward and groomed for a submissive role. In short, I wanted to discuss structural inequality in the kink community.

I think there’s a lot of resistance to this kind of critical dialogue in the scene because we get such bad press in the mainstream. Most people think of us as twisted, sick, emotionally damaged, and predatory. We want to have a space where we can celebrate everything that is good and beautiful about us. But celebration without
self-examination is nothing but empty chest-beating. Kink conventions should be a space where we can have critical conversations about our community.

Long overdue Adieu

29 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by rosiefranklin in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

like a grownup!

Dearest DDPeople,

I have not been very active as an author for DDP in some time. In that interval, I have finished a PhD and successfully defended a dissertation, gotten divorced, moved across the country, and switched careers entirely. This has left little time for writing.

And while I find myself called/drawn/convicted to begin writing again about these topics dear to my heart, I find that my perspective and values are no longer in sufficiently sync with the present active editorial board of DDP, and it has become time for us to officially part ways.

I’d like to thank the crew here, both the author/editor community as well as our active, articulate, curious, and moving commentariat for the support, feedback, education. And for your precious trust as you shared your stories with me in response to some of my own.

I will continue/resume writing at rosiefranklin.net. I hope to see some of you there.

Best,
Rosie

black and white, woman, looking down

photo credit: Jessica Keener Photography takes excellent portraits.

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