Poly People of Color
Body Heat is a national touring collective of erotica writers, performers and dancers who offer sizzling, thought-provoking shows. We are a fierce, sassy, irreverent Femme artist collective setting queer communities ablaze and smashing Femme stereotypes everywhere we go. We’ll challenge your assumptions, entertain the hell out of you, and leave you panting and begging for more!
Your pledge will help us bring fierce femme desire, politics and visibility to locations including Atlanta, Birmingham, Asheville and more. It’s not all lipstick, crotchless panties, and stilettos - femmes need to eat and put gas in the van!
This year’s line-up will feature Body Heat founder and spoken-word performer Kathleen Delaney (Atlanta, GA.), published author and sex-workshop facilitator Jen Cross (San Francisco, CA.), The Femme Show founder & performer Gigi Frost (Boston, MA.) writer and Sex Magick educator, Alex Cafarelli (Oakland, CA)Alex Cafarelli (San Francisco, CA.), and graceful and elegant Burlesque dancer The Lady Ms. Vagina Jenkins (Atlanta, GA.).
April 2011
70 posts
‘What closing the brothels would do is send hundreds of women and thousands of customers into the huge black market. In that market, where workers must use whatever means necessary to hide from the law, there are no labor rights, few social services, and no way to monitor underage workers or severe exploitation.’
Saying you want to end abortions among black women without addressing the systematic forces that affect Black people as a whole (ehem, inadequate schools and choices) is disingenuous and extremely problematic. Even SUGGESTING that “Urban decay has been accelerated due to rampant sexual irresponsibility” assumes that Black women are promiscuous and can’t control our urges. It assumes that all Black women seek abortions based on voluntary sexual activity. This sort of thinking doesn’t examine the forces that contribute to the issues of poverty (joblessness, under-education) and does everyone a disservice.
YEAH! Fuck femme if femme is all about and only about
Western femmes
in urban queer subcultures
descended from lesbian communities
with an alternative, vintage and rockabilly aesthetic
who collectively are primarily concerned with gender identity and queer recognition
who are usually partnered with more masculine folks
who are involved with or supportive of kink, polyamory and sex work - also DIY/craft/performance
who are connected to activism around trans issues (esp for trans men), sex work, fat and race
and hey. these are all things I care about too and if I met a bunch of femmes who were like this I’d probably want to go to their party.
but what is this as an identity? does it mean anything outside a really tiny subculture other than something like “straight cis men should know not to hit on me” which is not a position I’m in or one I’m particularly comfortable being around …
I really want femme to be about rethinking femininity - resisting the ways femininity is forced upon some, withheld from others, and culturally devalued.
I’ve been thinking of myself as femme for a year or two but there’s also times when I really hate being read as femme, and I wonder how much it’s something I’ve tried to reclaim because I thought I couldn’t escape it.
I know I have heaps of internalised femmephobia — like associating high pitched voices with ditziness or being frustrated with various feminine linguistic traits
like it pisses me the fuck off when people say “maybe” every time they have an opinion but I recognise that people have to sound less authoritative to sound more feminine
in most of my values and behaviours I feel I tend towards what is considered masculine in a gender binary — active, assertive/authoritative, intellectual, autonomous
(I know this is messed up, privilege asserting and privilege maintaining - but it’s how I behave if I’m not being careful, and it’s how I feel strongest and best)
but because I like to wear dresses and heels apparently that overrides my values & behaviours
blah blah blah what does it mean to say that gender is intentional if my intent is always secondary to an instinct for self-preservation which is just social appropriateness blah blah blah
This is based on Peggy McIntosh’s White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.
- Strangers don’t assume they can ask what my genitals look like and how I have sex.
- My validity as a man/woman/human is not based on how much surgery I’ve had or how well I “pass” as a non-trans person.
- When…
numol asked: what do you think makes for really good WRITTEN sex (poetry, prose, etc.)?
Here are some guidelines to My Idea of Good Written Sex
Dont use the word moist
Dont refer to a penis as a ‘baton’ or a ‘rod’.
If you must refer to a throbbing penis, don’t go into paragraph upon paragraph of JUST HOW MUCH IT THROBS. We get it. Its pulsating. Move on.
Do not cutefy it. Nothing makes my lust crash harder than reading a steamy sex scene and it turns into baby talk. Sex is often times sloppy and messy and glorious and wonderful and dirty and perverse but unless you’re writing a scene with baby talk in it, don’t refer to genitals as little pillows or such nonsense
It’s okay to be creative about when and where you place your sex scene. It is okay to write about rough sex and foreplay and times where you don’t orgasm or times when sex is just not written in the cards. So often I feel like I’m reading a script, like okay there’s the fingering and the foreplay and the oral sex and the penetration and the orgasm and boom we’re done. I’d love to see more honest depictions of sex in general, tbh.
[snip]
I STRONGLY DISAGREE.
You know, honestly, we need to redirect our energies away from these binary formations of political organizing. Queer / straight binaries are stupid, just like black / white binaries reinforce privilege and oppression or liberal / conservative binaries blind us from structural problems that effect us all. That said, queer is a non-totalizing term. What does that mean? In the mumbo jumbo of some brilliant queer theorists, queer is used to explain the idea that we aren’t self-transparent with our identities, we cannot put a label on us that will fully explain who we are. We don’t know who we are, and labels will always fail. If you want to imagine your subjectivity (multiplicity of identities that intersect to create your sense of Self) as a globe with multiple borders of countries representing each identity, queer allows you to shift these borders around. In this sense, queer is more of a politic at APPROACHING identity rather than an identity itself. Queerness is giving you flexibility and fluidity with your identity, instead of fixing yourself in to a tight box of “man” or “gay.” You approach these categories with caution, and a queer eye.
Why is all this meta-physical theory useful? It allows us to realize that everyone is born and essentially queer—most people choose to disavow their queerness because of a damaging and corruptive socialization process in relation to sexuality, gender, identity, etc. If we are able to organize under these understandings of queerness and identity, there is a radical potential to create solidarity and coalitions across all communities and spectrums.This is not to say that we have to erase the violence that “queer” (read, LGBTQQIA) people have experienced, nor does it mean we have to explain that oppression. In the words of Audre Lorde, difference is strength. Let our differences, our struggles, our experiences guide us to building rather than destroying bridges. Let us not forget our histories but rather, let us mobilize against oppression that hurts us all.
So yes, queer is all of us. Queer is straight people, the sex worker on the street, the CEO of a business, Obama, Hitler, and everyone else. In recognizing everyone as queer, we are able to understand our fluidity as beautiful, and recognize that we need others—and their differences—to understand ourselves.THIS EVERYTHING THIS.
Banning abortion oppressed all women and trans men. But privileged cissexual women had – as we usually do – more options to negotiate and mitigate that oppression. Low-income, isolated, young or desperate pregnant people just died, or were maimed. If abortion is once more restricted to a privilege enjoyed by well-off people, or if it is no longer regarded as a routine and necessary part of health care, these very people will start to die again.
Enter HR3. And, now, HR358. Both of which are explicitly intended to restore this order of things. HR3 aims to strengthen the federal funding restrictions that make it all but impossible for people covered by Medicaid to get abortions, and to strengthen medical exemptions which only apply if the patient is in immediate danger of death (if it will take you a year or two to die, as the result of your pregnancy, you will not be covered), effectively strengthening the class and privilege hierarchy of abortion and making it law. And there is the even more heinous HR358, the “Protect Life Act,” which aims to do the very thing which made the criminalization of abortion unsupportable in the first place: Encourage and allow physicians to let people die if they require abortions in order to live. Under HR358, hospitals would simply be allowed to refuse. Doctors would get to start killing patients more often. Which seems counterproductive, but there we are.
” —I wrote a bit for you, about HR3 and HR358, at Global Comment. (via sadydoyle)I just want to tell you what it’s like not to have planned parenthood. … You have to give your kids ramen noodles at the end of the month to fill up their little bellies so they won’t cry. You have to give them mayonnaise sandwiches. They get very few fruits and vegetables because they’re expensive. It subjects children to low educational attainment because of the ravages of poverty.
black women+ reproductive justice= YES!
Hello Interwebs!
It’s about that time again for the best conference ever! Yes The Allied Media Conference will be happening June 23-26 in Detroit and we want to be there!
Who are we?
We are the Skillsharers of the 3rd Annual INCITE! Shawty Got Skillz workshop! We are women, trans*…
My Pledge to Myself
I am a human being,
I am a sex worker,
I deserve respect,
I deserve to be protected by the police
I deserve to vote
I deserve to be protected by my government
I have the right to go to church
I have the right to walk on the streets
I have the right to free medical care
I have the right to say no to rape
And today I stand here
And say I am free!
Sugar High Glitter City is an all-dyke humourous porn film set in a future where sugar is outlawed and people turn to prostitution & pimping to get their sugar fix. This was recommended to me possibly after I announced my performance of the sugar-laden queer woman hit Dip Me - and now I can see why!
The name is pretty apt: it’s so full of sweet and shiny! Just about everyone has shiny glittery makeup & clothes and even the camera filter sparkles. SO SPARKLY. One of the central characters, Creme de la Marmalade (Simone de la Ghetto who I believe also does burlesque), runs a club named the PussPuss Glitter Palace - and immediately I wanted to be one of her staff. You get turned out to find candy and sex it up with your sugar mama? Don’t mind if I do!
There are all sorts of variations of lesbian sex on here - butch/femme, femme/femme, butch/butch, threesomes, voyeurism, the rough & tough, and the mystical and estatic. Colourful latex gloves and psychedelic strap-ons abound. I especially admire the cast’s dedication to keeping their patter and actions on theme - referring to female ejaculation as “sugar water”, pouring sugar sticks onto bodies to be licked off, and clever references to “bubblegum gloves” (since they were bright pink). There are also sneaky details if you look closely, such as an event flyer that advertises “100% Fruit”.
The film plays off all the stereotypes of exploitation films and prostitutes in the media - a great play on “blowing cocaine off a hooker’s bum”, the ex-pimp turned religious evangelist who gets turned back to her old ways, dodgy-looking masculine folk picking up sugar boys off dark alleys. There’s even a reference to shooting up, using insulin!
The whole scenario looks like so much fun that one is tempted to start hooking for the sugar hit. Heck, to satisfy my cravings in the absence of either of my lovers, I ended up munching on some chocolate cookies in the house. Close enough.
This movie is so much fun and would be a great hit played with your gal pals (whatever your definition of “gal”) during a sleepover while pigging out on lollies - especially if you and your gal pals are the sort to get frisky and physical! It’s just the right amount of cheese (er, corn? candy corn?) though if you’re a continuity nerd like I am you may need to resist the temptation to fix inaccuracies. It’s porn, not an Oscar nominee.
There are some DVD extras too - one that I checked out was called “How To Pick Up Girls” and basically involves some really daggy pickup lines exchanged within The Lexington, San Francisco’s only 7-night-a-week lesbian club. The last line is “hey, do you wanna go to the bathroom and fuck?” - the recipient agrees, and the duo head to the bathroom only to join 3-4 other couples making out as well as Your Host with their microphone signing off.
This movie is from 2001 and I wonder what became of the cast and the production house. It would be a shame if they didn’t end up making more fun plot-based flicks like these! The cast is utterly diverse in race, body shapes, gender presentation, and style, and everyone really enjoys spending time with each other, as evidenced from the smiles and laughs. It’s too easy with porn flicks to resort to cliche racist stereotypes, especially with a cast that includes minorities, but thankfully Sugar High Glitter City has stayed away from anything of the sort. They’re people representing their sexual selves, however it comes in, without needing to be packaged as “exotic” - such a refreshing relief for any sort of sex-positive performance work.
Decadent, silly and sweet. Porn should always be this fun.
I got my copy of Sugar High Glitter City from Australian online retailer The Sweet Spot, one of the few places I’ve seen anywhere that still sell copies. Use the code TIARA when you shop from them and 10% of the profits go towards the San Fran Plan! It’s set in San Francisco so thanks to you I could recreate the movie’s journey ;D
Everyone is out protesting in Wisconsin at the moment (and I have to work) but this is something I will be following up on and I hope others will as well. We cannot and should not separate attacks on workers from attacks on immigrant communities and their families. Think about who are the hands that drive so much of the economy and think about how many laws across the country are scapegoating those very same hands in the name of “American jobs”. Think about all the “anchor baby” laws that are popping up and the bills to defund women’s health services. All of these things are connected.” —VivirLatino (via radicallyhottoff)
Possible Trigger Warnings: Rape, rape culture, victim-blaming.
because “woman of color” has the same shifting ambiguous definition that “chicana” does to me. when it’s about biology—as so many people make it—it becomes solely defined by race. race is what white people see—it is what marks us different than them, and thus we are defined by it.
but when it becomes about *solidarity*—it becomes about *gender*. It becomes about *class*. it becomes about *citizenship*. it becomes about *language*. it becomes about *borders*. And *bodies*.
what does color mean? what does color mean when it’s not defined by it’s relationship with whiteness? what does gender mean? What does it mean when it’s not defined by it’s relationship with white women? what does “woman” and “color” mean when they are defined in relationship to each other?
what does it mean to define solidarity in a circular, ambiguous, multiple way rather than a singular, solid, hierarchical way? what does it mean to define race, gender, class, citizenship, language, borders, bodies, by *commitment* and *difference* rather than by separation and sameness?
