“Silenced Resistance is a ground-breaking study of the gendered dynamics of resistance to colonial and post-colonial authoritarian regimes in North and West Africa. Drawing on extensive archival and field-based research in Western Sahara and Equitorial Guinea, Allan forcefully analyses the complex relationship between women, feminist resistance to patriarchy, and political resistance to authoritarianism.”
—Alice Wilson, University of Sussex

Spain’s former African colonies—Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara—share similar histories. Both are under the thumbs of heavy-handed, postcolonial regimes, and are known by human rights organizations as being among the worst places in the world with regard to oppression and lack of civil liberties. Yet the resistance movement in one is dominated by women, the other by men.

In this innovative work, Joanna Allan demonstrates why we should foreground gender as key for understanding both authoritarian power projection and resistance. She brings an ethnographic component to a subject that has often been looked at through the lens of literary studies to examine how concerns for equality and women’s rights can be co-opted for authoritarian projects.

She reveals how Moroccan and Equatoguinean regimes, in partnership with Western states and corporations, conjure a mirage of promoting equality while simultaneously undermining women’s rights in a bid to cash in on oil, minerals, and other natural resources. This genderwashing, along with historical local, indigenous, and colonially imposed gender norms mixed with Western misconceptions about African and Arab gender roles, plays an integral role in determining the shape and composition of public resistance to authoritarian regimes.

LEARN MORE.

The post Silenced Resistance: Women, Dictatorships, and Genderwashing in Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Facebook’s introduction of PGPs (preferred gender pronouns) and new gender identity options allows users to choose among Female, Male or “Custom” where they can then view a multitude of trans* and non-binary gender options.

BY Lesbian.com

On Thursday, February 13, the queer world was abuzz with news that Facebook was opening up their gender specification fields and allowing a vast array of identities to be easily expressed via profiles on the online social networking site.

The changes have been hailed as an important step forward in recognizing LGBTQ identities and gender variant people.

From “Cisgender Woman” and “Transgender Man” to “Genderqueer”, users in the US can now express their gender identities a little more accurately on the site. Users can also select their preferred pronouns: “she”, “he” or the gender-neutral “they”.

According to the Associated Press, the new options will first be available to users in the US and and are “aimed at giving people more choices in how they describe themselves, such as androgynous, bi-gender, intersex, gender fluid or transsexual.”

The post Facebook expands gender options first appeared on Lesbian.com.

The Brown Boi Project Spring 2010 Cohort

BY JADE SALAZAR
TaggMagazine

Have you ever looked around and felt that you were underrepresented within the LGBTQ community? Have you been looking for like-minded people with shared struggles that are passionate about creating change? There is a fast-emerging organization within the LGBTQ community that may be exactly what you have been looking for. The Brown Boi Project (BBP), founded by B. Cole in 2010, is by definition, “a community of masculine of center womyn, men, two-spirited people, transmen and allies committed to transforming privilege of masculinity, gender and race into tools for achieving racial and gender justice”.

It is a community for masculine of center, people of color that provides participants with an expansive curriculum, workshops, one-on-one life coaching, and unlimited resources of like-minded people, over 150 Brown Bois and growing, from all over the nation. The BBP also provides participants with the tools to take their drive and knowledge back into their own communities to help both current and future generations achieve balance both racially and within genders. To get started, most participants apply online for the semi-annual, all-expense paid, retreat where they learn about themselves, their communities and meet Brown Bois from all over the United States.

You can learn more about the Brown Boi Project and donate to the cause through their website, www.brownboiproject.org.

Read more at TaggMagazine.com

Tagg Magazine is a print and online resource for LBT women in the DC Metropolitan and Rehoboth, DE areas

The post The Brown Boi Project: Working toward racial and gender justice first appeared on Lesbian.com.

BY LUCIEN MAE

The practice of asking someone’s Preferred Gender Pronoun (PGP) has been making the news these days. Mel Reiff Hill is the co-creator of “The Gender Book,” on the intention behind the practice, ways to support trans and genderqueer people in your community, and the (exc)uses of grammar. Hill’s experiences with feeling validated and supported by the practice of asking for PGPs, as well as his awareness that gender non-conforming people and their friends and family alike experience difficulty in talking about the issue, inspired him, and a few collaborators, to create the book.

Being asked what pronoun you prefer grants genderqueer and gender nonconforming people the chance to be seen for who they really are, and represent themselves in a way that aligns with their gender identity. “The Gender Book” project has recently launched an Indiegogo campaign where you can pre-order hardcover editions of the book, as well as support the collaborators in making this community resource available online. 

Read more at dot429.com

The post Getting grammatical with ‘The Gender Book’ first appeared on Lesbian.com.

BY AMY LAMÉ

Kate Bornstein is my heroine. Her books have been milestones in my life, offering advice, ideas, and inspiration at key moments when everything seemed destined for doom. My first great Kate encounter was “Gender Outlaw,” which served as my bible in the early to mid 1990s, when the war on the frontlines of gender politics was particularly fierce, and I felt like an outsider in my own community. Kate’s soothing words assured me that she’d always be there with a cup of tea and a well-padded shoulder to cry on. The fact that Kate grew up–as Al–just a few miles away from me in New Jersey made me feel an even closer kinship. I then encountered “Hidden: A Gender,” a performance piece based on Kate’s own life experience and that of the 19th-century intersex Herculine Barbin.

Kate Bornstein via LGBTJewishHeroes.org

So, with Kate’s latest book, “A Queer and Pleasant Danger” (Beacon Press), I was expecting life-changing stuff and I wasn’t disappointed. It is punchy and provocative, full of mirth and melancholy. From growing up male on the Jersey Shore (eat your heart out, The Situation!) to marrying, becoming a Scientologist, transitioning, moving to San Francisco to live with radical sex-positive femmes and then to New York to follow love, Kate’s journey is a blueprint for how to live without compromise but with heaps of compassion.

Curve, the nation’s best-selling lesbian magazine, spotlights all that is fresh, funny, exciting, controversial and cutting-edge in our community.

The post Kate the Great: In praise of Kate Bornstein first appeared on Lesbian.com.

BY ZOE AMOS

Father’s Day has passed, but it got me thinking. When a father has transitioned and is no longer male, what happens to the relationship with the children in regards to how the holiday is celebrated, if at all? To find out, I called one of my transsexual friends and asked for her viewpoint. This is her unique story.

In what might seem like a different lifetime ago, Mary Ann was a father to her two young boys with her then wife while living in the Midwest. Mary Ann went by her given name in those days, Mark. They raised the children in a nuclear family until the couple divorced. It was not pretty. The breakup involved bitter criticisms of cross-dressing, and curiously, that Mark’s soon-to-be-ex was a lesbian.

Some years later, Mark married a second woman, who was willing to adjust to the cross-dressing. At first, she seemed to take it in stride. The transition was slow for Mark, but inexorably moved forward.

As early as 1988, Mark took the name Mary Ann. The children already had a parent they called “Mom,” so the boys referred to their father as Aunt Mary Ann. They were aware of their father’s interest in cross-dressing from a young age and seemed okay with it in the privacy of their home.

“They called me ‘she’,” Mary Ann recollected in our interview. “They were very nimble with their pronouns.”

By 2001, the issue wasn’t so much about cross-dressing as much as Mark’s gender identification. After much discussion with his wife, Mark disappeared, that is, he was permanently replaced by Mary Ann.

“My wife didn’t resist,” Mary Ann said of this step in her transition. However, after three months they decided to get a divorce. “She hadn’t signed up to be married to a woman.”

By now, the elder son was a college freshman, and the younger, a junior in high school.
At first, the boys included Mary Ann (they dropped “Aunt”) in Mother’s Day celebrations, but with a mom, a step-mom, Mary Ann and whomever she was seeing (note: Mary Ann is a lesbian), plus grandmothers, the holiday was more than a little crowded with women. They decided to let all the moms take Mother’s Day and Mary Ann would celebrate on Father’s Day when she could have the kids to herself. It’s been that way ever since. “Works for me!” she said of the arrangement.

Maintaining a relationship with her sons is not all roses and perfume. Her younger son clings to a false front in the matter of his father being a woman. He brags to associates about his dad’s accomplishments in computer science as if the man still existed. Mary Ann’s comfort with herself is accompanied by the strength of her outspoken support of the LGBT community. She respects her son’s closeted attitude as a matter of free choice.

Mary Ann lives in California while her children reside in Ohio, so visiting isn’t always an option. This year, both sons sent Father’s Day cards. Each wrote similar messages inside, “Mary Ann, Happy Father’s Day, Love,” followed by their signatures. Mary Ann sounded pleased as she recited the sentiments.

The older son has shown greater acceptance for Mary Ann. He is married with no children. I asked what might happen if grandchildren come along. “We’ll have to address it,” Mary Ann said, “and I’m assuming I’ll be another grandmother when the time comes.”

Zoe Amos brings her lesbian point of view to articles and stories on diverse topics. Connect with her on Facebook and Twitter. Read her stories on Kindle and Nook. Check out her other life at www.janetfwilliams.com.

The post From A to Zoe: Father’s Day in transition first appeared on Lesbian.com.

A subreddit called “Gaybros” recently became a target of ire — and support — for creating a space for gay men with “traditionally male interests,” as described by creator Alexander DeLuca on The Good Men Project. Many derided the group for elevating traditional masculine traits and thus perpetuating misogyny among gay men, but as a queer woman, I see that this form of masculine privilege doesn’t just operate in the gay community. We too have our own “lezbros,” and I’m not talking about the straight men who are our friends.

There’s a particular New York lesbian party that might be the natural habitat for the lezbro. The party features minimally clothed, hyperfeminine go-go dancers performing routines as a sea of women fist-pump and drool and throw dollar bills. There, many lesbians appropriate fratty personas, using pickup lines that might have originated in the mouths of men catcalling women on the street. Party culture itself shouldn’t be conflated with misogyny, yet I find it impossible not to call this display objectification, even though it’s at the hands of other women.

In these spaces, it can be challenging, at times, to find the line between queer masculinity and masculinity as it is performed by straight men. “The way in which masculinity interacts with naked feminine bodies, it’s undifferentiated; the way queer masculinity interacts is almost the same,” Cyree Jarelle Johnson, editor of Femme Dreamboat and contributing writer to Elixher.com, told me in a conversation about the notion of the lezbro. “And to me that’s a problem, because when it’s a man, we think of it as sexism,” Johnson added.

But fist pumps and lap dances don’t a lezbro make, at least not on their own. Lately, I’ve seen a spate of tweets, Facebook statuses and OKCupid profiles deriding feminine queer people. From “no femme pillow queens” disclaimers on dating profiles to a series of tweets calling for loyal femme partners over “bitches,” these statements are, at best, veiled misogyny, hatred of anything feminine packaged as the desire for someone with a “more” radical queer identity in a poorly worded dating advertisement. Kate Severance, who writes the column “Butch Please” for Autostraddle, noted in a conversation that this conduct reinforces a hierarchy. “I think that there are certain modes of presentation in terms of butchness in conduct that allows us to create a queer hegemony and sit on top of it. That’s in the commodification of feminine bodies that happens in the bro-y conduct,” Severance said.

Much has been written about butch vs. femme privilege, and undoubtedly all identities are faced with different — but no less legitimate — modes of oppression. As a feminine queer woman who dates people all across the gender contiuum, and as a white, middle-class one at that, I certainly have privileges that my masculine-of-center peers do not. I don’t fear for my safety in public spaces, because I’m seldom read as queer, and I’m never questioned about my gender, because I look normative. But perhaps pitting butch and femme identities against each other is too limited when examining the impact of masculine privilege on our communities. After all, my own appearance borders on high femme, yet I too am guilty of being a lezbro: I’ve brought my own “male gaze” to parties with go-go dancers, I sometimes have “bro-time” with certain queer female friends (no girlfriends allowed), and I’ve certainly described women’s bodies in a manner of speech that I learned from my straight male friends, mostly because I thought it was the cool thing to do.

Coolness, of course, is at the heart of lezbro-ness, because masculinity itself is considered cool outside and inside the LGBTQ community: “Choosing masculinity to be cool is privilege,” Johnson said. Thus, when someone is masculine in certain contexts, they reap the benefits of such a value. That alone is a form of social currency wherein femininity becomes lesser by virtue of what it is not.

Lezbros, or anyone who engages in the conduct I have named above, really just present the latest intersection of masculine privilege within the lesbian community. “When you’re socialized as a girl, you go through life self-conscious of your body,” Severance said. “So when you enter a space and suddenly become a person who is treated like a man in so many ways, you get high off of that feeling.” Masculine privilege isn’t innate to any one identity among queer women, but when we perpetuate certain behaviors, we certainly strengthen its hold.

Follow Alex Berg, associate producer of HuffPostLive on Twitter.

Originally published by Huffington Post Gay Voices.

The post Move over, gaybros: Masculine privilege thrives among queer women too first appeared on Lesbian.com.

BY CINDY ZELMAN

When I was a younger woman, I donned leather pants, white ribbed tanks, and high-heeled black boots. I’d take off most weekends to meet women at lesbian dances in Boston. I was slim and fit because I worked out. I learned how to flex my muscles without looking as though I was flexing. This is how I met girlfriends-to-be: with a dash of egoism and a sexy outfit.

I attended these dances to validate myself as an attractive woman, measured by how many women wanted to talk with me, dance with me or get my phone number. I’m embarrassed now to admit how shallow my motives were, and that such a superficial validation was so important to me, but it was — and for a long time.

But times have changed.

I’m in my early fifties, and I don’t wear leather pants anymore. Although I’m still in good shape, I eat too many cheese puffs and red velvet cupcakes to fit into any leather-hugging trousers. I don’t wear heeled boots either, due to a nerve condition I have between my toes. Today I took delivery on three pairs of “Grasshopper” shoes. These are sensible and very comfortable tie shoes for a woman who no longer is trying to impress anyone. I realize I am no longer bringing sexy back, but I’m bringing something else these days, something more important — a wider perspective on the LGBTQ community.

For example, my views on Michfest have evolved. Known to those of us of the 1980s coming out era as The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, in those days the featured singers were Holly Near and Ferron and Cris Williamson, among others. Today, there is controversy as to what kind of woman should be allowed in — whether trans-women should or should not welcomed. The Indigo Girls plan an onstage protest of this womyn-born-womyn only policy.

Once I would have agreed with the only-born-as-a-woman policy and said, no, if you still have a penis or an Adam’s apple, you are not a woman, and therefore, you are not allowed into MichFest.

Now I find such a view as embarrassing as my leather pants. One of the ideas behind such an event is to end the isolation of a group of people who have been kept down in society. Who could be more isolated than a “man” who is really a woman? A transsexual, or a woman in transition, who has always felt like a woman but has never been welcomed into the women’s community? I believe anyone who identifies as a woman should able to attend. We must be more open-minded about what we mean by “woman.” Gender is no longer “bifurcated” as the intellectuals might say, and it can be very complex.

Other things have changed over the decades, for example, in the 21st century so many (r)evolutions in thought and technology have allowed me to be “out” in numerous ways that I felt unable to be in the 20th century.

Well, look, I’m writing a blog on Lesbian.com. There was no Lesbian.com way back when. There was no dot.com anything. Here I have a forum to talk about whatever I want as a gay woman where once I felt I could not even say the word lesbian. I have Twitter and Facebook accounts and a WordPress blog, and every so often, The Huffington Post, to talk about gay issues. I don’t take this for granted. If having to reach my fifties and move into comfortable shoes is the price I’ve had to pay to get to this place of expressive freedom, so be it.

My feelings for Pride, too, have changed. Years ago, I was embarrassed by the parades – by the parading –  with lesbians going topless and the men in full flame. I used to think: flaunting it is no way to garner support from the rest of society. Even when you’re gay, you can still carry mainstream homophobia with you, and that’s exactly what I did in my leather pants and heeled boots. I thought we needed to “please” the rest of society in some way in order to gain acceptance.

Now, in my looser-fitting blue jeans and comfortable shoes, I’m more of a mind to say, ‘go eff yourself’ and let us be what we are. I now realize that we need to flaunt our identities just to remain visible and Pride is a place for that to happen annually, and all around the world! We need the shock value — until we are accepted wholesale with full rights and full love — into society.

As I’ve shed my sexy boots, so, too, have I shed my narrow-minded views on the queer community and let go of my own socialized homophobia. I may not be bringing sexy back with my new dress style, but I’m bringing back something much more important: a wider and more encompassing perspective, that for me personally, couldn’t have happened until I’d had time to grow into middle age. Maybe I don’t look so cool now, but I am so much cooler than I was in those boots.

Cindy Zelman is a writer based in Boston, whose blog, “The Early Draft,” explores a variety of topics, including lesbianism, writing, agoraphobia and humor.

The post Everything changes, even my shoes first appeared on Lesbian.com.