“Take a day to heal from the lies you’ve told yourself and the ones that have been told to you.”
— Maya Angelou (via xcedarxsmoke)
(Source: the-healing-nest, via xcedarxsmoke)
Solidarity and attack/ fighting back/ striking first/ confronting oppression/ accountability/ the false idea of community within the anarchist scene/ running away/ my crippling and ever present anxiety/ my dog/ what to make for dinner/ how to continue having meaningful projects in montreal/ and you know, the struggle.
• Ask
Doom! Doom! Doom!
Doom! Doom! Doom!
hanging out at ethel street avoiding the rain, catching up on emails and posting this gif of porkchop winking at you!!!!
LOOK AT MY DOG EVERYONE. HE IS CLEARLY THE CUTEST THING OUT THERE.
(Source: anotherdayortooo)
don’t break eggs. break hearts. (tw abuse, trauma)
i’ve been thinking a lot about statements around rape apologism and the tone policing of survivors lately. (and mostly today because of the egg thing.)
the thing that gets me about being a survivor in a punk/anarchist/whatever scene, is how quickly you become problematic when you are a real person and more than a theoretical discussion. it’s as if the minute your existence steps out of the pages of a support zine and into reality, you are a problem to be solved, and all the ways the people that claim to be your community put the pieces together are to conceal any evidence you were ever real at all.
i have seen so many who claim to be my community stand up and defend out right abusers, or humiliate survivors because of tone, or using names, or being too confrontational. so many rape apologists only want to talk to me or people i know if we are ‘calm’, and ‘reasonable’, and use our inside voices. or worse, they pretend nothing has happened at all. we’re out of control if we voice our outrage at what they are doing and what has been done. we are unreasonable if we actually expect them to stick to the things they claim to believe, the things we have heard them say so many times. our lives and experiences become unmanageable if they are real. they become inconvenient.
i have tried to make peace with being inconvenient.
i was trapped in a scene where my dependancy on alcohol to cope with an abusive relationship i didn’t know how to leave became the thing everyone talked about behind my back. i was surrounded with people who didn’t have time for how sad and fucked up i felt, and told me so, particularly when they realized it had to do with actual abuse. i was shamed by people i thought i was close to. someone once told me how disappointed they would be if i went back to him, even though there was nothing left but for me to do but that very thing.in a classic pattern of going from one abuser to another, i entered another emotionally manipulative and abusive relationship with someone who most of the people i know are still friends with. i’ve tried to verbalize my concerns but typically end up downplaying it because i am afraid of how crazy he made me, how crazy he said i was, and how scared i am that he is right. he has left behind a trail of friends and lovers he has devastated, but he still comes around and no one turns him away.
i stand still and the world moves around me, edging me out. telling me how i could do better if i just approached them smiling, submissive and indifferent and i have continued to try and make peace with being inconvenient.
this means i don’t have a lot of friends now. i’ve heard people say i’m hard to talk to and i’m not very friendly. i get called frank like it’s a bad thing. i don’t trust you easily, i don’t like your bullshit, and i won’t stick around for it. this makes me unattractive to the false communities i interact with. i am so grateful for that.
“There is little precedent for fat androgyny. Generally our androgynous icons are svelte and lacking in secondary sex characteristics. David Bowie, Tilda Swinton, Katherine Hepburn; these small-bodied, predominately white figures of androgyny have created an aesthetic with little room for deviation. This means that for those of us with bodies that do not conform to traditional standards of androgyny, we are often misread and misunderstood, even in queer spaces.”
—
Fat Queer Tells All: On Fatness and Gender Flatness - By Allie Shyer (via cassket)
feelin this all the time. hating on skinny people. whateveer. fatties for life.
(via woc-resist)
Halifax, the burrow, “community” etc
I am very aware folks have issues with my house (the burrow) and I am all ears if anyone wants to talk to me about my house, my personal politics, hwf, or anything else. I am all down for productive and honest communication, not for the sake of community (which I see less and less in Halifax) but for the sake of personal growth and accountability within individuals.
On that note, it was real shitty to wake up and find out that our newest [vegan] roommate (who’s been here a week) had rotten eggs smashed into her bike helmet and on her bike, locked up outside of our front door.
She didn’t appreciate it & I sure as hell don’t either. It’s extremely frustrating that someone felt it was appropriate and/or productive. I realise these are the actions of one (or several) people but I’d like to hope that most folks are more serious about dealing with problematic shit in Halifax.I can be reached at jupiterzines (at) hotmail (dot) com or through the Tumblr Ask (anon is on) if anyone would like to email/go for coffee & talk about shit. I’m leaving town in a few weeks but am available until the end of the month.
If anyone knows anything about this, please tell them to go fuck themselves and come talk to me face to face.
Love, Devon.
Step 1.Throw rotten eggs at rape apologists house
Step 2. ????
Step 3.Profit
Whoever did this, I would like to high five you forever. No, but seriously, I am actually really glad this happened.
You know what’s way more frustrating than getting rotten eggs thrown at your terrible house?
Watching rapists get supported (for years!) in the face of alienating survivors.
Watching shitty people write terrible “apology” letters without any thought to all of the work people who still live there, as well as people who moved away put into holding said rapist accountable (as if they were the first ones to think about it!)
Watching people say some of the most heinous shit all over the internet about survivors and people who call shit out.
Rotten eggs is a great way to deal with problematic shit! When you all have done so much work to push people out and welcome rapists, there’s not a lot of room for “rational discussion of things”. Also, the Burrow is really one to talk about taking problematic shit seriously. People, for years, banged their heads against a wall as they tried to talk to you guys about having rapists in your space and you wouldn’t listen until recently. (big props to all the folks who tried to talk to the burrow though - that shit isn’t easy)
Rotten eggs is one of many productive and appropriate responses to the things you’ve all done.
Rotten eggs should be the least of your concerns. I, for one, hope it gets a lot worse.
A carton of rotten eggs for every rape apologist in this terrible rotten anarchist/punk scene!
(Source: longlongwinter)
rough draft of an introduction to a piece I’m writting. COMMENTS WELCOME.
Better than nothing?
…Is an anarchist critique of tendencies within anarchist sub-cultures from a “we tried” perspective.
…Is what I ask myself if I am.
…Is demonstrably absurd.
…rock > scissors > paper > rock. ??? > VOID
…is when you best case scenario is everything is terrible forever.
There was never enough chocolate, never enough experimentation. Friendships were shallow and we never learned to build new bonds of relation. Capital dominated all and all reproduced its horrid form. All lived its absurd logic. Those who stood against in practice were condemned by those who stood against in principle. We projected our disappointment, our frustration. No one was being a revolutionary correctly, and that bothered us. Our lives were marked by constant failure; constant repetitions of ineffectual acts. Our theory was loose, cumbersome, and often contradictory. We drew from too many sources, and not enough. We were unable to apply our confused theories to our lives and the lives of the people around us. We knew a million different places we wanted to be, but knew no way to get away from here.
Our lives were driven by self-valorization, self-aggrandizement; determined to prove how much better we were than everyone else. How much more correct. We had all the answers and we loved to flaunt it. Others only mattered when they agreed and we made sure they knew it.
Were we learning to speak our minds, or learning a new social aesthetic?
Our enemy was powerful and we were unable to build an apparatus of warfare. Many attempts were made but our apparatus remained unimpressive. …that fact did not stop us from deploying it, after all, we had to do something.
Our goals were too small or too large, and our plans were always in the short term. We relied too heavily on our hopes for a mass uprising that never came // on our hopes that hundreds would flock to our dismal groups and meetings. We lacked creativity and imagination, unable to inspire, but often able to win loud arguments or flamewars on the nets.
We sharpened our tongues, but only deployed them in defense of our egos and comforts. We could pick up or discard different scraps of theory when it suited us, or draw opposite conclusions out of the same bland aphorism. Absent from our culture was self-reflection, self-assessment, self-criticism, and humility. We never took seriously the art of listening. We became adept at putting ourselves in an oscillating role of victim/savior, and others in differing roles of victim // perpetrator.
We learned how to name the power structures we opposed.
We learned how to point them out to others in our sub-culture.
We learned how to describe the abuses we faced.
But few were those who learned and shared skills to deal with it. To live through it. To heal from it. To grow despite it.
We were good at handing out simple answers. We were good at blaming others for our non-revolutionary times.
We were unable to adapt our theories strategically to non-revolutionary times.
Each small victory shocked us; left us surprised and bewildered, not knowing what to do next, afraid of this break in routine, feeling smaller and more hopeless. Our plans were designed for failure, and we didn’t like getting anything else out of them.
We built our bonds on political//philosophical affinities, not on consistency, trust, respect, or character. We rushed into actions ill-prepared, barely knowing the people next to us, ready to fight alongside each other without ever learning to walk alongside each other. Many were captured. Many co-operated with the enemy and helped them hunt and capture our comrades. Can you imagine, being committed to a fight before being committed to your comrades in that fight?
We were so terribly inconsistent.
If anyone was wondering, it really really sucks to be fat in the queer punk scene. Like a lot. It sucks a lot. Like so much.
“To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal.”
— Malcolm X (via art-and-fury)
(via bradicalmang)
TO THE CLIFFS - A HAUNTED SHIELD
so brutal!!! I am so angsty & dysphoric as fuck this morning & I just want to shriek & shred & fucking die all at the same time.
One of my fav mtl bands.
whoops. hiding in my room again.
A Crime Called Freedom: The Writings of Os Cangaceiros
“Reform is the continuation of repression by other means. It increases the efficacy of social control.”
more here
“We can’t provide survivors safe space; safe space in a general sense, outside of close friendships, some family and the occasional affinity, just doesn’t exist… there is no such thing as safe space under patriarchy or capitalism in light of all the sexist, hetero-normative, racist, classist (etc.) domination that we live under. The more we try and pretend safety can exist at a community level, the more disappointed and betrayed our friends and lovers will be when they experience violence and do not get supported.”
— Safety is an Illusion (via ninjabikeslut)
