Youtube Favorite Friday: Cuteness (and apologies)

Yep, can't get enough of going "aw" at this one:


I love Sesame Street, so much.

So, sorry I've been totally neglecting this thing. Taize was good, but also hard, I still don't know how to convey the spiritual experience in words, but some more concrete highlights:
- Chocolate and butter sandwiches, for breakfast, everyday.
- Being humbled by people who walked there... from Italy.
- Picking up a slew of dirty ASL signs (prooobably just our group).
- The catchy tune stuck in your head is sung by monks (well, and everyone else).
- Sobbing with people you just met, and some of whom do not share a language with you.

So. That's that. I start work at camp tomorrow, so yeah, blogging is not my priority right now. I may stop in occasionally to link somewhere else, but don't expect too much original content until September.

Speaking of linking other places, here's a few of my favorite stories. I'm limiting myself to ones I found this morning, or else I'd just go on and on:
-Feministe: Latina teacher fired for not regurgitating the same old crap. Oh social justice, how you need to be a requirement- for students, and apparently school administrators. It's fucking scary that challenging Eurocentrism is so dangerous.
-Queerty: "Can’t I Just Have Mayonnaise?" Whines O’Reilly Over "Gay" Commercial O'Reilly's homophobia and glaringly obvious straight privilege here is endlessly amusing/distressing to me. He totally can't grasp the concept that the loving housewife being replaced by a New York deli man is "gender play". Because he totally can't see past two guys kissing. Because if it was a man and woman, it would be normal. Because straight people are normal and gay people are a disturbing and political affront to all straight people. I just feel bad for him at this point. Could someone educate him, please?
-Bitch Magazine: Factory Girl: Dora the Explorer and the Dirty Secrets of the Global Industrial Economy I'm kind of envious of how many issues the writer managed to neatly packed in this one article. I tried to sum it up, but please, just go read it.
-Fourfour: She just doesn't get it Oh, how I hoped- or perhaps rationalized- that Tila Tequila was at least slightly positive for bisexual visibility. But, alas- she's gone and spouted another old bisexual stereotype, and to make matters worse, still thinks she's helping.

Ok, I found another video of the kid, so today you're lucky enough to get two youtube favorites:

I wonder where she is now?

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Youtube Favorite Friday: New Crush!

Yep, I'm totally fucking girl-crushing on Julia Nunes.



Besides being magic on the ukulele - an instrument that evokes awe in me because I usually see it as a toy instead of, well, an instrument (maybe because I bought my own at a toy store?) - she's also just so sweet and goofy and sincere and cute. She's got all of this confidence I never have when I'm performing. Maybe I should try putting music on the youtubes sometime.

Well, I'm going to Europe tomorrow, so I might post something about France of Switzerland when I get back. This'll be the last post 'til June, though. Sorry to deprive you again, you five readers, you.

In conclusion: Julia Nunes! Come to Rhode Island and play a show with me!

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Youtube Favorite... Saturday

Hey. Sorry I'm late again. Finals are cracking down. (Aaaaaand Season 4 of Buffy arrived in the mail.)

So, some lighter fare today:

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Youtube Favorite Friday: Buffy

The Saint-Marie, not the slayer.
This video hasn't been working for me. If it doesn't work for you either, let me know and another song of hers up. If it does work for you, lucky, you get to enjoy the voice of Buffy Saint-Marie.



I first found her when Kimya Dawson posted the same video in her livejournal. She went on to talk about how inspiring and strong Buffy is, how brave, and gives Wal-Mart a great big fuck you. I really enjoyed the latter part at the time, but for whatever reason didn't pay the former so much mind.
Then I started writing an article for the Women's Center newsletter (I'll post it when it goes online) about progressive female artists, and I put Buffy on my list of people to check out, because I certainly trust Kimya's tastes. I ended up listening to Buffy Saint-Marie constantly for a solid week. She's amazing.

At the same time, a lot of things corresponded- my housemate went to a conference about women in politics, and the last speaker talked about how women often don't get politically involved because they don't think they understand every facet of the issue(s), but men don't have that same political inhibition. And in an essay class, we had to write about an experience with an animal, and I wrote about an injured pigeon that some kids were tormenting in kindergarten, and the essay ended up being about how baffling cruelty and a lack of sympathy has always been to me, and how powerless I feel every time I think about the fact that I'm in a country whose government condones torture. Then the Yoo memos were released. And none of my friends knew about it, and the TV didn't talk about it, and at this point everyone is watching Obama and Clinton and thanking their lucky stars that there's less than a year left of Bush, but there's still torture and we should still be talking about it. Fuck, we should be yelling in the streets about it! And I spent my days at work reading and writing about Buffy Saint-Marie and Billie Holiday and Patti Smith and Sweet Honey in the Rock and Ani DiFranco, and I one day I finished the piece on Buffy, and I went home, and I wrote my first protest song.

I ended up going back to that livejournal entry of Kimya's because, of course, I wrote about her, too, and wanted to work in some quotes displaying her feminist and anti-corporate sensibilities. So I read it again, I read this again: "All the strong women, who helped make me who I am, are on my mind. Maybe because of all the messages I have gotten from those of you who have said that I have changed or empowered you. Let's keep it going."
Kimya Dawson is the whole reason I picked up a guitar for the first time in eight years, and why I started teaching myself and writing songs. When I read those words, it just felt like magic, like the universe made sense for just a few minutes. It felt powerful.
Maybe that's all incomprehensible to you. It might be beyond words.
I guess, all I can say is, thank you, brave women. Thank you, Kimya. Thank you, Buffy.

More Buffy
More Kimya
More Me (including the protest song, "Inexcusable", uploaded for the occasion- it has some mistakes because it's new and quite fast, making it hard to play over and over. Be forgiving.)

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Youtube Favorite Fridays: Calpernia Addams Chaps Your Ass (or, Hitting the Brick Wall)

For this week, I chose Calpernia Addams's long list of Bad Questions to Ask a Transsexual.



Her smiling rage is so lovely and righteous. There can only be so many polite, even-toned education moments (usually met with confusion, skepticism or flat-out offense) before a person either stops bothering or starts screaming. I live a relatively comfortable and privileged life, and still, I know I've run out of steam (or, less often, had steam build up to the point of explosion) when trying to engage others in real conversation about sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia and so forth from time to time. Sometimes it just feels like there's no progress, not even that seed of enlightenment planted, and you just want to shout some sense into some eardrums. That, of course, gets you labeled as over-sensitive (or a feminazi, or a reverse racist, or selfish, or a plain old bitch) and others use it to undercut your credibility. Sometimes it's a brick wall that you no longer have the strength to dismantle.

That devastating discouragement has hit progressive bloggers hard in the past, and right now it seems to be particularly affecting women of color. Brownfemipower is down, and the permanence is unclear. Holly at Feministe covers that better than I could. Reappropriate also went on hiatus late last month, and Jenn, the blogger there, posted a comprehensive explanation. You should really go read it, and I'll end with an excerpt:

I’m tired of discussions of sexism being misconstrued as male-bashing, I’m tired of people who don’t know feminism thinking they can define it, and above all, I am tired of the suspicion of my racial solidarity and my pride in the Asian American community because of my identification as a feminist and the choices in my personal life. I’m tired of constantly talking and not being heard, and having to defend who I am to the men in my community. I’m saddened by the countless emails from feminists who write to me to tell me that the hoarde of anti-feminist commentors on this blog have chased them from commenting. I feel like I’ve been banging my head against a brick wall, and all I have to show for it is ostracization, derision, and occasionally ridicule from some Asian American men. I feel like the adage “working twice as hard to get half as far” is poignantly relevant to how hard I’ve struggled for the same acceptance in the APIA online community that some of my male colleagues enjoy almost innately.
...
It’s telling to me that this kind of hiatus occurs so frequently in the feminism of colour blogosphere. Something about having to fight the tides of racism in the feminist community and the sexism within our racialized communities makes us more susceptible to weariness. We are fighting a war on two fronts; perhaps this is why so few feminists of colour blog, and our blogosphere community remains so small. Perhaps this periodic need to rejuvenate is all the evidence needed to demonstrate how difficult it is to exist at the political intersection of race and gender.

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Whoops! Late Youtube Favorite

I was away this weekend, so I missed my one steady feature. Sorry about that.
I'll give you the Youtube Favorite, and a bonus: the March newsletter of the Women's Center at which I work. Our year's theme is Stereotypes, and that month's theme was stereotypes about mothers. Enjoy! (pdf)

To compliment that, here's one of my favorite lady Kimya's songs about motherhood:

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Youtube Favorite Fridays

This has been making the rounds on some of my favorite blogs. Enjoy, hopefully I'll get to something besides the regular feature this week... or perhaps I should just start making more regular features.

The original of this is down for whatever reason, but some smarty pants put it up on a different name. Check out the man's website, and enjoy!

EDIT: The original is up! Is youtube being weird for anyone else? A lot of videos have been mysteriously "unavailable" to me lately, and this has confirmed my suspicion that it might only be on my end.

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